Monday, March 09, 2015 

Dear me.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Kill yourself.  It's all downhill from here.

(In all seriousness, don't kill yourselves kids.  Just don't believe life will necessarily get better, especially when you're told it will by some of the most vain, privileged and self-absorbed people to have ever lived.  They could for instance have asked their legion of followers what their problems are and given advice based around that, rather than believe their experience remains universal, although considering most of these jump-cutting preening narcissists are barely out of their teens themselves perhaps it will be.  But hey, it's for International Women's Day, so can't be too critical, can we?)
 
In other adventures in bullshit:

Matthew D'Anconservative in the Graun reckons David Cameron is not "afraid of scrutiny", not least because of his PM Direct events.  There is after all nothing quite like being asked the same questions over and over again in a controlled situation where the audience itself will no doubt have been carefully screened, as opposed to say, having monthly press conferences like both previous prime ministers did.

Which brings us to this week's example of how the Tory narrative so often becomes the media one.  Barely has the debate row simmered down before Cameron demands that Labour rule out any sort of agreement with the SNP in the event of a hung parliament.  This is nonsensical on a whole number of levels, not least that it's up to the voters to decide what the permutations will be on the morning of May the 8th, and why wiser heads should rule nothing in or out before then.  Second, Labour's response should be to mock how Cameron apparently doesn't believe he's going to win a majority, and that he seemingly doesn't trust the voters to know their own minds.  Then we have the latest ridiculous campaign ad from M&C Saatchi, really earning whatever fantastic sum it is they're getting for their 10-minute photoshop work, depicting Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond's pocket.  Presumably this means David Cameron has been under Nick Clegg's control this entire time, rather than having given away much for very little in return, as has been the reality.  Nicola Sturgeon has already said Trident renewal would not be a "red line" for supporting a Labour minority on a case-by-case basis, which by SNP standards is a major sacrifice on its own.  Lastly, as John Harris argues, playing off England against Scotland is precisely what the SNP's zoomers want, but seeing as ever since the referendum result was confirmed the Conservatives have seemed as determined as the nationalists to break the union that might be the point.

What then have the broadcasters asked every shadow minister since?  To rule out any deal with the SNP.  Jesus wept.

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3/09/2015 10:20:00 pm | |

Thursday, August 07, 2014 

Mindfulness.

Is the exact same type of snake oil bullshit as previously pushed by self-help gurus, just rebranded and marketed to a new generation.

That is all.

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8/07/2014 10:38:00 pm | |

Thursday, May 29, 2014 

Spectators of suicide.

Visitors to our house can be left in no doubt as to which pop stars my daughter Jessica likes.

Drinks are taken from a Suicide cup, their age-worn faces blearily staring out at us at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The band's debut album, also titled Suicide, is on permanent loop, while at weekends Jessica deafens all and sundry with the lo-fi recordings captured between 1977-78 of their live shows.  Posters of Alan Vega (64) and Martin Rev (age unknown) stare down from her bedroom wall.

Alan is her favourite, she tells me on a daily basis.  She believes he can do no wrong. Last week, when my wife calmly suggested the late Sid Vicious was a better singer than Alan, World War III broke out.

Tears were shed and in the fallout, I found myself under attack for claiming, months earlier, that X-Ray Spex were more successful than Suicide.

I'll admit this makes my daughter rather strange.  While all her friends are devoted to the likes of One Direction, she delights in the ten minute long Frankie Teardrop, a song about a Vietnam veteran who kills his wife and child in despair.

And you know what, I'm glad she likes an obscure proto-punk band who despite their lack of commercial success have been highly influential.  I could be the type of father who is so devoted to the well-being of my daughter that I'm willing to write about her for a national newspaper, pretending to feel let down by her heroes appearing to smoke cannabis.  I could be the type of father who denies taking his little girl to a concert by her favourite group on the basis she's too young, despite knowing full well 8-year-olds are the prime audience for One Direction, and now feels smug about it in light of the shock revelation.  I could be the type of father who finds the fact young men in a beat combo are liable to get tattoos, have pop-star girlfriends and occasionally sample "Mary J" an example of their lack of responsibility, a betrayal of our trust, as proof they are unworthy of my daughter's loving affection, just as other men also will be in the future.

But I'm not.  Mainly because I'm not real, and am just a device to weakly mock a Daily Mail article.  If I was though, I'd be glad my daughter is already at a young age discovering what real life is like.  At times it will feel like you're having axes thrown at you, as happened to Suicide at a gig in Glasgow.  The sooner you learn that, the better.  It might also stop my daughter from rebelling against my overly protective, 19th century values by getting knocked up when she's 15 by a kid called Spud.  Your choice.

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5/29/2014 09:56:00 pm | |

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 

Why I'm speaking up for myself against everyone who has criticised me.

You've probably never heard of me, as no doubt you have better things to do with your life than follow the online adventures of the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, but a couple of weeks ago I tweeted something which has the potential to be truly revolutionary.

