Posted by sim-o
December 8th, 2010
Whoever’s compiling the statistics for the Department for Work and Pensions could do worse than get the Mail and Express involved as they seem to have the inside knowledge.
The Mail goes with the headline…
1.6m benefits claimants have never had a job ‘because it does not pay to work’
The article underneath doesn’t back up this claim, presumably because the headline can be a total lie and still be ok with the PCC. As FullFact.org state…
Unfortunately there are no statistics available for the reasons why people have never worked. Although the Labour Force Survey does record a person’s reason for currently being out of work, this would not necessarily be the reason they have always been out of work.
Therefore there is no way of knowing precisely how many of the 1.6 million have never had a job due to caring responsibilities or disability.
The headline is only the bit of the article that gets read by *everyone* that looks at it. Not everyone reads to the bottom of articles. Nearly everyone reads past the first couple of paragraphs, but *everyone* that looks at that article reads the headline.
It doesn’t matter that there are no figures for why people have never had job. The Mail doesn’t even say how many of those 1.6 million are claiming any sort of benefit. It’s just pulled the headline out it’s arse.
There will be some people that have never had to work because they have a spouse that earns enough for them not to work. There will be others that cannot work because of disability or are carers. There will be a bucket load of teenagers that are included in this that aren’t in full-time education that have never worked because they haven’t had chance to get job, despite wanting one.
But no. Every one of those 1.6 million people are lazy, workshy scroungers sponging off the state because ‘work doesn’t pay’. Or as I like to put it, capitalism sucks.
Now about that headline, this is the paragraph where I make it ok by stating that an expert says that, no, Daily Mail headlines aren’t truthful. They’re a load of bollox, isn’t it?
*the Express is not quite as forthright as the Mail, but still goes on in the same vain.
Categories: Wellfare State |
Tags: benefits, misleading headline | 5 Comments
Posted by sim-o
September 29th, 2010
The EU is only interfering again. This time it’s telling Cadburys’ to change it’s slogan…
EU forces Cadbury’s to axe its iconic glass-and-a-half slogan from chocolate bars
Grrr!
Oh, hang on. I think someone forgot to read the article before coming deciding on the headline because…
Experts at the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) said the EU rules should not apply in the Cadbury case.
TSI spokesman, Andy Foster, said: ‘The Cadbury slogan is well known by consumers and should not be confused or caught up with food labelling laws.’
He said the slogan was not part of the ingredients list, and so was not affected by rules regarding food labelling.
‘Therefore the Trading Standards Institute would have no objection to the continued use of the famous slogan unless it was considered misleading by consumers,’ he said.
That last quote is in the article itself.
Maybe a better headline would be “Mail blames EU for Cadbury getting it wrong”
h/t Mr Power
Categories: EU |
Tags: Cadbury, EU, misleading headline | 12 Comments
Posted by sim-o
September 9th, 2010
If you’ve got a Facebook account you’ve got a serious choice to make.
Where do you book yourself into first? The oncologist, the school or the pyschotherapist?
Not only does Facebook give you cancer, it doesn’t just make you stupid (as does anything else that distracts from studying), it also means that you’re narcissistic with low self esteem. Apparently.
Using Facebook is the online equivalent of staring at yourself in the mirror, according to a study.
Is it? Is it, really?
This conclusion is arrived at from a study, of which at least they give some details of.
So what did the study consist of?
They [the subjects] all took psychology tests to measure their levels of narcissism, which the study defined as ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and an exaggerated sense of self-importance’.
Those who scored higher on the narcissism test checked their Facebook pages more often each day than those who did not.
There was also a difference between men and women – men generally promoted themselves by written posts on their Facebook page while women tended to carefully select the pictures in their profile.
As we all could’ve guessed without a study, the narcissistic people checked Facebook more often, which isn’t quite the same as the headline…
Facebook users ‘are insecure, narcissistic and have low self-esteem’
Which suggests that all facebook users have those qualities. Not misleading at all is it?
Oh, the size of the study? 100 18-25 year old students. 100 out of 500 million of the most narcissistic, insecure users of Facebook.
Categories: Media |
Tags: facebook, misleading headline | 9 Comments
