Posted by dnotice
October 17th, 2010
This is a cross-post of an article by Dario Battisti which was originally posted on The 21st Floor.
In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived a strange race of people– the Druids! No one knows who they were, or what they were doing, but their legacy remains…
Thus sang Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel in the ‘hit song’, “Stonehenge”. However, the legacy of the druids is such that druidry continues today, in its revived, revised form. Recently, the Charity Commission accepted that druidry should count as a genuine religion, which should not come over as particularly shocking to anyone. Anyone, that is, except the columnist Melanie Philips, in a smugly hypocritical article protesting against the development.
Will someone please tell me this is all a joke. Until now, Druids have been regarded indulgently as a curious remnant of Britain’s ancient past, a bunch of eccentrics who annually dress up in strange robes at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice.
Can it be long before the BBC transmits Stones Of Praise, or solemnly invites listeners to Radio 4’s Thought For The Day to genuflect to a tree?
Religious programming– imagine that! Laughable! No point is being made by this derision; Philips merely sneers at a faith which happens not to be the one she champions. Her article is replete with demeaning caricatures of druids intended to portray them as inferior savages compared to Christians .
Some might shrug this off. After all, the Druids don’t do any harm to anyone. What skin is it off anyone else’s nose how they are categorised?
Well, it actually matters rather a lot. Elevating them to the same status as Christianity is but the latest example of how the bedrock creed of this country is being undermined. More than that, it is an attack upon the very concept of religion itself.
How, exactly, is accepting druidry’s status as a religion an “attack” on religion itself? By the sound of it, Philips simply doesn’t like druids, and acknowledging that they might well fall into the ‘religion’ camp is too horrid for her to contemplate. Her article is replete of demeaning caricatures of practicing druids which serve no purpose other than to portray them as inferior to Christians. Additionally, pagan belief systems were the ‘bedrock creeds’ of Britain long before Christianity came along and decided to dismantle them, opportunistically pilfering elements which would come in handy for converting the populace.
Philips goes on to claim that druids belong to a cult rather than a religion, on the feeble basis that they believe in spirits of nature but not a ‘supreme god’, and that they are not ‘mainstream’. Yet anyone who has been following our Cult Status series will be aware of the difficulties in distinguishing cults from religions. The standard by which Philips makes her judgement seems completely arbitrary, postulated only for the sake of portraying the ever beloved Judeo-Christian faiths as superior to other faiths. You know, the wrong ones.
On the prospect of charitable status, she complains about druid leaders’ statements that they want “harmony with the earth and everything in it” by noting that:
…there are many who subscribe to no belief system at all and who would say they, too, want to live in harmony with the earth and everything in it. Are they, therefore, also to be regarded as religious folk and given charitable status?
Well, wait a minute! This would suggest that people have charitable inclinations regardless of religion, rather than as a result of it, thus undermining the practice of affording charitable status to any specific religion.
The whole thing is beyond absurd. But it is also malevolent. For it is all of a piece with the agenda by the oh-so politically correct Charity Commission to promote the fanatical religious creed of the Left — the worship of equality.
The Commission was primed by Labour for this attempt to restructure society back in 2006, when charity law was redrawn to redefine ‘public benefit’ as helping the poor.
This put the independent schools in the front line of attack, since education was no longer itself considered a benefit — as it had been since time immemorial — but only insofar as it furthered the ideology of ‘equality’.
Equal rights? Helping the poor? It’s political correctness gone mad! What’s really beyond absurd is Philips’ labelling of equal rights and concern for those in poverty as ‘malevolent’ and ‘fanatical’. This kind of outdated attitude betrays an extremely callous and oppressive streak on the author’s part.
But the new respectability of paganism cannot be laid entirely at the Charity Commission’s door. For in recent years, pagan practices have been rapidly multiplying, with an explosion of the occult: witchcraft, parapsychology, séances, telepathy and mind-bending cults.
Parapsychology, an occult practice? I was not aware that Richard Wiseman was an occultist. And when exactly did this ‘explosion of telepathy’ occur?
How on earth has our supposedly rational society come to subscribe to so much totally barking mumbo-jumbo?
That’s Melanie Philips, speaking in the Daily Mail, invoking rationality and decrying “so much totally barking mumbo jumbo” in her defence of Christian tradition. This is an astonishingly arrogant level of hypocrisy.