I tweeted a picture of the online Jesus and Mo cartoon, the one that both Viz and Private Eye would reject as being a bit pathetic and transparent.  For those not in the know, this has caused controversy in the past, mainly among those who are always looking to be offended.  If nothing else, I know a controversy I can exploit when I see one.  After all, I was the person who felt Tommy Robinson or whatever his real name is (he hasn't actually told me it, but it's not important) was just desperate to get away from the far-right organisation he created.  That Robinson has now been sent to prison again and tweeted after the sentence that it was a "stitch-up" in no way means I was wrong to try and get him to slightly rebrand his unique critique of Islam.

I tweeted it not because I was seeking to speak for anyone other than myself, but because I know the only way to keep my think-tank Quilliam going is to make ever greater attention-seeking gestures.  I'd noticed you see that there's a certain section of the left-wing Twitterati/commentariat that is outraged by everything and anything some Muslims do politically.  A month ago the issue of the week was the voluntary segregation that fundamentalists at universities were insisting upon, and which the official guidance had acquiesced in.  Somehow Downing Street intervened, and soon everyone was backtracking.  It didn't matter that this essentially means fundamentalist women won't be able to attend speeches by their favourite extremist, and I speak having previously ploughed that furrow, or will just mean that such meetings will have to happen off campus, clearly an important wrong has been righted.

Why then shouldn't I join in?  There was never any chance of Nick Clegg or the Liberal Democrats deselecting me down to my tweet; look how they've dealt with Lord Rennard and Mike Hancock for goodness sake, so there was next to no risk.  Death threats?  I was in prison in Egypt for goodness sake.

You see though, this isn't about me.  Honest, it isn't.  No, I was speaking up for my religion.  Not all of us Muslims are mouth-breathers without a sense of humour, or who are offended by someone drawing a line and writing "Muhammad" next to it.  Some of us are also extremely ambitious and know how to get people like Nick Cohen writing columns.  I did it to create a space for people to speak out without being immediately accused of blasphemy, for Salmaan Taseer, Muhammad Asghar, Malala and Salman Rushdie.

Fundamentally, I believe in the same things as you do, just like most ordinary Muslims.  I'm not ordinary obviously, but you get the point.  I believe in the ability of those on social networks and in the modern media to blow extremely minor spats out of all proportion, presenting them as though they are about the very fundamentals of freedom of speech; I believe in making the most of such outbreaks of bullshit; and most importantly, I believe in myself.

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1/28/2014 09:39:00 pm | |

Thursday, August 02, 2012 

And the "is this guy for real?" gold medal goes to...

Andrew M Brown, for this passable Alan Partridge impression. He's terribly concerned that the girlies might hurt themselves at judo:

With those judo contestants – and I realise this will probably sound appallingly sexist – I couldn't help wondering about their soft limbs battered black and blue with bruises.

No, it doesn't sound appallingly sexist Andy, it is.

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8/02/2012 10:45:00 pm | |

Monday, July 30, 2012 

And the gold medal for most shameless bullshit goes to...

David Cameron, for this extraordinary nonsense:

When he was first shown the images of James Bond actor Daniel Craig meeting The Queen at Buckingham Palace and then appearing to parachute down into the stadium, Mr Cameron said it brought a "tear to his eye".

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7/30/2012 06:09:00 pm | |

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 

100 days to go...

and across the country channels are changed, entire newspaper sections go unread and holiday bookings fly in. The anticipation is truly unbearable.

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4/18/2012 05:23:00 pm | |

Friday, February 04, 2011 

Ground control to major bullshit.

We're constantly being informed of the how the next great threat to national security will be cyber warfare. Never mind that so far it seems to be the West leading the way, developing a virus which struck the Iranian nuclear program, just what have "cyber criminals" and potentially state actors thrown at us of late?

William Hague told a conference in Munich how government computers had been infected by a virus last year.

He also detailed an attempt to steal data from a UK defence contractor.


We're all doomed.

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2/04/2011 09:49:00 pm | |

Thursday, July 01, 2010 

The demise of al-Qaida in Britain.


At the end of a little noticed trial last week, the leader of al-Qaida in Britain was jailed for five years. If you're somewhat surprised that there was next to no media coverage dedicated to this most important of breakthroughs against takfirist jihadist terrorism in the UK, then there's a simple explanation. Al-Qaida in Britain only existed in the mind or minds of Ishaq Kanmi and a couple of his friends.

To call Kanmi, or as he grandly styled himself in his forum posts which brought him to the attention of the wider world, Umar Rabie al-Khalaila, a fantasist would be an insult to those Walter Mittys who manage to keep their delusions to themselves. It also pays them a compliment they don't deserve to compare them to the fictional group of jihadis in Chris Morris's Four Lions, where it hopefully isn't a spoiler to say that they at least succeed, whether intentionally or not, in blowing themselves up.

There is however no getting away from the resemblance Kanmi and his friends had to Morris's merry band of martyrdom seekers. When he wasn't posting on jihadist web forums, Kanmi and buddies were calling themselves the "Blackburn Resistance", filming themselves firing starter pistols in someone's back garden, taking photographs which show them handling what look like Airsoft rifles, and that all important terrorist in training mainstay, crawling about in wooded undergrowth while wearing camouflage gear. The key difference is that in Four Lions the stupidity of the characters doesn't undermine their ability to actually carry out attacks, having managed to at least make contact with some senior leaders out in Pakistan, even if their trip out there ends in miserable failure and ignominy.

