rhetorically speaking..

pause

2010-02-08T20:28:00.003Z

This blog is on indefinite hiatus until the 2010 UK election season, when I suspect I'll be unable to stop myself.

I'm (occasionally) around on twitter, but mainly occupied elsewhere.

synergised till it hurts

2009-11-17T14:40:00.003Z

Nadine Dorries is over at Comment Is Free proudly describing the "uncanny synergy between Conservative Central Office and the grassroots membership." I'm presuming that her own political history equips her with special insight - and that "uncanny synergy" is some kind of euphemism for.. well.. let's go to the record:

Back in 2000, Nadine Dorries (nee Bargery) managed to shave ten years off her age and get thrown out of the seat she was due to contest, within six months of having been selected.

That is until CCHQ stepped in to save the day but not before she apparently had to attend that year’s Tory conference in limbo, which seems to me to be the perfect venue for a Tory conference, unless there’s a vacancy in one of the other circles of hell.

Dorries was then dropped happily into her mid-Bedfordshire seat when senior Tories made it clear to local members that they would like the seat to go to a woman and presented the constituency with a shortlist of seven women and five men to underline the point.

So singing the praises of selection on merit and ability.. well, it's uncanny, indeed.

people opposed to sex education oppose sex education, shock

2009-11-06T10:58:00.005Z

Cath Elliot at Liberal Conspiracy sketches out the details of the ridiculously minimal reform of sex education and touches on the knee-jerk responses falling from the mouths of self-appointed family values campaigners.

It's never been quite clear how these supposedly moral crusaders square their morality with a track record of - with the full support of certain newspapers - lying, transparently and repeatedly, about the value and content of sex education programmes.

For example, if a newspaper is going to quote the Family Education Trust on the issue of sex education, it should also take the time to point out that they embody a tiny conservative minority who are badly informed, prone to lying and think that the real problem with sex before marriage is that it turns your wife into a whore. They're also opposed to any discussion of homosexuality because it might make people think that gay relationships are legitimate.

Furthermore, their resistance to sex education is part of a specific, socially conservative agenda which they have no problem in forcing on everyone else. So, while - as should be transparently obvious - contraception reduces pregnancy, it should be treated with fear and mistrust because it "undermines" marriage.

On that note, compare and contrast Cornerstone Group's Edward Leigh's approach to sex education ("you can’t and shouldn’t seek to impose your ideas from the centre") and Edward Leigh's approach to marriage ("We need to explain how we will buttress and support it through the tax and benefit system.")

patron saint of irony

2009-11-05T08:38:00.003Z

Third day in a row but here's Melanie Phillips' take on a recent court ruling extending anti-discrimination protection to a man with firmly held environmental beliefs:

In any rational universe, he would be sent away with a flea in his ear for trying it on. [my emphasis]

That appeal to rationalism is followed, of course, by outrage that religious beliefs are not being accorded special status in law.

Finally, there's space for a quick renewal of victim status: that a woman (Phillips, M) who writes regular columns - some of which appear in national newspapers - voicing her scepticism of man-made global warming is somehow the victim of discrimination because people don't take her entirely seriously.

Also: for continuing discussion of Phillips' Israel purity test - which has now extended to castigating Britain's "timid Jews" for failing to vocally agree with her - see Obsolete. As noted earlier this week, Phillips is now arguing that to criticise her is a form of violence - a verbal pogrom, a phrase which she has now repeated to describe the treatment of Israel by "Britain’s political and intellectual class." Will Phillips be extending this metaphor to directly accuse those who criticise her of anti-semitism?

victimhood

2009-11-03T12:40:00.000Z

Melanie Phillips declares herself to be the victim of a verbal pogrom - in other words, that criticism of her is a form of violence.

Would anyone - possibly M. Phillips of the Daily Mail - like to take her to task for the kind of hyperbole which can only belittle the memory of those who died in literal pogroms?

this is not ordinary hypocrisy: this is melanie phillips hypocrisy

2009-11-02T11:10:00.008Z

Melanie Phillips' dedication to personal liberty - and the enraged argument that the Labour government seeks to control every part of our lives - has one or two blind spots, most obviously relating to drugs policy. Here, the government can't act quickly enough to stop adults from making their own decisions about risk or harm, though Phillips does her best to dress her paternalism as concern for the little children.

But this is not ordinary hypocrisy - this is Melanie Phillips' hypocrisy, where the claim that Professor David Nutt's research is selective and inadequate must be married to Phillips' own "people who agree with me" use of research i.e. a response from 29 psychiatrists is "far too few for a reliable assessment," but a quote from one psychiatrist who happens to agree with Phillips means we should dismiss everything that Professor Nutt has argued.

My favourite piece of non-argument is this:

Nutt claims his arguments are 'scientific'. Does that mean that scientists such as Professors Parrott and Appleby or Dr Murray are not scientific?

Because only one person at a time is allowed to scientific: it's a shiny hat which is passed from person to person. The idea that there might be competing evidence which needs to be reasonably assessed is a subtlety that escapes Phillips: there's only the good kind of science, which says drugs are bad, and the wrong kind of science which "create[s] a culture of social acceptability for illegal drug-taking" and will lead to you "getting sucked onto the drug escalator" (which should be slang for something but, sadly, isn't.)

That said, it was a close match between the line above and the following awesomely inane rhetorical questions:

One might as well say that you run more risk of a car accident than being murdered. So what? Does that mean murder should be regarded as any less serious?

For ten points, explain the difference between an accident and murder. For a further billion points, explain what the hell Melanie Phillips was trying to say in the previous quote.

Above all, remember this: how do we know that Professor David Nutt is probably talking sense? Melanie Phillips is on the other side of the argument.

melanie phillips: it's your own fault for not agreeing with me

2009-11-01T10:44:00.005Z

Let she who is without self-awareness write a column. So here's Melanie Phillips:

The question remains, though, quite why Ed Husain feels so viciously towards me. I think it is indeed because of my support for Israel, on which subject he appears to be unbalanced and obsessional. In his Cif piece about me, he claims of me that anyone who opposes her views on Israel is either an Islamist or ‘in the Islamists’ camp’.

This is an absurd misrepresentation of my views. [...] A number of anti-jihadis told me from the start that my support for Ed Husain was misplaced because he had never properly renounced Islamist extremism.

Quite wonderful.

Phillips denounces the idea that she has an "us or them" mentality - you either agree with Philips or are on the side of the Islamists - before turning a few lines later to the claim that Husain has never "properly renounced Islamist extremism." In fact, she explains clearly that the conditions for being a "true moderate" or an "ally of the free world against the enemies of civilisation" are defined solely by.. meeting with her views on Israel.

Whatever criticism you might make of Phillips, she's certainly irony proof.

As ever, the idea that Phillips is some kind of staunch supporter of Islam's "inherent pluralism" should be held against her habit of running off into the wilds of conspiracy theory at every opportunity - for example, the supposed threat of a Caledonian caliphate, the declaration of "jihad in east Londonistan," and - my absolute all-time favourite - the argument that "peace, harmony and mutual goodwill" actually means "submit or die."

iain dale dictionary corner

2009-10-30T12:31:00.004Z

Iain "moral compass" Dale on the subject of Michal Kaminski:

The fact that the left continues this campaign of traducement says far more about their own moral compass than it does about Kaminski.

Golly. Better check what that word means.

Definition:
traducement (transitive verb)
to traduce: to cause humiliation or disgrace to by making malicious and false statements

I'm still not quite clear about... oh, hang on:

Contemporary usage:

When Iain Dale traduced Tom Watson in the pages of the Daily Mail, the newspaper was forced to pay substantial damages.

Much better. Not quite sure what I'm going to do with this surplus of black pots and kettles, though.

(Pssst. For signs of the shakiness of Dale's high-horsed claim of lefty-leftist traducement start with the comments on his post, and then try Denis MacShane in The Guardian.)

hah [pause] hah

2009-10-29T17:24:00.005Z

A minimal understanding of feminism can get you quite a long way, but - as in the case of The Telegraph's Michael Deacon - not quite far enough. Deacon can't quite see why a feminist might have a problem with page 3-lite without falling prey to hypocrisy:

The conundrum is this. Feminists believe, quite rightly, that women should be free, as men are, to make their own choices about what they do in life.

So what about women who choose to pose for photographs without terribly many clothes on? They aren’t being forced to do it. They’ve elected to do it, independently, for their own reasons, whatever they may be.

Should they stop, purely because someone else thinks it’s an activity unsuitable for a woman?

If it’s unacceptable for a man to tell women how and how not to live their lives, isn’t it a bit off for a women’s officer to do the same?

There's no flaw in feminism here, just a flawed understanding of how feminism might operate. For example, feminism does not offer carte blanche to any and all behaviour simply because it happens to have been carried out by a woman and can therefore be minimally described as liberational. Why might a women's officer - or indeed anyone - criticise another woman's choices?

Perhaps because - as the women's officer concerned, Natalie Szarek, pointed out - that certain images reproduce and reinforce harmful attitudes towards women, and that women (and men) might just collectively owe a small debt to each other not to help support or propagate those attitudes, particularly in a society which already has spectacularly fucked up attitudes towards women's bodies. To argue that none of the models involved had been "exploited" is to almost completely miss the point.

This is, incidentally, the same argument raised in criticism of raunch culture, which - last time it raised its head - inspired letters that read like this:

If you want to be a feminist, you need to take heed of other women - in this country and elsewhere - whose circumstances may be radically different to your own. Some women may choose to embrace so-called raunch culture; that's their prerogative - it's a simple matter of civil liberties. But don't try and suggest this is, in itself, feminist. Don't pretend it empowers other women. Don't pretend it advances anyone's interests except their own.

So when Deacon writes

here’s a conundrum that I don’t think feminists have ever satisfactorily answered. Or if they have, I wasn’t listening, being a man and all.

you can enjoy a few moments of cold, shallow laughter.

the spectator: no regrets (updated)

2009-10-28T14:03:00.004Z

Ben Goldacre obligingly provides the cancellation email sent by The Spectator following the collapse of their AIDs denial event. Some high-grade weaselling to note:

I am writing to inform you that, with much regret, the event on “Aids – realism or denial” due to take place on Wednesday 28 October, has been cancelled due to several members of the panel having pulled out at the last minute, leaving us with an unbalanced panel which would not make for a rounded discussion on the film.

The implicit claim here is that the planned panel was "balanced," rather than primarily containing people who a) have no role in AIDs research or b) whose only qualification seems to be in the act of challenging the scientific consensus.

The notion that there can be a "rounded discussion" of the film also presumes that the film is not, at face value, "a globe-trotting pseudo-investigation that should raise the hackles of anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the basic rules of reasoning." Examining the lopsided makeup of the original panel, Richard Wilson observed:

Perhaps one reason for this imbalance is that the real “leading medical authorities” on AIDS will generally refuse to share a platform with AIDS denialists, or engage in debate with them, largely for the same sorts of reasons that evolutionary biologists avoid Creationists, and established historians refuse to debate the Holocaust with the likes of David Irving.

All of which puts the lie to the following lines of the Spectator email:

The purpose of the event which was to have a rational and balanced discussion in an area of science too often characterised by hysteria.

A nice bit of rhetorical re-direction: the people who are concerned about the very real threats to health posed by AIDS denialists are hysterical; the people promoting a film which engages in baseless speculation and misrepresents the views of those interviewed within it are rational and balanced. The email continues:

House of Numbers is a controversial film and we wanted it scrutinised by leading authorities and to follow its showing with real debate encompassing a wide spectrum of opinion. It has proved very difficult to put together a panel which could do this.

That would be because there is there no wide spectrum of opinion: only the overwhelming majority who understand that HIV causes AIDs, and a tiny number who - through fuzzy logic and selective argument - speculate otherwise. Genuine scrutiny by leading authorities would - and has - lead to the film's central questions being dismissed.

To make it very simple, and to quote aidstruth.org:

House of Numbers asks if there is really a scientific consensus about HIV/AIDS. The real answer is: YES. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus, based on incontrovertible evidence, that HIV exists and is the cause of AIDS.

Things are not so clear for The Spectator, who conclude:

We will look at staging this event at a later date with another, more dependable panel.

Apparently, the problem isn't the quality of the evidence but the quality of the panel - which tells you nearly eveything you need to know about those planning the event. So, while The Spectator might be quietly removing the public traces of the event it was forced to cancel, its private commitment to (frankly irresponsible) fringe science continues unabated, without regret.

UPDATE: Joseph Sonnabend - originally invited to join the panel - explains his reasoning for taking part, and voices his own stringent criticism of the film and AIDS denialists.

pope: UR DOING IT WRONG

2009-10-22T08:48:00.000+01:00

My absolute favourite line from the Telegraph's continued coverage of the decision by the Vatican to welcome married Anglican priests (but, obviously, still no homos):

Anglican congregations who pride themselves on being more Catholic than the Pope will be able to carry on celebrating Mass in antique vestments, in sanctuaries behind traditional altar rails, to the accompaniment of motets sung by a professionally trained choir.

Because if there's one area where the Pope has been letting his side down, it's in a lack of antique vestments, elaborate churches and carefully arranged choral music.

schism schmism

2009-10-21T08:19:00.002+01:00

What could possibly heal the centuries old religious differences between the Anglican and Catholic Churches?

Traditionalists, including up to six Church of England bishops, had visited and pleaded with Rome to provide some sort of structure inside the Catholic Church for their wing of the Church of England because of liberal moves towards women bishops and gay ordinations.

Of course! A mutual disdain for women and teh gays. I can't believe we didn't think of this before.

damage control

2009-10-20T12:22:00.007+01:00

The Guardian provides coverage of continuing damage control over at the Daily Mail:

The Irish Daily Mail has attempted to distance itself from the Jan Moir's controversial column about the death of Stephen Gately, claiming it is "independent" of the UK edition of the paper. [...]

The Irish Mail on Sunday carried four pages of coverage on Gately's funeral in Dublin and printed a disclaimer, as did the Irish Daily Mail yesterday: "Comments made by journalist Jan Moir about Stephen Gately in her newspaper column caused controversy on Friday. Jan Moir's column has never been published in the Irish Daily Mail which, like the Irish Mail on Sunday, is edited and printed entirely in Ireland – independent of the UK titles – and does not have an online presence."

The paper carries copy from the UK edition, although much of it is rewritten for an Irish readership.

The (apparent/confusing) claim that the Irish Daily Mail doesn't have an online presence is false, unless it's an even more confusing claim that Moir's column doesn't have an online presence in Ireland. Is this a claim that Moir is - and has always been - regionally blocked? If so, is it too late to become Irish?

