Category: Celebrities

Celebrities

Chumbawamba’s former guitarist labels Gove a ‘stuck-up, lying, money-grubbing, privileged git’

From the Morning Star: Michael Gove has been labelled a “stuck-up, lying, money-grubbing, privileged git” by Chumbawamba’s former guitarist after the Tory leadership hopeful aligned himself with the anti-authoritarian pop group’s 1998 hit Tubthumping.

The Environment Secretary, with eyes for the top job, has branded himself “the Chumbawamba kid.”

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Gove said: “Someone said the other day: Michael, you are the comeback kid. You are the Chumbawamba candidate: You get knocked down, but you get up again. That’s been true throughout my career.”

The previous week Mr Gove had been forced to out himself as a former coke sniffer prior to publication of a biography that referred to his drug-hoovering past.

His comments sparked ridicule from former Chumbawamba guitarist Boff Whalley, who helped pen Tubthumping. Mr Whalley said: “Gove doesn’t understand that in order to declare yourself a ‘Chumbawamba kid’ you have to commit to a lifelong hatred of divisive, bigoted, self-obsessed Tory public-schoolboy politics. Gove’s naive and clumsy attempt to give himself some popular cultural credibility by remembering one line from a 20-year-old pop song is ridiculous considering Chumbawamba’s reputation for attacking self-serving politicians, physically and otherwise. What a stuck-up, lying, money-grubbing, privileged git.”

[Read full article on Morning Star website…]

Frankie Boyle on Brexit food stockpiling…

If there’s one thing I trust this government to do, it’s to fuck up the stockpiling of food and medicines

Posted by Frankie Boyle on Friday, July 27, 2018

Actor Michael Sheen: Thatcher waged war on communities

From Channel 4 News: Actor Michael Sheen talks about what the Tories did to mining communities, and to ways of life built on caring about other members of your community.

Michael Sheen on the Ways to Change the World podcast

"Margaret Thatcher wanted to take them down."Actor Michael Sheen, who's from Port Talbot, reflects on why the mining closures were a "war on a way of living", in the latest Ways to Change the World podcast.Listen to the full episode here: https://www.channel4.com/news/ways-to-change-the-world-a-new-channel-4-news-podcast-michael-sheen

Posted by Channel 4 News on Sunday, May 20, 2018

Grime artist Marci Phonix tells Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng he’s “talking nonsense” over Windrush

From Channel 4 News: Grime artist Marci Phonix tells Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng on Channel 4 News, “Mate, you’re talking nonsense, you know you’re talking nonsense” over the Windrush scandal.

Marci Phonix and Kwasi Kwarteng on the Windrush controversy

“You don't represent the same people I represent. You would not know and you don't care."Grime artist Marci Phonix and Conservative MP and historian Kwasi Kwarteng discuss the Windrush controversy.

Posted by Channel 4 News on Thursday, April 19, 2018

 

Rio Ferdinand slams Tory plans to cut bereavement benefits for grieving parents

From Welfare Weekly: Former England captain and Manchester United star, Rio Ferdinand, has slammed Government plans to reduce the length of time grieving parents can receive bereavement benefits, it has been reported.

Tory minister Richard Harrington recently claimed those changes “will help people readjust to single-parent life”, to which Labour’s Stella Creasy accused the minister of cruelly using “justifications that sound like something from the dark ages”.

His opinion isn’t shared by Rio Ferdinand, whose wife Rebecca died in 2015 aged just 34 from breast cancer, leaving behind three children and a devastated father.

[Read full article on Welfare Weekly website…]

‘I would not have survived’: Stephen Hawking lived long life thanks to NHS

From The Guardian: Stephen Hawking’s robust defence of the NHS set the tone for the row to come. When the NHS was plunged into crisis14amid plans to privatise the service, Hawking lashed out at the politicians he held responsible in a 2017 speech at the Royal Society of Medicine. He blamed ministers for funding cuts, pay caps and weakening the service through privatisation. He saw it all leading to a “US-style insurance system”.

He singled out Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, for particular criticism. In arguing for a seven-day NHS, Hunt claimed that 11,000 patients a year died because of understaffing of hospitals at weekends. Hawking pointed out that of the eight studies Hunt had cited, four were not peer reviewed, and that 13 more that Hunt had failed to mention contradicted the view.

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Sam Allardyce brands UK’s reliance on foodbanks a ‘disgrace’

From The Guardian: Sam Allardyce has branded the growing number of foodbanks in Britain a national disgrace, after visiting one in his role as Everton FC manager this week.

Allardyce, together with his assistant Sammy Lee, donated food on behalf of the club to the North Liverpool foodbank on Thursday. Supporters of Everton and Liverpool have held regular collections for the facility, one of 428 operated within the Trussell Trust Network, having set up the Fans Supporting Foodbanks initiative. Three wards surrounding Goodison Park are among the poorest in Europe, with up to 42% of families living under the Living Wage Foundation’s poverty line.