After making some more lazy caricatures, Philips makes the claim that focus on the natural world– that is, this world, rather than an elusive world-in-waiting– somehow provides a justification for mindless self-gratification.
These beliefs were, therefore, tailor-made for the ‘me society’ which turned against Biblical constraints on behaviour in the interests of others. They were subsequently given rocket fuel by environmentalism, at the core of which lies the pagan worship of ‘Mother Earth’.
I’m still not sure how the worship of the natural world, outside of oneself, amounts to self-worship. That sounds like the exact opposite to me.
…they were then legitimised by the doctrines of equality of outcomes and human rights — which, far from protecting the rights of truly religious people, aim to force Biblical morality and belief out of British and European public life altogether.
This is because human rights and equality of outcomes are held to be universal values. That means they invariably trump specific religious beliefs to impose instead equal status for all creeds.But if all creeds, however absurd, have equal meaning then every belief is equally meaningless. And without the Judeo-Christian heritage there would be no morality and no true human rights.
Yes, imagine the nightmare scenario that promoting human rights as universal values would result in. Never mind the fact that the whole point of human rights is that, as far as humans are concerned, they are universal values (and therefore must indeed trump religious doctrines which deny human rights, as any civilised person would realise). In any case, what the hell does “equality of outcomes” mean? Equal rights doesn’t mean that every outcome is the same, but that individuals in society are given equal opportunities within that society and not discriminated against– that citizens should have equal status as citizens. This terminology appears to have been devised solely to imply moral relativism where no such implication follows. The pathway beginning from equal rights and leading to absolute moral relativism does not exist.
There is nothing remotely enlightened about paganism. It was historically tied up with both communism and fascism, precisely because it is a negation of reason and the bedrock values behind Western progress.
It is not in the least surprising that, like any good fundamentalist nut, Philips does not neglect the obligatory unsubstantiated Godwin. The idea that the insular and insidious brand of Christianity championed throughout – a version of Christianity which does not recognise human rights as universal values – has somehow been the bedrock of Western progress is perverse.
The result is that, under the secular onslaught of human rights, our society is reverting to a pre-modern era of anti-human superstition and irrationality. From human rights, you might say, to pagan rites in one seamless progression.
This damning of secularism as instigating a reversion to “anti-human superstition and irrationality” is also utterly bizarre. By ensuring that people can live in a society whereby the religious views of one group (cough, Melanie Philips, cough) cannot be imposed on others, therefore meaning that measures have to be negotiated according to a rational, humanist approach, secularism defends against the advance of anti-human superstition and irrationality in making sure that it does not become a basis for laws. That is essentially the very purpose of secularism.
Anyone who thinks radical egalitarianism is progressive has got this very wrong. We are hurtling backwards in time to a more primitive age.
All this leads me to suspect that Melanie Philips writes her column from the safety of some bizarre parallel universe where a red traffic light means ‘go’, and rain falls upwards. A world in which a religious group is not a religion, in which worship of the natural world means self-worship, in which human rights are not universal values, in which equality is a malevolent doctrine, in which secularism favours superstition and irrationality, and in which egalitarianism is primitive and regressive. Her near-colonialist rage at the existence of anything non-Christian belongs in only two places that I can think of: the Dark Ages… and the pages of the Daily Mail.
Categories: Guest Blog, Melanie Philips, Religion |
20 Comments
Posted by sim-o
September 16th, 2010
This post was originally posted as Us British Munters by Kate at her Cruella-Blog
How thoughtful of the Daily Male to let us know how we British women are doing in the International “Whose Chicks are the Hottest?” Olympics. Today’s line-by-line destruction will be of this dreadful piece by Sean Poulter entitled Why French Women beat Brits in the Beauty Stakes: They spend twice as much on products. And incidentally if you want to place a bet on the beauty stakes do call William Hill. My money is on Chile – they’ve taken the South American title twice recently and a lot of their national chicks compete with international clubs.
“The women of France may enjoy perfectly powdered and smooth faces, however they pay more than twice as much as their British counterparts to achieve this effect.”
So the women of France all enjoy perfectly smooth faces do they? Guess all those holiday postcards of wrinkly weathered old women sat on street kerbs in Provence are staged then or done with latex special effects make-up?
“Spending on creams and potions designed to hold back the ageing process runs at £1.85billion a year on the other side of the Channel, compared to £854 million here.”
Designed to hold back the ageing process or designed to rip women off? I’m calling this a victory for British women who have an extra £1bn a year to spend on enjoying themselves.