It's a curious claim because the Irish and UK versions of the Mail website reveal a huge amount of overlap in the "independently edited" titles; at time of writing, for example, the hand-chosen (ahem) "Editor's Six of The Best" features are identical for both Irish and UK versions of the website, with no detectable differences in linked content. Sadly, Richard Littlejohn is available everywhere.

Furthermore, note that the shaky claim on editorial independence doesn't appear to extend as far as a direct rejection of Moir's comments; at best, it's merely a grudging recognition of the issue, forced by Gately's popularity in his home country.

In fact, the (sometimes widely) divergent editorial lines embraced by the Irish and UK editions exist on the basis of happy mutual ignorance, neither truly recognising the existence of the other: never has this been more obvious than in the case of the diametrically opposed editorial stances on the HPV vaccine.

In other words, claiming "independence" is another way of never having to say you're sorry.

melanie phillips: my islamist scaremongering has nothing to do with the BNP's islamist scaremongering

2009-10-19T09:07:00.004+01:00

Melanie Phillips does her level best to draw a line between her brand of reactionary hate and that of BNP's Nick Griffin:

Yesterday, [Griffin] showed his slipperiness in an interview on Sky News in which he unblinkingly claimed that he now had no problem with 'settled ethnic minorities' such as Afro-Caribbeans, Sikhs or Hindus, only with 'colonists who want to change our country into something completely different' - which is code for those who want to Islamise Britain and replace its values with Islamic Sharia law.

Such distinctions should fool no one. The BNP is hostile not merely to Islamic supremacists but to all Muslims, including those who threaten no one's way of life.

It's a really rather important distinction for Phillips to create because she has herself been a regular proponent of the idea that radical Islamists are trying to turn Britain into an Islamic nation under Sharia law.

Furthermore, Phillips has proven rather careless in drawing a line between mainstream UK Muslims and the supposed radical plots of a minority - either blaming the mainstream for failing to respond to her personal conspiracy theories, or failing to mention the majority mainstream at all.

For previous episodes of Melanie Phillips' attempts to clear ground between her own opinions and the racist right, see the attempt to define the BNP as leftists and the whitewashing of her own eliminationist rhetoric.

a failure of hypocrisy

2009-10-19T08:47:00.003+01:00

For the second time in as many days, the Mail publishes an opinion piece condemning homophobia (and this one actually mentions Jan Moir's column) in an attempt to repair its reputation... but still refuses to apologise or recognise that there was anything wrong with Jan Moir's column. It was just an "honest opinion."

Obvious here is the desire for the Mail to separate it's own routine dehumanisation of gay people - not merely by columnists offering their "honest opinions" but by the newsdesk - from the people who act (violently) on the basis of those beliefs.

We might tell you that gay people are trying to destroy society, break up your family and pervert your children, argues the Mail, but we're horrified that anyone would do anything about it. In other words, the Mail's problem is a failure of appropriate hypocrisy amongst a section of its readers - to loathe gay people is laudable; to act on that hate is terrible.

Some things to note:

the Mail's editorial position - homo BAD - remains unaltered;
Jan Moir is still employed by the Mail;
not a single advertiser boasting commitments to equality and respect has pulled their business from the Mail.

another coat of whitewash

2009-10-18T11:07:00.002+01:00

Suzanne Moore of the Daily Mail writes a column on twitter as our "new virtual conscience," condemns homophobia and those who "pruriently pick over the circumstances of Gately’s death" but somehow manages to avoid any mention of Jan Moir (still happily employed by the Daily Mail) or indeed the Mail's own reputation as the most homophobic member of the British press.

Funny that.

business as usual

2009-10-17T10:15:00.003+01:00

So.

Jan Moir is now in full-denial mode, describing complaints of homophobia in her "tawdry gossip for celebrity-snuff fans" column as as "mischevious" and the product of an orchestrated campaign. She's pushing back with the support of the Mail's own PR firm.

The Daily Mail itself is also pretending this is business as normal: the removal of ads from Moir's page is apparently little more than when ads for power companies are (for example) removed from stories about the possible dangers of power masts, though in this case it seems to be that Moir's work is incompatible with advertising for products for humans in general.

Why are these details of ass-covering important?

Because they're entirely unremarkable.

This is part of a pattern of behaviour which has a long and shitty history with the full support (and indeed encouragement) of the Daily Mail's editorial team and owners. Focussing on Jan Moir is to focus on the very tip of an iceberg of virulent hate stretching back decades.

Why not think back to the many, many months spent campaigning against civil partnerships, and the equally concerted effort to block same-sex adoption?

Maybe you'll recall the Scottish Daily Mail's twin screaming headlines, "Schools told to teach gay sex" and "Gay sex lessons in primary schools," from August 2006. Neither of these claims were even slightly true then, and they're still lies now.

Why not just confine your mental trip to the archive of Melanie Phillips' collected text-vomits? Discover how support for gay rights is the primary threat to British society, her attempt to explain why the problem with Islamic homophobia is that it's Islamic, and how the gay rights movement somehow has nothing to do with the rights of gay people.

Then there's always Peter Hitchens, a reliable source of prolonged homophobic screeds.

If you're in a hurry, just wrap your head around the central argument of the paper's editorial stance for over a decade: protecting the rights of a minority of homosexuals is BAD; protecting the rights of a minority of evangelical Christians, however, is GOOD.

Why is this story different in any sense? Timing - Gately hasn't even been buried yet - and celebrity - day-to-day homophobia in the Mail goes almost entirely unmentioned by the larger world.

We shrug. I've lost count of the times I've read on facebook or twitter "that's why we call it the Daily Heil," or "what do you expect from the Mail?" or "It's terrible, we've always known that." Adverts are being moved "away" from Moirs column, but no-one has said they'll stop advertising with the Mail. Companies are scurrying to cover their reputations while not.. actually doing very much.

"Marks & Spencer does not tolerate any form of discrimination," said a spokesman for the retailer. "We have asked the Daily Mail to move our advertisement away from the article. This is a matter for the Daily Mail."

Such bold, brave, consequential action. "This is a matter for the Daily Mail," the same Daily Mail that edited and approved the article in the first place. I'm sure the issue is in safe hands.

"Nestlé has no influence on the editorial content of the publications in which it advertises. The views expressed in the article are from the author and are not shared by Nestlé," said a spokeswoman. "The company has consistently emphasised the importance of mutual respect and tolerance, regardless of culture, religion or nationality. This a core company value as expressed in the Nestlé corporate business principles."

But it's the kind of core value which doesn't actually stop Nestle from advertising elsewhere in the paper. It's one of those important core values that doesn't actually inform business practice. It would be jolly nice if major corporations wouldn't wear their commitment to equality like some kind of paper party-hat, worn to entertainment and soothe the awkward child at the table but discarded before the first course arrives.

So. Business as usual. Or is anyone up for trying something else?

slight return

2009-10-07T08:35:00.003+01:00

Here's Teresa May on R4's Today programme (around 3.10) explaining that the Tories are allied with virulent homophobes in eastern Europe for the simple reason that they share the same views about the future of Europe.

Nice to have that particular political pecking order explained: the Tory party is fully supportive of the rights of gay people until passport control at Dover.

open and shut case

2009-06-14T18:58:00.003+01:00

Peter Hitchens makes the case that he is a dangerous idiot:

I have no idea if the MMR is safe or not. But I know many thoughtful and well-informed people who believe that it damaged their children, or fear that it might do so.

If you know nothing about the issue then maybe you should keep your fucking mouth shut, Hitchens.

hatchet-job

2009-06-13T12:55:00.002+01:00

The remarkable thing about Steve Doughty's otherwise fairly unremarkable anti-feminist hatchet job of Dr Katherine Rake is the fear of choice.

Doughty tries his best to present Dr Rake as a radical (she wants to "revolutionise" lives!), somehow hypocritical (she's married!), an insufficiently feminine woman (she has short hair like 70s feminists!) and willing to work with gay people (ZOMGZOMG THE GAYS!). He also fabricates one outright lie - the notion that wanting to support greater equality in relationships means she refuses to help "ordinary families" or "parents as they are."

This points to the underlying rhetorical device: to pretend that creating greater choice and freedom in the way we live our lives is the same thing as forcing people to change their lives - that, for example, to open mother and toddler groups to stay-at-home fathers is the equivalent of demanding that all men should stay home and look after their children. So the story leads with

..Dr Katherine Rake, who wants to see men bring up babies

and tries to pretend that this is some kind of blanket policy where men will uniformly take over duties of care and - as in the words of centre-right think-tank Centre for Policy Studies - her agenda is "more about reversing sex roles than helping parents."

And that's without touching the (fairly insulting) ridiculousness of suggesting that many men wouldn't be interested in having more of a role in their children's lives.

business as usual

2009-06-12T09:38:00.003+01:00

A week after the election of two BNP MEPs - which, of course, is the exclusive fault of the left, ZOMGZOMG - the Mail goes back to printing misleading immigration stories:

Want a British passport? Just stand on a picket line or canvas for Labour

Migrants will win fast-track passports if they stand on picket lines or knock on doors asking people to vote Labour, it emerged last night.

The Home Office says trade union activism and political canvassing should count towards the planned new system of 'earned citizenship'.

It's a fairly obvious attempt to make it seem as though Labour is bribing immigrants into campaign work on their behalf in exchange for passports - even though political activism, for any party, is only one of the ways in which applicants might complete 50 hours of voluntary work. The one shred of honesty in the report notes that "even aiding the BNP would count - if it was willing to accept help from an immigrant." Hah.

James Slack - the "journalist" responsible for this story - also helpfully looks into the future to invent conspiracy theories for critics who don't exist:

Critics will point to the historic relationship between Labour and the unions. Migrants cannot vote until they become citizens - so, by using union membership to speed their applications, Labour is potentially swelling its own support.

Except, of course, that the scheme is not restricted to joining Labour-friendly unions: you can also work at a soup kitchen for the homeless, serve as a school governor or help out a local museum. You can even volunteer for a faith organisation.

You'll probably recall that one of the recurring arguments presented by critics of immigration in general (and multi-culturalism in particular) is that that migrants should adopt the language and culture of the UK. So what's so objectionable about this proposed scheme, which affirms the need for "newcomers" to speak English and to "participate in our civic and political life"?

Or is the argument that visitors should "fit in" a thin cover for a rather more ugly hostility?

not for nothing

2009-06-11T10:50:00.002+01:00

Amongst the clutch of conservatives and neo-cons attempting to claim that the BNP are left wingers - sorry, that's LEFTISTSXOMGXOMG!!!! - is Melanie Phillips. My absolute, hands-down favourite part of her argument is when she claims this:

The philosophical antecedents of the BNP lie not on the right but on the left.

and refers to the following text in support of her thesis:

Ze’ev Sternhell’s classic work, Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France

Neither on the left or the right, except when it's entirely on the left, apparently. Phillips also manages to throw in one of the more obvious canards:

Not for nothing were the Nazis called ’national socialists’.

Indeed, not for nothing - sadly for Phillips case, that "something" was the propagandist attempt to encourage working class support. As this site summarises:

Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all his promises to workers. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. An organization called the "Labor Front" replaced the old trade unions, but it was an instrument of the Nazi party and did not represent workers.

To call Phillips' work intellectually dishonest cherry-picking would be a disservice to idiots working in orchards.

conspiracy fail

2009-06-09T17:32:00.005+01:00

Nick Griffin reveals himself to be a mere amateur amongst conspiracy theorists:

Speaking to the BBC after the protest Mr Griffin said he believed the march had been organised by his political opponents.

"There was shouting from down the road and I got 80 people marched up with eggs, bottles [edit: bottles which strangely no-one else seems to have spotted] and placards and that was the end of the press conference. It's an absolute outrage," he said.

"We do have a problem with this organised mob which is backed by all three main political parties. It's a disgrace. They clearly had orders.

"I was splattered. It's a very sad day for British democracy. It seems the ruling political parties who want this to carry on have lost sight of what democracy really is.

"They are silly left wing students, lecturers and probably civil service parasites off on their lunch break. This is a mob for hire. This does not represent the normal people.

"This is organised by the Labour party and funded by taxpayers' money."

There are some points here for general incoherent inconsistency (is Labour, or are all three parties to blame?) but what about the homosexuals, blacks, Muslims and feminazis? And what about the Jews? Is there so little room in your heart for hate, Nick?

ugly bedfellows

2009-06-08T09:20:00.004+01:00

Following last night's unbelievably shitty news that the BNP could get less votes than in the last election and still pick up two MEPs, the Mail reports:

Conservative Party leader David Cameron described the success of the BNP as 'depressing': 'It is obviously a depressing day for all of us. The BNP are completely beyond the pale... they are an appalling bunch of people.'

How, then, would Cameron describe the European parties on the far right with whom he would ally his party? During last night's Euro election coverage on the BBC, David Dimbleby asked William Hague about the problem of grouping with parties and politicians who are either virulently homophobic or manifestly racist.

Hague deflected the question, not by rejecting the possibility of working with such people but by arguing that "politics is different in Poland," that they share "our kind of politics" and that it would be part of a strong "mainstream" conservative grouping. A racist, homophobic grouping, apparently.

If we're going to get a Conservative government (which, given the ongoing collapse of both the Labour vote and the Labour party is fairly damn likely) that's serious about opposing the politics espoused by the BNP, now would be a good time for the Tories to reject policies which are "beyond the pale" regardless of their country of origin.

it would not be all bad news

2009-06-08T09:16:00.003+01:00

Hyperbole, where are thou?

Caroline Flint on her own has set back the cause of women's equality by about a millennium.

If true, it would mean that Melanie Phillips would be prevented from writing any more terrible articles.

Sadly, no.

fail

2009-06-04T10:08:00.005+01:00

In the middle of the BNP's education policy - which is gloriously low on necessary detail, logic and reality-based fact - is a river of cognitive dissonance. From the preamble:

“Citizenship” lessons are a euphemism for political indoctrination.

Indoctrination bad, right? Except when the BNP is doing it:

The introduction of a compulsory Community Award Scheme for all school-leavers to teach them work ethics and social and community values. [...] These courses would be character-building and instil discipline, social and community values and work ethics in all young people.

Yes, it's the bold policy of sweeping away citizenship lessons and replacing them with.. uh.. a compulsory citizenship organisation for young people. While re-introducing compulsory collective worship in schools, and claiming only certain areas of knowledge are "proper subjects." (Oh, and don't forget to re-introduce competitive sports which have.. uhm.. never stopped being played.)

The silliest rhetorical tick is to set up a vacuous opposition between "traditional" and "old-fashioned" approaches and the "modern," "fake," and "politically correct." Are we given any sense of what those words might mean? Is there any detail of any of the educational techniques being proposed or critiqued? Do we know which degrees will be considered "proper" degrees? No. That would be actual political content, rather than vapid posturing. Seriously: the "policy" page for education on the BNP website is shorter than this blog entry.

