Friday fun 31/7/09

I'm off in a bit, but you can have a look see at some of these, all right? It's a real bran tub today.

The Guardian have done a shoddy, as if to prove it's not just the Mail who blame 'editing errors' for things like saying someone's a rapist when they're not a rapist. Simon Jenkins, who as a former newspaper editor should surely have bloody well known better, accused Jacob Zuma of rape, bribery and corruption. Now his paper's had to say sorry. An 'editing error'? Really? I think they mean "We should have edited the libellous shit out, but we didn't".

Meanwhile, today's Graun looks at how disturbingly nutty qualifications are regarded as being as kosher. If you're taught that the Loch Ness monster not only exists but is a dinosaur, and that apartheid was actually a rather good thing, and you agree with that, then you can win a lovely qualification which is being taught at private schools in Britain. And a Government agency says that should be regarded as fair enough. I imagine if the far right had enough money to teach Holocaust denial, that would be OK too?

Septicisle looks at the right to die decision, which is a surprisingly liberal thing to happen under this Government but which is still skirting around the issue:

The terminally ill here that want to end their life shouldn't have to travel to Switzerland or anywhere else to do so; they should have the choice to do so in this country. The two things that are holding back a change in the law, which is still surely eventually inevitable, is that politicians are scared rigid of an issue which is both incredibly difficult and which there is no party political advantage to be gained from, quite possibly the opposite in fact.

Chicken Yoghurt: What they say about the Iraq Inquiry and what they mean.

Sarah Ditum on the 'Journalists are blacksmiths' meme. If we're looking at a profession to liken journalists to, I don't think it'd be blacksmiths. I'd go for an amalgam of graffiti artist, data entry clerk, call-centre worker and assembly-line drone, with a bit of Vivaldi thrown in.

No Sleep Til Brooklands on how the Mail takes credit for shit it doesn't have anything to do with:

I'd link you to the original Mail article, but in accordance with their Dicking Around With Our Stories After We've Published Them Because The Internet Is Like A Big Etch-A-Sketch policy, they've just inserted the 'embarrassing U-turn' bollocks into the story.

The Daily Quail: Outrage at people getting jobs:

The TaxPayers’ Alliance insta-quote machine seethed nonsensically: 'The public sector has failed to cut back in the recession...soft jobs like Social Workers or Home Carers would be indulgent even in good economic times, let alone in the current climate. When times are tough we have to make sure they are even tougher for the poor and the vulnerable.'

Cath Elliott on the difference between how the papers report murders:

Did you know for instance that on Friday last week (24th July) a woman in Ipswich was (allegedly) killed by her estranged husband in the stairwell of the block of flats where she lived? Does the name Malgorzarta Lipinska ring any bells with anyone?
I seriously doubt it. Because the only media that have picked up this story so far besides the BBC have been the local media, and even then, the BBC only started covering it in detail after the perpetrator topped himself in Norwich prison on Wednesday.

Chris Dillow on how inequality remains pretty constant, despite everything else:

what is striking is just how insensitive inequality is to either policy or to the economic “cycle.” Looking at this chart, you would struggle to identify either a change of government or any macroeconomic boom or recession

Army of Dave on the delights of Dale Arden from Flash Gordon. Ah, you're leaning against an open door with that one, though I'd probably say for me gawping at Kate Bush singing Babushka on Top of the Pops at the age of about 5 and thinking "I feel something rather strange about the nice lady and I don't know what it is" was what did for me.

Jack of Kent: Beware the Spinal Trap. Simon Singh's edited article about chiropractors is now everywhere, and deserves a reading.

A Very Public Sociologist on how the Tories don't understand blogs. I am surprised by the hostility towards blogging displayed by the Conservatives, who should know better, but clearly don't. But like the Tory hostility towards the likes of Esther Rantzen, who declared she'd stand as an independent MP, I think it's all anxiety about whether they'll stroll into a crushing election victory (despite getting nowhere near the majority of the popular vote, yet everyone somehow accepts that as being a massive mandate to rape the public sector and make thousands unemployed) or whether something will derail them. It's also a more familiar snobbery towards anyone who doesn't belong to their club, and in this Labour are often no better.

Uponnothing on the difference between Glenn Beck and Barack Obama, and how:

The Mail website isn't just home to British racists, it also holds great appeal to racists of other countries. The Mail online proudly lets commentators from across the globe write absolute rubbish which is welcomed onto the site by 'moderators' and voted up by other moronic readers. How else could you end up with Barack Obama being accused of 'hating whites' and Glenn Beck being labelled a 'libertarian'?

And finally Freemania has more of those pretty star pictures. I love them!

The Mail and Screaming Afterbirth

You know the moralistic Mail, who got their knickers in a twist the other day about men having a Tommy to internet porn? The moralistic Mail, whose writer got angry about a film he'd never seen, just because he thought it would probably be bad?

Well today they feature an article about people who've copied the Beatles' Abbey Road album cover. It's a straightforward C&V from somewhere or other else on the web, maybe here, and unlikely to be the Mail's own work. There is one cover included twice, for example, and also this delight:



Yes, it's those family favourites Screaming Afterbirth with a split album with those other funsters Methadone Abortion Clinic. Lovely, no? I think Screaming Afterbirth sound like just the sort of band the Mail would approve of, with song titles like "You're in Urine," "Anal Volcano", "Stinks of Rapes," "Drunk on Feces," "Blowtorch Lynchings" and "Completely stuffed bitch".

Ah well, that's what happens when you just copy things off the web without checking, isn't it?

Spotter's badge: Martin Beckford

Let's chortle at the poor - with the same article twice

Jan Moir has written a hilarious* article in the Daily Mail about... guffaw**... people shopping in Poundland!

Yes, it's 'let's chortle at the poor' - a veritable spectator sport when you're a screeching Mail writer snob who likes chuckling at people who can't afford to shop in M&S every lunchtime and who have to watch the pennies. You know, poor people, those dirty bastards who, you imagine, still have billions of pounds of taxpayer-spent benefits to spend on cheap cigarettes and booze; or even people who weren't poor but have been made recently redundant. What fun***! What hilarity! What an incredibly delicious wheeze****!

Jan snorts:

There is a floating frog pondlight that is as far from a Wow Deal! as imaginable and something that I thought were Star Wars light sabres, but are actually plastic solar lights. I'm not the only shopper to be confused by them.
'Solar lights? Wot for? For night-time?' one woman asks another.
'No, they are for day.' 'Why do you need a light in your garden in the daytime?'
'Well, you can only use them if you are in a sunny country, anyway.'

Do you like the 'wot' as if to emphasise the common-ness of the person in Poundland? Tee hee:

Now look. Of course, Gordon [Ramsay] and Rupert [Everett] are not actually here in person. They are lurking in the ultimate celebrity graveyard that is Poundland's DVD section, alongside offerings from The Professionals, the Teletubbies (so over) and something called Masters Of Angling with Bob Nudd.
Nearby is a strange range of Walkers potato snacks called French Fries. Who eats them?

Umm, people who like crisps? Who the fuck do you think?

The real crime though, as I'm certainly not the first to point out (Hat-tip to Adam Bienkov) is that this isn't even the first time the Mail has done this exact fucking story this year. They did it previously back in January, when Petronella Wyatt went meandering around the shelves and passing cold judgment on the lower-class types who might shop there:

The shop assistant in Poundland is becoming increasingly dyspeptic. In fact, I'm concerned he might just turn round and hit me. I am in the store's Enfield branch in North London and I have just asked him to show me where the Chanel shoes are.
'We don't stock anything from the Channel Islands,' he says irately. 'But we've got some mints from Indonesia.' I protest I can't wear a mint.
'All right then,' he replies, his face becoming rosier. 'We've got a feather boa section over there.'

Oh fuck off. Ooh, where are the Chanel shoes? In the fucking Chanel shoe shop you supercilious piece of shit. As I said at the time, violent class war wouldn't be entirely a bad thing if it meant that articles like that never appeared in the papers ever again.

But essentially, just the same story again. The same posh cunt being photographed frowning at the horrible experience of having to mix with people who don't have butlers; the same drivel; the same lack of imagination; the same sneering balls. I'm sure the same jollity will come back yet again at Christmastime when some other snotty fuckwit gets to tell us the horrors of having to swap Harvey Nicks for Poundland for buying Xmas pressies... oh just fuck off and die. Seriously. Just die.

Back to Jan Moir:

Is there anything good here? A friend swears by the dogpoo bags, which are apparently the middle-class poop-removal item of choice. 'A hundred for a quid,' he told me. 'You can't go wrong. Although it's a bit embarrassing if you bump into the neighbours in there.'

