Jan Moir makes her position clear - she's an unrepentant bigot

So after a week of prevarication, Jan Moir has used her (advertising free) column today to clarify what she wrote about Stephen Gately last week.

Well, not clarify, exactly. Repeat all the same baseless, innuendo-heavy stuff for a second time. Claim she was entirely misrepresented, the victim of an orchestrated campaign (by who?) and complained about by people who hadn't read the article (proof?).

One of the most dismal aspects of this piece is the apology she gives to the Gately family:

I would like to say sorry if I have caused distress by the insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral.

Right, so she's not sorry for what she actually said, just when she said it. Charming. She just doesn't get it.

To everyone else, there is no apology. She only says:

I regret any affront caused.

In other words: stuff you. Because if she really regretted causing affront, she wouldn't repeat many of the same allegations for a second time. She writes:

if drugs were somehow involved in his death, as news reports suggested, should that not be a matter of public interest?

We were told that Stephen died of 'natural causes' even before toxicology results had been released. This struck me as bizarre, given the circumstances.

Circumstances of course which Moir didn't really know, apart from some newspaper reports. Toxicology results which she didn't know either. But rather than wait, she decided she knew best - and clearly she still does. Better than the coroner, in fact. Sadly she didn't explain how the drugs she seems to know he took caused the fluid on his lungs which killed him.

She then claims she never said something which she did say:

I have never thought, or suggested, that what happened that night represented a so-called gay lifestyle; this is not how most gay people live.

Odd, given she said this:

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

Now assuming she picked the example of George Michael because of his antics in public toilets, then she is saying not everyone is like him in 'many cases'. Not most.

She fails to clarify why the death of Kevin McGee was in any way relevant to Gately. Probably because she knows it isn't. She pretends that her vile observation that Gately's death:

strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships

was that:

there was a 'happy ever after myth' surrounding such unions was that they can be just as problematic as heterosexual marriages.

But this was a myth she seemed to invent for her column. Whoever said that no civil partnership would ever end in separation? Who claimed there were never going to be unhappy civil partners?

Indeed, when she writes:

If he had been a heterosexual member of a boy band, I would have written exactly the same article

it's a blatant lie. She would not have written about the myth of happy-ever-after heterosexual marriage. She would not have mentioned whoever she thinks the straight version of George Michale might be, or suggested they were representative. She wouldn't have referred to 'straight activists'. And she almost certainly wouldn't have referred to a:

very different and more dangerous lifestyle.

She lies:

Absolutely none of this had anything to do with his sexuality.

And:

Anyone who knows me will vouch that I have never held such poisonous views.

Well, the article last week was poisonous, and if she really thinks people will believe her saying his sexuality had nothing to do with it, she's totally deluded.

She writes:

To be the focus of such depth of feeling has been an interesting experience, but I do not complain.

Followed by:

This brings me back to the bile, the fury, the inflammatory hate mail and the repeated posting of my home address on the internet.

And:

To say it was a hysterical overreaction would be putting it mildly

And:

I can't help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged?

All of which sounds a lot like her complaining.

And a 'hysterical overreaction'? Clearly she's so repentant she's calling everyone who was offended 'hysterical'. Not in the least like the Mail-orchestrated Sachsgate affair, of course, in which Moir played her miserable role.

That applies to her point about people 'determined to be outraged'. The default position of the Daily Mail is to be 'determined to be outraged' day in, day out.

The fact is, people saw bigotry and social intolerance because it did exist in her sorry little rant.

And there are other contradictions. Last week she described Gately as a:

founder member of Ireland's first boy band, he was the group's co-lead singer, even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk...popular but largely decorous.

Whereas this week, he was:

a talented young man

And of her claim that there was 'nothing natural' about his death, she says:

My assertion that there was 'nothing natural' about Stephen's death has been wildly misinterpreted.

What I meant by 'nothing natural' was that the natural duration of his life had been tragically shortened in a way that was shocking and out of the ordinary. Certainly, his death was unusual enough for a coroner to become involved.

When any 33-year old dies suddenly, a coroner would almost certainly be involved. This does not make it 'not natural', nor does it support her original claim.

And her attempts to explain 'nothing natural' is just bizarre. Here's what she said:

Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this.

In her original response, she backtracked, saying:

Anyone can die at anytime of anything

But now she seems to be suggesting they can't, again.

She claims she was showered with support too:

I also had thousands of supportive emails from readers and well-wishers, many of whom described themselves as 'the silent majority'. The outcry was not as one-sided as many imagine.

Really? So homophobic Mail readers sent supportive emails. What a surprise. But as there were over 25,000 complaints, that's a lot of emails to receive if she is to justify the claim it wasn't one sided. How many thousands was it? Even the comments on the Mail website were hugely against her. That's how 'silent' they were.

Oh, and is she sure all those 'thousands' of supporters read the article? Because she repeats her claim that her piece was:

unread by many who complained.

Can she provide the slightest evidence for this? How can she possibly know that they didn't read it? What proof does she have?

It's also an odd claim for someone who spoke out about the BBC Sachsgate affair, where the tens of thousands of people who did complain only did so after reading about it in the Mail, not having heard the radio show live. Moir included. So add hypocrite to all the other charges.

She also tries to re-state her view that this was all:

an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own.

In fact, as she isn't on Twitter, she wouldn't have a clue. What was noticeable was watching the sheer number of people taking an entirely natural reaction against her column. After having read it.

Who does she think is the conductor of this orchestra? What agenda does she think is behind it? Naturally, she doesn't explain. And, of course, she's not complaining about it.

And then she admits:

I accept that many people - on Twitter and elsewhere - were merely expressing their own personal and heartfelt opinions or grievances.

Oh right. So a cynical, orchestrated campaign by non-readers and mischievous gay activists was also heartfelt and personal grievances. Last week they were 'mischievous', now they are 'heartfelt'? What is she on about? Have the Mail executives been adding bits to try and take the heat off? Because it hasn't worked.

