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Bloody immigrants, coming over here, stealing our racism

After Melanie McDonagh's sparkling piece of dog-whistle-free straight racism in the Telegraph the other day, you can imagine the Mail were rather pissed off that someone had already stolen their thunder - someone else had already said all the things they were going to say, about the high birth rate being something to be scared about, because it's dirty foreigners, blacks and poor people giving birth, not nice middle-class white folk.

Not to worry, though: they simply ordered Amanda Platell to write the same shit out for them. Which she duly did, albeit in slightly more veiled terms. Like McDonagh, she's an immigrant, but like McDonagh, she doesn't see herself as being a bad immigrant (I mean, she's white after all!) and yet feels she's allowed to slag off all other immigrants.

Platell:

Sadly, though, it is not the indigenous middle-class, hard-working, tax-paying population that's exploding.

Indigenous! There we have it - the word of choice used by racists everywhere, the word so beloved of the BNP. But Amanda, you're not indigenous to Britain. You're an immigrant yourself. Should you fuck off with the rest of them, then? Should you not be allowed to procreate then, given that you're not 'indigenous'? Or are you trying to make another point, attempting to use the word 'indigenous' to mean 'white'?

Look at the beautiful construction of that sentence, though. If you're indigenous, you're middle class. If you're middle-class you're hard-working, and you pay your tax. Therefore, if you're not middle-class or indigenous... well it stands to reason, doesn't it? And is the population really 'exploding'? Is a rise of one per cent an explosion? It is to Platell.

It's not just the foreigns who come under fire from this, er, foreigner. It's those bloody teenage mums as well - although Amanda's a little confused as to how many there might be. Doesn't mean she's not allowed to slag them off, though!

So who are these younger mothers? It stands to reason that many of them must be teenagers.

Ah, here we go. Teenage leeches sucking at the tit of the welfare state - evil!

How many of them are married or even have their children's father around? How many have jobs or are supported by someone who does? How many live off benefits?

Dunno, why don't you do some fucking research about it? You're writing for a newspaper - how about doing the amazingly shocking thing of, oh I don't know, checking your facts before you spout off about them? No? Oh no, of course not, this is the Mail, isn't it. Silly me.

My other worry is this: how many immigrant mums have contributed anything to this country before landing us with another child to educate in our already struggling schools?

Again, you could actually find out for yourself rather than just trying to scare people. Platell also mentions 'soaring immigration' - migration that is actually decreasing year on year? Couldn't be bothered to find that out? Or knew it anyway but couldn't give a shit?

My plan to save the newspaper industry

It's a simple way to monetise digital news while keeping content free to view for everyone. I think it's going to work and raise millions of pounds for newspapers everywhere. And remember, if anyone does introduce this, I will be demanding royalties.

All newspapers have to do is simply charge for online comments. Call it "my two cents' worth" or something - and make it literally a couple of cents. People will be so incensed by the stories of the evil PC Brigade stopping ordinary middle-class Anglo-Saxon British families from writing racist abuse on bricks and throwing it through people's window - an appalling clampdown on free speech in this once-great country which has been ruined by ZaNuLab - that they'll be happy to pay a couple of pennies to have their say. I propose a bundle of comments, let's say 50 for £1, which will quickly be used up frothing at the mouth at what some council somewhere is doing to stop ordinary British hardworking families from setting fire to Muslims' heads, because of so-called health and safety.

Look at the thousands of comments on stories on newspapers everywhere. From CiF to the Times Online and Telegraph Online, there appear to be literally thousands of tragic bastards with literally nothing better to do in their appalling waste of life than parrot inane bullshit in the comments to show how Britain is going to the dogs and how Gordy McBastard has ruined our once-great land by allowing queers and Muslims to be alive. Let's charge these people for saying it. They're clearly so desperate to type their 50-60 words of utter shit that they won't mind paying a token fee to get it off their chest.

Once people get used to the principle of paying a little for the privilege of commenting on online news stories, I think we can introduce a bit of a sliding scale so that we can grow the digital revenue even further. So here are my plans:

- Expats writing about how bad Britain is even though they haven't been there in ages yet believe everything they read in Littlejohn's You Couldn't Make It Up section as being a fair and accurate representation: £2 per comment.
- The phrase "ZaNuLab" or "ZaNuLieBore" - £10 per comment.
- Anyone making a vile comment about how a woman looks - £100 per comment.
- The phrase "Here we go again" - £1,000 per comment.
- The phrase "Wake up people!" - £2,000 per comment.
- Anyone using the phrase "the indigenous population" to mean white people: £5,000 per comment.

So there you have it. The newspaper industry saved, with a bonus tax on fuckwittery.

Telegraph can't be bothered with dog-whistles; goes for straight racism

From Melanie McDonagh in the Telegraph, arguing for a 'middle-class baby boom' to stop foreigners and lower-class people from dominating the country. Something to offend everyone, including anyone with a fucking brain:

it's not the mortgage-paying, marrying middle classes who are having the babies

...

More than half the increase is attributable to mothers born outside the UK, and many of those mothers born here will be second generation immigrants. Of the indigenous mothers, many are in their twenties and some of the increase there is attributable to more generous benefits.

...

most middle-class girls tend not to have children in their twenties, which is probably when we should have them

...

The people most likely to take their views to heart are the agonised Anglo-Saxon liberals, for whom excess fecundity is never going to be much of a problem in the first place. They don't seem to cut much ice with the Somali mothers you see in West London.

So there you have it. The Telegraph can't be bothered with the subtleties of dog-whistling any more - sure, there's an 'indigenous' in there to give a nudge and a wink to those of us who might not have twigged, but the stuff about 'second generation immigrants' and 'Somali mothers' is just plain racism. Vile, tedious, dirty racism that shouldn't be anywhere fucking near a national newspaper, let alone a supposedly 'quality' one. But there's the modern Telegraph for you.

Underneath the article are charming comments from readers, including:

It is not really the single uneducated low-IQ mother towing a noisy brood of dirty pleblets from a neighborhood where contraceptive chemicals should be fed in the drinking water and the local lager, which deserves celebration.

Welcome to dhimmitude folks.

Anybody "white" with more than two brain-cells to rub together will have long departed these isles and their descendants will be enjoying life in Spain, the USA, the Antipodes etc etc.
ZaNuLabs master plan for the Peoples Islamic Republic of Britain will at long last have reached fruition.

I do not want to share my community with foreigners. Does that make me racist?

Ooh! Ooh! Let me answer that one! Yes you are.

It's Dennis the Politically Correct Menace!

Except of course, it isn't. But that didn't stop newspapers from churning around a story this week that the cartoon character had been 'toned down' by 'politically correct' BBC bosses.

Dennis is no longer the menace he once was after a BBC makeover that has transformed him into a politically correct shadow of his former self.

squawks the Mail, before re-hashing a couple of old articles to fill up the space, while providing no evidence to back up their story whatsoever. The Mail had lifted their effort from The Sun, who had roared:

COMIC tearaway Dennis The Menace has been turned into Walter The Softy by politically correct BBC bosses.

Except, as this fine blog post reveals, that's not the case at all, for anyone who actually wanted to check what they were writing to see if it resembled the truth or not (which naturally rules out tabloid journalists):

The Sun's story followed a traditional psychological redtop technique: printing alleged political correct quotes from anonymous "insiders" and "sources" to get their readers revved up, then a counter-claim from a named source at the end of the article. But by the the time the readers have reached the final quote they've already absorbed the myth and the red mist has descended.

