Happy New Year

So that's that, then. I'm off now for a while (only a couple of days in fact, but you know how it is) and then I'll be back.

I had meant to do a piece looking back at 2009, at all the awfulness I'd written about, and all the awfulness I'd written, but I didn't quite get there. I might do something like that in January if I have the time, but you can look back at this and this for a bit of reflection over the triumphs and atrocities of 2009.

As I was saying yesterday, this year has been one of quite amazing growth in traffic for the blog thanks in no small part to kind people retweeting and plugging things on Twitter, which I am proud of and a bit scared by - and I'll still keep doing it, for as long as it keeps me happy, and as long as some readers take some enjoyment from it. I'm also proud of the other blog I did in 2009, for as long as I felt it was necessary, and I'm pleased to say I don't think I need to write that one any more - but that was enjoyable, in its own way, and rewarding too.

So that was 2009. I hope the new year brings better things, but we'll see.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

It's Have Your Say UK!

People 'on the internet' are not stupid. If I thought that then I'd think I was stupid (although I occasionally do), and add to the kind of "wurrrgh, blogs and Twitter are rubbish aren't they?" drivel that you see regularly churned out in the mainstream media by people whose output is, somewhat ironically, a steaming shite compared to a lot of what you find via Twitter and blogs.

And I'd argue that there is some value in listening to voters rather than driving a steamroller through what they tell you they want. And if today's proposal by the Tories to create a Have Your Say for the UK were genuinely about creative policymaking, then that would be magic. But it isn't. You can see even from this distance that £1million for one website is ridiculously bad value for money - and taxpayers' money at that. But of course Tories - given that it's them who would be doing the wasting, were they to be elected - are roundly behind this pointless bit of pantomime posturing, arguing that it's crowdsourcing, brilliant, intelligent and wise.

I'm sure, of course, it won't be used to justify pre-existing policy decisions by sifting through the evidence to find people clamouring for the rich to pay less tax, the public sector to be burnt to death, etc etc, and will never simply ignore huge weight of public opinion towards matters such as not invading other countries and killing thousands of people. How many petitions on the Number 10 website, for example, end up as policy, affecting policy, or being anything other than ignored, unless they agree with what the Government wants to do?

It would be nice to suppose that the Tories would be entirely different, and would really want to engage with the people rather than simply cherrypicking the bits they want and rejecting the bits they don't; but their commitment to representative democracy hasn't yet creaked into life regarding a representative voting system, as it hasn't with Labour, so there's no reason to imagine they're desperately keen on anything other than being in power. This, like the Number 10 petitions, will just be a Cahier Des Doleances for the 21st century - a way of letting the non-political classes think they actually have some kind of influence, without ever going anywhere near giving them real power.

This Have Your Say UK could, in the end, be as valuable as the BBC's Have Your Say - in other words, not really valuable as anything but a cheap laugh at best, a virtual local library for enraged poor-me I'm-the-real-victim types to ejaculate giant lakes of bile. I'd like to hope it's not the case, and that this could really be a wonderful democratic tool, but the cynical part of me imagines that within hours of being set up it will be swamped by the "bring back hanging" and "our masters in Brussels" types who regularly spout such delightful dangleberries as are featured on the beautiful Speak You're Branes (this post on David Ethics, 'the most pompously petulant bumgrape I've seen for quite a while', gives you a flavour of the regular contributors to the debate.)

As I see it, there is a better way of 'crowdsourcing' than setting up a £1million website in a competition. It's called electoral reform. The Tories may claim the public know better than the politicians, but if that's the case then let them keep the £1million and put it towards genuine democracy in Britain, rather than attempting to create a cargo-cult engagement with the proles. If any major party did that, they'd get my vote - which wouldn't feel like it was being wasted, for once.

Twitter & blogging: a love story

This list by A Very Public Sociologist makes for interesting reading, not least for me because I scraped into the top 10. Exciting!

It's easy (and so predictable that, oh look, the Guardian have had a bash at a bit of rubbish prolling) to dismiss Twitter as a dreary affair full of dull people who don't add anything to your understanding of the world, but I can only comment on the effect it's had on this blog. If you compare web traffic for this month last year



with this month this year



you can see there are a lot more people here. Now much as I'd love to think that's down to me being spectacularly brilliant throughout the past 12 months and much more clever and funny and so on, I don't think that's the case. It'd be wrong to attribute everything to Twitter either, but I definitely think it's helped - not just through my own shameless self-promotion on there, but also through other people being able to find the kind of articles they want without having to rely on the mainstream media to dish them up.

When you're trying to cultivate a bit of a readership, or at the very least get more of the sort of people who'd like to read the sort of stuff you write through the turnstiles, I think it's helpful to have a way of letting people know what you're up to - and the immediacy of a link on Twitter is a great 'read it now' incentive. I reckon if you are a keen amateur scribbler like me, or like the many others I've happened upon thanks to Twitter links, then it's hard to underestimate the power it has. The mainstream media don't get that, of course, because they couldn't care less. They just assume we come stumbling through the mist up to their trough every morning to feast on what we're given.

A lot is being made of the looming general election, of course, and the role that Twitter will play in it. Blogging and tweeting won't affect the outcome, of course, but they will provide an alternative backdrop to the tiresome and straitjacketed world of the mainstream at that time - and I'm looking forward to that, if not the result itself. In the meantime, I'll try and catch up John Prescott. It won't be easy, but I'm determined!

Is arson a crime?

Not according to BNP legal officer Lee Barnes, who says on his blog of an arson attack on a refugee camp in Calais:



"This is not a crime, this is an act of national liberation". Really? I don't think this does very well in the BNP's campaign to develop a veneer of respectability; in fact, you start to wonder what other crimes BNP officials would regard as being 'not crimes' if they were to further the cause of 'national liberation'. Would this arson attack on a mosque and Islamic centre be considered a crime, for example? What about this attack on an Asian woman on a train in Lancashire, for example - is that a crime, or is it 'not a crime' it when it's in the cause of 'national liberation'?

Incidentally, I did notice this nugget from Barnes's blogger profile, under music interests:



I imagine those NWA albums go down a treat at the BNP disco.

The prolls creak into life

I've written before about what I like to call "prolls" - professional trolls who, instead of trying to upset people on internet forums by posting provocative ill-thought-out nonsense with the sole intention of getting a rise out of others, write provocative ill-thought-out nonsense for a bumper pay cheque in mainstream publications.

One saddening aspect of the Jan Moir Twitterstorm earlier this year was the sheer amount of traffic the Mail must have got to boost its stats, albeit at the expense of its brand reputation and a lot of the traffic consisting of outraged or soon-to-be-outraged people who couldn't believe the awfulness of what they were reading.

And it's for that reason that I don't really link to the Mail very often any more. They won't miss the couple of hundred clickthroughs generated by me, I'm sure, and you all know where to get a look at the original article, if you want. I know it goes against the etiquette of blogging, but I've reached a point where I can't be bothered to give these jokers any more traffic than they absolutely need - particularly when there's a lingering suspicion that they're simply trolling for traffic, trying to be as provocative as possible in order to lure in an angry mob of confused and annoyed liberals.

