Mail locates bottom of barrel, gives it a good scraping

I'm out of the country for a year or so. I'm somewhere nice and sunny - it's 30C outside right now - and really should be seeing the sights, sipping coconuts, that sort of thing. But instead, like a moth to a flame, I find myself drawn to the pages of Mail Online. I just can't help it. Maybe I have some kind of mental problem. And despite not having visited it for three whole weeks, within roughly six seconds of my return to intellectual masochism I'd stumbled across something that made me decide to break my self-imposed blogging moratorium. After I'd banged my head repeatedly against the laptop, obviously.

Now you don't have to have been at this tabloid-watching malarky very long to see a headline like that and instantly think "What are the chances that said ban ISN'T down to health and safety - or even the childish cloacaism that is 'Elf N Safety', something that surely has no place in a serious news story?" And were you to think that, you would of course be entirely correct. In the intro, lazy hack Nick Fagge, perhaps jealous of colleague Steve Doughty's 5CC tabloid bullshit of the month award, makes this bold claim:

Every year the Christians from different churches get together to march a 400-yard route to celebrate Easter. But this year their Good Friday parade has been banned – because it breaches health and safety laws.

This being a Mail health and safety story, Nick is legally required to undermine his own argument within the next few paragraphs. Hence these two sentences:

Previously organisers of the parade in Willesden, north London, had only needed to inform police of their route. But new red tape means they now need permission from Brent Council. Officials said they banned the procession because they were contacted too late to carry out a ‘consultation’ to close the roads.

And just in case you failed to understand that, there’s a handy quote from a council spokesman that spells it out extremely clearly (tucked away at the end of the article, natch):

“Brent Council was not contacted about the march until around a week ago. There is a strict legal procedure we have to follow to issue a traffic order closing roads so people can march in the highway, which includes advertising and consultation, and this takes about five weeks. We are very sorry to say there is now not enough time for us to legally facilitate this march.”

So it’s got nowt to do with health and safety at all – the council simply has rules requiring five weeks advance notice of any planned road closures so that people not involved in an event have time to plan for the road closure. The Catholic priest in charge of the march failed to check with the council five weeks ahead (maybe he forgot when Easter was?) so the road can’t be closed. I suppose you could accuse the council of being a little officious and inflexible, but thems the rules. And they have nothing whatsoever to do with health and safety, despite what the sub claims in the headline and Fagge claims in his intro.

The Mail has been blaming health and safety for everything from stepping stone repair to the non-banning of secret santa to parking arrangements at cheese-rolling events for donkey’s years now, but what makes this story remarkable is the way the paper has elbowed in a second pet theme – Christians being persecuted by authority and treated worse than assorted minority groups. Normally this kind of story has at least a vague basis in fact. But this time round it comes entirely from the imagination of the priest who forgot to give five weeks notice to the council:

Father Hugh MacKenzie, of St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church, said: “The rights of Christians are being overlooked in favour of the rights of Islamic groups and gay rights organisations.”

Wait, what?

“One does wonder whether if it was a homosexual rights or Islamic group the council would have been more flexible, as it doesn’t seem like rocket science to permit us to walk 400 metres. The rights of Christians are just not respected in Britain.”

Riiiiiight. The road won’t be closed because the priest failed to follow the rules, yet this is evidence of the rights of Christians not being respected in Britain? What rights are those then? The right to break the law? The right to be treated MORE favourably than other people who want to organise a road closure?

And is there any evidence that Brent Council has been more flexible with homosexual rights groups or Islamic groups? Anything to prove the claim that the rights of Christians are being overlooked in favour of such people? No, there’s absolutely nothing. It’s just the slightly unnerving ramblings of a disorganised priest. But hey, his outlandish claims chime with the Mail’s ongoing narrative about Christians being treated worse than the minority groups the paper loathes so much, so Nick duly sets out to come up with some rock-solid evidence supporting Father Hugh:

Brent Council hosts a Diwali street celebration every year. Last November it boasted it had held the biggest Diwali event in the country, after more than 60,000 people turned out.

And? Brent has huge a huge population of Sikhs and Hindus, so it’s not much of a shock that they hold a Diwali celebration. But how is this in any way related to the story? Did the council fail to advertise any associated road closures five weeks in advance? Or is the Mail just complaining because the council put on an event aimed primarily at brown people? Oh wait, there’s more:

And in July last year the council appealed to the Muslim community to notify it of any Eid events so it could promote them free of charge. But it did not do the same for other religious festivals.

