As coronavirus threatens to kill off print papers, a salaried opportunity for a journalist has arisen with a church in Rainham, Kent
In April, The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade highlighted the ongoing decline of newspapers in the UK and suggested the coronavirus pandemic would only accelerate this. Going further we argued that this “epoch of change” would make us all the poorer, but, now, we can share a positive piece of news about the press.
Highlighted this morning in the Guardian with the headline: “The good news: Kent church posts vacancy for journalist,” Harriet Sherwood reported that the St Margaret’s parish church in Rainham, Kent is “hiring a full-time journalist to help ‘build community life’ after a survey of parishioners found a demand for local news and communication.”
In their advert for the £20,000 per year salaried post, the church announced:
“For thousands of years, it is story telling which has kept communities together. Now, more than ever before we need someone like you to tell our stories so that we might stay together even when physically we are apart.”
“Whether it’s telling the story of the local fish shop, how the restaurant owners are coping whilst shut or the history behind ‘The Oast’ House and what it’s doing now – we want a multi skilled, qualified journalist to join our staff team as soon as possible.”
“Half of the stories you produce will focus on the local community – its people and groups, schools and new housing. The other half will focus on telling the story of the church, its people, purpose and history. You’ll also take a lead on all of our digital content including overseeing the live streaming of our services. We believe this is an exciting opportunity to make a real difference in a local community through serious journalism.”
The successful candidate will be expected to “originate and produce a wide variety of news and current affairs content for relevant output across the church’s digital platforms and to oversee St Margaret’s digital presence/profile” and will report to the vicar and church wardens.
Of why they had decided to make such an appointment, the bishop of Tonbridge Simon Burton Jones, told the Guardian:
“The shrinkage in local journalism as advertising gravitates online is already having really important consequences at community level. As local papers disappear … their long-standing and important links with their communities can be lost. Online alternatives like clickbait, lists, gossip and the like are no substitute for real journalism.”
A closing date of 22nd June has been set for applications.
The vicar of St Margaret’s, Rainham Reverend Nathan Ward made headlines in April 2018 when it was revealed he was a member of the Magic Circle and performs illusions as part of his church services. ‘Kent Online’ remarked: “The new vicar of Rainham has a few tricks up his sleeves which could have his congregation crying hallelujah,” whilst Ward himself added: “I have been using magic and illusions within the church for many years now. I think it’s a great way of engaging people and also telling some of the stories you can find in the bible. It also allows me to remind people that church should be fun.”
Former lead investigator in Madeleine McCann case predicted latest development involving German paedophile in April 2019; he suggested the man would be made a “scapegoat” by Scotland Yard
Amongst all the hubbub of the last 24 hours surrounding the “identification of a German sex offender as the key suspect” in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, it has been conveniently forgotten that the former lead detective in the case, Goncalo Amaral, predicted such a development back in April 2019.
With nearly £12 million of public money spent on this case thus far, an ending – happy or otherwise – would bring closure for all involved. Yet, with British cops again recently grubbing around for yet more funding, this actually not so new ‘development’ actually could instead be primarily about helping that endeavour.
In April last year, Amaral – who had focused his inquiries onto a German paedophile without success in 2008 – told Australia’s News 9 (through an interpreter):
“Scotland Yard are preparing the end of the case. They are going to a use a German paedophile who is in jail in Germany at this time. He is going to be the scapegoat for it. I don’t how they will start it, but that will be the big ending. This will be the conclusion of the case.”
Significantly, Scotland Yard and the mainstream media seem to have now forgotten all about this.
The police have yet to explain the actual significance of photographs of a 1980s Volkswagen T3 Westfalia campervan and a 1993 Jaguar XJR6.The car hired by the McCanns also remains a bit of a mystery. In 2008, it was revealed that “one of them had later removed the carpet from the boot compartment in order to scrub it clean.” The boot had been “left open for several days” also.More significantly, shared on ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’ Facebook page last month is this photograph illustrating the distribution of blood spots in the sitting room of the holiday apartment where the McCann family were staying in Praia da Luz, Portugal in May 2007. Elsewhere, analysis of the setting highlights that tiles in the room were later removed by persons unknown.
