Sweets, Presidents, naked veterans and a tarty PM....

Harry Willsher, a 12-year-old schoolboy from Billericay, Essex, has been given the best job in the world, chief tester...in a SWEET FACTORY! Jealous? I am!

Every 3 months Harry is given the chance to test new, top secret sweet recipes after he won a competition at Swizzell's Matlow to find a new recruit. His description of the smells and flavours of his favourite sweet, the Drumstick lolly apparently wowed the judges.

Harry described the factory as being like something out of Roald Dahl's children's classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I wonder if he gets paid too?

Also, Veteran actress June Brown, aka Dot Branning was Cotton in Eastenders, is planning to get naked in the future. The 82-year-old actress said "I don't know if it's a pretty sight". One can only imagine!

Barack Obama is establishing himself as a people's president, which is wonderful, but I was slightly annoyed to read that at a recent Washington Fundraiser the likes of Susan Boyle were invited. Boyle shot to fame on Britain's got Talent earlier this year, but I do not think that she should be invited to be entertained by the President of the United States, I mean surely there are more deserving people out there such as ex-army Brits etc. What's worse is she turned the invitation down. The phrase "too big for your boots", springs to mind.

And in conclusion to today's fascinating news update, it has emerged the Gordon Brown wears makeup, and has a step-by-step guide to applying the slap when he has to go D.I.Y. If I looked like him though I would probably do the same, he might want to change his brand however because as far as I can see it's not working for him.

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Mark McGowan and his "art"-felt tribute to Jade Goody

I thought I'd seen the lowest of the low in terms of art when I visited the the Tate Gallery in 2005 and stumbled across Tracy Emin's "Exploration of the Soul", a disgusting description of what she went through as a child, I don't even want to go into what she had written on the pieces of paper that in my opinion plagued the walls of the gallery. The woman is not an artist, she needs counselling.

Anyway, I was wrong! Mark McGowan, a Performance Artist has re-enacted the death of Jade Goody, using cardboard boxes with pictures stuck on of Jade's, mother Jackiey's and husband Jack's faces. The installation at the Guy Hilton Gallery in East London depicted the final two hours of Jade's life and around 200 people attended. Slightly soon, as she only died 6 weeks ago of Cervial Cancer. McGowan defends his art admitting it's "provocative" and accuses the people of England as being "too hung up on death".

So, I underwent a bit of research into him, and it turns out he is another deluded "Artist". His previous works include; re-enacting the death of Jean-Charles de Menezes by Met Police outside Stockwell Underground Station in London, and eating chunks of a Corgi dog in protest against Prince Philip for hunting foxes. Disgusting. Art my arse. But wait, it gets better! He sat in a bathtub full of baked beans with chips up his nose and sausages around his head claiming to be the defender of the Full English Breakfast. Art in this country really is going downhill. Sickening!

www.thesun.co.uk www.wikipedia.org

Woman's bra saves her life!

Bras, in my experience, are more trouble then they are worth. You can never find the perfect fit, a nice style or one that suits all lifestyles. But I wonder when this woman bought her bra, whether or not she knew it would save her life!

The unnamed 57-year-old woman from the West side of Detroit was shot at by one of three intruders as she looked out of her window and saw them raiding the house next door. The bullet deflected off of the underwire of her bra thus saving her life.

She was taken to hospital but released the same day and Detroit police said "she sustained injuries but they're not life threatening."

Local police Sgt Eren Stephens Bell told the Detrioit News: "We need to get some bulletproof vests made from that. It is some strong wire."

TV Talent

When Susan Boyle walked on stage on TV talent show Britains Got Talent, the audience and viewers at home laughed. Little did they know she could actually sing!

I myself admit I judged this book a little to harshly by its cover and just watched it because I thought it would make me laugh. How wrong myself and i'm sure many others like me were!

The 48-year-old wowed the TV show judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan by singing West End song 'I Dreamed A Dream'.

The audience and viewers were endeared by her as she admitted she had never been kissed and acted a bit, for want of a better word, 'kooky' on stage.

But now it has emerged the wonder from Blackburn, West Lothian, has infact been kissed and more than once! She recently admitted “That was made as a joke! Never been kissed? I’ve never stopped.”

Although she does have a good voice, I wonder if she would have been as much of a hit without the silly spinster story thrown in? Who knows?

What we do know is that there is some fierce competition in this years show including the very cute Shaheen Jarfargholi from Swansea, whose rendition of 'Who's Loving You' by the Jackson 5 raked in 13.5 million viewers, giving it the biggest TV ratings of the year so far. Susan and Shaheen are favourites to be in the final says the sun dubbing the competition, 'Boyle V Boyo'.

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Police Power.....Mad!

Last week during the G20 protests a man was struck by a police officer and died.

