“True Blood” star comes out on Instagram
…and engaged?!
Monthly Archives: November 2017
Sports Minister Tracey Crouch: People Are Tired Of The BBC’s Brexit Obsession
Sports Minister Tracey Crouch: People Are Tired Of The BBC’s Brexit Obsession
The smart watch strapped to Tracey Crouch’s wrist is programmed to go off when one of two things happens: breaking political news or a goal involving her beloved Tottenham Hotspur.
Her tech settings sum up why the Sports Minister is frequently cited as one of those rarest of beasts: a politician doing a job they actually know about.
Speaking in her office, the 42-year-old agrees she is a “round peg in a round hole.”
She says: “There’s more to me than knowing about sport, but at the end of the day I do know about sport, and am one of these people that probably turns to the back pages before the front pages.”
Crouch’s office is adorned with sporting memorabilia, including cricket bats signed by the England team, and her enthusiasm for her job is obvious.
First appointed to the role by David Cameron in May 2015, she was kept on by Theresa May – who added the Civil Society brief after the 2017 election.
While her smart watch is set up for Spurs and breaking news, there is one topic which Crouch does not seem to want minute-by-minute updates on: Brexit.
Despite being billed as one of the “new pragmatic Eurosceptic” Tory MPs in 2011, Crouch is one of the very few Parliamentarians not to reveal how she voted in the EU referendum.
Crouch was on maternity leave when the majority of MPs declared whether they were for Remain or Leave, and she took to Twitter in February 2016 to say she was thinking more about breast pumps than Brexit.
More than 500 days after the vote, Crouch still won’t disclose which side she was on: “Of course I voted. I was one of seven MPs who never declared how I voted. Now I figure it an irrelevance anyway.
“I was on maternity leave so I wasn’t sort of het up and caught up in all the political campaigning, and then I just decided that I didn’t think it mattered.
She adds: “I just decided I didn’t want to declare.”
Going back through Crouch’s personal blog – which starts in 2007, three years before she was elected as MP for Chatham and Aylesford – it seems she just about leans towards Remain more than Leave.
In 2007 she demanded a referendum on the EU Treaty, but in a 2010 rant against the EU Draft Budget, she said: “Before anyone tries to paint me as an anti-European, I am not. I am certainly not a Better Off Out campaigner but I do think we need to bring back some of our sovereignty.”
She denies her secret position is a political calculation to appeal to those on both sides of the debate, and happily tears into both campaigns.
When asked what she made of Vote Leave and Stronger In, Crouch replied she was “extremely disappointed” as she watched from home while on maternity leave with the rest of the country.
“I think that both campaigns ran quite information-free campaigns so people really couldn’t make decisions, or were making decisions, on really kind of high-level slogans.
“People made their decisions based on a whole host of individual choices and how Brexit would affect their families and their communities and their businesses, but the campaign itself, just watching it as an outsider was really quite shocking.”
Crouch believes that while the “Westminster echo chamber” is fixated on Brexit, those outside SW1 just want the Government “to get on with delivering leave”.
“We are leaving and people come up to me in the streets and say ‘Can you ask the BBC’ – they always say the BBC – ‘Can you ask the BBC to stop reporting on Brexit?’ because they are sort of tired of it, to the extent that actually I recently wrote a column for my local newspaper reflecting this, that people are saying they are bored of Brexit. I wrote my entire column on Bake Off instead.
“They want us to do it, they want us to get on with it. I’m not sure they necessarily want the daily commentary on it.”
Tracey Crouch’s son Freddie recognises his mum on the tele.
There has been a lot to distract Crouch from Brexit since the election. As well as her 21-month old son, the Sports Minister had to deal with revelations involving those managing the England Women’s football team.
Manager Mark Sampson was sacked by the FA in September for “inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour” while he was in charge of Bristol Academy, while England players Eni Aluko and Drew Spence both claimed he had made racist remarks while he was the national team boss.
In November, goalkeeping coach Lee Kendall quit his role after Aluko claimed he had repeatedly spoken to her in a Caribbean accent.
In an independent review of the case, barrister Katharine Newman found Sampson had made “ill-judged attempts at humour, which, as a matter of law, were discriminatory on grounds of race”.
