Mail corrects Littlejohn column

The 'Clarifications and corrections' column in today's Mail includes this:

A recent column said that EU regulations prevent the Women’s Institute from selling jam in re-used jars. In fact the rules apply only to commercial food businesses.

The 'recent column' was written by Richard Littlejohn and was mentioned on this blog on Tuesday.

This correction was published (at time of writing) ten hours ago on the Mail's website. But they haven't bothered to edit the original column - the incorrect claim remains there, and this correction hasn't been added to article. It doesn't appear anywhere on today's Littlejohn column either, so his regular readers may not even realise this has been corrected.

Moreover, the original news article, which made the same false claims back in October, remains live on their website and has never been removed or edited or corrected.

In the circumstances, it might make sense if they acted in some way over the original and then apologised for giving their readers the same, untrue information twice.

Littlejohn reheats 're-using jam jars' story

Richard Littlejohn devotes much of his column in today's Mail to the horsemeat scandal. In it, he says:

Funny how the EU can enforce strict food hygiene regulations which prevent the Women’s Institute selling jam in second-hand jars but can’t stop Eastern European horsemeat being passed off as beef.

Regular readers may remember this 'story' from October, when the EC Commission Representative in the UK dismissed tabloid stories on a 'ban' on re-using jam jars at fetes as:

completely untrue. There are no EU laws, new or old, which ban re-using old jam jars for fetes.

A question was asked in the European Parliament on this issue following the media coverage. The answer, from Tonio Borg for the European Commission, was published on 14 December. It made clear:

In the Guidance document on the implementation of certain provisions of Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs (SANCO/1731/2008 Rev. 6), the Commission indeed specified that "the occasional handling, preparation, storage and serving of food by private persons at events such as church, school or village fairs are not covered by the scope of the Regulation"...

Therefore, the Commission can confirm that, as long as the preparation, handling and selling of jams at local events to raise money for worthy causes is an occasional activity, it is not covered by Regulation (EC) No 852/2004. Rules governing such activities are established by Member States under national law.

A WI press release from 4 January 2013 confirmed:

Legislation is predominantly aimed at food businesses and excludes occasional activity with respect to charities; therefore the recent interest does not apply to infrequent charitable activities. 

Despite all this, Littlejohn claims not only that there are 'strict' regulations banning the WI selling jam in re-used jars, but that the EU are 'enforcing' them.

(Hat-tip to James)

Littlejohn and 'callous indifference'

In March 2011, this blog noted:

You know that when Richard Littlejohn begins one of his columns sounding as if he's being sincere and caring, it won't last long.

In that case, he was writing about the Japanese tsunami. He started by saying that no one could fail to be moved by the scenes of destruction, before labelling the Japanese 'militantly racist' and recounting his dead grandfather's experiences during the Second World War.

On 27 December, Littlejohn decided to write about the death of three people - including two children - in an accident on the M6 on Christmas Day:

Saddest story of the week was the death of two young brothers, aged four and ten, in a crash on the northbound M6 in Staffordshire on Christmas morning. Their mother, who was driving the car, survived, but another woman passenger was also killed.

They were on their way to a family wedding when their Ford Focus came off the road and struck a tree.

Police immediately closed the motorway in both directions as rescuers and an air ambulance raced to the scene.

And when he begins sounding sincere, you know it won't last long...

We all appreciate that in the event of a fatal accident the emergency services must be given room to do their job. But patience begins to wear gossamer thin when the road remains closed for hours on end for no good reason...

There is no visible debris, so why couldn’t one or two lanes have been opened at the earliest opportunity?

Most of these people will have been on their way to spend Christmas Day with friends and family.

With no public transport available they had no choice but to take the car.

There can be no justification for forcing them to spend a moment longer than absolutely necessary stuck on the M6.

This, of course, fits into the Littlejohn narrative about over-the-top policing and 'health and safety Nazis'. But it's hard to imagine how this tragedy could lead someone into a rant about the inconvenience of road closures.

Littlejohn says:

There will probably be those who will accuse me of using these tragic deaths as a stick to beat the police. I can’t help that...

But ruining the Christmas Day of thousands of other people by forcing them to spend hours stranded in their cars unnecessarily was an act of callous indifference on the part of the police.

'Callous indifference' indeed.

Littlejohn appears not to have spoken to the police or the Highways Agency, nor does he seem to have been anywhere near the scene of the accident.

Photographer Michael Rawlins was there, and he has blogged about how many of Littlejohn's assumptions are as ill-informed as you might expect.

For example, Littlejohn says:

The accident on the M6 happened at 11.25am. Though the southbound carriage-way was reopened in the afternoon, the northbound carriageway stayed shut for several hours until early evening.

Rawlins points out that the soutbound carriage only re-opened around 2:30pm because:

the 3 bodies had only just been removed from the scene some 10 minutes earlier...It stands to reason that the southbound carriageway would also remain closed until this had happened, the last thing you need is an accident on the opposite carriageway because someone was rubbernecking.

Littlejohn also refers to a:

three-lane tailback of stationary cars and lorries stretching goodness knows how many miles into the distance.

A photo taken by Rawlins (at 2pm) one mile south of the accident shows:

vehicles are travelling south on the north bound carriageway... escorted by a Highways Agency vehicle not shown in this picture. If the blue sign is about a mile from the accident and other than the truck on the inside lane there is no stationary traffic then this debunks Littlejohn’s statement somewhat.

Rawlins adds:

I’m sure there were some tailbacks at Jct14 to the south but I drove from there up to the crash site along the diversion route and it wasn’t any busier than a normal weekday evening.