OMFG! STOP THE PRESSES! Brent Council offered to promote festivities being staged by a minority group so that people from the majority, who may otherwise be unaware, could get involved! BUT THEY DIDN’T ADVERTISE CHRISTMAS!!!!!!! Which is a travesty, because, without the council telling people, NOBODY WOULD KNOW THAT CHRISTMAS WAS TAKING PLACE! Sure, they might be a little confused as to why all the shops were really busy, there were decorations up everywhere and they had two days of work, but without the council telling them what was going on they’d never have any idea that it was all related to an obscure little festival celebrated by a tiny religious group called “Christians”.

If Father Hugh wants to trot out tired lines about being part of a persecuted minority that’s his lookout, but if Nick Fagges wants to call himself a journalist and the Mail wants to call itself a newspaper, they have a duty to seriously investigate whether his claims have any substance. Who knows, maybe just yesterday a group of gay Muslims were given permission to close the M1 for three hours at the drop of a hat – if it happened, Father Hugh has a point and the story has some merit. But based on the facts provided by the Mail, it’s nothing but another attempt to win sympathy for Christians at the expense of other groups, something the Mail is all too happy to collude with. And based on some of the comments from readers, it certainly seems to be working:

Mail + Migrants = MUSLIMS!

So shrieks the headline in today's Mail. The story is based on a press release from MigrationWatch, which itself is informed by a written Parliamentary question from Tory backbencher Priti Patel.

The central claim is that Britain is a "soft touch" for illegal immigrants, because quite a few people who arrive here illegally go on to successfully claim asylum, even though the figures actually show that the number of illegal immigrants refused asylum is more than double the number who were granted it. Oh, and the base figure they use to provide the "one in five" statistic includes people who haven't had their cases heard yet, people who left the country of their own voilition, people who withdrew their claims and people who DIED before their cases were heard. Why IS Britain so bad at deporting dead people?

But the real highlight of the story is the picture chosen by the Mail to illustrate it.

Because as every Mail reader knows, Muslims = illegal immigrants.

PCC says it's OK to lie

So after a couple of months of pondering, the PCC have got around to replying to my complaint. You remember the one, where I pointed out that Richard Littlejohn was talking out of his arse when he claimed that "any Afghan climbing off the back of a lorry in Dover goes automatically to the top of the housing list"?

He said this despite the fact that it is simply not true - asylum seekers do not even join the housing queue and illegal immigrants (for fairly obvious reasons) aren't entitled to council houses and benefits at all. So Richard Littlejohn, who likes to portray himself as a man who speaks uncomfortable truths, made something up. He gave false information to his readers. He lied. And he did all this in an article that essentially blamed Afghan asylum seekers for the fact that an ex-soldier who served in Afghanistan couldn't get a council house, thus continuing the Mail's policy of whipping up anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hatred based on misinformation.

The PCC code is very clear on such matters. Section one, clause one says:

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures

And they've gone further on the subject of asylum seekers, issuing a note to editors that says:

"The Commission – in previous adjudications under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code – has underlined the danger that inaccurate, misleading or distorted reporting may generate an atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts."

So obviously after I pointed out that Littlejohn had published inaccurate, misleading or distorted information that generated an atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts, there was only ever going to be one outcome:

Commission’s decision in the case of Stable v Daily Mail

 

The complainant considered that the article falsely stated that “Afghans climbing off the back of a lorry in Dover” were given precedence in the allocation of council housing.

 

The Commission acknowledged the complainant’s concern over the statement; however, it had to consider the remark in the context of the article in which it appeared. The article had been clearly presented as a comment piece, in which the columnist expressed his concern that a soldier who had served in Afghanistan had not been granted a council house. The Commission considered that the columnist had exaggerated and simplified the example of housing immigrants for the purpose of stressing his assertion that the “system of government exists simply to punish those who do the right thing”. It emphasised that the newspaper should take care when using such rhetorical methods of expression that readers would not be misled into understanding that they reflected statements of fact. In this instance, on balance it considered that readers would be aware that the columnist was not accurately reflecting the government’s policy on the housing of immigrants, but that he was making an amplified statement for rhetorical effect. It was therefore the Commission’s view that, on this occasion, readers generally would not be misled in such a way as to warrant correction under the terms of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code of Practice.

The covering letter notes that I can't complain about the decision or ask them to reconsider, but notes that they'll forward my letter to the editor. You couldn't make it up.

Now that the PCC has been quite clear that it's OK for journalists to lie for rhetorical effect, I think I'm on safe ground when I say that Richard Littlejohn is a fine, upstanding journalist, the Daily Mail is a wonderful publication whose employees can be proud to work for it, and that the Press Complaints Commission is an effective, relevant and entirely useful organisation that continues to make an excellent case for ongoing self-regulation of the UK media.