Which brings me to the Mail, where it appears the trolls have creaked into life after Christmas. Leo McKinstry, who must have moved from the Express in a big-money transfer and charmed his new employers with his ability to write not very coherently but quite provocatively on a wide range of subjects, has a bash:



Bollocks, Leo. You're not sorry at all. You fucking love it.

And then there's Liz Jones, ah yes our old friend Liz Jones, with a couple of stabs at rousing fury over homelessness at Christmas.




Part of me thinks that she's a wily old writer, cleverly creating a dimwitted and ignorant persona in order to wind the rest of the world up; but I fear I think that because I don't want to think of a world in which she can really mean what she's saying and really agree with the things she writes. I don't want that world to be true.

And of course, they're just the headlines. But it's not as if they're not representative of the stories beneath. From McKinstry:



Nice try, Leo. Good attempt. But it's fairly predictable, and stumblingly written, and it's so obvious that you're trying to provoke a reaction that it almost inclines you to not be bothered at all with him. So he wants people killed for being drug smugglers, even if there are extenuating circumstances. Yeah yeah. Yawn. Oh and it's all New Labour's fault for not chucking everyone in prison who's ever had half a bifter, and everyone else's fault for Kate Moss being popular somehow. That's why it's OK to shoot someone through the back of the head. Mm.

Can Jones do better?



Not really, but again, a poor effort. "I didn't know poverty really existed in India, but then someone told me it did, and I made a sad frowny face, isn't it terrible what other people have to put up with?" - it's not even fun, or witty; and even if it is an act, which I'd really like it to be, it's still not a particularly good one.

The prolls are trying - so very, very hard, but so very, very ineptly - to get our attention. I just wonder if it's worth giving any attention to them - whether it's even worth writing this, for example, although I've started it now and I might as well finish it. I'm certainly not giving them a link; you know where to go and find their nonsense if you really want to.

There's nothing wrong with provocative, insightful, intelligent writing, of course. I just wish that we were well furnished with it. Look at this article by Matthew Parris for a good example of someone swimming against the tide and challenging received wisdom, but doing so in a way that neither screams for attention nor has to go to extremes in order to make a point, nor cultivates a faux-personality of extraordinary thickness (or just is that thick) in a feeble attempt to entertain. And that's why it's worth linking to.

Er... but... surely... and... but... eh?

Just as we're coming to the end of the Noughties (as we must, wearyingly, call it I suppose, given the wave of 'Ooh let's make up lots of lists to bulk out the TV schedules!' programmes littering the screen at the moment) and just when you thought it was impossible for the Express to out-Express itself in terms of bewilderingly frying-pan-smashed-into-own-face dumbness, comes this late entry for most fuckwitted headline of the year, decade, century and probably millennium:



After reading that, I had to sit down in an armchair, quietly, staring at the wall, slapping my face at regular intervals with a piece of barbed wire dipped in sheep shit. I considered sticking my head in a bowl of ice-cold water, or, better still, licking the toaster element to try and wake myself up from what was surely a delusional episode, but thought better of it.

It's quite a revolutionary thing, though, that the Daily Express are proposing: that terrorists shouldn't be allowed on planes.

Fancy that! And there I was, thinking that they should be let onto aircraft with a cheeky wave and a "Mind how you go, sonny, hey, you've dropped your explosive device!" rather than not being allowed on planes, what with them being terrorists and all. Thank goodness we've got the trusty Express to set us right: whereas we might think it's perfectly acceptable, once we've identified people as terrorists, to think that they won't do any harm and they're all a bunch of loveable lads really, the Express - very cleverly and quite counter-intuitively, you really have to say - has decided that that's a bad thing, and that in fact people who are terrorists (you know, the sort of folk who might well try to attack mass-transit vehicles in order to create a spectacular news event to further publicity for their cause) shouldn't be allowed onto mass-transit vehicles carrying lots of passengers.

"Experts", furthermore, say that "only those who pose a genuine threat" should be singled out. And again, you have to marvel at the brilliant lateral thinking that's gone into that. Ordinarily, you wouldn't think twice about people who pose a genuine threat being allowed to pose a genuine threat; but in fact, the truth is that people who pose a genuine threat shouldn't be allowed to pose a genuine threat. Who knew? Perhaps, with hindsight, we should have noticed that people who posed a genuine threat were actually most likely to be the kind of people who might be more dangerous than people who don't pose a genuine threat. But it's not always that easy to see that at the time, is it?

Actually, I may have been guilty of being mildly sarcastic with those last couple of paragraphs. In fact, the Express is being a sight more coded than it normally is, and the startlingly dumb clusterfuck of a front page conceals something a bit smellier than downright stupidity:

MUSLIM travellers must be singled out for airport ­security screening to foil future Al Qaeda attacks on airliners, a terrorism expert said last night.

Ah, now it all falls into place. For once, the Express was being subtle. Well, I say 'subtle' but this is about as subtle as the Express gets - it's like being stabbed in the face rather than set on fire by a man dressed as a giant fluorescent crab. Not really subtle, but not as obvious as it could be.

For once, the Express is asking its readers to join the dots rather than telling them what to think. Only two dots, I grant you, but dots nonetheless. Dot one: TERRORISTS SHOULD BE TARGETED. And dot two: MUSLIMS SHOULD BE TARGETED. Now, I imagine a lot of Express readers will strain over that puzzler like a blank crossword grid with no clues at all, but I think there might be just the teensy-weensyest implication that Muslims are those who 'pose a genuine threat'.

Yesterday a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said Abdulmutallab’s actions should not be used against the law-abiding Islamic community. He said: “The actions of one misguided individual should not tarnish the reputation of the majority.
“We will let terrorists win if bigotry is allowed to flourish.”

Oh, it's flourishing all right.

Compassion? You'll be lucky

This is not a post about the Mail's coverage regarding Akmal Shaikh's imminent execution, because their coverage is fair, detailed and very good, despite (a) one article having been written by the usually awful Sue Reid and (b) slightly contradictory headlines:





From reading the articles it seems there's quite a shadow of doubt over his conviction, his intent to commit the crime and his mental wellbeing at the time he did it, all of which should, perhaps, be taken into consideration when deciding whether he should be shot through the back of the head or not. Or not:





It's this kind of bludgeoning, roaring "NO, I'M RIGHT" that allows people to be sneery and snobby about what they read on the internet, lumping we poor bloggers in with the kind of folk who type in CAPITAL LETTERS underneath Daily Express stories or who patrol internet forums looking to upset others.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to say what they want, nor that only experts should be allowed to discuss things, nor that I know better than everyone else; it's just that comments like these are typical of a kind of compassionless, hate-fuelled contempt towards human beings that seems to be rather more prevalent in comments underneath Daily Mail stories, for example, than you might find elsewhere, or in real life.

It drags us all down - all of us 'on the internet' are tarred and feathered to be just the same as these jokers, those who would happily see a mentally ill man shot to death and couldn't care less about any of the doubts surrounding his conviction or the circumstances of the case. To answer the question that many will pose - 'well why don't you go on there and correct them?' - all dissenting voices are quickly crushed:



Some would say this just goes to show the classic equation - give people anonymity, and a forum to say what they want, and they'll be quite hatefully awful, in a sense that gives you a glimpse into why people used to be able to stand around smiling after lynchings or cheerily participate in genocide; it reveals the dark side of humanity. I'd like to hope we're better than that, but maybe we're not.