The real tragedy is that 3 people lost their lives on Christmas Day, families have lost 3 very loved people. The bigger tragedy is Littlejohn gets away with spouting this rubbish.

The anonymous police blogger Nathan Constable has also written about Littlejohn's article, labelling it 'horrible' and a 'poor-taste cheap shot'. He writes:

it’s not “just one vehicle involved” – the witnesses and other motorists have just watched this horror story unfold in front of their eyes and most will not have the desensitisation that the emergency service people have.

It is quite likely that the first few cars in the now huge queue will have witnesses on board. They will quite possibly be traumatised as well as having important information to share. You don’t just wave people on and hope they think to call in later.

He goes on:

So it’s not “just one vehicle involved” is it Mr Littlejohn? Emergency service personnel don’t just pack up and go home for tea and medals. In the incident I dealt with six months ago I went home and cried and I am about as cynical as they come.

And even if it was “just one vehicle involved” we still need to find out how and why this happened.

Was another driver driving dangerously?
Did they perform a manoeuvre so dangerous it was criminal?
Is someone else responsible?
Have the mechanics of the car been tampered with?
Is it murder?
Is it suicide?

You see – its not as simple as saying that “everything points to it being a tragic accident” within an hour of getting there. 

He adds:

The arrogance and ignorance it must take to write something like this simply staggers me.

Mail on Sunday corrects '£190,000 for two road signs' story

In his column on 11 September, Richard Littlejohn said:

The picturesque Yorkshire town of Masham has been pushed off the map by bungling bureaucrats.

After the nearby A1 was upgraded to a six-lane motorway, the nearest junction to Masham was closed and passing trade dried up.

Local councillors and business owners asked the Highways Agency to relocate direction signs to another junction two miles south, but they were told it would be too expensive. When they offered to pay for the signs themselves, they were quoted a staggering £190,000. After a bit of haggling, the agency agreed to reduce the price to £30,000 — way beyond the means of the town, which has suffered hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost business.

Heaven only knows where they came up with £190,000 for two road signs. Even 30 grand is an absurd amount of money.

Out of interest, I checked the website of Archer Safety Signs, which supplies everything from No Entry and Keep Left notices to public footpath signs.

How much? Have a guess. Not even close. Prices range from £38.75 for a national speed limit sign up to £53.60 for something more elaborate. Archer will also do you a nice line in posts and fittings, starting at just over £19. Chuck in a bag of cement and a couple of blokes with shovels, and it’s job done for under 500 quid, all in.

So how did the Highways Agency come up with a quote of £190,000? Your guess is as good as mine. Still, it’s not their money.

If you’ve ever wondered why public works projects always end up costing ten times the original estimate, look no further.

This was based on an article in the Mail on Sunday two days before, which said:

...an initial assessment by the Highways Agency costed the two signs at £190,000.

This was eventually reduced to £36,000.

Today, the Mail on Sunday has corrected the story:

Last week’s news story about Masham, Yorks, ‘The town that was wiped off the map’, said the Highways Agency had costed two road signs on the A1(M) at £190,000. In fact this was for nine signs on the motorway and roads to Masham.

The Highways Agency's statement on the issue says:

The Highways Agency’s position is that the initial estimate of approximately £190,000 was based on providing a full complement of nine signs on both carriageways and at junctions. This was regarded as too expensive and so the Highways Agency then consulted extensively with the community to develop a more-modest proposal, with a revised estimate for two signs on the northbound carriageway.

The cost estimate included design, road safety auditing of the scheme, manufacturing and installing the signs and posts, site supervision and temporary traffic management during the work.

'Firefighters were not stopped from entering the water due to health and safety protocols'

On Friday, the Mail was so excited about what it claimed was the latest 'elf 'n' safety' fiasco, it put the story on the front page:

The article by Eleanor Harding and Mark Duell states:

It looked like a major emergency – 25 firemen standing at the water’s edge assessing the life-threatening situation before them.

Stranded 200ft out and struggling for survival was the victim they had come to rescue...a seagull.

And if that scenario were not ludicrous enough, there was worse to come.

The firemen were then barred from going into the 3ft-deep water because it was judged to be a health and safety risk.

As crews from five fire engines stood beside the pond in South London for up to an hour, it fell to a member of the public to pull on his waders and rescue the bird, which was caught up in a plastic bag.

It was accompanied by an editorial (which included the curious phrase 'the legendary Mr Littlejohn') and was followed by comment pieces by Dominique Jackson and Mr Littlejohn. All refer to a health and safety risk assessment that stopped the firemen from rescuing the bird.

However, the London Fire Brigade's statement on the incident puts it slightly differently:

The Brigade was called to the scene by the RSPCA as an emergency and the Brigade always takes calls from such organisations seriously. Firefighters arrived on the scene at 1407 and the incident was declared over at 1411.

A London Fire Brigade spokesperson said:

“The RSPCA called us out as an emergency. Our firefighters rushed to the scene only to realise they’d been called out to a seagull with a plastic bag round its leg which was swimming around quite happily and wasn’t in any distress. This clearly wasn’t an emergency so the firefighters left it to a local animal rescue charity to deal with and swiftly left the scene.”

“Often, by the time our firefighters arrive at an incident, someone has waded in to try and rescue an animal only to get into danger themselves, so we send enough crews to deal with whatever we may find. The safety of the public and our firefighters is always our priority.”

Firefighters were not stopped from entering the water due to health and safety protocols. Just this week, LFB crews were called to rescue a man after the bulldozer he was driving fell 40 feet down into a quarry pit. When they realised the man’s life was at risk, the firefighters acted outside of normal procedures and risked their own personal safety to lift him out and save his life. London Fire Brigade’s firefighter are trained to make difficult judgement calls about when it is right to risk their lives in order to save another. 