Remember, these aren't just racist bigots: they're deeply stupid racist bigots masquerading as a political party.

want to ask gordon to quit? (updated)

2009-06-04T09:52:00.005+01:00

The Telegraph obligingly reproduces the draft email being circulated that asks Gordon Brown to stand down - complete with the contact address you should use if you want to sign it.

I wonder if, by the end of the day, signonnow@hotmail.co.uk might have a few more emails than they had originally planned.

EDIT: Spyblog points out that the choice of hotmail (and the wide circulation of the address in The Telegraph and the Guardian) means that the address is wide-open to pranking and/or abuse (though I think some of the concerns of insider snooping are overstated).

further tales of deliberate ignorance

2009-06-04T09:28:00.005+01:00

Britain has awoken to one of the more undignified moments of the lobby journalist system, wherein every political correspondent knows who is circulating the email asking Gordon Brown to stand down, but where not a single one is prepared to name names.

As Adam Bienkov tweeted earlier, MPs must know who they are, Gordon Brown must know who they are - so why shouldn't the rest of us know as well?

EDIT: I am stupid. It's only some journalists - e.g. the BBC's Nick Robinson. The Daily Mail, for example, has no problem reporting names (while citing BBC Newsnight as a source). Does Robinson not have a TV?

near miss

2009-06-03T09:28:00.006+01:00

The Daily Mail had accidentally managed to write a critique of Jacqui Smith without lapsing into patronising sexism - fortunately, the photo-caption writer was able to rescue the paper's reputation by reminding us of her "ill-advised cleavage-revealing outfit."

I presume that Quentin Letts was unavailable to assail us with his usual masturbatory prose. Maybe they're saving him for the day she leaves.

misinterpretation

2009-05-28T18:26:00.005+01:00

I can understand web-community policies that ban those who swear, are rude, abusive, aggressive or threatening - but Nadine Dorries' new promise to refuse to publish any comment that "tries to misinterpret the position I have laid out in a blog" is a loop-hole the size of the grand canyon.

It's all the more significant when you're dealing with someone who routinely distorts her own record (e.g. "..Being of neither the pro-abortion or pro-life lobby") or misrepresents fact. The claim that anyone might misinterpret Dorries has the quality of Escher-esque irony.

The refusal to tolerate the "harsh political aggressive tones accepted on other blogs" might also hold water if stated by someone who hasn't also proved more than willing to attack her opponents with demonstrably false claims of political corruption or breaking the law.

This is, though, unsurprising practice from someone who thinks that a fair discussion literally means a conversation behind closed doors with a controlled guest list.

everyman fail

2009-05-28T12:01:00.005+01:00

David Cameron's uncertainty over how many houses he owns - flagged by Johann Hari in The Independent - appeared at the end of a fairly long interview feature in The Times. Here's the quote in context:

I only get one flash of that Mr Nasty streak in Mr Nice when I raise the question of the Camerons’ various properties. We had been talking about his bewilderment about the depth of dislike that some people in the Labour party have towards the Conservatives: “Where I think Conservatives tend to feel Labour are misguided and wrong, there are some people in the Labour Party who just think the Tories are awful and evil, which is ridiculous and wrong.”

In my attempt to explain why they might have these feelings – I confess to shuddering whenever I see that photograph of young David and Boris in their Bullingdon Club regalia – I mention the four houses: “The four properties thing is rubbish. Touching that you believe everything you read in the newspapers!” You patronising git, I exclaim.

“I don’t mean it like that, but…” So how many properties do you own? “I own a house in North Kensington which you’ve been to and my house in the constituency in Oxfordshire and that is, as far as I know, all I have.”

A house in Cornwall? “No, that is, Samantha used to have a timeshare in South Devon but she doesn’t any more.” And there isn’t a fourth? “I don’t think so – not that I can think of.” Please don’t say, “Not that I can think of.” “You might be… Samantha owns a field in Scunthorpe but she doesn’t own a house…”

So Cameron's confusion arises when he rejects what he sees as the media's version of the Tory party as a group of landed grandees out of touch with ordinary people. The kind of people who when asked, "how many properties do you own?" answer with seemingly genuine uncertainty in their voices.

Incidentally, that humble-sounding "field in Scunthorpe" might just have something to do with Samanatha Cameron's father's property where she grew up - Sir Reginald Sheffield's 300-acre Normanby Hall estate, which has been in the family since 1590. Anyone?

A small point: having land and money are not automatically bad things, and having land and wealth does not automatically make you a bad person. It is, though, somewhat difficult to pose convincingly as a man of the people who feels our pain when your privileged and wealthy upbringing (and life to date) has apparently left you unable to count how many houses you own.

a short quiz

2009-05-27T21:14:00.003+01:00

Via bloggerheads, it's that all too familiar conundrum: stupidly ignorant, or lying through their teeth?

It is, of course, a trick question. The answer is "both."

another good question

2009-05-27T09:28:00.002+01:00

So, how many properties does our man-of-the-people, David Cameron, own? And, perhaps more importantly, why doesn't he know?

if I'd known you were coming

2009-05-26T20:48:00.003+01:00

It's one of those (rare) days where traffic is coming from numerous places to numerous posts: thanks to those who flagged/re-tweeted/reddit'd me. Turns out the perfect blend for high-traffic blogging is political scandal, religion and sex, and the joyful (if temporary) humiliation of the right-wing tabloid press. Who'd have guessed?

it couldn't happen to a nicer rag

2009-05-26T17:07:00.005+01:00

With great pleasure, here's delightful news (via @antonvowl) that the Daily Mail has been forced to pay out for printing transparently misogynist lies:

The Daily Mail has paid £10,000 libel damages each to three women after it ran a story alleging they rated their careers and figures more highly than having children. [...]

Its story was headlined: "For most women, giving birth is the most fulfilling event in their lives. But some are so afraid of missing out on their careers and losing their figures they refuse to go through pregnancy and choose adoption instead. Practical, or just plain selfish?"

A statement issued today by Carter-Ruck said the article contained a number of "false, defamatory and deeply offensive allegations about the three women" and that the Mail had accepted the allegations were "untrue and should never have been published".

There's one particular detail of the Mail's editorial process to read alongside Paul Dacre's recent defence of his paper's ethical standards:

The Mail blamed the offending elements on an unnamed executive who controlled a rewrite of the story, the statement from Carter-Ruck said, rather than the journalists who interviewed the women.

So a senior member of staff inserted lies into the story to fit the Mail's moral posturing about working women. For details of just how mendacious the original story was, read the Mail's extensive correction, which admits to assigning false motives, inventing opinions and fabricating direct quotes.

Will that executive be disciplined or fired? Or are we just hoping - following Dacre's theory of self-regulation - that the "shame" of going.. uh.. un-named.. in front of his or her peers will be enough?

into the long, stupid grass

2009-05-26T16:15:00.003+01:00

To counter the weekend's early pessimism, news that the Church of Scotland General Assembly voted to approve the ordination of openly gay minister Scott Rennie:

Rennie's congregation at Queen's Cross Church in Aberdeen had voted overwhelmingly to select him as their minister but the move was opposed by anti-gay traditionalists.

Last [Saturday] night at 11pm commissioners voted 326 to 267 in support of his appointment. [...] The ordination of Rennie, who lives openly with his partner, to Queen's Cross Church in Aberdeen had threatened to create a schism in the Church of Scotland.

Not so great is the following and contradictory agreement to a two-year ban on homosexual ministers:

Desperate not to allow the schism that had been forecast, the General Assembly postponed making a final decision on the issue by setting up a working group to report back in 2011, effectively kicking the issue into the long grass.

Delegates also agreed not to talk to the media on sexuality issues for the two years, a move that was later condemned as “suppressing the debate”.

Consequently, the moratorium reads like an attempt to back away from the significance of the support for Rennie - prolonging the ability of a conservative minority to claim that they can speak for and dominate the apparently more liberal majority.

In other words, Kirk leaders have passed over a prime opportunity to resolve this issue.. in the hope that hard-liners will somehow - over the next 24 months - come to love homo after all.

Does anyone else think that's wildly unlikely?

melanie phillips: support for gay equality is support for nihilism

2009-05-26T11:44:00.007+01:00

Melanie Phillips offers some fancy footwork to cover her distaste for gay people but you really don't have to read much further than her first few paragraphs to discover the nature of her rhetoric:

The Equality Bill currently going through Parliament is the latest and potentially most oppressive attempt to impose politically acceptable attitudes and drive out any that fall foul of these criteria. Since the attitudes being imposed constitute an ideological agenda to destroy Britain’s foundational ethical principles and replace them by a nihilistic values and lifestyle free-for-all, they represent a direct onslaught on the Judeo-Christian morality underpinning British society.

The most neuralgic of these issues is gay rights.

The (by now boilerplate) defence of religious freedom sits on top of the belief that supporting the legitimacy of gay people is the equivalent of supporting an amoral, value-free society (where everything is most likely turned inside out, on its head etc. etc.)

To put it plainly, Phillips argues that the unconditional support of the legitimacy of gay people is counter to public morality. Her claim to be being more-liberal-than-thou also deserves close reading:

The true liberal position, that it is right and just to tolerate behaviour that deviates from the norm as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, is deemed to be rank prejudice on the grounds that homosexuality is not ‘deviancy’ but normal.

The problem for Phillips here is that homosexuality is indeed "normal" in the sense that it seems to recur naturally, regardless of culture (or even species) on the planet. It's even normative in the sense that it's a recurring feature of human sexuality. However, the claim that homosexuality is normal is not the same thing as the claim that homosexuality is common. Phillips seems to play stupid by pretending that gay rights advocates mean the latter while arguing the former.

Phillips also attempts to make the claim of "true liberal" dispassionate uninvolvement while still advocating that a specific religious morality should be the basis of law: not just freedom for individuals to stand in moral judgment of gay people and their "lifestyle free-for-all" but the ability to protect and enforce those values through law.

In short, Phillips' apparent claim for tolerance must be read - given her track record opposing a variety of gay rights legislation over the years - as the kind of tolerance that involves treating gay people as less equal than everyone else i.e. not that tolerant at all.

a brief introduction to gender stereotypes

2009-05-26T10:08:00.004+01:00

THREE QUARTERS OF ALL VIOLENT ASSAULTS COMMITTED BY MEN.. oh, wait - sorry. That's not news. This is news:

A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are now carried out by women.

The shocking figures, police believe, can be put down to binge-drinking and the so-called 'ladette culture'.

Officers say young women are increasingly challenging their male counterparts when it comes to drunken yobbishness and booze-fuelled brawling.

Why is this such alarming ZOMG ZOMG news? Because traditionally, while boys are made from "snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails," girls are made from "sugar and spice and all things nice."

limited sympathy

2009-05-26T09:03:00.006+01:00

Oh, dear. I really want to feel sorry for another human being who's had a rough weekend but the problem is that so much of Nadine Dorries' recent trouble has been self-inflicted.

Don't want to get slapped down by your party leader for making hyperbolic claims? Don't make wild hyperbolic claims on your blog. Or, more specifically, don't make those claims on your blog and then go on every television and radio station willing to hear you repeat them. Don't want to get sued for libel? Cut back on the repetition of anonymous gossip and wild accusations. Behave like an MP, not Amanda Platell.

You might notice that Dorries' attempt to model herself as the unfairly pilloried defender of democracy involves carefully ignoring many of the things that made her the recent subject of attention: the defence of MPs on the grounds that the expenses fund was a de facto tax free allowance to be "maximised" however an MP wanted; her own attempt to test the elasticity of second residence rules to breaking point; and - perhaps most significantly for the media storm at the end of last week - the habit of repeating wild conspiracy theories and baseless accusations about her opponents.

Admittedly, talking about that last issue is difficult because she's in the middle of being sued for it: though Dorries' (much improved) blog is now back, it's missing the key entry from the 22nd, flagged last week as fairly obviously defamatory. I haven't seem anything from Dorries (or her supporters) which addresses the substantive points of the Telegraph/Barclay brothers complaint, which - given the precarious status of the case - might not be entirely surprising.

More importantly, Dorries' critique of a rapacious media too eager to print baseless accusations would also be slightly more convincing if Dorries hadn't made full and happy use of that same tendency to push lies and misinformation during and after last year's abortion debate.

So, limited sympathy.

from speculation to defamation

2009-05-23T12:19:00.015+01:00

The alleged (but not yet confimed) take-down of Nadine Dorries' blog after lawyers acting on behalf the Barclay brothers tapped her web host may indeed be worrying. I have no problem with ardent support of free speech - regardless of the speaker - if that's the issue at stake.

However, I'd also offer a small answer to Iain Dale's rhetorical questions:

Can it really now be illegal or libellous to question a newspaper's agenda and motives, or those of its owners? Is it really illegal to accuse someone of a witchhunt?

Well, under current law it may become libellous to speculate about motives if you defame, possibly by suggesting a conspiracy to commit crime - as in the hypothetical notion that someone has been masterminding a "long term undercover operation" to steal a database of MPs expense claims. There could also be a claim made that the accusation of conspiracy to manipulate the electorate is also defamatory - i.e. likely to damage reputation. The "witchhunt" comments may well be irrelevant.

Yet, as Craig Murray argues:

Nobody took seriously her argument that the sleaze revelations were an anti-democratic conspiracy by the Barclay Brothers. The Barclay Brothers will bring far more opprobrium on themselves by this action than was cast by the original accusation.

There is, admittedly, the defence of truth and fair comment for any of Dorries' comments - and I think that the burden would lie on the defendent to prove she had a reasonable basis for her claims. The uneveness of British law on that count is sadly not news: our legal system also has a substantial history of the use of spurious legal threats to silence critics.

Still, as we've yet to hear a formal statement from either Dorries, the Barclay's lawyers or The Telegraph, we're still in the realms of wanton speculation - myself very much included.

I hope you like your religious courts behind closed doors

2009-05-23T10:32:00.003+01:00

The Church of Scotland meets tonight to discuss gay clergy - or, more specifically, the case of Reverend Scott Rennie:

The Reverend Scott Rennie was backed by a majority of the congregation and the local presbytery as the new minister at Queen's Cross Church.

But some parishioners and 12 members of the presbytery have since said they had been unaware of Mr Rennie's sexuality.

The matter was referred to the General Assembly, the church's supreme court. [...]

But more than 400 Kirk ministers and almost 5,000 Church of Scotland members are said to have signed an online petition opposing the appointment.

One of those ministers, the Reverend David Randall, said he believed that "a minister is somebody who ought to live by the Bible".

