Tuesday 26 October 2010

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I refuse to call them Christmas lights if they are put up and turned on any time before December. My local council will no doubt be putting them up soon and I shall call them Winter lights until the 1st December and the EDL won't stop me as that is exactly what they are!

Last Year the Scottish tabloids went into overdrive as Dundee City Council decided to host a "winter light night" to co-incide with the Christmas light turn on. This was, again in early November, so not at all Christmas time yet.

The event clearly stated that the Christmas lights were to be the headline act for the whole evening and all promotional material used the word "Christmas" extensivley, the lights themseleves even said "Merry Christmas from Dundee City Council".

However, to spice it up a little the council held numerous light orientated events all around the city, including outdoor presentations, workshops for kids, torchlight tours of the city's most interesting areas, outdoor music, a market, fireworks and screened some local films at the cinema. There were also school kids singing CHRISTMAS songs all night too!

The whole event recieved a great turn out, much more than would normally have come to just see the tacky christmas lights getting turned on and it was hailed as a success. However, the papers had a different idea and slated the council for pandering to minorities. They failed to mention any of the events going on and that it was much, much more than just a christmas light switch on. Indeed it was part of the nationwide homecoming event for Scotland. The local community actually had a chance to learn about thier city and see some great entertainment for one night only, which was then topped off with the almighty switch on.

Such a shame that the press manipulated it to fit thier agenda. There's sadly no plans to host a similar event this year.

rpxadair said...

"Your shout is unavailable for this story"

Translation: "Even we're ashamed of the racist brainless drivel that would inevitably have been spewed upon the comments section for this story by a readership that overwhelmingly fears Britain is become a Islamic state because of the overexaggerations/lies they read about in newspapers, mainly ours."

rpxadair said...

Hmm, I don't like how I've used the phrase "overexaggeration" as exaggerations are, by definition, over the top.

Now it just seems as if I wanted to imply that its okay to provide a satisfactory amount of truth bending, or that it's even possible to underexaggerate by not bending the truth nearly enough for my liking!

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