More made-up Jordan news from the Star

More gripping Jordan news from the Daily Star:


Reading the headline and the "What you DIDN'T see on telly last night" teaser, you could be forgiven for thinking that Katie Price and that guy who had that song in the mid 90s and then went on that show in the jungle had a bust-up at last night's Brit awards. One assumes the bust-up took place behind the scenes, as you DIDN'T see it on TV.

The story, however, tells a different, er, story:

KATIE Price dropped out of the BRITs last night, blaming ex-husband Peter Andre.

The 32-year-old glamour gal withdrew to avoid a row. Kate had a ticket – but organisers made it clear they did not want her there in case she had bust-up with Peter.

She blasted a claim – “the source of which is sadly obvious” – that she would pick a row with Peter, 37, there for ITV2.

But Kate said she did not want to distract attention from the stars “so I will cheer them on in front of my TV”. A pal said: “She has been stitched up.”

A Brits source said: “It was felt best to let her make her own
decision with dignity, rather than face being barred.” Peter, 37, said he was not involved.

In other words, Jordan and Pete DIDN'T have a bust-up at the Brits, because she didn't go. And the reason you didn't see it on TV is because IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

Other things you didn't see on TV last night included Mumford & Sons being hacked to pieces by an angry mob of Take That fans (fun though that would have been), and Laura Marling delivering an extraordinary expletive-filled racist diatribe aimed at Régine Chassagne while accepting the Best Female Artist award. Strangely the Star neglects to report on these other entirely made-up events.

Intrusion into grief or shock

Along with several other papers, today's Daily Mirror splash relates the sad story of Jemma Benjamin. The Welsh 18-year-old died in 2009, and yesterday the Aberdare coroner delivered a narrative verdict, which explains that she died from sudden adult death syndrome. SADs is the catch-all term for death caused by the heart failing for no discernable reason.

The press were particularly interested in Jemma's death because she collapsed while kissing a man - some papers have claimed it was her first-ever kiss, some have said the man was her boyfriend, others that he was just an acquaintence. So there are lots of unknowns and variables about this case, but one thing is certain - the Mirror's coverage is a crock of shit:

Yes, that headline really does read "KILLED BY HER FIRST KISS". It gets worse inside, where spread across page 11 is the headline "KISS OF DEATH". For the avoidance of doubt, the cause of death was not recorded as "being kissed".

Quite how this absurd sensationalism will go down with her family, let alone the man who kissed her, we can only speculate. We can also only speculate as to how the Mirror's editors thought these headlines fitted with with the PCC code - both its clause one demand for accuracy and the oft-ignored clause five:

5. Intrusion into grief or shock
i) In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively. This should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings, such as inquests.

Clearly they'd thought better of it by the time the story went online, where the headline is much more sober and accurate.

It's been a busy week for "Killed by..." splashes in the Mirror - just yesterday they had this:

And back on 4 February they went with this:


Is "whacky attribution of death" becoming the Mirror's version of the Express's endless McCann family "stories" and the Star's creepy obsession with Jordan?

Cause and effect

An international poll, details of which are published today in the Financial Times but have yet to pop up elsewhere, shows that Britain tops the league table of anti-immigrant hostility.

The study, carried out by a group of international bodies including the UK's own Barrow Cadbury Trust, found that almost half of Britons think there are "too many foreign-born people in this country". In other European countries this figure averaged three in 10, and in the USA - where there's been a huge amount of anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Tea Party - it was just a quarter.

The FT goes on:

"Britons were also more likely to think foreign arrivals damaged “national culture” [and]some 70 per cent of British people think their government is doing a “poor job” of tackling the issue."

So far, so depressing. The interesting stuff is further down, where it becomes clear that, in the FT's own words, public opinion seems "out of step with reality":

"When asked to guess how many people in Britain were foreign-born, the average UK response was three in 10. When told the estimate by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was in fact just one in 10, more than two-thirds of UK people thought this was either “not many” (36 per cent) or “a lot but not too many” (31 per cent). Just 30 per cent thought it was “too many”. Far more British people than their western counterparts also thought migrants were a burden on public services, even though most research suggests they are in fact a net contributor."

But why do so many people overestimate the number of migrants living in this country? The FT isn't afraid to point the finger:

"Immigration experts blame this on the hostility to foreign newcomers espoused by many British newspapers and the fact that the arrivals from eastern Europe rose so rapidly during the middle of the last decade."

Virtually every day of the week the likes of the Mail and Express provide a drip-feed of scare stories about immigrants that have, as TabloidWatch, Minority Thought, Angry Mob and the rest of the gang regulalry point out, a relationship to the truth that is tenuous at best.

We're repeatedly told that "you can't talk about immigration" without being called a racist. Yet the taboids talk bollocks about it day after day after day, feeding people lies and distortions that lead to the average Brit overestimating the number of migrants living here by a factor of three. And when people are told the true figure, two-thirds of people think that, actually, that's not too many at all.

Newspapers sell copies by reflecting the views of their readers - the Guardian supports student protesters for the same reason the Express hates people who aren't white. But is it too much to ask for papers to at least base their prejudices in fact?

Government admits there was no evidence to support Eric Pickles' Winterval Tale

Apologies for talking about Christmas in late January, but the wheels of Government are not known for rotating especially quickly.

You may recall that, back in late November, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles won some easy headlines by demanding that councils stick to calling Christmas Christmas and not allow "politically correct grinches" to declare "War on Christmas" by rebranding it as "Winterval, Winter Lights and Luminos". He added that all three shoud be "consigned to the dustbin of history" forthwith.