Towards the end she sets up a straw man to knock down:

Can it really be that we are becoming a society where no one can dare to question the circumstances or behaviour of a person who happens to be gay without being labelled a homophobe? If so, that is deeply troubling.

Who has suggested you can't question? She entirely misses the point of what people found so offensive.

And frankly, if you have to spend 890 words explaining what you really meant in a 917 word article, you clearly ain't much of a writer anyway.

No doubt the Mail - and Moir - will expect this to be the end of the matter. Unfortunately, they will be wrong. This is not an apology, but someone who is in a hole and continuing to dig. There is nothing in here that corrects the egregious errors of judgement in her homophobic rant last week.

In fact, by playing the victim, stating she has been entirely misunderstood (yes, over 25,000 people all misinterpreted the words in the same way), saying the complainers haven't read what she wrote and then repeating claims that there was something untoward about Gately's death means this will rumble on.

Jan Moir: Twitter trending topic, for a second consecutive Friday.

Mail hypocrisy over Moir continues

Early this morning on the Daily Mail website homepage there were three stories which were less than favourable to the BBC:

No-one's watching their new drama!

They're all on cocaine!

Anton has made his dance partner cry again!

Curiously, the latter has disappeared from the site. Headlined 'Anton Du Beke makes dance partner Laila Rouass weep in another bust-up' and still visible on Google, you can assume it has been removed because it was completely inaccurate.

Then came news that the Question Time audience would contain BNP members to cheer on their leader.

The day before, they focused on The X Factor 'trouncing' Strictly Come Dancing in the viewing figures. And on Frankie Boyle's Mock the Week joke about the Queen, which the Mail approvingly calls 'grossly offensive' before repeating it, just so readers can see how gross and offensive it is.

And on Monday it claimed the BBC were altering Humpty Dumpty to make it 'politically correct', explained Conservative Party plans for the 'out of touch' organisation and revealed 'Two jobs and a pension for the BBC's £500,000 executive Alan Yentob'.

Nine critical articles in three days. Anybody would think the Mail was trying to divert attention to another media outlet so it could quietly slip out of the spotlight.

Yesterday, Five Chinese Crackers asked: Whatever happened to 'SACK THEM!' which was the Mail's front page demand to the BBC to fire Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross over the Sachsgate affair.

At various times the Mail accused the BBC of a 'week of prevarication', being 'painfully slow' to react and criticising the organisation because 'nobody takes responsibility'.

The sub-head of the 'Sack Them' front page talked of an:

unprecendented backlash.

Given the Jan Moir article has received more complaints than any other (25,000 and counting), it's reasonable to say the Mail has suffered an 'unprecedented backlash' too.

So has anyone at the Mail taken responsibility after five days? Has anyone apologised? Has anyone resigned or been sacked? Has the Mail said anything at all?

Apart from Jan Moir's insult to injury 'reponse' last Friday the answers are: no, no, no and no.

In any other organisation, employees caught behaving so revoltingly would be lucky to keep their jobs.

That was the Mail. In an editorial. Talking about Brand and Ross. Now they are on the defensive, the sheer hypocrisy of their stance matches the sheer nastiness of the Moir article.

And what of their columnists? Suzanne Moore and Janet Street-Porter had their say, rightfully attacking Moir.

But what about Allison Pearson, who wrote at great length about how awful Ross and Brand were, including repeating all their rudest jokes, just so readers could be shocked?

Not one mention of it today in the entire column. She does a piece about 'moral cowardice', but ironically, it's on a different subject.

More interested in the X Factor, she says Cheryl Cole:

would never have made it into the live final of The X Factor

somehow forgetting she made it to - and won - the live final of Popstars: The Rivals.

What about Stephen Glover? He also wrote plenty about Sachsgate, criticising the BBC for having to have an apology 'wrung' out of it.

Yesterday, in his weekly column in the Independent Media Section, he didn't criticise the Mail for not apologising. In fact, he forgot to mention it at all. For a media commentator to neglect one of the biggest media stories of the year suggests he's not much good at his job.

So what about Littlejohn? He talked of last year's events as a:

stunning victory for common decency over the self-appointed, self-obsessed, metropolitan narcissists who control so much of our public life.

Yesterday, he was bizarrely quiet. There was none of the spluttering outrage he aimed at the BBC over the Sachsgate affair. Whereas then he complained that Ross and Brand had been allowed to:

bully and ridicule an old man and his granddaughter in the name of 'entertainment'

bullying and ridiculing a recently dead man and his mother in the name of entertainment is, apparently, fine.

All he said was:

Forgive me, I know I really should get out more, but who is Stephen Gately?

Hilarious. Of course, that line means he can mention it without actually having to talk about it.

So is the Mail succeeding in slipping out of the spotlight? It seems they are being allowed to. Outside of the Guardian, there is very little reporting from other newspapers on the subject. The Mail ran four consecutive front pages on Sachsgate. This has had nothing like the same coverage. Is it the fact they all know where the bodies are buried and are reluctant to criticise other newspapers? There but for the grace of God etc.

We wait for Friday, to see if Jan Moir's column appears and what she says if it does. She may (have been told to) come over all contrite and apologetic so as to head off any possible censure from the PCC (eventhough that scares no one - despite what editors say to the contrary).

The broadcast regulator Ofcom can censure on the basis of offence; the PCC can not. The newspapers can be as offensive as they like, but if they are 'within' the Code they get away with it. Just ask Littlejohn, Malone or McKinstry.

And Ofcom can fine broadcasters for transgressions. The PCC can not.

Mail Editor Paul Dacre is Chair of the Editor's Code Committee, which reviews and revives the Code of Conduct policed by the PCC.