In the case of Kanmi and friends, they decided that they didn't need any actual links with al-Qaida members or those of a similar bent; they could just say that they were and people would sit up and take notice. Styling himself as Umar Rabie al-Khalaila, Kanmi posted the news about the formation of this latest franchise of the al-Qaida brand on the alekhlaas.net jihadist forum, at the time the largest of its kind (it has since disappeared like many other formerly important similar sites). The message was posted in Arabic, but whether it was Googlish Arabic or not is unclear. What it did do was suggest that the group aimed to kill both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for the crimes both had committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and urged like-minded individuals to join them, at least unless their conditions (getting out of the aforementioned countries, the release of Abu Qutada, etc) were met. How these recruits to the cause were meant to do so other than by messaging the poster of the original thread is unclear. In any case, the message was swiftly deleted by the admins on alekhlass, and that, might have been that.

Instead, as you might have expected, the security services seem to have been watching, or were otherwise swiftly alerted to these upstarts threatening the lives of our glorious leaders now past. The news that al-Qaida in Britain had been "formed" was leaked or otherwise handed to the media on Wednesday the 16th of January 2008, the message having been posted to alekhlass on the 2nd. This led inevitably to a huge amount of speculation, most of it utter rot. Despite the fact the message had been posted in the open section of the forum rather than where the real propaganda from al-Qaida and other groups was usually hosted, and had been deleted almost immediately, some of the similarly fantastically inclined ignored these slight problems with the major story and went wild with it. Admittedly, threatening to kill the prime minister is always going to be taken extremely seriously, regardless of the provenance of the group or individual doing so, yet it was clear as anything that this was the work of those with little idea of what they were letting themselves in for, as I, ahem, pointed out at the time.

Not that it seems Kanmi was regarded as a high priority; he wasn't arrested until the following August, when he and one of his fellow "lions" were boarding a plane to Finland. Despite his status as emir of al-Qaida in Britain, Kanmi also wasn't exactly concerned of how and where he accessed jihadist material: the police recorded him doing just that in the central library in Blackburn. Exactly what their plans were in Finland is unclear, yet it seems in this case that their leaving the country was not to be permitted; unlike say, Rangzieb Ahmed, whom the police and MI5 allowed to fly to Pakistan, where they then urged the police to arrest him, and where he was subsequently mistreated.

As in all the cases involving wannabe jihadists, it's difficult to know just how dangerous they really were and whether they wouldn't perhaps have grown out of their youthful radicalism. They certainly weren't found with anything even approaching material that could have been used in explosives, although Abbas Iqbal, whom Kanmi was to travel to Finland with, was convicted of preparing for acts of terrorism, but considering the sentence passed was for a massive whole year, how serious his potential offence would have been is equally unclear. As Rusty Shackleford on the anti-jihadist website The Jawa Report says, having been involved in the prosecution of Kanmi, they were "at least potentially dangerous". The same can be said of almost anything or anyone; the only really damning thing that can be said of Kanmi is that he was in contact with another person whom when arrested was discovered with 72 litres of petrol in his cellar and the usual array of explosive documentation and videos.

Far more instructive were the comments of the judge, Mr Justice Mackay, who said the "mere assertion" that a serious terrorist group had been set up, even if it was bogus, would have caused alarm to the public and was intended to do so. Except, of course, the public would never have known if the news hadn't been supplied to the media, or indeed have been anything near as concerned if it was made clear that this group was all in the mind of a few non-entities up in Blackburn playing at being holy warriors, as it looked from the very beginning. The sentences then passed were fairly appropriate. The difficulty, as always, is in sorting the hangers-on and blowhards from those who are genuinely a danger to the public, such is their belief and allegiance to takfirist jihadist ideology. Calling yourself Umar Rabie al-Khalila in the comfort of your own bedroom and claiming to have met Osama bin Laden and currently be fighting in Iraq when you've never been south of Watford Gap really ought to give the game away.

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7/01/2010 10:20:00 pm | |

Monday, December 21, 2009 

Scum-watch: This man deserved brain damage.

Every single time there's a "controversial" case of someone attacking a burglar or a criminal, almost always when said intruder has been fleeing the scene, as now in the Munir Hussain jailing, or previously and most notoriously when it came to Tony Martin, either the government or the opposition review the law of "reasonable force" or promise they'll change it, only to later quietly drop it or decide not to because the law as it stands is perfectly adequate. Every single time the tabloids and the occasional broadsheet get on their high horses and complain bitterly, often invoking that an "Englishman's home is his castle", and that in said castle said Englishman should be allowed to rip the intruder's head off and spit down the hole and receive a medal for removing from the gene pool such a disgusting piece of human filth. Every single time said tabloid and broadsheet also quietly drop it.

I'm not sure though that any publication has gone so far in the past to say that either the deceased or injured person deserved the treatment they received. The Sun however thinks this is exactly what Walid Salem needed:

It was never better exposed than by the scandalous jailing of Munir Hussain for chasing and battering a burglar who had tied up and terrorised his family at knifepoint.

