All human lifelessness is there

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Willesden Herald reader spotted in a local pub*

* Picture by Vanessa Gebbie © 2007

Diageo hard liquor advertised to kids on ITV teatime

Diageo Great Britain [sponsors] ITV weather’s UV updates during the early evening news as part of £1.4 million summer marketing campaign

Am I the only one somewhat dismayed at the current campaigns promoting Baileys Irish Cream booze, Gordons Gin and Smirnoff vodka on the ITV early evening news? These ads for drinks mixed with ginger ale, for example (today), are running alongside adverts for kids' soft drinks, sometimes directly after one for a soft drink (the other day). They are creepily oriented in a way that makes them sound like some good old kids' treat. Summer 2008 with lashings of gin and ginger ale: Enid Blyton turns into Edna the Inebriate Woman.

FFS Diageo (and ITV!), exercise some judgement and get behind the watershed. This present manifestation of greedy, unscrupulous, predatory behaviour is really outrageous. It's clearly based on the old Jesuit principle, give me the boy aged seven and I'll give you the man. It's a transparent and evil (there is no other word) attempt to implant a boozy notion of summer into childrens' minds before they are fully able to know they're being got at.

Zoz

William Burroughs shot my book

Ridley's Believe it or Not (No. 6)

Finbow on Burroughs, Lit Up magazine

"Another of my prize possessions is a copy of Dear Allen: Letters to Allen Ginsberg by William S. Burroughs 1953-57, Full Court Press, New York City, 1982, signed by both Bill and Allen with the addition of a muzzle-fire graze on the front cover - Bill shot it for me." (Steve Finbow)

Brilliant memoir writing

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Herbert Ridley

Disappearing London: Oriental City

"Chinatown in Soho is all very well, but there's a far more genuine East Asian dining experience a few miles up the A5 in deepest Colindale. It's called Oriental City, and it's an unexpected eastern treasure. Alas, it's also doomed. This Sunday evening, at 7pm precisely, the dim sum will stop, the diners will be ejected and the doors will be permanently locked. And all because what this part of London really needs, apparently, is eight blocks of flats, a health and fitness studio and a B&Q. It's a damned shame." (Continues)

That's Parsley, right, not Paisley?

John McCain's rabid looney religious pastor

Let me guess, Free Pescatarian?

Zoz

In search of lost art

The Willesden Labyrinth Project

A Community Arts project

at The Gallery at Willesden Green

by Nico Pollen and BAR, Summer 2008

Installation               Workshops               Exhibition

Enjoy the labyrinth forms constructed outside the library centre from May 19^th for two months. Enjoy learning about world labyrinth traditions and making art with an ancient motif, with many creative media resources and a variety of people from around the borough of Brent, in workshops led by local artist Nico Pollen.

This project also celebrates the contributions to the artistic and cultural life of the community of the various refugee communities among us. (Brent Artists Resource (BAR) & Brent Refugee Forum)

Workshops Saturdays or Wednesdays in BAR Gallery Space

5 Saturdays – 11am to 2pm 31^st May to 28^th June
5 Wednesdays – 6:30pm to 8:30pm 4^th June to 28^th June

Free for unwaged, £30 for series for waged

info {at} brentartistsresource.co.uk

Farewell to Storyville?

Billie Holiday w/ Louis Armstrong. (New Orleans, Arthur Lubin, 1947)

Sources close to Red Woodward have indicated that there will be no more Willesden Herald short story competitions, though Herald editor Feargal Mooney has stated that this is not the case. "I just don't know what to think," said Steve Moran who was chair of the judging panel in the recent unpleasantness, "It's all sort of co[mpet]itus interruptus, isn't it?"

Meanwhile keep on rockin' in the free world. (Bartell Darcy)

Newsmusic Desk

After the cup final 2008

The game after the big match is always the best



After the cup final, 2008 (Portsmouth 1 Cardiff 0)



After the cup final, 1927 (Cardiff 1 Arsenal 0)

Do the Ayatollah - Cardiff fans (YouTube)

We're on our way - Official Portsmouth FA Cup song 2008

Starset

Evening trees

Looking around in the park



Painting box - Mike Heron (YouTube)

Everything's fine right now - The Incredible String Band

Newsmusic Desk

And again: Repeat fly-tipping

I'm down in the dumps - Bessie Smith (YouTube)

Newsmusic Desk

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Evening moon

How high the moon - Stephane Grappelli (YouTube)

Newsmusic Desk

While it lasts

"Keep playing those mind games together" John Lennon

Jacintha Pukka

Loving China, hating its government

Let's support the Olympics 2008, after all. The problem with the protests is that they are stoking up a nationalist fever in China that could prove extremely dangerous, now that inflation is rampant there. The policies of the government of the P. R. China are reprehensible in their entirety, but it is only through support of the people against them that their tyranny can be extirpated. Ill-feeling about the Olympics could become a mainspring for a new threat to world peace.

Zoz

The rise and fall of Piggy Whitlow

A.P. Food



Corner Express/Goodbye scars

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Bonnie Secours

This kind of day

The yellow flowers closed and went to sleep early



like kindergarten kids, sleeping on their hands in the afternoon.



Are they primroses?



News summery



Bonnie Secours

Continuously variable tax rate suggestion

Brown fiddles while home burns

There is no salvaging anything from the 10p tax rate abolition disaster short of reintroducing the 10p tax rate. This is now Labour's Poll Tax equivalent - a tax change that is completely unjust. If they want to recover, they can either say ok we made a mistake and restore it, or they can take another step and go for a continuously variable rate, from 0 to 49%. Have they no insight, no analysis, no initiative? Do something right, you dozy shower.

You might as well incorporate the council tax into it as well, because the Tories may move to abolish that as their checkmate move before the next election. The calculations needed to incorporate local tax into income tax are simple enough for any schoolchild to work out, and shouldn't necessitate any additional bureaucracy. It's just another item on the income tax form.

Zoz

It was the Herald wot won it

Lenin suicidal / Geezer despairs

The Willesden Herald "Tomorrow's news yesterday"

From Stalin to Mr Bean to Mr Has-Been

Letters

It's all rubbish, of course, but I'm applying for a job as Vince Cable's gag writer. The election results coverage on BBC1 now includes pictures of three bloggers sitting at notebook computers like sewing machinists in a sweat shop. What's the bloody point? When everybody has a blog it will be the same as when nobody had a blog. Back to the status quo ante, Auntie. Thank God for real newspapers like the Willesden Herald.

A Genuine Reader, Neasden