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 Kate McCann 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 disappeared?
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?
Power of social media proven after the senseless murder of James Scurlock in Omaha, Nebraska allegedly by a bar owner Jake Gardner who has been photographed with Donald Trump
The true reach and usefulness of social media was illustrated on Sunday after the murder of a 22-year-old unarmed man named James Scurlock in Omaha, Nebraska the previous night.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT – This tweet shows video footage of the shooting of James Scurlock allegedly by Jake Gardner.
Whilst initially (at time of publishing at GMT 18:45, just hours after the alleged shooter, a cocktail bar owner named Jake Gardner, had “bailed out [of custody] at 6am” according to one local), no mainstream media outlets were reporting on the story, a GoFundMe page to support Mr Scurlock’s grieving family had gone viral.
It read:
We are creating this fundraiser for James Scurlock and his family.
Who is James Scurlock?
A 22 years old young black man who showed his dedication a love for his people every single day.
James was passionate for Justice, but today his fight ended as he was shot and killed downtown Omaha while protesting for the same Justice he deserves.
May you Rest In Peace James.
Within just seven hours of being made live, the page had raised over £32,000 ($40,000) for the late Mr Scurlock’s family whilst elsewhere on Twitter, filmed footage of the incident had gone viral. In it, gunshot can clearly be heard whilst other images shared include one of the alleged killer Jake Gardner posing with President Donald Trump.
James Scurlock died of his injuries soon after being shot.Jake Gardner’s bar, The Hive, is situated at 1207 Harney Street in Omaha, Nebraska. It is described as an “old-school bar with live music and a dance floor” that serves “cocktails, whisky and canned beer.” Here Mr Gardner is pictured outside it with his dog.Prior to the shooting, Jake Gardner posted on social media about “[having] to pull 48 hours of military style firewatch.”Jake Gardner posted a photograph of himself and his dog with President Donald Trump on Facebook on 25th September 2017. In the wake of the shooting, that image has gone viral on Twitter.Mr Gardner shared this image of himself on his Facebook page in July 2018 at the Republican National Convention with the Fox News commentator Jesse Watters in the background.Mr Gardner has a dog named LeBRON. It has its own Instagram account with 2,300 followers. Here it is pictured sporting Trump campaign materials.Another image of Jake Gardner shared on Twitter in the hours after the shooting shows him posing in one of his bars.This photograph of Mr Gardner with the comedian Adam DeVine has also been shared widely.
Travel writer Sarah Tucker shares news of her latest novella – it’s timely and its titled ‘The Redundant Travel Journalist’
My book The Redundant Travel Journalist has just come out. I would say “just in time for the holidays and in all good book shops” – but, as I don’t know which shops will be open and whether anyone will be taking anything vaguely resembling a holiday, I become aware of how many social constructs surround us. Holidays are one of them. The short novel is a dystopian tale of what travel will be like post-virus, although there may never be a post-virus.
It started off as fiction, but now I’m not so sure such is the boundary between what we think could never happen and what actually occurs. The travel industry has been most vulnerable to this surreal quality of wistful creatively about envisaging a normal, or a new normal, when really the industry is well off the cliff and currently walking on air, spin and hope. We dare not look down because we know, deep down, we have fallen, and are just waiting for the thud or a branch to break the fall.
Travel editors are in overdrive about what travel will be like, although their pages are thinning as there is no advertising and no one is going anywhere (well they are, they are just doing it illegally and in their own private jets).
There are so many webinars with very cross looking travel editors being signposted on Instagram and papers are asking writers in these unprecedented times to not write in these unprecedented times, and also drop all intention of writing virtual travel stories.
They are quote: “Fucking sick of them.” Travel experts are contradicting financial experts about asking for refunds from tour operators and the idea of staycations fills people with apathy and also incredulity (will hotels be open, expensive, can I afford them and then there’s the hygiene issues).