When asked if she feels the sport has had its reputation damaged by the affair, Crouch says: “The whole sorry saga has certainly tarnished not just the efforts of the chairman to reform, to be compliant with governance, but also some of the success on the pitch.”
As the former player and coach, Crouch is delighted with the “transformation” in women’s football in recent years.
Whereas youngsters can now idolise female players such as Steph Houghton, Fran Kirby and Lucy Bronze, Crouch says: “I’m not even sure I was aware as a young girl playing football that there’s was a women’s team. That has changed now. When I was growing up, the players that were in my head that I was pretending to be were all male players.”
When asked who Crouch would pretend to be, she replied instantly: “Clive Allen. My hero. I won’t hear a bad word said against him.”
Crouch does not believe Sampson’s replacement has to be a woman, saying: “The England manager, whoever it is, needs to be appointed on merit. That’s the same for the men’s team. I think you should always have a manager who is there who is going to do the best for the England team.”
As Sports Minister, Crouch has not been afraid to ruffle a few feathers in order to make changes. In 2015, with figures showing participation in sport flatlining, she described the Government’s strategy as “out of date”, adding: “I’m going to rip up that strategy and start again.”
She unveiled a new plan later that year, with the focus on getting youngsters as young as five getting involved in sport and trying to get more adults off the sofa and into the park or gym.
“The new sport strategy is not designed to get somebody who is fit fitter, it is designed to get somebody who was doing nothing do something,” she says.
Ahead of the strategy being announced in December 2015, Crouch gave an interview to The Spectator which garnered some unwanted headlines.
Discussing the Government’s planned cuts to tax credits, Crouch said some people who to come her constituency surgeries “just haven’t realised some of the savings that they need to make themselves, you know it can be… things like paid subscriptions to TVs and you just sit there and you think you have to sometimes go without if you are going to have people make ends meet.”
Her comments prompted a backlash from Labour MPs, with one describing her words as “frankly offensive.”
Two years on, and Crouch is clearly angry at the coverage her remarks got, saying: “Quite a lot of debt advisors contacted me after the misinterpretation by other newspapers to say that’s exactly the type of conversations they do have to have. I’m fully sympathetic of people because I’ve been there.”
Crouch racked up £15,000 of debt when she was in her twenties, and eventually her bank manager had to cut up her credit and store cards in front of her to help get control of the situation.
Explaining how she got into such a dire financial situation, Crouch says: “Straight out of university, I arrived in London and lived with people who were earning a lot more money than me.
“I wanted to keep up and got myself into horrendous debt which took a long time to pay off.”
Crouch added: “I’m fortunate to be in a well-paid job and I wouldn’t for a nanosecond think that I had the same problems as many of my constituents but I certainly from my own past can fully appreciate and understand what they’re going through which is why I always want to help.”
Perhaps the negative coverage she received over her subscription TV remarks is one of the reasons why she – unlike colleagues such as James Cleverly – has no aspirations to be Prime Minister.
Crouch says: “I’m quite a sensitive person, I’m not sure I want to see or want my family to see the daily sort of attack on me for my principles or my dress sense or things like that.
“I genuinely don’t want to do it. I think it’s a thankless task and I would be horrified on behalf of my family if they saw me being shredded on a daily basis.”
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tracey-crouch-brexit-sport_uk_5a13384be4b0bfa88c1c3ee0
‘Queen Sugar’ and Dee Rees lead LGBTQ-inclusive NAACP Image Awards nominations
‘Queen Sugar’ and Dee Rees lead LGBTQ-inclusive NAACP Image Awards nominations
Photo Credit: Netflix
The 49th NAACP Image Awards, which celebrate the accomplishments of people of color in the fields of television, music, literature, and film, announced their nominees on Monday and several LGBTQ and LGBTQ-inclusive honorees lead the way. From Dee Rees and Samira Wiley, to Survivor’s Remorse and Whose Streets?, the NAACP Image Awards nominated an exceptional group of LGBTQ talent and content this year.
