UK Nutter News

Sainsbury's is removing a mug from sale that features the words: The germ of a brilliant idea hit her, after PC campaigners ludicrously claimed that phrase was a call to domestic abuse.

The  mug is decorated with a quote from Roald Dahl's 1988 book Matilda . The full quote reads:

When at last the germ of a brilliant idea hit her, she began to expand on it and lay her plans with the same kind of care the Duke of Wellington had done before the Battle of Waterloo.

The design's emphasis on the words 'brilliant idea' leaves the 'hit her' part of the phrase hanging, and allows for a different interpretation of the two words.

Pictures of the mug circulated on social media and it became the target of the PC lynch mob. Ruth Mason from the campaign group Women's Aid criticised the mug and called on Sainsbury's to pull it from supermarket shelves:

We were dismayed to see the Sainsbury's design with the slogan

This slogan can be read two ways --  and that is the problem. It can be read as the author Roald Dahl wrote in Matilda: 'When at last the germ of a brilliant idea hit her'. However, it can also be read as a trivialisation of the violence that women experience in their own homes.

Perhaps it would be a 'brilliant idea' to change the design and donate to domestic abuse charities instead.

A spokesman for Sainsbury's apologised and confirmed that it is removing the mug from sale said:

We are apologising to customers for any upset this may have caused and working with the Roald Dahl team to remove the mug from sale while the design is reviewed

Offsite Comment: Policing language, controlling thought?

We must resist the attempts to manipulate the meaning of the words we use.

See article from spiked-online.com by Andrew Doyle

A group of lap-dancers who were filmed without their consent at a strip club have dropped their privacy case.

Feminists commissioned the covert filming which showed dancers sexually touching customers and each other at Spearmint Rhino in Sheffield.

Lap dancers, supported by the club, took legal action against the filming, saying their human rights had been breached.

However, the case has been discontinued with Spearmint Rhino agreeing to pay almost £50,000 in costs.

The feminist group Not Buying It said it hoped the outcome would embolden others to come forward.

It is understood that the club felt it could have won the case but decided not to pursue it because of added financial limitations due to the coronavirus crisis. All lap-dancing clubs remain closed as part of measures to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

Not Buying it is understood to have commissioned private investigators to visit the strip club, as well as another in London, wearing glasses containing hidden cameras.

A group of nine workers from the club then went to court claiming publication of the footage would infringe their human right to respect for private life .

Spearmint Rhino in Sheffield had its licence renewed last year, however campaigners are challenging this with a judicial review expected to be heard later this year.

365 Days (365 DNI) is a 2020 Poland drama by Barbara Bialowas.
Starring Michele Morrone, Anna Maria Sieklucka and Bronislaw Wroclawski.

Massimo Torricelli, a young and handsome boss of a Sicilian Mafia family, has no other option but to takeover after his father has been assassinated. Laura Biel is a sales director in a luxurious hotel. She has a successful career, but her private life lacks passion. She is taking one last shot to save her relationship. Together with her partner and friends, she takes a trip to Sicily. Laura does not expect that Massimo, the most dangerous man on the island, will get in her way, kidnap her, hold her captive and give her 365 days... to fall in love with him. "365 dni" is the first Polish erotic film. It is based on the best-selling novel of the same name from author Blanka Lipinksa.

A British singer named Duffy is asking Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to remove the sexy film 365 Days claiming that it glorifies rape and sex trafficking.

365 Days is an erotic thriller from Poland that has been likened to Fifty Shades of Grey . It is quite sexy for Netflix and has become the services's biggest movie of the summer. The film is is about a mobster who kidnaps a woman he's been stalking, holding her captive for an entire year so that she'll fall in love with him. Naturally, she eventually does fall for her hunky captor and has a lot of sex with him, in various positions filmed from many angles.

The films detractors have organised a petition against the film which has been signed by about 54,000 people.

Now Duffy has weighed in against the film citing her own experience with being drugged in a restaurant and being abducted. She found the premise of 365 Days was just a little too familiar to the singer, so she wrote an open letter calling Netflix irresponsible for airing the film.

