Payouts latest

The Sunday Mirror has agreed to pay £30,000 in libel damages to Ed Buxton after running an article on 12 July that he had 'viciously attacked' Sophie Anderton The MediaGuardian explains:

Mirror Group Newspaper's legal representative Lindsay Hodgkinson, a solicitor at Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, apologised on behalf of the newspaper group.

"The defendant [the Sunday Mirror] is here today through me to offer its sincere apologies to the claimant for the damage, as well as the distress and embarrassment, caused to him by the publication of the article. The defendant acknowledges that this false and defamatory allegation should never have been published."

The Express' reliable sources

The Daily Express doesn't believe in climate change. This front page from last week made that clear. The quote marks around fraud show it is a quote from someone else but the phrasing makes it clear the, ahem, 'world's greatest newspaper' is of the same mind.

That was emphasised again on Tuesday 8 December when their Environment Editor's feeble article about Copenhagen was given the headline A load of hot air!

That's their exclamation mark, not mine.

And the sub-head was 'Climate change talks are £130m waste of time'.

£130m? Guess where that figure came from.

Yes, the TaxPayers' Alliance. Who else? It's not entirely clear what use this figure is, or even if it is very accurate. For example, all their calculations assume every one of the 15,000 delegates stays for the whole eleven days.

Also, they have allocated around £54 million to the salaries of delegates (the wages they are being paid from their job, over the eleven days of the conference) based on a median wage of £72,713. With enviable accuracy, they say:

While many delegates will be paid less than £72,713, many political, civil service and business leaders will be paid much more.

Glad that's clear then.

The Express has a graphic of figures 'relevant' to Copenhagen: 15,000 delegates, 5,000 journalists, 140 private jets, 1,200 limos and so on. It includes five figures from the TPA's report as if they are fact.

And also - just to show how serious the paper is about the subject - the really crucial number in the climate change debate:

1,400 prostitutes offering free sex to conference pass holders.

But the £130m is what the Express leads with, although they don't attribute the figure to the TPA, or even - shock! - quote them in the article.

That's even more miraculous given the third paragraph:

Critics claim the conference of 192 countries, costing £130million, is a “waste of time”.

As the article rumbles on, you wonder: who are these critics? Who are these climate change experts branding Copenhagen a:

summit of hot air.

Not the TPA but...the Association of British Drivers.

Yes, that world-renowned authority on climate change.

Their website looks similar to the cheap, cobbled-together mess of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, who also only get coverage because tabloid journalists are too lazy to do anything but go to the usual quote-whores.

It's not immediately clear how many members the Association of British Drivers has, but they have less than 400 followers on Twitter and less than 370 fans on Facebook. They're that influential. They believe environment policies are based on:

politics and hysteria

and say:

Find out how emotive scaremongering about pollution and man-made 'global warming' are being used to intimidate you out of your car.

So when a journalist phones them up to ask them about Copenhagen, they aren't looking for a rational and informed reaction. They want them to say something along the lines of:

'the summit of hot air...it is a huge waste of time and effort which is likely to severely damage the economic recovery of Europe'.

Which the Express then turns into the basis for a whole article: headline by the Association of British Drivers, sub-head by the TPA.

Brilliant.

The lack of repeats on prime time BBC1 over Xmas

With the Express' front page about repeats on television fresh in my mind, I sat down to look through the Christmas Radio Times. The expectation of seeing new programmes and film premieres were low.

But something didn't seem quite right. The Express called the BBC the 'worst offender' for showing repeats. The Telegraph said BBC1 viewers would experience 'television déjà vu'. Tory MP John Whittingdale said the 'BBC in particular should not be relying on old shows'. The TaxPayers' Alliance were, of course, seething (are they ever anything else?).

And yet, looking through the BBC1 listings, it seemed the 'critics' were exaggerating.

Surely not?

Firstly, the BBC1 do have the Sign Zone almost every night (well, early morning), which is when programmes are repeated with signing. Over the two weeks, that accounts for 25 hours of repeats.

Is that what the TPA regards as 'tired' and 'unacceptable' from the BBC?