More Mail Fail

The Daily Mail - whose readers may not agree with what someone says but will fight to the death for their right to say it - is predictably outraged after a Muslim (gasp!) artist put together a (pretty crappy) piece of work based around the London bus that was destroyed by the 7/7 bombers.



The story goes like this:

"A Muslim artist has sparked outrage with his depiction of the ripped-apart bus destroyed in the 7/7 terror attacks.

"The artwork shows four angels flying above the bombed number 30 bus - the same number of Al Qaeda terrorists who took part in the atrocity which left 52 commuters dead and maimed hundreds more on London's transport network.

"Also seen are scores of ghostly souls shooting from the bus, which was travelling through Tavistock Square when it was devastated by suicide bomber Hasib Hussain."

The paper hasn't bothered to check whether the four angels are supposed to depict the four bombers, they're just assuming that because the artist is a Muslim who said he "wants to shock people" his work must be a "tribute" to the murderers. Nor has the nameless journalist managed to find anyone who is "outraged" - the only third party quote comes from the father of a woman who died on the No 30 bus, who (understandably) says the artwork is "upsetting".

All typical Mail stuff, but not on its own worthy of comment. However, there is one aspect of the story that we can't let pass. As further proof that the man behind the picture is some kind of Al-Qaeda sleeper agent, the paper tells us that:

"The artist has also used photo trickery to write the message 'Outright terror... bold and brilliant' on the side of the bus."

Photo trickery? Or just "a camera"?

As has been noted many, many times one of the sad ironies of 7/7 was that the side of the bus was carrying an advert for the film The Descent. An advert that included a quote from a review in Total Film magazine. A review that said:

That's right, the evil Muslim Terrorist Artist has cunningly used, er... reality in order to make his work more shocking. How very dare he.

UPDATE!

Closer inspection of the story reveals there's even more to this than meets the eye. The BBC's coverage concentrates purely on the fact that using am image from 7/7 is controversial. The full quote given by the artist reads:

"What I'm trying to do is to make anyone that has a faith, a belief, or an idea they hold close to their heart to think about the impact of these ideas when they leave their heads. I wanted to jolt people into seeing the results of these thoughts put into action. It is a grotesque thing that happened. The inquiry is to establish the facts and find out out what happened and to make sure something like this doesn't happen again and that is partly what my image is trying to do. It is meant to make people think about the effects of faith." (emphasis added by me).

Do they sound like the words of someone who wants to "glorify" the bombings and "pay tribute" to the killers? Even the Sun didn't try and claim that four angles = four bombers (although it did point out that there were four of each), and at least it managed to point out that "Outright terror" was written on the side of the actual bus.

But over at the Mail, they're sticking with the story that the picture is an "angelic tribute" to the bombers, despite there being abosolutely no evidence to back up their claim. And the results in the comments section are fairly predictable:

Mail readers: "nothing wrong with murdering gypsies"

A Conservative councillor in North Wales has found himself in a spot of bother after allegedly telling a meeting that Hitler "had the right idea" when it came to dealing with gypsies. As this idea involved sending nearly a quarter of a million innocent men, women and children to the death camps, it's understandable that quite a few people are now calling on the councillor to resign.

Even the Daily Mail's coverage is fairly critical in tone:

Tory mayor faces calls to resign after claiming Hitler had the ‘right idea’ about travellers
A mayor has provoked outrage by allegedly claiming Adolf Hitler had the ‘right idea’ about dealing with Germany’s gipsies.

However, the paper's readers are only furious with one thing - the fact that the councillor is being criticised. Sort the comments in order of "green arrows" and you quickly discover that hundreds of Mail readers think that gassing people to death is a perfectly sensible course of action:


A bit further down there are fewer green arrows but the messages are still getting a positive reaction:


Yes, you read that correctly - according to RP in Daventry, the "great majority" of people in England think that gypsies and travellers should be sent to the gas chamber. And at least 18 readers of the Daily Mail agree. It does make you worry. Although perhaps we shouldn't be suprised - I've pointed out before that many of the Mail's readers are keen on a spot of recreational gypsy-killing.

To be fair to the Mail's readership, most of the commenters don't explicitly support genocide. They prefer to complain about yet another example of political correctness going mad and how you can't say anything anymore without the thought police locking you up and so and so forth:


And of course someone had to quote Voltaire:

However, cast your mind back a fortnight to 11 November, when a small group of Islamic extremists protested against Britain's armed forces by burning poppies during the two-minute silence. Did the Mail's readers rush to defend the protesters' freedom to express their views, however, abhorent many people found them? Did they fuck:


But perhaps the most interesting reaction was the almost 500-strong net "red arrow" rating to the person who said this:

Freedom of speech: only applicable when we agree with what's being said.