Michael Howard is right

Michael Howard is wrong about a lot of things, of course, and was a truly terrible leader of the Conservatives (or a brilliant one, depending on your point of view) as well as an illiberal home secretary. But that doesn't mean he's wrong about everything, as this story shows:

Mr Howard told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend: "I think I am still the only party leader who went to Burnley and devoted an entire speech to confronting the BNP and saying that we've really got to take them on and we've got to take their arguments on.
"I don't think we can afford to be complacent. There are one or two constituencies where they are said to be a potent threat.
"I think you have to take them on, you have to confront them and you have to expose the appalling evil of their arguments."

What I like about Howard here is that he doesn't muck about. He doesn't wring his hands, as many other Tories and Labour politicians would, wondering whether the racists really have a point and whether poor white folk are right to feel 'disenfranchised' and upset by immigration. No, the BNP's arguments are 'appalling evil'.

Which I find myself agreeing with - though it's a kind of uncomfortable agreement. Imagine sitting on the train next to a man with a hideous cold whose nose is dribbling snot down his face. You don't want to be there, but it's late, you're tired, and you can't go anywhere else. There, I've said it: I agree with Michael Howard. As I've said before, a vote for the BNP is not a protest, and it's unfortunate if not entirely missing the point for politicians to wonder whether the racists are right - true, many may claim that the white working-class are the real victims of racism, but I think they're wrong.

There has, in recent times, been a thought in politics that the best way to deal with BNP voters is to say their concerns are genuine and to try and woo them. Phil Woolas is the classic New Labour example of this, but there are others right across the political spectrum. What Michael Howard rightly says is: bollocks to that. Racism is wrong, and the BNP need to be challenged, and fought.

Cough syrup confusion

Sometimes you don't need to be a brilliant scientist to detect a whiff of bullshit when it appears in newspapers under the guise of health advice. Take this article in the Mail:



The intro appears to be saying: people have looked at the evidence around some of these remedies, and tested them, and found they're not as good as you might think. So why not try these untested and unproven remedies instead!

For a start, is this even news? Well:



That report from USA Today, you'll have noticed, is dated 2006. But the Mail appears to be regarding this as a current story, and has decided the best way of informing its readers about what's really effective in fighting a cough is to decide that they'd like to hear about herbal and homeopathic remedies instead, with unproven claims parroted unquestioningly by the writer. Is that really what readers want? Well, who knows, but:

Here are five options to soothe nasty coughs

would seem to imply that these aren't just pretty liquids in bottles with herbs in them, or water-memory stuff, or whatever, but things that will/might/could soothe nasty coughs. Despite that, the packaging on the remedies is a lot more coy, only saying "based on traditional use only" in the case of the Kaloba Oral Drops, "apparently used by Zulus for thousands of years as a remedy for upper respiratory tract infections". Well if that's not nailed-down proof that that'll soothe a nasty cough, I don't know what is. Hey, and it's only a bargain £14.99 a bottle, so why not get five?

You can see the level of probing journalism that's been applied to these remedies by the objective and sceptical reporting of their effects:



That honey one doesn't even mention anything about coughs. Still, it's only a bargain £7.82 for a bottle, so it's worth stocking up with a dozen to see you through Christmas and the New Year.

Finally there's Seagate Olive Leaf Throat Spray, at a cheap-as-chips £5.71 for 30ml:

a combination of three natural antibacterials: olive-leaf extract homeopathic remedy Baptista tinctoria and Xylitol

So artificial sweetener, water, and a bit of leaf extract. I suppose you pays your money, you takes your choice: but the Mail have unhelpfully not pointed you in the direction of any choice, preferring to state unchallenged the claims made by these remedies without wondering whether they do any good (or harm) or not. Who wants to ask those awkward questions about things? Certainly not journalists.

I know there's a school of thought that says that journalists, not being scientists and having probably done inferior humanities degrees at former Polytechnics for god's sake, are confused by things like this and are a bit bewildered by it, so you can't blame them too much for getting it so wrong. I disagree with that kind of pomposity for a start, but I have another problem with it. You don't even have to be particularly bright or inquisitive to see that something's up with this, with the unquestioning presentation of unproven claims, with the legitimisation of stuff that perhaps doesn't always deserve to be legitimised, with the offering of stuff that's unproven as an alternative to stuff that has been tested. That runs contrary to any sensible journalistic instinct.

And besides, we all know the best thing for a cough is a large glass of whisky. (It might not make the cough any better, but with a bit of lucky you'll be too pissed to care.)

Ho ho holy shit, look at this!

From today's Mail front page:



Yes. You read that correctly. "Don't panic!" says the Mail. Think about that for a minute. The Daily Mail, telling its readers not to panic.

You might say "Well it's a bit fucking late for that, isn't it? The bastards have been telling their readers to panic about every conceivable thing, every other day this year, and now they're telling them not to panic? It's hardly likely!" - to which I would reply yes, I can see that, but look, it's Christmas, it's the season of goodwill to all people, no matter who they are, what they do or how they make a living - even working for the Daily Mail.

It's time to celebrate the happiness of the season and enjoy the fact that, for once, the Mail is telling its readers to relax, calm down, that everything's going to be all right, that Christmas is going to be OK and they're not going to be murdered in their beds or swamped by asylum seekers who are probably gay or something.

Hmm. You're wondering why I haven't used the whole front page, aren't you. Well, ah, um, well having told you that this was a rare outbreak of Christmassy loveliness from the Mail, and that, for once, they weren't trying to scare the shit out of their readers and get them to barricade themselves indoors for fear of what the outside world was going to do to them, I fear I misled you a little bit, because:



DEATH! FREEZING DEATH! PEOPLE BEING KILLED BY THE ICE! DON'T GET TOGETHER WITH YOUR FAMILY OR YOU WILL DIE! STAY OFF THE ROADS! STAY INDOORS! DON'T GO OUT THERE! YOU WILL DIE! YOUR FAMILY WILL DIE! YOUR CHILDREN WILL DIE AND YOU WILL WATCH THEM DIE A SLOW AND PAINFUL FREEZING DEATH IN THE EVIL ICE!

Ah well. It couldn't last, could it. It didn't last. Maybe next year. Merry Christmas!

Sun: shite

One argument you'll often hear from people who (unlike me) know a thing or two about newspapers, goes like this: Say what you like about the Sun's politics, but it's brilliantly written and put together.

I know what they're saying - but is that actually true? Today's Sun front page, for example, might lead you to the opposite conclusion:



I can argue with you about the choice of stories: the prurient intrusiveness into the deaths of celebrities like Stephen Gately and Brittany Murphy; a visit by a Premiership manager to a brothel and so on. But what I'd like to look at most of all is how shit it is.

The 'Prem manager' for example, appears to have overdosed on Ready Brek in preparation for his next match. "Aha!" you might say to me, "but might the colour not be a clue as to the team he manages?" and I'd say, I doubt it somehow, but you never know, and even if it is, it looks fucking shit.



