Mail readers think death of illegal immigrant is 'good news'

Five Chinese Crackers has highlighted just how horrendous some Mail readers are, following the comments left on the story Migrant found dead in the back of a lorry as it prepares to enter Channel Tunnel.

The thirteen comments so far all revel in the death of this person, and they are all rated positive from +47 to +120. Here's some the 'best':

one down, millions to go
- crackers, yorkshire, 31/10/2009 2:42

Good news. One less to worry about!
- keith jones, porthcawl, south wales, 30/10/2009 22:13

Shame but I would be a hypocrit if I said I was sorry!
- Nanny B, West Sussex, 30/10/2009 17:42

Has the Mail's constant attacks on immigrants (illegal or otherwise) now meant that they have become so de-humanised that the death of one of them is a cause for celebration and described as 'good news'? Are there really hundreds of Mail readers happy to call for the deaths of 'millions' of people?

And - as 5CC asks - are the advertisers happy that their wares are associated with this story and these comments?

The wit and wisdom of Eamonn Holmes

From today's unmissable column:

There was a lot of bird watching in the North East of England last week... and it had nothing to do with Jordan's book-signing in Newcastle.

Which needs to be followed by this.

Amanda Platell: inane, hypocritical and apparently, not racist

After last week's dismal Amanda Platell column, would this week's be any better? It doesn't start well. Here's the first paragraph:

Andre Agassi was always one of the most popular tennis champions on Centre Court. With his 17 major title wins, he was also one of the most successful players.

17 major title wins? That's certainly an interesting 'fact'. Agassi won 17 Masters Series Titles - which remains a record - but he also won eight Grand Slams. So that would be 25 major titles.

Having once again displayed her inability to do basic research, she thunders into a rant against Agassi for his admission he used drugs and lied about it during his playing days:

No mention that crystal meth destroys your brain and your life. No shred of remorse in his confession. No warnings to vulnerable children. Just a despicable bid to flog a few books.

Of course, since Agassi's autobiography hasn't actually come out yet, she has no idea if any of these things are in it. She selectively quotes this bit:

He said he felt 'a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought. I've never felt so alive and hopeful - and I've never felt such energy'.

Without mentioning this bit:

But the physical aftermath is hideous. After two days of being high, of not sleeping, I’m an alien. I have the audacity to wonder why I feel so rotten. I’m an athlete, my body should be able to handle this.

Which hardly sounds like someone:

bragging about the illicit thrills.

Who does she target next? Kate Moss. Yes, another one of those younger women she seems to loathe so much. She's upset about Moss' new dress:

Why?

A neckline so scooped it touches her navel and a skirt only just long enough to cover her modesty? Perfect for the office Christmas party - if you work in a lapdancing club.

Yes, it's not as if Amanda would ever wear something with a low neckline, is it?


No, never.

Ahem.

But why is it that any woman who wears a low cut, short length dress is instantly a stripper. Does she hate women that much?

Well not all women. After all, last year when Liz Hurley went to an Elton John party with a low cut dress and cleavage everywhere, Amanda said:

Leave her be...long may Liz do so, heaving bosom and all.

It's almost as if she is using her column to attack anyone she doesn't like, whether it fits in with what she has previously argued or not. Imagine that.

And, incidentally, if she had bothered to look further than a very carefully posed publicity shot, she would see the dress in question is nothing like as revealing as she is claiming:


Next!

In a week when there's a famine in Ethiopia, 132 dead in suicide bombings in Baghdad, 100 killed in a market blast in Pakistan and 12 murdered in Kabul, what does Foreign Secretary David Miliband talk about? Why Tony Blair should be President of Europe, of course.

Interesting. The Presidency of Europe has been one of the big stories of the week, so it would be incredible if the Foreign Secretary hadn't talked about it. In any case, he had probably been asked about it.

Funnily enough, Amanda herself doesn't discuss any of those events other than that passing mention. And that was after the bit about a sequin dress. Still, at least the paper she works for covers such big news stories prominently:

OK, so Monday it was something about grandparents. Must be on Tuesday's front page:

Oh no, that was the one about the scandal of Daily Mail readers becoming criminals because they break the law. How dare the law!