So, I thought I would write a ‘non-fiction’ tale of what it will be like post virus. (‘non-fiction’ being ‘nothing is intentionally made up’). Although research out this week (“What day is it?” I hear you ask) has just shown that all research and advice about what travel will be like during a crisis (the 2008 financial one, for example) never comes true. So, there you have it: There has been research to disprove the value of research.
Travel has become even more bonkers and surreal than it usually is. The dream destination has turned into exactly that, the journey of a lifetime, could be the last journey you take and getting way from the crowds is more of a necessity and less of a casual ask.
But, the Brits have always been ones to take their lives in their hands and travel whilst other nationalities stay put. There just may not be the airlines to fly with, or hotels to stay in. If airlines crash, there will be no use for airports, in which case, they could turn them into socially distancing schools, where children can learn and have the sense they are going somewhere metaphorically even if they aren’t. Or can’t. Like the rest though, I live in hope.
Sarah Tucker is an award-winning travel journalist, novelist, producer and broadcaster. She has edited, produced and presented a number of radio and TV series’ as well as presenting reports for the BBC’s ‘Holiday Programme’ and anchoring ‘I Want That House’ on ITV. She is the author of best-selling novels ‘The Playground Mafia,’ ‘The Battle for Big School,’ ‘The Last Year of Being Single’ and ‘The Control Freak Chronicles.’
To buy a copy of ‘The Redundant Travel Journalist’ by Sarah Tucker for £6.99 through Amazon, click here. Tucker has also recently written ‘The Witches of Richmond’ – it is also available on Amazon for £6.99.
“When you can travel, where will you go?” – Italy’s foreign minister Luigi Di Maio yesterday promised “foreign tourists will be welcome this summer” according to ‘The Telegraph.’
Ex-Daily Express owner Richard Desmond’s plans for a 1,500 apartment complex kicked out as Tory housing minister Robert Jenrick MP is shown to have “unlawfully approved” the proposed scheme
Given the green light just 24 hours before a new levy that “would have cost [Desmond] over £40 million” kicked in, the minister has now accepted the application must be “redetermined.”
With this controversial planning decision now frozen after Tower Hamlets council took legal action against the minister because of their apparent “bias towards the former owner of the Star, Daily Express and Sunday Express,” further questions about Jenrick’s judgment will follow.
Local councilor Andrew Wood, whom resigned from the Conservative Party “over the issue,” has now “put in a freedom of information request for all the correspondence between officials and the minister relating to the Westferry Road printworks development.”
He told the Guardian: “It should be investigated. The key question is: why did [Robert Jenrick] make the decision when he did so against the inspector’s advice?”
Robert Jenrick approved Richard Desmond’s £1 billion Westferry Printworks, Isle of Dogs, E14 scheme in January. 1,524 properties were due to be built there on the site of the former presses of the ‘Daily Express,’ ‘Sunday Express’ and ‘Daily Star.’ Originals plans, approved by then mayor Boris Johnson in 2016, for the site were for just 722 units.
Matthew Steeples suggests devious Dominic Cummings might actually be the best asset bungling Boris Johnson has got left; the king of distraction has made Jennifer Arcuri go away
Aside from consoling himself with the weak warblings of morose ministers who’ve been drafted out to lackadaisically laud him, most would suggest Dominic Cummings is the loneliest man in politics this Sunday. Instead, in reality – though no one’s got around to publicly saying it (yet) – this modern day Mandelson could still prove to be Boris Johnson’s most useful asset.
Hidden away somewhere deep in Downing Street in his beanie hat, this lookalike of Compo from Last of the Summer Wine crossed with Michael Kelly as Doug Stamper in the House of Cards has achieved one very important thing this weekend: Cummings has made the tawdriest elements of the Jennifer Arcuri story disappear from Sunday’s front pages.
Whilst Cummings’ wife, Mary Wakefield, certainly didn’t help the initial narrative with her clearly confused and contradictory account of how the pair had lived during their time with coronavirus in The Spectator, she certainly set in place curiosity as to where and in the company of whom the PM’s closest henchman had been sleeping. Then, when this Oxford graduate went “off on one” with his arrogant utterings as he clambered into his Land Rover Discovery yesterday, Cummings actually pulled a blinder.
