Monthly Archives: August 2009

Mail Lionises Utter Turd

Politics, Terrible journalism, , , , , ,

Over the weekend The Daily Mail had a double-page spread entitled, “A Breath of fresh air” about the wonders of Doncaster’s new “superMayor”, Peter Davies. Alarm bells started to ring at this, because that’s a name I recognised instantly: It’s the chap who made such a tit of himself on Radio Sheffield not too long ago!

The Mail starts with a few vague, populist facts about Mr Davies. He has a “contempt for diversity”. He’s “gloriously un-PC”. He’s a “keen devotee of the birch and the noose“. Of course, in the real world, this translates as narrow-minded, intolerant, and authoritarian, but in the Mail they’re treated as the greatest of virtues.

But let’s take a closer look at some of the claims the Mail makes for their new hero.

Firstly, he’s said to be “deeply sceptical of green claptrap”, and promises to put an end to bus-only routes in an attempt to get more traffic on his roads. He states proudly, “we live in the age of the car”. And, I suppose, when one doesn’t believe in the harmful effects of Co2 or global warming, there’s no reason not to encourage traffic congestion.

Next is the claim I hope to rip apart most thoroughly. “He has scrapped all future funding for Doncaster’s annual Gay Pride event”, Mail writer Robert Hardman happily expounds. Now, fortunately, I don’t have to do much of the initial ripping-apart here; in his interview with Radio Sheffield, which I linked to above, comedian Toby Foster does it for me. The bit I’m talking about is a little far in (about 5 mins in, I think), so I’ll give the glorious transcript;

Toby Foster: “You’re gonna cut the Gay Pride funding?”

Peter Davies: “Yup”.

TF: “Erm… how much does Doncaster council fund Gay Pride?”

PD: “Haven’t got a clue, haven’t looked into it, haven’t got the details, haven’t even started”.

TF: “Right… so how much was it worth Doncaster?”

PD: “How… how much… what?”

TF: “Gay Pride march. Eight thousand people in town for a day”.

PD: “…I dunno, they can still come, nobody’s stopping them coming…”

TF: “So you don’t know what it costs, don’t know what it earns, but you’re bangin’ it”.

PD: “…I’m saying… that hard-pressed taxpayer’s money should not be spent on promoting any type of sexuality, whether it’s straight or gay”.

TF: “But… but for all you know, it could be making a fortune for the town, you don’t know, you haven’t looked into it”.

PD: “Well… it may, or it may not”.

I think we can safely say that eight thousand people in town for a day, if Toby Foster’s guestimation is accurate, are worth a great deal to Doncaster. What rounds off the hilarity is that, once the new mayor actually did get hold of the details… he did a U-turn. He decided to fund the events he said he wouldn’t. Not only does that piss all over his manifesto (and the claims the Daily Mail made in his favour), but it also suggests that Toby Foster was probably right on the money when he said that the march was worth more than it cost.

By the way, the man made similar promises about getting rid of International Women’s Day and Black History Day. I expect he’ll face similar barriers (eg, logic) with them.

Anyway, I’ve dwelled on that for long enough. There’s another claim the Daily Heil makes for the new mayor that needs some mauling. And that’s about his promise to ban council translation services, on the basis that people should be encouraged to speak English (for ‘encouraged’, see ‘forced’). The problem with this pledge is a simple one: it is downright illegal, under the European Court of Human Rights, as Foster points out. But that’s ignoring the questionable logic of encouraging people to learn a new language by withdrawing their access to translation services.

Finally, we come to Robert Hardman’s claim that Mr Davies has the support of “around a third of the town”, according to a random street survey. “A further third are in the wait-and-see camp, and the remaining third have no idea what I am talking about. No one, though, is anti-Davies”, states Hardman. This is dubious from the start, considering Davies’ attempt to scrap celebrations that are in any way linked to gay, black or female people. Taking a quick look on Facebook, the biggest pro-Davies group features just over 370 members, whereas the group entitled “protest against Doncaster’s new mayor Peter Davies: What have we done?” has 1,380. I’d like to see the source of statistics the Mail has used in its research in Doncaster.

Altogether, the Mail has here managed to lionise a man on the basis of impossible, illegal policies, a cash-saving plan that costs more than it saves, and a manifesto he has already reneged on. The Mail seems desperate for heroes, to say the least.