How many fathers brave enough, strong enough and angry enough would have held back?

Career criminal Walid Salem richly deserved his beating.


The Tories are proposing that only "grossly disproportionate" behaviour towards someone should result in their being prosecuted (as David Cameron suggested as long back as 2005, only for it to be quietly put at least on the back-burner). Isn't chasing a burglar who is fleeing and then adminstering a beating so severe that the person attacked suffers brain damage "grossly disproportionate"? Not according to the Sun. It was however according to a jury, who heard all the mitigating circumstances involving the case and how Salem had threatened to kill Hussain's family, yet still felt that the attack on Salem justified a conviction for grievous bodily harm with intent. This isn't just a case of a liberal namby-pamby politically correct judge deciding that Hussain's crime was serious enough to warrant a relatively light in the circumstances 30 months in prison, of which Hussain will probably only serve a third, but of a jury of members of the public, among them doubtless Sun readers, who felt that it warranted a conviction. True, they didn't decide on the sentence, but 30 months is hardly the harshest sentence which could have been passed. Salem also didn't "walk free" from court, as the Sun has it: he was given a two year suspended sentence for the very reason, as the judge pointed out, that he couldn't adequately plead as a result of his injuries. Otherwise he would received a substantial custodial sentence himself.

As Catherine Bennett asked on Sunday, what sort of society is it that praises vigilantes with cricket bats and iron bars? Ours, of course. The self-same newspaper (and indeed tabloid media as whole) that regards yobs that use violence on the slightest of whims as the scum of the earth turns to the other side when it's a beating that was, in the Sun's terms, deserved. The judge, about the only person who comes out of this with any credit, noted exactly what would happen after his verdict:

"It may be that some members of the public, or media commentators, will assert that Salem deserved what happened to him at the hands of you and the two others involved, and that you should not have been prosecuted and need not be punished."

And then, in lines which no newspaper or commentator has been able to adequately deflect, he explained exactly why they needed to be punished:

"However, if persons were permitted to … inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting justice take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are the hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse."

Which is it seems what some would clearly like to happen.

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12/21/2009 10:45:00 pm | |

Friday, October 30, 2009 

That's how the cookie crumbles.

That Gordon Brown, eh? So indecisive that he can't even decide what his favourite biscuit is, even though he was asked twelve times? Indicative of his entire approach to government, right? Dithering and prevaricating and procrastinating while our metaphorical Rome burns, unable to take charge and leaving everybody incensed with his behaviour?

Well, surprise surprise, it turns out that the now infamous question posed by the hardnosed politicos over at Mumsnet was never actually given to Brown to answer, although Brown himself said at the time he had "missed" the question. In a blog posted on the site, an explanation behind how he "missed" it is given:

Now it’s not often we find ourselves feeling sorry for politicians but we have to admit to feeling more than a pang of sympathy for the PM over the past few weeks. Because the truth is that Gordon Brown didn’t follow the live chat on the screen directly - he answered the questions grouped and fed to him by MNHQ and his advisers. He didn’t avoid the biscuit question because it didn’t cross his path (as we said on Radio 5 on the day, in fact).

Why did we do it that way? Well, there were so many questions and they were coming in thick and fast on every subject under the sun, so we reasoned that the most effective way of getting as much ground covered as possible was to group them together for him, rather than him answering random ones that he happened to notice.

We had a pile as long as your arm on subjects ranging from climate change to childcare vouchers to treatment of asylum seekers. After he’d covered a question he would immediately demand, “What next?” Occasionally, we’d squeeze in a light-hearted one - for example, about what movies he wanted to see - but we were conscious of not merely focusing on frivolities. Fun as biscuits are, access to the Prime Minister is precious and we would have hated to waste time on Rich Tea Fingers at the expense of miscarriage or school starting age. Plus, of course, we’d rather not be seen as a soft touch in the GMTV sofa mould.


Why Downing Street themselves didn't point this fact out more forcefully is easy to explain - they knew they wouldn't be listened to and that if they did they themselves would have been accused of focusing on trivia. It must though have been absolutely infuriating for all involved for this nonsense to be used to attack both Brown and the government, as both the Times and Sunday Times even included mentions to it in leader columns, while the Mail, typically, suggested his failure to make up his mind was because he was "apparently unable to decide what the politically correct answer ought to be".

As the astute writer behind the blog on Mumsnet points out, this is one of those supposedly frivolous things that can actually colour minds more significantly than an actual decision or policy might. It was also manna from heaven for those who have already decided that Brown is a ditherer, even though this rather contradicts his supposed Stalinist ruthlessness that others have fingered him with having:

In fact the real message of Biscuitgate is that whatever you do or say as a Prime Minister can and will be woven into any commentator’s particular beef or agenda, in order to prove their point. Who’d be a politician, eh?

Well, indeed. Mumsnet does however some other pertinent criticism of the prime minister and his performance at the session:

That’s not to say Biscuitgate didn’t reveal something about the Prime Minister. We strongly suspect that Mumsnetters resorted to asking about biscuits repeatedly towards the end of the chat because they were frustrated at being fed chunks of official policy rather than being engaged with directly. It’s hard, of course, to keep up with the banter on a board like ours - particularly if you’re not reading the actual chat and you’re a Mumsnet virgin.

