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.

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.

Who's furious, exactly?

You know what you're getting with the Daily Star and progressive liberalism it ain't, so complaining about the horrendous way it reported a "story" about transsexual prisoners being allowed to request a strip search by a member of staff who shares their adopted gender seems rather redundant. Let's just say that the paper ran with the headline*:

BEHIND BRAS
Tranny strip-search fury

...and that it all went downhill from there, even managing refer to people whose:

"meat and two veg are still intact"

Classy. As I said, complaining about the use of language such as "trannies" in a Daily Star story is somewhat pointless. Suffice to say it wouldn't pass muster with the good people at Trans Media Watch. So let's ignore the bigotry (and the, er, interesting choice of photo on the website) and focus on the facts, starting with that headline. There's "fury" about these new rules, apparently. As the first sentence says:

"Female prison officers are angry at new rules which mean they may ordered to strip search transexual [sic] lags"

Further down we're told that;

"The move is creating unrest among female prison officers reluctant to strip-search male inmates."

But the only quote in the story, direct or otherwise, comes from a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice who, somewhat predictably, points out that these are not "new rules" but draft guidelines that have yet to be approved or implemented. Nowhere is there any evidence whatsoever of "angry" prison officers reacting with "fury". There's no quote from a named or anonymous prison officer expressing any opinion at all. There's not even that tabloid staple, the made-up quote that perfectly matches the paper's editorial line using language only ever deployed by tabloid hacks. They can't even get a response out of the Prison Officers Association, who are never shy about generating a media profile.

In short, there's absolutely no evidence of anyone being "furious" or "angry" about the proposed guidelines. Yet the Star manages to put "fury" in the sub-head, "angry" in the opening sentence and "unrest" further down the story.

Surely if prison officers up and down the land are up in arms, as the paper suggests, they'd be able to find at least ONE person who could actually say so?

*That's in the paper itself - the website used the slightly tamer "Female guards may be forced to search male trannies"