Five Chinese Crackers

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

2012-01-05T23:32:00.001Z

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.

What Young had done was pull out a box of rhetorical tricks and wave his hands about. He expertly directed us away from the things Starkey was in trouble for saying toward some other things he said instead for context, demanding strict adherence to one particular definition of racism from one dictionary along the way. Then, with a wave of a knotted hanky...poof! The racism disappeared! Except it didn't.

I mention all this because last night Diane Abbott said something on Twitter, inviting fresh racism-accusing shenanigans all over the place. Toby Young knotted his hanky again and swooped in. Ms Abbott must have breathed a big sigh of relief to see the Gumby who can magic away accusations of racism charging to the rescue. Except - you can guess what's coming next.

In today's effort, Young is appalled by the horrible racism on display. All the rhetorical tricks he deployed to defend Starkey have been left locked away.

The headlines tell the story pretty well. Back in August, the question was 'Was David Starkey being racist on Newsnight last night?' Today, the question is 'Was Diane Abbott's tweet racist?' One of those invites us to look at a lot of things one person said in a discussion on a TV programme. The other restricts everything to the contents of one 140 character tweet in an exchange.

Abbott is guilty of 'playing the race card' for mentioning race in a dicsussion about, uh, race. Starkey of course wasn't accused at all of playing the race card when he brought up race in a discussion about the causes of riots.

All Young's speculation about Abbott errs on the negative. What she was doing when she warned that not seeing a "black community" was playing into a "divide and rule agenda" was "effectively saying that any criticism of black leaders was a betrayal of her ethnic heritage."

But Starkey? When he attempted to explain the causes of riots by saying Enoch Powell's speech that warned about how allowing black immigration would lead to civil unrest was absolutely right - except that it wasn't inter-communal violence because "the whites have become black" - hey, we don't know what he means. Could be something nice.

When Starkey said that if you listened to David Lammy without seeing him you'd think he was white, he was just "condemning a particular sub-culture, one that may have originated in parts of the African-Caribbean community, but which has now been taken up by some white people as well." By saying you'd think black people who didn't sound obviously criminal were white if you listened to them - after saying that white people who spoke with "this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that's been intruded in England" were literally black.

"Imangine the uproar," we're asked today, "if an equally prominent white Conservative MP said something similar about black people on Twitter?"

Now I don't know about you, but I think I can imagine pretty well what Toby Young would be doing.

*I'll be away out of the country for a while after this weekend, and there's a lot going along offline that's keeping me away from blogging for a while. I'll explain some of it when I'm back from India at the end of the month.

Tabloid bullshit of the month award: October 2011

2011-11-21T15:11:00.001Z

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.

October kicked off the Leveson Inquiry with an appearance by Paul Dacre on the very week his paper told us Amanda Knox had her appeal overturned when she hadn't (filling in some nice, colourful, totally invented detail along the way), as well as repeating a cling-film transparent immigration myth that had been debunked years ago on its front page. Hurrah for Paul Dacre. I can totally see why he'd be annoyed that there were no people with tabloid experience on the panel who can explain this stuff away as totally normal and acceptable.

At least he can console himself with the idea that having a corrections column on page two makes up for all the rubbish his paper prints. Makes I laugh, that one.

We also had the Times and various other outlets parping on about how most of the tents at Occupy LSX in St Paul's were unoccupied, a claim described as 'rubbish science' by someone who uses the same sort of camera for his specialised job that the paper had used. The paper had the camera on the wrong setting, apparently. Here's a video of some people coming out of an unoccupied tent. Witches! Burn them!

Oh, and there's obviously the Express with news of how filthy immigrants are eating our Mogwais and the EU causes cancer, plus the Star inevitably chuckling on about some celebrity's conkers and Big Brother or something. Who even looks at that crap any more?

Enough intro! Onto the winners! The award is shared by two stories this month, both from the Mail. We have 'Truth about Tory catfight: Judge DID rule migrant's pet was a reason he shouldn't be deported' by Nick Fagge (no stranger to this blog) and Jason Groves, and 'Failed asylum seeker who has dodged deportation for a decade told he can stay... because he goes to the GYM', by Sarah Bruce.

Here's the email:

Dear Nick Fagge, Jason Groves and Sarah Bruce,

Congratulations, people. You are the winners of a journalism award given to only the select, the creme de la creme of British tabloid journalists, masters and mistresses in their craft. You can swagger about Derry Street like you own the joint now, for you are the proud winners of the October 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award. With such a crowded field in October, you should be dead chuffed.

You win for the sterling efforts in 'Truth about Tory catfight: Judge DID rule migrant's pet was a reason he shouldn't be deported' and 'Failed asylum seeker who has dodged deportation for a decade told he can stay... because he goes to the GYM'.

Here's why you won:

Truth about tory catfight

Theresa May was wrong. A man wasn't allowed to stay in the country because he had a cat, whether she made that up or not. He was allowed to stay because he was in a relationship. The judgement in the case doesn't 'vindicate Home Secretary Theresa May over the ‘cat-gate’ row', because it rules the defendant was allowed to stay because he was in a committed relationship.

Seriously, Barry O'Leary, the solicitor in the case, released a lengthy statement rebutting your story. There's an interesting bit in it where he says:
I stress that it was not argued at any point by this firm, nor by my client, that he would 'suffer from being separated from his cat' nor that 'the pet's quality of life would be affected.'
Gee. I wonder if he was referring specifically to you and your:
Yesterday it was revealed that the Bolivian not only argued that he would suffer from being separated from his cat, but also that his pet’s quality of life would be affected.
Still -doesn't matter, right? Last time your paper pretended the man was allowed to stay because he had a cat, someone complained to the PCC. As TabloidWatch revealed, the PCC found that your paper's claims were inaccurate, but because neither the Bolivian himself or his solicitor complained there was nothing it could do. Cuh. I'm sure its hands were tied. Still, it "trusted that the newspaper would take heed of the points raised in the complaint and bear them in mind for future coverage."

I wonder if the Commission realised the bit you would take heed of was the bit where it said it wouldn't do anything if two specific people didn't complain to the PCC?

Which brings me neatly to:

Failed asylum seeker who has dodged deportation for a decade told he can stay

This wins mainly because it pulls the exact same trick as the nonsense story about the cat.

The asylum seeker wasn't allowed to stay because he goes to the gym. He was allowed to stay because he'd built a stable life here and made lots of friends. He just happened to make a lot of them at the gym.

There's some other lovely stuff in there. Like the claim the guy had been here for a 'decade' in the headline, and the 'nearly a decade' in the opening sentence, when in fact the guy has only been in the country for six years.

Plus, I know it was probably a sub and not you, but you gotta love the random shout at the end of the HEADLINE.

Doesn't matter if it's rubbish though, right? Unless the man himself or his solicitor complains, you're fine. Even if they do, you'll just face having a 'correction' in a little nib on the graveyard that is page 2 in a few months' time. Oh, the horror! The horror!

Both of these stories are sterling examples of the well-worn tabloid bullshit trick of the red herring - taking one thing from a long list of points, and claiming it's the only thing on the list. Who cares if a man wasn't allowed to stay in the country just because he had a cat? A cat got mentioned, so let's pretend. If you need any more examples, just look at pretty much every story ever about something being banned because of Muslims.

Still, it's for the greater good. You're fighting the good fight of sticking the boot into immigrants and Muslims. And gays. And brown people. And lefties. And everyone else the Mail hates. I won't do a full list, this award is already three weeks late.

That's it, I'm done. As ever, I'll be reproducing this letter over at www.fivechinesecrackers.com. Please, please reply to leave an acceptance comment or rebuttal. Please. I'm begging. I've been doing these for a whole year now, and heard not a peep from any hack, ever. Not one of you have had the cojones to stand up for yourself and make a defence of what you've written.

Why, it's almost as if you can't.

You're also all in the running to win the 5cc tabloid bullshitter of the year award, which will go to the winner of the most monthly awards in the year. With two months left, you might catch up the leaders!

Cheers then!

5cc

That's another month out of the way. Sorry for it being weeks and weeks late, but I really have been pretty ill - I'm only just perking up after about three weeks and a couple of antibiotics prescriptions. I've been doing a lot of sleeping and groaning, but I'm perking up a bit now.

Enough self pity! Get out!

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

2011-10-25T13:35:00.002+01:00

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?'

Anyway, I'm digressing. This headline firstly makes the, uh, 'mistake' of saying in the headline that some failed asylum seeker dodged deportation for a decade when the story itself points out he didn't arrive until 2005. But secondly, and I might be nitpicking a bit here, he hasn't escaped deportation because he goes to the gym. That's two statements of fact in the headline that are complete nonsense.

This is all reminiscent of catgate earlier this month, where Theresa May said someone avoided deportation because he had a cat, repeating a story that had been debunked two years ago, and got called out on it by everyone. Everyone except the Mail, which splashed a front page headline about how she was right despite three vital pieces of evidence to the contrary. These were:

She was wrong.
No really, no-one escaped deportation because they had a cat.
The Press Complaints Commission had already apparently notified the Mail that this story was bunk last time they tried it and someone complained.

Christ knows how Dacre would defend this behaviour in front of the Leveson Inquiry, but I'm sure he'd find a way to polish the turd. Probably talking about a free press and trying hard and a corrections column on page 2.

I mean, there's no way those fine, if time-pressed, upstanding men and women of speaking truth to power at the Mail could ever have looked at that original PCC rebuke and thought, 'Great! The PCC will never do anything about this shite unless the guy himself or his lawyer complains! We can pick any old shit out of any decision and pretend away!'

That never happened, of course, and there's really a proper argument that can be made to say he was allowed to stay because he went to the gym. Except, you know, he wasn't.

Hey, if one of the people do ever complain, the paper might need to put something in the corrections column on page two in a few month's time. Oh, the horror, the horror!

Be prepared for stories about people being allowed to stay because they watch East Enders, fat people escaping deportation because they like Chipsticks and piano players being allowed to stay because they've got fingers.

My hat is tipped to TabloidWatch and Angry Mob for this one, and @hmallettuk from off the twitter.

Crime is the disease...the Daily Express is not the cure

2011-10-07T13:56:00.000+01:00

Fury as a potential criminal arrested

A couple of posts ago, I wrote a smart-alecky series of jibes at the 'you can't even defend yourselves in your own home' tabloid right winger types who all seem to operate under the misconception that they'd be really, really badass and totally wouldn't noisily do a poo in their pyjamas and cry if anyone smashed their way into their house in the night.

In it, I said this:

Here's the thing. The reason people who kill or seriously injure burglars or robbers get arrested has precisely bugger all to do with loving the baddies and hating the goodies or PC Gawn Mad...Police arrest people because they need to find out what happened and the person holding the knife might not be telling the truth.

This morning, the Daily Express front page bellowed 'HERO DAD GUNS DOWN BURGLAR! Fury as he's arrested for defending his home', except that's not the front page you'll see represented on their website right now.

That might have something to do with this:

Villagers have spoken of their shock after detectives investigating the shooting of a suspected burglar found a "well-organised and large-scale" cannabis farm during forensic searches.

Ah. So maybe not a hero dad defending his home then. Perhaps the case was more complicated than it appeared at first, and police only found out after arresting the 'HERO DAD' and carrying out searches. Who could have guessed?

Hilariously, 'HERO DAD GUNS DOWN BURGLAR' is still available on the Express website right now (although it might end up disappearing). It gets bonus blowhard points for mentioning Tony Martin and revealing in the second paragraph that the 'BURGLAR' wasn't in fact a burglar, but someone trying to break into a car outside the 'HERO DAD'S' house.

We're only a quarter of the way through the month, and I'm already spoiled for choice for the first anniversay of the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award. The amount of boneheaded idiocy has been turned right up to eleven this October.

Tabloid bullshit of the month award: September 2011

2011-10-03T00:02:00.000+01:00

It's that time of the month again. No, not that time of the month, stop looking for werewolves.

It's time for the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award. Yee-hah! Here I am! Rock you like a hurricane!

It had been a slow month for most of September, until the government released a bunch of immigration stats that predictably got the tabloids in a lather. Tabloid immigration fiddling is so 'meh' by this point in the life of the bullshit awards though, so for the longest time the front runner was Jo Willey for her nonsense in the Express, suggested by a lovely reader.

Don't worry, she must be in the running at some point. I've read her column.

Then - hoo-boy! The Mail on Sunday and it's sister paper came a knockin' with a brand spanking new Winterval style myth to thrill us all with tales of the end of Western civilisation at the hands of evil Political Correctness Gone Mad, and with the BBC as the culprits!

So, this month's winner, in an unprecedented situation, is the entire Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday for the hilariously transparently exaggerated claim that the BBC has BANNED the use of BC and AD, in favour of the HEATHEN BCE and CE.

It's the end of Western civilisation! Worse even than nuclear war.

Here's the email:

Dear the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday,

It's time to get out the turntables and switch on the Northcliffe House disco ball. Both of you, yes the entire Daily Mail stable, are the winners of journalism's most coveted prize! Yes, it's the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award! There's gonna be a party like it's nineteen - fifty-five!

An entire newspaper has never won the award before, not even the Daily Star, and reading the stories behind the Star's front page headlines is like pulling back the curtain only to find that the Wizard of Oz is actually just a picture of Jordan, a BNP pamphlet and a copy of Mucky Boobs.

You have really outdone yourselves. Light up a cigar and start a conga!

Here's why you won*:

A couple of weeks ago, Peter Hitchens sits innocently watching University Challenge, when the programme only goes and uses an abbreviation that's been the academic standard for decades! Who would have thought it? And on a show that questions people in Universities. It's an outrage!

Instead of doing a couple of minutes of research to find out if it's true, he decides, "The BBC’s Chief Commissar for Political Correctness (whom I imagine as a tall, stern young woman in cruel glasses issuing edicts from an austere office) was hard at work again last week."

Jeepers. They have a Commissar now? And such a sexy dominatrix with such unlikely anthropomorphic glasses? (I wonder if she ever takes off her cruel glasses and shakes her hair out, giving Peter's imagination a saucy wink. The minx.)

Sniffing a new Political Correctness Gone Mad sensation, Paul Dacre gathers his winged monkeys to his lair and screeches, "This could be the new Winterval, and it's about our commercial rivals! Fly! Fly my pretties!"

Chris Hastings writes the full story. Instead of thinking, hey, Hitchens is given to ridiculous and embarrassing hyperbole, must check to see if this is true, he thinks, hey, Hitchens is given to ridiculous and embarrassing hyperbole, must check to see if this is true. Oh, it isn't. Let's write the story as if it is anyway. There's always the last couple of sentences we can bury stuff in.

In reality, all that's happened is the BBC has issued no edict about what abbreviations should be used, instead leaving the decision up to individual editors. That's not really Political Correctness going mad is it, allowing people to say what they like?

You'd imagine this would make an editor spike the story, or embarrassed by how damp the new PC Gone Mad outrage squib really is, cut it short and bury it thirty pages in. Instead - BOOM! Front page headline.

Then, the monkeys well and truly flew. James Delingpole, lured from his usual home for getting things wrong and making a fool of himself at the Telegraph, and obviously having missed the last two sentences of Hastings' story, declares the usage of an abbreviation an attack on Western Civilisation. A Marxist one, no less. Ooh, those Marxists and their evil 'letting people make their own decisions about what terminology they use' ways. When will we be rid of them?

Reverend Dr Peter Mullen, who also seems to have missed the last couple of sentences of the previous front page story tells everyone the BBC has stopped using the abbreviations because it wants to obliterate Christianity from public life. As TabloidWatch points out, this nonsense was published less than half an hour after the BBC broadcast the 50th anniversary edition of Songs of Praise.

Not one to be left out of a panic about Political Correctness, Melanie Phillips parps, "Apparently, [the BBC] has decided that the terms AD and BC (Anno Domini, or the Year of Our Lord, and Before Christ) must be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era."

Now, to be fair to Melanie, she follows this up with, "Actually, this edict seems to have been laid down merely by some obscure tributary of the BBC website rather than from on high."

But to be fair to reality, having this sentence follow a definite claim about the BBC deciding things 'must be replaced' could easily lead the reader to infer that because of an edict from an obscure tributary of its website, the BBC has decided abbreviations across the board must be replaced.

Plus, a million extra points to Melanie for laughably claiming that, "Christmas has been renamed in various places ‘Winterval’." (In case any of you were wondering, it hasn't. Winterval was an ill thought out marketing exercise used for only two years over a decade ago in only one place, which had Christmas celebrations and everything.** You can see a poster from Winterval here, which clearly has the word 'Christmas' in very big letters at the top).

Then, predictably, Richard Littlejohn falls for the new myth hook, line and sinker. This should be no surprise, coming as it does from the man who thought a dog was a woman, 'The Hopscotch Centre' for Asian women exists to teach them hopscotch and that phoenetic spellings of words he doesn't like are hee-lair-ee-yuss. Don't panic!

But these are just tabloid opinion pieces. As the PCC has pointed out in response to a couple of complaints about columns from Phillips and Littlejohn, people will apparently know all this stuff is opinion and not believe it to be true. For people to start thinking it might be true, you'd need the claim to start appearing in news stories.

So well done Steve Doughty for his second mention in the 5cc tabloid bullshit awards, with 'The make-up of modern Britain: 70% of us claim to be Christians... and only 1.5% are gay', saying:
The finding that the nation remains overwhelmingly Christian comes days after it emerged that BBC programme-makers have been put under pressure to stop describing dates as BC or AD.
Instead, they have been told to use the non-Christian alternatives Before Common Era and Common Era.
Doughty's article lacks even the final sentence clarification from Hastings' original outraged headline story. Job done. Myth successfully planted in the news.

The new myth, like so many before it, has spread across the right-wing press to the Express, the Telegraph and even to London's bumbling Mayor.

The difference is that we've watched this one from the beginning. The BBC have explained the truth several times. The original story from the Mail even includes the true explanation at the bottom - but Western civilisation is still under threat from a Marxist plot.

Given that this whole thing has sprung from outrage at the BBC allowing its editors to say what they like instead of dictating that they must use the Mail and its commentators' preferred terms, I'd like to bring this to a close by quoting these words:
But then, political correctness is all about dictating what people are permitted or forbidden to say as a way of controlling and reshaping a society and its values.
Quite.

That's it. Everyone mentioned in this email, including the editors of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline's RightMinds section can now count one monthly award for themselves, which becomes important at the end of the year when I award the winner of the most the 5cc tabloid bullshitter of the year award. Paul Dacre, Richard Littlejohn and Steve Doughty now have two each, so it's all to play for.

As ever, I will be reproducing this at www.fivechinesecrackers.com, and you are all warmly invited to reply to this email with an acceptance comment or some sort of attempt at a rebuttal (sending an email rather than commenting on the blog post will let me know it's you). No winners have ever replied yet, exhibiting uncharacteristic coyness for people who often seem so shouty and strident. Why not be the first? Give us all a laugh.

Cheers then,

5cc

*I might have imagined some of what happened in this timeline, much like Richard Littlejohn imagines the contents of his column, but with less of an obsession with Minder, gayness and bins.

**Angry Mob has an excellent history of how this particular PC Gone Mad Myth evolved here.

So, that's it for another month. A massive, massive thank you to MacGuffin at TabloidWatch for his coverage of this new myth, which helped me no end in pulling this together.

I do hope you're enjoying these awards - they're always the most popular on the site unless one of my tweets gets RTed by someone good. They're quite fun to write, so to be fair I'd do them anyway. They've snowballed a bit from what I originally intended, which was to pick the one most rubbish story from the month, but there is a lot of tabloid bullshit out there.

Tune in at the end of next month for October's awards, which will mark the first anniversary of the first award, won by Jack Doyle - also a favourite to win the end of the year award.

Thanks for keeping on coming back. Reward yourself with this blog's official theme tune.

Now get out of my house!

Never mind Nicholas Cage, John Travolta and Keanu Reeves as vampires - what about this guy?

2011-09-29T13:21:00.002+01:00

There's a bit of a meme going around the internet at the moment because some old photos and a painting have surfaced of people who look a little bit like some celebrities so they must be vampires or something. Here they are:

Vampires? Via

Vampire? Via

The one thing wrong with this theory is that the photos don't look that much like the celebrities they're supposed to*. As far as I'm aware, Nicholas Cage doesn't have a bent chin and enormous left ear, the painting could be Johnny Depp as easily as Keanu and the John Travolta one...well, I'll give you that one. It does look a bit like Travolta. Maybe it's something to do whith thetoos and Xena or some other kind of Scientology cobblers about curing stress by holding coke cans or something.

But I came across another quite uncanny picture via @waxnip on Twitter, who'd found an amusing picture of some street urchins. Here it is:

Via (Click to embiggenize)

Now look at the guy on the left. Here he is in close up:

Hur hyah hyah hyah hyah!

Compare:

"I vaant to suuck your bluud! Hur hyah hyah hyah hyah!"

Was Sid James' 'death' not final? How many times has he 'died'? Has Sid James carried on again?

Big hat tip to @waxnip for that one.

*Oh, alright, that's the second thing wrong with the theory, next to the fact that there are no vampires and life isn't a chuffing Twilight novel, no matter how much you fancy the bloke with the head from the films.

The Mail joins the Brigade

2011-09-25T16:06:00.002+01:00

Except, no it doesn't.

It's been a good week, this week, for the Mail forgetting itself and calling for the things it hates in its ridiculously ill thought out panics.

Earlier in the week, the papers were up in arms about the scandal of cage fighting children. Except the children involved were doing something far less scary than 'cage fighting'. 'Where was their headgear?' asked the knee-jerkers, without being aware that the kids were taking part in a bout where punching and kicking were disallowed, punishable by disqualification.*

This wasn't good enough for top Mail blowhard, James Slack, who points out in his soberly headlined 'We have laws to protect dogs, but not our children':

The organisers would counter that, unlike adult cage-fighting contestants, the children are not allowed to punch, kick, knee or elbow each other during the competitions.

But the rules are almost inevitably broken, and it’s unsurprising to hear the British Medical Association warning of the dangers of brain injury – or worse.

So one Mail commentator outs himself as a member of the Elf n Safety Brigade, calling for the mandatory wearing of headgear for children just in case they break rules and hit one another.

I look forward to Mail outrage at the sight of kids not wearing headgear to play football, kiss chase and conkers.

Today's Mail on Sunday headline shouts "BBC TURNS ITS BACK ON YEAR OF OUR LORD", above a story that closes with:

The BBC said last night: 'The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems.

'Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams.'

So, the Mail is actually arguing against BBC editors being allowed to describe things as they want, and presumably want them to be made to use one permitted term.

Welcome to the PC and Elf n safety Gone Mad Brigades, the Mail. You'll get your ID cards in the post.

*I've had a frustrating exchange in the comments to Steve Baxter's post on the issue, with someone arguing entirely from their imagination. Fun fun fun.

Won't somebody think of the cage fighting children?

2011-09-22T23:32:00.000+01:00

JUDO CHOP! Lyoto Machida executing
the sort of move that today's 'cage fighting
kids' weren't allowed to.

This morning, sitting with a barely surpressed scowl on the East London Line to work, I looked up from my phone and caught a flash of the Metro in the hands of the person sitting opposite me. The headline yelled something about CAGE FIGHTING KIDS alongside a picture of two boys fighting in a cage. "Meh," I thought, a split second after being shocked at the lack of gloves and headgear. "Bet they weren't allowed to hit each other and were just wrestling."

Wouldn't you know it, I got to work and fired up the PC to find out I was right. Yay me. After wading through hundreds of words of breathless outrage on the Daily Mirror site, I finally got to the couple of paragraphs at the bottom of their main article that had been written by someone who actually knows about mixed martial arts to find that the kids involved in the mini-moral panic this morning weren't actually doing what most people think of as cage fighting. This is not much of a surprise. Cage fighting isn't what most people think of as cage fighting.

The children were engaged in a grappling bout, probably using techniques from wrestling, judo and Brazillian jiu-jutsu with strict rules and no striking allowed. It was a demonstration match, meaning that there was no prize for the winner. This sort of thing goes on all the time with kids wearing their gis in sports centres up and down the country to the consternation of nobody.

This is not to dismiss the whole thing as rubbish though. There were some things wrong with what happened.

Rosi Sexton, an actual living, breathing cage fighter who knows one of the boys and his family well admits there was some confusion over the rules resulting in things being a little rougher than usual.

Chris Granet (in that bit tucked away at the bottom of the Mirror's coverage) points out that the rules permitted some locks that can potentially lead to long-term damage, and also raises the point that headgear of the sort worn by American high school wrestlers wear to protect against cauliflower ears should have been used.

In the scheme of things, these are pretty minor compared to the idea of children actually 'cage fighting'. What probably isn't is that the bout should never have taken place in the evening in a bar with ring card girls in front of an audience of adults. This is what stops everything being about how children compete in martial arts and make it about creating a spectacle for grown-ups - but of course this is easy to say in hindsight.

As a sport for adults, mixed martial arts is relatively new and constantly growing. Contrary to its reputation for having no rules and being 'no holds barred', there are plenty of rules that have been developed since the first Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1991, and these vary between different leagues. You could argue that some of these are safer than boxing.

But it looks brutal. Knees and elbows and thin gloves mean fighters are more likely to get cut, and bleeding looks scary. Watching people punch an opponent who is on the floor looks barbaric. The cage itself conjures up images of fighters being captive, made to keep fighting against their will, although it is in fact used because fighters rolling around, grappling and throwing can easily fall out of a traditional ring.

Given MMA's brutal appearance and reputation, any association with children is bound to cause outrage, but children train and compete in all its constituent parts all the time without much concern. For the last few decades, any number of local sports centres has played host to children training and competing in karate, judo, tae kwon do, Japanese ju-jitsu (the Brazillian variant is relatively new) and any number of other martial arts.

The children in today's story were only competing in one of MMA's constituent parts, possibly even one of the safest, since they weren't allowed to hit each other. Of course we should be concerned with the safety of children, and we should do our utmost to ensure that any children who train in any of the martial arts or combat sports can do so without getting hurt.

This might even involve stopping children from being able to compete, and only allowing them to train and spar until they're a certain age. That's certainly open for debate. But we shouldn't be jerking our knees at the sight of a poorly thought out event that might seem a lot more brutal at first glance than it actually was.

Plus, of course, the emphasis in children taking part in these activities should be the children learning and having fun - not in creating entertainment for adults.

Steve Baxter makes many of the same points, probably better, in 'Cage fighting kids? The real problem is the knee-jerk reaction'. I didn't copy his homework, honest.

You should be allowed to brutally kill anyone you like, what are you, communist or something?

2011-09-21T17:58:00.000+01:00

There aren't a lot of things to love about reading the right wing press and the assorted blogs that orbit around it, but one of the the few is the sight of grown adults convinced that life in 21st Century UK is exactly like a dodgy 80s film set in the Bronx, that given half the chance they'd be as badass as Snake Plissken, John Rambo and the Punisher all rolled into one bladed, spiky ball of tough-guy awesomeness and the only thing that's stopping them taking out the trash is the lily-livered liberal laws that favour criminals.

In fact, the only thing that comes close to being as good is watching the logical contortions they have to go through to maintain the illusion.

Usually, you get outbursts of armchair-Plisskenism after some tory MP or other pretends we're not allowed to defend ourselves in our own homes, which of course we already are. Clang clang clang, goes Pavlov's bell. "Wuurgh! The law loves criminals and hates the victims! What about my rights? If anyone touches my kids I swear I'll do time!" goes every blowhard in the country.

The last big outburst I can remember came just before the last election, when David Cameron's advisors made him push a matchstick between his teeth, glare a steely-eyed thousand yard stare and growl, "The moment a burglar steps over your threshold and invades your property, with all the threat that gives to you, your family and your livelihood, I think they leave their human rights outside. Crime is a disease. I'm the cure."*

They backed this up by pretending that changing the word 'unreasonable' to 'grossly disproportionate' in a law would make any difference to anything, ever.

Rubbish, right? But it worked! Any suggestion that the law already allows you to defend yourself, backed up with a list of cases where people have killed burglars and been acquitted can be successfully countered with Tony Martin. Or maybe Munir Hussain.

You can't be allowed to defend yourself in your own home because this one guy chased a man out of his house and called his mates to come and beat him with a cricket bat and an iron bar until he was brain damaged and the cricket bat broke, and the man doing the beating ended up going to prison. (And then being let out on appeal - but let's forget that bit). Imagine that!

In the last couple of days, there's been a bit of tabloid outrage over the arrest of Vincent Cooke, who allegedly stabbed an intruder to death at the weekend. It's been a little bit muted because so far there's only been an arrest, but the news has still managed to make the front pages on the strength of the arrest rather than the killing.

Even so, the Sun, which is usually the worst for arguing in favour of being able to stab the shit out of anyone who acts shiftily within a three mile radius of your house, was careful in its coverage to emphasise that he's only been arrested, and two other men who'd been arrested for something similar in recent months had been acquitted on self-defence grounds.

This hasn't stopped a couple of commentators jumping the gun and displaying the 'but Tony Martin' defence of the idea we're not allowed to fight back against burglars, but one has included an interesting new twist.

Steve Doughty, of '5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award' fame has cropped up at the Mail's swanky new blog section, 'Right Minds' with 'Victims should be allowed to fight back against burglars'. So far so meh.