But the truth is it has come more naturally to other politicians to speak to and emotionally connect with Mumsnetters. That, I think, is a fair criticism of Gordon Brown, as is a a certain brusqueness, intermittently displayed during his visit. What is unfair is that Biscuitgate proves just how indecisive or insincere Gordon Brown is - he might be, of course - what do I know? But there was absolutely nothing he did during his visit to Mumsnet Towers to suggest it.


Or perhaps they simply had ran out of other things to ask? That Brown was brusque or short though does fit with some other pictures painted of the man: he probably didn't want to be there or thought he could make better uses of his time. After all, should the prime minister himself really be giving interviews to places like Mumsnet? New media might be great and all, but wouldn't appearing on say, 5 Live and answering callers as Brown has also done in the past, and reasonably well from memory, be both more representative and reach far more people? Wouldn't a health or family minister be a better fit and still able to answer other questions, if perhaps with not the same authority? Brown might deserve a lot of things, and you can certainly suggest he brought it on himself, but like with John Major and tucking his shirt into his underpants, sometimes the most ludicrous things stick while much else gets forgotten.

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10/30/2009 09:28:00 pm | |

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 

Scum-watch: Going "soft" on perverts.

If there was ever a chance that Dominic Mohan would be less overbearing compared to his predecessor when it comes to the protection of children, then that's gone out the window with today's "exclusive" claim that a "[Q]uarter of pervs go free", as alluded to on the front page. The actual article, by Brian Flynn, has to be one of the least illuminating and most lazy examples of supposed investigative journalism in quite some time:

THE Sun can today reveal how Britain's soft justice system allows hundreds of child sex fiends to escape court action.

In a special investigation, we found more than a quarter of child abusers are let off with a caution by cops.

The shock figures emerged in responses by 33 police forces to Freedom of Information demands by The Sun.

This then is a method which has been previously pioneered by the mid-market tabloids, where they submit FoI requests to the country's police forces, not all of which reply, with an article to write already in mind. Both the Express and the Mail have used this to supposedly show how many "foreigners" are either committing murders or rapes in this country, and has been dealt with in the past by 5CC. Those requests though have been much narrower in scope to this one, and also far better defined and explained. The Sun's request, presumably, as it is never properly outlined, is for the numbers of individuals who have been charged and cautioned with "sexual and physical abuse offences against kids", their best description, not mine. This understandably covers a whole multitude of sins, some, but which by no means all, are covered in this document explaining the changes which came in under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

To start off with, only 33 forces have responded when there are 44 in total, so the statistics are by no means complete. Here though are the shock figures:

In total, 8,043 people who committed sexual and physical abuse offences against kids were charged in the year to April, while 2,764 were given a caution.

Just to illustrate that these 2,764 given a caution hardly cover the most serious offences, the paper then gives the only breakdown in actual offences in the entire piece:

Even beasts who rape under-age children can get just a ticking off. The statistics included 20 who raped girls under 16 and eight who attacked young boys.

So only 28 who admitted to rape were given a caution. For someone to only be given a caution for such a serious crime, especially against a child, there has to be significant mitigating circumstances. One of these is explained in the above document on the Sexual Offences Act 2003: since the act was passed, anyone under 12, regardless of whether they consented to sex or not, is considered to have been raped if they take part in any sexual activity involving penetration. This still applies even if the person they have sex with is 13 or below the age of consent themselves. Since it's hardly in the public interest to prosecute to the full extent of the law young children for such serious offences, a caution will often be the best option. The changes in the law were additionally not meant to be used when, for example, a 15-year-old consents to sex with a 17-year-old, unless there was abuse or exploitation involved, but this is not always the case, hence a caution will again sometimes be given. Other examples of where a caution will be considered the better option will be where the offence involved a member of the family of the victim, which the SOA expanded to include step-family members and others. The Sun also adds its own explanations as to why a caution rather than a prosecution will sometimes be best option:

Legal sources said reasons for the caution option include victims not wanting to go through a court process, perhaps if the attacker was a family member.

Evidence could also be flimsy, meaning a fiend could get off whereas under a caution guilt is assured. But one source said: "It must always be a last option."


Well, precisely, and the Sun has provided no evidence whatsoever that suggests this isn't the case. All it has done is present some out of context figures with no information whatsoever as to what offences have actually been committed, which would help us to ascertain whether a caution is a reasonable end result to the offence or not. It's also provided no comparison figures as to whether the number of cautions has actually gone up or down year on year, which would further help to show whether or not this is a change in policy and genuine further evidence of it being a mockery of Labour "being tough on crime". In short, it's a typical piece of tabloid journalism, so flimsy that as soon as you look at it in any detail you notice that it's coming apart at the seams. It's an example of doing the very bare minimum as an attempt to prove an already held hypothesis.

This is without even considering the Sun's leader column on the subject:

SHOCKING figures show one in four proven child abusers - including child rapists -- get off with a caution. That means almost 3,000 known paedophiles are on the loose - many of them likely to re-offend.

