As London prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Blitz, parts of London are engulfed in flames as rioters engage the police after a father being shot to death by a policeman provided an excuse for looting (pronounced Loo-ting for those unfamiliar with the English Tongue).

Here is a linque to a West London newspaper featuring pictures and a blow-by-blow account.

BTW. When reading of riots please try not to snigger at place names. Yes, there really is a placed called Chingford Mount (Ching-ford Mount). Same goes for Dorking (Dork-ing) and Wapping (Wop-ing. And no, that does not mean Italians live there). Tottenham is pronounced Tott-num. Enfield is pronounced En-field.

When asked to comment, Margaret Drabble (Drab-ull) admitted that she had heard of Brixton (Brix-ton) but had never actually been there. “So long as Hampstead’s (Hamp-sted) safe we’ll manage somehow,” the celebrated lady novelist opined. “Has anyone seen Piers Morgan (Ass-hole)?”

According to Tacitus, Petronius Arbiter:

…spent his days in sleep, his nights in attending to his official duties or in amusement, that by his dissolute life he had become as famous as other men by a life of energy, and that he was regarded as no ordinary profligate, but as an accomplished voluptuary. His reckless freedom of speech, being regarded as frankness, procured him popularity. Yet during his provincial government, and later when he held the office of consul, he had shown vigor and capacity for affairs. Afterwards returning to his life of vicious indulgence, he became one of the chosen circle of Nero’s intimates, and was looked upon as an absolute authority on questions of taste (elegantiae arbiter) in connection with the science of luxurious living.

The Tom Ford of his day, his was among the more spectacular suicides. As the story has it (and no, I don’t care if it isn’t true), in 65 CE, the emperor dropped by for an evening of gladiator buttsecks during which he noticed the many priceless works of art littering Petronius’s penthouse triplex overlooking east 57th. Having had a day or two to work himself into a state, the emperor sent word that, admiring his subject’s collection, Petronius should do everyone a favor and kill himself leaving everything to said emperor.

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You know how when the press shows up at the front door when you’re trying to scrub the hard drive of incriminating evidence and goes all like — Gotcha! how annoying that can be?

Turns out…

I can’t. This is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard of. I can understand how it could happen. It explains the hair.

Here is the Guardian’s account.

You can find the BBC radio report here.

Leave aside the politics this is how Murdoch’s paper used for its own purposes a woman whose daughter had been abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered. Note to Americanski readers: ‘Sara’, the mother’s name, is lower class. On the BBC tape her words are read by an actress.

In the UK class is race.

Like most of us here I demand at least dinner and a movie before I get something hard crammed up my ass.

However, it seems that most of the politicians in the U.K. — past, present, and future — are only to glad to spread ’em for Rupert’s giant ravening kangareamer — no questions asked. This has shocked the New York Review of Books. No but srsly, stop laughing. The word ‘mephitic’ has been invoked to describe Murdoch’s back door access. Question is — who’s the top? Murdoch? Blair? Cameron? Thatcher? Katy Price?

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Joe Nelms thanks God for his smoking’ hot wife in best NASCAR prayer evah!

And Piers Morgan remains defiant about the whole middle class thing.

In a stunning new development in the hacking scandal that is engulfing the Murdoch empire and which now threatens to spread to more of Britain’s tabloids, it is revealed in today’s Daily Telegraph that when appearing on the BBC’s long-running Desert Island Discs international TV personality and one-time editor of The News of the World Piers Morgan was referred to by the interviewer as being ‘middle class.’

The BBC has issued an apology, insisting that the script had him listed as being upper-middle, not middle-middle. “It’s all jolly unfortunate,” said spokesman Nigel Brill. “Gosh, no one wants to give the impression that Mr. Morgan’s some kind of grammar-school boy.”

In the tape of the particular programme, the shock is palpable in Mr. Morgan’s voice, shock which no doubt led him to boast about all the hacking going on around him in the office which he did not personally take part in, oversee, or directly witness.

Reached in her Hampstead flat, Margaret Drabble expressed her sympathy, “I want to be very clear,” she said, “that when I admitted I had middle-class friends I was not in any way referring to Mr. Morgan.”

CNN’s Piers Morgan ‘told interviewer stories were published based on phone tapping’ [Telegraph UK]

Britain’s slebs are up in arms over who’s been hacked and, even worse, who hasn’t. Even dayplayers on the Eastenders don’t want to be left out.

Being on the list might be embarrassing: not being on the list might be professional death. Luckily, one of England’s loveliest slebs, Katy Perry, is already talking to lawyers (note: the English say ‘solicitor’ so exactly what does this tell us about Miss Perry’s intended audience? E.T.?) and the pleece.

English gels were once famous for their complexions: a result of all that rain, lack of sunlight, and nanny’s habit of rubbing baby’s piss-soaked nappy (diaper) over her face before it had a chance to cool. As you can see, Miss Perry is doing her bit to bring the delicacy of the English Rose into the 21st century. And has added a charming innovation of her own: rubbing lumps of coal across her eyebrows.

As an exile, living here amid the alien corn, it brings a lump to one’s throat as Rupert Brooks’s immortal line bubbles to the surface of what’s left of one’s brain:


And is there honey still for tea?