The 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; BBC executives rule most offensive word in English language is 'a good joke' on the radio at 6.30pm.

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?

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.

The Corporation decided that the word – most abhorrent to women – has lost much of its 'shock value' and is tolerable for radio and television.

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’.

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...

Anyway, readers of a sensitive disposition may need to look away now, as the Mail reports the offensive joke uncensored:

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.

Miss Toksvig said: 'It's the Tories who have put the 'n' into cuts.'

Oh.

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 implies 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.

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.

But, y'know, really, all those factors pale into insignificance next to the fact that she didn't actually say it. 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.

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?

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.

How 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.

Today we find several papers tossing wildly different logs into the fire. The Sun goes with this good old-fashioned campaign nonsense:



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:



I won't go into much detail on that, as it's already been very well covered by Natalie Dzerins over at Forty Shades Of Grey, which you may go and read now as long as you promise to come back.

Today's prize for most grotesque coverage, though, must go to The Daily Star, who have gone for this:



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 psychic. Yes, you read that right, a national newspaper has given over its front page to the wild claims of a psychic investigator.

In the article we get some more detail about the claims;

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.

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.

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 claimed 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), piercings (none visible) and isn't even sure whether the thing on his head is hair or a scarf. [EDIT: thanks to @tabloidwatch 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].

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:

Carol described the killer she saw as of mixed race, 5ft 11in to 6ft tall and in his early 20s

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.

It'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 anything 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 and to hell in a handcart.

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.

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 that, politicalcorrectnessgonemad! Everyone had brilliant fun and we all probably learned something profound.

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 Top Gear stars cause religious row after dressing up in burkas on Boxing Day special, 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"!

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!

But hey, maybe I just got lucky. I'll read on and find out the many examples of frothing outrage this stunt has generated.

Islamic extremist Anjem Choudary, said: 'The burka is a symbol of our religion and people should not make jokes about it in any way.

'It would have been equally bad even if they’d not been in a country mainly populated by Muslims.'

Ah, it's Anjem Choudary! Yeah, he'd be my go-to guy for a representative sample of Muslim opinion too!

Okay, okay, so Anjem Choudary was 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.

So what about people who aren't rent-a-quote Islamic extremist trolls?

On the Yahoo! forum, someone wrote, 'Death to America', which another, called Rebecca Liberty, said mocking burkas is 'ugly'.

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!

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!!?

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?

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:

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!
- Had Enough, England, 28/12/2010 15:40

What doesn't offend them? There is no Top Gear in Saudi. Move there.
- CF Tab, Johannesburg, SA, 28/12/2010 15:39

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.
- In awe, Surrey, 28/12/2010 15:32

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- bels, norfolk, 28/12/2010 16:30

Regardless of what you thought of the TV programme, that was funny. On the BBC (the first B stands for British).

If you were offended, go to the airport and fly somewhere else never to return!
- P.C. Gonemad, Loughborough, 28/12/2010 18:16

Well done top gear, the best way is just to keep winding these inbred idiots up
- steff miller, edinburgh, 28/12/2010 16:51

...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 bastards.

*doesn't apply to poncey floppy-haired liberal 'comedians' making indiscreet jokes about granddaughter-shagging, obviously. That was an outrage!

ALL YOUR WAGE ARE BELONG TO US

In a way, I find the Express quite endearing. It's kind of like a children's version of the Daily Mail. I like to imagine that its writers sit on the floor in front of little fun plastic desks, copying Press Association articles out using massive crayons, tongues sticking out of the side of their mouths as they concentrate really hard on every letter.



Today's front page seems to bear this out. It comes across like an angry, stamping toddler, complaining loudly that he doesn't get enough pocket money to buy sweets. It's not fair, Kevin's parents give him twice as much and he's got a Wii!

It's really quite a staggering front page, isn't it? Even after you get over the initial confusion of thinking that Michael Douglas has been appointed The Taxman and isn't too happy about it, you're confronted with something quite bizarre. The taxman wants ALL our wages? This 100% income tax idea seems a bold step, particularly from a Conservative government. Labour, yeah, that's the sort of mad communist thing they'd do, but Cameron's Tories? Has Comrade Vince Cable warped them with his Marxist hectoring?