The Sun presents nothing whatsoever that justifies calling those given a caution paedophiles, and it also hasn't the slightest basis for claiming that "many of them" are likely to re-offend. This is just base scaremongering using the terms which are most likely to cause fear in both children and adults.

Raping girls under 16 - or even gang-raping a boy - goes virtually unpunished.

Except the article shows that only 28 cases of rape out of a total of 10,807 offences were concluded with a caution - we can't even tell how many cases of rape were prosecuted as the Sun doesn't provide us with those figures. That's hardly going virtually unpunished. The Sun does however have an explanation:
But there is a culture of idle incompetence at the very top - with both politicians and police chiefs. The message from on high is: Jails are full so turn a blind eye.

This is abject nonsense. The jails being full has very little to no influence whatsoever on the CPS deciding who to prosecute and who to not. The courts and judges may indeed be influenced by lack of space when it comes to passing sentence, but the CPS simply decides on the merits and circumstances of the case. The possibility of prison doesn't enter into it.

This stunning failure of justice is a crime in itself.

And innocent children pay the price.


As will innocent children and adults who believe the fearmongering which the Sun fails to even begin to back up.

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9/23/2009 11:59:00 pm | |

Friday, August 28, 2009 

Monsters everywhere.

I presume then, now that Jacyee Lee Dugard has escaped from 18 years of captivity, along with the two children fathered by her alleged kidnapper, that the nation's finest media organisations will inform us that this was the sort of thing that could only happen in closed, post-authoritarian societies where questions go unasked, secrets remain secrets and tents, outbuildings and sheds are permanently closed, while others will suggest that the police should be arming themselves and start searching sheds across the nation, should any others like Dugard be hidden from view.

Or considering that most of those who indulged in such fantasies after the discovery of what Josef Fritzl had been subjecting his daughter to in Austria are rather fond of and think America to be vastly superior to both this country and Europe, maybe they'll just tone down the rhetoric slightly.

P.S. A rather meatier piece concerning today's Sun front page is over on The Sun - Tabloid Lies.

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8/28/2009 08:14:00 pm | |

Monday, August 17, 2009 

Twitter twatter.

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who's getting thoroughly sick of both the hype and churnalism surrounding Twitter, or more appropriately, Twatter. The latest is that 40% of the messages sent on it are "pointless babble". Shurely shome mishtake? Shouldn't that be 99.9%? You also know that when the government appoints a "Twatter tsar", to go with all the other inexplicable tsars it seems insistent on appointing, the other one being Arlene Phillips as a "dancing tsar", that its demise hopefully won't be that far in the future.

David Cameron, for once, wasn't too far wrong in his view that too many twits might end up making a twat. I can see the point of the likes of Facebook, despite not using it, and do have a MySpace account although again I never use it, they're just not really for me, mainly because I prefer to operate under something of a semi-anonymous shroud. Twitter though, with the exception of when it is clearly put to good use, such as when instant updates are necessary such as on breaking news, reporting on protests and organising around them, seems to be beyond pointless; it's a glorified instant messaging service where every stalker and sad sack can follow your ever so fascinating immediate thoughts on what your sandwich tastes like, what it's like being stuck in a lift, and why the NHS is brilliant. Obviously, accusations of hypocrisy can be levelled against a blogger for criticising such "micro-blogging", and some bloggers do indeed do little more than those on Twitter do, but I'd like to think for the most part I put more thought into what I write here than many do with their numerous updates throughout the day (although blogging has been deliberately lighter this month).

Then there's just the wishful thinking, such as Sunny's that Twitter challenges right-wing dominance online. This would be amusing if it wasn't so tragic. If the NHS couldn't find enough people who could relate their own experiences of its service in a supportive fashion then Daniel Hannan would be more than right in calling it a sixty-year old mistake. Those doing so are clearly apolitical; they support the NHS, not the political arguments behind it. The entire hype behind online political campaigning has got all out of proportion to its actual value and use: there has been no indication whatsoever that the success of campaigns in the US can be translated to this country. Indeed, repeated attempts by the Conservatives to do so have failed abjectly, from their "Tosser" campaign to more recent calls for donations, whatever their size, appropriating from last year's US campaigns. If the Tories, the main players online as we are forced to admit can't do it, how can anyone?

Twitter provides what the other social networking sites do: circle jerks, where like-minded people share like-minded things, all while stroking their egos. Again, I'm not going to pretend I'm also not guilty of this, but Twitter just exacerbates the problems inherent in blogging. It is essentially meaningless, not even giving extra quality to real life relationships like Facebook does. Doubtless I'm about to be flayed alive in the comments, but once again the hype and the defences of it simply fail to live up to the reality.

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8/17/2009 10:39:00 pm | |

Wednesday, August 05, 2009 

Silly season moaning.

Every year it's the same. The newspapers moan about politicians while they're at Westminster, then they moan when they're not at Westminster. Gavel Basher in Private Eye today points out that those most fingered as being useless can't win: Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, pilloried for being out of his depth and described in the Sun's umpteenth leader on Our Brave Boys having to fight the government as much as they're fighting the Taliban as a "bungling Defence wallah", went for a few days break, just as the row about compensation broke out. He came back, as you would, and the same newspapers complain that he shouldn't have bothered.

