‘Private firms and utility companies forced to offer services in Welsh under new equality law’ is a nasty snidey dishonest anti-Welsh language little bit in today’s Wail.
There is no ‘new equality law’ so the claim utilities and private firms in Wales could be forced to print all their bills and literature in both English and Welsh is false.
Check out the Welsh Assembly’s website and you wil see the measure is about the Welsh Assembly seeking the transfer of powers from Westminster to legislate on the language in Wales.
That’s only right and fair and democratic isn’t it!?
Gas, Electricity bills in Welsh! Mobile phone bills even!?!?! Perish the thought!
This isn’t the first time the Wail has done anti-Welsh language pieces. Hate it!
Assholes, why is it so wrong for the Welsh to insist on using their own language? Imagine if a Punjabi community group in East London protested at having to do their leaflets in English, the Mail would take exactly the opposite stance and insist on it.
And that front page is ridiculous, why buy a newspaper when I can look outside the fucking window and get exactly the same information? It’s snowing! Oh yes, I remember, for the bullshit racist story on the top banner. They’ll be inviting foreign athletes to the Olympics next! Who the fuck do they think they are coming to our country and competing in OUR Olympics?
Michael P – It’s interesting how the anti-Scots and anti-Irish bile doesn’t make it into the Scottish and Irish editions of the Mail. I wonder if there’s a special Welsh print run identical to the English one but with stuff like this taken out?
Um… Planes are flying, drivers are no longer stranded (unless they chose to drive into a blizzard, and millions are no longer trapped at home (if anyone ever was, then they probably live somewhere which gets snowed in at least once every five years and should not be shocked by it. Don’t confuse “there’s no busses” with “trapped at home”. If you can open your front door and walk then you’re not trapped.). So it hasn’t really lasted two days, let alone all week.
I wonder which genius thought up the storyline about the Luftwaffe not being able to stop buses in WW2 in London but the Elf & Safety Nazis stopped them after a few inches of snow.
Re: The top banner. I think, with the wildcat strikes and all, the Mail sees the potential to start another ball rolling with the hope of putting serious pressure on the government. After the Ross/Brand thing expect to see quite a lot of this.
The snow headline re-inforces an interesting point about the tabloids in general (including the Independent) and the Mail in particular – they love distaster and love telling their readers how awful things are or are going to get. The Mail/Express negativism over “food shortages” (which didn’t happen) and the economic slump are other good examples of this. I think that’s interesting; apart from the political capital to be made out of it they seem to think misery sells.
The London news on ITV last night was complaining about all the buses (and most of the trains) being taken out of service. Two buses had jacknifed yesterday morning; if TFL had left all the transport running as normal, there probably would have been at least one serious accident and a possibility of people getting badly hurt. If that had happened, I’m fairly certain everyone (e.g. Daily Mail readers) would have been up in arms over why nothing was done to prevent it.
The misery angle is interesting. They’ve chosen to present the snow as some kind of apocalyptic harbinger of doom, instead of using pictures of people enjoying themselves and presenting it as what most people I know took it for: a day off work and a chance to slide down a hill on your arse.
“Two buses had jacknifed yesterday morning; if TFL had left all the transport running as normal, there probably would have been at least one serious accident and a possibility of people getting badly hurt. If that had happened, I’m fairly certain everyone (e.g. Daily Mail readers) would have been up in arms over why nothing was done to prevent it.”
I think that’s why I have no time for the “‘elf and safety” whinging of the Littlejohns. If the laws were done away with and accidents occured they wouldn’t say “shame, but it’s the price of no health and safety nazis”, they’d demand to know why nothing was done to prevent it. We’ve seen this with social workers: when social workers are pro-active they’re accused of being the Big Bad State interfering in YOUR family life, when they don’t do enough (a la Baby P) they’re pilloried for *not* being pro-active enough. Hacks get away with this because they don’t have the responsiblities of dealing with these issues themselves; Orwell described “opinionated” columns in newspapers as (and I may be paraphrasing) “the harping of people who have never been anywhere near the responsibilities of actual power and never expect to be”. Amen to that.
Re: The ‘elf and safety. These will be the same people that bemoan the “Yuman Rights Brigade,” yet in last weeks gay adoption story, many of the comments were along the lines of “Surely these childrens Human Rghts have been infringed.”
Mail types want these laws, but only when it suits them.
The Scottish Mail’s omitted the Olympics thing on the top banner. Instead they’ve gone with a piece about how Gwyneth Paltrow and her family have been mortally wounded by a comment made by Jonathan Ross.
Well I was ‘trapped’. That’s what zero public transport means when you don’t have a car. I calculate that it would have taken me three hours at least to walk to work. In a snow storm. Both my local stations were shut again this morning – but I was able to use alternative means today. Apparently the line needs to be cleared but it seems no one could be bothered to do it last night. But that’s what you get when you privatise essential public services. The passengers come way down the list of priorities for these train companies.
I love all the media hysteria about the snow. The Grauniad had ‘Snow – Live’ reports. You would have thought some extraterrestrial beings had landed in the UK the way the press is going on. This is what winter in the UK should be like, although to be fair global warming has made people forget.
Would the foreigners being employed for the Olympics have anything to do with, like, you know, communicating with the athletes from, er, other countries maybe?