On the television side, out actors Titus Burgess, Jussie Smollett, and Samira Wiley all received nominations for playing LGBTQ characters on their respective shows. Burgess received a nomination Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for playing Titus Andromedon on Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Smollett is nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for playing Jamal on FOX’s Empire. And Wiley is nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Moira on Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
LGBTQ-inclusive nominees for television included Netflix’s Dear White People, and Starz’s (unfortunately, canceled) Survivor’s Remorse for Outstanding Comedy Series; as well as OWN’s Queen Sugar and NBC’s This is Us for Outstanding Drama Series. Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins was nominated for Outstanding Children’s Program, NBC’s Saturday Night Live received a nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series, and out writer/director Justin Simien was nominated for both Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series and Outstanding Directing for Dear White People.
Master of None’s Emmy Award-winning “Thanksgiving” episode received a nomination for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series for Aziz Ansari, although the episode was highly influenced by the life of the episode’s co-writer Lena Waithe. The pair won an Emmy for the episode earlier this year.
On the film side, lesbian filmmaker Dee Rees received a nomination both for Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture and Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture for the Netflix film Mudbound.
Professor Marston and The Wonder Women, written and directed by out filmmaker Angela Robinson, was nominated for Outstanding Independent Motion Picture. And queer actress Amandla Stenberg was nominated for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture for her lead role in Everything, Everything.
Meanwhile, documentary Whose Streets? received a nomination for Outstanding Documentary (Film).
The NAACP Image Awards, will again be hosted by “Black-ish” star Anthony Anderson and will air on January 15th, 2018, at 9/8c on TV One.
November 20, 2017
Issues:
Tags:
New York Times Golden Boy Suspended Over Accusations of Sexually Pressuring, Humiliating Young Women
New York Times Golden Boy Suspended Over Accusations of Sexually Pressuring, Humiliating Young Women
The influential White House correspondent Glenn Thrush will be the subject of an investigation.
Politician invents a truly original argument against gay marriage & Twitter is obsessed
Politician invents a truly original argument against gay marriage & Twitter is obsessed
Hint: it involves crocodiles.
Azzedine Alaïa, Della Reese, Armie Hammer, Emile Griffith, David Cassidy, Al Franken, Roy Moore, Robert Mueller: HOT LINKS
Azzedine Alaïa, Della Reese, Armie Hammer, Emile Griffith, David Cassidy, Al Franken, Roy Moore, Robert Mueller: HOT LINKS
ROY MOORE. Leigh Corfman speaks out. ‘Leigh Corfman, the woman who accused Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of initiating a sexual encounter when she was 14 — and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney — said she feels “a weight has been lifted” since going public with her story, even though it has cost her personally and financially…Corfman is one of nine women who have accused Moore of pursuing relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was an adult. Moore has denied all of the allegations. He also said he specifically does not know Corfman.’
GRAVELY ILL. Partridge Family‘s David Cassidy reportedly on brink of death.
ALMOST DONE OR JUST STARTING. Trump believes Mueller probe is almost over: “The Washington Post, in a report published Sunday, said White House officials think the investigation’s current emphasis on individuals who were close to the president means the probe will soon come to an end. But a current law professor who was once a federal prosecutor told the newspaper that there is no sign Mueller’s probe will soon be over.” But he ain’t.
AL FRANKEN. Woman says Franken touched her inappropriately in 2010.
RIP. Fashion designer Azzedine Alaia has died at 82. “Known as a sculptor of the female form, and worn by women from Michelle Obama to Lady Gaga, Mr. Alaïa was equally famous for his rejection of the fashion system and his belief that it had corrupted the creative power of what could be an art form.”
RIP. Touched By An Angel star and R&B singer Della Reese has died: ‘Reared in gospel, Reese became a seductive, big-voiced secular music star with her No. 1 R&B and No. 2 pop hit “Don’t You Know” in 1959. The 45, her first single on RCA Records, was a ballad drawn from an aria from Puccini’s opera “La Boheme.” She ranged through a series of releases that showed off her mastery of standards, jazz and contemporary pop through the early ‘70s, and over the course of her career she received four Grammy Award nominations.’
ARMIE HAMMER. Baring his biceps for The Hollywood Reporter.
EMILE GRIFFITH. Director Lenny Abrahamson and producer Ed Guiney, the team behind the film Room are making a film about the bisexual boxer who defeated a homophobe: ‘He’s the boxer who won world titles in two weight classes but is best remembered for beating to death Benny “The Kid” Paret in the ring during a live nationwide TV broadcast. The vicious incident occurred after Paret grabbed the buttock of his opponent and called him a homosexual at the weigh-in. Fact is, Griffith led a secret life as a bisexual man, but in 1962, such a thing was taboo and most especially in the macho culture of boxing.