Subsequent revelations as to whether the senior adviser to the Prime Minister attempted a rendition of Theresa May’s “wandering in the wheat fields” and boogied in the bluebells are surprisingly neither here nor there. Aside from quite rightly exciting anger from the public due to his hypocrisy, Cummings, in true Machiavellian fashion, has instead just shifted the news agenda away from BoJo’s very own bedroom behaviour.
In a clear example of the ‘distraction technique’ coming into play, Cummings’ travails have made everyone forget the sordid sexual relations ‘Bonking Boris’ had with the American founder of Hacker House. According to a most reliable source close to Downing Sttreet, Arcuri – a woman whom believes she has “been thrown under a bus” by her former lover – was about to give a “kiss-and-tell,” but has now retreated to her bunker. For now, ‘Bungling Boris’ can stay home and stay safe; the blabbering bird has (for now) been belted-up.
Pictured top: The finest examples of modern day distraction technique spinners in politics (both in reality and in fiction) have to be Dominic Cummings and Doug Stamper.
(Not So) Sexy Time with Jen and Dom – Jennifer Arcuri’s alleged attempt to kiss-and-tell about her indoor activities with Boris Johnson were supposedly put on hold this weekend due to the outdoor antics of Dominic Cummings dominating the news.
Elsewhere on social media and taking a break from sharing his enjoyment of Vimto and dislike of Jeremy Clarkson, the “laureate for our fractured times” turned Pan Macmillan published novelist Brian Bilston shared a poem he’d prepared about Mr Cummings. It follows.
Tweedle Deviant and Tweedle Deviant – Is Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson’s brotherhood of bumbling balls-ups about to be brought to an end? The public are most definitely braying for blood.
Rent-a-gob stand-in for Rod Liddle at ‘The Sun’ Olivia Utley shows herself to be nothing but a big-mouthed berk in brainlessly banging on about Brexit; she should eff off!
“Chuffed to be filling in for Rod Liddle today,” 27-year-old Olivia Utley is exactly the kind of person you’d expect to big herself up and this week was no exception for this motormouthed maniac.
Utley, a somewhat tepid try-hard attempt at being Katie Hopkins yet a fan of David Cameron strangely also, on Friday, was given space to spout her views in The Sun. In a column that’d make even Karren Brady look rational titled: “It’ll do our spoiled young Remainers good to remain in Britain for the summer holidays,” this “gleefully” childlike upstart not only attacked the lovely Fiona Bruce but also suggested “it would have been easier to have come out as a paedophile than a Brexiteer.” She’d plainly been drinking vinegar as she penned this particularly puerile drivel.
Here, in ramblings rooted in ridiculousness, Tom Utley of the Daily Mail’s “rent-a-reactionary” niece mocked other millenials and stupidly suggested they believed “the Lake District was a fictional place.” She attempted to justify proclaiming there being a “darker side” to young people “knowing nothing about Britain” and that now their “ignorance could finally be shattered.”
Concluding on the subject of how she believes young people will forget Europe in favour of their country of birth, Utley patronisingly argued: “Reconnected to their roots at last, they might just begin to feel the first stirrings of patriotism running through their British veins.” We’d suggest otherwise: They’re more likely to just tell this moron to eff off!
On Thursday, Olivia Utley was given a “guest column” in ‘The Sun’ in place of Rod Liddle. She was delighted to brag about it on Twitter.What a hypocrite – In 2019, so-called journalist Olivia Utley bragged about going on holiday to France; in 2020, she mocked others for wanting a holiday abroad. Shame on her.
1978 Piaggio Ape ‘limousine’ used by the controversial Countess Agusta – a woman who either fell or was pushed to her death from her home above Portofino in 2001 – to be auctioned
On 8th January 2001, “shop assistant turned model turned multi-millionairess many times over turned fugitive” (via a stretch in what American’s so pleasantly term ‘pokey’) Countess Francesca Vacca Agusta “disappeared” from the terrace of her Ligurian seaside home. The series of events that preceded and followed could have featured in an Agatha Christie novel or a Sherlock Holmes story.
