Daily Mail round-up

Well, it's Friday, so I'm in a glorious mood. Of course, when I'm in a good mood something inside me starts worrying that I'm getting all out of equilibrium, and so I found myself drifting towards the Daily Mail website to put a little sprinkle of misery back in my day.

It's a pretty typical day for the Mail. The first thing that strikes you is the "So what?" box, where hard-hitting picture journalism finds its online home. Today's big three "so what?" stories include Cameron Diaz's upcoming bit on Top Gear, Danielle Lineker getting what appears to be a fairly minor haircut, and Shakira doing a sexy photoshoot. It occurs to me that pictures of Shakira dancing and stretching are spectactularly unlikely to give me the hit of depression I'm chasing, so it's time to scroll down. Although I may be back later.

Ah, this is more like it: Magistrate is forced to apologise for saying migrant 'abused our hospitality'. See, it turns out that the Office for Judicial Complaints has just released a 56-page report detailing various complaints made about the conduct of judges over the previous year. Buried deep in the middle of this report are a number of case studies with examples of things judges have had a ticking-off about. One of them relates to a judge who "had used words in open court with regard to a non-British defendant, that could have been construed as displaying prejudice against them for not being British, including saying, “We take exception to people coming to our shores and abusing our hospitality”". He wasn't sacked, or tarred and feathered for this, and it's not clear what the full comments were (the word "including" suggests there were more). However, the Mail is predictably angry, because, well, you can't even say anything about the foreigners anymore, just because you're in a highly sensitive job where the consistent appearance of impartiality is paramount!

Further down, I'm struck by two stories which appear to be news stories largely because of the sex of the people involved, a fact the Mail helpfully highlights with BLOCK CAPITALS in its headlines. So we get Dead at 28, the youngest MAN in Britain to get breast cancer (a MAN, no less!), and the more light-hearted Moment a TV host got the hots for Mad Men's Christina Hendricks (but this time, it was a WOMAN presenter), which brings us the not-at-all startling revelation that even some women (sorry, WOMEN) would quite like to have sex with Christina Hendricks. MAIL ONLINE REPORTER paints quite a picture here, one-handedly typing phrases like "curvaceous beauty" and "she placed her hand seductively on Christina's leg", as the anticipation builds. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of papers like the Mail, news reporting remains tenuously chained to events that happen in reality, and so the story ends with nothing much of note happening, instead of escalating into the frenzied lesbian romp you might have just unzipped for. "CURSE YOU, REALITY!", we hear MAIL ONLINE REPORTER yell, before taking a cold shower and going off to write about an unusually big-toothed rabbit.

Back to the misery then, and we're treated to a classic "Now" headline in the glittering form of Now you pay for prison parties: Tory minister says taxpayer must fund balls and comedy workshops for criminals, which reports a Tory minister very obviously not saying that. Still, the headline is a beauty; "Now" at the beginning to build up our sense of panic about where our runaway handcart is headed today, unnecessarily invoking the TAXPAYER to remind you that YOU, yes YOU actually have to pay taxes which sometimes FUND things that don't even get your bloody bins emptied.

The story is quite interesting really. A while ago, a ban on certain types of prisoner taking part in certain types of activity was knocked into place by the wildly jerking knee of Jack Straw, after some bad publicity about an imprisoned terrorist who apparently enrolled in a stand-up comedy class or something. One of the great ironies of the last few years in politics is that the right-wing press consistently portrayed New Labour as an arrogant, out-of-touch, PC institution a million miles removed from the concerns of the middle classes and the self-professed silent majority (who ironically never seem to shut the fuck up). In fact, towards the end of their reign, Labour became insanely keen to appear tough on crime and immigration, and ended up tossing out all kinds of illiberal legislation in a pointless attempt to placate Mail-readers and their ilk, a ploy which didn't even fucking work. So, Tory prisons minister Crispin Blunt has called into question a couple of these policies, saying, quite rightly;

"As a measure it was typical of the last administration's flakiness under pressure," he said.

"At the slightest whiff of criticism from the popular press, policy tended to get changed and the consequence of an absurd over-reaction to offenders being exposed to comedy in prison was this deleterious, damaging and daft instruction."

This has clearly vexed the Mail, who like their Tories to talk tough on crime. Indeed, it's angered them to the extent that a second article is attached to the bottom of this one, entitled "Tory who talks like a Left-winger". Here, we discover that Blunt has...well, he's actually never really said anything that left-wing or liberal before, leaving Rachel Quigley to wonder aloud if Blunt (a former Army man!) might have been "polluted by the presence of so many Liberal Democrats in the Coalition". Maybe one of them bit him and infected him with Not Being A Massive Cartoonishly Tory Prat disease? We may never know.

Lastly, we have another pleasingly ludicrous headline the Mail wants you to swallow at face value: EU spends £12m employing 200 researchers to conclude fruit is good for you (.... didn't we all know that?). If you're thinking "Hmm, I bet it turns out there was a little bit more to it than that", then you're right! Pat yourself on the back, Mr or Mrs Smart Guy or Girl!

So, the EU has spent some of its money on something. Before we find out what, the Mail wheels out someone from a "Eurosceptic think-tank" to give us his unbiased opinion, which he does in the form of the rhetorical question "In these tough economic times, do we really need an EU-funded superhero to tell us that fruit is healthy?". Well, no, I'd wager we don't. I'd also wager that the project started before the "tough economic times" (it's four years old), and that it did more than just tell is fruit is good. It seems the Mail is talking about the IsaFruit project, a major research project which published papers with pant-tighteningly exciting titles like these:

Variations in the orchard environmental conditions affect vascular and transpiration flows to/from peach fruit

Identification of a tri-iron(III), tri-citrate complex in the xylem sap of iron-deficient tomato resupplied with iron: new insights into plant iron long-distance transport.