Spectacular bit of lunacy from Potty Pete Hitchens last Mail on Sunday- apparently it wasn’t alcohol or poverty that led to a gang of Chavvy bastards beating up a pub landlord, it was video games, TV, cannabis and “Godlessness”. Seriously.
And in other comedy right wingers news, the BNP have made a complaint to the BBC, claiming Jo Brand making a joke about them was racist!
Do agree we’re overreacting to a bit of weather though. Interestingly, London bus services continued to run right through the Blitz, but in snow? No way, far too dangerous!
No. It was not the worst snow for 18 years. It might have been in the south east, but we’ve had many days like that in the rest of the country.
Anyway, I regard snow as a good thing, so shouldn’t they be celebrating the ‘best’ snow in 18 years?
‘Trapped’ at home? Better than being trapped at work or at school! I managed to get as far as the pub last night. Had to turn back after 3 pints though
Luby Lu – Absolute genius! And final proof if any were needed that the Express journalists don’t even believe their own stories.
I really think it’s time for some serious regulation of the press in this country. The free press is a noble tradition, but the actively manipulative press is a different thing. They almost work as a form of anti-education now where you (in theory) learn tolerance, responsibility and rationality at school then the newspapers bombard you every day with bigotry, selfishness and psuedo-science and transform you into a total bastard.
I seriously think the press is one of the major contributing factors in ironically turning this country into the shithole they often profess it to be. Call me a Nazi if you must, but the first thing I’d do as prime minister is absolutely knock the shit out of the press with new laws. Not to compromise freedom, but have huge penalties for printing outright lies, including mandatory changes of editors and owners.
SNOW ALL WEEK – AND GUESS WHO’S FAULT IT IS – ZANULIEBORE AND STALIBERALL LOONY CHAVEZ MCBROON AND THE PC BRIGADE (ANOTHER PLOY TO DESTROY BRITISH BUSINESS AND SNOW ELF AND SAFETY GONE MAD) – AND GUESS WHO’S PAYING – YOU!!
Well, I’ve got a very clean house now and I’ve paired all my socks, but I don’t think I’d like to do another day. You can’t really go anywhere or do anything outside, other than build a snowman and once you’ve done that it rapidly gets rather boring. Plus I will be expected to stay late every night until I’ve made up the time, plus the trains are likely to be shit all week so I’ll have to get up an hour earlier to have any chance of making it on time and avoid having to stay even later. Not that much fun really.
The headline should have read: “TWO IN THREE OLYMPIC JOBS GOES TO A BRITISH WORKER”. This is yet another blatant attempt by the Fail to claim that foreigners are getting the jobs, which simply isn’t true. Gordon Brown’s plans for a “British jobs only” policy is beginning to backfire on him.
[...] In fact there are entire websites devoted to mocking its gloomy tone – whether it’s the risk of cancer from common household products, the freefall of the housing market or, and this has been a gift to its newsdesk recently, British weather chaos. [...]
There’s apparently 1.5 million British workers in the EU it said on Newsnight yesterday. Nobody gives a fuck about them do they?
I’m sure in the Express and Mail’s Spanish editions there’s not so much of this bile seeing as it’d involve taking their livelihood away, but as usual the ‘ex-pat’ morons wouldn’t see it that way and want the moon on a stick – basically banning foreign workers from the UK but somehow magically allowing UK workers free access all over the EU.
“I really think it’s time for some serious regulation of the press in this country. The free press is a noble tradition, but the actively manipulative press is a different thing. They almost work as a form of anti-education now where you (in theory) learn tolerance, responsibility and rationality at school then the newspapers bombard you every day with bigotry, selfishness and psuedo-science and transform you into a total bastard.”
I kind-of agree. The British press exercises its freedom with barely a shred of responsibility which has made it arrogant, presumptuous and controlling. If they attack a celebrity with money then there’s a good chance they’ll be called on what they print but an ordinary member of the public? Forget it.
Government is largely to blame for this, especially Labour. They’ve been far too soft with a thoroughly nasty press under the misapprehention that they can “get them onside” and it’s failed. You don’t deal with bullies by co-towing to them, you deal with them by showing your teeth.
It’s the old “with great power comes great responsibility” maxim.
The press has great power but zero responsibility, and you don’t need to curtail the press’ freedom to achieve it, just alter the regulations – look at the BBC for example which is as trustworthy as you can get for a news organisation mainly because it is run to a charter, and nobody (sane) would accuse it of being that biased or having an agenda.
The people who run these rags are interested in one of two things – power and/or profit. If you make them sign up to a charter like the BBC they lose the power and if you increase the penalties it damages the profits, making the unsavoury and unprofessional go elsewhere.
I’m not in any way saying that views like the Mail’s shouldn’t be allowed to be aired, it is a democracy after all, but just that news should be impartial and such journalism should be confined to magazines. I disagree with the content of the Spectator and Nuts, but they’re magazines and as such readers are aware they’re editorially biased. Newspapers have the dangerous air of legitimacy and as such should be forced to be as impartial and possible or at the very least reign in some excesses.
Damm Snow, coming over here and covering our towns.
I bet Paul Dacre actually took an orgasm when he seen those workers strikes. It is quite funny to see the conservative Mail try and have sympathy with the Trade Unions. That thing about the Olympics is old hat. Nice sentence construction which implys that the migrants were given the jobs to build on the olympics. Because, no person from eastern europe could actually qualify for job could they?
