Sunday, August 09, 2009
The Daily Mail produce one of their typical hatchet jobs on Harriet Harman for daring to suggest something should be done to try and stop domestic violence against women and Liberal Conspiracy retort with what is probably the best response so far. Mailwatch goes into the detail of the Mail report.
Mail: The Government claims that violence against women is costing Britain an astonishing £40billion. It has emerged they are carrying out five separate reviews into the causes and how women can be better protected. This is despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that young women are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Mailwatch: The Mail is trying to destroy the feminist arguement by shouting that boys are a bigger victim than girls and Harriet is just looking after the girls. But just like any comparison, it needs to be like for like and this is not it. Boys and men are victims of domestic violence too, but not in the same numbers as women. It would be good if boys as victims were included in this report too, they may well be, but to try and beat Harman with the feminist stick by making incompatible comparisons between these two levels of victims is wrong.
A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested, recently overtaking theft and handling stolen goods.
So three quarters of all violent assaults are carried out by men.
Liberal Conspiracy: The plans are being rolled out despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that it is in fact young women who are becoming increasingly mean: a staggering 25% of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by vicious ladette women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested.
The other 75% of violent assaults are thought to be carried out by transvestites and gays, not men.
Mail: The Government claims that violence against women is costing Britain an astonishing £40billion. It has emerged they are carrying out five separate reviews into the causes and how women can be better protected. This is despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that young women are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Mailwatch: The Mail is trying to destroy the feminist arguement by shouting that boys are a bigger victim than girls and Harriet is just looking after the girls. But just like any comparison, it needs to be like for like and this is not it. Boys and men are victims of domestic violence too, but not in the same numbers as women. It would be good if boys as victims were included in this report too, they may well be, but to try and beat Harman with the feminist stick by making incompatible comparisons between these two levels of victims is wrong.
A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested, recently overtaking theft and handling stolen goods.
So three quarters of all violent assaults are carried out by men.
Liberal Conspiracy: The plans are being rolled out despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that it is in fact young women who are becoming increasingly mean: a staggering 25% of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by vicious ladette women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested.
The other 75% of violent assaults are thought to be carried out by transvestites and gays, not men.
Labels: Daily Mail, domestic violence, Government, Harriet Harman, journalists, newspapers, women
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
In Shock News, The Daily Mail Lies About Muslims Again, (And Libraries)
Those Muslims eh? They come over here, live perfectly quiet and respectable lives, get jobs, raise families, WHAT ARE THEY UP TO EH? The Daily Mail, in an exercise to allow people who have left this country to complain how bad things are (ie: "I saw a person with dark skin sit down on the bus! This is political correctness gone mad! I'm moving to Spain!!!") regularly prints fictional articles, and today it's about how libraries are supposedly going to be told to put the Koran on their top shelves to avoid offending Muslims. Only, if you note that this guidance is coming from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and do the literally seconds of work needed to find the report (PDF file) you'll find that Steve Doughty, the Daily Mail journalist, has lied. The MLA are not telling me, or any of my colleagues, to put the Koran above other things, they are reporting on Leicester City Libraries receiving a few complaints about the Koran not being on the top shelf. It wasn't even a campaign by a group of disgruntled Muslims, the Library Service went out and talked to such a group for their opinion. The report doesn't even mention whether Leicester followed the group's advice.
I suppose that what gets my goat is that when left-leaning journalists (or at least journalists that are defined as left-wing purely because they are not as right-wing as neo-cons and other Far-Right theocons) make a mistake they are rightly pilloried and often hounded out of their jobs, however, when those right-wing ideologues make similar mistakes (and let's face it, they assume their audience is so lazy that it won't take a minute to examine their logical fallacies or evidence) they have normally put their lies and misinformation within such a secure web of protective censorship that they can't be challenged. And they claim the largely non-existent 'left-wing media' doesn't allow for criticism!