Electrospray-Collision-Induced Dissociation Mass Spectrometry: a Tool to Characterize Synthetic Polyaminocarboxilate Ferric Chelates used as Fertilizers

Changes in organic acid and iron concentrations in xylem sap and apoplastic fluid of Beta vulgaris in response to iron deficiency and resupply

Fruit: turns out it's well good

(Note: one of the above is not a genuine paper emanating from the IsaFruit project; I made it up for satires! See if you can guess which).

All in all, a bit of a bollocks non-story then, patronisingly assuming that any study about fruit must obviously be frivolous, when it's clear that we should be putting all our money into EMPTYING OUR FUCKING BINS, OH GOD THE BINS, THEY HAVEN'T EMPTIED MY BIN SINCE TUESDAY, I THOUGHT WE WON THE FUCKING WAR?

Anyway, I'm sure, like me, you hate serious organisations such as the EU wasting their time and effort on tiresomely inconsequential fluff, so head over to the Mail's site and read some proper news, like how Angelina Jolie looks alright in leather, Cheryl Cole socialises with a penis-carrying male man, a Russian FEMALE golfer is quite attractive, which reminds me of various other sexy FEMALE sportsWOMEN whom you might like to see pictures of, and, most shockingly of all, Amy Winehouse has gone out drinking.

I feel a bit depressed now, where's those Shakira pictures again?

The Ethnics are coming!

This is the actual front page of the real Daily Express today:



No, really. The Express have actually gone with ONE IN 5 BRITONS WILL BE ETHNICS as their headline. On a day when most papers are reporting pointless fluff like the unprecedented NHS cuts, the Express has gone for the real big story, the one about how there's gonna be loads of blacks and Asians living here one day.

First of all, the word "ethnics". It's my genuine belief/hope that in 10 or 15 years this will become a taboo racial slur. "Ethnic" simply means of or pertaining to a race. It doesn't really make sense on its own; you can be "ethnic Chinese" or you can be an "ethnic minority", but this reference to races other than your own as "ethnics" is a troubling usage of the word that has crept into the language recently and still, incredibly, remains used frequently by the mainstream media (or at least it does in the Express). It's a shortening of "ethnic minority" that takes all the meaning away and instead creates this divisive term; there's us, the white British on the one hand, and then there's those ethnics. It's a brutal-sounding word, there's something nasty about the way it sounds and I've heard it used by people who would probably have once said "darkies" in its place when looking for a catch-all description for non-whites.

It's a very clear message from the Express here; the rise in the number of "ethnics" is something that should worry us. Last night, when I first saw this story, the online version used a fairly mundane picture of a British passport. At some point between last night and this morning, this was switched for a more incendiary picture of two veiled Muslim women, as if 1 in 5 Brits will be niqab-wearing Muslims by the date not mentioned in the headline.

The story itself is just some figures projecting that people from an ethnicity other than "white British" on the Census will form 20% of the population in 40 years' time. I don't know if these stats are accurate, but to be honest it's not that important. Let's assume that's true. What's important is the tone and the placement of this story, and that shocking, pisspoor headline. This is a dry population prediction spun into something more damaging, the sort of story people will be using to demand we close our borders and keep the "ethnics" out, lest we lose our nebulous sense of identity. An identity which, one can assume, is wholly derived from our skin colour.

So, is it really a problem? What does it matter that in 40 years, British people won't just be white? It's not as if they are now, unless you subscribe to the BNP's "just because a dog is born in a stable doesn't make it a horse" maxim. Britain has a long and proud tradition of making people of other races who settle here feel British. You can't expect everything to remain the same, but by and large immigrants that settle here speak English and immerse themselves in the British culture. They help shape it, but that's natural; all cultures evolve.

When I read this story, I was reminded of a quote that stuck with me from a couple of months ago. Spurs defender Benoit Assou-Ekotto gave an interview to the Guardian about how he feels about football, which was most notable for the fact that he considers it a job above anything, rather than a passion. But also interesting was his perspective on racial integration; as a French-born player with a French mother who chose to play for his father's native Cameroon, he claims to feel no real affinity for France:

"...the country does not want us to be part of this new France. So we identify ourselves more with our roots. Me playing for Cameroon was a natural and normal thing. I have no feeling for the France national team; it just doesn't exist. When people ask of my generation in France, 'Where are you from?', they will reply Morocco, Algeria, Cameroon or wherever. But what has amazed me in England is that when I ask the same question of people like Lennon and Defoe, they'll say: 'I'm English.' That's one of the things that I love about life here."

And that, for the most part, is how it is. Personally, I think that's something we can be proud of. We have ethnic minorities who were born here and raised in this culture. Mostly, they identify as British or English, because that's what they are. Why should they be treated as if they're simply "ethnics"? Well, because the Express, frankly, is either suspicious and fearful of people who aren't white British, or thinks its readers are and panders to them. Remember, this isn't about immigration, it's not about illegal immigrants or "bogus" asylum seekers or alien cultures; this is a straightforward division the Express is highlighting between whites on the one hand and everyone else on the other. The "ethnics" include second and third-generation "immigrants", people who were not only born here but whose parents were born here, and who are British in every meaningful sense. Oh, but they're not white. Now, I don't want to cry racism at this, but bloody hell folks, you're making it fucking difficult.

It's just so depressingly familiar; mundane predictions rendered in apocalyptic tones, quote from Sir Andrew Green, ramblings about Poles, picture of scary Muslims, we've seen the story a million times before in the Express and the Mail, either by Macer Hall or James Slack. But today, with that headline, the Express may just have surpassed itself for spite and nastiness.

They're letting gays in now, you know! Whatever next?

I suppose it was to be expected really. The right-wing press was never gonna be able to ignore the chance to make headlines about gay asylum seekers. Still, I was a bit taken aback to see the Express going with the monumentally crass headline of NOW ASYLUM IF YOU'RE GAY. As the front-page lead. I don't know why I occasionally let these things surprise me, I mean, yesterday's front page was about how the Muslims are forcing everyone to swim in the dark due to, like, PC gone mad.

