A couple of points on this…

Firstly, is it really newsworthy? Someone in their twenties goes on holiday, gets drunk, and makes a total arse of themselves. If that is news, I would have spent a lot of the 90s in the newspapers (instead of the mere 5 appearances – none of which involved nudity). Okay, so this person ended up butt naked in a hotel corridor. I was 33 before that first happened to me. It still isn’t news.

Secondly, is the story even true? Is there one piece of admissible evidence that this event ever occurred with Miss Gillan involved? Could it have been another skinny ginger? Only the release of photo/video evidence will tell.

Personally, I doubt every aspect of this story, with good reason.

I know a lot of Scots, and a lot of Gingers. A lot of my friends and family are either Scottish, Ginger, or both.

While the idea of a Ginger Scot drunk and naked in a hotel corridor is not entirely outside the realms of possibility, one crucial point is: they were whimpering.

In my experience, neither a Ginger, nor a Scot, would ever be in that state of mind.

Due to the high levels of rage which both Gingers and Scots possess, the only state of mind for a drunken Caledonian Redhead to be in, would be Pure Incandescant Rage. A state which they stay in until soberness approaches, or a coma occurs (at which point whimpering is impossible).

If said person was kicking seven bells of shit out of a fire extinguisher for it being “redder than her”, or repeatedly punching a mirror because the reflection was looking at them in a funny way, then I’d accept the possibility that a skinny, drunken, Ginger, Scottish wench was there.

Without that possibility, I don’t think the story can be true.

See here: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3651181/Study-reveals-fifth-of-UK-have-German-blood.html

And, as usual they can’t get their facts right.

Note, as you read the web page, the title text (thats the bit on your browser’s top bar): “Study reveals fifth of UK have German blood”.

Now read the second paragraph of the article: “Geneticists claim HALF of Brits could have German blood in them”.

So… one fifth DO, but a half COULD?

And then: “Supported by archaeological studies on teeth and enamel, experts have concluded that 50 per cent of Brits have some German in their genetic make-up.”

Oh for fucks sake, make your mind up. Is it 50% could be, 50% are, or 20% are? These are the sort of things that the average retard in the street needs to know. (For example, the sort of retard that attends an English Defence League rally in Cardiff).

Anyway, The Sun follows this up with a “Quiz”, which is borderline racist.

For example:

When you see a sun lounger by a hotel pool do you…

• A. Have a lie down and order a nice cold lager.
• B. Leave it for now… it’s far too early to think about sunbathing.
• C. Put a towel on it. Immediately.

Ignoring the lack of correct punctuation, they might as well have asked:

Are you Welsh? You see a sheep in a field, do you?

• A. Think nothing of it. Sheep live in fields
• B. Consider having lamp chops for tea
• C. Shag it senseless.

Here is a simple way to test if you have German blood:

Do you have blonde hair?

• Yes: Almost certainly you are partly of Anglo-Saxon descent, therefore you are a bit German.
• No: Don’t kid yourself. Unless your family have repeatedly interbred for the last millennium and a half, then the chances are that you have at least some Germanic DNA.

As I’m now struggling to find an end to this, I’ll just do what The Sun did and compare good and bad things about Germany and Germans (from my personal perspective):

• Bad: Frankfurt Airport (Arrivals),  iTT (specifically the bloke who sacked me from Teleride), Mk 1 VW Golfs with oil leaks, 1984 BMW 3 Series that break down the day after you buy them.
• Good: The utterly indestructible Mk3 VW Golf, the two half-Germans that I work with, Frankfurt Airport (Departures), Ford Sierra with the Cologne V6 engine, its a great language to pretend to know if you want to shout incomprehensively at someone.

I’m selecting parts of the article here just to highlight journalistic bullshit. Should News International wish to take action against me, well let us just say that they know my address and leave it at that.

Anyway:

She was stunned when the jumbled letters SHAHSITED clicked over to reveal the swear word.

Stunned? Really? I would have been mildy amused.

Angry Victoria, 30, said yesterday: “I couldn’t believe my eyes as the word was slowly unveiled as an obscene insult.

Firstly, I’ll tackle “Angry”. Was she really angry? Mildly annoyed? Quite bothered? Only she can tell you that.

Next, does “shithead” count as an obscene insult? I think not. The girl in the bank said “shit” when she dropped a bundle of notes last week. Sean Connery said it in Highlander II, so it must be OK. (This is possibly the only time I will acknowledge the existance of Highlander II).

“Oliver is a really bright kid … he was already asking what the word meant   …  my husband Daniel had to rush him out of the room.”

Yeah, because turning the television off was too difficult.

Channel 4 declined to comment yesterday, as did the company who make the game, Koch. Nintendo also would not comment.

Did you actually bother asking them? Probably not. But you do have a history of that, don’t you?

Anyway, was the mother really “outraged” as The Sun headline claims? For what is “outrage”? Well…

1. An act of extreme violence or viciousness.
2. An act grossly offensive to decency, morality, or good taste.
3. A deplorable insult.
4. Resentful anger aroused by a violent or offensive act.