No, I'd find it embarrassing if I bumped into Jan Moir in there. I'd find it embarrassing to share the same few square feet on the planet as her while I was shopping for bargains in Poundland. It's embarrassing enough being the same species as it is. Christ.

* By 'hilarious' I mean 'fucking not funny in the slightest'
** By 'guffaw' I mean 'bang your head on the desk repeatedly, as the tears of despair turn into manic laughter, at the pointlessness of it all'
*** By 'fun' I mean 'tedious repetitive wank and thinly veiled class prejudice'
**** By 'incredibly delicious wheeze' I mean 'annoyingly predictable same old space-filling shit which for some reason gives real money to an annoying twerp who couldn't write anything even slightly interesting if their children's lives depended on it'

If it's too hard, I can't understand it

The Mail had another one of its 'there was weather' stories the other day, discussing the recent chilly and rainy spell in Britain. I looked at the story with a heavy heart. Perhaps people would realise this was weather. Perhaps people would know that Europe has recently been experiencing very high temperatures which have led to wildfire conditions, as reported by that bastion of green climate-change love, the, er, Daily Mail. Perhaps they wouldn't all go "Muuuuughh, global warming what global warming innit???!!!!eleven???!!!!".

You can hope, can't you. Oh you can dream.

Wasn't it only a week or tow ago that the same Met Office declared that the planet would be uninhabitable in a few years because of soaring temperatures? Or am I mistaken?
Despite what we are told about "GLOBAL WARMING" and all the photos of places without ice, the planet is COOLING (by their own figures not mine).
- anon, uk, 27/7/2009 21:53

I think 'anon' is referring to this story about retreating ice in Alaska which was peddled by those evil climate change Nazis at, er, the Daily Mail. As that story said:

The graphic photographs, released last week by the American military, show huge swathes of summer ice cover have disappeared from the Chukchi Sea.
The photos were kept strictly secret by the Washington administration under George W Bush and were declassified by the White House last week.

The Mail - The Daily Mail - even called it 'global warming'. Did they inform Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips of this bizarre phenomenon, which they presented as fact rather than some made-up fairytale by the diversity scum who only want to tax us? How dare those pinko bastards at the Mail do this to us!

Further down the 'wet weather in Britain in summer shocker' article, though, are more comments backing up anon:

Third wet summer in a row. I'm heartly sick of it and if anyone mentions global warming I think I'll scream.
- polly, england, 27/7/2009 21:53

Christ. Yes, wet weather = no possibility of climate change ever. Well done Polly, you've fucking cracked it. It's a textbook Mail response to any of these stories. I mean, what sort of berk would claim that just because of the weather he sees out of his window, there's no such thing as climate change? What kind of utter fool would try such a laughably nonsensical argument? What kind of... oh. I see. Yes.

Comment of the day though goes to this:

These jobsworth's with vested interests will still try and convince the gullible masses that unless we hand over even more of OUR money to combat so called ' Climate change', we will all be doomed in 30, 40, or was it 45 years?
The only thing at risk if we stand up and say ' ENOUGH' of this ridiculous scaremongering, are the copious amounts of well paid worthless jobs that these leeches occupy.
- PAUL REDHEAD, woodhall spa, England, 27/7/2009 18:54

Yes Paul. It's not as if there are any countries currently experiencing record weather conditions which are putting people's lives in danger, as reported by those leftie climate-change bastards at, er, The Daily Mail, is it? I mean, if that happened and it was a story available to read on the Mail's website, you would have thought twice about that crock of shit you posted there, wouldn't you Paul?

Wouldn't you?

The Mail and internet wanking

Today in the Mail there's a marvellously po-faced article about internet pornography entitled: "It's addictive as cocaine and just as damaging: So is YOUR husband hooked on internet porn?"

Olivia Lichtenstein (whose byline alone gives you an insight into what's about to follow) opines:

As a mother of two in a 22-year marriage, I'm not sure I can be so understanding. My husband has never been able to see the point of porn and has no interest in it. But he is unusual.
I suspect thousands of wives who discover their husbands are watching porn are then left with a very modern dilemma: should you forgive them, or throw them out and try to explain to your children why Daddy has gone?

"Daddy has gone because mummy caught him knocking one out to the lady on the Bangbus, darling." Simple enough really. But wait, here comes the science. Seatbelts fastened, brains removed...? Good:

Mary Anne Layden, Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Programme co-director at the University of Pennsylvania, says: 'Porn is the most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today.'
According to Layden, online pornography is akin to having an addictive drug pumped into your house for free, 24 hours a day.
And unlike other drugs, which users can get out of their system, pornographic images stay imprinted in the brain.

What in the wide world of sports...? I mean what? Porn stays imprinted on the brain? Is there any actual evidence for this? Then why do people need to see it again and again if it's there burnt into the brain?

The easy, open-all-hours access that exists means many men neglect their families, give up hobbies and don't get enough sleep because they are up until four or five in the morning on the computer.
There is an argument - which many feel has some currency - that a lot of these men would not be that interested in porn if it were not so freely available at the click of a mouse. If that's the case, then it's another example of the internet subtly debasing society - and chipping away at the self-respect of men and women alike.

Lichtenstein appears to be saying that men having a hand-shandy behind their spouse's backs is a bad thing and should be stamped on. But it's not just hardcore porn that encourages a gentleman to slip the old chap out, is it? Surely there are other forms of titillation available at the click of a mouse...? For example:

Hollyoaks girls in bikinis having a water fight!
Carmen Electra fully topless!
Lily Allen's nipple pops out!
Lily Cole naked!
Some vaguely famous woman in a bikini!
Abbey Clancey's boob pops out of her swimsuit!
Lady GaGa naked!
Hayden Panettiere gets her kit off in a film (and we've got the still pictures for you to enlarge!)

Buff the Banana with Paul Dacre chronicles the Daily Mail's regular titillation. Will Mail readers end up with these images burnt into their brains? Or is it only the hardcore stuff that's as addictive as cocaine, somehow?

Wonderful comments appear below the story, including some knockabout fun at the author's and Mail's expense:

Sorry, I haven't read this article yet - am too busy staring at the Hollyoaks babes bikini calendar article...
- Todd, London, UK, 28/7/2009 8:21

Why is this article assuming that only men watch porn?! How about to include the fact that women also watch porn, and not all porn "debases" women. Welcome to 2009.
- Lara, NY, USA, 28/7/2009 7:59

"My husband has never been able to see the point of porn and has no interest in it. But he is unusual." Ummm, no, he's just good at lying to you about it!
- Mike, Rockingham, Aus, 28/7/2009 0:59

Dear oh dear. What on earth were they thinking, agreeing for this nonsense to be published?

(Big hat-tip to Bigdaddymerk for finding this nonsense in the first place)

Mail and the BBC, sitting in a tree...

Well not quite, but there's been a rather interesting development in what has become a somewhat frosty relationship. As a bastion of the evil money-grabbing public sector (and completely irrelevantly a direct competitor to DMGT) the Beeb often gets a bad press from the Mail.

Sure, there are those, such as certain lamentably pisspoor blogs I could mention, who'd maintain that Auntie is actually a secret Socialist plot to brainwash our kids with things like disabled presenters and black people on programmes, but they're twats. Nevertheless, the BBC = pinkoes nonsense is something that dimwitted Mail pundits like Peter Hitchens are happy to regurgitate every now and then.

So when I saw today that our tax pounds were being used by the British Bolshevik Corporation to prop up some struggling private-sector firms by giving them stuff for nothing, I wondered if our friends at the Mail would complain about this scandalous use of public money. I looked and looked on the website, but... no. The story hasn't been mentioned at all.

But then, when one of those companies is the Mail, it's a whole different pair of trousers. They suddenly drop their ideological objections to the state-funded broadcaster and leftie troublemakers. They've even got a relatively positive story (at least a not entirely negative one, anyway) about the Beeb in the paper today!

Whatever next - demanding a rise in the licence fee?

Success!

Mm.

Oopsy oopsy oopsy

Everyone makes mistakes. But some of us make mistakes more than others. You have to wonder, if someone makes the same kind of mistake again and again, whether it's down to sheer incompetence or not giving a flying one about the consequences. Consequences which in the case of the Pathetically Craven Commission mean a very nasty finger-wagging if you do something like ruining someone's life or completely misrepresenting them; or even a much sterner tut-tutting if you drive someone to suicide or destroy a dead person's memory.