Sunday Express Exclusive: Muslims "do Muslim stuff"

Step aside Woodward and Bernstein, the intrepid Express duo of Jarvis and Bhatia have an "exclusive" that puts your lightweight Watergate "investigation" to shame:

MUSLIMS CUT BODIES FOR FAITH

Really? Could that be the relatively well-known ritual called Matam that appears in the papers on a semi-regular basis and which crops up in most secondary RE lessons? The one where people self-flagellate? But what's that you say? Those pesky Muslims are doing their filthy Muslim business IN BRITAIN????!?!?!

ISLAMIC fanatics are mutilating themselves at British mosque in a bloody ceremony carried out only yard from a busy high street.

How very dare they! This is Britain, I don't want their unusual religious habits rammed down my throat!

Huge wooden screens were put up around the mosque to keep the event secret and prevent passers-by on busy Romford Road seeing the bloodletting.

Oh. Still, at least the Express's crack reporting duo has tracked down this enormo-story in double-quick time.

The Sunday Express visited the mosque last week and learned that the ceremony took place last December.

Right. So the mosque didn't tell anyone about the event, took steps to avoid people seeing it and nobody has complained at any point in the ELEVEN MONTHS since it happened? Hang on, there is one "witness", who of course remains anonymous:

"There was blood everywhere ... I was told it was part of a religious ceremony but the anti-western sentiment was clear. If the public had seen it they would have reported it to the police."

And yet the not-at-all-entirely-made-up Express "witness" didn't report it to the police? And what about that "anti-western sentiment"? Any evidence of that at all? No? Oh well. Surely now that the Express have brought this awful, awful abomination to the attention of the authorities, something will be done about it?

Scotland Yard said it was aware of the annual Ashura event at the mosque but had no knowledge of the bloodletting which it said it had no power to ban.

A spokesman said: “If it is on private property and no offence is being committed this is not a matter for the police. The Ashura is an annual community event which has taken place in Newham for many years.”

Newham Council said it had no knowledge of the Matam taking place and the Ministry of Justice said self-flagellation was not an offence.

Hmmm. I think self-flagellation in the name of religion is a bit crackers - and that applies to the Catholics who do it, too - but if you want to do it that's up to you. The Muslims in this story did what they did behind closed doors, on private property, having taken steps to make sure other people couldn't be upset by seeing a rather bloody spectacle. What they were doing is not against the law, the police have known about it for years, and nobody has ever complained.

So what, exactly, is the (page 12 lead) story here? Is this an "exclusive" because no other paper would go near it? Well, maybe the Mail...

Mail "journalist" knows what's important in a story

On Friday five men were jailed for "grooming" and sexually abusing three schoolgirls. Truly horrific stuff. Here's how the Times reported it:

Jail for sexual predators who preyed on schoolgirls
Five "sexual predators" who ruined the lives of three vulnerable schoolgirls were starting jail sentences of between four and 11 years last night.

Fairly straightforward stuff. But look at how the Mail presents the same story to its readers (this comes from the paper itself rather than the slightly different online version):

Jailed, Asian sex gang who preyed on schoolgirls as young as twelve
A gang of Asian "sexual predators" were jailed yesterday for abusing white girls as young as 12.

Alleged "journalist" Paul Sims and whichever sub wrote the headline both think the most important facts in this story are the skin colours of the people involved. Never mind that this is a horrendous story of terrible people doing awful things to innocent children, the Mail has a racial angle to push so lets bring out the dog whistle and put away any notion of decency.

Phil Woolas, the Daily Mail and staggering hypocrisy

I'm not going to try and defend Phil Woolas, who has been kicked out of the House of Commons after being found guilty of lying about his election opponent and trying to stir up racial hatred in order to win votes. He's always been a bit of a an arse, and it's good to see the law coming down on him like a tonne of bricks.

What I am going to complain about is, predictably, the Mail's staggering hypocrisy in its coverage of the case. The paper describes Woolas's campaign materials thus:

Evil leaflets that set out to stir up racial tension

Rebecca Camber examines how Mr Woolas embarked on a toxic campaign of lies, smears and dirty tricks to ‘make the white folk angry’ enough to vote for him.

A toxic campaign of lies and smears designed to make white folk angry, you say? Tell me more, Rebecca.

Labour’s ... newspaper-style mailshots ... contained inflammatory headlines such as ‘Lib Dem pact with the Devil’. Other so-called ‘stories’ included ‘Lib Dems in mosque planning permission stitch-up’ and ‘Straight talking Woolas too fair for militant Muslims’.

A picture of extremists holding a sign saying ‘behead those who insult Islam’, taken in London four years earlier, was also used, even though it had nothing to do with the supposed Muslim threat in Oldham.