“Although Italian by birth, Carla Bruni, the wife of the French president, has come to epitomise the women of France for whom no price is too high to hold back the wrinkles.”
You said it Sean. She’s Italian. Italian. And she’s an Italian supermodel. If anyone thinks she represents the women of France they should try speaking to a French woman. A real one. And if no price really was too high for the women of France the country would be bankrupt in about a week and every woman’s bathroom cabinet full of royal jelly and placenta.
“Indeed, some of the 42-year-old’s treatments, thought to include laser skin peels and botox, have produced some startling and bizarre results.”
Startling and bizarre – no price is too high for me to achieve THAT look.
“By contrast, Samantha Cameron, who is three years younger, apparently enjoys a more natural – English Rose – beauty regime.”
Samantha Cameron is also NOT a super-model. She’s a part-time accessory designer. And comparing one English part-time bag designer with one Italian model and then drawing conclusions about all British and all French women is just weird. There is real news out there you know Sean? Try visiting Congo, I think some women have been raped. Let us know if that helps to “hold back the wrinkles”, won’t you?
“New reseach looking at the body hang-ups of the women of Europe identifies some surprising differences.”
Surprising? So like German women wish they had two heads while the Latvians long for lustrous feathered wings? Something tells me I am going to be less surprised than I was when there wasn’t a fiver in that novelty birthday card last year.
“Certaintly, the women of France are content with their enviably flat stomachs.”
Ah, enlightenment… That’s probably also why Shakira looks so smug. And like Carla Bruni – she’s not French!
“Just 27per cent list their stomach as a problem area, which is a fraction of the 44per cent of British women who are worried about their flabby midriff.”
The question of course is what percentage are actually dangerously overweight and what percentage have merely been convinced they are by the beauty industry? But that would be journalism wouldn’t it Sean? And your speciality is copying out corporate press releases. Sidenote though: I don’t believe doubling your creams and lotions budget is going to shrink your midriff – it might be a better idea to halve your dessert budget.
“However, British women are far more content with their breasts and thighs than their counterparts across the Channel.”
I can’t wait to hear what percentage prefer not to rate their bodies like cuts of meat.
“Just 31per cent of women here are worried about having chunky thighs, compared to 43per cent of the French. Similarly, 30per cent of women in this country are concerned about their breasts, versus 38per cent of the French.”
The real issue is right across Europe women have been convinced to hate some part of their anatomy that is perfectly healthy.
“Looking at other nations, Italian women have a problem with their bottoms with some 47per cent listing this as a concern, far more than any other nation.”
If you have “a problem with your bottom” you should see a doctor. [Se hai un problema con il fondo si dovrebbe vedere un medico.]
“Rather alarmingly, some 57per cent of Spanish women have a worry about their entire face. Again a higher percentage than other nations.”
Well spotted Sean, that is certainly alarming. Can’t wait for your in depth research to discover what is behind these numbers, why we allow the beauty industry to bully women into feeling this way…
“Among German women, 46per cent are worried about their bigger bellies.”
…or you could just carry on cut and pasting that press release. Stick to what you’re good at eh?
“The research was conducted by retail analysts at Mintel for a report investigating the sales patterns of beauty creams and potions.”
It’s like I’m psychic isn’t it?
“It found that for British women, concerns about ageing are focused on the eyes and the dark circles, bags and wrinkles that give their age away.”
I find for me what gives my age away is that I just tell people because I don’t think getting older is shameful.
“Some 48per cent said the eye area is a worry, while 35per cent were concerned about a sagging jaw line.”
I still want to know what percentage told the interviewer to go f*ck themselves.
“Sixty-two per cent were worried about fine lines and wrinkles and 49per cent wanted to do away with the dark circles they have.”
What percentage were worried about all this rubbish BEFORE the market researcher started asking stupid intrusive questions?
“Nica Lewis, head consultant Mintel Beauty Innovation, said there is enormous money to be made by beauty companies that find a way to hold back the ageing process.”
Indeed. So much so that it might seem like even some of the companies who haven’t managed it will claim they have. If only there was a journalist around to investigate, but there’s only you eh, Sean?
“‘Ageing skin is no longer only a worry for older consumers. Younger women are now paying more attention to preventing wrinkles while they can rather than trying to cure them at a later stage,’ she said.”
