Perhaps it was a very hot day and the PM (because, as we all know, he is so very kind to young people) suggested the interviewees make themselves a little cooler.
Perhaps one of the interview panel, explaining the process to one of the candidates as she prepared for her coming ordeal on a handy chaise longue, became a little excited at the prospect of putting such an obviously qualified candidate through her paces.
Male readers, try not to immediately cup your family jewels protectively while reading this Metro story; your workmates’ll think you’re having a little private pleasure in public. Female readers – just try not to laugh.
Singapore:
A boss and his secretary who were having an affair saw their romantic tryst interrupted in a wince-inducing manner – after a car crash led her to accidentally bite his penis off.
According to reports in China Press and Sin Chew Daily, the 30-year-old woman was performing oral sex on her boss in a car in a Singapore park, when the car was struck by a reversing van.
The impact caused her to bite the man’s penis off.<
Just in case this wasn't already bad enough for those involved, the incident was observed by a private detective who had been sent by the woman's husband to catch them out.
He described how, shortly after parking, the car started to 'shake violently' - but then was hit by the van. He said that the woman screamed loudly, with her mouth covered in blood.
Whole story
Global online retail giant Amazon, now embroiled in its own internet related scandal – the #amazonfail list is now at 1,582 books and other products, and rising – has much in common with New Labour.
Both are omni-bloody-present, both collect huge amounts of info about us and our habits; both believe that a] they alone control the internets and b]computers are only a powerful when they use them. Both suffer from megalomania, control freakery and a refusal to accept they could ever have done anything wrong, or even just immoral – even when it’s quite clear that they have.
According to one author, Amazon stated a few days ago that it was now its “policy” to exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and bestseller lists, but his book had no “adult” material in it. It seems that books written by lesbian or gay authors, or with lesbian or gay themes, were being classed as “adult”, actively removed from searches, and de-ranked, alongside the books featuring erotic content.
“This is a den within Westminster. We’re talking about a house in Downing Street, with an office and in that office sits Gordon Brown, Damian McBride and Tom Watson.
“We are talking about three people in this marriage at the heart of this scandal.”
Corporations like Amazon tend to think a computer’s a powerful political tool, but only when they use it. Amazon’s wrong:
Barely an hour after the amazonfail tag first appeared, it was being mentioned four times a second on Twitter search – thousands of people were talking about it; but none of the tweets were positive. Calls for Amazon to be “googlebombed” were acted upon and people were commenting on the politics of “cyberactivism” – contributing to lists of the books that had been affected – and calling for a boycott of the site. Amazon, it appeared, had started to dig its own grave.
A blog has just done something that I thought no one could do: elicited an apology (or as close as we’ll ever get to an apology) from Gordon Brown. Indeed, according to The Guardian, the McBride-Draper scandal might cost Labour the next election. If so, Guido Fawkes would have succeeded where his baleful namesake failed 404 years ago: he would have brought down a government. Even if you think the Guardian story is a bit de trop, the idea that one man with a laptop could do so much damage would, until very recently, have seemed risible.
Both are now desperately trying to spinpaddle their way out of the river of cack that attitude’s got them into.
Good luck with that, Amazon and Brown: there’s millions of us, but only one each of you.
I was a bit shocked, I admit, when I found these pronographic cartoons (your mileage may vary) by 18th century satirist Thomas Rowlandson portraying our antecedents – how shall I describe it – doing what comes naturally, in colour and in great detail.
This collection of respectable (it’s Georgian, innit) wickedness has well over a thousand bookmarks on delicious alone, which is unsurprising given Rowlandson’s explicit lubriciousness. I’m only surprised it doesn’t have more. I haven’t checked Digg.
Me? I only came across it by accident whilst googling for satire and cartoon archives, I swear.
Though I knew his political cartoons such is my usual tunnel vision I had no idea Rowlandson had drawn pornography, or even that you could get such things on Wikipedia. That seems astonishingly naive of me given that well-thumbed (no, that is not a euphemism) copies of both Cleland’s Fanny Hill and Defoe’s Moll Flanders sit on my bookshelves: I’m not a modern-day Mrs. Grundy who tries to play down the Georgians’ robust attitude to sex.
But I wasn’t aware just quite how robust it was. After having seen Rowlandson’s naughty cartoons I’m not surprised that Austen’s heroines were always blushing.
I’ll never read her or Maria Edgeworth with the same eyes again. Where’s my copy of Castle Rackrent? I feel a re-read coming on.
ObDisclaimer
Emphatically Not Safe For Work or if you are a minor or in a repressive jurisdiction.