He said: "We believe that the Bible's teaching is quite clear in this matter - that marriage is the right and only context for sexual relationships.

"After all, if a minister sought to move in with a man, with a woman, to whom he was not married, that would obviously be unacceptable - how much more so when we're talking about a homosexual."

You'll note that the claim that they'd treat a straight man in the same situation with the same zeal for the letter of scripture is immediately undercut - being gay makes it far more unacceptable.

Such a stance also conveniently ignores that Rennie couldn't marry his partner within the church, even if he wanted to: the core objection here isn't to unmarried clergy, but to gay people.

As is clear from the other motions being proposed for tonight's meeting, the evangelical wing of the Church of Scotland objects to the notion of gay clergy on principal, regardless of their relationship status. And, given their track record of public statements, it's fair to say that those same conservative voices aren't too fond of gay people outside of the church either.

In other words, the legalistic wrangling is an attempt to make respectable what the evangelical wing have wanted to do for years: pin a "no homos" sign to the door of the church.

now that's what I call PR

2009-05-22T13:09:00.003+01:00

Never knowingly under-bloviated:

The technique deployed by the Telegraph, picking off a few MPs each day, emailing at 12 giving five hours notice to reply, recording the conversation, not allowing them to speak, shouting over them when they try to explain, telling them they are going to publish anyway, at day 15, is amounting to a form of torture and may have serious consequences.

Hyperbolic bids for sympathy aside, and judging by the comments on this post at Conservative Home, it seems as though patience with Nadine Dorries is also fast running out amongst Tory activists. A small sample:

And here I was thinking Nadine Dorries was one of my favourite Tory MPs.

Nadine. Please engage brain before mouth.

To talk such drivel is to once again ignite the criticism that MPs leave in a different world and to clearly misunderstand the public anger.

In common with most of the posters above, I heard with astonishment Nadine Dorries` rather intemperate performance on the Today programme this morning. She clearly hasn`t "got it".

Nadine loves media attention far too much

Nadine Dorries is clearly competing hard with Anthony Steen for the Most Stupid Response by an MP to a Self-inflicted Crisis Award. So it's all part of a ploy by the Barclay Brothers to let the BNP take over the UK? Why doesn't she throw in the Freemasons and the Pope for good measure too?

There are also a number of people complaining how heavily she moderates critical comments, preferring to only post those offering her support. Still, nice to see that it's not just nasty leftist blogger types who'd noticed..

doh

2009-05-22T08:55:00.008+01:00

Leave it to Nadine Dorries to entirely misunderstand the narrative of the McCarthy subcomittee hearings and turn the government into the helpless victim of independent critics.

Her new argument - and I use that word to indicate a desperate sound-shape rather than a logical sequence of supposition - appears to be that MPs should not be vilified for their extortionate expense claims because the political press had known what they were doing for years and have only just turned into a front page story.

Defence by culpable hypocrisy is certainly an interesting strategy, but not one that does anything for the reputation of the person arguing it: I might be in the gutter but you're to blame for not pointing it out sooner.

(Actually, the claim of McCarthyist persecution is entirely hilarious, given that McCarthy was fond of extended slurs and conspiracy theories which he was widely unable to substantiate. No further comment, m'lud.)

old habits dies hard

2009-05-21T21:22:00.008+01:00

Uhm.. did Nadine Dorries just attempt to smear the deep-pocketed (and not unshy of legal action) Barclay brothers with a wild conspiracy theory? Under the thin cover of repeating sourceless rumour, Dorries writes:

The Telegraph are uncovering a few cases of fraud, but not enough, so they are more than slightly embellishing some of the stories. I write as a case in point.

Enter the Barclay brothers, the billionaire owners of The Daily Telegraph. Rumour is that they are fiercely Euro sceptic and do not feel that either of the main parties are Euro sceptic enough.

[...] Where do I get this from? Well, at heart I am just a cheeky scouser. I like to go into the rooms of the faceless and nameless in Parliament, sit on their desk and ask pertinent questions like: who are you? What do you do? I've made friends with one or two. One in particular I am very fond of. He is a mine of very astute information; and whilst in his office yesterday, we chunnered over the 'what is this all about?' question.

He reckons this is all a power game. That the British public are being worked like puppets by two very powerful men. Whipped up into a frenzy to achieve exactly what they want.

Two powerful men? Just who can she be talking about?

Personally, I'd be slightly more careful about suggesting that anyone has directed a deliberate and potentially criminal "long term undercover operation" with the desire of overturning stable government and installing incompetent hard-right patsies in positions of power.

Still, what's an exciting and hopefully-not-actionable conspiracy theory between friends?

further evidence of amazing psychic powers

2009-05-20T10:54:00.002+01:00

On twitter yesterday:

Who'll take my bet that Michael Martin will be booted out.. into the House of Lords?

Today:

Last night senior government sources said it was 'a formality' that Glaswegian Mr Martin, nicknamed Gorbals Mick, will be given a seat in the House of Lords. [...] As a peer Mr Martin would qualify for £174 for each night he spends in London on Lords' business.

Don't you just love the smell of reform in the morning?

flying the flag of stupidity

2009-05-19T09:26:00.004+01:00

The Mail's self-induced flap over the display of gay rights flags at a small number of police stations is dependent on a particularly nasty turn of logic:

Critics believe the gesture could do more harm than good. David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth, said: 'Showing support for particular campaigns is a very dangerous route for the police.

The job of the police is to enforce the law even-handedly and without prejudice, and we ought to be able to take that for granted.

'If they refused to fly this flag it wouldn't mean they supported homophobia - it's just political correctness.

It's much better for them to say we just fly the Union Flag, otherwise all sorts of groups will want them to fly their flags too.'

The fear of an influx of "issue" flags of every variety is patently silly, and just because a group wants to fly a flag doesn't mean that the police would be forced into allowing it.

And - while failing to fly the rainbow flag isn't proof of homophobia - nationalist voices in the Mail have been entirely content to argue (contrary to Davies' theory of flag semiotics, and I can't believe I typed that) that failing to fly the Union Jack is the equivalent of being unpatriotic. So, which is it?

More importantly, the Mail appears to be arguing that showing support for a group of people who are still routinely the subject of abuse - both verbal and physical - is "taking sides," as if to presume there's some kind of debate over whether such treatment is justified or not. This is turn, depends on the right-wing rhetoric that argues recognising and addressing the discriminatory treatment of gay and trans people is the equivalent of "special treatment."

And so the the claim to equal rights and protection for gay people is "political" in the sense that the legitimacy of gay and trans people (and their freedom to live without the fear of violence) is something decent people can agree to disagree over.

You may want to join me in saying, "fuck that."

awkward bedfellows

2009-05-18T12:18:00.002+01:00

The gap between Melanie Phillips and a certain section of her ardent readership is now getting rather awkward. Phillips - to her credit - has started writing things like this on a fairly regular basis:

For all its slick repackaging, the BNP remains an odiously racist party, with its leader blurting out the fact that he doesn't regard British citizens of Asian descent - indeed, any ethnic minority - as British at all.

He has a criminal conviction for a racist offence, and BNP members are regularly embroiled in ugly or even criminal displays and activities.

Her readers respond with comments like this, which are then voted up by other readers on the Mail website:

In the simplest of terms...... I just want my country back ! The BNP are saying everything I want to hear from a political party..... so, if I don't vote for them..... you tell me.... just who am I supposed to vote for ?

For all its faults- which I don't deny - the BNP is emerging as the only party which cares about Britain's national identity.

Well, Melanie Phillips says I shouldn't vote BNP? Maybe she should keep her nose out of my business! People can see through this silly "the BNP are racist thugs" nonsense. The more you people tell us not to vote for them, the more we are going to do it.

The perception of a narrow gap between Phillips' rhetoric and that of the BNP has been explored here before - it's not entirely surprising that some have made a connection between "bizarre, mainly racist conclusions" and bizarre, mainly racist political policies. That's not to suggest - in any way - that Phillips is a closet supporter of the BNP, but that a number of her readers seem surprised and offended that it isn't the case.

Also see: the problem with islamic homophobia is that it's islamic

simple answers to simple questions

2009-05-18T12:02:00.003+01:00

Nadine Dorries - demonstrating Melanie Phillips' level of grip on reality - asks:

Will the Queen be next?

No.

the gift that keeps on giving

2009-05-17T12:44:00.002+01:00

Pumped with the zeal of the newly righteous, The Mail seems to have turned on their former favourite, Nadine Dorries. The significant thing about the story is the appearance of a third property:

Homes in the Cotswolds, South Africa and Bedfordshire but MP Nadine Dorries doesn't live near the House of Commons

A colourful Tory MP was at the centre of a fresh expenses riddle last night after admitting that she runs four homes – none of which is near the Commons.

Nadine Dorries admitted to The Mail on Sunday that she claims for a second home in her Mid-Bedfordshire constituency, just 100 miles from her main home in the Cotswolds.

In addition, she earns rental income from a separate home in the Cotswolds and a holiday home in South Africa.

Now to Dorries' response:

Have an article on me today which is just a joke. I haven't owned a holiday home in South Africa or owned a home in the Cotswolds since marriage split. As I have said over and over, I rent two homes. They probably got that information from the register which I probably havent up-dated but they really should have just asked me, they phone often enough!

So, given that the Mail has seemingly printed a story full of untrue claims - smears, if you will - and Dorries' recently acquired hair-trigger when it comes to her reputation, will she be suing for damages? Or, at the very least, demanding a correction?

It must be so frustrating when a paper that could previously be relied upon to print anything you told it without stopping to check facts applies that same shitty standard for journalism to reporting you.

labour's new job creation scheme

2009-05-16T10:53:00.004+01:00

Time to get a front seat for Labour's self-inflicted coup?

Any Labour MP found to have made improper expenses claims will be automatically deselected and barred from standing at the next general election as the party desperately tries to overcome the constitutional crisis facing parliament. [...] Gordon Brown has also given ministers a Monday night deadline to ensure their expenses claims for the past five years are lodged with the parliamentary authorities and ready for publication.

Any deselection would happen after the parliamentary commissioner for standards had ruled that an MP had been found clearly guilty of improperly claiming.

Not quite sure why plain MPs should be held to a lower standard than ministers: do we expect elected officials outside of the government to be generally less ethical?

The one thing that this plan also stops short of is a reassurance that MPs who have made fraudulent claims will be prosecuted in the style of, say, benefits cheats.

a small question for her constituents

2009-05-15T23:38:00.006+01:00

Given Nadine Dorries' apparent admission that she spends "most holidays" overseas (in a second/third home in South Africa) and pays for a house-sitter in the constituency property during the long summer recess (out of her own pocket, tiny violin) it would be highly interesting to discover how much of the year she actually spends in the country doing her job.

the angry guide to self-incrimination

2009-05-15T21:26:00.009+01:00

After a few days of righteous fury from Nadine Dorries that her privacy has been invaded by the Daily Telegraph and imaginary domestic terrorists... oh. This is just too delightful.

1. The Daily Telegraph discovers that Dorries has two properties: a constituency home/office (on which the rent is being paid through the MPs expenses system) and a second mystery property. They write to her to ask her some questions about this property and other expense claims.

2. Dorries reacts in inimitable style by writing a long post on her blog with CAPITALS AND ANGY MISPLELLINGS. (Update: As Justin notes this morning, it seems as though someone has had a quiet word to point out that "13 year old Youtube commenter" is not the most dignified style for an MP).

3. The Daily Telegraph reads the entry, and realises that Dorries has incriminated herself by revealing that she only stays at her "main property" a few days each week:

Nadine Dorries tells the Commons authorities that her second home is a rented house in her constituency where she has claimed more than £18,000 in rent.

But when questioned by The Daily Telegraph about her living arrangements, she posted a message on the internet in which she admits her daughter goes to school in the area, she keeps her pet dogs there and she spends many of her weekends working there. [...]

This suggests her constituency base is in fact her main or only home, which would mean she cannot pay for it using the £24,222 Additional Costs Allowance [ACA] meant to cover the cost of running a second property.

In other words, Dorries provided the information necessary (lovingly reproduced by the Telegraph with CAPS intact) to launch a claim of malpractice against her. Whoops.

As of Tim Ireland of bloggerheads just twittered, "Iain Dale claims Dorries has spiked the Telegraph's guns when she's really shot herself in the face."

time for another waah-mbulance

2009-05-15T11:30:00.003+01:00

Shorter ex-Justice minister Shahid Malik: it is someone else's fault that I claimed over £1000 for a TV at tax-payer's expence.

The wonderful thing about the self-righteous rage of MPs protesting their innocence ("This bloodfest has got to stop...otherwise we will have no democracy left.") is that it fails to recognise the source of much of the public's anger - the sheer profligacy of spending which was allowable within the rules MPs had set for themselves.

The claim that MPs have acted according to the best advice available involves a complete abandonment of personal responsibility for their own decision to spend public money. The anger at fraudulent claims is only the very tip of a deeper dismay that our elected officials think it's entirely reasonable to be allowed to spend tens of thousands of pounds on soft furnishings, flatscreen TVs and tennis court repairs.

perfectly legal

2009-05-14T12:53:00.003+01:00

I'm trying to read non-expense stories today in the knowledge that this is the perfect time for the government to release information it would prefer to remain out of the spotlight.

And so, at the very bottom of the Times' coverage of conviction rates for terrorist-related offences, there's this little admission:

The Home Office said that most of those arrested spent a short time in custody, with nearly half held for less than one day in pre-charge detention and 66 per cent for less than two days.

Only six people have been held for the maximum 28 days of pre-charge detention, three of whom were released without charge when the time limit was reached.

That's half of those held for 28 days released without any charge - not any lesser or unrelated criminal offences which bulk up the apparent conviction success rate - despite being held in prison for a month.

homos, nazis, church of scotland etc.

2009-05-13T11:44:00.003+01:00

Apparently, failing to oppose gay people is like failing to oppose the Nazis:

The Church of Scotland is moving towards a schism after one of its ministers compared an increasingly determined campaign against gay clergymen to the war against the Nazis. [...]

Mr Watson posted on his blog last night a sermon he delivered on Sunday at Kirkmuirhill Church in Lanark, in which he invoked the failure of the French Army to stand up to the Nazi annexation of the Rhineland in 1938. “[Hitler] guessed correctly that the French had no stomach for a fight. If only they had, then the tragedy of a Second World War might have been avoided,” Mr Watson said.

Watson appears to be arguing that allowing gay ministers within the Church would be the equivalent of WWII, the conflict in which some half million British soldiers and civilians died.