I suppose that what gets my goat is that when left-leaning journalists (or at least journalists that are defined as left-wing purely because they are not as right-wing as neo-cons and other Far-Right theocons) make a mistake they are rightly pilloried and often hounded out of their jobs, however, when those right-wing ideologues make similar mistakes (and let's face it, they assume their audience is so lazy that it won't take a minute to examine their logical fallacies or evidence) they have normally put their lies and misinformation within such a secure web of protective censorship that they can't be challenged. And they claim the largely non-existent 'left-wing media' doesn't allow for criticism!
Labels: Conservatives, Daily Mail, Islam, Islamophobia, journalists, Koran, libraries, Museums Libraries and Archives Council, Muslims, religion
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Daily Mail Lies (No Surprise There)
So, there was a big demo in London yesterday (amongst other cities) calling on Israel to not murder Palestinians. You may have heard about it. You may have been there, organisers said about 70 thousand people marched, police said 20 thousand, so that tends to average out at about 40 to 50 thousand. And it was cocking freezing in London yesterday, we got snowed on for crikey's sake. On to what I want to say about that in a minute. Newspaper coverage is mixed. Going by websites The News of the World seems to have ignored it, pretending it didn't happen. The Times has a tiny news piece down the bottom of it's UK news, they concentrate on the fighting but mention it was a mostly peaceful protest, though they don't give any figures to show their readers how it was less than 1% of the march that got punchy. The Telegraph does much the same but quotes the head of Scotland Yard who is accepting that the trouble was caused by a tiny minority. The Indy is more sympathetic and has more of an overview of the entire day, about the only outlet to acknowledge that the violence only started after most protesters had finished and left.
The award for the most biased report that has the least to do with reality must be from the Daily Mail though. Protesters clash with police as 100,000 strong London Gaza demo descends into violence. No mention of the fact that most of the demonstration and demonstrators were peaceful, instead it's straight-up trying to suggest that 100,000 people tore apart Kensington. Firstly, where did the Mail get 100,000 people from? Stop the War, who tend to massively overestimate numbers (it may be a Socialist thing) said 70,000 people, the police (who tend to do the opposite) said 20,000 and the Beeb reckon it's 50,000, so the Daily Mail made their own number up.
(UPDATE: 70,000 is what I thought StW were saying at the end of the demo yesterday. Septicisle, who was out later than me, says StW were saying 100,000 but StW's website is currently suspended. So that solves the problem of where the Daily Mail got the 100,000 figure from. Still, it's rather odd that they have chosen to accept StW's figure rather than going with the Police estimate. I suppose this is so as to make the following seem exciting enough.)
Violent clashes occurred between police and around 20,000 protesters outside the Israeli Embassy in London... The protesters - mainly young men - knocked down barriers threw missiles including eggs, red paint, sticks and shoes as 300 officers in full riot gear tried to maintain the peace.
Now, I'm no expert, and I know that police are trained for riot control, but I don't think these numbers can be right. Indeed, they seem suspiciously close to The Battle of Thermopylae which makes me wonder if someone at the Daily Mail watched 300 before filing their report. Training, schmaining, if 20,000 people wanted in to the Israeli embassy then the only way 300 police can stop them is if they each have their own personal tank and there's no way the supposed 'liberal, left-wing anti-Israeli media' could hush that up.
There were reports that some protesters had tried to set fire to police vans.
The violence, which broke out in front of the Israeli Embassy, appeared to be led by a hard-core of masked and hooded youths.
'There were reports'... 'appeared to be led'... The weasel words that signify you are about to be served a load of shit from someone who wasn't there, hence the fact this is attributed to 'Daily Mail Reporter'. This suggests it might actually be a report from a wire service rewritten by a Mail editor.
As it was, the demo that people who actually went on it attended was cold. Very cold. Have I emphasised how cold it was yesterday? Stop the War did no-one any favours by insisting that everyone stand around in the corner of Hyde Park for a few hours listening to speaker after speaker talking about Gaza as though that wasn't what we had all turned up for. When I got to the other end and found more of the same I decided I'd had enough and headed for home. I know that these things tends to have lots of speaking but there's a difference between a mild October day and January. Maybe the youth were trying to keep warm while being patronised by Juliet Stevenson, the police misread the situation and baton-charged them and the Mail reported it as 'feral youth attack police'?
