CHARLIE CONDOU - No.926

AUTOGRAPHS

bsassy088: @Charliecondou thanks so much for signing my piccies,it is you thats signed them isnt it?.hope ur ok!! Xx

Charliecondou: @bsassy088 yes, I did that on Wednesday! Glad you got them x

bsassy088: @Charliecondou ahh gd gd.u do a gd luv heart too,wish i cud do them like that!! Xx

NIGELLA LAWSON EMOTICONS

scouserachel: nigella the emoji story

scouserachel: 👩💄✒📰➡👰💎➡👩🍰✒📖📺🌟➡💎💀😭➡👰👹🎨➡🍴🚬👹👐🙅📷💥📰➡👩💔👉🚪👋👹➡👯💸💸🚨🚓➡👹🆚👩 ➡ 👹💬💩 ➡👩💬🚫👉👈👃❄ ➡ 🌎❤👩💅

Charliecondou: Nigella summed up in emoticons “@scouserachel: 👩💄✒📰➡👰💎➡👩🍰✒📖📺🌟➡💎💀😭➡👰👹🎨➡🍴🚬👹👐🙅📷💥📰➡👩💔👉🚪👋👹➡👯💸💸🚨🚓➡👹🆚👩 ➡ 👹💬💩 ➡👩💬🚫👉👈👃❄ ➡ 🌎❤👩💅”

Tom_in_Oz_: And for all those ppl who couldn't see Nigella's life summed up in emoticons here it is in pic form

JadeGo1: @Charliecondou @scouserachel Hahahaha!! Oh wow x

Freckles_H: @Charliecondou @scouserachel brilliant, it even makes sense !

VIRGIN BACK ON TRACK

VirginTrains: UPDATE: If you were due to travel yesterday, but decided against it, your ticket will be valid for travel today.

Charliecondou: RT @VirginTrains: UPDATE: If you were due to travel yesterday, but decided against it, your ticket will be valid for travel today.

CHARLIE'S AIDS TWEET 

STILL GOING STRONG

Charliecondou: The most damaging thing about HIV today is what people without HIV think about it @THTorguk #stigma #WorldAIDSDay

trendinalios: RT @Charliecondou: The most damaging thing about HIV today is what people without HIV think about it @THTorguk #stigma #WorldAIDSDay

trendinaliaCL: El tuit con más repercusión de la Tendencia #Stigma fue de @Charliecondou: http://twitter.com/Charliecondou/status/407143359271010305 (44 RTs) #trndnl

SECRET SNAPS FROM CHARLIE'S DATE WITH MALCOLM

Above: This is another from my secret stash of pictures. Charlie Condou and Malcolm Hebden were trying hard to pose sensibly for the cameras (they were on their first date if you remember), while Ryan Thomas was busy stealing the limelight by smooching Malcolm!

Just remember what many Tories thought of Nelson Mandela in the apartheid years.

Soon we will be inundated with heartfelt speeches – but we mustn't let those who opposed Mandela's struggle pretend they didn't!

Suzanne Moore 

The Guardian

A smile that came from the centre of the Earth.

So we must recall how it really was. The struggle against apartheid was the one thing that unified the left. I came to it accidentally. Isn't that how politicisation happens sometimes? Via extraordinary people, unlikely meetings, chance encounters?

Like this one: in 1981 I had just come back from travelling around South America and got a job in a care home with Haringey Social Services in north London. Some of the local kids were in big trouble – the girls were on the game at 14, the boys breaking into houses and stealing cars. A large, in every sense of the word, African woman became my ally there. She was always encouraging them to be lawyers despite their constant truanting. We were an unlikely pair, but she believed in "discipline" and I believed in "manners" so we would talk late into the night. She was one of the poshest people I had ever met – she drank Perrier water, which at that time was exotic beyond belief. Sometimes she would weep after receiving calls from South Africa and talk of murders and assassinations. Sometimes she would take me out for cocktails and get diplomatic cars from embassies to take me home. Her name was Adelaide Tambo, the wife of Oliver. They were the exiled leaders of the ANC.

I began to know what this meant. How Mandela had ridden to power in 1952 in the Defiance Campaign, how he was harassed and, of course, finally taken to Robben Island. To that tiny cell. The Tambos had to leave much later. One night she called me as she was locked out of her house in Muswell Hill. "Can't you just break a window? "No Suzanne," she said. "The windows are all bullet proof glass." That's how they lived.

This personal introduction to the ANC is my story but everyone I knew opposed apartheid. Indeed, who could support such barbarism? This was more than racism – there is only one race, called the human race. Botha's regime did not regard black people as humans but as animals.

By 1984 Jerry Dammers had written Free Nelson Mandela. But apartheid continued to exist, propped up by the Tories. Some of their elder statesmen, such as Norman Tebbit, still see Thatcher's policy as a success. David Cameron denounced it in 2006, saying she had been wrong to condemn the ANC as terrorists and to have opposed sanctions. Too late for those veteran campaigners such as Peter Hain, who had seen the massacres in the townships and knew it was a life-or-death struggle.

Indeed, when I saw Mandela in later years having his garden surreally being "made over" by Alan Titchmarsh or being cuddled by random Spice Girls, I wondered if they had ever heard Gil Scott-Heron's Johannesburg (1975) or been at the anti-apartheid demos outside the South African embassy where we were all kettled.

