Journalist can't abide people making money from the royal wedding, so gets paid to write 500 words about how awful it is

Mail columnist Sandra Parsons is displeased with the news that the company owned by Kate Middleton's parents is launching a "Royal Wedding scratchcard", prompting this moan:

"Yesterday, I went on to their Party Pieces website to have a closer look at the scratch cards. I typed 'royal wedding' into the search facility and up popped an entire menu of offerings, from 'royal wedding Kate' — which throws up 24 products — to 'royal wedding party products', which brings up a jaw-dropping 1,883 items, an endless array stretching from drink stirrers to invitation holders to cake boxes."

For the purposes of comparison, I typed "royal wedding kate" into the Daily Mail's search facility. I don't know if the 759 results it brought up counts as "jaw-dropping", but I do know that it's more than 30 times as many hits as the Middletons had on their site. The simple phrase "royal wedding" produces 2,679 hits on the Mail's site, which isn't so much jaw-dropping as jaw-falling-off-your-head-entirely-inducing.

And as for those 1,883 hits on "Royal wedding party products", is Parsons really that shocked given that the company in question sells party products, and that a lot of people buy party products for their own weddings? Further inspection suggests that the search engine is returning matches for ANY of the words, not ALL of them - which is why it turns up things like this:





Yes, those awful Middletons. Why can't they stop cashing in on their daughter's wedding with their clockwork train sets and their pink party shoes? I bet on the day of the wedding they'll even sink so low as to try and cash in by producing a 36-page full-colour souvenir supplement about the day...

Tory MPs strangely quiet on THIS botched evacuation

It's Easter 2010. The sun is shining. The country is already bored to tears with the election campaign. Nick Clegg is about to become humungously popular thanks to the first televised debate between party leaders, and will go on to surf a huge wave of popular support for, ooh, about three weeks before becoming the Most Hated Man in Britain.

Meanwhile, the skies over Britain are empty of everything except birds and Icelandic volcanic ash. An estimated 150,000 Britons are stranded across Europe, struggling to get home via taxis, buses, bicycles and ferries. And the Tories are not happy. They think the Labour government has failed to get a grip on the situation and is not doing enough to get stranded Brits home. Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers has a lot to say about the issue:

"Those who are stranded abroad need reassurance from the Government that they are doing all they can to help get people home and address the crisis."

"Stranded Britons abroad need a clear assurance from the Government that there is a strategy in place to help them and bring them home, but a number of issues are not clear and we have not had a detailed public statement from ministers [for two days] ... clarity from Gordon Brown and his ministers is essential ... How many British citizens are stranded overseas? Where are they stranded? How many days does the govt estimate it will take them to return home?"

"We saw real concerns with the government's lack of action in terms of taking action to rescue people while the skies were closed. It took them far too long to get their act together on that. We need to ask some searching questions about the judgments made by the government."

"People stranded abroad need to know all that can be done to help them is being done."

Tobias Ellwood, then shadow tourism minister, accused the government of "dithering" in its duty to help citizens stranded abroad.

Fast forward just under 12 months, and instead of volcanic ash there's a cloud of protest and revolution settling across north Africa.

Things are really kicking off in Libya, where around 500 British citizens live. Many other European countries evacuated their people as soon as the fighting broke out, but Britain's response has been less than efficient - so much so that David Cameron has felt the need to apologise and the Daily Mail has branded the whole situation "a farce". Things are so bad that even Richard Littlejohn feels able to criticise the state of affairs.

The ash cloud closed airspace for six days and left up to 150,000 people stranded. It is now seven days since the first protests began in Libya, creating a need to evacuate up to 500 people, but Theresa Villiers and Tobias Ellwood have yet to complain about the PM failing to act quickly enough to help stranded Britons. Could it be that they've realised being in government isn't as easy as it looks from the outside?

Mail laments "desperately sad" lack of benefits for immigrants

Earlier this month the Mail's irony meter exploded into a thousand tiny pieces when the paper expressed its shock at a French newspaper daring to criticise British ski instructors taking French jobs. You see, the usual invective about foreigners stealing "our" jobs doesn't apply if the foreigners in question are white and British.

Today the Mail is at it again, attempting to drum up sympathy for Brits who ploughed their life savings into homes in Spain only to see the bottom fall out of the market leaving many in negative equity.