Secondly, it is quite clear that the prime time schedule of BBC1 throughout the two-week period beginning on 19 December has very few repeats at all. Here's an entirely unscientific look at the schedule:

19/12 - 5.45pm-12.55am - no repeats
20/12 - 6.30pm-10.55pm - repeat of Countryfile (60 mins)
21/12 - 6.00pm-11.35pm - revised repeat of Nigella's Christmas Kitchen (30 mins)
22/12 - 6.00pm-1.15am - no repeats
23/12 - 6.00pm-11.15pm - no repeats
24/12 - 5.45pm-1.05am - repeat of Shrek 2 (85 mins)
25/12 - 6.00pm-11.45pm - no repeats
26/12 - 6.00pm-1.10am - no repeats
27/12 - 6.00pm-11.30pm - no repeats
28/12 - 6.20pm-1.20am - repeat of Wallace & Gromit (30 mins)
29/12 - 6.20pm-11.50pm - no repeats
30/12 - 6.20pm-12.15am - no repeats
31/12 - 5.50pm-12.15am - repeat of Dead Man's Chest (140 mins)
1/1 - 6.10pm-10.55pm - no repeats

Which means there will be five-and-three-quarter-hours of repeats in 85 hours of evening/night television on BBC1.

Of course, there are repeats on during the day (can't do without Murder, She Wrote apparently), and BBC 2 are wheeling out old episodes of Terry and June, Are You Being Served? and other comedies for their theme nights.

But assuming the TPA aren't expecting the BBC to show new programmes all day every day - with the knock-on increase in the licence fee that would entail - how can their Chief Executive Matthew Elliott say that:

'churning out hundreds of hours of tired programming is unacceptable behaviour and will leave licence fee payers feeling ripped off. Christmas, more than any other time of the year, is when people want quality entertainment, and Auntie is currently falling far short of the mark.'

It is petty bit of anti-BBC criticism, and it's not even accurate.

And BBC1 is showing The Incredibles, which gives them a free pass in my book.

On the subject of the TaxPayers' Alliance, here's another quick 'audit' of how lazy the newspapers are in always going to the TPA for a bit of predictable outrage. This is how many times each paper (including their Scottish and Sunday versions) has published a quote from them in the ten days since 1 December:

Express: 19
Mail: 15
Telegraph: 9
Mirror:4
Times: 4
Sun: 3
Star: 2
Guardian: 2
Independent: 1

Elliott Matthew, from the entirely fictional NewspaperReaders' Alliance, said:

'Churning out hundreds of tired quotes is unacceptable behaviour and will leave newspaper readers feeling ripped off. People want quality reaction quotes, and the newspapers and the TaxPayers' Alliance are currently falling far short of the mark.'

Money for old rope

Mail Editor Paul Dacre received a pay and benefits package of £1,635,000 this year.

That's a £14,000 increase on 2008.

That's also nearly eight-and-a-half times what the Prime Minister is paid.

Question for Mail columnist Melanie Phillips - does she believe Dacre is worth that much more than the PM? If not, is she going to write a column criticising that level of pay?

The Mail prints Littlejohn, Platell, Moir, Jones, Pearson and Phillips. It writes lies about immigration, Islam, political correctness, health and safety, and health. It's small minded, intolerant, racist, homophobic. It is obsessed with Suri Cruise, wheelie bins, Kim Kardashian and pointless attacks on the BBC. It has published the most complained-about article in British newspaper history.

And someone, somewhere thinks the man responsible for all that is worth £1,635,000 per year.

Staggering.

Mail admires 'pretty' 11-year-old with 'innocent smile'

After a series of decidedly creepy articles about the pre-school-age Suri Cruise and the picture of a fourteen-year-old's bum, the Mail is at it again, with the groundbreaking revelation that someone who is now 25 was once 11:


Now, there's nothing wrong with Perry putting a pic of her younger self on Twitter - the same evil Twitter the Mail seems to get lots of stories from.

But there's plenty wrong with the Mail using the picture and referring to her as a:

pretty, wide-eyed little girl

with an

innocent smile

and noting

My, hasn't she grown!

