UK Nutter News

The easily 'outraged' are enjoying the latest music video from Miley Cyrus called Adore You

Supposedly even the singer's own fans have joined the backlash against her latest raunchy video, branding it gross', sick' and pornographic'.

The former Disney star has been accused of cynically exploiting' her hordes of teenage fans by releasing an X-rated video of herself on Christmas Day simulating masturbation to the sound of her new single Adore You.

It has prompted one of the Government's main whingers about online child safety, the secretary of the Children's Charity Commission John Carr, to call for immediate action to ensure such videos have 18+ age ratings. He spouts:

Lots of children and young teenagers will be browsing the internet with the tablets and mobile phones they have been given for Christmas. And one of the first things they will have stumbled across on Boxing Day is this explicit video. Instead of being freely available online it should be hidden behind age-filters.'

Pippa Smith of Safer Media, a campaigner against violence, sex and strong language in the media, called the video a new low' in teenage pop culture.

Meanwhile the video is proving very popular on YouTube with 15 million views. Hardly sounds like a fan backlash.

The Royal College of Nursing has issued a statement in support of a ban on the Sun's topless Page 3 glamour feature saying:

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) supports the No More Page three campaign because we believe that the humiliation and exploitation of women is something that should not be acceptable.

Gender stereotyping and the sexualisation of women can have detrimental effects on the safety of women in our society. The RCN promotes a working environment where our members and staff can work with dignity and not be placed in compromising situations that cause offence, humiliation, embarrassment or distress.

All nursing staff should be seen as respected professionals with no sexualised stereotypes attached.

The Daily Mail is thankfully providing a little hype for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Surely the film makers are appreciative as otherwise the film seems to have proven very uncontroversial compared with the previous film. the Daily Mail writes:

With a public execution, a violent beating and frenzied animals, it hardly sounds like ideal entertainment for children. But film censors appear to think otherwise -- granting The Hunger Games: Catching Fire a 12A rating, which means it can be seen by under-12s if they are with an adult.

In one scene viewers witness a man being flogged and whipped by soldiers and are shown his wounded and bloodied back. Later, an elderly man is clubbed by two soldiers and publicly executed by a gunshot to the head.

The BBFC passed the film 12A for moderate violence and threat and infrequent strong language .

Vivienne Pattison, of the morality campaign group Mediawatch-UK spouted:

The problem with this particular film is that it originates from a book designed for children. Success: The blockbuster has made Miss Lawrence a household name. But critics blast the appeal to children

And there is a very big difference between reading a gory image on the page than burning it into the retinas of young children watching it on the big screen in the cinema.

Although the rating suggests there may be some adult scenes there is still little guidance, and there is nothing in place to stop parents or guardians from taking children as young as six or seven to the cinema to see the film.

The story environment at times is quite realistic and therefore the horrific violence is glamorised.

In a society in which children are exposed to so much violence and adult imagery we should be working to protect youngsters from further exposure in films and games. We don't need to terrify children to entertain them.

Pippa Smith of the religious morality campaign group, Safer Media said:

The film industry puts too much responsibility on parents. It isn't fair they should have to make the decision whether they take their child or not when the guidelines are so vague. Classification on films needs to be much stricter.

A new campaign named Rewind&Reframe is a joint project run by the gender extremists End Violence Against Women Coalition, Imkaan and Object. It will launch a website with women from a variety of backgrounds writing, blogging and commentating on the portrayal of women in contemporary music videos. A petition is also being started to call on the government to act.

Justine Roberts, founder of the website Mumsnet, said:

There's no doubt there's a huge amount of racism and sexism in music videos and it's great that this campaign raises awareness about it. I can't see any reason why these videos wouldn't be classified in the way that other forms of media are but the truth is that it won't be a silver bullet.

Technology these days makes it pretty nigh on impossible to stop under-18s viewing and sharing this kind of material so as parents it's important to talk to them about what's wrong with it. As a society we need to consider how we've got to a situation where misogyny and racism is so commonplace.

Tomorrow evening a debate will be hosted at the House of Commons, chaired by Labour MP Kerry McCarthy and attended by MP Claire Perry, the prime minister's personal Mary Whitehouse. Perry has said she has the backing of David Cameron to push for solutions -- including an age classification system for music videos and the clear labelling of airbrushed celebrity pictures.

A miserable health minister has called for a ban on supposedly dangerous mobile phone apps that he claims encourage young people to binge-drink.

Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem Minister for Care, called on Google and Apple to launch an urgent investigation into irresponsible drinking games sold through their online markets, which he claims could fuel drink-related health problems and anti-social behaviour.

The calls followed a Mail on Sunday article digging around for 'outrage' uncovered hundreds of alcohol-related apps and promotions on social media sites that critics claim target youngsters and popularise excessive drinking. This newspaper identified more than 340 alcohol-related apps available to download on the Google and Apple stores. Some of them have been downloaded tens of thousands of times by British users.

Examples of drinking games online include Let's Get Wasted on Google Play, which has been downloaded 8,000 times in the UK, either for free or for just 83p.

