Recommended reading - links

A few links to other blogs with some excellent posts:

Five Chinese Crackers: The onward march of racism in the Express - The racist rag's disgraceful front page headline 'Strangers in our own country' pretends our schools are being over-run by foreigners.

Angry Mob: Richard Littlejohn's 'permanent opposition' - Littlejohn claims he has 'no party political affiliations' yet comes out for the Conservatives (shock!) for the General Election.

Five Chinese Crackers - A look at the PCC's ruling against Rod Liddle. Unlike Liddle, 5CC produces the evidence.

Angry Mob: Really bad journalism - the tabloids claim a boy was left up a tree by a school because of health and safety, forcing the headteacher to put out two statements saying it's 'untrue'.

Jon Slattery: Labour MP tells constituent: 'Life can only get better - if you stop reading the Daily Mail'.

Angry Mob: A catalogue of lies - Round-up of four nonsense articles from the Mail, including three health and safety lies.

One, with the headline 'Environmentalist fined £4,000 after catching the wrong kind of crayfish' only revealed later in the article that he had in fact illegally caught 40 crayfish, and cooked some of them. If he'd been an immigrant, it's unlikely they would have been so sympathetic.

And in 'Council bans dogs from parks leaving owners wondering where to go 'walkies'', there was no blanket ban, as implied. Instead, the truth was that:

The vast majority of the orders ban dogs from fenced-off children's play areas - they do not ban dogs from the council's four Green Flag Award-winning parks which are popular with dog walkers, or from the vast majority of open space in the district.

The handful of village playing fields which are now subject to exclusion orders were included at the request of the various parish councils who felt such action was needed as dog fouling had become a serious problem in those localities.