The news thread

[Garfield]

There is also no need for anyone in mainstream politics to be using gun metaphors when it comes to campaigns. Crazy people don't hear what you meant, only what you say.

Everyone uses them though. Both the left and the right "target" regions and districts. That's not saying, "Kill the opposition". That's saying that they want to reach, or defeat a group electorally. "Targeting" people or districts didn't inspire this murdere. His own pyschopothy did.

[JackFetch]

There is also no need for anyone in mainstream politics to be using gun metaphors when it comes to campaigns. Crazy people don't hear what you meant, only what you say.

Everyone uses them though. Both the left and the right "target" regions and districts. That's not saying, "Kill the opposition". That's saying that they want to reach, or defeat a group electorally. "Targeting" people or districts didn't inspire this murdere. His own pyschopothy did.

I never said one side was doing it. I said nobody should do it. Everyone uses the word target. I'm talking about when someone says they will use "second amendment remedies" to get what they want. That is a threat of violence. The fact that nobody steps up from that side and says it was wrong scares me.

Also, when people bring guns to a political rally they are sending the wrong message.

[Garfield]

There is also no need for anyone in mainstream politics to be using gun metaphors when it comes to campaigns. Crazy people don't hear what you meant, only what you say.

Everyone uses them though. Both the left and the right "target" regions and districts. That's not saying, "Kill the opposition". That's saying that they want to reach, or defeat a group electorally. "Targeting" people or districts didn't inspire this murdere. His own pyschopothy did.

I never said one side was doing it. I said nobody should do it. Everyone uses the word target. I'm talking about when someone says they will use "second amendment remedies" to get what they want. That is a threat of violence. The fact that nobody steps up from that side and says it was wrong scares me.

Also, when people bring guns to a political rally they are sending the wrong message.

I really don't want to get political here. There are very few in the mainstream who do those things. Besides, none of this had any influence on his actions. People could suggest using Mormon missonaries to influence their oppositon, and the murderer would still have killed.

[Stavros]

The filthy rag known as the Daily Mail just released one of the worst stories I've ever seen regarding the murder of Jo Yeates in Bristol. Check this out and try to hold onto your lunch.

Is lovely Jo becoming just another thumbnail on the police website?

By Liz Jones

It's Friday night and I’m in the Ram bar on Park Street in Bristol.

This is where Joanna Yeates spent her last evening before she set off up the hill, past all the twinkly shops and bars (a Habitat, a Space NK beauty emporium; Bristol is nothing if not upwardly mobile) towards her death.

The bar is OK but ordinary. The wine list, chalked on a board, says ‘Lauren Perrier’.

I wish she had spent what were probably her last hours on earth somewhere lovelier. The food is awful (I ask for a veggie burger and it comes without the burger – and without the bun!) but the young women behind the bar are sweet with huge, wary eyes.

Alex is working her way through uni, where she is studying English. She comes from London and her parents are now terrified something is going to happen to her.

She was working in the bar on the night of December 17, when Joanna was having a drink before heading home. ‘I don’t remember her,’ she says.

‘It was so busy that night. I used to walk home but I always get a cab now.’

Lyn, with white blonde hair, who was also working here that night, says she is ‘more fearful now, I’m more nervous. It’s just so mysterious’.

I leave the bar at 8pm and retrace Joanna’s steps. Even though it’s January, the streets are packed. There are a couple of women joggers but they are with boyfriends or husbands.

I walk past the beautiful university building on my right, with Waitrose on my left. I wander the bright aisles, full of young women rushing round after work, leaving with carrier bags and expectation.

I head up the hill towards Clifton, the leafy part of the city. It’s quieter now, and darker. I find Tesco, and go in. I almost buy that upmarket pizza; the choice tells me Jo wanted a lovely life, something above the ordinary.

There is one police van on the green as I turn right into Canynge Road.

I bet Jo’s heart lifted as she reached this junction, looking forward to the feeling only a Friday night near Christmas can give you.

As I near her basement flat, at No 44, the road is quiet. Earlier in the day there had been an ITN news van here but it has gone now. I’m reassured to see two policemen standing vigil at her iron gate, either side of a small, discreet pile of flowers in varying degrees of decay.

I tell them I’m spooked, walking here. ‘Don’t be spooked,’ one says. ‘Residents are campaigning to get brighter street lights installed.’ So the antique, lovely ones are to disappear to be replaced by ugly ones because of something even uglier.

That afternoon I had gone to the lane where Jo’s body was found. It was horrible and windswept. I don’t know what I had expected but not this.

There was no ceremony here, no policeman, just that lovely face on a now dog-eared poster. I got the feeling the world is starting to forget Jo, that she’ll become just another thumbnail on the Avon and Somerset Police website, along with the faces of the other murder victims no one can recall.

I’d have expected the cars to slow down here to show respect but they sped past, carrying people on their way home from work. The lane is narrow. I can’t see how a car stopped here and a man struggled with a body without being beeped at and told to get out the way, as I was.

There were no messages with the flowers, just one card, still sealed in its Cellophane. The person who left it hadn’t bothered to scrawl a note.

