tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31040889464741831712024-03-08T19:13:02.099+00:00No Sleep 'Til BrooklandsDepressing adventures in the damp caves of professionally published nonsense.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-55696041361007579862013-01-06T19:50:00.004+00:002013-01-06T22:11:16.625+00:00Yes, Another Blog About Nice Guys And The Friendzone<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">In recent weeks there's been a lot of debate about the concept of Nice Guys and the dreaded 'friendzone' they inhabit, some </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">of it sparked by the infamous and now-deleted 'Nice Guys Of OK Cupid' tumblr, which collated examples of men who considered </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">their lack of dating success to be (somewhat counterintuitively) the result of them being 'too nice', while in many cases </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">demonstrating attitudes towards women that were anything but.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">I don't want this post to be a critique of that tumblr, or of anyone else's views on the issue, but a more personal take on why I think Nice Guys are a problem. For the uninitiated, when I talk about </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">this stereotypical 'Nice Guy', I'm talking about those guys who think that women 'always go for jerks' and thereby 'friendzone' </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">men who would be much better for them. By being 'too nice', these dudes think they've inadvertently locked themselves into a </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">inescapable prison of friendship through which neither sex nor romantic love can ever be smuggled. Because Nice Guys, as you may have heard, inevitably finish last. </span><span style="line-height: 15px;"> However, a</span><span style="line-height: 15px;">ctual nice guys are, well, nice. You and I have no beef, nice guy.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">Now, this may be hard to believe, but I haven't always been a confident, swaggering ladies' man, turning knees to jelly and breaking hearts on the reg. Reader, </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">I've been rejected by women, I've been attracted to women that weren't attracted to me, I've had crushes on women and never </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">actually told them, and I've felt waves of nauseating self-pity about the state of my love life, (and droned tediously on about </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">it) in the past. When I was younger, I'd been the guy sat with a similarly unlucky comrade, complaining about how clearly I was lovely and awesome, and yet the </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">object of my affection had stupidly spurned me for some kind of grotesquely horrible walking dick of a man. I wish someone had told me back </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">then that this actually made <i>me </i>sound like the awful one, because ultimately, figuring shit out for yourself is hard. So this </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">post will attempt to explain why I think 'friendzoning' is bullshit and you're an awful person, by giving you men out there </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">some things to consider, should you find yourself one day explaining to some pitying observer about the quasi-masonic Great Friendzone </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">Conspiracy that's keeping you from getting rightfully laid.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">1) Being 'Nice' Isn't Everything<br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">Look, a lot of things are 'nice'. Tea is nice. Hot water bottles are nice. Sheets of as-yet-unpopped bubble wrap are nice. Very few </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">of these are likely to send you spinning into a lust-filled frenzy, though as ever, your mileage may vary on this, and I judge ye not. My point </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">is, the kind of spark of attraction needed to make a woman interested in you is <i>probably </i>not going to be set off by niceness </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">alone. Physical attraction is not the be-all and end-all, but the nature of attraction is complex and nebulous</span><span style="line-height: 15px;">, not a simple one-item checklist containing merely 'basic human decency', which you can fulfill and expect to be </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">rewarded with endless, dizzying fuckfests with the partner of your choice. So, what else you got? Are you smart? Are you funny? Do you have an </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">excellent beard? If your answer to all three is 'no', then you're going to need to consider what your qualities are that a </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">woman might like, and put them front and centre. Or just grow a beard. Either way could work.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">2) Are You Being A Hypocrite?<br />'</span><span style="line-height: 15px;">So, we've established that you've not got much going for you in the personality department beyond that you're 'nice'. Now ask </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">yourself if you'd date a woman who you felt no physical attraction to, and whose company you didn't particularly enjoy, if she </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">were just kinda, y'know, <i>nice</i>. Can you honestly say that if a woman earned enough mate points, bought you enough rounds, helped you into enough taxis, you'd suddenly fancy her? If </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">not, why are you expecting women to suddenly drop 'em as soon as you've 'been there' for them enough times?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">3) Those Guys Dating The Women You Think You Should Be Dating Might Not Be As Bad As You Think<br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">I know, I know, he looks smug as fuck swanning around with the woman who should be yours because you once listened to her cry </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">about a break-up. But what do you actually know about him? You profess to like this woman, and yet you think she's </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">intentionally shunning happiness with you in order to date some unholy mixture of Some Prick From Jersey Shore and Hitler? Have </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">you stopped to consider that he may actually be nice in the conventional sense? Or that, even if he isn't, he may possess a </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">lot of other positive qualities that she finds appealing? If you respect women, then respect their decisions, and understand that </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">they're not playing some unfathomable game somehow designed to alienate you. Not everything is about you, and other people's consenting relationships are frankly none of your business. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">4) Declaring Your Intentions Is Hard But Important<br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">This sucks, but honesty is a good quality. Are you attracted to your friend to the extent that it's eating you up inside? </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">Tell her, if you can. It may hurt if she wants to just be friends, but it's not especially healthy to have an air of unspoken desire hanging between </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">you and your friend. Ask yourself how many of the 'friend' things you do for her are actually because you care about her, and </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">not because you want to get in her pants. Ask yourself if you'd want to know if your friend was in love with you. Tell her, </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">and be prepared not to like the answer. Or, if you feel you can't, don't tell her. You don't have to. But don't fail to tell her, and <i>then </i></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">passive-aggressively complain behind her back that she's failing to read your signals, or putting you in the 'friendzone', or dating douchebags because she's a fucking moron. </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">Accept that your inability to tell her is a problem YOU have to deal with, not her, and try your best to deal with the situation in a </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">manner which is grown-up and not insulting.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">5) The Friendzone Is Not Really An Actual Thing<br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">If a woman is just your friend and not someone you're having sex with, that is what we in certain circles call a 'friend'. Yes, </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">what you have there is a friendship, one between you, a man, and a second person, a woman. This can sometimes happen. The chances </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">are she's not 'put' you there because women get off on torturing men, but because she simply wants to just be friends with </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">you, like you might be with a dude. Sex is not the default interaction between men and women. Sex is a thing that happens between two (or more!) people that express a </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">sexual interest in one another and then gratify it by mutual consent. It's not something you're supposed to expect, but which women then </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">cruelly decide to deny you from their lofty position as the gatekeepers of the sexual realm. Friendships with women that </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">feature no sex can be rewarding. Try viewing said woman as a person rather than a target for your dick, and see what happens.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">6) You May Not Actually Be That Nice After All<br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">Look, are you REALLY that nice? You're complaining about women refusing to sleep with you, but you haven't told them how you </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">feel. Is that nice? You're friends with a woman, but whenever you do something for her you note it down mentally as yet </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">another thing you've done which inexplicably went unrewarded with blowjobs, as if it should have been. Is that nice? Think long and hard about your </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">expectations of women, and whether they're reasonable. And consider whether you're maybe acting with an unearned sense of </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">entitlement. Be aware that what you think of as 'nice' (reluctantly listening to a woman's problems while wishing she'd shut the fuck up already and touch your penis), may not be what she defines 'nice' to mean. Perhaps she thinks of a 'nice guy' as someone who likes her with no ulterior motive and who isn't concealing his true feelings for whatever reason.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 15px;">In conclusion, I'm not setting myself up as an expert on women, or relationships, or men, or indeed anything, because I am demonstrably an expert on none of those things. I don't know </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">what to tell you if you can't find a girlfriend. I do know how tricky it is to let a woman know you like her in a way that's </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">obvious without being aggressive. So if you do tell her, be considerate, because you're putting her in an awkward position. And think about how to deal with a 'no'. These things </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">are all problems that will happen over and over again. Ultimately, though, my point is this: women aren't so incredibly stupid </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">as to not appreciate you being nice. It just takes <i>more than that</i>. And it's not always palatable, but you can't just comfort </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">yourself with the belief that women are just fucking ridiculous because they're failing to adhere to the clearly correct dating formula </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">you've come up with in your head. But let's say you think that, that you firmly believe it. In that case, by all means say it, but be aware </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">that saying it repeatedly does not make you any more attractive, or convince people that you're The Guy. It may just make you sound entitled, disrespectful and self-involved, with an </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">inflated opinion of your own worth and a significant lack of understanding of what women are after. And that, sadly, ain't all that </span><span style="line-height: 15px;">sexy.</span></span>No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-62298145749649302292012-12-11T12:56:00.001+00:002012-12-11T12:56:32.896+00:00The Good-Men-Who-Only-Occasionally-Rape-People Project<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the endlessly fascinating things about the internet is that it forever seems to throw up new and eye-opening ways to really make you feel ashamed to be even broadly associated with other human beings. Football fan? Why not log onto the internet and see what other football fans think? (Note: don't ever do this). Maybe, like me, you're an atheist! Have fun logging onto the internet and getting embroiled in discussions about whatever stupid shit Richard Dawkins just said!<br /><br /> And so it is with men. Good old men. Perhaps the second most damning indictment of men as a group is the fact that 'The Good Men Project' is a thing. Men are genuinely so terrible that we have to have niche movements of dudes clubbing together to scratch their heads and try to figure out how not to openly be arseholes all of the time. I say that's the second most damning indictment of men, because the first is that said Project still manages to go ahead and publish an article by a rapist, about how he's not quite bothered enough about rape to stop drunkenly flailing his dick around. You can read it <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/id-rather-risk-rape-than-quit-partying/">here, although obviously trigger warnings apply here in spades</a>.<br /><br /> The article is genuinely called 'I'd Rather Risk Rape Than Quit Partying'. A reminder is due at this point that he's not talking about risking becoming a victim of a rape, although he goes on to make that argument too, but becoming a repeat sex offender. It begins with the line "When you party, when you move in party circles, you accept certain tradeoffs", the piece's anonymous author thus immediately setting himself up as the kind of Andrew WK of rape apology. It kicks off with three self-serving paragraphs explaining how super awesome it is to party, and how, hey, if you're going to be a wild party guy, some people might end up getting raped! Shit happens! Deal with it! Observe;</span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I swear to God, it is only after the fact that you start figuring out that one of the tradeoffs you’ve accepted is a certain amount of rape. The way crooked businesses accept paying fines for their infractions as the cost of doing business, you gradually, an inch at a time, realize that some of the stories you’ve heard, some of the stories you’ve lived, didn’t involve what they call good consent nowadays.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To this guy, rape is just one of the costs of doing business. PARTY BUSINESS! Whoop! Hey, you know what they say, you can't make a party omelette without seriously sexually assaulting a few eggs! So, this dude occasionally doesn't get "what they call good consent" when he has sex at a party. <br /><br /> Maybe he's not so bad though. I mean, he's probably not a real rapist, right? Maybe it was kind of a borderline thing that somehow a reasonable guy could accidentally do. What's his story?<br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I’d been in a drinking contest and she’d been drinking and flirting with me (yes, actually flirting) all evening. As blurry and fucked-up as I was, I read her kiss of congratulation to me as a stronger signal than it was, and with friends hooting and cheering us on, I pressed her up against a wall and… well. Call it rape or call it a particularly harsh third base, I walked away with the impression that it had been consensual, if not really sensible. (She had a boyfriend at the time, but their boundaries were fuzzy.)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now we can see that he was merely forcing himself on a woman for his own pleasure and that of his no doubt equally cool-guy friends. "Call it rape or call it a particularly harsh third base". Yeah, I think I'm probably gonna just go ahead and call it rape there, because "particularly harsh third base" sounds uncomfortably like what a dickhead would call it.<br /></span><div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Years later, she was in a recovery program—not for alcohol, ironically—and she got in touch with me during the part where she made peace with her past. She wanted to clarify that what had happened between us was without her consent, that it hurt her physically and emotionally, that it was, yes, rape.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hint: this is the point where you're supposed to develop a sense of shame and a kind of humility about the thing you did. And yet, there's not even a hint of an apology or contrition about finding out that you've left someone emotionally scarred for years. Because, if he accepted that he'd committed a rape, then he would be, gasp, a rapist, and he really, really doesn't feel like one. </span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We talk about who is and is not a rapist, like it’s an inextricable part of their identity. “I’m a Libra, a diabetic, and a rapist.” That doesn’t work, though. Evidently I walked around for years as a rapist, totally unaware. Nobody stuck that label on me, I certainly never applied it to myself, even now it only feels like it fits when I’m severely depressed. The label, the crime, simply coalesced for me one day, dragging years of backstory behind it.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, here's the thing, right? A rapist is just <i>someone who has committed a rape</i>. It's one of those things that you only really have to do once for it to be a name we can apply to you. It doesn't mean you wake up every day and plan your life around your next rape. It's not that kind of label, in the same way that just killing one measly dude is enough to land you with the uncomfortable term 'murderer'. If it sounds a bit harsh that people are calling you a rapist because of that one rape you did ages ago, it's because you're <i>not supposed to rape anybody, ever.</i> It's one of those awkward little rules we came up with after we figured out that rape is a bad thing. I'm sorry this causes you party problems. I'm doing a proper sadface.<br /><br /> Essentially, the piece is about how Rapists Are Bad, but this one guy doesn't feel like he's a bad rapist, so maybe we can invent another word for it? Tell him it's all okay? It's an awkward position to take; he's essentially arguing for a bit of maturity and nuance to the debate, but the reason he's asking for it is because he's set up 'rapists' in his mind as this massively evil group of people that a guy like him could obviously never be in. He's just a good guy trying to have loads of drink-fuelled orgies, and you can't expect him to be responsible for his actions because that would totally harsh his freakin' buzz, man.<br /><br /> The neatest illustration of how he simply Doesn't Get It comes toward the end. Told by society to stop drunkenly raping people, he somehow interprets this as a demand not to get drunk and have a good time. He asks, plaintively, "Do people who’ve been in car accidents give up driving?". Well, no, we don't tell people who've had accidents not to drive, but we absolutely do tell people who are drunk not to drive their cars around drunkenly running people over. When you hit someone with your car while drunk, you don't get to go "Hey, I was DRUNK! Can't a man fuckin' PARTY around here any more?" as a defence. You have to face responsibility for your actions. I'm happy to let people get as drunk as they want. We're asking you <i>not to commit a rape.</i> And if you can't judge whether you're committing a rape, it might be time to just fucking put it away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>See also Ally Fogg's excellent piece on this: <a href="http://hetpat.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/the-dreadful-dangers-of-normalization-why-most-men-dont-rape-continued/">http://hetpat.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/the-dreadful-dangers-of-normalization-why-most-men-dont-rape-continued/</a></i></span></div>
No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-45714774018093597522012-07-26T11:39:00.003+01:002012-07-26T11:39:34.439+01:00Gun massacres, and the importance of sensible bedtimesWhen we're confronted with a genuine human tragedy, it's often hard to know what to do. Senseless violence and barbarity can be confusing, so we're left grasping for meaning, trying to make sense of it all. When someone walks into a cinema screening and opens fire on moviegoers, it's left to the rest of us decent folk to pick up the pieces, learn lessons, and ask the big questions, like 'why did this happen?', 'could we as a society learn from this?', and 'hey, isn't it past your bedtime?'.<br />
<br />
Admittedly, the last one wasn't my own natural reaction. But then that's why I'm a lowly blogger and not an esteemed national newspaper columnist like that Allison Pearson. In her Telegraph column, she <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9426408/Why-was-a-child-watching-such-a-violent-movie.html">asks the questions</a> that those of us without such a keen journalistic mind might miss.<br /><br />It's the little details that we miss. I would never have thought to start a column with a wistful, thoughtful analysis of the killer's name;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #282828; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">James Holmes. It’s a quiet sort of name for a mass murderer.</span></blockquote>
It is, isn't it? We didn't stand a chance really. If his parents had called him Deathbringer McMurderson, perhaps we'd have been on the front foot and this whole sorry tragedy might've been avoided. But 'James Holmes'? It's a bit-part Doctor Who actor's name. The name of someone who listens to Radio 4 and whose only real immorality is cheating on his wife with a string of younger veterinary clinic receptionists. None of this makes <i>sense</i>, dammit.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="firstPar" style="color: #282828; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px;">
<div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.48em; padding: 0px 0px 0.7em;">
But then unreality – the failure to distinguish between what’s true and what’s make-believe – is the crux of this tragedy.</div>
</div>
<div class="secondPar" style="color: #282828; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px;">
<div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.48em; padding: 0px 0px 0.7em;">
When Holmes first opened fire, using some of the 6,000 rounds of ammunition he had bought online, cinema patrons said they didn’t notice. They thought it was part of the film.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