Anyway, the real story goes like this; two homosexual men (from Cameroon and Iran) who were claiming asylum here have been allowed to stay, at least for now. There's a rather sensible rule that says that, due to our tree-hugging, sandal-wearing "not really wanting people to die" policy, we don't send potential asylum claimants back to countries where they are genuinely fleeing real persecution. In this case, the two men have successfully argued that they would suffer persecution in the not particularly gay-friendly countries they came from. The applicant from Cameroon, for example, had been physically attacked for being gay in his own country, so this seems to be a reasonable claim.

The Court of Appeal, however, initially rejected this argument on the grounds that they could go back and just, y'know, pretend not to be gay. Or least not be so bloody gay about it. This suggestion has now been overturned by the Supreme Court on the grounds that it was, and I'm paraphrasing a touch here, fucking stupid. So now the two men will be allowed to live here instead of being forced to return to countries that don't want them.

As you'd expect, the Express reacts to this decision with the heart-warming humanitarian glow they're renowned for. By which I mean, whining that "ASYLUM claims could soar after judges upheld appeals by two gay men who were to be deported" and "Campaigners last night warned it could mean millions might try to claim they are gay to qualify for asylum in Britain".

And who might these campaigners be? Take a minute to guess. Go on. I'll give you a clue; it's not really a public finance issue so the Taxpayers' Alliance aren't really appropriate for once, so just consider who else is on the Express' speed-dial. You there yet? If you said "Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch" and "Tory MP and perennial rent-a-quote gobshite Philip Davies", then take a swift drink because you're depressingly, soul-crushingly right!

This is how the Express and others are choosing to deal with the story. It's a thorny issue, so instead of arguing with the decision on moral or ethical grounds, which they can't really do without looking like they might have some kind of problem with gays and foreigners, just moan about how it obviously means that by 2015 the country will be sinking into the sea under the sheer weight of Iranians ostentatiously brandishing Scissor Sisters albums to try and pass as gay. So, Green takes the "obviously we don't want people getting beaten to death for being gay, but maybe we should pull out of international conventions on asylum" line, while Davies can be relied on for a bit of largely baseless scaremongering;

Conservative MP Philip Davies said: “It’s a dangerous game to play to go down this line because it’s quite feasible that this could offer an ideal line of defence for someone who wants to try to avoid being kicked out of the country, whether it is true or not that they are gay.

“By its very nature, it’s very difficult to prove one way or another. My concern would be that this may well be exploited by some people as a way of avoiding deportation.”

I mean, never mind that these cases will come to an actual court, which will weigh up the evidence and have to decide not only whether or not the person concerned is actually gay, but also how well-founded their fear of persecution is. Let's just pretend that this is going to lead to any failed asylum seeker suddenly saying "oh yeah, did I mention I'm gay?" and being carried out of court under a hail of ticker tape with a sincere apology and a fistful of benefit money.

The whole tone of the article is just profoundly dispiriting, concerned not with the plight of two real human beings (which is what the story should really be about), but with what it may mean for the number of foreign-looking dudes we have invading our green and pleasant land. Still, at times like this we have to be thankful for small mercies such as this;

"Have Your Say" is unavailable for this story.

A spooky internet pest writes...

Generally speaking, I'm not one of those people who gets a throbbing great hard-on talking about the effect of the internet and blogging on political discourse; if I have to read another meandering blog post about how Web 2.0 has sparked a paradigm shift or something I might well have to take a lighter to my eyeballs. However, as a massive fan of laughing at people, I will make occasional exceptions in cases where it's a bit funny, and so it's proved to be with Proper Telegraph Journalist Cristina Odone and her complete bewilderment at the perils of this new-fangled internet thing.

A week ago, Odone penned a sloppy attack piece on the Lib Dems and Dr Evan Harris MP in particular. In the aftermath of the first televised debate between the leaders of the three main parties, in which Nick Clegg surprised everyone by appearing to be marginally less shit than a beleagured PM widely held responsible for our fucked economy and wax-faced Tony Blair impersonator David Cameron, papers started falling over themselves to a) remember who the fuck these 'Liberal Democrat' dudes were and b) attack them. Odone's piece was titled "The Lib Dems are a Jekyll and Hyde party. Forget nice Mr Clegg. What about 'Dr Death'?", although it may as well have been titled "I've got to slag off the Lib Dems and have just realised I know dick-all about Clegg, but have remembered that I don't like that Evan Harris".

The nature of the criticism was pretty poor. It had the feeling of a blog cobbled together at the last minute, with lazy references to how Harris is referred to by opponents as "Dr Death" because of his not-that-controversial views on abortion and assisted dying. It called Harris "pop-eyed" regarding matters of religion, accused him of believing that "God is bad, his followers mad", and called the Lib Dems' apparent secularism "sinister" and "creepy". The whole thing was garbage; lazy, unsupported attacks on Harris which distorted his views. (Disclaimer: I'm not really a Lib Dem voter myself, but in keeping with a lot of people who value the evidence-based approach I have a lot of time for Harris as an individual, who's always seemed like one of the good guys). This being the internet, the link gets shared, and the comments section under Odone's piece was quickly filled with rebuttals, including a good one from Harris himself responding to the various accusations and clarifying his position on abortion and euthanasia.

Now, at this point, a good journalist would have either admitted she was wrong, or posted a follow-up piece justifying her depiction of Harris and the Lib Dems, using old-fashioned stuff like quotes and facts. An average journalist would have ignored the comments, which are never as widely read as the piece above the line, and gone on as if nothing had happened. Then there's always the third option; whine petulantly at your critics, accuse them of being some kind of mindless mob, and conspicuously fail to deal with any of their criticisms in terms of their substance or otherwise.