After the payments to the parents of Madeleine McCann by the Express and Star, Express Editor Peter Hill was replaced on the PCC. Some may wonder how an Editor as atrocious and dishonest as Hill could ever have been on the PCC in the first place. But there was an example of a huge failing by an editor, which resulted in the PCC replacing him.

It seems extraordinary that the man ultimately responsible for the most complained newspaper article ever can possibly imagine he can continue to be the Chair of the Code Committee. As their website points out:

The guiding principle has been that the Code should be observed not only to the letter, but in the full spirit.

Even if the PCC find the Moir didn't break the letter of the Code, which wouldn't be a big surprise, was it within the spirit?

The Codebook also explains about the Code:

It should not be abused...by editors trying to tiptoe around the rules

In his foreward to the Codebook, which explains how the Code works, Dacre states:

Sometimes we get it wrong...Where there are legitimate public concerns, we must respond to them.

Indeed. So when is he, and the Mail, going to respond to the Moir article? You know, like they demanded the BBC do over Sachsgate...

Leo McKinstry and the BNP

At the start of August, Leo McKinstry wrote in the Express about how all Britain's problems are caused by immigration.

Yesterday Leo McKinstry wrote in the Express about how all Britain's problems are caused by immigration.

Then it was: Labour's lies have brought the UK to ruin - Labour's rhetoric on immigration is a colossal exercise in deceit.

Yesterday it was: Labour's biggest lie of all is about mass immigration.

This cost-cutting at the Express really is getting out of hand...

Then, without any shred of irony, he begins his latest with this:

Josef Goebbels, the sinister chief of Nazi propaganda, wrote: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it"...

Those words apply exactly to the Government’s rhetoric on immigration.

Yes, repeating lies so people begin to believe it. Not that the Express or McKinstry would ever repeatedly use dishonest rhetoric about immigration. Or Muslims. Or political correctness. Or Diana being 'murdered'.

And so begins yet another anti-immigration rant:

As our country sinks deeper into the mire of recession, despair and social dislocation, the full extent of [government] lies on immigration has been exposed.

And:

The dramatic rise in immigration has coincided with the deepest recession since the Thirties.

As the numbers continue to flood in, unemployment rises and living standards fall.

That's funny - the dramatic rise in the use of, say, Twitter has coincided with the deepest recession since the Thirties. Shall we blame that too? Does it have nothing to do with the bank system then? Or the

grotesque mismanagement of public finances

which McKinstry blamed for the economic crisis back in April.

He continues:

the mass arrival of foreigners has imposed an intolerable strain on public services, especially the NHS, social security, housing and education, as well as creating a huge burden for the taxpayer, costing more than £30billion a year.

It's not totally clear what that £30billion refers to, it's not clear he knows either, but after suggesting immigrants are costing the taxpayer that much (by which he means white British people, as 'foreigners' don't appear to be taxpayers), he doesn't have to. The damage is done.

There are other outright lies. He talks about:

rising crime and ethnic tension

as if the latter is the fault of immigrants, rather than, say, racist newspapers which carry BNP slogans on their front page.

He should take a look at last night's Panorama too.

And 'rising crime'? The last British Crime Survey said the crime rate was stable and recorded crime was down 5%.

With no apparent logic at all he also states:

no fewer than 733,000 National Insurance numbers were handed out to newly arrived foreigners, making a mockery of Government claims that net migration is on the decline.

It's hard to see how those two things are related, or how one disproves the other. But he's wrong. As his own paper stated when the last immigration figures were released:

Overall, 118,000 more people arrived in Britain than left, the lowest net immigration figure since the EU expanded in 2004.

So, er, net migration is on the decline then.

McKinstry also uses the term

bogus refugees

eventhough it is meaningless. What is a 'bogus refugee'?

Towards the end he says:

the Labour lie machine goes on remorselessly, bullying us into “celebrating” our nation’s own demise.

It's hard to know exactly how McKinstry thinks the nation is in 'demise' or indeed how this is being 'celebrated'. Apart from frothing, fact-lite soundbites, what evidence does he have or examples does he give? None. It appears as if any change to the population or the work-force is, to him, ruining the country.

Therefore, here's a quote from the BNP on immigration:

The current open-door policy and unrestricted, uncontrolled immigration is leading to higher crime rates, demand for more housing (driving prices out of the reach of young people), severe extra strain on the environment, traffic congestion, longer hospital waiting lists, lower educational standards, higher income taxes, lower wages, higher unemployment, loss of British identity, a breakdown in community spirit, more restrictive policing, higher council taxes, a shortage of council homes, higher levels of stress and unhappiness and a more atomised society.

And here's a paragraph assembled from quotes in McKinstry's column:

Immigrants 'continue to flood in' as the 'Government has lost all grip on our borders'. This is leading to 'rising crime' and has 'imposed an intolerable strain on public services, especially the NHS, social security, housing and education'. 'Unemployment rises and living standards fall' and there is a 'huge burden for the taxpayer'. We see a 'transformation in our society' with 'ethnic tension' and 'recession, despair and social dislocation'. 'Britain has become a place of apprehension, fear and suspicion.'

The differences are minimal. And the conclusion both want you to reach is this: immigrants are to blame for everything that is wrong with Britain.

In a week when the BNP will probably get more publicity than at any time before, McKinstry doesn't use his column to attack the nasty, racist party, preferring instead to use the platform he has to peddle a load of anti-immigration myths that only help that party get its message out.

It's the manure that helps the BNP grow.

The unsavoury Richard Littlejohn

The main part of Richard Littlejohn's Tuesday 20 October column is an attack on the BNP. He spends part of it recalling the time he had a show on Sky News (yes, really) and of meeting various BNP people.

He says:

I put it to [Nick] Griffin that what set the BNP apart was the large elephant not in the manifesto, namely that it is the 'Wogs Out' party.

