Kelly Brook Christmas Pictures

She's my favorite!

At London's Daily Mail, "'Look what came down the chimney': Santa looks very leggy this year in the form of Kelly Brook in a skimpy red dress."

Also, at The Sun, "Kelly Brook is a comedy cracker."

PHOTO CREDIT: Twitpic.

Queen Elizabeth Christmas Message 2011

At Telegraph UK, "The Queen's Christmas Message 2011":

In her traditional televised Christmas message, the Queen said she had been "inspired by the courage and hope" the royal family had witnessed in Britain and the Commonwealth in 2011.

RELATED: At London's Daily Mail, "Stunning Kate Is the Style Queen Sandringham."

Five Myths About Margaret Thatcher

I was thinking about this the other night, while watching the preview for "The Iron Lady" at the movies.

See Claire Berlinski, at Washington Post.

'Police Oppression'

More Angelic Upstarts:

I just cant take much more of this oppression
I’m going out of my head and its getting that impression
I’m gunna go out for a walk
I’m gunna sit down and have talk
There asking me how, and they’re asking me why, have you ever seen grown men cry?

police police police oppression, police police police oppression

really find it hard even walking round the streets
hey i know u son ill knock u off ur feet
same number a million times before,
shut ur mouth son or ill knock u on the floor

police police police oppression, police police police oppression

I just cant take much more of this oppression
I’m going out of my head and its getting that impression
I’m gunna go out for a walk
I’m gunna sit down and have talk
There asking me how, and they’re asking me why, have you ever seen grown men cry?

police police oppression police police oppression

Lying in the cells is really no fun
Cutting the bricks learning some tricks
Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies
Is being different really a crime?

police police police oppression
police police police oppression
police police police police police...

'Exmoor Emperor'

Althouse has the story of the mounted head of the 9 foot deer stag that was Britain's largest indigenous animal at the time it was killed. A hunter apparently nabbed him fair and square. But clearly, killing a majestic animal like that is the perfect trophy for abolitionists, not tourists.

See "'To come out and proudly boast you have one of the country's most magnificent creatures hanging on your wall is both unscrupulous and, frankly, professional suicide'."

Prime Minister David Cameron Stands Up for British Sovereignty

At Telegraph UK, "EU treaty: David Cameron stands as the lone man of Europe":

David Cameron took a decisive step to distance Britain from the European Union on Friday as he became the first prime minister to veto a new EU treaty.

Mr Cameron provoked widespread anger among European leaders by refusing to back a deal to rescue the eurozone, delighting Tories and raising questions about Britain’s future in the EU.

After Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, led objections to his “unacceptable” demands for legal protections for the City of London, the Prime Minister refused to give Britain’s backing for a new treaty to create a “fiscal union” among eurozone members.

At the end of an acrimonious summit in Brussels, all 26 other EU members signalled they could now support the new treaty, leaving Britain in a minority of one.

Conservative MPs welcomed Britain’s move back towards the traditional Tory stance of “splendid isolation” in Europe — a term for the foreign policy of the late 19th century.

Also at Telegraph, "Eurozone banking system on the edge of collapse."

Looks like a smart call by Cameron.

Britain's National Institute of Health to Ration Viagra

This is no joke.

Viagra is available privately, but the NHS is dogging those least able to pay for it out of pocket, the same people who are supposed to be better off with nationalization. Socialism sucks that way.

At Telegraph UK, "Viagra rationing to limit patients' sex lives":

With the Christmas holidays approaching fast, hard-working middle-aged couples could be forgiven for viewing the season of mistletoe and wine as a chance to spend a few cherished moments between the sheets.

But their amorous plans may be scuppered after penny-pinching NHS managers introduced new viagra prescription guidelines which could limit thousands of couples to having sex once a fortnight.

New policy documents advise GPs in parts of the country that patients in need of Viagra or similar drugs should be limited to two pills per month, down from the normal prescription of four.

Although the policy was described as a "recommendation" by NHS authorities, local medical committees told the GPs' magazine Pulse it was being handed down to family doctors as an "edict".

Erectile dysfunction medication is already stringently limited on the NHS and can only be prescribed to patients with certain conditions such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and prostate cancer.

According to the NHS some 2.2 million prescriptions for erectile dysfunction drugs were issued last year, with 14.5 million tablets issued at a cost of about £78 million.

NHS guidance acknowledges that there "appears to be no clinical reason to restrict the number of tablets" but it adds that, according to research, the average person has sex four times a month.
It says: "The average frequency of sexual intercourse in the 40 to 60 age range is once a week."
The new policy is aimed at economising on non-essential treatments, recommending that the minimum effective dose be prescribed "two times per month using the drug with the lowest acquisition cost."

The guidance applies to sildenafil (Viagra), vardenafil (Levitra) and tadalafil (Cialis).

And this is the clincher:

Richard Hoey, editor of Pulse, said: "Ask most doctors and they will say that being able to live a satisfactory sex life is a key part of health and wellbeing, but the NHS has never recognised that in its policy on treatment for erectile dysfunction.

"Limiting patients to drugs like Viagra just twice a month is to treat sex like an unnecessary luxury, and completely fails to recognise the degree of anguish it can cause some men with erectile dysfunction."

Well, yeah.

Freakin' big government health bureaucrats. What losers.