It's sad stuff - nobody wants to see someone suffering like this - but once again the Mail displays extraordinary double-standards. Would we get two pages of sympathetic copy if an Asian Muslim family based in Britain found itself in similar straits?

One paragraph that leaps off the page contains a quote from 62-year-old widow Marian Henderson:

"I’ve looked for work but there just isn’t any. If you go for an interview and there are five Spanish people and one British person, they’ll have the five Spanish first. You can’t blame them, but that is just the way it is. As for help from the government there is nothing. If I was in England I would get help with the council tax and pension credits, but because I am in Spain there is nothing. They don’t hand out anything for free here - it’s terribly depressing."

The Mail describes her plight as "desperately sad" - but isn't this EXACTLY what the Mail wants to see happen in this country? Remember all those front pages demanding British jobs for British workers? The years and years and years of complaints about immigrants receiving benefits paid for by hard-working natives? Doesn't anyone at the Mail realise that the Brave New World the paper is constantly calling for will result in exactly the same "desperately sad" circumstances affecting Brits on the Costa? Would the Mail be at all sympathetic towards a 62-year-old Polish widow living in a house worth half-a-million pounds who couldn't get any benefits and was therefore struggling to get by?

I think we all know the answer...

Mail complains about "extraordinary attack" on immigrants.

"Foreigners, eh? Always coming over here and taking our jobs. And they don't even learn the language! It's a disgrace."

So goes the standard Daily Mail line on immigration. When it comes to migration, the paper takes a more relaxed attitude. It has even managed to muster outrage at a French newspaper complaining about the number of foreigners going over there and taking THEIR jobs:

The Mail is not at all impressed with a comment piece published by Liberation:

A leading Paris national newspaper today singled out 'The English ski instructor' as the latest threat to French jobs for French people. In a hugely provocative article, Liberation likens the unpopular character to handymen who have flooded the west following EU expansion. 'Europe: After the Polish Plumber, the English Ski Instructor' reads the headline, with the headline suggesting that everything should be done to keep them out.

Just imagine a newspaper running a hugely provocative attack on legal immigrants who just want to work hard for a living within the EU! But it gets worse - the French even expect migrants who want to work there to LEARN THE LOCAL LANGUAGE!

A trained instructor has to wait up to six years to get his first job, and even then they have to master French before being allowed to work in France.

It's a disgrace!

Liberation's story comes in response to EU moves to harmonise the ski-instructor qualification system across Europe, making it easier for people of all nationalities to work in resorts across the continent. As the Mail puts it:

At present it is hugely difficult for British people to become instructors in French resorts, but a proposed EU instructor permit would remove many of the barriers.

Just stop for a moment to imagine what the Mail would say if the EU were to introduce a new, cross-Europe qualification that would allow French people to work in a tightly regulated British industry, even if they don't speak English.

Actually, you don't have to - you simply have to read the stories they've already published about exactly that kind of thing:






Were all of these "extraordinary" attacks contained in "provocative" articles? Or is migration outrage a one-way street?

Mail: give children vaccine that we said would kill them

Today's Mail has a very emotional splash:


It tells the sad story of a three-year-old girl who died after contracting swine flu. Her father, a doctor, believes that the only reason all young children haven't been vaccinated against flu is that it would be very expensive. The paper also carries a strongly worded editorial on the issue, complaining about a lack of reliable and consistent information coming out of government:

"...Parents can’t understand why last year it was necessary to vaccinate their children, but this year it isn’t. They want to know whether decisions are being driven by medical advice or budget constraints. Above all they want to know the real risk to their families. At the moment, they are not getting nearly enough information from Coalition ministers..."

But assuming the Government does a U-turn and suddenly announces that all under-fives need to be vaccinated, how many Mail-reading parents would be willing to have their child jabbed? After all, it's less than three months since the Mail on Sunday carried this scary headline:



The story also ran in the Mail itself a couple of days later. As Atomic Spin pointed out at the time, the truth was somewhat less apocalyptic. Mr Spin also warned that:

"If even one person decides not to get the jab because of this article, that’s one more potential infection this winter. One more potential flu death."