This is impressive work. Already, by the end of the first paragraph, we know what lies at the heart of this tragedy. It's probably because of films, right? There's violence in films, now there's violence in an actual cinema. <i>That's where they show films!</i> You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure out the link. I guess the police can discount the theory that he just went on a gun rampage because of the extortionate price of lobby-bought soft drinks and wine gums now.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="secondPar" style="color: #282828; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px;">
<div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.48em; padding: 0px 0px 0.7em;">
And there was something else that was hard to grasp. Tragically, among the dead was a six-year-old, Veronica Moser-Sullivan.</div>
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What was a six-year-old doing at a midnight screening of such a violent film?</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Yes, why WAS a child at a cinema at their parents' discretion to see a film about Batman? Watching a film they were legally allowed to see? What's up with THAT? Isn't that the real issue here? Frankly, if you're going to take your child to a PG13 certificate movie after, ooh, let's say, 9pm at night, then you can't very well complain when that child is shot to death by a masked gunman. Everyone knows the dangers of sitting quietly in a movie theatre. Would you push your child down a razorblade-filled rubbish chute into a shark tank? No. The same principle obviously applies to going to see a film about a funny-looking superhero who never kills anyone.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #282828; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">What kind of adult would subject a tired little girl, with a highly plastic imagination, to the deafening horrors of Christopher Nolan’s movie? </span></blockquote>
Perhaps someone who believes that it's impossible to shield your child forever from on-screen violence, and instead allows them to see it under supervision and explain to them that it's just a film? I don't know, to be honest. But I sure as shit know that the decent thing to do in this situation is pour cauldrons of molten-hot judgement over her grieving parents. If Telegraph columnists aren't gonna step up and blame the parents of a six-year-old child who just wanted to see a film, then who will?<br />
<br />
In many ways, the child's parents most fatal mistake was not knowing about Allison Pearson's own entirely made-up classification system beforehand. I reprint it here in full, so that tragedies of this nature can be avoided in future;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #282828; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Well, I went to see The Dark Knight Rises last night and, I tell you, the innocent or angelic should be kept well away. In my house, we have our own film classification system. There’s SFG – Safe For Grandparents. And then there’s MA – Mummy Appropriate. The Dark Knight Rises would not get an MA rating</span></blockquote>
If we could adopt this rating system universally, then maybe the next time someone decides to murder innocent strangers at random at a film screening, they will at least only end up executing grown adults, ones who aren't 'mummies'. It'll be a better world.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #282828; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">...please don’t tell me that certain warped minds, minds like that of James Holmes, don’t sup full of the horrors they see on screen and develop a taste for it. Can it be coincidence that Holmes boobytrapped his apartment with explosives to kill police – the same wicked trick played in Speed by the maniacal Dennis Hopper?</span></blockquote>
Normally I'd argue the point here, but to be fair I've just watched four seasons of Breaking Bad and decided to embark on a career in the field of RV-based meth labs and disposing of the bodies of my enemies in acid-filled bathtubs. And it's fair to say that watching the 2001 movie 'The Hole' taught me the life lesson that a lot of problems could be avoided by having sex with Thora Birch, something I will keep at the back of my mind if I'm ever trapped in a disused underground bunker with her and her annoying underage friend. So, yes, we can learn things from movies. But does that mean the movies are to blame? I don't know, because I'm not the esteemed writer of 'Admit it, chaps – you just prefer other chaps' and 'Is Pippa Middleton all about bottom line?'.<br />
<br />
Pearson moves on to briefly touch on triflin' shit like gun laws, but quickly returns to her theme;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #282828; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">We need to ask what kind of a system allows a six-year-old to watch such a frightening film.</span> </blockquote>
A terrifying system of informed consent, where allowing kids to watch certain films is left to the viewers' discretion? Pearson pauses thoughtfully to deliver her final verdict, and somehow just nails it;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #282828; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Batman himself flew into Colorado yesterday to pay his condolences. “It’s amazing to see Christian Bale,” said one fan, “he was stepping into reality.” So the actor who plays a fictional hero visits the scene of a real crime committed by a real student who thought he was a fictional villain and enemy of Batman, but who murdered real people who had gone to see a movie about a fictional hero who has the powers to defeat evil. Confused? We all are. And that confusion is a breeding ground in which dangerous minds can bloom and grow.</span></blockquote>
Alternatively, 'a real person shot some other real people with a real gun in reality', which is less confusing. I read this paragraph a few times, trying to determine some kind of point. I'm now pretty sure that Pearson's argument is that unwieldy and convoluted sentence structures which add unwarranted complexity to descriptions of events <i>may </i>lead to confusion and, eventually, murder. Either that, or, that the six-year-old would probably grow up to be a killer anyway, having been inappropriately taken to a violent film. So we can take some small comfort in the fact that someone came along to snuff out her no doubt budding death lust.<br />
<br />
The moral of the story is this; we can't stop this epidemic of movie premiere-related gun massacres, but we can protect our kids from it by sending them to bed early. Spread the word. For a brighter tomorrow.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-13505179424387177462012-04-24T13:01:00.001+01:002012-04-24T13:01:47.342+01:00Nice Guys Finish First, But Feel Kinda Bad About It AfterSo, earlier I was reminded of The Good Men Project by the fact that their spamtacular Twitter account unfollowed me on Twitter so they could spam-follow someone else. So I went to check out their site. The rant which follows has almost nothing to do with the fact they unfollowed me on Twitter, although that does clearly mark them out to be wrong'uns right from the get-go.<br />
<br />
The Good Men Project is a seemingly well-intentioned group of cuddly men's rights activists. They're ostensibly not the outwardly sexist 'Why isn't there an International Men's Day, bitches?' whiners invading feminist blog comment sections and dribbling their entitled slobber all over the place. These are the guys who just think that, hey, us totally non-creepy guys who've never even hit a woman - even when she really deserved it - need a voice too. And so I come to <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/in-praise-of-small-breasted-women/">In Praise of Small-Breasted Women</a>, by the "writer and singer/songwriter" Mark 'No, not THAT Mark Radcliffe' Radcliffe.<br />
<br />
Radcliffe uses this article to position himself as a pretty sensitive, rounded kinda guy. The kind of guy who would really <em>get</em> you, and who you ladies need to get to know. Sexually, yes. But he'll probably talk to you afterwards. He's just that nice of a guy. He begins by singling out the small-titted among you for some of his...special attention.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Despite the typical male preoccupation with breast size, there are some of us who wouldn’t want you any other way, who see sublime perfection where others see absence.<br />
<br />
Maybe we’re just not as vocal as some.<br />
<br />
We’re not the guys working construction who whistle chauvinistically from across the street three stories above you as you walk to work.</blockquote>
I mean, come on, girls! Any sexism I may exhibit would be way more sophisticated than hollering at you in the street! When I perv on you, I'm perving on you on a whole other, much deeper level, baby.<br />
<br />
So, you know how some people will try and make small-breasted women feel less marginalised by saying that women of <em>all</em> shapes and sizes are just fine? Well fuck that shit. Radcliffe is here to deliver the message that he actually gets off on your small boobs and thinks the way you look makes you super-fuckable.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Maybe we’re the ones quietly taking you in from five tables away. Listening to your voice. Your perspective. Your sense of humor. The witty way you referenced an F. Scott Fitzgerald line in the middle of ordering your drink.<br />
<br />
And yes, don’t worry, we snuck a good, long look at your body.<br />
<br />
But maybe it’s not a giant rack we’re looking for.</blockquote>
I mean, hey, you don't have a big rack, right, so you're probably intelligent. Not like those stupid big-boob women, and the gross dudes who like them. Do you see now how most men are terrible and you should totally suck off this one guy? Check it; he knows F. Scott Fitzgerald. He's maybe got Met-Art in his bookmarks and not regular porn. He probably even fancies Audrey Tautou more than he fancies Christina Hendricks. That's some deep shit. Observe;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Some of us grew up as athletes, amongst thin, athletic, small-breasted women and grew to like different physical traits than most guys. Like the tight calves of a runner. Or the strong thighs of a skier. Or the muscular stomach of a volleyball player. Maybe we know that having an athletic woman at your side means being more likely to live an adventurous and daring life. (Not just in the outdoors, but in the bedroom, too…)</blockquote>
<br />
So hey girl, don't worry about not packing some pendulous swingers under your top. As long as you've got a flat stomach, incredible legs and an ass that won't quit, Captain Sensitive here has got a sympathetic boner for you. I think my favourite part of this whole grubby affair is this bit: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Guys like me, like the fact that you’re used to having to win people over with your mind and personality, not what was peeking through your blouse.<br />
<br />
For me, an A-cup puts you on the A-list, every time.</blockquote>
See, Nice Guys are not just interested in your tits. They're not shallow. But FYI, your small tits are HOT, and actually totally work for some guys, guys who aren't solely interested in your tits but can still get off on them because they don't like big tits, even though tits don't matter like I just said. You're <em>welcome</em>. And so, when they make sweeping judgements about you because of your tits, it's okay, because they're being kind of benevolent and complimentary. You're probably smart or something! (Radcliffe goes on to say that "Some of us have learned from experience that small-breasted women often have larger minds", making full use of his Boob Science degree from Sensitive Dudes University).<br />
<br />
There's something super-creepy about this whole thing. It's an open love letter to a certain section of women which aims to be enlightened but just ends up sounding like a weak attempt to rebalance the Earth's perv-scales somehow. I think it's good that some guys can recognise that body fascism is a problem and that bangers aren't everything, but I don't really think the way to address that is to fetishise the opposite kind of body. It reminds me of when people try and fight against the supposed 'size zero' orthodoxy by saying they prefer 'curves' and 'real women'. It doesn't really help to say "hey girl, you don't need to look like Kate Moss, try and look like Kim Kardashian instead because tits and ass rule"; it just replaces one improbable ideal with another. Likewise, acting like you're some kind of fucking hero because of your subjective preference for dicking Natalie Portman-alikes over women who look a bit like Kelly Brook, makes you look like kind of a dick. It doesn't help the cause of inclusivity to single types of women out for compliments.<br />
<br />
As I say, it's good that men are trying to be nicer guys, and I'm sure The Good Men Project do a lot of worthy things, but...if you have to actually declare yourself to be a nice, sensitive guy, it's probably because you're not sufficiently coming across that way with your actions. That's really the kind of stuff other people are supposed to say about you, rather than something you announce yourself.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-86276992436063851392011-12-13T18:28:00.000+00:002011-12-13T18:39:44.658+00:00The Public InterestI still remember the moment I heard the news. Some stories do that to you. The second plane hitting the South Tower on 9/11. The death of Osama bin Laden. That time Gordon Brown said some woman was kind of a bit racist or something. These are stories that shape your understanding of the world, news events that you know instantly are going to change everything, define whole eras with their magnitude.<br />
<br />
I felt this way the day I logged onto the internet and heard that David Beckham might have had sex with someone who wasn't his wife. The day started like any other; coffee, eye-rubbing, the mysterious emergence of an unprompted but not unpleasant morning erection. But once I went online, BAM! It was everywhere; the crushing, almost incomprehensible news of Beckham's allegedly misdirected penis. <br />
<br />
At first I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't. David Beckham was a <i>footballer</i>, not for nothing known as the world's noblest profession. Killers, sex offenders, violent thugs, racists, homophobes, all these people are lightly frowned upon in the footballing community (albeit allowed to continue playing if they're vaguely any good at kicking). For years, heck, for all my life that I can remember, I thought that being a footballer gave a man a certain sense of moral superiority. I simply couldn't conceive that a footballer, especially one with as cultured a right foot as David Beckham, would behave in the lascivious, lustful, <i>caddish</i> manner one associates more readily with politicians or tabloid journalists. "Say it ain't so!", I cried. My mind rejected the notion. I needed the tabloids to go on and on and forever fucking on about it, just so I could understand that it was real. That my hero had done this.<br />
<br />
I mention this because the former News Of The World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck has been <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j1UGe8S8wogZHjNdXX5vDsfhGXQA?docId=CNG.cde72fdc7fdc86d7bc9c43e1147b39b4.441">defending his pursuit</a> of the David Beckham/Rebecca Loos story in 2004 at the Leveson inquiry as having been squarely in the public interest.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
"We decided there was huge public interest in that matter because the Beckhams had been using their marriage in order to endorse products," he said.</div>
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They were making "millions of pounds on the back of that image. It was a wholesome image that the family cultivated and the public bought into on a massive scale and we exposed that to be a sham," Thurlbeck told the inquiry.</div>
</blockquote>
A sham, exposed. This is what journalists are for. Journalists are often maligned, frequently by me, but when Thurlbeck said that, I realised he <i>wasn't</i> an unprincipled, devious shitbag desperately scrabbling around for unconvincing mealy-mouthed justifications for the most voyeuristic kind of grubby tabloid 'reporting', like I had previously assumed. No, Thurlbeck is a hero. He's a hero of the kind David Beckham once was, before his capricious wang prompted his philandering fall from grace.<br />
<br />
You see, some people will claim that David Beckham became famous, at least partly, for his footballing talent. They'll talk about his goal from the halfway line against Wimbledon or That Goal Against Greece, his dazzling free-kicks or his array of trophies. Others will claim that Beckham's fame is also in part due to his dashing good looks, which saw him famously modelling the underpants which coquettishly housed the genitalia that would one day betray a nation. Poppycock, I say! For me, and millions like me, Beckham was meant to be a monogamist first, a footballer a distant second. I prized his marital fidelity above all else. Beckham had always, repeatedly, constantly told us that he would never, ever, ever shag anyone who wasn't his wife, scout's honour. Not in <i>words</i>, exactly. It was sort of just kind of implied. Yet it defined him. His faithfulness was pivotal to his fame, it was his very essence. As Sinatra was defined by his voice, as Hendrix was synonymous with his guitar, as Cat Bin Lady was forever entwined in the public consciousness with the image of that cat and that bin, so was Beckham's spirit manifested in his sexual purity, forever the unspoiled poster child for not shagging around.<br />
<br />
Sometimes you'll hear idiots saying things like "But Beckham was just really a good footballer who married someone famous and who people liked to look at! He no more claimed to be pure of virtue than you or I, Mr Thurlbeck!". Other morons might say things like "Call me a flipping cynic, but I suspect the News Of The World was driven primarily by a profit-hungry desire to sell papers off the back of one of Britain's most famous celebrities, rather than motivated by a lionhearted determination to expose the corrupt lie at the heart of the Beckhams' marriage!". Others might point out that the Beckhams remain married 7 years on, and have had two subsequent children, and that this might suggest that their claim to have been married to each other (which is really all they ever promised) remains fundamentally true. Still others will say to Thurlbeck, "Hey, man, if you're so comfortable up there on your moral pedestal, how come your paper paid Rebecca Loos over £100,000 for her shabby kiss-and-tell story? Does this not suggest that you're actually just opportunistic gossip-mongers selling the worst kind of gratuitous tat to satisfy your readers' baser appetites?".<br />
<br />
All those people miss the point. The fundamental, undeniable point remains that David Beckham only ever sold himself or ever made any money on the explicitly-stated promise <u>never</u> to fuck his PA. <br />
<br />
I understand this. I understand this because I, too, once worshipped David Beckham. I bought everything he endorsed. And the day I found out he'd erroneously put his penis in a woman other than that Spice Girl, my world came crashing down. Overnight, all those products I'd bought became tainted with betrayal. No longer did I feel I could recline seductively in my tight white Armani briefs. Every word I'd ever written with a Beckham-endorsed Sharpie felt like lies, horrible lies. Whenever I see that goal he scored from the halfway line now, a little bit more of my soul dies. It was once a great goal. Now it is the goal of a philanderer. I <i>hate</i> it. It makes me sick to my gut. I've tried to put on my expensive Police brand sunglasses, but I can't see anything through them now. All I can see now is Beckham's wayward, sinful penis, sliding grotesquely into the various orifices of that...that iniquitous <i>harlot</i>. But with each one of these tragic moments I become a little more grateful to the dogged truth-warriors of the News Of The World, for exposing Beckham's disgusting LIES before I fell any deeper into his indecent web. Thank you, a million times thank you, Rupert Murdoch.<br />
<br />
A thought occurs...did they ever decide on a permanent statue for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square? Because it might be time your brave, brave decision to pursue a story that would obviously sell a metric fuckload of papers was recognised, Neville Thurlbeck. We love you. And we always will. Unless you cheat on your wife.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-3505260088796297972011-11-12T11:31:00.000+00:002011-11-12T11:31:10.851+00:00The Daily Mail vs The Gays...vs Cancer<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I suppose in some ways I need to thank the Daily Mail. Occasionally, living in my cosy liberal bubble surrounded by people who aren't constantly-seething, hate-filled, evil morons, I sometimes think we've progressed much further than we have in reality. So it's important that occasionally I'm reminded that we still have a long way to go.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In <a href="http://www.freezepage.com/1321093503QTVRXXZMTM">Outrage as Tesco backs gay festival... but drops support for cancer charity event</a>, the Mail gives us a curious glimpse into the conservative mindset. Here's the gist of the story;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Tesco has triggered outrage by ending its support for the Cancer Research ‘Race for Life’ while deciding to sponsor Britain’s largest gay festival.<br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Some religious commentators and groups have condemned the decision and are calling for a boycott of the supermarket chain.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Suddenly, it's time to pick a side. Which side are you on, cancer or gays? NO, YOU CAN'T CHOOSE BOTH. Tesco has made two seemingly unrelated decisions here, but the Mail is convinced that Tesco have really decided they love gays more than they want to fight cancer. Maybe that's true, maybe the gay demographic spends more than the stricken-with-cancer demographic, I don't know, I'm not in marketing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">But what is the Mail really angry about here? They're not <i>actually</i> angry about Tesco dropping support for Race For Life, because that <a href="http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/not-for-profit/tesco-and-cancer-research-uk-end-sponsorship-deal/3029855.article">happened in September</a>, and nobody, least of all the Mail (as far as I can tell), gave a shit. Y'know, because it was just another big company making another marketing decision based on its usual set of flipcharts and whatnot. Race For Life will continue, they're looking for other sponsors, it's probably all going to be fine. You can stand down.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">What the Mail are <i>actually </i>angry about is the gays. Mail readers don't spend their hard-earned law-abiding taxpayer two-parent family money on Tesco's Finest Yorkshire Pudding ready meals, for that money to go towards helping The Gays have a street party! The Mail helpfully illustrates how outrageous this is with an entirely representative picture of five buff dudes in sparkly red underpants.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Let's get one thing clear here; the amount of money Tesco is spending on sponsoring Pride is <i>tiny</i>. Toward the end of the the article, we find out that it's a mere £30k, which for a company of Tesco's size is the equivalent of listlessly tossing a White Company button at a toll both like it ain't no thang. It's a mere fraction of the £800k Pride costs to run. This would suggest that this decision is a small-scale one unrelated to the dropping of Race For Life, except in the fevered imaginations of Mail hacks. So what is the actual problem here?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Well, I don't know about you, but when I want a balanced, reasoned reflection on corporate sponsorship choices and homosexuality, I head straight for the Catholic blogosphere!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Francis Phillips, a commentator at The Catholic Herald, condemned the shift, saying: ‘Tesco is a supermarket. </span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The kind of searing insight only a life dedicated to solemn religious study can bring, there. But wait! It continues!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Its remit has been to sell good-quality food and other items at very reasonable prices, and in this it has been hugely successful. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Why has it now aligned itself with an aggressive political organisation such as Pride London?<br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">‘Why has it given up its sponsorship of Cancer Research? Or at least…why hasn’t it taken up with another mainstream charity such as the British Legion or Age UK? </span></div>