Look at the Scottish Daily Express, which memorably slagged off Dunblane survivors for no reason whatsoever. The PCC said they were very naughty and they should do something about it. They haven't. The PCC has done nothing else, because it can do nothing else. Essentially, you can ignore its decisions entirely, and get away with it.

Ah, how reassuring that the PCC is there to upbraid the press when they get things wrong again, and again, and again, and again...

Over at Mailwatch I recently talked about an amazing transparent headrest which had appeared in a Mail article about Prince Harry and Caroline Flack off the telly. Someone complained that it wasn't accurate. The result?

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper – which believed that readers would have recognised that the photograph was a composite of the two images – separated the two photographs on the online version of the piece to make the distinction clearer, as it had done in the print version of the article.

Do you like the way that the paper gets a sarky little pompous dig at the complainant in as well? Oh surely everyone could tell! What, you mean like with this photo?



Yes, easy enough to just splice two images together to make them one. I mean, it's not as if you ever intend them to be the same image, is it?



I mean, everyone can see that, can't they?



It's so obvious they aren't the same image!



Relatedly, you will recall that the Mail put up an image of a peaceful Muslim protest in Luton to illustrate a rowdy anti-Army protest in Luton. Understandable oopsy, given that the details of the photograph were clearly visible in the electronic caption (see comments)? How did the PCC clamp down on this atrocious misrepresentation?

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper agreed to remove the picture from the online article and to publish online the following correction:
On May 25, 2009, we published an article ‘Nine arrested after masked mob’s march against Muslim extremists turns violent’, in which we inadvertently included an archive photograph of a peaceful unconnected parade held in Luton some weeks earlier. We are happy to clarify that this march had in fact passed without incident and regret our error in wrongly captioning the photograph.

Oh so that's all right then. And how prominent is this article - as prominent as the original one was? No. Of course it isn't. But then that's fine, according to the PCC. The damage can be done as large as you like, so long as the apology is tucked neatly away, then that's the matter 'resolved', isn't it? I love the way the PCC describes things as resolved. Perhaps if you went round their house and did a shit on their front lawn you could 'resolve' the matter by putting an atom-sized apology next to it? I think they'd be fine with that.

Next!

COMPLAINT:
Medway NHS Foundation Trust complained that an article inaccurately reported the treatment of a man who had died at Medway Maritime Hospital. The Trust also complained about an article which alleged that staff had posed for a charity calendar when they should have been working. In fact, the calendar was produced by staff in their own time.

RESOLUTION:
The matter was resolved when the newspaper published the following letter from the Trust’s chief executive, Andrew Horne:
Staff at Medway Maritime Hospital who took part in creating a fundraising calendar (Mail) made use of hospital facilities but did so entirely in their own time. The Trust is currently investigating the tragic death of Stewart Fleming in December.

Yes, we may have written utter shit about staff at this workplace but we have allowed you to write in a fucking letter to correct the matter, which we got entirely and completely wrong, so that makes it all right, doesn't it?

Next!

COMPLAINT:
Mr David Johnson complained on behalf of his son Haydn that a comment piece about the tragic death of his friend, fellow student Rachel Ward, in Val d’Isere contained inaccuracies. Specifically, the complainant made clear that his son had not received an answerphone message from Miss Ward saying that she was lost on the night of her death. In addition, the complainant disagreed with the columnist’s view that his son had failed in his duty of care, had “abandoned” Miss Ward and acted in an unchivalrous manner.

RESOLUTION:
The complaint was resolved when the newspaper made a note of the complainant’s points on its internal records for future reference in addition to removing the article from its website.

But no apology, obviously. Yes, this man has gone through a terrible ordeal and lost someone very close to him, and been wrongly and incorrectly slagged off by some pompous bastard columnist who doesn't give a shit about people's feelings, and his father has quite rightly stood up for his son, but it's all right, because they've removed the article. No apology. No saying sorry for getting it so catastrophically wrong and smearing a bereaved person all over the papers. No. They've removed the article, so it's 'resolved'.

Next!

COMPLAINT:
Mr James Cole expressed concern that the headline “Scientists discover the brain’s ‘God spot’ and show that faith helps human survival” was inaccurate as it did not reflect the statements made by the scientists concerned. He said the existence of a “God spot” had been denied by those who undertook the research and, contrary to what was stated in the headline, the research had not shown that faith helped human survival.

RESOLUTION:
The complaint was resolved when the newspaper changed the headline of the online article to read “Research into brain’s ‘God spot’ reveals areas of brain involved in religious belief”.

Yes, so the Mail may have entirely misrepresented the work of these scientists, but they can simply change the online headline, and that makes everything all right, doesn't it? I mean it's not as if they've misled loads of readers in the meantime, is it?

Next!

COMPLAINT:
Mr Maurice Greenham, the National AIDS Trust and the Children’s HIV Association complained that an article about foster parents not being informed of the possible HIV status of their foster children contained a number of inaccuracies.
RESOLUTION:
The complaint was resolved when the newspaper published the following correction on the matter:

Following comments in an article on 23 February about foster parents not being informed of the possible HIV status of their foster children, we would like to make clear that it is highly unlikely that a child born to an HIV positive mother would develop HIV where appropriate drugs have been administered during delivery. There has never been a recorded case of a family caring for an HIV positive infant being infected. It takes three months – not eighteen – to ascertain the HIV status of a child born to an HIV positive mother.

Oh at last, a correction. Wonder if it was as prominent as the article that misled so many readers in the first place? What do you reckon? I think I have a pretty fair idea.

So there we have it. The Mail gets it wrong again, and again, and again, and again. They're not the only newspaper to do so, but they do pop up in the PCC adjudications time and time again. Sometimes it's not too serious, merely entirely misrepresenting a scientific study for example; sometimes it's really serious and unpleasant, for example making peaceful Muslims out to be rowdy protesters, or smearing the good name of someone who has recently been through a terrible tragedy. The PCC says this is all perfectly fine so long as they make tiny amends afterwards, and then everything's tickety-boo, isn't it? And there you have it. This is the redress available to those who can't hire the top legal lawyers. A tiny correction shoved away in the middle of nowhere, and no apology at all.

Those people at the PCC must be really proud of themselves.

The worst film I've never seen

This is a guest post by Nik Johnson. If you like it, perhaps you'd like to go here and read some more stuff by him. If you'd like to submit a guest post to me on some crap you've read in the papers, send me an email to antonvowl at live dot co dot uk and I'll see what I can do. No promises now.

You know which film I haven't seen? Jaws 2. It's rubbish. Haven't seen Casablanca either. It's my favourite film, though. I was ambivalent towards The Mummy Returns when I didn't watch it on ITV2 the other night. Do these sound like the deluded ramblings of an idiot? Good, because I am.

Although not as big an idiot as Daily Mail film critic Christopher Hart, who hasn't bothered watching Antichrist, a new film about all blood, sex and stuff, but still feels he should let the devoted legions of Mail readers know just how disgusting and wrong it is, and it SHOULD BE BANNED.

If I were to see Antichrist, I don't believe for a moment that it would incite me into copycat violent behaviour or make me a danger to others. But it would poison my mind and imagination, with explicit, ferocious scenes of sexual violence that would stay with me for ever.
Isn't that good enough reason to ban it, or at least demand extensive cuts?

Chris, (can I call you Chris? I hope so, cos I am) are you really suggesting this film should be withheld by the state because you're guessing that your mind will be poisoned by sexual images? Remember this is a film that Chris still hasn't seen, and as he says

I haven't seen it myself, nor shall I - and I speak as a broad-minded arts critic, strongly libertarian in tendency.

Broad-minded and libertarian, eh? You definitely wouldn't say such stupid things as

sick, pretentious trash

or

torture porn

or

blatantly amoral, without any sense of justice or retribution whatever.

about a film you haven't fucking seen, would you?

Remember up there, where Chris predicted how the film would affect him? Well, he's even more psychic than that (i.e. can make more shit up.)

As soon as it's released on DVD, Antichrist will harm children anyway, deeply and irrevocably.

It will harm children. See, he's put it in italics, because he's so sure it will happen. Christopher Hart will wake up tomorrow and be an enormous cock-end. Anna Friel will wake up tomorrow in my house. Dammit - it's not foolproof.

You might think that Hart is just pandering to his audience, the "Down with this sort of thing!" "Careful now!" brigade. But no, even the Daily Mail readers have realised what a disingenuous, making-shit-up, reactionary idiot Hart has been. The top rated comments on his article?