On 25 October last year, the Mail even complained that too many people were being vaccinated against as priority groups were being given the seasonal flu and swine flu vaccines in one jab, with no ability to opt out of having the swine flu element:

"The H1N1 vaccine will be the dominant of three flu strains included in the shot, meaning millions of elderly and vulnerable patients will get it automatically. Yet many people refused to have the swine flu vaccine when it was offered last year because of fears it may cause serious side effects."

It's also worth drawing attention to another piece of Mail doublethink. The splash headline claims that a "paltry £6" is all it would have taken to save the unfortunate girl's life. Of course, this is not at all accurate - the vaccine itself may have cost £6, but administration costs would increase this further and, crucially, she would only have been vaccinated as part of a much larger campaign that would have cost a great deal more. It's interesting to note the Mail's sudden interest in the cost of the jab. It's taking the same line as with various cancer drugs that are not paid for by the NHS because they are too expensive* - "how dare you put a price on the life of a sick child".

But back last summer, that's exactly what the Mail did:


Now I accept that there's a difference between £46 million and £6, but it would be interesting to know at exactly what point the Mail thinks a drug becomes too expensive on the basis of a society-wide cost-benefit analysis, not least because when NICE tries to do the same thing they get crucified by, er, the Daily Mail. And as I said above, the cost of saving Lana Ameen's life would have been much, much higher than the £6 cost of one dose of vaccine.

In conclusion, the Mail thinks that everyone should be given a vaccine that can kill them and that cost shouldn't be an issue but that we shouldn't spend too much on it.

And this is the paper that accuses the Government of not giving out clear and consistent information...

Fire extinguishers, dangerous actions and Guido Fawkes

Paul Staines, the portly political blogger who would rather be referred to as Guido Fawkes, has gone out of his way to criticise and condemn the muppet* who threw a fire extinguisher off the roof of the Conservatives Party’s office building during the first big tuition fees demonstration. When said muppet was jailed yesterday, Staines gleefully reported:

A good day for justice it seems. Edward Woollard who was revealed as the infamous thug who threw a fire extinguisher off the roof off CCHQ, narrowly avoiding killing a copper, has been sent down for 2 years and 8 months for violent disorder. Just long enough to do an Open University course. The judge said the heavy sentence against Wollard is warning to other protesters not to ‘cross the line’.

Fair enough. Woollard did something stupid and dangerous. He propelled a heavy lump of metal at great speed and with no control, an act that could have led to severe injury or death if someone had been unfortunate enough to get in the way.

However, is Staines really in a good place to comment on this? In 2008 and he picked up his second conviction for drink driving. After spending the afternoon getting pissed he drove off across central London with a blood alcohol level that was twice the legal limit. The police stopped him when they saw his car veering across lanes of traffic.

To put it another way, Staines did something stupid and dangerous. He propelled a heavy lump of metal at great speed and with no control, an act that could have led to severe injury or death if someone had been unfortunate enough to get in the way.

Staines generally does nothing to stop some horrendously offensive and downright nasty comments being posted on his blog by his more window-licky readers. However, in the past 24 hours I’ve tried several times to post a message asking if he agrees that first-offence drunk drivers should be given nearly three years behind bars in order to warn other boozehounds not to “cross the line”, but for some reason the Staines massive keep moderating out my question. Last summer Stained announced that he was introducing some auto-moderation to keep out the worst of the lunatics, but apparently this also picks up on any mention of awkward truths about the blog author.

This week’s Private Eye reports that the Daily Telegraph’s letters editor refused to publish any of the hundreds of pieces of correspondence the paper received from readers who were outraged at the tabloid-style sting on Vince Cable and other Lib-Dem ministers. Interesting to see that Staines’ attitude to criticism is so closely in step with the mainstream “dead tree press” he claims to despise.


*possibly Fozzie Bear, judging by the haircut

Express complains about failed asylum seeker leaving the country

Barely a day goes by without the Daily Express complaining about the Government's failure to eject foreigners from the country, so you think they'd be pleased by the story of Farid Boukemiche, who is currently on trial in Paris accused of helping to finance terrorists.

The 34-year-old French Algerian spent three years on remand in a British jail before the case against him was dropped to avoid a public airing for evidence that could endanger undercover operations in north Africa. In June 2000 he was given a 12-month sentence for possessing false identity documents, but was released because he'd already spent so long in prison.

