Freida Pinto, the Indian actress who rose to fame in the hit 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire has hit out at cosmetic firm L’Oreal, claiming they lightened her skin colour in a photo they used to promote an eyeshadow range.
Pinto, who became the face of L’Oreal in 2009 says that she specifically excluded products designed to lighten skin colour from her contracts.
L’Oreal denies that they lightened Ms Pinto’s skin for their eyeshadow ad.
A Scots guardsman, Stephen McWhirter, is set to quit the Army after they used his photograph in a recruitment ad alongside copy that read “Snowflakes – the Army needs you and your compassion”.
McWhirter, who pointed out that “snowflake” was a modern derogatory term for oversensitive young people and that he had been exposed to ridicule since the ad appeared.
Invidious and greedy overdraft charges imposed by our banks are to be severely cut after investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCI), the City watchdog.
One example of the scale of the rip-offs is treatment meted out by Natwest to customers who go £15 in the red where no overdraft has been agreed. These unfortunates are then charged £8 per day up to £72 per month, a figure way in excess of the actual debt. In some cases the daily fees represent an interest charge of 20% per day, far higher than the 0.8% a day cap the FCI imposed on payday lenders in a clean-up three years ago.
Rulings on essential changes to bank’s behaviour needed are expected to be made by the FCI by June this year.
Online fashion firms have been selling items trimmed with “faux” fur that has actually come from rabbits.
This has been revealed in tests carried out by Humane Society International (HSI) on coloured pom-poms on a jumper from boohoo.com and a headband from accessories firm Zacharia. Both firms sell through Amazon and both boast anti-fur policies, claiming they were unaware that the fake fur was real.
Because of the appalling conditions animals are kept in on fur farms, especially those in China, real fur can be produced more cheaply than fake. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned ads promoting the items from the two companies, on the grounds that they are misleading.
In the past “faux” fur tested by HSI has been found to come from domestic dogs and cats, and foxes.
Transport for London (TFL) is to axe ads for junk foods from Tube stations and bus stops from next month as part of London mayor Sadiq Khan’s war on child obesity.
Ads for mayonnaise, pesto and olive oil are also thought to be included and the ban is estimated to cost deficit-hit TFL £13 million a year in lost revenue. Other products that may be affected are butter, cheese and stock cubes.
Some MPs have accused Khan of “pointless virtue signalling” and “grandstanding” – previous bans imposed by him have been for “body-shaming” where the ad featured a slim model in a bikini, “overtly sexual” where a woman in tights showed her bare back and the “sexual objectification” of an ad showing the topless torso of a fifty year old man.
A four-session course The Pre-Raphaelite Revolution is being offered by the Leighton House Museum in Kensington.
The four two-hour sessions take place on Tuesday Feb 26, Tuesday March 5, Tuesday March 12 and Tuesday March 26, 10.30am to 12.30 pm and the price of £125 includes light refreshments. The course covers the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) and includes the contributions of such as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and some of their models, muses, mistresses, mates and fellow -artists.
It is led by curator and lecturer Jo Banham, whose specialist areas of knowledge are Victorian art and design, and the history of wallpapers.
Those interested in this important sphere of art might also enjoy the 5hour, 29 minute DVD of the BBC TV programme about the PRB, Desperate Romantics, and the 418-page book by Franny Moyle of the same name on which it is based.
One useful and enjoyable annual event put on for organisers is the Speaker Drinks evening staged at the Institute of Directors venue on Pall Mall by speaker agency Performing Artistes.
This showcases stand-up comedians and their acts and allows plenty of time for delegates to network with, and perhaps book their chosen performer(s) The latest event presented five, four who made us laugh and one who made us laugh and think. Andy Parsons, well-known from his appearances on topical news show Mock the Week, told jokes about topical issues, including the current bad joke Brexit, (he is an activist for a second public vote on the issue) and introduced the other four stand-up specialists, including Markus Birdman, Naomi Cooper and George Lewis, all of whom went down well with the mostly female audience.
Continue readingTourism chiefs at VisitScotland used a picture of a Glencoe cottage once owned as a holiday home by disgraced BBC celebrity and sex offender Jimmy Savile, to promote tourism in the Highlands.
Savile is thought to have sexually abused more than 450 people over a 60-year period, over 300 of them under 18 and some as young as eight. He owned the cottage for 13 years, from 1998 to 2011 when he died without ever being caught or charged aged 84. It was featured in a highly regarded Louis Theroux documentary in 2000, When Lous met….Jimmy. In a van on the way back from Glencoe Theroux asks why Savile had claimed to the media that he hated children and Savile told him “It’s to put a lot of salacious tabloid people off the hunt”. As the couple said goodbye Theroux claimed that he had “a new-found respect for Jimmy” though he felt he, like most other people, had never got close in the week he had lived with him for the documentary.
At Savile’s death the leader of Leeds City Council, Councillor Keith Wakefield described Savile as “Leeds born and bred, and he remained a Leeds lad all his life”.
VisitScotland have now removed the shot of Savile’s cottage from their website, “in case it caused any offence”.
Plans are being considered for The Entertainment Resort, a world-class theme park with supporting hotels containing conference space, as well as cinemas, nightclubs and restaurants.
This would be on the Swanscombe Peninsula in Kent and just across the Thames from Tilbury.
A recent tasting of nearly 100 wines from Italy, organised on behalf of Italian wine expert Daniele Cermilli (who styles himself Doctor Wine), provided us with tastings of wines from the Velenosi winery in the Marche area.
This produces an excellent medium dry white for drinking with food that the good doctor rates with a 92% score in his highly regarded “Essential Guide to Italian wine” (2019) and this is the Verdiccho dei Castellidi Jesi DOC 2017, which is also flagged as exceptionally good value and should be selling retail for around £16 a bottle.
Rather more expensive is the red Roggio Del Filare Rosso Piceno Superiore DOC 2015, not rated by Cemilli. This is likely to be £50+ to buy here but is the Winery’s “Grand Cru” and, for our personal taste delivered a lovely creamy sweetness of red berry fruit that trickled seductively down the throat and dared us to spit it out, or ruin it with food.
The importer for Velenosi is Dolcevita Wines, Web: dolcevitawines.co.uk