In the online edition, the manager appears to have transformed into a silhouette of a character from a 1980s ZX Spectrum adventure game, and so we're still left guessing. But surely if there's any manager out there who looks like he's made out of Lego, or bright red, then he'll be quickly spotted...?

The 'cocktail of drugs' attempting to piss on the freshly-dug grave of Brittany Murphy before she's even been lowered into it is fairly abysmal as well - ooh look, a list of things found in her house. Christ! "Here is a list of things" - whoa, thanks for that! I don't know how I'd get going into the day without a list of things! Sentences and words are a bit too tricky for me - can we just keep it to lists and pictures, then I'd be able to understand! I don't see any evidence here of the 'brilliantly written' Sun that people are always telling me about.

And the smiley face. The smiley face, what the fuck is that about? The Sun considers its readers so infantile that they'll only react to the simplest possible level of explanation - BIG SMILEY FACE GOOD, FROWNY SMILEY FACE BAD. What kind of regression is this? Even the bad old Sun didn't stoop that low - did it? Maybe it did and I don't remember.

It's truly woeful to behold, and if you were wondering why the Sun is struggling like all other newspapers then you'd probably do well to start with how comically shit it looks. Who knows - maybe everyone was out getting ratarsed at the Christmas party and they left the cleaner to to the front page. Maybe I'm doing them a disservice. But - and I never thought I'd say this - the Sun looks as bad as the Express. As bad as the Express! And it can't really get much worse than that.

The whole 'We can't tell you who this Premiership manager is because of bloody Human Rights and privacy' thing is fairly childish too, I think. Whereas the Tiger Woods exposes had the waffer-thinnest of justifications, that he had marketed himself as an all-American hero (though I still have yet to see evidence of him and his family in TV adverts - and besides, does anyone, anyone in the world, think: "Hang on a minute, before I buy these expensive razors, has the sportsman advertising them been completely faithful in his relationship? Otherwise I may question the effectiveness of the blades") this story has none. Who gives a shit - and, beyond that, how can you possibly justify telling the story in any kind of public interest way, given that you don't even have the "Woods defence", which (in my view) is bollocks anyway?

Perhaps I've just caught the Sun on an especially bad day. Maybe normally they're launching full-scale investigative reports about the things that really matter, rather than trying to trap celebs in brothels, and maybe normally they look like they're something other than a shite comic. But not today.

Year of the Twitterstorm

I'll have to confess something now which I imagine a lot of people who read this blog may well disagree with, but I'm going to say it anyway.

I can't bear reading Roy Greenslade.

I know I'm supposed to read him and enjoy him, but I can't. Not a bit. Well, I think to be fair there was one thing he wrote this year that was quite interesting for a couple of paragraphs, but reading his usual output, to me, is a bit like plodding through a muddy field in high heels - awkward, embarrassing and demoralising, particularly if your dad happens to be driving past.

I can't adequately explain why I should feel this way and I'm sure he's a lovely man who, to most other people interested in the media, is a riveting read. Maybe he's just a much more successful and remunerated version of someone doing the kind of things I do, yet doing them much more articulately and more precisely, with less swearing, and that annoys me. That could be it, but I don't think so.

But reader, I have to tell you that given a choice between Greenslade and, oh I don't know, Clarkson, I'd go for Clarkson every time. I'm bound to agree with most things Greenslade says and disagree with most things Clarkson says; but I know who I'd rather read - Clarkson's words spark off the page and get your brain working - often to think "What the hell do you think you're saying, you donut? But that other thing you said did make me laugh, you naughty little guilty pleasure, you" - while Greenslade's make me feel like repainting the banisters instead. Sad but true, and like I say it's probably jealousy or something. But anyway, I needed to get that off my chest. Don't judge me.

Today, Greenslade ponders the Twitterstorms that have happened this year, with particular reference to the Jan Moir incident. Go there and read it if you must - I'll see you in a few hours' time, and don't blame me if you find yourself with your face in the keyboard, lightly moistened by drool that's lazily slobbered out of your mouth in your narcoleptic state.

Anyway, while I can kind of see some of the points he makes - that Twitterstorms aren't really that marvellous at effecting a great deal of change, and are going to lose their impact over time - I can't agree entirely. I think that the Jan Moir episode was a splendid reaction to being spoonfed the same sort of bollocks repeatedly by the mainstream media time and time again, and having things said that were just plain nasty and beyond the pale. It's a similar case when you look at what happened with the 'Should homosexuals be executed?' discussion on the BBC's Have Your say website. It's not a case of saying: "I don't think anyone should discuss this" - it's a case of asking: Why do you think it's a good idea? Why do you choose to host such poisonous views?

Let me explain a little more clearly - probably less clearly (this won't do my slagging-off of Greenslade any good, if I end up being even less interesting than him; it'll kind of make me look silly. But I'll press on anyway). If you owned a pub, and you found out that that nice group of lads who held a meeting upstairs every week were actually BNP, would you be happy for that to carry on? You might well. But you might not, and it would be your decision as to whether they met there or not. They couldn't say to you: "Wurrrrgh, freedom of speech mate, you've got to let us, or you're a fascist, though hang on a minute, that's something we aspire to, shit, haven't thought this through properly, bugger..." - or they might say exactly that, who knows? The point is, it's your decision. Society at large says you can't, for example, refuse to serve black people into your public bar; but you can do whatever you like with your own space. And it's the ownership and the publicness of the space that I'm talking about.

True freedom to say whatever you want without consequences doesn't really exist, and nor should it in every circumstance. (If you think that's a horrendous thing for a liberal to say, then you won't mind me popping this letter in the post to your boss, next-door neighbour and children's school, saying that you're a convicted paedophile, will you.) There's a balancing act when you're dealing with media with thousands and millions of viewers and readers; there's an implicit responsibility not to offend unless it's in the public interest, and not to offend at all in certain circumstances.

Which brings me to the Gately story. Now his partner has complained to the PCC, this does change things slightly. Whereas before the 25,000 complaints could be summarily dismissed with a pat on our heads and a "Sorry, you just don't understand what the clever adults are up to". They must take it seriously - and how they deal with it will determine what kind of PCC we have. I'm fairly sure what kind of PCC we have, but I'll reserve judgement on this particular occasion until they've decided.

A couple of things need to be added to the Moir story to bring it up to date. Firstly, one of the Sunday red-tops (and I forget which) carried an interview with the other person who was in the holiday home the night Gately died, giving fairly intimate details of the kind of thing which, he claims, went on. Secondly, Stephen Glover wrote in the Mail that that story therefore validated everything Jan Moir had said. I didn't link to it at the time because I didn't want the cunt to get any meagre dribble-through of traffic from here, as he didn't deserve a single page impression, let alone the 25-odd extra he'd have got. Incidentally, at around this time, the Mail refused to give a quote to Gay Times on a story they were running about the Moir debacle, using the defence that the PCC complaint was still going on - funny that didn't seem to matter when Glover sharpened his pencil (or had his butler do it).