And all that is just above a very sexualised recent pic of Perry showing lots of cleavage and with her tongue out - a snap they first used a few days ago. It's all a bit weird.

Their colleagues at the Metro also go overboard in their descriptions:

Who is this wide-eyed, fresh-faced little lady? Surely not one of today's naughtiest pop sirens?

And then:

Who would have thought that this fresh-faced little princess would grow up to become a multi-platinum-selling pop vixen

And just in case you haven't go the picture:

who could have known that this angelic little lady would mature into the sexy saucepot

This juxtaposing of a child and a sexualised adult is troubling and, as with the Suri articles, it's not immediately obvious why they continually use this curious and inappropriate tone and language.

As Tracy Morter noted on Twitter, the Mail appears to be increasingly resembling 'some dodgy uncle with a bag of Werther's'.

Rolling back the lies

On 29 October, The Sun ran a story with the headline Asda till snub for Hope for Heroes mum. It claimed:

Mum-of-three Beth Hoyle claims an Asda till worker refused to serve her because she was wearing a wristband backing injured troops.

Beth says the checkout lad told her the band for Help for Heroes - aided by The Sun - meant she supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And when she complained to a supervisor, he BACKED the Asian youth, saying he was entitled to his view.

Beth, 40, who has two brothers in the services, said the checkout worker told her he didn't want to serve her because of "what she was wearing."

Asda responded by apologising to the mother (based on the allegations) and launched an investigation.

Two weeks later, Asda issued the following statement:

We’ve come to the end of our investigation at Asda Rochdale and can’t find any truth in the allegation that one of our colleagues refused to serve a customer for wearing a Help for Heroes wristband.

Our regional operations manager Paul Rowland said: “We’ve completed our investigation and it’s clear this exchange never happened. We’ve interviewed over 400 colleagues in the store, examined over three days worth of CCTV footage and talked to other customers and we can find absolutely no evidence that a colleague said what was alleged.”

Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they? But as the spokesman quoted in the Sun article says Asda sell the Help for Heroes wristbands and badges in store, the story never made much sense.

They continued:

“We are disappointed and angry that right-wing groups are using this mythical incident to whip up racial hatred,” said Paul. “Thankfully the people of Rochdale will see straight through that. We remain big supporters of the work our troops do serving our country.”

Some of the comments on the ASDA statement suggest the rumour started on right-wing Facebook groups. If you Google 'Beth Hoyle and Asda' the first result is the 'Exposing Islam' blog. The National Front comes up a bit later. It's very hard to find the results of the Asda investigation.

But using mythical incidents to whip up hatred? Surely the Sun wouldn't do such a thing?

Would they?

(hat-tip to Paul Bryant)

Jon Gaunt and the tsunami of cliches

The Sun has quietly dropped the word 'daily' from the 'new blog of Jon Gaunt'. It seems their Littlejohn-lite couldn't keep up with churning it out every day having written 14 entries in five weeks.

And his woeful post attacking Gordon Brown's condolence letter (and Simon Cowell), which included almost too many spelling and grammatical mistakes to mention, has still not been corrected.

Eventhough it's stopped being daily, it's clear that Gaunt doesn't have the original ideas required to write such a regular blog.

For example, here's how Gaunt dealth with immigration in his first post, addressed to the Home Secretary, on 29 October:

the tsunami of immigrants you have allowed to swamp Britain.

He argues this wasn't racist; this blog argued using words like tsunami and swamp suggest he probably is.

The very next day, he wrote about a (non-existent):

secret plan to let a tsunami of immigrants into our green and pleasant land.

A few days later, on 3 November, he was talking about Alan Johnson again, who had:

arrogantly dismissed all our concerns about the tsunami of immigrants that are flooding Britain.

Hmm. On 30 November he was talking about the slightly curious story of a Somalian family living in a large house on benefit:

I am only just recovering form the tsunami of phone calls my radio show received to day from people outraged about the Somalian asylum seeker who is living in a house that is costing the rest of us taxpaying mugs £1600 a week in rent.

A slightly different immigration-related tsunami, but still he links the two.