How could anyone possibly judge a film that they had not seen?!
This is beyond ridiculous!
People can make thier [sic] own choice as to weather they want to watch it or not.

"I haven't seen it myself..." I stopped reading there.

and

If you haven't seen the film What gives you the right to comment on it???

Still, congratulations to the sub editors on getting three different images of sex scenes into the article, so Hart can offend himself to orgasm. Broad-minded, libertarian orgasm.

Friday links 24/7/09

The best thing I've read in ages is here, at Between The Hammer And The Anvil, which says that if blogs really are the future of our public discourse rather than journalism, then we're in for a pretty terrible time:

The form has its upside, allowing snarky, semi-literate smartarses like myself to put buckets on our heads and make like we're miniature Hunter Thompsons until the wife gets home and kicks off mental about the unwashed dishes. At its best, it's a knockabout club for sharp people with a talent for argument. At it's worst, it's a Comment Is Free pissfight about Israel-Palestine - about as edifying as a flock of half-spazzed, one-legged pigeons pecking each other to death over a pile of sick.

It's a truly wonderful rant:

Never mind blogs as a primary news source, I'm struggling to think of a handful of bloggers who would merit even the fabled fifteen minutes of fame. That's particularly ironic, since the vast majority of them certainly deserve chemical castration, and that's being charitable.
Iain Dale's running his annual Blog Awards wankathon as we speak - I defy any reader to deny that the world would be a richer, more rewarding and more just place if each of the top ten writers on his final list had been ripped to pieces by enraged mako sharks three seconds after they logged in to their first Blogger accounts.

In fact my only problem with it is, by being so bloody good, it's kind of self-defeating.

Jamie Sport reports on Richard Desmond's libel defeat:

Richard Desmond, philanthropist, pornographer, adherent of Godwin’s Law, and Great Architect of The Daily Express was jubilant last night after spending a jolly few weeks socking it to silly biographers in the High Court.
Desmond, once described as ‘an appalling man’ by Britain’s most appalling man, told his own newspaper: “It was worth it to stand up in court and set the record straight”, apparently unaware that he’d actually lost the case.

That's based on an abysmally bad story in the Express pretending that everything's all right and that his crushing defeat was actually a marvellous victory. I bet whichever poor hack had to cobble that crap together had to hold their nose while doing it. There's more on Dirty Des over at Paperhouse and Septicisle.

Justin has an excellent review of the latest Harry Potter film here.

There's a marvellous piece by Jon Stewart here which flays alive the idiots who've been talking about Barack Obama's birth certificate. Splendid journalism which rips apart the media's need to keep a crappy story kicking around, even when overwhelmed with evidence that blows it out of the water. Which kind of takes us back to the beginning, and Between The Hammer And The Anvil. Sure, blogs are quite often appallingly bad, but when the competition behaves just as badly, what do we expect? Who is it who's setting the bar so low?

Illegal immigrants = enemies

A story has popped up today about an illegal immigrant making it to become a soldier guarding the Queen. I guess there are a couple of ways to look at it. You can either think, good on this plucky immigrant for pulling himself up by his bootstraps, using a bit of gumption, bending the rules and working tremendously hard to be a soldier for his adopted homeland - what a sparkling way to say thank-you to the country which took him under its wing.

Or, you could go the other way, which is predictably enough what the screamsheets have done. The Telegraph says:

The guardsman is believed to have used fake documents to join the Army – where he was trained in marksmanship, grenade throwing and how to use a rocket launcher – and his scam was only uncovered after a car crash when police discovered he had numerous aliases.

Imagine that! A soldier trained in using guns and weapons. Whatever next? I bet they'll be teaching bus drivers how to fucking drive buses.

But let's not blame the Telegraph. The lazy, pointless drones in Canary Wharf aren't doing any investigating of their own to try and find news. No, they've just lifted this story almost in its entirety from the Sun. You can see how complete a cut-and-paste job this is when you compare some of the paragraphs.

But here's why I find this story a little disturbing:

A senior military officer told The Sun: "This is a blunder of unparalleled proportions. For an illegal immigrant to gain membership of any Army regiment is unbelievable when you consider the potential damage an enemy could do there."

It's the likening of illegal immigrants to enemies. As if somehow they're more likely to be 'enemies' than British people - which, given the recent history of terrorism and terror convicts in this country, isn't actually the case. Did this illegal immigrant ever show any likelihood of being a terrorist? No, so it's kind of irrelevant whether he might have suddenly become one or not - that's just as likely as any other soldier.

Illegal immigrants aren't evil bogeymen, they're just illegals. They're not more likely to assassinate the Queen than anyone else. I imagine this man just wanted the money and a good career. There have got to be easier ways of making a few quid than grafting away in the armed forces, after all.

Red faces all round

Or at least there should be at the publication which put this miserable non-story on the front page of their website:

Burn, baby, burn: Simon Cowell battered by Mediterranean sun

Yes, a man went on holiday and got a suntan. Would you believe it? Well yes you would. Ooh yes, he was quite pale, and now he isn't.

As befits a man of his fabulous wealth and talent, Simon Cowell enjoys many of the trappings of the LA lifestyle. But while he has the cars, the mansions, the high-waisted but exquisitely tailored trousers – there is one thing about him that remains resolutely, even defiantly, English: his skin.

Oh really? Stunning. Thank goodness we all know about that. Imagine what a void of knowledge our lives would have been without knowing about the colour of some TV man's skin.

Like his fellow countrymen, the pop mogul seems to be cursed with an epidermis that burns like milk before a flamethrower when he ventures out of the shade.

Epidermis? What? Who says epidermis? Ever? Anyone?

Whatever the cause, his battle scars are all too familiar. First there is the bright pink hue of the flesh, reminiscent of a lobster freshly plucked from the pot but yet to be covered with a cheesy duvet of thermidor sauce.

I feel sorry for the life of this writer who had to churn out this wall of turd, because I'm sure they'd rather be doing proper journalism about real stories - at least I hope they are. But I feel even sorrier because the publication which has chosen to cover this pointless crock of codswallop and put it on their web front page is not the Mail, nor the Sun, nor even the Telegraph (although they may well have done it) but The Guardian.

Christ. How depressing.

PANIC! (Don't panic) Part 2

On the back of today's earlier post about the Telegraph's uneasy grasp of the reality of swine flu, here's today's Times:

Swine flu cases doubled to 100,000 last week

They doubled to 100,000 did they? Definitely?

The number of swine flu cases in Britain nearly doubled last week, as an estimated 100,000 people were infected, officials said today

So this isn't 100,000 people definitely affected, it's 100,000 people reporting flu-like symptoms. That's not the same as cases doubling at all. Out of these '100,000', how many were seriously affected?

Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, said that as of today, 840 people were being treated in hospital after contracting the H1N1 virus.

...which is less than one per cent, if we're to believe the estimates. If anything that demonstrates how thankfully un-lethal this strain of flu has been so far, doesn't it? But you wouldn't know it from reading the press, 'quality' papers like the Times or Telegraph or tabloids alike.

There's more detail in there to back this up:

According to Sir Liam’s latest weekly update, the deaths of 26 people in England have been provisionally linked to the virus. Not all of these deaths have been fully investigated, but of the fatal cases where post-mortem examinations have been carried out, 67 per cent had severe health problems and 16 per cent were said to have been healthy previously.

So that's 26 deaths from supposedly 100,000 cases, which works out at very low mortality rate, even when compared to bog-standard winter flu. Where are the headlines about this? The reporters have the data to hand. Why must they concentrate on 'cases' rising while the truth may well be that many of these 'cases' are just people self-reporting less serious illnesses, or even bunking off work?

Now I know headlines are not the same as stories, but you have to wonder why quality newspapers, when they're using the internet where words are not limited to a small space as it is in a dead-tree newspaper, can't be bothered to get it right. Are they deliberately getting it wrong to ramp up the fear and indulge in another bit of panic-porn?

PS The other angle to the story is about the NHS swine flu website crashing after it was launched - presumably under the sheer number of journalists trying to get on it to see if it would crash. But look, it's working now. Any stories about that...? No...?

PANIC! (Don't panic)

Following on from last week's panic-porn in the Mail about swine flu comes this story in the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper which, if you aren't familiar with it, can be best described as the Daily Mail on bigger sheets of paper, but without the charm and liberalism.