But what's new is that Doughty has looked at the examples the Sun included in its coverage - of the sort that you could have turned up at any time in the last few decades - and used them as evidence that it is okay to defend yourself against burglars now, but in the old days you couldn't, because Tony Martin. It's amazing.

Creative as it is, it doesn't stand up to five minutes' scrutiny. The reason Martin's case ended up the way it did is because it was complicated. Martin had shot and killed a sixteen year old in the back as he was running away. He did this with a shotgun he owned illegally, since his licence had been revoked after he shot at a motorist. The two burglars he shot apparently thought there was no-one home, and were unarmed as far as I can tell. Martin left the bleeding youth to die.

The two other cases Doughty quotes are way more straightforward. One involves a break-in by someone armed with a machete, and the other involves five men armed with guns and a knife trying to rob a shop. These sorts of cases would always have ended up with an acquittal, but if you'd have pointed out this sort of case before the election to show you are allowed to defend yourself, you'd have been met with the 'you're so not, because Tony Martin' defence.

Doughty's reasoning for the pretend change is that perhaps people were so outraged by the Tony Martin case that the judiciary had to take notice. Ha ha. At least his conclusion wasn't that you can now defend yourself in your home because of David Cameron.

The right wing blogs can usually be relied on for more of a stereotypical knee-jerk reaction to things when even the press is being a teensy bit more circumspect than usual, and Donal Blaney doesn't disappoint in 'Dead men tell no tales' at Dale & co.** eschewing the mention of the guys who've been recently acquitted.

Apparently Tony Martin did what a lot of people wish they'd do if they were burgled. I don't know about you, but I think I'd pass on the whole shooting an unarmed, fleeing sixteen year old in the back with an illegally owned shotgun as the result of a paranoid personality disorder thing. Maybe that's just me.

In among the run of the mill "the-law-favours-the-guilty-over-the-innocent" hilarity and the quoting of Cameron's empty macho posturing you'd expect from this sort of thing, there is a little claim that needs a bit of unpicking. It's this:

There's a reason home invasions are less common in states where homeowners make maximum use of their Second Amendment rights.

Really? This is likely to be purest hogwash. 'Home invasion' is not a legally defined federal offence in the States, so any comparison of rates will be based on something else. Figures about 'home invasions' you find on the internet can often be rubbish.

I have never seen figures that compare states in the US for this sort of thing, and can't find any.*** I did ask in the comments of his piece and on the twitter just in case there actually were some, but wouldn't you know it, people seem to be too busy to reply.

The closest I've ever come is "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control" by Gary Kleck, a favourite among pro-gun people, in which he compares the rates of burglary in occupied homes from the US, the Netherlands, Canada and the UK.

A few years ago, I wasted a few afternoons reading the study in the British Library and emailing the Home Office and the US Bureau of Justice Statistics only to find out that not only is it rubbish on many, many levels, but people often use it to prove something it doesn't anyway. That 'something' would be anything about 'home invasions'.

Kleck's figures are from the US National Crime Victim Survey's data on burglaries with a household member present. Trouble is, any burglary that results in face to face contact with the intruder is no longer classified as a burglary but a robbery (or whatever crime results from that), so even if Blaney isn't regurgitating some vaguely remembered, well-thumbed claims about Kleck's study that have been passed around and changed urban-legend-stylee over the years, if what he's talking about is based on the US National Crime Survey and burglaries it's useless.

Here's the thing. The reason people who kill or seriously injure burglars or robbers get arrested has precisely bugger all to do with loving the baddies and hating the goodies or PC Gawn Mad. As Blaney's own headline points out, dead men can't tell their tale - they can't let us know how they died. Police arrest people because they need to find out what happened and the person holding the knife might not be telling the truth.****

Blaney, Doughty and much of the rest of the right wing press have jumped to the conclusion that the man who died was a burglar who broke into Vincent Cooke's house armed with a knife in order to rob or do harm, and Cooke was defending himself, his family and his property. This is probably true, but how much more rubbish would the police be if they made the same assumptions when they turned up at a crime scene?

"Honest officer, he broke in and I was in fear for my life - I totally didn't invite him round, stab him several times in the neck and then put his fingerprints on a knife and smash a window. Why yes, I would like a cup of tea thanks." Case closed.

"Absolutely not, officer. I definitely didn't talk him into putting down his knife and then batter him to death with a claw hammer fifteen minutes after he'd calmed down. Two sugars, thanks. " Case closed.

"Why, no officer, I've never seen him before and he totally didn't break in to get the stuff back I nicked from him in a feud and I swear I didn't take advantage of the fact that you no longer arrest people for killing burglars by shooting him in the back. I'll just be loading up the car as you make your enquiries. Ooh yes, a biscuit would be nice." Case closed.

The only way Vincent Cooke or anyone like him will end up in prison is if something more is going on than meets the eye. It's always been the case. Don't believe people who tell you there's been some sort of change, don't believe people who tell you you're not allowed to defend yourself in your own home because this one bloke ended up in prison for shooting a kid in the back with an illegally owned gun while he was running away and leaving him to die.

And just imagine how easy it would be to plan a murder and escape if the police suddenly stopped arresting people for killing burglars. Times that by a gazillion to find out how much easier it would be if a 'burglar' really did forefeit all their rights when they break into your house and you were allowed to kill them even if you weren't in any immediate danger.

"Why yes, officer. I know he's gaffer-taped to a chair and there are bloody pliers on the table next to his ears, and I know it looks like he might have been undergoing some sort of mob-style interrogation when he died of blood loss but look! A broken window! He was a burglar! Yes, I would like help loading my wordly possessions into this 4X4, thank you."

That you need to explain this stuff to grown adults is enough to make you feel like a reception-class teacher. Next week from the pundits, 'Now we're not even allowed to eat glue'. Sheesh.

*I added the last bits myself. I stole them from 'Cobra'. Ho ho.
**My suggestion for a name for that site was way, way better.

***Please put a link in the comments if you've ever seen one. I'd be surprised if it isn't balls.
****I learned about how murderers might lie from Columbo, and because it's, like, all obvious and that. Duh.
Anyone interested in watching all of 1990: The Bronx Warriors (and why wouldn't you be?) it's here on YouTube.

Tabloid bullshit of the month award - August 2011

2011-09-04T12:49:00.001+01:00

It's here! It's great! It's late! Ha haah!

It's the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for August ought eleven! There's a line of them medieval blokes with long trumpets that have coats of arms hanging off them tooting out a fanfare. In my mind. And yours too now, because I put them there with the magic of words.

August hasn't been anywhere near as eventful as July in the sulphurous netherworld that is the tabloid press. No papers shut down, some people arrested, but not very high profile. No excellent performances by top cops (as the Sun would call them - see, I pay attention) in front of Committees.

What we have had, though, is the award very, very nearly being won by our very own Prime Minister, David Shinyface. Very nearly.

Following on from his awful, tabloid-inspired, mendacious speech about immigration, Shinyface decided to get all Charles Bronson and tough about Human Rights in the Daily Express. That's right. Our Prime Minister elected to show what he's learned about the honesty of tabloids from the News of the World phone hacking scandal by having an article published in a newspaper owned by a pornographer who removed it from the Press Complaints Commission so it doesn't have to face regulation. Even the scant regulation of the PCC, which covers about as much as a porn star's lingerie put through a boil wash. This means the paper is free to do what a free press does best. Lie about Muslims, the EU and the Human Rights Act. Excellent choice, Mr Shinyface. Perfectly shows the utter contempt you hold for the general public, you bloat-faced pantomime baddie.

But this month I had to ignore the Prime Minister in favour of an absolute sterling example of one of the things the tabloids are excellent at, the sort of story synonymous with the red-tops (and the papers that think they're not red-tops). We're talking about the tabloid hatchet-job, my friends. Early this month, you may remember, the Daily Mirror settled its crosshairs on Steve Wright and BOOM! blew him away with the buckshot of his own depravity.

The winner is 'Steve Wright: inside the weird world of the Radio 2 legend', by Ryan Parry.

Here's the email:

Dear Mr Parry,

You know that bit in 'Footloose' where Kevin Bacon charges around a deserted warehouse jumping about and whirling and kicking up his legs like someone's punted him squarely in the anus? You might want to start doing that now, and doing it for joy! You've won the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for August 2011! Kick off your Sunday shoes, my friend.

You already know what you've won for, I bet. If you don't, and the man who wrote 'Steve Wright: inside the weird world of the Radio 2 legend' is sitting there wondering what he might be getting a bullshit award for, you probably need to book some appointments with someone. Here's why you won (I hope you've already said this to yourself over and again in shame as you struggle to sleep, shivering):

Imagine someone in radio listening to other people's shows to pick up ideas. Why, it's almost as if this would be entirely normal behaviour for someone who works in bloody radio, but you've seen through the veneer of totally banal normality to expose the unspeakable evil behind a man just getting on with his job.
"For breakfast, he usually asks for poached or scrambled eggs on brown toast from a restaurant called Avelli’s, porridge from Make Mine or Eat, a small bacon or sausage butty with ketchup from Eat and a skinny latte with one sweetener." The bastard! Eggs? For breakfast? He's worse than Fred West!
As if having eggs or porridge for breakfast wasn't enough, this depraved, thoroughly evil man has his lunch at 1.30. Or 'lunchtime' as it's often known. I, for one, have never heard the like. I hope our top psychologists are coming up with a suitable treatment for such inhuman, despicable behaviour.
Wait, what? On Fridays he often goes to visit his mum? Oh my god, hanging would be too good for this monster! I mean - having eggs for breakfast and eating lunch at lunchtime you can almost understand, but visiting your mother? I think I've just been a bit sick in my mouth.
If you're trying to do a tabloid hatchet-job and you can't dig up anything worse than 'he likes eating', you should probably, you know, just stop. You might make yourself look stupid. Well, stupid or weirder than the person you're trying to hatchet.
Keep it up though! It's this sort of thing that keeps tabloid journalists at the bottom of the list of the most trusted professions, below estate agents, carnies and serial killers.

I will be publishing this email over at www.fivechinesecrackers.com. As ever, you are more than welcome to have a reply published by simply replying to this email. You're actually encouraged. I've been sending out this award for nearly a year now, and not a single recipient has ever had the courage to respond. It's like you guys prefer skulking in the shadows or something. I bet you all have your lunch at lunchtime as well, you sick bastards.

You're also in with a chance to win the 5cc tabloid bullshitter of the year award, which I'll be giving to the hack who's won most monthly awards by the end of the year. If you're going to make an effort to win, please don't do it by creepily attacking people for going about their business. It's just not nice.

Cheers then!

5cc

Okay, you people. That's it for August. Tune in at the end of September for the next one. If I have a month as busy as August it might be late again, but never mind. It's not like I'm eating eggs for breakfast or anything evil like that.

More on riots, moral panic and black people

2011-08-17T14:42:00.006+01:00

Teddy boys! Who is responsible for this outrage?

Following on from my last post 'Should we be scared of black culture's influence on white kids?', here's an excellent article in the Economist about how all the things we're hearing in connection with last week's riots are hardly new, with quotes from older reactions to criminal youth and rioting: 'We have been here before'.

Here are the best ones about the topic of being scared of black people:

Brixton is the iceberg tip of a crisis of ethnic criminality which is not Britain's fault — except in the sense that her rulers quite unneccessarily imported it.
Sunday Telegraph, November 29th, 1981

It's the desire to be able to give this kind of reaction that led to some people deciding on not very much evidence that the white people rioting last week were 'wiggers' or somehow had become black.

It is deplorable. It is tribal. And it is from America. It follows rag-time, blues, dixie, hot cha-cha and the boogie-woogie, which surely originated in the jungle. We sometimes wonder whether this is the negro's revenge.
Daily Mail front page story, 'Rock 'n Roll babies', 1956

And, from the Economist article, concerning a House of Commons debate from 1842:

Still, at least no Jamaican patois, eh? Ah no, the same Commons debate saw an MP denouncing parts of the country suffering a "preposterous epidemic of a hybrid negro song".

That's 1842, my friends.

So, none of this stuff is new at all. When sweating nervously and worrying about what makes young people and the working classes so very violent and rebellious, some will always choose some outside scapegoat to absolve us of the responsibility for trying to see what we might be doing to make some people so angry, or face up to the possibility that this might just happen from time to time.

Sometimes that's a genre of music, or a new technological advancement that poor people's tiny little minds are too fragile to be able to deal with, and sometimes it's black people. Even when it's white people misbehaving.

And while I'm making up posts mainly of great stuff written by other people, here's a point made by Iain in the comments to my last post about kids speaking in 'Jamaican Patois' that I wish I'd made myself:

The children who grew up in inner London in the 1960s and 70s didn't speak the "gaw blimey apples and pears" Cockney of their grandparents; they developed a slang and accent which grew into what's now described as Estuary English. That in turn is being replaced in urban London by an accent derived from the background of those urban Londoners. Not just Jamaican influences, but also that from urban USA, from the Indian subcontinent, and also from more traditional London. Even the infamous case of saying "innit" at the end of every sentence is derived from a similar construction in Hindi.

In all this worry about kids speaking in Jamaican patois, we seem to have forgotten that it's not even Jamaican bloody patois. It's something with lots of influences.

Go and have a look at the full Economist article. Go on! Go! It's better than anything you'll read here.

Should we be scared of black culture's influence on white kids?

2011-08-15T23:47:00.002+01:00

What I want I take/What I don't I break/And I don't want you/With a flick of my knife/I can change your life/There's nothin' you can do
...

What I want I stash/What I don't I smash/And you're on my list/Dead or alive/I got a .45/And I never miss - The music destroying our youth

Alongside trying desperately to make David Starkey's remarks on last Friday's Newsnight appear innocuous and not racist, his apologists seem to be telling us that he raised a serious issue that must be addressed: there is a criminal sub-culture that originated in the black community, and white kids are now involved in it. Oh noes! We must address this now that white kids are joining in!

Really?

First of all, just to get this out of the way before we go on, we have no idea what sort of music the people rioting last week listened to. Nobody was going round with a clipboard, taking a survey.

Young people in the UK, black, Asian and white, listen to all sorts of different kinds of music and are parts of all sorts of different overlapping cliques. Hip-Hop is just one of many musical genres kids might dip into, along with things like R&B, that crappy dance music they always play in my bloody gym and so on.

To assume that the white kids rioting last week were a bunch of mini Ali G's, you have to adopt a kind of circular argument, starting with your conclusion.

But let's leave the riots aside for a minute, since this is an important issue and we cannot let political correctness get in the way of us discussing it. Should we be worried about white working class kids being subsumed by black culture and therefore becoming violent?

Probably not, eh?

People have wrung their hands at what it is that makes young people, especially young working class people, oh-so-violent and rebellious for at least as long as humans have been on the planet. In the last couple of decades this has ended up being expressed as a moral panic about anything that's remotely new, music or otherwise, and people decide that's to blame. It could be heavy metal, punk, rock and roll, video nasties, video games, Dungeons and Dragons, the internet and on and on and on. In the 1950s some numpty in the States decided it was comic books.

But it seems that every generation, there's a criminal youth subculture that should make us noisily defecate at the mere sight of a young person, often based around a musical scene. Teddy boys, mods and rockers, punks, metallers. Even new romantics, although the fear there wasn't so much that they were criminal and violent, and more that they might be gay.

Oh-so-unhealthy lyrics about violence and materialism and tunes that demean women are not exclusive to black culture, or even particularly new. When I was a teenager, my record collection was filled with swaggering garbage about battering people to death with hammers. In the 70s, Elton bloody John sang about how brilliant it is to have a fight on a Saturday.

Jesus, in the 80s these scary bruisers had a hit about big talk being cheap talk unless you're backing it up and one called 'Dirty, Rotten, Filthy, Stinking Rich':

Nothing says 'tough' like a blowdried poodle perm.

Oh, and they also sang 'Cherry Pie'. About shagging. But with gangsta rap, something new happened (or at least, something old could be recycled). Now we can blame things on black people. If only we could sort out the problems inherent in black culture, white kids would not be influenced to be violent and rebellious.

Please.

But it's not just music. There's a whole subculture of glorifying crime and violence these kids are part of. A whole black subculture. You can tell from the accents and slang of white kids who are becoming black. Just listen to them! This is new, right?

Not really. Adults have been worried about and threatened by young people's slang for at least as long as they've been worried about what makes young people so violent and rebellious.

Anthony Burgess wrote 'A Clockwork Orange' in 1962, an expression of fear of feral, violent youths, written in their initially almost indecipherable slang of English portmanteau words mixed with words from Eastern European languages. There's a cracking scene towards the end of the book where Alex, the violent young narrator, is horrified to encounter a younger person speaking in a slang he doesn't quite get. People were nervous about how they couldn't understand young people and why they were so violent and lawless forty years ago.

Before the Windrush even landed on these shores, working class people in London used rhyming slang, which was possibly invented to fool detectives who were listening in on you creating your nefarious criminal plans. For a hundred years, white working class people in London spoke in a way that was influenced by criminality.

Something I can remember from when I was a kid are the letters sent to 'Points of View' by pearl-clutching posh parents, complaining that 'Grange Hill' was influencing their children to speak like working class people. Oh, the horror!

But what's new? Some youths are talking in a way that is influenced by black people. If only our white kids weren't pretending to be black, they'd be as well spoken as they would be well behaved.

That's, like, well rubbish and that innit?

Worrying about violent kids, their scary influences and the way they speak is hardly new or even specifically linked to black culture. But what about glorifying criminals and gangs? That's new, right? That's unique to black culture?

In 2000 and 2007, thousands of people lined the streets of the East End to watch two funeral processions, of gangsters who had come to be idolised. These were the funerals of the infamous black gangsters of the 60s, the Kray twins. Oh wait, they weren't black. Neither were most of the people lining the streets.

Go and look at the 'true crime' section in your local bookshop and check out all the books with titles like "Geezer!", "Hard Man!" and "Smash your face in!" Are these about black guys?

For decades and decades, Hollywood pumped out movie after movie about gangsters, from Jimmy Cagney to Marlon Brando. In fact, I saw 'New Jack City' in a Film Studies class, where we examined how it followed the same patterns and tropes as earlier gangster films despite it being unusual (at the time) because it was about black people.

In 1988 there was a panic about Prince Charles attending the premiere of 'Buster', because it might glorify criminals and influence our kids.

In England, our greatest folk hero is a bloody criminal. As we know him, Robin Hood might well be committing bad acts for the greater good, but that wasn't necessarily evident in the early ballads where he first appeared. There's one where he robs and murders a Friar, and murders his page boy so as not to leave witnesses. Nice. Ballads glorifying child murderers from the 13th century.

'Romeo and Juliet' is heavy on the gang violence theme. That's from the olden days.

None of this is new or different. When it comes to being frightened for, and frightened of youth, adults have always blamed some sort of subculture. We've always blamed music. We've always been scared of how young people speak. We've always wrung our hands about the glorification of crime. We've even always glorified bloody crime and gangs, from Dick Turpin to 'Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels'.

Now, this is not to say that there isn't a problem with gang culture and violence in inner-cities. It's also not to say that the violence isn't more serious than it was a few decades ago, as it certainly seems to be.

Is this a problem within the black community? You can't ignore the stats for gun and knife crime in London - but what you can do is look to see if violent gang culture is peculiar to the black community. As has been raised several times in this debate, violent gangs have existed up in the whiter parts of Glasgow since, like, forever. Nobody asks what it is about white culture that produces those gangs.

If you really want to get to the bottom of why violent gang culture exists, you really need to look at what's the same about gangs in different areas, not what's different. And if you want to know what drives black gang culture specifically, you look at the practical things that influence it - the availability of drugs, the ease of acquiring guns. Things I don't know much about. You don't look at the bloody music and accents.

Violent Hip-Hop lyrics do not spring from a vacuum. Listening to some people in the last few days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that everything was rosy and lovely and tea and crumpets and then suddenly, boom! Black people suddenly with no outside influences started producing violent and materialistic music that swept our helpless youth along in an amoral frenzy. But, of course, that music and those lyrics are produced as a reaction to something.

And, going back to the riots, perhaps the thing that led to the creation and rise in popularity of some Hip-Hop is the same thing that led people to mindlessly loot instead of target civic buildings. Hip-Hop is not the only place you see encouragement to blindly consume. Hip-Hop is not the only place where what products you buy are seen as status symbols. It is a product of the environment in which those things exist.

And mindless consumption and the measurement of self worth by how many new, shiny products we own that are more expensive than our neighbours' is not something society took from black culture. Even a violent and criminal one.

Now, for those of you who like their gangsta rap, here's a live performance of the lyrics I quoted at the beginning of this post. You might not have heard of it. It's quite new:

David Starkey's not being racist, but...oh, wait a minute.

2011-08-13T18:21:00.005+01:00

It always goes the same way. Someone high profile says something racist, they get called out on it, and then people swarm to defend them because whatever they said wasn't racist after all. Or at least, that's what they claim.

The defences usually go the same way too. "What's so racist about..." followed by the most sanitised version of whatever was said. We mustn't look at the actual words that came out of the accused's mouth, but the most charitable interpretation of what they might have meant. It's kind of a reverse strawman. In it's purest form, I suppose, is the old, "you can't even talk about immigration without being called racist," deal. You can easily talk about immigration without being called racist. You just have to not say anything that might be considered racist. It's not difficult.

We're seeing this again with David Starkey's appearance on Newsnight last night, in which he said Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech was right, that 'the whites have become black' and that if you heard David Lammy MP, a successful black man, without seeing him you'd think he was white. Even the Daily Mail isn't on his side on this one.

In the early hours of this morning, after watching Starkey's performance, I tweeted my surprise that he got such an easy ride after saying the most racist thing I'd seen on TV in ages.* I then got a reply from @mickeyfree53 telling me to watch the show again, assuring me nothing racist was said. This was odd since you know, quite a lot was. A bit later, he informed me that Starkey hadn't said much of any significance except that 'some whites try to imitate blacks in terms of accent'. Seems it wasn't me who needed to watch again.

Professional Gumby Toby Young has popped up in his Telegraph blog to make the same sort of argument. I'm going to go through it so I don't end up just shouting 'racist' without explanation. It's a bit crazy to have to do this in the 21st century, but I guess those are the rules.

After mentioning something that wasn't racist, Young quotes Starkey saying Enoch Powell was right and opens his defence with this wonderful gambit:

Now, that statement is vintage Starkey. He almost says something inflammatory – “Enoch Powell was absolutely right” – but, after pausing for a nano-second, pulls back from the brink - "in one sense". [...] So it’s difficult to say which parts of the Rivers of Blood speech he was agreeing with.

Yes, very difficult. I wonder exactly what part of a speech about how allowing the immigration of black people will lead to civil unrest Starkey meant in a discussion about the causes of civil unrest. What could he have been talking about when he said Powell wrong in that the violence wasn't inter-communal because the whites have become black? If only there was some clue in the entire point of the speech, the entire point of the discussion he was involved in and the words he actually said with his mouth.

Having successfully dispatched with one of the most contentious things Starkey said by pretending what he was referring to is a mystery and declaring it not 'the particularly controversial bit' anyway, Young goes on to quote this bit of what Starkey said:

What’s happened is that a substantial section of the Chavs that you wrote about have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together, this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that’s been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.

Here's why that's not racist:

But I’m not sure Starkey was guilty of racism which, according to the OED, is defined as “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race , especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races”.

Ah. So if i call a black guy a 'dirty n*gger' to his face, or turn down a black job applicant on the grounds that 'black people can be lazy', I'm not racist because I haven't stated a belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities or qualities specific to that race. Something tells me something's up with this particular definition.

Luckily though, there's a second definition in Young's link that he mysteriously decides not to quote, which goes, "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior". Does what Starkey said fit this definition?

Let's see. He's defined a particular culture as 'black' even though he's talking about white people being part of it. He even goes so far as to say that white people who are part of the culture 'become black'. He's pre-judging people who behave a certain negative way as being black, even if they're white. I think this fits pretty well actually.

Young deals with this by saying, "Starkey wasn’t talking about black culture in general, but, as he was anxious to point out, a “particular form” of black culture," and follows with my favourite bit of this defence:

In addition, Starkey wasn’t linking this sub-culture to people of just one skin colour, but condemning working class white people – “Chavs,” as he put it – who embraced it as well.

Mysteriously, he leaves out exactly how Starkey condemns the working class white people who embrace this sub culture. As you probably know already because I've said it a few times by now, he condemned them by saying they had 'become black'.

Now, call me old fashioned, but I think that condemning someone by saying they've become black isn't the best evidence to use to show a person isn't saying anything racist.

Here's how Young deals with what I think was possibly the worst bit of what Starkey said. This one's a doozy:

He then went on to make an almost equally controversial observation about the Labour MP for Tottenham. “Listen to David Lammy, an archetypical successful black man,” he said. “If you turned the screen off so you were listening to him on radio you’d think he was white.”

But this is apparently okay. It's fine to say white people who are part of a negative culture have 'become black' and that if you never saw him, you'd assume a successful black man was white. That's because:

...he was simply reiterating the point that he wasn’t condemning African-Caribbean men per se. On the contrary, he was condemning a particular sub-culture, one that may have originated in parts of the African-Caribbean community, but which has now been taken up by some white people as well.

So, he was simply reiterating that he wasn't condemning African-Caribbean men, per se. By saying that he assumes someone who doesn't take up a 'particular sub-culture' is white.

Here's the definition of 'racist' from the dictionary Young used earlier:

having or showing the belief that a particular race is superior to another

Do you think saying that being part of a particular negative, criminal subculture makes you black even if you're white fits that bill? What about when that's followed up by saying if you're not obviously part of that subculture, if you're successful, he'll assume you're white, even if you're black? Does this fit? I think so.

Young finishes with:

No doubt there’ll be people who take issue with this analysis. They’ll point out that Starkey’s “body language” and his “tone” were somehow racist. Perhaps they’ll even dig up other things Starkey has said. But if we confine ourselves to just those things he said on Newsnight last night, he wasn’t guilty of racism.

I'm afraid this is absolutely wrong. You only need the words he actually said. You have to leave some of those out and stick like a limpet to one particular definition of racism to make that conclusion work.

To recap, here's what Starkey did:

Opened a discussion on the causes of riots by saying a speech that said allowing black immigration to continue would lead to violence was right.
Qualified this by saying that the speech was only wrong because the violence wasn't inter-racial. Instead, white people had become black.
Followed this up with claiming that listening to a successful man who is not part of this subculture would make him (and by 'you', he does mean himself here) think he was white.

What Starkey was doing here was to try to deal with the fact that some of the people rioting last week were white by saying that actually, they were black anyway. It's exactly the thing Nick Griffin was doing earlier in the week when he blamed it on 'blacks and wiggers'. No wonder Griffin responded this morning with:

Credit to Toby Young where it's due. You have to really work very hard to try to dismiss this as not racist.

The thing that puzzles me is, why would you bother?

See also RuinPunk and Nathaniel Tapley.

*Don't really think he got such an easy ride after watching again. As @mikemantin said last night, when someone says something like Starkey, "it's the kind of comment that leaves you gobsmacked for 10mins before you can formulate a reply.

**UPDATE** After several people pointed Toby Young toward this post on Twitter, he eventually replied by saying it was too weak to reply to. I'm sure it was.* I don't know if that defence will fool many people, but it'll be tragic if it does. What would be more tragic is if it fooled Young himself.

*Sorry, that sentence isn't true.

(Also - I tidied some spelling and grammar in the post as I added that update).

Tabloid bullshit of the month award - July 2011. The MailOnline edition

2011-08-06T10:45:00.000+01:00

It's been a mad month for trying to pick an appropriate article to win the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award.

The News of the World phone hacking scandal is still claiming scalps on a scale I never began to imagine might happen. An entire tabloid newspaper - the bestselling one in the country - no longer exists. The appearances before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee were probably worth several monthly bullshit awards to themselves.

Johann Hari has ensured that controversy about poor journalistic practice isn't restricted to the tabloids. His weird plagiarism and alleged sockpuppetry have led to him being suspended and having his Orwell Prize reconsidered. It's a nice reminder to try to read around and check whatever we read in the papers, even in 'respectable' papers.

Most disturbingly, Anders Breivik, the nobody who killed several people whose politics he despised in Norway, had released a manifesto covering his politics that not only could have been cut and pasted from our right wing press, but some of it was.

But here's the deal. Sending an award to anyone who appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee would probably get me sued - and sending a jokey email with swears and gags about bums in because some hack might have contributed to the possible inspiration for mass murder would just not be right. Joking about buggering about with the price of bread doesn't seem right either.

So, who to pick?

I figure that pointing the finger at people who were included in Anders Breivik's manifesto is out, but focusing on the papers' reaction to the murders is fair game. Unfortunately, it's impossible to send an award to the the entire bloody media for assuming that he must be Muslim, so I'm settling for a couple of stories from the Mail that perfectly illustrate the paper struggling to deal with a killer whose views wouldn't all look entirely out of place in its pages.

I'm talking about two stories included in one handy link: 'Burning with hatred... The right-wing extremist who hated immigrants and multi-culturalism' and 'The changes he saw all around him fed his warped sense of injustice'.