And then a couple of days ago, guess what? A rant about 'New Labour social engineers' who have, apparently:

denounced any white working class person as a racist if they have dared to mention the tsunami of immigrants that Labour have let in to our green and pleasant land. A tsunami that has deflated wages, taken working class jobs and used up precious resources.

A tsunami of immigrants and they're all to blame for everything. Got that?

And just in case all that language wasn't sounding quite enough like the BNP, he wheels out the racist's favourite:

Britain is full

Even if he must talk about immigration in this way, surely as a journalist, someone who works with words, he can come up with a slightly different phrase once in while.

Ahh, but he's Littlejohn-lite. Of course he can't come up with something new.

Is this really today's Daily Star?

Please ensure you are sitting down for this, because it is shocking:


After 19 consecutive appearances, it's the first time since 15 November that Jordan has not been on the front page of the Daily Star.

Surely they haven't finally run out of made-up stories to write about her?

Damages round-up

A cracking end-of-the-week for the newspapers and their lawyers. First up, yet another libel payout by one of Richard Desmond's rags:

Earl Spencer and his daughter Kitty today accepted substantial damages today over false claims made by the Sunday Express that they acted improperly over his divorce... Today, the court was told the newspaper had offered its sincere apologies for the distress and embarrassment caused and had agreed to pay substantial damages and their legal costs in full.

But Rupert Murdoch has two substantial lots of damages to pay. First, to Derek Simpson of the Unite union:

Union leader Derek Simpson today accepted undisclosed damages from the News of the World after it claimed he took unfair advantage in an election he eventually won. Simpson, the joint general secretary of Unite, brought High Court proceedings over an article published in October.

His solicitor, Athalie Matthews, told Mr Justice Eady in London the article alleged that Simpson was guilty of a breach of election rules and misusing union funds which gave him an unfair advantage in the March election. It stated that he had sent a mailshot to Unite's members six weeks before the election and, as a result of this, was to be fined £100,000 or would have to retire early.

All the allegations were untrue, Matthews said, adding: "The publication of this article caused Mr Simpson considerable distress and embarrassment.

"He was especially concerned that it could cause Unite members to suspect him of cheating in the election and thus to question the validity of his election.

"He was also understandably concerned that falsely suggesting that he might have to retire within six months could undermine his leadership and destabilise the union."

News Group Newspapers, publisher of the News of the Word, had apologised and agreed to pay Simpson damages and legal costs. The newspaper's solicitor, Patrick Callaghan, said it wished to make clear that it was entirely mistaken in publishing the allegations.

He added: "It did so in reliance on a source which it believed to be reliable. As such, the News of the World apologises to Mr Simpson for this article and for the distress and embarrassment it has caused him."

And (thanks to Sun - Tabloid Lies) a reminder that the Sun will be paying £75,000 in libel damages to Mohammed George for calling him a woman-beater, which they also have to tell their readers about now:

Former EastEnders star Mo George has been awarded £75,000 libel damages over a Sun article which a jury ruled wrongly branded him a woman beater. The actor's lawyer Ronald Thwaites, QC, told the High Court the article left Mr George depressed and unwilling to go out. After the case, Mr George, 26, said: "I want to thank all my friends and family who have supported me through all of this." Publishers News Group Newspapers had denied libel, claimed justification and maintained the article was true.

Striking a blow for the likeable Mail columnist myth

Mail columnist Jan Moir has decided to give everyone the benefit of her opinions on Tiger Woods and his 'transgressions'.

Weirdly, as several of the comments point out, she hasn't decided that the single case of this married father-of-two having an affair

strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of heterosexual marriage.

Which, of course, she did say about civil partnerships in her infamous column about Stephen Gately.

She also declares that Woods is:

not in any position to lecture anyone at all about principles.

But the hatred-spewing Moir is. Apparently.

Mail columnist complains about cynically exploiting girls' bodies for commercial gains

A few days ago, the Daily Quail wrote a Super sexy misogyny special which looked at several recent news-free articles from the Mail which were published mainly to get lots of celebrity flesh on the website.