Update: Noted by the New Zealand film censor

7th July 2020. See article from rnz.co.nz

 When it was first launched in New Zealand, 365 Days carried a rating of R16, but that was bumped up after Chief Censor David Shanks got involved. Shanks said:

We felt that age rating was inadequate, we thought that this was more at the 18-plus level. We also wrote to Netflix and advised that they should warn for sexual violence as well as potentially highly impactful content in this film that viewers should be warned about.

Shanks said it was frustrating that the legislation his office operated under was from 1993, and therefore did not cover streaming services. But there was a bill before parliament which if passed, would change that and allow for Netflix to rate films more in line with New Zealand standards.

 

Update: A petition to ban 365 Days

16th July 2020. See article from standard.co.uk

A petition to ban the Polish Netflix film has gained about 70,000 signatures.

The Change.org petition's author, fitness influencer Mikayla Zazon, wrote:

Netflix clearly stands on the side of the abusers by having a movie that glorifies, romanticizes, and condones sexual assault trending on their top 10 recommended movies to watch around the globe.

As a social media public figure and a victim of these crimes, I am outraged and heartbroken that this movie shows up on teens' 'watch next' recommendation.

By taking down this movie on Netflix, we can protect sexual violence in adolescent women and adult women. And we can prevent boys from seeing such horrific behaviour as permission to sexual assault and rape women.

An anti-porn campaign group, misleadingly name Freedom United, has joined in the campaign against Pornhub. Several feminist groups are petitioning for banks to act as moral censors by refusing payment service to porn companies.

Thanks to Alan who comments:

Take a look at this bullshit . As lovely a piece of authoritarian feminism as you could wish to find. Pornhub directors might like to consult m'learned friends about defamation, especially in the UK.

Julie Bindel is a British anti-porn campaigner. She has had a whinge about OnlyFans website in the Spectator. She writes:

OnlyFans.com (OF) is the latest kid on the block to be billed as a safe, consequence-free way of selling sex and home-grown porn that empowers women. The social media site is similar to Instagram, but users pay to subscribe to creators' feeds.

The top earners on OF are women whose subscribers are male. These men pay between £5 to £20 a month to view images considered too pornographic for Instagram. Subscribers can also direct message women and pay tips to get personalised videos or photos, depending on his individual sexual tastes.

OF is a huge money machine and is doing extremely well during the Covid-19 lockdown. It now has around 17.5 million users worldwide and over 70,000 content creators, who have received over $150 million (£119 million) since its launch. Content providers keep 80% of their income, while the company takes the remaining 20%.

OnlyFans' subscription-based model has led some to claim that it is somehow empowering women. Outlets like the New York Times say it has put X-rated entertainment in the hands of its entertainers and means content creators perform fewer sex acts. Others think that because OF has reduced physical sexual exploitation, it does not put women in danger.

But of course Bindel disagrees, and should you want to read her see article from spectator.co.uk

  Facebook is moving ahead with plans to implement end to end encryption on Facebook Messenger and Instagram to protect users from snoopers, censors, spammers, scammers and thieves.

But children's campaign groups are opposing these safety measures on the grounds the encryption will also protect those illegally distributing child abuse material.

About 100 organisations, led by the NSPCC, have signed an open letter warning the plans will undermine efforts to catch abusers.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said she fully supported the move, presumably also thinking of the state's wider remit to snoop on people's communications.

End-to-end encryption, already used on Facebook-owned WhatsApp, means no-one, including the company that owns the platform, can see the content of sent messages. The technology will make it significantly less likely that hackers will be able to intercept messages, going a long way to protect users from phishing and cyber-stalking. And of course child internet users will also benefit from these protections.

The campaign group opposed such protection arguing:

We urge you to recognise and accept that an increased risk of child abuse being facilitated on or by Facebook is not a reasonable trade-off to make.

A spokesman for Facebook said protecting the wellbeing of children on its platform was critically important to it. He said:

We have led the industry in safeguarding children from exploitation and we are bringing this same commitment and leadership to our work on encryption

We are working closely with child-safety experts, including NCMEC [the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children], law enforcement, governments and other technology companies, to help keep children safe online.

In 2018, Facebook made 16.8 million reports of child sexual exploitation and abuse content to the NCMEC. The National Crime Agency said this had led to more than 2,500 arrests and 3,000 children made safe.