This month though, the winner is not any of the hacks that wrote the peices, but MailOnline editor Martin 'Nosferatu' Clarke for the genius decision of squishing these together. Oh, and there's an extra bonus reference to something that happened earlier in the month you might have forgotten about.

Enough rambling. On with the email!

Dear Mr Nosferatu,

It is with a combination of pride and a heavy heart that I can announce that you are the winner of journalism's newestish prize - the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for July 2011! Well done, you!

Now, you haven't won for the genius that is the 'Sidebar of Shame', which manages to:

Put stories about how terrible anorexia is next to ones calling perfectly slim women 'fat'
Put stories about how terrible the sexualisation of young children is next to creepy long-lens pap shots of children illustrating stories going into great detail about what they're wearing and how grown up they look
Include stories built around saucy pictures of celebrities while pretending to be disgusted
Attracting those all important clicks from Americans with stories about minor US celebs few in the UK have heard of
Target the equally important female audience by telling us constantly how crap women are and they're better off just shutting up and getting on with the cleaning
Laudable as all those things are, they're not why you win. You win for 'The right-wing extremist who hated immigrants and multi-culturalism' and 'The changes he saw all around him fed his warped sense of injustice'.

Here's why:
It must have been difficult, waking up and finding that the guy responsible for the latest terrorist atrocity was not a Muslim, but a blonde, blue eyed right winger with views that wouldn't look out of place in your own paper. Do you go for the 'we're shocked that he hated multiculturalism' or the 'it's all multiculturalism's fault' angle? It's a conundrum. A conundrum you managed to solve like a cackling, morally bereft Sherlock Holmes.
'Burning with hatred... The right-wing extremist who hated immigrants and multi-culturalism' goes with the first option. It appears to express shock that Breivik posted comments on the internet about Somalian immigrants with Norweigan passports sending money home and expressing hatred of multiculturalism. He's an extremist because of these things.
Here are the Google search results for 'Daily Mail passports', 'Daily Mail Polish sending money home', 'Daily Mail multiculturalism' and 'Daily Mail Somalian'. See, you guys hate immigrants and multiculturalism and moan about what Somalians get too! Had you forgotten?
Beautifully, the bit that talks about the horrid things Breivik wrote is immediately followed by:

"Little is known about his early life, however, and there is no clue so far as to why he should have resorted to such terrible acts of violence."

No. There's no clue so far. What could it possibly be?
Of course, you knew what you thought it could possibly be, which is what gave you the ingenious idea of using your internet stapler to attach 'The changes he saw all around him fed his warped sense of injustice' to the bottom. That's what won you this award.
So, it was the changes this ordinary, white middle-class man saw about him that made him shoot people and blow them up. Not his ridiculous view of those changes. You stay classy, Mister N.
Must've come as a bit of a shock to see his manifesto quoting your paper several times in support of what he thought was going on in the world.

Extra special bonus mention

Okay, you won for those two stories, but I can't go without mentioning how the strategy to attract links with flamebait is working for you.

'Girl, 13, crushed to death by a falling branch as she sat on a bench because her teachers were out on strike' was a stroke of evil genius. So obviously wrong was it that not even a Daily Mail hack was willing to put their name to it, and even your commenters - who can usually be relied on to act gleeful when things happen like immigrants drowning - gave you a kicking for it. The crowning glory must have been managing to get a statement from the girl's grieving parents out of it.

Was it worth it? Did the few hours it spent as top story with that headline get you many clicks from people rightly appalled by it?

Okay, that's it. I'm done. I'll be reproducing this email over at www.fivechinesecrackers.com. You can be the first person ever to respond with an acceptance or rebuttal by emailing me back at this address, and I promise to publish. I'll email you the crap picture of a trophy that is the official prize if you do. None of you guys seem very happy to defend yourselves though.

Cheers then!

5cc

All finished for this month everybody! Sorry for another long 'un, but you know. Tune in next month for August's edition that may or may not be on time. I have to say, there's already been a very, very strong contender for the award and I'll be very surprised if it gets topped, but as this month has shown, there doesn't seem to be a depth to which our press is unhappy to sink.

Now get out of my house!

Move along. Nothing to see here?

2011-07-15T21:19:00.004+01:00

You can't say this last week has been an uneventful one if you're following the News of the World hacking story. FBI investigations, NI's bid for BSkyB dropped, judge-led enquiries launched, unimpressive performances by senior police officers at the House of Commons*, the Murdochs refusing to appear in front of a select committee and then being summonsed, police advisors who used to work for News of the World being arrested, Rebekah Brooks quitting. It's all go.

One of the smaller things that has a potential to become really big is the possibility that other publications and news organisations could end up being pulled into the affray. Gordon Brown revealed the Sunday Times and the Sun's involvement in using less than kosher means to get at private information, and it's been widely agreed that the inquiries announces this week must look at media practices in general.

There are loud rumblings about the Information Commissioner's report in 2006 'What Price Privacy Now?' (pdf) that looked at the records of another Private Investigator. Steve Whittamore, unlike Glenn Mulcaire, had worked for a number of newspapers, and his biggest customer was not the News of the World, but the Daily Mail.

Which might just explain today's desperate and laughable editorial in the Mail. 'Never mind phone hacking, what about the real issues facing Britain?' it says. Because the corruption of our police and politicians and their collusion facilitating widespread lawbreaking is not a real issue.

It hilariously opens, 'In the real world...' like every blowhard who ever wants to claim the high ground, ever. Then we get a list of stuff that desperately tries to distract us before telling the hacking scandal isn't anything to worry about. It's apparently been 'orchestrated by a vastly subsidised BBC' despite actually - in the real word, you might say - being led by the Guardian, who actually did some real journalism.

Milly Dowler, dead servicemen and the families of Soham murder victims, 7/7 victims, 9/11 victims and Jean Charles de Menezes aren't mentioned. Neither is the potential of an FBI investigation. Police corruption isn't mentioned either, and that one's a little bit important. People, very high profile people, could end up in prison here. But our elected representatives, some of whom could be implicated in this (including the Prime Minister), should move on and focus on other things because the BBC and chattering classes and gold plated pensions and definitely not because of that Information Commissioner's report. Okay? Perish the thought.

Even Richard Littlejohn can't seem to be completely able to stomach churning out the paper's line on the phone hacking scandal. His article 'Hacking? They can all go to hell in a handcart!' opens:

Since the start of the phone hacking scandal I’ve tried to stand back from the hysteria. But on days like this, I give up.

Last night, I was halfway through a full-throated defence of the police, when I received a phone call informing me that in 2009 Scotland Yard hired Neil ‘Wolfman’ Wallis as a strategic public relations adviser.

It seems even Smellyface can't keep it up. Sure he says, 'I was going to point out...' and then reproduce the stuff he might have written about in the full throated defence he mentioned in the opening, but that's just because he's lazy.

He ends up saying (just after saying words to the effect of 'I should have been monstering Chris Bryant for being gay, but it's overshadowed now,') 'I am left with the conclusion that the entire political class, police and all, are rotten to the core.' And then announce he's off on holiday.

Pity he doesn't mention the press in that list, since they're the people in the centre of making the political class rotten to the core, but still. Could it be that this issue is the one that made him grow a pair and go against his paper's official line? Can even Littlejohn see the ridiculousness of trying to minimise this? Does this have anything to do with him having to go on holiday?

If even Littlejohn can see how stupid it is to try to pretend the potential corruption of police and government is nothing, then US parody news network Fox News** should see that too. But of course, to Fox it's nothing for some reason. Here's a clip of a pundit saying widespread corruption and lawbreaking on behalf of the company that owns the channel is nothing to be worried about and move along please:

Quite funny, huh, how people who might get in trouble if this particular scandal is allowed to rumble on getting bags of attention end up telling us to move along, nothing to see here?

And on that note, how about, uh, the police? A couple of years ago, senior police officers including the most senior of all, Met Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson, met Alan Rusbridger to tell him the Guardian investigation was way off the mark and too vigorous. At the time, one of his advisors was Neil 'Wolfman' Wallis, the guy who'd been deputy editor at the News of the World at the time the hacking was apparently going on. Wonder if Stephenson had been advised by him to tell the Guardian to back off. Gee, d'you think?

All this is hugely exciting, and has the potential to get to the bottom of something that's been rotten about this country's politics for years. But let's not forget that some of the people in Parliament who are charged with getting to the bottom of it are people who might stand to lose a heck of a lot if they succeed.

Like the Mail, Fox and the police before them, people like David Cameron might end up getting in deep, deep water if we ever get completely to the bottom of how the press has corrupted the government in this country. Don't be surprised if once the fury dies down a little, we see them suddenly wondering openly what the fuss is about and distracting us with things happening elsewhere.

That's exactly what they were doing before the Guardian uncovered that Milly Dowler's phone was hacked.

There's a reason for that.

*Except Andy Hayman. I'm told he's been inundated with offers from several pantomimes for his 'I can't believe you just asked me that' performance.

*UPDATE* Here's the video of that:

Oh no it isn't!

**I know it's not a parody. Bloody hell, do you think I'm stupid? Don't answer that.

Truth and lies

2011-07-12T15:00:00.003+01:00

Interesting article by Richard Peppiatt over at the Huffington Post today about the difference between 'legal truth' and 'moral truth' in newspaper reporting. Have a look, go on.

I'll have to agree that Fleet Street Fox set the goalposts a little narrow in this post about how difficult it is to get a lie published in a national newspaper. Sure, an entirely made up from nothing story about a celebrity rich enough to sue won't make the papers, but there are other kinds of story you can lie in, and a whole slew of levels of lie below 'make the whole story up from scratch' you can use if you like.*

Richard Peppiatt talks about 'moral lying' in his piece, covering lies of omission and cherrypicking what details of a story get reported, which goes on all the damn time as far as I can see. It's a good post.

But tabloids do also lie by, well, the old fashioned business of just saying stuff that isn't true, morally or otherwise sometimes.

One of the stories that moved Peppiatt to quit the Daily Star was the now infamous 'Muslim-only public loos' front page splash in the Star. Now, while the whole story wasn't made up from scratch, it wasn't true either. The toilets in the story were not Muslim-only. They were not paid for by the council as the story claimed. It made the paper.

Fair enough, it's gone from the website now and apologies were published. But here are a couple of my favourite stories I've looked at before here that are still available online.

The first is this story in the Express - 'Muslims: 'Ban non-Islamic schools', which made the front page of the print version under the headline, 'Now Muslims tell us how to run our schools'. It's supposed to be about this report from the Muslim Council of Britain (PDF) that, while it says a lot of things I find unpalatable, doesn't say some of the things the Express says it does.

The story includes a number of flat out falsehoods. The online version headline claims the report called for the banning of non-Islamic schools. It didn't. The article said the report said swimming should be banned during Ramadan. It hadn't. The article said the report states children should always be covered from navel to neck while swimming. It doesn't. It says navel to knee. The article said the report called for all school trips to be made single-sex. It didn't. It just suggested that overnight trips should be single-sex.

The MCB complained to the PCC. The PCC found in favour of the MCB on a number of points, particularly the claim about swimming, and ruled that the MCB should have a letter published that pointed out these falsehoods. The Express agreed to remove other claims like the one about boys being covered from navel to neck, which it claimed were mistakes.

The MCB declined to write a letter, so the article is still up on the website with absolutely no changes. Not even to remove the 'mistakes'. There's even a pull-out quote box that says:

Swimming lessons should be banned during Ramadan

Muslim Council of Britain

Those words do not appear in the report, and that was one of the particular claims the PCC ruled were misleading.

But at least the PCC ruled against those falsehoods, right? It's the MCB's fault these are still here, right? Surely you'd never get lies in an article and totally get away with it.

Here's an article in the Mail from when Romania And Bulgaria had only been in the EU for a few months: '120 immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria arrive in Britain every day to be circus stars'. It covers figures from the first three months of the two new eastern European countries being part of the EU.

The article says over 10,000 had arrived from the two countries. In fact, only just under 8,000 had been given permits to come. If you count everyone who ever applied, that makes over 10,000. The Mail claimed the total would make 'over 120 a day'. Even if we counted everyone who applied like the Mail does, the total would have been less than 120 a day over three months. The article says the figures cover five months. They don't. They cover three. The paper says the most common profession declared by Romanians was 'circus artiste'. It wasn't. The top profession of a certain subset of Romanians was 'circus artiste'.

Here's the kicker: 120 didn't come to the UK every day to be circus stars - that would have made over 10,000 circus artistes in the figures. There were actually 55. In total, not per day. The subset of Romanians and Bulgarians these were taken from amounted to just 410. Nowhere in the article does it make it clear that the total is 55. Nowhere does it make it clear that the most popular profession only comes from a small subset.

As far as I know, nobody's ever complained about the article. It's still there. It's still full of rubbish. It was co-written by the paper's Home Affairs Editor. Of course, he might just be a bumbling oaf rather than a liar, but this is the sort of stuff that you'd hope checks like the ones Fleet Street Fox suggested were the norm would catch in a heartbeat.

So - there's more to lying than making an entire article up about someone who can probably afford to sue. there's also more than moral lying.

*Even so, here's TabloidWatch's list of apologies for false stories taken from the papers. Oh, and here's Starsuckers, in which Chris Atkins managed to get a number of fake stories in the tabloids

Inconceivable!

2011-07-08T21:59:00.000+01:00

Say what you like about the tabloid press, but they know what people want and by golly, they give it to them. That's what you snobs don't understand.

Remember that argument? You used to hear it a lot back when people would try to convince you the tabloids weren't full of a bunch of lying, baying jackals and crooks who treated their audience with barely disgused contempt. Good times.

It's ironic then, that this unfailing ability to give people what they want is precisely what led them into the criminality that got them where they are now. And doubly ironic that what tabloid readers often want - mawkish grief-porn about young female murder victims and the virtual deification of 'our boys' - is what led the story of phone hacking to finally end up being given the coverage it deserved. Even after the revelation that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked and her answerphone messages deleted, the tabloids avoided giving the story front page treatment. The hacking of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman's families as well as those of dead soldiers is what finally pushed the story past the point where the tabloids could no longer walk away, whilstling. It was only when the story became fitting for a tabloid that the News of the World was killed.

I've sat down to write a post about this at least half a dozen times this week, and each time I do something else happens. It's wrongfooted this old cynic more times than I can count, from Ed Miliband actually saying something about it through it hitting the front pages of other tabloids to Rebekah Brooks announcing the closure of the News of the World rather than her own resignation. I'm not ashamed to say I've viewed this in shock. Happy shock for the most part, like walking into that armoury in The Matrix and being told you're the millionth customer and ending up walking out some super kick arse kung fu monkey who can jump a train on a motorbike while something below you blows up and you shoot ninja stars out your bum, thus saving the world or something, but shock nonetheless. Not that I've done anything, you understand. Just, you know it feels pretty darn good. Even the police corruption angle seems to be getting proper attention, the news is covering how cowed MPs and the government were and even the PCC seems to be getting the well-deserved shaft.

What doesn't feel good is seeing the News of the World suddenly closed down without warning, leaving hundreds of people out of work. I don't look at the News of the World often here because it seems to be given less to lying about facts and figures than, well, you know what it's given to now I guess. I read 'Fake Sheiks and Royal Trappings' earlier this year and was disgusted at the paper, hoping something would happen. But like my blogging colleague and bloke I'd quite like to meet, Steven Baxter, I've always just wanted the tabloids to be better. Shutting the paper seems to me a cynical move, designed to protect Rebekah Brooks for some reason and perhaps something that was even going to happen in some way or another anyway. It was announced that the Sun was going to become a seven day operation a while ago, and thesunonsunday domain name was registered days ago. Something tells me that the Murdoch who shat all over the unions in the 80s and chucked hundreds of workers on the street was rubbing his hands with glee at this opportunity.

The word on the street is, though - if you can imagine me as Huggy Bear with my afro and massive flat cap and flares and sunglasses indoors for a minute - the word on the street is that Brooks has said something is coming that the paper could never survive. Can you imagine what the fuck that is? My guess is that it has something to do with the surveillance of Dave Cook and the murder case he was covering, but so much crazy stuff is going down that I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out they'd commissioned a midget hitman to hide in the backpack of a French paparazzo on a moped and shoot a blow dart into the neck of Princess Di's driver so they could make money out of the aftermath. Actually, that's not outlandish enough. Stuff involving monkeys and lasers and the biggest diamond in the world wouldn't surprise me now.

There are dangers in all this elation. Posts like this always have to end with stern warnings about the danger in missing things to show how clever the writer is, but there are dangers. One is that David Cameron's announcements are worth as much as Blair's nonsense about marching hoodies to cashpoints, the PCC won't be reformed and the inquiries he talks about end up being ridiculous whitewashes. Another is that Brooks and James Murdoch get away scot free. Yet another is that we lose the chance to reform self-regulation and end up with an organisation still happy to say, 'yeah, it ws a lie but no-one would have believed it anyway'. Yet another is that we forget Glenn Mulcaire was only one of many private detectives involved with more newspapers than just the News of the World, and never find out exactly what other papers were doing. The last is that we eviscerate Murdoch's empire and someone worse rises to take his place. Imagine Richard Desmond with as much clout as Murdoch.

Anyway, that's enough worrying about the dangers. I'm going to crack a beer and carry on yelping with glee at every development. Fuck it, I'm downing two at once when Rebekah Brooks finally goes. Even if I'm at work. And just bloody look at this!

The inevitable Johann Hari post

2011-06-29T21:47:00.004+01:00

"It's a bit odd, being outside the world of journalism looking in," I thought as I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror this morning. "What people like me, and possibly you, don't usually understand," I said aloud, propping myself against the sink and raising a conspiratorial eyebrow, "is that there are certain practices we would think are absurd or evidence of unprofessionalism that are just standard practice in journalism." I hung my head in contemplation, slowly raising my toothbrush back to my mouth, deep in thought.

Except no I never. I said that in a blogpost back in March. Ho ho! I'm such a card. All I can manage to think about in the mornings is whether or not today is the day I have my Falling Down style breakdown and run up and down the Tottenham Court Road screaming with my shirt off. I'm just using the same bloody joke a gabillion other people have used and passing it off as if it was my own.

God, this is getting a bit meta. I might have to have a lie down.

Yesterday, I was busy looking through a Richard Littlejohn column in which he admitted starting with his conclusion, pretended the EU denied something it didn't, used the existence of the scheme the EU didn't deny (the Arc Manche region) to make it look like the EU was lying, exaggerated the powers of the Arc Manche to make it look more significant than it actually is and then passed off the cost of the new headquarters of the EU Council as costs of the headquarters for this small, regional scheme. Oh, and added an extra £40 million to that pretend cost. All in a rehash of a story that appeared months ago, itself a repeat of something that emerged six or seven years ago, and has cropped up in its exaggerated, rubbish glory a few times since.

Then, while trying to find a source for Littlejohn's fantasy costs I logged onto Twitter and walked into a bit of a to do about Johann Hari copying bits of his interviews from other places and passing it off as though things had been said to him that hadn't. They had been said, mind, just not to him in those exact words.

Of the two, I know which is worse. But that doesn't excuse Hari from passing things off as having been said to him that hadn't. He shouldn't have done it. I can see why people attacked him for it, and I don't blame them. His initial defence didn't help much either. It reminded me of the post I quoted from at the beginning here. Of course it's wrong to cut and paste things and pretend people said things to you they didn't. Only in the world of newspaper journalism could anyone be confused enough to think this is alright.

The thing is though, I still can't help thinking this is a bit like watching Falling Down. At the start, Michael Douglas is an annoying, insufferable, right-wing prick as he smashes up a shop, berating the shopkeeper for not speaking English well enough and how much money the shopkeeper's country gets from his country. He's not easy to sympathise with. But then he walks into an army surlpus store and meets a guy who keeps an empty Zyklon-B can in his secret collection of nazi paraphernalia in the back of the shop and launches into a bunch of racist and homophobic rants before attacking Douglas for not being enough of a right-wing nutter and seemingly attempting to rape him. Suddenly, Michael Douglas's rants don't look quite so bad.

Obviously, Hari isn't a right-wing prick and he's not going on some Mail reader's gun-toting badass wank fantasy and Michael Douglas ends up being probably worse than the army surplus nazi so the analogy is a bit lame, but its sort of similar. If you think what Hari has been doing is the lowest of the low, hoo-boy, are there surprises in store for you if you spend some time looking behind what you read in newspapers.

So, yes, Johann Hari should be in trouble for what he did and I guess that's up to his editor. He's apologised and said he won't do it again. In a world where the Press Complaints Commission allows columnists to tell bald-faced untruths preceeded by the words 'the fact is', that'll probably be enough. If he ends up getting into more trouble, can't say I'll be complaining. I won't be complaining if he doesn't either.

The story still seems to be unfolding, and perhaps someone will uncover worse things, but until then it would have been nice if the attention, Twitter storm, Newsnight coverage, front page apology and potential sacking had been about one of the guys in the army surplus stores.

How confirmation bias works and how to deploy the strawman with Richard Littlejohn

2011-06-28T11:28:00.002+01:00

Ah, Richard Littlejohn. I'd decided not to bother looking at his stuff in any detail after wasting my time ploughing through his godawful books*, but today he offers us a masterclass in confirmation bias and how to deploy the strawman argument, so it would be rude not to pay attention. These are the rhetorical flint hammer and rock on a bit of string of the internet comments section buffoon, so it's nice to see them used to crushing effect by the highest paid columnist in all the land.
You might remember that in May's 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award, I looked at how Macer Hall creatively interpreted the existence of a project to promote co-operation between British and French councils in an area called the Arc Manche as evidence that the EU wants to merge Britain and France. Our smellyfaced chum picks up the baton only a few weeks after the Express to let us all know the truth, dammit.

Here's how he does it:

As a general rule of thumb, I always assume that anything dismissed by the EU as a 'myth' is almost certainly true.

That's your confirmation bias right there, explained in a nutshell in his opening paragraph. Even I don't assume everything in a Littlejohn column is hogwash. If you already assume everything the EU denies is probably true, it might cause you to try to mash a square peg into a round hole with your rock on a bit of string and come up with a really bad attempt to explain why you're right. Like Littlejohn does right here.

Before he does this with the Arc Manche, he shows how its done with a stalwart of EU mythology:

We've had all sorts of denials over the years, from the directive banning bent bananas...

There was no directive banning bent bananas. This is a strawman, a misinterpretation of a boring EU directive made to look as ridiculous as possible. Here is the actual EU directive about banana standards (pdf). If you can keep your eyes open long enough to read it, you'll see it's about classification of bananas. Green bananas. Bananas sent to wholesalers. You'll also notice it doesn't talk about how straight or bent bananas must be, but that in the highest quality classification they should be free from 'malformation' and 'abnormal curvature' (the Wikipedia article about the directive mistakenly says the directive mentions 'excessive curvature). These are nowhere defined as 'bent'. Lower down the quality scale, 'defects of shape' are allowed.

But what people often do is point to the existence of the directive as proof that the EU banned bent bananas. Here's a link to a reproduction of the directive on a Eurosceptic site. They've highlighted the bit that says defects of shape are allowed in lower classifications as evidence that bent bananas are banned. There's not a lot you can say to that. "Look, here - the bit where the directive says defects of shape are allowed is proof that bent bananas are banned." You just have to respond with a funny look and walk away.

To be honest, this is all a bit too much effort to go to to refute this old chestnut. All you need to do is remember; have you ever seen a bent banana in this country? Bet you have. Because bent bananas aren't banned.

Anyway, onto the second half of that sentence, and the new strawman:

...to the most recent claim that there were no plans to merge the north-west of France and the south of England into a single European administrative region.

But, as those of you who read May's bullshit award will know, the EU denial was about merging Britain with France. That was the headline of the article it was about.

So, Littlejohn hasn't said exactly what the EU denied. He's given a watered-down version of the claims the EU were refuting, and created a strawman version of the EU denial. It's masterful.

But it doesn't end there. Littlejohn is like a regular Crowman:

This is the precise scheme [the Arc Manche], which would amalgamate vast swathes of both countries from Normandy to Land's End, that official EU spokesmen insist doesn't exist.

It would be bloody stupid if EU spokesmen did insist the Arc Manche doesn't exist. It has its own bloody website. Except, of course, they never did. Here are some actual words an EU spokesperson actually said (you'll notice Littejohn never includes any of these):

There is no proposal to create a new cross-channel region. What exist (and have done for 10 years) are a number of cross-border programmes aimed at things like boosting jobs and looking after the environment.

Some cross-border programmes exist. The Arc Manche is a cross-border programme of the sort the EU spokesperson said exists. But here's your smoking bum that proves the EU are lying bastards!

Littlejohn says:

Arc Manche (also known as Transmanche) even has its own EU-appointed President, a French socialist called Alain Le Vern, and a regional assembly.

The Arc Manche website says:

It is not a 'regional Assembly' like the South East England Regional Assembly. It has absolutely no powers confered to it, no role in governance, law-making or public administration.

So, is Littlejohn playing fast and loose with the definition of 'regional assembly' or are the EU lying bastards because they banned bent bananas and denied the existence of the Arc Manche project? You decide.

Littlejohn says:

Arc Manche is one of the 13 different districts into which Britain will be carved up if we are stupid enough to remain in the EU.

The Arc Manche website says:

It is important to stress that this is an informal, voluntary network of local authorities who can use the network to share best practice, coordinate initiatives and pull together project ideas to draw in EU funding.

There's also a map showing that some councils, all on the English side, natch, have not signed up to be members. Because it's voluntary. The site also includes this handy FAQ:

It is obviously a ploy to undermine national authority, or can you give me any reason why this is not the case?
No it is not ploy, the Arc Manche has absolutely no authority whatsoever. It is not even a legal entity. It merely serves to articulate the concerns of coastal local authorities when it feels they should be heard and taken into account.

And there you have it. The rest of our smellyfaced chum's section on the Arc Manche is rested purely on believing everything the EU ever says about it is a lie. So, are the EU telling bald-faced and evil lies or has the man who thought a dog was a woman and has decided before he starts that the EU is lying when it denies things *ahem*, made a mistake?

Here's what I really love though. Like the Express article, Littlejohn's column rests his claim that the EU are lying, evil bastards on the fact that the EU gave us some money to fund arts projects and cycle lanes. He concludes that we must get out because it costs us too much money. The proof is that it gave us some money. The Arc Manche is an evil waste of money. Because it secured us some funding.

Well done, Lumpy. Give yourself a lolly.

*If you liked my reviews of 'To Hell in a Handcart', check out Atomic Spin's review of 'First Ladies' by Kay Burley. Seems to share some of the characteristics with Littlejohn's effort.

**UPDATE** After spending too bloody long searching around for the source of Littlejohn's claim in this article that Van Rompuy recently unveiled plans for a £280 million headquarters for Arc Manche, @nosemonkey has come up trumps with a strong possibility.

It seems that last week, Van Rompuy drew attention to plans for a £240 million headquarters for the EU Council. So unless the EU have decided to pay more for a headquarters for a small administrative region than for the whole EU Council, it's likely that Littlejohn is 'confused' here. It seems from a second reading of Zelo Street's excellent post that he already knew this, but I missed it first time round.

Tabloid bullshit of the month award - June 2011: the Paul Dacre edition

2011-06-25T11:31:00.000+01:00

I had this month's tabloid bullshit winner all picked out and ready to go, I'd thought of a few gags, I was all happy because I wouldn't have to focus on immigration, there were many many clear and obvious examples of dishonesty and if that wasn't enough, I'd be targeting a tabloid editor rather than a hack. I'd also have been in time this month for a change.

But some other tabloid numpty had to jump in at the last minute acting like an arse and snatch the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for May 2011 from the clutches of Dawn Neesom at the Star for twelve straight days of front page Giggs headlines. Headlines that mostly bore little or no relation to the truth.

Who was it who stole the award away from stories like 'GIGGS LOVER IN SEX ROMP REVENGE', shouted next to a massive picture of Imogen Thomas in her pants at the top of a story about how someone who wasn't Imogen Thomas went on Facebook and mentioned some celebrities she fancied? (That was the 'sex romp revenge', by the way).

The answer is...wait for it...here comes the drumroll...hang on a sec...you might not have read the title of this post yet...it's...Paul Dacre of 'editor of the Daily Mail' infamy, for getting his lawyers to bully Uponnothing of Angry Mob into taking down a post from a couple of years ago that criticised him. Slow handclap, Mr Dacre. It's a slow handclap for you.

Heeeere's Johnny! Uh, I mean the email. Here's the email:

"Dear Mr Dacre,

It is with great pride that I can announce you - yes, you - as the winner of journalism's sort of newest prize! You might have heard of it. A few of your fantastic* journalists have won it so far, but modesty may have prevented them from mentioning it.

This month, you join Richard Littlejohn, Dawn Neesom of the Star and that bloke that comes up with the pretend EU ban stories for the Express in winning the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award! Just think of it. You beat Dawn Neesom even after twelve days straight of Ryan Giggs front page headlines that bore no relation to the story inside. I'm clapping you right now. Very, very slowly. It's a slow handclap for you.

Well done. Get out your party poppers and Nuremberg Rally 78s or whatever it is you do for fun,** put your feet up and bask in the glory.