They're all too willing to believe it, of course, because it weaves together two familiar and fire-stoking narratives: firstly, that Britain is going to the dogs because of the so-called politically correct brigade, who mean you can't even set fire to golliwogs any more without being labelled 'racist' by the Guardianista bastards; and secondly, that the socialist scum at the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation are trying to manipulate our children by producing a stream of extreme leftist propaganda. Combine the two, and bingo. No need to check. Why check? It might ruin the story!

Lew Stringer continues:

The way in which the national press can so easily and rapidly manipulate their readers with disinformation is quite disturbing. Yes, the "new" Dennis does look different to the way he was in the 1950s, but what these media reports ignore is that any changes have happened gradually over the past 50 years, not overnight by the BBC as they suggest. But if they admitted that they wouldn't have a story to pad out the pages of their bulging papers, and they wouldn't be achieving their usual remit - winding up "Little Englanders" into such a beetroot-faced apoplexy that they feel the right-of-centre papers are their only comfort zone.

Exactly. Someone take a slipper to the Sun and the Mail and take away their peashooters; it's the only language they understand.

Thanks to Suave for the tipoff!

Slipped through the net

Always nice to see Littlejohn getting a slap round the chops. This week's first effort from everyone's favourite smellyfaced prick has attracted some unwelcome comments:



The one from Sheelagh in Ongar is particularly inspired. (You won't be surprised to learn that our hero had been making hilarious jokes about Peter Mandelson's prostate.)

The clampdown on life

I'm a libertarian at heart. By which I don't mean "I'm one of those people who calls himself a libertarian to mask and justify his inherent racism", or "I'm one of those people who calls himself a libertarian because 'extremely right wing' doesn't sound as good" or anything like that. No, I mean libertarian in the sense that it used to be used before the so-called politically incorrect brigade turned it into a confusing term that can just as easily mean "free thinker" or "total arsehole": essentially, that adults should be allowed, as much as possible, to do whatever they like, so long as it doesn't do harm to other people.

I find it wearyingly disappointing, then, to read about the Government's plan to outlaw 'legal highs' with the wafer-thin justification that some people somewhere have died after taking them (not necessarily from taking them). I imagine that even if no-one had ever died after taking them, they would still be cracked down upon: because it's not a crackdown on danger, or risk, or people hurting themselves, but a crackdown on the kind of unregulated recreation (or, as you might call it, 'fun') which the state disapproves of. So if you take a lot of these drugs you might die? It's the same with water, or carrots*, or anything. Too much of anything isn't good for you. Banning it doesn't make the situation any better, either.

But this Government, as every other Government has or will do, wears the Mr Mackey hat when it comes to drugs, and simply says they're bad, mmkay. It was the same when a drugs expert told Jacqui Smith something which went against this logic - something she didn't want to hear, which led her to put her fingers in her ears and screech that drugs were definitely evil and killed you, and that was the Government's position, no matter what anyone else might say.

Not that the Tories are very much better, despite many Tories claiming to be 'libertarians' of a sort. David Cameron's plan to cure all the problems of alcohol by making it more expensive - rich people who can afford more expensive booze of course never cause any problems whatsoever, for example smashing up restaurants and then chucking some money at the owners to get it fixed up; whereas the poor are vermin who can't be trusted and who therefore must be forced to pay more - was mooted some time ago, and I said then it wouldn't work. Now it's turned up again and it's fairly obvious which groups are being targeted:

Such tax changes would mean a four-pack of extra-strong lager such as Carlsberg Special Brew costing an extra £1.30, a bottle of powerful cider an extra £1.25 and a bottle of alcopop an extra 50p. But duty on low alcohol products would be slashed.

So there you have it. A tax on poor alcoholics, essentially, street drinkers rather than anyone else. Are they really the ones causing the most trouble with booze - really? Or are they just the easiest to target because they don't complain, because they're easy to villainise, because it's simple to make out that they're the problem, rather than the pint-and-a-punchup types out in town centres every weekend?

And yet if our masters looked at the evidence, and kept a sliver of an open mind, they might like to reconsider. Take this story the other day which means that kneejerk censorship and film classification legislation is completely worthless. Has anyone been harmed in the few days since this was found out? No. Has anyone been damaged by a rudey video? No. Was anyone harmed before that? No. Are we living in a scary hinterland where there are no laws protecting us from watching things in our own homes through our own choice, and in which we might unwittingly, because we're so frail and vulnerable, do serious damage to ourselves? No.

But that doesn't matter. It never matters. Drugs are bad. Booze is bad. We must be stopped from ourselves. We must be told what to do. Don't anyone think the Nanny State is going to vanish in a puff of smoke when the 'libertarian' Tories get into power, because it's not. It's going to be here for a very long time to come.

* I saw this in an episode of Casualty once. So it must be true.

Our new masters

If you look at this photograph and think "Hmm, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with that" then may I invite you to jump headfirst down the nearest metal fire escape.

Whereas if you think: "Jesus Christ, are these awful boorish ruddy tits really the people who are going to be running the country in a year's time, not because they have any decent policies or anything approaching a vision for the country, but simply because we've decided that it's their turn, and our miserably pisspoor and rankly unfair electoral system will give them an enormous landslide despite the fact they'll probably only scrape about 35 per cent of the popular vote? Don't we deserve better than to be ruled by this horrific shower of oily shites?" then don't worry. You're not alone.

Why getting it wrong is a bad thing

The Mail often gets it wrong. Who knows if they get it wrong because they're incompetent, lazy or malicious? It would be foolish to imagine we definitely know the answers to that. All we can say is that on certain stories, for example those involving race and immigration, there is a pattern of wrongness that extends beyond what you'd expect for simply incompetent reporting.

Last week, for example, Mail reporter Sue Reid accidentally/deliberately got the figures mixed up on how many migrants there were looking for work in some parts of Britain. Sure, she's the same Sue Reid who incited Polish people to break the law in return for financial gain, but you can't assume from that we know whether she's lazy, inept or simply hateful towards minorities.

Who knows why she got it wrong, but she got it wrong. And the key problem with getting things wrong is that the likes of the BNP don't care whether you've got it wrong or not; if it's something slating immigrants then they use it as propaganda. Yes, they'd have propaganda whether the Mail handed it them on a silver plate or not, but there's an authenticity, a level of trust afforded to national newspapers, which people accept - it's often assumed (rightly or wrongly) that newspapers actually check things before they go in print, and that therefore there's more legitimacy to stories that appear there rather than just being concocted by BNP members. As 5cc points out, the BNP put up Mail stories straight away - it doesn't matter whether they're accurate or misleading. It doesn't matter to them: it's just more fuel for the fire.

So when the Mail comes up with some nonsense saying that Muslims get preferential treatment to all other customers as revealed by Tabloid Watch, a lot of people will roll their eyes and know it's bollocks straight away without having to read it. But that's not the point. For newspapers and journalism in general to cling on with their fingertips to any kind of credibility whatsoever, it needs people to have some kind of ability and willingness to check things and make sure they're fair and accurate; for people to say "Look, I don't mind running a story about genuine bias towards Muslims because that would be important, but unfortunately what you've done here is misrepresent the situation. We can't run this". I get the impression - and as ever I could be very wrong - that that doesn't happen as often as you might hope at the Mail.