</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The next person it quotes is from 'Anglican Mainstream'. Why, it's almost as if this story has been lifted wholesale from <a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/11/07/why-has-tesco-thrown-its-enormous-weight-behind-a-gay-pride-event/">Phillips' blog</a>! It turns out the Anglican Mainstream may not be as cuddly and mainstream as they sound;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">He wrote: ‘For Tesco to sponsor a tiny homosexual minority – according to the Office for National Statistics, that amounts to little more than 1 per cent of the population – will be showing the utmost contempt for a large proportion of British society that still adheres, more or less, to the morality and values of the Ten Commandments.’ </span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Seems a rather baffling stance to me. I'm not gay, but I'm really quite fine with this. Were people who didn't have cancer being discriminated against when Tesco was sponsoring cancer research? I didn't realise I was supposed to be upset when people who aren't me are acknowledged in some small way. Still, cute of this guy to imagine that British society still adheres to the Ten Commandments. I would love to see him go out on the streets of a major city of a Friday night and ask people what the Ten Commandments are, in full. I guarantee that most of them would do better listing football teams' starting line-ups. "Something about an ass? Covering an ass? Don't do that?".<br /><br />Next, we are told that homosexuality is one of a number of unnamed "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">dubious fringe political movements". I guess we need to get rid of these dubious political movements and replace them with minority religions instead, huh? To get an idea of the extent of quite how fucked-up this article is, one quote is - and I'm not making this up - introduced thusly; "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Catholic campaign website Protect the Pope said..."</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Protect The Pope! Excuse me while I sick up my fucking soul for a second. So what do Tesco say?<br /></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Tesco said it was in talks with the charity to support its work in other ways and would encourage staff to continue taking part in the Race for Life.<br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">A spokesman said the decision to drop its support ‘is not connected to our £30,000 sponsorship for Pride, which is one of hundreds of community and charitable events that we will be supporting next year’.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />You...bastards. Of all the things Tesco has ever done, sponsoring this inclusive street party which aims to foster tolerance and understanding of homosexuality is easily...oh, wait, it doesn't even register, does it? As much as the Mail tries to feign mass outrage here, all it can provide is quotes from wacky Catholic bloggers. Of course, their myopic presentation of the story as TESCO WANTS GAY PEOPLE TO DANCE ON CANCER PATIENTS' GRAVES does manage to elicit some choice wingnuttery in the comments. At the time of writing, the top-rated comment is an unhinged screed about how gays should just bloody well keep quiet and act a bit more flipping STRAIGHT, from a person who calls themselves "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Free Britain from the unelected EU dictators in Brussels". This is your market, Daily Mail writers! I hope you're happy.<br /><br />Ooh, just received an emailed addendum to The Gay Agenda. If anyone wants me, I'll be at Tesco's....</span><br />DISCLAIMER: This blog post was not sponsored by or endorsed by Tesco. But if anyone from their marketing department is reading, I am currently too skint to afford Modern Warfare 3...</span><br />No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-76365819733748125082011-10-07T14:10:00.000+01:002011-10-07T14:12:41.265+01:00An Englishman's home is his drug farmThis morning's Express front page returned to a familiar theme of British debate; the right of an upstanding Englishman to shoot the living shite out of anyone who tries to touch their stuff. <br /><a href="http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/?action=view&current=express3.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/express3.jpg" /></a><br /><br />It's a time-honoured tale, rehashed in various configurations ever since the conviction of charming Middle England pin-up Tony Martin, for bravely shooting an unarmed 16-year-old intruder in the spine as he tried to run away all those years ago. Today's version concerns the tale of Malcolm White, a homeowner who, finding himself beset by intruders, took the ultimate action to protect his property, and by extension himself and his family, by allegedly shooting an alleged intruder. The Express, never big fans of moral ambiguity, or indeed facts, has picked a side pretty early on here, and I don't think it will be a terrible surprise which side. The <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/276020/Hero-dad-guns-down-burglar">story of the 'hero dad'</a> firmly plants the Express in White's camp thusly; <br />
<blockquote>
Neighbours of Mr White, who is 60 and described as a pillar of the local community in Whitbourne, Herefordshire, were furious after discovering that he had been arrested.</blockquote>
Mr White is a retired clockmaker. Quaint, right? It's like Midsomer. We get to hear much about his good deeds over the course of the story. If this guy was auditioning for X-Factor, Coldplay's 'The Scientist' would be kicking in right about now over a montage, as we learn of White's recent ill health, and that he generously fixes the church clocks. He's 60, 'gentle-natured', and 'a very nice bloke'. He's just a guy in his £420,000 house trying to enjoy his life with his wife and his £50,000 car, and trying to make it as a pop star. Wait, not that last bit. But still, an all-round Good Egg, dragged into doing something desperate because of Broken Britain. But wait, what's this? If you go to the Express' site at the time of writing, the front page appears to have changed. Malcolm White's story is no longer front-page news. Wayne Rooney's dad remains a hot topic, but now the most pressing issue facing us is how the cuts to the bloated BBC that bloody well needed cutting down to size may lead to a few extra hours of sickening REPEATS which we all hate... <br /><br /><a href="http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/?action=view&current=express2.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/express2.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Now, I'm sure the BBC repeats issue is vexing to Express readers, being as they are the kind of people who can simultaneously want licence fee freezes AND dramatic improvements in quantities of original output. But it's a tad harsh on good old Malcolm White, no? I wonder if, perhaps, it could have anything at all to do with this extra little facet to the story, that emerged after the initial front page was released? <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5j-eWWjA82Wl5REIbXTeMvy0xAgtQ?docId=N0812441317975854599A">Shock over drug farm after shooting</a>. <br />
<blockquote>
Villagers have spoken of their shock after detectives investigating the shooting of a suspected burglar found a "well-organised and large-scale" cannabis farm during forensic searches. West Mercia Police said a 60-year-old man, named by neighbours as Malcolm White, was still being questioned on suspicion of attempted murder and of cultivating controlled drugs after the shooting incident late on Wednesday. Meanwhile, officers investigating the alleged break-in at White's home in Whitbourne, Herefordshire, have arrested a second man on suspicion of burglary.</blockquote>
I should make several things clear at this point. I do not know if Malcolm White is a drug farmer or drug dealer. I do not know if he was acting in reasonable self-defence when he seemingly shot his intruder. He may well be, and if he was I hope justice is done and no charges are brought against him. Those are things for courts, rather than jumped-up snarky media bloggers, to decide. But I would like to go on record as stating that, if Malcolm White does indeed turn out to be a massive weed dealer protecting his homegrown stash (as well as being a charming elderly clockmaker), I will laugh my fucking tits right off. <br /><br />Because if he <i>does</i> turn out to be less than whiter-than-white (if you'll excuse the pun), the Express have put themselves in an awkward position. And in withdrawing the front page as soon as it turned out he might not be the type of man they like, they would have shown themselves to be moralising cowards whose sympathy for human beings is threadbare and conditional. I love this story because, <i>if</i> all the elements I've presented here turn out to be true, it shows that we're not simply a world of Good Guys and Bad Guys, nasty burglars and gentlemanly 'pillar(s) of the community', as White was described in the Express' story. We're human beings with shades of grey, capable of heroism and evil and good old-fashioned moral ambiguity. As I've said, I don't know. But if Malcolm White acted in self-defence then he has my sympathy whatever he may or may not have been cultivating, and for whatever purpose. Does he still have the Express' sympathy?<br /><br />(Hat-tips for this story to <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/richpeppiatt">Richard Peppiat</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/5ChinCrack">Five Chinese Crackers</a>)No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-19782746256957580852011-10-03T09:53:00.000+01:002011-10-03T09:53:26.212+01:00Correctness gone mad!One of the fun aspects of the Daily Mail is that relatively minor changes in administrative procedures can seem earth-shatteringly, pants-tighteningly <em>important</em>. Imagine, for a second, that changing the name of a particular field on a passport application form could herald the death of thousands of years of civilisation and tradition as we know it. If your beloved, time-worn traditions are so entirely flimsy that they can be under threat by a simple choice of words, then congratulations! You have found your newspaper.<br /><br />Today's Mail, then, is upset. Very upset. See, the liberals are at it again, and this time, they're coming for <em>your mum and dad</em>. And all because of the gays. Those meddling gays. In <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044491/PC-passport-Goodbye-mother-father-Now-Parent-1-2-appear-form.html?ito=feeds-newsxml">Goodbye, mother and father! Now Parent 1 and Parent 2 appear on PC passport form</a> (direct link), we get a shocking insight into what the tree-hugging liberal do-gooders have gawn and done now: <br /><blockquote>For decades, passport applicants have been required to provide details of their mother and father.<br /><br />But now, after pressure from the gay lobby, they will be given the option of naming ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’.</blockquote>Oh my! That's disgus...oh, wait, it's fine, isn't it? It's really actually a pretty straightforward change which enables the Passport Office to get accurate data from everyone about people's legal, rather than biological, parents. Including, wait for it, those of us with a mum and dad. The Mail's story goes on to breathlessly blame all this horror on The Gay Lobby, only slightly undermining themselves with this bit: <br /><blockquote>Officials accepted that the move was made following lobbying from gay rights groups who claimed it was discriminatory.<br /><br />But a spokesman for the Identity and Passport Service insisted it was necessary to incorporate same-sex parents on the form so that accurate information is collected. </blockquote>Accurate information? What will these PC liberal Nazis want next? I bet they'll have to add extra lines for people who have three or more gay parents! That's what they're like, isn't it? Quick, get some rent-a-quote dickbag to denounce this travesty! <br /><blockquote>Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said: ‘Fathers and mothers are not interchangeable but have quite distinct roles to play in the care and nurture of their children.<br /><br />‘To speak of “parent 1” and “parent 2” denigrates the place of both fathers and mothers.<br /><br />‘Much as the equality and diversity social engineers might wish it were otherwise, it still takes a father and a mother to produce a child.’</blockquote>Norman Wells, there, a man who apparently takes his cues about what he should call his parents entirely from passport application forms. Inspiring. Wells then goes on to make a point which is as self-defeating as it is joylessly bigoted; <br /><blockquote>‘It is high time ministers started to represent the interests of the country as a whole and not capitulate to every demand made by a vocal and unrepresentative minority.’ </blockquote>Just process that for a second. 'The country as a whole'. That's quite an interesting insight into this mindset ,there. See, what this relatively minor change does is to indeed serve the country <em>as a whole</em>, including people who were raised by same-sex parents, without in any way excluding the majority of people who weren't. What Wells is asking for there is instead the exclusion of a minority, in the face of a simple solution, just because of his pearl-clutching devotion to How Things Have Always Been Done. At the end of the piece, The Mail goes on to, quite bizarrely, parrot statistics about how few gay people there are in the country. The underlying message of all this, of course, being; you're gay, you're a minority, you don't count. Why should we change anything to help you?<br /><br />There's very much a sense that this whole article was tossed off in a rush. Wells is surprisingly the only self-publicising loudmouth the Mail could find to back up their hell-in-a-handcart narrative. The rest, including the headline, is left to shady, unaccountable 'critics'; <br /><blockquote>It has led to claims the official travel document is being turned into a ‘PC passport’.</blockquote>And, in a photo caption;<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>Capitulating: Critics say the official travel document is being turned into a 'PC passport'</blockquote>At no point are the identities of these 'critics' revealed. Perhaps they are too afraid to speak up publicly, lest Stonewall send in their big gay militia. Perhaps the critics are simply too numerous to name. Perhaps the critics are little voices nagging, nagging, nagging in the author's head that never stop talking in the night and won't go away and OH GOD MAKE THE VOICES STOP. Who knows? All we can know for sure is this; The Critics do not take too kindly to being made to be politically correct. Or, as we might more accurately call it in this case, correct.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-52521816619682187032011-09-22T20:20:00.002+01:002011-09-22T20:33:51.936+01:00On Charlie Wolf, the death penalty, and loss-leading bananasI suppose the combination of the Daily Mail and a former TalkSPORT host who blazed a trail for Jon Gaunt to follow was never going to be quite perfectly tuned to my taste. Even so, I was taken aback to discover quite how often the "American broadcaster currently living in the UK" Charlie Wolf managed to make me splutter bewildered obscenities at my screen in his jaw-dropping <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2040554/Troy-Davis-Justice-served.html">piece on Troy Davis' execution last night by the state of Georgia</a> (direct Mail link).<br /><br />Wolf begins by painting a surprisingly quaint picture of the scene of the execution which I won't quote in depth; peaceful, gentle, humane. Lovely in all aspects really, with only the minor niggle of a man being slowly killed by the state having to be glossed over. "Putting down the family dog would have been a lot worse", claims Wolf, before embarking on one of those sentences you have to read numerous times, from different angles, possibly getting a trained professional to confirm that you just saw it;<blockquote>Far from an execution, this was more like state-ordered euthanasia.</blockquote>So...an execution, then? I'm not sure how something can be 'far from' being the thing that it is, but then I guess that's why I don't get paid the big bucks to write for the Daily Mail. It takes a special breed of...well, something. I kind of wonder why he stopped at 'euthanasia' in his brazen attempt to cutesify the fact though. Why not call it 'judge-encouraged natural causes'? Or 'state-nudged endless sleepytime'? I worry that some of these writers lack ambition.<br /><br />Wolf though, sensing his moment, is in the ascendancy at this point. Other writers might consider pacing out the crass statements at this point to conserve energy, but Wolf boldly goes for the jugular and piles stupid on top of stupid in a wobbling Jenga tower of madness;<blockquote>The average person going into any Accident and Emergency department would have had a more painful experience than those put to death as doctors jab, prod and shock people in an effort to keep them alive.</blockquote>The key distinction, fans of subtlety may note, between going into A&E and being executed is that one is trying to keep you alive, and the other is trying to kill you. Some people might consider this difference big enough to make void such a comparison, but perhaps I'm missing the bigger picture. This sets Wolf off on an entirely pointless riff about how totally not-painful lethal injection is compared to having your heart restarted after a major coronary or something, as if opponents of capital punishment are only bothered about the pain of the subject in the brief moments of the act itself. Baffling non-arguments come thick and fast here; Iran has more painful executions! The Chinese kill people who haven't even killed people! Something about Guy Fawkes!<br /><br />Having seen the level on which Wolf's arguments operate thus far, it's frankly terrifying to see him begin his next bewitchingly cock-eyed point with the phrase 'In simplistic terms...', but he does. Oh God, he does. Explaining how having the death penalty proves that a society 'values the lives of its citizenry' (no, <em>really</em>), Wolf scrawls the following with his very bestest crayons;<blockquote>In simplistic terms think of it like one of those self-service scales in Tesco.<br /><br />If I push the illuminated button for 'bananas' and the little sticky tag comes out I expect it to fall in a certain price range.<br /><br />Too much and I don't buy -- but also, if too little, just pennies, I am suspicious too. Why so cheap? What's wrong here?<br /><br />They mustn't be that good if they are worth so little.</blockquote>Not having the death penalty, yeah, is like selling surprisingly cheap bananas. Right? Why would anyone eat cheap bananas? It seems obvious now he's said it. But you would never have thought of this analogy, would you? That's the difference between normal, human folk like you, and The Professional Writer. They're missing a trick not paywalling this stuff.<br /><br />After a brief detour to the glittering outskirts of reality, Wolf returns to the Tesco metaphor he's obviously so proud of;<blockquote>Getting back to the Great Tesco Scales of life... If I was to put the lives of Officer McPhail, shot in cold blood; James Byrd, dragged to a grizzly death; or the Petit girls and their mom, raped and killed, what is the price that would come up? How much would their lives be worth?<br /><br />In this country, how much is the life of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman from Soham worth?</blockquote>Seemingly for Wolf, the answer is 'exactly the same amount as their killers'. Victim dies, the killer dies. Balance has been restored! It's so simple, it's almost <em>childish</em>! Yes...almost.<br /><br />For me, the reality is that the loss of a loved one is so huge that it can't be balanced out by removing someone else from the face of the earth in retribution. For Wolf, the value of your life can plunge quickly to nothing if you commit a serious enough crime. I can understand 'an eye for an eye' in principle at least. I just can't help feeling it does little other than increase the total amount of suffering. Not just killers, but their families. And people who find the spectacle of executing citizens on ceremony a tad distasteful. Anyway,<blockquote>What is the life of James Bulger worth (what little there was; he was tortured and murdered at the age of two)? </blockquote>Well, it's worth the lives of two other children (Thompson and Venables), apparently. This is how Wolf's macabre scales work. It's basic science, stupid!<br /><br />No Daily Mail article would be complete without a wild flail at The Left, and sure enough Wolf gets a picture of Bianca Jagger up on his dartboard and takes aim;<blockquote>But I don't see any enlightenment --or indeed consistency-- on the left. The only consistency is the fact that the liberal intellectual elite is secularist, and puts no stock or sacredness in the value of life.<br /><br />They do not protect the lives of the unborn; euthanasia (and not just for the terminally ill) is toted as an ideal over palliative care; and in the case of heinous crimes they opt to protect the lives of the murderers over the victims.</blockquote>Yes! You can cross that one off on your Tired Argument Bingo card and collect your prize; a gnawing sense of fruitless despair! What Wolf is arguing here is that the Left is mad for only giving a shit about the living, when foetuses should clearly be prioritised over those of us who are here (be it people convicted of a crime*, or women who don't want to have children). Wolf impressively manages to find time in that breathless run-through of a stock argument to cram in a hilarious bullshit strawman about how the Left approve of euthanasia for people who aren't terminally ill, and implies that they think it should be instead of palliative care instead of as a last-ditch alternative when palliative care isn't providing a tolerable quality of life. Quite a skill.<br /><br />[*Let's not forget here that the reason this case has become so high-profile is because there's a widespread belief that Davis is the victim of a miscarriage of justice and may indeed be innocent. While I personally oppose capital punishment in all circumstances, his potential innocence is the reason this case is being discussed].<blockquote>The abolition of a death penalty here is not the sign of some form of modern day enlightenment but in fact is just the opposite.<br /><br />If anything it is a sign of moral weakness, of a society that is so afraid of its own barbarity that it cannot grasp the difference (or distinguish) between justice and revenge.</blockquote> See? Liberals just don't get it! It's about justice! A word I've just appropriated and defined around my existing beliefs! Suck it! Stop being so morally weak and let the state have the ultimate power to kill people! What exactly is so unenlightened about leaving a man strapped to a gurney while he waits for lawyers to finish negotiating over whether he lives or dies?