You may well have guess from that laboured set-up that Odone chose the third option, in her already infamously-titled effort The Lib Dems' spooky posse of internet pests. Odone bleats:

I’m spooked. Although I’ve been a commentator for years, I’m new to blogging. So it’s come as a bit of a shock to discover that everything I write that is even mildly critical of the Lib Dem sacred cows, Nick Clegg and Dr Evan Harris, provokes instant, ferocious and unchecked response

"Mildy critical" is a bit rich for an article which describes the person being criticised as "Dr Death", as though Harris were a cartoonish supervillian smashing babies in his lab with a hammer and becoming visibly sexually aroused as he does so. Instead of backing up her attack on Harris, she simply complains about those who called her on her bullshit for doing so. She suggests that the people criticising her are trying to shut down the discussion, apparently oblivious to the irony of saying that in a piece which is smacking them down for responding at all. Her response drips with theatrical over-reaction; her critics unleashed "the forces of hell" on her, she implies that Lib Dem supporters who responded are "thugs" who don't use the tactics of a democracy, asserting that there is "no room in the Lib-Labs’ intolerant culture for discussion", that they are "demagogues" displaying "knee-jerk hostility".

The democracy accusation is the most enjoyable one for me; there's something about its complete lack of self-awareness that would almost be endearing if it wasn't so brain-poppingly stupid. Being criticised for what you say is part of the essence of democracy; in the old days journalists would write whatever nonsense they liked and not know what the reaction was, but now they get an instant, sometimes deservingly brutal, judgement. Free speech, innit? But no, Odone stamps her feet at the criticism instead of dealing with any of it on its merits, and for people like me it's hard not break into a bit of a smile watching her flail about having been caught out running her mouth without thinking. And let's be clear here; no-one is trying to get Odone locked up or silenced, we just reserve the right to use the internet's interactive nature to tell you when you're being a bit of a prat. Feel free to hurl abuse at me below!

P.S. why not join our evil debate-silencing gang of web creeps at the sinister Facebook group, or flex your Lib-Dem-Thug-4-Life muscles on Twitter using the #spookyposse hashtag?

FaceBONK, more like!

You'd think they might learn something, wouldn't you? A couple of weeks ago the Mail singled out and named Facebook in an article about the dangers of evil paedos trawling the internet, in a story which completely misrepresented its source, as covered nicely here at Enemies Of Reason. The Mail was forced into a pretty humbling apology in that instance when it turned out that the report the story was based on was explicitly about a site that wasn't Facebook.

So I was surprised (wait, surprised is the wrong word...depressed?) to see the Mail again picking out Facebook for special scorn in today's marvellously-titled Facebook 'sex encounters' linked to rise in syphilis, which, as the title suggests, attributes the rise in syphilis in parts of the North East to the fact that Facebook is popular there. The first three paragraphs really hammer this point home:

Facebook has been linked to a resurgence of the sexually-transmitted disease syphilis.

The virus has increased fourfold in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside, the areas of Britain where the website is most popular.

Medics believe Facebook and other social networking sites make it easier for strangers to meet multiple partners for casual sexual encounters.

Got it? FACEBOOK! The Telegraph have taken a similar tack as well. However, go to a less scaremongering source, such as the Press Association and you won't find a mention of Facebook at all.

While it's fair to say that 'medics' (well, one at least), seem to have given some quotes connecting the two rises, the guy who gives the quote never mentions Facebook by name. And probably for good reason; Facebook isn't really a casual dating site, profiles are mostly protected and for the most part I've never really got the vibe there that I'm one click away from finding someone I can disappoint up against a bin later that evening. Isn't that what Gumtree and Plenty Of Fish are for?

Regardless, there's precious little evidence here that it's Facebook in particular that's responsible for syphilis. So why do the Mail insist on mentioning Facebook in all these non-specific stories (see also Burglars will burgle the fuck out of you if you're not careful on Facebook!), to the extent that it made my Mail-reading mum the other day idly call for Facebook to be banned at the dinner table? (Little insight into to the inspiration for this blog, there...)

I guess partly it's because it's the one everyone's heard of, and it makes everyone who reads it able to relate a little more to the story, and partly because OH MY FUCKING GOD I SAW MY DAUGHTER ON FACEBOOK THE OTHER DAY WHAT IF SHE HAS THAT AIDS NOW?! However, a cynic might also suggest that putting the word 'Facebook' in your article is a good way to get more precious Google hits, and that's why Girls Aloud upskirt Messi hat-trick Lady Gaga video Twitter sex Olympics tickets Tiger Woods.

The more things change...

Having taken a fairly lengthy sabbatical from writing this blog, and indeed reading the papers, for a while, I thought I'd dive back in this week and have a look at what progress has been made in the world of journalism since the beginning of the year, while I've been sleeping and playing video games and trying not to read things that make me want to cave my own head in with a desk drawer. What I read all seems disturbingly, or maybe comfortingly, familiar.

Of course, it should be no surprise that Richard Littlejohn is still, for want of a better word, an arse. Today's column finds him predictably dancing a wee jig on Michael Foot's grave, calling him a coward and sneeringly referring to Foot's asthma as 'alleged asthma'. He follows this with a 'hilarious' imaginary conversation between two people from 'the real world', which concludes that real people in the real world don't give a toss about Lord Ashcroft's apparent £127m of avoided tax, and are instead more concerned about MANDELSON, BIG GAY PETER MANDELSON, LOOK OVER THERE AT WHAT LABOUR ARE DOING. Never being one to shy away from the important issues, Littlejohn then moves on to talking about how Ashley Cole's beard makes him look like a terrorist. No, really.

Elsewhere in the Mail we get reminded about the terrifying nature of our willies and front bottoms in yet another outraged article about the communist plot to ruden up our kids' fragile minds with dastardly sex education. The headline of this one describes the "Parents' anger" (plural), but it soon becomes apparent that the article hinges on literally one complaint by one mother about a sexy cartoon sex video the authorities sexily tried to sexify her 7-year-old daughter with. The parent, one Mrs Bullivant, sets herself up as an expert in psychology:

There is no educational or psychological benefit or need for children of this age to have full knowledge of what sexual intercourse actually entails

...which she may well be, for all I know. Still, the complaints of a single parent about a video which, according to the obligatory stapled-on official response at the end of the article, has been around for ten years, seem a somewhat flimsy basis for an entire story. Anyone would think the Mail was full of nannying conservative busybodies desperate to shield their kids from being educated about anything that might seem rude!