There was no evidence of a Muslim extremist threat in Oldham or any death threats to Mr Woolas.

So the highlights of the Mail's charge sheet against Woolas (which earns the overall package the headline "Can our MPs sink any lower?") are:

• That he published "so-called stories" suggesting Muslims had been involved in a planning permission scam

• That he illustrated a story with a picture that had nothing to do with the story itself.

• That he lied about the threat Muslims posed to the area.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this by now, so let's cut straight to the chase. Other examples of so-called newspapers publishing so-called stories along these lines include:

• The Daily Mail falsely claiming that Muslims had stopped a cafe owner receiving planning permission for an extractor fan

• The Daily Mail illustrating a story with a picture that had nothing to do with the story itself.

• The Daily Mail lying about the threat Muslims pose to the country.
  

So the question the Mail's editor has to ask himself is, can you possibly sink any lower? Any lower, that is, than the new low you apparently sank to last year.

Also winning a special prize for hypocrisy today is Simon Hughes, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. After the Woolas verdict he proudly told the media:

"Mr Woolas has come severely unstuck and I am very pleased for politics and the rule of law that the judges have said so clearly that this was unacceptable."

I'm very interested in what Simon Hughes thinks is unacceptable in an election campaign. He first entered Parliament in a 1983 by-election, where his Labour opponent in the Bermondsey constituency was Peter Tatchell, who is today better known as a human rights campaigner with particular focus on gay rights issues. 

Bermondsey was a traditionally safe Labour seat, but at at time when there were no out gay MPs and homosexuality was nowhere near as acceptable as it is today, Hughes was elected after running a viciously homophobic campaign based almost entirely on the fact that the Labour candidate was gay. Hughes infamously produced leaflets calling himself "the straight choice" for Bermondsey, while male Lib-Dem canvassers went do-to-door with lipstick smears on their faces and stickers saying "I've been kissed by Peter Tatchell".

Hughes, who himself came out as bisexual in 2006, has since apologised and Tatchell has siad he doesn't bear a grudge. But to see Hughes of all people trying to take the moral high ground over dirty tricks in an election campaign is absolutely shocking.

Playing the name game: more on the Mail and Mohammed

As No Sleep Til Brooklands has pointed out, if you apply the Daily Mail's "add all the names that sound a bit similar together" rule to Oliver as well as Mohammed, Oliver comes out on top by a country mile.

With nothing better to do in my lunchbreak I decided to see how the Top 10 list of names looks if you apply the same rule to all of them. It comes out like this:

1) Oliver (plus Oliwier, Oli, Oliwer, Olivers, Olliver, Ollie, Olli) = 8,148

2) Mohammed (plus Muhammad, Mohammad, Muhammed, Mohamed, Mohamad, Muhamed, Mohammod, Mahamed, Muhamad, Mahammed, Mohmmed) = 7,549

3) Jack (plus Jac, Jacques and Jacky, but not including the massed ranks of Jacobs) = 7,238

4) Charlie (plus Charley, Charlee, Charly, Charli and Charles) = 6,755

5) Thomas (plus Tommy, Tom, Thom, Tommi and Tomi) = 6,350

6) Harry (plus Harri, Hari and Harrie) = 6,332

7) Joshua (plus Josh) = 5,874

8) Alfie (plus Alfi, Alfy, Alf, Alfee, Alfey and Alffi, not including Alfred) = 5,565

9) William (plus Will, Willem, Wil and Wiliam) = 5,498

10) Daniel (plus Daniel, Danny, Daniyal, Danyal, Dan, Danyl, Danyaal, Danielius, Danial, Daniels, Daniele, Daniyaal, Dany and Daniaal) = 5,038

(Note that I've not counted compound names, where middle-class parents think they're being terribly unique by calling their child Alfie-Jack only to discover that eight other couples came up with the same idea)

Let's compare it with the Mail's top 10:

1) Mohammed (#2 in my list)

2) Oliver (#1 in my list)

3) Jack (#3 in my list)

4) Harry (#6 in my list)

5) Alfie (#8 in my list)

6) Joshua (#7 in my list)

7) Thomas (#5 in my list)

8) Charlie (#4 in my list)

9) William (#9 in my list)

10) James (not in my top 10, even with the help of 50-odd people called Jaymes)

What does this little exercise prove? We've already seen that Mohammed is clearly NOT the most popular name for boys. With the exception of James (which lost out to variations of Daniel) the names in the rest of the top 10 remain the same. However, the order in which they are ranked is completely different. Had the Mail applied the methodology it used to construct an anti-Muslim story for other, less scary names, the top 10 list they published today would have looked very different indeed.