Once we actually started marching things went fairly smoothly at first. I had my iPod on and can report that Asian Dub Foundation's Punkara is a great album to march to. We made good time along Bayswater Road although we were stopped for about ten or fifteen minutes about halfway along the street. I'm not clear exactly what the problem was but the stewarding was fairly week as I saw any number of people getting stuck the wrong side of bollards and traffic barriers because the stewards for that section were two old guys with a bit of white string. There was no danger to anyone at this time, it was all good-natured.
We turned down Kensington Church Street and it was as we approached the bottom of that road where it turned into Kensington High Street that things ground to a halt. I'm not sure what was going on, the roads were all closed off for the demo all the way so I'm not sure what was slowing us down but something was. The police around here looked a lot more edgy (though maybe that was me projecting) and there were several noticeable police photographers doing their thing so maybe it was the police trying to slow things down so they could look for people they thought might be trouble-makers, I have no idea. It would take a couple of minutes to walk from Kensington Church Street to the corner of Kensington Gardens normally, it took us over thirty minutes and I was not too far from the front of the demo.
The demo I attended was very much a family affair, I got banged in the legs by buggies several times, though that's hardly unnatural in British streets these days. There were a large number of teens and young adults wearing masks, which of course makes it easier to demonise them when they are pictured in battle with mounted police. The thing I come away with though is that this all goes to show the failure of the British education system. I'm not sure if I saw any home-made banner that was spelt correctly...
The award for the most biased report that has the least to do with reality must be from the Daily Mail though. Protesters clash with police as 100,000 strong London Gaza demo descends into violence. No mention of the fact that most of the demonstration and demonstrators were peaceful, instead it's straight-up trying to suggest that 100,000 people tore apart Kensington. Firstly, where did the Mail get 100,000 people from? Stop the War, who tend to massively overestimate numbers (it may be a Socialist thing) said 70,000 people, the police (who tend to do the opposite) said 20,000 and the Beeb reckon it's 50,000, so the Daily Mail made their own number up.
(UPDATE: 70,000 is what I thought StW were saying at the end of the demo yesterday. Septicisle, who was out later than me, says StW were saying 100,000 but StW's website is currently suspended. So that solves the problem of where the Daily Mail got the 100,000 figure from. Still, it's rather odd that they have chosen to accept StW's figure rather than going with the Police estimate. I suppose this is so as to make the following seem exciting enough.)
Violent clashes occurred between police and around 20,000 protesters outside the Israeli Embassy in London... The protesters - mainly young men - knocked down barriers threw missiles including eggs, red paint, sticks and shoes as 300 officers in full riot gear tried to maintain the peace.
Now, I'm no expert, and I know that police are trained for riot control, but I don't think these numbers can be right. Indeed, they seem suspiciously close to The Battle of Thermopylae which makes me wonder if someone at the Daily Mail watched 300 before filing their report. Training, schmaining, if 20,000 people wanted in to the Israeli embassy then the only way 300 police can stop them is if they each have their own personal tank and there's no way the supposed 'liberal, left-wing anti-Israeli media' could hush that up.
There were reports that some protesters had tried to set fire to police vans.
The violence, which broke out in front of the Israeli Embassy, appeared to be led by a hard-core of masked and hooded youths.
'There were reports'... 'appeared to be led'... The weasel words that signify you are about to be served a load of shit from someone who wasn't there, hence the fact this is attributed to 'Daily Mail Reporter'. This suggests it might actually be a report from a wire service rewritten by a Mail editor.