As today's Telegraph reports, upon his release Boukemiche tried to claim political asylum in the UK but his application was rejected and he returned to his home country, France.

Let's review the facts:

1) Man is convicted of criminal offence, but released due to time served.
2) Man attempts to claim asylum, but claim is rejected.
3) Man leaves country (legally) and returns to his home nation.

The Express should be delighted by this - Boukemiche committed a crime, was convicted, spent time in prison and then left the country. But apparently not:

That's the headline on page 15 of today's Express. But Boukemiche is not a "fugitive" in any recognised sense of the word. The terrorist case against him in Britain was dropped, he was convicted of another offence, released from prison and left the country legally after being refused asylum.

The story, written by Peter Allen and John Twomey, begins:

A MUSLIM extremist who fled Britain after the collapse of a £3million trial set up a cross-Channel terror network in France, a court heard yesterday.

Again, he didn't "flee" Britain. He left, legally, to go back to his home country after being refused the right to stay here.

Last month the Express (and the rest of the tabloid press) was up in arms about the case of Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, a failed asylum seeker who was allowed to stay in Britain at the end of a prison term that was imposed for running over and killing a 12-year-old girl. A leader comment called it a "truly sickening decision". Columnist Leo McKinstry complained that the immigration authorities showed "characteristic feebleness" when they failed to "kick him out" after his asylum claim was rejected.

But when the system DOES work, when a failed asylum seeker with a criminal record DOES leave the country after the legal system has finished with him, suddenly he becomes a "fugitive" who has "fled the country".

What, exactly, does the Express want the authorities to do with such people?

Just look at how disgusting it is!

Somewhat predictably, the Mail is still trying to whip up outrage about a TV programme that was broadcast four days ago. Today's splash, updated online this afternoon, goes like this:

Paul Revoir, fresh from making up a story about another TV programme, tells us that Ofcom has received around 1,000 complaints, with ITV also receiving a thousand. Even assuming there's no crossover that makes 2,000 complaints from the reported 20,000,000 viewers - one for every 10,000 viewers.

2,000 complaints is also just a tenth of the number who complained to the PCC about a certain newspaper's columnist when she tried to smear the name of a recently dead singer. The Mail was strangely unoutraged when the PCC failed to take action over that one...

But in the Mail's coverage of the X-Factor there's really only one number that counts - and that's the SIX (count 'em) still from the show so you can see just how OUTRAGEOUS and unsuitable for children it all is. Underneath the pictures is a boxout with some quotes from Mail readers:

How thoughtful of the Mail to share with us the pictures of the "soft porn" dancer so that young girls everywhere can have something to aspire to.

The Mail's secret love for Facebook

I think I'm on pretty safe ground when I say that the Daily Mail hates Facebook.

Over the past 18 months the Mail has blamed Facebook for murders, falsely claimed that Facebook provides a safe haven for paedophiles, alleged that Facebook is behind a massive nationwide crimewave, blamed Facebook for an outbreak of syphilis, said Facebook is responsible for rising insurance premiums, accused Facebook of causing riots at parties, and this being the Mail and the natural order of things needing to be maintained, said that Facebook gives you cancer.

So it took me a while to stop giggling when I read the following paragraph in Press Gazette's coverage of recent speech given by Martin Clarke, publisher on Mail Online:

"Emphasising the importance of social media for the marketing of news websites, Clarke said that 10 per cent of Mail Online's UK traffic now comes in via Facebook, making it the biggest source of traffic for the site after Google."

So remember boys and girls - social networking might give you an STD, turn you into a rioter and make you an easy target for kiddy-fiddlers, but you can't argue with its potential for driving traffic figures.

The Curious Case of the Metric Headlines in the Daily Mail

The metric system. Nice easy way of measuring things in units divisible by 10 or, in the words of Grandpa Simpson, "the tool of the devil"?

For many years now Britain's tabloids have been firmly in the latter camp. Despite the fact that every child born in Britain since at least 1979 has been schooled in the use of metres, kilograms and litres, the likes of the Mail, Express and, at the "higher" end of the market, the Telegraph are united in their hatred of all things metric.