There's a bit of a whopper in the headline. See if you can spot it:

More than a million callers to flood swine flu helpline

Yes, unless the Telegraph have managed to construct a time machine and go into the future - in which case why haven't they seen that cheapening their newspaper into a crappy celebrity-obsessed Tory shoutrag will see sales fall even further? - they can't possibly know that a million people are definitely going to 'flood' the swine flu helpline. No, the million callers is the total number per week that the helpline has been set up to deal with, as the Tele is quick to acknowledge:

More than a million calls a week are expected to flood the new swine flu telephone helpline set up the Government, it has been estimated.

It's an estimate now, is it? A minute ago it was definite! Ah, but this is the way of the swine flu story: scare the shit out of your readers in the headline, then quickly withdraw the panicky stuff in the first or second paragraph.

You'd expect more from a quality broadsheet newspaper than this, but then of course, that would be to assume that that's what the Telegraph is.

Swine flu and panic

The first thing to bear in mind, before reading any newspaper coverage of swine flu, is that if you have swine flu, and then die, that doesn't necessarily mean you've died of swine flu. For example, you could be dying of cancer, then get swine flu, then die from your cancer.

The second thing to bear in mind is that reporters who write about swine flu will know this fact. They know that one thing does not necessarily confirm the other. They will know that people who die, having caught swine flu, may not necessarily have died from swine flu.

Which makes it unforgivable that the link is being blithely made by newspapers up and down the country, including national papers, who should know better. In fact I can't help concluding they're not stupid, they're not ignorant; that they do know better, but that they have simply decided to mislead their readers. Swine flu deaths are a better story than people with swine flu dying from other illnesses; and a better story than people with weakened immune systems or existing health problems, for example, succumbing to swine flu.

It's interesting to compare and contrast this attitude with how newspapers cover hospital-acquired infections. Imagine a terminally ill patient, who was dying anyway, contracts MRSA or C-difficile in hospital, possibly that they've acquired from their visiting relatives rather than by licking a dirty hospital floor - how is that then reported? OUR HOSPITALS ARE KILLING US! Again, the truth is a little more complicated. Not loads more complicated. But it is the truth, unlike simply imagining that 'dirty hospitals' kill people who would otherwise have been tickety-boo. Not that there isn't a problem with hygiene causing deaths, because of course there is; it's just that I don't think it's a million times more difficult to represent these things accurately. Readers of newspapers are intelligent people; they deserve to be treated with respect, and told what's actually going on, in detail, rather than a grossly simplified version of it, inevitably the most panic-inducing version of it.

The Daily Express, of all people, attempted to try and ask people not to panic earlier this week. As these images show, it's a bit rich coming from them. Today, they've gone back to deciding that it is time to panic after all:



350 WILL die? They WILL? No doubt about it? This from the paper that earlier this week asked people not to panic. Some chance, with front pages like that!

The Mail's story today shows you how they turn the facts of the situation into the "Aaaargh! We're all gonna die!!!!!!" narrative they want in order to scare their readers:

A baby is fighting for its life in hospital today after its mother gave birth prematurely before dying from swine flu.

Sounds like the mother definitely died from swine flu then, doesn't it? The phrase 'dying from swine flu' is a bit of a giveaway. But are we really sure about that?

A hospital spokesman said: 'Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust can confirm that a 39-year-old woman passed away on July 13, 2009 and that she was infected with Pandemic H1N1. The trust can confirm that she had underlying health conditions.'

Hmm. That's not the same thing at all, is it? And incidentally, I wonder why we haven't seen pictures of this woman all over the papers?

The pregnant woman died at Whipps Cross Hospital in the capital. She is thought to have been a paraplegic after a car crash several years ago.
Relatives of the victim, who lived in London but is originally thought to be from Bangladesh, are said to be caring for her five other children.

Yes, that'll be it.

Watch the deception at work here as well:

Other victims include American tourist has become the latest to die from swine flu in the UK after falling ill during a holiday in Scotland with her husband.
She had been in intensive care at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness for three weeks but died yesterday.

The use of the word 'victim' implies that the person who died must have died from swine flu, doesn't it? But wait:

It is understood she had 'significant' underlying health problems.

Perhaps not a swine flu 'victim' then? Perhaps not. Or perhaps so. Why would it hurt to express the genuine uncertainty about the facts of the situation? Why portray this poor person as being a swine flu 'victim'? What does that achieve, apart from making the virus appear more lethal than it may well be?

Also in the Mail there's this:

Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson has ordered the NHS to plan for this worst case scenario, although he stressed he was making assumptions not predictions.

It's sensible to plan for a worst-case scenario, so that if it does happen then the health service is prepared - that's entirely reasonable. But unfortunately, despite the stressing of it being 'assumptions not predictions' we get headlines like the one in the Express today: 350 WILL DIE A DAY. Not might or could, but WILL. That's how newspapers use language to ramp up the tension, turn a possibility into a certainty, and mislead their readers.

In the coming weeks, swine flu might well be 'getting serious'. But there is no way of knowing. But a mass panic over swine flu by healthy people could overwhelm the health service and cause severe problems, even deaths, for people with more lethal illnesses than swine flu currently is, who might have to wait longer for treatment. If that did happen that would be a real tragedy, and an avoidable one at that. That's why newspapers have a responsibility to be careful about what they report. They're not, and it's shameful.

Hmm. What do you reckon?

Littlejohn, 8/9/08, complaining about Gordon Brown talking about his dead child:

With his one good eye on events the other side of the Atlantic, Gordon Brown has decided to share his personal 'story' with us.
He has convinced himself that if he reminds us about his rugby injury and his dead daughter, we'll forget about his incompetence, deceit, duplicity, dishonesty, downright lying, bullying, cowardice, volcanic temper tantrums, vanity, sulking, unjustified sense of entitlement, betrayal, bungling and boasting.

Hoho Richie, funny! Nice. Keep going:

Which bit of getting kicked in the face when he was a teenager and losing a child equips him to be Prime Minister and erases his atrocious record in government?

I hope that Dickie will be equally scathing towards David Cameron after this article in which the Tory leader speaks about his dead disabled child.

No, you say...?

Far-right terrorism and the papers

Scary white supremacist Neil Lewington's conviction is getting a pretty good show in the papers and in the media. It's not surprising: he was caught with bomb-making equipment. There are a couple of court cases going on now, involving Muslims accused of similar crimes, so it will be interesting to compare the press reaction to those verdicts, whatever they might be, with Lewington's conviction.

As Septicisle points out, it's just the latest in a series of far-right extremist convictions, most of which have received far less media attention than the trials of Muslim extremists for similar offences. There is of course the justification that links have been claimed with the spectral Al-Qaeda network and overseas training of terrorists, thereby creating a much bigger story in those instances; but that's only part of the story. It might also be worth asking where these far-right loners, often with a cruel streak for minorities, whom they blame for their own failures, get the fuel for the fire - who, for example, keeps telling them that foreigners are taking their jobs and council houses? In which newspapers might they find that kind of justification for their hatred?

On this occasion you can't fault the Mail's reporting as regards the seriousness of the offences: Lewington is labelled as a 'white supremacist' embarking on a 'terror' campaign; he's called a 'fanatic' on a 'murderous mission' - and he was discovered just by chance before he had a chance to put his horrific fantasies into reality.

No, it's not the Mail's reportage which is the issue here. It's the readers' comments. Remember, these are comments which are actively moderated and approved for publication, with many comments failing to make it through the filtering system. The comments you read here, then, have been selected for publication, just as newspapers might choose which letters go on a letters page. Remember that when you read this:

Evil pigs like him muddy the waters for any reasonable debate over immigration. Very few native Britons like the unprecedented levels of foreigners in their midst but most resist the urge to kill or maim. Disgraceful man.....certainly not a patriot.
- Kay Jones, England, 15/7/2009 15:15

It's a comment which is ostensibly critical of Lewington for his failed bombing campaign, but it's critical because the commenter is saying he's let the (far right) side down. Not just that, though: the commenter says it's perfectly understandable that 'native Britons' would have an 'urge to kill or maim' foreigners. That is the kind of view the Mail regards as being acceptable to publish: that immigration makes people have the urge to murder or commit violence against foreigners, but that they should resist it.

As I write this, that's the fifth best rated comment on the story, out of 38.

Yes, there are comments slamming Lewington and Kay Jones's view, but they are less well rated. Also in there in this:

There are no excuses for engaging in voilence for political ends. I understand this guy's frustrations with immigration but there are now legitimate electorial alternatives.
People like Lewington blacken the name of British patriotism.
- Paul, Isleworth, UK, 15/7/2009 15:40

Again, that word 'patriotism', just as in the Jones post. Again, the idea that people are frustrated with immigration, and it's understandable, but there's a political solution - which I assume to mean the BNP and their hateful extremist policies.

