And now, the weather
Props to Paul for bringing this superb, weather-related local news story to my attention. (You should really view it on his own blog, which is here. I hope you don't mind me spreading the love, ie. borrowing your timely grabs, Paul.)
Fig. 1
Handiwork by Nottingham resident in last night's snow, captured on the aptly "frozen" Old Market Square webcam on BBC website:
Fig. 2
Amended image this morning on same website. Stalin would have been proud.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:15 AM
23 Comments
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23 Comments:
I hope the nationals pick up on this. There is a serious question about the censorship. I have never understood how the BBC is fine to show people with limbs blown off, and people shooting at each other and lots of other hateful death stuff (which I'm fine with in context btw), but the very word cunt, the place from which each of us is born is hangworthily offensive. Bonkers.
Anna
I agree with the bold 'Anonymous' (what a character he/she is!) - let's start a national debate about this so secretly loved but so overly censored word of ours. Let's get it out into the open.
Maybe then my wife will stop smacking me in the face when I use it at the dinner table!
Scott
Hey Andrew, don't mind you stealing my photos but get my name right!!! Paul Fernley! Thanks!!!
it makes you proud to be british.
This makes me wonder if perhaps instead of removing people from photographs (and, indeed, history), Stalin could just have amended snapshots by writing "cunt" and drawing an arrow. Is this proof that dictators just have no sense of humour?
Of course, the other option would have been to draw a big cock on them, with a few drops of semen coming out the end. And hairy balls. Either way, the word verification word I've been given by blogger for this comment is 'gittle', which I'm about to go and write in the snow myself.
Ban this filth! There's a similar piece of work on google maps here: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&t=k&ll=53.538774,-1.346804&spn=0.000875,0.002626&t=k
Shouldn't you be recording your audio book Andrew?
Geoff
Oh dear. Not another foul mouthed incident involving the BBC.
Now, whoever that man who wrote 'cunt' in the snow was will have to stay off the BBC for 12 weeks, unpaid.
Quite a piece of work. Although whoever air brushed out the offending word left the 'C', they should have changed the 'u' to an 'a' and said it was a tribute to Brian Cant.
Nice - I hope it's genuine. (Even if it isn't it's still funny).
Not all of us were born from cunts, Anna. Some of were Caesarian.
However, I do agree with your point.
To be honest I ain't so worried about the airbrushing of the offending 'unt' part, and more so (at least in my hopeful mind) the fact that someone took it upon themselves to see where the webcam is, make the effort to get out to it, write the huge letters which must of took some time, and then stand there posing when the pic was taken.
All for the point of just making some people giggle when they saw it. It restores my faith in humanity that there are people doing that, rather than some paranoid people airbrushing things out :)
Sorry, Paul, I took your surname from the email you sent me!
Classic, thanks for sharing.
That is just hilarious. ;)
But yeah, I am also with Anna (first comment up the top) there re. censorship.
I'd like to take issue slightly with the comment about:
I have never understood how the BBC is fine to show people with limbs blown off, and people shooting at each other and lots of other hateful death stuff ... but the very word cunt, the place from which each of us is born is hangworthily offensive. Bonkers.
Talk about loaded with emotive words...where did it say that someone should be hung? and to say that the word cunt is justified because we are all born from them is ridiculous.
Also, which would you rather have reported on? Some silly (and offensive word*) being written in the snow or a report on people being needlessly killed or victims of war fighting for their freedoms?
Perhaps you may think it is 'hateful death stuff' as you put it and that it shouldn't be reported but with reasoning like that, it makes you no less 'bonkers' that those you accuse (I think) of censorship.
Be thankful that you find the 'death stuff' hateful, because the day that you stop finding it hateful is the day we have all gone bonkers.
*for those of you who think that such words are more tolerated in today's society (whether rightly or wrongly) and that most of us neither care about it or not, I suggest the following: Print out the word 'CUNT' in big black letters and tape it to the back window of your car or put it on your office wall and see how 'tolerated' you are.
The BBC are lying! The 2nd one is no 'live' webcam!
What's that number for OFCOM again..?
It says CLINT, doesn't it? He looks like a Clint.
I'm frankly amazed that someone would bother to edit the image and replace it, when they could have just deleted it.
I can't understand why some people are so desperate to exercise their right to use the word. If it's just a word then who cares? It doesn't offend me but I know that many people consider it hateful. So I respect their right not to hear it and I don't use it. Somehow I manage to do this without feeling I'm living in a totalitarian state.
And of course the word has appeared on the BBC. But just as when it shows images likely to shock or cause offence, the BBC issues a warning before programmes containing such language. What's wrong with that? It's only polite, isn't it?
But who's Clint??
Bah, I thought the orginal pic showed the word 'Clint' and that the second was evidence of the BBC's clear anti-Eastwood bias.
Rachel R
I thought the original photo was mischievous and funny but photoshopping it seems the wrong reaction. Putting up the old test card would have been better (esp. if the blackboard had the word "vagina" chalked on it).
The earlier comments brought Flanders and Swann to mind:
Ma's out, Pa's out, Let's talk rude!
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
Dance round the garden in the nude,
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
Let's write rude words all down our street,
Stick out our tongues at the people we meet,
Let's have an intellectual treat for
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
More at http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/tried_pee.html
As stated in their intro neither was pro-censorship but I agree with the following sentiment There are very few of these four letter words left. If they all come into common use, we shall have nothing left for special occasions.
I can be quite liberal with the swearies but believe context is hugely important.
(As an aside I found out the other day that Flanders' daughter is Stephanie Flanders BBC's Economics editor)
finally. some recognition
clint
That's "Clint Power"one of Niamh Connolly's albums.
The very same Niamh who seeks to create a safe haven for victims of intolerance and hypocrisy.
Amen.
More importantly, "MOD" seems to written following the offending word. Are the rockers marauding in Nottingham?
The stunt was by a local artist famous for making a statement. http://www.questionmarc.co.uk/
I don't condone graffiti but I also don't condone censorship of this calibre!
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