Labour leadership: Not true to you

Never mind Yvette Cooper's sudden realisation that, actually, she always hated Ed Miliband and everything he said, or did, or thought, or liked, or touched, or tasted, or loved, or licked, or coloured-in, or flirted with, or smelled, or drilled, or folded, or applauded, or arrested, or fed from a packet of seed he kept in his pocket, or folded, or bought, or proposed, or endorsed, or Googled, or polished, or filed away for safe keeping, or sang to, or wrapped.

As John Rentoul has reminded us, last year Andy Burnham went cold on The Smiths. In an interview, Burnham talked about how Morrissey changed his life, but:

[But it hasn’t lasted?] I feel that. I play it to my kids [13, 11 and 8] and the only song that they will really relate to is “How Soon Is Now?” And it has a vibe, or a beat, a bit more of the reverb thing going on, but the jingly-jangly yodelling-type lyric does feel a bit trapped in Eighties indy-land.

When you see those early Top of the Pops performances it’s like a historical curiosity. Did they really do that back then? I’m also – a bit predictable again – a huge Stone Roses follower. I was younger when I liked The Smiths and then the Stone Roses came along, ‘89, ‘90, and I was 19, I was old enough to follow them around. I went to the Heaton Park thing in Manchester when they reformed last year and they’ve also got a film out recently. One thing you notice about the Stone Roses is that they are more Everyman. They are less an introverted sixth-form thing, and they are much more the lads in hi-vis jackets, they are everyone’s band in the way that The Smiths never were. The Smiths were always, I’m a student therefore – The Stone Roses [has] a more timeless feel to it, more relevant.

Also, Morrissey's position on thresholds for strike ballots is so anti-business.

Britney Spears: Independent seems a little lost in the modern world

The Independent is very excited indeed by Britney Spears:

To many women, being called a "bitch", particularly by a man, is derogatory.

And there are equally as many reasons for why the term is perceived to be offensive as there are women offended by it.
[...]
Not so for Britney Spears, a pop singer who’s reiterated the word so often over the course of her career, it’s bizarrely formed part of her catchphrase ("It's Britney, bitch).

So, in a strange twist of neo-feminist fate, she’s decided to fully reclaim it with a definition of her own.

“Being a bitch means… I stand up for myself and my beliefs,” she wrote in a post on Instagram. “I stand up for those I love, I speak my mind, think my own thoughts or do things my way.

She wrote this, did she, Jenn Selby of The Independent?

Do you understand how memes work, exactly?

Sure, Britney posted the "Bitchology poem" to her Instagram account. And, yes, you might see that an embracing its viewpoint.

But it's clearly just a jpeg, and about one tenth of second with Google Image search confirms this is a "poem" which has been doing the rounds of the internet since before Grumpy Cat was a kitten.

You wonder if when Jenn sees those "funny" ecards on Facebook that she assumes the person who is posting them wrote the things: "Hey, I never knew my great aunt Margaret was such an amusing and inspirational thinker on questions of motherhood and religion. And how did she come up with that test to see if you can read all those words jumbled up? She's an undiscovered genius."

Beyonce banned from graves, only not really

The Mail has glossed the results of Beyonce's bad behaviour at the Pyramids:

Beyonce 'banned' from Pyramids by Egypt's Indiana Jones after her 'stupid and rude' behaviour

By "Egypt's Indiana Jones", they mean "an Egyptian archaeologist who loves himself a bit", Zahi Hawass. And by "banned", if you read the Independent version, it turns out they mean that he withdrew an offer to show her around:

"She said she would come at 3pm but she came late. I said 'You have to say I'm sorry I'm late'. But she didn't open her mouth," continued Dr Hawass, credited with modernising the management of Egypt's ancient sites and who claims to have repatriated 6,000 artefacts "stolen" by Western powers.

"I brought a photographer and she also had a photographer and a guard. When my photographer started to shoot, he said 'No, Stop! I am the one who says yes or no, not you.' I said 'In that case since you almost hit my photographer and you are not polite - out! I am not giving you the privilege of having you on my tour.' I said Beyoncé was stupid and I left."

Actually, "Beyonce told she is stupid" is both a more accurate and more interesting headline than the suggestion that she has somehow been "banned" from the World Heritage Site.

Parlophone moves from one empire to another

As part of the deal to allow EMI to become part of Universal, Parlophone had to be put up for sale.

The idea being that if you take EMI out of the marketplace, power becomes highly concentrated in just three major labels' mechanised-hand-like-claws, and that would be a bad thing.

So, who has bought Parlophone, to save us from this idea that most of the Western world's chart music will be held by just three companies?

Universal.

I know what you're thinking: how does Parlophone being held by a different major make things more competitive?

But that is to misunderstand competition law: it exists not to allow everyone to compete equally; it functions to ensure that those who are already rigging the market play nicely amongst themeselves.

The Independent, by the way, thinks the key detail in this deal is something else:

Russian-born billionaire Blavatnik buys Blur and Coldplay in £500m Warners Parlophone takeover

Obviously, given the person paying for the ink and the Windows licences at the Indie, being Russian-born is rather more significant for that paper than it might be for the rest of us.

Why, i?

Yesterday's Independent spin-off i did its best to pitch itself as small-but-smart, despite the clunking strapline ("The paper for today" - perhaps shrunk down from "The paper for Today readers who have been a bit bereft since Murdoch closed that title" to fit the space?) and a confusion between "brief" and "rushed".

There was quite a large clunk, though, in the form of an oh-so-Mirroresque "I love i" box in which one of our great thinkers welcomed the new paper.

I say great thinkers; I mean Noel Gallagher:

It's a top idea to have a paper for clever people who can't be arsed to spend hours reading every day

You're smart, but, oh, reading is such a chore, isn't it?