Getting it wrong is a bad thing. It chips away at the reputation of not just the newspaper in question but all newspapers and all journalism. Getting it wrong means that the hateful bastards who tell lie after lie after lie about other races and religions can have a veneer of respectability to mask their inherent nastiness; they can hold their hands up and say: "Not me saying this, this is a national paper telling you that Muslims get treated better in banks than the rest of us / there are more immigrants looking for jobs than locals". That's why it matters. And that's why we should care. And that's why it's a disgrace that so many people in positions of power and influence in the press don't.

What's the excuse for this shoddiness?

Or is it even shoddiness? Jamie has an excellent piece over at MailWatch on the fact that the Mail has made a catastrophic error in figures about migrant workers. Specifically, it says that in some areas of the country more migrant workers are chasing jobs than locals. Except it doesn't back that up at all:

Unfortunately for Sue, her methodology is catastrophically flawed. She has taken the cumulative total number of National Insurance number (NINo) registrations for the entire financial year 2007-08, and compared it to the number of people claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA) in the single month of July 2009.

That's a disastrous mistake because there's no legitimate way of comparing the two things - unless you assume that every migrant who applies for an NI number in a certain area (1) stays in that area and doesn't move, either to another area or back to their home country; or (2) doesn't get a job.

Or is it a mistake? That's what I wonder. How did no-one notice, from journalist to printed page, that these figures were so wrong and so misleading? Is it really conceivable that one of the biggest newspapers in the country could make such a spectacularly bad error? Well, of course it is. And I'm no conspiracy theorist. Sometimes people just see what they want to see, and I'm no different.

But there's just something nagging away at me. 5cc in the comments to the MailWatch story points out that the author of this piece is the same Sue Reid who offered cash to Polish people to break the law so she could write a story about the scandal of Polish people breaking the law. Here's a journalist who was quite happy to give people money to break the law in order to create a misleading impression of crime among migrants. What else is she prepared to do in order to get a story into print?

A test for the PCC

This could be an interesting test of the strength of the PCC. Whereas Robert Murat and Kate & Gerry McCann received hefty payments after seeking redress through the courts rather than the Press Complaints Commission, now there's another figure in the whole sorry saga attempting redress, not through legal means but through the Pathetically Craven Commission.

Debbie Butler of the Madeleine Foundation was accused of being 'The McCann's stalker' by the Sunday Express's front page last week



and was labelled a 'sicko' in a Daily Star article about her activities. Now the best way to decide about the Madeleine Foundation is to have a look at the website and judge for yourself. I am not for a moment going to say I agree with everything on there; but on the other hand there are legitimate questions that are posed about the little girl's disappearance, and I think it's fair enough that they should be asked.

Of course the allegations against Butler are nowhere near as serious as those against Kate & Gerry or indeed Robert Murat. But nonetheless it might be interesting to compare and contrast the cases. Specifically, how seriously will the Express take a complaint through the PCC, as opposed to one through notable libel lawyers? Particularly in the light of the fact that even when they got a stern ticking-off from the PCC over the Sunday Express-Dunblane atrocity, they did absolutely nothing about it whatsoever, despite the fact the PCC said they hadn't done enough.

This sentence of the complaint caught my eye:

Debbie's ex-husband asked why they had printed such a bad picture of Debbie in the 'Sunday Express' and why they had apparently chosen the worst one. The answer from the journalist, verbatim, was: "The editor told me he wanted her portrayed as a hard cow".

Ah yes, there's the Fourth Estate in all its glory for us, right there.

Friday links 21/8/09

Hello! There may be proper writing of things later but for the meantime, here are some things I've read and enjoyed.

Five Chinese Crackers - Columnists: Creators of imaginary worlds

What the tabloid columnist usually does is act as Greek Chorus for the paper they appear in. The tabloids set the scene with their constantly repeated stories, with exagerrated figures, distorted coverage of reports that aim to invert their meaning and opinion dressed as fact - that happen to fit the targeted narratives they've created. But these will often be flawed by the balance that must be inserted (and mostly is) with a quote toward the end, or the inclusion of actual figures that readers might spot aren't quite as scary as the paper wants them to believe they are. So here the columnist pipes up and shows the reader what their ideal reaction should be.

A beautiful, thoughtful post examining why Richard Littlejohn and Kelvin Mackenzie are such hateful cunts.

The Daily Quail: Readers supportive of model's compensation claim

Compares

This cyber bully was clearly a very jealous and vindictive woman and I'm glad that she was been found out. Too many people come onto internet forums spreading lies and hurtful gossip. It's about time people grew up and considered other peoples feelings, how would they feel if the tables were turned?

with

If she wants to work in banking, she should grow some thicker skin. It's hard work being a girl working in a man's world, but if you don't react to silly comments, then they get bored and give up.

See, it's only fair for certain people to be cyber bullies and not others, OK?

Greenpeace: Greenpeace admits BBC got it wrong

Sackur claimed that we were predicting that all the ice in the Arctic -- including the massive Greenland ice sheet, which is on land, would be gone by 2030. That's NOT what we said. When we talk about "ice-free summers" in the Arctic, we're using the term the same way that NASA and climate scientists the world over use the term: to describe an Arctic free of sea-ice. And Sackur, or his researcher, would have known that if they read the entire article, including the next sentence: They say you can't be too thin or too young, but this unfortunately doesn't apply to the Arctic sea ice.

How journalists don't check things, don't bother to check things, and how opponents of environmental groups make stuff up to try and claim victory. Also: how being absolutely accurate is important for environmental groups.

Stumbling and Mumbling: Against a high pay commission.

Septicisle: The latest on Glen Jenvey. Jenvey has now not only admitted planting the 'Sugar Terror Target' quotes but also now says he has converted to Islam.

Lady McScamp: There are no ulterior motives here, move along now, nothing to see...

Jack of Kent: Quentin Letts and a frozen haddock (no, it's not 'spot the difference')

Sarah Ditum: Capitalism in action with playground conkers

Army of Dave: James Dyson is a slacker

Freemania: Turning Japanese (following on from John Band's lyrics quiz)

It's because they work with sick people

Radio 2 this morning. Matthew Bannister cues up his sub-Littlejohn call to housebound Little Englanders everywhere to reach for the phone and bark away about something. I paraphrase, but it went along these lines: "NHS workers are more likely than people in the private sector to ring in sick. Is that because people who work in the public sector are lazier?"

Ken Bruce, almost embarrassedly, popped his balloon with: "Or it could be those sick people they work with."

Yes, it could be that, couldn't it? (It could also be the ridiculously long hours and understaffing, but let's for a moment stick with the apparently inconceivable idea that if you come into contact with people who have contagious illnesses, then you may become ill).

No-one seems to have contemplated this simple idea. Or have they? Surely it's not difficult to understand. It's not as if NHS workers are being compared to private healthcare workers, is it? No, it's not. But, despite the simplicity of the argument against, you can expect reams of drivel to be poured out in the public-sector-hating press over the next day or so, about 'lazy' public sector workers (probably with 'gold-plated' pensions for a bonus rant).

You expect it from the likes of the Mail - in fact, here it is, look! - but the BBC? It strikes me that if you want to know where to find lazy taxpayer-funded workers, you might do well to start in a BBC newsroom.

Let's all have a party when Glenn Beck gets sacked

Glenn Beck's pathetic "Obama is a racist" broadcast has got the vile little troll into trouble. Not because of its content - no, people expect that kind of crap from him. That's why the insufferable shit was hired in the first place.