It's an "un-British" imposition being forced on us by politically correct lefties and the European Union, quite probably in the name of Elf 'N' Safety. To quote Grandpa Simpson a second time, their attitude has been very much along the lines of: "My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's they way I likes it!"

Just this morning in the Daily Mail, columnist Peter Hitchens bemoaned the way the evil decimal-based system was being used in reports about the Snowpocalypse:

"The intensifying campaign to force the foreign, unwieldy metric system on the British people continues apace. Broadcasters and newspapers have virtually abolished the yard (still lawfully used on thousands of road signs) and the foot. But their most determined campaign is against the inch. Why do the weather people insist on telling us that 10cm of snow have fallen? Partly, they do it because they are fanatics. Partly because it sounds much worse than 4in. A country halted by 4in of snow sounds – and is – rather pathetic."

You know that when the Mail - and in particular Peter Hitchens - says "broadcasters" he's really complaining about the BBC. In the past he's even FoI'd the Corporation to try and uncover official rules that force Beeb hacks to use metric measurements over imperial ones. But perhaps he should start his crusade a little closer to home. Because also in today's Daily Mail is this headline:

What's that decidedly foreign-looking measure of temperature in the headline? Could it be - gasp! - a metric unit? In the past week there have been many, many more sightings of the metric menace in Mail headlines:

Extra points for the mix-and-match approach in the last one there.

So why is the Mail using the "foreign, unwieldy metric system" in its headlines? Could it be that "minus 7c" sounds, colder, scarier and generally more Snowpocalyptic than a rather pathetic "19f"?

UPDATE!
Just in case you can't be arsed to read the comments underneath, I should point out that Hitch's column appeared in the Mail on Sunday yesterday (5 December), not this morning's main paper. However, it was published on the Mail website this morning.

Diana, Kate and yet more Mail hypocrisy

Whatever you think of the royal family, and in particular Dianamania, you can't deny that Charles Spencer's speech at his sister's funeral was a powerful piece of oratory. Let's look at one section in particular:

"It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this - a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age. She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here, Diana, on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair."

In the aftermath of Diana's death and funeral, Fleet Street exercised its usual total lack of self-awareness by attacking the paparazzi photographers they blamed for Diana's death. With Earl Spencer's words filling their sails (and ignoring the bit where he pointed out that the tabloid press were "at the opposite end of the moral spectrum" to his sister) they laid into the evil men on motorbikes who had (literally) driven The People's Princess to her death*.

With one eye on its sales figures and the other on what is arguably Private Eye's greatest-ever front page, the owners and editors of the Daily Mail decided to take a moral lead. They pledged there and then that never again would the Mail purchase or publish photos taken by paparazzi snappers that intruded into the private lives of individuals, regardless of how famous they were.

Thirteen years later, all that is obviously forgotten. We're well-used to the long-lens pictures of famous women going about their daily lives, taking their kids to ballet lessons and so on. Today the Mail even has what is clearly a long-lens pic of a 17-year-old girl sharing a moment with a male friend in a nightclub.

But bearing in mind that the pledge to never again publish paparazzi photos came right after Diana's death, and right after her brother pledged to protect her children from the press intrusion that "used to regularly drive" their mother to "tearful despair", I'd like to know the Mail's justification for publishing this piece of vitally important news:

Yes, that's right folks - Diana's eldest son's bride-to-be went shopping in the town near where she lives! In jeans! And ballet pumps! And there are photos to prove it! Photos from Camera Press, an independent photo agency that specialises in photos of celebrities and royalty! According to well-placed sources, Anglesey is currently crawling with freelance photographers who are all eager to get a potentially lucrative snap of Ms Middleton going about her daily business. And with the Mail providing a ready market for their wares, who can blame them?


*And yes, I'm well aware that she was ACTUALLY driven to her death by a drunk driver and would probably have survived if she'd been wearing a seatbelt, but bear with me here, OK?

Mail gets its knickers in a twist over your cervix

The Mail is so delighted with its latest miracle cancer breakthrough that the story gets splashed across page one:

The £15 cervical cancer test that could save thousands of women's lives
Thousands of women’s lives could be saved by a dramatic improvement in testing for ­cervical cancer. The test delivers overnight results and is vastly more accurate than the smear test which is currently used to spot early signs of the disease, according to researchers.