Of course, the story, as it turns out, is almost breathtakingly mundane. The coalition Government made a lot of noise about how overcomplicated the tax system was, so it's outlining a bunch of proposals to make it simpler. One of them is the possibility that maybe, at some time in the future, if the idea gets through Parliment, they might change the system so that HMRC makes its deductions itself, rather than having employers make the deductions on its behalf and then sending the money to the Government.

The Express is furious about this though. The idea that the money would technically go to the Government first seems to anger them to a frankly baffling degree. The article begins:

THE taxman could soon be getting his hands on all our hard-earned gross pay before we see it, it was revealed yesterday.

BEFORE WE EVEN SEE IT! Even though we don't get to see the money anyway because it's all deducted by our employers first! OUR HARD-EARNED GROSS PAY!

The taxman could then deduct income tax, national insurance and any student loan payments – before money is paid into our bank accounts like a parent doling out pocket money.

The thing about this, though, is that this already happens, but it's employers who do it instead of The Taxman. Does this mean our employers are effectively our parents? Is the head of monthly payroll my mum? I haven't been getting her anything for Christmas. And hey, look who it is:

Emma Boon, Campaign Manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “After recently telling six million people they’ve been paying the wrong income tax for the past two years, there’s no way we should reward HMRC for failure by giving them more power and responsibility.

Aside from a fact this is only a proposal and will most likely never come anywhere near being implemented, that argument doesn't even make sense, given that one of the reasons people paid the wrong tax was because it was left to employers to determine what tax people should be paying. But then I suppose it's the TaxPayers' Alliance's job to be angry about everything involving tax, all the time.

Now, I'm sure there are loads of potential issues with this proposal. It may be unworkable or unwise. Lord knows I don't particularly want to defend this Government. But if you're going to make a big deal about creating an Office of Tax Simplification, as they did, then it kind of behooves you to at least consider all the possible ways of reforming the system. Yes, even if one method makes you feel like you're being given "pocket money"! It wouldn't be so grating if the Express had come up with some reasonable, adult reasons for complaining, but this? This is just throwing toys out of the pram.

SHOCK AS BRITAIN HAS AVERAGE NUMBER OF FOREIGNERS

Another day, another angry Express headline about how we've got too many foreigners. In BRITAIN NOW HOME TO 4 MILLION IMMIGRANTS, the Express tells us:

MORE than four million foreign nationals now live in Britain – nearly seven per cent of the population, according to the latest official statistics.

Four million? That's, like, millions! These figures do at least appear to be accurate for once, as they're taken from this official Eurostat PDF. However, when I look at it with my non-Express hat on, I'm struck by how tediously average our number of foreign nationals is.

First, though, a neat little bit of that customary disingenuity we've come to expect;

The UK is one of the most sought after destinations in Europe for immigrants. Only Germany and Spain have a larger number of foreign citizens.

That implies that we're third on the list, but as anyone who's ever gently brushed past a bit of statistical analysis on a crowded train will tell you, absolute figures like that don't mean shit. The UK has a relatively large population compared to a lot of other European countries, so the only really relevant statistic is one which expresses this as a percentage of total population.

Of course, looking at the Eurostat figures, you soon realise why the Express hasn't made much of a big song and dance about the percentage of people in the UK who are foreign nationals; the average across the 27 EU member states is 6.4%. The UK figure is 6.6%. A shocking difference, I'm sure you'll agree. Germany and Spain, it transpires, not only have more foreign nationals in terms of absolute numbers, but a significantly higher percentage than us (8.8% for Germany, 12.3% for Spain).

Here, for perspective, is a list of all the countries in the EU that have more foreign nationals per capita than we do: Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg and Austria. Italy has 6.5%, so is only very slightly behind. The figures show that the UK has a very slightly above average number of foreign nationals. Given the UK's relative prosperity and how widely spoken our language is, you may actually be surprised by how close to that EU average we are.

The Express though, would rather draw our attention to the fact that poorer countries in the far-flung reaches of Eastern Europe have unsurprisingly low figures;

In contrast, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia have less than one per cent of their populations made up of foreign nationals.

So, those are the facts. But what does the Express want us to think?