The situation is almost exactly the same with whoever it is who deputises for the prime minister while he's away for a couple of weeks. John Prescott got it in the neck repeatedly simply because he wasn't Tony Blair and also from the usual suspects for being a working class idiot above his pay grade. This year it's Harriet Harman's turn, and it being the silly season and there being no real politics to write about, she's transformed by the Mail especially into a feminist harridan determined in just a week to strike a blow against the oppressive patriarchy. The evidence? She jokingly repeated her remarks that women would make better bankers than men (they couldn't be much worse), is daring to introduce lessons about relationships at the age of five which in the Mail becomes five-year-olds being indoctrinated in the ways of feminazism, and might have suggested that the proposals on reforms to the rape laws aren't tough enough. It's utter nonsense, but it fills the space and makes for a good front page splash.

The last person to deputise for the prime minister who was given anything even approaching respect was John Reid, who was praised for his handling of the "liquid bomb plot" raids while Blair was off sunning himself. Reid of course was the hard, unflappable and determined politician which the authoritarian tabloids especially love, at least until they decide that what was up must be brought back down to earth. As for Bob Ainsworth, attacked as much for his choice in facial hair as for his current performance as defence secretary, he's just the latest poor bastard to be cleaning up the mess which Reid himself left at defence, he being the one who told the world that he hoped the troops in Afghanistan would be able to return home from their mission without firing a single shot. We might get the politicians we deserve, but we get the media we deserve as well.

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8/05/2009 09:47:00 pm | |

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 

The summer holidays were here again...

The silly season, in case you haven't already noticed, has begun in earnest. Not that newspapers and news sites aren't normally stocked fully with churnalism, but it just becomes instantly more evident when there's next to no real news around.

In case then you wondering, the Wookey Hole witch is a publicity stunt. Even if they are paying the winner £50,000, that's nothing as to the free advertising they've received and will receive, especially when compared to how much it would cost to take out adverts on the same pages and same size as the stories themselves will appear. Likewise, the BBC story that "Swedes miss Capri after GPS gaffe" is almost certainly a similar piece of churnalism. It's plausible, as anyone could accidentally make a typo on their system and be guided to Carpi instead of Capri, but like the Wookey Hole story it makes for excellent publicity, even if it isn't as unbelievable as the benchmark, the "Cab, innit", girl. Not directly publicity seeking churnalism, but also designed to fill up the pages, is the Coca Cola carbonated milk launch, which is only happening in the US. Why then do we care over here? Because we haven't much choice.

Over in the Sun they don't need so much churnalism because they've bought Amy Winehouse's ex-husband's story, no doubt for a gigantic wad of cash. This is despite the fact that the newspaper on numerous occasions directly blamed Blake Fielder-Civil for Winehouse's descent into drug addiction, and which it is now handsomely profiting from, with such eye-opening exclusives as the fact that Fielder-Civil saved her from an overdose, and that she stole cocaine from Kate Moss's bag. Winehouse herself in fact claimed that Fielder-Civil saved her, as reported by the Sun at the time, except with the added aside by the paper that FC left her in hospital to go and collect another fix. Doubtless though, the Sun was merely misinformed, and reports headlined "Amy's lag hubby has no shame", "Amy and Blake back to worst", "for God's sake, get help Amy!", "Amy stop your brainrotting", and "You should be ashamed Blake" were mistakes, all now rectified thanks to a bulging cheque.

With all this in mind, the Daily Quail has set up a form where anyone can submit a post mocking a specific example of piss-poor journalism, which has this blog's full support.

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7/28/2009 08:51:00 pm | |

Monday, July 06, 2009 

Death to the quangocracy!

Interesting how out of the hundreds of quangos which David Cameron could have chosen to pick on, he decided that Ofcom was the main one that just has to be cut down to size. True enough, Ofcom is one of the most prominent and one of the most expensive, yet Peter Wilby draws our attention, while dealing with the question of the next Sun editorship, to something currently causing much anger in Wapping:

Though the bookmaker Paddy Power last week quoted him at 10-1, hardly anybody mentions Fergus Shanahan, the Sun's executive editor and former deputy editor, as a candidate to succeed Rebekah Wade in the chair. But Shanahan clearly takes himself seriously and is making special efforts to catch Rupert Murdoch's eye.

In his weekly column last Tuesday, he recalled how, in Atlas Shrugged, the futuristic novel by the American rightwing author Ayn Rand, bosses of companies that refuse to share inventions with rivals are tortured under a leftwing US government. Shanahan drew comparisons with Ofcom's proposal to cap the price at which Sky TV sells sports and movie channels to other companies. "This ruling means firms like Sky, who invest money, take risks and spend years building a customer base, can have everything stolen from them by the state."

That's just the kind of fearless, independent judgment that Murdoch values in his editors.


Surely Cameron isn't so shamelessly courting Murdoch that he's proposing slashing Ofcom just to get in his good books? What's next? Flying across the world to address Murdoch's yearly soirée?