The problem is, as numerous people pointed out at the time, no local authority has ever declared war on Christmas by calling it Winterval, Winter Lights or Luminos. All three were umbrella terms for season-long festivals that included Christmas. As Birmingham City Council said of Winterval (which was consigned to the dustbin of history in 1998):

"There was a banner saying Merry Christmas across the front of the council house, Christmas lights, Christmas trees in the main civil squares, regular carol-singing sessions by school choirs, and the Lord Mayor sent a Christmas card with a traditional Christmas scene wishing everyone a Merry Christmas".

In all three cases the tabloids had taken something innocent and sensible and spun it into an attack on Christmas itself. So I wrote to Eric pointing this out and asking him to apologise for making misleading statements.

A month later I received a letter from one of his civil servants. It failed to address any of the points I'd made and simply told me that Eric Pickles thought Christmas was great. So I filed an FoI request asking the department to release the research or data on which Eric's claims were based. Today I received a reply:

"I am unable to provide you with the information you requested as the Department for Communities and Local Government does not hold it. This Department does not carry out research on this matter, and whether and how to celebrate the festive season is a decision for individual local authorities. Mr Pickles was making the point that councils should continue to take pride in Britain's Christian heritage and traditions at Christmas and also reminding them of the potential to boost the high street economy by embracing the spirit of the festival."

It's very clear - there is no evidence of local authorities, politically correct grinches or anyone else attempting to ban, rebrand or declare war on Christmas. The Department has never even tried to find any.

What does this prove? Quite simply, that Eric Pickles isn't that bothered by facts - if it was in the Mail it must be true, so why bother checking something accuracy if it fits the "Common Sense War on Political Correctness" narrative you're pushing.

It would have been bad enough if the made-up "facts" had merely been pumped out by the Conservative Party press office - Eric's Winterval Tale first appeared in one of their press releases. However, two days later the same message was released by the civil servants in the Department for Communities & Local Government press office. Could they not be bothered to check the facts either, or does Pickles - who once claimed to keep a revolver in his desk drawer with which he planned to shoot any civil servant who told him something he didn't want to hear - so intimidate his staff that head of news Michael Winders is no longer concerned about accuracy provided Uncle Eric gets what he wants?

It seems that DCLG is THE department for made-up news right now - earlier this month Eric's deputy Grant Shapps claimed that Manchester City Council was spending £40,000 on a "Twitter Czar" who should be fired before any frontline council workers lost their jobs. The story was complete bollocks, sourced, of course, from the clippings file of the Daily Mail.

And Eric is also believed to have shelled out taxpayers' cash on legal advice after someone in his department - most likely one of his special advisers, Giles Kenningham and Sheridan Westlake - attempted to smear the name of the head of the Electoral Commission.

But don't expect Pickles to get in hot water over his department's lies and smears any time soon - as I said before, his rentaquote "common sense" approach chimes perfectly with the agenda of the Mail, Sun, Telegraph et al, so the mainstream media aren't exactly queuing up to point out his shortcomings.

Girl with a pearl earring (because the dog still hasn't eaten it)

Today's Metro brings us this great news of worldwide importance:

Blurgh. I can't imagine how much more of this kind of thing we're going to have to put up with between now and the end of April, but if editors want to put it in their papers that's up to them - although as the entire piece is based around speculation from a magazine editor rather than an actual source you have to question its news value.

However, the thing I have an issue with appears in the final three sentences:

"On Sunday, she will be hoping for better luck with her gifts. Last year, her pet cocker spaniel Otto ate a pair of pearl earrings given to her by Prince William. The antiques were recovered only when nature took its course."

But, as TabloidWatch pointed out when the Mail on Sunday first ran this "story" (on page one, no less), it's a load of crap (forgive the pun) as Kate Middleton doesn't have a pet dog.

Still, it's in the Associated Newspapers cuttings file so it must be true, right?

Winterval spotting (10 days late or 355 days early?)

When the Google Alert first popped up I thought there must have been some kind of mistake. Perhaps the internet was broken? After all, how could even the Daily Mail squeeze a mention of Winterval into this story:


But there it is, tucked away in the 24th paragraph (just next to the HILARIOUS Pugh cartoon):

The rubbish gap has been dubbed ‘Binterval’ after the name Winterval, which was first coined by council chiefs as a politically correct replacement for Christmas.

Quite who has dubbed the rubbish gap "Binterval" remains unclear; the Mail cites no sources and a Google search turns up just one news story containing the phrase, and that's this piece of quality Mail journalism. There ARE plenty of hits for it on a general search and on the blogs, but these all refer to it in this kind of context:

"According to the USB 2.0 spec, bInterval value for the High Speed Bulk OUT endpoint must specify the maximum NAK rate of the endpoint."

Which means absolutely nothing to me, but clearly isn't about the menace of infrequent rubbish collection.

Still, even if the Mail's intrepid reporting duo HAD found someone outside their own office to dub the snow-and-strike-related delays "Binterval", the name couldn't have been derived from a politically correct replacement for Christmas devised by council chiefs, as no council chiefs (politcally correct or otherwise) have ever tried to replace Christmas with Winterval.

But then you already knew that. And I already knew that. And loads of people already knew that. So why does the Mail keep insisting that the opposite is true?

Honestly, I sometimes wonder why I bother.

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.

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.

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.