The game selects a player roulette-style and they are instructed to drink what the app suggests. Volumes are decided at random. Players monitor their alcohol levels through stages including tipsy , boozy , well-oiled , drunk and loaded. If a player refuses a drink, the game makes a chicken noise. The winner is the first to reach the final stage of wasted .

After The Mail on Sunday alerted him to the games, Lamb obliged with an 'outraged' sound bite:

It's pretty abhorrent and I condemn those organisations because it promotes behaviour which has a massive impact on our A&E departments and police forces. The damage that it can do is immense, so I think the people who promote these apps should think again.

Conservative MP Andrew Percy, a member of the Health Select Committee, called the apps dangerous and backed Lamb's call for a ban.

A BBC boss has claimed that modern audiences would be left baffled by the humour in Monty Python film The Life Of Brian - because they have such poor religious literacy .

Head of religion and ethics, Aaqil Ahmed, claimed that poor education has left two generations devoid of understanding when it comes to issues of religion.

[All right, but apart from wars, violence, intimidation, hypocrisy, child abuse, misogyny, homophobia, easy offence, backstreet abortion, and the Spanish inquisition, what have religions ever done for us?]

Speaking as the BBC launched a mini-series on religious pilgrimages, Ahmed said:

We have poor religious literacy in this country and we have to do something about it. Falling flat: BBC head of religion and ethics Aaqil Ahmed claims that 1979 film The Life Of Brian would be lost on modern audiences because of their poor religious knowledge

If you tried to make The Life Of Brian today it would fall flat on its face because the vast majority of the audience would not get most of the jokes.

According to the Independent, Ahmed also ludicrously claimed that comedians don't make more jokes about Islam because the religion is so poorly understand by large sections of the British public.

[What a load of bollox. You know the penalty laid down by Roman law for joking about islam? Crucifixion! Nasty, eh? Could be worse. What you mean Could be worse ? Well, you could incur the wrath of the politically correct!].

Ahmed said that a basic grasp of religious issues is necessary for the public to understand wider contemporary issues. He said that religious understanding would help us understand things from why women chose to wear face coverings to what is happening in Syria.

...BUT... he added that he is not trying to impose religious knowledge on BBC audiences. [wisible or what?!]

Comment: BBC bloke has a point

21st October2013. Comment from Alan

Don't often disagree, but I think the BBC religious programmes boss is right.

There's a hell of a lot of English (and other European) history and literature that can't be understood without some knowledge of the Bible and Christianity. One problem is that some of the experts don't cover themselves in glory: the very interesting series on birth, marriage and death presented by Helen Castor is a case in point. Dr Castor is a distinguished historian but in some ways she's utterly clueless about religion. For instance, she presents as a strange medieval curiosity, unknown in the modern age, a theology of baptism that remains the doctrine of both the Roman Catholic Church and the dear old C of E.

Only last night I was gobsmacked by the subtitles in an episode of The Young Montalbano . Now, you might expect the name Giuseppe to appear in the subtitles for an Italian programme, but there was an astonishing blunder when Montalbano was talking about a story in the Old Testament, in which the protagonists were Giuseppe e la moglie di Putifarre . Both proper names were left in their Italian version in the subtitles, but an old sixtysomething like me would expect every primary school kid to know the story of Joseph and the wife of Potiphar.

You certainly can't understand much of Shakespeare unless you have some knowledge of Christianity (and maybe a bit of Graeco-Roman classical mythology). The same is true in spades of Dante: you can't make any sense of La Divina Commedia unless you understand what he believes to be L'Inferno , Il Purgatorio and Il Paradiso , and what conduct puts you in one or other of them. You can extend this to most of the arts: including the renaissance soft porn in which the Pope can commission a pious picture of a woman with her tits out if it's called Susanna and the Elders or The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha . And there's plenty of liturgical music about by the great composers, where the listener needs to know something about the religious beliefs which inspired it.

A Christian group has lodged papers at the High Court attempting to force Transport for London to take down hundreds of new billboards on double-decker buses telling people who disapprove of homosexuality to get over it .

It claims that transport chiefs are deliberately ignoring a ruling by a High Court judge that the posters, from the gay rights group Stonewall, are highly offensive to fundamentalist Christians who claim that gay sex is a sin .

Core Issues Trust, a Christian counselling group which advocates controversial reorientation therapy, booked advertising space on London buses last year promoting the idea that people can become post-gay through therapy. The posters were modelled on advertisements taken out by Stonewall a few weeks earlier reading: Some people are Gay. Get over it! Mayor Boris Johnson stepped in and banned them saying it was clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness .

The ban was allowed after a court challenge, but the judge did question the decision to allow the earlier Stonewall advertisements, and Christian groups have asked to get the Stonewall ads banned too. The outcome is due later this year.

But pre-empting this decision, further similar Stonewall advertisements have begun to reappear on buses across London as part of a new campaign.

Dr Michael Davidson, founder and Core Issues Trust, is lodging an urgent judicial review application seeking an injunction forcing TfL to ban the new advertisements.