No, this is a problem for Beck because it's losing his employers money. Quite a significant number of blue-chip advertisers have started withdrawing their products from endorsing his show. They don't want to be associated with a rank idiot telling lies about the President. This all off the back of one of the grass-roots web campaigns which are redefining politics and the MSM.

That's more worrying for Beck. He can offend almost anyone (on the "left") he likes, and Fox won't mind; but if it's costing them $$$$ to do so, maybe he's in danger of becoming a luxury they can't afford. Surely Beck would approve of his being sacked under such circumstances? After all, that's capitalism for you.

Anyway, I say if (and hopefully when) the horrible goblin does get his marching orders, we should hold a great big party. Balloons, streamers, fireworks, the lot. Passers-by should laugh and point and give him a slow hand-clap as he is escorted down the Fox News fire escape, tears pouring down his face and bin-bag in hand. Oh what a fine, sunny day that will be.

Mumsnet and the Mail

I'm not a mother (nor a father as far as I'm aware) but I've heard of Mumsnet - a web forum devoted to parenthood which brings together mums from all walks of life. So has the Mail, which likes to harvest content from all open sources to try and drive traffic to its own site. So every week the Mail rounds up the latest from Mumsnet to shamelessly C&V the content without having to pay anything for features in its publication give an insight into what the nation's mums are talking about.

This laziness, however, hasn't gone unnoticed over at Mumsnet, where not everyone is delighted that their views are being airlifted out of their original location and parachuted down into the Mail, a publication whose views and opinions aren't always the most delightful in the world.

As one poster points out*:

The idea that some deadline journalist who can't be a*ed to come up with an original idea is going to cherry pick her way through the juiciest posts and make her selection is horrendous. What do you post on? What do you post on that WON'T be selected by an idle Daily Mail hack for mass regurgitation in her weekly column? You've no way of guessing, so you've got to muffle your identity. Or not post on the burning issues. The idea that my thoughts about my struggles with parenthood, birth, twins, PND, toddler feeding can become fodder for the cynical of middle England depresses and appalls me. Given that I can't predict which posts will be selected on a weekly basis the only recourse is to stop posting or make my posts bland and anonymous and keep to safe, generic subjects. If we all do this then maybe Mumsnet will become so bland the Daily Mail will go somewhere else to satisfy its deadlines. Now there's an idea. Hoist on its own petard!

Now some posters have come up with a creative solution to ensure their views aren't parroted by the Mail in its weekly round-up: they've started calling themselves rather interesting names. I can't quite see the Mail including comments by "DailyMailisperfectasapoopscoop", "TheDMofficeisfullofimmigrants", "TheDailyMailsuckscocksinhell", "DailyMailatemyswans" or "PaulDacreeatsbabies". Can you?

Thanks to Joanne for the tipoff!

*I appreciate the irony of me copying and pasting comments about Mumsnet in a story about posters complaining about having their posts copied and pasted over at another website. Honestly I do. But it's one of those occasions where I feel I have to do it. It's not as if I'm making a weekly column out of it, is it?

The good, the bad and the ugly of the Mail

The Mail isn't all xenophobia, scare stories about cancer and thinly veiled racism, you know. All right, so a lot of it is, but there are always nuggets to be found. Sure, sometimes it's like looking for chocolate chips in horse shit, but they're there if you really want to find them.

Take this article, for example. It's an excellent opinion piece about the war in Afghanistan which I found myself agreeing with almost entirely.

No one in the Bush administration had any thought beyond the initial toppling of the Taliban and the destruction of Al Qaeda's training camps.
In Donald Rumsfeld's memorable words: 'We don't do nation-building.' Thanks to overwhelming, high-tech U.S. firepower, it was to be a quick in-and-out job.
Some in-and- out job it has turned out to be. Let us never forget that this panic-driven, ill-thought-out decision is why we are in Afghanistan today.
But if the West, under U.S. leadership, took over the country to extirpate Al Qaeda, the truth is that we have failed, and at enormous cost in blood and money. And we have failed primarily because Afghanistan was never essential to Al Qaeda's global operations, despite what Gordon Brown seems to think.

It's really very good, and well worth a read. To balance things out before you start thinking the Mail has started employing exclusively good writers, Peter Hitchens had a bash at Afghanistan at the weekend and ended up sounding miserably ignorant and dimwitted, even for him, but especially in comparison to something as reasoned as today's considered and insightful piece, which criticises both Tories and Labour for repeating the same old rhetoric about Afghanistan and causing needless deaths, 'our' troops and civilians alike.

But I sense a slight shift in opinions towards Afghanistan, even at a paper like the Mail. There's no doubting that the vast majority of the British public have tremendous sympathy for the British troops, who are suffering ever increasing casualties in the war zone. And I think they're increasingly wondering what the point of this war is, especially in the light of human rights atrocities such as a proposed law to allow husbands to starve their wives if they refuse sex. Is this, then, the outcome of the 'humanitarian intervention' so beloved of the hawkish liberals? Is this why so many have died, so someone other than the Taliban can be just as anti-freedom and oppressive as the Taliban? Hardly anything to celebrate.

In case you were thinking that this marks a paradigmatic shift in the Mail's opinions, don't worry (or indeed dare to hope). No, as 5cc points out, the Mail can still set the hares running for its more racist readers with incendiary headlines such as "EUROPE ON THE BRINK OF A NEW RACE WAR" which brings some truly unpleasant bastards out of the woodwork, calling Muslim victims of ethnic cleansing "potential Jihadists" for example.

If that's the bad old Mail doing the things it's become notorious for, then what's the ugly? Well, this story about a man who loves a crocodile a little bit too much is a bit bizarre. But I think this comment is one of the finest I've ever read, in the Mail or anywhere:



Wonderful.

Express silliness

This weekend I have only two things to comment on, and both involve the Express. Well obviously I have lots of things to comment on not involving the Express, but for here, and for now, we'll concentrate on that.

1. It's a bit rich of the Express to come out with a headline like this, given their track record. Is this the same newspaper group which paid out damages to Kate & Gerry McCann for libelling them?



2. Not only was Saturday's front page a straightforward lift from a deeply flawed and wholly unpleasant Littlejohn rant we discussed on Friday



but it involves the same hateful "THEY're not YOU" tactic that Express stablemates the Star have used before:



Just as the Star said that Muslims couldn't possibly be YOU, so it is with transgender cops. All minorities are not YOU in Express land. It's a clear "You're not wanted" statement of intent, and pretty stinky.

Also, I dare say there were spectacular queues at garden centres across the nation this weekend with Express readers keen to redeem their free cup of coffee (coffee, mind, not tea) OR cake at the counter. You can imagine the teeming masses backing up cafeteria lines up and down the land. I mean, garden centre eateries are hardly bastions of speedy service at the best of times. Imagine the madness as literally millions of Express readers demanded their free coffee OR cake from bemused weekend workers! It hardly bears thinking about. Imagine if a transgender police officer, who clearly should not be allowed to buy the Express, decided to try and get a cake OR coffee (but not tea, mind). What then? Should they be banned from doing so? It's PC gawn bladdy mad! Innit!