Yes, one of those odious 'Wogs Out' types. Not like Littlejohn at all, who in his dishonest look at the Bolivian immigrant who was(n't) saved from deportation by his cat story writes:

If the couple are determined to have a family life, they can have one in Bolivia.

'Wogs Out' indeed.

He moves on to talk about the time in 2004 that he 'moderated' a discussion between a BNP supporter and the Independent's Johann Hari:

The researchers had also invited an excitable teenage 'cultural commentator' from one of the unpopular papers by way of balance.

He managed to work himself up into such an hysterical, nasal lather of sweaty indignation - squealing like Ned Beatty in Deliverance - that he succeeded only in making the BNP man seem reasonable.

Of course, referring to him as an 'excitable teenager' is a way of belittling and patronising him so he doesn't have to admit the fact that Hari utterly humiliated him. He showed him to be a complete liar about the benefits asylum seekers get (Littlejohn wrote £117 per week, rather than £33 they actually recieved) and Littlejohn had absolutely nothing to say in return.

Enjoy - and savour it - here.

Hari's point was that the constant lies and exaggerations spread by Littlejohn (and others) about immigrants and Muslims gives the BNP a platform on which to build. The way Mail stories on these subjects appear on the BNP website within hours of being published by newspapers - including the cat story - is clear evidence of that.

But look again at way Littlejohn describes Hari.

'Squealing like Ned Beatty in Deliverance'. That is the infamous scene where Beatty's character is raped by another man.

And it is surely no accident that Littlejohn uses that reference solely because Hari is gay.

In a Tweet a few days ago, Hari revealed:

The BNP on their website call me "the notorious fat homosexual Johann Hari". I am considering changing my name to this by deed poll.

Attacking Hari and pointlessly raising his sexuality - clearly Littlejohn is appalled by the BNP.

Coming so soon after the infamous Jan Moir article, the Mail should be careful about insidious little homophobic remarks from their columnists. It would seem to raise similiar problems under Clause 12 of the PCC code, which deals with:

prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's...sexual orientation

and

Details of an individual's...sexual orientation...must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.

Not only that but he sounds like the school bully, pathetically settling old scores now he has thought of a response five years later.

And, on the subject of Moir, Littlejohn is bizarrely quiet. There's none of the spluttering outrage he aimed at the BBC over the Sachsgate affair. Whereas then he complained that Ross and Brand had been allowed to:

bully and ridicule an old man and his granddaughter in the name of 'entertainment'

bullying and ridiculing a recently dead man and his mother in the name of entertainment is, apparently, fine.

All he says is:

Forgive me, I know I really should get out more, but who is Stephen Gately?

Hilarious. The man is a fool.

(Hat-tip to Killer Whale at the Mailwatch Forum for the Wogs Out comparison)

Littlejohn lies about a cat (to go with the two recent lies about dogs)

As predicted earlier today in a blog post about the nonsensical 'cat saves immigrant from deportation' story, Richard Littlejohn has included it in his column tomorrow.

He has lied twice about dogs recently, so why not lie about a cat too?

The story as presented by the Sunday Telegraph, Mail, Express, Sun and Star (and BNP) is not accurate, but that has never stopped Littlejohn before. He writes:

A Bolivian man living illegally in Britain has won his appeal against deportation on the grounds that he has a cat.

Well, it wasn't on those grounds at all. But never let the facts get in the way of a good anti-immigrant rant, eh?

Littlejohn even includes the scaremongering - and entirely irrelevant - bit from the Sunday Telegraph article that implies all immigrants are up to no good:

The case comes in a week in which the same court refused to deport 50 foreign criminals, including killers and sex offenders, because it might infringe their human rights.

Indeed, the whole piece is like a lazy copy-and-paste job from the Sunday Telegraph. As dreadful as Jan Moir's article was, Littlejohn churns out the same fact-free intolerant drivel twice a week. When will we get such a backlash against him?

He states:

Surely if joint ownership of a cat has to be taken into consideration, his application was bereft of all other merit.

And likewise, if the cat was 'immaterial' - as it was - then the case wasn't bereft of all other merit. And then there is no story. The Mail itself included the fact there were many other details, but Littlejohn conveniently ignores that.

But it's worth noting a comment left in response to this blog's take on the story from Barry O'Leary, the lawyer who represented the Bolivian man in the case. Here is what he has written:

Dear Tabloid Watch,

Thank you for your comments. You have made me feel sane in a day when insanity has ruled.

I am the lawyer quoted in this article. I was contacted by the Sunday Telegraph last week who had found this case on the Immigration Tribunal website. I explained clearly that the cat was irrelevant and, learning from experience, followed up with written comments as to why the case was won.

The Home Office conceded this case - they were not 'aghast', they accepted they had not applied their own policy and the cat was immaterial. As you have shown, the Telegraph begrudgingly explained this in the article but added a completely misleading headline. Of course, it was then picked up by all and reportedly completely inaccurately.

The sad fact is that it is now on the BNP website and people will believe it.

Where do I go from here? I agreed to an interview with a national radio station to try to get the message out but they lost interest when I explained the facts. I called Damian Green's office. they will 'send me a letter'.

The Telegraph were unfair but accurate on my quotes. Other sites have made up quotes.

I have been here many times as I have being doing immigration law for a long time but still do not have the answer to how to deal with this. Let it die a natural death? What do others suggest?

Once again, thank you reading what I said fully. I was starting to wonder if I had said something completely different.

Barry O'Leary

It is impossible not to be sympathetic that when he tells the media the cat was immaterial, he finds every article that follows focusing on it. And that now includes Littlejohn's.

Now that it has done the rounds it is probably too late to undo the damage. And we have seen how difficult it is to get any joy from the Press Complaints Commission. Perhaps it would be worth contacting them anyway. It might be possible to get a clarification from Littlejohn, although it will be hard work.