In case you're wondering if this is an misrepresentation, here's Watson - on his blog - arguing that the fight against gay ministers is as morally necessary as opposing Hitler:

The vast majority of decent people will do almost anything to avoid situations of confrontation. So, the soup may be cold, the meat tough and the pudding inedible, but when the waiter asks us if we are enjoying our meal we’ll smile and nod. We don’t want to complain, we don’t want to make a fuss. We’ll even pay for the privilege.
This is how bullies succeed. They realize that no matter how unhappy we are with their behaviour we’re not going to stand up to them, because the last thing we want is a shouting match.
That was the gamble Hitler took when he marched German troops into the Rhineland in March 1936 in breach of a condition forced on Germany after World War 1.

That's right: Watson draws a straight line between bad service at a restaurant, the equal status of gay people within the Church of Scotland and.. Hitler's troop manoeuvres preceding WWII.

Watson's war motif seems to be the clumsy set-up for the weakest kind of rhetorical argument - the slippery slope fallacy, which lies in falsely asserting that one thing will make a series of other things so likely as to be certain:

Let me assure you, neither I nor like-minded minsters enjoy conflict. We long to be getting on with the work of the gospel in our parishes. It’s a distraction we could do without.

But have we learned nothing from history? Remember Hitler and the re-taking of the Rhineland. He got away with it. No one stopped him. So next it was Austria, then Czechoslovakia, and then Poland and only then world war.

I can’t help asking myself: if we say nothing, do nothing at this time, what next? What scriptural truth is next for shaving? The uniqueness of Christ as our only Saviour? The nature of God as Holy Trinity?

I believe those are items 2-4 on the Global Homo Conspiracy agenda, right between "allow gay people to be ministers" and "Ragnarok."

If there's anyone who should be especially pissed at this kind of hyperventilating homophobia, it's veterans (and their families) whose memories and sacrifices are being cheaply manipulated to serve a bigot's political agenda.

two for one

2009-05-13T11:24:00.003+01:00

Nadine Dorries demonstrates that it's possible to play the victim and issue a nasty smear at the same time:

My personal details, including credit card numbers, bank account details, home address, signatures, family details and IDs have all been sold to the Daily Telegraph, and who else? Terrorists, pro-abortion extreme groups, Al Queda, BNP?

Anyone else notice the odd one out in that list?

It is slightly awkward for Dorries' attempt to characterise supporters of abortion rights as murderers and fascists that the overwhelming record of violence surrounding the issue comes from... pro-life activists who bomb abortion clinics and attempt to kill doctors who (legally) perform abortions. And who exactly are these "pro-abortion extreme groups" that Dorries seems to have invented?

Still, why let reality get in the way of an opportunity to smear your enemies?

limited sympathy

2009-05-03T12:24:00.002+01:00

Here's a deal: I'll start feeling sorry for Nadine Dorries when she shows one single glimmer of remorse or self-awareness about the impact her own smears and accusations have had on the lives and reputations of others.

I'd suggest that it should probably happen before she begins to dress herself as the new figurehead of "political austerity."

peter hitchens: I blame margaret thatcher (for everything)

2009-05-03T11:36:00.011+01:00

Peter Hitchens demonstrates (once more) that reason is something that happens to other people, declaring that Margaret Thatcher should be blamed for everything done by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and John Major.

In fact, he seems to be arguing that the period of Conservative government between 1979 and 1997 concealed a carefully orchestrated plot by:

cultural revolutionaries who wanted to undermine marriage, dissolve the family, sexualise children and use State schools as an egalitarian sausage machine, turning out brainwashed Leftists by the million.

Accordingly, Thatcher is a failure for preventing all of the above from happening.

Demonstrating a renewed taste for ideological purity, Hitchens fleshes out his reasoned critique by dismissing Michael Howard - former advocate of the death penalty, original promoter of Section 28, opposed to equal gay rights, in favour of reducing the abortion limit to 22 weeks and former hardline Home Secretary - as "the fake Right-winger." David Cameron's apparently unforgivable crime is to not even deny that he's a liberal.

My favourite bit of his diatribe - dictated, I imagine, over a brandy glass of horse tranquilizer - is this:

We also used to have a number of state industries – coal and steel – which, for all their faults, made or provided things the nation needed.

They’ve gone. Now we have regiments of condom outreach workers, facilitators and homophobia monitors, all costing much more than coal miners, and far less useful.

It's a moment that condenses all of Hitchens' loathing of sex and pauperish knowledge of economic history into one paragraph. The Daily Mail might save time in the future by merely printing these sentences over and over again until a page is filled.

EDIT - For contrast (and to see the Mail covering as many ideological bases as possible) read Hitchen's column next to Peter Oborne's effort:

AS A consequence, Britain has enjoyed an unparalleled period of prosperity and influence on the world stage for three decades. For that, we have Maggie Thatcher to thank.

But Peter, what about teh HOMOPHOBE MONITORZ!!!!

re: victimhood

2009-04-30T11:57:00.007+01:00

It's beyond debate that female politicians (and other women in public life) find themselves the subject of (frequently) sexist elements of mainstream journalism: witness Quentin Letts' fixation with Ruth Kelly's weight and wardrobe choices, or the determined attacks on Natasha Kaplinksy as a fashion-obsessed airhead.

I'm also uncomfortable with pejorative attacks which simply claim someone is mad or mentally unstable - "Mad Nad" being one such nickname that I've chosen not to repeat. So I have some sympathy for Nadine Dorries' complaint (even if she then somewhat undermines it by claiming "And it’s always men who use it. They’re usually ugly. And often quite obese.")

However, it's important to maintain some sense of difference between unfair, ad-hominem and sexist attacks, and critiques of a politician who - regardless of gender - has shown herself to be a bully, a hypocrite and the proponent of illogical and incoherent arguments.

You can, quite obviously, do the latter without the former, and there's perhaps a responsibility for people who engage in this dialogue to be conscious of that (particularly given the propensity of certain politicians for well stage-managed bouts of public outrage).

because self-regulation works so very well

2009-04-29T17:26:00.003+01:00

Compare and contrast:

1. Paul Dacre's claim that the Press Complaints Commission is successful because of the deep personal shame felt by editors called before it.

AND

2. Daily Express editor Peter Hill's "defence" of his paper's coverage of Madeleine McCann's disappearence, and his strange amnesia of the numerous PCC complaints found against his paper.

Choice quote from Roy Greenslade's column:

Hill was a PCC commissioner at the time his paper was forced to apologise to the McCanns, and was asked by an MP why he had not resigned. He said he did consider resigning but "a strong majority" of PCC members told him he should not do so.

This are the people who Dacre would have us believe are beyond all reproach and accusation of industry bias.

Shorter Daily Mail: ZOMG TEH GAYZOR

2009-04-28T09:30:00.002+01:00

As the title says, shorter Daily Mail: ZOMG TEH GAYZORS.

Though it might pain the Mail to mention it, lessons about all relationships will become compulsory when personal, social and health education (PSHE) classes become part of the compulsory national curriculum in primary and secondary schools. It's not just about the deadly, deadly homos - and parents will still be able to exclude their children from sex education classes if they so wish.

Notably, both renta-moralists quoted in the story present the image of a dangerously alluring homosexuality into which children might be ensnared:

Simon Calvert, of the Christian Institute, said that 'pressing the virtues of homosexuality' could lead to more experimentation, which could be 'harmful' to children.
He said: 'What we don't want to see is vulnerable young people being exploited by outside groups which want to normalise homosexuality.
'If this guidance purports to force faith schools to teach things which go against their faith then it is profoundly illiberal and must be resisted at all costs.'

You may recognise the rhetorical slant of "pressing the virtues" from the educational homophobia of the 1980s - of debates surrounding Section 28 which voiced the irrational belief that being gay could be "promoted," and so spread amongst the vulnerable. As I've joked, uncomfortably, there is the persistent belief that all that stands betweeen civilisation as we know it and a same-sex orgy is a convincing ad campaign. To the second of our self-appointed guardians:

Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said: 'Making PSHE a statutory part of the national curriculum could be used as a vehicle to promote positive images of homosexual relationships.
'It is difficult to see how teaching children as young as 11 about same-sex relationships and civil partnerships fits in with a study of personal wellbeing, and many parents will be very concerned about the prospect of such lessons being imposed over their heads.'

Not too hard to discover the bigotry there: Wells sees being gay (or even seeing gay people and their relationships as legitimate) as incompatible with "personal wellbeing." This is, incidentally, the same model of personal wellbeing that advocates a policy of directed ignorance when it comes to sexual health. The very idea of a positive image of same-sex relationships is seen as abhorrent.

There is something desperately sad about the version of hetereosexuality imagined by Wells and Calvert that thinks even exposure to the acknowledgement of gay people will leave it in ashes.

a policy of deliberate ignorance is not balance

2009-04-27T19:33:00.010+01:00

One step forward, one step into an abyss of stupidity:

The government has announced plans to make sex education compulsory for pupils aged five to 11, dividing faith groups and safer sex campaigners.

Under the plans all secondary schools will have to teach teenagers about contraception, safer sex and relationships, but faith schools will also be free to preach against sex outside of marriage and condoms. [...]

It means that all secondary schools in England will for the first time have to teach a core curriculum about sex and contraception in the context of teenagers' relationships, but teachers in faith schools will be free to tell them that having sex outside of marriage, homosexuality or using contraception is wrong.

You'll want to put the last sentence of that story alongside this one from last March before you start to let out a long, hearty scream:

A report from the Commons education select committee singles out Catholic schools, which, it says, should be forced to make public their commitment to stop gay pupils being bullied. The Catholic church has refused to follow government guidelines urging schools to set up specific policies against homophobic bullying.

So, having persistently ignored the government's request to address substantial and widespread bullying of young gay people in school, the Catholic Church - the loudest voice amongst denominational schools on this issue - may be about to be rewarded with the explicit permission to preach against the legitimacy of gay people.

How, exactly, will this policy sit next to the Childrens Minister's previous stated commitment to confronting homophobic language in schools?

The idea that this position represents some kind of balance is farcical:

Sir Alasdair Macdonald acknowledged that giving schools the right to apply their values was "difficult" and could conflict with the curriculum.

He said: "What we're trying to do, and I accept it's difficult, is find a balance between young people having an entitlement to knowledge, facts, information but where schools, particularly schools with a particular faith interest or other disposition, also have a right to put that in context of their particular institution. Parents have chosen to send a child to that particular institution knowing that will be part of the education.

"I'm not suggesting that's easy and I'm glad it's not my responsibility to do it. What we're looking for is some kind of balance between ... the entitlement of young people and how much schools have a right to put that in their context."

What kind of "knowledge, facts and information" can be involved when certain faiths don't even believe that information should be discussed? How can any factual education about contraception and sexual health be successful if its legitimacy is continually undermined by those entrusted with that task? How do you recognise the legitimacy of gay people while simultaenously preaching that they are sinful?

Either this government believes that gay people are equal citizens in this culture, or it doesn't. Either this government believes ALL students are entitled to information which will allow them to protect themselves in adult life, or it doesn't.

Here's the deal: you take money from the state to subsidise a religious education, and there are strings attached. One of those strings is keeping the religious justifications for prejudice and ignorance out of the classroom.

EDIT: Making the sex and contraception within relationships element of the PSHE curriculum compulsory is good news - and long overdue. That news, though, is horribly soured and undermined by the above.

defamation for fun and profit

2009-04-26T16:46:00.006+01:00

Somewhat unsuprisingly, The Daily Mail provides the most detail of Nadine Dorries' impending legal action:

Announcing the legal action yesterday, Ms Dorries, 51, the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, said that on the advice of her solicitor she was refusing to say who she was suing, but Tory sources confirmed she was taking action for defamation against [Damian] McBride.

It's that special kind of refusing comment when you actually give a full and comprehensive briefing, providing it's off-the-record.

So defamation it is. Though there is no single comprehensive definition of what is defamatory, various suggestions have been made before the courts, including any material which:

* Is to a person’s discredit.
* Tends to lower him or her in the estimation of others.
* Causes him or her to be shunned or avoided.
* Causes him or her to be exposed to hatred, ridicule or contempt.

Interestingly, a statement that amounts to an insult or is mere vulgar abuse is not defamatory. Carter-Ruck obligingly advises prospective clients that:

Making a defamatory allegation, whether orally or in writing, even to one individual other than the claimant himself is sufficient to give rise to a claim (although the court has the power to stop a case proceeding in limited publication cases if it would be disproportionate for them to proceed to trial).

Any communication to anyone other than the person actually defamed is, in law, capable of constituting publication. A draft manuscript sent by an author to his or her editor is a publication.

All of which gives a sense of the breadth of what might constitute defamation, and the potentially self-evident quality of a case against McBride. The real questions may be over the degree of damage to Dorries' perceived reputation (hence the recent seeming web crawl to find repetition of the contents of the original emails).

Gaby Hinsliff in The Observer notes that:

The announcement comes only days after Dorries demanded - and received - a public apology from Gordon Brown in the Commons, raising the intriguing possibility that Brown's own words could form part of her evidence.

The key here is not that Brown is likely to be found culpable in a defamation action - even though Dorries has asserted that "these emails were part of a dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by Downing Street" - but that Brown might be dragged into court and directly (and embarassingly) grilled on his personal knowledege of McBride's activities. Whatever the legal merits of the case, it's clearly also a floor show.

Finally, it may be remarkable how closely the parliamentary Tory party has wed themselves to this media-oriented strategy, given their clearly organised willingness to give Dorries the floor during last week's PMQs. Is this really going to be how they try to win the next election?

waving to passing lawyers

2009-04-26T09:49:00.007+01:00

Suddenly the increased flow of traffic searching for "nadine dorries smear" over the last week makes sense.

(Note: "Sexgolf"? WTF?)

It is slightly unfortunate for that case that very few bloggers who write about Dorries thought it ever necessary to repeat the details of the unfounded claims made against her, instead choosing to emphasise her own past behaviour as a smear-merchant (see, for example, the "abortion industry" accusation).

This does make it slightly difficult to claim that the original allegations were maliciously and deliberately spread on the internets by Brownite conspirators: by the time most of anyone had heard the claims, it was through the news that the claims were false. Still, I'm sure someone will try to argue it anyway.

Though we'll have to wait to see just who Dorries is attempting to sue at No.10 (and the legal grounds for that case, given her previous shakey rationales for action) it's obvious that we're looking at a headline grab - the only reliable outcome, in any case. Isn't calculated outrage fun?

margaret thatcher, class warrior

2009-04-25T15:07:00.003+01:00

Regarding The Daily Telegraph's declaration that a 50% tax rate is the equivalent of class war, here's Charles Moore doing his very best to ignore the fact that - despite being the patron saint of low taxes - Margaret Thatcher held the top tax rate at 60% for the first nine years of her rule.