Yet again, it's an example of pretty sickening views being voted well up in a Daily Mail story. I can't help thinking this is a news story, not a blog or other platform. What is really added by those comments? What would be lost if they weren't there - if all comments weren't there, apart from a few clicks on the website?

More big stories

Following on from the Mail's huge journalistic endeavours in the wake of the Guardian phone-hacking story, today the Telegraph has weighed in with its own contribution. It's a magnificent piece which really demonstrates their commitment to quality investigative reportage.

Oh no, hang on, it's a story about some dick seeing Michael Jackson's face in a fucking car bonnet.

Surely not, you say? But here it is.

A builder was stunned when he discovered a ghostly image of Michael Jackson on his car bonnet.
It appeared to show that the 'King of Pop' had made a swift ascent to the heavens after his death.

Yes, he Beat It up to heaven and now looks down as a fucking scary noseless disembodied giant head with eyes like pissholes in the snow, reflected in some Stafford fucking builder's Rover bonnet. Yes, because that's what recently dead pop stars do. They turn up in one bloke's car bonnet. That is the mystery of the afterlife right there.

No, I'll tell you what it shows. It shows that things like exposing the way in which British taxpayers - ie everyone except the Barclay Brothers - were being ripped off by MPs are the exception, rather than the rule. It shows how this kind of witless gurning chumpery gets promoted above any kind of decent news coverage. It shows the lack of imagination in modern newspapers and why they are rightly dying. I'm only sorry to link to the fucking thing because the two or three people who go from here to there almost perpetuates the idea that utter crap like that is in any way, shape or form a good idea.

Photoshopped or not, it doesn't even fucking look like Michael Jackson, by the way. It looks like Terence or Philip from South Park.

We bring you the big stories

In a week where tabloid excesses have been brought into focus, it's nice to see the Mail at the vanguard of decent old-fashioned grafting and real investigative journalism, cutting through the vested interests and digging deep to find the stories that really matter to their readers:

Two people who work together have gone into work together.
A woman got on a plane, and looked slightly different when she got off it.
A woman has given birth and her mother is happy about it.
A woman has cooked on a television programme.
A woman is pregnant.
A woman is pregnant.
A woman is pregnant.
A child exists.
It rained. Someone got caught in it.
A woman and her daughter have gone to the beach.
A man and his son have gone to the beach.
A television programme is being shown on television.

More on these as we get them.

Telegraph oopsy

Was this shameful atrocity really an editing error?

Owing to an editing error, our report “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists” (June 23) wrongly stated that research presented at the recent BPS conference by Sophia Shaw found that women who drink alcohol are more likely to be raped. In fact, the research found the opposite. We apologise for our error.

Perhaps it is an editing error. If your definition of editing is 'looking at something then deciding to re-write it to say the opposite of what it actually says'. It's not as simple as just missing out the word 'not', because the Telegraph article was a complete hatchet job, as Ben Goldacre described at the time:

Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped? “We found no evidence that that women who are more outgoing are more likely to be raped, this is completely inaccurate, we found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober.”

The Tele have thrown up a mea culpa for the alcohol part of the wrongness, but interestingly have decided not to say sorry for the dressing provocatively bit.

Also via Bad Science and Jack of Kent comes this list of articles by the same journalist. The Tele's 'science correspondent'. An editing error, really?

J-Cloth fuzziness

Look, I don't often do this sort of self-indulgent balls on the blog but I couldn't face any of the tabloids today. I bought the Guardian, wasting about a pound-odd on a TV guide and a free learn Italian CD (which actually is quite handy as I'm off to Italy next week) and couldn't bring myself to look through the Mail website, the Express, even the Times... do you know what I mean? Sometimes it's just easier not to poison yourself. It's like you can have a clean day, without the need to be infuriated by pointless lies, stupid columnists, nonsense statistics, miracle cures for cancer/ causes of cancer which are exactly the same thing, and so on, and so forth. You can reach teatime, or even longer, without thinking that there's anyone out there who'd wilfully be an ignorant bastard so long as it reinforced their existing prejudices. You can even reach darkness without imagining that every story, everywhere, about everything ever, is commented on in a nasty and invariably cruel way by some expat living in Spain or the UAE or somewhere like that, who hates Britain even though they don't live there, yet somehow are experts on every aspect of British life, despite only gleaning their knowledge of it through phone conversations with their witless friends as they park their enormous arses on cheap white plastic garden furniture and guzzle DOS KERVEZZOS MATE on the balcony of their gated residence, and the pages of the newspapers whose job it is to make readers hate the country they live in and hate themselves, pretty much, most of the time, for being too fat, or thin, or whatever it might be this morning, as it's bound to have changed by the afternoon.

You can avoid all that. You can just coast along in your Guardianista world, as I've done today, throwing away all the lifestyle shite out of the paper, pointless wank that it is, slightly missing the Robert Fisk / Howard Jacobson combo in the Independent (however much at loggerheads they might be) but generally seeing some news about stuff's that has happened, rather than aching nonsense about how foreigners are stealing all our bladdy jobs innit.

So with that in mind, I don't really have a blog post as such to write, but merely a story about J-Cloths, which I hope might interest you. I say 'interest' but it will no doubt just make you shrug your shoulders and think "What the fuck is that man on?" and turn the computer off with a snarl. For which I apologise in advance. I'm just saying that this really happened, and it happened to me, and I just wanted to tell someone about it. It's so banal that if I told anyone I knew then they'd just stare blankly as if to say "And...? And what?" and then realise there wasn't a punchline of any description, merely a void. And then they'd probably throw something at me, and I'd deserve it. But I can safely say I'm out of throwing distance of you, unless you have the misfortune to live next to me, in which case turn the fucking TV down, and stop coughing and banging on the wall all night, you'll get no sympathy from me.

So, there I was in Asda. I was buying various items, the nature of which needn't detain us, as it's slightly less relevant even than the point of the story. And there I was putting shopping into the carrier bags when I saw some J-Cloths heading towards me.

What kind of madness was this? I hadn't bought J-Cloths. I hadn't even been near the aisle where they sell J-Cloths. I didn't want J-Cloths - we've got the fuckers coming out of our eyeballs in this house. But no, there they were, heading down the conveyor belt. A bag of J-Cloths. I hadn't bought them. But there they were.

I looked at the couple behind me. Perhaps it was they who had bought the cloths, and they'd somehow vaulted over the "Next customer please" bit of plastic. But no. They showed no signs of interest as I picked up the bag of J-Cloths, which surely they would have done, had they been theirs. Wouldn't they? I elaborately held them up, as if to ask the question without asking the question. They could see what I was doing, but there wasn't a flicker.

Had someone put them in my basket without me knowing? I don't think so. I would have noticed. And besides, there wasn't enough room.

Had they been discarded by some previous customer, wedged up against the side of the conveyor belt? No. The person before me had bought a simple load of shopping - giant bottles of lemonade and out-of-date meat. Must have been party time down at the old folks' home or something.

No, these J-Cloths were mine. Was it some practical joke on behalf of the woman at the checkout? I don't think so. She seemed quite bored, and was hardly suppressing a giggle. No, it wasn't her. So how had they materialised from nowhere?

I don't know, but you know what I'm going to say now: I bought them. I didn't want them. I know we didn't need them. They were only about 18p or something, but I decided to buy them anyway. I bought things I didn't need, because it would be easier than trying to explain that I had put something down on the conveyor belt and then not wanted it. And then I put them in my bag, and I left. Why the hell did I do it? Why didn't I just leave them there?

Do you know what it was? I think I felt sorry for them. Honestly, that's the only explanation I have. I thought: Aww, little J-Cloths, all lost, ended up in my shopping. I might as well get them and bring them home. I did! It was sympathy for the anthropomorphised J-Cloth that made me think I'd take them rather than leave them.

Sympathy for J-Cloths. I've heard of bleeding-heart liberals but that really takes the bloody biscuit. What kind of fool am I? What kind of madness is this? I need to get back to reading the Mail, and quickly, to get the cynical juices going, or I'll end up bringing home pieces of plastic and dead beetles.

And there is no punchline. And that's the end of the story. But I'll be back to the tabloids on Monday. And I'll promise to take my brain out and give it a wash. I might even dry it on... well, obviously.