Graffagni saw off the business tycoon’s first wife, Pupetta Maresca, after a torrid affair and following their marriage in 1974, amongst other things, became chatelaine of a 40-room property complete with a helipad. It had been built in 1870 by George Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon – whose death was attributed by amongst others Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the “curse of King Tut” – as his holiday home and during the 1970s and 1980s guests to “jet-set parties” given at the house by the socialite Countess were ferried back and forth from their dock in Portofino harbour in a custom built 1978 Piaggio Ape coachbuilt ‘limousine.’ This vehicle, described as a “perfect yacht tender” with its opulently patterned interior and passenger-driver intercom, is now for sale.
Countess Francesca Agusta (née Francesca Vacca Graffagni, 29th October 1942 – 8th January 2001). It is most surprising that the late Dominick Dunne did not make a television programme about her life and demise.Villa Altachiara (alternatively known as ‘Villa Alta Chiara’ or ‘Villa Carnarvon’) was one of Countess Agusta’s homes from the 1960s until her death in 2001; it was originally built as a holiday home for Lord Carnarvon (26th June 1866 – 5th April 1923) – the financier of Howard Carter’s explorations of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings that led to the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The Carnarvon family hosted many guests during their ownership, amongst them Brooke Astor and Evelyn Waugh.
Count Agusta died in 1989 without divorcing his second wife in spite of separating from her in 1985. At that time, in addition to Villa Altachiara, he had given her four apartments in Milan, an estate in Cuernavaca, Mexico, family jewellery and an undisclosed cash sum. With his demise, she came into yet further fortune.
This by-then “very wealthy woman” hit the headlines again in 1994 when she and her new lover, a “former Portofino playboy politician [named] Maurizio Raggio,” were discovered to have been part of a corruption scandal involving Bettino Craxi, the Prime Minister of Italy from 1983 to 1987. Before police could apprehend them to charge them with amongst other things money laundering, the pair fled to Mexico and lived on her estate until 1997 as fugitives. During this period, the Countess reportedly attempted suicide at least once.
Upon her return to Italy, the Countess plea-bargained and spent just three months in Milan’s Opera prison for her crimes in spite of receiving a two-year jail sentence. After “some further time under house arrest” in the Villa Altachiara, the “retired” gadabout then took up with a Mexican, Tirso ‘Tito’ Chazaro (also known as ‘Tirso Di Ricardo’ and ‘Rafael Tirso Roncado Gonzales’), and lived in the style of Miss Havisham. She was rarely seen in public and having become dependent on drink and drugs, was known for her erratic behaviour and temper.
“Considerably the worse for wear and muttering she would not be coming back” on the night of 8th January 2001, the Countess supposedly told her lover and two others present that she was going for a swim, but either slipped on wet leaves or was pushed off a veranda into the sea. A search followed, but after the only traces found were the Countess’s dressing gown on the seabed close to the Villa Altachiara and her slippers on nearby rocks, press reports suggested she had either committed suicide or, given her past form, staged an “elaborate disappearing act.”
Countess Agusta’s badly decomposed body washed up three weeks later on a beach at Toulon on the French Riviera. Her feet had been gnawed off by fish, her skull was smashed and her face was disfigured. She could only be identified by two rings she was wearing and her exact cause of death could thus not be determined.
As an autopsy found no trace of water in her lungs, she plainly did not die by drowning, but in in 2004 the Countess’s brother, Domenico Vacca Graffagni, was quoted in the Independent as stating: “The [original] inquiry was closed in a hasty fashion because of absence of proof, relying too readily on ‘reasonable doubt’ … It was manslaughter. He [Chazaro] was always beating her. He didn’t mean to kill her. But that evening things didn’t go the way the Carabinieri said, my sister was not drunk and she did not slip on wet leaves on the veranda.”