You’re taking the piss, right?

Bullying, , , , ,

The most important rule of Daily Mail Club is you do not talk about Daily Mail Club. This means, in general practice, that if you are a Daily Mail writer you must pretend that the Daily Mail does not exist, because if you did, you’d realise everything in your article was hypocritical and / or clearly contradicting something written elsewhere by the same newspaper. The only people outside of this one basic rule are columnists, who for reasons of them being lazy, shit-for-brains twats can only base their columns on rubbish they read in the Mail.

However, for the stock Daily Mail writer – in this case Angella Johnson – you must write as if you have never heard of the Daily Mail or what it gets up to on a daily basis, how else could you open an article on Natalie Cassidy like this:

She has developed a tough skin after years of being mocked publicly for her yo-yo dieting, breast enhancement surgery and supposedly less-than-glamorous looks.

Surely, Angella, you must be taking the piss right? I mean, you must know that the Daily Mail exists to mock Natalie Cassidy?

Search her name on the Mail website and you get 97 results most of them like the following:



I could copy and paste a lot more, but I think you get the point.

Amanda Platell: Racist and Clueless

immigration, Newspaper Lies, , , , , , ,

OK, let’s invoke Godwin’s Law straight away here and just state that Amanda Platell is sounding particularly like a Nazi today: ‘Why this baby boom will make us all go bust‘. It’s the sort of article that makes you immediately think of Nazi rhetoric about the master race and the fear of the undeserving breeding and populating an area – diluting or destroying the true, white race. This may sound a little bit exaggerated, but when Amanda Platell makes statements like this:

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

According to statistics, our latest baby boom is partly down to high birth rates among immigrants, and partly due to rising numbers of younger mothers.

All the classic Daily Mail myths condensed into two short sentences: somehow white people are ‘indigenous’ to the UK, even though we have genetics from most of Europe as a result of constant ebb and flow of populations – our existence here is arbitrary; all of the middle-classes are employed, hard-working and pay taxes; on the other hand young mothers and immigrants never pay taxes and are a drain on the benefit system. The whole premise of the article is based on another Daily Mail fallacy: that there has been some kind of immigrant birth rate ‘boom’, when – as Tabloid Watch and 5CC point out – the actual boom is a rise from 23.2% to 24.1%. That is less than 1%.

However, as 5CC points out, the only reason a boom is being made of such an insignificant figure is that latest immigration figures just do not support the Daily Mail myth that the country is being swamped by dirty foreigners. However, Amanda Platell is not put off repeating it today: ‘Soaring immigration – and a migrant baby boom – has sent Britain’s population rocketing over the 61 million mark.’ This is the trouble when you read the majority of Mail columnists, how can they ever hope to be even vaguely right about anything when their source material is the Daily Mail?

Amanda Platell – like Littlejohn and others – takes a badly skewed world view then warp it that much further using their ‘creative’ licence as columnists, so a ‘boom’ of less than 1% becomes an ‘explosion’. You end up with a vacuous airhead like Amanda Platell spouting absolute shite and sounding very much like a Nazi at the same time.

But this isn’t the only problem with Daily Mail writers, the main problem is that they never, ever show us the sources for their information. I mean, sure, most of the time you can see which article from the Daily Mail they are ripping off and you might have a chance at engaging with the source figures, but today Amanda Platell puts out some interesting figure without giving us any indication where they come from:

The cost of unemployment in the UK is now £346 billion – with £100 billion of that paid in housing benefits alone.

But what do you mean Amanda? Do you mean that each year we spend £346 billion on benefits? It certainly sounds that way, doesn’t it. Then you track down the source and find out that Amanda has removed a bit of important context to make the figure sound scarier:

More than £340bn has been paid in state benefits to the jobless since Labour came to power in 1997, the Tories will disclose today.

Oh, I see, so it is not a yearly figure at all, but a figure since 1997. This means that on average we have spent £28.3 billion on benefits each year in total, with around £8.3 billion of that on housing benefits – you know, that little thing of giving someone a roof over their head. Sadly, Amanda still has sunk lower into her accusations against immigrants:

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?