Well excuse me! How selfish of the DM, a British newspaper, to stick up for the rights of British people to get jobs in their own country! ‘Racism!’ I hear most of you chanting. To me, it seems more like loyalty to your own kith and kin, which some people might regard as a virtue and not a vice.
And as for the Olympics I wish that they’d never been given to London. The lasting legacy of the Olympics for London will NOT be economic regeneration but a ’super-mosque’, surely a contradiction in terms, at the Olympic site. It will be the biggest mosque in Europe and will mark a huge advance in the Islamification of London and perhaps ultimately of Britain itself. What’s to celebrate in any of that?
“Well excuse me! How selfish of the DM, a British newspaper, to stick up for the rights of British people to get jobs in their own country! ‘Racism!’ I hear most of you chanting. To me, it seems more like loyalty to your own kith and kin, which some people might regard as a virtue and not a vice.”
Stop trying to stifle debate on issues about free trade and free movement of workers by claiming that anybody who questions whether it would be right for all jobs in the UK to be fufilled by British people is somehow forgetting their own people. We can sit and debate over whether protecionism would actually work but don’t acuse me of forgetting my own people just because I believe it would be more benefical for this country if we allowed migrant workers to compete for jobs.
Also the Mail states that 63% of those working on the olympic village are British. 8% are Irish and 29% of them are from Europe. So British workers still make up a majority.
I can think of a pretty good reason why 1 in 3 Olympic jobs are going to migrants… Because where the work is centred there AREN’T ENOUGH QUALIFIED BRITISH LABOURERS TO FILL THE JOBS.
daveyp, if you want to give those jobs to British people, then feel free to tell me how you intend to handle the logistics of moving them plus their families to the correct areas so that they can do the damn jobs, as well as filling in the gaps in the workforce from the areas you take them from.
Or we can give the excess to migrants to plug the gaps and not have to uproot the entire workforce because we don’t have enough workers in each part of the country. What a plan, eh?
I am looking out for British workers – all 1.5 million of them who work in the EU and would be made jobless if we revoked the free movement of labour laws.
Lest people forget the main reason for an influx of foreign workers here is the same as why British builders go to Dubai – because there isn’t enough skilled local labour. It’s all well and good people outside the refinery striking because some Italians got ‘their’ jobs, without bothering to mention they aren’t actually qualified for the job in the first place, but still feel entitled to it anyway.
Thick? Lazy? Un-skilled? Don’t bother to improve your own shortcomings in life! Blame it on a foreigner instead!
The DM’s blogs have gone into overdrive on this one! British Jobs for British Workers, Peter Hitchins; American Jobs for American Workers, Mary Ellen Synon. Send all foreign workers home, leave the EU, make Britain Great again! What a load of fucking rubbish! Imagine British society with no Chinese or Indian takeaways, no Italian football managers, do I need to go on?? Yet this crap is being published and swallowed by large chunks of the British public. Then this from Mary Ellen today:
Looks like today the British workers outside the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire have been twinned with the striking workers at the shipyards at Gdansk in 1980: and for any worker, there could be no greater honour.’ You couldn’t make it up! Has the woman any idea how completely insane that remark is?
Regarding James M’s comment about Gwyneth Paltrow/Jonathan Ross: that story is on the Mail’s site, and the comments section is amusingly full of remarks about how she’s keeping the story going when we should be leaving it be, instead of generating needless fuss over it.
I’ll bet there was some nervous throat clearing at DM HQ when they read those.
I wrote a letter to the Wail about a year ago when they were getting all het up about Network Rail and the maintenance cock-ups over Christmas and New Year – suggested a team of Polish rail workers were brought in to get the job done on time. Never got printed – what a surprise!
“The press has great power but zero responsibility, and you don’t need to curtail the press’ freedom to achieve it, just alter the regulations – look at the BBC for example which is as trustworthy as you can get for a news organisation mainly because it is run to a charter, and nobody (sane) would accuse it of being that biased or having an agenda.”
I wouldn’t say the BBC, as broadcast, is unbiased and agenda-free, that’s not really true. What is true is that it’s the least-biased broadcaster we have because of its charter. There is bias, though and it comes largely from the personal politics of the people who make the programmes (whenever people accuse the BBC of being “biased” I tend to correct it to “there are biased people working at the BBC and the programming often reflects this”; the corporation itself as an entity can’t really be accused of bias). There’s also an argument often made by the Beeb’s more sensible critics that it’s pre-occupation with “even-handedness” means that it give too much weight to some viewpoints when discussing a contentious issue because it thinks it should treat them all “equally” although I’m not sure I agree with that.
What is very true is that the vast majority of “biased BBC!” harrumphing (a lot of it from the Left as well as the Right) is based around assuming bias and then looking for evidence to back it up rather than examining the whole picture. There’s also a large dollop of hysteria involved, especially from the Mad Mel tendency.
“The people who run these rags are interested in one of two things – power and/or profit. If you make them sign up to a charter like the BBC they lose the power and if you increase the penalties it damages the profits, making the unsavoury and unprofessional go elsewhere.”
I agree entirely with your idea of a Press Charter and I think that’s a better idea than laws encroaching on press freedom. To be honest, where the balance lies between giving the press the freedom to report and controlling nasty and invasive tabloids has been bothering me and I think you’ve struck a good balance – make any national newspaper sign-up to a “good behaviour” contract and impose stiff fines if it is broken.