Ian Tomlinson, 47, was trying to get home from his newspaper selling job, through the Royal Exchange Passage when he was struck in the leg with a baton by a metropolitan police officer and pushed to the ground. Bystanders are said to have helped Mr Tomlinson up, but he collapsed three minutes later of a heart attack and died.

Footage shows the newspaper vendor trying to get home to Smithfield past police cordons. He had his hands in his pockets, his back to the officers and it is alledged he was in no way part of the protest.

The independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the death.

I wonder, after looking at the pictures in the newspaper, why the officer chose to attack a man, not making any trouble and clearly just walking? I could understand a mistake perhaps if the scene was busy and there were lots of people creating havoc, but from the stills of the footage, it appears to be quite empty.

I was reading John Kingdom's Government and Politics in Britain, thinking about how much power the police on the streets should really have.

Kingdom writes that 'One of the defining characteristics of the state is the right to use violence' but that it needs to be used with caution or we run the risk of becoming a 'police state'. He also writes that 'Policing involves two broad functions 'fighting crime and maintaining public order'.
I think, that there is a very thin line between these two concepts. Yes, the police should fight crime in order to maintain public order, but there is a difference between keeping the peace and using violence in order to make a point.

In the case of the officer who hit Ian Tomlinson, no one knows exactly what was going through his mind at the time, in his eyes, he may have been trying to make a point that the police presence was there to stop anything kicking off, however he made the vital mistake in using a weapon. This raises the point of militarization. Using military style force to maintain order. 'Once officers are armed, mistakes can be fatal'. (Kingdom:670:ch21).

In 1994 the Criminal Justice and Public order Act was put in place giving the police the right to restrict protestors amongst other things. Of course this is a vital act given the amount of protests that have led to violence, but this should not protect the officer in question, and the footage will clearly show that he used force in completly the wrong circumstance. A similar case of police violence which led to the death of a person was Oliver Price in 1990, who died after being held in a head lock by a police officer.

Kingdom also writes that 'characteristically the police are associated with certain attitudes towards race, gender, class and ideology'. Looking at the stills, Mr Tomlinson does fit the lower class model, tracksuit bottoms, a shaved head and quite a big figure (I do not want to generalise here, I am just looking through the eyes of the officers) so this reiterates the police attitudes. It is however a very shocking incident, and it just shows that the police are giving too much freedom when it comes to policing the streets. Luckily there are witnesses in favour of Mr Tomlinson's family, and the footage, as it would not suprise me if the police got away with this by twisting the facts as has been done in the past, to protect the reputation of the Police Force in Britain. A quote from Kingdom 'There are grounds for believing that policing in the UK is a model for the world'.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7992783.stm
John Kingdom: Government and Politics Chapter 21.

Parky tells it how it is.....

The television legend that is Michael Parkinson never ceases to amaze me. I think he is brilliant. He speaks the truth. And yet again he has graced the world with his wise word.

There is no denying at this moment in time the subject of Jade Goody's death is somewhat a sensitive point amongst many of the public, as people are still mourning and she was taken so young. However the idea that she was a 'saint' and a 'martyr' seems a tad far fetched. Well to me anyway! Which is why I am really glad Parkinson has had his say and brought everyone back down to earth.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that her death had been turned into a media circus, and no matter how sad it is for her two children and everyone she left behind, death is a part of life, people die everyday!

In a recent interview Parkinson told the Radio Times "Jade Goody has her own place in the history of television and, while it's significant, it's nothing to be proud of. Her death is as sad as the death of any young person, but it's not the passing of a martyr or a saint or Princess Di."

Not one to shy away from voicing his opinion Parkinson also referred to Jade as "ignorant" and claimed that she represented "all that's paltry and wretched about Britain today".

It is absolutly wonderful that her passing has led to more people getting cervical cancer screenings and raised mass awareness of the disease. But however sad, I do think that the British Public have a guilty conscience for all the bad things they said about the young women, and this is there way of repenting. If Jade hadn't died, would we like her?


http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=Michael Parkinson

Madonna shown no Mercy

Last week Madonna travelled to Malawi in a bid to adopt yet another orphan, this time a young girl, Mercy James. She was however denied the adoption.

When a child is deemed better off in a poverty stricken Malawi with high infant mortality rates rather than joining a rich family in a developed country, it begs the question, why?

Judge Esme Chombo ruled Madonna was ineligible to adopt Mercy last week as she did not qualify as a Malawian resident. But surely this does not matter considering Madonna adopted David Banda in 2006 from Malawi.

Although Madonna has gone through a very public divorce in recent months, both herself and Guy Ritchie have tried to keep life as normal as they can for the children, and there is no doubt that the child will have everythin she needs. So why is the judge denying this little the girl the right to a better life?

When it comes to adoption from poor countries, if the family is checked, deemed safe and approved in every other way other than nationality or residency, I think children should be given the chance to improve their lives, it seems selfish not to.

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