The Mail has not published this statement.

The Mail also contacted the HSE's Mythbusters Challenge Panel on Thursday, and then wrote a critical, mocking article when they didn't get an immediate response - presumably, a response to the version of the incident as told to them by the Mail:

The Daily Mail contacted the panel at 3pm. But despite being given a whole afternoon to mull it over and it being only the fifth inquiry since the panel’s launch a day before, it failed to give an answer.

It's open to question whether contacting someone at 3pm really gives them 'a whole afternoon' to reply. But perhaps the Panel wanted to do a bit more fact-checking before giving a knee-jerk reaction? In fact, the Panel issued a statement on Friday - the day the Mail's front page article appeared. It said:

"We have now had chance to examine the facts in this case and it is clear that it was not about health and safety at all. The fire service itself has made clear that their decisions at Carshalton were not based on health and safety factors. We endorse this view.

"The Myth Buster Challenge Panel has been set up to bring common sense back to decisions made in the name of health and safety, and to do our job properly we need to establish the facts. We will try our best to meet deadlines when we can but not at the expense of working on hearsay rather than facts. We said that we aim to make a response within 48 hours and it has taken us less than 24 hours to respond to this case."

Despite the hurry to get the Panel's view, and the huffy response when they didn't get it within a few hours, the Mail has not yet informed its readers of this statement.

A statement which has, at time of writing, been in the public domain for two days.

Mail corrects Littlejohn column

On 12 July 2011, Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote about the accessing of Milly Dowler's voicemail by the News of the World. In it, he said:

For the life of me, too, I still can’t see the difference between the Screws hacking into voicemails and the Guardian lionising Julian Assange, who hacked into the security services and then published classified details which got people killed.

But if you read the column now, that paragraph now reads:

For the life of me, too, I still can’t see the difference between the Screws hacking into voicemails and the Guardian lionising Julian Assange, whose organisation publishes highly confidential leaked information from security services, publication of which puts people's lives at risk.

A clarification published on Thursday explains why it has changed:

A column on 12 July suggested that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had hacked into the security services and published information which got people killed.

Mr Assange asks us to clarify that Wikileaks does not itself ‘hack’ but provides a secure facility for anonymous sources to deposit information online.

While the U.S. government has warned that Wikileaks disclosures put lives at risk, no such deaths have to date been reported.

Quote of the day

Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote about the Jeremy Clarkson controversy today:

I can’t believe the phoney furore over Jeremy Clarkson is still rumbling on, just because he joked that public sector strikers should be shot. The plot has well and truly been lost. Where does all this puerile hair-trigger outrage come from?

Complaining about 'phoney furore' and 'puerile hair-trigger outrage'?

In the Mail?

'Claims were so quickly reported as fact'

One day in May, the Mail's website led with the story of Ian Faletto:

(image from Angry Mob)

The Mail wasn't the only media outlet to cover the story. In the Express, Richard and Judy said it was:

another health and safety loony tune

In the Telegraph, Jenny McCartney wrote:

A sad story from our railways: Ian Faletto, an award-winning stationmaster at Lymington Pier, Hampshire, saw a shopping trolley on the railway lines, which had the potential to cause an accident. He requested that the power be turned off, and then jumped on to the lines in protective shoes to remove the trolley.

A week later, a district manager saw the incident while reviewing CCTV footage, and found that the power had not, in fact, been turned off. Mr Faletto was subjected to a disciplinary hearing and given the sack...

Unless there is some other aspect to the case which South West Trains is not willing to reveal, it would seem that Mr Faletto's very enthusiasm has made the authorities uneasy. The rest of us, however, could do with many more public employees like Mr Faletto, who appear – within sensible limits – to be even more concerned about other people's safety than their own. 

But South West Train's side of the story was never fully revealed. As the BBC reported:

A South West Trains spokesperson said an employee had been dismissed for a “serious breach of safety” but refused to officially explain what this was.

“This action was taken following a full and thorough internal investigation and the decision was also upheld at an appeal hearing,” he said.

This didn't stop the Mail and others deciding South West Trains were definitely in the wrong. It was 'all down to elf 'n' safety' and an over-reaction from 'Elf 'n' safety tyrants'.

The latter was a headline on a comment piece by Richard Littlejohn, who said:

The sacking of Mr Faletto is beyond disgusting. Whoever runs South West Trains should be thoroughly ashamed.

He should be reinstated immediately with a grovelling apology.

And that was that. The media moved on.

A tribunal to consider Faletto's claim of unfair dismissal was to be heard on 1 November. The Mail, Telegraph, Express, Star and Sun haven't updated their readers on what happened. But the Guardian has:

A railway worker who claimed he was sacked for removing a shopping trolley from the track has withdrawn his claim of unfair dismissal.

Ian Faletto alleged he was sacked after 27 years of service by South West Trains for removing the trolley at Lymington railway station in Hampshire...

But after he was presented with new evidence, his counsel advised him to drop his claim, prompting a strongly-worded statement from SWT. It described the allegations by Faletto as "fictitious, Walter Mitty-style claims" and the company stressed he was not paid off.

The statement from SWT Director Jake Kelly is, indeed, strongly-worded:

''We are pleased that Mr Faletto has finally withdrawn his case, which proves definitively that there was never any substance to the claims he made.

''However, we remain angry at the way these fictitious Walter-Mitty-style claims were so quickly reported as fact. It is also doubly upsetting that many well-meaning people in community were so misled.