Once more, the myth that all immigrants arrive to be showered in cash is wheeled out once more by Amanda. You know what, Amanda, if you are worried about this, why don’t you do a little bit of research and put your mind at rest that immigrants are NOT entitled to any benefits in the UK unless they have worked for a certain period etc. As for immigrants from outside the EU, they have to jump through so many hoops it is hardly worth moving to the UK to work unless you have a determined employer handling the paperwork and footing some of the bills.

The trouble with you, Amanda, is that you are absolutely clueless about any issues outside of your tiny, empty head. You really should just stick to insulting other women, even though that is a pretty pointless exercise, at least you don’t sound like a worried Nazi.

UPDATE

As Tabloid Watch, many people on Twitter and indeed people in the comments under her Daily Mail article have pointed out, Britain is 52nd the world population density figures, not second as Amanda claims. A quick Google search would have told her this, but clearly she is too lazy and too busy inciting racial hatred towards immigrants. This may well come as a surprise because Amanda Platell is an immigrant, born in Perth Australia. Which does raise the question, if she is writing lie-riddled drivel like this then what exactly is she contributing to the UK?

UPDATE 2

This is now covered by 5CC as well. Carmen Gets Around also has a post on immigration that is worth reading as well.

Just a few things

Something different, , ,

Right, I’ve been back in the UK since Monday but have yet to manage to post anything on here largely because I have some thoughts on a range of issues but can’t really find any focus. I shall therefore address them here individually but briefly.

1

The day before I flew to Spain I attended a wedding, all pretty standard fare until one of the speeches. The father of the bride was sadly deceased so his surviving brother got up to say a few words, but he actually rambles on for ages about his family history. The essential story is that his parents were Jewish and they fled to the UK during the war to escape Nazi persecution (he took around 15 minutes to say this) and that when they entered the UK his father had to prove he could work to support his family, and luckily he had a trade and was let into the country.

Now, for the punch line: ‘However, nowadays anybody can come into the UK and be welcomed with open arms.’ At this point, one individual actually cheered the anti-immigrant sentiment, whilst the rest of us sat in a rather stunned silence that the punch line to his story was a cheap, inaccurate shot at immigrants and had little to do with the wedding.

A stranger on my table muttered ‘He must be a Mail reader’. So I wasn’t alone in seeing the irony of an immigrant to the UK bashing immigrants to the UK. The whole point of his story seems to support more open borders, not less. For what kind of country would reject a person fleeing the holocaust on the grounds that they might not have a worthwhile trade? Surely a country that accepts those fleeing persecution irrespective of trade or financial circumstances is a civilised and great one?

The myth that immigrants arrive in the UK to open arms and wads of cash is so pervasive that it is actually believed by immigrants.

2

Mail readers constantly whinge about the loss of ‘British identity’ or the invasion of foreign culture, yet the Costa Del Sol was a virtual home away from home. Streets lined with British pubs showing UK soaps, a pub chain called ‘Heatherspoons’ and countless ex-pats wondering around reading British papers etc.

Now, the Spanish may not be massive fans of this, but at the same time, they make huge amounts of money out of tourists and ex-pats, so this is just a consequence of globalisation. People are allowed to move; Mail readers are allowed to retire to sunnier climes, others are allowed to move to the UK because they believe they have better prospects here (or perhaps because they have heard they myth that they’ll be showered with benefits). Mail readers should just get over it.

3

A person was thumbing through a copy of the Daily Mail in my company and started telling me wasn’t it terrible that a family got x amounts of benefits and that they never worked and so on. I merely replied that the Daily Mail was a terrible newspaper and that I wouldn’t believe anything published in it without properly looking into the matter. ‘Oh, she replied, I know that, I only buy it for the crosswords’.

Right, I am sick of people saying something along these lines: ‘I only buy it for the sport’, ‘I don’t really believe everything I read in the papers, I only buy them as a bit of fun’ etc. If you really do only buy the Daily Mail for the crosswords then do not under any circumstance tell me about how terrible immigrants are because of an article you have just read in that newspaper. If you really only buy it for the crossword, then save money and paper and just buy a book of crosswords.

If the BNP incorporated crosswords into their pamphlets would you make an effort to get hold of them? Would you sit there and tut-tut aloud to those around you about the evils of black people, before qualifying that you only really read the pamphlets for the crossword?