After praising the patients, parents and staff at Alder Hey, he said: “It’s extremely depressing that a country of this magnitude, and where it thinks it lies in itself, can allow so many food banks to be operating in this country.

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Neville Southall tweets: May “could not give a shit” about firefighters, nurses, carers

Neville Southall kept goal for Wales 92 times between 1982 and 1998, and a club record 750 times for Everton. World Soccer magazine named him one of the 100 greatest players of the 20th Century. Since his retirement he has worked extensively with disadvantaged children, and set up his own educational consultancy.

Stephen Hawking: I’m worried about the future of the NHS

From BBC News: Stephen Hawking says he is worried about the future of the NHS, attacking the impact of government policies and the health secretary in person.

In a speech on Saturday, the Cambridge University scientist is expected to accuse Jeremy Hunt of “cherry-picking” evidence to support his policies.

And he will also say he is concerned about the involvement of the private sector in the NHS in England.

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Akala: “By choice, I’ve never voted before. But Jeremy Corbyn has changed my mind”

Akala, a Mobo award-winning hip-hop artist and founder of the Hip-hop Shakespeare Company, writes in the Guardian: “I have a confession to make: I have never voted in a general election in my life. Despite attending more demos with my parents than I care to remember, I have never yet cast a vote. I can hear the voices of disapproval. Don’t bother; it has been a conscious choice. Many people have been trained to see the Houses of Parliament as the only site of political activity and their vote as their only, or at least primary, obligation. I was, thankfully, not raised with such a narrow view of political engagement.

“So why will I be voting now? Jeremy Corbyn. It’s not that I am naive enough to believe that one man (who is, of course, powerless without the people that support him) can fundamentally alter the nature of British politics, or that I think that if Labour wins that the UK will suddenly reflect his personal political convictions, or even that I believe that the prime minister actually runs the country. However for the first time in my adult life, and perhaps for the first time in British history, someone I would consider to be a fundamentally decent human being has a chance of being elected.

[Read full column on the Guardian website…]

UK plan to boost cycling and walking ‘worthless without more funding’

From The Guardian: The government’s cycling and walking investment strategy “won’t be worth the paper it’s written on” unless backed by sustained funding, cycling campaigners claim.

The British Cycling policy adviser and 1992 individual pursuit Olympic champion Chris Boardman believes far more ambition is needed if Britain is to create a cycling and walking culture to rival countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands.

His comments come as the government launched its blueprint to encourage more walking and cycling with the aim of boosting the number of people who get around by bike or on foot by 2040. Yet the ambition is backed by just £316m over the next five years, barely half the cost of upgrading Bank tube station in London. “Frankly it’s embarrassing,” said Boardman.

The funds available for both walking and cycling work out at just £1.38 per person in England outside London, according to the CTC, a national cycling charity. The CTC notes that the Department for Transport has set aside £15bn to upgrade motorways and trunk roads.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Alan Bennett: Tories govern with ‘totalitarian attitude’

From The Guardian: Award-winning playwright Alan Bennett has launched a withering attack on the Tories, describing their style of government as “quite close to a totalitarian attitude”.

Bennett said of the Conservatives: “It’s not merely that they want to be the governing party, but the only party, and that’s never been a part of British political tradition,” he said. “That stems from Mrs Thatcher: she did believe that Labour was wicked.”

He reserved his staunchest criticism for the state of British politics and the press, and attacked the Daily Mail for their coverage of Corbyn not singing the national anthem. “Half the royal family don’t even sing the anthem … they don’t even seem to know the words to Jerusalem. The notion that you are required to sing the national anthem in order to prove your patriotism, and if you don’t you’re not patriotic, is so absurd.”

“The lies on the front page of the Mail are so vulgar and glaring. Occasionally people say they like my work and then I see they have a copy of the Mail, and you think, ‘Well, how can you?’”

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Corrie star calls Tories the ‘proper f***ing enemy’ at Manchester theatre night

From Mancunian Matters: Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh described the Tory government as a ‘fucking proper enemy’ at a theatre night to raise awareness of cuts and the importance of trade unions yesterday.

The actress, who plays Hayley in Corrie, was one of many to donate their time to the event hosted at the People’s Assembly theatre in the Northern Quarter.

The play readings were part of the Take Back Manchester campaign against the upcoming Tory conference.

Julie, who was in the audience for the debate, said: “Somebody I know who grew up in the nineties said to me once that they envied me growing up in the eighties because we had a proper enemy.

“We’ve got a fucking proper enemy now.”

The actress went on to discuss the importance of not just going along to demonstrations, but unionising and politicisng ourselves in the ‘wider world’ too.

[Read full article on Mancunian Matters website…]