As it was, the demo that people who actually went on it attended was cold. Very cold. Have I emphasised how cold it was yesterday? Stop the War did no-one any favours by insisting that everyone stand around in the corner of Hyde Park for a few hours listening to speaker after speaker talking about Gaza as though that wasn't what we had all turned up for. When I got to the other end and found more of the same I decided I'd had enough and headed for home. I know that these things tends to have lots of speaking but there's a difference between a mild October day and January. Maybe the youth were trying to keep warm while being patronised by Juliet Stevenson, the police misread the situation and baton-charged them and the Mail reported it as 'feral youth attack police'?
Once we actually started marching things went fairly smoothly at first. I had my iPod on and can report that Asian Dub Foundation's Punkara is a great album to march to. We made good time along Bayswater Road although we were stopped for about ten or fifteen minutes about halfway along the street. I'm not clear exactly what the problem was but the stewarding was fairly week as I saw any number of people getting stuck the wrong side of bollards and traffic barriers because the stewards for that section were two old guys with a bit of white string. There was no danger to anyone at this time, it was all good-natured.
We turned down Kensington Church Street and it was as we approached the bottom of that road where it turned into Kensington High Street that things ground to a halt. I'm not sure what was going on, the roads were all closed off for the demo all the way so I'm not sure what was slowing us down but something was. The police around here looked a lot more edgy (though maybe that was me projecting) and there were several noticeable police photographers doing their thing so maybe it was the police trying to slow things down so they could look for people they thought might be trouble-makers, I have no idea. It would take a couple of minutes to walk from Kensington Church Street to the corner of Kensington Gardens normally, it took us over thirty minutes and I was not too far from the front of the demo.
The demo I attended was very much a family affair, I got banged in the legs by buggies several times, though that's hardly unnatural in British streets these days. There were a large number of teens and young adults wearing masks, which of course makes it easier to demonise them when they are pictured in battle with mounted police. The thing I come away with though is that this all goes to show the failure of the British education system. I'm not sure if I saw any home-made banner that was spelt correctly...
Labels: Daily Mail, demonstrations, Israel, London, newspapers, Palestine
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Ridiculous New Daily Mail Attack on the BBC
The Daily Mail, buoyed by it's success in surfing a wave of ignorant public opinion against the BBC has a new scandal, a paedophile working at the Beeb in the children's department!
Except, he was in four episodes of a childrens show made by an independent company in 2001. Of course, the comments are worse, as though people reading this article thought it was saying that Auntie had replaced Songs of Praise with film of BBC presenters wanking over a pile of toddlers.
Talking of masturbation, they must have surely run out of Vaseline and tissues at Associated Newspapers over a survey that allows them to claim that most people want to scrap the license fee. Of course they do, in a survey format people are never going to say "I want to spend ten pound a month paying for something" because most people are fundamentally idiots bereft of village walls to fall off of. However, seeing as ITV is no more than a rolling channel of Coronation Street, Heartbeat and, on digital, Inspector Morse repeats, there is a very good reason why making Auntie rely on adverts to pay its way is no solution at all.
Except, he was in four episodes of a childrens show made by an independent company in 2001. Of course, the comments are worse, as though people reading this article thought it was saying that Auntie had replaced Songs of Praise with film of BBC presenters wanking over a pile of toddlers.
Talking of masturbation, they must have surely run out of Vaseline and tissues at Associated Newspapers over a survey that allows them to claim that most people want to scrap the license fee. Of course they do, in a survey format people are never going to say "I want to spend ten pound a month paying for something" because most people are fundamentally idiots bereft of village walls to fall off of. However, seeing as ITV is no more than a rolling channel of Coronation Street, Heartbeat and, on digital, Inspector Morse repeats, there is a very good reason why making Auntie rely on adverts to pay its way is no solution at all.
Labels: BBC, Daily Mail, License Fee, stupidity
Monday, October 27, 2008
Spot the difference.
Yesterday.
Today.
I'm curious as to whether this happens often and I just don't normally notice.
Today.
I'm curious as to whether this happens often and I just don't normally notice.