''This was a matter of principle and integrity and we were fully prepared to outline the truth to the employment tribunal.

''We are confident that they had heard all of the evidence, they would have found in our favour. For the avoidance of doubt, we have made no payment to settle this case and nor have we ever considered doing so.

''As we have maintained all along, this case involved a serious breach of safety. The fact is that there is no evidence to show that there was a trolley on the track, as Mr Faletto claimed, and the safety of our passengers was not compromised at any point.

''The only safety risk was caused by Mr Faletto's foolhardy actions in knowingly stepping down onto an area of live track for no justifiable reason.

''No 'trolley' incident was recorded in the station log or reported to management at the time - or even when Mr Faletto was first questioned by management.

''There was no evidence either of any call to a signalman or station.

''We are not interested in a box-ticking or jobsworth approach to these issues and the decision to dismiss Mr Faletto was not taken lightly.

''It is very sad that an individual who was recognised by the railway has acted in this way.'' 

Mr Faletto does, however, stand by his version of events.

The BBC, Guardian and Mirror all reported that Faletto withdrew his unfair dismissal claim and quoted Kelly's statement. Given that that happened several days ago, it looks unlikely the papers who did so much to champion Faletto six months ago are going to update their readers on the case.

(More from Zelo Street)

Mail 'sets the record straight' on another Littlejohn column

On 5 August, Richard Littlejohn wrote:

From time to time I may have written about both asylum seekers and wheelie bins. But never before in the same sentence. Until now.

Six illegal immigrants have been detained by a border patrol in Calais. The four men and two women, all from Vietnam, were discovered hiding in a consignment of wheelie bins bound for Britain. They were detected stowed away in the back of a Polish-registered lorry by a vigilant sniffer dog called Jake.

Asylum seekers hiding in wheelie bins in a Polish lorry. What a perfect metaphor for modern Britain.

On 16 August he returned to the same story:

Another snapshot of modern, multicultural Britain, coming hard on the heels of the story about those Vietnamese asylum seekers caught hiding in wheelie bins in a Polish lorry.

There was no evidence these six people were asylum seekers, having been caught in France before they reached the UK. The UKBA news report certainly never called them asylum seekers but 'would-be illegal immigrants'. 

But Littlejohn called them 'illegal immigrants' and 'asylum seekers' interchangeably. The PCC's guidance on refugees and asylum seekers states that journalists should be:

mindful of the problems that can occur and take care to avoid misleading or distorted terminology.

A complaint was made to the PCC asking that they look into Littlejohn's use of these terms. It was sent on the evening of 15 August, after Littlejohn's second article had been posted online.

By 19 September the complainant had received no reply from the PCC or the Mail. So he contacted the PCC again, asking what was happening.

On 23 September - nearly six weeks after the original complaint was made - the Mail finally responded with a letter from Managing Editor Alex Bannister.

The Mail had acted to correct the error, replacing 'asylum seekers' with 'illegal immigrants' in each article, and marking the archive with a note. Bannister said he had reminded 'Littlejohn and our other reporters' of the need to avoid such 'confusion'. He also apologised for the delay in replying, but gave no explanation for it.

The complainant said he would like some explanation for it and also asked for the Mail to admit in print it had corrected the articles.

Bannister's reply came through on 7 October. He said he had been away on annual leave and then had much to catch up on his return but admitted this was 'no excuse'. He also offered to print a clarification.

The complainant accepted the wording of the clarification that was offered and said he looked forward to seeing it in the Mail's new corrections column soon.

On 18 October, around 6pm, the Mail sent a revised wording to the PCC which was sent on to the complainant.

Before he could reply, he received another email at 7:46pm, in which the Mail explained it was hoping to run the clarification on Wednesday and they had changed the wording again.

Fifteen minutes later, another email from the Mail and yet another amendment to the wording.

The complainant agreed to this and so on Wednesday 19 October, the Mail published this:

Commentary articles on 5 and 16 August referred to six individuals apprehended in France who were attempting to enter Britain in wheelie bins on a lorry as asylum seekers when they should have been described as illegal immigrants.

We are happy to set the record straight.

By this time, the Daily Mail's 'Clarifications and corrections' column had been running for three days and this was the second clarification for something Richard Littlejohn had written.

It is also the second time this blog has covered a complaint about a Littlejohn column that has been met with a month-long silence from the Mail.

The Mail's first corrections column

The Daily Mail has followed in the footsteps of its Sunday sister paper and published its first 'Clarifications and corrections' column on page two of today's paper.

It begins:

The average issue of the Daily Mail contains around 80,000 words - the equivalent of a paperback book - most of which are written on the day under tremendous pressure of deadlines.


Huge efforts are made to ensure our journalism meets the highest possible standards of accuracy but it is inevitable that mistakes do occur.


This new column provides an opportunity to correct those errors quickly and prominently. 

The first clarification is aimed at Michael Levy:

On 26 September we reported that barrister Michael Levy had been arrested on suspicion of “carousel” fraud.  Whilst HM Revenue & Customs confirmed the information to us at the time, we now understand that Mr Levy was arrested on suspicion of irregularities in his personal tax position, which he denies.

This appears on the Mail's website. But the other three clarifications do not. The next is:

An article on 9 September reported a World Economic Forum survey which ranked UK schools 43rd in the world for maths. We are happy to clarify that the survey was based on the opinions of business leaders about teaching in their own countries.

There's no sign of this on the original article or anywhere else.

Then:

An article on 27 September, 'Tesco wins opening skirmish as price war catches out rivals', quoted the price of a Sainsbury's shopping basket at £26.26 against the Tesco equivalent of £19.04. While the Sainsbury's basket remained more expensive than the other supermarkets surveyed, the correct figure should have been £23.51.