Here's why you won:

You, as editor of the second best-selling daily newspaper in the country and big cheese at the country's most popular news website, reaching a combined audience of several million, decided to sic lawyers on a single blogger for a post that was nearly two years old because it said nasty things about you.

Diddums.
Your paper is infamous for its spitefulness and hatred. Not just, you know, a bit known for occasionally saying things that might be considered a bit impolite. It actually received a record number of complaints for a spectacularly nasty column about Stephen Gately even before he was buried. One of your columnists referred to some murder victims as disgusting, drug-addled street whores. The same guy called Gordon Brown a sociopath. Your paper was criticised by a Parliamentary Committee for its coverage of asylum seekers and has recently taken to worrying about the number of ethnic minorities. The list of links down the right hand side of your website is a constant deluge of catty jibes about women's arses. The Federation of Poles in Great Britain complained about your coverage of Polish people and you had to remove or amend 50-odd stories, while at the same time claiming the paper was never anti-Polish. Made me laugh, that one. I could go on, but I don't have three weeks spare.
So you'd think you'd be able to take a bit of 'robust' criticism. Not least because of your editorial meetings apparently being renamed 'the vagina monologues' because of how often you use the c-word, according to Nick Davies.

I'm sure you're not exactly standing on a chair and hitching up your skirts at a bit of 'robustness'. You seem love a bit of robustness when it's you being robust.
Your lawyers' letter said the original post was defamatory and abusive. People are having trouble finding exactly what is defamatory in the post. Your lawyers didn't bother listing what was supposed to be defamatory, which is normally expected when giving a notice preparatory to action in an alleged defamation case. This could lead people to believe that's because there's nothing defamatory there.

Fancy that.
Is it abusive? Maybe. Does the author really want you dead?

You should be familiar with articles with headlines that are, um, "clarified" by the content of the article below. Lord knows there are enough of them in your paper. The blog post in question makes clear that the author just wishes you would die and people would line up to shit on your grave, not that anyone would kill you.
That might sound nasty, but you're familiar with hyperbole for effect, right? You must be. The PCC defended an article by Richard Littlejohn in which he falsely claimed Afghan immigrants automatically go to the top of the council housing list by claiming he was using a rhetorical device and no-one would believe him. It said something similar about nobody believing a Melanie Phillips column that said, "the fact is," before saying something that wasn't a fact. These are instances of your writers saying things that are clearly and demonstrably false and getting away with it, so maybe the author of the blog post really doesn't hope you die. Maybe he just wants people to shit on your grave when you do. In any case, I'm sure there's nothing illegal in wishing someone would die.
I've saved the best bit til last. This is the funniest thing about you forcing someone to delete something. You're supposed to be a champion of free speech. You rail against those who dare to try to silence you in your fearless struggle to reveal what celebrities do with their genitals in their private lives. You once said:
"This [a privacy law] would merely be yet another method for the rich, the powerful and the corrupt to hide their transgressions from their public and provide a feeding frenzy for the lawyers,"
And now you, who reportedly earned 2.8 million pounds last year in your job running a news outlet that reaches millions of readers on behalf of a multinational corporation worth billions of pounds, decide to sic your highly priced lawyers on a guy who blogs in his spare time and force his internet provider to squash his opinion of you. Staunch defender of free speech, you. Hate the rich and powerful squashing the little man's right to say what they want. And I invented pegs.

You might look a bit hypocritical there. A bit like a newspaper that rails against the sexualisation of young people while at the same time providing a seemingly never ending stream of creepy articles about what a toddler is wearing and how grown up she looks or something. But what do I know?

That's it. There is so much more I could say about the hatefulness and hypocrisy of the Daily Mail, but I have to stop somewhere. I'll be reproducing this letter over at www.fivechinesecrackers.com for people to snicker at. Do feel free to reply, and I will publish what you say there too. Nobody has ever replied before, so you would be blazing a trail for truth and honesty and standing up for the little multimillionaire media mogul who only has an audience of several million against the big, scary blogger with a couple of thousand readers at best who writes in his spare time for free.

Oh, if you get your lawyers to reply, please get them to point out anything here that would be defamatory. I could always then write up apologies about them and bury them somewhere on my blog where nobody would ever find them unless they knew where to look and not connect them in any way to my original post. That's acceptable, right? My blog's hosted in the US after all, and the hosts might not be so easily intimidated into removing the whole thing.

Cheers then,

5cc

*Shite.

**Now, before your lawyers get itchy triggerfingers, I'm not seriously saying you listen to the Nuremberg Rally for fun. Rhetorical device, remember, like the hilarious jokes Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips tell about immigrants and gays. I could have even said, "It is a fact that Paul Dacre gets his kicks listening to the Nuremberg Rally," and been golden according to your paper's standards."

Okay. All done. Hope this one doesn't get me in trouble. It's the biggie I was kind of hoping I'd never have to attempt, but I, in my capacity as an enormously powerful media mogul with millions at his disposal had to crush the free speech of the little guy as if I were actively evil or something.

Hope you enjoyed it. See you in a month, I hope.

The five stages of Tory grief

2011-06-17T16:15:00.001+01:00

Or maybe there aren't as many as five. I'm still watching the car crash unfold on Twitter, where gullible Tory representative of the Campaign ~~For Gullible Marks~~ Against Political Correctness, who you might remember from the classic 'Why is it racist to black up?' letter and half a gazillion fat-headed and ill-informed comments in lame tabloid stories is attempting to defend himself for saying some things in the Commons today he really shouldn't.

He said that because people with learning disabilities are often turned down for work, they should be allowed to work for less than minimum wage. I know, right?

How his defences have unfolded has amused me greatly. There have been four stages so far.

1. The 'Enoch Powell' manoeuvre:

To be fair, Powell never claimed he was repeating anything black people told him, but still. "It's not my fault, someone else said something. Wasn't me." except Davies was obviously endorsing that by raising it. That's if it was ever said by someone else in the first place. Mind (the people he claims to have been meeting when he heard this) have called the idea 'preposterous'.

2. The 'Pollyanna' gambit:

Hey, this is good for everyone! Surely you want things to be good for everyone, don't you? Hah!

3. The 'no, you're the meanie' defence:

This is also known in wanky terms as a 'false dichotomy'. Either you want disabled people to work for less than minimum wage or you don't want them to work at all. There is no position saying we need to try to change people's perceptions and make sure employers don't discriminate . That just doesn't exist, stupid. Stop trying to make an argument that doesn't even exist.

4. The 'don't blame it on sunshine, don't blame it on what I said, don't blame it on the argument, blame it on the lefties' trump card:

It's the last-ditch of the dolt in trouble. Call your opponents names, create a strawman and then get the hell out. 'Hey, you're only annoyed that I challenged you and you can't take it!' it says. No, people including Tory MP Edward Leigh are criticising an embarrassing and discriminatory proposal that is stupidy stupidy stupid,.

Imagine anyone arguing that to combat racial discrimination in the workplace, employers should be allowed to pay black people less. Oh, sorry - black people should be allowed to work for less pay (sounds less weird that way round, doesn't it, Philip?) You'd laugh them out of town, right?

And, as @MediocreDave points out on the Twitter - women appear to be discriminated against in the workplace and paid less.

Let's hope step 5 is acceptance, eh? Acceptance and a proper apology, not any of this 'I apologise for any offence I caused' rubbish. An 'I'm sorry I said that, it was pretty stupid,' apology. As it is, we have an example of squirming around to avoid taking responsibility for your own actions a naughty four year old would be proud of.

A slop bucket on every front page

2011-06-15T14:07:00.002+01:00

I've been a bit busy this month. Well, I say 'busy'. I mean 'I've been playing LA Noire until I finished it so sod you lot'.

But that's only one of the things I've been up to. To prepare for the broadcast of 'All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace', I've been rewatching old Adam Curtis documentaries. Curtis isn't everyone's cup of tea, but he is mine. And I really, really like tea.

'The Century Of The Self' is excellent. It's been a while since I've seen it - years before I even started this here blog - so how what it says applies to newspapers hasn't occurred to me before.

'The Century Of The Self' covers how Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, influenced the world of marketing and PR by including elements of psychoanalytic theory, and how this in turn affected the world of politics.

Bernays changed the concept of market research by introducing the focus group - moving away from the process of asking logical, rational questions about products towards allowing groups to talk freely about how products made them feel. Emotion became the most important factor in marketing, and Bernays' most famous success was to break the taboo on women smoking by making it a symbol of freedom and emancipation.

Politicians took advantage of these tactics, and the last part, 'Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering' focuses on how Clinton and Blair both used focus groups talking about how they felt to inform their messages and how they marketed themselves. If it were filmed any later than 2002, Curtis could have easily included David Cameron, with his rubbish YouTube videos, cycling to work in front of a huge car driving his stuff and hugging hoodies.

The interesting thing about newspapers is how they sit in both of these worlds.

They're all about selling products - newspapers and audiences. The newspapers get bought by punters in shops and the audience gets sold to advertisers. The audience is probably the more important of these two since advertisng raises more money than the cover price, especially when we're talking about free sheets. Paul Dacre has boasted before about the number of 'quality readers' the Daily Mail attracts. He means ABC1 readers - the ones with money who can afford to buy any luxury items advertisers might want to pay him money to push in his newspaper. No good trying to sell expensive stuff to people who can't afford it.

But they're also about pushing political messages. The political messages are one of the many ways they attract the audience they sell to advertisers. One reason (and it is only one of loads) the right wing press push the anti-global warming message so disproportionately may have something to do with the need to sell advertising space to corporations selling big, petrol guzzling behemoths. It's so much easier to do that when you can say, 'Hey! Our audience is X million per day with X amount of disposable income and guess what? They don't give shit one about how much your new model with the cow-catcher will fuck the world up for everyone else. In fact, they mostly don't believe it'll do any damage at all'.

So, in order to sell an audience whose emotions advertisers can appeal to in order to sell whatever it is they're advertising, newspapers attract readers by appealing to their emotions with iffy political messages that have about as much evidential support as, well, an advert selling you freedom in the mountains instead of the car you're actually being asked to buy.

The anti-global warming approach is just one example. Take today's Daily Mail and Daily Express front pages. 'A SLOP BUCKET IN EVERY HOME' shouts the Mail, and 'DUSTBIN CHAOS ON THE WAY' squeals the Express. Are bins the most important thing in the country at the moment? Are they really?

As you'd expect, both papers' headlines aren't exactly rational or dispassionate. The Mail goes for the jugular with 'slop bucket', a description designed only to conjure up horrible images (how is a 'slop bucket' different from 'a bin' when you can chuck all your food waste in a bin?) The Express decides to tell us about DUSTBIN CHAOS that's definitely on the way. But do either of these tell us anything that would contribute rationally to any debate?

Not really. The real story is that because, wouldn't you know it, actual government is a bit more complicated than armchair pontificating to appeal to people's emotions, the coalition is rolling back its promise to have weekly bin collections. Instead, people might have to separate their food waste from their recycling into bins that councils will be encouraged to collect - wait for it - every week.

In terms of a rational debate, this actually removes one of the arguments of people who get het up about bins. I know this because I subjected myself to reading all Richard Littlejohn's books, which I think makes me an expert about what people who moan about bins say. And about fifteen percent out of twenny more stupider.

This argument goes that it's unhygenic to collect bins only once every two weeks because smelly, dirty food remains are left too long to rot and attract vermin. The new plans should mean that the smelly, rotting stuff that attracts vermin is collected exactly as quickly as the bin enthusiasts would like.

But the tabloid fascination with bins has nothing to do with a rational debate, and everything to do with appealing to emotion. The papers are targeting the 'can't be arsed to do anything extra with rubbish' market, and they're offering ad hoc resoning for why that's an okay position to take. For the Express, this means saying that the new change will cause chaos with no evidence at all, and for the Mail this means the most sophisticated of all rhetorical devices - namecalling.

And the tabloids are so good at selling political positions by appealing to emotions that political parties go beyond just copying the approach. They actually steal the nonsense positions themselves. The reason the new headlines can talk about u-turns and whatnot is that Eric Pickles read the papers and stole one of their wheezes for himself. And it's not the only time he's done this stuff. Who cares whether Christmas was actually banned, or whether elf n safety has gorn mayyyd or if it's even possible to have weekly bin collections if you can attract X number of ABC1s with X amount of disposable income to vote for you if you promise to do something about them?

The thing is, newspapers market themselves as being rational representations of what is going on in the world. Even Richard Littlejohn pretends to be just giving the facts when not even the news section of the paper he writes for does that.

It seems everything's a product, and you can't trust anyone's messages about anything when you're deciding who to vote for or what should be done about anything or even what's happening at all in the first place. And you can expect more of the same in future.

I hesitate to use the term 'false consciousness', but Jesus.

Tabloid bullshit of the month award - May 2011

2011-06-02T15:36:00.004+01:00

There was a pop, a flash and a faint whiff of ozone. A yelp. A jump.

My laptop blew, which explains this month's low number of posts, the less often even than usual Tweetage and the late arrival of this here post.

But fear not! Now there's a pop, a flash, a whiff and plenty of jumping and yelping for the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for May 2011! Hear the cheers as literally some people read the blogpost they'd forgotten was due and wasn't bothered about in the first place! Look at their mostly uninterested faces as they prepare to find out that tabloids are full of a bunch of bullshit. Again. Er. 'Ray.

There was a fair bit of competition this month. This included:

A Daily Mail story about video games that dislpayed as much respect for the truth as you'd expect, taking a report that said playing violent games appeared to cause less aggression than sports games and turning it into 'Playing football games on computers 'makes you more aggressive''. This was covered by CVG.

The Sun's heavy handed crap propaganda, including a Photoshopped piece of crap showing David Cameron as Superman saving Britain. You know what, just fuck off, the Sun.

'BRITAIN'S 40% SURGE IN ETHNIC NUMBERS', a race for the racist crown in which the Express counted white people not born in the UK as 'non-white', forgot that 'white' is an ethnic group too and filled imaginary trousers over the knowledge that there were more people who aren't white in the country than there used to be. Who knew?

'81% of new jobs go to foreigners', the Sun's creative interpretation of how things that aren't actually jobs went to people who aren't all actually foreign. Go, the Sun!

Those last two only missed out on being proper contenders because I said I wanted to move away from the staple of looking at immigration scare stories last month.

There was other stuff too, but I either missed it or can't be arsed to include it in this list, so on to the winner.

We have a second-time winner this month. It seems there's so much bullshit out there it's impossible to stick to my original rules of giving the award to the best bullshit article. There's just so much of it about from the same sources. The winner is...

...Macer Hall, for 'EU WANTS TO MERGE UK WITH FRANCE' and 'EU FLAG RULE: BIG FINES IF OUR PUBLIC BUILIDNGS [sic] FAIL TO MARK EUROPE DAY'

Here's the email:

Dear Mr Hall,

I am so overjoyed that I could literally muster enough energy for some rolled eyes and a slow handclap to accounce that you, yes you, are the winner of May 2011's 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award! Yes! That makes you a second time winner and up there with big time tabloid bullshitter, Jack Doyle of the Mail.

You've won this month for 'EU WANTS TO MERGE UK WITH FRANCE' and 'EU FLAG RULE: BIG FINES IF OUR PUBLIC BUILIDNGS [sic] FAIL TO MARK EUROPE DAY'. Here's why:

'EU WANTS TO MERGE UK WITH FRANCE'

No it doesn't.
Seriously, it doesn't.
Of course, you know this, which is why you've dropped the claim in the opening sentence and moved on to talking about 'carving up Britain' and merging 'some parts of southern Britain and Northern France' by the third.
What you might not know is that this is rubbish too. Here is the Arc Manche website's list of objectives. You'll notice that none of them say 'merge Britain with France' or even 'merge parts of Britain with parts of France'. Oh, hang on. You do know that, which is why you admit it was formed to "forge closer links between local councils".
It seems the most evil things you can find about this shadowy cabal of baddies is that they've funded cycle paths, travelling art exhibitions and clown shows. Damn those Eurocrats for, er, providing us money for transport and arts projects. Damn you, Europe! Not the cycle paths!
I mean, "EU chiefs have been quietly pouring around £1billion a year of taxpayers’ money into the regions." The bastards! Giving money to us? Why it's almost as if the UK has benefitted in some way from some EU funding.
This is all hardly an up to the minute scoop, since you say halfway through that Arc Manche was formally launched six years ago, which to be fair is only nine years out. After fifteen years, the closest we've got to a merged UK and France is some clown shows? Is that the best you can do?
Of course, the entire justification for this shoddy piece funhouse hucksterism is based on things Eric Pickles, Nigel Farage, the Taxpayers' Alliance and tory backbenchers have said. I probably don't need to point this out, but those guys are about as reliable on the reality of EU policy as, well, you.
"However, one Whitehall aide yesterday rubbished the emblem as “a bid to subvert the St George’s flag and the Union Jack”." Did he, Macer? Did he really?
'EU FLAG RULE: BIG FINES IF OUR PUBLIC BUILIDNGS [sic] FAIL TO MARK EUROPE DAY'
No there won't be.
Seriously, there won't be.
My favourite thing about this article is that the 'angry revolt' is just illustrated by some couple of fat blokes burning an EU flag. Look at the fury on their smiling, podgy faces. Okay, one of them's scowling a bit, but still, it's hardly Little Big Horn, is it?
I also love the way you've used a quote that appears to trash the article to support it. "A spokeswoman for the Department said: “There are two flag poles outside the departmental building of Eland House, and it is the policy of the department always to fly the United Kingdom’s Union Flag in the superior position.”" She probably said that because the whole fly the flag or face a fine thing experienced by 'scores of public buildings across the country' is actually cobblers.
Of course, the Taxpayers' Alliance and Eric Pickles are the sources of whatever pretend fury there is, but we know how reliable they are, don't we?

Both stories

Here's the best bit. If the headlines and your byline weren't enough to clue us in to their reliability, letters to your editor that he decided not to print might help. According to spokespeople from the EU:
We are as surprised as your readers to hear that your newspaper believes the EU wishes to merge Britain and France. The suggestion that the “EU wants to merge UK with France”, 2nd May, is absurd, and of course, untrue.
and:
Regarding your front page of today, only 2 buildings in the UK are expected to fly the European flag for Europe Day and the Commission would not fine countries that did not do so.
You might not have seen these as your editor doesn't have to do anything with this sort of thing since your paper withdrew from the PCC. Nice to see you fellas staying classy after that development.

That was lucky for you, eh? You have a bullshit crusade of scaremongering to do, as you remind us by saying:
The Daily Express crusade to get Britain out of the EU has won massive support. We delivered a petition of 373,000 signatures from readers demanding a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU to 10 Downing Street earlier this year.
in , er, both articles. Word for word. Hey, did you check those signatures for duplicates, 'Mickey Mouse', 'Pete ZaHutt' and 'Syph Ellis' style hilarity? Of course you did.

And with articles like this, you'll end up with a few more signatures from ~~gullible marks~~ concerned, patriotic citizens in no time! What can we expect in the future? '"Cyclists: wear a beret, hooped shirt and onions or face a massive fine" EU says', 'Now EU renames Scotch Eggs 'Northern European pork and oeuf product bready balls', 'EU bans legs'. Maybe they'd sit alongside stories about how there are too many darkies, or 'ethnics' as your colleague Sarah O'Grady and, er, you prefer to call them, in a lovely xenophobic, racist stew. Who can say?

Since the Express isn't in the PCC anymore, the answer is no-one. No-one can say.

I'd like to give a big thank you to TabloidWatch for covering these articles. If he hadn't done that, I may never have seen them.

Right, that's it! As you may remember, I'll be reproducing this letter over at Five Chinese Crackers - plus, you're eligible to win the 5cc tabloid bullshitter of the year award at the end of the year. Since this is your second monthly award, you're in the front running with the Mail's Jack Doyle. Good luck!

You're also more than welcome to have an acceptance or rebuttal published over at my blog. Just reply to this email (that way I'll know it's you) and I'll publish it - and send you the image file of a crap drawing of a trophy that's the official prize for this award.

I'd love to hear a justification for your nonsense this month, but I won't be holding my breath. Strangely reluctant to defend yourselves, you lot. Go on, be the first hack ever to reply! Let me know why it's okay to say scores of buildings have to fly flags when the real number is two and tha the country will face massive fines when it in fact won't. I'm all ears.

Cheers then,

5cc

Okay people, that's it for another month. At the end of June I'll be back as close to the last Saturday of the month as I can manage for more snarky sniping at easy targets.

UPDATE: Hat-tip to Matt for emailing me the Mail sports games story and the reaction from CVG.

Full of crap and racist. Who knew?

2011-05-20T16:25:00.001+01:00

Just in case you missed it.

I've said it before, but being able to tell what the tabloids are going to do is a rubbish super power. It's like having a power that lets you eat your dinner.

Earlier this week, some stats were released that were guaranteed to get the tabloids in a lather, and I went out on a limb and said they would get the tabloids in a lather. Ooh, those lathered up tabloids. Always with the foreign workers and the too many ethnics.

On the foreign worker scare stories, the Sun gets extra bonus bullshit points for counting everyone born overseas as foreign, regardless of how long they've been in the country or their immigration status. Hurrah! '81% of new jobs go to foreigners' says the headline, which we know isn't strictly true from the hundreds of other times people have covered this. Here's another link to my post with the blue and red marble analogy that helps explain anyway.

Even more bonus points for saying 'shock figures reveal yesterday' despite reporting the same old shite over and over again.

'Four times more jobs go to migrants as total of foreign-born workers hits 4m for the first time' says the Mail, creatively taking a slightly different angle than usual. Blazing new trails, that's the Mail. Always trying to find a different way to express percentages so you won't notice the same story was published a couple of months ago.

As you would expect, both include a boilerplate quote from Sir Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch infamy, who tore himself away from his Steven Seagal DVDs for long enough to say, "The immigration lobby can no longer pretend immigration has very little effect on British workers' job prospects."

Of course, none of the stories let us know that the proportion of UK born people in work hasn't changed in the period, or that the figure is much lower if you look at non-UK citizens. These things might make it much easier to say immigration has little effect on job prospects, so they kind of have to be left out.

On the ethnic minority numbers story, the Express takes the most overtly racist award (again), this time for 'BRITAIN'S 40% SURGE IN ETHNIC NUMBERS'. Yes, that is the same shortened form of 'ethnic minority' to 'ethnic' that the BNP love so much. Extra racist points for counting white people who are not 'white British' as not white at all to come up with:

The huge rise over just eight years means more than nine million people in England and Wales – equivalent to one in six of the population – are now from a “non-white” background.

Extra shitty journalism bonus points for churning this line from Martin Bentham, crack Home Affairs editor of the Evening Standard, who said almost the exact same words.

Extra lazy journalism bonus points for getting a paint-by-the-numbers quote about how terrible this all is from a Tory MP - who just happens to be the hack's husband.

Still, this isn't news really. The Express has been Britain's most overtly racist newspaper for ages. And shit. It's been a shit newspaper for ages too.

The Mail went with 'Immigration 'boosted the UK population by 1.75m in just eight years'', interestingly turning the story into one about immigration and numbers with the headline. Could this signal a bit of a rowing back from its position last time, when it scaremonogered about there potentially being too many black & brown people and used an editorial to call people who might think that was racist 'sanctimonious'. Perhaps even the Mail realised, "It's political correctness gone mad. Can't even whinge about how many blacks there are without being called racist," is a bit of a ridiculous argument.

As you would expect, there's a boilerplate quote from Sir Andrew here too. Apparently, "This is the legacy of Labour’s mass immigration policy now appearing in the official figures. They have, whether deliberately or not, changed the face of Britain." I like the way it's now 'deliberately or not', when a while ago they were trumpeting that it was too deliberate and they had the proof, goddammit. Except they didn't. The proof was, in the technical language used by scientists examining evidence, "mucky wank".

Sir Andrew does of course go on to make the obligatory reference to the mysterious 70 million number. Presumably the papers cut the next bit of what he said, which was probably, "Wait, wait. It's nearly that bit where the Jamaican drug dealer calls him a bumbaclart and he chucks him through a glass counter. Yeeeeah! Smashh!"

Anyway, that's it. The UK papers take predictable rubbish, manipulate it predictably and range from borderline to overtly racist. Who knew?

On a similar note, I predicted last night on the Twitter that the Express's front page story today would be bullshit. And what do you know, it is. An Express story about the EU banning something and it turns out they're not banning the thing. It's the shock outcome no-one could expect.

I didn't get any of this right because I'm any good at anything. It's because the papers are shite, which is a conclusion as predictable as they are. I think I'm gonna need a new schtick.

Christmas for the tabloids, I tell you!

2011-05-18T22:30:00.004+01:00

Following yesterday's prediction, today's Express:

Not even just comparing 'white British' now? It's 'whites' vs 'ethnics.

Hurrah for the Express, The World's Racist Newspaper! (Via @psythor).

And today's Sun:

Bonus bullshit points for saying 'foreigners'.

Hurrah for the Bum, the biggest selling English language daily in the world! (Via @FactCheck)

It's Christmas for the tabloids!

2011-05-18T16:49:00.003+01:00

Today, two sets of stats are published that may cause much salivating and rubbing of thighs at the bottom end of our low quality newspaper market come tomorrow.

First, we have the May Labour Market Statistics (pdf - via Labour Market statistics at the ONS). These are always popular, since they can be farted around with to make it look like every new job in some time period or other went to a dirty foreigner.

Here's the sort of calculation the tabloids will make:

	Jan-Mar 2010	Jan-Mar 2011	Change
Total number in employment:	28,726,000	29,142,000	+416,000
Total non-UK Nationals:	2,262,000	2,501,000	+239,000

So, you could say that foreigners took around 57% of new jobs in this period, but that wouldn't really be true. Remember the blue and red marbles from this post. We don't know how many people retired, died, left the workforce because of disability or how many more people went into full time education rather than work by nationality. Without knowing this, we can't be sure how many people were really added to the workforce in the sense of individuals getting a job when they didn't have one before. If we knew these things, it's likely that they would take the share of UK-born people added to the workforce up a few notches.

Even still, this probably isn't the actual calculation the tabloids will make. There is another set of figures they like to pounce on for their scary headlines, and it's this one:

	Jan-Mar 2010	Jan-Mar 2011	Change
Total number in employment:	28,726,000	29,142,000	+416,000
Total non-UK born:	3,709,000	4,044,000	+335,000

Gah! 80% 0f new jobs go to migrants! Extra bullshit points go to any papers that bump up the hyperbole to say 80% of jobs go to foreigners, but whether they do depends on which paper gets there first to be churned. The same things apply to these figures as the above ones, with the added bonus of not knowing how many of these people are UK nationals born overseas to parents who were UK nationals at the time.

Even so, it says a lot about the tabloids that they'd rather use figures that make people from overseas undesirable and worthy of being viewed as a problem for life, regardless of how long they've been in the UK and regardless of their nationality.

Regardless of what the papers do, the one thing they're sure to ignore is that the percentage of the UK born and the percentage of UK nationals in work stayed about the same, rising by 0.3%. Foreigners are hardly coming in their droves and putting everyone else out of work.

The next set of figures that might get the tabloids hot under the collar are the Population by Ethnic Group 2002-2009 estimates (pdf - England & Wales only - via Population Estimates at the ONS).They give a good opportunity for a ZOMG! 1 in six are ethnics!Headline. In 2001, the figure was 1 in 8. The sky will fall on our heads!

Still, in common with the UK born/citizen employment rate, the number of "White British" people in England & Wales was roughly the same in 2009 as it was in 2001 - around 45.7 million.

All things staying at the same rate, for the "White British" to become a minority as the paper claimed in 'By 2066, white Britons 'will be outnumbered' if immigration continues at current rates', (based on projections of Professor David Coleman, of MigrationWatch infamy), the population would have to hit 90 million.

Coleman's projections had the population at less than that by 2083. Not looking so good is it?

Of course, the important thing here is a similar one to the workforce figures. No matter how long people who aren't white stay in the country, no matter how many generations their family have been here for, they will always be regarded as undesirable, a problem, something to worry about.

White immigrants can become '"White British" as quick as they like. These figures are only based on what people describe themselves as (not where they were born, as the Mail erroneously reported). ;My mate, who's dad's from Ireland and mum is half Greek is "White British". My other mates, who were born and grew up in the same neighbourhood, will never be classed in the same way, and neither will their children, or their children's children.

If you think their presence in the country is something to worry or wring your hands about because they're different colours - well, there's a word for that.

Perhaps the Mail will realise this after they called people who might think about using that word "sanctimonious", and they'l lay off these figures. We'll see.

I'm strangely looking forward to how Tom Whitehead will look at these after his Bullshit award win last month.

UPDATE
Like Mystic Meg, I got it right with the last one. Mystic Bloody Meg!

The Sun - your super soaraway source for crap propaganda

2011-05-16T23:18:00.003+01:00

Years ago, when I had too much hair, wore too much black and listened to too much Nirvana, around about the time of the first Gulf War, my cousin's boyfriend passed me a creased bit of paper that was beginning to fall apart around the folds in it. "Here, Crackers," he said, except he didn't because my name isn't Crackers but you can imagine him saying a real name like Trevor or something, "have a look at this".

It was the same voice my brother used when he passed me my first ever badly photocopied copy of Viz. "This is gonna be good," that voice said, "you're gonna piss laughing at a swearing postman and a man who wheels his knackers around in a wheelbarrow."