Most hateful front page of the day competition

On any ordinary day, this bit of maiden-aunt pearl-clutching from the Telegraph would win. On any ordinary day, this



bit of sneery "Ooh, women are doing something that men are allowed to do, not sure if they should be allowed to, for some reason or other" picture headline would clinch it. On any ordinary day, that kind of "Do we really want gells to be being unladylike?" toss would scoop the prize with no need for a steward's inquiry. But this is Friday, and Friday means it's Littlejohn day in the Mail. So we get this:



If you thought WPCs in burqas were ridiculous (I didn't, thanks for asking) then how about the Transgendered Police Association? How about it! Eh! Eh! Well, since you want to know with the kind of witless rhetorical question the Telegraph tried up there ^^^ then I'll tell you. I imagine it's an association for police officers who are transgender, and as such is a perfectly legitimate body. I imagine it brings together police officers who have to put up with the kind of sanctimonious carping from smellyfaced cunts like Richard Littlejohn day in, day out; people who, because of their legitimate lifestyles are ridiculed and held up as some kind of freak by utter bastards like the foul stinky scumbag tosspieces who work for the Daily Mail. Just for being who they are. Oh yes, Littleman, let's all gather round and have a fucking right old laugh about PC gone mad - hey, see what I did there? - in providing support and assistance to people who choose to do one of the toughest jobs in the country, and do so despite sexual proclivities* that idiots like you, you fucking gobshited pig-eyed prick squatting in judgement over everyone's lives in Britain from your gold-plated Florida mansion, regard as being worthy of hysterical abuse and being singled out as somehow deserving of mockery. Well actually, WPCs in burqas is fine by me, if they want to wear them.** If people want to be police officers then I couldn't give a shit what religion or sexual orientation they are - and surely it's better to have a police force that reflects the community it serves. Isn't it?

Or shall we just have a titter about the transgendered police association, because we have an emotional age of nine?***

* Or simply the way people are born into the wrong gender. See comments, and apologies for giving the wrong impression.
** The article refers to a story the other day in which non-Muslim women police officers wore Muslim dress in order to get a better understanding of the issues affecting Muslim women. A simple and understandable bit of empathy which Littlejohn doesn't compute either.
*** With apologies to nine-year-old readers, who are probably more insightful than Littlejohn

Absolute filth in pop

Apropos nothing, I thought I'd try and collate some of the filthiest lyrics in mainstream pop music. It comes off the back of a Twitter discussion I had with loveandgarbage on Twitter about the lyrics to Bucks Fizz's Making Your Mind Up. Here was a song that was cheerily played on the same BBC that took an iron rod to Frankie's Relax, despite lyrical similarities.

Where Frankie said:

Relax don't do it
When you want to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come

Were the bubbly bowlcut boys and girls from the Fizz thinking along pretty much the same lines of delaying orgasm, with

you gotta speed it up
and then you gotta slow it down

and let's not forget their sage advice:

dont let your indecision take you from behind

Well, who'd want that?

Most baffling sexual reference comes from R Kelly, who's in fairly safe 'car-sex' territory with

Girl I'm feelin what you feelin
No more hopin and wishin
I'm bout to take my key and
Stick it in the ignition

in his hit 'Ignition'. The car key is his cock, you see! But wait, what's this?

Now it's like murder she wrote
Once I get you out them clothes

Come again?

Now it's like murder she wrote
Once I get you out them clothes

It's like Murder She Wrote? You mean to say when you take your clothes off in front of R Kelly, you become a mystery writer from Cabot Cove who becomes implausibly embroiled with a series of brutal murders? Is that what you mean, RK? Or are you fantasising about putting your "ignition key" somewhere near Angela Lansbury? What are you on about, you strange and slightly disturbing man?

The car-sex stuff is also covered by Rihanna in "Shut Up and Drive", where she opines:

So if you feel me let me know, know, know
Come on now what you waiting for, for, for
My engine's ready to explode, explode, explode
So start me up and watch me go, go, go, go

Again, with the ignition key = cock metaphor. "You've got the key, shut up and drive", she says. Rihanna, the modern emancipated woman, isn't too keen on the niceties of sex, a bit like Kelly Rowland, who warbles:

You lookin' like you're lookin' for an explanation
Use the curves in my body for your motivation
Skip the petty games no need for complication
Use those things for sure I'll reach my destination

in the imaginatively titled "Put it in", which makes "Lick my love pump" seem almost coy. Oh whatever happened to romance, to seduction, to foreplay even? Fear not, for here's Christina Aguilera demanding a proper old-fashioned evening of teasing and delights:

If you wanna be with me, baby
There's a price you pay
I'm a genie in a bottle
You gotta rub me the right way
If you wanna be with me
I can make your wish come true
You gotta make a big impression
I gotta like what you do

Phew, well that's something. Got to rub her the right way, much as the Sugababes Autotuned in their hit "Push the Button":

If you're ready for me boy
You'd better push the button and let me know
Before I get the wrong idea and go
You're gonna miss the freak that I control

Who'd want to miss that freak? You'd be a fool to. Before the Sugababes we had the Spice Girls, who extolled the virtues of slapping on a rubber bucket, even if it was just for a bit of post-breakup rutting:

Are you as good as I remember baby? Get it on, Get it on
'cause tonight, is the night,when 2 become 1
...
Be a little bit wiser baby, put it on, put it on
'cause tonight is the night when 2 become 1

Yes, put it on, for heaven's sake. Who knows where you've both been in the meantime? You'll be getting all sorts of soreness otherwise.

And finally, I think for absolute muck in a popular song, I don't think you can do much better than Sheena Easton. Ah she was such an innocent wee girl before she met Prince. Afterwards, there came the depravity of "Sugar Coated Walls":

My sugar walls
my sugar walls.
Where I come from there's a place called heaven

That's the place where all the good children go.
The houses are of silver
the streets of gold.
But there's more where you come from - my sugar walls.
My sugar walls
my sugar walls.
Blood races to your private spots

let's me know there's a fire.
You can't fight passion when passion is hot

Temperatures rise inside my sugar walls.

Let me take you somewhere you've never been

I could show you things you've never seen.
I could make you never wanna fall in love again

Come spend the night inside my sugar walls.

Well, that doesn't leave a tremendous amount to the imagination, does it? All suggestions of filthier filth than that are gratefully received.

Rod Liddlejohn and real racism

How can you call out racism nowadays and be taken seriously? There's a ready-made counterpunch - PC GONE MAD! - available to anyone who's strayed over the boundaries into out-and-out racism. Aha, they say, I am not racist at all; whereas you are a dirty PCgonemad leftie troublemaker who has no grasp on reality.

I've pointed it out before about the Carol Thatcher / golliwog saga but it bears repetition. Why are golliwogs racist? Because they're a stereotype in a child's toy, a big-lipped boggle-eyed inane-looking black man, that's why. Yet somehow that's not enough. Somehow they're not racist if you say they're not racist. Somehow if you accuse the person accusing you of having a racist toy - not even racism itself, because you can simply have these things through ignorance and it'd be incorrect to label anyone with a golliwog as a racist (some of them are just stupid) - of being PCgonemad then you can shield yourself from any legitimate claims.

My argument is always this. If they aren't racist, why then does the BNP take such particular pleasure in selling them? What other reason would there be for the BNP devoting an entire section of its 'Excalibur' merchandise website to them? They don't sell any other children's toys, so why golliwogs? And let's manoeuvre past the last wafer-thin excuse - that they're selling them because in these PCgonemad days they're standing up for traditional values and, as they say themselves, 'striking a blow against political correctness'. No, they aren't. They're selling them because they like the stupid caricature of black people. They enjoy the ridicule. They enjoy the racism. Sure, your granny might have Robertsons jam jar stuff and think it's OK, and might not necessarily be a raging BNP nut; of course not. But to go and buy golliwogs now? To compare a black man to one now, with all the racist connotations? No, there's an activeness about that with more than a whiff of racism involved.