I also think the law needs to be changed so that those accused-of or charged with a crime can’t be named in the media unless they’re convicted. This would prevent the press prejudicing trials and prevent the innocent from being hounded by the papers (as has happened before). Unfortunately, both the power of the yellow press and the public’s appetite from salacious gossip (as long as it’s not them that’s the target, of course) mixed with government that is weak and cowardly towards the press means this is extremely unlikely.
Sorry Zagrebo, I meant the BBC does I have bias (I said it isn’t that biased, should have put emphasis on ‘that’) The problem is any secondary source is always tainted by the filter it comes from, that’s unavoidable unless robots do the reporting, but the BBC is the least guilt of this as any spin it creates is usually personal by the reporter and unintentional rather than editorially mandated.
I’d be happy for the Mail and Express to continue as if, but only in magazine format. A newspaper has an air of truth and legitimacy and they use that to distort the truth and manipulate huge sections of the country for petty bigoted agendas. In a magazine format the average person would take it with a pinch of salt and the those that did buy would be the hardcore anyway who just want their opinions backed up.
“Sorry Zagrebo, I meant the BBC does I have bias (I said it isn’t that biased, should have put emphasis on ‘that’) The problem is any secondary source is always tainted by the filter it comes from, that’s unavoidable unless robots do the reporting, but the BBC is the least guilt of this as any spin it creates is usually personal by the reporter and unintentional rather than editorially mandated.”
I agree, that’s why I get annoyed when harrumphers complain about the BBC being “biased” in its news reporting when the bias actually comes from individual journalists. They tend to propagate the idea (largely amongst themselves, it has to be said) that the organisation is biased, ie that management and programme-makers actively encourage bias. I’ve seen plenty of examples (although they are rare) of journalistic bias on the BBC but no real evidence of institutional bias beyond loudmouths saying that they *must* be because it’s *obvious* in the way that people do when spouting received opinion.
I think there’s genuine bias in the *entertainment* output (heck, I’ve been quite bored recently listening to some shows on the (otherwise excellent BBC7) that are often boring political commentary dressed as “entertainment” (yes, “In The Red”, I’m thinking of you)) but I think that’s symptomatic of the sort of people who write for television and radio: they tend to be a left-leaning lot in general.
Zagrebo – I’ve actually done a bit of work in TV and it’s not as simple as that. Socially they’re extremely left-wing as a huge amount of people are gay and from ethnic minorities, but economically some of the most right wing selfish bastards I’ve ever met! This is mainly because the vast majority come from very middle class backgrounds and are on comparatively high salaries. I remember having a 10 to 1 argument about why inheritance tax was actually socially, economically and morally a good thing, and they looked at me like I needed to be euthanised.
But yes, the entertainment output is biased, but the point of entertainment is to give a creative spin to a subject, and the same goes for every other channel. The news however is impartial as it can be really, which is why even now the BBC is respected, trusted and listened to and read worldwide by citizens from Iran to Burma to Zimbabwe to China, even when those governments officially try to ban and discredit it.
Sorry for the triple post, but actually Libertarian or even the dreaded Ann Rand bollocks – Objectivist – would describe most people who work in TV in my experience. Socially very left, economically very right.
Basically selfish egotists who want the freedom to do anything they want (drugs-wise, sex-wise, etc) without interference, but equally don’t want to give a shit about anyone else while they’re at it.
“Zagrebo – I’ve actually done a bit of work in TV and it’s not as simple as that. Socially they’re extremely left-wing as a huge amount of people are gay and from ethnic minorities, but economically some of the most right wing selfish bastards I’ve ever met! This is mainly because the vast majority come from very middle class backgrounds and are on comparatively high salaries. I remember having a 10 to 1 argument about why inheritance tax was actually socially, economically and morally a good thing, and they looked at me like I needed to be euthanised.”
Interesting you say that. I’ve heard it argued that the BBC’s worst bias isn’t about “left” or “right” or race or sexuality but actually class: that it’s an overwhelmingly middle-class institution. I think it’s got better in this regard in recent decades (it wasn’t that long ago – easily in living memory – that the only voices you heard on the Beeb were brayingly posh) but still has a long way to go.
I personally am against the repatriation of foreign labour. Like Mary Ellen Synon, I am Irish and working in the UK. Repatriating all foreign labour would mean that Mary Ellen Synon would have to go back to Ireland – bad news for Ireland. Probably bad news for MES too, since many Irish still have it in for her after the hateful things she said about the paralympic games.
Perhaps instead she could be sent on a journalistic fact-finding trip with NASA’s next mission into deep space? Her constant spouting of intellectually bankrupt drivel would be sufficient to fill deep space.
‘Private firms and utility companies forced to offer services in Welsh under new equality law’ is a nasty snidey dishonest anti-Welsh language little bit in today’s Wail.
There is no ‘new equality law’ so the claim utilities and private firms in Wales could be forced to print all their bills and literature in both English and Welsh is false.
Check out the Welsh Assembly’s website and you wil see the measure is about the Welsh Assembly seeking the transfer of powers from Westminster to legislate on the language in Wales.
That’s only right and fair and democratic isn’t it!?
Gas, Electricity bills in Welsh! Mobile phone bills even!?!?! Perish the thought!
This isn’t the first time the Wail has done anti-Welsh language pieces. Hate it!