Potentially excellent news. But why is the Daily Mail so happy about this? After all, just last month the very same paper was up in arms at one health authority's attempts to get girls vaccinated against cervical cancer - a move that, to use the paper's phrase, could save thousands of women's lives. Back then the paper branded it a "promiscuity scheme" that would encourage teenage girls to sleep around. Why does a test that makes it easier to identify cervical cancer not have the same effect?

For reasons I can't begin to understand, the paper seems to believe that it's better for women to get cancer and then have it detected early than not to get it all. It's often said that prevention is better than cure, but it appears that such tried and test logic has no place in the pages of the Daily Mail.

I blame the celebrities

Research by the Royal College of Midwives has found that new mothers are putting their health at risk by crash-dieting in order to emulate the "perfect" figures of celebrities who seemingly shed their "baby weight" within days of giving birth. The Mail is duly concerned:

Celebrity mothers who lose weight quickly after giving birth put pressure on women
Super-slim celebrity mothers are putting women under pressure to lose their baby weight too fast, a report warns. Many feel compelled to crash diet almost as soon as they have given birth, potentially putting their health and well-being at risk. Almost two-thirds of new mothers said they felt a degree of coercion to slim to their original size as soon as possible, a survey by the Royal College of Midwives found. Many said seeing celebrities such as Strictly Come Dancing’s Tess Daly and singer Myleene Klass lose baby weight so quickly made them feel disgusted with their own bodies.

It's not pleasant reading - as the RCM points out, after having a baby women should be concentrating on building up their own strength rather than crash dieting. But from where do new mothers get the idea that they should be losing masses of weight? Could it be the paper that published the following stories in the past six weeks alone?

Model mother Danielle Lloyd smoulders in saucy calendar shoot... just three months after giving birth
Just three months after giving birth and Danielle Lloyd is seen here posing confidently in a series of racy shots for a new calendar. The 26-year-old model, who has a four-month-old son Archie with footballer Jamie O'Hara, has shed more than two stone in the past couple of months.

'Everything goes south when you're pregnant!' Chanelle Hayes shows off post-baby figure after dropping two dress sizes in just THREE months
She only gave birth to son Blakely 13 weeks ago, but Big Brother 8 star Chanelle Hayes has nearly regained her pre-pregnancy shape. The 22-year-old reality star has dropped from a size 12/14 to 8/10 in just a few weeks after enrolling at boot camp and overhauling her diet.

How does she do it? Gisele Bundchen looks slimmer than ever just ten months after giving birth
Most women are happy if they lose even half their baby weight ten months after giving birth.But Gisele Bundchen looked as if she didn't even gain a pound during her pregnancy, let alone lose it quickly.

Danielle Lloyd reveals her post-pregnancy body in monokini and heels just 11 weeks after giving birth
Just 11 weeks after giving birth to her first child, Danielle Lloyd has already regained her model figure. The Liverpudlian model has shrunk back to 9st 7lb and she’s determined to lose even more until she reaches just 9st.Despite gaining over two stone while pregnant with son Archie, it appears the baby weight has quickly fallen off.

A stunning Amy Adams debuts her slender post-baby figure, four months after giving birth
It's been just four months since she gave birth, but Amy Adams has already managed to shed all her excess baby weight.

Back to yummy! Rebecca Gayheart shows off her fat-free figure five months after birth
Rebecca Gayheart may have gained a little bundle of joy, but she has lost the weight that came with it as she showed off her fat-free figure in West Hollywood. The actress stepped out with little daughter Billie Beatrice looking every inch the back to yummy mummy as the 38-year-old has clearly lost all her baby weight after giving birth last March.

And could that paper be the Daily Mail by any chance? Why yes it could.

Daily Mail Reporter can't read

Daily Mail Reporter is by far and away the paper's most productive journalist, either that or his is just the default name added to stories lifted wholesale from wire services and other publications. Unfortunately he's not very good at something that's generally considered to be a crucial skill for reporters - the ability to read.

The headline on DMR's latest piece is quite clear:

Grieving mother had disability allowance stopped on Remembrance Day… because she got compensation for the death of soldier son
The mother of the youngest British soldier killed in Afghanistan condemned government officials yesterday for using a death-in-service payment to stop her full disability allowance.