If you are a Daily Mail reader, don’t try and hide behind excuses, just admit you like to be scared, angered and misinformed on a daily basis. Embrace your own racism and ignorance, don’t shy away from it. I might at least grudgingly respect you for your honesty then if nothing else.

4

As I arrived at various airports I was disgusted by the treatment I received as a white, British person. I was consistently asked to provide my passport to people, those people would then look at the passport and compare the photo to my face, as if there were some kind of border controls in place. I was outraged to think that as an indigenous white person I was subjected to these checks whereas presumably beyond the wall next to me dirty foreigners were arriving to be greeted with free cars, huge sums of money and directions to their free houses. Presumably they must even use some kind of special, glamorous red-carpet airport that us Brits are not allowed in, because I certainly didn’t see any of the above at the airport I landed in.

5

I’m not sure what was more relaxing, the holiday or simply the break from the world that the Daily Mail tries to convince us we’re inhabiting.

6

I’ll try and post something decent soon, once I have got the will power to log onto the Mail website. In the meantime, many happy returns to the Daily Quail who has just turned 1 years old.

Daily Mail Continues To Incite Racial Hatred Toward Gypsy & Travelling Families

Newspaper Lies, , , , ,

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail continues to incite racial hatred toward Gypsy and Travelling families…..
It is hard to believe that in a modern Britain Paul Dacre and the rabid pack of racist hate hungry rabble that he employs, can conduct unabated a campaign that is designed to incite racial hatred against UK’s oldest ethnic minority..The Romany Gypsies..and other groups of Travelling peoples.

It will take a little time, but please read through the links on this posting, you will note as you read that Surrey Police did make it clear that the article about the Helicopter was untrue, a similar one appeared in the Sun, they did print a retraction, not so the Daily Mail. Printing lies and deliberately misleading their readership is all in a days work for Dacre and his cronies.

These Articles have been reported to the Police as “hate crimes” and have been logged, I will let you all know if we get a positive out come. A complaint has also been lodged with The Press Complaints Commission

After discussing this matter with the Police on more than one occasion, the opinion is that the more unscrupulous Editors who allow this sort of article to go to press do so in the knowledge that provided it is worded in such a way that it is not aimed at any one individual then they will be exempt from any redress from the Press Complaints Commission.

In point of fact the damage done by aiming the hostility toward the community as a whole is by far more damaging, as it criminalizes us as a people; it creates a picture of an asocial race.

In the 1940’s Adolph Hitler labeled the Gypsy people as asocial and used it as an excuse for ethnic cleansing. Today Newspaper Editors are using the same excuse to persecute our people. It’s far more subtle; they don’t round us up and kill us in our tens of thousands. They print these damaging articles that marginalize our people even more. They vilify us and create fear and hate against us. As a result our children get persecuted and bullied in school, families cannot get planning permission because people believe the stories and don’t want Gypsy people for neighbours. In order to live in peace and have their children educated and access medical services people deny their culture. This amounts to ethnic cleansing by media.

The article below by the Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn is grossly insulting and inflammatory leading the reader to believe that all Gypsy and Travelling people are thieves and benefit fraudsters.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1205683/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Are-sitting-comfortably-Lets-tarmacking-Teabag-Tess-Toby.html

This next one gives the impression that our community is not worthy of Lottery funding and that Gypsy people are not hardworking people who play by the rules and pay their taxes

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205693/5m-Lottery-cash-help-gipsies-beat-planning-rules.html

————————————————————————————-

There is no evidence that the family named in this article are in fact a Gypsy family

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206652/The-1m-neighbours-hell-Meet-gipsy-family-terrorising-peaceful-street.html

Below is an email I sent to Paul Dacre you will see it was forwarded to him as I had emailed the reported Rachel Porter but she did not reply, Paul Dacre did not reply either.
FW: RE Article in Daily Mail?
From:
Shay Clipson shay.clipson@live.co.uk
Sent:
17 August 2009 16:54:24
To: editor@dailymail.co.uk

Dear Mr Dacre I am concerned at the mount of articles that appear in your publication that are derogatory toward the Gypsy and Traveller community I sent the attached email to your Rachel Porter this morning As yet I have not received a reply regards Shay Clipson

From: shay.clipson@live.co.uk

To: rachel.porter@dailymail.co.uk

RE Article in Daily Mail Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:12:43 +0100