It's hard to get through all the ready-made defences that people who come out with racist shite set out. Of course it is. But it's necessary, and right, to do so. There's a commenter on John Redwood's website, for example, who calls him (or her) self Little Black Sambo. Again, like golliwogs it's a bit of a hangover from the bad old days, and, again, while your older relatives might not understand what the big fuss is all about, it's pretty stinky to use terminology like that now. Is that PCgonemad of me to say that? No, it isn't. I'm not PCgonemad. I'm just saying that user names like Little Black Sambo are pretty grim and outdated, and likely to cause offence - which is probably why they were picked in the first place. Who knows? It might even be a black person using that user name, in which case, yes, it's up to them, but it's still pretty offensive and unpleasant terminology. Is it PCgonemad to say that? No, it isn't.

Which brings me to Rod Liddlejohn again. I'd meant to leave him behind after reading his execrable toss from the Speccy on Friday, but I've just spotted this post over at Pickled Politics from the archive of Liddlejohn hilarity. Liddlejohn says:

Most middle-class parents would prefer not to spend £25,000 per child, per year, on private schooling. And they probably would not do so if the alternative was of a higher educational standard than the state school around the corner, the Mary Seacole City Academy for Advanced Textspeak and Stabbing. This is especially true in central London, where Dave lives. Perhaps he thinks that Westminster is a state school, near as dammit, compared with his own alma mater, Eton.

Ah, there we go then. See? It's funny because Mary Seacole was a courageous and intelligent woman who happened to be black, and in Liddlejohn's mind that means that you can link her name with the kind of school where people get stabbed. Do you see? Do you see why it's funny? Do you see why it's clever and hilarious and brilliant and good? That the Loony Left PCgonemad education types would name a school after Mary Seacole - what bastards to name a school after a national heroine! - presumably because it was in an ethnically diverse area, and therefore - and here's the funny bit - people would get stabbed there, and also be so thick they could only speak in textspeak! Guffaw! And that's the funny bit, yes?! And that's why it's sensible to send your kids to private schools, so they don't have to mix with kids who'll stab you (with the Seacole name dragged in for a whiff of racism)?! Isn't it? No...? No, you say? It's not funny at all, you say...? Come on, don't be so PCgonemad! Laugh along with the funny man!

Modern journalism: Let's not bother to fucking check

This, then, is how modern journalism works. The TUC has a proposal to state that people shouldn't be forced to wear high heels (or foot-damaging footwear) in the workplace if they don't want to. The usual suspects at the Sun and Mail (and even the Telegraph, who really aren't a quality paper any more) decide they'll have a bit of fun and pretend that the TUC is BANNING HIGH HEELS OMG, whereas in truth they're more than entirely aware that isn't the case; it's just the same sort of drab lie that gets dredged up from time to time against trade unions, the hated bloc-voting Trotskyite Reds who WOULDN'T EVEN BURY THE DEAD BACK IN 1979 and so on, yadda yadda.

You'd hope that at that point the 'quality' papers, even the Guardian, which is traditionally seen as being a left-wing newspaper, might have a look at the facts of the situation and say, ah no, that's not it at all. Wouldn't you? You would? Well you'd be wrong. Because far from bothering to fucking check anything in the slightest, they just decided to run with a crock of steaming horseshit from Jenni Russell which assumed that everything the Mail and Sun had said was correct. Big assumption. Big, wrong assumption. But then I suppose there's no snooty little article (and £££ to be made from it) if there isn't a story, is there?

OK, so don't blame the journalist for not fucking checking in the slightest; it's not in her financial interests to check, is it? No ban on high heels = no shit article from me saying oh noes, but I like my heels innit? Fine. But didn't anyone else check? Couldn't anyone else give a shit? Didn't anyone else care that the Guardian, the liberal-left Guardian, was running an article based on a total and utter lie about trade unions? Or, to boil it down a bit further, did no-one care that a supposedly quality paper was running an article based on a total and utter lie? No, apparently not.

This comes in the wake of the fairly tawdry hatchet job the Graun did on comedians the other week, including Richard Herring, who was understandably a bit pissed off by the whole affair. Sure, he got a 'right of reply' but that doesn't excuse the misleading article.

It's pretty saddening for those of us who see the Graun as the last-chance saloon for some kind of mainstream liberal voice in the media (apart from the state-funded Bolsheviks at the Beeb, obviously, pffffft). Crap journalism makes every single article less respected. The thing about being the good guys is that you sometimes can't run the story you want, if it's not based in fact. That means you have a sliver of integrity, and it sets you apart from your rivals who couldn't care less.

Doesn't it? Or doesn't that matter any more?

Rod Liddle: Would you?

Read one of his shit-on-a-stick articles, I mean? I mean, would you? Sure, he's as unattractive a man as it's possible to be - a grubby hangdog Churchill insurance dog face, smashed-crab teeth, eyes that somehow simultaneously suggest a boggle and a squint at the same time, folds of ruminant flab dangling under his neck like a scrotal sac, and then an albino candyfloss of straggly Carol Thatcher-style hair; all the time, that self-satisfied "Hey, do you know what, I've had a fuck a couple of times, lads" early-developer smirk on his chops. Like the Fonz, he thinks he's the epitome of cool, and can tell the younger kids he hands around with what it's like to feel a girl's chest round the back of the cycle sheds; but also like the Fonz, he's a tragic, laughable figure without any depth to his character. And, like the Fonz, he's just jumped the shark with this laugh-free cockwiping of an article over at the Spectator*.

Rod Liddle is for people who find Quentin Letts too highbrow and complicated. While Letts has had the same brainwave about British women politicians - "Ooh they're not as tasty as I'd like them to be, eh boys? Guffaw!" - and did a despicably shit job in making it (a) anywhere approaching funny or (b) insightful in any what whatsoever other than confirming in your mind what an atrocious bellend he really is, Liddle has gone a step further. No, not further. Lower. And he's not even being original. Letts beat him to it. Liddle's had ages to do a better job on exactly the same subject. But can he do it? Can he fuck.

Would you? I think you wouldn’t. I think you have more self-respect, a greater sense of self-worth, no matter how much you’ve had to drink.

I don't know Rod, you're the cock of the South. You tell us.

That’s the problem with Caroline Flint’s statement that Labour’s most senior women were used by the Prime Minister as ‘window dressing’. I mean, would you dress your window with Jacqui Smith, or Ruth Kelly, or Harriet? If you had a window? You might dress the window with Caroline Flint, who, we should all agree, is as fit as a butcher’s dog. But the rest?

And what of you, Rod? Are you as fit as a butcher's dog? Or as fit as an arthritic half-blind incontinent Labrador on its way to the vet for that final injection? Does it matter that you're as disgustingly ugly as hell - should that mean you shouldn't be allowed to write for the Spectator? Maybe that would be a better world, in which everyone should be judged solely on their appearance in order to pass some fuckability test by which they can be deemed to be capable at doing their jobs. In which case, Liddle, it's down the fucking Job Club you go my son. Or is it just women that should be judged this way, by any chance?