Missing from the list was the Serena Williams 'swimsuit malfunction' article, which went so far as to show the actual moment the tennis player's nipple was exposed. All in the name of quality journalism, as Mail Online Editor Martin 'news is far more important to us than showbiz' Clarke would undoubtedly claim.

The infamous Daily Mail Reporter tried to link the Williams picture to the £50,000 fine handed out for her outburst at the US Open, in a desperate attempt to give it a news angle. But as they had already covered that story, they were fooling no-one.

Still, the Mail's been a bit undecided about what to do with nipples this week (although a few weeks ago they were gutted they didn't see one). It happily showed Serena's but in Bel Mooney's article about the sexual revolution, a stock photo of naked hippies was censored. Well, sort of - the picture on the article contained pixellated nipples, apparently to spare us this dreadful, corrupting image:


Yet on the Mail's homepage, the trail for the article contained no such censorship:

And if you search for the article, it's not censored on the results page either.

Mooney's article was very strange and more than a little hypocritical. She criticises Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes for being bad role models for letting Suri wear heels, but doesn't criticise media outlets such as the Mail who disseminate dozens of pictures of her in heels and say she is 'growing up fast'.

She talks - in the Mail - of:

girls feeling abused and full of hate for their bodies - the very bodies so cynically exploited for commercial gains throughout a sexualised media.

Something the Mail would never, ever do, of course.

They wouldn't use four pictures of 19-year old Taylor Swift in her bikini and call her 'slender' and a 'bikini babe', would they? They wouldn't write in bold near the top of the article that you can scroll down to watch a video of her in said bikini?

And then, deciding Swift is perhaps too old, surely they wouldn't dream of printing five pictures of the 17-year old Miley Cyrus looking 'pretty' as she 'paraded around' in a 'skimpy neon pink two-piece'?

That wouldn't be cynically exploiting girls' bodies for commercial gains, would it?

Incidentally, that Miley Cyrus article was written by a Georgina Littlejohn, who has been busily churning out 15 articles for the Mail website in the last four day, all in the worthless celebrity gossip genre.

It appears that Georgina is indeed Richard's daughter.

Who said 'nepotism' at the back? The Mail has taken a stand against nepotism and people 'giving plum jobs to their friends' children' on many occasions, so obviously she got the job solely on merit. Obviously...

Going on the evidence so far, she's not much better at being a journalist than her father.

Nothing says Christmas more than putting a tea towel on a child's head

Those original thinkers at the Mail have come up with yet another pointless attack on the BBC:

Not sure about the 'the' in the headline - surely it works better without it?

But anyway, is the Mail really trying to claim the BBC don't like the word 'Nativity'? Really?

Because last Friday a film was released in cinemas nationwide called Nativity! and it was co-produced by, errr, BBC Films.

Yes. They must absolutely hate the word to produce a film with that as the title.

As for the substance of the article - if you can describe it as substance - it is mainly an excuse for journalist Laura Kemp to have a go at CBeebies for not forcing programmes about the Nativity down the throats of their audience of under-6s.

Back in June, in the Mail, Kemp wrote about how awful CBeebies was, so it's hard to know why she cares what they put out anyway.

But her argument doesn't even stand up because she explains there is a Nativity programme on after all. It even has the 'dirty' word in the title:

the sole programme completely dedicated to the birth of Christ, the Tikkabilla Nativity, will be broadcast on Christmas Day.

So a programme 'dedicated' to the birth of Christ goes out on Christmas Day. And this isn't good enough? Apparently not:

toddlers will be too busy opening parcels and spending precious time with family to watch TV.

Elsewhere in the article she attacks:

today’s blatant consumerism

and yet thinks her two year old is going to be too busy opening all his presents to watch the programme about why he has those presents. Hmm.

In any case, most kids learn about the Nativity as soon as they spend a Christmas in school. And if she's really bothered about him learning about the birth of Christ, perhaps she should teach him herself rather than sticking him in front of the TV and hoping that'll do the job for her.

She admits to having tried:

My attempts so far have stretched to My First Nativity Book at bedtime, a shepherd-like tea towel on his head which he thought was a game of ‘boo!’, a trip to church, and a glue-and-glitter cardboard star of Bethlehem.