Labels: Daily Mail, News International, newspapers, The Sun
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
So the Large Hadron Collider didn't destroy the world in an infinitesimally small chance of creating a black hole. Well, that's just terrific. That means we're still left with hoodies, the ruined housing market and brown people on the street. Aah, Daily Mail readers, not about to let their stupidity get in the way of displaying their ignorance.
Labels: Daily Mail, science, stupidity
Monday, August 11, 2008
Madeleine McCann is Bigger Than Jesus!
That's if you misspell 'Jesus' by using a random collection of numbers and letters, but we're in the silly season and I have to fill this blog somehow. Much in the same way as the usual offenders but primarily the Daily Mail (because The Sun is still watching Big Brother in the hopes someone flashes a body part of some description). It seems that Madeleine has been kidnapped to order by Belgian paedophiles or taken by some distraught hippy and is now in the European Union or possibly OUTSIDE the European Union. She has truly become Schrödinger's Kidnap Victim, a waveform of probabilities encompassing the globe which will stay that way until someone collapses the waveform and finds the body, pulse optional.
Septicisle presents a warning from the future of what could lay ahead if the media continue down the path of filling column inches with the most meaningless gibberings of drunk holidaymakers. [via Bloggerheads]
Septicisle presents a warning from the future of what could lay ahead if the media continue down the path of filling column inches with the most meaningless gibberings of drunk holidaymakers. [via Bloggerheads]
Labels: Daily Mail, Madeleine McCann, media
Saturday, July 26, 2008
The funniest thing I saw last week was one of the columnists in the Daily Mail complaining about how mean and nasty people on 'The Left' were. Someone in the Daily Mail. Calling other people who didn't share their beliefs 'mean'. That person should win every media award for the year, just for that piece. I wish I'd saved it, I really do.
Anyway, We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to not support a state funeral for Baroness Thatcher because we're mean .
Anyway, We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to not support a state funeral for Baroness Thatcher because we're mean .
Labels: Daily Mail, Margaret Thatcher
Monday, July 07, 2008
Daily Mail insist Doctor Who fans are OUTRAGED!!!1! that phone number in show doesn't connect to anything exciting.
Doctor Who finished its latest series on Saturday night watched by a huge audience of nearly 10million. But it was another set of figures that got some fans really worked up - the Time Lord's phone number. The digits had been flashed up on screen several times in the previous week's episode as the Doctor's sidekicks Sarah Jane Smith, Martha Jones and the Torchwood team contacted him.
More than 2,500 fans... dialled it before the last episode aired on Saturday.
One fan complained: "They showed that number so many times, as if they were asking for it to be called."
But their attempts to contact their hero on his personal number - 07700 900461 - came to nothing when they discovered that it would not connect-Writing on the BBC's website, one disgruntled viewer said: "Grrr - I phoned the Doctor's phone number but there was just an annoying network message.
"What's the point in showing a phone number if you're not gonna use it?!"
The Daily Mail really will try to find any excuse to bash the BBC won't they? Just imagine the headlines if they'd used a real number, 'Lorry driver Pete Belly claims that the BBC have made his life a misery after using his mobile phone number in an episode of Doctor Who'. Also, 2500 fans out of ten million, isn't that below one percent of the people who watched it supposedly tried phoning it?
Doctor Who finished its latest series on Saturday night watched by a huge audience of nearly 10million. But it was another set of figures that got some fans really worked up - the Time Lord's phone number. The digits had been flashed up on screen several times in the previous week's episode as the Doctor's sidekicks Sarah Jane Smith, Martha Jones and the Torchwood team contacted him.
More than 2,500 fans... dialled it before the last episode aired on Saturday.
One fan complained: "They showed that number so many times, as if they were asking for it to be called."
But their attempts to contact their hero on his personal number - 07700 900461 - came to nothing when they discovered that it would not connect-Writing on the BBC's website, one disgruntled viewer said: "Grrr - I phoned the Doctor's phone number but there was just an annoying network message.
"What's the point in showing a phone number if you're not gonna use it?!"