I took the grubby bit of A4, already sniggering a bit and getting ready to laugh a big one. On it was a picture of Saddam Hussein, with his beret on. I think my smile disappeared.

"Fold it out," my cousin's boyfriend said. "Fold it out!"

So I unfolded the bit of paper and Saddam Hussein was transformed into - a pig. Great. It's like Saddam Hussein is a pig. "That's rubbish," is what I wanted to say, but I didn't want to hurt the guy's feelings. I think I might have just given him it back in bewildered silence. It was my first real brush with proper propaganda, shite obvious propaganda like in World War II. My mum even said she remembered something similar with Hitler in it.*

I've come across quite a lot of shite obvious propaganda since then, most of it in the Sun. Whether you want a crap photoshopped picture showing what PRINCE William might look like as a KILLING machine or how it might go if Prince Harry got kidnapped in Iraq, you can rely on the Sun for some cheesy-arse rubbish you thought people became too savvy for some time in the fifties.

Actually, talking of Saddam Hussein, The Sun played a big part in making his execution a yuck-it-up barrel of laughs the like of which hasn't been seen since the last Morecambe and Wise Christmas special.

'The tyrant's in his pants' chortled the front page over a picture of Saddam in his pants back in 2005. In his pants! Never mind the morality behind handing him over to a court made up of his enemies who would probably want to kill him, he's in his pants! Does that violate international law? Who even cares?

'You're well hung now!' splorted the headline above the same picture just after he was sentenced to hanging a year or so later. Get it? well hung because he was about to be hanged until he was dead! And you can sort of make out where his willy is in the picture! Then it showed us a picture of some tits.

The US Military were allegedly furious about the Sun getting the pictures and vowed to aggressively investigate how the paper got them. The Sun claimed it got them from a US Military source. As far as I know, that investigation was never heard of again.

If that wasn't enough fun revelling in someone's death for you to bear, a couple of days later we got 'Your Saddam Hangman Kit' with, er, a hilarious kit for playing hangman with a cut out Saddam with a comedy expression on his face. Hur hur! On the same day, the paper reminded us that we should shit ourselves about terrorism since every month that passes without a new 7/7 lulls us into a false sense of security. Then it showed us a picture of some tits.

The dead baddie of choice today is of course Osama Bin Laden. Like every other newspaper in the world, the Sun reported that Bin Laden the coward had been using his wife as a human shield while brandishing a gun when he was shot before it was revealed that he wasn't. Unlike every other newspaper in the world, it turned the affair into hilarious knockabout comedy with the headline 'Bin bagged'. Then it showed us a picture of some tits.

The latest bit of suspected propaganda the paper has engaged in is the - ahem - news that a large porn stash was uncovered at Bin Laden's compound. The paper missed a trick with not having a hilarious headline for this one ('Porno found at Bin Laden hideout'), leaving it to its sister paper at the News of the World with 'Unnatural Porn Killer' and Murdoch stablemate the New York Post with the amazing front page at the top of this post. It still showed us a picture of some tits though.

I'm with Robert T Long of Auburn Alabama on this, who apparently said, "I have no problem believing that Bin Laden was a hypocrite. But I also have no problem believing that the US government is a liar. Hence I have no opinion one way or other as to the existence of Bin Laden's alleged porn collection."

But whatever the situation, the Sun can be relied on to supply us with some clumsy-arsed propaganda that gives us the official line on things next to comforting pictures of tits to take our mind away from all the difficult questions we might have thought of. Question what you're being fed and you're questioning humour itself, you killjoy. Probably a lefty as well. No sense of humour you lot.

As for the pictures of tits, even those are wrapped up with some lovely propaganda these days. Question the propaganda and you're questioning the lady with the boobs. Nikkala, 19, from Herefordshire might not fancy you if you don't think Osborne has it right on cuts.

Which sort of brings me to a close with the weird photoshopped picture above today's Kavanagh column, which I don't think is online. Anyway, just look at this:

Now think of some words to describe it that are any better than 'fucking shit'.

The source of all the US official propaganda stuff is pretty obvious, but where does this stuff come from? Couldn't be a reciprocal arrangement of the sort that has been alleged between News International and the Metropolitan Police could it? Can't be. Just ask Jeremy Hunt.

*Yes, my mum was quite old when she had me. Yes, this makes for rich pickings if you're into cussing people's mums. But then so does your mum being a smelly tramp and a slag like yours.

Temporary outage

2011-05-15T21:54:00.001+01:00

Hello people. Slim pickings here at the moment thanks to a crap Dell XPS laptop explosion. It is dead beyond repair.

With any luck I'll be able to post before I get a new PC, but it'll be thin here for a bit.

Lucky you, eh?

What do tabloids do?

2011-05-06T14:22:00.000+01:00

Today, Fleet Street Blues links to a spirited defence of tabloid values from Oscar Williams-Grut at wannabehacks. It's a good piece, but you might have trouble reading it if you follow the link. The enormous elephant in the room might get in the way of your screen.

Aside from suggesting that celebrity and popular culture are no less important than politics or science, which quite funny, the main thrust of the piece seems to be this:

Recent figures reveal that the Mail Online is the second most read news website on the web. Why? Because they know what their readers want.

And:

The virtues of the student tabloids are exactly the same as the nationals: they both know how their readers think.

Yes, the national tabloids do know what their readers think, and they're keen to give them what they want. The problem is that they're so hell bent on giving it to them that they prioritise this over telling the truth. That's kind of a problem.

One major aspect of tabloid style reporting is the blatant disregard for truth. It's just as much of a feature as short sentences, puns and punchy headlines.

TabloidWatch has recently covered how the Express and Star both made false claims about the flying of EU flags. The coverage prompted the EU Information office to write to the Express pointing out what was wrong. The Express decided not to print the letter or make any sort of clarification, but did print several letters that backed up its false claims.

The Telegraph recently parroted a claim about the costs of immigration that was a tabloid fabrication. The cost came from adding together figures whose author said shouldn't be added together and slapping almost a billion pounds on the top. When this total originally appeared in the Daily Mail, it was included at the bottom of a table that'd had certain things on it labelled differently to the labels their original author had given them, changing 'ethnic minority' to 'immigrant'. On the vaunted and incredibly popular MailOnline, the table was included in another story about the government's position on the benefits of immigration without the source being labelled at all, so it might look to the casual reader as though these were official government figures.

Express readers might think the EU is bonkers and might want to read about how it's going to fine countries whose buildings don't fly its flag - but that never happened. Mail readers might have wanted to read shocking figures about the cost of immigration - but they got a made up total that would have been unreliable even if the paper didn't add almost a billion pounds to it.

The article at wannabehacks also says:

Meanwhile, meanings are often lost, ambiguity appears and the reader becomes confused or loses interest. Good journalism should be clear, accurate and economical. No papers provide a better example of this than the tabloids.

The Sun famously has a reading age of 8, a fact often used to dismiss them. But The Sun’s subeditors are some of the most respected on Fleet Street precisely because of this. The language they use may not be intellectual, but they know damn well how to use it.

It's not necessarily just the simple language that is the problem with the tabloids. It's the simplifying of concepts and events. If ambiguity appears in an article about an ambiguous situation, that's a good thing.

The reality behind the figure of the costs of immigration I mentioned earlier is that they were ambiguous. The original author didn't know how much of the figures he quoted actually applied to immigrants, which is why he warned against adding them together. This would have been more obvious to the reader seeing 'ethnic minority' in a table of supposed costs of immigrants, which is why the Mail changed them. Even without adding .9 billion pounds to the total, Mail readers would have been presented misleading, shaky figures as though they were concrete fact. This is not a good thing.

The idea that tabloid hacks are better than other writers because they use shorter words and make things simple is one of those weird myths, like how swallowed chewing gum stays in your gut for years and years, or that trainers thrown over a phone line mark gang territory. (That last one appeared on the front page of the Daily Mail by the way).

What tabloids do, away from fake sheiks, phone hacking and blagging is supply what they've decided their readers want by oversimplifying issues, reducing complex and ambigious ideas to simple black and white certainty that often misrepresents reality. Oh, and show pictures of tits that are sometimes accompanied by fake outrage. And that's before we even think about stories that are just rubbish from the start.

Anyone know where I can find a muslim only public loo?

Tabloid bullshit of the month award - April 2011

2011-05-04T22:18:00.002+01:00

It's here! A stay in the country this weekend with no internet connection at all (unless I stood in the garden with my phone down by my ankles) delayed it, but it's time for the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for April 2011. Hurrah!

It's an odd one this month. I decided to avoid all coverage of the royal bloody wedding wherever possible, and the thought of looking at the yes/no to AV stuff fills me with the kind of existential despair I haven't felt since trying to read the Sun for a week. So I went with what I know.

In the end, there is a tie this month. It was so difficult to choose between two potential winners, who were so completely wrapped up with one another that they both have to get it.

The winners are Tom Whitehead of the Telegraph for 'Almost one in eight people living in UK are born abroad' and 'Concerns over foreign crime wave', and our friend Jack Doyle of the Mail for 'Migrant crime wave revealed: Foreign arrests have almost doubled in just THREE years'. Between the two of them, these crazy guys help reveal how much peddlers of tabloid anti-immigration stories rely on each other for sources, and how the broadsheets are no better than their downmarket cousins.

Here's the letter explaining why. Enjoy:

Dear Mr Whitehead and Mr Doyle,

Congratulations! I'm pleased to announce that the two of you are joint winners of one of journalism's newest and most prestigious prizes, the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for April 2011. Mr Doyle is no stranger to this award, having won the inaugural prize back in October 2010. Hurrah!

Mr Whitehead has won for his hilariously freamongering-tabloid inspired 'Almost one in eight people living in UK are born abroad' and 'Concerns over foreign crime wave' and Mr Doyle, you're up for 'Migrant crime wave revealed: Foreign arrests have almost doubled in just THREE years'. well done boys.

Here's why you two won:

Almost one in eight people living in UK are born abroad
This article reads like its been bashed out by someone who's been locked in a room for years and given only the Daily Mail to read and a bucket to poo in. You'd win a game of tabloid immigration bullshit bingo in no time with this one. The "open door" immigration policy, the 'immigration has added enough for a city the size of...', the 'OMFG! 70 million! If the population hits 70 million, er, something or other will happen. Dunno what, but it's gonna be bad.'

Some of these points aren't just bullshit in the sense of being editorialising bluster masquerading as objective fact, but are bullshit in the sense of being, uh, bullshit.

Britain doesn't 'now have a higher proportion of foreign-born residents than European neighbours such as France and Italy', at least according to the UN. France has a slightly higher proportion than the UK, and Italy has had a lower one since at least 1990, so the tabloidesque 'now' is redundant. Even when cherrypicking to achieve a scary result (why not pick other English speaking developed western nations, or other European countries like Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands or Spain - couldn't be because they all have a higher proportion according to the UN) you pick the wrong cherry. I would love to see your sources for this claim.

You include the funny idea that Andrew Neather revealed a plot to make Britain more multicultural, while being careful to point out that ministers denied there was a plot and equally careful to leave out the fact that none other than Andrew Neather denied the existence of a plot too. He even complained that his words had been twisted beyond recognition by the right wing press. You know, you guys.

David Coleman never estimated that immigrants cost the taxpayer £8.8 billion a year. He sent a paper to the Economic Affairs Committee with a list of costs accompanied by the disclaimer that these should not be added together as some might overlap and it isn't clear how much of some apply to immigrants. Adding these costs together gives the misleading total of £7.882 billion. The source for the £8.8 billion figure is the Daily Mail, who changed the labels of some of the things Coleman included to read 'immigrant' instead of 'ethnic minority'along with adding almost a billion pounds to the real misleading total.

'Concerns over foreign crime wave' churned from 'Migrant crime wave revealed: Foreign arrests have almost doubled in just THREE years'
Top churning! The real winner for this one is Mr Doyle. Here's why:

The technique of sending out a bunch of FoI's to police forces about foreign arrests and then clumsily masking-taping them all together will never return a reliable result. There are a few reasons. One major one is that nationality is something a person being arrested reports themselves. It is never checked and bears little relation to where someone is born. The other is that the Metropolitan Police, who always disclose these figures arrest far more people, 'foreign' or otherwise, than any other force. This would completely skew incomplete national results, even if you could rely on the reliability of the ones you have. Which you can't.

You display a legendary capacity for ignoring disclaimers. The Metropolitan Police and Durham Police are both keen to point out that you should not add their results together with those from any other force. The Met even says it 'may result in distorted and misleading figures'. Still, never mind distorted and misleading figures when you're writing a Daily Mail story about dirty foreigners with murder in their eyes, eh?

The Met says - in bold, mind you:
It was not possible to retrieve data prior to 1 April 2008 as the previous custody system does not hold nationality data.
So you're using incomplete data for your first year of Met figures. Given that your figures from this force account of around half of your "OMG! Foreign arrests have doubled! They're coming to get you!" hook, using an incomplete year to compare with a complete one might be just a little bit significant.

Cambridgeshire Police even point out that they couldn't retrieve anything prior to 2007, which didn't stop you comparing their 2006 numbers with 2010. Still, credit where it's due. You've removed that claim, which is more than can be said for Mr Whitehead. Top churning, Mr W! That's the standard you expect from the Home Affairs Editor of a national broadsheet newspaper. You're in good company with others who blindly churned that number, who include the Daily Express and the National Front. Even the BNP managed to skip that one.

You're both incredibly good at the technique of ignoring more mundane explanations for changes than Jesus! The foreigners are getting us! Every force I've seen results from indicate that they've recently changed the way they collect this data. Hey, maybe introducing a new recording system would affect the reliability of the new numbers while they're bedding in, especially if they place greater emphasis on recording certain things than the old system.

Durham Police certainly think so, although their statement that, "The [custody recording] system was introduced to the force at the end of 2005 and during its first years several data quality issues were identified, including that the Nationality field was often completed as "unknown" or "not applicable". This issue has now been resolved hence increased accuracy in more recent years," didn't stop you from using their 2006 figures for comparison with 2010.

The big fancy table in the middle of the Mail version says Bedfordshire Police made 39 arrests in 2008. Bedfordshire Police say they arrested 3 hundred and 39.

I came up with these howlers after being able to access figures from only five police forces. I wonder how many more would turn up if someone had a proper look the rest. Or even a cursory glance at the covering disclaimers.

Why you both won instead of just one of youYou both demonstrate the way scaremongering newspapers rely on each other to churn and re-churn material until some things get accepted as fact that aren't. Cambridgeshire Police didn't only arrest 27 foreign nationals in 2006. David Coleman's evidence to the Economic Affairs Committee did not show that the cost of immigration was £8.8 billion per year nationally. But they're shared as if they're facts.

Now, there are no nuggets churned by Mr Doyle. Your story is based on your own research. But your technique isn't.

The first time I can see that the idea of banging out FoI requests to police forces and mashing the limited results together to attampt to get a national picture is in a Daily Express story from 2008. 'EVERY 4 MINUTES A MIGRANT IS ARRESTED IN BRITAIN' shouted the headline, atop a story written by the bullshit technique pioneer...

...Tom Whitehead. Top job there, Mr W.

So, the other thing you both demonstrate is that broadsheets aren't really any more reliable than the tabloids. When someone scaremongering for the Express can end up as Home Affairs Editor for the Daily Telegraph and churning the old bollocks they read in the Mail, it doesn't really speak well for the quality of the Telegraph.

That's it. I'll be reproducing this letter over at www.fivechinesecrackers.com. You're both more than welcome to become the first hack ever to reply with an acceptance comment or defence by replying to this email, but I won't be holding my breath.

Mr Doyle is now well on the way to winning of the first ever 5cc tabloid bullshitter of the year award, which I'll be awarding at the end of this year to the hack who wins the most monthly awards. After all, your hit rate has doubled in just SIX months!

Mr Whitehead, keep up the good work and you could catch up. Imagine winning a tabloid bullshit award for a broadsheet.

Good luck. The births and deaths figures are released in the summer, so you should be able to squeeze out some indignant rage about the number of non-white babies born like Jack Doyle did last year or something. Cuh, those non-white babies. Come over here, gurgle a bit, steal cooing smiles from decent, hard-dribbling white British stock. The bastards.

Cheers then,

5cc

Okay, sorry this was a long one, but that's it for April. Check back at the end of May for the winner next month. It should even be on time this month, since I have no plans to go away and my wife will be out of the country. Send me any suggestions you have and I'll consider them. I'd like to move away from the staple of looking at immigration coverage if I can, so I'm well open to suggestions.

How many immigration myths can you spot?

2011-04-16T11:58:00.002+01:00

A quickie, as I leave for a week's mucking about in Scotland & the north.

Thanks to @jood88 in the small hours of this morning, I've come across 'Almost one in eight living in UK are born abroad'.

Are you scared yet? Someone you know might be, I'll whisper it - *foreign*.

The article is full of brilliant tabloid anti-immigration bullshit classics.

In a quick read through, I came across:

The one about the secret plot to make Britain more multicultural. The paper is careful to point out that Ministers denied a secret plot, and just as careful not to mention that the guy they're claiming revealed the plan also said there was no plot, and that his words had been twisted beyond recognition.

The one about David Coleman saying the cost of immigration is £8.8 billion I mentioned a couple of posts ago. You know, the one where his table of costs included a disclaimer warning not to add them to get a total because it would be misleadingly high that the Mail ignored, slapped almost a billion pounds on top of the already misleadingly high total and then changed some of the items to say 'immigrant' instead of 'ethnic minority'. That one.

How many more can you spot, readers?

*UPDATE*

The immigration scare story bullshit bingo results in this story also include:

70 million! Panic!
Immigration contributes a city the size of...
Aaargh! Babies! 1 in 4 births to foreign mothers!
Huge number of East Europeans based on workers permit figures
The UK now has a bigger proportion of migrants than France and Italy! (Except, according to the UN, France has a bigger percentage and the UK has had a higher proportion than Italy since at least 1990)
Quote from UKIP
Quote from MigrationWatch chief and Steven Seagal fan, Sir Andrew Green

Do we have a potential first proper broadsheet contender for the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award?

David Cameron's speech revisited

2011-04-15T18:44:00.000+01:00

I started this post as a response to Anonymous in the comments of 'Look who's wearing the Emperor's pants', who asked for an analogy because my statistical analysis is hard to follow. That's fair enough, because it is. In fact, it's so hard to follow that creating the analogy made me realise I'd made a mistake in one of my assumptions about how Cameron's speech is trying to hoodwink with its eastern European figures.

Yes, I did give myself an ironic lolly and call myself 'Lumpy'.

Here's a clearer idea of what's wrong with the figures I looked at in Cameron's speech yesterday. I'll be starting by using barrels and marbles for the easier stuff, and then dropping the analogies for the things that are more dishonest than I'd at first realised.

Net migration
Okay, imagine a barrel. The barrel has 750 marbles in. It springs a leak, and 250 marbles go cascading cross the floor. while this is going on and the leak is plugged, you tip more marbles in to replace the ones spilling out, but you end up pouring in 500 marbles. You've now got a barrel with 1000 marbles in it.

Now, you need to measure how many new marbles had been added to the barrel. You just count how many you tipped in. That would be 500. This would be how we measure total immigration.

You would make a different calculation if you wanted to know how much the number of marbles in the barrel has grown by. That's pretty easy, right? You started with 750 and now you have 1000, so the number of marbles in the barrel has grown by 250. This is the same way we measure net migration.

David Cameron uses the net migration figure in his speech. This is totally fine for what he's doing, and there aren't any problems with it at all.

Foreign-born people added to the job market
We've got another barrel. This one has 750 marbles in too. 650 are blue and 100 are red. It springs a leak, and 500 marbles spill out, 450 of them blue and 50 red. You pour in replacement marbles from a barrel that is made up of a mix of red and blue marbles, but you pour enough to end up with 1000 marbles in the barrel.

You end up pouring in 450 blue marbles and 300 red ones, adding a total of 750 to the barrel. This leaves a total of 650 blue and 350 red in the barrel.

Now you need to know how many marbles are in the barrel that weren't there before. You'd just do the same calculations you did for net and total migration from before. Which one you used would depend on what you were looking for.

The way the government usually does this when they're asked how many people have been added to the job market is by using the net figure. They're basically saying, "When we took over looking after the barrel there were 750 marbles in it and now there are 1000, so we've added 250 to the total number of marbles in the barrel". This is okay as far as it goes. A government can't really take credit for adding people to the job market if they're just taking the place of people who left. But things start to get complicated when you try to split things up, and the net figure stops being very useful.

Let's say someone asks you what the proportion of the marbles you poured into the barrel were red. You poured in 750 marbles, and 300 were red. That means 40% of the new marbles were red. Easy.

This is not how the tabloids, and now David Cameron, would measure it when looking at what you'd done when they took over the barrel. They would say, "250 marbles were added to the barrel by the previous owner. There are 250 red marbles in the barrel that weren't in there before. Therefore all the marbles added to the barrel were red."

That's just not right. More blue marbles were added than red ones, they just all took the place of the marbles that leaked.

Migration from the EU
For this, we're going to have to dispense with the marbles analogy. What Cameron has actually done here is even more dishonest than I imagined, which is why I got confused in the first place. Marbles would only confuse things further. Here goes.

What this part of the speech aims to do is show that immigration from the EU has been both low and high at the same time. He needs to do this to show that being in the EU doesn't have much effect on what can be done to restrict immigration at the same time as telling us immigration from eastern Europe is scary high.

Here's how he does it. First, he's already made sure he's let us know that net migration since 1997 has been about 2.2 million a couple of sections earlier. Now we have that figure in our head. This most likely comes from the Long Term International Migration figures, which you can see here.

Then, he tries to show how teeny-tiny net EU migration has been by restricting himself to one year's worth of figures. So we end up thinking about net EU migration for one year in relation to overall net migration for thirteen years.

If you wanted to give an honest idea of how much being in the EU affects our ability to restrict immigration, you'd show how much EU migration compares to non-EU over the same period. Net migration from the EU between 1997 and 2009 stands at 680,000. That's about a third of the 2.2million total.

This is still low, and would still help with Cameron's point. But 27,000 sounds way lower when you've already heard the 2.2 million figure bandied about.

Now he's got us thinking about how ridiculously low EU migration is, he needs us to think migration from eastern Europe is really high.

He does this by shifting to a total figure since 2004, rather than stay consistent with using net figures. On top of that, the total figure he uses is a nonsense, it's a complete tabloid confection. As I said in 'Look who's wearing the Emperor's pants':

The 'over a million' figure is arrived at using the well trodden technique pioneered by the unparalleled James Slack of counting every application for a Work Permit recorded by the Worker Registration Scheme and ignoring the following things that some people might think was, I don't know, completely fucking essential if you want to work out how many people have come to live and work in the UK:

a) whether the applications were accepted or rejected
b) how many applications are from people who have applied before, returned to Eastern Europe and want to come back again
c) whether the people who applied actually followed things through and came to the UK
d) how many of these people actually returned home

We've now totally lost contact with reality.

If Cameron had any desire for honesty here, he'd be using net figures from the same source. If he did that, he'd have been talking about net migration from eastern Europe being 304,000. Slightly less than 'over a million', huh? Even if he wanted to cheat and use a total calculation to make it look bigger, we'd be talking about 490,000.

But if he'd been honest, our Prime Minister wouldn't have been able to sound quite so impressive, going from 2.2 million to 27,000 to 'over a million'. The only honest figure there is the first one.

If even I, who was looking for clues as to how dishonest this speech was managed to underestimate how bad it was, what chance did people not being so careful have?

So, thank you to Anonymous for making me look closer at my working. Without that, I'd have just thought it was a simple matter of switching between net and total calculations when convenient. It was much more than that in the end.

Did immigrant crime really double in just THREE years?

2011-04-14T16:58:00.001+01:00

'Never trust the Mail on crime and immigration' I said last Tuesday in response to the Mail's 'Migrant crime wave revealed: Foreign arrests have almost doubled in just THREE years' from the Mail, which was subsequently churnalised by the Telegraph and Express.

And now, thanks to hmallett in a comment on that very post, I have a bunch of links to some of the sources, which means I don't have to make a bunch of FoI requests and wait weeks for the results to find out how much shite the Mail is trying to peddle. Hurrah!

Multiple choice time! Which of the following things is wrong with the Mail's data:

A) The Mail could be merging data that isn't compatible
B) The Mail might be comparing an incomplete year's figures with a complete year
C) The way these figures are measured may have changed
D) Police may be putting greater emphasis on recording nationality
E) Some of the figures might be crappy 'typos' and not the actual figures at all

The answer is...all of the above! Seriously, Jack Doyle has managed to ignore caveats about the first four things in the list with some of the figures and include at least one buggered up number that make everything look just that bit more scary. Well done, that man.

We have the results from the Met, Durham, West Mercia, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire (cover letter and stats) to go on. If the Mail can use incomplete data then so can I, suckers!

Merging data that isn't compatible
Firstly, the Metropolitan Police has this to say:

Comparing this data directly with information supplied as part of another FOIA request, or with data from other sources may result in distorted and misleading figures.

And:

It should be noted that for these reasons this force's response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

Pow!

Durham says:

Please note that Durham Constabulary’s response to your request is unique and should not be used as a comparison with any other Force response you receive.

Smash!

I wonder how long it took after seeing this before Doyle (or whoever pulled the figures together for him to write up) thought, fuck it. Let's add them together anyway.

Comparing and incomplete year's figures with a complete year
The Met says, in the only one of their notes that have been included in bold:

It was not possible to retrieve data prior to 1 April 2008 as the previous custody system does not hold nationality data.

So that big fancy-Dan table in the middle of the page is comparing a year's worth of data with nine months' worth of data. Totally accurate though, I'll bet.

This isn't an insignificant tiny difference that might skew the figures just a little, The rise in arrests in the Met area accounts for half the rise recorded across all forces the Mail has data for. The splashy headline would be ruined without the Met's figures.

Away from the scary looking table, the original article made a fair bit out of Cambridgeshire police only arresting 27 foreign nationals in 2006 and 4,803 in 2010. It did a calculation of how many thousands of a percentage increase that would mean and everything. That bit's gone now (This could explain why there's a big picture of Cambridgeshire's MP with no quote to match it), presumably because someone pointed out the bit on Cambridgeshire's reply that says:

Information prior to 1 January 2007 is no longer retrievable.

Which might explain the low number of arrests of foreigners recorded for 2006. I wonder who it could have been who got that bit removed? Cambridgeshire's Chief Constable is on the PCC Committee by the way.

Still, the claim is still there in the Express and in the Telegraph. Wa-hey!

Changing the way figures are measured
Almost all the forces I have figures for point out that they've changed the way things are recorded in the years 2005/06/07/08. This explains the Met's partial information for 2008. It explains other things, too.

Durham Police say this:

The [custody recording] system was introduced to the force at the end of 2005 and during its first years several data quality issues were identified, including that the Nationality field was often completed as "unknown" or "not applicable". This issue has now been resolved hence increased accuracy in more recent years.

Right. A new recording system with inaccurecies in early years that have been fixed more recently. Could this possibly explain the jump from 147 arrests in 2008 to 418 in 2009? Gee, do you think?

West Mercia say:

There was a change to recording of information on WMP systems in 2007 and before this we do not have the facility to filter search criteria by nationality, therefore we are unable to provide full data for 2006 and partial data has been provided for 2007.

Ah. Do you think the new system from 2007 might have taken a while to bed in and affected the recording of 2008's figures? I wonder. No I don't.

Bedfordshire say:

The information provided only goes back to 2008, because a new custody system was introduced at teh end of 2007 and the Go Live dates throughout Bedfordshire varied therefore, 2008 is the first full years worth of data available in the custody system since it went live.

Boringly familiar now, huh?

Greater emphasis on recording nationality
What Durham Police said, above. Since the systems for recording information are changing, it most likely follows that for other forces too, natoinality was less likely to be recorded properly in the period of the system bedding in. Which conveniently happens to be the year the Mail has its first set of figures for.

Crappy typos
Big scary table records Bedfordshire as having only 39 arrests in 2008. Bedfordshire says 339.

As stupidly unreliable reporting of data about foreigners goes, this story ranks up there with the one about David Coleman's submission to the Economic Affairs Committee in 2007. Coleman included a big table of potential costs of immigraition with a massive disclaimer where the total should be saying, in effect, "Don't add these together to make a total because it would be misleading, since some of them overlap and it's not certain how much applies to immigrants" (which kind of begs the question 'why include the feckin' thing anyway?').

The Mail added the figures together, added an extra 900 million pounds to it, made the fake total the basis of the headline, amended some of the entires on the table that said 'ethnic minority' to say 'immigrant' and included the table in another article on the website without attributing it to make it look like they were part of the government's submission to the same committee.

Nice to see the paper (and its followers) staying classy.

Look who's wearing the Emperor's pants

2011-04-14T13:02:00.003+01:00

Twice in two posts? What are the chances?

In the comments to this post, Anonymous asked for an analogy to explain my stats. In thinking of one, I realised I'd made a couple of mistakes in what I thought Cameron was doing with the figures. Turned out things were even worse than I'd imagined. Please go to 'David Cameron's speech revisited' for a clearer idea of what the foreign worker stuff is about and a better idea of how dishonest he's being with everything else. Stay here for more jokes about pants and gussets.