Nope not Wednesday or Thursday either. They'd have to do one of those tragic events on Friday rather than, say, some complete non-story about a rock star's daughter wearing lipstick:

Oops.

Next it's the weekly pop at immigrants. And don't forget - Amanda is Australian. Because she seems to sometimes:

A mother who objected to ethnic minority staff being present at the birth of her child may be charged under the race discrimination laws.

I deplore racism and am aware our NHS would collapse without its army of fine foreign nurses, but perhaps the mother had a similar experience to me when I was last in hospital.

Or, perhaps, the mother was just a racist. Still at least we know Amanda

deplores racism

which come as a surprise to anyone who remembers this column of hers. And that's the second time she has said she deplores racism this month. Does she think people might think otherwise?

She then goes on to refer to a plan to

flood Britain within immigrants.

Obviously, because she deplores racism, that must be one of those good 'floods'. And then:

all they have really succeeded in doing is alienating the white working class, landing our schools with unmanageable numbers of non-English-speaking pupils and opening the door to the vile BNP.

Funny, but that sounds very familiar. Has Amanda been reading Jon Gaunt's thrilling new daily blog? Because on Monday he wrote:

I am no racist...

I and thousands of other Brits are having sleepless nights in between queuing for hours to see a doctor or a dentist, and to get a our kids into a school where the majority speak English and not a variety of languages from round the globe due to the tsunami of immigrants you have allowed to swamp Britain.

Again, that must be one of those good tsunamis and a totally positive use of the word 'swamp'. Because he's not a racist either.

The two are exactly the same. Referring to floods of foreigners taking your place in the healthcare line, suggesting your kids' education is suffering (although the difference between not speaking English and not speaking English as a first language is wilfully ignored) or in other ways suggesting immigrants are benefitting where you aren't is exactly the language the BNP uses.

But Gaunt and Amanda - they're not racist. Oh no.

Moving on, she celebrates the success of Today and Woman's Hour but suggest they wouldn't be commissioned today because:

Three hours of news and politics, with no screeching celebrity presenters? Unthinkable!

This from someone who loves Strictly Come Dancing (except Alesha Dixon) - a two hour programme of celebrities twirling around to elevator music.

And also from someone who presented the not-at-all missed news and politics show Morgan and Platell with Piers Morgan. How horrific is the thought of those two on television at the same time? Although she would probably claim as former newspaper editors they were serious journalists. Stop laughing at the back.

Anyway, she is really making another point that's well worth making:

As for Woman's Hour, it would be renamed Persons Of Unspecified Gender Hour.

Haha! Do you see? Because three sentences earlier she referred to 'Harriet Harperson'. It's about 'political correctness gone mad'!

It's also about some dismal, overpaid, know-nothing hack coming up with feeble jokes about the week's events. And this is just after she attacked someone else for being unfunny. Yes, really.

She targets Frankie Boyle for his Rebecca Addlington joke on Mock the Week (note to whingers: the clue is in the title):

While I'm all for free speech, Boyle's jibe was cruel, unfunny - and, above all, unjust.

So she believes in free speech, but not for people who tell jokes she doesn't think are funny? That'd be like saying, 'I'm not racist, but look at all these foreigners flooding here to ruin the education of white kids'.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Funny is clearly a matter of taste, but when did comedy have to be safe and just? Or is cruel and unjust fine, as long as it is funny?

Presumably it's not cruel or unjust to say someone is 'vacuous,' 'asinine' and has a 'chainsaw laugh'?

It's hypocritical to complain about pretending you can't say 'woman' and 'man' any more, but then saying certain jokes shouldn't be told.

Week in, week out, we see Amanda's pathetic attempts at comedy (and journalism) and yet she is trying to tell comedians what jokes they should tell.

Imagine her in another time, writing angry letters to Groucho Marx for:

Why don't we get married, and take a vacation? I'll need a vacation if we're going to get married. Married! I can see you now, in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove!

Cruel. Unjust. Funny.

But cruel is having to suffer her drivel every week. Unjust is how she gets work in the media and other people - people with talent - can not.

And funny? Nope, can't think of anything funny about her.

Is this the worst attempt at a hatchet job ever?