Still, at least the writer did attempt to disguise their agenda by tying it to a bit of factual information that, if you squint a bit, could almost be considered newsworthy. Not something that troubles writers at the somewhat lower-rent Daily Express, where I stumbled upon this curious piece about Anthea Turner by a writer named Elisa Roche. This piece is currently the fourth most important story on the Express' website, above the interest rate freeze, the Lord Ashcroft thing, and that boring story about the British child kidnapped in Pakistan. Anyway, this piece is one of the most bizarre I can remember reading. I urge you to read it in full (it's not very long), and when you've finished, tell me where the a) news, or b) comment is. It's essentially a potted biography of Anthea Turner's career which gives you the impression that she's no longer making as much money as she used to. This may not come as a surprise to you; it didn't to me, because I used to see her on the telly a lot, and now...not so much. It reads like a section from an Anthea Turner Wikipedia entry, written by someone with too much time on their hands and not deleted or tidied up yet because no-one bothered to read all the way through it.

What confuses me about this article isn't so much its absolutely staggering pointlessness (finding superfluous Daily Express articles is not a task that requires training and dedication, given that the paper loves to plug Desmond's OK! magazine by giving news space to fellating vapid celebrities), but the fact that it doesn't attempt to disguise its absolute absence of worth by orbiting loosely around a recent Turner-related news story. "But there are none!" I pretend to hear you cry! Well, quite. So why this? Did Roche wake up late, realise she had barely any time to file any copy, and then spin some kind of big celebrity wheel which told her to write some witless nonsense about Anthea fucking Turner? I mean, I know it's Friday (which is why I'm writing this rather than doing the work I get paid for), but seriously, have some standards! It's an unwritten law of journalism that you bloody well tack your hollow celebrity witterings onto some kind of nominally newsworthy happening that involves them, even if it's just a new picture of them on a red carpet or looking a bit fat. Elisa Roche, you have flouted these rules and left me dazed and confused. I don't know what to believe in any more.

Nor of course, does my old favourite Andrew Brown over in The Guardian, who in his guise as Chief Wet Blanket Of Spirituality has penned another inconclusive article about religion which is sort of sceptical but also sort of credulous. Brown's articles seem forever pitched at the sort of people that consider themselves agnostics or nice atheists, but who would really like some kind of interesting proof of god's existence to come out, if only so they could slightly impress their friends at a dinner party with a quasi-spiritual tale that begins "Well, actually, I'm an agnostic atheist but I did read an interesting piece in The Guardian the other day...". In this piece, Brown tells the tale of some religious folks who like to make cups of tea for god, only for him to mysteriously not drink it. The ever-sensitive Brown resists the urge to be mean about them, and instead concludes his piece by quoting someone quite mealy-mouthed saying something a bit enigmatic, from atop a particularly broad fence.

So, yeah, I'm back, and fuck-all has changed. The Daily Star, lost for headlines without a current reality TV series to run angry "It's a fix!" front pages about, settles for some bollocks about Madeleine McCann. The Sun, meanwhile, is a sucker for stories about how prisons are basically holiday camps, and therefore is particularly incensed that Jon Venables ate a burger (with chips, mind you) when he should be eating humble pie on a bed of soil.

Fearful Venables is being given 24-hour protection inside jail as he gorges on burgers and chips in his cell.

We can only hope and pray that it was a Tesco Value burger and not one of those more expensive lamb and mint burgers. A source with no apparent sense of self-awareness said;

"The level of protection he has is incredible. It's like he is some kind of celebrity."

Ah, sometimes the satire just writes itself.

Daily Mail writer branded 'mass murderer' by critics

One of my favourite newspaper tricks is what I like to think of as the 'critics say' gambit, wherein a writer of an ostensibly factual article uses references to unnamed 'critics' to tack on his opinions and turn it into an editorial piece. Although, in the case of DPP rejects Tory plans to give homeowners the right to kill burglars, the prejudices of the writer are so clear that it's more like the vaguely factual bits of the article have been tacked on to righteous sermonising.

The story itself is pretty straightforward. Recently, a man named Munir Hussain was sentenced to 30 months in jail for attacking a burglar who invaded his home and tied up and threatened his family. Hussain, unfortunately, went beyond the law's 'reasonable force' caveat when he and some of his friends chased the criminal down the street, pushed him to the ground and beat him with a cricket bat and other weapons in a sustained attack so violent that the cricket bat broke and the burglar was left with a fractured skull, so badly brain-damaged he couldn't stand trial for his own crimes.

Predictably, the same forces that supported Tony Martin in his infamous case came out in Hussain's support, and the Conservatives, ever keen to toss out populist soundbites that they know are unworkable so they won't have to deal with the consequences do the decent thing, are making noises about changing the law in some way that allows householders more leeway to knock seven shades of shit out of intruders (presumably unreasonable force?).

Anyway, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has come out and rather uncontroversially said he thinks the law is basically fine as it is; it allows for the use of 'reasonable' force, which by definition makes the law, well...quite reasonable. The Tories, the Daily Mail, and this DM writer (Tim Shipman), appear not to agree. See if you can spot any subtle hints as to the writer's opinion in this tentative opening paragraph;

Britain's top prosecutor faced charges he is a 'socialist' yesterday after he flatly rejected Tory plans to give homeowners the right to kill burglars.

In the next couple of paragraphs, Starmer is described as 'controversial' (to whom? Not stated), and 'a former left-wing human rights lawyer' (one rung above 'Islamic paedophile' on the Mail's morality ladder). The article drips with contempt for Starmer, going so far as tell him what he should have said;

But he then went on to dismiss Tory plans to help homeowners out of hand, when he could have stated simply that his job is to uphold whatever laws governments pass.

In reality, what Starmer actually said was;

'The current test works very well. I can't really see the case for a change in the law at this stage.