SURROGACY. British mom ordered to give baby to gay couple she carried it for: “The male couple met the woman online in April 2015 and agreed to use her as a surrogate. She had done so for other people on two occassions. She travelled to Cyprus later that year to transfer the embryo – conceived with sperm from one of the men and an egg from a Spanish donor. In the months that followed, the couple fell out with the woman and her husband, who already had five other children. They cannot be named for legal reasons.”
LONG LOST FAMILY. Gay man learns he has a daughter.
VIRGINIA. Sheriff’s deputy reassigned after attending party in blackface as Rep. Frederica Wilson: ‘Her boyfriend dressed as President Trump, the newspaper reported. The local branch of the NAACP said it is “inappropriate and disheartening when anyone mocks someone’s race.”‘
COCKBLOCK OF THE DAY. This bus. “The Georgia Dome, in Atlanta, Georgia, was imploded a short time ago. While The Weather Channel was well prepared to invite all of us into observing the event what they were not expecting was a MARTA bus to obstruct the view during the climax. The reaction of the camera man is much what all of us truly felt.”
RAT RACE OF THE DAY. The A Train to Far Rockaway.
MONDAY MUSCLE. Antonin the 2nd.
The post Azzedine Alaïa, Della Reese, Armie Hammer, Emile Griffith, David Cassidy, Al Franken, Roy Moore, Robert Mueller: HOT LINKS appeared first on Towleroad.
3 Major Plot Holes In Jeremy Hunt’s ‘Disingenuous’ Rebuttal To Ralf Little
3 Major Plot Holes In Jeremy Hunt’s ‘Disingenuous’ Rebuttal To Ralf Little
And so it continues…
The weeks-long Twitter spat between Jeremy Hunt and Ralf Little opened its latest chapter on Monday afternoon as the Health Secretary launched a 26-tweet defence of his mental health strategy.
What began as a “double dare” from the actor over comments made about “the biggest expansion of mental health provision in Europe” has now reached box-set proportions.
This is what it looks like when a man goes on TV and knowingly lies to the public. If I’m wrong @jeremy_hunt, sue me. I double dare you. t.co/YvdvK98Gci
October 29, 2017
WHAT HAVE I MISSED?
A recap of seasons 1 and 2 can be found here. But season 3 saw the Health Secretary “setting the record straight” and praising the “endurance and resilience” of anyone who read it, whilst also admitting that he is not funny.
25) Frankly anyone who has got this far in the thread deserves a medal for endurance and resilience not least because I am nothing like as witty as @ralflittle…
November 20, 2017
26) …. I hope you understand that in the rough and tumble of Twitter sometimes we have to put the record straight! I therefore apologise for this interminably long thread and promise this will be my final tweet on the issue.
November 20, 2017
24) So let’s do a deal: you provide me with evidence that I was – as you claim – deliberately seeking to mislead the public about mental health in my Marr interview & I will happily meet you, factcheckers and all
November 20, 2017
Hunt’s basic premise is that he is indeed overseeing “the biggest expansion of mental health provision in Europe”.
HOW DID HE DO THAT?
Hunt used a variety of reports and documents to backup his argument…
3) Parity of esteem for mental health became law in 2012, so here are the tables that show the 4,300 increase in staff at mental health trusts since 2013…
November 20, 2017
4) ….more than 2,000 of which are fully qualified (e.g. not the reduction of 167 in the fullfact piece you linked). t.co/pS5O3j8Qq1
17) The New York Times praised the expansion of talking therapies as “the world’s most ambitious effort to treat depression, anxiety and other common mental illnesses” t.co/U3ppmgFBRX
November 20, 2017
There’s one slight problem – when this article was written it mistakenly asserted the “world’s most ambitious effort to treat depression, anxiety and other common mental illnesses” was treating one in three of the entire British adult population.
This is not true as a correction made after publication states:
Correction: August 29, 2017 An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the portion of adults in England who received treatment through the country’s free talk therapy program. One in three adults with common mental disorders have recently received treatment through the program, not one third of all adults.