Adding further to speculation, much earlier, the Countess’s step-son, racing driver and team owner Rocky Agusta (1950 – 2018), told Corriere della Sera in 2001: “Francesca was a beautiful woman, simpatica, very rich… People have written that she inherited 500bn lire, but if it had been only 50 or 25, who commits suicide with 25bn lire set aside? … The people who were around her certainly did not help her… It’s not up to me to formulate accusations, but Francesca was not alone that night. She was very upset. She should have been put to bed. Instead, they let her go out into a dark, wet, cold night, not even dressed.”
In due course, the last of many wills left by Countess Agusta revealed Tirso Chazaro to be her sole beneficiary, but after this was challenged in court by her former lover, Maurizio Raggio, the pair split the legacy – reported to be worth as much as £165 million ($201 million, €186 million or درهم738 million) according to the Guardian in 2001 – sixty-forty between them.
In 2009, the Villa Altachiara was offered for sale initially for £44 million ($54 million, €50 million or درهم198 million) and then for £30 million ($37 million, €34 million or درهم135 million) in 2014. It supposedly eventually sold for less than half that sum to a Russian billionaire a number of years later in spite of an estate agent remarking: “Some say the spirit of Countess Francesca Vacca Agusta still walks the estate looking for her husband and you can hear her shouting for him on the wind.”
An estimate of £37,000 to £49,000 ($45,000 to $60,000, €42,000 to €55,000 or درهم165,000 to درهم220,000) for the Countess’s Piaggio Ape. Described as “sweet” and “[anything but] an Italian tuk-tuk” by RideApart, the one-off private taxi will be auctioned as part of the forthcoming RM Sotheby’s ‘Driving Into Summer’ 21st to 29th May 2020 online sale. One can only hope it finds a happier home than it encountered at that of its former mistress.
That ‘The Canary’ is still lauding Jeremy Corbyn as “the best Prime Minister we never had” about sums up that sorry shower of a rag’s grasp on the current state of British politics
Whilst The Steeple Times is anything but a fan of Boris Johnson and his government, we most certainly would never have welcomed Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.
On Saturday, however, The Canary – a far-left, arse-licking online rag that claims to have a “wider reach online than The Times” – saluted Diane Abbott’s former “bedfellow” (in all senses of that word) as “someone who stands for the many, not the few” and “the best Prime Minister we never had.” They went further and concluded: “On VE Day… Corbyn reminded us of the kind of leadership we so badly need at this time of crisis.”
Known for having produced many “questionable pieces” in times past, the nauseating bird that should long ago have croaked that is The Canary has hopefully finally now realised that it is now as alive as Jeremy Corbyn’s prospects of entering Downing Street. It ended its so-called “article” with a pathetic begging note that stated:
“We have been fighting against an establishment that is trying to shut us down. And like most independent media, we don’t have the deep pockets of investors to call on to bail us out. Can you help by chipping in a few pounds each month?”
In throwing out major elements of her argument against Associated Newspapers yesterday, the Duchess of Sussex’s defeat marked not just a battle loss, but the start of a worse stage for her war
‘MeGain’ should quit whilst she’s (just about) still ahead. Whilst public support for her is still just about there in some quarters as, frankly, distaste for the Mail and its parent operation remains high, this ‘I don’t want to be a royal anymore but I want everything that went with being a royal’ looks increasingly isolated after having major part of her case against Associated Newspapers deservedly struck out yesterday.
In delivering his ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Warby pointedly remarked that parts of the duchess’s case were “irrelevant” and “inadequately detailed.” He went further and totally ignored her claim of “dishonest behaviour” and now, according to Mark Stephens, a libel and privacy expert at the law firm Howard Kennedy, will be forced to pay a bill of upto £250,000 in costs as a result of her totally “ill-informed” claim.
Worse still, the Duchess of Sussex now faces the prospect of her five friends – whom most curiously still remain unnamed at this stage (raising the question of: “Do they actually exist?”) – being dragged into the witness box. In addition, yet more embarrassment and costs will follow for the royal family she once so used to crave being part of and as a result we today join those telling this mendacious madam: “Enough is enough. Put a stop to your nonsense before it is too late.”