For some time now the Mail has been branding anyone living on benefits a workshy scrounger. But despite the fact that the soldier's mother:

"... is unable to work because she suffers from a degenerative and incurable tissue disease called Hypermobility syndrome..."

...the Mail is very much on her side on this one. Unfortunately DMR's literacy problem means the headline and story have both missed the point entirely. Slap-bang in the middle of the page is a copy of the letter sent to the soldier's mother by her local Job Centre. Anyone who is able to read can see that it says:

"I am writing to tell you that from 6.11.10 we have decided to suspend your income support."

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly harsh that Mrs Aldridge could lose benefits because she received a compensation payout following the death of her son. As she says herself, given the choice she'd much rather have her son than any amount of money.

But the letter is quite clear - she's losing her income support, not her "disability allowance". Which makes perfect sense, as disability living allowance is not means-tested. It is paid to "disabled children and adults who need someone to help look after them, or have walking difficulties", regardless of how much money they have. If she's unable to work because of her disability, Mrs Aldridge is probably also eligible for either the employment and support allowance or incapacity benefit, depending on when she started claiming. Income support, on the other hand, is paid to people who have a low income and, crucially in this case, less than £16,000 of savings.

So the headline is wrong, the intro is wrong, and the reference to the woman's disability is irrelevant. Which wouldn't be so much of an issue if it didn't all occur in a story in which the Mail accuses the authorities of being bungling idiots who can't get anything right.

UPDATE!
The Mail have now amended their headline and intro to reflect reality. It'll be interesting to see if they also delete the numerous comments underneath the article pointing out the reporter's lazy error.

PWC part II, in which the Daily Mail goes from bad to worse

Yesterday's Mail website write-up of the "female PWC interns" story was bad enough, featuring as it did the full photos of all the women involved with no regard to their thoughts or feelings.

Today the hard copy of the paper goes one step further, by putting a name next to each of the women. Note that none of the men involved are named, even though a cursory glance at the email chain would reveal all their identities.

So now the Mail has published private photos of 13 women (the paper cheerily states the photos were ripped from the PWC intranet), confirmed their names and told everyone which city they live in and where they work.

Now they're moving on to travel plans - having got hold of the names, Mail reporter Eleanor Harding has dug out one of the women's Twitter feeds, so the paper can exclusively reveal that she's due to travel to Chicago later this week.

The Mail also gleefully states that one recent Tweet from the woman in question read:

"God I hate my life right now."

Why do you think that might be, Daily Mail?

"It's so awful we just HAVE to show you how awful it is"

Some numpty at PricewaterhouseCoopers' Irish office is in a spot of bother after he got hold of photos of all the firm's female new recruits, picked out the 13 he found most attractive, and emailed the pictures to his numpty mates with the message "This would be my shortlist for the top 10".

All the numpties involved are now being investigated by their bosses after the email whizzed around the world. As you can imagine, a major multinational like PWC is very aware of the damage such a stunt could do both to their reputation and to the poor women involved, who are likely to be less than happy at the prospect of being ogled and "rated" by cyber-pervs from Dublin to Dunedin*.

As a PWC spokesman told the Daily Mail:

"Our main concern is the impact of this matter on the women who were the subject of these e-mails. We are meeting with them regularly to offer them every reassurance that they have the full support of the firm in dealing with this very difficult issue for them."

It's nice to see an employer taking its duty of care to employees seriously. It's less nice to see the Mail add insult to injury by publishing all 13 photos, both on its homepage and on the story itself. And to really rub salt into the wound, they've even included a clip from the email chain in which derogatory comments are made about one of the women in particular.

The photos look they were copied from staff profiles, which also means the Mail will be breaking all manner of copyright and data protection laws by publishing them. But what the hell, it means they get to publish a bunch of pictures of blonde women!

* Google it.

UPDATE!
The Telegraph are at it as well - lots of "isn't this terrible" about the pictures, then all 13 reproduced for your viewing pleasure. And it certainly seems to be doing the trick - at the time of writing it is the most-read story on the paper's website, edging out even Japanese man streams suicide live on the internet and Dick Van Dyke 'saved by porpoises'. It's a very serious paper, you know.

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.