<br /><br />Conveniently, the abolition of the death penalty in the UK was the fault of people Wolf already hates, which is a bonus. It was 'the intellectual liberal classes of Oxford and Cambridge in the sixties that hijacked the Left', in case you were wondering. Anyway, knowing the value of a strong finish, Wolf waits til a couple of paragraphs from the end before solving the tricky 'does the death penalty deter murder?' argument once and for all, with the razor-sharp clarity of a man who hasn't really thought about it for more than a single fucking second;<blockquote>The deterrent effects of the death penalty in the United States are incontrovertible.<br /><br />One only has to look at studies and statistics concerning murderers who have been let out to kill again to realise that the death penalty does work as a deterrent – if not for others, at least for the killer in question.</blockquote><br />At this point I could go round digging for statistics about how many murders there are in the US, but I'd have more success walking out into the main road and trying to stop speeding lorries with my penis than I would trying to argue with this guy. It would probably be less painful, too. I'm not sure he even understands what the word 'deterrent' means. If he does, he's hiding it deep under layers of his own bluster here.<br /><br />In conclusion, I could really have quoted more of this, to be honest. Part of me wonders why I bothered to share something this painfully boneheaded with you all. But then I thought, hey, an eye for an eye. If I have to suffer, I don't see why you lot shouldn't too. It's balance. Karma. And, er, something about banana prices.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-87626670303154823002011-07-11T11:06:00.001+01:002011-07-11T11:07:34.088+01:00Brendan O'Neill vs the tabloid-hatin’ TwitterersIn a strange way, it's almost reassuring that Brendan O'Neill has written a column deflecting blame for the News of the World scandal onto the liberal intelligentsia with their fancy lattes and their hemp shoes and their stupid moral compasses. Imagine if Brendan O'Neill wrote something a human being could agree with? I just wouldn't know what to believe any more.<br /><br />For those of you unfamiliar with Brendan O'Neill; run! Your life is clearly going better than mine is, and ignorance is genuine bliss in this case. If you must know, though, he's a Telegraph journalist and the editor of Spiked Online, which is kind of like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KgdW57GrSc">The Ironic Review (video)</a>, except it got bored of trying to just be contrarian and expectation-confounding, and just settled on trying to troll liberals. Richard Littlejohn with a more well-thumbed dictionary, in other words.<br /><br />Much of what you need to know about the sort of person O'Neill is, he gifts us in the opening paragraph of <a href="http://istyosty.com/99rd">today's piece</a>, a frothing tour de force of misplaced outrage which might give Melanie Phillips cause to be concerned that there's a pretender to her throne:<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>“It is clearly people power that has forced this decision.” That was Ed Miliband’s impressively otherworldly take on the shutting down of the News of the World. It takes doublespeak to dizzy new heights to describe the closure of this popular Sunday paper as a victory for “people power”. On what kind of warped Orwellian planet can a crusade led by a few hundred Twitter activists and liberal journalists against a newspaper read by 7.5 million people be described as a democratic moment? It is the polar opposite of “people power” – it is chattering-class intolerance of mass tastes, resulting in the extinction of a tabloid which the cliquish great and good considered vulgar and offensive.<br /></blockquote><br />Let's get this out of the way right at the start; regular people didn't close down the News Of The World. The owners of the News Of The World made that decision. Few even among the Twittersphere demanded its closure, fewer still actually expected it. There was a groundswell of outrage at the paper's conduct which led to a campaign for advertisers to boycott, but the decision to not even attempt to ride out the storm and shut the paper down almost immediately the moment the story hit the front pages was not ours.<br /><br />Now, a cynic might suggest that Rupert Murdoch sacrificed the NotW to rescue his bid for the vastly more profitable complete ownership of BSkyB. Other cynics have pounced on evidence that a 7-day edition of its sister paper The Sun was already planned, as somehow being proof that the NotW's closure would have happened anyway, and the outrage just sped up the process a little.<br /><br />Those are the sort of things a terrible, terrible cynic might suggest. O'Neill instead suggests that the decision was effectively made by "a few hundred Twitter activists and liberal journalists". Frankly, this is fucking <em>brilliant</em> news! Politicians have long sucked up to Rupert Murdoch in a desperate attempt to get into power, so it'll be a nice change now that they merely have to appease Josie Long, that dude who wrote Father Ted and a couple of earnest Guardian columnists. Keeps things fresh, I think.<br /><br />O'Neill tosses his clusterbombs of scorn still further, taking out Mumsnet like this: <br /><blockquote>Justine Roberts of Mumsnet used the term “consumer power” to describe her galvanisation of Yummy Mummies against scummy tabloids.</blockquote>BOOM! Take that, Mumsnet! How dare you use the term "consumer power" to arrogantly describe consumers using what power they have! You're nothing! Nobody! O'Neill seems to be having his cake and eating it here, simultaneously complaining about the disproportionate power of activists and yet sneering at the same activists for deludedly thinking they're "leading a modern-day peasants’ revolt against evil powerful men". <br /><blockquote>In truth it is nonsense on stilts, nonsense on a “Freddie Starr ate my hamster” level, to describe the movement against the News of the World as an expression of “people power”. It’s mad even to call it a “movement”. More accurately, it was a tiny cabal of liberal journalists and time-rich, tabloid-hatin’ Twitterers who spearheaded the campaign to get big corporations to withdraw their adverts from the News of the World and to bring this 168-year-old institution to its knees.</blockquote>O'Neill dcesn't name any of these "liberal journalists", perhaps because he realises how ludicrous it would be when he named a bunch of people half his readers had never heard of. It is of course fair to say that this story started in the Guardian. What's unfair is to imply that no-one else outside of the Guardian and a small gang of actors and comedians on Twitter gave a shit. My parents, Daily Mail readers to the core, were outraged by this. It's been a hot topic of debate on my Salford construction site. Apparently even red-top reading, Page 3-enjoying manual labourers think that spying on the private voicemails of missing 13-year-olds and causing their families even more worry is a bit, well, not on. It's almost like they're people, huh?<br /><br />The story didn't gain traction because they were hacking into the phones of some small-scale liberal icon like Charlie Brooker or David Mitchell. We had a liberal storm already about this, and the wider public didn't care because it was Sienna "Oh, THAT'S Sienna Miller!" Miller that was being intruded upon. This, this was different. It gained traction because they were targetting regular, non-celebrity people, outside of "the chattering classes". Not just normal people, but vulnerable people, people who'd done nothing except <em>suffer personal tragedies.</em> So people from all across the political spectrum were incensed that the family of Milly Dowler could have learned that her voicemail was hacked and messages deleted by unscrupulous private investigators, paid for by tabloid hacks in pursuit of a gossipy, voyeuristic story. It goes beyond what most people will tolerate, even people who read OK! magazine and love finding out what Kerry Katona's about to be sacked from or what Cheryl Cole has said to Ashley lately.<br /><br />So when O'Neill suggests that: <br /><blockquote>For many of these so-called warriors against wickedness, the hacking scandal was a simply a very useful stick with which they could beat something they’ve always hated: tabloid press, tabloid values.</blockquote>...perhaps he should look at himself and consider whether he's <em>really</em> as in touch with the ordinary people as he claims. No-one elected Brendan O'Neill either, and yet here he is, telling us what people who would never read his Telegraph blog in a million years think.<br /><br />The most telling part in all this is that nowhere in his piece does O'Neill attempt even a single caveat apportioning <em>any blame at all</em> to Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson, Glenn Mulcaire, or any of the other figures involved in a widespread and systematic campaign of <em>actual criminal activity</em>. No, just like in his <a href="http://istyosty.com/99vc">previous rant</a> on the subject, his entire focus is aimed at the whistleblowers and campaigners, the "do-gooders" and snotty liberals, rather than those who did what you might call "the actual bad shit".<br /><br />It's a straightforward abdication of responsibility. Just as the Mail's <a href="http://istyosty.com/99vo">Melanie Phillips</a> and <a href="http://istyosty.com/98pw">Beth Hale</a> are today saying "Yeah, but Steve Coogan was a drug-taking philanderer, so I think you'll find he's the <em>real</em> sick man in this so-called society", O'Neill is using the scandal as an excuse to bash the liberals that clearly annoy him. And yet he complains that his enemies are the ones using the scandal to further an agenda.<br /><br />My favourite part, though, is that it <em>isn't even a secret</em> that many liberals enjoyed watching the News of the World implode. Coogan was quite open on his infamous Newsnight appearance about hating the News Of The World and what it stands for. Many of my cabal of liberal Twitterati were equally delighted. I was, and I'm such a liberal I used two Lee and Herring references in this piece! But while all sides in this debate have their own agendas and politics, the ultimate question is; was what the News Of The World (and other papers) did <em>wrong</em>, and do people have the right to criticise it? If the answer to that question is yes (and it obviously fucking is), then all O'Neill is doing here is flailing around trying to point the finger at anyone and everyone but the actual people responsible. As befits a man who deems "do-gooder" an insult.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-37657840195480252982011-06-05T00:46:00.003+01:002011-06-05T01:02:09.224+01:00The Daily Mail: Putting the 'H' in 'Sit'The current top story on the Mail website is about a shocking development, albeit one that happened six months ago. Someone alluded to a bad word on the radio. You probably remember where you were when you heard it. Britain hasn't been the same since. What's even worse though, even more shocking is that, as we find out from the Mail On Sunday today; <a href="http://istyosty.com/5sps">BBC executives rule most offensive word in English language is 'a good joke' on the radio at 6.30pm</a>.<br /><br />It may surprise you to hear that's the case. But the Mail assures us that it is, it definitely is. The BBC has now decided you can say 'cunt' on the radio whenever you want, just as you could on a degenerate blog like this. Soon it'll be cunt this and cunt that, cunt the other. Wall-to-wall cunt. On Radio 4! What the cunting fuck happened to this country? <br /><blockquote>The BBC was at the centre of a new decency row last night after ruling that the most offensive word in English is acceptable for broadcast.<br /><br />The Corporation decided that the word – most abhorrent to women – has lost much of its 'shock value' and is tolerable for radio and television.<br /><br />An executive who cleared it for daytime transmission on flagship Radio 4 even said it would 'delight' many of its audience, who would 'love it’. </blockquote>A row has broken out! A row about decency! You'll have heard all about this massive row by now. How could you not? It's all we're talking about round here. I mean, I didn't hear the show, because I wasn't listening to The News Quiz when it was broadcast. Or, indeed, ever. But it was all the fault of Sandi Toksvig. Danish-born Sandi Toksvig, no less. Coming over here...<br /><br />Anyway, readers of a sensitive disposition may need to look away now, as the Mail reports the offensive joke uncensored:<br /><br /><blockquote>The Mail on Sunday feels it is necessary to the reporting of the story to repeat the joke, and apologises in advance for any offence caused.<br /><br />Miss Toksvig said: 'It's the Tories who have put the 'n' into cuts.'</blockquote>Oh.<br /><br />Yeah, you see that? You see how the Mail can reproduce the joke without having to asterisk anything out like it usually does for its prudish-about-some-things demographic? Well, that's because, and there's no cleverer way to put this, it doesn't say 'cunts'. It <em>implies</em> the word 'cunts'. But it doesn't say it. Which is kind of a problem for this story about how the BBC has suddenly warmly embraced the word and intends to start tossing it unbidden into our homes and cars until we're so used to it we're naming our kids after it.<br /><br />Of course, the problems with this story don't even stop there. You can add in these factors: 1) It's aimed at adults on Radio 4, not 'In The Night Garden'. 2) It's a joke. 3) There is no proper radio watershed anyway.<br /><br />But, y'know, really, all those factors pale into insignificance next to the fact that <em>she didn't actually say it</em>. Not that you'd know that if you just glanced at the article. The revelation that the word was never actually uttered, like the headline and opening imply, doesn't come until paragraph 11.<br /><br />This is the top story on the Mail's site now, and it's going to be their actual front page splash. Yes, readers, someone making, in a joke, a veiled reference to the word 'cunt', on a radio show, for adults, in October of 2010. Just think of all the children who would have raced upstairs after dinner that evening to listen to The News Quiz, without an adult to put the joke into context for them. Lord only knows where they'll be in 10 or 15 years' time. It's almost too terrifying to contemplate. I only hope they discover drugs, unprotected sex and knife crime first, rather than face a world of teenagers making faintly risque jokes that you've heard a dozen times before about politics. On Radio 4. Who could bear that?<br /><br />I think the thing that annoys me most about this is that I don't believe for a second that the writers of this piece were actually offended by it. It's just cynical moralising and BBC-bashing for the sake of it. They know it's a complete non-story. Indeed, if they were actually worried about people being offended, they wouldn't be repeating the joke to a wider audience six months down the line. But ultimately they know that scandal sells papers, so if they can splash yet another massive BBC outrage on the front pages they might achieve that goal for another day.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-40389062696814457992011-05-11T11:19:00.000+01:002011-05-11T11:19:34.930+01:00Prison sentencing and the mediaThis morning, a story is circulating in the media which apparently once and for all proves that longer sentences cut crime, so we can all just stop thinking about it and start locking people up for as long as possible. Huzzah! It has appeared in the <a href="http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/190361/Prison-works-but-only-if-jail-terms-are-longer/">Star</a>, the <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/245912/Proof-that-tough-justice-does-put-crooks-off-crime-">Express</a>, the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/10/reoffending-rates-short-jail-terms">Guardian</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13345189">BBC</a>, alongside pretty much every other news outlet.<br /><br />The news is a huge boon to conservative thinkers who have long advocated tougher prison sentences, so it was no surprise to see the likes of unstoppable Tory gobshite Philip Davies MP <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/PhilipDaviesMP/status/68232636132360192">crowing about it on Twitter</a>: <br /><blockquote>We now know for sure that the longer people spend in prison the less likely they are to re-offend! Some of us have said this for years!<br /></blockquote><br />So, what do the findings say? Well, according to pretty much all papers, they say things like "The longer the prison sentence the less likely an offender is to commit a further crime, according to research" (the BBC). The Guardian, while saying much the same thing, helpfully links to <a href="http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/2011-compendium-reoffending-stats-analysis.pdf">a PDF of the figures</a> so we can have a look for ourselves (as all online news outlets should do in 2011). Here we find, among other things, a couple of very important quotes that are missing from Davies' crowing, and most of the media reporting: <br /><blockquote>The findings are not conclusive on whether the deterrent effect of longer custodial sentences is effective at reducing re-offending</blockquote>So yeah, the findings are not...wait, what? I thought Philip Davies MP said that now we know FOR SURE? How can this <em>be</em>? <br /><blockquote>Despite higher re-offending rates, offenders receiving sentences of less than 12 months do not have access to offender management programmes and are not subject to supervision by the Probation Service upon release. This latter factor is also likely to explain some of the difference between community sentences/suspended sentence orders and short prison sentences.</blockquote>Oh, right. So there's a fundamental difference between the 'short' sentences and the longer ones which means that factors other than simply the length of sentence itself could be responsible for a discrepancy. That is really a quite major difference, as it implies that effective managment programmes and post-release supervision are possibly having a big effect, not just the actual banging-up of people for as long as possible.<br /><br />Indeed; <br /><blockquote>Custodial sentences of less than twelve months were less effective at reducing re-offending than both community orders and suspended sentence orders</blockquote>That's another nuance somewhat left alone in the media coverage today, which all seems startlingly similar. (Although, if you read <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/245912/Proof-that-tough-justice-does-put-crooks-off-crime-">the Express'</a> frankly childish attempt to cover it you might come out a tad stupider than if you'd read one of the other, real newspapers). While the Guardian mentions the importance of community sentences for minor crimes, the Mail's effort, somewhat unsurprisingly, doesn't.<br /><br />The only thing that's really clear from this study is that, like most reports, you can spin it how you want, and that newspapers will spin it in a way that reflects their politics. Or, at least, that newspapers will copy other newspapers' spin. There's a lot of depth and complexity to the figures, but the bottom line is this - it seems ludicrous that you could have, for example, a BBC headline that says; <br /><blockquote>Longer prison sentences cut reoffending, study suggests</blockquote>...referring to a report that says; <br /><blockquote>The findings are not conclusive on whether the deterrent effect of longer custodial sentences is effective at reducing re-offending</blockquote>Or so you would think!No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-290464959859280982011-05-04T12:40:00.002+01:002011-05-04T12:42:06.857+01:00On AV and the Daily MailTomorrow sees many of us head to the polls to vote on the alternative vote (AV) system, a system which, if implemented, would sort of actually change some shit a bit. Predictably, the Daily Mail doesn't really like it.<br /><br />Under the typically restrained and understated heading of <a href="http://istyosty.com/2uh0">Vote No tomorrow to stop Clegg and his cronies destroying democracy in Britain - forever</a>, the Mail's leader column argues that putting candidates in order of preference rather than just voting for one is "fiendishly-complicated". Because putting candidates in order of preference (if you feel like doing so), is presumably incredibly taxing to its readers. Why on earth would you want a system which risks encouraging voters to <em>think</em> about it, when you can just stick your customary X next to whoever your local Tory is?<br /><br />The piece goes on to refer to "the lies, cynicism and personal insults of the desperate Yes camp", a particularly laughable charge to anyone who's paid even the slightest bit of attention to the No campaign.<br /><br /><blockquote>For this paper passionately believes that the arguments against the arcane AV system, in which candidates are marked in order of preference, rather than with a simple ‘X’, are overwhelming.</blockquote>The simple 'X', there! Nice and simple. Not like those complicated 'numbers'. What are they all about? We don't know, and we don't want to know! Let's just do an X, please, so we can be back in time for Emmerdale. It's not all frivolity though, the Mail has actually thought about this shit. In the next paragraph they drop their big fact bombs:<br /><br /><blockquote>The reallocation of losing votes, until somebody gets 50 per cent, wrecks the historic principle that every citizen has one vote of equal value, which can be counted only once.</blockquote>This is, broadly speaking, horseshit. Or at least a distraction from the issue. Winning votes remain the most important. If a candidate gets 50% of first preference votes, they win! If not, they don't have such a convincing mandate. AV then starts to count up the second preferences, then third, and so on. If the candidate who didn't quite win is popular as a second choice, then he will win. What AV does is attempt to seek the candidate who meets with the approval of most voters. The Mail prefers the system whereby a candidate with the approval of 30% of the electorate, in a low turnout, would still win even if the other 70% absolutely hated the bastard, simply because their votes were split between the other much nicer candidates.<br /><br />Again, the counting of second and third preference votes only comes into play if the 'winner' doesn't have a majority. Under first past the post, your vote isn't really as equal as you think. If you don't vote for the winning party, your vote and your opinions count for precisely jack shit. You don't get to influence the election one bit.<br /><br />Next we get to my favourite bit of the article:<br /><br /><blockquote>Votes initially given to fringe parties, such as the BNP, will be counted two, three or even four times — and prove decisive in some constituencies.</blockquote>Now, in the very next paragraph, we get this:<br /><br /><blockquote>Overwhelmingly, AV is a system which — by requiring candidates to campaign for second, third and fourth preferences — favours bland, common denominator politicians over bold, decisive leaders. It rewards those who cause minimal offence — rather than those who have the courage of their convictions.</blockquote>So, there you have it. AV is a system which rewards the most inoffensive candidates. But it also rewards the most offensive candidates, such as the BNP! I'm pretty sure you can only make one of these arguments, though perhaps the Mail is putting the "the BNP will win!" argument as their first choice, and expressing a second preference for the contradictory "no offensive politicians will be able to win!" argument. Either that or the Mail doesn't actually consider the BNP offensive, which I suppose is always a possibility.<br /><br /><blockquote>A moment of decision in the polling booth is replaced by a process of relative judgment, as voters try to decide who they dislike least.