Was mother Victoria carrying a professional quality digital SLR and lighting rig when she spotted this game-based swearyness? She must have been, to be able to take that photo (in the short time before she hustled little Oliver out of the room and back into his secure bunker). Obviously she didn’t have time to clean the shitty fingerprints from the front of the telly.

Or, is that photograph a set-up job? How long would it take to get the same word to show up in the game again?

Clearly the picture has been altered (to blur out the alleged “offensive” bits), but the image on the CRT screen is genuine. So, how can this be?

Well, either the game shows the word “SHITHEADS” every time a News International employee is nearby, or the screen is showing a doctored image displayed from some hack’s laptop.

A ten minute job with Photoshop and a screen grab. Get me a copy of the game and the console hardware and I’ll show you how.

Faking countdown has been done before: see this.

Anyway, who are the “SHITHEADS” here, Nintendo et al, or The Sun?

My money is on The Sun.

Addendum: I’m blocked from commenting on The Sun site now.

(See the story at http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2960673/Ghostly-figure-of-a-weeping-girl-in-mirror-of-hotel-room.html)

This little girl gets about a bit. Sometimes she appears in kitchen door glass (http://www.ghostsandstories.com/little-girl-ghost.html).

But this is hardly surprising considering this iPhone App: http://www.appstorehq.com/ghostcapture-iphone-79452/app

But it isn’t just the outrageous fakery that annoys me. Just read the story for all the signs of Sun Bullshit:

• Unidentified guests
• Unidentified spokesman
• Random words in BOLD CAPITALS

Honestly, if they want some made-up bullshit they should contact me. A copy of my CV should proove fictional enough for them.

The Sun (again) gives us this story about how the number of unemployed people has reached 2.4 million. In this story they present this graph:

To the casual observer who knows nothing about how to read a graph, this would appear to indicate that unemployment has grown threefold.

If we show this graph with a properly scaled y axis, things don’t look quite as bad:

Of course it is still a massive leap, but it doesn’t look so scary and thus won’t sell as many papers.

And as i’ve shamelessly violated one copyright today, I might as well go for two. So here are some Marillion lyrics:

…You call for justice and distort the truth
Well Ive had enough of all your pretty pretty speeches
Receive your punishment
Expose your throats to my righteous claws…

-Grendel, Marillion

Oh, and for the record, I only buy The Sun for the Alphapuzzle, the crossword, and to look for all the two-faced double standards and downright scaremongering bullshit.

Oh, and the free TV guide and Jeremy Clarkson’s column on Saturdays.

The story also had a sidebar entitled “Helping kids to be fine online”, which gave 10 handy tips on keeping the kiddywinks safe on t’internet. Point 8 was particularly interesting:

“8. The internet can be accessed from many devices – including mobiles – so make sure kids’ phones are registered as such with the provider and filters are in place.”

Fair words, but illustrated with a poorly chosen picture (versions from the printed copy, and The Sun website):

Ah, the good old Nokia 3310, that well known internet capable phone from 2000. But not only is it possibly the most internet-useless phone of the century, it is also the most dangerous.

I don’t mean that the Nokia 3310 in general is a dangerous phone, just that one in particular. It was, after all, the one used by terrorists, as shown in The Sun’s story of December 17th, 2008.

Clearly The Sun either don’t know anything about phones, or have a really rubbish picture researcher. Or this particular phone is cursed.

“Nobody will bat an eyelid when one of them in civvy colours turns up over a built-up area. It looks the same as a corporate ride.” one of the SAS told The Sun, even though the only known UK owner of one is the dwarfish footballist Michael Owen.

These helicopters, which come with state-of-the-art communications equipment and a quiet rotor system will provide an ideal platform for anti-terrorism.

Nice. Anti-terrorism is good.   But…

Buying helicopters from the French isn’t so good, as anyone who ever owned a French car will tell you.

Still, at least they’ll tell you how to fly them and give you the keys, unlike the bloody Americans and the Chinook.

They probably fly for about 200 miles before slowly dissembling themselves into component parts, probably somewhere over Cheshire.

However, Eurocopter is the successor of Aérospatiale, the company who made the SA-341G Gazelle.

Now you may not recall the Gazelle. Here is a picture of one:

Hmm, that looks familiar…doesn’t it have the same tail section as…

Yup, its Blue Thunder.

In reality, the Blue Thunder helicopter was a cosmetic make-over of the Gazelle. It was intended to make it look scarier, unlike the current plan…

Looking back on the Blue Thunder film (not the TV series, never look back at that), Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response, THOR, was the “proposed use of military helicopters to quell disorder” during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Now I’m not drawing any parallels here, but by the time the 22 Regiment acually get their hands on these things the Olympics will be nigh on hand. But they probably won’t work properly, and will need to go back to the main dealer after a week. Being French.

I’m just thinking… and I think that is still legal.