Yesterday Labour’s shambolic immigration policy was blamed for opening the floodgates.

And critics said the official figures for UK immigrants had been “wildly underestimated”.

Hmm, who blamed Labour? Who called it "shambolic" (a strangely emotive choice of word for a supposedly factual piece, as is "floodgates")? You're probably thinking "Well, either Sir Andrew Green, the entirely unbiased Migrationwatch guy, or unstoppable quote machine Philip Davies MP!". But on this occasion, you'd be strangely wrong! I can only assume that those two are on holiday, or that they've run their phone batteries into oblivion, because they are conspicuous by their absence.

Instead, the Express turns to another non-partisan, fully-qualified, expert voice of reason to speculate on mysterious Immigrants We Know Nothing About:

Last night UKIP party chairman Paul Nuttall said: “Of course Britain is a place where people want to come and live and I would say this is a massive underestimate. The figures are questionable because we do not control our borders.”

So there you have it; Britain has FOUR MILLION foreigners here! But it's almost definitely probably A LOT HIGHER AND MORE SHOCKING than that. In fact, it could be as high as INFINITY because under this Labour SHAMBLES there's a distinct lack of surface-to-immigrant missile silos defending our borders. Literally ANYONE could be here! There could be HUNDREDS of immigrants IN YOUR LOFT or something. Have you checked? One of them might be BIN LADEN! While you're at it, check your passport/speak to your mum. It could be that YOU are a foreigner! It wouldn't surprise me, bloody Labour.

Reading comprehension

Here is a headline from the Daily Mail: "Romanian president praises countrymen for claiming British benefits in attack on 'lazy Westerners'".

Here is the opening line of the article to which that headline is attached, with an important bit emphasised in italics by me:

The president of Romania has publicly thanked the tens of thousands of his countrymen who claim benefits in Britain instead of their own country.

And here are the quotes from the president of Romania on which the headline and opening paragraph are based:

'Imagine if the two million Romanians working in Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, came to ask for unemployment benefits in Romania,' he said. 'So to these people we have to thank them for what they are doing for Romania.'

[...]

'In those countries, the social protection is at a level that makes it more comfortable to be unemployed. Romanians do that hard labour for them and to earn better and make more money than they could at home,' claimed President Basescu.

Today's homework assignment is this: find a quote from the Romanian president in that article which support's the headline's assertion that he is praising Romanians for claiming benefits in the UK. I ask because I, a lay person with only A-level English to my name, read those quotes and saw him praising Romanian emigrants for being hard-working and going abroad to earn money through work rather than claiming benefits in Romania, something the article itself later admits.

So, the story is a straight-up misrepresentation of what the man is saying. But wait! I think DAILY MAIL REPORTER done found a loophole!

Romanians workers have flooded into Britain with other eastern European citizens after joining the EU following the collapse of Communism.

When they they arrive the immigrants are immediately entitled to child benefit, Tax Credits and housing support.

After 12 months in Britain they can receive generous income-related benefits like unemployment benefit.

Do you see? The headline wants you to assume that by 'benefits' it means unemployment benefit. DAILY MAIL REPORTER or their sub-editor will know that the word 'benefits' is synonymous with feckless scroungers stuffing their face with chips on the dole. It has a far less powerful association with those benefits which are paid to people who work legally and pay their taxes, such as tax credits. Moreover, DAILY MAIL REPORTER knows that the Romanian president was not praising his fellow Romanians for coming over here and taking all our lovely benefits, but for performing real work. But hey, why let that get in the way of an inflammatory, baiting headline?

UPDATE 10:41 - the Mail has now amended the headline from "claiming British benefits" to the more accurate and fair "doing British jobs" (thanks to the excellent Tabloid Watch for pointing this out). You can still tell what it used to say though, as the URL still reads: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1300807/Romanian-president-Traian-Basescu-praises-countrymen-claiming-British-benefits.html

By the time the amendment was made, many people will have read the original story. Among the comments left before the edit were Sue in Sussex observing "what he really means is thank you all for having our degenerates", and one "Hamster" who cries "Dear God, this just gets more ridiculous by the minute. Stop ALL benefits to foreigners - simple". I do hope those two come back to read the new headline...

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?

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...

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!