Assholes, why is it so wrong for the Welsh to insist on using their own language? Imagine if a Punjabi community group in East London protested at having to do their leaflets in English, the Mail would take exactly the opposite stance and insist on it.
And that front page is ridiculous, why buy a newspaper when I can look outside the fucking window and get exactly the same information? It’s snowing! Oh yes, I remember, for the bullshit racist story on the top banner. They’ll be inviting foreign athletes to the Olympics next! Who the fuck do they think they are coming to our country and competing in OUR Olympics?
Michael P – It’s interesting how the anti-Scots and anti-Irish bile doesn’t make it into the Scottish and Irish editions of the Mail. I wonder if there’s a special Welsh print run identical to the English one but with stuff like this taken out?
I hope we don’t have any foreign athletes comming over here for the olympics, taking away our medals! Bloody Polish weightlifters!
Um… Planes are flying, drivers are no longer stranded (unless they chose to drive into a blizzard, and millions are no longer trapped at home (if anyone ever was, then they probably live somewhere which gets snowed in at least once every five years and should not be shocked by it. Don’t confuse “there’s no busses” with “trapped at home”. If you can open your front door and walk then you’re not trapped.). So it hasn’t really lasted two days, let alone all week.
It’s probably being built with an input from foreign workers because they actually want it completed prior to the start of the Olympics.
Snow falls in winter shock!! It’s all Gordon McBroon’s fault no doubt….. and his cronies in Nu-LieBour.
I wonder which genius thought up the storyline about the Luftwaffe not being able to stop buses in WW2 in London but the Elf & Safety Nazis stopped them after a few inches of snow.
Re: The top banner. I think, with the wildcat strikes and all, the Mail sees the potential to start another ball rolling with the hope of putting serious pressure on the government. After the Ross/Brand thing expect to see quite a lot of this.
The snow headline re-inforces an interesting point about the tabloids in general (including the Independent) and the Mail in particular – they love distaster and love telling their readers how awful things are or are going to get. The Mail/Express negativism over “food shortages” (which didn’t happen) and the economic slump are other good examples of this. I think that’s interesting; apart from the political capital to be made out of it they seem to think misery sells.
The London news on ITV last night was complaining about all the buses (and most of the trains) being taken out of service. Two buses had jacknifed yesterday morning; if TFL had left all the transport running as normal, there probably would have been at least one serious accident and a possibility of people getting badly hurt. If that had happened, I’m fairly certain everyone (e.g. Daily Mail readers) would have been up in arms over why nothing was done to prevent it.
The misery angle is interesting. They’ve chosen to present the snow as some kind of apocalyptic harbinger of doom, instead of using pictures of people enjoying themselves and presenting it as what most people I know took it for: a day off work and a chance to slide down a hill on your arse.
“Two buses had jacknifed yesterday morning; if TFL had left all the transport running as normal, there probably would have been at least one serious accident and a possibility of people getting badly hurt. If that had happened, I’m fairly certain everyone (e.g. Daily Mail readers) would have been up in arms over why nothing was done to prevent it.”
I think that’s why I have no time for the “‘elf and safety” whinging of the Littlejohns. If the laws were done away with and accidents occured they wouldn’t say “shame, but it’s the price of no health and safety nazis”, they’d demand to know why nothing was done to prevent it. We’ve seen this with social workers: when social workers are pro-active they’re accused of being the Big Bad State interfering in YOUR family life, when they don’t do enough (a la Baby P) they’re pilloried for *not* being pro-active enough. Hacks get away with this because they don’t have the responsiblities of dealing with these issues themselves; Orwell described “opinionated” columns in newspapers as (and I may be paraphrasing) “the harping of people who have never been anywhere near the responsibilities of actual power and never expect to be”. Amen to that.
Re: The ‘elf and safety. These will be the same people that bemoan the “Yuman Rights Brigade,” yet in last weeks gay adoption story, many of the comments were along the lines of “Surely these childrens Human Rghts have been infringed.”
Mail types want these laws, but only when it suits them.
It drizzled all night, it’s well above zero and pretty much all the snow’s gone from York.
The Scottish Mail’s omitted the Olympics thing on the top banner. Instead they’ve gone with a piece about how Gwyneth Paltrow and her family have been mortally wounded by a comment made by Jonathan Ross.
Isn’t it time to change the record now?
Well I was ‘trapped’. That’s what zero public transport means when you don’t have a car. I calculate that it would have taken me three hours at least to walk to work. In a snow storm. Both my local stations were shut again this morning – but I was able to use alternative means today. Apparently the line needs to be cleared but it seems no one could be bothered to do it last night. But that’s what you get when you privatise essential public services. The passengers come way down the list of priorities for these train companies.
I love all the media hysteria about the snow. The Grauniad had ‘Snow – Live’ reports. You would have thought some extraterrestrial beings had landed in the UK the way the press is going on. This is what winter in the UK should be like, although to be fair global warming has made people forget.
Would the foreigners being employed for the Olympics have anything to do with, like, you know, communicating with the athletes from, er, other countries maybe?
Spectacular bit of lunacy from Potty Pete Hitchens last Mail on Sunday- apparently it wasn’t alcohol or poverty that led to a gang of Chavvy bastards beating up a pub landlord, it was video games, TV, cannabis and “Godlessness”. Seriously.