</blockquote>Doesn't that just fill you with terror? Voters would be largely unable to just vote on the spur of the moment by tossing a coin, or voting Tory on a whim because they were given a blue pen and their favourite colour is blue. They'd have to have some actual preferences! Nuances to their views! Imagine a world in which a voter who wants to vote Green, but would also rather keep the Tories out and is painfully aware that the Greens are unlikely to win, was given the ability to express his or her preferences in a simple numerical order? It'd be fucking insane!<br /><br />Much of the rest of the article is devoted to detailing the pant-soiling nightmare scenario AV might bring, of hung parliaments and their resultant coalitions, with leaders who didn't win the popular vote colluding to form uneasy alliances and breaking manifesto pledges. I don't really feel it's necessary for me to write a clunking punchline to that, is it? Let's just sound the IT'S OBVIOUS WHAT I'M DRIVING AT HERE klaxon and move on.<br /><br />The article continues to moan about the Coalition government, which obviously could have only happened under the AV we don't have:<br /><br /><blockquote>The replacement of Trident has been delayed . . . counter-terrorism powers have been weakened . . . the promise to reduce the number of non-EU migrants to the tens of thousands has been downgraded . . . reform of Labour’s insidious Human Rights Act has been kicked into the long grass.</blockquote>And the reason the Tories couldn't force through all these promises? Because they didn't have a mandate. There was a hung parliament. The Tories failed to convince the majority of people that these policies were important, and so they had to compromise.<br /><br /><blockquote>Indeed, the messiest compromise of them all is the referendum itself — an expensive distraction which is taking place for no reason other than Mr Clegg insisted upon it as part of the price of his support.</blockquote>Of course, the fact that it's only now that we the public get to actually vote on AV is a demonstration of one of the limitations of the first past the post system. We would never have had the option of doing this if the Tories had been in complete control, even if they only had a low percentage of the vote. AV is not a perfect system, but because of the brutally black-and-white nature of FPTP, we're most likely not going to get the choice of alternatives like the single transferable vote or full proportional representation unless we get this, because it's usually not in the interests of parties who rule under FPTP to implement. Only the hung parliament has afforded us this opportunity for now, and we'd probably need another to get a similar chance in future.<br /><br /><blockquote>The latest estimate is that, of those certain to go to the polls tomorrow, around two-thirds will vote No.<br /><br />But, alarmingly, more than half of those asked say they may not bother to take part at all. This is where the danger to our democracy truly lies.<br /><br />For it is certain that the luvvies and political anoraks who support AV — if only as a step to full proportional representation — will turn out in their droves to cast their ballots tomorrow.</blockquote>Ah, the political anoraks! They'll be out there, <em>voting</em>. With their bloody considered political opinions, the big fucking nerds. Get a life! Just vote for who your dad voted for, or for whoever's promising the most frequent wheelie bin collections.<br /><br /><blockquote>And, thanks to a disgraceful agreement between Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg, no minimum turnout is required for the referendum to be binding.</blockquote>...just like no minimum turnout was required for the current election's result to be binding. You know, the one that brought us here. The irony here is something else; the Mail is arguing against AV, a system that tries to appoint a candidate with the broadest majority appeal, while defending a system which actually gave us the no-overall-mandate situation it's complaining about, a system in which the Conservatives failed to get an overall majority on a relatively low turnout.<br /><br />Of course, no lazy No-to-AV article would be complete without "We will be stuck with a system used by only three countries in the world", and sure enough that appears at the end of the article, enabling you to cross off the last bit of your No-to-AV bingo card. It's just a half-arsed argument that plays into people's fear of change; it adds nothing to the debate about how well AV might actually work and just replaces it with "You don't want to look like Fiji, do you? They're probably fucking MENTAL in Fiji!".<br /><br />So anyway, there you have it, the AV debate, laid out in idiot's terms by the Mail. To summarise: Vote no to AV, because it's waaaaaaaaay complicated and you couldn't <em>possibly</em> understand it. And it'll bring boring, safe, bland, do-nothing candidates who are also extremist and offensive. Also, NICK CLEGG LIKES IT AND HE IS A DICK!<br /><br />Actually, that last argument <em>is</em> reasonably compelling.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-48504151482412096002011-04-15T11:14:00.002+01:002011-04-15T11:19:27.214+01:00In which Littlejohn defends phone-hackingOne of the most enjoyable aspects of the ongoing revelations in the NOTW phone-hacking scandal has been watching underwhelming hacks attempting to justify it or attempt to diminish its relevance with increasingly extravagant and unconvincing shoulder-shrugs. True to depressing form, Richard Littlejohn has made own typically crap attempt. <br /><br />Before that, in, <a href="http://istyosty.com/1h01">today's grating word-dump</a>, Littlejohn rails against the 'gruesome slappers' who sell kiss-and-tell stories, happy to put the blame primarily on the women involved and, in so doing, glossing over his profession's own grubby yet pivotal role in the whole business. His apparent contempt for people like "a bird called Linsey Dawn McKenzie" seems to contrast with his insistence that we all have a right to know about where celebrities' dicks are going. You'd think he hail them as heroes of citizen journalism! <br /><br />Surprisingly, Littlejohn actually approaches a point when he complains about how legal injunctions taken out in the reporting of these matters unfairly favour the rich, but typically pisses on his own chips with self-parodic mentions of how it's all the fault of 'yuman rites'. <br /><br />Having established that we all have a Right To Know about stuff, Littlejohn moves on to the pressing topic of belittling the importance of the NOTW affair. Under the sub-heading "Sorry, but this isn't Watergate", Littlejohn lays bare his "couldn't give a shit" attitude: <br /><blockquote>But nor do I understand what the difference is between the Screws listening to Sienna Miller’s tittle-tattle, and the self-righteous Guardian publishing leaked emails from national security agencies.</blockquote>Now, I'm not particularly supportive of every decision Wikileaks has made, but I'm not so cretinously fucking stupid as to be unable to tell the ethical difference between releasing not-even-hidden diplomatic memos which relate to issues of serious international political importance, and bugging the private phone lines of actors and footballers so we can all have a good voyeuristic pry into who they're knobbing/being knobbed by. <br /><br />Of course, when in doubt, always pull the "ah, but what about...?" distraction card; <br /><blockquote>Incredibly, there are now 50 officers investigating this matter full-time, having been pulled off rape, robbery and murder cases. Is this a proper use of scarce police resources at a time when London is in the grip of gun crime? </blockquote>At this point I could probably go and try and check whether officers actually HAVE been moved off rape and murder cases, or I could go and check if London really is "in the grip of gun crime", but it seems kind of pointless, right? If the best thing you can come up with to defend phone-hacking is that it's <em>less bad than rape</em>, then it's not really worth the effort of trying to argue. <br /><br />Next up, hilariously, rumoured £800,000-a-year celebrity newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn tells us what we the plebs think: <br /><blockquote>The paying public don’t share the collective Fleet Street/Westminster/Scotland Yard fascination with phone hacking. They must conclude that this particular three-ring circus has gone stark, staring mad.</blockquote>Actually, some of us very much <em>do</em> share the fascination. No, we don't wish for the police to stop investigating all rapes and murders, but some of us actually would like to see journalism's grubby and illegal reliance on bugging celebrity phones for shit sex-based gossip come to an end. Some of us rather enjoyed <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/newspapers/2011/04/phone-yeah-cameron-murdoch">Hugh Grant's revenge-bugging of Paul McMullan</a> (Grant trended on Twitter as a result of the interest in this, and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/14/hugh-grant-news-of-the-world">Roy Greenslade was moved to complain</a> about how much interest the story was getting now Grant was involved). Some of us also enjoyed how Grant's piece undermined <a href="http://istyosty.com/1b1z">this bit of utter fucking celeb-obsessed nonsense</a>. <br /><br />But, more importantly, some of us just think that it's actually a bit wrong for the media to use their powers to bug private phones in pursuit of the story. Perhaps we the public would have more sympathy if you, the journalists, actually used it to target people in power, people of influence, catching them in acts of actual corruption, exposing real crimes, conflicts of interest or duplicity among those whom we vote for or who run the country. Instead, it's easier for Fleet Street to just find out who a footballer is cheating on his wife with and run article after article of pisspoor thigh-rubbing about how many times they did it and what his stamina was like. I mean, for Christ's sake, if you're going to commit acts of criminality in pursuit of content, you could at least target someone more important than professional charisma-vacuum Sienna "Sienna Miller" Miller, a human being so forgettable I'm surprised I even got to the end of typing her name before having to go on Wikipedia to remember who she was.<br /><br />The bottom line is, if there's a crime here, some of think it needs investigating, not simply shelving because there are more important things going on. The police work for all of us, and some of us are actually concerned about the pressure the media puts on the Met in particular to keep their nose out and turn a blind eye while the tabloids dig around in people's fucking bins. It's a grubby, hard-to-justify business, and you're going to need one helluva better excuse than the shit ones Littlejohn is tossing forward if you're going to convince us we shouldn't care.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-18661582553066331142011-04-06T10:37:00.000+01:002011-04-06T10:38:24.226+01:00Quentin Letts vs the massive liberal conspiracyYou might think, as we sit here under a primarily Tory government, watching as it makes at least partly ideologically-motivated 'savings' to public services, that it would take some pretty massive balls to claim that the Left was running the country, right? Well! Enter, stage right, Quentin Letts, his giant, monumental balls resting in a shopping trolley as he trundles in, eager to make that exact point. In <a href="http://istyosty.com/xya">We may have a Tory PM - but Lefties and luvvies still run Britain</a>, Letts attempts the quite extraordinary, beginning; <br /><blockquote>Over at Ofcom it is shrug-your-shoulders time. The broadcasting regulator had shown leniency to ‘edgy’ comedian Frankie Boyle after he made jibes about a disabled child — letting him off with no more than a rap on the knuckles. Boyle’s remarks were made on Channel 4, another public body. Chairman David Abraham and the channel’s liberal supremos were similarly disinclined to take the matter too gravely.</blockquote>This is a pretty baffling tactic in itself. Firstly, the right hardly has the monopoly on being irritated and/or offended by Boyle's laboured, tiring, scattergun shock-making. He gets some leeway on account of being a comedian, rather than, say, someone actually running the country (more on this distinction later, Quentin!), but even liberal lefties aren't always massively keen on rape and incest jokes where the imagined rapist is a real, blameless disabled, mixed-race child. Hang on, reading that again, one might think that chastising Boyle for insulting such a person would be a sign of 'political correctness', and that leniency would be the more right-wing or libertarian position? Either way, it's a strange point to make a mere two days after everyone's favourite denim-afflicted right-wing tossbag Jeremy Clarkson was similarly <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/apr/04/top-gear-cleared-anti-mexican-comments">let off</a> over his hilarious Mexican stereotyping, much as he was when he made a joke referencing Ipswich's murdered sex workers. It's almost as if Letts is talking one-eyed garbage ('one-eyed' being another insult Clarkson hurled at left-wing colossus Gordon Brown and got a minor rap on the knuckles for). Later in the piece we find out just how wide the liberal tentacles that control Britain are spread: <br /><blockquote>Over on Twitter, meanwhile, millionaire actor and Labour supporter Eddie Izzard was regaling his faithful munchkins with his latest political apercus, attacking the Government’s cuts.</blockquote>Who would have thought that famous transvestite comedian Eddie Izzard would be a liberal? Witness the power he wields; talking to people on Twitter...er...being at a Labour conference? Help me out here. <br /><blockquote>They all show the way that our politics is increasingly being influenced by unelected voices from the Left. </blockquote>If only Eddie Izzard had existed before May 2010! We might have been spared Tory rule, for the socialist liberals to reign supreme. But alas. <br /><blockquote>The Yes To AV referendum campaign has been dominated by showbusiness personalities. Stephen Fry has been involved. Isn’t he always? So have Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick in TV’s Blackadder, Oscar winner Colin Firth, militant atheist Richard Dawkins (ugh) and dreadlocked poet Benjamin Zephaniah.</blockquote>The more you think about it, the more astonishing it is that Cameron is Prime Minister, right? He had defeat massed ranks of leftist forces that blocked his path; titans such as Baldrick out of Blackadder, and a <em>poet</em>. Letts continue to rage on in bewilderment; <br /><blockquote>Hang on. Are politicians not voted in by us? Do we not choose them to represent us and to be accountable? How can an inadequate ‘star’ such as the impeccably Left-wing novelist Zadie Smith be held up to scrutiny when she appears on BBC Radio to rail against library closures?</blockquote>I agree to some extent that there can be problems with unelected and often uninformed celebrities and lobbyists appearing on the airwaves. This is hardly an exclusively left-wing problem though. Turn on the radio and you're as likely to hear Stephen Green, the Taxpayers' Alliance or any number of unelected anti-abortion campaigners mouthing off as you are to be subjected to the terrifying danger of a novelist talking about libraries. Letts dribbles on in this manner, apparently staggered to discover that artists are not typically fond of cuts/'savings' to the arts, gently accusing (with caveats) Phillip Pullman of being motivated by pure financial self-interest for not wanting libraries to be shut down. Eventually, once he's mentioned Stephen Fry and Judi Dench, he starts to run out of big-hitting lefties to complain about the staggering political influence of. At one stage he refers to "Actor Sam West, whose mother Prunella Scales (of Fawlty Towers fame) appears in Labour Party adverts". Yes, an actor whose mum was in Fawlty Towers! An actor I had to Google! He was in Howards End apparently! Who could fail to unite behind such a totemic figure? <br /><blockquote>No discussion of pay is allowed to pass on the public airwaves without a contribution from Left-wing journalist Will Hutton</blockquote>Letts stumbles onto a hint of some kind of point here. But it isn't Leftist bias. The BBC and other news organisations are obsessed with, appearing 'balanced', as they are obliged to be. You have a climate scientist on? You need a 'climate sceptic' to argue with him. Pro-choice campaigner? Better get someone virulently anti-abortion to oppose them. Alternative medicine debate? Get one scientist and one homeopath and give them equal time, as if they're merely two equally correct alternatives. I'm happy to accept that actors and rock stars and comedians are overwhelmingly left-wing. There are reasons for that I could go into if I a) could be bothered to do the research and b) wasn't at work right now. But they're just mouths flapping in the wind, much like Clarkson and Littlejohn and Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama. None of them have managed to prevent Tory rule. They didn't even manage to prevent the rightwards slide of the Labour party either. It must be strange to be Quentin Letts, looking at a Tory-led coalition government, who in turn took over from an ever-increasingly centrist 'New' Labour, and argue that we are dominated by socialists and left-wing thinking because a few comedians and actors get some airtime to say they don't want libraries to close. Particularly strange given that he writes for the ever-popular Daily Mail, whose readership dwarfs that of the Guardian or the Independent. Some people are just never bloody happy, are they?No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-8206892956675260042011-03-18T15:14:00.002+00:002011-03-18T17:47:29.413+00:00On the Daily Mail and rapeFor a paper famed for its pearl-clutching prudery about sex, the Daily Mail often seems to get surprisingly defensive about the wayward wang deployment of men accused of rapes and sexual assault. It's rare that more than a couple of weeks go by without the paper running <a href="http://istyosty.com/d4f">a story</a> about a woman convicted of lying about a rape, as if to create a narrative whereby women routinely use sex and subsequent lies about it as a form of manipulation.<br /><br />If you want to know how far the Mail's attempts to muddy the waters surrounding rape cases will go, then look no further than today's <a href="http://istyosty.com/g5b">Six footballers jailed over gang rape of 12-year-old girls in midnight park orgy</a>. Here, the Mail comes across as largely sympathetic to the six men involved, despite them being a) footballers, b) accused of raping two <em>twelve-year-olds</em>, and c) largely of ethnicities permanently forbidden from entering Midsomer.<br /><br />Straight off the bat, in the first line, words like 'rape' and sexual assault are replaced by "midnight sex orgy". By the fourth paragraph we're told that the poor lads "were encouraged by the schoolgirl 'Lolitas'" who apparently ensnared them with text messages. We're informed that one of the two girls, the "most active" (<em>shouldn't that be "more active"? - Pedantry Ed.),</em> "called the defendants over one-by-one to have full sex or perform sex acts on them", whereas; <blockquote>The other girl was more reluctant and was raped by just one player.</blockquote>Ah, just the one rape there, then. Good job she looked reluctant, and therefore only got raped rather than gang-raped.<br /><br />The entire tone of the article continues in this manner. The girls, or one of them at least, were up for it, and so it was unfortunate that these six men took it in turns with her, apparently believing she was 16 or over. We're then told the men all made the exact same "mistake", and informed; <blockquote>They were said to have been shocked and disgusted to learn the true ages of the girls, with one stating: 'I've got a little sister about that age.' </blockquote>The most worrying part of all this is that the Mail doesn't seem to agree with or believe in the established legal position that 12-year-olds cannot legally consent. Yes, if the story is to be believed, this wasn't a violent, physically coercive stranger rape. However, even given that, what we have here is a group of 18-21 year old men taking sexual advantage of two children too young to legally consent to sex. Even the Mail's rather sympathetic-to-the-convicted retelling of the story admits that one of the girls was 'reluctant'. But all this is rather glossed over in favour of what seems like a narrative which deflects blame from the men involved and onto the slutty, cock-hungry 12-year-old girls who ruthlessly tempted them to gang-fuck them in a park without first checking if they were 16. It's difficult to imagine a 21-year-old not being able to tell that the girl he's about to have sex with is under 13, but the Mail seems to buy it unreservedly. This isn't a 16-year-old having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend that he's in the same class with, the gap is much more distinct than that. This is important.<br /><br />The girl-blaming tone continues into the comments section: <blockquote>They did a reprehensible thing but I cant help having sympathy for them. The 12 year old girl is clearly a danger to herself and should be removed from her parents no question.</blockquote>Another commenter says; <blockquote>Ummmm am i the only one who took any notice of the parts where this girl had lied - saying she was 16 - and had willingly called them over one by one!!!</blockquote>And yet another; <blockquote>It wasnt rape, girls nowadays look much older than they actually are, if these girls state they 16, one even having a facebook page with a fake age, then im sorry it is their fault. Guys of that age are always persistent when it comes to sex, its hardly a girl being pinned down and violated...</blockquote>And one more for good measure; <blockquote>abslutely that's not rape. the girls were cooperative</blockquote>It's depressing to see the lack of seriousness with which those below the line are treating the story, but on this occasion they're not much different to DAILY MAIL REPORTER'S rather one-sided account.<br /><br />Still, at least these men didn't buy the girls some <a href="http://istyosty.com/fxr">penis-shaped sweets</a>, that would have been a real fucking scandal.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-13038750995938925672011-01-31T21:51:00.000+00:002011-01-31T21:51:54.310+00:00A True Story Of Daily Mail Lies (guest post)<em>In a departure from this blog's usual jokey fisking, what follows is a guest post from fellow Manchester-dweller and fellow cool person </em><a href="http://www.twitter.com/jules_shaw"><em>Juliet Shaw</em></a><em>. It's the story of how she agreed to be the subject of what turned out to be a deeply misleading Mail article, and her subsequent fight against it.<br /></em><br />I grew up with the Daily Mail. When I was younger and living with my parents, they read it every day. As I got older and began to form my own opinions, I decided I didn’t like it and instead opted for what I thought to be the more independent viewpoint of The Guardian. However, I didn’t actively oppose the Daily Mail. I had no opinion on it, other than it wasn’t for me.<br /><br />Pre-Facebook, pre-blogs and Twitter, if you didn’t like a particular newspaper, you didn’t buy it and could quite easily go about your life without becoming involved in any discussions about its content.<br /><br />So when, in 2003, I received a request on Response Source (an online resource for journalists to request information from PR companies) from a freelance journalist working for the Daily Mail looking for people who had left the city to live in the country and the benefits it had brought, I decided to respond. I vaguely knew the journalist as she’d started work at the Manchester Evening News just a few weeks before I left my job there. I’d recently left Manchester to return to my home town in Cumbria with my two children (three and 10 at the time) because of an acrimonious relationship breakdown, and I was working as a freelance copywriter and PR consultant and keen to raise my professional profile in my new home town, where I lived in an unremarkable semi-detached house 10 minutes away from the beach.