The cat was immaterial, the papers all say it was central. On that basis, some of the online articles may get removed and if Mr O'Leary can get the papers to mark their archives it may be able to stop the story being repeated in the future.

Unfortunately, for the BNP, Stormfront and other racist website/forums where this story has appeared, it is now accepted as 'fact'.

And that is why the papers should think far more carefully about the way the present such stories. Starting with someone that might seem obvious but clearly isn't when there is another agenda: is this true?

Mail returns to attacking immigrants and Muslims

The Daily Mail appears to have decided that it might need to stop picking on the gays for a bit and so has turned its attention back to immigrants and them Muslims.

There's the ludicrous cat story, a Melanie Phillips article about the BNP and another story about numbers of immigrants. And then there's this rather oddly worded headline:


'The schools told'. What?

This story, like the cat one, has been stolen from yesterday's Sunday Telegraph. The impression given by the Mail's headline is that this is widespread. This is a usual tactic - such as when seven policewomen in Bristol were given headscarves for when they enter mosques and the media made it sound as if everyone was getting one. Or when the Express said all Muslims believe one thing last week.

In fact, it is only two councils (Waltham Forest & Newham) in east London who say schools should close for Diwali, Eid-Ul-Fitr and Guru Nanak, but are now launching a review of the policy after complaints from some headteachers and others.

So it is a story which fits in with the 'minorities dictating our lives' agenda of the Mail and other tabloids.

But on the Mail website homepage, the headline is this:


Which makes it clear it's them Muslims causing the trouble again. The councils instruct schools to shut for three significant holy days: one Muslim, one Sikh and one Hindu.

So why 'Schools ordered to close for Muslims holy days'? It's only one Muslim holy day (not days), as it is equally one Sikh holy day and one Hindu holy day.

The Express have done the same thing with their headline: Ramadan? No school today. A headline which isn't even accurate as Eid-Ul-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan. Nonetheless, the story begins:

Parents and headteachers are furious after schools were given permission to shut for Ramadan and other non-Christian holidays in the name of multiculturalism.

Again, the focus is on the Muslims. Despite the fact 'shut for Ramadan' doesn't really come into it.

But there is an interesting point raised in an Evening Standard article by Felix Allen, which states:

All state schools under Waltham Forest's control have been closed for Eid-Ul-Fitr, Diwali and Guru Nanak's birthday - as well as Christmas and Easter - since the Eighties.

One of these councils has been doing it for twenty years? Certainly this article from 1995 makes clear it was happening in Waltham at least fourteen years ago.

Why do the articles therefore imply it is something new? And why do they focus on Islam more than the other religions?

Mail has amnesia as it complains about 'fatism'

Lead story on the Mail website at time of writing is this:


Imagine that. Picking on someone just because they might be bigger than stick thin. The Mail is right to be outraged.

It's not as if the Mail would do such bullying. Like accusing a 9 stone woman of having 'blubber'.

Or calling Britney Spears fat with 'thick arms and thighs' and telling her it's 'time for a diet', saying John Travolta is 'obese' or describing Leona Lewis as 'dumpy'.

And the Mail certainly wouldn't dream of calling someone 'imperfect' because they have 'piled on the pounds' and have a 'cellulite riddled physique'.

'Horrific' indeed.

Moir complaints hit 21,000

The Guardian is reporting that 21,000 people have now complained to the PCC over the Jan Moir article on Stephen Gately. It is, they say, more complaints than the PCC has received in total in the last five years.

The Mail itself has written a page four story on the controversy, although seem to be following a slightly different controversy to everyone else:

A worldwide debate over a Daily Mail article on the death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately spread over the internet at the weekend.

It's an interesting use of the word 'debate'. The headline even refers to a 'Stephen Gately debate' rather than a Jan Moir one.

That the Mail has chosen not to avoid the story, and following critical comments from its own columnists Suzanne Moore and Janet Street-Porter, it does look as if the it is trying to mollify critics.

It continues:

Thousands have been moved to comment on Moir's column

'Comment on'? Well, that's one way of putting it. They add the column was:

about the circumstances surrounding the star's death in Majorca, when he and his civil partner invited a Bulgarian man to their flat.

Which, again, suggests there was something untoward about both the death and the Bulgarian man.

And still there's no apology and no one has been sacked. How different to how it wanted the BBC to react after Sachs.

Mail and Sunday Telegraph: cat-alysts for more anti-immigration feeling

Yesterday's Sunday Telegraph story Immigrant allowed to stay because of pet cat, has turned up in the Mail today as Migrant facing deportation wins right to stay in Britain... because he's got a cat.

Both articles make clear the cat was

one detail among many.

So how come the 'many' other details are not the focus of these articles?

Because both papers have an agenda to make the immigration system seem ridiculous and worthless, and to make immigrants appear engaged in any trick they can dream up in order to be allowed to stay.

It wouldn't take a genius to work out that those headlines may not be the whole story, and a look at the forty-plus comments left on the Mail website at time of writing rather proves the point.

One, claiming to be from the 'EUSSR' (see what he did there?) says:

Is it any wonder the UK is currently the laughing stock of the entire world?

You could not make it up.

Oh. Littlejohn quotes? Really?

However, it must be added that the Mail have only told half the facts, so it is perhaps small wonder the readers who are always ready to jump on any anti-immigration story pile in. The paper stops copy-and-pasting from the Sunday Telegraph article just around the point where the truth of the case comes out. Why would they do that?

Disgracefully, the Sunday Telegraph pushes in this paragraph:

The case comes a week after The Sunday Telegraph disclosed how the same court had given permission for more than 50 foreign criminals, including killers and sex offenders, to avoid deportation because of human rights concerns.

It has nothing to do with the case at hand, but serves to link immigrants with criminals, again.

