CONSTRUCTION workers at the O2 Arena in London were in the news last week. Not because they scythed through someone's broadband cable, mistakenly cut off the gas to thousands of homes and hoovered up all the fudge doughnuts and steak bakes in Greggs – they didn't, so far as I know – but because they unearthed and then smashed to smithereens the Blue Peter Millennium Time Capsule (BPMTC). “The boys thought they’d struck gold,” a “source” told the Sun newspaper. “They were going at it with anything they could find – hammers, shovels, the lot.” It was the metal teeth of the forklift truck they used that did the real damage, though.
Buried in 1998, the BPMTC was supposed to lie undisturbed until 2050, by which time its contents – among them a Spice Girls CD, a Tamagotchi, a photo of Princess Diana and a full set of Teletubby dolls (yes, even Tinky-Winky) – would be viewed as a treasure trove of late-20th-century pop culture. In 2017, however, it just looks like a bunch of stuff left over from a PTA car boot sale.
By the way, rumours that Tony Blair's soul was also buried there could not be verified. But if you dig it up, he doesn't need it back.
SO have you signed the petition yet? No, not that one. Everyone's signed that one. I mean the other one – or, more precisely, one of the many other ones currently on the UK Parliament website. Such as the petition to remove all French words from new British passports because, it is claimed, the phrases “Dieu et mon droit” and “Honi soit qui mal y pense” have “no place” on these holy documents (though apparently they're still OK on the masthead of a certain right-wing English newspaper). It had gathered 511 signatures at the time of writing, including one from the Clacton constituency of Ukip bozo Douglas Carswell MP.
Or if not that petition, perhaps you've signed up to demand one of the following: for the repeal of the 1955 Canal Closures Act; for paganism to be taught in religious education lessons; for cats to stop being classified as property under UK law (who knew?); for fluffy hamster bedding to be taken off the shelves (“It's dangerous!”); for a bypass to be built round the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray.
That last one had 733 signatures at the time of writing, by the way, including one from the Clacton constituency of Ukip bozo Douglas Carswell MP.
As you probably know, any petition which attracts 100,000 signatures will be debated in the House of Commons. So in theory if there was a petition to make MPs debate the petition MPs Can Only Debate Petitions Dressed As Tinky-Winky From Tellytubbies then they'd all have to roll out the vivid purple terry-towelling to do it. I think. Actually you might need the Supreme Court to untangle the constitutional arguments on that one.
Sadly, few of the above petitions are likely to make it as far as the Commons. Even less likely to be successful are the ones at the bottom of the list whose signatories can be counted on the fingers of one hand – such as the petition to let voters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland decide if they want Scotland to remain in Britain. At the time of writing, it had gathered a massive nine signatures. You won't be surprised to hear that two of them were from the Clacton constituency of Ukip bozo Douglas Carswell MP.
ACTUALLY I'm thinking of starting a petition myself, to demand that the next Dr Who be a woman. I don't really mind which woman (there are three and a half billion to choose from, after all) though please not Emma Thompson or Sarah Lancashire – Thompson for obvious reasons, Lancashire because we still need her for Happy Valley. Can't go mooching around Gallifrey when you're needed in Hebden Bridge.
In fact Olivia Colman has emerged as the favourite to replace Peter Capaldi, who announced his departure last week. However when I run into actress Alice Lowe in Edinburgh she has an alternative suggestion: Scottish actress Kate Dickie, who knows a little bit about aliens thanks to her role in Ridley Scott's sci-fi film Prometheus, and a lot about police boxes having twice appeared in Taggart.
Come to think of it, Lowe herself would be a pretty good choice. For a start, she's a fan of the show. Second, she actually looks a little like actress Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith alongside Tom Baker's Dr Who in the 1970s and reprised the role in CBBC's The Sarah Jane Adventures. So, would she fancy it?
“If they offered it to me,” she says. “I always hear these rumours that the BBC has a hit list of the people they like. I'm pretty sure I'm not on it. But I think I'd be a good wild card. I'd definitely bring something different.”
In her new film, a black comedy she also wrote and directed, Lowe plays a pregnant woman who goes on a murder spree on the orders of her unborn daughter. But perhaps that's a little too “different” for the producers of Dr Who.
WITH all this talk of fake news doing the rounds – most of it shooting out of Donald Trump's stubby little Twitter finger like evil lightning out of Voldemort's wand – it's becoming harder to tell the difference between real news that's so bonkers it seems fake, and fake news that looks like the real stuff. Some stories even seem to be both things at once.
An example reared its sleek head this week and concerned animal rights pressure group PETA. With the animal skin business still worth $40 billion a year and fur looking as comfortable on the cat walk as it ever has, PETA seemed to have lowered their sights somewhat by taking aim not at the fashion industry or the pampered wives of Russian oligarchs but at Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop fantasy war game in which players use plastic figures to scratch the sort of itch fantasy tabletop war games were invented for.
In a letter to Games Workshop, who make the figures, PETA asked that the company consider removing the fur from characters such as Leman Russ, Horus Lupercal and the Sisters Of Silence, even though that fur is, like the figures themselves, plastic.
“Warhammer features an abundance of characters who wear what appear to be animal pelts,” thundered the missive. “Draping them in what looks to be a replica of a dead animal sends the message that wearing fur is acceptable.”
Naturally, universal ridicule was the result, with the comment of one poster on the PETA website – “The fur isn’t real you dumbasses” – pretty much summing up the mood of the rest of them.
Not that PETA were overly concerned. “We’re laughing, too!” said a blog statement on the organisation's website, published on Friday afternoon. “For the cost of a postage stamp, our website has received record traffic – and the people who were prompted to visit our site by this story can’t have missed the prominently featured eyewitness footage showing that animals in real life are electrocuted, drowned, and sometimes even skinned alive for their fur.”
So were PETA ever serious about this? Or was their outrage just a little bit manufactured, fake(ish) news cooked up to create a social media feeding frenzy? Answers on a nice piece of tenderised calf skin, please. Or vellum, if you prefer.
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