Quote of the Day

"Of course, Professor Nutt is entitled to his opinions. But when he dresses them up as science, he is playing a disengenuous and dangerous game."

- Daily Mail leader column.

The Mail has yet to hold forth on whether it is dangerous and disengenuous to claim that age, asbestos, aspirin, babies, baby bottles, being black, bubble bath, candle-lit dinners, childlessness, Chinese medicine, dogs, eggs (free range), Facebook, false nails, the Internet, menstruation, metal, milk, older fathers, pastry, peanut butter, rice, sausages, sex, shaving, soup, space travel, turning on the lights at night to go to the toilet, vitamins, the war in Iraq and Worcestershire sauce give you cancer.

Or whether it's dangerous and disengenous to present the views of a lone "moral" campaigner as a reason to not vaccinate girls against cancer.

Or whether it's dangerous and disengenous to repeatedly ignore the scientific evidence and suggest that the MMR jab causes autism (including a widely read columnist "dressing up her opinion as science").

Or whether it's dangerous and disengenous to fiddle the facts and distort the truth and sometimes just print outright lies in order to make Muslims look bad.

But I'm sure they'll address this in a holier-than-thou editorial in the near future.

Mail condemns hospital for taking Mail's advice

Back in August I took a look at a Mail article that attacked the NHS for spending lots of money on sterile surgical screws instead of picking up them up at B&Q for 20p a pop. At the end I pondered what the Mail's reaction would be if it discovered that a hospital was carrying out operations using equipment purchased on the cheap at an out-of-town retail park.

Today we find out:

Burns victim's amazement after NHS hospital staff wrap his blistered hand in a TESCO freezer bag
A burns victim was left stunned after NHS staff wrapped his blistered hand in a Tesco freezer bag. Nicholas Robertson, 38, was treated for the injury - then medical staff needed to wrap his hand in a protective and sterilised plastic bag. But he was amazed to see the word Tesco stamped across the bag.

It appears that someone at the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board thought the Mail's procurement advice was actually pretty sensible, which of course prompts outrage from the, er, Daily Mail. And, perhaps more justifiably, from the burn victim himself*:

"Is this what the NHS has come to? I know there are Government cuts - but wrapping patients in Tesco freezer bags is not acceptable."

Protecting a properly treated burn with a plastic bag bought at Tesco and sterilised at the hospital = unacceptable. Using B&Q screws to bolt someone's hip back together = common sense.

The Mail must be a very confusing place to work sometimes...

*My sympathy for the victim was diminished slightly when I discovered that he had burned himself after "accidentally spilling lighter fluid on his hand close to a naked flame". Oh dear.

"Cynically cashing in"

The Express is outraged at talk of a Kiera Knightley/ Helen Mirren film about the early years of Princess Diana's life, said to bein the early stages of production.

"A FILM depicting the life and death of Princess Diana was accused last night of cynically 'cashing in' on her memory. Critics claimed the movie was 'extremely inappropriate' and could tarnish how people remember her."

And who is so outraged by the content of this film that has not yet been made? Her family? Her friends? Or a random member of the public with a slightly creepy Diana obsession?

Margaret Funnell, co-founder of the Diana Circle UK, a group dedicated to the Princess’s memory, said: “I don’t think anyone should make money out of the death of another person – and certainly not Diana. “We don’t need a glorified blockbuster about her life where all the facts are twisted and blown out of proportion. “It could tarnish her memory. I hope there is enough opposition to stop it.”

There's a certain irony in the Diana Circle campaigning against a film telling their idol's story, given that they think the "People's Princess" is being "airbrushed out of history" and have pledged to do all they can to keep her memory alive.

But before they take on a film that hasn't even made it out of pre-production, perhaps they, and the Daily Express, should turn their focus on a journal of ill-repute that seems determined to shift copies off the back of Diana's name with headlines such as:

"Princess Diana tells psychic her death was a well-planned accident"

"Diana was murdered says QC as he tells of unanswered questions"

"Princess Diana: The 500 hidden clues"

"Diana was killed over plan to expose UK arms dealers"

"Teacher at Princess Diana's old school in porn case"

"Diana's doctor love to marry colleague"

"Diana: New Sensation"

"Exclusive: Diana - why it was a murder plot"

And many, many, many more... Anyone want to guess which paper they come from?