But back to the 'cat' and the Mail states categorically:

An illegal immigrant was allowed to stay in Britain because he had a cat

The Mail has gone from 'migrant' in the headline to 'illegal immigrant' in the second line of the story. The Sunday Telegraph doesn't use 'illegal immigrant' at all, referring to him as 'immigrant' throughout.

But the Mail have made it clear - it's all because of that cat:

The unnamed Bolivian was spared deportation after he told a court that he and his girlfriend had bought the animal as a pet.

The Mail goes on to quote the disgust of Damien Green and Migrationwatch's Andrew Green. Hold on, what was that about Littlejohn quotes? Here's Andrew Green:

Drawing pets into the consideration of issues of such importance is so utterly absurd that you could not make it up.

Oh dear. (Incidentally, this is just the type of story Littlejohn is likely to cover in his column tomorrow...)

The Mail also quotes from the Bolivian man's lawyer, but not these crucial statements, included in the Sunday Telegraph:

Mr O'Leary [the couple's lawyer] added that his client originally brought the case because he should have benefited from a Home Office policy on unmarried partners which gives credit to couples who have been together more than two years. The Bolivian had been with his partner for four years, he said.

How convenient the Mail forgot to include that bit. And this bit:

"It was made clear by the initial judge and then by Senior Immigration Judge Gleeson that the appellant should benefit from that policy and be granted the right to remain," he said.

"Furthermore, it was accepted by the Home Office representative at the hearing before Judge Gleeson that the policy should apply and any other errors in the initial decision by the judge, including too much detail on the cat, were immaterial."

And this bit:

He added: "This case was won because the Home Office had a policy which they did not initially apply but later, through their representative, they accepted should have been applied."

A spokesman from the Judicial Communications Office said: "This was a case in which the Home Office conceded that they had mistakenly failed to apply their own policy for dealing with unmarried partners of people settled in the UK."

So the actual story is the Home Office had a policy which it didn't adhere too.

Moreover, the 'too much detail' on that cat was 'immaterial' and accepted as much by the Home Office.

So how does that become 'immigrant stays because of cat'?

Mail on Sunday columnist calls Moir 'homophobic, repulsive'

It looks bleak for Jan Moir.

Mail - and Mail on Saunday - columnists are distancing themselves from her deeply offensive views. Is the paper preparing to sack her, or are they hoping publishing critical comments will dilute the anger?

Janet Street-Porter says she was:

astonished to read in Jan Moir's column last Friday that his death 'strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships', and 'under the carapace of glittering hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see'.

She points out that she disagrees with Moir, saying she:

didn't think that Stephen Gately's death was sanitised, as Jan claims.

Then she asks something many of us have wondered:

What exactly was bothering Jan?

The fact Stephen was gay, the fact he was in a civil partnership, or the fact that he or his partner might have enjoyed sex with someone they had just met?

But that was as nothing compared to what columnist Suzanne Moore had to say. Her article is damning, although conveniently - and rather cowardly - avoids referring to her by name.

But from the headline 'Whatever killed Stephen, it wasn’t being gay' it's not hard to know who she's on about. She begins:

Let's get just one thing clear: the cause of Stephen Gately’s death was not gayness...

Those who pruriently pick over the circumstances of Gately’s death will find that no doctor signed a certificate with cause of death ‘homosexuality’.

Which is exactly the implication that so angered so many people about Moir's vile column.

Moore continues:

What has been so offensive to many are the insinuations that his death is connected to the death of comedian Matt Lucas’s ex. How is it?

Or that these tragedies are somehow the result of civil partnerships – as though ‘straight’ marriages are non-stop heaven.

Again, she is giving voice to what so many people were asking on Friday. And then:

A man was kicked to death in Central London recently by two teenage girls because he was gay.

So while many of us could not care less, homophobia is alive and kicking. It is repulsive to see it repeatedly kicking the corpse of a popular young guy.

Oof. So there it is.

Moore calls Moir offensive, prurient, homophobic and repulsive.

Of course, for someone who writes for the Mail newspapers to complain about homophobia just because there has been this outcry is a little like shutting the stable door.

As Paul Dacre is Editor-in-Chief of the Mail group titles, it is likely he will have approved these two columns.

But it's still not an apology.

And, as far as we know, Moir will be writing her bile again this week...

Will the Mail react to Moir as it expected the BBC to react over 'Sachsgate'?

The obnoxious way in which the Mail tried to occupy the moral high ground over the Sachsgate affair should come back to haunt them in the wake of the Jan Moir article about Stephen Gately.

Take this quote from a Mail on Sunday editorial on 25 October 2008:

It is astonishing to discover that this torrent of verbal sewage was pre-recorded, approved by a nameless 'senior executive' and then deliberately allowed to go out on the air.

Quite so. So would the Mail like to name the 'senior execuitve' who gave the go-ahead to Moir's torrent of written sewage?

Moir, of course, has issued a feeble 'response' but there was no hint of an apology from her. Or from the paper. Surely the Mail wouldn't accept a failure to apologise if others caused offence?

Many of us would much enjoy the sight of Mr Ross and Mr Brand offering a five-star grovelling apology, with BBC Director General Mark Thompson at their side.

Change the names for Moir and Paul Dacre, the Mail Editor, and yes, we'd very much enjoy that sight, thanks.

Mail columnist Stephen Glover was also up in arms, asking:

How could a man of such high morals preside over the BBC's descent into the gutter

Is he equally worried about the Mail's descent into the gutter under Dacre who regards himself as highly moral, despite the filth his newspaper all too often spews out?

Of the BBC DG, Glover added:

His statement was certainly everything one might have wished for, referring as it did to 'a gross lapse of taste that has angered licence payers', but it had to be wrung out of him.

Obviously there will be no such trouble extracting such an admission from Paul Dacre over Moir's 'gross lapse of taste that has angered readers', or Glover will surely be the first to complain. Won't he?

He also wrote:

The BBC still pumps out many programmes that offend against decency and taste, and are often particularly offensive to women.