<br /><br />What followed was a catalogue of events that proved just how little regard the Daily Mail has for the people it relies on for its content. Some might argue that the celebrities the Daily Mail and other tabloids pick apart on a daily basis deserve the negative coverage they get. After all, they’re only too keen to court publicity when it suits them, when they’ve got a new film or book to plug – so they’re fair game when it comes to exposés about their love life and can’t be surprised if they’re the subject of a negative article about their weight/hair/dress sense, right?<br /><br />However, I wasn’t a celebrity. Some might be of the opinion that, working in PR, I knew the game and how it worked and that by putting myself forward to appear in a national newspaper, I too deserved everything I got. But my speciality at the time was business to business PR – writing case studies about wonderful things IT companies did and then getting them placed in the trade press. Everything I wrote was – and still is - backed up with statistics and evidence, and then sent to my interviewee to confirm that I’d quoted him/her correctly and in the right context. I’d never have dreamt of paraphrasing or using artistic licence – I was of the opinion that if I had to start making bits of the story up, then I didn’t really have a story.<br /><br />So I naively (or stupidly, depending on how far you’re willing to push your sympathy levels) believed that when I was interviewed about the benefits of leaving the city to live in the country, my comments would be reflected accurately and I would have a nice bit of publicity in a national newspaper with which to promote my business.<br /><br />My response to the journalist was met with a request for a photograph, and after sending it I was told I’d be ideal and that the feature would be a great plug for my business. Unfortunately, rather than promoting my business, the feature made me a laughing stock. I earned a reputation within my community for being a fantasist and a liar, and spent the next two years learning the intricacies of the laws of defamation and in order to try and salvage what was left of my reputation.<br /><br />The whole episode started badly. I was alarmed by the line of questioning during the interview, which seemed entirely focused towards the number of men I’d been out with rather than the benefits of country living.<br /><br />Then I was coerced into attending a photo-shoot in London – a round trip of 580 miles - after being told by the journalist that her “neck was on the line big-time” if I didn’t. Not wanting to be responsible for someone I barely knew getting into trouble and perhaps losing a commission, I reluctantly agreed to attend after they agreed to pay my travel costs and put me up in a hotel for the night – coming all the way from Cumbria, it couldn’t be done in a day. It took many weeks and countless emails to increasingly senior members of Daily Mail staff before my expenses were eventually reimbursed.<br /><br />On 11 September 2003, the article appeared in the Femail section of the Daily Mail. I’ll reproduce it here – what was printed, along with what actually happened.<br /><br />“Sex & the Country – What happened when four singletons, fed up with shallow urban lives, upped sticks in a quest for rural romance?”<br /><br />Shallow urban lives? I didn’t have a shallow urban life. I had two children and a career. I’d just been through a very traumatic relationship breakdown and a period of severe depression. And I certainly didn’t force my children to move 100 miles in a ‘quest for rural romance’. I wanted a better life for us all, away from a situation that had caused me immense distress.<br /><br />“Sex And The City is back on TV – but an increasing number of British career women are turning their backs on metropolitan life in favour of the traditional courting rituals of the countryside.”<br /><br />So now it became clear that the article had never been about the benefits of leaving the city to live in the countryside, as it had been told to me. The article was a reposte to the final series of Sex And The City. I was never made aware of this. Had I known the feature was to take this angle, I would never have taken part.<br /><br />“FEMAIL spoke to four, including Juliet Shaw, 31, a PR consultant, who moved from Manchester to Walney Island, Cumbria, in August 2000. She split from her partner four years ago and has two children, Amelia, four, and Bethany, ten.”<br /><br />I was 33. I moved in April 2000. I’d split from my partner three years ago. Nothing defamatory there, but inaccurate nonetheless.<br /><br />“She says she has been asked out on more dates in her three years in the country than in 20 years in the city.”<br /><br />No I didn’t. Not true. I said I rarely went out and, other than two occasions which I’ll describe later, I didn’t meet men - repeatedly, in response to the increasingly probing questions about my love life.<br /><br />“Juliet says:”<br /><br />That simple line made it all oh so much worse. I wasn’t being paraphrased, or speculated about. What was to follow was directly from me, in my own words. Or so the Daily Mail would have its readers believe.<br /><br />“The ‘best’ man I met in my final year of being single in Manchester, a doctor, ‘forgot’ to tell me he was married until a few weeks after we met in a nightclub.”<br /><br />Fabricated. All of it. In my final year of being in Manchester I was in a relationship with my daughter’s father. My final year of being single in Manchester? It had never been discussed. Without sitting down with a calender, I’d struggle to work out when that even was. Either way, I had certainly never had a relationship with a doctor, married or otherwise. During the interview, after racking my brains for romantic encounters following increasingly probing questions from the journalist, I had finally remembered a drunken snog I’d had with a friend of a friend on a night out around six months’ previously. He was a doctor, but he wasn’t married and there was certainly no relationship. We didn’t even exchange phone numbers.<br /><br />“To me, it summed up the hypocrisy of the whole city experience, and I despaired of ever finding a man to settle down with.”<br /><br />No I didn’t. I left Manchester because of an extremely traumatic relationship, and I would have been quite happy to never date again. As for the ‘hyprocisy of the whole city experience’, I don’t even know what this means.<br /><br />“It was all the more difficult for me because I had two children from a previous relationship.”<br /><br />What was difficult? Dating? I didn’t want to date. Before I left Manchester I was in a relationship, so no dating there. When I left, I was more than happy to be on my own with my girls. I certainly didn’t begrudge them from preventing me from going out on the pull.<br /><br />“But I have been delighted to discover that most social events in the countryside are children friendly, such as garden parties, camping and walking on the beach.”<br /><br />I’ve never been to a garden party in my life. I enjoy camping and we did walk on the beach regularly. I did these activities to have fun with my children, not in a desperate attempt to snare a man.<br /><br />“In the city, dating revolves around the sort of places to which you can’t take children, such as bars and clubs.”<br /><br />Does it? I wouldn’t know. I was in a relationship so didn’t go out dating.<br /><br />“It was difficult to find a man when I could go out only if I had a babysitter.”<br /><br />I already had one so wasn’t looking.<br /><br />“My sister had lived on a farm in Cumbria for ten years, and she and her husband loved it so much that I decided to move nearby. I grew up in Derbyshire, so I was used to the pace of life in the countryside.”<br /><br />No I didn’t. I spent a few years in Hadfield, Cheshire, but the majority of my early years were spent in Barrow-in-Furness. Again, nothing defamatory, just a simple inability to get things right.<br /><br />“I now live in a gorgeous three-bedroom semi-detached house with a massive garden and its own beach.”<br /><br />Now, this is where I started to become really alarmed. I lived on Walney Island which doesn’t have any houses that have their own private beach. You can walk all the way around the island on very public shores, and anyone familiar with the island will know this to be the case.<br /><br />“I am a ten-minute drive from the Lakes, and it costs me just £400 a month, which is what I paid to live in a two-bedroom flat in Manchester. I have started my own PR business and because it’s online, it doesn’t matter where I am – I’ve been earning more than I ever did as a wage-slave in the city.”<br /><br />Again, basic factual errors. I’d been working as a freelance PR consultant and copywriter for four years by 2003, and started doing so two years before I left Manchester. My business wasn’t ‘online’, whatever that may mean, and I was never a wage-slave in the city. I had a job I loved which I chose to leave after the birth of my second daughter.<br /><br />“But most importantly, I’ve been asked out on more dates in the past three years than in the 20 years I spent in Manchester.”<br /><br />Leaving aside the assertion that had I spent 20 years in Manchester which meant that, using the ages in the article, I would have been 11 when I left my family and moved there (and she’s already stated I grew up in Derbyshire), this was simply not true. It was made up.<br /><br />“Eligible country bachelors have asked for my number in village pubs, on the high street, on the beach and at the local fete.”<br /><br />Fabricated. All of it. Never said it.<br /><br />“Now I’m more experienced at countryside dating, I take full advantage of all the opportunities there are to meet men.”<br /><br />I wasn’t, and I didn’t. I had two young children. I worked from home. I rarely socialised. My idea of a day out was doing the big shop in Tesco.<br /><br />“I’ve helped out on a local farm, feeding lambs and collecting eggs, because there were several young, fit and handsome men working there.”<br /><br />My sister lived on a farm. I never helped out on it. Sometimes she gave me eggs, I never collected them. The only men who worked there were here husband, his father, his brother and, some years previously a man called Kevin who I shall refer to in more detail shortly.<br /><br />“I would never have imagined myself in wellies scrabbling around in the dirt a year ago – I was more at home in designer stilletos – but I have to admit I really enjoyed it.”<br /><br />Fabricated. I’ve never worn designer anything. I hate shopping. And the only time I’ve worn wellies and scrabbled around in dirt was when I went to Glastonbury in 1997.<br /><br />“Being at the farm every weekend, I ended up getting to know one of the farmhands, Kevin, very well. He’s three years younger than me and we saw each other for a month before we drifted apart.”<br /><br />Now the fabrication is damaging not just me, but other people. Kevin was a friend of my sister and her husband, and he had indeed worked at the farm. However, this was a couple of years previously and he’d been married at the time. We saw each other a couple of times long after he’d left the farm and long after he’d got divorced. This single sentence makes it appear that, again, I was dating a married man.<br /><br />“It was so refreshing talking about nature and the countryside while sitting and cuddling on hay bales, rather than discussing something vacuous about work in a noisy city bar or club.”<br /><br />Oh my. I laughed so hard when I read this (before the reality of the whole article hit in and I cried). I can categorically state that, prior to attending the photoshoot for the Daily Mail when we were asked to pose on bales of hay brandishing pitchforks, I had never sat on one, never mind cuddled on it. Totally, completely made up.<br /><br />“Another great place to meet men is on the beach. There are always lots walking their dogs or riding a bike who will smile or stop to talk to me.”<br /><br />There are men on the beach. Some of them will be on bikes, some of them will have dogs. However, I never said any of this.<br /><br />“People aren’t afraid of each other the way they are in cities, where even making eye contact with someone can lead to verbal abuse. I’m also convinced the men you meet in the countryside are nicer characters than those in the city. They are easier to approach, less arrogant and not at all concerned iwth how you look or whether you’re wearing designer clothes.”<br /><br />Not defamatory, but not true either. I never said any of it.<br /><br />“The only thing I really miss is the shopping and the nightlife.”<br /><br />I hate shoppping.<br /><br />“But then I don’t feel the same kind of pressure to keep up with trends.”<br /><br />What pressure? I’ve never felt any pressure to keep up with anything, except perhaps my rent.<br /><br />“I’ve swapped my Jimmy Choos for Timberland boots, and I’ll never go back.”<br /><br />I’ve never owned any Jimmy Choos or Timberland boots. I didn’t say it.<br /><br />This article appeared in the week my youngest daughter started infant school. I’d been looking forward to it immensely, because I’d spent the last three years working from home and looking after two young children. Working from home meant I didn’t have the social aspects of life that working in an office could bring and being a single parent of two young children meant that nights out were rare. I’d suffered depression of varying degrees, particularly since the birth of my second daughter, and had been happy to stay at home with my girls. But I saw my youngest daughter starting school as an opportunity to meet some new people, make some new friends and the start of a new chapter in my life.<br /><br />This article changed all that. When I went to school on the day it was published, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. There was audible mockery and thinly-disguised pointing and sniggering. I didn’t blame the perpetrators – after all, here was the braggart who lied in a national newspaper about having her own private beach and boasted of her endless pursuit of men on beaches and at garden parties. I would probably have done the same.<br /><br />But there was no way of defending myself. I couldn’t approach every single person who sniggered at me in the street or while I was doing my shopping and ask them if they’d read the article, and explain I hadn’t said any of it.<br /><br />Obviously, I wrote to complain. They responded that they were happy the article was an accurate reflection of what I’d said and were standing by it. I wrote again, pointing out in detail the discrepancies. Again, they stood by their article and told me that they would not enter into any further correspondence with me and considered the matter closed.<br /><br />I certainly didn’t consider the matter closed. My name, image and brief details of my life had been used to fabricate a story which bore no resemblance to me or my life, then presented as fact, said by me, in my own words. It was damaging to me, my children, my friends and had a significantly negative impact on my life.<br /><br />I emailed the other three women who’d been interviewed for the article – I found their addresses on an email the journalist had sent about the photoshoot. They each confirmed that they’d been horrified by the article, that it bore no relationship to anything they’d said and that they too had complained to Associated Newspapers and been similarly stonewalled. Sadly, after consulting solicitors they decided not to pursue any legal action because of the prohibitive costs.<br /><br />I made my own enquiries with a solicitor and he was very sympathetic, but told me that I’d need a five-figure sum to consider bringing a claim.<br /><br />Not having a five-figure sum, but determined to bring the Daily Mail to account for their damaging article, I decided to pursue my own claim.<br /><br />So I researched the laws of defamation on the internet, identified the areas appropriate to me and acted as a litigant in person in an action against Associated Newspapers.<br /><br />In response to my original claim for defamation, the Daily Mail brought a claim against me citing that I had no prospect of success and proposing that my claim be thrown out. This meant that instead of Associated Newspapers responding to my grievances, I was forced to defend myself to them and prove that I had been wronged. They also applied for me to pay their costs.<br /><br />It took two years of legal wranglings before the claim was finally heard in front of Mr Justice Tugendhadt in the Royal Courts of Justice in London.<br /><br />I won’t go into detail of his summing up – I’d have to go down to the cellar and sift through boxes and boxes of paperwork to do that, and I’ve already spent two years of my life on this. (You could probably double that if you included all the time I spend jabbering on about it to people I meet at parties.) But Mr Justice Tugendhadt ruled in my favour, and gave me leave to proceed to a full defamation trial with jury. The two or three points he didn’t allow weren’t on the basis that he believed them to be true – it was because although it was accepted they were fictional, I couldn’t prove that my reputation had been harmed as a result of them being in a national newspaper: technicalities. He also declined Associated Newspapers application for costs against me of around £24,000.<br /><br />Immediately following the ruling, their barrister approached me outside the court and asked what I required to settle. Having not thought that far ahead – I hadn’t dared to believe I might win that round of my battle, so hadn’t given my next move any further thought – I declined to answer, asking her to contact me in writing.<br /><br />All I’d ever wanted was an admission that they had got it wrong. If, in the response to my original letter, they’d have apologised for the freelance journalist getting some facts wrong, or admitted their sub editors had been a little heavy-handed, I would have left it there. But I was not prepared to be defamed in a national newspaper and then bullied into silence.<br /><br />While I was considering my position, I received a call from the senior partner in the law firm representing Associated Newspapers. He ever so kindly pointed out that trials cost lots and lots of money, and it would be such a shame if they were forced to take my house off me were I to lose such a complicated case. I pointed out my house was rented and I had nothing to lose. He then very sympathetically informed me it would be just horrid if they had to take my business assets in order to recover their costs should the outcome of the trial not be favourable for me. I thanked him for his concern, and pointed out that as a freelance working from home, my only asset was my brain and I was more than happy to put it to good use fighting my claim to the end, whatever the outcome.<br /><br />Surprisingly, the next day I received a letter asking me what I wanted in order to avoid the need for a full trial. It was simple – always had been. I wanted an apology. I wanted them to admit they’d fabricated the article, made me look a fool and damaged my reputation.<br /><br />And given they’d tried to make me pay upwards of £20,000 in costs just to get to that point, I thought it only fair I was reimbursed for my losses: for the money I didn’t earn when I was spending time preparing my claim and subsequent defence; for the reams and reams of evidence and statements I’d had to prepare in triplicate; for the money I’d spent travelling to London to attend the hearing.<br /><br />I worked it out as accurately as possible – the number of days, the photocopying, the train tickets – and asked for exactly that, with a breakdown of how I’d come to my figure. Given that the partner in Associated Newspapers’ law firm had warned me a trial would cost upwards of £100,000, I could have plucked a number from thin air and added a few zeros. But it was never about the money. It was the principle. It was about standing up to a corporation that thought nothing of using my image, my name and my location alongside a story purporting to be about me, in my own words, but that bore no resemblance to my life or my values. It was about wanting them to accept responsibility for the damage they’d done to my life.<br /><br />So I sent them my conditions to settle; my costs, and an apology. They agreed to one or the other. I could have the costs and the matter would be resolved. Or they would print an apology, but offer no financial recompense.<br /><br />By this time, I had spent two years bringing this case to court and defending myself against a national corporation. I was tired of fighting, and although I had been determined to see it through to the bitter end, the prospect of recouping some of my losses and never having to spend another night sifting through hundreds of pages of statements and quotes was too appealing to refuse. I also suspected that had I agreed to an apology being printed, it would never have found its way into the newspaper and I would have to start another lengthy legal battle. And I knew that if I did proceed to full trial with jury, and the jury ruled in my favour but their settlement was the same or less than the figure I’d requested, I’d be liable for all the costs of the trial.<br /><br />So I went for the money. It wasn’t a massive amount, certainly not life changing. The majority of it went to my mum, who’d been bailing me out when my earnings dipped due to spending so much time on the case. A couple of weeks later my engine blew in my car, so the rest went on a second-hand Punto. That’s the sums we’re talking about, not Ferarri territory. Not even close.<br /><br />In the five or so years that have passed since my claim was settled, things have got much, much worse. The huge growth in the Mail’s online presence has meant that its search for content becomes ever more desperate, and it gleefully prints pictures of 15 year old girls in bikinis - “Hasn’t she grown up!”- while whipping the nation into an outraged frenzy by falsely claiming Muslims insist extractor fans are removed because they’re offended by the smell of bacon, or that schools are being forced to teach ‘gay maths’ to corruptable young minds. But the majority of the people the Daily Mail tells lies about won’t do anything about it. Bringing a libel claim is prohibitively expensive, and there’s no legal aid. And for those who have the time and inclination to take the law into their own hands, it just got a lot more difficult.<br /><br />The same judge that ruled in my favour, Mr Justice Tugendhat, ruled in June 2010 that in order to bring a claim for libel, claimants must prove that they have been substantially affected by the offending article, rather than simply being able to demonstrate an adverse effect of publication. The ruling was made in response to a claim against Lynn Barber and the Telegraph Newspaper Group over a book review, and applauded by journalists and news organisations as a step forward for press freedom.<br /><br />Unfortunately, it also made it much easier for unscrupulous tabloids to print whatever they like about members of the public in order to fit their own agenda, with very little prospect of recrimination.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com312tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-70500766680358088022011-01-24T11:31:00.000+00:002011-01-24T11:31:32.222+00:00Melanie Phillips and "normal sexual behaviour" vs the gay McCarthyitesReading Melanie Phillips' columns holds a weird kind of fascination for me. Some people just <em>had</em> to watch '2 Girls 1 Cup', others graphic videos of beheadings or extreme porn. I, sadly, have the same morbid curiosity towards Melanie Phillips. I shouldn't read her pieces, I know I shouldn't. It's bad for me. <em>No good can come of it</em>. And yet, I can't tear myself away...<br /><br />The thing that fascinates me is not so much what she talks about, as her tone. She has this dramatic, apocalyptic tone to everything she writes. The words drip with melodrama. Just look at the very <em>title</em> of today's: <a href="http://istyosty.com/81u">Yes, gays have often been the victims of prejudice. But they now risk becoming the new McCarthyites</a>. Gays! The new McCarthyites!