The paper: Daily Mail

The target: X Factor contestant Stacey Solomon

The headline: The Dagenham Diva: Single mum Stacey's wowed the X Factor with her ditzy witterings, but is she the ingénue she seems?

The scandal:

But despite the squeaky-clean image on screen, friends paint a racier picture. There are tales of fancy dress parties where Stacey swept up her naturally dark hair into a beehive to emulate her idol, Amy Winehouse, and evenings in bars where she liked nothing better than to knock back glasses of Malibu and Coke and belt out karaoke hits.

Oh.

Pointless stories round up

Yesterday's Daily Express front page headline tried to get readers upset about an 'EU income tax' which the story made clear didn't exist.

The day before that, the front page was this:


It's hard to know exactly when 'it might be warm for a few days' became something to stick on the front page of a newspaper. Can you imagine the editorial meeting that decided that a prediction of what the weather might be like in two days is regarded as the most important news event of the day?

And it wasn't as if the prediction (70F on Thursday) was even accurate. According to the Met Office website, London temperatures got to 64F for about one hour, but otherwise it's been 62F or under.

So the Express' use of terms like 'basking', 'glorious' and 'balmy', accompanied by a picture of a (white) family making sandcastles, looks even more ridiculous now than it did on Tuesday. And it's not as if the Met Office spokesman didn't warn them:

Temperatures will peak on Thursday with 66-68F (19-20C) – even 70F (21C) at a squeeze

So '70F at a squeeze' becomes 'Britain gets 70F Indian summer'. Brilliant.

Today, the Express comes up with this for the front page:

Although this one does appear to be based in fact, is the news that a dog has been killed really worthy of a front page? Yes, it's an unpleasant event and yes, the teenage owner is no doubt devastated. But front page news?

The story begins:

Animal welfare campaigners were left shocked and stunned last night after a teenage yob stamped a puppy to death in front of its owner.

Not just 'shocked'. Not just 'stunned'. But 'shocked and stunned'.

It continues:

the Jack Russell, its tail wagging, wandered over to three teenage boys in jeans and hooded tops.Suddenly and for no reason, one of the gang callously stamped on the tiny animal’s head.

'Its tail wagging'? How much more emotive do they want to get? But note how the story says 'teenage yob' and 'one of the gang', yet the front page headline said 'thugs'.

So one vile little sod kills a puppy and this makes the Express ask 'what has happened to this country?' Must be the fault of Labour and the immigrants.

The story also contains an interesting use of the term 'social commentators':

But social commentators warned that such behaviour was only symptomatic of the wider problem of Britain’s hooligan culture.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said...

Tory MP Philip Davies was also appalled by the attack.

And apart from an RSPCA spokeswoman, no one else is quoted. Since when did MPs - Conservative or otherwise - become billed as 'social commentators'?

The Express could have run with the story about the latest bomb blasts in Pakistan, which the Guardian put on its front page. But clearly 101 dead Muslims are regarded as less important than one dead Jack Russell.

Or, for a paper which boasts a poppy on its masthead, it could have led with the Nimrod inquiry which uncovered 'lamentable' failures by senior military figures led to the deaths of 14 service personnel in Afghanistan in 2006.

But the Express decides neither of these stories is important enough. So it goes with the dead pup and, also on the front page, the news that a well-loved but (whisper it) not very good actress is leaving a soap.

The Express really is a dire excuse for a newspaper.

But in terms of articles of mind-numbing pointlessness, yesterday's Mail might take some beating (although it has since appeared in other papers). If you're a Sagittarian, you are twice as likely to hit the big time turned up on page five of the Mail. And what's it about? Believe it or not, this:

Researchers analysed the zodiac signs of 100 celebrities from the past and present, looking for those who made their big breakthrough in their youth.

They discovered those born under Sagittarius are twice as likely to hit the big time than those born under any other sign.

Yes, that's right. It's almost impossible to know how civilisation has managed to get to this point without this knowledge. Forget gravity, this is what the world really needed to know. It's not just an excuse to put a picture of Sagittarian Britney Spears in the paper and plug the Cartoon Network, who did the 'survey'. Honest.

With such a statistically insignificant sample, another 100 would almost certainly find another star sign out in front. And yet this 'story' is what the Mail decided had to go on page five of its paper yesterday.

Page five.