So now they’re selling wrinkle cream to women who don’t even have wrinkles. Shouldn’t you be exposing the lies, pseudo-science and creepy advertising tricks that make women believe they should spend a lot of money on products that don’t even work? Sorry – almost forgot you’re working for the Mail…
“‘Educating these younger women about the benefits of a good facial skincare regime is an important way to ensure product take-up.”
“Ensuring product take-up”? Honestly – I know you didn’t write this, some PR puppy did – but really Sean – don’t put your name on articles this humiliating. It’s … well … humiliating.
“‘Brands could use mobile phone apps to remind young girls when to cleanse and moisturise on a morning and at night…”
Mmm how helpful of my phone to tell me when morning and night come round. What if I run out of battery though – if only some giant glowing orb would appear and disappear from the sky…
“…and notify them of new products or competitions and offers they could take advantage of.”
Wouldn’t that be ace? Having companies send junk mail direct to your actual phone so you don’t have to go downstairs and find it on the hall floor.
“A clear link between teen lines and ranges aimed at women in their early to mid-20s could also help brands retain customers…”
Sean, really, I understand that besuited twerps doing “brand management” graduate internships say this sort of thing but you are a journalist. Or at least you probably think you are.
“…as they progress through their age-related skincare needs.”
Oh gosh yes so here’s a quick run down of your age-related skincare NEEDS…
Age 0-5: soap and water
Age 5-10: soap and water
Age 10-15: soap and water
Age 15-20: soap and water
Age 20-25: soap and water
Age 25-30: soap and water
Age 30-35: soap and water
Age 35-40: soap and water
Age 40-45: soap and water
Age 45-50: soap and water
Age 50-55: soap and water
Age 55-60: soap and water
Age 60-65: soap and water
Age 65-70: soap and water
Age 70-75: soap and water
Age 75+: soap and water
Oh sorry Sean, I thought you said NEEDS. No-one needs expensive anti-aging products and treatments. In any case the treatments you suggest Carla Bruni has had are medical procedures like Botox. She’s not having those because she got a text about brand loyalty.
And worse still there is a real story hidden in here about body image – the rise in Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Eating Disorders and the irresponsible attitude of the beauty industry pushing expensive products that don’t actually work on women across Europe. Instead we’ve got a male journalist regurgitating a press release that reads like an advert for these products.
Please stop.
Categories: Guest Blog, Healthcare |
Tags: advertorial, cosmetics, press release | 4 Comments
Posted by Merk
December 7th, 2009
The following is a copy of a post made by Dr. Alienfromzog (an NHS Doctor) debunking Richard Littlejohn’s recent misinformed and frankly pathetic swipe at the NHS. The orignial article can be found at Angry Mob. We republish with kind permission.
There must be something wrong with me. I read Richard Littlejohn’s column from 30th November (Thank heavens my sick mum wasn’t at the mercy of the NHS) and I didn’t get angry.
Was this because I agreed with what RLJ had to say?
No.
Was this because RLJ extensive research had led to a well thought-out argument that I found interesting?
No.
Was it because his column contained some facts for a change?
No.
So why wasn’t I angry?
Simply because it was RLJ being RLJ and I’m told you shouldn’t shoot a duck for quaking.
Normally this kind of thing makes me really very very angry. I have a small confession to make at this point. I am an unrepentant apologist for the NHS. I work in it, I am aware of its limitations and issues and I could write long articles on what’s wrong with it. I don’t for three reasons. Firstly, the NHS is much – and unfairly – maligned. Two, the problems of it are almost always different to the issues raised in the press. And thirdly, and much more importantly, the NHS is an amazing thing and whilst it does have issues they are, in the real world, a price well worth paying for comprehensive healthcare. I am proud of the healthcare the vast majority of patients receive and the work we do in the NHS. It is hugely frustrating to see this constant abuse in the press. And it’s not just about the shear insult of this but every week I have to deal with the anxiety created in patients before they even make it to the hospital door. Of course, it is not surprising that anyone who reads our papers is scared of being admitted to hospital.
So, let’s summarise RLJ argument;
1.His mother was involved in a traffic accident and was well looked after in a hospital in the states.
2. The NHS might have killed her because all British hospitals are dirty and you will pick up a deadly disease in you are unfortunate enough to be admitted one.
3. American Healthcare is great and insurance works while the billions we spend on the NHS are a waste as there’s no good outcomes or accountability.