I read with interest your article in Saturdays Daily Mail. Can you tell me what evidence you have that the Connors are in fact an Irish Travelling family ? The Law Society have no record of Jeremy Kaye being a Solicitor Best Regards

Celebrate a decade of Messenger with free winks, emoticons, display pics, and more. Get Them Now

————————————————————————————-

I have also included the wholly untrue article as printed in the Daily Mail on 14th may 2009.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1181534/Gypsies-smash-5million-police-helicopter-axes-revenge-spy-flights.html

Response from Surrey Police
RE: ?
From:
Press Office PressOffice@surrey.pnn.police.uk

Sent:
17 August 2009 13:56:02
To:
‘Shay Clipson’ shay.clipson@live.co.uk

Dear Shay,

Surrey Police did not state that the offence had been committed by any particular group, in fact we stated the offenders were unknown. Here is a copy of our media response:

“Damage was caused to the Surrey Police helicopter during an incident at its base at Fairoaks Airport, Chobham just before 10pm on Thursday 30 April. Five windows were smashed by unknown offenders and the value of the damage is being determined. The incident is part of an ongoing investigation and security measures are being reviewed as part of this. Surrey Police is working with the maintenance contractor to ensure the aircraft is back on line as soon as possible. We continue to have access to air support through agreements with surrounding Forces.”

Following the article in The Sun on 14 May, we have been in contact with the ‘Friends, Families and Travellers’ action group and the accuracy of the article was challenged. This led to a correction being published in The Sun:

“CHOPPER ATTACK: Surrey Police have not blamed gipsies for an attack on their force helicopter, no staff in their operations room were threatened by gipsies and no gipsy site was being targeted for a raid, as we reported on May 14 We apologise for the mistakes and are happy to set the record straight.”

So far no-one has been arrested in connection with the incident and, even if they had, their ethnicity is not a detail we would comment on.

Regards,

Nick

_______________________________Nick ClokeSenior Media Relations OfficerSurrey Police Headquarters_______________________________

This post originally appeared on Pesha’s blog, a blog looking at the attitude of the media towards Roma Gypsies. It is well worth a look.

Holiday

Announcement

Well I’m at a wedding all day today and tomorrow I fly out to Spain for a week, so obviously Angry Mob will not be getting updated for a week or so. I will endeavour to relax away from the Daily Mail and enjoy the sweetness that is reality.

However, should I happen to bump into an ex-pat clutching a Daily Mail and bemoaning the state of ‘once great Britain’…

In the meantime the prolific Tabloid Watch has been on fine form recently, whilst I’m sure you already read The enemies of Reason and Five Chinese Crackers. For an international flavour pay The Polemical Report a visit. Also Stirring Up Apathy for Daily Mail related horrors as well as Mailwatch.

In fact, it would be far easier if you just looked at the links on the bottom right part of the site and went from there!

Disenfranchised: Beware of Littlejohn

Richard Littlejohn, , , ,

If you thought paying Gordon Brown a salary of around £200,000 is ridiculous, then how about paying a talentless twat like Richard Littlejohn around £850,000?

This rhetorical technique is used on the front page of the Daily Mail today by Richard Littlejohn to poke fun at the transgendered Police Association, as if the very notion of such a group could trump all of his previous snide and offensive articles. The enemies of reason has already posted on this, so I’ll use some of his words here to save repetition:

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.

Many bloggers have attempted to convey just what a vile little man Richard Littlejohn is but it’s hard to really get across just what an unmitigated cunt he is. The photo next to the tag-line shows a grinning columnist who looks as if he has just written a fluff piece on an interesting dinner party he attended; when in fact he has just spent hundreds of words essentially pointing and laughing at people slightly different to him. He never changes the picture, whether he is explaining that he doesn’t give a shit about genocide when it happens to black people; or telling us that prostitutes deserve to be murdered or whether he is spending an entire column creating a hellish image of just why gypsies are evil, feral scum.

I like to think that Richard Littlejohn is a bit like Dorian Gray in reverse, he has sold his soul to the devil (here played by a succession of tabloid editors) who snapped the above photo of him which is printed each week next to his columns and he’ll live for eternity as long as the photo survives. However, instead of the picture ageing and showing all the horrific signs of evil, it is in fact the real Richard Littlejohn who is decomposing with each column written – to the extent that he has had to board himself up in a mansion in Florida where he spends his existence like the mad women in the attic from a popular Gothic novel.