'I have faith in the current arrangement which is the use of reasonable force. There are many cases, some involving death, where no prosecutions are brought.

'We would only ever bring a prosecution where we thought that the degree of force was unreasonable in such a way that the jury would realistically convict.'

Now to me, that's so staggeringly uncontroversial that it verges on the bland. After a few paragraphs pointing out that Starmer was a bit left-wing as a youth, it tries to crank up the evil socialist-o-meter a bit more by including a bunch of paragraphs about Keir Starmer's namesake, Keir Hardie, the famous socialist from ye olden days. Hmmm. You might think that a writer with the surname SHIPMAN would steer clear of encouraging people to judge others by their given names, but apparently not. Now, please note, I'm not saying that Tim Shipman murders hundreds of old ladies in their sleep. There's absolutely no proof of that. But I'm not not saying it.

The last paragraph is probably my favourite, it's just so wonderfully 'Daily Mail' that it could have come out of a particularly clever Daily Mail outrage-generating machine;

His appointment as Director of Public Prosecutions in July 2008 was seen by critics as among the most blatant attempts by New Labour to pepper the establishment with those who share their ideological commitment to European human rights law, which is blamed for a host of politically-correct rulings.

What critics? They're never quoted. The closest we get to an actual attributable criticism is a BBC interviewer asking him a question about his youth editing left-wing journals. Oh wait, there's this anonymous criticism;

Privately, party officials were furious that Mr Starmer had again been drawn into a public denunciation of their policies. 'He is there to enforce the law,' one said. 'He is not there to make the law.'

...which Starmer would appear to be doing by saying that the current law is fine and just. But going back to that final paragraph, it's just so beautiful I almost want to frame it. Deftly it brings up political correctness, Europe, The Establishment (of left-wing ideologues), and of course that terrible human rights law. I wonder if Shipman spent a minute or so trying to figure out a way to get asylum seekers and Jonathan Ross in there somehow? Perhaps he didn't have time, there are a lot of sick old ladies that need 'help' at this time of year...

On Melanie Phillips and religion

Melanie Phillips normally considers Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams an obnoxious liberal moron, but happily she's found some common ground with him over his recent grumblings about politicians not giving suitable respect to Christianity, which she details in Just for once, the Archbishop is right ... treating Christians as cranks is an act of cultural suicide. As is her style, and as the hilarious 'cultural suicide' bit of the title suggests, Phillips takes his comments and appends to them some staggering hyperbole and myopia.

What Williams said was typically bland, of course:

...the trouble with a lot of government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem, it’s an eccentricity, it’s practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities.

The effect is to de-normalise faith, to intensify the perception that faith is not part of our bloodstream. And, you know, in great swathes of the country that’s how it is.

(As an aside, I quite like how in Phillips' piece the bit about oddballs is immediately followed by a photo of the Archbishop in mandatory ceremonial get-up of pointy hat, giant flapping robe with sleeves that look like wings, and massive ornamental gold staff...nothing odd or eccentric there, of course, it's what all the kids are wearing down the shopping mall these days).

Phillips immediately goes on the offensive, suggesting there's a "war of attrition being waged against Christian beliefs". She cites some recent cases like that of Duke Amachree, a council worker who was sacked for, as Phillips has it, "encourag[ing] a client with an incurable medical condition to believe in God". What happened is that a woman with bowel disease came to see him in his capacity as a housing officer to see if she could be relocated nearer hospital, whereupon he apparently started telling she'd be alright if she believed in god. The full facts of the case don't seem to be public domain, with mostly the conservative newspapers covering it, but ultimately it was a case of a man who had been warned about his conduct before, using his position to do something he wasn't supposed to. I doubt Phillips would be as happy if it were a dogmatic atheist using his council position to talk believers out of their faith.

It's here that Phillips and I really part ways:

Christians are being removed from adoption panels if they refuse to endorse placing children for adoption with samesex couples.

Similarly, a Christian counsellor was sacked by the national counselling service Relate because he refused to give sex therapy sessions to gays.

I read those things and I think 'Good!'. We should be taking action against people who discriminate on the grounds of sexuality in 2009. If the religious want to believe that homosexuality is a grave sin, they can do so, but when they're in public positions they should be treating everyone as equals. It doesn't just apply to Christians, of course, but anyone who discriminates against gays. But amazingly, Phillips turns this on its head; instead of it being a case of the religious denying access to services on the grounds of sexuality and thus infringing their rights, this is somehow an assault on religion:

What this amounts to is that for Christians, the freedom to live according to their religious beliefs - one of the most fundamental precepts of a liberal society - is fast becoming impossible. Indeed, merely professing traditional Christian beliefs can cause such offence that it is treated as a crime.

This would be funny if the equality legislation Labour had introduced didn't strongly protect religion. Phillips then goes way back to 2001 to cite the case of Harry Hammond. This is fun, because she started the piece defending Williams' view that religion wasn't just about eccentric oddballs, and is now throwing her backing behind a man who stood in the street with placards demanding an end to homosexuality. His placards bore the legends 'Stop Immorality', 'Stop Homosexuality' and 'Stop Lesbianism', which Phillips apparently considers 'traditional Christian beliefs'. Are they? If they are, this might explain why Christianity is fast becoming perceived as an 'eccentricity' practiced by 'oddities'. When it comes to parading with placards telling people who they shouldn't be having sex with, based on centuries-old teachings which we're told are the divine words of an invisible, unknowable being, then maybe shit has got a bit strange.

It's enjoyable to watch Phillips attempt to defend this stuff though. She talks endlessly of liberty and freedom, but in doing so is defending people who have actually been intolerant to the liberty and freedom of others. She goes on, first trying to reconcile her belief that Labour hates religion with her other belief that Labour is cosying up to the Muslims, a 'double standard' which she conspicuously provides dick-all evidence for. Hilariously, she goes on to accuse the Left of 'racism':

The root of this double standard is the unpleasant prejudice that minority faiths hail from cultures where people are less well-educated and so cannot be blamed for their beliefs. This, of course, is a deeply racist attitude, and is commonly found on the Left.

