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 goes strangely quiet on "elf N safety" and "com-pen-say-shun"

The damning narrative verdict on the death of Charlotte Shaw probably came too late to be included in today's Littlejohn ramblings - maybe he'll mention it on Thursday, although I suspect he'll give this one a miss. Likewise, the Mail seems to have overlooked the demands of the namby-pampy nanny state for improved health and safety rules.

Charlotte Shaw was the 14-year-old Devon girl who drowned on Dartmoor three years ago. As the inquest heard this week, the teachers who were supposed to be supervising Charlotte and her friends were not properly qualified. The coroner also complained that Health & Safety Executive guidelines for state schools running outdoor trips are not automatically made available to their private counterparts.

This is why health and safety is important - because it saves lives. Every time a cretin like Littlejohn or an anonymous "Daily Mail Reporter" calls for the HSE to be scrapped or makes up a story about "Elf N Safety gone maaaad" it chips away at the credibility of both the organisation and the whole concept of health and safety.

Just 10 days ago the Daily Mail was celebrating the fact that school trips were to be freed of the "stranglehold" of red tape. A quick search of the Mail online archive reveals a steady stream of articles calling for "more danger" in schools or demanding that we stop "mollycoddling" our children in the name of health and safety.

There is obviously a balance to be struck between risk and the benefit kids get from getting out and about, but the Mail and its ilk consistently portray the very idea of "health and safety" as some terrible invention of killjoys that should be done away with. The tragic death of Charlotte Shaw shows exactly what can happen if this approach is taken to its natural conclusion, which may explain why the Mail hasn't published an outraged editorial attacking the coroner for destroying good old-fashioned fun and attempting to wrap our children up in cotton wool.

I also see that Charlotte's mother is suing her daughter's school for negligence. What are the odds that in Thursday's column Littlejohn will complain about her being a money-grabbing ambulance-chaser in search of com-pen-say-shun?

Closing something because people don't like it = health and safety madness

Earlier this week David Cameron trailed an announcement about "the end of health and safety madness", which was predictably lapped up by the tabloids. Richard Littlejohn was clearly worried that this might leave him with nothing to write about*, as he makes clear in his latest column:

"For the past 15 years, this column has made a good living out of elf'n'safety. Now, though, the Government is promising to put an end to the madness, scrapping the stupid rules and risk assessments, and derailing the spiv lawyers cashing in on the com-pen-say-shun culture. No one has told Lancaster City Council, which has banned revellers from watching the city's annual fireworks display from Castle Hill, citing - you guessed - elf'n'safety."

Something else you can probably guess is that Littlejohn isn't telling the whole story. As is so often the case you have to go to the local paper to get some actual journalism with a bit of balance. Over in the Lancaster Guardian we learn that:

"Lancaster City Council has decided not to allow people into the Castle and Priory area on November 6, citing negative feedback from visitors last year and potential safety issues."

Right from the off they're clear that the dreaded safety issues are just one of the factors in play, but Littlejohn overlooks this as it doesn't fit his narrative. The Lancaster Guardian also spoke to the council’s "assistant head of community engagement", Gill Hague who said:

"Visitors told us that the castle precinct was cramped and is not a particularly good area from which to view the fireworks due to its historic layout. Many people found that their view of the fireworks was blocked by spectators, buildings and trees. Last year we experimented with limiting numbers at the castle but we received similar comments.”

Which begins to make it sound like the primary reason for closing the hill is not "elf and safety" at all - it's just not a great place to watch fireworks from something that the council learned by SPEAKING TO THE PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY WENT THERE, something highly paid migrant Richard Littlejohn can't be arsed to do.

The only mention of safety comes when Ms Hague states that

"...People's safety was one consideration."

So not the only consideration. Yet even if it WAS the only consideration, is this necessarily a bad thing? Littlejohn trots out the favourite line of the "common sense brigade" when he states that

"...it has taken place for the past 18 years without anyone getting hurt."

But is this really relevant? As the Lancaster Guardian states:

"the event has grown in popularity over recent years, making it increasingly difficult for people to get into the Castle area and see the event."

So if more people are coming to watch than in previous years, the area will become more overcrowded and hence more dangerous - especially in the dark, in potentially bad weather and with lots of small children, all of which are expected at bonfire night displays. The council isn't banning fireworks, it's not stopping the display, it's not insisting that kids wear goggles in case fireworks fall out of the sky and impale them. It's just closing one viewing area that is getting too crowded for people to enjoy and too crowded to be policed safely.

If this is the sort of elf-and-safety gone mad that David Cameron wants to ban, we may be in more trouble than I thought...

*Apart from the Muslims and the gays and the immigrants and the gay muslim immigrants, obviously. Oh, and the feminists - bunch of lesbians, the lot of them.

The Curious Case of the Bouncing "Elf and Safety Killjoys"

Those Elf & Safety killjoys have been at it again, this time "outlawing" a trampoline that a woman has erected outside her house every summer for the past decade. As the Daily Mail says:

"A childminder has been ordered to take down a trampoline – because youngsters could ‘injure themselves’ if they bounce off it and onto the grass. Sharon Farmer has put up the 14ft trampoline in communal gardens in Lewisham, south London, for the past decade, but has been told by housing association bosses she must remove it for health and safety reasons."

The Express is also up in arms, telling us that the "Nanny state" has outlawed communal bouncing in South East London. You couldn't make it up. Except, of course, you can, especially if you're a "Daily Mail Reporter", the byline they usually use when they've taken a story from a news agency or, more often than not, just ripped it out of a local paper without giving them credit. A local newspaper such as South East London's News Shopper, which first broke the story yesterday, and from which the Express and Mail directly lift their quotes without attribution.

Plagiarism aside, you don't even have to go back to the source material to spot the gaping hole in this story, you simply have to read to the end. In the final paragraph of the Mail and Express stories, a spokesman for the London and Quadrant Housing Association (AKA the Elf & Safety Killjoys), which owns the land that the trampoline is sited on, says:

"We have agreed the trampoline can remain until the end of the school holidays. The trampoline will be re-assessed next spring in conjunction with health and safety representatives."

So they haven't ordered the owner to take it down - in fact, they've agreed she can keep it in place until the end of the school holidays, just as she does ever summer. And they haven't "outlawed" it for next summer either, they've just said that they want to do a proper health and safety assessment before it gets used next year. All of which rather fails to stand up the Mail and Express headlines. But that's not the end of it - although the national tabloids are more than happy to lift quotes from outrages residents, they're not so hot on repeating in full what the Elf & Safety Killjoys have to say. Go back to the News Shopper and the spokesman's quote continues:

“The trampoline will be re-assessed next spring in conjunction with health and safety representatives to determine if there are any potential risks to residents from their use and, if so, what can be done to mitigate these risks. We will also be carrying out a consultation with residents at Sandstone Road to get their views on the trampolines.”

He's being quite clear that they're not banning the trampoline, or even planning to ban it, they just want to be clear about any potential risks and take steps to mitigate them. Which seems perfectly sensible, both to protect children from harm and to protect the housing association from legal action if a child is injured on their property.

But the Mail and the Express didn't get where they are today by being perfectly sensible. Or by telling the whole story. Or even by using the actual things people say - eagle-eyed readers will have spotted the quote marks in the Mail's intro: "...because children could 'injure themselves' if they bounce off it..." If anyone can point me to the place where the housing association use the words "injure themselves", thus justifying the Mail's use of quotation marks (normally used to denote, you know, 'quotations'), I'd be very grateful.