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Archive: sex

More on the Max Mosley allegations

1 April 2008 01:31

Categories: Opinion

I don’t want to dwell on it, but I have a couple of extra thoughts on the Max Mosley allegations after reading some more articles on the subject.

Firstly, this one from Planet-F1. The site is not one of my regular visits, but this article caught my attention. And this paragraph in particular is interesting.

So far we have seen no denial from Max Mosley that he likes to spend his time with highly-paid dominatrix, giving out and receiving punishment and acting out bizarre role play. However since the story was revealed in the British Sunday newspaper, the photos of “spanking Max” that adorned the item on the website have disappeared.

The story remains, though, which would seem to indicate that although the photos were an invasion of Max’s privacy – they couldn’t get him to sign a model release form – the facts are not in dispute.

I am not a legal expert by any means, but this seems very interesting to me. If the photographs have been taken down, then Max Mosley’s lawyers have surely been in contact. Also note that the video has been removed from both the News of the World website and YouTube (though, as we all know, you can’t keep these things quiet on the internet these days).

So it looks as though Max Mosley has successfully had the images and video removed from the News of the World website on the grounds of invasion of privacy. But he has not succeeded in removing the actual allegations. Like I say, I could be off the mark on this. But a lot of people are noting that Max Mosley has not yet come out with a denial.

Now, on to my second point. Yesterday I, and other bloggers (e.g. F1Fanatic, BlogF1, F1Wolf), mentioned the fact that the mainstream F1 websites had ignored the story.

Now all of the websites I singled out in yesterdays post have mentioned the scandal in some form or another. Presumably the editors of the websites each woke up on Monday morning and realised how ridiculous it was that they did not even mention this story that potentially has huge implications for Formula 1.

The excuses some of the websites have come up with are pretty weak. Here is what Grandprix.com had to say for itself:

We would not normally cover such stories, but this one may have a significant effect on the FIA, and the world of motorsport and we feel that it should be noted.

Yeah, about 24 hours after everyone else noted it!

Then there is Pitpass’s excuse:

Pitpass would like to make it clear that it doesn’t do private lives, not unless a story has serious implications on the sport.

Fair enough on the first part of the sentence, but the second part then goes and undermines it. Of course this story has serious implications on the sport, even if the allegations turn out to be false in the end. It is not as if we are talking about a flag marshal being caught kerb-crawling. This is an allegation about the President of Formula 1′s governing body taking part in acts that make light of and fantasise about victims of Nazi death camps.

This is not a mere sex scandal. If it was, I doubt many people would care very much. It is the clear fascist overtones of the allegations that bring this to the public’s attention. You don’t have to be a rabid hater of Max Mosley to realise that this immediately brings the governance of the sport into question. People are rightly asking how someone who fantasises about fascism can be trusted to lead, say, a scheme such as Racing Against Racism.

As I said in the post I wrote yesterday, I do not think that newspapers should sniff around in people’s private lives, even if I don’t like the people in question. I also said that what happens between consenting adults is not the business of anyone else. Furthermore, I pointed out the dubious reputation of the News of the World and the vested interest that News International has in undermining Max Mosley.

But I recognised the potential importance of the story for the future of the governance of Formula 1. I realised that these allegations undermine the authority of Max Mosley unless it can be determined that they are false. I saw that people will question if someone who has Nazi fantasies is fit to be the President of an organisation such as the FIA.

So why couldn’t Pitpass, Autosport, Grandprix.com et al. say that? They just had to say that allegations surround the President of the FIA. They can tiptoe around the finer details if they want. But they cannot ignore it. This is a big Formula 1 news story — there can be no question about that.

My guess is that on Sunday the websites were too scared to upset the powers that be in F1. But you can’t keep these things quiet. The editors of the websites in question woke up on Monday to find that the entire world was talking about the Max Mosley allegations except the major F1 websites. What a patently absurd situation.

And the media wonders why people are increasingly turning to blogs.