Apparently, the rationale that "she was perfectly capable of putting up taxes out of immediate necessity (in 1979, she all but doubled VAT)" does not apply in the context of global recession. Okay?

paul dacre: the daily mail was never against the MMR vaccine

2009-04-25T13:10:00.009+01:00

Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, gave evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee last week on the issue of press standards. Questioned about disciplinary action taken over inaccurate reporting, Dacre responds:

There's a bit of an urban myth that The Daily Mail was against the MMR triple jab.

You can watch it here, at around the 1hr 20mins mark of the hearing.

He goes on to argue that the Mail printed articles for and against the vaccine, and that "all newspapers" were involved in that kind of reporting. As you'll probably recall, the Daily Mail - far and beyond all other papers - demonstrably lead the charge in raising fears about the MMR vaccine.

To illustrate the scale of Dacre's distortion, here's a small selection of the stories which the Daily Mail saw fit to print on the subject of MMR: New warning on MMR jab, Were MMR warnings ignored?, Vaccine is poisonous substance, MMR vaccine side-effects 'not fully tested', New evidence revives MMR fears, New MMR link found to autism, MMR fears gain support, MMR jab "may have triggered autism" says new research and - amongst many articles by Peter Hitchens - Is it really our duty to risk our children's lives with this jab? That's a very small sampling of headlines from 2001-2 alone.

Dacre's claim in the hearing is that the Mail's "gloss" on the story was (then PM) Tony Blair's supposed hypocrisy in not revealing whether his children had been inoculated, a notion which ignores the far greater, unrelated number of articles published both before and long after that particular issue was raised.

The Mail repeatedly overstated the potential risks involved in vaccination, prominently reporting the concerns of a small minority of anti-vaccine campaigners and frequently presenting them on equal footing with the overwhelming weight of evidence and opinion that argued MMR was necessary and safe. In other words, the Mail created and sustained the pretence of balance where none existed.

Even when the safety of the vaccine was reported, it was presented in contexts which re-introduced the possibility of genuine doubt:

New research says no link between MMR and autism

New research says there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism or bowel disease, but critics claim the study is a missed opportunity to find new evidence.

At the centre of this coverage was Melanie Phillips' series of scaremongering articles challenging the safety of the vaccine, including (but not limited to) This baby suffered brain damage and epilepsy after the MMR jab, International evidence against MMR, MMR: the true facts, MMR - the truth revealed, MMR - The Truth and Are we facing an autism epidemic?

To pretend that this constitutes balanced reporting is ridiculous. To pretend that this record of journalism - which continues up until this year - doesn't reach the point of actively campaigning against MMR is also absurd.

The rest of the hearing is worth sitting through - not least for Dacre's persistent rhetorical device of distancing his publication from all and any "mistakes" made by the press in their coverage: errors are made by "all papers," successes and good practice can be attributed to the Mail.

So the Mail's coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann becomes a story about the Evening Standard, skimming over the Mail's own part in the settlement paid to Robert Murat. The McCann's error was also apparently in not complaining to the Press Complaints Commission rapidly enough (which is a rather curious argument for a man who believes in the self-moderation of an ethical press). He's also stumped when asked whether disclosing the location of one of Joseph Fritzl's daughters - attempting to lead a normal life under a new name - was moral and ethical.

Almost hilariously (if it wasn't also tragic) Dacre claims that the main incentive to avoid being called before the PCC is the "shame" that newspaper editors experience in front of their peers in the industry: indeed, this is the strength of self-regulation. "What sickens me," Dacre bemoans, "is the charge that the PCC is not independent."

not that this has anything to do with ego

2009-04-24T12:25:00.005+01:00

I've obligingly watched Nadine Dorries' moment in the sun during Wednesday's PMQs: she should be rightly proud that time was taken to extract an apology which she had.. uh.. already received.

There's a lovely pause after she asks her question when everyone's thinking, "That's it?" - and then another pause after Brown has apologised when everyone has realised that it's over and there's a little rush to make some "outrage outrage" noise to cover the fact that the attempt to embarass has fallen entirely flat. Great theatre.

It's also entirely hilarious that an MP with a proven track record of smearing her opponents should have such a thin skin. It's also faintly sickening that she should somehow think this has anything to with support for women's rights, given Dorries' similarly proven track record when it comes to the political sisterhood. In fact, I believe that the phrase "undignified fishwife" springs to mind.

joseph nicolisi and the BBC's "balanced" reporting

2009-04-24T09:54:00.007+01:00

A preamble: homosexuality cannot be cured. There is no therapy that can turn gay people straight. No reputable psychological organisation here, in the US (or across most of Europe) supports such pretended therapy, and largely regards it as unethical to even suggest such treatment.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists believes that there is no sound scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Reparative therapy has been rejected in the US by The National Association of Social Workers, The American Psychological Association, The American Psychiatric Association, The American Counseling Association, and The American Academy of Pediatrics.

Consequently, the ex-gay movement is filled with men and women who are re-gay (including some very high profile "lapses" into homosexuality). Reparative therapy doesn't work, and can instead cause considerable distress and harm.

I'm making that clear up front so it's clear why the BBC's Today programme's choice to give airtime to Joseph Nicolisi - a man who claims, without any evidence, to be able to relieve gay people of their homosexual tendencies - was an embarassing mistake.

By chosing to interview Nicolisi alongside Reverend Sharon Ferguson (chief executive of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement) the programme gave the false impression of balance - that there is some general disagreement on this issue which can be explored evenly from both sides. There is not. The belief that homosexuality can be cured is presented almost exclusively by a small number of (primarily religious) social conservatives.

Nicolisi is in London to talk at a conference of conservative figures from the right of the Anglican church. Unmentioned by the BBC or The Telegraph is that Nicolisi is the executive director of NARTH, the "National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality."

Amongst NARTH's officers is George Alan Rekers, who - despite NARTH's claim to secular status - has testified in court that the Bible is the infallable word of God and that homosexuality is a sin. NARTH's website also offers a resource list of over seventy theological articles, and maintains - as an organisation - that homosexuality is a mental disorder. NARTH is, as should be clear, a conservative pseduo-religious group on the fringe of medical research and psychiatric practice.

To make it clear, it's fine that Nicolisi should speak, or visit London. Obviously. But the BBC - as an organisation with a claim to journalistic integrity - should know better than to give a public platform to a manifest fraud under the pretence of balanced reporting.

invading privacy for fun and profit

2009-04-24T09:38:00.007+01:00

Apparently, behaving like a teenager when you are a teenager stops you from behaving like an adult when you are an adult. A teacher enforces the rules of her school and sends pupils home, and the Mail's snide response is to opine:

She did not, however, explain why she was so lax about her own attire when she at Cowes High School on the Isle of Wight in 1989.

So lovely for Neil Sears of the Daily Mail to assist in the invasion of a woman's privacy through the bullshit pretence of hypocrisy. Perhaps it was the chance to pruriently report "in one photograph she boasts about the size of her ample breasts" that made it justifiable to print photographs of a woman from 20 years ago to hound her professional behaviour today.

Finally, just to make it clear how unbelievably fucking stupid this story is, here's the SHOCK photo showing this teacher's schoolgirl scruffiness:

Truly, a schoolgirl in a shirt and tie will be the end of decorum everywhere. Neil Sears: collossal wanker of the week.

ZOMG news

2009-04-23T17:09:00.005+01:00

Yesterday's budget seems to have tripped some kind of internal switch at the Daily Telegraph. First, there's the front-page headline:

Quickly, comrades! To the barricades! I get the feeling that headline has been held in reserve since 1997.

And then there's this story:

Brown denies Budget spells the end of New Labour

PM denies the new 50p top rate of tax sounds the death knell for New Labour and insists the party remains committed to aspiration and opportunity for all.

Of all the possible journalistic approaches to take on this story, reporting that the head of a political party refuses to declare that his party is doomed is the least insightful or revelatory - particularly when that's the argument being advanced by their direct political rivals.

Report the argument, fine, but act surprised that Brown doesn't agree with Cameron? What other scoops can we look forward to? Pope refuses to admit demise of organised religion?

on the purity patrol

2009-04-23T14:33:00.008+01:00

Given the BNP's renewed fondness for racial purity, I'm wondering where the party would stand on one-drop legislation. Presumably anything less than full support for such a measure would be to condone a "bloodless genocide."

I think we've pretty much abandoned the pretence that this discussion can ever be about cultural values when Nick Griffin's objection is to someone's genetic "stock," and thinks that "racial foreigners" is a more subtle way of objecting to who his predecessors would have called "darkies." More importantly, all that word play frees the BNP from having to define what Britishness is without referring to whiteness.

Nick Griffin's rhetoric also articulates a common (and alogical) position: that having someone use a term to define themselves stops me from using that same term to truly describe myself. In other words, gay marriage invalidates straight marriage, and the term Asian Britains "denie[s] indigenous people their own identity." This theory is, as many speech-act theorists before me have opined, balls: language (and law, and culture) doesn't work that way.

If you have a strong stomach, dip into the comment section over there for the Mail readers' angry defence of Griffin from the forces of political correctness.

a tale of two headlines

2009-04-22T17:41:00.003+01:00

Sometimes spin falls on deaf ears. From today's papers, pre-budget:

The Guardian: "The gravy train must stop: PM orders expenses shakeup," versus The Daily Express: "Greedy MP's New Rip-Off."

tut tut tut

2009-04-22T15:00:00.003+01:00

The Met Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, leading the investigation into police tactics during G20 in London:

Sir Paul said it was "absolutely unacceptable" that some officers covered or removed their identity shoulder tags during the protests.[...]

Mr O'Connor admitted that seeing images of protester Nicola Fisher being struck across the face by an officer made him "very uncomfortable". He added: "I would expect police officers in public order and other situations to wear their numbers so the public can identify them. It acts as a good check and balance for all parties in the situation."

But, as Simon Carr points out:

[Sir Paul] was livelier on the need for officers to wear their identifying police numbers. But he revealed the numbers were attached by velcro. So forget any disciplinary action on that score. "It must have got ripped off by anarchists," they'll all say. No one asked about balaclava wearing.

Once again, it's not so much anti-police sentiment as the sensation of impending, horribly accurate cynicism. Odds on Sir Paul's "expectations" being sadly frustrated?

manners

2009-04-22T10:06:00.002+01:00

A lesson in writing whatever article you want, regardless of what a piece of research might discover. From the top:

1. The headline and lede.

Excuse ME! How most people believe manners are unimportant in 21st century Britain

They say that good manners cost nothing. So you'd think that even in these credit-crunch times, we could still afford to be polite.

Apparently not. For researchers have found that fewer than a quarter of us think that common courtesy is important today.

Ten points for noticing that disagreeing with the statement "During a credit crunch, manners are important" is not actually the same as saying that manners are unimportant.

2. The more detailed findings of the survey commissioned by a bank on attitudes toward courtesy and happiness, reported further down the page:

Almost one in ten sometimes forget to say 'please' and 'thank you' - and one in 50 said they had 'too much on their minds to worry about other people's feelings'.

In other words, the vast majority of those surveyed still exercise common forms of social courtesy. Here's the Telegraph doing the exact same thing with the story i.e. failing to read past the first result before deciding on the contents of the story.

3. The original press release:

Despite the economic downturn and the widely held perception that manners and courtesy have declined, Britain seems to be seeing a renewed appreciation for courtesy and consideration.

A new poll has revealed that nine out of ten adults believe it’s common, everyday niceties such as a compliment or being given a seat that make us happy.

But apart from that, everything is going to hell in a handbasket etc. etc.

"If anyone ever deserved a good slap, this woman certainly did."

2009-04-21T14:23:00.005+01:00

From the asshat files, here's Bill Carmichael of the Yorkshire Post, arguing that complaining angrily (even abusively) about being detained by police without charge is the grounds for being assaulted by the police:

Take a few moments to look at the video and a strikingly different picture emerges from the propaganda being put out by the protesters and their friends at the BBC and left-wing newspapers.

Instead of the sanitised version of injured innocence, what you'll see is an aggressive-looking young woman – as yet unidentified – hat pulled down over her eyes, mouthing obscenities into the face of a police officer, who is trying to ignore her.

After several minutes of this he snaps and slaps her with the back of his hand with the words: "Go away."

She doesn't and she continues to hurl abuse. At which point he draws his baton and belts her on the legs. If anyone ever deserved a good slap, this woman certainly did.

Instead of being suspended and investigated, I believe the officer involved should be commended for his forbearance.

It's those last few lines which frame the misogyny of the piece: that it's perfectly acceptable, even admirable, to hit a "mouthy" woman. And then strike her with a weapon.

boris johnson: woefully inadequate

2009-04-21T13:58:00.010+01:00

Justin McKeating and Tory Troll pick up on the story that Boris Johnson has dumped his election promise to fund four new rape crisis centres in London.

The rationale appears to be that Johnson knows less now than he did before he took office many months ago and promised in his manifesto to ring-fence cash to correct "woefully inadequate funding."

The Evening Standard quotes his revised position:

"The Mayor is determined that all women in London who need them have access to rape crisis services. To do this he first needs to know where the gaps in service provision are and where to focus funding.

He is consulting widely with partners, organisations and Londoners through his Violence Against Women Strategy as well as carrying out a thorough needs assessment. Once both these results are available he and his team will be able to identify the best places to direct funding for rape crisis provision.”

This would be a reasonable and rational response if the answers to such enquiries were not already screamingly self-evident. i.e. Q. Where are the gaps in funding? A. In funding for rape crisis centres.

Why would Boris be particularly well placed to know that, even if amnesia has robbed him of his pre-election memories? He cut his promised funding for rape crisis centres in December 2008.

Finally, note the horribly ironic detail that this news came out during the launch of a strategy to cut violence against women.

it's the internet, stupid

2009-04-21T10:54:00.003+01:00

Someone phone for a police wahmbulance:

A worrying anti-police “bandwagon” has built up over the handling of the G20 protests, the leader of rank-and-file officers told The Times last night.

Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation, said that much of the criticism by politicians and media commentators was inaccurate, ill informed and ignorant.

McKeever's protest would be a lot more compelling (i.e. a little bit instead of not at all) if he could point to exactly when and where commentary and criticism based on misinformation had taken place. Some kind of evidence-based process for supporting charges, if you will. And the bandwagon isn't anti-police so much as anti-"getting smacked in the face by balaclava'd police who refuse to identify themselves."

More significantly, McKeever's critique of the political and press circus also demonstrates a worrying ignorance of the source of public information (and anger). The Guardian has a collection of 14 separate videos of violent or questionable police action, with further fresh footage to be revealed to MPs today. The youtube hosted video of Ian Tomlinson's assault alone now has over 300,000 hits.