But Glover was wrong, and it's worth reiterating a couple of things. Firstly, we have only this one person's view that that's what happened on the fateful night. You might say "Why hasn't Andrew Cowles sued him?" and I'd say "Oh, I don't know, something about being recently bereaved and not wanting lurid accusations to be thrown around in court, something like that". So you have to bear that in mind. But secondly, and most importantly, it still doesn't matter, even if there was a massive gay orgy going on in that holiday home on that night, with dozens of people involved and all sorts of spectacularly filthy things going on: that still doesn't make it right for Moir to have written what she wrote, when she wrote it, being nasty, saying his death was 'not a natural one by any yardstick', not waiting for the corpse to get cold, calling into doubt the involvement of drugs in the death - that was all wrong. Factually incorrect in the case of the doubts about the death, and just plain nasty in the case of the lurid speculation.

Should she be prevented from writing that kind of thing? If it's factually incorrect, then yes. For the nastiness, I don't think so - but if it offends a lot of people, you'd better have a bloody good public interest argument as to why you did it; and if it offends a person directly connected, then you're really in trouble unless you are terrifically sure that what you wrote benefits the wider reading population. Otherwise you end up looking like a pretty vile and malicious individual who has hurt someone at a time of great stress and grief, just to make a bitchy comment or two. Is that all right? My freedom of speech instincts (much as I'll be accused by my usual trolling friends of not having them) begrudgingly say yes, but I wonder how much damage can be done to a brand by causing such widespread offence. Maybe the Mail loved all the attention and hoped it would all die down, which it hasn't. Maybe they don't get it. Maybe they get it and don't care. Who knows.

But as ever with these things, we keep coming back to Trafigura, another Twitterstorm this year. As I wrote the other day, the BBC have taken down an article about Trafigura and toxic waste dumping under huge financial and legal pressure. If you're rich enough to afford top libel lawyers rather than go through the PCC process, you're in a much stronger position. As ever, it's money that really talks when it comes to 'freedom of speech'.

On the one hand, you have people genuinely fighting for the freedom to report, who are being squashed by the libel system and huge corporations who have knowingly poisoned people; on the other, the feeble-minded bastards who do nothing more than say offensive, vicious and disgusting things hide behind the 'freedom of speech' defence and demand the right to be heard without any consequences whatsoever.

Something strikes me about this as being a little bizarre. If we are to have free speech (within certain parameters, and balancing it within the right to privacy) then let's really have it. Otherwise, can we sort out the real bullies and real enemies to freedom before we go around protecting the rights of people like Jan Moir to be vacuous and offensive?

Gay left-wing immigrant praised by Mail readers

Stop rubbing your eyes. Stop it! It's actually true. This is the story:



and the comments haven't been overwhelmingly negative. Is it the Christmas spirit infecting the Mail commenters? I don't know, but look:






I know. Isn't it? Disappointing about the 'Londonistan' under Gary's comment, but I suppose you can't have everything. Oh, and before you get all misty-eyed at this display of warmth and affection for Tatchell, I have to tell you that these weren't the only comments under the story. Some happily advocate smashing people over the head if they don't agree with you:



OK Roger, well it appears you're 'sticking your neck out' with that comment, so I'm perfectly within my rights to come around your house and bash your brains in with a rusty spade. Is that all right with you? Or is it only other people that those rules apply to?

Also:



Ah well. You knew it couldn't last, didn't you?

Thanks to Alex for the tipoff!

Hooray for vigilante justice!

This is a guest post by Nik Johnson. Enjoy his blog or follow him on Twitter.

The whole criminal justice system is a bloody hassle, isn't it?  All those Policemen wandering around being Policey, Judges - who do they think they are, anyway? - having the cheek to judge people, and trial by jury. Twelve idiots off the street deciding whether you broke the law or not. Who needs all that?

Wouldn't life be far easier if the Bad People What Commit Crime (y'know, the black lads wandering round London, single mothers, and drug dealing scum on council estates) could be punished by anyone who thinks they committed a crime? 

Spot a mugger and feel free to throw them down the stairs like a nightclub bouncer dealing with a drunken idiot. Is that shifty looking bloke dealing drugs?  Probably. So pick him up WWF style and throw him through a window.

This woman stupidly tried to rob a coach full of people, and found out the hard way that her guns weren't a match for the mob of passengers. For whatever reason, they stripped her half naked and set her on fire, which proved some sort of point.

The article glosses over what sounds like a horrendous lawless place to live, in favour of two large photos of the half-naked, upset and humiliated Alejandra.  There's two of these vigilante attacks every three days, but let's not worry about those, look at the way she's covering her boobs!

Still, the comments are going to be somewhat sympathetic, right? I mean, she is a criminal, but she was set on fire for God's sake. There aren't many reasons to set someone on fire other than to kill them, and she hadn't actually been convicted of anything. She could have been a career shit, or just a girlfriend caught up in something. We don't know. So at least the Mail readers will understand that and take it into consider- oh, wait.

I bet she doesn't do that again.
- Bill, Wimborne, Dorset, Uk, 16/12/2009 13:19

Way to go, not pleasant, but nothing else seems to work. Deterrents are required, something the UK shies away from. Summary justice is often the most effective.
- Chris, Correze, France, 16/12/2009 13:20

That's right Chris, nothing else works. Nothing at all. It's fire or nothing.  That's what they do in Italy, you know. They set all criminals on fire and there's no crime at all. Compare that to Broken Britain, eh, where they let every murderer and his wife run around free and we're all crack addled baby eaters.

And the bottom rated?  As though you need to ask.

Poor woman
- Tilly, Tots TV, 16/12/2009 12:24

HYS backlash: it's been coming

Sometimes it takes a friend to tell you something that you need to know - when you're walking around with paint-stripping body odour, or your flies are undone, for example. Your enemies won't tell you because they'll be chortling at your misfortune, and everyone else just will be too polite to tell you - but will look down on you all the same.

And it's from the position of being a massive fan of the BBC that I have to question the relevance and value of Have Your Say. Not because I don't think people should have their say - they should - but what does the current format achieve, other than being a great big jam sandwich next to an anthill? What does it do, other than give undue prominence to the views of bigots? And at a time when the BBC is going to have to justify every single piece of its output, how is our public discourse improved by having discussions which frequently get overwhelmed by extreme and offensive views?

Let's get one argument out of the way to begin with. Let's not imagine that people's freedom of speech is only represented by their ability to type whatever they want on the internet, and more specifically on a BBC forum. It isn't. No-one is clamping down on anyone's freedom of speech by denying them 'the right' to be offensive and deeply unpleasant. There is no right for people to use taxpayers' cash to spout views that make other people upset. And Auntie would not be being a massive evil censor by denying them that 'right'.

The question in the particular instance I mentioned earlier isn't awfully offensive, in my view. The debate, when taken in isolation and ignoring the context of how HYS is regularly taken over by views that you could consider to be bigoted and prejudiced, isn't either. But you can't ignore the context. The context is one in which people seek an opportunity to Speak You're Branes - and often come out with complete tosh.