The Daily Mail really will try to find any excuse to bash the BBC won't they? Just imagine the headlines if they'd used a real number, 'Lorry driver Pete Belly claims that the BBC have made his life a misery after using his mobile phone number in an episode of Doctor Who'. Also, 2500 fans out of ten million, isn't that below one percent of the people who watched it supposedly tried phoning it?
Labels: BBC, Daily Mail, Doctor Who
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Nanotechnology will kill us all! Though only if you write articles for the Daily Mail and so don't understand science.
Labels: Daily Mail, science, stupidity
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Hmmm, in the evening the Daily Mail reports on what we were all talking about this morning. I do like the way they are trying to write this in a way that doesn't look like they just bought a copy of The Times and cribbed from that.
Labels: beauty, Daily Mail, journalists, misogyny, newspapers, Tad Safran, United Kingdom
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Best. Daily Mail Story. Evar.
Lesbian foot specialist struck off after posing in bondage gear and saying 'fuck Easter' in front of nun.
Labels: Daily Mail, humour, newspapers
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Gah, stuff to do, stuff to do, thank Crickey I'm on leave this week as I'm just so tired right now.
Anyway, just time to dump a few links in your laps for your edufictation...
Iraqi interpreters and other key support staff who have risked their lives to work for Britain are to be allowed to settle in the United Kingdom.
And done just in time to avoid the meeting that was being organised in one of the rooms in the Palace of Westminster about this. Bollocks to it being 'a Times campaign', everyone played their part.
Meanwhile, the Home Secretary is urged to respond to allegations that failed asylum seekers have the shit kicked out of them as they are deported. The Indy had a big report on this yesterday, shocking if true but not surprising.
This ban will not stop us. There's going to be a Stop the War demo on Monday, but the police have decided it's illegal and dusted down legislation centuries old to justify their reasoning (which is interesting because although Gordon Brown promised to repeal SOCPA when he finally took to the thrown I believe it's still in force right now). More info here.
And finally, for some 'light relief', Celebrity racist Danielle Lloyd says she "felt like a man" after being forced to venture out in public with hairy armpits as part of a TV documentary. More TV fakery as it was prosthetic underarm hair, she wasn't even asked to just not shave for a while.
Anyway, just time to dump a few links in your laps for your edufictation...
Iraqi interpreters and other key support staff who have risked their lives to work for Britain are to be allowed to settle in the United Kingdom.
And done just in time to avoid the meeting that was being organised in one of the rooms in the Palace of Westminster about this. Bollocks to it being 'a Times campaign', everyone played their part.
Meanwhile, the Home Secretary is urged to respond to allegations that failed asylum seekers have the shit kicked out of them as they are deported. The Indy had a big report on this yesterday, shocking if true but not surprising.
This ban will not stop us. There's going to be a Stop the War demo on Monday, but the police have decided it's illegal and dusted down legislation centuries old to justify their reasoning (which is interesting because although Gordon Brown promised to repeal SOCPA when he finally took to the thrown I believe it's still in force right now). More info here.
And finally, for some 'light relief', Celebrity racist Danielle Lloyd says she "felt like a man" after being forced to venture out in public with hairy armpits as part of a TV documentary. More TV fakery as it was prosthetic underarm hair, she wasn't even asked to just not shave for a while.
Labels: beauty, Daily Mail, demonstrations, Gordon Brown, immigration, Iraq, Parliament, The War Against Terror, United Kingdom, women
Friday, October 05, 2007
Oh, following on from this, earlier? Look at the tiny disclaimer down the very bottom.
Labels: books, Daily Mail, stupidity
Hmmm, do you think someone is possibly pulling the Daily Mail's plonker?
Children's books that don't have happy endings should be banned, it was claimed yesterday. Youngsters are already exposed to enough misery in their lives and should be protected from such stories, says a parents' group. The Happy Ending Foundation is planning a series of Bad Book Bonfires for later this month, when parents will be encouraged to burn novels with negative endings... Among the stories on the foundation's blacklist are best-sellers such as A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and Marcus Pfister's Milo and the Magical Stones... Adrienne Small founded the organisation when her ten-year-old daughter became depressed and withdrawn after reading the first book in the Lemony Snicket series.