One of the most depressing things about realising how bad the tabloids are and how little attention they deserve is watching people who ought to know better spouting tired, tired tabloid myths that have been debunked a million times over as if they were true. Whether the motive is deliberate skulduggery or boneheaded stupidity, it's always depressing to watch someone like Baroness Warsi talk about Winterval replacing Christmas or Eric Pickles bang on about health and safety gawn mad as if these things were real.

At least no-one as important as the Prime Minister would be stupid enough to pull on those invisible Emperor-style pants and strut around as if they're the most stylish silk, their flaccid and sagging bits swaying to and fro in the imaginary gusset, eh? Sorry, I'm mucking about again. Of course they would.

Today, David Cameron is apparently going to waste his time delivering a speech about immigration that has already been leaked and published. There's a lot of it to take issue with, and many, many assertions that you'd want to see backed up by at least two independent sources and looked over with a fine toothcomb yourself before you believed, but I want to focus on a couple of things I've looked over again and again and again on this blog. I will be illustrating how wrong a set of figures are by comparing them to another set of figures that would look absurd if they were calculated in the same way. I've taken these other figures from, uh, another bit of David Cameron's speech. Which also relies on figures taken from tabloid bunkum. Score one for boneheaded contradictions!

Cameron says:

Since 1997, the number of people in work in our economy has gone up by some 2.5 million. And of this increase, around 75% was accounted for by foreign-born workers … many of whom were employed to clean offices, serve in restaurants or work on building sites.

Of course he does. As I said, I've looked at similar claims from the tabloids many, many times over the years, because they are rubbish. They're very, very popular though.

There are a lot of reasons why the figures are so dirty and wrong. The Daily Express famously managed to make the same calculation over a different time period to show the totally impossible result that foreigners took more jobs than existed and conclude 'MIGRANTS TAKE ALL NEW JOBS IN BRITAIN' rather than 'OUR FIGURES MUST BE RUBBISH BECAUSE THE RESULT IS IMPOSSIBLE'.

Although Cameron avoids the usual howlers of calling things that aren't jobs 'jobs' or British citizens 'foreign' (he fudges with 'foreign-born' instead) he makes one massive howler that contributes quite a bit to the possibility of getting the Express's earlier totally impossible result. Which would make his assertion complete cack, of course.

The number of people in work added to the total is a net calculation. It is not the absolute number of people who have gained work. The number of new people in work since 1997 will be higher than Cameron's 2.5 million, because in the same period people will have left work for one reason or another. Since more UK-born people are reaching retirement age than foreign-born - in fact, one of the big reasons people argue for immigration is that the UK-born population is ageing faster than babies are being born - you will never get an accurate result by doing things this way.

Working things out like this completely misses the number of UK-born people (or foreign-born, for that matter) who have been added to the workforce and replaced people who have left. Plus, if a foreign-born person replaces a UK-born person in the workforce, they will still be counted as one of the 75% of the 2.5 million added to the workforce sine 1997. If a UK-born person does the same thing, they won't. That's without even mentioning how many of these 'foreign-born' people will be people who arrived as children or have been in the country for decades and have precisely sod-all to do with recent immigration.

You might be totally okay with using this calculation. I don't know who you are. You might work for a tabloid or have some other reason for wanting to distort the truth to create a negative impression of immigration, I dunno. But if you do carry on using this, you'd have to reject an earlier bit of Cameron's speech.

Before talking rubbish about foreign-born workers, Cameron says:

Between 1997 and 2009, 2.2 million more people came to live in this country than left to live abroad.

And:

But actually, this [immigration from Europe] counts for a small proportion of overall net migration to the UK. In the year up to June 2010, net migration to our country from EU nationals was just 27,000.
That's not to say migration from Europe has been insignificant. Since 2004, when many large eastern European countries joined the EU, more than one million people from those countries have come to live and work in the UK – a huge number.

If we accept that foreign-born people take up 75% of the 2.5 million people added to the workforce, then we have to accept that more than 50% of immigrants since 1997 have been people who arrived from eastern Europe since 2004, and Cameron's assertion that EU immigration counts for a small proportion of overall net migration is rubbish.

Well, you would if you wanted to believe that 'more than one million' number wasn't just a well trodden tabloid myth in the first place. But I'm guessing if you want to have your foreign worker cake with EU immigration icing and eat it, you probably do.

The 'over a million' figure is arrived at using the well trodden technique pioneered by the unparalleled James Slack of counting every application for a Work Permit recorded by the Worker Registration Scheme and ignoring the following things that some people might think was, I don't know, completely fucking essential if you want to work out how many people have come to live and work in the UK:

a) whether the applications were accepted or rejected
b) how many applications are from people who have applied before, returned to Eastern Europe and want to come back again
c) whether the people who applied actually followed things through and came to the UK
d) how many of these people actually returned home

Other than those things - the number is fine. Over a million people have totally come to live and work in the UK from Eastern Europe.

That's as much time as I have right now. Given the bullshit spewing forth in just two small claims, I can only imagine how full of truth and accuracy the rest of the speech is.

I think the thing that makes this thing sinister rather than just bloody annoying is the possibility that Cameron isn't so much swinging his knackers about in invisible pants as he is trying to sell us a stylish pair of Emperor's kecks himself.

He wouldn't, would he?

I can see the Emperor's winky

2011-04-13T13:08:00.001+01:00

Kind of the Sun , huh?

In January, I set myself the task of reading every book of recycled Littlejohn columns. I was hoping to spot a through line and work out the odd logic that make the columns fit together. I had kind of lofty hopes that involved the word 'narrative'.

A few weeks ago, I decided to read the Sun every day for a week with something similar in mind. I don't know what I expected to find, but I had a vague idea that the Sun is like the Mail with a sense of humour, softer edges around its xenophobia and less prissiness about showing pictures of tits. Finding out whether this is true was supposed to do something or other. I forget what.

But something happened while I was in the middle of both of these tasks. Although I was finding out some things that I was after, I started to hear a nagging at the back of my mind that grew steadily louder with each page I turned and each crappy article I trudged through until I couldn't ignore it any longer. It made any enthusiasm I had drain from my body in thick, snotlike ropes. "Why are you even reading this?" it asked. "This is shit."

And it is. It really, really is. It probably comes as no surprise to most people, but tabloids are crap. They're incredibly pisspoor products whose aura of fucking shitness should overshadow any outrage we feel when we read someone saying something nasty about homosexuals or something pretend about Muslims, or the annoyance that comes with seeing figures you know have been manipulated, because those things are part and parcel of it all. Nobody at these papers gives a flying fuck about the quality of what they put out or the reliability of their analysis. They don't have to. Because, like the bloke at the market who sells you a DVD player that's actually full of old pinball machine parts who's mysteriously disappeared when you go to get your money back I just made up in my head, they don't give a flying one about the bonky load of busted lightbulbs and springs they've sold you as long as you buy it.

My week of reading the Sun came during the aftermath of the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The paper was busy telling us that it was just like Hiroshima and showing us radiation signs and telling us to panic and lying about the British Embassy telling 'Brits' to leave immediately. This was a big, global story and of course the paper was doing a rubbish job of reporting it. But that was just the start of the unadulterated fucking crap the paper had sold me.

In this week, I also learned that David Beckham had ridden a motorbike. Wait, that's not it. This made the papers (and not just the Sun) because he had a bandanna in his pocket. Hang on, that's not quite is just yet. You'll never believe this. The bandanna had a colour on it that might have been pink. And David Beckham is a man! Well push me down the stairs and call my mum a slag. A man with something that might have been pink? They'll be telling us women sometimes wear trousers next.

Other things I learned were that Alex Reid was apparently upset about Jordan giving his watch to her new boyfriend in a story that included pictures of both men with the watch circled for us to see. Except they were clearly different watches. They were different colours, for fuck's sake.

Ashley Cole once went into a nightclub that had a hookah pipe at some unspecified point in time. Umm, thanks, the Sun.

Also, the paper alleged that one of the women who slept with Wayne Rooney had a birthday cake with two women in bed with Shrek wearing a Man United shirt on it. There was another almost identical story about a birthday cake with some old bollocks on it later in the week but I forget what it was now. The proof offered for both of these were that unnamed 'guests at the party' said stuff about them, and there were pictures of the cakes close up that showed nothing around them to prove where they were and gave no sign that some Sun hack hadn't had the cake made themselves and taken a crap picture of them with a cameraphone. Which they obviously wouldn't do because they totally care about boldly reporting the truth about tenuous connections between celebrities and items of confectionery.

The thing is, if you point out just how crap tabloids are, you risk getting yourself called a snob. Who are you to criticise people for wanting to read possibly made up stories about cakes with Shrek on next to a picture of some tits in a national newspaper? You probably hate working class people don't you, you posh wanker. And middle class people too. Look at you, with your airs and graces and education and top 'at and monocle.

Knackers. That's rubbish. The trouble with that argument is that the person calling you a snob for pointing out how crap tabloids are is the one who's decided that tabloid readers (or working/middle class people if they want to pretend that tabloid readers represent a whole class) don't want or deserve anything better. They're the ones defending the practice of selling crap to people under false pretences because that's what they want, made up cobblers and all. But somehow you're the snob.

This gets even more absurd when the person doing the accusations of snobbery work for these papers. Especially the editors. They've decided that to appeal to their target audience they must reinforce what prejudices it already has at all costs, even if it means deliberately distorting the truth, entrapping unsuspecting victims or making shit up. And they've decided what the prejudices are in the first place. And this is on top of bunging out any old shite about celebrities' watches and cakes, whether true or not.

The highest paid columnist in the land is so craptacularly substandard that he reproduces fifteen year old myths as truth, mistakes a dog for a woman, says an organisation is responsible for something fifteen-odd years after the it was disbanded and not only can't be bothered to even find out if something has happened or not, but decides to say, "Did this happen? Maybe it did. I don't remember," without breaking his stride and acting as if it didn't anyway. Like a laser guided truthiness machine, that man. But it doesn't matter. It's what people want. Who are you to deny the people their shit sandwich, you ponce?

Last Thursday, former News of the World hack Paul McMullen appeared on 10 O'Clock Live opposite John Prescott to defend his former paper for the phone hacking scandal. He first launched into Prescott for his expenses claims, which is pretty funny. The expenses scandal - the biggest political scandal to surface for years - wasn't revealed as the result of phone hacking. A whistleblower approached the papers with the information. The News of the World turned it down. Too expensive and not enough about footballers and pink cakes, probably. Or tits. Too complicated for the audience. You snob.

The actual defence of phone hacking itself was, predictably, that the papers need to be free to do certain underhanded things for truth! and justice! and democracy! and to hold our elected masters to account. That'll be why they targeted Sienna Miller's mum then.

These lofty defences of criminality in the press sound like what would happen if Superman had a breakdown and went on a rampage across Metropolis. Imagine him using his super hearing to snoop on people and his super voice to shout out their secrets, spying on women in the shower with his x-ray vision and blowing his super breath up women's skirts while he rubs his thighs and dribbles super drool all down his 'S' emblem, randomly shouting saucy puns as he goes.

The Mayor of Metropolis calls a meeting and says, "We have to make a tough choice here. Superman must be stopped. It's time to break out our secret supply of Kryptonite and bring him down."

But apparently Metropolis needs Superman. What would happen if there was an alien invasion? Even though last time aliens tried to invade, Green Lantern took care of it. Superman was busy with his hands down his tights, looking through Lois Lane's bra and making chimp noises.

So yeah. It would be totally fine if the papers occasionally used underhand methods just so they could expose corruption and dishonesty. Except they bloody don't. One of the stories the paper had apparently prepared on the back of phone hacking alleged an affair between Gordon Taylor and his assistant based on the message "thank you for yesterday. You were great." The message actually referred to Taylor speaking at her father's funeral.

Well done, Lumpy! Give yourself a lolly.

In fact, talking of corruption, the most intriguing recent potential examples is the relationship NoTW may have had with the Metropolitan Police.

There's Rebekah Brooks admitting to the paper paying the police for information. Or 'bribing' if you prefer. There's the matter of police not questioning Neville Thurlbeck in the original investigation into phone hacking despite having papers marked 'for Neville' among the evidence they'd seized from Glenn Mulcaire and him being the only Neville who worked for News International. Oh, and having his name on the byline of the story about Prince William's leg that kicked the whole affair off, alongside Clive Goodman's, who was being investigated at the time. And was jailed. At least Thurlbeck has been questioned now.

I won't go into the instances of the paper revealing supportive bullshit that appeared to cover the Met's collective arse when the police have been involved in spectacular fuckups. Well, not again, anyway.

There's more in the Hugh Grant secretly recorded interview with Paul McMullen in the New Statesman. It don't look too good. According to McMullen, "20 per cent of the Met has taken backhanders from tabloid hacks. So why would they want to open up that can of worms?" Go and read the whole thing for a clearer idea of what you probably suspected anyway. (And here's the Mail's take on the interview).

The tragic thing - the thing that all this farting on is leading up to - is that the tabloids (and other papers too, I shouldn't wonder) are nut deep in the sort of scandal that giving them free reign is supposed to protect us from, involving potential police and political corruption, in order to help provide us with a shiny polished turd of a product. Is it really worth the effort? David Beckham had something pink! There's a cake with Shrek on! Alex Reid had a different watch to someone else, but let's pretend it's the same! Someone had an affair except they didn't! Is it true? Who gives a shit? Look - Muslims are getting their own Muslim only toilets!

And Richard Littlejohn gets paid rather than paraded through the streets with the word 'BUM' scrawled across his forehead, being blatted in the face with one of those boards you used to rest on your knees in art at school and made to wank for coins.

Realising this, as I did in the middle of reading Littlejohn's books and the Sun, kind of robs the enthusiasm for pointing out dishonesty and mistakes, or trying to work out the logic behind ginormous piles of stinking garbage. I never even got round to posting about the Sun. You can only point out the Emperor's winky so many times before it makes you despair of the whole task.

And you can only witness millions of naked people being fleeced by shysters selling them new 'Emperor style' outfits while politicians and police prostitute themselves so the grasping shysters don't say anything nasty about them for so long before you despair of the state of fucking humanity.

Never trust the Mail on crime and immigration

2011-04-05T17:10:00.005+01:00

Some things just don't inspire trust. An email promising to deposit a million dollars into your account, a designer handbag for a fiver at the market with the glue still drying on the logo, an article about immigrant crime in the Daily Mail.

These stories are usually a bit like foreign worker scare stories. They're about as reliably accurate as a pissed-up gibbon throwing darts at a board sellotaped to a bucking bronco's arse, but they'll do for something scary. I've explained why a few times over the years.

There's a new one in the Mail, originally published last night. Jack Doyle brings us 'Migrant crime wave revealed: Foreign arrests have almost doubled in just THREE years', which as well as having a nice random shout in the middle of the headline, shows us something we don't normally see with these stories: a comparison with earlier data.

But I am incredibly, incredibly suspicious. Even more than I would normally be for figures in the Mail. We're not just talking about the usual reasons either (no link to primary source so we don't know the same things are being measured, don't know if the recording method has changed, haven't been given figures for the surrounding years so son't know which is the anomalous figure, etc) but I suspect an epic howler.

Here's why.

Back in '08, I looked at a Mail story from 2007 that shouted about these sorts of figures, telling us a fifth of crimes in London were committed by 'foreign citizens'. That wasn't true, but the upshot was that 22,793 people who didn't say 'British' as their nationality when they came to the attention of the police (including everyone who didn't say anything) were accused of crimes between January 1 and June 30 2007.

This latest Mail story, which has been churned in the Express and Telegraph, includes a swish table graphic in the middle of the page. It tells us that the Metropolitan Police reported a total of 24,364 arrests of 'foreign nationals' in the whole of 2008. That's very close to the figure for six months of 2007.

One of two or three things may be going on here with the Met's figures.

2008 saw an unusual dip, where the number of people declaring themselves as something other than 'British' to the police mysteriously halved before returning to normal in 2010.
The 2010 figures measure something different to the 2007 and 2008 figures. I submitted my own FoI request when I looked at the earlier Mail story from 2007. I did this because I am rock and roll. It showed a total of 20,415 people not recorded as British were charged with crimes in the whole of 2007. This makes up just under half the number of those accused, the figure the paper reported. 2010 figures may be of people accused and 2008 of people charged.
Jack Doyle has somehow compared figures for the whole of 2010 with six months' worth from 2008.

The figures for everywhere else look all over the place.

Can Cambridgeshire really have arrested only 27 foreign nationals in 2006 and 4,803 in 2010, or has something else happened like a change in the way these things are measured, or a heavier focus on making sure the 'nationality' box is filled? Are they definitely measuring the same things? Would this explanation apply across other forces? Are they all measuring the same things or do we have a mishmash of different things here?

A similar scare story in the Express in 2008 managed to get results from 26 forces for the whole of 2006. The current one only manages 19. Were all 19 included in the older Express article, or are some of them new? Why are (at least) 7 missing? Have they been discouraged because of the way their figures were used before?

Somehow, the total arrests/accused/whatever has gone from 79,308 across 26 forces in 2006 (from the Express) to 51,899 across 19 in 2008 and 91,234 in 2010. Around half the Mail's alleged rise between 2008 and 2010 is taken by the Met - whose rise looks decidedly fishy.

I'm going to get some FoI requests fired off this evening, but I'm not likely to get any answers for weeks. Until then, I'll be incredibly sceptical of what the Mail is claiming here. Especially since the Met explicitly drew my attention to this in response to my FoI request about a Mail article claiming these people were foreign nationals:

The MPS crime recording system only records the nationality given when the person comes to the attention of the Police. As a consequence there is no way to distinguish between residents of the UK (regardless of citizenship) and visitors from other countries.

The emphasis there is the Met's. What caveats might be missing from the newest 19 FoI requests the Mail got answers from? We won't know unless we see the primary sources, but boy, do they stink of fish.

Tabloid bullshit of the month award - March 2011

2011-03-29T15:22:00.000+01:00

It's here. This month, the Japanese kodo drummers are out in force to announce the March 2011 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award!

Kind of a weird month, this month. We've had a natural disaster with fake atomic panic in Japan and the declaration of a no-fly zone over Libya. We've had some disgraceful coverage from the Mail about the gang rape of two 12 year old girls in a park, which called the girls 'Lolitas' and seemed to take the side of the men involved.

We've also had the Sun claiming Alex Reid was distraught over Jordan giving his watch to her new boyfriend, complete with pictures of the watch. Which was a different colour. And a different watch.

The Daily Star also hilariously claimed it never had a negative editorial stance on Muslims after ex-employee Richard Peppiatt spectacularly resigned.

But the award would have had to go to this month's winner at some point. Spectacularly insensitive comments on the tsunami were the main driver behind Richard Littlejohn winning this month, for 'Who's the Wally with the Golly?' and 'Why my wife's PoW grandad wouldn't mark a minute's silence for the Japanese'.

Here's the email:

Dear Mr Littlejohn,

It is with great pleasure that I can announce you as the winner of one of journalism's newest prizes! Get out the party hats, Scotch eggs and 70s sitcom DVDs, you've won the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for March 2011!

To be honest, I could probably stick a pin in a calendar and pick any month for you to win this prestigious award. Last month would have caught you repeating a myth that was debunked back in 1995 about Haringey Council hiring people to teach Asian women hopscotch for example.

This month will do though, and you're getting the award for two columns, 'Who's the Wally with the Golly?' and 'Why my wife's PoW grandad wouldn't mark a minute's silence for the Japanese'. Here's why:

Who's the Wally with the Golly?
A Richard Littlejohn column about golliwogs is always going to be fascinating. Like a car full of clowns, whoopee cushions and trumpets careening off the road into a schoolbus. In slow motion. While Dennis Waterman sings I Could Be So Good For You in blackface. These are my favourite bits:

You tell us about a shopkeeper who had his entire stock of golliwogs confiscated. In real life, the Daily Mail account of the story from four years ago (fingers always on that current affairs pulse there) tells us that:
The next day two officers arrived and confiscated one 6in doll and one keyring.
Which the police subsequently returned without charge.
Apparently, a campaign in the eighties led by Ken Livingstone and the GLC forced Robertson's to remove the golliwog from its jars. There's even a big old picture of Ken in the middle of your article online, with a caption telling us that too.

In real life, Robertson's removed the golliwog from its marketing in 2001. This was 15 years after the GLC was dissolved.

In 2001 Robertson's said removing the golliwog had nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with low brand recognition. Still, probably lying, weren't they? It was really the GLC not buying from Robertson's in 1983 that did it. Coodernmaykidapp!
You manage to miss almost the whole chuffing point of why golliwogs are a bad thing, telling us that you thought the whole thing was absurd in the eighties because you'd never met a black person who looked like one. That's kind of like saying you don't see what the fuss is about punching people in the face, since it's only slamming the hard bit of your fist into someone's chops, causing pain and potential injury.
Still, credit where it's due. At least you recognise you lost the argument about golliwogs years ago, and the two numpties who posed with the things 'to provoke debate' were idiots, although I was far from the only one to spit their tea at this gem:
Having said all that, if there’s one thing just as irritating as ‘political correctness’, it’s that peculiar breed of people who go out of their way to be politically incorrect.
Particularly irritating, those people. Sometimes they're paid hundreds of thousands of pounds every year to do just that. Unbelieveable, huh?
While we're on the subject of people who go out of their way to be politically incorrect...

Why my wife's PoW grandad wouldn't mark a minute's silence for the Japanese
This is one of the laziest columns I have ever seen in my life. Right from the 'Hey! Some American commentators got a lot of attention for saying the earthquake and tsunami in Japan were payback for Pearl Harbour. Let's rejig that for a British audience' concept through to the end. Some more of the wrong:
Saying, 'You shouldn't do X, yet...' and then doing X anyway doesn't mean you haven't done it.
Nor does somehow trying to distract attention by projecting what you're doing - breaking your rule about later generations not being responsible for the actions of their forebears - onto 'lefties'. We can see what you're doing. You can't have your Scotch-egg and eat it.
Hiding behind the hypothetical position of someone who isn't around to ask doesn't make it any better. It just makes it that little bit more cowardly.
Even the stereotypes are lazy. The 'inscrutable Oriental' is as old as they come, but who can understand the Japanese? Surely, no-one can fathom this alien culture of violent racists. Let's not bother trying.
"Did we have a minute's silence for this? Maybe we did, I dunno. But did we? What about this one? We might have. Can't remember. Not sure. Did the Japanese have one? I don't know. Probly not. Shall I check? Naah. Is it time for my dinner?" I'm paraphrasing of course, but those are the rigorous research skills we've come to expect from the man who thought a dog was a woman on show there.
They're also shown to spectacular effect in an entire section about why you're not going to bother covering the no-fly zone in Libya. No-one knows anything about it. Can't be arsed to try to find out. Won't be writing about it. Let's pretend that it's because no-one can know, like with Japan.
"I missed the row over Midsomer Murders..." Really? You're normally so sharp and well informed. Long queue at a particular Florida branch of International House of Pancakes that day?
Nice save with the joke about how churches in the East End have been turned into mosques and every woman is forced to wear a burkha. That is hee-laireeyuss. But since you call the BNP nasty names sometimes, this joke is totally fine. You can carry on to joke about the golliwog people being suitable for the BNP without looking the least bit hypocritical.
Which segues neatly into the best bit of laziness in the article, which I've been saving til last:
"But why Japan and not, say, those massacred in Rwanda or starved to death by Mugabe in Zimbabwe?"
This from the man who reportedly said of Rwanda, "Does anyone really give a monkey's about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them."

Maybe that's why. They just didn't care about the Mbongos and Mbingos. The bastards.
Okay, that's it. Stick your feet up until five minutes before the deadline for your next piece. I'll be reproducing this letter over at www.fivechinesecrackers.com. You're more than welcome to have an acceptance comment or rebuttal published. Just reply to this email (that way I'll know it's you) and I'll publish it. You'd be the first hack that's bothered. I'll send you the crap picture of a trophy you won, too. Don't want this message ending up in the spam filter.

You're now in with a chance to win 5cc tabloid bullshitter of 2011 at the end of this year. That's when I'll tally up how many monthly awards each hack has won to find out the winner. The more monthly awards you get, the more likely you are to win win win! I suppose that just means you'll have to wait until I get lazy and just stick a pin in the calendar.

Cheers then!

5cc

That's it for March. Tune in on the last Saturday of April and see who wins next month. As long as there's not a march or something. Suggestions are always welcome, either in comments, on twitter to @5ChinCrack or by email to fivechinesecrackersATgmailDOTcom.

Now get out of my house!

Racism by proxy

2011-03-17T17:16:00.000Z

What do you do if you want to say something that might be you know, a bit racist, but are a bit nervous that you might get called out on it? It's a tricky one.

Tried and tested solutions include the old dog whistle, where you say something that can clearly be interpreted in more than one way. "It's not racist to talk about immigration - are you thinking what we're thinking?" - that sort of thing. Of course, it is racist to talk about immigration if what you say is 'there's too many blacks', which is probably what a lot of the people looking at those infamous tory party posters were thinking.

'Migrant' seems to mean many things beyond 'someone who was born in a different country to the one they live in' for a lot of people too. If you're a newspaper, there's always the judicious positioning of pictures of smiley white British families next to pictures of swarthy men on street corners, smoking. The difference between that and a flashing neon light saying 'WE MEAN BROWN PEOPLE!' is that you can't claim the neon sign is just a coincidence.

Another excellent technique is to shift the blame for what you're saying on to other people. It's one I remember from being a kid, hearing adults talking about mixed-race mates I had saying, "I wouldn't want my kids having half castes. No one accepts them, not the whites or the blacks." (Happily all these people changed their tune after the birth of several mixed race family members and the growing potential for more). This sort of thing is becoming more common now that papers are creeping away from the nudge-nudge, wink-wink stuff of monkeying with pictures and pretending they're really concerned with sheer numbers rather than just numbers of the wrong sort of people.

Late last year, Professor David Coleman, of MigrationWatch infamy, produced a study that suggested white British people would be in a minority in 2066. He justified his conclusion about this being a bad thing by saying most people won't like it. His study got two bites of the Daily Mail cherry in less than three weeks, because a couple of weeks later MigrationWatch commissioned a YouGov poll that showed - wouldn't you know it - most people wouldn't like the 'white British' to be in a minority by 2066. Hey, we don't necessarily say we think there'll be too many black and brown people ourselves. We just need to keep them out for other people. We're champions of public opinion, us.

One of the very poor figleaves the Daily Star used to cover its short lived support for the EDL was that 98% of people who read the rabidly anti-Muslim paper and could be bothered to pay for a premium rate phone call said they supported the EDL. Doing it this way allows the paper to laughably pretend it never supported the EDL now it's been slapped down for it.

We have another winner in today's Express. Reacting to news of Midsomer Murders producer, Brian True-May, being suspended for his comments about keeping the show all-white, 'BRITAIN SAYS BOSS IS RIGHT TO KEEP MIDSOMER WHITE' it lies in its headline, pretending that the 99% of people who read the Express and could be arsed to shell out for a premium rate phone call is actually 99% of Britain. Yesterday, the paper went with 'FLOOD OF SUPPORT FOR RACE-ROW MIDSOMER BOSS' and 'MIDSOMER MURDERS FIGHT BACK'. The latter manages to try to support the producer by visiting the town Midsomer Murders is filmed in and saying:

And it’s not a surprise to find it invariably white and middleclass, just like the TV programme. Three people stopped me as I stood in the station car park and looked quizzically at my map – all of them white. Five minutes later, as I enquired about internet access inside the library, young white mothers pushing prams and queuing to return books fell over themselves to help point me in the right direction.

And then going on to say how many ethnic restaurants there are and quoting an Indian shopkeeper. So, not 'invariably' white 'just like the TV show' then. It even uses the apparent words of the shopkeeper to say the suspension is all a fuss about nothing.

Paradoxically, the Sun (which I'm reading every day this week for a post at the weekend) interviews the Asian landlord of a pub that's featured in the series to argue against the idea that the show should be kept white. And it refers to him as 'British Asian', which is kinda nice. The Daily Star also seems not to be taking the side of True-May either, publishing a story with the headline 'MIDSOMER MURDERS: TV VILLAGE IDIOT'.

And what of the Mail? It's leaving the dirty work to columnist Quentin Letts, who thinks it's 'sinister' that you can't have a whites only TV show, and the comments of True-May claiming he's being victimised to let us know what it thinks. It's not going the whole 'everyone thinks this is madness' hog, although it probably could if it did a rubbish online poll about it.

Perhaps all the papers sense it's probably kind of racist to demand a show has a deliberate policy of only employing white actors. Only the Express goes full on argumentum ad populum.

And only Quentin Letts has the guts to say in his own words:

Why should an ethnic minority be allowed to retain its true-life ghetto, yet the white shires not be allowed to retain their fictitious Causton? But that is the way multi-culturalism proceeds. It attacks the host culture while demanding rights for smaller groups.

Yes Quentin. I'm sure it does.

Top of the Nazi pops!