There's no sign of this online either, but the original article has disappeared from the Mail's website.

Finally, and perhaps inevitably, they correct something Richard Littlejohn wrote:

A reference in Richard Littlejohn's column reported the allegation that Dacorum Borough Council in Hertfordshire had ignored six letters and as many phone calls from a resident requesting additional assistance in caring for her incapacitated mother before finally making a hone visit and refusing her request. In fact the complaint concerned Hertfordshire County Council. 

There's no sign of this online, but the original column as been corrected, although with no note admitting this.

So the Mail on Sunday's clarifications were all published on MailOnline, although the original articles were not corrected and didn't have the clarifications added. Today, the Mail has published only one of the four clarifications online.

Hopefully, in future, all clarifications will appear on the website and there will be some note on the original article (if it still exists) about those corrections.

(Hat-tip to The Grim Reaper blog)

That darn cat!

After two years and one political spat, the claim that a cat saved a man from deportation refuses to go away.

It dates back to a Sunday Telegraph article from 17 October 2009 which had the headline 'Immigrant allowed to stay because of pet cat'. The following day, the Mail, Express, Sun and Star all ran the story, the Express going with the headline 'Got a cat? OK, you can stay'.

The story was then repeated by columnists including Richard Littlejohn, Amanda Platell, Sue Carroll and Eamonn Holmes, who stated:

If you are an illegal immigrant facing deportation from the UK then don't worry - just tell the authorities that you have a cat and they will let you stay.

Except, they won't, because - as Dominic Casciani makes clear - that isn't what happened. The Telegraph's Tom Chivers explains:

There never was someone who could not be deported because he had a pet cat. It goes back to a Bolivian student (not an illegal immigrant) who applied to stay in this country. In his application, he does indeed mention a pet cat. But he was granted leave to remain in Britain as "the unmarried partner of a person present and settled in the United Kingdom", not as the owner of a British cat. Under UK Border Agency rules (not the Human Rights Act), if a couple has lived together for two years in "a genuine and subsisting relationship akin to marriage", they have a right to stay, regardless of whether they're married.

Yet the cat has popped up occasionally since 2009. In March 2011, a text to the Daily Star made a 'joke' of it. It was mentioned again in the Star on 14 July, in the Mirror on 13 June and in a Daily Mail editorial on 20 June.

And on Tuesday, Home Secretary Theresa May said:

“We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act...The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat.”

As Kevin Arscott noted, she was right to say she wasn't 'making this up' - instead, she was repeating something that wasn't correct that had appeared in several newspapers.

But it had been debunked. The lawyer in the case, Barry O'Leary, was quoted saying the cat was 'immaterial' - including on on Radio Five Live - but this was either ignored or overlooked.

As Adam Wagner of UK Human Rights Blog, writes:

Put it this way. If I had a client who was facing deportation and I wanted to show that the simple fact that he had a cat meant that he should stay, and I tried to use the Bolivian cat judgment as a precedent, I would be laughed out of court.

Following May's speech the Judicial Communications Office reissued their two-year old statement which pointed out:

"This was a case in which the Home Office conceded that they had mistakenly failed to apply their own policy - applying at that time to that appellant - for dealing with unmarried partners of people settled in the UK.

"That was the basis for the decision to uphold the original tribunal decision - the cat had nothing to do with the decision."

But that didn't stop today's Daily Mail claiming it had the 'truth':

A judge allowed an illegal immigrant to dodge deportation because he feared separating him from his cat risked ‘serious emotional consequences’, it emerged yesterday.

The human rights ruling, obtained by the Daily Mail, vindicates Home Secretary Theresa May over the ‘cat-gate’ row with Justice Secretary Ken Clarke at the Tory Conference.

She claimed that the cat, Maya, was a key reason behind the decision to let the man, a Bolivian national, stay in Britain

They were so sure of their version of events, they put it on the front page.

Yet on page 17, even their own columnist wasn't even convinced. Stephen Glover said May was:

partly misinformed as well as uninformed

Back to the front page article, however, and there was the inevitable clarification towards the end, in which the Mail admitted:

the Bolivian – whose name is blacked out in the court documents – won on different grounds at a later hearing which found the department had not followed its own rules.

Today, Barry O'Leary has issued a lengthy riposte to the Mail and others. He says:

The Judicial Office has already made a statement in this matter and I wish to give my support to that statement.

The case referred to was not decided on the basis of ownership of a cat. It was decided on the basis of a Home Office policy which the Home Office themselves had failed to apply. This was accepted by the Home Office before the Immigration Judge. The Home Office agreed the appeal should be allowed. The ownership of a cat was immaterial to the final decision made. Any press reports to the contrary are not based on fact.

The Mail claimed:

Yesterday it was revealed that the Bolivian not only argued that he would suffer from being separated from his cat, but also that his pet’s quality of life would be affected.

But O'Leary replies:

I stress that it was not argued at any point by this firm, nor by my client, that he would 'suffer from being separated from his cat' nor that 'the pet's quality of life would be affected.' Our arguments were based on the long-term committed nature of the couple's relationship. Their ownership of a cat was just one detail amongst many given to demonstrate the genuine nature of their relationship.

He continues:

It was, in fact, the official acting on behalf of the Home Secretary who, when writing the letter of refusal, stated that the cat could relocate to Bolivia and cope with the quality of life there. This statement was not in response to any argument put forward by this firm or my client (and was, frankly, rather mischievous on behalf of the official).