So, rather than minding her own business and just going to the library and suggesting her child read the first Harry Potter book or something like 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' Mrs Small decided to start a nationwide society to restrict children's reading. As you do.
Here's the website. I had some difficulty finding it because the Mail misnamed the group as the Happy Ending Foundation rather than Happy EndingS Foundation. But surely, someone is taking the piss? Sad books are bad books. Mrs Small has now left her career as a tax inspector to focus on THEF full-time. She plans to rewrite all 13 Lemony Snicket books to give them happy endings. Her versions will be published on-line - watch this website! I'm sure Daniel Handler and Egmont Books will be watching the website. Wholesale rewriting of a current children's book, I don't think 'fair use' works here.
I don't know. I'm not a parent, but I would have thought that if my child was sad because they'd read a book that made them unhappy I would have tried talking to them about it, or tried cheering them up?
Children's books that don't have happy endings should be banned, it was claimed yesterday. Youngsters are already exposed to enough misery in their lives and should be protected from such stories, says a parents' group. The Happy Ending Foundation is planning a series of Bad Book Bonfires for later this month, when parents will be encouraged to burn novels with negative endings... Among the stories on the foundation's blacklist are best-sellers such as A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and Marcus Pfister's Milo and the Magical Stones... Adrienne Small founded the organisation when her ten-year-old daughter became depressed and withdrawn after reading the first book in the Lemony Snicket series.
So, rather than minding her own business and just going to the library and suggesting her child read the first Harry Potter book or something like 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' Mrs Small decided to start a nationwide society to restrict children's reading. As you do.
Here's the website. I had some difficulty finding it because the Mail misnamed the group as the Happy Ending Foundation rather than Happy EndingS Foundation. But surely, someone is taking the piss? Sad books are bad books. Mrs Small has now left her career as a tax inspector to focus on THEF full-time. She plans to rewrite all 13 Lemony Snicket books to give them happy endings. Her versions will be published on-line - watch this website! I'm sure Daniel Handler and Egmont Books will be watching the website. Wholesale rewriting of a current children's book, I don't think 'fair use' works here.
I don't know. I'm not a parent, but I would have thought that if my child was sad because they'd read a book that made them unhappy I would have tried talking to them about it, or tried cheering them up?
Labels: books, Daily Mail, stupidity
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Why do I do it? Why do I look at the Daily Mail website when I know the paper is written solely to annoy the hell out of me? Today's exhibit: 'I spent a week living like a woman' in which a Daily Mail orc tidies his flat, is aware of what he eats and drinks, makes conscious decisions about what to wear, reads Cosmo, phones his Mum for a chat, has his legs waxed and pays attention when people speak to him. It's 'all a bit of fun' of course, in the same way that a crowbar to the head is 'light-hearted japery'.
Labels: Daily Mail, men, metrosexuality, stupidity, women
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Mark Thomas went to the Defence Systems and Equipment International, got countries that had always denied it to admit to torture and got turned away. The Daily Mail sent a reporter to fondle the big guns and have his photo taken with naked women. He got in. He celebrates in the glorious name of 'Robert Hardman' (Same Robert Hardman who was a chairman of Cambridge University Conservative Association? Probably not, don't mind me Lorraine, just Googling names again.)
Daily Mail readers are a funny lot. They believe, on the lack of any evidence, that scrounging Eastern European scum are coming to steal benefits from this country. They believe that the BBC are pinko subversives out to transform this country into the U.S.S.R. A lot of them seem to think that if you don't support hanging as a punishment for wearing a hoodie then you're a crazy bleeding-heart liberal. Surprisingly, they draw the line at being an arms manufacturer.
Daily Mail readers are a funny lot. They believe, on the lack of any evidence, that scrounging Eastern European scum are coming to steal benefits from this country. They believe that the BBC are pinko subversives out to transform this country into the U.S.S.R. A lot of them seem to think that if you don't support hanging as a punishment for wearing a hoodie then you're a crazy bleeding-heart liberal. Surprisingly, they draw the line at being an arms manufacturer.