And in other comedy right wingers news, the BNP have made a complaint to the BBC, claiming Jo Brand making a joke about them was racist!
Do agree we’re overreacting to a bit of weather though. Interestingly, London bus services continued to run right through the Blitz, but in snow? No way, far too dangerous!
No. It was not the worst snow for 18 years. It might have been in the south east, but we’ve had many days like that in the rest of the country.
Anyway, I regard snow as a good thing, so shouldn’t they be celebrating the ‘best’ snow in 18 years?
‘Trapped’ at home? Better than being trapped at work or at school! I managed to get as far as the pub last night. Had to turn back after 3 pints though
Thought people would appreciate this very amusing Guardian article on a URL on the Express website…or look out for the monkeyblog at Guardian online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2009/feb/03/url-cock-up-express-story
Luby Lu – Absolute genius! And final proof if any were needed that the Express journalists don’t even believe their own stories.
I really think it’s time for some serious regulation of the press in this country. The free press is a noble tradition, but the actively manipulative press is a different thing. They almost work as a form of anti-education now where you (in theory) learn tolerance, responsibility and rationality at school then the newspapers bombard you every day with bigotry, selfishness and psuedo-science and transform you into a total bastard.
I seriously think the press is one of the major contributing factors in ironically turning this country into the shithole they often profess it to be. Call me a Nazi if you must, but the first thing I’d do as prime minister is absolutely knock the shit out of the press with new laws. Not to compromise freedom, but have huge penalties for printing outright lies, including mandatory changes of editors and owners.
SNOW ALL WEEK – AND GUESS WHO’S FAULT IT IS – ZANULIEBORE AND STALIBERALL LOONY CHAVEZ MCBROON AND THE PC BRIGADE (ANOTHER PLOY TO DESTROY BRITISH BUSINESS AND SNOW ELF AND SAFETY GONE MAD) – AND GUESS WHO’S PAYING – YOU!!
Well, I’ve got a very clean house now and I’ve paired all my socks, but I don’t think I’d like to do another day. You can’t really go anywhere or do anything outside, other than build a snowman and once you’ve done that it rapidly gets rather boring. Plus I will be expected to stay late every night until I’ve made up the time, plus the trains are likely to be shit all week so I’ll have to get up an hour earlier to have any chance of making it on time and avoid having to stay even later. Not that much fun really.
The headline should have read: “TWO IN THREE OLYMPIC JOBS GOES TO A BRITISH WORKER”. This is yet another blatant attempt by the Fail to claim that foreigners are getting the jobs, which simply isn’t true. Gordon Brown’s plans for a “British jobs only” policy is beginning to backfire on him.
http://armchairnews.co.uk/2009/02/01/british-jobs-for-british-workers-dream-on/
[...] In fact there are entire websites devoted to mocking its gloomy tone – whether it’s the risk of cancer from common household products, the freefall of the housing market or, and this has been a gift to its newsdesk recently, British weather chaos. [...]
There’s apparently 1.5 million British workers in the EU it said on Newsnight yesterday. Nobody gives a fuck about them do they?
I’m sure in the Express and Mail’s Spanish editions there’s not so much of this bile seeing as it’d involve taking their livelihood away, but as usual the ‘ex-pat’ morons wouldn’t see it that way and want the moon on a stick – basically banning foreign workers from the UK but somehow magically allowing UK workers free access all over the EU.
How do we stir up support for the bnp and Ukip just before the Europeon Elections, Oh I know start publishing these stories every few weeks.
Oh and we can probably bring down this Labour Government if we can stir enough phoney phobia up.
“I really think it’s time for some serious regulation of the press in this country. The free press is a noble tradition, but the actively manipulative press is a different thing. They almost work as a form of anti-education now where you (in theory) learn tolerance, responsibility and rationality at school then the newspapers bombard you every day with bigotry, selfishness and psuedo-science and transform you into a total bastard.”
I kind-of agree. The British press exercises its freedom with barely a shred of responsibility which has made it arrogant, presumptuous and controlling. If they attack a celebrity with money then there’s a good chance they’ll be called on what they print but an ordinary member of the public? Forget it.
Government is largely to blame for this, especially Labour. They’ve been far too soft with a thoroughly nasty press under the misapprehention that they can “get them onside” and it’s failed. You don’t deal with bullies by co-towing to them, you deal with them by showing your teeth.
It’s the old “with great power comes great responsibility” maxim.
The press has great power but zero responsibility, and you don’t need to curtail the press’ freedom to achieve it, just alter the regulations – look at the BBC for example which is as trustworthy as you can get for a news organisation mainly because it is run to a charter, and nobody (sane) would accuse it of being that biased or having an agenda.
The people who run these rags are interested in one of two things – power and/or profit. If you make them sign up to a charter like the BBC they lose the power and if you increase the penalties it damages the profits, making the unsavoury and unprofessional go elsewhere.
I’m not in any way saying that views like the Mail’s shouldn’t be allowed to be aired, it is a democracy after all, but just that news should be impartial and such journalism should be confined to magazines. I disagree with the content of the Spectator and Nuts, but they’re magazines and as such readers are aware they’re editorially biased. Newspapers have the dangerous air of legitimacy and as such should be forced to be as impartial and possible or at the very least reign in some excesses.
Damm Snow, coming over here and covering our towns.