Giant Pandas Prepare For New Life In Scotland

At Sky News:

Edinburgh Zoo is about to take delivery of two of the rarest animals on the planet - a pair of giant pandas on loan from the Chinese government.

Sunshine and Sweetie - Yangguang and Tian Tian in Chinese - are both seven-years-old.
They have grown up together in the misty mountains of southwest China.

On Sunday they will embark on a 5,000 mile journey to Scotland, where they will become star exhibits at the Edinburgh Zoo.

Continue reading.

Melanie Phillips: Britain Impotently Warns Iran of 'Serious Consequences'

She's the best.

See, "Hague shakes his puny fist in the thirty years' invisible war":

For some thirty years, Britain and the west have experienced war waged upon them by Iran – but fantastically, have refused to acknowledge this fact. They refused to fight back. They refused therefore also to acknowledge what has been crystal clear for at least the past two decades: that it was never going to be a choice between war or peace with Iran. It was always going to be a choice between fighting that war sooner, when Iran was weaker and the west had more chance of minimising the fall-out, and fighting that war later, when Iran would be much stronger -- and possibly even a nuclear power -- and when the consequences for the west would be that much more terrible.

What the west refused to grasp was that there was never any chance of the Iranian regime seeing sense. That’s because what drives its dominant members at least is not conventional political impulse but an apocalyptic messianism. That means they actively seek to bring about a conflagration -- even if this consumes much of Iran -- since they believe that this apocalypse will prompt the return to earth of a religious messiah figure. They actually want to bring about the end of the world. But the west just didn’t take any of this remotely seriously.

The result has been catastrophic for the world. Iran has been outwitting the west at every turn, aided immeasurably by an American President who extended to these genocidal fanatics the hand of friendship while smashing his fist down on their principal prospective victim, Israel. As a result, Iran has enormously extended its power in the region and become seen there – disastrously -- as the strong horse which must be ridden, while the once-mighty US has become the enfeebled nag that is no longer prepared even to defend itself, let alone anyone else.

RTWT.

Iranian Students Storm British Embassy in Tehran

The Lede followed the story all day, with lots of video, "Storming of British Embassy in Tehran Broadcast Live on State Television." Also at New York Times, "Protesters Storm British Embassy in Tehran."

And Telegraph UK reports on the obvious and troubling comparison to the United States, "Iran: British embassy attack brings to mind US siege":

Iranians stormed two British Embassy compounds in Tehran, bringing to mind the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran by Iranian students on Nov 4 1979.

Here are details of that siege.

* Students helped spearhead the overthrow of the US-backed Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Shah, who was already gravely ill, sought refuge overseas.

* Exiled cleric Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran in triumph to seal victory for a revolution whose mantra was "Death to America".

* Student activists in co-ordination with radical clerics stormed the U.S. embassy, taking 90 hostages. Fifty-two were held captive for 444 days with the students demanding the extradition of the deposed Shah from the United States.

* The siege prompted then U.S. President Jimmy Carter to freeze Iranian assets and sever all diplomatic ties with Tehran.

* On April 25, 1980, a US commando mission to rescue the hostages was abandoned in the desert with the loss of eight American lives when a helicopter collided with a tanker aircraft, politically damaging President Carter.

More at the link.

Also, "British relations with Iran sink to lowest in decades as Tehran embassies are stormed."

British Press Inquiry Turns the Tables on Tabloids

At New York Times, "Inquiry Into Press Tactics Turns the Tables on Tabloids."

LONDON — It is a story made to order for the sensation-hungry tabloid newspapers that have millions of avid readers in Britain: a roll call of A-list celebrities and crime victims pouring out — day by day, live on the Internet — the personal miseries they say they have endured in seeking to protect the everyday normality of their private lives.

But this time, for the tabloids, it is a story with a bitter twist. For what is happening in a courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice has amounted to a turning of the tables, through the medium of a government-appointed inquiry into the “culture, ethics and practices” of British newspapers, that has turned into a legal soap opera in which the villains have emerged as the tabloids themselves.

The high court judge leading the inquiry, Sir Brian Leveson, has called the sessions that began this week, relayed live on the inquiry’s Web site, a “right of reply” for victims of tabloid excesses. He has refused requests by the newspapers’ lawyers for the right to cross-examine the witnesses, and issued a formal warning to the mass-circulation papers not to strike back against those testifying with new articles that invade their privacy or damage their reputations.

One of those taking advantage of the platform was Sienna Miller, 29, a New York-born actress who lives much of the year in London and found herself a target of intense tabloid scrutiny when she was dating the actor Jude Law. One of the inquiry’s most arresting moments came on Thursday when she described her experiences with London’s “relentless” paparazzi, and described being spat at, verbally abused and subjected to dangerous car chases while trying to elude them.

“I felt like I was living in some sort of video game,” Ms. Miller said. “For a number of years, I was relentlessly pursued by 10 to 15 men, almost daily.”

“I would often find myself — I was 21 — at midnight running down a dark street, alone, with 10 big men chasing me, and the fact that they had cameras in their hands meant that was legal,” she added. “But if you take away the cameras, what have you got? You’ve got a pack of men chasing a woman, and obviously that’s very intimidating.”

British Shopkeeper Fights Off Knife-Wielding Attacker With Broom

At Mirror UK, "Hero shopkeeper fights off knife robber with broom." And at London's Daily Mail, "Shocking moment robber takes shop assistant hostage with a knife to her throat... before brave boss fights him off with a BROOM."