The fact they didn't proves beyond all doubt that accuracy and "truth" are not what Jack Doyle was aiming for with this story. How can he possibly justify bunching all the Mohammeds together "because they're really the same" but not counting Daniel, Danial and Daniyall in the same way?

If you're reading, Jack (Jac? Jacques?) I'd really like to know how this doesn't breach the editors' code rules on accuracy...

Spelling mistake

Mohammed is now the most popular name for baby boys ahead of Jack and Harry

So screams the headline in today's Mail, inviting you to draw your own conclusions about how the dreaded Muslims are taking over. The comments at the foot of the article contain the usual predictable rants about immigration and "English" culture and so on.

The problem is, the Mail has had to fix the facts in order to make the story fit its readers' prejudices. As they admit halfway down the story, Mohammed is actually the 16th most popular name in Britain. But Home Affairs Correspondent Jack Doyle has taken the liberty of including various other spellings of the same name - Muhammad, Mohammad, Muhammed and so on - and added them all together in order to give the "true picture". The Office for National Statistics didn't feel the need to do this, but who are they to argue with the Mail's methodology?

Of course, Mohammed is the only name to get this treatment from the Mail. Alexs are not bundled in with Alexanders, Alixs and Alecksanders. Charlie and Charles are kept distinct. Thomas and Tom apparently have nothing in common at all.

The paper also fails to mention that naming your firstborn son after the prophet is a standard thing for Muslims, so there is always going to be a bias towards it - after all, if there was an English tradition, followed by almost everyone in the country, to call your first son "Methusula", it would comfortably top the chart year after year. Likewise, the lack of a similar tradition for female Muslim children gives parents much more flexibility on names, so there are no "Muslim" names anywhere near the top of the girls' list.

There's also a distinct lack of context - add together all of the spellings of Mohammed and you get 7,549 babies, which sounds a lot. But 362,135 male births were registered in England and Wales last year, so the massed ranks of Mohammeds make up just over two per cent of 2009's baby boys, or around one per cent of all births.

What's the story here? I think we should be far more worried that three couples chose to call their sons Zoltan.

The Daily Star, the EDL, Winterval and more statistical failings

The English Defence League has discovered Winterval! According to today's Daily Star, everyone's favourite braindead Nazi thugs have pledged to "close down" any town that, as the Star puts it "ditches British traditions and shows favourtism to Muslims".

"The English Defence League said it has written to every council in the country threatening a mass invasion if they ban the word “Christmas”. It includes using the term “winter festival” in case Christmas upsets Muslims. "

Thankfully this means the good people of England will be able to go about their Christmas shopping without having to negotiate crowds of feeble-minded skinhead fuckwits (who are so hard they always have to hide their faces in photos), seeing as how no council anywhere in England has EVER banned the word Christmas and used the terms "winter festival" to avoid upsetting Muslims.

The EDL - whose knuckle-dragging members actually support their allegedly Christian credentials by disproving the theory of evolution - will no doubt claim that they "saved Christmas" when, in two months time, Christmas continues unabated.

What's more worrying is the treatment the Star gives the story. All bar the final paragraph - or roughly 90 per cent of the word count - is given over to the EDL's insane ramblings and the Star's apparently support for them. This includes the observation that the EDL's threat:

"... comes after yesterday’s Daily Star poll found 98% of readers fear that Britain is becoming a Muslim state. "

The poll in question is one of those classic Express / Star revenue-raising premium rate phone scams, and was attached to a story about a Church of England diocese in Yorkshire being merged with its neighbour as there are no longer enough people going to church there to make it economically viable. One of the reasons for this is a demographic shift that has seen an increase in the number of Muslim families in the area. This prompted the Star to ask "Is Britain becoming a Muslim state?", to which 98 per cent of readers responded in the affirmative.

According to the Office for National Statistics, just 2.8 per cent of the population call themselves Muslim, which suggests two things - that the Islamification of Britain has some way to go yet and that Daily Star readers are a bit thick.

Warning: this story stinks

The headline in today's Mail is pretty clear:

Cafe owner ordered to remove extractor fan 'because smell of frying bacon offends Muslims'

And the comments from enlightened Mail readers are fairly direct too. Lots of demands that Muslims "leave the country" if they don't like the way "we" do things here. Except, as seasoned Mail-debunkers doubtless predicted the moment they read the headline, not a single Muslim has said they are offended by the smell of frying bacon.

Let's start at the beginning:

"A hard-working cafe owner has been ordered to tear down an extractor fan - because the smell of her frying bacon 'offends' Muslims. Planning bosses acted against Beverley Akciecek, 49, after being told her next-door neighbour's Muslim friends had felt 'physically sick' due to the 'foul odour'. Councillors at Stockport Council in Greater Manchester say the smell from the fan is 'unacceptable on the grounds of residential
amenity'."