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7/06/2009 10:29:00 pm | |

Thursday, July 02, 2009 

Toothless, useless, the Press Complaints Commission strikes again.

To get an idea of just how useless the Press Complaints Commission is, you only have to look at its non-investigation into the Alfie Patten disaster. You would have thought that they might just have something to say about how the Sun, the People and the Sunday Mail had almost certainly paid his family for personal interviews which led to some of the most invasive and potentially damaging intrusion into the private lives of children for some years, only for it to subsequently turn out that, oops, Alfie wasn't the father after all.

Today the Commission announced that it is to do, well, nothing. To be fair, that isn't quite what it's done. Because of the restrictions imposed by the High Court, which prevent the families of both Patten and Chantelle Steadman from being approached, the PCC supposedly has been unable to determine exactly what was paid, what was expected in return for that payment, how the families intended to use the money, how concerned the newspapers were about the children's welfare and the circumstances surrounding the original mistaken identification of Alfie as the father. It has instead elaborated on its guidelines on payments to parents for material about their children, which while welcome, is not for a moment going to stop this happening again.

While it's unfortunate that the families themselves cannot tell their side of the story, this is letting the opposite side completely off the hook. Is the PCC a regulator or is it not? A regulator with any teeth would have demanded that the newspapers themselves reveal what was promised, and just how, if the reports of the Sun setting up a trust fund for the child are accurate, it was intending to deliver the payment. It isn't clear that this information was sought at all; instead, it seems the PCC was relying purely on the families to inform them of what deals were made.

What the papers did provide the PCC with, predictably, was their arguments on how it certainly was in the public interest for them to claim that a 13-year-old who looked more like 8 had fathered a child:

The newspapers argued that the articles involved the important issue of the prevalence, and impact, of teenage pregnancy within British society. By identifying the principals involved and presenting them in a particular way, the story dramatised and personalised these issues in a way that stimulated a wide-ranging public debate, involving contributions from senior politicians (which included the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition). The newspapers said that they were fulfilling an important duty in publicising to a large audience a social problem that is perceived to be widespread. Their position was that the case was, on the evidence available at the time of publication, an exceptional example of the problem.

This is all true. This however doesn't take into account the fact that it was not in either Patten or Steadman's best interests for the entire world to know intimate details about their lives, with their parents making the decision for them based presumably on the fact that there was money offered in exchanged. There was only a story because of how Patten looked; 13-year-olds being fathers is rare, but not that rare. 15-year-olds being fathers and mothers however, is not a story at all, as in this case it subsequently turned out to be. Some might think it should be a story, and that it's a sad reflection on society at large when it isn't, on which they might have something approaching a point, but that isn't the issue here. Most damningly, the newspapers don't seem to have taken any real interest in how their stories would affect the children, and in the case of the People, doesn't seem to have decided that how Patten had to be begged, almost forced to come and speak to them might have suggested that they shouldn't be running such reports.

The Sun especially must be laughing at the weakness of the PCC. To say they profited from the story would be an understatement: almost purely down to the Patten report, which went around the world at the social horror of a baby himself becoming a father, they sky-rocketed to the top of the ABCe tables, becoming the most popular UK newspaper website for Feburary, with over 27 million unique visitors. However much they promised to pay the Patten family, they must have surely more than made their money back. For a newspaper editor who has dedicated herself to campaigning for child protection, either for Sarah's law or for "justice" for Baby P, Rebekah Wade seems to have completely lost her moral compass over Patten, and the only organisation which could have punished her has spurned its opportunity.

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7/02/2009 10:46:00 pm | |

Friday, June 26, 2009 

I hear someone died...

And a few people have been tortured. Not much else really happening though.

You can though rely on the Sun to say everything that everyone else has already said:

THE news is stunning, shocking, unbelievable.

...

And now he lies dead of a heart attack at just 50. It just does not seem real.

...

There has never been anyone like him. Perhaps there never will again.

...

Today's appalling news is as devastating a shock as the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

...

The King Of Pop has gone. His memory will live for ever.

It is indeed stunning, shocking and unbelievable that someone will have been paid for this nonsense. Still, knocked the BBC expenses non-story down the agenda ever so slightly.

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6/26/2009 09:52:00 pm | |

Friday, May 29, 2009 

Beyond parody.

At first sight, I imagined that the subs at the Graun had had a bit of fun with Pollyanna T's latest column. After starring in the latest Private Eye's Hackwatch with the emphasis being on just how many "last chances" she had given both Labour and Gordon Brown, it would have been a laugh to headline it with just that description. Then I actually bothered to read the text:

Anything that makes enough splash to stop the one story that really matters: will the cabinet and leading MPs seize this last chance to sack their failed leader?

...

What will it take? They don't need to wait for Thursday's poll results. I have no idea if a coup will happen, but if they let this moment slip, history will record this as the spineless cabinet that threw away Labour's last chance.


Either Pol doesn't take Private Eye, she's sticking two fingers up at them, or she really can only find just the one way to express herself. Perhaps Pol herself should be in the last chance saloon.

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5/29/2009 09:49:00 pm | |

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