2011-03-10T14:47:00.001Z

Today, the Mail changed the layout of its website to put a banner for something even more important than news about Britney Spears' legs and potential strikes at the top of the page. Apparently - get ready for this - Eva Braun blacked up this one time! Oh my god! Why, it's almost as if she was racist or something.

The banner's gone now, sadly. But you can still see the story about the fun side of the Nazis. Ah, those lovable Nazis. The Mail seems to love telling us exactly how much of a barrel of laughs they were. Here's a top 10. Break out the hats and noisemakers for your very own Nazi party:

Today's banner before it disappeared (Hat tip: Steven Baxter)

10. He was the genial dentist who cuddled him as a child. But then Martin Davidson found his grandfather's secret past as a proud Nazi SS officer - Lovely man? Lovely NAZI more like!

9. 'Mild mannered' Hitler enjoys marmalade for breakfast (... but he hates being watched): The observations of a PoW revealed - By day, he was a mild mannered murderous dictator, but by night...he was...a murderous dictator! As secret identities go, it's abit of a crap one.

8. Hitler's Christmas party: Rare photographs capture leading Nazis celebrating in 1941 - Look at that first photo. Not looking mild mannered at all. He's been in a phone box to change.

7. Oh what a lovely war! The dazzling photos of innocent Parisian fun that make the French so ashamed -Ah, fun in occupied France. Bad. Says so in the headline. But what about laughing in a concentration camp? You'll see.

6. Hitler was the perfect boss: Former maid breaks her silence on the 'charming' dictator - Man, this woman must have had some shit bosses.

5. Hitler at home: Rare photographs show how the Nazi leader relaxed while he waged war - He had doilies! He liked marmalade! How could he be evil?

4. Ve haf vays of making you laugh: The Nazi postcards that reveal German sailors' sense of humour - Bet they bombed the shit out of the Royal Navy while wearing Groucho Marx disguises.

3. Hitler the comedian: The Nazi leader's bodyguard reveals a different side to the dictator - He had a character called 'Chalky' apparently.

2. Blacked up and in a bow tie: Eva Braun in party mood as rare set of pictures of Hitler's wife are unearthed - Today's story. Weird how you have to click 'most recent' to sort through the list of articles about Eva Braun on a newspaper website. Hitler's missus blacked up, Hitler loved marmalade, but the Mail still thinks taking the golliwog off Robinson's jam is PC Gone Mad.

And, the number one 'Oh, the Nazis! Such fun!' article is (drumroll please)...

1. Day off from Auschwitz: The laughing death-camp guards at play

Those laughing death camp guards. So playful.

To be fair, that pretty much exhausts the fun Nazi stories on the Mail site - but sod it. I'm not being fair. I'm laughing at the Daily Mail, probably the only paper to have a Nazi section. It might not be though. I never checked.

Hat tips: Steven Baxter and Chris Atkins

Richard Peppiatt and the top ten ridiculous tabloid editor denials

2011-03-06T22:53:00.002Z

When I got all annoyed at the Daily Star sinking to the depths of supporting the EDL last month, I said:

One can only hope that any journalists at the Star that have a single ounce of conscience left will be jumping ship quick smart.

It seems that someone else had a similar idea.

Richard Peppiatt, who had reported for the Star (the Star claims as a freelancer, but ~~here's a picture of his business card~~ removed for a bit) for two years quit in spectacular fashion on Friday. If you haven't yet seen the letter of resignation, you can see it here. It's worth a read in full for some of the things Peppiatt confirms happen at the paper, as if we didn't already know. If Mr Peppiatt is for real and not engaged in some reverse churnalism sting on non-tabloid journalists and bloggers, we should salute him.

In a follow-up, the Independent on Sunday claims that the EDL really are considering becoming a political party, and reveals some intimidation of Peppiatt.

The thing that cracks me up most about the whole thing is the Star's official response, which hilariously claims:

For the record, the Daily Star editorial policy does not hold any negativity towards Islam and the paper has never, and does not endorse, the EDL.

It seems whoever wrote that took advice from Shaggy (not the one from Scooby Doo). There's more about this from Bryan McComb.

I always like how tabloid editors and proprietors try to deny doing things that we can see them doing every day. The Star - which attempted to publish an insert called 'The Daily Fatwa' and only pulled the thing when journalists revolted, was recently targeted by Hope Not Hate for its incendiary coverage of Muslims, was censured by the PCC for it' s false 'Muslim only public loos' headline, ran obviously supportive headlines of the EDL and regularly writes skewed, exaggerated anti-Muslim headlines that verge on parody - claims not to hold any negativity toward Muslims.

So, poop-pickers, here's the top ten 'Wasn't Me' tributes I've seen tabloid editors involved in since I started this blog:

In 2007, while speaking to the Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights, Peter Hill claimed:
I would never put any of my journalists under pressure to write something that they wouldn't want to write. I would never do that.
Back in 2004, the Daily Express's own journalists famously complained to the PCC about the pressure they were put under to produce anti-Roma news stories and to ask the Commission to protect those journalists who didn't want to.
In the same 2007 appearance, he said:
We must be able to be truthful in our headlines what the facts are, palatable or otherwise [...]

We can't tailor our headlines to fit news as you would wish it to be.
Yes, that is the editor of the Express claiming not to tailor headlines. Following the arrest of two of the failed suicide bombers of 21 July 2005, the Daily Express's headline was 'BOMBERS ARE ALL SPONGEING ASYLUM SEEKERS'. At the time, we only knew the identity of two of them. Neither was an asylum seeker. It's not as if this is the only nonsense headline from the Express, it's just one of the best.
At a hearing of the same Committee, Robin Esser from the Daily Mail said, "But the idea that they [Mail hacks] are running around looking for inflammatory things to say about asylum seekers is wrong". Ha ha! He also claimed "no journalist on the Daily Mail is ever told to write a story in a particular way". Ha ha!
In 2008, The Federation of Poles in Great Britain complained to the Daily Mail about its coverage of Polish migrants. The paper agreed to alter or delete over 50 stories from its website, but said:
The newspaper wishes to make clear that it wasn't in any way anti-Polish.
Yes. The paper removed the stories for fun.
In an appearance in front of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in 2009, Peter Hill claimed that the Express' coverage of the Madeleine McCann disappearance wasn't the worst offender for milking the story. The Express featured the case on the front page every day for 100 consecutive days. The Express and sister titles had to pay the McCanns half a million in damages and print apologies on their front pages. He's since admitted differently in an interview.
In the same appearance, answering whether he'd run a story because it'd sell newspapers with it not mattering too much if it was true, he said:
No, that is not the case. No, that is not what I do. I am just not that kind of person. I do not do that.
This is the editor of the paper that was known for a long time as the Daily Diana for printing spurious stories about Princess Diana every Monday. In an earlier interview about that in the Independent, he'd said:
My job is to sell the Daily Express. My job isn't anything else. My job is to produce newspapers that people want to read and I can tell you that people want to read about the Diana conspiracy because the figures tell me that they do, seriously tell me that they do.
But then, he wasn't in danger of getting into any trouble there.
In front of the same committee, both Dacre and Hill said their papers didn't engage in churnalism (Peter Hill said, 'The word "Churnalism" is a rubbish word,') - and yet both relied on the defence that they were just reporting the same things as everyone else whenever they were confronted with evidence of wrongdoing. In Hill's appearance, Alan Keen notices this himself:
You have just rejected the word "churnalism" yet almost all the answers you have given this morning about the McCanns have been that it said it in this paper, it said it on the news, it said it here so all you did was repeat it. That is "churnalism" is it not?
Hill says no because they weren't copying each other. He needs to read about Ninja Turtle Syndrome in 'Flat Earth News'. Roy Greenslade listed all Peter Hill's 'mistakes' in front of the committee here.
In his own appearance, Paul Dacre claimed the idea that the paper had taken an anti MMR stance was an urban myth. This is just funny.
When asked about producing stories with headlines that are contradicted by the stories below, Dacre says:
I'd like to think this doesn't happen in the Mail - I'm not going to hold my hand on my heart and say it doesn't. It does happen in some areas of the media.
In 'Flat Earth News, Nick Davies says:
...if by chance, reporters come up with the wrong angle, it is reversed before it gets into print, either because the copy itself is rewritten or because the headline changes the angle. 'Dacre kills with headlines,' as one long-term Mail reporter put it.
Plus, when I look at stories for this blog, I often forget to tag the ones where the headline is 'withdrawn' later in the story because it happens all the damn time. It's a feature, not a bug.
You can't talk about immigration.

That's the top ten. Or rather 'the ten I managed to cobble together without too much effort'. I didn't have room for the collective amnesia of News International people about phone hacking or anything like that.

Do you have favourite? Bung it in the comments. The best will get a sweetie. Except no they won't.

We pay someone else to do our work, so it's all good.

2011-03-04T14:36:00.004Z

I already talked about Paul Dacre's 2009 evidence to the Culture Media and Sport Committee last week, but I'm opening another post with it today. Hooray for the Culture, Media and Sport Committee from 2009!

Here's how Dacre came up with a defence for something his paper perhaps shouldn't have done (after 'strongly refuting' that his paper indulged in churnalism):

Q576 Paul Farrelly: One specific question. Why on 11 March did you publish the name of the village where Elisabeth, the daughter of Josef Fritzl lived who was trying to be resettled to live what you would hope would be a normal-ish life, given what she has been through?

Mr Dacre: You have caught me absolutely cold. I am not aware we did—

Q577 Paul Farrelly: You did.

Mr Dacre: I do not know the answer. Did other newspapers?

Q578 Paul Farrelly: You did it first and they followed you.

Mr Dacre: Could I look into it and send you a note on that?

Q579 Paul Farrelly: Given that you did, would you say that was responsible journalism?

Mr Dacre: I do not know the circumstances, whether it came over from a news agency, whether it was our journalist who did it. I am very happy to look into it.

Q580 Paul Farrelly: I am surprised you do not remember it because it has attracted some comment in the media.

Mr Dacre: In Britain?

Q581 Paul Farrelly: And it was a story of great human interest.

Mr Dacre: Oh, yes, the Fritzl case. I am not being evasive, I really was unaware of it. I am very happy to look into it when I get back and send you a very full note on it.

Not me, guv! It was another paper or a news agency what done it!

Here's what I'm farting on about. Yesterday, Minority Thought wrote a blog post about how the Daily Express and Daily Mirror had 100% copied and pasted copy from a wire service. There's been a bit of a debate about whether or not this should even count as churnalism, let alone be considered a bad thing.

What people like me, and possibly you, don't usually understand is that there are certain practices we would think are absurd or evidence of unprofessionalism that are just standard practice in journalism. It seems obvious to me that copying and pasting something someone else wrote and passing it off as your own is just not right. The agency might be wrong, or taking their copy from a press release, or might be putting stuff out that shouldn't be reproduced anyway, on ethical grounds.

Plus, it's just feckin' lazy. As a punter, my reaction to comments underneath Minority Thought's post is - 'Really? You think this is okay because you pay for a service where you copy someone else's work and pass it off as your own?' Anton Vowl is spot on about this, as usual.

Anyway - back to the opening. What you have there Paul Dacre trying to excuse his paper from doing something it shouldn't because it might have just taken it from a wire service, as if that would make it okay. It doesn't, of course. Turns out that the reference came from a freelancer and Mail hacks, uh, missed editing it out* - but would it have really made it any better if it had come from a wire service?

The problem with CTRL+Ving stuff is that you have no idea if a) that stuff is true and b) there are things in it really shouldn't be reproduced. Like a picture of Auschwitz train tracks in a story about Wales. Sure, the new 100% churned story in question here is a puff piece for the iPad 2, so that's not likely to be the case. But what's the difference between copying and pasting a puff piece from wire copy and from a press release?

And what if a wire agency just churns a press release? One of Chris Atkins' fake stories that publicised the launch of churnalism.com - the chasity garter - only got in the papers after an agency picked up the story. The story made it around the world. Did the PA story about the launch of the new iPad really originate with someone from PA at the event? How would we know?

How many stories that me or any of the other media bloggers who point out press bullshit (check the blog roll on the right) originated with wire copy? We don't know, because hacks don't tell us when they've just copy/pasted stuff. Would attribution help? Yes it would. Would it have stopped the chastity garter story from shooting around the world? Probably not.

Seriously - still can't get my head around, 'we pay someone else to do our work for us, so it's all good.'

The Chris Atkins video for those who missed it:

*Dacre to the Culture, Media & Sport Committee, as a part of how he 'refuted' the charge of churnalism in his paper, "Certainly our reporters when they get freelance copy should and are encouraged to make their own inquiries, to check them and take them further."

*UPDATE* Wrote this without my copy of 'Flat Earth News', which I was sure talked about reproducing wire copy as being part of churnalism. I was sure because it does. A lot. Reproducing wire copy is a major, major part of what Nick Davies (who as far as I'm aware coined the term) refers to as churnalism. He says:

I found that national journalists have been forced to rely overwhelmingly on the output of a tiny number of wire agencies - one for the whole of the UK, just two big ones for the whole of the world - and that none of these agencies has anything like the manpower needed to cover its patch; none of them has anything like the scope of the old network it replaced; none of them generally gives its own editorial staff enough time to function as effective journalists; none of them generally attempts to check the truth (as opposed to the verbatim accuracy) of its sources.

The opening of the section of the book that explains what 'the news factory' is involves a piece of crap PR puff about an insurance policy for nervous football fans during the 2006 World Cup that started its life being picked up by the Press Association.

The same chapter outlines how the same pressures that have forced news outlets into churnalism have forced wire agencies into the same position; job cuts and scaling back of funding has led to journalists being expected to produce more and more content.

There. The old CTRL+V of wire agency content sn't necessarily a good thing. Who'd have thought it?

What's this? The tabloids taking PCC rulings even further than they're asked?

2011-03-03T14:31:00.002Z

A couple of weeks ago, the Daily Quail and some other bloggers were sent a letter by the Daily Mail, requesting the removal of some material from their blogs.

It says:

We have received a complaint from the Press Complaints Commission about this article and have as a result removed it from our websites and agreed to request that you do the same.

Hmm. Would the PCC really do that?

Today, Liberal Conspiracy includes the news that the PCC really has been requesting that newspapers contact others to get them to remove content based on their ruling. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing on the part of the PCC.

Stories get churned all the damn time in the press, so it's a good idea that the PCC should try to get outlets and maybe bloggers that have churned an article from another paper (or had one of their stories churned) to make sure the offending story is removed. It might even be a good idea that the cost of this is passed on to the papers who have been on the receiving end of a PCC ruling.

However, it looks like the Mail in this case has kind of creatively interpreted the request. The PCC ruling Liberal Conspiracy links to requests only:

the submission of informal requests for removal on behalf of the complainant to other news sources that had re-published the original piece

Does that really mean, 'contact everyone who pointed out the article was bullshit now we've decided it was in fact bullshit and tell them we've asked you to get them specifically to delete where they point that out'? Does it really?

Poll finds out some things to make you worry or cheer. Go on, WORRY or CHEER!

2011-03-02T17:42:00.001Z

It's been a good few weeks for the release of polls about people's attitudes to immigration, with the Transatlantic Trends survey that hit the headlines a few weeks ago was followed by an Ipsos Mori one last week that didn't. Both were very interesting reading for those of us who waste time worrying about how much our media contributes to a hostile environment for immigrants and ethnic minorities, and how much it shifts everything further to the right.

Then, this week, some worrying headlines:

'Searchlight poll finds huge support for far right 'if they gave up violence'' - Guardian
'Immigration poll 'disturbing' say anti-racism campaigners' - Independent
'Half of Britain 'would vote for far-Right parties if they gave up violence' - Daily Mail
'THE BRITISH PUBLIC HAVE HAD THEIR FILL OF IMMIGRATION' - Leo McKistry in the Daily Express

The attitudes of the papers to these findings obviously depend on which one you're reading, but my favourite is Leo McKistry's:

What is remarkable about these findings is that the public feels this way after all the years of aggressive, institutionalised propaganda about the joys of cultural diversity and the unalloyed benefits of mass immigration. But then, while the politicians live in their ivory towers, ordinary people can see with their own eyes the disaster brought about by the cultural revolution.

Thisis kind of funny. McKistry works for one of the papers that vociferously oppose immigration to the point of overt racism, and it's one of the worst selling of these papers. Despite this, it still outsells the papers that don't oppose immigration by quite a large margin. And yet we're supposed to believe something about aggressive, institutionalised propaganda? I suspect he's got a machine in the corner that's all booping, wires and flashing lights that spits this stuff out on tickertape. Maybe an intern has scribbled a Hitler fringe and moustache on it in indelible ink and McKistry wastes hours trying to get it off and sighing.

Sorry, I'm buggering about again, and in the midst of such a serious subject. But is it as serious as it sounds?

The full study is now available online, so you can see for yourself. The question that led to the worried/triumphant headlines is this, see what you think:

A new party is going to be set up which says it wants to defend the English, create an English Parliament, control immigration, challenge Islamic extremism, restrict the building of mosques and make it compulsory for all public buildings to fly the St George's Flag or Union Jack. Would you...

and then asks if people would support it. But what does any of that mean? Where does it say 'far right'? Where does it mention ditching violence? What does 'defend the English' mean? What about 'control immigration'? Who wouldn't want to oppose Islamic extremism? How would this party differ from the Conservative party, or even New Labour, except maybe for the English Parliament bit?

18% of people wanted to halt immigration permanently - this is too high for my liking, but comparing this to earlier polls saying 75% or 65% see immigration as a problem kind of puts those into perspective. A further 16% would halt all immigration until the economy improves, which is a bit of a worry but not as much of one. Combine these and you have 67% of people who don't want to stop immigration completely. (Update: my crap maths originally put that at 77% - thanks to @peerlawther on Twitter for the correction). That'd be a big problem for your actual far right people, who usually want to reverse it. (Who knows what the EDL thinks. Something about Islams and not surrendering to the KFC, probably).

Now, I might be missing something here, but the only question I can see that refers to violence at all is one connected to a hypothetical situation involving a mosque being built in 'near where you live'. It asks whether respondents would support or oppose a campaign against the hypothetical mosque being built, and this is followed up with:

And regardless of whether you would support or oppose the building of the mosque or the campaign to stop it, if either side became violent or threatened violence, would this make you reconsider your view?

81% of people agreed with:

Yes, I think violence is unacceptable and I wouldn't support anyone who was involved.

I don't get how this links to supporting the far right as long as they're not violent. The question is about people on both sides of the support the mosque argument. Plus, not opposing a campaign against the mosque doesn't necessarily mean you're far right. There are reasons you might not want a new busy building in your area that don't involve hatred of Muslims. Sure, people who do hate Muslims often co-opt these reasons, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

I don't want to poo poo the whole survey here. It does have some quite disturbing things in it. 52% say muslims create problems in the UK (although the question does suffer from the same thing as some newspaper headlines - by 'muslims', does it mean 'some muslims'?) 62% of white people would say overall immigration has been a bad thing for the country. But they're not quite as bad as you might at first think. I was actually quite relieved, after seeing other polls with a high number of people who think immigration is bad to find that such a small number want it stopped forever. Let alone turned back, which is a different kettle of fish entirely.

As Sam Leith said, in yesterday's Standard:

A poll on actual parties of the Right gets conducted, for real, and with a much larger sample size, every time we have an election. The BNP is a far Right party that doesn't use fascist imagery and does its best to dissociate itself from violence - and its share of the vote remains more or less what it has always been: that is, pathetic.

On top of that, what happened to the 'are you thinking what we're thinking' tory campaign of 2005? Bombed like the Luftwaffe. Sure, the English Democrats have a mayor, but he doesn't exactly look brilliant and they tend to do really badly despite having the essential attributes in question.

Still, some things make good headlines, some don't, eh?

Tabloid bullshit of the month award - February 2011

2011-02-26T21:27:00.001Z

It's here! The past month has been a montage of headlines spinning towards the camera, hacks furiously typing, frowning at Muslims, waking up before dawn and chugging a nasty glassful of booze, chucking a book called 'Journalistic Ethics' in the bin and 'CRTL+V'ing press releases into articles while 'Gonna Fly Now' plays in the background. They can do it! They can win February's 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award.

It's been an odd month. Steve Doughty, w inner of January's award, has shown no sign of changing his ways, or even reading the email I sent. His list of published articles still reads like a list of parodies with 'Anger as word 'marriage' vanishes from birth statistics', 'The 'glass ceiling' is all in the mind: Women lack confidence and ambition at work says new survey' and 'Swamped by our bins: How the average family now has FOUR recycling boxes ... and some have NINE'. Yay! Bins! Also, his 'Gah! The Muslims are coming!' story from last month still says 0.8% of the US population is American. Crack journalist Steve Doughty. Like a current affairs ninja, except shit.

We've also had some more naked racism from the Express, in 'NOW A MERE 37% OF NHS DOCTORS ARE WHITE BRITISH', covered excellently by the brilliant Full Fact and Minority Thought. The Express didn't tell us that about a quarter of doctors in the survey didn't specify their ethnicity - and the article included lots of quotes from people about immigrant doctors, not ethnic minorities. Still, it's a scandal. Imagine a black doctor. He'd be rubbish, right?*

The papers also quoted some stats about the number of illegal immigrants on benefits, which appeared to have been based on figures taken from journalists arses, and everyone's favourite bumbling oaf managed to recycle a myth from 1995 about there being a job teaching Asian women to play hopscotch in London. This is odd, since the rest of the time he tries to make us believe hopscotch has been banned because of health & safety.

Other worthy recipients include the Sun for 'Tran or woman?'and 'Horse-faced stars go from WAG to nag?'(nominated by @press_not_sorry on twitter) and "How many more victims of Facebook sex gang?" (nominated by @NatalieDzerins), which has prompted Facebook to threaten legal action. Again.

@pbulkers also nominated the Mail for its treatment of Juliet Shaw, but as that didn't happen this month, I can't consider it. Head over to No Sleep Til Brooklands for the full story on that (which you should be reading anyway because it's good and that).

I should also mention the launch of churnalism.com, which is a godsend for sad acts like me.

This month though - fanfare please (the one from Rocky for preference) - there are four winners, all from the same paper and for the same incident. The winner is...the Daily Star for throwing support behind the EDL and then getting smacked down for it.

Here's the letter:

Dear Dawn Neesom, Gary Nicks, Steve Hughes and Emily Hall,

I'm writing to inform the four of you that you're joint winners of a new(ish) award for journalism. You've won the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for February 2011.

Usually, I open these emails by saying 'I'm happy to announce...' and all that polite stuff, but even though it's tongue in cheek and I'm talking the piss, I can't bring myself to do that this month.

The stunt you pulled could have caused even more serious damage to community relations in this country than the tabloids are usually guilty of.

Obviously, I'm talking about your apparently short-lived support for the EDL in 'EDL TO GO POLITICAL', 'EDL BOSS TOMMY ROBINSON SAYS HE HAS 24-HOUR GUARD', the editorial 'Don't dare ignore EDL' and 'ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE: WE'LL STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR BRITAIN'S BRAVE HERO'S' [sic], corrected to 'ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE: WE'LL STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR BRITAIN'S BRAVE HEROS' [sic].

Here's why you won:
Mainstream support of street thugs claiming to defend the majority while going around victimising religious minorities, making stiff armed salutes and wearing black tops traditionally doesn't end well. You know that film, the black & white one with Liam Neeson where he helps Jewish people escape Germany in the 1940s? Liam Neeson is not meant to be the bad guy.
The EDL weren't 'to go political' at all, until you said they were on your front page. As you will know, since it's in your story, all that had happened is that the chief hoolie had said he hadn't ruled that out. It looked suspiciously like you were trying to encourage the building of a political party from a group born from football hooligans and former BNP members.
You crowed about how 98% of your readers supported the EDL. Firstly, no they didn't. 98% of a self-selecting group who could be bothered to call a premium rate phone line said they did. This is not the same. Three things:
Small groups often swarm online and phone polls to create the false impression of mass support. It happens all the time. You're all working in a national newspaper. You should know this.
If you truly believe 98% of your readers support a bunch of shouty, delusional, pissed up thugs, then you should wonder why, look at what you might be doing to attract them and then stop doing it. You're not supposed to be attracting people like that. You know that film, the one where Patrick Swayze cleans up a bar by ejecting all the rowdy, drunk lowlifes who go there and smash the place up? Patrick Swayze is not meant to be the bad guy.
If you're not sure what might be attracting these people, look no further than stories like 'MUSLIM-ONLY PUBLIC LOOS', 'MUSLIM SICKO'S MADDIE KIDNAP SHOCK' and, well, pretty much any Daily Star story with 'Muslim' in the headline since they're pretty much all negative and quite often exaggerated, bullshit or just plain wrong.

If a large number of your readers really do sympathise with the EDL, it's less because you have somehow hit on being the authentic voice of the disaffected working class than because numpties who don't like Muslims like reading stories about how horrible Muslims are. Plus, people who might not think about Muslims either way might be persuaded to change their mind by a constant drip-drip-drip of stories about how Muslims are bastards. Hope Not Hate didn't choose your paper to kick off its Campaign for Responsible Reporting by focusing on your paper by accident, you know.
You ran 'ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE: WE'LL STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR BRITAIN'S BRAVE HERO'S' [sic], or 'ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE: WE'LL STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR BRITAIN'S BRAVE HEROS' [sic] (hint: 'heroes' has an 'e'in it) without checking to see whether the main hero featured in the story supported the EDL. It was left to your sister paper, Daily Star Sunday, to report that like most people in the country, he doesn't.
And what luck it was that your sister paper stepped in. At least someone at Northern & Shell has more sense than you. For all I know, that person is Richard Desmond. Imagine that. Richard Desmond is the guy who has more sense than you. Must be pretty embarassing.

I'd love to have seen what made you suddenly stop the support. Maybe there was a PowerPoint presentation with a picture of a smashed in window on Krystallnacht with 'BAD' stamped across it, one of Anne Frank above the words 'YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO CHEER WHEN SHE GETS CAUGHT' and one with Darth Vader beneath the words 'JUST NO'.

That's it. I was going to ask what the hell you were thinking of, but I think I already know. There's an audience of numpties who want to get pissed up and travel around starting fights who can't do that at football matches any more and you mistook them for authentic, salt of the earth, ordinary people instead of dangerous, delusional rottweilers on two legs. In case you didn't realise by now, this is a very dangerous thing to do.

I don't normally do this, but here's some further reading for you. Have a read of 'The Nazi Conscience' by Claudia Koonz. This Wikipedia article on the Sturmabteilung (especially for Steve Hughes that one, since he's still knocking out stories for people with a hatred of a religious minority and a lob-on for the military), this one on the Völkischer Beobachter and this one on Kristallnacht might help too. Here's a hint though - they were all bad things.

I'll be reproducing this letter, as always, over at Five Chinese Crackers. If any of you want to make an acceptance comment or any other response, reply to this email and I'll publish it (that way I'll know its really you). So far, a sum total of zero hacks have chosen to do this. Why not be the first? You could tell us how it's okay to support violent thugs because they say they're not violent, and hey! They're popular with your readers.

Cheers then,

5cc

P.S. The 'Contact US' section of your site still says you abide by the Press Complaints Commission Code and tells readers to conatct the PCC with complaints. You should probably remove that, since I'm sure you're keen that Daily Star readers are not misled. *Snort!*

That's it for this month, people! We've got a whole month to go for the next award, so I'll be preparing like this**:

*Note to idiots and foolish people. I don't believe this. I'm parodying what the article in the Express said, obviously. Like, duh.

**But with less excercising in Soviet Russia and more sitting on the sofa, eating biscuits and watching kung fu films. Incidentally, I have a boring theory about the training montages in the Rocky films that I'll tell you about if you ask and/or I'm drunk. You might not want to do that.

More evidence of tabloid influence on perceptions of immigration

2011-02-25T23:32:00.004Z

Earlier this week, I mentioned how MigrationWatch quoted a poll from last year suggesting 3 quarters of people thought immigration was a problem, without bothering to mention another that showed most people thought immigration was much higher than it actually is.

That poll, the Transatlantic Trends Survey was published earlier this month, showing people in the UK are far more hostile to the idea of immigration than in seven other countries. But people in the UK greatly overestimated the number of immigrants in the population, with the average UK respondent estimating 3 in 10 have come from abroad. In fact the number is around 1 in 10.

Two thirds of British people also thought immigration to the UK was too high - but only if they were asked without being told the actual figure. If they were told, that number dropped to around a third.

It seems a lot of people in the UK don't like immigration much because they have a false perception of how high immigration is.

Thanks to Anonymous in the comments on 'MigrationWatch - it's a tough existence, being anti-immigration', I've come across another poll into attitudes to immigration in the UK.

Last week, Ipsos Mori produced 'Does Immigration Matter?', which didn't get an awful lot of coverage in the press. Only Jack Doyle, winner of the inaugural 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award paid it any attention, churning a little of the press release into his story, focusing on what younger people thought.

It might have only got a little bit of coverage because the poll backs up some of the results of the Transatlantic Trends Survey. A high percentage of respondents (75%) thought immigration was a fairly big or very big problem. But, like Transatlantic Trends, people tended to overestimate the number of immigrants in the UK.

56% thought the UK has a higher proportion of immigrants than other countries in Europe, and 58% thought the UK has a higher proportion of asylum seekers. Eurostat figures would put the UK at around 12th in the 27 EU countries for the percentage of people in the country who were born abroad, and 14th for the number of asylum applications per million inhabitants.