I'd argue that the public's response isn't being driven by newspaper commentary and political speechs so much as access to clear and seemingly obvious evidence of police malpractice which has previously either been ignored by the mainstream press or beyond the reach of a mainstream audience. The behaviour of police at public protests isn't new: the rapid and systematic distribution of evidence of that behaviour is.

McKeever's real problem (beyond police officers who see protestors as the enemy) isn't Fleet Street, or Westminster: it's the internet.

daily mail campaigns for and against HPV vaccine simultaneously

2009-04-15T14:05:00.008+01:00

Even after many months of tracking the Daily Mail's unique brand of hackery, this story is almost unbelievable. The Daily Mail has been campaigning both for AND against the HPV vaccine in different countries simultaneously.

While the UK mainland edition of the paper has repeatedly scaremongered about possible side-effects, the Irish edition of the Mail is proudly "leading the fight to have the cervical cancer vaccination programme reinstated" after government cost-cutting measures.

If you sign up to support the campaign, you even get a free car sticker:

Credit goes to Martin Robbins at The Lay Scientist for making the discovery:

Are they insane?! They're printing scare stores about the dangers of the HPV vaccine in one country, while simultaneously campaigning for its reintroduction in another. It's so absurdly cynical that I can't quite form the words to convey just how shocked I am by this. Even by the piss-poor journalistic standards of the Daily Mail, this takes quite some beating.

What this means is that those of us who believed that the Daily Mail had some editorial or ideological stance against certain vaccines were in fact wrong. The Daily Mail position on vaccines is whatever happens to sell newspapers - and if those positions are completely self-contradictory, or might cause a bit more cancer in the readership, then who cares, as long as the advertisers are happy?

The closest hint of this level of hypocrisy in the past was when the Mail reported that the government's failure to issue formal guidance on the Gardasil vaccine was forcing mothers to pay to have their daughters vaccinated privately. That story, though, was a rare moment that approached sanity.

Long term readers will know that The Daily Mail has persistently campaigned against the HPV vaccine: continually referring to the vaccine as the "promiscuity jab," over-emphasising possible risks and - until now most notoriously - giving space to socially conservative moralists who prefer cancer to sex, confuse vaccination with "promoting" underage sex, and think that women who seek protection from cervical cancer are tarts and slags.

Given that the Mail is clearly missing out on a chance for some self-promotional moral posturing, I've taken the liberty of producing a car sticker for Mail readers in the mainland UK:

Or, alternatively:

Not too subtle, I hope.

hypocrisy schadenfreude tango

2009-04-13T11:46:00.003+01:00

Shorter Nadine Dorries: it is utterly disgraceful that anyone should attempt to smear their political opponents with entirely false.. oh, wait, never mind.

Also see: slander is not the same thing as libel.

weak from laughter

2009-04-13T11:45:00.000+01:00

Shorter Derek Draper: at the end of the day - and in our own individual ways - we've all been responsible for planning websites which would trade in tawdry gossip and smears.

I believe it's traditional to wear the sackcloth and ashes for at least a few hours before proceeding to sainthood:

Maybe this affair will encourage the whole blogosphere, right and left, to commit to a new start, where offensiveness and personal attacks are avoided and debate is elevated not dragged down into the gutter? Maybe this can be a turning point at which we all redouble our efforts to tap into the internet´s positive potential rather than allowing its more peurile aspects to come to the fore?

shouted the man in the gutter.

the situationists have taken over the asylum

2009-03-30T22:18:00.004+01:00

There's something about the lede of this story that makes me deeply proud to be British:

Members will this week be shown copies of thousands of receipts and other documents due to be published under the Freedom of Information Act. They will be invited to redact the documents, blacking out information they do not want to disclose.

Other countries have corruption. Other countries have censorship. But we, the British, have a free media which reports that - in the coming weeks - our elected officials will finally be forced to release details of their expenses after a lengthy legal battle, but not before those politicians have been invited to censor their own records.

I'm not sure this joke could possibly be improved. To have said, "Yes, I've released the details of my tax-payer-subsidised kitchen... into the mouth of a volcano" might have involved some kind of pleasing delayed-gag wherein the meaning of "released" is interpreted literally instead of figuratively, but I'm not sure it could improve this exemplar of darkly ironic comedy.

The fine detail of the story merely reveals the richness of this exquisitely honed parody. We learn that:

Most public sector bodies required to publish give the task of editing to other people not involved in the case.

but

MPs argue that they must still be allowed to vet their own claims because, they claim, they have unique knowledge of their constituencies and any "local issues" that may be raised by disclosure.

Translation: the people who actually voted for me might find out how I've spent their money and that would be disastrous. And look - "no date for final publication of the edited receipts has been set." Truly, no opportunity to performatively enact the grasping venality of our political class has been overlooked.

Can I suggest that our addition to the sporting events at the Olympic games take the form of a self-destructive spiral into the alienation of the majority from the democratic processes of representation?

capitulation

2009-03-30T18:37:00.005+01:00

Long-term readers will know that I've been keeping a careful eye on Policy Exchange ever since they attempted to silence BBC Newsnight with legal action over the content of their report, The Hijacking of British Islam, back in December 2007. As you may recall, Policy Exchange accused Newsnight of making "libellous and perverse" allegations which they threatened to pursue "relentlessly, to trial or capitulation."

You may now find yourself suddenly short on adequate supplies of schadenfreude. Courtesy of Liberal Conspiracy:

The right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange has been forced into a humiliating climbdown over its report, ‘The Hijacking of British Islam’, for making allegations in the report that it now admits were unsubstantiated.

The next part of the game, of course, is to pursue those newspapers and pundits who cheerfully reported Policy Exchange's conclusions without a hint of critical engagement (though some, it should be said, have already published partial corrections to certain claims).

You may also recall the following defence mounted by Charles Moore in the pages of The Telegraph in January 2008, accusing the BBC's Peter Barron (with no small absence of irony) of "vanity broadcasting":

Mr Barron's judgment of the Policy Exchange report came under attack from colleagues: his flawed methodology - the original decision not to broadcast - had lost the entire corporation an important story.

Mr Barron decided to try to prove himself right. In the private sector, there is something called "vanity publishing", where people pay for their own works to be published.

Mr Barron's vanity broadcasting was, of course, at the expense of the licence-fee payer. He put the crew of the flagship on to investigating Policy Exchange's receipts. For six weeks, they turned on the staff of Policy Exchange, who had come to them in good faith in the first place, and treated them like criminals. [...]

I don't blame Newsnight for reporting questions about receipts, though I deplore their methods. I do blame them for trying to kill the much, much bigger story about the hate that is being preached in our country.

Oooh. Awkward. As I pointed out at the time, the critique of "vanity publishing" is a curious claim to make on behalf of an organisation that commissions and publishes its own research without outside editorial input, or peer review of supposedly "academic" work.

I am certain we can look forward to a full apology to the Newsnight team from Charles Moore in recognition of their justified professional scepticism, occuping a position of equal public prominence in the pages of a national newspaper.

the wrong kind of extremism

2009-03-13T12:15:00.004Z

Shorter Richard Littlejohn: a man who has committed no crime should be locked up in Guantanamo Bay because I don't like what he says.

Even shorter Richard Littlejohn: I hate free speech.

It's increasingly interesting that that right-wing columnists modelling themselves as the voice of common sense (or "authentic" liberalism) have so little interest in free speech, fair trials, innocence until proven guilt etc. etc. Could it be that their main problem with Islamic extremist authoritarianism is that it's Islamic? (c.f. homophobia is only a problem when it's not the Christian kind).

Also note that the "paralysed by the fear of being called Islamophobic" meme is spreading:

It's the same warped mindset which sees groups of young Muslim men, accompanied by faceless women in burqas, waved through airport security without so much as a cursory glance, while old-age pensioners from Tunbridge Wells on their way to a long weekend in Madeira are subjected to the full Spanish Inquisition and a humiliating strip search.

The authorities are terrified of anything which might lead to charges of 'Islamophobia' being levelled against them.

Beyond Littlejohn's entirely imaginary example (and he forgot to make the pensioners white Anglicans carrying puppies and orphans) consider what his logic suggests: that young Muslim men should justifiably be the subject of interrogation and intrusive searches simply because they are young Muslim men. That, presumably, would be the right kind of oppressive extremism because it's being done by us instead of them.

Note: Littlejohn's faux-concern for people using Luton airport might sound a little less like an empty populist gesture if he didn't write his columns from a gated mansion in Florida, while continuing to pretend he's a regular Brit on the street. As is perhaps obvious, Littlejohn only sees Britain through the pages of the right-wing press and his self-reinforcing mailbag.

melanie phillips: even as I write this nationally syndicated column, I am silenced by the claim of islamophobia

2009-03-12T13:43:00.003Z

I'm running out to teach, but I think we can deal with this helping of nonsense quite quickly. Melanie Phillips - determined to draw even more attention to a tiny minority of extremists - writes:

The repellent spectacle of Muslims demonstrating in Luton against the British soldiers returning from Iraq does more than turn our stomach. [...]
When the returning troops of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment paraded through Luton they had to run the gauntlet of Muslim protesters waving placards saying: ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra,’ and ‘Anglian soldiers: cowards, killers, extremists.’ [...]
Yet if anyone objects to any of this, they are called ‘Islamophobic’.

Uh, no. A large number of people from different backgrounds - Islamic and non-Islamic, Christian and Muslim, ordinary member of the public and batshit insane columnist - have objected to the protest (held, again, by a tiny vocal minority) and even though I've combed through a stack of newspaper reports, I can't find a single person criticising the protests who has been accused of Islamophobia.

But - even if they had - that would be a stupid thing to claim, and its very stupidity would make it extremely easy to dismiss and ignore. It might be fun to suggest that tolerance of the free speech of extremists of any flavour is part of the extended conspiracy of Political Correctness but it's also very, very dumb.

As has been argued elsewhere, Phillips' brand of hyperventilation does the extremist's work for them.

some simple advice

2009-03-12T11:10:00.004Z

The best way to avoid bankruptcy because of institutionalised concealment of child abuse would be to.. not be the kind of organised religion that lies about abusers and moves them to fresh parts of the country where they can abuse again.

That, however, doesn't stop the Catholic Church from attempting to adopt victim status:

Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are mounting an intense lobbying effort to block a bill before the State Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of children. [...]

“We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church,” said Dennis Poust, spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, a group representing the bishops of the state’s eight dioceses.

No. The bill is designed to allow the victims of abuse to claim some measure of justice - justice which the Church has done its very best to limit. Bankruptcy would be an entirely incidental (some might say happy) side effect.

numbers, crunched

2009-03-09T16:25:00.001Z

Using the Daily Mail's coverage, we can conclude that the percentage of women treated so far showing minor adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine is around 0.19%. The number of cases involving more serious problems is 6 - or 0.00086% of over 700,000 women.

In case you were wondering if any lessons had been learnt since the debacle of MMR, here's the Mail's front-page headline:

Concerns over safety of cervical cancer vaccine after 1,300 girls experience adverse side-effects

Where's my anonymous, passively voiced outrage?

Some have dubbed it the 'promiscuity jab' because it is given to girls to protect against the sexually-transmitted HPV virus which causes 70 per cent of cervical tumours.

It was actually happily referred to as the jab for tarts and slags - but who's counting, really?

The HPV vaccine has absolutely nothing to do with promiscuity: as with many, many STIs, a single exposure to an infected partner is enough. HPV is also far more common than any other STI - between 50% and 75% of sexually active men and women contract genital HPV infection at some point in their lives, and most people do not know they are infected. Vaccination is not a comment on sexual morality; it's a comment on not wanting to die from an avoidable cancer.

So, is it that the Mail really loves cancer, or really hates women?

just a PR problem

2009-02-25T10:10:00.005Z

Shorter Bishop Richard Williamson: the error in my anti-semetic views was talking about them in front of the press.

After a few weeks of using the country's border to indicate what we just won't stand for (torture notwithstanding), Holocaust-denier, conspiracy theorist and archaic sexist Bishop Richard Williamson lands in Heathrow, where a phalanx of police courteously escort him to his car.

Ruth Gledhill and Chris Smyth at The Times do a great job of pointing out how this trip is part of Williamson's attempt to revive his reputation - and just who he's chosen to assist him:

[Williamson] is believed to have contacted the revisionist historian David Irving, asking how to present his views on the Holocaust without arousing controversy, The Times has learnt. [...]

The bishop was believed to have been met at Heathrow by the socialite Michele Renouf with a legal team. Ms Renouf, a former beauty queen, denies that she is anti-Semitic but has described Judaism as a “repugnant and hate-filled religion”.

I believe the word to describe this kind of behaviour is "unrepentant." I'm moderately intrigued by the idea of a version of a palatable, media-friendly version of holocaust denial - presumably produced by a specialist thinktank who are also at work attempting to turn a certain stiff-armed salute into a cool new wave that all the kids will enjoy.

(Incidentally, the faint sound that you hear in the distance is the wringing of a thousand pairs of pundit hands, as they attempt to tackle the issue of double-standards at our border without inadvertently pointing out that it's okay to be an anti-semetic bigot if the Pope is your friend, which would of course be an unacceptable "attack" on Catholics.)

changing some of the words but losing none of the subtlety

2009-02-25T10:06:00.001Z

Shorter Daily Mail: please ignore this anti-semetic extremist who has already arrived in the country in favour of this anti-semetic extremist who has yet to leave his house. Incidentally, it turns out the one we care about is a Muslim! A MOOOOSLLLIIIIM!

uncontaminated by fact

2009-02-23T18:55:00.003Z

Via Pickled Politics, Peter Hitchens' latest contribution to the fine art of bloviation:

You’ll have noticed that openly Christian citizens are the ones who increasingly get the rough end of this society. The cultural elite jeers at them, militant atheists denounce religious education as a form of child abuse, people are threatened for doing or saying Christian things.

There is some confusion here between jeering at Christians, and jeering at total idiots who happen to be Christians (for examples, see here and here).

Hitchens' column is, as ever, refreshingly free from any worrying traces of evidence to support his claims. Given that I have minimally higher standards, I might point you towards the Equality Act of 2006 - passed into law less than 24 months ago - whose primary function is to guarantee the faithful the right to employment, housing etc. without discrimination on grounds of religion of belief.