When we hear Cameron's inevitable tribute, don't forget that in 1989, aged 23, he went on a "jolly" to South Africa paid for by a firm that did not want sanctions busted. This does not mean he supported apartheid, but by then it would have been impossible not to know of the regime's brutality. Many people knew, and boycotted South African goods.

I see Dylan Jones, a Cameron fan, has written a book on Live Aid, defining the 80s as caring: more anodyne revision. The key concert of the 80s was the more political and consciousness-raising Free Nelson Mandela one, not long after. Mandela himself was there on stage with that smile that came from the centre of the Earth. The glare of his grin made us cheer and cry. The glare of the sun, when he was breaking rocks in Robben Island, had permanently damaged his eyesight, but not his mind. When he walked to freedom he wrote, that unless he left bitterness and hatred behind, "I would still be in prison."

This is wonderful, but do not let his story be rewritten, do not let those who opposed his struggle pretend they didn't.

"There is no passion to be found playing small," he said. He told his own people to recall the past. I ask simply, before we are inundated with those who want to bask in his afterglow, that we remember our own past too. It is sad, but let him go. I just wanted to remind you of how it was before he passes and before the "official" rewrite of history begins. Forgiveness is possible. Forgetting isn't.

MANDELA

OwenJones84: Some of the people celebrating Mandela made the struggle against Apartheid longer, harder and deadlier. That can't be erased from history

Brendan_Surrey: Tories should be banned from paying tribute to Nelson Mandela. They did nothing but attack him & support apartheid. Hypocrites! The Mail's front page; 'The 'Death of a Colossus' Clearly forgotten that it supported Thatcher's opinion that Mandela was a terrorist

missmcollins: RIP Nelson Mandela .an inspiration to us all! He had no bitterness in him just forgiveness a political listener he sacrificed his freedom for others we should all be inspired by him!

gaystarnews: Our hero: As world mourns, South African gay groups pay tribute to Nelson Mandela http://shar.es/D9bp3 

FROM SOMEWHERE

OVER THE RAINBOW

- WITH MR OZ -

JUST IN TIME FOR XMAS

Confidential_CC: Just in time for Xmas I've found a site which has Charlie Condou wallpapers to download...

Confidential_CC: The wallpaper pics are from screencaps I made.....

And had on the Condou blog obv!

If you'd like to see the full range go HERE

SOME SAD WYNN FAMILY NEWS

Tom_in_Oz_: This was yesterday's sunset at daughter's farm. We are looking after her 24/7 as she's confined to bed with preeclampsia. She's due mid Jan.

Tom_in_Oz_: Son had his birthday on Tuesday. Boss called him to office this morning & retrenched son after 8 years due to economic downturn. Merry Xmas Triple Point Inc - NOT!

Tom_in_Oz_: Feel free to tell http://www.tpt.com/ what a lousy company they are on behalf of worried father Tom Wynn, Newcastle Australia.

DID I MENTION IT WAS MY WEDDING ANNIVERSARY?

tnvol19: @SirThomasWynne Happy 36th anniversary Sir and Mrs. Wynne! May ur lives be happy and see many more! *hugs and mwah*

SirThomasWynne: @tnvol19 Thanks xxx. Spending all our time at the daughter's farm. Keeping granddaughter busy today - we have swum rivers, climbed mountains and fed the monsters...

We are resting at mo - me, not her!

GOD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS IN GOSFORD NSW OZ

Gosford might be an unlikely location for Australia's most politically-minded and forward-thinking Church, but the NSW Central Coast community's Anglican congregation is the talk of the town. Oh, and the internet after one of my Tweets yesterday went slightly viral - it had an attached picture of a sign which read, 

"Jesus had 2 dads 

and 

he turned out OK."
The Church has taken a stand on various hot topics of modern society, including marriage equality, asylum seekers and women's rights. "From a theological perspective, Jesus was on about one thing and one thing only, and that's what he called the Kingdom of God," said Father Rod Bower, the man responsible for all things sign-related. "This Kingdom of God manifests itself in compassion and justice and true humility and there are lots of things going on in our society at the moment that aren't about those things, like the way we treat gay people by not allowing them to be married, the way we treat our planet and the way we treat asylum seekers. "These are the things Christians should be seeking - justice and compassion. We contribute to that."

For those in foreign lands, I have rounded up a few more church signs and I think if you know a little about current Australian politics you'll be able to work them out. Just remember Rupert Murdoch is alleged to have been the backer of the incumbent, Tony Abbott. Abbott's political party has done a great deal to alter the social fabric of Australia in a short time, especially human rights and equality.

And here is the minister responsible for all those signs, Father Rod Bower.

PS. Father Rod even has a sign for Charlie Condou!

TOM WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS IN NEWCASTLE NSW OZ

Friends,

The Australian Liberal Party headed by Tony Abbott is going after our national broadcaster, the ABC, simply for doing its job.

Abbott’s colleagues didn’t like a story the ABC aired, so they're taking the opportunity to wage an all-out attack on the national treasure -- calling for its funding to be cut, and to force it to accept ads. It's a national broadcaster's job to air difficult stories, but Abbott’s cronies don't like it, and are threatening the ABC's funding to shut it up.

For a national broadcaster to fill its mandate of independence, it cannot have politicians threatening to cut its funding every single time it reveals the truth. Join me and stand against the Liberals threats to cut the ABC’s funding here:

http://action.sumofus.org/a/liberals-threatening-defunding-abc/2/?sub=mtl

Thank you

Tom Wynn

Australia