First Among Equals

Meanwhile, back at the revolution ...

Venezuelan broadcasters have banned The Simpsons from morning TV on the grounds that it violates regulations barring “messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents.”

In the interest of smashing western imperialist gender constructs it has been replaced by Baywatch Hawaii.

Referring to “Baywatch, General Manager German Perez Nahim of Televen affirmed that he was “hoping it will continue to have a good rating, because ‘The Simpsons’ worked very well — so much so that it had the highest levels of viewership for that morning timetable in the history of the channel.”

Will he, won't he?

Gordon Brown told the Chinese Prime Minister that he would be attending the Olympics. His spin doctors say that he meant he was attending the closing ceremony and never meant the opening ceremony. Easy mistake.

Meanwhile, as the Flame of Harmony, made it's way across London, Xinuha, the official Chinese News Agency, reported that he would indeed be attending.

I know who my money's on.

Max Mosely - wasn't he in hotel babylon?

You have to hand it to Max Mosely, head of the global motorsports federation the FIA. He's come out fighting and is now suing the News of the World for their expose of him having his jolly's with hookers dressed as prison guards.

The point that Mosely's lawyers are making is that the paper's report of Nazi connotation were entirely false. How do you argue with this:






Mosely's father was of course Oswald Mosely, leader of the British Union of Fascists in the

1930s which is why the British press have become so excited about the prison guard link.

Still, as long as it gets Tibet off the front page ...

I wonder what made CID think that Shannon Mathews step dad might be a kiddy fiddler?

Chinese Embassay pulls out of Torch Relay

Lot's in the papers this morning about the Chinese Ambassador, Her Excellency, Fu Ying, pulling out of her commitment to be one of the 80 bearers as the Olympic Torch Relay heads to London's O2 Arena.

Fu Ying, yesterday in London

Beauties of the Russian prison system

It's not just the industrial military complex of the former Soviet Union that recognises talent when it sees it.

Women's Correctional Facility UF91/9, which is 20 miles north of Siberian capital, Novosibirsk is also getting in on the act.

The former Gulag has been running a beauty pageant since before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Originally contestants made their gowns out of plastic bags from the prison kitchen but they nowadays receive materials and help from warders and the competition is featured on local TV.

Inmates get to make gowns in three categories: Greek Goddesses; Flower Gowns; and Uniforms of the Future.

The winner is voted on by guards and unit heads as Miss Spring while the runners up are Miss Grace and Miss Charm.

"My prison days continue to haunt me" says former winner Natasha Patalakhova, 29, who served eight years for armed assault.

I'm not bloody suprised.

Miss Atomski 2008ski

Well it's that time of year again when Madame Mao, as a former Miss Comrade Shanghai 1935, gets to announce the winner of the annual Miss Atom competition to find the most attractive woman currently working in the nuclear industry across the former Warsaw Pact countries.

The lucky winner this year is Yulia Nagayeva who was born in 1981 and works for TVEL Corporation.

Safe in my hands

There is little going on today other than David Cameron claiming the Tories as the party of the NHS. Again my number one cadre shows his adeptness at the politics of cognitive dissonance.

He claims that hospitals should be punished by fines whenever anyone gets MRSA which, in effect, means punishing the hospital for failing to prevent the virus developing an immunity to antibiotics.

Cognitive dissonance was a tried and tested technique of the Chairman. It means saying one thing and doing another. For example: tell people that they are moving towards a socialist utopia while starving 23 million peasants to death.

Cameron says the Tories are the champions of the health service while threatening punitive measures against Doctors for something we don't understand properly and which they have little control over. Bit like paying thousands of pounds a term for your son to go to Eton only for him to be thrashed if he refuses to give some fifteen year old a blow job.

Cameron told the Today Programme that Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, was guaranteed to be the Health Secretary in the next Conservative Government. Guaranteed to get his colleagues in the Shadow Cabinet sharpening their knives more like.

Think back to August and Lansley was being described as 'exhuasted' and 'bungling' after making an arse of the latest Tory drive to save the NHS when they claimed that 29 NHS Trusts were ear marked for closure, only they weren't.




Back then Labour were 10 points ahead in the polls. My advice to Mr Brown is to immediately send in the tanks and crush that bloke in the tent on Parliament Square.

Mixing your messages and mixing your drinks

As the Beijing City authorities crackdown on the city's bad habits such as spitting and smoking in the street in time for this year's Olympics the UK press is foaming at the mouth over an orgy of drunken New Year violence topped off by PC Brunstrom claiming that ecstasy is no more harmful than aspirin.



While the press goes into an apoplectic moral hyperdrive and cracks begin to show in the capitalist system it was heartening to see the Mirror cheerfully lead with Ricky Hatton managing 57 pints, 17 vodka and Red Bulls, four vodkas, three whisky chasers, and a bottle of Moet champagne in just four days.

Madame Mao remains slightly confused.