Rupert Murdoch is upset that his BSkyB has to compete in Britain with the BBC on bids for American programming, and wants the publicly funded channel to be banned from the practice. [Variety]

Yes, the woman at right is missing a limb, as are the ladies below. Because of this, each and every day they are faced with unique obstacles most of the rest of the world will never understand, and they’re certainly all the stronger because of it. Good for them. But we’ve got one question: How pretty are they compared to one another?

A new show on the BBC seeks to get to the bottom of that query, so that the world may finally know who is the most beautiful, English, female amputee around.

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Are we really going to have to “thank” right-wing zealots like Bill O’Reilly for getting Heinz to yank a mayo ad featuring two dudes kissing? Perhaps. After just a week of airing the ad on British television, the ketchup company has removed the spot — and apologized for it. Heinz has said the ad – where a busy working father rushes his kids off to school, then kisses the (male) cook in the kitchen who prepared their lunches – which wasn’t even supposed to be gay themed; the guy making the sandwiches was supposed to represent a New York deli man, not a house-husband.

But then Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority received 200 complaints about the ad, which mostly outlined how inappropriate it was to show two fellas smooching on national TV. “It is our policy to listen to consumers,” kowtowed a Heinz UK spokesperson. “We recognise that some consumers raised concerns over the content of the ad and this prompted our decision to withdraw it.” Nevermind that the ad was already banished from children’s programming because Heinz Deli Mayo violates a “no products high in fat, salt and sugar” mandate.

And forgive us for noticing the double standard here: While an ad that benignly portrays two men kissing gets booted from the airwaves, an ad like Snickers’ spot from the 2007 Super Bowl, which adds a negative implication about two men kissing, is just fine to air. (In the U.S. at least.) Highlighting aspects of a gay household: bad. Demeaning aspects of a gay household: OK.

View the Heinz ad below.

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Martha Stewart was not allowed to enter Britain’s borders, where she was “planning to speak at the Royal Academy and to hold meetings with several figures in the fashion and leisure industry,” because of her criminal record. This is not entirely bad news. The stress this travel blockade brings her will cause her to grow older faster, which will better position her to launch her new magazine, M,, which is for old ladies.

The American press corps isn’t the only group anxious to see President Bush leave office in January — the Brits are twiddling their thumbs just as much. The Guardian’s Bill Blanko, who refers to said American press corps as a “bunch of toadies,” lays into the current leader of the free world, and his list of complaints is lengthy. Among them: “His sneering performance this week at his press conference with Gordon Brown in the Locarno Room (which lobby correspondents much prefer visiting for Foreign Office drinks parties) confirmed that he obviously loathes us. And after his surly verbal swipes at journalists, in between such horrendous Bushisms as “white-guy Methodists” (imagine the row if a British politician used a phrase like that), the feeling was mutual.”

But most of all, what really bags Blanko is a little thing called alcohol — and the fact that the president doesn’t drink any. And that the D.C. media doesn’t drink enough.

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Not that a British court ruling will affect American policy much, but the jury in an inquest as to the cause of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed’s deaths ruled the limo’s driver, Henri Paul, and the stalkerazzi were to blame. They’ve been assigned blame for “unlawful killing, grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles and of the Mercedes” that fateful August 1997 night. (The twosome were also assigned some blame, for not wearing their seat belts.) And though the Brits paid $6 million for six months of trial proceedings, where some 250 witnesses testified, plus $16 million for a two-year investigation, the ruling will have little to no affect on criminal sanctions against any of the accused, since the crime was committed in France.