<br /><blockquote>Here’s a question ­shortly coming to an examination ­paper near you. What have mathematics, geography or science to do with homosexuality?<br /><br />Nothing at all, you say? Zero marks for you, then.<br /><br />For, mad as this may seem, schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and ­science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda.<br /></blockquote><br />The Mail has gone big on the story about terrifyingly gay maths and science lessons. I don't want to digress too much here, go read <a href="http://fortyshadesofgrey.blogspot.com/2011/01/mail-you-owe-me-new-bullshit-detector.html">Forty Shades Of Grey</a> for an analysis of the scaremongering bollocks involved. Again, the thing that strikes me is just the palpable fury and drama with which she writes. There aren't simply gay references in these lesson plans; kids are to be "bombarded" with them. And it's not to encourage acceptance of homosexuality, it's "a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda". Ah yes, the "gay agenda". No-one really knows what this is, (who can say for sure what goes on in the crazed minds of The Gays?), but what we <em>do</em> know is that involves brainwashing our kids.<br /><br />And yes, she does actually say "brainwash":<br /><blockquote>Alas, this gay curriculum is no laughing matter. Absurd as it sounds, this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda under the ­camouflage of ­education. It is an abuse of childhood.</blockquote>The difficulty in blogging about Phillips is that her sheer absurdity makes her difficult to satirise. How can you top the claim that mentioning gay people in passing in a textbook question equates to "an abuse of childhood"? Next, we come to perhaps the most vile, hate-filled sentence in the piece:<br /><blockquote>And it’s all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very ­concept of normal sexual behaviour.</blockquote>That's a sentence absolutely dripping with contempt. The "gay rights lobby" isn't about gay rights, it's about "destroy[ing] the very ­concept of normal sexual behaviour". Destroying it. They want to <em>destroy</em> everything you hold dear. Hey, you know that sex you heterosexuals are having? That's <em>normal</em>! It doesn't matter if you're dressing up as Luke and Princess Leia and are shoving toy lightsabres up each other...it's all NORMAL because one of you is a dude and the other one is a chick. Go for it. I mean, as long as you're married. But still, even if you're not, it's normal for men and women to fuck, right? Two guys though? What's that all about? Two women? The world's gone mad!<br /><blockquote>Not so long ago, an epic political battle raged over teaching children that ­homosexuality was normal. The fight over Section 28, as it became known, resulted in the repeal of the legal requirement on schools not to promote homosexuality.<br /><br />As the old joke has it, what was once impermissible first becomes tolerated and then becomes mandatory.</blockquote>That last line is just baffling, isn't it? Can anyone please tell me when it's going to become mandatory? I don't remember being consulted. I'd just like some notice of when The Gay Lobby are going to brutally force me to change my sexuality as part of their Agenda.<br /><br />The rest of the column is shot through with myopia and misrepresentation.<br /><blockquote>The bed and breakfast hoteliers Peter and Hazelmary Bull — who were recently sued for turning away two homosexuals who wished to share a bedroom — were but the latest religious believers to fall foul of the gay inquisition merely for upholding ­Christian values.</blockquote>They weren't merely upholding Christian values. They turned away a couple in a civil partnership because they disapproved of their sexuality, contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law. It's tales like that which are exactly why there still has to <em>be</em> a gay rights lobby. Let's hope that one day we can all be grown-up enough to treat each other equally. Until then, unfortunately we're going to have to use the law to enforce, y'know, basic fairness and human decency.<br /><blockquote>It seems that just about everything in Britain is now run according to the gay agenda.<br />For, in addition to the requirement for gay-friendly hotels, gay adoption and gay mathematics, now comes, apparently, gay drugs policy.<br /><br />Last week, the Government announced the appointment of some new ­members to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, who included a GP by the name of Hans-Christian Raabe. </blockquote>Here, Phillips launches into a perplexing rant about the appointment of Dr Raabe. You would think that his actual appointment, in spite of his homophobic views, would be evidence that perhaps not everything is "run according to the gay agenda". But no. The fact that people have complained proves that it is. Presumably, then, by the same token, the fact that Phillips is complaining about gay rights proves that the country is in the vice-like grip of the authoritarian Melanie Phillips lobby. Everything is run according to the Melanie Phillips agenda!<br /><blockquote>It was the BBC’s Home Editor Mark ­Easton who led the charge. On his BBC News blog, he announced that Dr Raabe’s views on homosexuality were causing such fury among (anonymous) members of the Advisory Council that at least one member was threatening to step down.<br /><br />Well may you rub your eyes at that. Just what have his views on homosexuality got to do with illegal drugs? Well, according to Easton, more than one member of the ­council is gay or lesbian.<br /><br />How extraordinary. Just imagine if the boot were on the other foot and Dr Raabe had refused to serve on the drugs council because some of its ­members were gay. He would be out on his ear within the hour. </blockquote>At the end there, you get a little hint of the reasons for Phillips' beliefs. In conflict with all available evidence, she seems to believe that being gay is a belief, an opinion, a lifestyle. Refusing to work with someone because you believe they have virulently anti-gay beliefs is, to her, the same as refusing because they are gay. Phillips simply cannot see a difference here. And, of course, she singles out a fairly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2011/01/another_acmd_member_threatens.html">straightforward piece of reportage</a> and presents it as a clarion call from Mark Easton. Because, y'know, he's from the BBC. You know what <em>they're</em> like.<br /><br />The curious thing about it all is Phillips' claims about tolerance for free speech. She makes a big fuss about various cases where she believes people have been unfairly persecuted for expressing sincerely held, anti-gay, beliefs. Freedom of speech is important, she argues. And yet, the mere idea of mentioning gay people in a textbook is something that must be opposed, stopped, cried out against. Where's the freedom of speech for that? It doesn't matter. That is brainwashing our kids, destroying our ideas of "normal sexual behaviour", and thus it must be stopped.<br /><br />Phillips finishes off by describing the "crazy, upside-down world of the equality agenda", and expressing fear of the "seemingly all-­powerful gay rights lobby". If there's one thing Melanie Phillips can never be accused of, it's understatement.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-10091661537050578162011-01-16T12:09:00.001+00:002011-01-16T12:10:05.468+00:00Liz Jones: murder, disappointing bars and buttonsOf all the the journalists in Britain you would want to write about the Joanna Yeates murder, Liz Jones is probably nestling somewhere near the bottom of the list. You might think, after all, that Jones' penchant for consumerist superficiality and ill-directed moaning doesn't quite carry the gravitas required to really deal with such a case of genuine human tragedy and emotion. Well, you'd be right.<br /><br />Jones has travelled to Bristol to recreate Yeates' final evening and put her own, er, unique talents to use, covering the story in a lightweight human interest style, in <a href="http://istyosty.com/7bd">Is lovely Jo becoming just another thumbnail on the police website?</a>. Right off the bat, from the very title, it's starting to go wrong. Yeates is one of the most high-profile adult murder victims of recent times. There are people dying all the time who don't get a mention in the national papers, much less the dizzying 24-hour coverage that Yeates' murder got.<br /><br />It doesn't take long for Jones' peculiar obsession with class and social mobility to surface:<br /><blockquote>This is where Joanna Yeates spent her last evening before she set off up the hill, past all the twinkly shops and bars (a Habitat, a Space NK beauty emporium; Bristol is nothing if not upwardly mobile) towards her death.<br /><br />The bar is OK but ordinary. The wine list, chalked on a board, says ‘Lauren Perrier’.<br />I wish she had spent what were probably her last hours on earth somewhere lovelier.<br /></blockquote>Yes, the <em>real</em> tragedy is that Yeates didn't even get to spend the evening of her violent death in a posh enough bar. You can rest assured that if Liz Jones ever gets strangled, her family will be able to take some comfort in the fact that she was no doubt yukking it up drinking overpriced cocktails in a pretentious London drinking hole before she met her end.<br /><br />You get the sense that the surroundings make it all the more tragic for Jones. She's not alone in this; it's common for papers to treat more middle-class victims of crime, or crime in 'upwardly mobile' areas, as more upsetting. These aren't council estate scumbags that might deserve it, these are people you could see at a cocktail party! <blockquote>I walk past the beautiful university building on my right, with Waitrose on my left. I wander the bright aisles, full of young women rushing round after work, leaving with carrier bags and expectation.<br /><br />I head up the hill towards Clifton, the leafy part of the city. It’s quieter now, and darker. I find Tesco, and go in. I almost buy that upmarket pizza; the choice tells me Jo wanted a lovely life, something above the ordinary.<br /></blockquote><br />There's almost a flicker of emotion in whatever passes for Jones' heart here; this girl wanted a slightly more expensive pizza. If Liz Jones ate a pizza, she would probably choose a more expensive one too. Isn't that profound? That connection? Doesn't it make you want to weep, just a little? This <em>could</em> have happened to our favourite self-absorbed newspaper columnist! What then? What would we <em>do</em>?<br /><br />Jones talks to some police officers: <blockquote>I tell them I’m spooked, walking here. ‘Don’t be spooked,’ one says. ‘Residents are campaigning to get brighter street lights installed.’ So the antique, lovely ones are to disappear to be replaced by ugly ones because of something even uglier.</blockquote>It just gets worse, doesn't it? I mean, the murder is one thing. But the ramifications of it are severe. What if we lose the pretty antique street lights? What might that do to house prices? I can barely bring myself to consider the horror.<br /><br />Jones then wonders why other, perhaps local, drivers, aren't slowing down to gawp at Yeates' house, like she has done. Don't they respect Jo Yeates? It's almost like they have somewhere they need to get to, as if they don't get paid handsomely to mooch about waiting for material for their pointless articles.<br /><br />Towards the end, Jones uses all her skill as a writer to haul her own petty problems into the story, and connect them thoughtfully. <blockquote>My satnav takes me to the Clifton Suspension Bridge.<br /><br />The theory is the killer took the long route from the flat to where he dumped the body to avoid the CCTV cameras. Perhaps he also wanted to avoid the 50p toll.<br /><br />I don’t have 50p and try tossing 30p and a White Company button into the bucket. It doesn’t work. </blockquote>Never mind Jo Yeates; when are they going to come up with a toll bridge that accepts designer buttons, for those of us too classy to carry small change? Then follows possibly the weirdest paragraph I have ever read in a national newspaper column. Jones attempts to find some kind of poignancy in this moment of personal awkwardness. Is there a way we can link toll bridges refusing to accept designer buttons with the tragic murder of a young woman? Liz Jones can find a way, sort of: <blockquote>There is now an angry queue behind me. Isn’t it interesting that you can snatch a young woman’s life away from her in the most violent, painful, frightening way possible, take away her future children, her future Christmases, take away everything she loves, and yet there are elaborate systems in place to ensure you do not cross a bridge for only 30 pence?</blockquote>Well...no. No, that isn't interesting. It's irrelevant, facile and absurd. Bridge tolls are no more relevant to this murder than the tooth fairy is. There is no sad irony, no lingering meaning to be found here. Are you proposing a system where murder is given a prohibitively expensive pre-paid toll? You just drove onto a toll bridge without having enough cash. Stop it.<br /><br />Luckily, fortune favours the vacuous, and Liz Jones is suddenly presented with a convenient get-out, not just of her toll bridge nightmare, but of the article, as a man, who I shall call Mr Deus Ex Machina, helpfully gives her both fifty pence and a neat feed line to set up her finale: <blockquote>Finally, a man in a taxi jumps out, and runs to me brandishing a 50p piece.<br /><br />‘Not all men are monsters,’ he says, grinning. Maybe not. But one monster is all it takes.</blockquote>[Applause]<br /><br />Perhaps the real story is about Bristol's omniscient taxi drivers/users; men who can sense what a journalist is writing about and offer forth convenient set-up lines, despite not formally being given any context to do so. I hope Liz Jones' next article is about that.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com77tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-82423666828235497812011-01-14T10:08:00.001+00:002011-01-14T10:10:08.149+00:00The art of headlinesOver the past few weeks, the press has managed to get a ton of headlines out of mass animal die-offs. Birds, fish...there have been several incidents widely reported from across the world where a couple of hundred critters are found dead somewhere, and this has been great fun for conspiracy theorists, armchair occultists and people who just wish something more interesting was going on than by-elections and cuts.<br /><br />Today's Mail reports another such incident with a typically dramatic headline, pleading desperately with the authorities to stop covering shit up and tell us The Truth, dammit! <a href="http://istyosty.com/759">"Now 300 dead birds fall from the sky in Alabama (how much longer can scientists keep saying this is normal?)"</a>, it seems to yell. Yeah, Mr Science Guy, how long are you gonna keep bullshitting us and admit it's time to start stocking up on shotguns and fortifying our basements?<br /><br />The strange part is, though, the article is...actually fairly sensible. Y'know, for the Mail, I mean. Early in the piece, an entirely rational, non-apocalyptic, and deeply mundane explanation is offered for this particular incident: <blockquote>It appears that the birds died of blunt force trauma - possibly from being hit by a truck, wildlife biologist Bill Gates told local news station WAFF</blockquote>The article goes on to give a similar explanation for a recent incident in California. Flock of birds hit by truck. Not, perhaps, the start of the Rapture. DAILY MAIL REPORTER briefly mentions the excitement about the apparent spate of incidents, but then punctures such giddiness with a note of skepticism: <blockquote>The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated.<br /><br />Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other.<br /></blockquote><br />Indeed, most of the article is a pretty decent, if lightweight, debunking of the fuss around these animal deaths; the bottom line being that these things have always and will always happen, and we're just reporting them all of a sudden which makes it look like more. It's a little reminiscent of the Bridgend suicides, which were not particularly unusual statistically speaking but ended up portrayed as a massive sinister suicide pact. Or indeed the recent Implanon contraceptive jab story, where out-of-context absolute figures gave the impression that a massive amount of failures were occurring when in fact the failure rate was very low.<br /><br />So what of that title? As we know, it's usually a sub-editor or someone other than the author who adds the title. If you'd given this article a title along the lines of "Animal deaths 'not unusual', say scientists", it would have made a lot more sense in the context of the article. But would people have read it? We live in an age of short attention spans where a shouty headline is what's needed to get hits, even if it's wildly misleading. I suppose the thing that bothers me about this case is that it's not just sensationalism; the headline seems to actively try and scorn the relatively sensible article beneath it in the name of cheap publicity. The person who wrote the article seems to think it's perfectly reasonable that "scientists keep saying this is normal", yet that ridiculous headline wants you to click on the article in the expectation finding that something deeper, something weirder, something perhaps conspiratorial or apocalyptic is going on. Why, I can only speculate, but it would hardly be surprising if the headline was purely designed to get a fairly mundane story Tweeted and Facebooked around the world by people who haven't really got any desire to read past the headline.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-88664600186461479522011-01-07T09:19:00.001+00:002011-01-07T10:15:54.959+00:00How to report a murder in the absence of facts? Use a psychic!The time between a murder and someone being charged has always posed problems for the tabloids. Eager to keep the story running, but with no real hook for it, they often end up scrabbling around for something, anything to keep people glued in anticipation of someone being caught. So it is with the Joanna (now just 'Jo') Yeates murder.<br /><br />Today we find several papers tossing wildly different logs into the fire. The Sun goes with this good old-fashioned campaign nonsense:<br /><br /><a href="http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/Papers/?action=view&current=7.jpg" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="Photobucket" src="http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/Papers/7.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The Mirror features the previous suspect, now released without charge, continuing to vow to clear his name. The Mail, meanwhile, goes back to one of its favourite social ills, Facebook, with a rather flimsy-sounding suggestion that Yeates may possibly have been killed by someone who knew her through the social networking site:<br /><br /><a href="http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/Papers/?action=view&current=8.jpg" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="Photobucket" src="http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/Papers/8.jpg" /></a><br /><br />I won't go into much detail on that, as it's already been very well covered by Natalie Dzerins over at <a href="http://fortyshadesofgrey.blogspot.com/2011/01/mail-reports-facebook-link-to-joanna.html">Forty Shades Of Grey</a>, which you may go and read now as long as you promise to come back.<br /><br />Today's prize for most grotesque coverage, though, must go to The Daily Star, who have gone for this:<br /><br /><a href="http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/Papers/?action=view&current=9.jpg" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="Photobucket" src="http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/Papers/9.jpg" /></a><br /><br />It's a bad enough headline in itself, but it becomes even more grim when you realise that this story, this new 'evidence', worthy of a front page headline no less, is based entirely on the claims of a single <em>psychic</em>. Yes, you read that right, a national newspaper has given over its front page to the wild claims of a psychic investigator.<br /><br />In <a href="http://dailystar.co.uk/news/view/170741/I-KNOW-WHO-KILLED-JO-YEATES/">the article</a> we get some more detail about the claims; <blockquote>The psychic investigator insists she “saw” Jo being attacked by two of a group of five men after she rejected their offer of a lift.<br /></blockquote><br />It's later revealed that this vision took place 10 days before Yeates went missing. She speculates further, saying "The girl wasn’t bosom friends with the men. It looked like they offered her a lift but she didn’t take it and they followed her". It looked like? Is a psychic giving rough details of something she saw in a vision of something which may or may not have been relevant, really good enough for a national newspaper front page? Apparently it is.<br /><br />The psychic in question is Carol Everett, a shameless self-promoter who has attached her, er, unique gift, to various high-profile cases, including the Ian Huntley murders and the Washington sniper. She <a href="http://www.caroleverett.com/ce-crime/jessholl.htm">claimed</a> to have drawn Huntley and Maxine Carr before they were arrested, a claim which seems impressive at first but falls apart when you scroll down to the untouched image, which has 'Carr' with beyond-shoulder-length hair, and an utterly generic white male drawing which claims Huntley has blue eyes (he doesn't), <s>piercings (none visible)</s> and isn't even sure whether the thing on his head is hair or a scarf. [EDIT: thanks to <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/tabloidwatch">@tabloidwatch</a> on Twitter for correcting me here, I think the 'piercing' may have been a description of Huntley's eyes. Which still aren't blue, mind].<br /><br />I don't want to get dragged too far into the subject of whether psychics are real or not, but ultimately this kind of unfounded speculation from a single source who has no knowledge of the case can't be helpful, particularly when she's allowed to toss out potentially serious misinformation like this: <blockquote>Carol described the killer she saw as of mixed race, 5ft 11in to 6ft tall and in his early 20s</blockquote>Perhaps it's the mysterious "some Puerto Rican guy" from South Park. Either way, this really feels like tremendous barrel-scraping from a paper content to give a platform to self-promoting bullshit merchants for the sake of keeping voyeurists entertained.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-80128270717749631422010-12-29T10:24:00.001+00:002010-12-29T10:25:22.044+00:00It's probably an outrage!At this festive time of year, you might be feeling a little more contented than usual. This, no doubt, worries the Daily Mail. Have you even rolled your eyes at <em>anything</em> and had cause to say "This bloody country...couldn't make it up!" today? Luckily, the Mail has staff working year-round to ensure you get your RDA of self-important tutting at the way society's gone both to the dogs <em>and</em> to hell in a handcart.<br /><br />So, you like Top Gear, right? Of course you do! No political correctness on Top Gear! Just endless hours of Jeremy Clarkson saying everything with exactly the same mildly Partridge-esque intonation. On Boxing Day, Top Gear did a Christmas special. I didn't watch it, obviously, as I would genuinely rather spend the same amount of time repeatedly slamming a car bonnet on my balls than listen to Clarkson affect bafflement at a foreign car's dashboard layout yet again.<br /><br />Anyway, apparently, during this episode of Top Gear, everyone's favourite trio of denim-clad raised-eyebrow-possessors went to Syria and dressed up in niqabs, to no doubt hilarious satirical effect. Take <em>that</em>, politicalcorrectnessgonemad! Everyone had brilliant fun and we all probably learned something profound.