We only have to get to the second sentence before the first hint appears that something is amiss. It wasn't a Muslim who complained but a non-Muslim next-door neighbour. And he didn't say that his Muslim friends found the smell offensive, but that the smell made them feel sick. Just to be clear on that point, let's read on:

"They claim they received no complaints about the cafe which is open from 7.30am-2.30pm six days a week, until around 18 months ago when they received a letter from environmental services to say their neighbour Graham Webb-Lee had complained about the smell."

So someone living next door to a cafe complained to the council about the smell. Blimey. Hold the front page. Whatever next?

"They say that the council's environmental services had been out to inspect their property after their neighbour complained about a foul odour last year, but they ruled that the smell was not causing a problem. Mrs Akciecek said: 'Environmental services said everything is ok. They kept coming back and guaging it and said there was no problem and because they didn't take any action (the neighbours) complained again.'"

Now we're getting onto the serious stuff. The council responded to a complaint from a taxpayer?Someone call Eric Pickles, we won't stand for this nonsense! Let's get back to that headline. Who has ordered them to take down the offensive extractor fan?

"The couple had never applied for planning permission as they had simply replaced an existing extractor fan with one of the same size and in the same position, but, following further complaints from their neighbour, they were informed by the council they would have to apply retrospectively as an objection had been raised. They applied for planning permission in May this year, but the application was refused at a meeting of Stockport Area Committee on October 14."

Ah-ha. So they made changes to their premises without obtaining planning permission and when they did so retrospectively their request was declined BECAUSE THE SMELL OF BACON OFFENDS MUSLIMS? Er, no, not quite:

"Mr Webb-Lee said: 'The vent is 12 inches from my front door. Every morning the smell of bacon comes through and makes me physically sick. I have a lot of Muslim friends. They refuse to visit me anymore because they can't stand the smell of bacon.'"

Riiiiight. Mr Webb-Lee (who, let's remember, is not a Muslim) says the smell makes HIM physically sick. Which rather contradicts the second paragraph of the story, where the Mail claims he said the smell makes his Muslim friends physically sick. And his Muslim friends say they won't visit him because they can't stand the smell of bacon. Not that they're offended by it. It's possible they hate the smell because they're offended by the idea of bacon being cooked, we just don't know. But that hasn't stopped the Mail making up "facts" to fit a headline.

What do the council have to say about all this?

"The retrospective application was rejected on the grounds of residential amenity, as the committee felt the odours given off from the vent were unacceptable for neighbouring residents. We will ensure that the cafe complies with this decision and removes the extractor fan."

Nothing at all about offending Muslims there, either. The cafe owners installed a new fan, the fan made the smells worse for their neighbours, the neighbours complained to the council and the council took action. So that headline should really have read:

Cafe owner who flaunted planning laws ordered to remove fan because she's stinking out the neighbourhood

But that doesn't really fit the Mail's agenda, does it? And for those of you who think such things don't matter, have a look at the comments under the story. Page after page of vile anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ranting, all of it based on the lies of a "Daily Mail Reporter".

UPDATE!
Between me spotting this story and writing this post, the Mail have updated the headline to the slightly-less-batshit-but-still-inaccurate "Cafe owner ordered to remove extractor fan because neighbour claimed 'smell of frying bacon offends Muslims'". Worth noting that the URL sticks with "Cafe-owner-ordered-remove-extractor-fan-case-smell-frying-bacon-offends-passing-Muslims." Who knows where "in case the smell offends passing Muslims" comes from, as even the Mail's twisted little story doesn't make that claim.

How journalism works: sins of omission

I have several friends and friends-of-friends who work in Civil Service press offices. In the pub on Saturday night one of them mentioned, with a groan, that the Mail on Sunday had spent the second half of the week ringing round every single government department asking them how much of the meat in their staff canteens was halal.

As a life-long vegetarian I applaud the Mail group for developing a sudden interest in the finer points of animal welfare - obviously this story has NOTHING to do with the fact that halal meat is something Muslims eat. No no no. It's all about how inhumane the halal slaughter process is. To prove it, there's even an angry quote from someone at animal rights group Viva!, an organisation the Mail has not previously expressed a great deal of love for as one of its leading lights is Heather Mills. She got the full Jan Moir treatment in July when the Mail's resident hate-monger visited her vegan cafe on the south coast.

Anyhow, it turned out that the vast majority of canteens in government buildings don't actually serve any halal meat as a matter of course, although most can order it in if required for specific functions and events.