If I only I knew where to begin with this. I must warn any brave readers that in order to write this I have done some actual research and have provided references at the bottom so that all the facts can be checked. That’s right – this article ought to come with a health warning to anyone who reads RLJ regularly; WARNING, the following contains actual facts and not RLJ delusions.
I think I want to begin by talking about MRSA. To be fair to Littlejohn, almost no one in the press gets this right. My own personal rant is that MRSA is NOT a superbug. (E.coli 0157 now that’s another matter…. sorry, getting of the point). MRSA stands for Methicillin resistant Staphlococcus aureus. Staph. auerus is an extremely common bacteria, it is on the skin of at least a third of the people who read this article. It can be treated with various antibiotics including penicillins. Methicillin is not used in the UK – it is most closely related to Flucloxicillin (a type of penicillin). MRSA is Staph aureus that is resistant to flucloxcillin. This is not a major problem, as the vast majority of strains of MRSA are fairly weedy and are sensitive to multiple antibiotics and are fairly easy to treat. It is quite misleading to say that someone died of MRSA – they died of Staph. aureus infection and the MR bit or otherwise is usually irrelevant. Hospital-acquired infections are common and in general have nothing to do with hospital cleanliness. I know, what a ridiculous thing to say! Well, firstly the majority of infections that patients get come from their own skin. The main reason why people get infections in hospital is not because they’re in hospital but because they’re ill. By definition the people in hospitals are those that will be most vulnerable to picking up infections. This is why hospital cleanliness matters because it is about minimising the risk to vulnerable people. However, and this is the key, even if the hospital walls, floors, ceilings and beds were entirely sterile it would not stop people getting infections.
So what’s all this fuss about MRSA? The answer to that is multifactorial. I think there are two important reasons. Staphlococcus aureus is a very clever bug and can infect multiple sites in the body; it can cause skin infections, urinary infections, pneumonia, septicaemia (blood infection) to name but a few. The other reason is that the methicillin-resistant strains of Staph aureus are only found in hospitals or other institutions. Places where antibiotics have been used. And hence there is an assumption that MRSA has been acquired in hospital. MRSA infection can certainly be reduced by increasing cleanliness but to some extent that’s irrelevant, remember that most infections come from skin (and it’s impossible to ever fully sterilize a patient’s own skin). Do you really care whether you have a MRSA or an MSSA (common-or-garden Staph. auerus) infection, if I can treat it for you either way? There is no evidence that MRSA strains are more deadly that non-resistant strains.
Here’s some facts you’ll never hear in the press:
1. MRSA is a worldwide problem. (Probably the greatest problem is in Japan for various historic reasons).
2. MRSA became endemic in UK hospitals in the early 1990s.
3. MRSA-related deaths are falling.(1)
4. MRSA is a major problem in the USA. This is a quote from a CDC report. (The CDC is the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention – one of the world’s leading authorities on infectious diseases).(2)
“Hospital-acquired infections from all causes are estimated to cause >90,000 deaths per year in the United States and are the sixth leading cause of death nationally. Nosocomial infections increase patient illness and the length of hospital stays. The direct cost has been estimated to be >$6 billion (inflation adjusted) costs of longer inpatient visits are shared by hospitals.”
So, please, can we move on from the myth that NHS hospitals are uniquely dangerous because only we have MRSA and it’s a superbug?
The US Healthcare system and its costs
So let us look at the US healthcare system. The top hospitals in the USA are amazing and provide amazing healthcare, many of them are world centres. However there are a few minor points worth noting. Healthcare in the US is astoundingly expensive.
Here are some interesting statistics;
46.3 million(3) – that’s the number of Americans with NO healthcare coverage. (15% of the population). In the event of an emergency they do indeed get treatment – but it is strictly emergency only. So cancer surgery is not covered, on-going asthma care is not covered. People with bad asthma need on-going treatment to control their disease. Without this hospital admissions are common. Emergency cover will patch them up (usually) and chuck them out to come straight back in again the next time. The frequency and severity (i.e. whether it is life-threatening or not) of attacks can be reduced with good on-going treatment. Not available to 46.3 million Americans unless of course they pay for it themselves.
The leading cause of bankruptcy is the US is healthcare costs(4) – even people with healthcare insurance struggle – limitations on cover, the deductible (i.e. how much you have to pay yourself). Imagine recovering from a serious illness to then lose your home.