If you laid eyes on Richard Littlejohn you would barely recognise him from his gurning photograph. His hair is actually lank and grey, clinging to his scalp with the oozing puss that seeps from his rotting brain. Shit, blood and urine are sweated through every pore in his clammy, white carcass. Great chunks of flesh drop from his sagging face as he attempts to email his latest article to Daily Mail HQ; his fingers are reduced to bone and tendon by the many years of poisonous key-tapping. Due to his condition he is unable to engage in any real debate, and he is instead forced to attack increasingly obscure and powerless targets: 3 woman who wore Burqas, a Police Association for the Transgendered for example.

Long ago the stinking, decomposing pile of shit gave up trying to engage anyone – right around the time that Johann Hari and Will Self both calmly pointed out the Richard Littlejohn’s universe was entirely fictional. Richard Littlejohn is a coward, he has a stage from which he could engage in real debate but he chooses not to. He knows that he is an intellectual fly, so, like the fly, he survives on a diet of shit – regurgitating Daily Mail stories as satire whilst pursuing his own targets that he knows cannot possibly respond.

If you are a minority or somehow disenfranchised from mainstream society in any way, beware, because a cowardly, hateful little cunt called Richard Littlejohn is out to get you.

Apologies for the strong language used in the above post. I usually decline from being too free with swear words, but at the same time I know that a swear word is sometimes needed to emphasis an emotion. I do not use the c-word lightly, but I cannot think of a word more offensive and thus fitting to describe Richard Littlejohn.

Cock of the day

Mail Reader Watch, , ,

People commenting on the Daily Mail website often show that they cannot read anything other than the headline, regardless of how short the article is. Today’s moron is N Cockburn, Falkirk and he is really putting the Cock into Cockburn. The article is a light-hearted, feel-good story about a fisherman that rescued some ducklings: ‘The fisherman’s tale that saw eight lucky ducklings saved from certain death‘. The story is told by the pond-owner who states that:

Mr Pady, of Colyford, said: ‘We had an urgent call from the fisherman to say the ducklings were in trouble.
‘They were caught in a drain which is the pond’s outflow – the mother duck was clearly upset, calling down the pipe.

‘The fisherman could hear them making a noise at the bottom so we lowered a ladle to see if they would get in, but they wouldn’t.

‘We couldn’t think how else to get them out, but the fisherman put a piece of bread on a barb-less hook and lowered it and after a while he caught one of the ducklings.

‘It was all downy fluff, so it didn’t do the duckling any harm – and he was able to reel it up the pipe. Then he carried on for another two and a half hours taking the ducklings out one by one until he’d got all eight.’

‘I said he’d be in line for an RSPB award for rescuing the birds but I don’t know his name and he has yet to come back.’

As for the offending pipe: ‘We’ve put a grill shelf from a fridge over it now – the old one had disintegrated,’ said Mr Pady. ‘It was one of those jobs you keep meaning to get around to, but don’t.’

So, the person being interviewed is quite clearly – as stated at the very start of the article – Mr Pady. The fisherman was clearly a second person who did not give his name to Mr Pady. All seems pretty clear to anyone who could get through the first couple of paragraphs, but not N Cockburn:

He seems to have read the whole article because he refers to the confession from the pond owner in the last line, but he has managed to have a nice little rant with SHOUTING whilst being entirely wrong in every way. Congratulations N Cockburn: you are Cock of the Day.

Intolerance? We’ll show you intolerance!

Muslims, , ,

I’m an atheist. I do not think that this is a big deal, for me it seems the only logical position to take if you actually engage your brain and look at the matter of religion with any kind of objectivity. In some ways I have a problem with the whole label ‘atheist’, why does anyone have to make a declaration that they are not a believer in religion? I don’t believe in fairies, Santa Claus or Unicorns, should I also have some kind of label to indicate this as well?