Recommended reads

Angry Mob has revealed how the latest PC gone mad story from the Mail - about parents being banned from playgrounds - has been rejected by the very Council accused.

He also explains how the story of a man's death has been twisted by both the Mail and the Mirror to make it something it wasn't.

Anton reveals the latest anti-Muslim nonsense from the Express, as the paper goes to Islam4Uk for yet another story. It's almost as if the Express can't function without reporting on loudmouths spouting deliberately inflammatory crap, and the loudmouths no doubt enjoy seeing their utternaces in a national newspaper.

Anton has also written about the Mail's quite unbelievably hypocritical article complaining about naked female flesh on the cover of men's magazines. This is the same website, which has this pic on it.

At Hagley Road to Ladywood, Claude has pointed out that the Mail's rhetoric on immigrants and against the BBC sounds suspiciously like the BNP.

Sun pays damages to Tom Watson MP

The Sun has joined the Mail on Sunday in paying damages to MP Tom Watson over claims he was involved in the Damien McBride plot to smear Conservative politicians. The MediaGuardian explains:

Lawyers for Sun publisher News Group Newspapers, a subsidiary of News International, said today that the paper accepted the stories were untrue. The Sun has agreed to pay Watson's legal costs and "a substantial sum" in damages...

The Sun has apologised to Labour MP Tom Watson in the high court today...[but] It is understood that the paper has not agreed to print an apology, however.

So the Sun apologises in court, agrees to pay damages, 'unreservedly withdrew the allegations' but nothing has appeared in print where the original allegations appeared? This seems most unusual - and surely can not remain the case for very long...

Express unveils plan so secret it doesn't exist

The Daily Express. The EU. Tax. Not the most thrilling topics to write about but anyway...

Today's Express front page is yet another of their eye-catching, scaremongering headlines which bears little resemblance to either the story or the truth.

'Secret plan for EU income tax' sounds as if the EU is engaged in a secret plan to impose an income tax on British taxpayers.

The story, written by Gabriel Milland, begins:

Secret plans to seize more than £4billion a year from Britain and make its citizens pay taxes direct to Europe emerged last night.

So 'income tax' has become 'taxes' in the first sentence. And the headline looks even more questionable when Milland writes a few paragraphs later:

Possible taxes suggested in the report – which could be discussed as soon as the start of the European summit in Brussels tomorrow – include levies on phone calls, flights, financial transactions or carbon emissions.

Right. So no 'income tax' then? Well, no. Nothing in the story suggests any such thing.

And note how these 'possible' taxes have only been 'suggested' and 'could' (and therefore won't) be discussed tomorrow. At the end of the article an EU spokesman says the report is a 'draft' and 'work in progress'. And as the current EU budget runs until 2013, all of this is a very long way off. Whatever 'this' is.

Still, Milland has gone through his little black book of quote whores including the TaxPayers Alliance and several other Eurosceptics, who all express something like concern. But about what?

Does this amount to anything? Unfortunately, Milland's writing is pretty poor and it is hard to work out what he is actually on about under all the anti-EU rhetoric. At one point he says:

The proposals would see big cuts to programmes like the Common Agricultural Policy which sees tens of billions of pounds paid to small farmers in countries like France.

But in return Britain would be expected to give up its £4.1billion a year rebate, first agreed by Mrs Thatcher in 1984.

Countries 'like France'? Which countries are 'like France'?

But if the EU wants Britain to stop getting the rebate, and that equals the £4bn extra it wants from Britain, doesn't that make it all square?

You would think. But elsewhere, Milland says the 'new taxes' would:

have to raise about £6.4billion a year

So do they want £4bn or £6.4bn? Do they want extra taxes or the rebate withdrawn? Do they really want an income tax? Does Milland even know?

The story has been re-posted on both Stormfront and the website of David Icke. If both of them are pushing it as true, you just know something isn't right about it.

Gyles Brandreth predicted this Mail headline ten years ago

Last week the Mail was serialising Gyles Brandreth's latest diaries. On Monday 19 October they published extracts running to over 2,600 words. It included Gyles recalling an interview he did with Prince Philip in 1999:

One myth, I told him, 'is that you're a stick-in-the mud, oldfashioned. In fact, I think you're a moderniser'. To get him to say anything, you have to provoke him. 'No, no, not for the sake of modernising, like some bloody Blairite, not for the sake of buggering about with things. I'm anxious to get things done.'

