Tag: blog

Dr No More

Gatecrasher ‘Dr Nastro’ admits defeat and announces he’ll be retiring from the ligging circuit; perhaps Denis Doble, David Pun and Sandra Shevey ought to follow his lead

On Wednesday, we received a message from a known member of London’s ligging community of aging oddballs using the pseudonym ‘Dr Nastro’.

In an email to our main editorial email address and sent from a Yahoo account, this gatecrasher accused Matthew Steeples of effectively being responsible for his being “banned from venues” and suggested that one of the worst of his very own number “had me thrown out of a place. ” also. He added a link to an article on a website named ‘Stop Wine Liggers’ and rather pathetically concluded: “I will not be going to events any more.”

By return, Matthew Steeples responded:

“I have nothing to do with the website you have linked to – I am busy enough with my own work – but have responded to the comments there. If they decide to publish, you will see my thoughts.”

“I do believe the behaviour of the ligging community is unacceptable. You and your friends do not add to events, they subtract and they are a nuisance to organisers. Some of your number are thieves and others are just racist bigots. Plainly, you have offended the person behind the site you mention but what I cannot understand is why you are surprised.”

“As for giving up going, it is probably the wisest decision you’ve made given the chaos you’ve caused previously. Enjoy your retirement.”

In reply, ‘Dr Nastro’ immediately answered: “I just did it for fun the rest are not [sic].”

Image taken from ‘Stop Wine Liggers’ website.

July 26, 2017
Enough is Enough

Funding for the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann must cease; £11 million spent with no result is evidence that enough is enough

Over £11 million has been spent in relation to the search for Madeleine McCann since the then 3-year old disappeared on 3^rd May 2007. The result? Absolutely no progress and a lot of unanswered questions.

Now, with the last round of public funding given to the element of the search known as Operation Grange by Theresa May in March set to run out in September, is the time to end the search. Enough is enough and in spite that some would suggest that the chances of finding the disappeared child is still there, the fact of the matter is that in ten years of following leads that have led nowhere resources that could have been allocated to other missing people have been squandered.

Last week, a Metropolitan Police spokesman told The Sun:

“A lot of potentially significant images and material were captured on previous trips to Portugal and we are still working on all leads…. The investigation continues with focus and determination. It is not winding down, it is not grinding to a halt. It is on going.”

Such sentiments will no doubt leave such people as Kerry Needham – whose 21-month year old son, Ben, disappeared in Greece on 24^th July 1991 – spitting feathers. As of 2015, a comparative sum of just £700,000 had been spent on attempts to find him and thus one is left asking why the child of two middle class medics is worth 93% more than the son of an ordinary working class woman.

In 2015, Ms Needham, after supporters of the McCanns cruelly suggested those backing her in her search for her child were “toxic”, remarked: “I have never criticised the McCann family. I have only every criticised the authorities for the way the two cases have been handled so differently.”

Kerry Needham

Missing Madeleine – Questions without Answers

Many questions about what happened on the evening of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann remain. Some that have been highlighted by the press and discussed online include:

Why did the McCanns refuse to answer 48 questions put to her by the Portuguese police?

Why were certain records of phone calls on the evening of the disappearance “whoosh-clunked” from the memories of the phones of Mr and Mrs McCann and the ‘Tapas 9’?

Why did a British sniffer dog sense the smell of a corpse in a cupboard in the apartment from which Madeleine McCann disappear?

Why did a sniffer dog also supposedly sense the smell of a corpse in a vehicle hired by the couple a month after the disappearance of their daughter?

Why did Mr and Mrs McCann go jogging and play tennis in the days after their daughter’s disappearance?

Was it acceptable for Mr and Mrs McCann’s mortgage to be paid by the fund established to search for their missing daughter?

July 23, 2017
Enough is Enough

Funding for the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann must cease; £11 million spent with no result is evidence that enough is enough

Over £11 million has been spent in relation to the search for Madeleine McCann since the then 3-year old disappeared on 3^rd May 2007. The result? Absolutely no progress and a lot of unanswered questions.

Now, with the last round of public funding given to the element of the search known as Operation Grange by Theresa May in March set to run out in September, is the time to end the search. Enough is enough and in spite that some would suggest that the chances of finding the disappeared child is still there, the fact of the matter is that in ten years of following leads that have led nowhere resources that could have been allocated to other missing people have been squandered.

Last week, a Metropolitan Police spokesman told The Sun:

“A lot of potentially significant images and material were captured on previous trips to Portugal and we are still working on all leads…. The investigation continues with focus and determination. It is not winding down, it is not grinding to a halt. It is on going.”

Such sentiments will no doubt leave such people as Kerry Needham – whose 21-month year old son, Ben, disappeared in Greece on 24^th July 1991 – spitting feathers. As of 2015, a comparative sum of just £700,000 had been spent on attempts to find him and thus one is left asking why the child of two middle class medics is worth 93% more than the son of an ordinary working class woman.