The reason the label exists is to imply that atheism is some kind of significant choice, as if everyone has undergone a soul searching battle between belief in religion and the barren wilderness that atheism is so often painted to be. The label tries to validate religious belief by implying that if you do not believe then you deserve some kind of label so everyone knows that you are an outsider, that you are somehow different to them. I personally have very little tolerance for religious people in as much as if they knock on my door and try to convert me (which seems to happen about 4 times a year in Wales) I’ll make it pretty clear to them – in polite terms – that I think they’re not in touch with reality and that I treat the bible like any other work of literature – fiction.

However, the vast majority of religious people are peaceful human beings who are not out to do me any harm and I have to try to understand that the power of religion lies in indoctrinating the young, so most people hold these beliefs because of the way that they were nurtured and it is difficult for them to change. I therefore try to sympathise with religious people, I may not agree with their beliefs but if I was to try and force my worldview upon others I would become as intolerant as some religious people are and consequently no better than them.

Intolerance is something that Muslims are supposed to practice according to the Daily Mail and its readers, so you’d imagine that Daily Mail readers would take the high ground and be tolerant of others, otherwise two wrongs wouldn’t make a right would it? Naturally, Daily Mail readers are about as tolerant towards Muslims as Hitler was towards disabled, Jewish, immigrant gypsies: ‘Muslim woman banned from wearing a ‘burkini’ in a French swimming pool‘. Now the headline (for a change) is actually a fair summation of the article: a swimming pool in France has banned a Muslim item of clothing from a swimming pool. Of course, the Daily Mail readers are keen to praise the French for ‘not bowing down’ to evil Muslim women who want to cover up whilst swimming.

Now, again, in my opinion women should be able to wear whatever the hell they want, but at the same time, by wearing this swimming costume I am not being inconvenienced in any way whatsoever, so why would I want to ban it? Daily Mail land is a strange place, on the one hand a women wearing a skimpy swimsuit is probably a slut and is asking to be raped, whilst a women who – for her faith – wants to remain largely covered whilst swimming must be banned for… well, for what exactly?

I pity the poor women who have to wear these outfits, it makes me sad that religion causes human beings to deny their essential being (in as much as they have to hide their physicality from the world) so why would I want to add to their perceived misfortune by demanding that the authorities ban articles of clothing that make an enjoyable pastime like swimming accessible to these women?

Daily Mail readers are misanthropes, they want everyone to wallow in misery, regardless of whether the activity benefits or hinders them. This article is about a human being having the ability to swim taken away from them because the French authorities are trying to battle intolerance with intolerance. Yet the comments under the article seem to imply that the French have found the cure for cancer:

So, France respond to a swimsuit that is representative of religious oppression and intolerance… by acting intolerantly and repressively by banning it… and Daily Mail readers cheer.

Muslims have been dehumanised to such an extent that a women who lives in a supposedly liberal and civilised society cannot go for a swim in a large swimming costume without hordes of right-wing shitkickers demanding that she be banned from doing so – without a hint of irony. Muslim women are repressed by their religion and Daily Mail readers can’t wait to join in with a good kicking: ‘You what? You want to swim? Not in that costume. Now fucking get it off or get out of the pool’.

And I thought Muslims were supposed to be the intolerant and backward ones.

Some might suggest that this website is intolerant or preaching intolerance towards Daily Mail readers / writers. I think that is probably a fair accusation, but at the same time I have never demanded that the Daily Mail be banned or that Daily Mail readers should all be punched, hard, in the face – no matter how much they deserve it.

Uncensored reader comments scare advertisers

Advertising revenue, ,

Via Mailwatch I stumbled across this interesting piece of news: ‘Daily Mail braves uncensored reader comments‘. Just the title of the article raising some points that deserve looking at. For example, if you have ever flicked through the comments on the Daily Mail website you’ll realise what a homage to ignorance, racism and homophobia they are; so the Daily Mail is hardly leaving an age of properly moderated comments to let their moronic readers pour forth their hate in an uncensored frenzy. However, and perhaps here is the real reason why the Daily Mail is ‘brave’, anyone who has ever tried to make a sensible comment perhaps pointing out a factual inaccuracy or making an informed argument pointing out that Richard Littlejohn is talking absolute rubbish, will realise that it is these comments that the moderators are out to stop.