15 comments

Sky breaking news while it breaks the news

28 February 2008 17:35

Categories: Current affairs, Media, Radio, Television

There is an amusing video on YouTube of a couple of people giving a running commentary over BBC News wondering why they haven’t mentioned the earthquake (via Media Monkey).

The people in the video make some amusing comments, although they do exhibit the worst of the victim mentality that a lot of people in this country have. An inch of snow has fallen and it is the end of the bloody world. A train is five minutes late and it is an abomination that would never have happened under British Rail. An earthquake has hit us, woe is me. Etc, etc.

Maybe the guys in the video were being ironic when they kept on shrieking, “There’s been an earthquake! Hellooo? BBC? There’s been an earthquake!” But it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of people genuinely were enraged when the BBC didn’t cover the only interesting that has happened in their dull little lives. I have heard that Radio 5 Live has had a record number of text messages. That doesn’t surprise me, 5 Live being as it is the country’s premier forum for self-important people with anal passages in place of their mouths, wanting to phone in and describe how the world revolves around them.

Victoria Derbyshire’s programme in the morning was even worse than usual, amazingly enough. The callers I heard all said much the same thing. “My house was shaking! I thought a lorry had crashed into my house!” “I was lying in my bed and I was woken up. At first I thought it was a burglar. Little did I know that it was something even more serious!” YAWN

So parts of England got the shakes. Big deal. The stories about it on the BBC News website are a parade of mediocrity.

“The room just started shaking” Shaking?! How will you ever recover? “The quiet market town at the epicentre of the earthquake recovers”. Yeah, recovers from a few toppled chimneys!

The only casualty from the whole episode appears to be one poor man with a broken pelvis. While I certainly would not like a chimney stack to fall on top of my pelvis, it isn’t exactly September 11 in terms of casualties.

So I am not surprised that BBC News decided not to give it so much coverage. It is worth bearing in mind that after 0100 BBC News 24 ceases to be a UK service. What we get in the UK is essentially a simulcast of BBC World. As such, it reflects a global news agenda.

This is the way it should be really. UK news seldom breaks during the night, and there are few people in the UK watching at that time of night anyway. News channels are notoriously expensive to run anyway. I know certainly that Sky News makes a loss.

It would be difficult for the BBC to justify spending license payers’ money on a near-useless overnight UK service that would be watched by very few people. The BBC has a 24 hour UK news service anyway — it’s called BBC Radio 5 Live. From what I heard of their coverage, they did a pretty good job — as you would expect from the Up All Night crew.

If BBC News 24 / BBC World were to slavishly cover the earthquake like Sky News did, the majority of the BBC’s viewers scattered across the globe would have been equally indignant as the people in the UK complaining about the lack of earthquake coverage. I can just imagine people around the world uploading their commentary onto YouTube. “5 on the Richter scale? I have taken naps through that!”

People across the world look to the BBC as a source of authoritative world news. A piddly wee earthquake in Lincolnshire just doesn’t cut it. If it was an exclusively UK service like Sky News then you would indeed expect them to cover it. But it isn’t, so you wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t).

I did actually watch a bit of Sky News’s overnight earthquake coverage and it was indeed execrable. In fact, the video I have embedded above highlights the completely different approaches of the two channels and why Sky News falls flat on its face so often.

BBC News might have been late to mention the story, but notably they got it right. They did not spend longer than required on the story, and they got the important details such as the epicentre correct. Meanwhile, Sky News were showing a map with Birmingham and Manchester pinpointed. Why? We don’t know. Sky don’t care about getting it right, as long as they can convey that something is happening — NOW!

In fact, Sky News’s coverage of the earthquake highlights everything that is wrong with 24 hour news. Media Monkey highlights their typically insightful coverage:

Sky News interviewer Faye Barker: “So, what were you doing when the quake shook?” Eyewitness, or should that be earwitness, from Lincolnshire: “I was in bed.” Barker: “Oh… [Pause]. And would you say it felt more like a juggernaut or a freight train going past?” Woman: “Er… a freight train.”