In 2015, Ms Needham, after supporters of the McCanns cruelly suggested those backing her in her search for her child were “toxic”, remarked: “I have never criticised the McCann family. I have only every criticised the authorities for the way the two cases have been handled so differently.”

Kerry Needham

Missing Madeleine – Questions without Answers

Many questions about what happened on the evening of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann remain. Some that have been highlighted by the press and discussed online include:

Why did the McCanns refuse to answer 48 questions put to her by the Portuguese police?

Why were certain records of phone calls on the evening of the disappearance “whoosh-clunked” from the memories of the phones of Mr and Mrs McCann and the ‘Tapas 9’?

Why did a British sniffer dog sense the smell of a corpse in a cupboard in the apartment from which Madeleine McCann disappear?

Why did a sniffer dog also supposedly sense the smell of a corpse in a vehicle hired by the couple a month after the disappearance of their daughter?

Why did Mr and Mrs McCann go jogging and play tennis in the days after their daughter’s disappearance?

Was it acceptable for Mr and Mrs McCann’s mortgage to be paid by the fund established to search for their missing daughter?

July 23, 2017
Great Minus Garden

San Francisco landmark mock Tudor house with stunning ‘Great Room’ for sale for £12.2 million – in spite of no longer having its garden

Built in 1909 as a wedding gift from Morris Meyerfeld, a partner in San Francisco’s Orepheum Theatre, to his then 19-year old daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband Leon Roos – of Roos Brothers Men’s Clothing – 3500 Jackson Street in the city’s Presidio Heights district has been placed on the market for £12.2 million ($16 million million, €14 million or درهم58.8 million).

Consisting of 10,313 square foot of accommodation and constructed in half-timbered, mock Tudor style, Roos House at 3500 Jackson Street is a listed architectural curiosity that includes 6 reception rooms, 7 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms. It centres around a ‘Great Room’ with 20-foot ceiling heights and also has 2 terraces, a wine cellar, a double garage and off-street parking.

The house, which was designed by Bernard Maybeck (1862 – 1957) – an Arts and Crafts architect responsible for the domed Palace of Fine Arts, a “vision of how Roman style could fit in a California context” – is being sold by Dr. Jane Schaefer Roos, the widow of Leslie Roos, son of Leon Roos. It sadly lacks a rear garden as this was sold off “after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake to raise funds for repairing the rest of the house” according to the Curbed San Francisco blog.

In 1992, in her book Bernard Maybeck: Visionary Architect, Sally Woodbridge described the interior of Roos House. She remarked:

“Panels of mauve plush edged with gold gimp harmonize with redwood walls. Redwood battens and moldings have Gothic profiles. Indirect lighting and diffused light from wall fixtures softly illuminate surfaces and details, while hanging chandeliers sparkle against the dark heights of the roof timbering. Tables of dark oak and chairs cushioned with rose velvet supplement the furnishings selected from the owner’s collection of medieval pieces. Wall coverings, light fixtures, and furniture – even the heraldic crest of the owner’s initial ornamenting the entrance door – were fashioned from designs by Maybeck.”

Launched to the market last week, Nina Hatvany has the listing.

July 18, 2017
Isaac Hindin-Miller

“Dapper Dan” and “quasi New Yorker” Isaac Hindin-Miller established his online presence “at the very beginning of the blogging boom” in 2008. A “shameless self-promoter”, New Zealand born Hindin-Miller offers “relationship advice for anybody who asks” and claims not to be afraid of legal spats. He lists his career highlights as having met Kanye West and watching Tyga record Hotel California.

May 31, 2017
Pete Cashmore (AKA ‘The Sage of Media’)

Born in Banchory, Aberdeenshire in 1985, Pete Cashmore founded Mashable, a “one-stop-shop” digital media news and blogging site, in his bedroom in 2005 with the aim of “changing the world”. The firm now has over 120 employees, is based in New York and has 9 million followers on Twitter and achieves over 45 million unique views per month. He was once described as “one of the most influential voices of his generation – on and offline” and was also called “more than just a superb head of hair” by Hearst’s Town & Country magazine in 2016.

May 7, 2017
A Georgian Gem

Grade I listed Georgian mansion in Worcestershire for sale for the first time since the 1720s

Few houses remain in the ownership of the same family for three hundred years, but an example of such, Ombersley Court at Ombersley in Worcestershire, has just been placed on the market for £3.5 million ($4.5 million, €4.1 million or درهم16.7 million).

Designed and built for the 1^st Lord Sandys by the master builder Francis Smith of Warwick between 1723 and 1730, Ombersley Court was substantially alerted by the landscape architect John Webb in 1809. Grade I listed and featuring impressive entertaining spaces, the 27,449 square foot house comes with a 13,188 square foot Grade II* listed stable complex and 39 acres of land. A further 11 acres and a three bedroom cottage are available as separate lots.