Friday links 10/7/9

Let me kick off with this. If you're a journalist and you think it's in any way (a) bright (b) funny (c) original (d) clever or (e) in any way fucking amusing to use your privileged position with a national newspaper to write tired, cliched bollocks from about nineteeneightyfuckingthree about "Ooh, aren't men terrible? Pffft it'd be a better world without them, innit?" then the world would undoubtedly be a better place if you just threw yourself down the fire escape now. Go and kill yourself. Actually wait. Give back the money from that article you wrote about "Ooh, men are rubbish aren't they, but pffft they're still useful for mending the shed or something innit?!?!" and then throw yourself down the fire escape. Just die. You don't deserve to live, let alone to work for a shit parish-pump local newspaper, let alone work for the kind of newspaper that should be reporting really important things about real life and real people rather than tedious re-hashed lifestyle wank. Just kill yourself, you should be ashamed to be still around walking the streets, let alone being paid for churning out tedious unfunny guff like that.

Yes, I'm talking to you, whichever brainless shithouse wrote this laugh-free collection of excrement in The Times:

23 Using the last drop of milk before, very helpfully, putting the empty carton back in the fridge.

Eh? Do you see? Do you see? Ho ho.

Also, I'm talking to you, Tanya Gold in the Guardian.

I awoke yesterday in Ira Levin's brain. Scientists have used embryonic stem cells to make synthetic sperm. My first thought is - does it come in pink? But the possibility grows (and I'm wilfully hopping and skipping and bouncing over the science bit here) that we will at some vague point in the future be able to breed without men.

Yeah, magic Tanya, keep it up. Jesus wept. You'd like to hope, deep down, that she's being wonderfully clever and actually parodying the kind of bollocks that women lifestyle writers put into broadsheet newspapers like the Guardian, making fun of the kind of shit they churn out about how men are ghastly and women are all clever and brilliant, and how she's taking us all for a knowing ride. But no. It is just unironic shit. This on a day when the Guardian was making the headlines for the right reasons. The Graun and the Observer always have to piss me off at the same time as delighting me - they can't just run good investigative journalism; they've always got to put some pointless posturing shite in their pages at the same time to balance it out and remind me just how squealingly dreadful they can be. This week we've already seen the return of 'leggy lovely' in a national newspaper; now the return of Polly Filla (as if they ever went away). Hey ho.

Anyway, on the subject of real news about real things and journalists getting money for actually being quite good instead of mindlessly inane, the Guardian reports how, despite the lack of a fresh police inquiry into phonetapping (as if the cops would wilfully come out and say "Oh yeah, we didn't investigate that very well first time around! Doh!") there's still a good chance that Andy Coulson and chums won't be allowed to get off the hook:

[Max] Clifford said yesterday: "If all the allegations are true, then it is tremendously serious, because all of us were convinced by the police, by everybody, that this was just two people, a rogue journalist and a private investigator, and it was a one-off.
"But what is now coming out is an awful lot more damaging, not just for the News of the World, but also for the Metropolitan police, the Press Complaints Commission and, of course, for Andy Coulson. Am I taking legal advice? Yes. Have I decided what I am going to do? No."

The more cynical among you might imagine that's just a public negotiating position for Clifford in order to sign up a few tasty deals with Murdoch's red-tops, but there are other celebs who've been targeted by the phone-tapping scandal who may well launch the kind of class action that could seriously embarrass overpromoted shit showbiz writer Andy Coulson et al. We'll see. Meanwhile, those leading Tory and 'Libertarian' blogs who couldn't wait to condemn everyone who'd ever brushed past Damian McBride as being obviously complicit and guilty in his stinking actions are, rather unsurprisingly, less willing to believe that the editor of a national newspaper would ever possibly know what his reporters were up to, despite signing off their expenses. Isn't that interesting?

Septicisle has an excellent piece about the scandal, and concludes:

...if we were being fair this wouldn't be about the News of the World, Murdoch or Coulson at all. This would about a press that is getting ever more desperate as its condition weakens. Perhaps the excesses which it once resorted to, especially during the 80s, are not quite being plumbed, although the Alfie Patten case, the Sunday Express's Dunblane story and now this all certainly come close. The one thing that is now needed is confirmation that these practices, except in cases of the utmost public interest, have ceased. The PCC has shown itself to be woefully inadequate to confirm just that. Self-regulation, at least in its current toothless form, has failed. If Coulson wants to save his job, he perhaps ought to be telling his boss that those hated privacy laws might now be needed after all.

While the Daily Mash reports:

As the tabloid faced legal action from celebrities whose phones were tapped and Tory leader David Cameron stood by his beleaguered spin doctor, the paper's readership said its priority would continue to be all the stories about fucking.
Tom Logan, a reader from Grantham, said: "I think I would have been disappointed, perhaps even a little bit hurt, if they had not been tapping Gwyneth Paltrow's phone on my behalf.

The Independent, meanwhile, has managed to break free from the gushing tsunami of glurge that accompanied Michael Jackson's death and appallingly kitschy memorial service, and is pointing out some uncomfortable home truths:

Ultimately one is faced with two options. Either Jackson really was an innocent, a childlike man-boy who simply enjoyed hanging out with young boys, up to and including having them sleep in his bed ("There's nothing more loving you can do," he told Martin Bashir in the infamous 2003 documentary, while Arviso cuddled him adoringly), and that some of these children decided – in collusion with their money-grabbing parents – to take Jackson to the cleaners. Or Jackson was an active, predatory child molester.

One of those options has been utterly dismissed by almost the entire media in the past few days. I don't know why, because it's still just as valid as it always was. We can't just ignore it because he's dead.

Sim-O points out that it's pretty simplistic to compare Michael Jackson's funeral with repatriation of the war dead in Wiltshire. It is, of course, and you wouldn't think it needed pointing out, but then of course some newspaper numpty's gone and imagined it's quite a startling revelation.

Michael Nugent in the Irish Times talks about the national shame of the blasphemy law that was passed this week:

The problematic behaviour here is the outrage, not the expression of different beliefs. Instead of incentivising outrage, we should be educating people to respond in a more healthy manner than outrage when somebody expresses a belief that they find insulting.

Ministry of Truth has an excellent demolition of Michael Gove's support for Steiner schools. The Tories naturally seem to gravitate towards anything that isn't the public sector (Gove calling it 'diversity', using a word that's usually kryptonite to Tories); but in the case of Steiner schools, that's just plain wrong. Read more to find out why.

Between The Hammer and the Anvil has a marvellous article, entitled "Politics is simple when you're as cuntish as possible about absolutely everything":

There was a time when the nightly news used to frighten and intimidate me. Every day, I'd sit down in my favourite chair to catch up with domestic and world affairs, only to be presented with an incomprehensible babble of impenetrable jargon, rampant criminality and bloodcurdling atrocity.
None of it made sense - wars, famine, death, plague... It felt like the world was a terrifying vortex of unaccountable power, random chance and purposeless violence. It's only been since I started being as cuntish as possible about absolutely everything that I've realised how simple politics really is.

Absolutely magical, that.

The fatty/skinny world of Mischa Barton and Natalie Cassidy

Mischa Barton can't get it right. Her weight, in ounces, has never quite hit the Numberwang that will stop her from being called too fat or too thin, as a look back through the archives reveals:

Her face is drawn, her cheeks are sunken and her collarbone is protruding sharply.
To the outside world she looks gaunt and unwell, but it seems in Hollywood the shockingly thin look is back in fashion.

Too thin? Wait:

But despite her sporty attire, the slender 22-year-old's extremely pale thighs already appear to have some issues with cellulite.
Former O.C. star Mischa appears to have gained some weight since leaving the show which made her famous.

Too fat? Wait:

in January where she looked frail and gaunt after dropping from a healthy size 12 to a size 6-8.

Too thin? Wait:

The 23-year-old appeared to have piled on the pounds last month and was looking extremely pale and unhealthy.

The last two sentences come from the same story by the Daily Mail. Too fat and too thin at the same time? Wow, that's got to be a first. But it does come with a caveat that it's nothing bloody whatsoever to do with the Mail, in that this is a cut-n-shut job from those brightly-coloured women's magazines you see in dentists' waiting rooms:

Sources told Mail Online that the actress's face has swelled considerably since undergoing the dental procedure last month.

Sources? What sources are these?

‘When her love life is out of sorts she just lets herself go and hits the party scene,’ a source is quoted as telling Closer magazine.

I see.

It's not just Mischa, though, who can't get it right on the Mail's Procrustes' bed of too fat/too thin. Here's someone who is daring to be happy, despite not being the right weight, as decided arbitrarily by the Mail!

Her curves were encased in a rather shapeless grey frock, which did not do her figure many favours.
Nevertheless, the 26-year-old looked happy, flashing a smile for photographers and chatting on the phone outside a London hotel.