I bet Paul Dacre actually took an orgasm when he seen those workers strikes. It is quite funny to see the conservative Mail try and have sympathy with the Trade Unions. That thing about the Olympics is old hat. Nice sentence construction which implys that the migrants were given the jobs to build on the olympics. Because, no person from eastern europe could actually qualify for job could they?
how do you have a “snow – live” report? is it like: “there’s some snow falling… and some more… and even more…” etc?
Well excuse me! How selfish of the DM, a British newspaper, to stick up for the rights of British people to get jobs in their own country! ‘Racism!’ I hear most of you chanting. To me, it seems more like loyalty to your own kith and kin, which some people might regard as a virtue and not a vice.
And as for the Olympics I wish that they’d never been given to London. The lasting legacy of the Olympics for London will NOT be economic regeneration but a ’super-mosque’, surely a contradiction in terms, at the Olympic site. It will be the biggest mosque in Europe and will mark a huge advance in the Islamification of London and perhaps ultimately of Britain itself. What’s to celebrate in any of that?
“Well excuse me! How selfish of the DM, a British newspaper, to stick up for the rights of British people to get jobs in their own country! ‘Racism!’ I hear most of you chanting. To me, it seems more like loyalty to your own kith and kin, which some people might regard as a virtue and not a vice.”
Stop trying to stifle debate on issues about free trade and free movement of workers by claiming that anybody who questions whether it would be right for all jobs in the UK to be fufilled by British people is somehow forgetting their own people. We can sit and debate over whether protecionism would actually work but don’t acuse me of forgetting my own people just because I believe it would be more benefical for this country if we allowed migrant workers to compete for jobs.
Also the Mail states that 63% of those working on the olympic village are British. 8% are Irish and 29% of them are from Europe. So British workers still make up a majority.
I can think of a pretty good reason why 1 in 3 Olympic jobs are going to migrants… Because where the work is centred there AREN’T ENOUGH QUALIFIED BRITISH LABOURERS TO FILL THE JOBS.
daveyp, if you want to give those jobs to British people, then feel free to tell me how you intend to handle the logistics of moving them plus their families to the correct areas so that they can do the damn jobs, as well as filling in the gaps in the workforce from the areas you take them from.
Or we can give the excess to migrants to plug the gaps and not have to uproot the entire workforce because we don’t have enough workers in each part of the country. What a plan, eh?
I am looking out for British workers – all 1.5 million of them who work in the EU and would be made jobless if we revoked the free movement of labour laws.
Lest people forget the main reason for an influx of foreign workers here is the same as why British builders go to Dubai – because there isn’t enough skilled local labour. It’s all well and good people outside the refinery striking because some Italians got ‘their’ jobs, without bothering to mention they aren’t actually qualified for the job in the first place, but still feel entitled to it anyway.
Thick? Lazy? Un-skilled? Don’t bother to improve your own shortcomings in life! Blame it on a foreigner instead!
The DM’s blogs have gone into overdrive on this one! British Jobs for British Workers, Peter Hitchins; American Jobs for American Workers, Mary Ellen Synon. Send all foreign workers home, leave the EU, make Britain Great again! What a load of fucking rubbish! Imagine British society with no Chinese or Indian takeaways, no Italian football managers, do I need to go on?? Yet this crap is being published and swallowed by large chunks of the British public. Then this from Mary Ellen today:
Looks like today the British workers outside the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire have been twinned with the striking workers at the shipyards at Gdansk in 1980: and for any worker, there could be no greater honour.’ You couldn’t make it up! Has the woman any idea how completely insane that remark is?
Regarding James M’s comment about Gwyneth Paltrow/Jonathan Ross: that story is on the Mail’s site, and the comments section is amusingly full of remarks about how she’s keeping the story going when we should be leaving it be, instead of generating needless fuss over it.
I’ll bet there was some nervous throat clearing at DM HQ when they read those.
I wrote a letter to the Wail about a year ago when they were getting all het up about Network Rail and the maintenance cock-ups over Christmas and New Year – suggested a team of Polish rail workers were brought in to get the job done on time. Never got printed – what a surprise!
@Steven
“The press has great power but zero responsibility, and you don’t need to curtail the press’ freedom to achieve it, just alter the regulations – look at the BBC for example which is as trustworthy as you can get for a news organisation mainly because it is run to a charter, and nobody (sane) would accuse it of being that biased or having an agenda.”
I wouldn’t say the BBC, as broadcast, is unbiased and agenda-free, that’s not really true. What is true is that it’s the least-biased broadcaster we have because of its charter. There is bias, though and it comes largely from the personal politics of the people who make the programmes (whenever people accuse the BBC of being “biased” I tend to correct it to “there are biased people working at the BBC and the programming often reflects this”; the corporation itself as an entity can’t really be accused of bias). There’s also an argument often made by the Beeb’s more sensible critics that it’s pre-occupation with “even-handedness” means that it give too much weight to some viewpoints when discussing a contentious issue because it thinks it should treat them all “equally” although I’m not sure I agree with that.
What is very true is that the vast majority of “biased BBC!” harrumphing (a lot of it from the Left as well as the Right) is based around assuming bias and then looking for evidence to back it up rather than examining the whole picture. There’s also a large dollop of hysteria involved, especially from the Mad Mel tendency.
“The people who run these rags are interested in one of two things – power and/or profit. If you make them sign up to a charter like the BBC they lose the power and if you increase the penalties it damages the profits, making the unsavoury and unprofessional go elsewhere.”