(I'm not a proper journalist, am I? Already I know that I'm going to remove the Blairite reference. HRH said it, on the record: I was there to interview him, notebook in hand. To quote him would be entirely legitimate, but if I use the line, that's the story. 'Duke attacks "bloody Blair".')

In the entire two-page spread, that is the only reference to Blair. Yet what is the misleading and entirely predictable headline the Mail gives the article?

What Prince Philip really thinks about that b****y man Tony Blair

Mail buries story that Britain isn't worst place in Europe to live

A couple of weeks ago, the media was giving a quite staggering amount of coverage to a uSwitch press release which made out Britain was the worst place in Europe to live. It was based on some highly selective criteria and omitted 80% of the countries in Europe, but that didn't stop the Mail running it as the lead story on its website and Littlejohn repeating the nonsense a few days later.

It was a prime example of churnalism, and gained uSwitch a lot of free publicity.

Today another survey, this time the Legatum Institute's 2009 Prosperity Index. This one covers 104 countries from all over the world and takes into account:

data on economic growth with ratings for democracy, social provision, happiness and quality of life.

And the result?

Britain is ranked 12th overall. Ahead of Spain, France and Germany, which were higher in the dubious uSwitch list.

So surely the Mail will be saying this is a good sign that Britain isn't such a bad place to live after all? Not a bit of it:

Britain has failed to make it into the top ten of a list of the world's most successful countries

The Mail is just never satisfied. Despite the fact Britain rose from 17th in 2007 and 14th in 2008, the original headline on the website referred to 'unhappy UK'. If it goes up to tenth next year, the Mail will probably complain it's not in the top five.

But what is striking is that this list hasn't had anything like the prominence on the Mail website as the uSwitch one, and is buried on page 28 of the paper. Chances are, Littlejohn won't mention it in his column on Friday either.

Why? Because it doesn't fit their agenda that everything in Britain is crap (and it's all the fault of those immigrants).

Another video game accused of murder

The print edition of today's Daily Mail contains a story with the headline 'Video game axe killer'. It reveals how 17 year old James Callaghan went on a rampage which ended with the brutal murder of a 65 year old widow.

Here are some excerpts from the Mail's story:

A schizophrenic teenager killed a grandmother with an axe when he went on a drunken rampage...

After drinking a bottle of vodka, James Callaghan, 17, stormed out of his home in a rage armed with an axe and a long-bladed knife.

He threatened to attack two girls, struck a passer-by on the head with the axe, terrified a cyclist and tried to smash his way into a couple's flat...

After his arrest Callaghan was diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic. He told psychiatrists that for several months he had been hearing voices in his head urging him to kill and had seen a man 'with horns on his head'. He said he began drinking heavily to cope with these visions.

He was known by his friends to be violent after drinking alcohol.

As a six-year-old he had threatened his mother with a kitchen knife...

While a young child Callaghan had been referred to the community psychiatric nurse on three occasions as his mother struggled to control his behaviour.

So a schizophrenic teenager with a history of violence and psychiatric problems gets drunk and goes on the rampage with an axe.

And yet this is the fault of a video game? Oh yes. According to the Mail:

In the hours before the rampage, Callaghan lost three consecutive games of Fifa 2008, playing at home against his younger brother and a friend. He also played the computer game Grand Theft Auto, which sends the player's character on a violent crime spree.

Even the online version of the story, which has a different headline, implies a link between the games and the murder:

Teenager killed widow with axe in drink-fuelled rage after losing a computer game to his brother

And the Mail wasn't the only one to blame the game either:

Yob killed widow after losing computer game (Express)
Crazed teen's game rampage (Sun)
Murder after teen loses video game (Mirror)

Yet neither the BBC, nor the local paper mentions video games, choosing instead to stick to the facts.

On Saturday, the Mail was pinning a murder on Reservoir Dogs. Now this. Why not report crime and mental health issues seriously rather than lazily using a game or film as an easy scapegoat?