How dare she look happy, despite not being the right weight, as determined by the Mail's sliding scale of fatty/skinny! Outrageous scenes! Doesn't she know she should be crying into her hanky at not being the exact perfect precise weight?! Disgraceful.

Ewwwwww

There's nothing like a child-star-gone-legal to get Fleet Street's finest in a masturbatory frenzy. And it's Emma Watson who got them all foaming at the mouth as she attended the Harry Potter film premiere yesterday. You might be forgiven for thinking you've been transported back to about 1983 when you read some of this, but no, it's 2009...

Evening Standard:

Showing her thigh, knickers and the hint of a left breast in public that's not what we've come to expect from strait-laced know-it-all Hermione Granger.

Mirror:

The 19-year-old, who plays swotty schoolgirl magician Hermione Granger, unwittingly flashed her pants as she stopped to sign autographs for Harry Potter fans.
Oo-er!
Since filming ended, the leggy lovely has also changed her magic wand for a mascara wand...

The London Paper:

Later Emma appeared to forget about her number’s plunging neckline, almost revealing her ‘muggles’ as she turned up to the afterparty at Middle Temple in central London.

The top prize must go to the Mail. Of course it does! For this:

Emma Watson shows how much she's grown up at Harry Potter premiere

Ewwww. Just, ewwwww.

The actress is certainly growing up quickly and she seemed to enjoyed the chance to try a bold new fashion look in a free-flowing vintage 1970s Ozzi Clark dress.

I can't help being reminded of this. Yes, the woman's gone through puberty. Yes, she's gone beyond the age of consent. Yes, she's playing a schoolgirl in a film. I mean, do we have to go through this every time she turns up somewhere? It's just a bit grim.

When vanity isn't enough

I'm joining Tim and asking for this site not to be included in the Total Politics poll of political blogs.

I did take part in it last year, and it was quite exciting from a vain point of view, and I even put the little widget on the website. It was very nice.

But the longer time goes on, and the more I learn about Iain Dale, the less I want to have anything to do with him. I couldn't give a shit if I don't therefore get the links that give me a little bump up the Wikio rankings. I'd rather have nothing from Dale and his mates. He didn't invent blogging and I don't even think he's particularly good at it. There's no reason for anyone who has a blog and who wants it to be successful to be in thrall of him. Moreover, there's every reason to keep away if you want to have any integrity.

Here's a man, after all, who said there were 'no border controls'. A man who vilified Tory MP James Gray, whom he doesn't like, when he was *falsely* accused of having claimed a remembrance wreath on expenses, yet said nothing when Boris Johnson, whom he does like, actually *did* claim a remembrance wreath on expenses. A man who regularly links to John Redwood and Nadine Dorries, as if they're people worth reading rather than laughable fools.

Do I really want anything to do with his shabby blog poll this time around? No thanks.

All hail to the Mail!

(This post comes with a wearingly necessary caveat, as you'll see at the end)

Never let it be said that this blog blindly attacks the Mail, or other newspapers, without due consideration of the good work newspapers can do. In fact, I'd state it this way: it's precisely because these newspapers could spend their time with valuable campaigns, investigative journalism and insightful reporting that I feel compelled, in my particularly ineffective pissing-in-the-wind (yet still more effective than the Pathetically Craven Commission) way, to take these jokers to task for the repeated re-hashed press releases, prejudiced drivel and complete made-up bollocks they stick together in order to produce their daily news ejaculation.

I've praised the Mail before, though it always comes with a caveat - they included a wonderful piece about the Kindertransport which made me wonder why they couldn't understand the plight of modern-day refugees, for example.

But here are a couple of examples where I really can't fault them (well I say that, but you know there are going to be exceptions). Firstly, the campaign to stop Gary McKinnon from being deported to the US to face a trial for hacking. This is a superb piece of campaigning journalism from a national newspaper, and is just the sort of way in which daily papers can really make a difference to channel support from their readership for causes they may not otherwise have heard about.

I have but two issues with the campaign. Firstly, calling McKinnon an 'Asperger's victim' strikes me as a bit clunky. I know one or two people with Asperger's and I wouldn't call them victims at all. But that's a mere quibble over terminology. Secondly, though, was this story headlined "As Gary McKinnon faces Jail in the U.S. look who CAN'T be kicked out". You know what's coming and, yes, the story delivers.

Last week there was even an article in praise of science and against quackery, although as Sarah pointed out at the time, that was probably more to do with an anti-Justice Eady agenda than the Mail really being on the side of wisdom versus witchcraft. As well as that it's in the Mail's financial interests to get a change in those pesky libel laws which see them regularly creamed for £30k here and £50k there for getting facts wrong, defaming people and so on. But still, a reason to be cheerful? A sign of progress?

And now today. I've seen a story on the Mail's website, whose content and whose comments I'd like to share with you. I want you to think of some stirring music in the background - Land of Hope and Glory if you like, or Fingal's Cave, you know, something like that - as you read this.

Our rainbow family: Three children, three skin colours... all born to the same parents

Rainbow family...? Why that sounds almost... I don't know, as if the Mail - The Daily Mail, for God's sake, who earlier this very year attempted to claim that non-white British-born people weren't entirely British - is trying to be positive about mixed-race relationships and the changing face of this country under immigration. Surely not...? Surely not! But wait.

Carla Nurse and her husband Cornel have three beautiful children, all with different-coloured skin.

Look at the words! Look at them! I've been cruel about Mail reporter Andrew 'M Beat Featuring General' Levy before, but not this time. Can you believe it? Read on...

Six-year-old son Jermaine has golden skin and brown eyes. Daughter Tanisha, four, takes after her father, with dark skin, dark eyes and tight curls in her hair. And two-year-old son Jayden has fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes.

*checks website* No, it's really the Mail. It really is!

But now, the comments. I know what you might have been expecting. But you were wrong. Check out these highly rated comments...

It's absolutely horrid that people can't get over skin colour, but my belief is that when people stare it's not because of skin colour but because the children are so cute.
- Lorraine, Quebec, Canada, 6/7/2009 15:49

But...

What a lovely family, No racial discrimation in that house. Pity the world couldnt live like that.
- William S., Alicante Spain, 6/7/2009 15:07

I...

I see this family to be the true new age energy, this is shows the beauty of love and uniqueness of our DNA's structure.
I so love this family..... they look PERFECT
- kaveeta, windsor UK, 6/7/2009 15:34

Surely...

What a beautiful family!!!
- Sharon, Brussels, Belgium, 6/7/2009 13:45

I'm almost in tears - aren't you? What lovely comments on a rather nice story by the Mail. See, it can be done! It can! I wish it got done more often, but it can happen - and look at how the readers respond. (Although the more sceptical part of me wonders if the moderators haven't been stemming back an almighty tide of racist crap).

Isn't that nice, though? I wonder if with this and the McKinnon stuff, the Mail isn't dipping its toe into the water. I said last week that the Tories were moving away from the bad old days of the Birching Brigade and the rabidly anti-gay stuff; maybe the Mail's moving that way too? It's probably too soon to call that one, I think, especially given the fact that Melanie Phillips and Richard Littlejohn are still employed, but I noticed a columnist the other day who wrote a rather reasoned and well thought out article about gay rights - and they were writing for the Mail!

Make no mistake, the Mail doesn't do anything on principle. It exists to make money for shareholders, so the only reason it might be trying a more liberal stance on some issues is because maybe they've done some market research and they've discovered that the brand has been pretty tainted by the disgraceful prejudiced nonsense of the past, and that maybe, you know, potential Mail readers don't actually like racism and are a lot more liberal than their newspaper tells them they should be. It's certainly not a complete about-face, let's not be under any illusions.

And here comes the caveat I spoke about at the beginning. Now, it's only right that newspapers should scrutinise reports and statistics - so long as they scrutinise MigrationWatch press releases, which we all know the Mail doesn't; and it even allows an 'Andrew Green' (is it Sir Andrew Green, the head of MigrationWatch?) to write articles without any balance whatsoever.

You'll notice that last article was about 'council house queue jumping' - yet today's report from the Equality Commission says that's complete nonsense, and no queues are being jumped. How does the Mail deal with this report? By repeating it as unquestioningly as MigrationWatch's opposite viewpoint? By reporting it in the same way as almost every other publication in the country, by saying it states that council house queue jumping is a myth and there's no evidence for it.

Er, no.

Oh dear. Let's not break out the champagne just yet then, shall we? There are encouraging signs from the Mail... but it's got a hell of a long way to go.