£92.5bn – the cost of the entire NHS for the financial year 2008-9(5)
$596.6bn – the combined cost of the US Medicare and Medicaid programs(6). That’s £360bn. Medicare provides healthcare coverage for the elderly and Medicaid for the poorest. The majority of uninsured people are too well off for Medicaid but can’t afford insurance or their employer doesn’t provide it. Both of these programs still involve premiums and co-payments in addition to the government £360bn. Medicare has about 45 million people enrolled and Medicaid 50 million. So, in summary; the inefficient, expensive NHS covers 60 million people entirely for £92.5bn, whilst Medicare/Medicaid provides basic coverage (but not without co-payments) for 95 million people for £360bn. In fact, the US spends more per population on a basic healthcare system that only covers the oldest and poorest than the UK government spends on a healthcare system that looks after everyone. In UK terms that would equate to the government spending around £120bn for basic (so-called safety-net) coverage of less than 20 million of the UK population.
And here’s the real shock; for all the money they spend, the US life-expectancy is less than that of the UK.(7)
I am seriously impressed by anyone who’s still reading at this point. And this is part of the problem, the sort of trash that the Daily Mail puts out is much easier to read than the complex facts that actually reflect the truth of healthcare. There is so much more I can write – about unnecessary and invasive tests, about the benefits of preventative medicine but I think I should stop now.
The NHS is far from perfect but it is very very good. It is also unbelievably cheap for what we get for our money – worryingly to those who work in it, it is the most efficient healthcare system in the world. The problem is that for ideological reasons (i.e. Government=bad) The Daily Mail and those like it want to force us to take on a US-like model of healthcare. They’ll get their 5* hotel room hospital beds and everyone else will suffer. We will see the poor and the elderly left to die quietly or to live with their debilitating disease as the insurance companies make a fortune. And if the American example is anything to go by, ultimately we all end up paying more for sub-standard healthcare coverage for the most vulnerable.
I want to apologise for the length of this article but someone has to stand up to the constant lies of the Daily Mail. The NHS is an amazing thing and whilst it does have issues they are, in the real world, a price well worth paying for comprehensive healthcare. I am proud of the healthcare the vast majority of patients receive.
Dr alienfromzog BSc(Hons) MBChB MRCS(Ed)
References:
1. Department of Health: http://tinyurl.com/6kjbue
2. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention paper: http://tinyurl.com/ybvp2p3
3. US Census: http://tinyurl.com/ln5a2q
4. Baltimore newspaper article: http://tinyurl.com/ylg2fet
5. HM Treasury corrected figures: http://tinyurl.com/yzme4ng
6. Official financial report of Medicare and Medicaid; http://tinyurl.com/yguq2wn
7. World Health Organisation figures: http://tinyurl.com/yguq2wn
Categories: Guest Blog, Healthcare |
26 Comments
Posted by Merk
October 19th, 2009
The following post was orignially posted at Deeplyflawedbuttrying’s Blog and reproduced here with kind permission.
Jan Moir? Is this article really that bad?
So I read the article by Jan Moir, about the death of Stephen Gately. The thing I dont understand, is the absolute shock it appears to have caused.
Daily Mail publishes hateful, homophobic shit, callously exploiting the death of one person, to strengthen its hate towards a section of the public it despises? Its a bit like the Kate Moss ‘Supermodel does cocaine shocker’. Do the people who are shocked not read the Daily Mail?
When Rachel Ward died, Amanda Platell published one her hateful pieces. She outright stated that complete responsibility for the girls death, was with Ms.Wards friends. Before Miss Ward was buried, she outright accused Haydn Johnson, a friend of Miss Wards, of causing her death by ignoring an answering machine message(that apparently only existed in Ms.Platell’s head), pleaing for help. The only mitigation for Mr.Johnson, in her article, was the insinuation that Ms’Ward had caused her own death by engaging in immoral behaviour(well she had been drinking!). She attempted to be sympathetic to the girls grieving parents, by telling them not only was she empathetic to the plight of losing their daughter, but to their plight of losing their daughter after she dissapointed their middle class, moral upbringing, by abandoning any moral framework they had instilled, by becoming everything that was wrong with modern women. Which she helpfully illustrated with pictures of Ms.Ward, having fun, while she was alive. The story was removed from the site, after the father of her grieving friend, made a complaint to the PCC. Which did not result in apology from the Mail, but did result in removal of said article.
A Daily Mail columnist is salivating over someones death, willing to lie about them, to illustrate the breakdown of society -done before. Must be something else causing the shock? The homophobia in the article?