Sky News is also rightly being criticised today for a truly disgusting interview conducted by the diabolical Kay Burley. She was previously famous for her measured response on September 11: “If you’re just joining us, the entire eastern seaboard of the United States has been decimated by a terrorist attack.” This week she asked the wife of recently convicted serial killer Steve Wright the following question:

Do you think if you’d had a better sex life, he wouldn’t have done this?

What a vile question to ask. Not surprisingly, the interviewee burst into tears upon being asked that question. Imagine having that thought running through your head — “If only I had sex with my husband a bit more, those five prostitutes wouldn’t have been murdered.”

Unity, Jennie and Mitch Benn say all that needs to be said.

If BBC News lost respect for its slow response to the earthquake, goodness knows what Sky News must have lost.

3 comments

Selling looks and selling sex

22 November 2007 00:01

Categories: Current affairs, Economics, Entertainment, General, Internet, Technology, Television

I saw this story about a man who has come to believe that he must be the ugliest man in the world — because he has had 5,000 marriage proposals rejected (via Digg).

I don’t think Emil Kacic is ugliest man in the world. He is certainly not as ugly as some of the people of Newcastle. But is Emil Kacic the least self-aware man in the world? The most socially inept man in the world? Possibly.

I found another story with a bit more information (warning: contains some NSFW images). My Romanian is not too hot, but I reckon it says he has been looking for 30 years. This means that the average length of time he has known each woman before proposing is 2.19 days. No wonder he is getting rejected!

I’ve got to the point where I have even been asking women I am meeting in the streets to marry me, but they always say no.

What a shock! You know, I think if a stranger came up to me and asked me to marry them, I might do a bit more than just say no.

The thing is that when somebody proposes in this manner they are sending a whole variety of signals. He is desperate and rude. The fact that he is 49 years old and has still never married, despite clearly wishing he had, itself provides enough information to anyone who has the question popped in their face. Emil Kacic is a lemon.

It reminded me of another example of somebody approaching relationships in a controversial way. This also hit the internet big time a couple of months back. The “spectacularly beautiful” woman who placed an ad on Craigslist outlining her exasperation that she was failing to date anyone who earned more than $250,000. (Yeah, my heart bleeds.)

The most incredible bit of her ad is the paragraph where she points out that some rich people marry — gasp — plain-looking women!

Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the Upper East Side so plain? I’ve seen really “plain Jane” boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the East Village. What’s the story there?

Both the gold-digging Craigslist advertiser and Emil Kacic are making the same mistake. Both assume that looks alone are good enough. Mr Kacic reckoned that, as long as he was not abnormally ugly, all he would need to do was ask enough people and he would eventually marry. The Craigslist gold-digger (not a nice name, I know, but I don’t have her real name so it will have to do) also implies that the only possible justifiable reason why a man would want to marry someone would be if they were good looking.

For sure, looks must count to a degree. You would be lying if you said otherwise. But it could never be the sole factor, or even the main factor, when making the decision to marry. The reason comes from one of the respondents on Craigslist:

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party, and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub — your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity … in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms, you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset…

In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following: if my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

What I find interesting is something that is kind of skirted around by most people. What the Craigslist gold-digger is doing is little more than a subtle form of prostitution. Yet while the Craigslist gold-digger might attract a few eye-rolls and tsk-tsks, you won’t find her being fined or thrown in the slammer.

In this sense, masses of people sell sex. Countless relationships along the lines of what the Craigslist gold-digger was seeking must be forged. How about also actors who film sex scenes, models, those people on Babestation-style programmes, Page 3 girls, strippers, porn stars, brothel workers, street prostitutes?

My guess would be that many people find some of the activities at the end of that list more unacceptable, but some at the beginning of the list relatively innocuous. But they are all essentially activities that involve people selling their bodies for money.