Now who could quibble with this slight change to that sentence:

The Mail still pumps out many articles that offend against decency and taste, and are often particularly offensive to women.

Anyone? No, thought not. No doubt Glover will be taking exactly the same line in his media column in the Independent on Monday...

Of course Richard Littlejohn also weighed in:

This was the week decent people stood up and cried, like Peter Finch in the movie Network: 'We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more.'

We don't have to take it lying down. This has been a stunning victory for common decency over the self-appointed, self-obsessed, metropolitan narcissists who control so much of our public life.

At last, the secret people of England have spoken.

We will wait with baited breath to see if he thinks the same thing happened yesterday.

On 30 October, a Mail editorial gloated:

It's been a painfully slow business, but yesterday the BBC finally woke up to the huge offence it has caused by broadcasting the puerile obscenities of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.

The long-overdue decision to suspend the pair, followed by Brand's resignation, was a small victory for decency - and for licence-fee payers whose feelings the Corporation has insulted for far too long.

So how long before the Mail - which aside from the Moir statement has said nothing - finally wakes up to the huge offence it caused? Will it suspend Moir, who so many people think has insulted common decency?

This is, after all, reportedly the most complained about article in British newspaper history. That's some achievement and not one to be brushed off lightly.

In those circumstances, how can Dacre continue to Chair the Editor's Code Committee, which oversees the Code of Practice policed (ahem) by the PCC. He must be made to consider his position there, or it makes the PCC an even bigger joke than it already is.

The same editorial suggested:

Now he has finally broken off his holiday, Director-General Mark Thompson must address these questions with all urgency.

To which we ask - where is Paul Dacre and when is he going to address the questions raised by Moir's column?

The Mail also claimed:

when grotesque mistakes are made, nobody takes responsibility.

Moir certainly didn't take responsibility, choosing instead to lash out at mischievous gay activists who hadn't read her hateful article in full. So who at the Mail will?

The following day, another Mail editorial delighted in action taken by the BBC Trust:

After a week of prevarication, the BBC faced up to its responsibilities yesterday.

Well, that's one day of prevarication from the Mail, and counting...

The Mail added:

Lesley Douglas, the Radio 2 controller who recruited Brand and was ultimately responsible for the broadcast, rightly resigned.

So the person who was ultimately responsible did the right thing and resigned? Over to you then, Mr Dacre...

Corrections round-up

The Daily Star has published a staggering apology today:

On 29 September we stated, in an article headed “Blues are on the ball” that Chelsea football stars flirted with various Coronation Street and Hollyoaks actresses at the Sex and the City Ball while John Terry, Ashley Cole and Didier Drogba enjoyed “girly pampering treats” while they were staying at the Lowry Hotel in Manchester before a recent game.

We now accept that the players did not attend the ball and the story was therefore untrue.

We unreservedly apologise to Chelsea and to the players for making these allegations for any distress and embarrassment our article has caused.

The mind boggles as to how the original story was concocted, but given the revelations coming from the Starsuckers film, which shows the newspapers printing any old sleb crap without checking if it is, actually, you know, true, then it is not surprising apologies like this appear.

The Star does make up stories quite often. The Press Gazette reported yesterday that Peaches Geldof is to sue the paper over its front page story which heavily implied she was a prostitute ('Peaches: Spend night with me for £5k'). They apologised for that back in March but it seems Geldof wasn't satisfied with a page two apology for a front page lie. And rightly so.

Meanwhile, the People has apologised - and made a charitable donation - for an article about Justine McGuinness, a PR expert involved in the McCann case. The paper claimed she had overcharged the Madeleine fund to the tune of £20,000 and then been forced to resign. McGuinness disputed that and Mirror Group Newspapers were forced to back down:

MGN Limited had accepted that the allegations were incorrect and apologised. It agreed to make a donation to an undisclosed charity of Ms McGuinness's choice.

MGN's solicitor, Holly Mason, apologised for the distress and embarrassment caused.

What Jan Moir said about Peter Mandelson

A couple of weeks before she became (in)famous for the dreadful bigoted tripe she wrote about Stephen Gately, Jan Moir came up with some bizarre imaginary attraction between Peter Mandelson and George Osborne.

Is it just me or is there a volcanic sexual tension bubbling under the crust of the fraught relationship between Lord Mandelson and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne?

Once again, it's just you, Jan. She continued:

So as they both clip-clop up this Brokeback Mountain of mutual political desire, my fanciful homoerotic narrative buried deep and unknown in their respective saddles, we can be sure of one thing. It will all end in tears.

George Osborne, it should be noted, is married. But frankly, what the hell is she on about?

But when she turns to describing Mandelson in detail, those 'undertones' (ahem) of homophobia raise their head again:

Mandelson seems more ebullient than ever before, intoxicated with himself and his own fabulousness.

With his blue suede shoes, his peach mansion and his green tea devotionals, he is like a rock star camping it up on a farewell tour.

'Fabulousness'! Green tea'! 'Camping it up'! Because he's gay!

And then, in a phrase she probably found in the same book as Amanda Platell's 'chocolate labrador' remark:

It is as if, after all these years of clawing his way up the soil pipe of politics, the psychologically astute Mandelson has suddenly realised that lots of people don't like him.

'Soil pipe of politics'! Because he's gay!

That's the work of the same Jan Moir who denies being homophobic or a bigot. Thankfully, today she has been exposed.

Jan Moir: homophobic bigot

Reading Jan Moir's hateful, homophobic rant about Stephen Gately's death on the Mail website this morning was one of those totally jaw-dropping, lost for words moments that the tabloids still manage to inflict.

As Anton and Jamie and many, many others quickly pointed out, the problems with the article began with the headline:

Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death

Of course, the coroner said he died of natural causes: fluid on the lungs. But the use of natural, in quote marks, was for no other reason that to point out Gately was gay. It's saying: his death wasn't natural because he wasn't 'natural'.