Racism, ignorance and the continual repetition of lies and misconceptions are absolutely fine for the Daily Mail Online, it is the sensible, logical comments they have a problem with. Perhaps the end of moderation spells a new age of enlightenment, or Mail readers will just have to work harder to secure their ill-formed preconceptions about the world – I wonder how many times the old ‘Oh dear the loony-left-liberal-scumbags are out in force today’ response will be wheeled out in the face of dissent (the Internet equivalent of a child putting their fingers in their ears and shouting ‘la, la, la I can’t hear you’). Perhaps the other fear for the Daily Mail is just how bad their readership is going to look when they have the chance to comment without moderation – perhaps there are reams of really really racist stuff not even the Mail Online dare print?

This argument does fall down somewhat when you consider that they actually pay Richard Littlejohn around £800,000 a year to produce very racist columns twice weekly – surely uncensored reader comments couldn’t be any more offensive than the hateful, ignorant bile that he vomits onto his laptop in Florida?

Anyway, we’re three paragraphs in and we haven’t got to my favourite part yet – the advertisers response to this news:

Jenni Convey, head of online marketing at O2, said, “There’s always the risk with user content that our brand advertising may appear next to a comment we may not agree with or like. In the Mail Online example, we would want to understand the controls the media owner is giving to users of the forum so inappropriate content can be reported. If we’re satisfied with the processes then it’s likely we would consider advertising.”

I luckily was able to click onto some offensive content on the Mail website – Richard Littlejohn’s latest racist outburst attacking gypsies, complete with De Sturmer style cartoon – and find that O2 happened to have their adverts slapped either side of this offensive content:

Furthermore, scrolling down the same page reveals a vast quantity of deeply offensive content, such as:

So, it rather begs the question: just what is too offensive for O2 or other advertisers? Is Richard Littlejohn ranting against gays and gypsies absolutely fine for advertisers, along with comments like the one above? Because that is the reality of advertising on the Daily Mal website: the whole content is offensive – it is a tabloid newspaper website edited by an absolute shit-stain of a human being, why would advertisers expect anything else? The fact that they cannot trust the readership of such a website to post uncensored comments in a responsible way – and nor do they have much faith in the ability of the Mail readership to self-moderate – speaks volumes about the sort of reader they know that they’re marketing their products to.

Have O2 marketing people never sat round the table discussing their advertising strategy and discussed what kind of content their ads are placed next to when they choose to advertise their products? Do they never stop to consider that – as above – their adverts could regularly appear next to the racist ignorance of Richard Littlejohn or any other of the stable of lying, vacuous and offensive contributors that makes up the Daily Mail press office? I wonder if an O2 executive would look at the above screenprint and think: ‘You know what, the tabloid press is a terrible thing and we don’t want any part of it’. Or would they simply think: ’29 million unique visitors a month’ and to hell with morals?

It seems they want it both ways. Advertisers want to sell the ignorant hordes of Mail Online readers their products, but somehow do not want to be at all associated with the opinions or views of those people in order to ‘protect [their] brand reputation’. Whereas, surely, if they wanted to protect their brand, they wouldn’t want such people seeing their adverts on such a website and perhaps wouldn’t even want them buying their products? Are they are happy to have two Mail readers speaking over an O2 network and generally being ignorant arseholes, but heaven forbid O2 would have an advert on the same page as a comment from one of those two customers?

Specsavers go a step further and threaten to boycott the Mail Online:

Mark Trustum, director of ecommerce at Specsavers, which advertises across the Mail’s site, said the brand wouldn’t choose to advertise on a website that contains content that could be controversial.

Just read the last part of that again, just to make sure it’s actually true: They would not ‘choose to advertise on a website that contains content that could be controversial’. Has Mark never looked at the Daily Mail website? Has he never looked at the latest lies stuck into a massive headline to stir up hatred against immigrants or other minority groups? If Specsavers do advertise on the Mail website (I cannot be bothered to check right now) and they do stick to the policy they outline above, then perhaps they are the ones who should have gone to Specsavers.

The only conclusion to be drawn from the article is that advertisers are kidding themselves if they think that somehow the Daily Mail website could become the home of offensive content due to uncensored comments. The truth is current comment moderation is there only to ensure only offensive comments get through, and even these comments often pale into insignificance when you scroll up the page and read the actual articles above them.

If advertisers really had any morals they would have never advertised on the Daily Mail website, but they do, which I think tells us all we need to know about the morality of advertisers.