You might say to me, look, it's not for anyone to decide what's tosh and what isn't, and who are you to come in and save the world? What you find offensive might not be offensive to others; what you find intelligent might be offensive to others. But that's half the story, because there is always editorial control. As soon as you stop people from swearing, or being off-topic, there's editorial control. As soon as you stop people using certain derogatory terms, that's editorial control. As soon as you decide that certain sentiments are too unpleasant to be broadcast, that's editorial control.

We don't live in a world without editorial control - and this blog is no different, by the way. I decide what comments are published, which can be a pain when there are a lot, but I prefer it that way. I let myself down on one occasion when I had a lot of comments about one particular columnist (you can probably guess who) and someone said they should be kicked to death for being a necrophiliac. Pressed for time, I let the comment through without checking, but luckily found it later and deleted it. I wouldn't be happy with having it on here - that's my decision. It's no use pretending my personal weblog is some big chalkboard for everyone else, and nothing to do with me, because that's not the case.

I know there are some who advocate everyone being allowed to say whatever they like all the time, but I'm not quite of that view. I wouldn't want someone to call my mum a whore, or say I was a paedophile, for example. I think most people wouldn't. Freedom of speech does not trump everything else, in my opinion. Which isn't to say that if one person is offended by something, it should be banned straight away - there are degrees of these things, and it's not an 'all or nothing' situation. Alongside the right to speak your mind, there's also the right not to be offended - not just by private individuals or companies, but especially from organisations we are funding through taxation. Similar issues were raised when Nick Griffin turned up on Question Time, but it was right to put him on. BBC HYS is different. It is like the panel is made up of five Nick Griffins, with another 200-odd in the audience.

Which brings me back to Auntie, and Have Your Say. It's sad, but I don't think the Great British Public can be trusted to have a balanced debate on these issues when it's a self-selecting sample. That skews it and makes it not only unrepresentative but misleadingly unrepresentative. It's not up to those who don't want gay people to be locked up, left to die on islands or killed to go onto the BBC HYS and counterbalance the more vile views on the discussion, because by the time many of these debates have got going, they've already been piled on. Remember when someone shouted "Bundle!" at school and everyone crushed the poor bastard at the bottom of the pile till he couldn't breathe? That's what happens when there's a new HYS question. It's kind of already happened by the time the itchy-fingered bigots have piled on via their keyboards. Any halfway reasonable voices are already behind the curve.

This has been coming for a long time. I don't know what the solution really is, but it's not like today's question came out of the blue. I feel sorry for those people firefighting with the HYS moderation, because it must be a tough job - like those people who screen out the slightly more ripe contributors from radio phone-ins or stop complete lunacy from appearing in newspaper and magazine letters pages. But HYS is like a phone-in where quite a lot of the nutcases have been allowed on air, or a letters page where the green crayon submissions have been waved through. It doesn't quite work at being balanced, or representative of the readership.

There's also the issue of the BBC brand. Is it enhanced by such bigoted and offensive views being broadcast, all in the name of lively debate? Do we learn anything from these discussions? Or are they all too often being taken over by people with a particular type of mindset? If so, is that such a good thing, or are our tax pounds - which I happily contribute to the wonderful and generally sparkling BBC - being used to fund a misleadingly unrepresentative broadcast of poisonous and offensive opinions? And if that's the case, what is to be done?

*update* Now the title of the debate has been changed to "Should Uganda debate gay execution?"

BBC Have Your Say: Genocide, why not?

The question asked is the family-friendly public-service debate: should homosexuals face execution?



Chris in Guildford agrees that this should be imposed in the UK. He also says that gay people should be taken away to a remote island to die out.

That's my licence fee paying for him to say that and have it broadcast nationally. And that's the most recommended comment. Oh, how proud I am of the BBC, and the British public, right now.

*update* That comment has gone now, which is something I suppose, although it did pas through moderation in the first place, despite appearing to break the house rules on homophobia. This one is still there, to keep the state-funded hatred going:

Barry George: An apology

...of sorts, anyway. Tabloid Watch reports on the libel payout to Barry George from News International:

News Group now accepts that George never made that statement to them. News Group also admitted that any suggestion George stalked Kay Burley was incorrect.

This is gleefully reported by the Express today:



I wouldn't get too smug over the payout from my rivals, though, if I were at the Express. What's this, still available on your website today?



Hmm. I don't think there should be too much gloating, then.

Mail rapped over misleading front page

...don't worry, though, the world hasn't gone through a massive shift in which the PCC has suddenly become effective. No, this is the ASA giving them a stinging slap across the back of the legs for misleading advertising of spring bulbs:

A front-page flash on the Daily Mail was headed "WORTH £25 FREE SPRING BULBS FOR EVERY READER". Smaller text stated "DETAILS: PAGE 50".
Page 50 included a tear-off order form and stated "FREE SPRING BULBS WORTH MORE THAN £25 YOU PAY ONLY P&P ... TODAY, every reader can claim two super packs of FREE spring flowering bulbs. Choose from a pack of 25 large-flowered long-stemmed tulip bulbs or a mixed collection of 100 Cottage Garden Alliums ... All you need to do is send £3.99 for each of the packs you wish to claim, to cover the costs of p&p."

One of the reasons you have to grudgingly admire the Mail is the way in which they never cave in, even when they're obviously in the wrong. They always fight:

Associated Newspapers Ltd (the Daily Mail) said the front-page ad was not misleading. They said the CAP Help Note on front-page flashes did not state that they were required to mention that there were postage and packaging costs for redeeming the promotion.

The ASA disagreed. And the punishment?

The ad must not appear again in its current form.

That'll be a blow, then. Because I'm sure the Mail were planning to run exactly the same promotion again, weeks later, once it had finished completely.

You can't help wondering if the ASA are just as pointless as the PCC.

100 reasons why the Express isn't the world's greatest newspaper

In the spirit of the Express front page today



and the ill-advised decision from the self-proclaimed 'World's Greatest Newspaper' to back a list of 100 fairly flimsy (and often repetitive) reasons why climate change is not man-made (and often not even reasons at all, just saying "Wurrrgh, someone told me so, and by the way, wind farms don't work, so there!"), I've decided to produce a list of 100 reasons why the Express isn't, in fact, the world's greatest newspaper. For a bit of a laugh, I've backed up some of my claims using evidence, rather than 'because I said so'.