Richard Michael Oliver Hill, 7th Baron Sandys of Ombersley (1942 – 2013) accompanying the Queen on her inspection of the Yeoman of the Guard

An image of Ombersley Court before the service extension that provided kitchen and staff accommodation (right) was demolished in 1964

Of Ombersley Court, Matthew Beckett of The Country Seat blog remarks:

“With the death of Lord Sandys in 2013 the house passed to Lady Sandys but following her recent death, concerns were raised and rebutted via letters in Country Life that this wonderful house would be forced (for complicated reasons) to become a care home; a fate which would have despoiled this jewel of a house. Instead, for the first time since it was built in 1724, it has been placed on the market. This is a house created by one of the finest craftsmen of the early-Georgian period, with connections to a wider, distinct Midlands architectural tradition which epitomises all that one would hope to see in a country seat”.

“As an important house which deserves respect, one hopes that the new owner will appreciate this remarkable situation and that perhaps the best approach would simply be to buy the house and contents and perhaps another couple hundred acres to truly secure an Arcadian ideal, one which would be hard to better anywhere in the country”.

The selling agents are Savills.

May 6, 2017
Michael Heaver

The co-owner of the right-wing Westmonster website terms his ethnicity “milk bottle white” and claims there are “tons of burkas” on the streets of East London. Naturally a fan of Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump and of the belief that England is the land of “soft justice”, Michael Heaver loathes what he describes as the “pathetic” Hope Not Hate campaign and claims Nigel Farage is responsible for the rise in the usage of the usage of “political elite” and “establishment” as descriptions. He previously worked as UKIP’s head of online engagement and was once mocked as “another useful idiot” and a “remarkably unpleasant child”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ohIm78FLEA

April 25, 2017
Rent-a-Gob v. Rent-a-Gob

Acid tongued food blogger Jack Monroe’s libel victory over right wing media personality Katie Hopkins represents a victory for only their lawyers

Katie Hopkins undoubtedly spouts a lot of hot air but that she lost a libel action yesterday brought by the acid tongued food blogger Jack “I don’t want my boobs anymore” Monroe is a little beyond a joke. Both women like the sound of their own voices more than anything else and both profit from controversy, but that Hopkins is now left facing a total bill estimated at around £325,000 seems a little ridiculous given that all she did was write two undoubtedly inappropriate but subsequently retracted tweets.

Monroe – whose claims in documents submitted to the court that she tends “to move in circles of cookery and politics rather than outrage and vitriol” will have those who’ve encountered this nasty piece of work in fits of hysterics – won £24,000 after Mr Justice Warby agreed that Hopkins’ actions had left poor, little her with “injured feelings” that “remain raw”.

In the judgment, Mr Justice remarked:

“Publication [of the tweets] not only caused Ms Monroe real and substantial distress, but also harm to her reputation which was serious, albeit not ‘very serious’ or ‘grave’”.

“In this case, the allegations were serious but certainly not towards the top end of the scale. The extent of publication was significant but not massive in its scale. The harm to reputation, though serious, will not have been grave. The need for vindication is not a weighty factor, as there has been no attempt to prove the truth of what was alleged. This judgment will make the position clear to those who were unaware of it already. Ms Monroe is a public figure, in the sense that she chooses to engage in public life and to engage in political discourse in public forums”.

In spite of the judge rejecting suggestions that any real harm was done to Monroe, she’s actually benefited hugely from this case. Not only does a woman who once claimed David Cameron “used stories about his dead son” to sell off chunks of the NHS “to his friends” walk away with a large chunk of change in damages, but this foul mouthed, ‘gender X’ harpy has also had her profile splashed across virtually every paper today. She will now profit handsomely from interviews and features and no doubt will find herself taking on new work elsewhere. In the case of Rent-a-Gob vs. Rent-a-Gob in summary though, there’s actually only one real winner: Their lawyers.

March 11, 2017
Picture of the Week – Spying on Trump

As an image of Barrack Obama spying on Donald Trump in Trump Tower goes viral, we call on America to section the lunatic president

On Sunday, Florida based Michael Hussey, editor of the Pushing Rope blog, shared an amusing image of Donald Trump in his ghastly, over gilded Trump Tower apartment on Instagram. Outside the window –Photoshopped into the picture – is Barrack Obama suckered to the building and peering in with a pair of binoculars.

Though what Mr Hussey shares will certainly amuse many, Trump’s unsubstantiated claims on Twitter about being wiretapped are anything but. Here, again, all we see is evidence of a lunatic in charge of the asylum and now, one can only hope, the powers that will be will finally act: It is time for Donald Trump to be sectioned.

March 7, 2017