But Moir's article was just as vile as that headline. She wrote:

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this.

So even when the coroner says 'natural causes', medical expert Moir says it can not be a natural death. Amazing.

And then there was the key passage:

Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

Let's be clear about this: the death of Gately says absolutely nothing about civil partnerships and it's an utter disgrace to suggest otherwise. Would Moir attack marriage because Harold Shipman or the Wests were married?

Of course not.

And notice how the second paragraph is phrased. 'Gay activists' makes it sound like heterosexual people don't call for 'tolerance and understanding about same sex relationships'. Moir proves she doesn't.

And then:

Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. In many cases, that may be true.

'They say' and 'in many cases that may be true'? Clearly Moir doesn't agree that all gay men are not like George Michael. Why would one man be representative of everyone? That's as clueless as yesterday's Express front page where all Muslims are tarnished because of the beliefs of a few.

Those gays are all out for cheap thrills in public toilets, she's saying.

To Moir same sex relationships, which she claims to support, are just not the same as heterosexual ones, because homosexuals just aren't quite the same. They aren't quite 'natural'.

And why the need to drag in the suicide of Kevin McGee? It is completely irrelevant to Gately's death unless you are trying to make some cretinous point that same sex civil partnerships are somehow a danger to your life. She appears to be saying Gately died of being gay.

That's why at the end of the article she refers to a:

very different and more dangerous lifestyle

Unsurprisingly, Twitter went beserk. Jan Moir became the trending topic. Stephen Fry weighed in. A Facebook campaign began. Then the Mail's advertisers started to get targetted. Did they want their products on the same page as Moir's bile?

Marks and Spencer's said no thanks:

"Marks & Spencer does not tolerate any form of discrimination," said a spokesman for the retailer. "We have asked the Daily Mail to move our advertisement away from the article. This is a matter for the Daily Mail."

The MediaGuardian story added:

Nestlé added that it contacted its media buying agency MindShare to investigate having its ad removed, but the Daily Mail had already stripped the web page of advertising.

That is wonderful. A brilliant example of how reader power in the new media age can hurt newspapers.

The Mail also decided to change the headline to:

A strange, lonely and troubling death . . .

'Lonely'? It's an odd choice of (replacement) word given how much Moir is intent on telling us that there were two other men in his apartment when he died.

But that change completely fails to repair the damage - the main hate is in the article. Changing the headline is re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

Charlie Brooker wrote an excellent piece; the story became the lead on MediaGuardian.

The PCC were bombarded with over 1,000 complaints which caused their website to crash. And their response was to suggest that unless there is a complaint from Gately's family, they'd ignore everything else.

Apparently, a general outcry over homophobia isn't good enough to warrant considering a complaint.

Which is why people using Twitter or Facebook are going to increasingly take direct action against newspapers in this way - targetting advertisers and online campaigns, for example. The PCC is simply not up to the job of keeping them in line, and dole out the most ineffective and feeble punishments for transgressions.

And then Jan Moir weighed back in with a 'response' - defiantly not an apology - of such crassness, it makes it all even worse. She doesn't even say sorry for the hurt she may have caused Gately's family. She begins:

Some people, particularly in the gay community...

See? It's those gays again, causing the trouble. She goes on:

However, the point of my column-which, I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read

Which is a totally obnoxious response. We have all read it, that's why we're all so pissed off.

She went on to repeat that there's is clearly something dodgy about Gately's death:

Yes, anyone can die at anytime of anything. However, it seems unlikely to me that what took place in the hours immediately preceding Gately's death - out all evening at a nightclub, taking illegal substances, bringing a stranger back to the flat, getting intimate with that stranger - did not have a bearing on his death.

'Anyone can die ay anytime of anything'? That's weird, because in the actual article, Moir stated quite clearly:

Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

But now they can?

And on the civil partnerships point, argued:

I was suggesting that civil partnerships - the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting - have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.

Well that's not really what you meant, is it Jan? Because that's not what you said. That's how we all came to misunderstand you. You were saying that two people in civil partnerships have died recently and tried to make the point that something about their lifestyle was to blame.

She ends:

In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.

It's an interesting use of the word 'undertones'. The homophobia and bigotry was there for all to see. Undertone doesn't even begin to describe it.

And for someone from the Mail - architect of the whole Sachsgate affair - to complain of a 'heavily orchestrated campaign' would be funny if Moir wasn't being so unpleasant. But the reaction was an entirely natural response to what was an awful, awful article. This is something everyone could read for themselves. It's not like, say, getting people riled up over a radio show from two weeks before that none of them had heard.

Of course, it was Moir who wielded the poison pen, but let's not forget that other people at the Mail must have OK'd the column before publication. Indeed the Belfast Telegraph reports that the piece did not appear in the printed Irish version of the paper. Was this an admission by Mail executives that they thought it was likely to be inflammatory?

And Mail editor Paul Dacre must seriously consider his position as Chair of the Code of Practice Committe. His paper has been responsible for what looks to be the most complained about newspaper article in PCC history. How can he possibly continue to sit on the Committee that oversees the Code, let alone Chair it?

Incidentally, on Sachsgate, Moir wrote:

They fatally underestimated public taste, values and our strong sense of British fair play.

Something Moir now knows all about.

News of the World makes liar deputy editor

Victoria Newton is to become Deputy Editor of the News of the World.

Editor Colin Myler commented:

'I am delighted to welcome Victoria to the News of the World. She is one of the brightest journalists of her generation'.

Hmm. Really? Perhaps he should take a look at the wonderful Vickywatch blog, which proves what a hopeless, lazy and dishonest plagiarist she actually is.

But then, the paper is trying to get over the phone-hacking scandal, where everyone was suddenly struck by a very convenient collective amnesia and no one seemed quite able to tell the truth. She will surely fit in very well.