The appeal against the refusal was successful and, when giving judgment, because the reasons for refusal did refer to the cat the judge commented on the couple's cat. It was taken into account as part of the couple's life together. However, it was not the reason for allowing the appeal. The appeal was allowed because of the couple's relationship, and the judge also relied on the Home Office policy that had not been applied.  

There is one further problem with the Mail running this story today. When the paper mentioned the cat on 20 June, a complaint was made to the Press Complaints Commission. The complainant stated that as Mr O'Leary had already made clear the cat was 'immaterial', the article breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code of Practice.

As the complainant was a third party, the PCC contacted Mr O'Leary who told them that his client did not want to make a complaint about the article. Without the participation of the subject of the story, the PCC did not feel able to adjudicate on the complaint.

But in its conclusion, it said:

The Commission fully acknowledged the concerns raised by the complainant in regard to the accuracy of the article...

While it emphasised that the complainant’s concerns were indeed legitimate, it did not consider, in the absence of the participation of the Bolivian man or his representative, that it was in a position to investigate the matter, not least because it would not be possible to release any information about the outcome of the investigation or resolve the matter without the input of the man.

That said, it recognised that the complainant had raised concerns which had a bearing on the accuracy of the claim made in the article and, as such, it trusted that the newspaper would take heed of the points raised in the complaint and bear them in mind for future coverage. 

Today's Daily Mail goes to prove how much the paper 'takes heed' of what the PCC says.

(More from Channel 4 Fact Check, Full Fact, David Allen Green, Alan Travis, Adam Wagner, Alex Massie, Ed West and Minority Thought)

And, of course, Littlejohn...

It was something of a surprise that Richard Littlejohn didn't mention the BBC BC/AD non-story in his column on Tuesday. But he just couldn't resist.

Today, under the headline Whatever the BBC say, Britain is still mainly white, Christian and straight (has the BBC ever said the opposite?), Littlejohn proclaims:

Only this week the BBC announced it was scrapping references to AD and BC because it didn’t want to offend, or discriminate against, non-Christians.

And here, again, is what the BBC actually 'announced' 'this week' about this issue:

It is incorrect to say that the BBC has replaced date systems BC and AD with Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE). Whilst the BBC uses BC and AD like most people as standard terminology, it is possible to use different terminology, particularly as it is now commonly used in historical research. The BBC has issued no editorial guidance on date systems, and the decision rests with the individual editorial and production teams.

So: did Littlejohn know his statement was untrue, and wrote it anyway, or did he not bother to check his facts, and so wrote out of complete ignorance?

And how many more times is the Mail going repeat something that it must know is not true?

(Thanks to all who got in touch about Littlejohn's remark)

Littlejohn and the census

Richard Littlejohn signs off his column in today's Daily Mail with this:

The BBC continues to refer to the mayhem on our streets as the ‘English Riots’. Since this now seems to be the officially accepted designation, can we expect a box on the next census form to allow us to identify ourselves as ‘English’?

But Littlejohn doesn't need to wait ten years for such a box - because there was one in this year's census.

Question 15 asked 'How would you describe your national identity?' and allowed you to select an answer from this list: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, British and other (write in).

(Hat-tip to PrimlyStable)

Liz Jones and an 'emergency'

Last Sunday, the Mail's Liz Jones announced she was off to cover the famine in East Africa.

For someone who has spent £26,000 on a bat sanctuary, £9 on tubes of toothpaste and had a homeopathic vet for her chickens, and then complained she was in debt, it seems an odd assignment.

But as ever with Jones, it wasn't about the people suffering in Africa. It was about her suffering:

on Friday morning, I found I needed the NHS for the first time in about 20 years, and it let me down. Very badly.

Jones was flying out on Monday. On Thursday, she went to her private GP in London to get some jabs she needed before she could get her visa. But he couldn't give her all of them in one day. So, back home in Somerset on Friday, she thought she would phone her local GP - one she has never used or even bothered to register with - and tell them she had an 'emergency':

'Hello!' I said cheerily. 'I am not registered with you, but I live two miles away. I wonder if you could possibly squeeze me in today to complete my jabs for travelling to Africa, and fill in my malaria prescription, as I need to start taking the tablets on Sunday.'

'You are not registered?!' the woman said, clearly appalled I had made her pick up the phone. 'We can't see you then. And we can't fill out a prescription that hasn't been written up by us.'

'But I will pay for the jabs, it only takes a couple of minutes.'

'But the nurse is fully booked. She can't do it. I don't even know if we have the drugs.'

'Can you find out?'

'Well, no. I'd have to ask her. And she can't fit you in.'

'But this is an emergency. I have never bothered you before in the three years I have lived here. Not with a snotty-nosed kid, not with depression, nothing. Never!'

'But we don't have your notes.'

'You don't need my notes. Lots of people go to walk-in centres. You could telephone my doctor if you're worried about anything.'

'I don't have time to do that. Why don't you go to A&E if it's an emergency?'

'I'm sure they wouldn't classify a routine jab as an emergency. I mean, it's a global crisis. Millions of people are dying and you won't put yourself out to allow me to be seen by a nurse, not even a doctor, for five minutes?'

'No.'

Outraged at not being able to jump to the front of the queue ahead of people who were actually registered and already had appointments, she then mentions abuse in a care home in Bristol as if that, and her treatment, were similar:

I always wonder why people who don't like people go into the caring professions. The problems in the health service and in privately-run homes are not always to do with money. Attitude is often the issue.

Turning back to the receptionist, she adds:

What would it have cost this woman on Friday morning to have said: 'Sod the protocol – everyone needs to know about this famine, Miss Jones, so I am going to speak to the GP and see what we can do.'