Leaving Jo’s flat, I return to my car. My satnav takes me to the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

The theory is the killer took the long route from the flat to where he dumped the body to avoid the CCTV cameras. Perhaps he also wanted to avoid the 50p toll.

I don’t have 50p and try tossing 30p and a White Company button into the bucket. It doesn’t work.

There is now an angry queue behind me. Isn’t it interesting that you can snatch a young woman’s life away from her in the most violent, painful, frightening way possible, take away her future children, her future Christmases, take away everything she loves, and yet there are elaborate systems in place to ensure you do not cross a bridge for only 30 pence?

Finally, a man in a taxi jumps out, and runs to me brandishing a 50p piece.

‘Not all men are monsters,’ he says, grinning. Maybe not. But one monster is all it takes.

[Venneh]

That's not journalism, that's just some wanker making it all about himself and also verbally jerking off all over the page.

[Stavros]

That's not journalism, that's just some wanker making it all about himself and also verbally jerking off all over the page.

Herself, but yes, that's exactly what it is. The shitty restaurant review of a really quite nice pub (I'm betting she ordered outside kitchen hours and thus just got chips, which is more than she deserved). "Oh the vintage streetlights" she cries when brighter safer ones are proposed. Then she whines about the 50p toll is required to cross the bridge, the toll being the main source of upkeep for the oldest suspension bridge in the world, the most famous landmark in the region outside Stonehenge. Newsflash you harpy, trying to cheat a toll makes you look like a complete piece of shit. The cars speeding past the site? Maybe it's not fucking signposted in neon "MURDER-SITE HERE!". But the fucking cherry of this pile of shit is the aspirational pizza thing. That's really reducing someone's life, to imply that you can tell anything about someone from the type of pizza they bought. I cannot imagine how this woman has a job.

[slothian]

Liz Jones is a famed troll of a journalist. You don't even need to read Private Eye semi-regularly to know that she's a hysterical shrew that the Daily Mail loves to employ. Which is a nicer way of calling her a cunt.

EDIT: A parody of that article.

[KnightWing]

Around here, when someone's killed, no one "slows down when driving past, out of respect." People who do that are too sentimental to be driving safely.

[Missy]

A suicide bomber attacked a Moscow airport, killing at least 31 people.

[KnightWing]

Woah!

[slothian]

Damn. I spent quite a few hours in that airport waiting for my connecting flights to/from China in 2006, and I can picture some of the areas I've seen on the news footage.

[Molly]

Taco Bell is being sued, with claims that their meat is 65% filler.

I know this is barely news, but personally, I find this hilarious. I like Taco Bell, but I know it's total shit.

[dc20willsave]

A woman in Akron, Ohio was jailed for falsifying records so she could send her children to a better school. For those of you that don't know, Akron is adjacent to Cleveland. It sounds a lot like this woman lived in Cleveland and I cannot blame her.

[slothian]

A woman in Akron, Ohio was jailed for falsifying records so she could send her children to a better school. For those of you that don't know, Akron is adjacent to Cleveland. It sounds a lot like this woman lived in Cleveland and I cannot blame her.

I know it's only for 10 days, but is that REALLY a jailable offence??

[Venneh]

It is if you're trying to make an example of people. The fact that she's black is neither here or there, but it's probably a bit of a contributing factor.

[KnightWing]

Filing false court papers is a pretty serious thing. I don't think the sentence is particularly wrong.

[slothian]

As far as fraud goes, wanting to get your kids a good education is definitely at the shallow end. Prison should be for murders/paedophiles/people who actually harm society in a major way. I'm not saying she hasn't done wrong, but in the grand scheme of things, it is not a "pretty serious thing" at all.

[JackFetch]

People do it out here all the time. All they do is kick the kid out of the school when they get caught. Sending someone to jail for it is bananas.

[James D.]

Taco Bell is firing back at the group suing them claiming slander, and saying they're going to counter-sue.

[JackFetch]

Taco Bell is firing back at the group suing them claiming slander, and saying they're going to counter-sue.

All that story did for me was remind me I haven't eaten there in awhile so I got Taco Bell last night.

[Molly]

I'm with Taco Bell.

[JackFetch]

I'm with Taco Bell.

Same here. I don't go there expecting quality.

[Dan]

Taco Bell is firing back at the group suing them claiming slander, and saying they're going to counter-sue.

All that story did for me was remind me I haven't eaten there in awhile so I got Taco Bell last night.

Same here. It sucked, like it always did, but I got a shitload of food for about $4.

[James D.]

It gives me epic heartburn, but it's cheap as hell. Rock on, TB.

[Venneh]

Guess what the House Republicans are trying to do in order to limit federally funded abortions? Redefine rape!

Let me say this now. I think them trying to restrict the abortions they're trying to restrict (which mostly has to do with federal funding for abortions from pregnancies resulting from incest and statutory rape) from getting federal funding is angering, but, it's pretty standard GOP.

What goes above and beyond is how they want to redefine rape as something that happens only by force in order to get this to happen. As this bill stands, if you were drugged, intoxicated, date raped, raped while being mentally disabled, or sexually abused by someone older than you that is not related to you, you did not get raped. Rape only happens by force. If any of that happened, you're a slut who was asking for it.

In short, GOP? GO DIE IN A FUCKING FIRE.