But none of those was as engaging as a well-made and informative programme would be to a young mind.

So Tikkabilla Nativity on Christmas Day isn't good enough but sticking a tea-towel on the head of a two-year old is?

Perhaps she should stop trying to force religion down his throat. But it's more than likely, he's just too young to care.

She goes on:

Aside from Tikkabilla, the BBC has proudly informed me that one part of one episode of a programme called the Green Balloon Club will feature the Nativity.

Right. So that's now two programmes that will feature the Nativity. And a feature film, called Nativity! What about their website:

The BBC may claim its website for youngsters will contain references to the Nativity, but how many tots do you know who can log on to the internet, resist the temptation to fiddle with the keyboard and sit still for long enough to take it in?

A quick look at the CBeebies website reveals they have a Finger Puppet Nativity which gives instructions for kids and parents to make a Nativity scene for themselves.

So the BBC hate the Nativity so much they are encouraging kids to make their own stable scene.

Of course, this isn't about the Nativity per se, but another attack on the BBC for hating Christians. That's despite the six-part History of Christianity that Auntie is currently showing. Kemp rambles on about winterval lights and political correctness gone mad and Christians being under siege from other religions and all the usual Mail myths.

She says:

I’m not saying the BBC should bash its young viewers over the head with a Bible; however, there is room in the scheduling, beyond its current tokenistic effort, to explain the inherent connection between Christmas and Christianity.

No, she's saying the BBC should bash everyone over the head with a Bible.

And on her second point - surely putting out a Nativity programme on Christmas Day, is the perfect way to make the connection 'between Christmas and Christianity'?

(Hat-tip to Jim Hawkins)

Express repeats repeats story

The (ahem) 'World's Greatest Newspaper' is leading with the really crucial issues of the day again today.

More important than Obama's speech on extra troops for Afghanistan is the news that there will be some repeats on TV over Christmas.

A stunning revelation indeed.

Does the headline make sense? Not really. 'Christmas TV includes 600 hours of repeats' would be better. The way it is worded (with 'is') makes it sound as if 600 hours of repeats is all that is on.

The first version of this story to appear on the Express website - now removed - was so poor they hadn't even bothered to find a half-decent person to be outraged by this non-scandal.

Instead, they spared no expense in getting reaction from Mike Ward. Who?

Mike Ward, Daily Express TV critic

Ah.

In the updated version, there are a couple of quotes from politicians which the Express appears to have swiped from the Telegraph, whose version of the story appeared online at 7:30am yesterday. That's how groundbreaking the Express' front page is.

But they have managed to get one new quote about how the BBC is a huge disappointment. Guess where from? Yes, it's Matthew Elliott from the TaxPayers' Alliance. Where would the tabloids be without them? Elliott splutters:

'churning out hundreds of hours of tired programming is unacceptable behaviour and will leave licence fee payers feeling ripped off. Christmas, more than any other time of the year, is when people want quality entertainment, and Auntie is currently falling far short of the mark.'

Tired repeats are something the quote-machines at the TPA know all about. It's not immediately obvious why they think the BBC has to be better at Christmas than the rest of the year - surely most right-minded people would rather they were better for 50 weeks of the year, rather than two?

As for falling short on quality entertainment, has Elliott not seen Life? In any two minutes of that incredible series you will find more that is informative, interesting and intelligent than in anything his ludicrously predictable, utterly humourless, kneejerk organisation has ever said or done.

The repeats figures themselves seem rather underwhelming. For one thing, the number of hours is actually 580, as the story reveals in the third paragraph.

Also, 580 hours of repeats over the five main channels over 14 days only equates to about a third of their output. Given that the repeats figure includes films, that doesn't seem that bad.

Besides, wouldn't the Express be the first to complain if shows such as Morecombe and Wise weren't shown? Wouldn't that be yet another sign that British traditions are under threat?