I instruct you to go to the Daily Mail website, read as they fight the corner of everyone who has ever been chastised for trying to mainating a status quo, where gay means ‘unnatural’. Go read Melanie Phillips tell you that gay rights, undermines marriage as an institution. Or Amanda Platell dismiss anyone who objects to not being able to pursue their life, without their sexuality used as a reason to exclude them from society, as a ‘gay zealot’. Read as they champion the people who refuse to bow down to hard won legislation, to prevent sexuality automatically meaning a presumption of immorality.
Maybe people rarely notice venom that isnt spouted at them? Are there any other groups who the Daily Mail hates? Lets look outside Jan Moirs current article- we have this recent wet dream of a Daily Mail headline. Narcissistic I may be, and therefore sensitive to the Daily Mails take on single parents. But seriously, there is no shortage of material.
Although, I was one of the Mails target ‘most wanted’ before my marriage ended, as a working mother. Helpfully told by ‘Femail’ that me choosing to work, was going to damage my child, and was ultimately responsible for the fracturing of our society into immoral little pieces. Oh wait, even before motherhood- the Mail didnt much like me. Type Rape, into the search engine of the Daily Mail, and read how they have interpreted the painfully inadequate framework of rape legislation, which has produced a 5% successful prosecution rate for rape. Lists of vitriolic stories, of girls who ‘cry rape’, and the heartbreaking consequences of women reporting such a piffling little thing.
Thank fuck am not black. The biggest bane of the Daily Mails existence is the fact that the BNP are so despised that they cant come outright and say they support them. Instead they have to treat ‘foul’ as a contested term, by placing it in inverted commas, while juxtaposing it against the revelation that the BNP have opened their membership to ‘non white members’.
With editorial about how the indigenous british people(read white, for indigenous) are constantly under threat, not just from the constant threat of immigration, but by being persecuted and not represented by british institutions. The very presence of people in the world who may have a different religion is alarming. The only time the Daily Mail champions the right of any woman, is to show how terrible those muslim types are- look at how they treat women who have children? Further evidence of this threat is shown, when we see how unfairly people who only want the right to be racist, are being treated.
So who is safe from the Daily Fail? Children? Well, children are safe if they are nice middle class children. But even then the Daily Mail isnt above causing them pain, and humiliation, in the course of a good story, as long as they can attack one of their other despised groups of people, in the process. Here is the transcript of an article the paper had to take down, where they stood a page size picture of a named eleven year old girl, alongside a feature about how her mother didnt love her. The feature was designed to illicit public reaction against her ‘unnatural mother’- the fact that an 11 year old girl was deeply humiliated, surely ok, because the end justifies the means? Feral children anyone, or maybe you just want to starve and hiss at the mothers? The Fail doesnt mind condemning children, if they are outside the nice white, heterosexual, christian, middle class dystopia they would like us to believe once existed, and will again.
Cries of ‘complain to the PCC’ have abounded, since the publication of Moirs article. Again, while admirable, am not entirely sure what people believe this will do. Have been complaining to the PCC for years about the homophobic, racist, hate mongering shit, this vile rag publishes- and it achieves nothing.
This may be the cry of a jaded left wing ranter, with an over developed sense of justice, and handwringing tendencies. But it is true, complaining to the PCC achieves nothing. The media is powerful, we know that the the editorial content of your average newspaper, affects more than the people involved in the article.-But unless its exceptional circumstances, your complaint about an article, not directly about you, will be binned. THe Chair of the PCC is Paul Dacre, for gods sake. Paul Dacre being the editor of er…The Daily Mail.
I would like to end this post, with a sense of ‘we must do something about this’- I certainly would prefer my journalists held accountable for constistently spreading vile homophobic, racist, mysogynistic shit- but there are few avenues to go down. We could do as this facebook group suggests and go straight to the advertising revenue that allows this shitrag to be published. Indeed, Marks and Spencer have withdrawn advertising on the grounds of the Moir article. But seriously, take action yourself. Stop buying this shit. Dont accept the flawed, bigoted premises, that underpin their editorial.
And for fucks sake, stop kidding yourself that this Jan Moir article is some kind of abhorration, in an otherwise lovely newspaper. Yes, the Jan Moir article really was that bad. In the context of the normal editorial line of the Daily Mail, it really wasnt that unusual.
Categories: Guest Blog, Media, Sex & Sexuality |
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