Labels: Daily Mail, DSEI, Government, Mark Thomas, terrorism
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Sherrif Paxman lays down the law about television, 'trust' and why Tony Blair is an arse and an idiot. I may not like Paxman as an interviewer but he has some good points here. Unsurprisingly the Daily Mail has decided to interpret this as a blistering attack on Auntie, but then as they've spent the last few weeks obsessed by newsreaders legs I think anything they have to say about the Beeb can be safely ignored.
Labels: BBC, Daily Mail, Jeremy Paxman, Tony Blair
Thursday, August 23, 2007
News just in from the Gah, Fuck! We Men Are Such Bastards! desk:
A management consultant who branded his wife with a hot steam iron because she had failed to press his shirt and ...also slashed her with a knife because she had forgotten to make his sandwiches... walked free from court - with just a £2,000 fine.
And what was the Judge's well thought out, wise and sagacious decision for this?
He was spared even a community punishment because the judge ruled that "special circumstances" suggested he was unlikely to reoffend and his job meant he was too "busy" to find the time to complete any order.
SO, if I were to kill Shrubya on my holiday and then point out that he's the only scumbag I really dislike and I have a 9-5 job at a library to return to, that'll be okay then? What the cock is going on when you have A FUCKING JUDGE believing the criminal justice system is not there to inconvenience someone who has committed GBH on someone else?
the £90,000-a-year executive walked free from court - with just a £2,000 fine.
His wife Elizabeth, also 25, sat quietly in the corner of the courtroom at Southwark Crown Court as he indicated he could pay the fine within 28 days.
By my reckoning he'd be able to pay the fine in just over 8 days.
You know it's something serious when the comments on the Daily Mail website are against him, the Daily Mail readership normally comprising of people who think Thatcher was dangerously liberal.
Anyway, the fella's name is Colin Read. Yep, Colin Read likes torturing women for fun. If you're the sort of woman who has even lower feelings of self-worth than Liz Jones then Colin Read is the man for you. Colin Read will beat the shit out of you and you'll have no means of legal recourse. Go out with Colin Read today and get a free breadknife in the shin. Of course, there are lots of Colin Read's on the net, so here's a picture of the little shit:
A management consultant who branded his wife with a hot steam iron because she had failed to press his shirt and ...also slashed her with a knife because she had forgotten to make his sandwiches... walked free from court - with just a £2,000 fine.
And what was the Judge's well thought out, wise and sagacious decision for this?
He was spared even a community punishment because the judge ruled that "special circumstances" suggested he was unlikely to reoffend and his job meant he was too "busy" to find the time to complete any order.
SO, if I were to kill Shrubya on my holiday and then point out that he's the only scumbag I really dislike and I have a 9-5 job at a library to return to, that'll be okay then? What the cock is going on when you have A FUCKING JUDGE believing the criminal justice system is not there to inconvenience someone who has committed GBH on someone else?
the £90,000-a-year executive walked free from court - with just a £2,000 fine.
His wife Elizabeth, also 25, sat quietly in the corner of the courtroom at Southwark Crown Court as he indicated he could pay the fine within 28 days.
By my reckoning he'd be able to pay the fine in just over 8 days.
You know it's something serious when the comments on the Daily Mail website are against him, the Daily Mail readership normally comprising of people who think Thatcher was dangerously liberal.
Anyway, the fella's name is Colin Read. Yep, Colin Read likes torturing women for fun. If you're the sort of woman who has even lower feelings of self-worth than Liz Jones then Colin Read is the man for you. Colin Read will beat the shit out of you and you'll have no means of legal recourse. Go out with Colin Read today and get a free breadknife in the shin. Of course, there are lots of Colin Read's on the net, so here's a picture of the little shit:
Labels: angry, courtrooms, courts, Daily Mail, domestic violence, England, Flickr, men, torture, women