1. Batshit insanity in the comments section including the demand to kill everyone who agrees with man-made climate change.
2. Diana obsession, on front page all the time, occasionally with photo of her wearing a seatbelt, which would ironically have saved her life even without the intervention of the evil Fiat Uno assassins, or whoever it was who was supposed to have killed her this week.
3. Speaking of Susan Boyle being bullied, despite having accused her of having 'cracked up' and printed unflattering photos.
4. Scientists have actually proved that newspapers incorporating a man in a suit of armour on the front page are less good than all others, in fact, although there's a conspiracy to tell you otherwise.
5. Employing Richard & Judy as columnists. They are not as good as other columnists, specifically all other columnists.
6. It's like the Mail, but worse. It's as if someone had seen the Mail and thought: "That looks quite entertaining, but can we possibly make it less good, more racist and more comically awful to look at? Let's really go for it!" - er, according to some scientists somewhere.
7. Running a front page about mushrooms.
8. And breakfast cereals.
9. Employing Leo McKinstry, as if he's any good at writing or something.
10. The news, sport and all other sections.
11. Wind farms are rubbish anyway! So there. OK so it's not strictly relevant to this discussion, but neither are 14 and 51 in the Express's own '100 reasons'.
12. Banging on about the 'immigrant baby boom' as if people who were born abroad should be sterilised as soon as they cross the border, or something (on the way to getting their free house, car, speedboat and taxpayer-funded palace, obviously)
13. Basing an entire front page about 'transgender police want YOUR cash' from a Richard Littlejohn column
14. Saying that 'Muslims demand full sharia law' implying that all Muslims were doing the 'demanding' and not just a tiny minority of extremists.
15. Then just doing the same story again.
16. Juxtaposing a picture of a Muslim who doesn't want to 'kill us' with a headline saying £113,000 FOR FANATICS WHO WANT TO KILL US
17. Saying 350 PEOPLE WILL DIE EVERY DAY from swine flu, when it didn't quite turn out that way.
18. The Paul Thomas cartoon. What the hell is all that about? Why do people always seem to be vibrating? I believe there are better cartoons in national newspapers.
19. Saying, wrongly, that the HPV jab is AS DEADLY AS THE CANCER.
20. Saying that BRITAIN IS FULL UP, KEEP OUT - almost exactly the same as a BNP slogan
21. and then doing it again on the international edition.
22. The miserably bad story about Dunblane survivors
23. which led to them getting a stingy smack across the back of the legs from the PCC
24. and even left them saying sorry
25. but which has now been swept under the carpet, as if that was enough.
26. Saying that 'MUSLIM SCHOOLS BAN OUR CULTURE'
27. Doing a front page about bread and butter using a picture of a plate of toast to illustrate it, just in case you weren't sure about what bread or butter were.
28. No, I'm not kidding. Have a look for yourself.

29. Yes, they put in a photo of a plate of toast.
30. In case you didn't know what toast looked like.
31. Phew! I mean, thank goodness for that. I might not have known how to think in terms of bread and butter unless someone gave me a handy illustration of what it looked like.
32. So now we're all clear about what bread and butter is, yes?
33. And toast.
34. Although obviously you'd be better off with breakfast cereals and mushrooms, but not eggs. And maybe tomatoes. Just to make all that clear.
35. This:

36. Not some. Not half. Not a quarter. Not even 'most'. No. ALL.
37. Not just ALL. But ALL in BIG RED LETTERS so you're left in no doubt as to the completeness of the allness of it all.
38. ALL.
39. Which is odd really, because I had a new job at around that time, and yet I don't think I'm a migrant. But according to them, I must be. Oh well, you learn something new every day, don't you?
40. Oh hang on, eggs are good for you now. Or were they bad for you? I can't work it all out. It's too complicated!
41. Saying that 'Swearing is the blight of Britain'. The fucking twats.
42. Saying that Gordon Brown and a 'secret squad' were preparing Britain's entry to the euro, back in, let me see, December 2008. Oh. Maybe they haven't quite got around to it yet, then. Or was it entirely due to the pressure of the World's Greatest Newspaper that we're not paying 0.4 euros for it?
43. Setting up discussion questions which are just the teensy-weensiest bit skewed towards a particular outcome.
44. Implying that 1940s black marketeers selling chocolate and nylons were responsible for smashing the British economy.
45. That it is no good at writing articles about things.
46. Windfarms, though, who wants them? Someone somewhere once told me there was something bad about them.
47. Of course in these PC times the climate Nazis are forcing us all to put our rubbish into separate bags, whereas in fact we can relax, knowing that nothing we ever do will ever affect the planet in any way whatsoever.
48. Someone once said: "The Express isn't very good."
49. It is far from understood how the Express still exists as a newspaper.
50. It is a myth that the Express is good. In fact it is bad.
51. The Express claims it is the 'World's Greatest Newspaper' but I have it on good authority that it isn't.
52. It's actually a good thing that the Express is bad.
53. In the old days, the Express was bad, and everyone was happy. Look at medieval times - no Express to speak of, and yet people were blissfully deliriously happy, drinking wine and walking round in bermuda shorts all day with surfboards and sunglasses. And they didn't complain!
54. The 'Express-gate' scandal says that the Express isn't as good as it claims to be, so therefore it isn't.
55. Back to wind farms for a minute, because they're at the heart of this argument. Wind farms aren't very good, and could indeed be considered not as good as other things. This means that the Express, journalistically, hasn't reached the heights of previous years, and no mistake.
56. CHEESE, EGGS AND MINCE SOAR, TOO
57. AND THEY GO TO THE FRONT OF THE HOUSING QUEUE
58. Concocting 'fury' over a plan to teach some aspects of the Koran in OUR schools.
59. It would simply be too expensive to make the Express any good in the fucking slightest.
60. And it's not in our national interests.
61. Employing Neil Hamilton.
62. A proper analysis of ice-core records for the past 10,000 years indicates long periods of happiness, joy and delight for human beings which coincided with there being no Daily Express newspaper in existence.
63. I find the TV guide limited and slightly disappointing.
64. Hang on! Tea and coffee are going to stop you from being diabetic now!
65. And coffee could help you with prostate cancer, according to someone, somewhere.
66. I'd go for coffee then, wouldn't you?
67. Unless you're not worried about prostate cancer, in which case go for the tea.
68. Or maybe have a couple of cups of tea a day and the rest coffee. Why not? Push the boat out. It'll be fun. Mix things up a bit.
69. I don't want to labour the point, but wind power? Who thinks that's a good idea? Not me.
70. Australia has voted against having a Daily Express in Australia, thereby negating all arguments in favour of it being a good newspaper.
71. It is a myth that racism is a pollutant, as it forms quite a lot of discussion around the world.
72. Some claim that racism 'pollutes' our workplaces and societies, but it has been shown to be beneficial, and actually a good thing, providing a 'buffer' between racists and everyone else.
73. Higher levels of racism and suspicion towards immigrants and Muslims could actually make the world a better place, somehow, probably, in a sense, or something.
74. Those polar bears? Shithouses. Eat their own children and that. Who wants to save them?
75. The amazing thing is that the Express - the Daily Express - are having a go at people for slightly changing statistics and trying to represent their own agenda. I mean, it's the brio of it that you have to admire. The sheer nerve of it.
76. Studies have shown that people who have never read the Express are much happier, less racist and less capable of writing GOOD RIDDANCE JOCK MCBOTTLER as a nervous reaction when typing anything on a keyboard.
77. Someone once read the Express and died shortly afterwards. Which is just about almost certainly the same as saying that the Express causes death in people. In fact, let's just say it.
78. The Express is owned by the charming Richard Desmond, who has no qualms about printing pictures of soon-to-be-dead people.
79. And the Daily Star as well. Which I kind of like to think of as a pre-school Express, for people who hate immigrants but haven't got a purple rinse yet.
80. This:

81. I don't know about you, but I've got a lawn, and it hasn't been banned yet. Maybe the lawn-banning brigade are about to leap through my garden gate like Richard Burton in Where Eagles Dare and machine-gun my lawn as I type this? I hope not.
82. Though if they accidentally shot my next-door neighbour's dog, I wouldn't be complaining.
83. But that's beside the point.
84. Have I mentioned wind farms?
85. I think I did somewhere, but I don't know if I made the point three times. It seems like that's the best way to make a point. If you've got a list of a hundred, it's worth saying the same thing three times, just to be sure that people are going to see it in there.
86. It's certainly not a way of padding out a list, in any way, shape or form. I'd like to make that absolutely clear.
87. And anyone who says that I am will be severely dealt with, somehow, though I'm not sure exactly how or why at the moment.
88. To be frank with you, since I started looking back through the archive and seeing all those Express stories, I've become a little queasy. I've started hating life a little bit more.
89. It's like all the birds have fallen out of the sky and started dying on the ground, and giant fluorescent evil cats have feasted on their giant entrails, and I've been sitting there watching it, and the cats have been looking at me as if to say: "So what?"
90. Do you know what I mean?
91. The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all.
92. Sorry, that's actually number 72 from the real "100 reasons" list. And yet it bears as little relationship to the existence or otherwise of man-made global warming as does this blog post.
93. "To be truthful you only need one reason to see that Man made Global Warming is a hoax: hundreds of politicians are advocating it." says Jpfife poster on the 'top 100' list at the Express website. Wise words, Jpfife. Or, on the other hand, a pointless aphorism that adds nothing to our understanding of the issues in the slightest. But you be the judge.
94. The Express actually makes the Mail look good.
95. It makes having your face caved in with a big wooden bat look good in comparison, mind.
96.
Holly? On your logo? Please!
97. Every other newspaper in the entire world is better.
98. On every level.
99. In every way.
100. So there.

Rape and drunkenness

Sometimes the chimps' tea party of Mail story comments needs to be broken up, and the shutters get pulled down pretty rapidly when things get out of hand. I say 'out of hand' but when comments have been approved by a moderator, and then suddenly the plug gets pulled on all of them, you have to wonder why.

Anyway, this story's headline is the first 'wtf?' moment among many:



Maybe I am a silly woolly-headed disgusting liberal idiot, but my response to that is: well, yes. Forcing someone else into sex is rape, and it doesn't matter whether you're pissed or not when you do it. And it's not as if rape is something like buying kebabs, pissing down an alleyway or vomiting in someone's front garden: it's one of the most serious crimes there is. But note the use of quote marks to imply there is some doubt over whether forcing people to have sex with you is rape or not.

The URL gives another clue to the original story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235743/Drunk-men-force-women-sex-rapists-use-alcohol-excuse.html

as the first headline was "Drunk men who force women to have sex 'are rapists and cannot use alcohol as an excuse'". Which is about the same thing, except the focus has switched from forcing someone into sex in general to forcing someone into sex in the context of a pre-existing relationship - again, something which in my bleeding-heart mores is rape, and about which there isn't a tremendous amount of debate. But perhaps I'm wrong. Well, I'm not as wrong as some of the people who originally commented on the story, I can say that with pretty much nailed-on certainty, but we'll get to them in a minute, what few of them I was able to capture before the Mail panicked and dropped all the comments.

The story seems fairly uncontroversial, to be honest,



though as we saw yesterday with the (fairly) positive immigration story, you don't need bells and whistles to attract people with rather poisonous views on things - especially if you've got a history of courting them.

Now, the poll in the article looks like this:

]

at the moment. That's pretty much as I would expect it to be, though of course I would probably hope for more people to see forcing someone into sex as being rape, but given the context of the website where it was held, not too bad. Still, the comments were something else. I'm glad they're gone, because some of them were jaw-droppingly appalling, but here are some highlights, if you can call them that:






and those weren't even the worst. Others called for the entire repeal of rape laws. It makes me wonder whether these stories are floated around in order to whack the hornets' nest with a big stick, then they get the dozens of clicks thanks to people being allowed to write in electronic green crayon their numbskull views, and then the plug gets pulled because those comments (which have been sent through a moderator, let's remind ourselves, and were deemed acceptable for publication) have got out of hand. It's a win-win situation, isn't it? Unless you regard it important for there to be decent and rational debate under your brand banner, of course, which it would appear that the Mail don't - until such time as they deem it necessary to wash their hands of the slew of awfulness, and pretend it never happened.

Thanks to Sadie for the tipoff.

Batshit insanity at the Express

It's not often that I find myself paddling through the murky effluent of the Daily Express Have Your Say section in search of insightful comments, but it's always worth knowing what the readers of the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Newspaper" think about the burning issues of the day. Whether these people really represent Express readers is a moot point; whether they represent a truly disturbing batshit insane cross section of the most wearyingly thick people in the world is not.

The debate is this:



That introduction sets the parameters of the debate. It says that punctuation isn't important, for example, and points out that CAPS LOCK is more than welcome. It says that you can assert stuff like "Kids don't even know Christmas is about Jesus" without anything whatsoever to back it up. It's aiming high. The majesty of some of the political and theological analysis is quite breathtaking.



You might look at that and think to yourself: what the hell? But that's really not unrepresentative of the debate, which quickly veers off the idea of Christianity. It's not even as if these people can manage to talk about the thing they're meant to talk about: they're all so vein-poppingly angry about Gordon and Darling and NuLieBore that they have to mention their rage at every available opportunity, regardless of the topic that's actually up for discussion.



Well, that's a bit more like it, isn't it? At least Christianity gets a look-in with this comment; it's almost slightly relevant to the discussion question. As ever, the Express messageboard obsession with Blair and 'mass immigration' dominates everything else, as well as a dig at people who are on benefits, so all in all, a marvellous comment.



That's quite beautiful, isn't it? The anger is there, the roaring froth of indignation; there's also a lovely touch of 'white people are the real victims', which is an essential ingredient of these Daily Express debates. I always enjoy the portrayal of New Labour as Marxists as well; delightful.



'One_of_the_seven_dwarves' has a simple solution to problems such as the PC Brigade and people who believe in global warming: kill them. Quite an elevated level of debate here, which might give you a tiny clue as to why a lot of Express stories don't allow comments.



Well, I'd like to see you argue against that. Go on, try. I bet you can't! I bet you can't fight your way out of that intellectual labyrinth.



Yes. I think that's answered the question about Christian values very well.



If in doubt, go with a dictionary definition. That way you win the debate! It's like calling in a YouTube link to prove your case.

Reading these Express discussions gives you a wearying feeling. These people know they're meant to be angry, but they can't quite aim it in the right direction. They know Gordon's bad and Blair was bad, but they're not quite sure why, except they might be Marxists, and it's got something to do with the PC Brigade and white people feeling like strangers in their own country. But generally it just seems to be an electronic day centre that's open for those cold hours when the library might be closed and the Wetherspoon isn't open yet. It's bewildering and slightly demoralising to wade through all this. Is this really the freedom that the internet gave us - freedom for this? Ah well. At least if it keeps these people happy, then that's something. Obviously, it demolishes the Express brand and makes it appear even more laughably inane than it already was, but perhaps that's no bad thing.