Perhaps the biggest difference with the later items in the list (besides the case of street prostitution, which happens in a public place and with women in a particularly vulnerable situation) is the socio-economic status of the people involved. Is there a bit of snobbery that comes into play?

It strikes me that selling sex, in its various forms, is a reality of life. And since prostitutes are in an especially dangerous position I would have thought it would be wiser to be trying to help them more rather than increasingly criminalising (and thereby making even more dangerous) their particular brand of this common activity. In a sense, they are being penalised for calling a spade a spade.

4 comments

Playdate and Party People: Works of comedy genius

6 November 2006 01:11

Categories: Entertainment, Humour, Television

I’ve taken the piss out of the late-night television programmes for losers with not enough sex, ITV Playdate and SmileTV / Party People on this blog. For more on these nocturnal televisual travesties, read phucker’s take on: ITV Playdate; Party People.

Because I tend to stay up late and, frankly, I am a loser with not enough sex, I sometimes flick past these programmes, as terrible as they are. I’m starting to wonder if they are not elaborate projects devised by twisted comedy genii.

Last night’s edition of Playdate had a classic participant last night. She was 29 years old and her profile boasted that she has an 18 year old child! That exclamation mark isn’t mine — her profile actually said, “She has an 18 year old child!” as if it was bloody brilliant. But if, like me, you have done your maths you will have worked out that she was eleven years old when she gave birth. Attractive! How do I get in touch?!

Judging by her behaviour on the programme, her courting skills probably haven’t improved since she was 11. Her legs were permanently wide open. One of the other participants noted, “I think I’ve seen her crotch more often than I’ve seen mine.” The presenter had to literally force her legs shut!

Part of the Playdate format is that the participants will often have a bit of a chat with the presenter so that you get to know a bit about them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an awful lot to know about the open-legged participant.

“What do you like doing?”, asked the presenter.
“I dunno… I like havin’ sex,” she replied, suggestively sucking her third Chuppa Chup.
“Okay, so what kind of guy are you looking for?”, the presenter pressed.
“Dunno… Actually, I like the look of Lee over there.” She pointed at one of the other participants, who was probably shitting about half his weight with fear. This relationship was never going to be helped by the fact that Lee is “looking for a man tonight.” (Was that the truth or just quick thinking?)
But that didn’t deter our pre-teen pregnancy champion. “Come over ’ere an’ play with mah fanny.”

That’s not the way to charm a man. It’s no wonder she is resorting to going on television to advertise her undoubtedly flappy flange. That chat-up line probably hasn’t worked with anybody above the age of about 15. Unsurprisingly, her microphone was turned off after that incident. Remarkably, she wasn’t hauled off air completely.

That wasn’t embarrassing enough though, so I switched over to Party People. The format is more straightforward: weirdos send their texts in as council estate munters witter on while trying to show a bit of shoulder. It’s a world where the producers and right-hand men of the programme are all called Partyboy. A typical text is: “Partyboy tickle her feet for AT LEAST TEN SECONDS.”

Not tonight. That simply isn’t weird enough. One text read: “Do either of you ladies need a poo?” He should have visited this blog instead.

Another text said, “My boyfriend wants to watch me go to the toilet but I’m worried that I’ll fart. What should I do?” To which the presenter said, “You can tell that text is from a bloke can’t you?”

4 comments

Welcome to all my manky new visitors!

29 August 2006 15:29

Categories: Admin, Entertainment, General, Internet, Technology, Television

Sorry I didn’t post much during the weekend, but I was worried that I was going to run out of bandwidth, so I was doing my own little part to limit the damage. I was probably going to run out of bandwidth for this month anyway, but I waited until the end of the bank holiday before deciding to upgrade. And then this happened.

Spike in visitors

I didn’t even say anything about Imogen’s mucky video. I haven’t watched it, honest guv! It was that pesky commenter!

Interesting that the latest news about the video has meant much more people searching for information on it, making the previous spike look utterly insignificant.

Normal service will resume as soon as I can be bothered!

1 comment

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