<br /><br />Except, of course, they won't bloody let you do stuff like that now, will they? The Muslims, I mean. And the PC Brigade! They'd never let you broadcast something like that on the painfully liberal BB...er... So anyway, predictably, poking gentle fun at the Muslims has stirred up an absolute hornet's nest of seething outrage from the miserable asylum-seeking foreign killjoys living here on benefits and telling us what to do. In <a href="http://istyosty.com/5p1">Top Gear stars cause religious row after dressing up in burkas on Boxing Day special</a>, we learn that this classic bit of harmless British dress-up japery "sparked religious outrage"! Our irreverent speed-camera-hatin' heroes were "slammed by Muslims for mocking their religion" after it "caused a storm online"!<br /><br />Now, this was the first I'd heard about this storm, despite spending much of my Christmas cocooned in my little online bubble surrounded by like-minded woolly liberal types. None of my humourless Marxist PC friends had been spluttering their non-denominational Winterval egg nog on their screens after finding out about the show. What gives? It's almost as if no-one really gave that much of a toss!<br /><br />But hey, maybe I just got lucky. I'll read on and find out the many examples of frothing outrage this stunt has generated. <blockquote>Islamic extremist Anjem Choudary, said: 'The burka is a symbol of our religion and people should not make jokes about it in any way.<br /><br />'It would have been equally bad even if they’d not been in a country mainly populated by Muslims.'<br /></blockquote><br />Ah, it's Anjem Choudary! Yeah, he'd be my go-to guy for a representative sample of Muslim opinion too!<br /><br />Okay, okay, so Anjem Choudary <em>was</em> a bit outraged. But then he always is. He's the Islamic equivalent of Phillip Davies MP or that guy from Christian Voice in terms of playing the Indignant Self-Appointed Mouthpiece Who's Always A Phone Call Away When You Need An Angry Quote For Your Deadline. If Anjem Choudary getting pissed off constitutes a 'storm', we must be embroiled in one near-constantly. The only time Anjem Choudary isn't outraged is when he's asleep, and even then he's probably dreaming about it.<br /><br />So what about people who <em>aren't</em> rent-a-quote Islamic extremist trolls? <blockquote>On the Yahoo! forum, someone wrote, 'Death to America', which another, called Rebecca Liberty, said mocking burkas is 'ugly'.</blockquote>Now, that sentence doesn't actually make any fucking sense, but picking out some of the important words, I can just about work out that someone on a Yahoo! board said it was 'ugly', and that someone else with an apparently tenuous grip on reality may have said 'Death to America'. Of course, the miserable killjoy OUTRAGE wasn't confined to that Yahoo! board which I'm startled to find out people still use, there was also something on Twitter too! <blockquote>Some viewers also took to Twitter to blast the burka stunt with one saying: This is probably the worst top gear special. Y the f*** r they wearing burkas!!?</blockquote>So, not so much outraged, as calling it shit. And...that's it. That's the sum total of the Mail's evidence that anyone anywhere got upset by this; one Islamic extremist and someone on a Yahoo! forum whose single-word quote isn't given any context at all! Maybe there were more examples but DAILY MAIL REPORTER didn't have time to do any more messageboard quote-mining because he or she was feeling bloated after eating too many pigs in blanket? THOUGH YOU PROBABLY CAN'T EVEN SAY 'PIGS IN BLANKETS' ANY MORE IN CASE IT OFFENDS THE ETHNICS, AMIRIGHT?<br /><br />So what's the motive for this flimsy confection of "cuh, can't say anything any more" bollocks? Well, I can't say for sure. But it fits with the Mail's usual narrative about how we the good old white male British law-abiding are being persecuted in our own country by uppity minorities with a sense of grasping entitlement, who complain about everything and have the sympathy of the out-of-touch metropolitan homosexual elites that run everything from their ivory towers in Islington. A quick glance at the best-rated of the (360 and counting!) comments shows that it's working: <blockquote>To all the foreigners complaining about this programme and 'Come Fly with Me'. There is something you need to do before complaining if you don't like BRITISH humour, remember, it's our country, and we will laugh at whatever we want to. If you don't like it, PACK YOUR BAGS!<br />- Had Enough, England, 28/12/2010 15:40<br /><br />What doesn't offend them? There is no Top Gear in Saudi. Move there.<br />- CF Tab, Johannesburg, SA, 28/12/2010 15:39<br /><br />They looked great, it was hilarious and just a bit of fun. This country has the best humor in the world, don't like it, don't live here, simples.<br />- In awe, Surrey, 28/12/2010 15:32<br /><br />Get the hell out of our country and go back to your own if you don't like what we do nor like our sense of humor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br />- bels, norfolk, 28/12/2010 16:30<br /><br />Regardless of what you thought of the TV programme, that was funny. On the BBC (the first B stands for British).<br /><br />If you were offended, go to the airport and fly somewhere else never to return!<br />- P.C. Gonemad, Loughborough, 28/12/2010 18:16<br /><br />Well done top gear, the best way is just to keep winding these inbred idiots up<br />- steff miller, edinburgh, 28/12/2010 16:51</blockquote>...and many, many more along those lines. Do you get it now? We're British! We all love Top Gear here, and if you 'inbred' Muslims don't like it you can fuck off back to Saudi Arabia or wherever! The BBC may not have confirmed whether or not anyone actually got riled enough to officially complain about the show, but the message is clear; if you complain about a simple joke*, you should leave the country, you bloody miserable multiculti oppressing <em>bastards</em>.<br /><br /><em>*doesn't apply to poncey floppy-haired liberal 'comedians' making indiscreet jokes about granddaughter-shagging, obviously. That <strong>was</strong> an outrage!</em>No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-42703797067781838362010-12-21T09:50:00.001+00:002010-12-21T09:52:16.076+00:00BREAKING: Melanie Phillips not impressed with the Left, feminismThe thing that always strikes me when I read the extended word-vomits that Melanie Phillips calls her newspaper columns, is that they do actually sort of make sense, as long as you buy into one or two comically absurd notions about her opponents.<br /><br />First, a summary. Over the past couple of weeks, debate has raged on the left about Julian Assange and Wikileaks. It's been interesting to follow, and a lot of very sensible (and some stupid) things have been said. One major issue that has caused some arguing has been people's reactions to the rape charges levelled against Assange. The timing of the arrest so close to a major bout of embarrassment-causing by Wikileaks has caused some to be suspicious that the charges were not genuine, and this has not been helped by a torrent of misinformation about the nature of the charges, ranging from the bizarre "it was sex by surprise!" to the idea that a condom simply broke. As a result of this confusion, and in some cases no small element of political bias, some on the left were perhaps rather too quick to insist on Assange's innocence. In the worst cases, this has led to some tremendously ugly bashing of the women concerned, which has understandably caused some of us to feel rather uncomfortable. <a href="http://kateharding.info/2010/12/16/some-shit-im-sick-of-hearing-regarding-rape-and-assange/">This Kate Harding post</a> makes a pretty good fist of explaining why it's okay to support Wikileaks <em>and</em> still take the rape allegations seriously without resorting to slinging mud at the women making the claims. Above anything else, regardless of the facts of this case, it's important that women are not discouraged from reporting incidents of rape and sexual assault, and reactions like this (which have come from both the left and right - indeed the Mail itself was the source of much of the smearing of the women concerned), are not helpful in the bigger picture.<br /><br />So, serious issues, big things at stake, topics worthy of grown-up debate and discussion, right? Enter <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340101/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-Fancy-The-Left-war-Mr-WikiLeaks.html">Melanie Phillips</a> <em>[I apologise for any disturbing images that phrase may have given you].</em> Phillips is reacting to this with absolute <em>glee</em>. Arguments on the left of politics are not a sign of adult discourse, or a reflection of genuine disagreements about real issues. They're just<em> funny</em>. Funny, and a sign of wavering moral confusion. "...our most sanctimonious campaigners have managed to hoist themselves simultaneously on not just one, but multiple politically correct petards", she reports.<br /><br />Phillips rampages through this tale with unconcealed joy. It involves Sweden! Liberals like Sweden! Isn't that terribly funny? What a hilarious mess! She gets to have a go at 'luvvies', and most joyously of all for her, the Guardian. At no stage in the piece does Phillips particularly concern herself with stating her own beliefs, either about Wikileaks, about Assange or the allegations. Pointing and mocking is fine enough.<br /><br />What confuses Phillips the most though, and its a theme that courses through her writing, is nuance. Melanie Phillips isn't really about nuance. It's not something she does, or feels she needs to do. Like her fellow columnist Peter Hitchens, everything is simple. Things A and B are right and moral. Things X and Y are wrong and disgusting. Person 1 is dead wrong. Person 2 is dead right. Phillips never seems to be able to understand why other people cannot instantly uncover the rights and wrongs of a situation in the way she can. There are a couple of examples of the binary way she views the world in this piece, and she asserts the same central canard twice. The first is here:<br /><blockquote>For the whole world-view of the Left rests upon its iron-clad conviction that America is a global conspiracy of evil from which all bad things ultimately emanate.</blockquote>...and repeated in more depth further on: <blockquote>To understand why there is such an ear-splitting screeching of brakes from The Guardian, it is necessary to consider the mind-bending contradictions of what passes for thinking on the Left.<br /><br />For it believes certain things as articles of faith which cannot be denied. One is that America is a force for bad in the world and so can never be anything other than guilty. Another is that all men are potential rapists, and so can never be anything other than guilty.</blockquote>Now, that's an absurd caricature of liberal thinking. It's a fairly common view on the right that the left HATES America, but it's a bafflingly simplistic depiction of it. A lot of time is spent criticising the US, but that's a reflection of two things; 1) the power which the US has, and 2) its democratic nature. We spend a lot time shouting about the US because in many ways it's the biggest hope for worldwide positive change. The direction of US politics can be changed by political action, if we can demonstrate the will. We criticise the US harshly at times because we recognise that if we want any kind of global political change, the US is always going to be a key player, and can be influenced in a way that other nations can't. It's kind of the friend we like to criticise constructively because we know what its capable of achieving.<br /><br />The other 'article of faith', that the left believes that all men can never not be guilty of rape, is a cartoonish simplification of a viewpoint which isn't held by a majority of feminists, let alone leftist liberals. But you get the feeling Melanie Phillips actually unwaveringly believes that this is the stark, Manichean way liberals think. She's projecting her own binary way of thinking onto her opponents, seeing them as a mere mirror image of herself and unable to ever accept that maybe things are just a little less neat than they appear.<br /><br />Of course, what Phillips is utterly unable to provide are any quotes to support her assertions that we all passionately hate the US and all assume men are guilty. I've read a lot of blogs and articles from various sides of this debate, and I've yet to come across a single feminist who has stated that they assume Assange's guilt; the vast majority have been at pains to point out that, at this stage, we simply cannot know. It's simply about taking serious allegations seriously, and affording the alleged victims the chance to put their case before the courts without simply dismissing the charges out of hand because the timing looks dodgy or because Wikileaks is something we may support. For all the fighting and debate that's gone on, ultimately there's no contradiction to be found when it comes to reconciling the two issues; Wikileaks can be a good thing whether or not Assange personally is a good man. We can defend Wikileaks' right to disclose documents that can inform debate without needing to assume anything about the truth of the personal allegations made against him.No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-40831693523458004762010-12-10T10:18:00.002+00:002010-12-10T13:35:43.570+00:00The NHS is sending dirty texts to your child!It's often said that there are few certainties in life; death, taxes, George Lucas pissing everybody off, Jamie Redknapp misusing the word 'literally'. You can add to that 'the Daily Mail getting outraged at any attempt by authorities to provide any kind of sexual advice to anyone under the age of 18'.<br /><br />Today's 'controversy' is outlined in the ridiculously titled <a href="http://istyosty.com/2w4">Sex texts for teens: Controversy as NHS promotes mobile advice line for children as young as 13</a>. Or, as it was previously titled, "Sexting for teens: NHS promotes mobile advice line for children as young as 13". You can still see the previous title in the title bar at the top. The Mail likes to rethink its headlines, but this is a slightly strange one as it drops the more lurid 'sexting' but at the same time adds 'controversy' into the mix. Perhaps the original didn't have a rent-a-quote to back up the controvery claim.<br /><br />Anyway, it's clear from the off that author Sophie Borland and whoever wrote the title want you to think this is all rather seedy. First of all, as you've probably worked out, this is <em>sex advice via text</em>, rather than 'sex texts' or 'sexting'. The NHS is not sending your teenager texts asking them what they're wearing right now and luring them into describing their sex fantasies in great detail, cock in hand. That is the job of dirty liberals like me! It begins; <blockquote>Children as young as 13 are being sent sex advice by text message under a controversial NHS scheme.</blockquote>There's nothing particularly untrue about that sentence, but it does make it sound rather like this is <em>unsolicited</em> advice. It isn't. It is an advice service for young people who have questions about sex, pregnancy and sexual health which they feel uncomfortable talking to their peers or parents about. You send a text, you get advice back from an anonymous but trained professional who won't judge you or tell you you're going to burn in hell.<br /><br />The article goes on to outline the basic, fairly sensible sounding principles behind it. But, as predictably as night follows day with sex education stories, it's not long before the poorly evidenced claims that sex education encourages our kids to fuck rear their head: <blockquote>But campaigners warn that the text service – funded by taxpayers – is simply encouraging promiscuity among underage youngsters.</blockquote>Funded by taxpayers, no less! Who would have thought! Still, who are these 'campaigners'? The Mail cites one: <blockquote>Norman Wells, director of Family and Youth Concern, said: ‘Not only does it undermine parents by presenting itself as an authoritative source of advice on sex, relationships and sexual health, but it also fails to respect the age of consent by offering a service to children under 16.<br /><br />‘The information provided is not even accurate. The website fails to tell visitors that condoms provide much less protection against sexually transmitted infections than they do against pregnancy, and says nothing about the health benefits of keeping sex within a lifelong, mutually faithful relationship with an uninfected partner.’</blockquote>You know the drill by now. An unelected, unaccountable, campaigner gets space to mouth off because his opinions chime with the editorial stance of the Mail. Family And Youth Concern are not sexual and reproductive health experts. They are a bunch of concerned conservatives with traditional values. Of <em>course</em> the advice does not tell young people to wait til they're married. This is advice to people who will in many cases already be having sex. They are looking for advice, not a moral lecture. If you want advice about sexual health, you go to a health professional. That is what they are qualified to do. If you want traditional moral guidance, text your local preacher. I'm not sure what Wells wants here. Does he want there to be no sex advice line at all? Or does he simply want every response to say "Are you 16 yet? If not, don't do it. Ever"?<br /><br />In the spirit of swashbuckling investigative journalism for which it is renowned, the Mail poses as an anonymous young person to ask for advice. <dramatic>What they discovered was <s>shocking</s> boring.</DRAMATIC voiceover><br /><br /><a href="http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/?action=view&current=article-1337216-0C6C0132000005DC-519_468x219.jpg" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="Photobucket" src="http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e308/jonnyhead/article-1337216-0C6C0132000005DC-519_468x219.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br />There you have it then. Crushingly boring, sensible sex advice to concerned young people seeking it. It's a bloody outrage!No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104088946474183171.post-72665931965476629632010-12-02T10:57:00.000+00:002010-12-02T10:58:10.935+00:00Britain sucks and everyone is laughing at us!If there's one thing guaranteed to be more boring than people complaining about the weather, it's people complaining about people complaining about the weather, and bemoaning our collective reaction to it. Every time Britain gets some bad weather, you know you'll see the following things:<br />- headlines screaming about CHAOS<br />- front pages consisting entirely of the predicted temperature in the coldest part of Scotland done in a MASSIVE font (in Celsius, even if the paper is bafflingly committed to Fahrenheit for the most part, because Celsius gives lower and hence more dramatic numbers)<br />- business leaders and the CBI on the radio complaining endlessly about how people getting stuck in the snow is affecting their profits<br />- tedious hack pieces about how Britain can't handle a bit of extreme weather because we've lost our Blitz spirit, and how embarrassing it is that foreigners can handle everything and we can't.<br /><br />The latter rears its head in David Jones' <a href="http://istyosty.com/2ef">Why we're a laughing stock with the rest of the world</a> in the Daily Mail, which has moaning in spades. <blockquote>Whiling away the long hours in my steamed-up Toyota on Tuesday night, I thought of the many countries I have visited on foreign reporting assignments with far harsher climates than ours, and wondered why they never have these problems.</blockquote>Well, the reason is that countries with "far harsher climates" are forced to spend the money on solutions, otherwise the disruption would simply be too much. Britain has a mild climate for the vast majority of the time, and so unless we want to spent a whole metric shitload of money on vast stockpiles of rock salt and fleets of snowploughs on the off chance that we'll get a day or two's snow disruption. In January, up in Manchester, I missed one whole day of work due to the disruption which prevented me from completing a 40-mile journey to work. The problem in that case was that we'd already had ice and frost for several weeks before Christmas which had depleted the grit supplies, and so once we had several days of the heaviest snowfall I'd seen in many years, it became harder to get about.<br /><br />It's not a particularly exciting topic; councils have limited funds, they have to make decisions about how to allocate those funds in the face of many competing demands, and so many of them won't put massive excesses of it aside for snow which may or may not come.<br /><br />What's slightly more interesting, though, is the weird, insular assumption that we must be the only country shit enough to be facing any disruption. Did you know Germany has had no problems? You would if you'd taken David Jones' deeply scientific approach to the topic and canvassed the opinion of one friend: <blockquote>According to a friend in Berlin, the trains are running, the schools are open and – in contrast with the horrendous scenes on the M25, where hundreds of lorry drivers slept in their cabs on Tuesday night – the autobahns are clear.</blockquote>Well, that's that then, isn't it? The Bloody Germans, ruthlessly efficient as always, chuckling at our bumbling Hugh Grant ineptitude! Of course, if you have any Google chops at all, you'd be able to find evidence that <a href="http://www.expatica.com/de/news/german-news/sixty-flights-cancelled-at-frankfurt-aiport-due-to-weather_114325.html">Germany isn't made of magic</a> and can't make everything work: <blockquote>Wintry weather caused on Wednesday the cancellation of around 60 flights at Frankfurt airport, Europe's third busiest, a spokesman said.<br /><br />The number of takeoffs on one of the western German airport's runways had to be reduced because of high winds, a spokesman for airport operator Fraport told AFP. On Tuesday almost 300 flights were scratched.</blockquote>360 flights cancelled in two days in Frankfurt? But...Teutonic efficiency...? 250 were cancelled in Munich. But what of the roads? Let's go to a <a href="http://www.thelocal.de/national/20101202-31547.html">German news site</a>:<br /><blockquote>Ongoing snowfall in the southern state of Bavaria caused major traffic snarls, with police reporting problems near Regensburg for several hours in the early morning. Many abandoned transport trucks blocked lanes near on-ramps, they said. And while winter road cleanup crews were out in full force, they were unable to keep up with the heavy snowfall in the region.<br /><br />Deaths from traffic accidents were reported in Nuremberg and Aschaffenburg.<br /><br />Meanwhile trains in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and northern Bavaria were also impeded by the snow storm. National rail provider Deutsche Bahn reported that drifting snow and felled trees caused numerous delays. Travel between Leipzig and Nuremberg, as well as between Gerstungen and Leipzig had to be cut off entirely during parts of the night, they said.</blockquote>Oh. Still, I assume the "Hundreds of train passengers" who were "forced to spend the night at the Frankfurt train station" kept themselves warm with a good old chuckle at the Brits, eh? And we can just ignore the fact that schools <em>were</em> in fact closed in parts of Northern Germany.<br /><br />It's not just Germany; stories like <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11895107">this</a> reveal that Geneva airport had to close, as did Lyon in France. 8 people died of exposure in Poland. <blockquote>In France, 12 regions in the frozen east and centre banned the use of lorries, forcing more than 7,000 of them to park overnight, while the weather has caused hundreds of accidents on German roads.</blockquote>But...I think you'll find that a Mail reporter spoke to a friend in Berlin and they said it was fine? What more evidence do you need?No Sleep 'Til Brooklandshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03326756018822759152noreply@blogger.com2