'Everyone needs to know about this famine' - in other words, until Liz Jones writes about it, no one will. This despite widespread coverage across all media, and television appeals by the Disasters Emergency Committee.

Somewhat inevitably, a spoof account was started on Twitter. @LizJonesSomalia is written by the person behind the (spoof, but at times it's hard to tell) Daily Mail Reporter account. But it hasn't just been set up for laughs:

I’m doing this for charity now. I want your money.

If you’ve enjoyed the feed so far, and have replied or RT’d then perhaps you’d consider a donation for the DEC East Africa Appeal?...Tell me that’s not the perfect harnessing of social media?

At time of writing, the total raised so far has been over £22,000. And this on the day that Richard Littlejohn has said Twitter 'mobs' are:

motivated by spite, envy and resentment

(See also: a line-by-line analysis of Jones' article by nurse Brian Kellet.)

'I do not know whether some of the things Littlejohn writes are honest'

Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre gave evidence to a joint parliamentary committee on the Draft Defamation Bill on 18 July.

He defended the PCC which he praised for its:

increased powers and strength...which no one will admit to in this febrile climate.

He attacked the BBC for:

very light-touch regulation. It almost regulates itself.

This despite the fact that Ofcom also regulates the BBC and has fined them for transgressions - a sanction Dacre will never accept for newspapers.

On front page apologies Dacre said:

I suppose we are now leading to the ultimate sanction of a front-page apology. Again, I think that would be the court taking away the editor’s right to edit and the thin end of all kinds of undesirable wedges. It is perhaps a technical point, but a newspaper’s front page needs to sell itself. A newspaper has to be viable. If it does not sell itself, no one will read the correction inside. Finally—this is slightly contradictory—in truly heinous offences, a front page can and should be considered by the editor. There are quite a few precedents for that but I should not want the court to have the right to insist on it.

The committee also mentioned the wording of the defence of 'fair comment' and asked whether 'honest opinion' might be more appropriate. Dacre said:

Yes, I suppose “honest” is slightly better, although I prefer “free opinion” for the life of me. As long as it does not inflame a situation, is not racist and does not defame someone, the freer it is the better. Certainly, thinking about some of the things that Mr Littlejohn writes in my paper, I do not know whether they are honest but they certainly get people talking.

They came from the bins...or not

Last week, Richard Littlejohn wrote:

Residents of a street in Exeter have been told to keep their windows closed because of a plague of toxic caterpillars infesting the area. Meanwhile, as a result of the recent spate of Bank Holidays, some dustbins in Exeter haven't been emptied for nearly three weeks. I wonder: could these stories be related?

Of course, you might think a highly-paid newspaper columnist would try and find out, rather than just 'wonder'. Yet this is someone who isn't known for his exhaustive research, but is known for droning on about bins.

So, are these stories related? Exeter's Express & Echo newspaper reports:

A plague of toxic caterpillars has forced residents of one Exeter street to stay indoors despite the sunshine...

The insects are covered in small hairs which can break off easily in a light breeze and cause an allergic reaction, rashes and, in severe cases, asthma attacks.

But are they coming from the bins?

The caterpillars are understood to be coming from a disused railway embankment owned by Network Rail...

The Brown-tail moth caterpillars are a non-native species that don't have any predators. They have built hundreds of web-like tents on a disused railway bank and in trees in the Ashwood Road allotments...

The council said it inspected the allotments in March because of previous infestation, but there weren't any tents around at the time. He said the creatures has [sic] emerged early this year because of the warm weather.

'Could these stories be related'?

No.

Littlejohn admits he hasn't got 'enough material'

Two days ago, the Mandrake column in the Daily Telegraph said:

Just as Mike Yarwood, an acclaimed impersonator of Harold Wilson in his day, never really appeared to get over Margaret Thatcher's election as prime minister, Rory Bremner is suffering at the hands of the Coalition.

The amiable comic tells Mandrake that his disappearance from our television screens since David Cameron won power has not been by choice.

And today, Richard Littlejohn reveals:

My sympathies are with Rory Bremner, who says he is having an enforced sabbatical from television.

Just as Mike Yarwood’s career nose-dived when Harold Wilson departed the scene, so Rory is struggling to survive the demise of New Labour.

Where does he get it from?

In the Mandrake piece, Bremner says:

"It would be great to do more television, but it's all gone very quiet on that front and I don't know why that is," he says. "I must have upset somebody somewhere. I'm having what you might call a slightly enforced sabbatical."

This isn't quite the same as what Littlejohn claims, who says it's all to do with the absence of recognisable characters:

How do you do an impression of, say, Andrew Lansley? And if you did, would anyone recognise it?

Why did Littlejohn pick on Lansley, in particular? From Mandrake:

Happily, however, he has a stage tour coming up, but Andrew Lansley, the health secretary who has been much in the news recently, looks unlikely to be included among the impersonations.

However, Littlejohn admits something that some of us have suspected for some time:

There simply isn’t enough material to fill an hour of airtime...

As a columnist, I’m having the same problem.

Littlejohn? Struggling to find enough material to fill his columns?

Surely not?

Littlejohn gets it wrong on 'NHS funding'

In his column on 8 April, Richard Littlejohn turned his attention to the funding of the NHS:

The NHS is always pleading poverty, despite its budget being ring-fenced by the Government... Unnecessary spending is rife.

And, having read the Mail a couple of days before, he found an 'example' to illustrate his point:

For instance, Bolton NHS is frittering £75,000 on a scheme which involves buying mobile phones for alcoholics. The idea is that health workers will send a daily text message to patients recovering from alcohol addiction...