Bizarrely, Harman has been allowed to draft legislation based solely, it would seem, upon her hatred for men. Legislation to ensure that men who murder their wives are banged up for life with no recourse to a plea of provocation occasioned by the woman’s behaviour. And, at the same time, that women should henceforth be allowed to plead provocation when they murder their husbands and get a lesser sentence.

Lie. Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Caught you with your fucking dirty skidmarked Ys halfway down your stubby legs, Liddle, and not for the first time. LIE! It is not legislation that is skewed against men, and it's easy to find that out. Sure, if you want to read the Mail you might get that impression, but even then if you read it fucking properly, looking at the words and so forth, you'd find out that wasn't the case. Or maybe you don't care whether it is the case or not, if it fits your 'Harman hates men' narrative?

And, to occupy her campus-ground for a moment, what about those other victims of discrimination — black people, homosexuals, the elderly, the disabled? Shouldn’t there be some sort of mechanism to ensure that they are represented in senior positions at the top of the party? This is not simply a facile observation: as black Labour activists will tell you, one of the biggest obstacles in the path of getting more black and Asian Labour MPs has been the party’s insistence upon all-women shortlists. Of the various communities exulting in multicultural Britain, it is whitey who, sadly, is most committed to the principle of equality for women; hence all-women shortlists tend to discriminate against black men.

Yeah, course it is, Rod. Hang on though, what's this? Someone called 'Harriet Harman' calling for all-black shortlists? That can't be right, can it? I mean, you'd've mentioned that, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you...? You, the wise man saying that Harman's dogma is 'furious yapping based upon a misconception' - I mean, you wouldn't do that, would you? I mean, you wouldn't write some furious yapping based on a misconception, would you?

Would you?

* Can I just digress for a minute? Anyone who makes you click five times to read something on the internet should be beaten with a scaffold pole until they learn how to do things properly and their raw wounds spinkled with pine-scented Flash liquid. Ooh, there's five pages, wow, four extra page impressions, cor imagine the online revenue! Fuck off! You'll piss more people off by doing that kind of lazy toss. Why not put other things on the website that are actually worth reading instead - that's a better way of getting more clicks than just making people keep turning electronic pages when there's room on their screens to scroll. Making money from online (I'm not going to use the word 'm*net*s*' because the only people who ever use that word are noncreative talent-free arses who spend their lives with flipcharts, whiteboards and Powerpoint presentations, desperately hoping their concocted bullshit will be obscure enough to fool someone) isn't about pissing off your online readers; it's about entertaining them. Isn't it? Oh hang on, they've given a job to Rod Liddle, what the fuck do these people know about entertainment anyway? Hmm. Fair point.

Who are these critics?

When the Mail attacks a subject it doesn't do so with the finesse of Quincy carving up a recently-murdered cadaver to try and determine the cause of death (while at the same time solving social problems and humiliating the fat policeman); it's more like a frozen turd that's been dropped into a pan of boiling oil, spitting and seething and bubbling away with fury.

I wouldn't even mind so much if they showed some subtlety, intelligence or guile about how they do it, but they don't. They come barging through, all elbows and fists, smashing things about, causing chaos and generally making it pretty obvious what they're up to. There's not a great deal of class about what they do. It's a simple hatchet job. Now you may say - and you'd be right - that I'm much the same, clobbering away at the festering worm-infested decapitated head of the dying dead-tree press with a rusty spade, splattering its withered, yellowing brain around like so much lumpy mashed potato... but it's to be remembered that I am, in no way, shape or form, intended to be taken as a legitimate news source, whereas the Mail actually pretends it is. More fool you if you thought I was, by the way. Anyway, with that caveat in mind let's look at this atrocity.

Anyway, I'll try and be a bit more precise than usual with this one. See it as me poking them in the eye with a pointed stick rather than bludgeoning them to death with a three-piece suite. If you must.

So the headline goes

Lessons about wife-beating at five: In the week Harriet Harman takes charge, yet another feminist initiative

A few things are going on. First is the attempt to portray Harman* as an evil feminist crusader; second is the idea that feminism is, in some way a bad thing; third, that OUR CHILDREN are being infected by leftist indoctrination and there isn't a thing we can do to stop it.

Author James Slack leaves his turdy fingerprints all over this afterbirth of an article. Just as in the good old days when he regularly churned out astonishingly misleading drivel about immigration figures, he's decided to ratchet up the hatred against Harman with a series of spectral attacks.

Have a look at this picture caption for an idea of what we're going to get, and for evidence it's not just the authors like Slack who go about confecting the outrage, but the drones who put together the pages:

Feminist agenda: Under controversial plans, schoolboys will be taught not to beat their partners or any other female

Yes, not beating up your partner is a 'feminist agenda', not simple human decency. And such a plan is 'controversial'. It's 'controversial' that children should be advised not to break the law and hurt other human beings. Is it? Is it really? It is if you live in the Mail-land.

Now here are two statements by Slack, and I want to see if they're stood up by the rest of the article. Or whether these 'critics' exist at all:

Last night, critics warned that ministers are cramming the already over-stuffed National Curriculum with lessons that should be taught in the home or in the community.
Others say the plan is part of the feminist agenda led by Harriet Harman in her role as Equalities Minister.

OK so what does Slack use to substantiate the 'critics' claiming that the already overstuffed National Curriculum (presented as fact) is being 'crammed' with lessons that should be taught in the home or in the community?

It comes here:

Margaret Morrissey, of family lobby group ParentsOutloud, said that PSHE classes were in danger of being 'hijacked by pressure groups'. She added: 'I do not really want my youngster to be indoctrinated with these things.
'There will always be those who want to cram our school curriculum with social issues that need to be taught by parents and society.'

Do you like the irony? A pressure group is saying that classes were being hijacked by pressure groups? But surely this article has been 'hijacked' by a pressure group, then? Or is it only the wrong kind of pressure group that this pressure group objects to? So, sure, a 'critic' has said that the curriculum (not 'already overstuffed', mind) is being crammed with things, but just things they disapprove of. And who are ParentsOutLoud anyway? Well have a look at the website and see what you think. Now don't be cruel about the fact that an education pressure group can't spell or write things properly; that's just nasty of you. We all make mistakes and doubtless there'll be one from me just centimetres away from this. No, look instead at the kind of articles they have - roaring about 'health and safety', complaining about Government targets, attacking Ed Balls - it's a bit like if the Daily Mail ran a pressure group, what that pressure group would be. So naturally their interests dovetail nicely with the Mail's when a 'critic' needs to be found of any Government plan involving kids.

How does Slack stack up the second part of his argument? That it's part of Harriet Harman's horrible 'equalities' (boo! hiss!) agenda? He quotes this sage:

In a document peppered with the language of Miss Harman's equalities-agenda, the Government says the first ever Violence Against Women and Girls strategy is in production by departments across Whitehall, and will be published this autumn.

Silly me, no, that's just Slack himself. No, well the justification must be somewhere. After all, where are these 'others', these other critics? They must actually exist, right?

[Jill Kirby, of the Centre for Policy Studies] added: 'It is young men who are most likely to be the victims of violent crime. It is a distortion to suggest otherwise. It appears that everything must be viewed through the prism of 1960s feminism.'

Well yes it would be a distortion. If that were actually the case. Is that what's really happening, though? Are children really being taught that violence by men against men is not more common than violence by men against women? No, of course not. But it's a perfect strawman. Even so, it's hardly a thumping endorsement of what Slack was trying to set up in his introduction to the story.