Did anyone think through whether this was really the message for day one? That i is a paper for those who Noel Gallagher would consider "clever"?

I think I might want my 20p back.

Do They Know What The Money's For At All?

The BBC World Service has claimed that millions of dollars intended for Ethiopian famine relief in the mid 80s was siphoned off to keep the popular civil war in weapons:

One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) - from Western governments and charities including Band Aid - was channelled into the rebel fight.

The CIA, in a 1985 assessment entitled Ethiopia: Political and Security Impact of the Drought, also alleged aid money was being misused.

Its report concluded: "Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes."

Bob Geldof has denied it:

Mr Geldof told BBC One's Andrew Marr show he would personally sue the Ethiopian government and spend the money on aid if any evidence was produced.

He said: "Produce me one shred of evidence and I promise you I will professionally investigate it, I will professionally report it, and if there is any money missing I will sue the Ethiopian government for that money back and I will spend it on aid.

"There is not a single shred of evidence that Band Aid or Live Aid money was diverted in any sense, it could not have been."

Apparently the 1985 CIA assessment doesn't, for these purposes, count as "one shred of evidence".

Various charities are preparing to take complaints about the report to the BBC Trust and Ofcom.

Talking to The Independent, Geldof describes the report as "a Ross/Brand moment for me" - an interesting way of describing it, as that was a disproportionate fuss over a silly misjudgement. Is Bob saying that he's kicking up a stink that isn't warranted, or that the BBC was a little bit rubbish?

The Independent report ends with this, erm, "support" for the aid agencies:

A former British ambassador to Ethiopia, Myles Wickstead, added weight to the aid agencies' condemnation last night. "I'd give no credibility whatsoever to the idea that 95 per cent of aid to Tigray was diverted," he concluded.

"It was too highly monitored, most particularly that of Live Aid. Some money may well have gone astray in Ethiopia in 1985. But nowhere nearly on the scale which the BBC has alleged."

I'm not sure that saying "ooh, nowhere near as much as 95% was diverted" is quite the same as the agencies insistence that everything was accounted for.

Given the terrible state the country was in at the time, you'd have been surprised if some of the aid didn't go awry, no matter how well-intentioned the agencies distributing it were; no matter how well-considered their systems were. Personally, I'm more worried by Bob and the charities insisting that nothing was misplaced than I am by the BBC claims of massive amounts vanishing. Even Wal-Mart can't stop shrinkage to theft, and Wal-Mart are evil.

James Allan alive and well, more or less

The front of the BBC News website reports that James Allan's whereabouts are still a mystery:

Allan went Awol four days ago and missed the Mercury Music Prize, where the Scottish rock band were nominated.

But he got in touch soon after the ceremony on Tuesday to say he was safe. He did not reveal where he was or why he took flight.

Nobody seems to have told them that The Independent revealed his whereabouts yesterday:

The band's manager, Dean Cunning, said the singer had telephoned him yesterday afternoon after finding out that people were concerned for his safety.

"James is not missing, he's in New York," he said. "He got in touch with me yesterday at about 1.45pm to tell me he was OK because he knew people were worried, but to be honest I've been just as much in the dark about this as anybody - the last time I saw James was at the gig in Cardiff. I don't even know exactly when he went missing."

Not quite "not missing", then.

When asked whether the singer would be able to join the band for their American gigs, Mr Cunning said: "I fucking hope so."

I'm not entirely sure that I'd file Allan under 'found' just yet.

Trent Reznor: Retweet

Everyone seems delighted at Trent Reznor's return to Twitter earlier today.

Well, everyone except The Independent, who only got around this morning to telling its readers that Reznor had quit social networking "for good".

Rowntree pledges devotion to Blur

Last week, The Independent - the freesheet you get in the Toby Carvery - carried a story which suggested Dave Rowntree would quit Blur after the reunion dates, the better to carry on his legal career.

Surprisingly, Rowntree saw the report and has issued a response:

"I want to set the record straight following the bizarre and inaccurate piece in The Independent," he wrote on Forums.blur.co.uk. "As anyone who follows the band will know, we all have interests outside Blur.

"I am currently at law school, about to sit the exams for the first part of my training as a solicitor. I am fitting my studies around our preparation for the shows in the summer.

"I have one more year of academic training to complete, but if we decide to do more as Blur, I will obviously continue to fit my studies around the band and not the other way round. Whatever else I do, first and foremost I am a musician."

It's interesting and definitive - not entirely sure how I'd feel if I was instructing a solicitor to defend me only for him to wave a hand and say "look, you realise that if we get invited to go and record a Hootenanny for Jools Holland, you're on your own, right?", but good look with the studies, Dave.

Free Sigur Ros

The Independent - yes, it's still going - is attempting to boost its circulation with a free Sigur Ros album this Saturday.

Now, I love Sigur Ros, and look forward to Saturday and picking up some free music from them. But... they're not exactly the band I'd be looking to in order to try and turn around the slump in the Indie's fortunes. Couldn't their columnist Alex James whip up something with his newly refound chums?

Andy Kershaw on the run

There's not been much heard of Andy Kershaw in the last couple of months - it turns out that he'd gone to ground after again breaking the terms of court orders to not have contact with his ex-partner.

Kershaw gives a trying-not-to-sound-too-bitter interview to today's Independent; it's not any less heartbreaking this time around and - with bungled attempts to hide from police, and periods of sleeping rough - it's got a little worse. And while you can understand his need to sound off, complaining about the BBC for not paying him while, erm, he hasn't been at work for six months, and having a pop at the Isle of Man police isn't really going to help make things better.

Worse, the detailing of what went wrong between him and his partner in a national paper isn't a sign that he's moving on, either. He should be on the radio, not sleeping on the streets, but instead of a route back he's traipsing over and over old ground.