But apart from that, we are indeed a nation driven by the need to persecute Christians and burn them as witches etc. etc. etc.

melanie phillips: any resemblance between my politics and the BNP should be ignored

2009-02-23T17:53:00.004Z

Melanie Phillips' latest column (printed with the helpful sub-heading "BY MELANIE PHILLIPS, WRITING IN THE DAILY MAIL" for the hard of thought) opines that the "odious" BNP's success is due to the betrayal of the great British public by every other political party. Somewhat awkwardly, the feedback section is ripe with Phillips' own readers happily rating up comments in support of the BNP.

Phillips' attempt to drive some distance between her own politics and those of the BNP also demands close attention. As is predictable, Phillips declares that the politics of the fascist right is the politics of the centre left:

But it is a mistake to denounce fascism as the province of the 'far Right'. It is, in fact, the bastard child of Left-wing thinking. Indeed, even today some of the BNP's own rhetoric is echoed in progressive circles.

For example, in the U.S., President Obama has been flirting with protectionism; while in Britain, the BNP's denunciations of 'greedy bankers' are echoing across the political spectrum.

This is, even by Phillips' standards, a pathetic syllogism: the BNP are fascists; the BNP denounce greedy bankers; therefore anyone who denounces bankers is a closet fascist.

More importantly, it's an attempt to distract from Phillips' substantial track record of eliminationist, scaremongering rhetoric - which places her in far closer company to the far right than she would like to admit while styling herself as "authentically" liberal. Writing on the threat of Islamic extremism, Phillips opined:

But the fact is that the persistent failure to tackle such extremism is providing fertile territory for white racists to exploit.

before adding her own contribution to that fertile field by declaring:

This is not about prejudice or discrimination. It is about cultural survival.

referring, of course, not to the threat posed by white rascists but by non-white extremists.

In another such column, Phillips offered her own unique reading of an open letter (pdf) from 138 Muslim scholars to the Pope and the leaders of other Christian churches on the subject of peace between the faiths as "put[ting] a scimitar to the neck of the Christian church":

And so when it says:

So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill

it’s really a variation of the ancient adage: submit or die.

Can there be the slightest bit of surprise that Melanie Phillips' ardent readers might support the racist scaremongering of the far right? Can there be any doubt that Melanie Phillips has herself contributed to that discourse?

painfully stupid

2009-02-22T10:11:00.002Z

And now The Times is at it too:

PARENTS should avoid trying to convince their teenage children of the difference between right and wrong when talking to them about sex, a new government leaflet is to advise.

No, no, no. It's painful to have to struggle through this kind of reading comprehension exercise with The Times - of all newspapers - but that is not the advice. Here's the quote:

It advises: “Discussing your values with your teenagers will help them to form their own. Remember, though, that trying to convince them of what’s right and wrong may discourage them from being open.”

Instead, any discussion of values should be kept “light” to encourage teenagers to form their own views, according to the brochure, which one critic has called “amoral”.

I presume we're all capable of understanding a conditional statement, right? One thing may lead to another? This is cautionary advice rather than a simple recommendation: tell your children about your values, but a blunt attempt to drive them away from sex may drive them away from you, instead.

As it stands, the leaflet is doing the uneviable job of reminding parents that they might have to be ever so slightly pragmatic when it comes to teenagers and sex: that actually knowing what is going on in your son or daughter's life might be more important than training an exact acceptance of your personal sexual morality.

The grand-mal stupidity of this attempt at outrage is that this is a piece of advice for parents who - as adults with free will - can entirely ignore this advice and attempt to pass on absolutely set of morals they choose.

And as for those now claiming that this advice is "amoral," note that the rest of the leaflet contains specific information about different forms of contraception. As hard as it may be for the Christian Institute to understand, giving people the information (and therefore the ability) to control their own sex lives and fertility is moral activity. It might not match the tenets of conservative Christianity, but it's not "value-free."

sins of omission

2009-02-21T10:42:00.003Z

The Scottish Catholic Church's recent vision for education is a very positive, humanist statement: it affirms the need to treat individuals with dignity, respect and honesty, showing real care, compassion and concern for those in the community around us.

The context in which this publication appears, though, is a little more troublesome. While the document describes a potential curriculum which

needs to take account of a child’s individual needs, culture and background; the many social and emotional problems associated with the prevalence of prejudice and intolerance

the Church has has proven highly selective in which forms of prejudice it is actually willing to address in schools.

As you may remember, the Catholic Church has a worn record of resisting action on homophobic bullying - rejecting the idea of even having a policy stating the school's position on such behaviour. If anything, the Catholic Church's position appears to be to turn a determined blind eye despite widespread evidence of homophobic bullying in schools across the UK.

So while the statement emphasising dignity and respect is a positive step, the Church also needs to confirm that GLBT youth are included in that sentiment and entitled to an education free from abuse. While this document might not have been the right place to make that statement, it could - and should - act as the trigger for a reformed stance on this issue. Anything else would be hypocritical.

hook, line..

2009-02-19T17:59:00.001Z

..and sinker:

There was no evidence that the Phelps family, who tour the US spreading their message and have expressed a wish to come to Britain to preach at Speakers' Corner in London, had made arrangements to carry out their threat of picketing the play, but the Home Office said Phelps and other members of his family would be banned from entry if they arrived.

I'm sure the Home Office feels the need to appear (and behave) in a way that's even-handed after refusing entry to Geert Wilders, but this response gives Phelps (and those like him) the two things that they crave most: media attention, and the claim to persecution. It's bad politics.

melanie phillips: the problem with islamic homophobia is that it's islamic

2009-02-18T14:49:00.013Z

Via Pickled Politics, I read details of the government's plans to identify Muslim extremists - and discover Melanie Phillips' corresponding approval. Front and centre is the argument that extremists "argue that Islam bans homosexuality and that it is a sin against Allah."

This would be the right moment to take a large mouthful of drink so that you can then spray it all over your keyboard in a few seconds time.

Phillips - in her infinite ignorance - declares:

All these things sound pretty extreme to me (although some traditional Christians also believe homosexuality to be a sin, the crucial difference is that unlike the Islamists they believe in the separation of religion and state, and so do not repudiate the fact that homosexuality is legal).

"Unlike the Islamists they believe in the separation of religion and state"? They don't "repudiate" - refuse to accept - that gay people are legitimate citizens?

This would be the movement of "traditional" Christians that have done the following in the past two years:

demanded (and received) protection from discrimination on grounds of personal faith while arguing that gay people shouldn't have the exact same rights;
produced wildly deceitful propaganda in the attempt to derail the move towards protection for gay people;
produced "legal advice" that was little more than a string of scaremongering lies;
protested the very concept of gay adoption by handing out cards like this:

blocked attempts to address homophobic bullying in schools;
demanded the continuation of special protection from the state from speech they declare to be "blasphemous," etc. etc.

Somehow, Melanie Phillips has interpreted this activity as proof that "traditional" Christians are in favour of the separation of church and state, and want to avoid imposing their personal, religious beliefs on the rest of us. In fact, you couldn't ask for a group of people more accepting of the rights and legitimacy of gay people.

For more of Phillips' past attempts to whitewash the homophobia of the religious right, go here and here.

quite contrary

2009-02-18T11:04:00.001Z

Shorter Steve Doughty: it is OUTRAGEOUS that Muslims have forced libraries to show respect to the Bible.

airmiles for idiots (updated with DOOOOM)

2009-02-17T19:10:00.004Z

Maria Miller, Conservative MP for Basingstoke, has apparently contacted the Home Secretary asking that a religious hate group be barred from entering the UK:

Westboro Baptist Church, a tiny sect based in Kansas, often picket funerals in the US. They claim God is punishing the world because homosexuality is tolerated. The group claimed on their website GodHatesFags.com that they would be protesting at a performance of a gay-themed play in Basingstoke on Friday.
Maria Miller, MP for Basingstoke, has contacted the Home Secretary after she received emails from concerned constituents. A spokesperson for Ms Miller told PinkNews.co.uk that she has "passed on her constituents requests" that members of the Westboro Baptist Church be denied entry into the UK.

Miller is doing the work of a constituency MP - and recognising the contents of her office mail-bag, which is perhaps fair enough. However, the request to have the group blocked at customs is an illiberal overreaction, and shows a complete lack of strategy.

I would suggest that even though the Westboro Baptists are full of shit (having threatened to protest in Canada, Australia and Sweden without ever showing up) crazy fundamentalists should be encourage to sink as much of their money as possible into expensive airfare, thus draining their bank accounts of money donated by the stupid, foolish and hate-filled.

Hell, I'm thinking about telling that I'm staging Angels in America on the moon to see if I can get them to spring for rocket fuel. Nothing would be more pleasing than to see the Westboro Baptist's desire to spread intolerance and hate leave them destitute and penniless.

But, as I say, my money's on sound and fury, signifying nothing.

EDIT: Excellent understated sarcasm from an earlier report:

"It is the first actual picket. We have been preaching by so many means to the UK for years," Ms Roper-Phelps told the Daily Telegraph.

"The arm of the Lord our God is not shortened by oceans and things, all of which he created, and all of which he knew about when he considered these last hours of the very last days of all."

It is unclear if this means they will or will not be physically present.

Ha.

EDIT: The Telegraph publishes its frankly batshit crazy correspondence with the Westboro Baptists. My favourite moment:

But your goofy queen and her adulterous whore of a son - YIKES put their hand and you all put your hands to mischief at every turn.

The antichrist is sitting now, in the Whitehouse, the time is SO SHORT - the Lord is coming and this generation is DOOMED

DOOOOOOMED!

open daily mail, find lie, type blog entry

2009-02-17T18:39:00.005Z

More grotesquely obvious lies about sex education from the Daily Mail:

Teachers have been instructed to tell teenage boys about the pleasures of early fatherhood. Government advice tells them to discuss 'parenting aims and aspirations' with the youngsters.

Teenagers should be equipped with the necessary 'skills, knowledge and attitudes' to prepare them to bring up babies, said the Department of Health.

Would anyone like to spot the obvious lie? Teachers have not been instructed to preach the pleasure of early fatherhood - as something to be desired and pursued. Instead, a document (which is now six years old) offers images that could be included in the discussion of fatherhood to recognise that even young men can be proud and successful parents. To claim otherwise - that this is part of a deliberate strategy to encourage teen pregnancy - involves taking one piece of information out of context, twisting it and ignoring everything else (also known as the Melanie Phillips Method).

As ever, the Mail voices the belief that it's impossible to do more than one thing at a time - namely, advise young people that they should wait before having sex (as many, if not most, coherent sex education programmes do) while simultaneously accepting that young parents are not instantly doomed to failure.

And in any case, discussing fatherhood with teenagers is not the same thing as encouraging teenagers to become fathers there and then. If anything, discussing fatherhood with teenagers is far more likely to produce adult men who see that role in a positive light later in life - and that's something we'd probably want.

Today's pyramid of lies seems to balance on this precarious point:

The publication in question includes pictures of boys with babies and was described by Cathy Hamlyn, then head of the pregnancy unit, as a 'timely resource'.

It is, then, rather regrettable for the Mail's shit-storm that the publication "was designed for teachers and health professionals" and not intended to be shown to teenage boys at all. As such, the dangerously provocative photographs (which would encourage teenagers into acts of procreative sex with girlfriends who presumably have no will of their own) have been seen by almost no-one.

For for your daily dose hypocrisy, note the Mail's frequent decision to print articles proclaiming that fatherhood and the role of men in general is under attack by a conspiracy of lefty liberal, gay feminist BBC journalists. Wouldn't any attempt to boost the self-esteem of men be welcome? Doesn't the Mail - often bemoaning absentee fathers from broken homes - want young men to aspire to be dedicated and proud parents?

Or is this one of those occasions where the desire to cause a shit-storm trumps every other value?

Also see: Oh that's textbook Mail.

one-stop hysteria-shop

2009-02-13T13:34:00.002Z

The Daily Mail is crammed with hysterical lies about sex and contraception today, so let's work quickly.

First, let's marvel at the gross dishonesty of this headline and lede:

GPs to get bonuses for giving teenagers contraceptive implants and jabs without informing parents

GPs will be paid bonuses for persuading teenagers to have long-lasting contraceptive implants and jabs without their parents' knowledge, it has emerged.

GPs will not be paid bonuses for deceiving parents: this is a lie. GPs will be minimally rewarded for encouraging young women to use long-acting methods of contraception, rather than depending on the pill, or the morning-after pill. The measure is intended to address low-levels of knowledge about contraception amongst many young people, and will hopefully reduce the demand for abortion. The question of doctor-patient confidentiality is entirely unrelated to the issue of pay.

Please also note the everlasting hypocrisy of people who object to educating young people about condom use, and then protest that informing young people about long-term methods of contraception will expose them to STIs. Oh, if only there was some condom-related way to protect their health.

Next, let's take a quick stop with the patron saint of unreliability, Melanie Phillips, commenting on the UK's high teen pregnancy rate:

This is exacerbated by an approach to sex education and contraception which, based on the belief that under-age sex is impossible to stop - and Heaven forbid schools from being ‘judgmental’ or ‘moralistic’ towards their pupils - teaches children to regard sex as on a par with ski-ing or bungee-jumping, with the implicit message: ‘have fun but take the following precautions to avoid getting hurt’.

There's no other solution but to assume that Phillips is entirely ignorant of any detail of any contemporary sex education programme - which both inform about the illegality of underage sex and encourage young people to wait before having sex for the first time. The fact that such progammes do not privilege Christian (or Phillips' own) morality is not proof that they are value-free or without morals.

There's also space for Phillips to piggy-back on the lie repeated above:

As campaigners have warned, such payments will act as bribes to doctors to give thousands of under-age girls contraception without the knowledge of their parents.

No. Wrong. See above, go to back of class.

Finally, back to the first story for some standardised scaremongering:

There are also concerns about side-effects of long-term contraception. Possible side-effects of the implant include irregular periods, acne, weight gain, headaches and abdominal pain. Some have excessive bleeding.

Some coils can make periods very heavy and carry a risk of infection. Concerns have been raised that the contraceptive injection can lead to brittle bones.

But are these side-effects common? And is there any research to support the validity of those concerns? It's delightful that the Mail cares enough to scare women.. but not enough to actually inform them how to live healthily.

time, once more, to treat women like morons

2009-02-12T12:49:00.002Z

Simply beyond parody:

Liz Jones: Forget what the length of hemlines and the width of shoulder pads tell us about a woman's state of mind and her place in society, the real barometer is to be found in the thickness of our brows.

FAIL.

a second "family" salary?

2009-02-09T17:47:00.002Z

My favourite detail from the story of Jacqui Smith's "second" family home is supplied by the Daily Express:

Ms Smith earns £142,000 as Home Secretary and claimed £152,000 in Commons expenses for 2006-07.

Puts the defence of "value for money for the taxpayer" into rather exciting context, no?