Of course, the scheme is a little bit more complex than that. However, Littlejohn just mocks it:

No one seems to have thought through the obvious flaws in this plan. Have you ever seen a drunk trying to work a mobile phone? I have enough trouble sending a text when I’m stone cold sober.

Yes, but if they're recovering, the hope is they won't be drunk.

But Littlejohn's main complaint is that the scheme is 'frittering' away public money:

Still, when it comes to NHS funding, it’s always trebles all round. So what’s seventy-five grand between friends?

But Littlejohn hasn't done his research. The scheme is not being funded from the NHS' 'ring-fenced budget'. It is being funded by the Health Foundation:

an independent charity working to continuously improve the quality of healthcare in the UK.

And it's being funded as part of their annual 'Shine' initiative to:

find new approaches to delivering healthcare that reduce the need for acute hospital care while improving quality and saving money.

And a simple enquiry to them would have revealed:


Littlejohn, it seems, has even more problems doing research than he does texting...

PCC agrees there is no Union Flag ban, 'requests' the Mail 'take heed'

In February, the Mail, Telegraph, Richard Littlejohn and others claimed that Suffolk Police were happily displaying the rainbow flag for LGBT History Month but were totally 'forbidden' from ever flying the Union Flag.

There was, as usual, no such ban on the Union Flag. It was completely untrue, and had any of the 'journalists' actually bothered to contact the police, they would have been told that.

The Press Complaints Commission received two complaints about the Mail's article. The PCC took the view that these were third-party complaints and so would not 'examine' them under the terms of the Code. But they had gone to the trouble of asking Suffolk Police if they wanted to pursue a complaint, but the constabulary decided against it.

Here's the PCC's full ruling (sent to this blog by one of the complainants):

The complainants were concerned that the claim the Union Flag had been banned by the Chief Constable of Suffolk was inaccurate. A spokesperson for the police had confirmed on Anglia TV that this was not correct and that both the rainbow flag and Union Flag were flown outside the police headquarters.

The Commission fully acknowledged the concerns raised by the complainants in regard to the accuracy of the article. However, the Commission generally only considers complaints from those directly affected by the matters about which they complained.

In this instance, the article related directly to the Suffolk Constabulary and as such, the Commission would require its involvement in order to come to a view on the matter. It had therefore proactively contacted the police force, which had been aware of the article but had decided not to make a formal complaint about it.

While it emphasised that the concerns of the complainants were indeed legitimate, it did not consider in the absence of the participation of the police that it was in a position to investigate the matter, not least because it would not be possible to release any information about the outcome of the investigation or resolve the matter without the input of the Suffolk Constabulary.

That said, it recognised that the complainants had provided information which had a bearing on the accuracy of the claim made in the article and, as such, it requested that the newspaper would take heed of the points raised in the complaints and alter the article accordingly. In light of the police’s decision not to pursue a complaint against the newspaper, the Commission could not comment on the matter further.

So clearly the PCC agrees the story is rubbish. It seems quite obvious it breaches the Code of Practice clause on accuracy. Yet all the PCC have done is to have:

requested that the newspaper would take heed of the points raised in the complaints and alter the article accordingly.

Given that the PCC said they were not going to deal with the complaint formally, that is, perhaps, more than they might have done.

But as yet, the Mail have not taken heed of this request. Hopefully they will - although there appears to be no sanction for ignoring it.

And would an 'alteration' (which would be difficult, given the whole article is about the Union Flag 'ban') to the story, done without fanfare, matter two months later anyway?

UPDATE: The Mail have done more than 'alter' the original article - they've removed it completely. They've also edited Littlejohn's column to remove his reference to the ban. Yet in neither case have they explained why - there appears to be no clarification or apology. This way, they can just pretend they never said it in the first place.

Littlejohn gets it wrong (again)

In his column today, Richard Littlejohn says:

Following last year’s triumphant forecast of a ‘barbecue summer’, the Met Office is now predicting a ‘phew-what-a-scorcher’ August this year.

So expect a small tsunami. Better start stocking up on umbrellas, dinghies and galoshes, just in case.

This short piece seems to have been thrown in at the last minute, as several newspapers reported on a long-range weather forecast yesterday.

Unfortunately for Littlejohn, that forecast came from Positive Weather Solutions (PWS). Not the Met Office.

Oh, and the Met Office's infamous 'barbecue summer' forecast wasn't 'last year' but in 2009.

So that's two factual errors in one sentence.

In fact, PWS did predict summer 2010 would be a 'good time to get the barbecue out' - as reported in the Daily Mail under the headline 'BBQ summer ahead!'

Moreover, as Littlejohn might have heard, the Met Office announced last year:

We have therefore decided to stop issuing a UK 'seasonal forecast' four times a year. Instead, we will now publish a monthly outlook, updated on a weekly basis.

If he missed their press release, he could have read the news in the paper he writes for.

But the 2011 forecast was, in any case, less clear-cut than Littlejohn and others made out. Indeed, PWS issued a statement yesterday regarding the various media reports of their forecast:

On Monday, March 28th, 2011, PWS was quoted on the front of the Daily Telegraph with the headline 'A Barbeque August'. On the inside of The Sun, their headline read 'Summer Washout'. So two newspapers, with two different interpretations...

Whilst the Daily Star also followed the path of the Daily Telegraph, the only two newspapers which seemed to have the balance correct, and indeed the quotes correct, were the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, who quite rightly went along the lines of a mixed June and July, with August possibly [their emphasis] offering the best of the weather.

If you can see the word 'barbeque' in our August forecast, please let us know.

(Hat-tips to robaparis and uponnothing)