I agree entirely with your idea of a Press Charter and I think that’s a better idea than laws encroaching on press freedom. To be honest, where the balance lies between giving the press the freedom to report and controlling nasty and invasive tabloids has been bothering me and I think you’ve struck a good balance – make any national newspaper sign-up to a “good behaviour” contract and impose stiff fines if it is broken.
I also think the law needs to be changed so that those accused-of or charged with a crime can’t be named in the media unless they’re convicted. This would prevent the press prejudicing trials and prevent the innocent from being hounded by the papers (as has happened before). Unfortunately, both the power of the yellow press and the public’s appetite from salacious gossip (as long as it’s not them that’s the target, of course) mixed with government that is weak and cowardly towards the press means this is extremely unlikely.
Sorry Zagrebo, I meant the BBC does I have bias (I said it isn’t that biased, should have put emphasis on ‘that’) The problem is any secondary source is always tainted by the filter it comes from, that’s unavoidable unless robots do the reporting, but the BBC is the least guilt of this as any spin it creates is usually personal by the reporter and unintentional rather than editorially mandated.
I’d be happy for the Mail and Express to continue as if, but only in magazine format. A newspaper has an air of truth and legitimacy and they use that to distort the truth and manipulate huge sections of the country for petty bigoted agendas. In a magazine format the average person would take it with a pinch of salt and the those that did buy would be the hardcore anyway who just want their opinions backed up.
More scum oozing.
Anyone would think more than 1 million Brits didn’t work in the EU
(imagine the DM/DE etc outrage if they start getting fired and have to come home).
@Steven
“Sorry Zagrebo, I meant the BBC does I have bias (I said it isn’t that biased, should have put emphasis on ‘that’) The problem is any secondary source is always tainted by the filter it comes from, that’s unavoidable unless robots do the reporting, but the BBC is the least guilt of this as any spin it creates is usually personal by the reporter and unintentional rather than editorially mandated.”
I agree, that’s why I get annoyed when harrumphers complain about the BBC being “biased” in its news reporting when the bias actually comes from individual journalists. They tend to propagate the idea (largely amongst themselves, it has to be said) that the organisation is biased, ie that management and programme-makers actively encourage bias. I’ve seen plenty of examples (although they are rare) of journalistic bias on the BBC but no real evidence of institutional bias beyond loudmouths saying that they *must* be because it’s *obvious* in the way that people do when spouting received opinion.
I think there’s genuine bias in the *entertainment* output (heck, I’ve been quite bored recently listening to some shows on the (otherwise excellent BBC7) that are often boring political commentary dressed as “entertainment” (yes, “In The Red”, I’m thinking of you)) but I think that’s symptomatic of the sort of people who write for television and radio: they tend to be a left-leaning lot in general.
Zagrebo – I’ve actually done a bit of work in TV and it’s not as simple as that. Socially they’re extremely left-wing as a huge amount of people are gay and from ethnic minorities, but economically some of the most right wing selfish bastards I’ve ever met! This is mainly because the vast majority come from very middle class backgrounds and are on comparatively high salaries. I remember having a 10 to 1 argument about why inheritance tax was actually socially, economically and morally a good thing, and they looked at me like I needed to be euthanised.
But yes, the entertainment output is biased, but the point of entertainment is to give a creative spin to a subject, and the same goes for every other channel. The news however is impartial as it can be really, which is why even now the BBC is respected, trusted and listened to and read worldwide by citizens from Iran to Burma to Zimbabwe to China, even when those governments officially try to ban and discredit it.
The irony of course being that the nation the BBC is least trusted or respected in is probably the UK!
Sorry for the triple post, but actually Libertarian or even the dreaded Ann Rand bollocks – Objectivist – would describe most people who work in TV in my experience. Socially very left, economically very right.
Basically selfish egotists who want the freedom to do anything they want (drugs-wise, sex-wise, etc) without interference, but equally don’t want to give a shit about anyone else while they’re at it.
@Steven
“Zagrebo – I’ve actually done a bit of work in TV and it’s not as simple as that. Socially they’re extremely left-wing as a huge amount of people are gay and from ethnic minorities, but economically some of the most right wing selfish bastards I’ve ever met! This is mainly because the vast majority come from very middle class backgrounds and are on comparatively high salaries. I remember having a 10 to 1 argument about why inheritance tax was actually socially, economically and morally a good thing, and they looked at me like I needed to be euthanised.”
Interesting you say that. I’ve heard it argued that the BBC’s worst bias isn’t about “left” or “right” or race or sexuality but actually class: that it’s an overwhelmingly middle-class institution. I think it’s got better in this regard in recent decades (it wasn’t that long ago – easily in living memory – that the only voices you heard on the Beeb were brayingly posh) but still has a long way to go.
I personally am against the repatriation of foreign labour. Like Mary Ellen Synon, I am Irish and working in the UK. Repatriating all foreign labour would mean that Mary Ellen Synon would have to go back to Ireland – bad news for Ireland. Probably bad news for MES too, since many Irish still have it in for her after the hateful things she said about the paralympic games.
Perhaps instead she could be sent on a journalistic fact-finding trip with NASA’s next mission into deep space? Her constant spouting of intellectually bankrupt drivel would be sufficient to fill deep space.