But then it never matters, does it? Slack may claim he's found 'critics' to say what he wants, but even when they don't say quite what he wants, it doesn't matter, does it? It doesn't even matter than the 'critics' he finds are a shoddy pressure group that no-one in their right mind should listen to, and a 'think-tank' which represents largely Conservative views. That doesn't matter. The dissenting voice has been found; everything is fine. There are no prizes in journalism for getting things right; whereas ramping up hatred against this week's Aunt Sally gets you a nice pat on the back, doesn't it?

As others have suggested, there's a ridiculously skewed poll on the website, so it would be remiss of anyone not to try and skew it back towards reality. So if you feel like voting, then by all means be my guest.

* Anyone who says 'Harperson' should die. Look, it might have provoked a mediocre snicker the first time. Oh yes, Harperson, hoho. Not really that funny, but yes I see what you're saying. That sort of thing. But if you're still using 'Harperson' then you should just be killed. There's no use in trying to keep you alive, because there is no point, because your life means nothing. Now I'm no defender of the woman herself - God alone knows the awfulness that New Labour have brought upon this country, and she's one of the leading players - but calling someone 'Harperson' isn't funny, clever or even approaching amusing. It's just pointless, lazy, boring shite, and you need to die. There is nothing good about it. Even if you think you're using it in a way that says "Oh well if it annoys the lefties then it's worth doing" you should still be killed, because it doesn't; because it just makes you, and every argument you have, look stupid.

Eerily similar

Why, it's almost as if it's the same picture!

Banned for inaccuracy... eh?

Don't worry though, it's nothing to do with our chums at the Pathetically Craven Commission. They're not only unable to ban something for being inaccurate, but probably wouldn't even if they could. Can you imagine? "Sorry, you've used misleading statistics, you're not allowed to do that again, you must remove the article from the web." Can you see that happening to any British newspaper ever, about any story ever?

No, this story revolves around another regulatory body, in many ways as Cargo Cult as the PCC but one which actually has some teeth, sometimes, in certain circumstances. This is about the Advertising Standards Authority's decision to tell the NSPCC to stop using outdated figures in their adverts.

Now, it's not as if the ASA is a shining example of regulatory power. It's not as if they stop adverts from going out in the first place (except in extreme cases) but rather act retrospectively, often when adverts have finished their run anyway, so any punishment not to show them again is entirely pointless. But, this aspect of the decision interested me:

The ASA said that people seeing the ads were likely to consider that the claim was derived from current figures and "represented the prevalence of ongoing sexual abuse at the time the ad appeared".
"We were also concerned that the ad did not clarify the definition of sexual abuse on which the claim was based," said the ASA in its ruling.

What we have, then, is a regulatory body for advertisements that gives more of a shit about accuracy than the regulatory body for newspapers. And yes adverts do need to be monitored for accuracy, as they can often make misleading claims, intentionally or otherwise. But all I wonder is: why isn't there an equivalent for the press? Sure, you can complain about accuracy all you like, but will it get you anywhere?

Spare me the madness

Watching television is often like being like Peter Duncan's ill-fated character in Flash Gordon - we are all plunging our hands into the tree-stump maze, hoping not to be attacked by the evil pulsating bladder within; and yet, more often than not, we end up mortally wounded and have to appeal to camper-than-Christmas Timothy Dalton to finish us off with his weapon, pleading: "Spare me the madness!"

OK, so watching television isn't a lot like being Peter Duncan's ill-fated character in Flash Gordon, but you get the general idea. Every now and then you get attacked by something unpleasant, and every now and then you wish that someone would step in and end it all. In the case of Big Brother, which is lurching through its 10th series, I just wish someone would end it rather than me. I've had enough.

Scunt has a rather good post on this. It's reached that stage where I just can't bear to look at the programme any more. All the twists and turns have been anticipated long before they've even been dreamt up. All the characters are fairly predictable types. You can even rehearse most of the dialogue before you've even seen it. It offers nothing new or interesting or watchable or fun.

I know for many of you, this is hardly a revelation. A lot of people can't stand the programme anyway, and that's fair enough; but I was one of those who actually quite liked it. I rather enjoyed it down the years, getting to know the tragic inhabitants, picking favourites and wondering who'd win and who wouldn't. But this long, slow death of Big Brother doesn't do anyone any favours. It's time to be kind, buy it an air ticket to Geneva and tell it to pop round to Dignitas to see the nice lady with the lethal injection. It's time, I'm afraid.

This year has been especially unappealing, and it's just exposed the emptiness at the heart of the programme if you can't summon up the empathy. Exactly who are we meant to be rooting for in there? Which of the colossal arses in there is meant to be someone we'd even give a shit about, let alone warm to? I can't stand any of them. Any of them. They're all monstrously arrogant ("I'm quite a big deal" smirked Jack-the clippy-out-of-On-the-Buses-toothed posh Bristolian Bea the other day, without any evidence as to why on earth that might be) and yet feebly equipped for adult life. Is this the same as it's always been? I don't think so.

I just think it marks a point beyond which there's no point in going. Contestants are too savvy to the cameras that you end up with a ridiculous scenario in which people are acting like they don't know or care they're on camera, while actually being all too painfully aware of how they'll be seen or how they'll be edited, fearing the boo of the pantomime crowd on their exit; they despise their fellow housemates who 'play up to the cameras', while knowing that the bit where they accuse them of playing up to the cameras is being filmed and may well be used on the highlights show. It's got to such eating-your-own-arse levels of postmodernism that fuzzy-faced eyes-too-close-together martial arts oddball Marcus regularly rants to Big Brother about what makes good television and what doesn't - but does that make good television?

The trouble is, the contestants are now not really drawn from the general public any more, if they ever were in the first place. They're more likely to come from model agencies or the ever-growing pool of existing reality show contestants than they are to be gurning wannabes who made it through an open audition process. The only way you could rectify that would be to drag in 12 people off the street at random and ask them to be on the show. You'd avoid the knowing attempts to get on the highlights by rowing, fighting, snogging or approximating outrageousness. God knows it might even be better, or at least have some whiff of verisimilitude.

What we're left with is just a bunch of rather smug, tedious student types sharing a pretty colourful hall of residence, attempting to outdo each other and be seen as being the good one, the decent one, the honest one, the truthful one. It's just not fun any more and it's not really believable - much less so than it ever was. Whereas once you might consider suspending your disbelief for an hour a day to watch Big Brother, nowadays you just think: oh, what's the bloody point?

As Peter Duncan said: Spare me the madness. But rather than being dispatched by Timmy Dalton's shiny sword, I think I'll just not bother with Big Bro any more.

Ban this photo tinkering filth!

In the Mail today, an article about the campaign by a leading Liberal Democrat politician to outlaw flattering Photoshopping of pictures for fears it 'ruins the esteem of teens'.

Now, I don't want to state the obvious - actually, who am I kidding? - but this story would be a bit more convincing from a newspaper that hadn't regularly used Photoshop, very badly, on its own photographs.

Anyway, here's the article on the Mail's very own Femail section of the website...



Hmm. That picture of the woman's face that illustrates the 'Femail' section of the website... I mean... well, it's just that... of course, maybe she does have perfect flawless skin, but... well... you know... isn't it?

And if the Lib Dems were looking for a publication which really could have an impact on teens' esteem, perhaps they could look at one which regularly accuses celebrity females of being either too fat or too thin...? Just an idea of where might be a better place to start.