And isn't a bit rich for the Express - the Express - to complain of repeats? The paper that put Madeleine McCann conspiracy theories on the front page for around 90 consecutive days. That has put Diana on the front page with tedious regularity over the last 12 years. That reheats racist columns. That in the last few weeks has regurgitated cereal, tea and mushroom stories.

Oh and, err, which paper was it that in December 2008 was complaining about the number of repeats on television over Christmas?

A round-up of Mail fail

A slightly different post, which is going to round-up several links to great posts elsewhere, and also take a very quick look over some of the other stories that haven't been mentioned here, despite best intentions.

Last Friday, the Express' disgraceful scaremongering front page and vile BNP-style rhetoric seemed on course to be the worst article of the day. But then up popped Sue Reid with the putrid Mapping out the strain on your NHS: 243 sick babies treated in one London hospital ward.... and just 18 mothers come from Britain.

It riled up the Mail readers in precisely the way that she and the Mail wanted. Health tourism, scrounging immigrants, look what they're getting instead of you - it's classic anti-immigrant fodder. It just wasn't true. Rather than some startling new report or any kind of reliable research, the story was based on the stickers on a map pinned to the wall of a hospital. Brilliant.

When first published, the article contained no statement from the hospital. When it was updated later to include this, the spokesman's words completely destroyed the story. So naturally it was stuck at the end in the hope no one would notice.

So eventhough the hospital said the stickers represented not just mothers of babies, but also of hospital staff, the Mail continued to claim it was about '243 mothers'.

Despite the hospital saying only 2 out of 550 admission this year were recorded as 'overseas admissions' the Mail continued to claim British babies were massively outnumbered.

In any case, as the Mail's graphic shows, the British Isles are completely covered by stickers, which would more than likely put people off adding yet another to that area.

And of course there's the basic decency of referring to sick babies as a 'strain' on the NHS.

Five Chinese Crackers covered the story fully, including background on Sue Reid's anti-immigration views.

5CC also asked Why 70 million anyway? as he wondered why the tabloids are so obessesed with that particular figure in the immigration debate. And in the latest 'PC gone mad: Xmas edition' saga, how the Mail reports on Scrooge police 'ban' Christmas carol singers because of stranger dangers'. Which, of course, they haven't. But you knew that just from the headline anyway.

Still with the Mail, Jonathan at No Sleep til Brooklands has done an excellent job destroying Jan Moir's latest idiotic column, called The madness of lessons in wife-beating. She deliberately misleads on what the 'lessons' actually are but thinks that teaching kids not to beat up women is, generally, a 'bad thing'.

She also, brilliantly, wants thanks for not invading Poland.

Jonathan has also looked at yet another Mail attack on the BBC over climate change, which was one of several non-stories about the Beeb that Dacre's rag couldn't resist.

Another was BBC radio presenter sparks complaints by playing When Harry Met Sally 'orgasm' clip on school-run show. DJ Steve Harris from Radio Solent played the 'I'll have what she's having' clip from said film. There was just one slight problem with the headline, which was revealed in the last paragraph (as usual):

Last night the BBC said: 'We've had not a single complaint or comment.'

Oh.

Talking of Mail obsessions, it's been rather quiet on the Kim Kardashian front recently, but she roared back into the Mail's good books when she posted a picture of her 'astonishing new figure', clad in a bikini, on Twitter.

And despite Twitter being evil and Kardashian being a nobody for most people in the UK, the Mail happily reprinted it. That was one of only four appearances in November, compared with eleven in October. Is she falling out of favour with the Mail Online 'newshounds'? Not quite - they've even given her her own section where all articles mentioning her are nicely date-ordered. Bless.

Of course, the Mail is fascinated by someone else now - Suri Cruise. The Daily Quail has done an superb job of rounding up the obsessive and genuinely creepy Mail coverage of this three year old.

Last week, this blog noted that in the last two months, Muslim graves in a Manchester cemetery had been desecrated three times. In that period, the Mail has run around 20 articles on Suri Cruise. It hasn't mentioned the graves once.

Still on the subject of Mail Online paparazzi garbage, there was a curious, but rather telling headline about last year's X Factor winner: Spotty Alexandra Burke braves her fans without any make-up.

