I told you - there are no space hoppers in football

As if to prove the thrust of yesterday's post, Chris Grayling apparently popped up on Radio 4 this morning to claim that campaigners against Workfare were part of a front for Socialist Worker, and pretend mistakenly assert that they'd hacked his email.

There are no space hoppers in football

When I arrived back from India a few weeks ago, I hadn't even got as far as leaving the airport before I was welcomed home by the oh-for-fuck's-sake cortex of my brain being prodded awake for the first time in weeks. "Oh yeah, this again," it said, as my shoulders slumped.

My dad's better than your dad

One of the weird things about growing up without a dad is that you don't really have a concrete idea of who he was. At least not from your own perspective.  What you get is cobbled together mostly from what other people who loved him and want to remember the good things have told you. Your own memories are few and seen through a gauze of childish idolatry, so you don't really have a clear idea of what he was actually like as a man.

Tube fun

Flange

I was standing up on the tube this morning, reading my book, and I couldn't help overhearing a couple of snatches of the conversation going on between three women sitting in front of me, all in their twenties, dressed up smart and on the way to work together.  One of them didn't say a word. The one in the middle and the one on the right were talking. I've recorded some of their words for posterity.

Diane Abbot's so racist - it's just like David Starkey. Oh, hang on.

Today, I break cover from my self imposed stint of blogging hermitry* to point and laugh at professional Gumby Toby Young. Ha ha.

Not six months ago, historian David Starkey cropped up on Newsnight to examine the causes of the riots that burned their way through some of our cities last summer. You might remember him putting his foot in it by saying a number of things that were on the surface of it, pretty racist.

But guess what? Scratch the surface of those things and underneath, and they were pretty racist.

That didn't stop the chorus of totally not racist right-wingers turning up to deliver the traditional response to accusations of racism levelled against probably ignorant oafs who stumble about saying racist things and then being all surprised when they get called out on it.  You know the sort of thing. I covered it here.

While covering it, I looked at one particularly good example. Toby Young had grabbed his knotted hanky, pulled it down over his forehead and declared Starkey's comments to be totally not racist, so everything was alright. Except it wasn't.

Tabloid bullshit of the month award: October 2011

Finally, it turns up. Wobbling like a drunkard and with a face like like an angry basset hound, it's the 5cc tabliod bullshit of the month award for October 2011. And, er, me, who's had a stinking ear infection that buggered up my balance and made me sad and weak.  Sad and weak.  That's no mood to write a bullshit award in, so I never did.

I'm feeling a bit better now, despite the muffled hearing in one ear, so here it is, a bullshit award in a month positively awash with complete and utter rubbish.

FAILED ASYLUM SEEKER ALLOWED TO STAY BECAUSE...YOUR MUM!

One of the things that's difficult about writing about the tabloids (which I occasionally do now) is keeping up with the pretence that they're actually acting in good faith, and the 'mistakes' that turn up in articles are the result of laziness, poor judgement or incompetence; they're never, ever deliberate.  I fail miserably at that from time to time, as you may have noticed.

There's a good example of an *ahem* 'mistake' in yesterday's Mail. 'Failed asylum seeker who has dodged deportation for a decade told he can stay... because he goes to the GYM', it says, shouting the last word inexplicably. I might start trying that in real life. 'Good morning EVERYONE! How was your WEEKEND? Did you get up to anything NICE?'