Again, she backs this up with nothing, and is surprisingly casual about tossing the racism accusation around, an accusation she finds abhorrent when it's directed at 'her side', as it were, (for example when she says that "those who shriek racism want to destroy British identity").

She's not finished though. She asserts that religion is suppressed in political discourse...

As his former spin doctor Alastair Campbell once famously observed: 'We don't do God.'

This is because among the intelligentsia, the animosity to religion runs even deeper than the upside-down value system of the multicultural agenda. It springs from the fixed view that reason and religion are in diametrically opposite camps.

There's a kernel of truth here in that politicians in Britain don't talk loudly and strongly about their belief in god. This is not a conspiracy, it's just because we, the people, no longer react well to it. We don't really want our politicians to be acting on the word of god; they should be acting for those of us unfortunate enough to be constrained to the physical realm. By the same token though, there's very little outspoken atheism in politics either, to the point where Nick Clegg's declaration that he didn't believe in a god was actual news, despite being what I would consider the default position. Amusingly, his admission of atheism was seen as so politically dangerous he was moved to issue a statement that his wife was a Roman Catholic, that he raises his kids as Catholics and that he fully respected religion and so on and so forth. And that, my friends, is about the closest a mainstream party leader has come to being an outspoken atheist. This is not suggestive of a country where the political discourse is dominating by raving religion-bashers of the kind people imagine Richard Dawkins to be. Politicians are so desperate to be all things to all men that they don't want to 'do god' or do atheism.

Hold onto your seats though, because she's got more to say, and this one is fucking awesome:

Anyone who prays to God must therefore be anti-reason, anti- science and antifreedom - in other words, an objectionable, obscurantist nutcase.

But this is the very opposite of the truth. Rationality is actually underpinned by Judeo-Christian beliefs.

Without the Biblical narrative, which gave the world the revolutionary idea of an orderly universe that could therefore be investigated by the use of reason, science would never have developed in the first place.

Unfortunately all that investigatin' never found much evidence for many of the wilder things that happened in the Bible, but somehow for Phillips, science still legitimises Christianity because Christianity preceded it, and if we hadn't had Christianity, then of course we couldn't possibly have had science. She goes on to yearn for a Britian where politicians and the public were as religious as those in the US, but this is always a stance I've never quite understood from traditionalists. British history and culture has led us to the point where most of us aren't strongly religious; that's now, broadly speaking, the British way. Why try and reimpose something that is no longer natural to us? She ends with a warning to Williams:

But unless he starts promoting the Church as the transcendental custodian of a civilisation rather than the Guardian newspaper at prayer, the society to which it gave rise will continue to sleepwalk off the edge of a religious and cultural cliff.

This whole 'sleepwalking' thing is a recurring theme in Phillips' pieces; her Spectator blog in particular is littered with dire warnings that we're sleepwalking into something or other. It always seems like a strangely arrogant thing to say, in this case with its implication that the decline of religion is something we shouldn't want or should be protected from having, because only visionaries like Phillips are awake enough to see the dire consequences of a potentially godless UK. Imagine, a nation whose beliefs aren't derived from ancient scripture and as a consequence don't openly discriminate against homosexuals in the provision of public services. What a terrifying world!

The madness of teaching kids right from wrong, by Jan Moir

Having managed to offend an impressive number of people with her Stephen Gateley piece, Jan Moir turns to the much safer subject of domestic violence. In The madness of lessons in wife-beating, she proudly asserts that it's terribly silly for schools to be teaching our kids that it's wrong to beat women up. This is a fairly common position on the right, where lecturing people about drugs and banning computer games is somehow compatible with a libertarian position, but talk about something like actual genuine domestic violence and you're the nanny state, which is the worst thing to be. And, like all good conservative pieces, it begins by harking back to the old days with a wistful tear and a made-up story;

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin. Once upon a time, in a land that now seems far, far away, there lived a mummy and a daddy and their lovely little children.

Back then, the moral responsibility lay with the mother - and yes, even the father! - to bring up their children properly: to teach them right from wrong, to show them how to sit up straight, polish their shoes, say their prayers, be nice to everyone and eat pureed organic carrots without getting it all over their bibs. And so on and so forth.

Some parents did it better than others, of course. Yet in the scramble of life - taking in the cruelties of the playground, the learning curve of adolescence - we just about managed to get by.

If by 'get by' you mean 'survived', then yes, I agree with that, with the exception of the people who didn't and thus aren't around to write shit articles about it. But if by 'get by' you mean 'didn't have worrying levels of domestic violence', then you're on somewhat shakier ground. This is of course pretty standard for traditionalists; the mere fact that you and your parents lived beyond 50 is proof that literally everything was fine. Sure, a few wives got battered to death, but we did win two World Wars and one World Cup!

We did not rear a nation of monsters. We did not try to invade Poland or seize the silk routes. Did we get any thanks for this? No, we did not.

You want thanks for not invading Poland? Fucking hell, they set the bar for achievement pretty low in the Moir household. Still, I'm not sure what Moir thinks not invading Poland has to do with wife-beating. I'd wager that if you did a survey of people in British prisons who'd assaulted women, you'd find that relatively few of them had been directly responsible for Nazi Germany's annexing of Poland in 1939, although I'm willing to be proved wrong on that.

Surely if you insist on lessons to teach small children it is wrong for men to hit women, then you are implying that all men are a potential menace.

Speaking as a man, I'm fairly comfortable that teaching kids that it's wrong to hit women doesn't suggest to them that I personally am a violent psychopath with a pile of unconscious women lying bloodied on my carpet. You know, in the same way that when we teach kids it's wrong to, say, invade Poland, I don't worry that they think I might be Adolf Hitler disguised with a beard and hiding in plain sight. But hey, you're right Moir, let's not teach kids about right and wrong in case it offends men! I admire your hardcore political correctness!