So essentially he’s quoting a journalist who said he’s brilliant but the whole basis on which they said he was brilliant was based on a rather significant error.
PLOT HOLE #2 – The ‘Mid Staffs’ Issue
The Mid Staffs scandal refers to the negligent deaths caused at Stafford Hospital between January 2005 and March 2009 which led to a public inquiry in 2010 and a number of recommendations being made for overhauling nursing care.
In tweet number seven, Hunt suggests a decrease in mental health nurses was caused by the plugging of understaffed wards.
7) @ralflittle you pointed out that mental health nurses have gone down. This is correct, even though overall numbers working in mental health have gone up. Why? Because post Mid Staffs we realised…
November 20, 2017
8) …there were too many hospital wards with dangerously low staffing so in the last five years have increased hospital nursing staff by almost 13,000. Whilst this has been good for hosps, it has been challenging for MH
November 20, 2017
Labour’s Luciana Berger told HuffPost UK: “Mid Staffs had nothing to do with the reason why all these people were cut from community mental health nursing.
“If you’re trained to be a mental health nurse you’re not transferable to go fill the wards to deal with patient safety to do with Mid Staffs, they’re not transferable skills.
“So the idea that the cuts to community mental health nurses of over 5,500 thousand suddenly plugged the gaps is just nonsense.”
PLOT HOLE #3 – WHY DO WE NEED MORE MENTAL HEALTH NURSES IN THE FIRST PLACE?
The main thrust of season 3 is that the Tories are doing much to train mental health practitioners and provide better services.
11)….so I have corrected the record. But 12,700 more doctors and 10,600 more nurses on our wards since 2010, including 4,300 more MH staff since 2013 isn’t a bad thing surely? t.co/K3QvmQnS02
November 20, 2017
But what isn’t mentioned is that this is all in the context of huge reductions in the budgets of NHS mental health providers since the Tories came to power in 2010.
A Kings Fund analysis in 2015 found:
Funding for mental health services has been cut in recent years. Our analysis shows that around 40 per cent of mental health trusts experienced reductions in income in 2013/14 and 2014/15.
There is widespread evidence of poor-quality care. Only 14 per cent of patients say that they received appropriate care in a crisis, and there has been an increase in the number of patients who report a poor experience of community mental health care.
These transformation programmes have also resulted in far-reaching changes to the mental health workforce and have led to a significant reduction in the number of experienced nurses. This has resulted in staff shortages and insufficient staff skill mix in some areas of care.
So effectively, the increase in mental health practitioners lauded by Hunt is to plug the gaps created by austerity.
This issue was raised in July when the Government announced an extra 10,000 more staff working in mental health treatment in England by 2020 without mentioning that 6,700 mental health nurses and doctors has already been cut.
Berger told HuffPost UK: “And that’s just within mental health, part of the NHS ‘envelope’ – that doesn’t take into consideration all the other cuts of people that haven’t been replaced in, whether it’s a children’s centre, befriending services, in outdoor spaces, leisure and recreation – all these things that make a difference to keep us mentally well.
“If you don’t have all those things then people turn up at the door of the NHS. So there’s a reduction of people at the NHS but that’s not even really shining a spotlight on the thousands of people we’ve lost all across the country that actually made a difference to keeping us proactively, positively and preventively mentally well.”
Ralf Little has yet to respond but we’ll update you as soon as he does – a few plot holes never stopped Jack Bauer from getting the job done.
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ralf-little-jeremy-hunt_uk_5a130a5ce4b0aa32975cacdc
57 Photos of Glittering Celebrities and Self-Revelation
57 Photos of Glittering Celebrities and Self-Revelation
www.advocate.com/photography/2017/11/20/57-photos-glittering-celebrities-and-self-revelation
Sky tambem conhecida como JD Aeon – Ocultista 100% Pagã & Wiccan
Sky tambem conhecida como JD Aeon – Ocultista 100% Pagã & Wiccan
Dea-Infinitus posted a photo:
Sky also known as JD Aeon – US UK France Brazil – UK.youtube.com/c/JDAeon
WATCH: Aja backs closer and closer to the edge of the stage until… queen down.
WATCH: Aja backs closer and closer to the edge of the stage until… queen down.
She’ll tumble for ya.