Eminem's new single Rap God has been praised as a sign that the rapper is still relevant in today's music industry, but its lyrics have offended gay campaigners at Stonewall.

The group said the song's content was outdated and deeply offensive , and claimed the rapper was stuck in the last century .

Rap God is currently top of the UK and US iTunes charts, and has earned positive write-ups in Time and Rolling Stone. MTV lauded its expertly laid verses .

The lyrics are complex and layered with metaphor. An offending passage seem to be:

I attempt these lyrical acrobat stunts while I'm practicing that
I'll still be able to break a motherfuckin' table
Over the back of a couple of faggots and crack it in half
Only realized it was ironic I was signed to Aftermath after the fact

The second verse frequently references gays, eg:

Little gay-looking boy, So gay I can barely say it with a straight face-looking boy

Richard Lane, media manager at Stonewall, said:

Compared to inspirational modern artists like Frank Ocean and Macklemore, who have vocally supported tackling homophobia, Eminem seems stuck in the last century with these outdated and deeply offensive lyrics.

Annie Lennox has captured a fair bit of press coverage over a bizarre claim that sexy music videos are somehow pornographic. Surely there would not be many people in the country who could not distinguish a Miley Cyrus video from a porn film. Still, you can claim any old unchallenged bollox if you are preaching from the moral highground.

Pro-censorship Lennox was speaking against in an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live's Anna Foster and Peter Allen. She spouted:

I'm all for freedom of expression. I'm all for boundary pushing ...BUT... this is clearly one step beyond, and it's clearly into the realm of porn.

She seemed a little angry that millions of people enjoy sexy music videos:

There are so many millions of hits on Youtube; with this barrage how do you stop your kids being exposed to it? It is so powerful. I am sure I talk for millions of parents.

Claiming that she's a liberal minded person, Annie at one point commended artists who are pushing sexuality boundaries but reaffirmed that the music videos need to be age appropriate, and shouldn't be viewed by young audiences.

I actually think that what is really required are some kind of very clear boundaries. There is a difference between what is pornographic and what is entertainment.

She previously wrote on her Facebook page that if a pop star created a soft porn video or highly sexualised live performance, then it needs to qualify as such and be X-rated for adults only .

If sexy music videos were to be rated by say the BBFC, then hardly any would be 18 rated. A 15 rating would be tops, with most qualifying for a 12.

According to the Daily Mail:

Rihanna faced an extra- ordinary backlash last night after even her fans branded her latest video obscene , vile and pornographic .

Hundreds took to social networking sites to tell the singer that she should be ashamed of herself over the X-rated images in Pour It Up.

'Hundreds' may have complained but this nothing given that 17.5 million have watched the video on YouTube.

The video was originally posted by Rihanna on Vevo, a video sharing site, but was banned due to its explicit content. The site has since reinstated it.

The Daily Mail lavishes praise on the video:

It features pole dancers, strippers and lewd dance moves including twerking , a particularly provocative hip-thrusting dance.

Rihanna spends most of the video dressed in nothing but a jewel-encrusted bikini and platformed stiletto heels. She sings about strip clubs, alcohol and money and is seen gyrating and sliding provocatively down a chair.

Miranda Suit, pro-censorship campaigner for Safermedia lauded the video:

[Rihanna's] crude, tasteless and explicit dancing, combined with the money-focused lyrics, are telling all her fans -- many of them still children -- that it is good for women and girls to sell their body, and right for men and boys to see women purely as a sexual commodity.

Rihanna has sold out completely to the commercialisation and objectification of women's bodies and their sexuality. And now she's promoting it to girls and boys.

She urged websites such as YouTube to ban such videos, adding: Parents want to know that their children are going to be safe online.

And of course the Daily printed plenty of pictures highlighting all the sexiest bits of the video.

George Thorogood - I Drink Alone

Almost one in five songs in modern top tens contains a reference to alcoholic drinks, twice as many as ten years ago and almost three times as many as 30 years ago.

Recent number ones referring to alcohol include Rihanna's Cheers and Kesha's Tik Tok . Since 2001 lyrics about alcohol in chart-topping songs have more than doubled, according to researchers from Liverpool John Moores University.

The researchers described their findings as a major concern . The research team at Liverpool John Moores University counted mentions of alcohol in songs that reached the UK top ten in 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011. Songs that specifically mentioned drunkenness were also noted.

The proportion of hits featuring alcohol rose from 6% in 1981 to 19% in 2011. The number of references was lowest in 1991, at 2%.

The study attributes the rise of alcohol-related lyrics to an increase in the amount of U.S songs becoming popular in the UK. The analysis, published in the Journal of Music Psychology, found mentions of drink to be most common in tracks from the US and in R&B, rap and hip-hop genres.

Researcher Professor Karen Hughes claims that the hidden advertising could encourage youngsters to start drinking or lead those who already drink to consume more. She said parents should be aware of the content of songs their children listen to.

Hughes added that although lyrics cannot be censored, it may be possible to warn about references to alcohol on labels that point out sexually explicit and violent lyrics.