However, I found this out by speaking to some government press officers. You wouldn't have found it out by reading the Mail on Sunday. Its story simply listed all the places that DO serve halal meat - Wembley Stadium, some pub chains, a few hospitals and some schools - in order to prove that we're living in what the headline calls "Halal Britain"

Had it emerged that every building in Whitehall was stocked to the rafters with ritually slaughtered sheep and cows, you can bet that it would have been right there in the headline. However, in Mail World if a fact doesn't fit the story, it's always best to leave it out.

Littlejohn's bonfire inanities

Oh dear. Richard Littlejohn has decided to tackle the thorny issue of "International Burn a Koran Day". He seems to start off rather well, calling pastor Terry Jones "crass". But he's a man who knows what his readers think, so once he's done just enough mild condemnation to avoid being accused of agreeing with Jones, he reverts to type and launches into yet another attack on Islam.

"the last time anyone looked evangelical Christians from Gainesville weren’t flying hijacked airliners into skyscrapers and blowing themselves up on crowded railway trains."

True. But Christians have killed plenty of people in terrorist attacks - just look at the murders of abortion doctors, the bombings carried out by Eric Rudolph in the USA, the wholesale relgious violence of Northern Ireland, the actions of the National Liberation Front of Tripura in India and, worst of all, the actions of The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. However, as I'm not an complete idiot I'm able to recognise that none of the actions of these individuals or groups can be used to "prove" that most Christians are homicidal maniacs.

"The other part of the conundrum is the fact that the tolerance America and Christians throughout the West extend to other religions is not reflected back. For instance, there are no Christian churches or symbols allowed in Saudi Arabia, where possession of a Bible is a criminal offence. Bibles are confiscated, shredded and, yes, burned by the Saudi authorities."

I've never understood this argument. It's wrong that the brutal totalitarian regime in Saudi Arabia does not allow religious diversity and to show how wrong it is we should do the same? It's some kind of intellectual lowest common denominator, like saying "they have vigilante justice in backward third-world countries, so we should have it here, too". Although actually the Mail is pretty cool with that.

"Across parts of the Muslim world, every day is Burn-A-Bible Day."

Really? Any examples to prove that rather wild claim? Any evidence? Any detail, even, of which these "parts of the world" are? No? And even if it were true, is Littlejohn saying that this is wrong (in which case burning a Koran must be wrong also) or is fine with the idea (in which case he's a bit of a twunt)? I guess we'll never know, because the Mail's noted theological scholar is taking the rhetoric a step further:

"Under the more extreme interpretations of Islam, the punishment for any Muslim who converts to Christianity is death."

Under the more extreme interpretations of pretty much anything you can come up with similar stuff. That's what makes it an extreme interpretation, you see. The clue's in the word "extreme". It doesn't mean "normal," or "mainstream". To demonstrate, have a think about extreme interpretations of the following Bible passages:

"But for the cowardly and UNBELIEVING and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
Revelation 21:8

"He who is not believing the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God doth remain upon him."
John 3:36

"The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Matthew 13:49

"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
Matthew 13:12

But because Littlejohn's narrative is that Muslims are somehow asking to be treated like shit, he doesn't note that extreme interpretations of Christianity (or some pretty literal ones, based on John 3:36) can lead to conclusion that non-believers should be put to death or, at the very least, face eternity burning in hell. Back to Littlejohn's rantings:

"If a rural vicar tried burning an effigy of Osama Bin Laden on ­Bonfire Night in Britain, he’d be banged up for incitement to ­religious hatred."

Except they wouldn't. In November 2001 the people of Lewes burned an effigy of the al-Qaeda leader, but mass arrests did not follow. In fact, I've done a bit of research and can find no media reports of anyone ever being arrested for burning an effigy of the world's most-wanted mass murderer. Perhaps everyone's just too scared of the consequences if they do.

In any case, what does Osama Bin Laden have to do with this? The equivalent in this country would surely be a rural vicar burning a pile of Korans, but that wouldn't let Littlejohn to both trot out his tired "political correctness gone mad" line - "You can't even say you hate Osama Bin Laden without Harriet Harman arresting your for being anti-Muslim!" - and draw an implicit link between Islam and terrorism.

The whole column underlines the Mail's consistent approach to Muslims, the idea that there's one rule for "them" and one for "us". "They" get treated differently, "they" get offended at everything "we" do... There's never any evidence given for this, never any proof. Counter-arguments can be safely brushed under the carpet as "political correctness".

Right at the very end of the column, Littlejohn writes:

"In a perfect world, everyone would have written off Pastor Terry as a crank and ignored him."

I'd suggest that Dicky do everyone a favour and ignore Jones himself. But then, in a perfect world, there would be no Littlejohn, either.