And despite the schizophrenia this teenager was suffering from, the majority of people leaving comments on the story want him executed:

Why are we concentrating on this scum who should be turned into manure and spread on fields?
Mozza, Telford, 26/10/2009 18:00

Patronising headline of the year?

A new study by the University of Kent claims date rape drugs are an urban myth. The study's sample - 200 students - seems quite small for such a sweeping statement, but the conclusion suits the Mail just fine, because it can blame alcohol for women being raped, rather than rapists.

But whatever the pros and cons of the study, did the Mail really need to treat the story so flippantly by putting this unbelievably patronising headline on it:

Eamonn Holmes can't think for himself

In Sunday's People, Eamonn Holmes became the latest ignorant 'journalist' to repeat the completely untrue 'immigrant saved from deportation by his cat' story. He writes:

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.

Well, they won't, because that isn't what happened, but do go on...

That was the case for a Bolivian man who was due to be sent home. Then judges ruled that deporting him would breach his human rights by interfering with his family life - his family being his girlfriend and a cat.

Well, that wasn't 'the case' at all. But do go on...

I can see the signs as you enter Dover: "A cat is for life not just for Christmas... in fact it's for a whole new life. Welcome to Britain."

Invented signs for an invented story. Brilliant. How does he do it?

The story, incidentally, was debunked by Donal McIntyre - and the man's lawyer - on BBC Radio Five Live on Sunday.

How many more times is it going to be repeated before columnists and journalists do the slightest bit of research and find out it's rubbish?

And isn't it clearer than ever than Littlejohn, Platell, Holmes and their ilk just regurgitate crap they have read in other papers, with a few spiteful comments and woeful attempts at humour added. No independent thinking or common sense or research required.

With Holmes, you doubt the readers even got to the cat bit however. After all, he began his column with the striking revelation:

Funerals are always sad occasions

Most people should have given up right there.

Daily Star sets on 'good taste'

There has been much media coverage of the homophobic attack that left trainee policeman James Parkes in hospital, fighting for his life, with:

multiple skull fractures and fractures of his eye-socket and cheek bone.

It comes just a couple of weeks after Ian Baynham died from injuries sustained in a homophobic attack in London.

The headlines on the stories of the latest crime vary slightly. The BBC's Homophobic attack on trainee Pc and Independent's Police officer fights for life after homophobic attack are straightforward.

Both the Mail (Gay off-duty PC left fighting for life after horrific assault by mob of homophobic teenage thugs) and the Sun (Gay policeman is beaten up by teenagers for being homosexual) feel the need to emphasise 'gay' eventhough a homophobic attack would hardly be on anyone else.

Yet it is encouraging to see the papers covering the story. Compare that to the disgraceful way the murder of Michael Causer, also gay, also from Liverpool was hardly mentioned at all by the media.

And there's always one paper which shows the old prejudices still exist. The tabloids show these prejudices all the time and, as Jan Moir proved, even a tragic death doesn't usually stop them.

But can there really be any excuse for the Daily Star to write about the attack on Parkes under the headline:


Tasteless, unpleasant, stupid. Yes, you don't expect much else from the Star, but can they really not even accept a 'gay' might exist without putting quote marks around the word.

The last time they wrote about a yeti/Bigfoot they didn't feel the need to put quote marks around the words. So why do it with gay?

Of course, given that it was a homophobic attack, the fact of Parkes' sexuality inevitably becomes part of the story.

Yet if an ethnic minority police officer - trainee or otherwise - had been assaulted, would the Star write: Yobs set on 'black'? OK, with the Star you never know, but it's highly unlikely.

But such wording - and such a use of quote marks - serves only as an on attack minority groups, to emphasise that they are 'different'. And the attacks on Baynham and Parkes show why this daily vilification of minorities is so dangerous.

Express admits publishing made-up quotes

From the Express:

On October 13 we published an article supplied by Men's Health headed "9 simple steps to lower your blood pressure".

The article referred to advice given by Professors Cappuccio and Ferro.

We are happy to make clear that neither professor contributed to the article and did not give the quotes attributed to them.

They state that the advice given does not reflect current national guidelines and dissociate themselves from it.

Matt Barbour's original article (cached) contained seven quotes attributed to the two men. So that's seven deceptions in one short piece.

And the paper doesn't even apologise for it.