So a 21-year old has spots. What news! And let's all point and laugh at her. But what the hell does the Mail mean by 'brave'? Being a soldier or fireman is brave. Going outside without make-up, err, isn't. Unless, like the Mail, you believe that women have to be covered in make-up and dressed flawlessly before they should be allowed out. What a hateful view the Mail has of women.

Still, at least Mail Editor Paul Dacre is the very pinnacle of fashion and grooming and would never be seen with a ridiculous hair style.

Here's a question for the Mail - why is it when two male musicians kiss it is 'crude' and 'provocative' and yet when two twentysomething actresses kiss it's (nudge, wink) 'naughty'?

Not that the Mail could ever be homophobic - the PCC has said so. On 4 November, the PCC ruled on Ephraim Hardcastle comments that Iain Dale was 'overtly gay' and implied something along the lines of a 'gay mafia' when he stated:

Isn't it charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause?

Dale called the Mail 'hateful' and 'homophobic'. Apparently, he'd only just noticed...

The PCC seemed to agree that the comments were 'snide and objectionable' but did not consider the piece:

an arbitrary attack on him on the basis of his sexuality.

As usual, that's totally puzzling, because without the references to Dale's sexuality, there would have been no article. The Commission concluded:

While people may occasionally be insulted or upset by what is said about them in newspapers, the right to freedom of expression that journalists enjoy also includes the right – within the law – to give offence.

To all the people who complained about the Jan Moir article, your might find a clue as to how the PCC will rule in that sentence.

Not that Hardcastle was in any way worried. A few days before the Dale ruling, he wrote:

Europe Minister Chris Bryant, who once posed in Y-fronts on a gay website, is wheeled out by BBC2's programme for chronic insomniacs, Newsnight, to promote Tony Blair as 'EU President'.

He ridiculed his Tory opposite numbers, Mark Francois, and William Hague, as 'Dastardly and Muttley' - the villainous characters in The Wacky Races TV cartoon.

With Bryant as the show's pink-car-driving beauty, Penelope Pitstop, presumably?

Pink. Girl. Because he's gay. Do you see?

In the same column, Hardcastle wrote this totally inane comment:

The performance of Peter Capaldi as a Number 10 spin doctor in TV's The Thick Of It, written by literary flavour-of-the-week Armando Iannucci, is nothing like the man he's meant to represent, retired Blair mouthpiece Alastair Campbell.

Yet it's praised to the rafters. How puzzling.

It's hard to figure out exactly what point he is trying to make, or what the point is of any of that drivel. He thinks it's 'puzzling' that an actor gets praised for a superb performance?

What?

The Daily Eggspress (sorry)

The dangers of salt. The wonder of cereal. The wonder of mushrooms. And now the danger of eggs.

And not just any eggs. But dirty, scrounging, come-over-here-and-work-on-the-cheap foreign eggs.

As usual with any Express story, but particularly their health ones, the headline says something the article doesn't.

The sub-head makes it absolutely clear 'cheap imports from Spain' are to blame.

And yet that's not quite the case - as journalist Louise Barnett should now as much of her article is little more than a copy-and-paste job from this Food Standards Agency press release.

Indeed, the Express even quotes the key passage:

Although there is no conclusive evidence yet, the clusters may be linked to eggs sourced from outside the UK and used in these establishments. Investigations are ongoing into a possible link to eggs sourced from an approved establishment in Spain.

So not quite what the front page claims then. Furthermore, the Health Protection Agency report adds further facts. Of the 443 cases of salmonella recorded in 2009, 144 cases are linked to 14 outbreaks. Of these:

eggs collected from catering premises in five of the outbreaks (three oriental restaurants, two cafes) were produced from the same approved establishment in Spain.

So taking a very rough estimate of ten cases per outbreak, that could mean only 50 cases of the 443 total may be linked to Spanish eggs. What the Express doesn't reveal is that 53 of the cases have been confirmed as 'indigenous'.

It would have been sensible to wait for the full results of FSA and HPA tests before splashing this all over the front of newspaper.

But the Express just can't resist a health scare story - especially one that attacks foreigners at the same time.