As the press release to the poll says, "Despite the majority of people seeing immigration as a problem, the public's attitudes towards immigration are formed on misconceptions."

'Does Immigration Matter?' doesn't show adjusted figures for those told the actual level of immigration, but it does break down respondents by the sort of newspaper they read. 84% of people who read centre right or popular newspapers thought immigration was a problem, and an unsurprising 86% of Daily Mail readers thought so.

Things get a bit more complex when the poll asks respondents for their two main sources of information about immigration. 55% of people chose television and radio news as one source and 19% chose tabloids, but these aren't broken down into people who thought immigration was a problem, and the TV/radio isn't further broken down, so it's impossible to tell how many people overlap with TV/radio and tabloids, how many mean news bulletins/reports and how many mean radio phone-ins, where lots of the topics are taken from the tabloids. It would be nice to see how these break down, but we shouldn't see everyone but the tabloids as pro-immigration or even totally fair either.

Let's not forget Paul Dacre's speech to Society of Editors in 2008, where he boasted:

Why does not half an hour go by that the high priests of the subsidariat, the BBC, can’t resist a snide reference to the popular press, again blissfully oblivious that all too often they are following agendas set by those very popular newspapers whose readers pay their salaries.

People are not confronted with an anti-immigration popular press on one hand and pro-immigration TV/Radio news sources on the other. We have an anti-immigration popular press that regularly exaggerates and misinforms on one hand and more balanced TV/Radio news that still treats immigration as a problem on the other. Sections like 'Immigration cap 'good news for Britain'' on the BBC Today Programme, with Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch infamy as a guest are the sort of thing we see on the supposedly liberal elitist BBC. This approach is way better than the tabloids', but combine the two approaches and there's precious little pro or neutral information about immigration readily available.

There is another pointer towards respondents having unrealistic ideas about immigration - a question about whether it is a problem in their local area. 71% thought it wasn't, almost as many as thought it was nationally. So, in most people's direct experience, immigration isn't a problem. It's only when they look outside their own experience that people think it is, and where do people get information about what's happening outside their area from?

Do the tabloids make people anti-immigration, or xenophobic, or racist? Not directly. It's not like someone normal is going to read a copy of the Express and suddenly start pushing over black people. But they contribute to an environment where immigration is perpetually discussed as a problem, and they provide misleading and inaccurate information about it. These polls show that this environment has its effect on people, who generally think immigration is much higher than it is and that it's a bigger problem outside their area than it is in their experience.

As the press release for 'Does immigration matter?' says:

With the vast majority of people getting their information on immigration from broadcast and print media, the exceptional stories that appear in the press have clearly had an effect on Britons.

Churnalism? We so totally don't do that.

2011-02-24T12:39:00.003Z

"I do not want to sound arrogant but I refute that charge [of churnalism] for the Daily Mail. [...] Certainly our reporters when they get freelance copy should and are encouraged to make their own inquiries, to check them and take them further." Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, April 2009*

"96% cut, 97% pasted, 3,198 characters overlap" verdict of churnalism.com on how much text of 'Baby blues: It takes 18 months for a new mother to 'feel like a woman again'' from the Daily Mail had been lifted from a press release

To some fanfare in the Guardian, a new website has been launched that can show how much of a press release has been cut and pasted into news items in outlets across the UK, a process regular readers will know is referred to as 'churnalism'. Churnalism.com allows users to paste text into a box, and searches a database of articles stretching as far back as early 2007 to see how much has been cut and pasted wholesale into articles.

Much has been made of the site's ability to check how much of a press release has been pasted into news stories, and that's also the main focus of the site, but churnalism is about more than that. Churnalism is also about cutting and pasting wire copy, and copying stories from other newspapers without checking (Ninja Turtle Syndrome). A great thing about the site is that you can check these things too, you just don't have to save those into the database of press releases the site is building up. Pasting in Steve Doughty's article about migrant workers that contributed to him winning last month's 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award showed that around 38% of it was cut and 19% pasted into Alison Little's version in the Express, with 506 characters overlapping.**

Coinciding with the launch, Chris Atkins of 'Starsuckers' managed to perfectly illustrate Ninja Turtle Syndrome by - among other things - setting up a fake Facebook account for someone called Tim Sutcliffe, claiming that the Downing Street cat belonged to his aunt. He got national coverage, appearing (apparently twice) in the Daily Mail, although it was swiftly pulled. Chris tweeted this morning that he could have gone 'sooo much further' with another 24 hours. Head over here (and watch the video) for more of how Atkins' stunts managed to find their way into the papers. There really is some great stuff there, demonstrating the importance of news wire copy for churnalism too, including the invention of a 'chastity garter' - which was covered internationally.

He also claims to have had his first angry email from a journalist, which he'll be updating about soon. Looking forward to that so much that I'll link to any updates right here.

**Update** Hah! 12 hours after coming clean that the cat story was a hoax, Chris Atkins gets an interview with BBC Radio Norfolk!

This is sure to upset the press. A couple of years ago, a new site popped up called 'The Churner Prize', which looked at obviously churned stories in the press. It got pulled. Before it disappeared, I remember the site implied that this was because it was run by anonymous journalists who had been found out and might face difficulties in their career if they went any further with it. Great.

So, get over to churnalilsm.com and start checking out how much of that crappy tabloid nonsense you know and hate has been lifted from press releases, wire copy and other crappy tabloid nonsense. As a great man once said, "You know what you gotta do. Do it. Do it."

*Paul Dacre's answer about churnalism was a masterclass in dodging and weaving to answer specifics of a question rather than the broader question itself. He seems to be answering whether his paper is guilty of churnalism, but in fact he's referring specifically to the charges of newspapers not having enough money for proper journalism, unquestioningly churning government press releases and, as the quote shows, freelance copy. Not press releases, wire copy and other papers in general, which are generally what churnalism is all about.

**I don't think Steve Doughty read the email I sent. His 'Gah! The Muslims are coming!' article still says that 0.8 per cent of the US population is American. Hey, maybe he just doesn't give a shit.

Yes yes, hundreds dead blah blah blah. Are any of them British?

2011-02-23T11:25:00.001Z

Blast from the past

Last year, looking at the Mail's coverage of the Haiti earthquake disaster, I blatted this out:

It's so common in comedy shows that it's a cliche - major disaster happens in foreign country, UK news agencies only take notice if British people are involved. Submit a script with that situation in and someone's bound to say, "Do we need to include that tired joke? It's been done about eight-million times before."

Yes, it's a tired gag, but one that's so accurate. Today's tabloids show this brilliantly. Most papers have included news of Libya and Gadaffi's speech yesterday on their front pages - it is a little bit relevant to the UK, people in countries across the Middle East in revolt against the largely UK-backed oppressive regimes that rule them, with one of the most infamous despots vowing to fight against a revolt that has already killed quite a number of his citizens - but the tabloids have splashed with the headlines that count.

Here's the Mail's view of what's most important:

There are British people there! Won't somebody think of the British?

And the Express:

Won't somebody think of the UK petrol prices?

And the Sun, which goes with a natural disaster elsewhere in the world:

The 'disater down under' (is it me, or is that just the teensiest bit tacky?) is that 10 British people died.

Finally, the other tabloids' less gifted cousin, the formerly EDL supporting Star:

Ah, the shame of Benefit Britain is that a person on benefits has said exactly what I think about work. How can we live with the embarrassment? I'm sure the world's eyes are on us now. Screw earthquakes and upheaval in the Middle East. Someone on the dole thinks work's boring! If only ritual seppuku were allowed for the whole country, we could take proper action to atone for such disgrace.

Interestingly, there is a little bit there on the Star's front page about the earthquake in New Zealand, it goes with 'Brits' hell as quake kills 300'.

Hey, it was only 10 in the Sun. What gives?

What gives is that there's another 'it's a cliche because it's true' thing that's going on with both papers - tabloids fudge information on their front page to trick you out of your money. The Sun follows its ''10 Brits' dead' headline with '300 missing as frantic response goes on' which could easily be interpreted as meaning 300 Brits are missing. The Star is much worse, managing to imply that 300 Brits are dead while making an outright claim that 300 people have died.

In reality, 300 people in total are missing. 75 are confirmed to have died. The opening couple of sentences in the Sun's story reveal that:

TEN Britons were last night feared to have been killed in New Zealand's devastating earthquake.

One British citizen was confirmed dead this morning...

So, ten Britons feared dead with one actual dead Briton becomes 10 dead Brits on the front page of the Sun and 300 in the Star. Neither manages to include the actual current death toll.

To be fair, why would you want to? 74 of them are foreign. The Star had much more important news about a person on the dole not much liking work to splash with.

To finish with another clichéed gag - how do you confuse a tabloid journalist? Tell them the Brits involved in an international incident are on benefits.

MigrationWatch - it's a tough existence, being anti-immigration

2011-02-22T18:44:00.002Z

MigrationWatch has issued a press release and - ooh, a study. Since MigrationWatch was 'one of the few voices consistently raised in opposition to mass immigration during the Blair and Brown years', we'll have to look directly at the press release to see what it's all about, since there's such a lack of opposition to mass immigration to be found that it probably got no coverage.

Oh, silly me. It's all over the papers this morning. And Sir Andrew Green gets space in the second biggest selling newspaper in the country to expand on the release. It's the tough life of the underdog, being anti-immigration in the UK. You literally have to cobble together some old nonsense you've already said and bung it all together in a press-release and study issued to pre-empt the release of official figures that have been leaked to you ahead of publication to get coverage in all the best selling newspapers.

Let's all head over to 'How Labour let in 3 million immigrants, in defiance of the overwhelming wishes of the British people' and have a look at what Sir Andrew Green has to say for himself, eh?

He opens:

Official figures to be published on Thursday will confirm that foreign immigration under Labour added more than three million to our population.

At the same time nearly one million British citizens voted with their feet, some saying that they were leaving because England was no longer a country that they recognised.

I love how this co-opts the UK citizens leaving the country to make it look as though most left because "'England' was no longer a country that they recognised", despite not actually knowing the motives (hey - maybe they left because they got a good job, or wanted an extended stay abroad) and despite some of these people leaving countries other than England.

These figures are presented in an unclear and potentially misleading fashion here. Full Fact has had a closer look at where these figures come from, and come to the conclusion that the 3 million figure is net foreign migration to the UK. That's what Migrationwatch's press releasesays, but I'd rather wait until the actual figures are published, since the report itself gives a different impression, making it look as though the 3 million figure is the total number for inward migration. In any case, if the argument is purely about overcrowding, why split UK born and non-UK born like this?

Onwards:

How could all this have happened in the teeth of public opposition? Even the Labour government’s own survey last February showed that 77 per cent of the public wanted immigration reduced, including 54 per cent of the ethnic communities, while 50 per cent of the public wanted it reduced ‘by a lot’.

Hey! Isn't there something missing here? Wasn't there a study published this February that showed the majority of people in the UK do indeed think immigration is too high - until they're told exactly how high it is? It seems 'the public' overestimates the level of mmigration to the UK. Now, why might that be, Sir Andrew, when you've just put out a report that says things like, "England (not the UK) is already, with Holland, the most crowded country in Europe (apart from Malta)" when according to official Dutch figures, it really, really isn't?

Mass immigration is an entirely different matter. The question now is how did it happen and what can be done about it. Was it all a Labour conspiracy? Was it sheer incompetence in government? Or was it wholesale retreat in front of the race relations lobby?

Or was it dealing with a complex and difficult global phenomenon with different assumptions to Sir Andrew Green? Maybe it was that. Just a thought.

The strongest evidence for conspiracy comes from one of Labour’s own. Andrew Neather, a previously unheard-of speechwriter for Blair, Straw and Blunkett, popped up with an article in the Evening Standard in October 2009 which gave the game away.

Heh. I love this. This time last year, MigrationWatch was crowing that they had the smoking gun that proved there was a secret conspiracy to import voters. There was one small problem with it. It was cack. I wrote why in this article over at MailWatch. Nice to see Sir Andrew dropping that particular nonsense and kick it under the carpet, whistling. Not to mention funny.

It's also funny that Sir Andrew has rolled back from the 'smoking gun' claim to an earlier one, by selectively quoting some things from Andrew Neather, but not his response to the storm his Standard article kicked up, which was:

There was no plot.

He also said his views had 'been twisted out of all recognition' by the people saying he'd signalled a plot. But he would say that, the dirty plotting bastard. How could you argue in the face of such strong evidence?

Sir Andrew goes on to say:

The result is now plain for all to see. Even Blair’s favourite think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), commented recently: ‘It is no exaggeration to say that immigration under New Labour has changed the face of the country.’

Pity he misses out the very next paragraph of the IPPR report, which says:

There was no conspiracy to bring about this huge social change. New Labour did not deliberately set out to turn the UK into a huge multi-racial melting pot and so prevent the Conservatives from ever winning power again, as implied by former Number 10 adviser Andrew Neather in an article seized upon by right-wing commentators. Indeed, as Ed Owen describes, far from having a grand plan to transform Britain, New Labour didn’t have a plan at all.

Oh.

There follows a curious thing. The man who says his opposition to immigration has nothing to do with race uses a breakdown of people of darker skinned races who voted Labour, according to a 2005 study that doesn't break down how many were migrants or how recently those that were arrived in the UK. Weird that.

The article closes with the head of the, ahem 'non-political' think-tank crowing about the government's immigration policy, and saying:

This will be uphill work, and the Liberal Democrat partners in the Coalition can be expected to make difficulties (so it will be essential to remain vigilant).

You know what I like about that conclusion? The total lack of political bias in support for the government who seem to be leaking figures to Migrationwatch ahead of publication.

The MigrationWatch site says this:

Unlike most organisations in this field, we receive no subsidy from the government in any form and have no intention of seeking one.

Most anti-immigration pressure groups get funding from the government, do they? Tell you what, I'd like to see a list of actual donors. There's no subsidy from government, but what about the people who subsidise the main political party in government? What about that party's supporters? What about other, less popular political parties?

Nickchard Littlegriff on Question Time

2011-02-18T13:26:00.006Z

Vive la difference

Nick Griffin, October 2009:

The audience is always the same noxious, inarticulate blend of Left-wing local government activists, NHS malcontents, trades union officials, spotty students and women in headscarves. Occasionally, they throw in a couple of comedy Tories with dandruff, for the rest of the crowd to boo.

Last time I was on the programme [...] where 93 per cent of the population is white, and which elected a Conservative MP in 2010 with 41.4 per cent of the vote [...] the audience looked as if it had been bussed in from central casting, carefully selected to reflect the BBC’s view of what Britain should look like. If 41.4 per cent of that audience were Conservative voters, they did a damn good job of disguising it.

Richard Littlejohn, February 2011:

That audience was taken from a city that is no longer British ... That was not my country any more. Why not come down and do it in Thurrock, do it in Stoke, do it in Burnley?

Do it somewhere where there are still significant numbers of English and British people [living], and they haven't been ethnically cleansed from their own country."

Nick Griffin, [on his appearance on Question Time] October 2009:

That was not a genuine Question Time; that was a lynch mob...

Richard Littlejohn, [on Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time] February 2011:

...this was a licence fee-funded lynching, with Dimbleby acting as head of the posse, rather than a neutral chairman.

Whoops! Got one of those the wrong way round.

See what I did there?

Littlejohn's House of Bum - part 3

2011-02-17T22:36:00.002Z

And so we arrive at the last part of Littlejohn's House of Bum, where we will look at his unbelievably thorough and rigorous research techniques, carried out, you'd imagine, by a crack team of researchers hooked up to a vast array of enormous flatscreens and blinking lights, a bit like Oracle in the Batman comics. Every time a playground game is banned, buzzers go off and the crack team swoop into action, contacting everyone involved in the story before sending Littlejohn an alert on his flashing red mobile phone with dates, times, streets and names.

Sorry. I'm buggering about.

Littlejohn's research

All Littlejohn's books are littered with nonsense that takes a few seconds and an internet connection to disprove. As coincidence would have it, this Tuesday's column (the most recent as I'm writing this) includes a bunch of old hogwash that was used in an article in 2009, again in 'Littlejohn's House of Fun', reproduced in his column in March 2010 and finally again this Tuesday. At the cutting edge, Mr Littlejohn.

One new detail in the most recent iteration is an instalment of one of his hilarious 'let's look at job titles and reproduce them out of context, embellishing them as we go' series:

Haringey hired someone to give hopscotch lessons to Asian women.

Except no it didn't. In the neighbouring borough, Camden, there's a centre for Asian women that deals with things like 'domestic violence, benefits, housing, education, immigration and health matters'. As well as providing 'support to people with learning disabilities'. It's called the Hopscotch Centre. The made up version apparently dates back to 1995.

His books are littered with similar examples. Here are some of my favourites. They go along with the nonsense about NASA scientists saying the polar ice caps are growing I looked at in part 2.

In 2002, the media was up in arms about the Red Cross banning Christmas in its shops. This got picked up again last Christmas, and the Red Cross responded (again) with:

It’s true that you won’t find explicitly religious items or displays, relating to any faith, in any of our shops, at Christmas or any other time. [...] This neutrality is one of our fundamental principles and governs everything we do in the whole Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It means that we can reach and help people in need, whoever and wherever they are. Often we provide help in countries that other organisations cannot or will not work in.

Here's how Littlejohn responded to a similar explanation in 2004, reproduced and adjusted a bit in 'Littlejohn's Britain':

Cobblers. The Red Cross is a Christian organisation. Where do they think the cross comes from? Muslim countries have their own version, called the Red Crescent.

Face. Palm. The Red Cross is the Red Crescent. And the cross comes from the reversal of the Swiss flag, as I learned in primary school. That explanation was given by the Red Cross in 1906 specifically to counter claims from the Turkish government that it was a Christian organisation.

In 'Littlejohn's Britain', released in 2007, he says cyclists face a £2,500 fine if they ride a bike with no bell. They don't. The government was apparently 'studying' such a rule in 2006, but never introduced it. The proposal was covered in a sober, sensible manner at the time by the Evening Standard.

In 'House of Fun', published in 2010, Littlejohn rails against Derby Council for refusing to reinstate a statue of a boar in one of its parks because of offending Muslims. Here's a link with a picture of the statue from 2005 when it was in fact reinstated.

In 'Littlejohn's Britain', he rails against the idea of Tony Blair being interviewed by Little Ant and Dec, since no other Prime Minister would ever stoop so low as to appear on children's television. "For all her media savvy, Mrs Thatcher managed to win three elections without the help of Tucker and Pogo off Grange Hill," apparently. Except here's a link including Cheggers reminiscing about interviewing her on Saturday Superstore, the same programme on which she was famously outwitted by a kid ringing in to ask if she had a bunker to use in a nuclear war.

You get the gist. Laziness, stuff taken out of context, an eagerness to accept anything that fits into the 'they only want to ruin our fun' narrative that extends to never bothering to check if proposals ever made their way through to being policy or whether anything that happened once ever happened again, and never noticing when these contradict other things he's said.

Last bonfire night, he claimed Watford didn't have a bonfire celebration because it didn't (apparently) in 2007. In 2010, predictably, it had several.

This post opened with Littlejohn moaning about someone getting a job teaching Asian women to play hopscotch, except as eagle-eyed readers would have spotted, hopscotch is banned.

Whole subjects built out of a lack of research

A lot of the PC Gone Mad stories are built from a postbag bulging with one sided, unsubstantiated stories from readers that are never checked or followed up. His 'Mind How You Go' stories about how crap and petty the police are is fed almost exclusively by the same sort of thing. It never seems to occur to this crack journalist that people facing a fine might just be giving a one-sided version of events that might just be slightly embellished to paint them in the best possible light.

There is a new type of Littlejohn story built out of this stuff. Given his obsession with bins, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that individual local stories become suddenly of national importance, but Britain's best paid columnist has managed to build a whole series of stories about supermarket checkout staff making mistakes.

Every now and again, supermarket staff get over-enthusiastic with their implementation of rules about asking for identification when selling alcohol. It's crap when it happens, but it happens. People misunderstand rules, people forget a little common sense, sometimes people are even jumped-up little Hitlers with a complex. Should it make the national papers? Maybe in an 'and finally' type of way, but as evidence of a vast government conspiracy?

For Littlejohn, yes. Getting asked for ID when you're way over 18 is more than just evidence of 'people dreaming stuff up to justify their own pathetic existence' this time. It's evidence that:

The [Labour] government clearly figured that eventually we'll become so frustrated that we'll gratefully accept a 'one-stop' state identity card.

Dun-dun-durrrrn. Presumably nobody way over 18 has ever been asked for ID when buying booze since May 2010. Except whoops and whoops.

Littlejohn the man

There's the odd glimpse of what Littlejohn's like as a person in the books, but the best is the opening vignette about Tony Blair from 'Littlejohn's Britain'.

The story goes like this. Our smelly faced chum was invited to dinner with the future Prime Minister back in the 90s and, establishment outsider as he is, he attended. He didn't throw any bottles, but as the evening wore on and some were presumably emptied, he launched into a hilarious idea of how Blair should raze Liverpool to the floor and tarmac it over. How sweet.

Except he didn't know Cherie Blair was from Liverpool.

Rather than this being a story about how you can inadvertently put your foot in it and make an embarrassing faux pas that makes you feel a little bit sick when you remember it, he offers this story up as an example of how horrible Tony Blair is. You'd expect the illegal war leaving thousands dead, the sucking up to the worst, most bloodthirsty US administration in decades and the erosion of civil liberties would have been better examples, but there it is. Blair is slimy because he let Littlejohn blather on without stopping him. Cherie, of course, is totally incapable of stopping him or saying anything herself because she's a woman:

Then I wondered: why the hell didn't he say something? Why did he sit there grinning and nodding instead of saying something like: 'Look, I know you're only joking, Rich, but I think I should point out that, er, actually, ha, ha, Cheri's from Liverpool...'?

Blair would rather risk a night in the spare bedroom than stop in full flow a half-pissed hack whom he'd hoped to impress.

Because that's what women do, even QCs. They wait for their husband to speak for them or they withhold sex. The bitches.

As much of a reptilian villain Blair actually was, I think a lot of us have been in a situation where we've thought, Oh my god, he's actually a massive bell-end. Won't be inviting him to anything again, while we've stood aghast and let some embarrassing, pissed-up prat finish before moving on to talk to someone else. Lots of other people have while I'm around, that's for sure.

Wrapping it up

That's as much as I can bear of Littlejohn now. The question I set out asking was whether there was a through line that provided some Littlejohn-ray specs to make sense of his columns with.

There is, but that doesn't mean Littlejohn actually believes the stuff he writes. He just slots things into the pre-existing line, just like the paper he writes for. Back in my first ever post about Littlejohn, I said:

I don't look at Littlejohn's writing much, mainly because I think he's an arse who probably doesn't even believe what he writes himself...

Now, I honestly don't think he gives a shit whether what he writes is true or not. He gets paid gazillions of pounds for writing 'provocative' stuff, so that's what he does. Or at least, that's what he lazily reproduces over and over and bloody over.

What does that imply about his attitude to his readers. Doesn't care much, huh? He'll repeat any old cack any number of times without checking it's true. Because at the end of the day, he doesn't give a shit. He's paid to whip up an audience, and that's what he lazily does, with half an eye on his pancakes.

I won't repeat the line from 'To Hell In a Handcart' about his fictional radio host's audience being like a 'fucking NF rally' (except whoops! I just did), but I'll wrap up by reproducing how Littlejohn describes the audience of the character who's most like himself when they actually turn up:

Ricky was joined on the back of the truck by an overweight, peroxide blonde, wearing a tight denim skirt, white trainers and a replica Leyton Orient football shirt. She was waving a Rocktalk 99FM placard bearing the message: FREE MICKEY FRENCH.

'What brought you here this morning, er...'
'Kaylee.'
'Yeah, Kaylee. Why are you here?'
'We want Mickey out. He done nuffink wrong. He just defended hisself against some thieving gyppo. 'Bout time some-one done sommink.'

And, just after describing the supporters and their badly scribbled placards, the anti-racist crowd gathering to oppose them and his listeners making a break through the police cordon:

A ferocious-looking woman in a pink Ellesse tracksuit was rugby-tackled by a stout WPC.

A large and especially ugly skinhead in a brand-new Rocktalk 99FM T-shirt headbutted a student waving an AFL banner.

Are you a LIttlejohn fan? Then according to him, that's you, that is.

That's it. I won't waste much more time on Littlejohn in the future unless it's to point and laugh. There's nothing to work out. He really is as shallow as he appears. I feel as cheated as his readers should for even wondering enough to read his books.

My application for Daily Mail Trainee Reporter job

2011-02-10T16:57:00.002Z

You might have seen around the blogs that the Daily Mail is advertising for a trainee reporter. Anton Vowl and Angry Mob (plus a more people in the comments at Angry Mob than I've managed to read yet) have written their own applications, so I thought I'd be a big old copycat and give it a go myself. If you see any more around the place, mention them in the comments and I'll stick some links up here. *UPDATE* Ooh look, here's Primly Stable. And Daily Quail, and Cath Elliot and Doug.

Here's my application:

Dear Sue,

I'm writing to enquire about your recent advert for a Trainee Reporter at the Daily Mail.

I've reached a time in my life where I could perhaps benefit from a career change. Although I haven't had any journalistic experience, I do have a degree in English Literature and I have blogged for a number of years on the subject of the news media. I have a strong commitment to the promotion of the highest journalistic ethics and believe passionately in the necessity of a national press that shines a light in the dark, speaks up for those who would not otherwise have a voice and, above all speaks truth to power.

National newspapers have a responsibility to provide their readers with as accurate a representation of events as possible. Democracy itself relies on the public having reliable information to base their voting intention on. A cohesive society relies on having a united and co-operative people at its heart, with people treated equally and with fairness. People who are part of a minority group should be able to rely on a fair and ethical press to protect them from demonisation from those who would spread lies and disinformation about them for political or financial gain.

It is for these reasons that I've changed my mind while typing this letter and decided against applying. To be honest, the first time I was asked to massage immigration statistics, churn some skewed, exaggerated nonsense about Muslims banning things or encourage readers to become outraged about homosexuals being allowed to do something heterosexuals can, the nightmares would start.

Plus, I don't give a shit about bins.

Cheers then,

5cc

Fingers crossed eh?

Daily Star - absolute filth

2011-02-10T13:55:00.001Z

Except, you know, it isn't

When I started this blog, nearly five years ago now, I was very angry with the way papers like the Mail, Express (and surprisingly less often) the Sun dealt with immigration and race. I hardly ever looked at the Star, since it exists primarily as a vehicle for selling pictures of tits to stupid people. Or at least it did at the time.

Watching the papers dog-whistle with stories about 'migrants' illustrated with the burkha-clad woman flipping the Vs or swarthy men standing about on street corners was a pretty hideous step towards something ominous.

The Mail writing articles calling the BNP 'odious' and 'vile', and then following it up with a 'but' was a cowardly step further. The occasions when the mask slipped and the racism spewed out were worse, and started becoming more frequent after last year's scaremongering about babies who - brace yourself - weren't 'White British'. Gasp!

It gets tiring, saying 'this is a new low' for the British press. When you start in the sewer, you shouldn't be surprised when you come across turds. But following the Express massaging the figures and misrepresenting quotes to encourage outrage at the number of doctors who are not 'White British' (as opposed to just 'British'), its sister paper, the Star, has come out in support of the new violent ballheads on the block, the EDL, all but begging the goons to create a political party so they can be 'taken seriously, like the British National Party'. The guy in charge of a group of people with a number of links to the BNP - a former BNP member with a conviction for assaulting a police officer himself - should set up a political party to be 'taken seriously, like the British National Party'? Say what?

Infamously, back in the 1930s, the Daily Mail supported Oswald Mosely's blackshirts. The paper's support drained away after it suddenly realised that the blackshirts were violent goons. Who would have thought that the anti-semites in black shirts stomping about the place would be violent?

The EDL - which grew out of football hooliganism - are quite obviously a violent, nasty presence in our culture, with their black hoodies and face masks and nazi salutes. Journalists covering their marches have reported receiving death threats from organisers. The National Union of Journalists issued a statement in November 2009, which said:

Professional journalists covering the events have filed reports with the NUJ detailing physical violence, including one being punched in the head, verbal threats, and attempts to seize cameras and smash equipment. The union is to file complaints to the police.

And now a newspaper is openly pushing support for these people.

The Desmond titles continue to sink beyond the gutter to some fourth dimension of crap. It's impossible to imagine how much lower they can go now that they have left the PCC and the Express editor has retired. We've already had the racist Express article about white British doctors followed by its sister paper supporting thugs who have reportedly threatened journalists, if not actually assaulted them. Should the NUJ be supporting a strike of its members at the Star? One can only hope that any journalists at the Star that have a single ounce of conscience left will be jumping ship quick smart.

I'm not usually one to argue for boycotts or campaigns, but a gentle (or stiff if you prefer) letter to the larger stockists of the Daily Star might be in order. Here are the contact details for Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and WHSmith if you think so. Perhaps letters to Star editor Dawn Neesom to find out what she's playing at and the NUJ to find out if they intend to do anything would also be in order.