While saying 'it should be left to parents to teach our kids, the majority of them are alright' sounds quite nice in principle, there are a few tiny flaws in it. The main one being that some of these parents are actual wife-beaters, and therefore expecting them to teach their kids that wife-beating is wrong may be a tad ambitious.

Anyway, it wouldn't be a Mail article without a bit of foreigner-baiting, and Moir obliges with some finesse;

One of the real problems to face women in this country is honour crime. Is the Government addressing this properly? No, of course not. They are far too terrified of upsetting any ethnic minority to tackle the issue.

Of course, what better way to deal with domestic violence among ethnic minority cultures than to, er, forbid schools to tell kids that such violence is wrong and leave it up to the parents, whose culture apparently teaches them it's okay? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?! While it's perfectly valid to argue that what we teach in schools is not going to end domestic violence on its own and that more things need to be done, writing off the plan entirely and then pointing the finger at The Ethnics isn't really helping either. Unless the lessons are going to include the phrase "Violence against women is wrong in all circumstances, except if you're Muslim, Hindu or Sikh in which case kill the sinful whores!"; then, you might have something resembling a point. The best part of this is, if the Government were to shelve this 'plan' (which sort of doesn't really exist in the way the Mail portrays it anyway), it wouldn't be long before someone started a rumour that they'd decided not to teach kids domestic violence was wrong in case it offended the Muslims.

Here endeth Jan Moir's lesson in morality for the week; let's leave it up to parents, including the wife-beating, honour-killing ones, to decide whether to teach their children that violence against women is wrong. Huzzah!

Ooh, comment of the day from Johnrs65 in Norfolk;

Why teach children about domestic violence? Those involved already know, those that aren ot involved don't need to be set a bad example.

Yes, those children who've witnessed domestic violence won't do it, and neither will those who didn't. That's why domestic violence has now reached zero! Johnrs65 for Prime Minister!

BBCC: the extra 'C' is for 'CONSPIRACY!'

There's been much excitement about the release of a lot of hacked emails from the Hadley Climate Research Unit, and what, if anything, it means for science of global warming. I'm not going to get involved in that, because I'm not a climatologist and what I've read of the emails makes my head spin. What has been interesting to watch is the media reaction, and today's Mail (what else?), found a great new angle on the scandal. See, not only is there a big scientific conspiracy going on, but the evil BBC are in on it too!

In Climate change scandal deepens as BBC expert claims he was sent leaked emails six weeks ago, Carol Driver seems to think she's hit on a doozy of a story.

The controversy surrounding the global warming e-mail scandal has deepened after a BBC correspondent admitted he was sent the leaked messages more than a month before they were made public.

Paul Hudson, weather presenter and climate change expert, claims the documents allegedly sent between some of the world's leading scientists are of a direct result of an article he wrote.

Hudson wrote a blog a while back for the BBC which got some criticism from scientists because in trying to be even-handed about the idea of anthropogenic climate change, he'd written a piece which climate scientists felt gave too much room to the minority viewpoint that it's all bullshit. He got emails about it from scientists and everything. Driver continues;

In his BBC blog three days ago, Hudson said: 'I was forwarded the chain of emails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the world's leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article "Whatever Happened To Global Warming".'

Amazingly, no alarm bells rang for Driver when she read that no-one had picked up on this SHOCKING REVELATION that Hudson had been sitting on these illegally leaked emails, even though he'd written about it three days ago on the rather widely-read BBC site. Nevertheless, she ploughs on with the insinuation that someone had sent Hudson all the emails, and he'd kept it quiet, presumably kowtowing to the bullies of the global warming industry or something. There's a particularly telling sentence;

However, Hudson does not explain why he sat on the controversial information for so long...

...meaning "Hudson didn't write it on his blog which I've taken this story from, and I never bothered asking". I mean, heck, she's only a journalist!

Sadly for the Mail, the idea that Hudson (and by extension the BBC), deliberately sat on these scandalous emails, is swiftly debunked by Hudson himself;

As you may know, some of the e-mails that were released last week directly involved me and one of my previous blogs, 'Whatever happened to global warming ?'

These took the form of complaints about its content, and I was copied in to them at the time. Complaints and criticisms of output are an every day part of life, and as such were nothing out of the ordinary. However I felt that seeing there was an ongoing debate as to the authenticity of the hacked e-mails, I was duty bound to point out that as I had read the original e-mails, then at least these were authentic, although of course I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the others.

Short version; Hudson was copied into some of the emails when they were sent, because they were about him, and rather than revealing that he'd been forwarded the zip file of stolen emails, he was merely vouching for the authenticity of the ones that he'd seen. When the story first broke, people weren't quite sure if they were genuine, so Hudson was merely saying "Well, these ones are".

As yet, the Mail haven't altered this story to include Hudson's response. Meanwhile, their readers get to run with their fantasy that the BBC and Hudson covered it up;

Why did this guy wait so long before cimning out with these facts, though? Could it be there is a complicity between the "leading scientists" and the BBC?
The BBC are certainly churning out a lot od GW propaganda these days!
- Kevin, Newtownabbey, UK, 26/11/2009 8:09

This is proof that the BBC is biased and is no longer an impartial news reporting broadcaster.

The BBC sat on this because it went against their "masters" and their "beliefs", namely the Labour party is good, the Tories bad, the EU is good, Islam is great and global warming is happening. Any evidence which proves these beliefs incorrect is supressed or covered up. Bias by ommision.

Time and time again good news stories for Labour are covered, stories that harm Labour are not shown or are distorted or given a fraction of the air time.
- L. G., Berkshire, 26/11/2009 8:00

The BBC is the public arm of the government, its propaganda department, what else do people expect?

Nothing to see here, move along please...
- Steve Walker, Luton, 26/11/2009 7:01

The irony being, of course, that Hudson is only involved in this because he'd written a piece for the BBC that cast doubt on global warming, rather than because he's some kind of Nu Liebore mouthpiece for the AGW conspiracy. D'oh!