Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

A bit icky

The Mail is covering this story today:

And on every photo of the seven-year-old girl, there's this:

For me, that's just a little bit icky.

Terry’s not All Gold

If nothing else good comes out of the John Terry saga, at least we won't ever see the "Terry's all gold" headlines ever again. They started surfacing at the start of the millennium and have carried on, pretty much unashamedly, ever since. Yes, his name's Terry. Yes, he's quite good at things. Yes, you could say he's "all gold". And yes, "Terry's All Gold" is a chocolate box assortment, the sort you'd buy if you you're too cheap for Milk Tray and don't like all that dirty dark chocolate in Black Magic. But that's pretty much the end of it. If John Terry played a really good game of football then celebrated with a low-end chocolate box assortment, then you could really go to town on the whole Terry's All Gold thing. But no matter. There won't be any of that shit any more. Actually I say "there won't be any of that shit any more" but I'm pretty convinced there will be a lot more of that shit in the very near future, as soon as he's promised to clean up his ways and stop being such a silly boy. I'm sure the 'Terry's All Gold', which is presumably on a template on tabloid newspaper subs' desktops, can get dusted off for a new outing, sooner or later.

Poor old Terry. It takes quite a lot to make me feel sympathy for such an odious character, but I did a bit this week. A bit. Don't get me wrong, I don't love him all of a sudden or something, and I certainly don't think any more of him this week than I did last week, but blimey. Being John Terry must feel a bit like being Ray Liotta in Goodfellas - constantly followed, knowing you're going to be found out, with a helicopter circling overhead - except it doesn't belong to the CIA or FBI, it belongs to Sky News. Ah, what would the BBC's detractors have to say if Auntie had taken a helicopter up to film a man's car driving along a road? All of a sudden, Terry was OJ. Except he hadn't fled from police and wasn't a suspect in a murder investigation; he got caught doing the nasty on his wife and family. What a spectacular week for Sky News - having made Peter Andre cry in a fairly tawdry bit of telly, they decided to aim just that bit lower. Many congratulations for trying to outdo themselves, though; it just goes to show they're always striving to be thought of as more awful than they already are.

But after all this, the England football team has a new captain. In place of someone who cheated on his wife, which was nothing to do with football, is someone who's currently going through a four-match ban for being violent on the football field; someone who previously forgot to take a drugs test and went out shopping. It's nice to know that the England football team, like Sky News, is always aiming a little bit lower. In case Rio Ferdinand - catchphrase "YOU'VE BEEN MERKED BRUV! HAHAHAHA!" during those never-to-be-forgotten World Cup Windups of years gone by - gets injured, there's always Steve Gerrard, a man who covered himself in glory last year by punching a DJ in the face, but who got away with it because he claimed he was punching the man in the face in self-defence because he got threatened. You might say "Ah but he wasn't convicted", which is true; but nor has Terry been convicted of any criminal offence, yet he still hasn't punched anyone in the face, has he? Well, not yet anyway. Perhaps tomorrow's News of the World will bring further revelations and perhaps that will make it even worse for him; we'll have to wait and see - well, I won't because I won't be buying it, but everyone else can make up their minds.

Everyone's aiming lower. Terry aims to outdo himself; the journalists reporting him aim to outdo themselves; and those replacing Terry as the figurehead of the England team haven't exactly covered themselves in glory in the past. Perhaps the thinking is that they've got their misdemeanours out of the way and the captaincy - the thought of holding that trophy aloft if England were to win the World Cup and to be taken into immortality - will be a good behaviour bond for them. That might be smart thinking, if it's been done that way. Might be.

In the meantime, the Terry story shows no signs of going away; as much as it's damaging to him it's obviously more damaging to those close to him, his family and friends. But now it's reached the point of no return, and it's a fairly easy free hit for everyone to have a bash at writing about it - and I'm no different, of course. I see (but which I hadn't seen) Jan Moir and Liz Jones have had a bash at it in the Mail, in their usual insipid and largely unreadable way. I almost end up feeling sorry for them as well. They must really hate themselves, having to write that guff every week, having to dredge up such clumsy tedium.

Hmm. It seems I've ended up feeling sorry for everyone. I must be a soft touch. This will pass, I'm sure, but in the meantime I can only apologise.

Listen up. Things are going to change

...though not completely, so don't worry.

As I wrote about a little while ago, there are going to be a few changes around the shambles that is here. I've already started making some of them - you may have noticed; you may not; you may be one of those people who stumbles across this place looking for some other place, or runs off in despair, having read a couple of paragraphs. I don't mind.

There will be a couple of other things changing too. Not just cosmetic, though that's going to happen. And soon. And I hope you like it. But I'll let you know about it all once it's done. Or rather, you'll see it. And go "Wow, how exciting!" or something.

Orly?

The Telegraph is proud to bring you this breaking news:

Danielle Lloyd 'targeted' by Tesco pyjama ban despite wearing £120 tracksuit
Danielle Lloyd, the glamour model, has complained that Tesco staff tried to bar her from a store after mistaking her designer tracksuit for pyjamas.

Orly? Because I thought the ban was only in one Tesco store, in St Mellons:

A Tesco store has asked customers not to shop in their pyjamas or barefoot.
Notices have been put up in the chain's supermarket in St Mellons in Cardiff saying: "Footwear must be worn at all times and no nightwear is permitted."

According to the Telegraph:

The supermarket giant has introduced a dress code banning people from shopping in their pyjamas, it emerged last week.

I'm pretty sure it was just in one store. Perhaps Danielle Lloyd lives in St Mellons, in which case, fair enough. But she doesn't:

But Lloyd, 26, said she was wearing a Juicy Couture tracksuit when staff at the Tesco Express in Theydon Bois, Essex, accosted her over her attire.

I think it's fair enough to ban anyone from wearing £120 tracksuits anyway - unless they're Jimmy Savile. But I can't help wondering if this is just a bit of maggot-dangling from Lloyd, which has been eagerly snapped up by the celebrity obsessed tabloid press top-selling quality broadsheet in Britain. As it was, the original story is a fairly brilliant bit of news about nothing anyway, getting Tesco bang into the headlines for no good reason whatsoever. And now a bonus - a double dose of churnalism. Well, every little helps.

Ban this sick filth!

I do love the spam-handedness with which newspapers try to grasp hold of Twitter, like whoever wrote this headline in the Daily Express. Twitter page? But yes, I am sure that 'Diana fans' will have been upset by this - as upset as they ought to have been by the ridiculous conspiracy theories constantly dragged out repeatedly on the front page of one daily newspaper, over a period of years... ah, but if only I could remember the name of that newspaper...? Hmm. I'm sure it'll come to me.

Ah. Hang on... yes...

And this isn't the first time that the Express have thrown their hands up in faux outrage over a Diana spoof, either:

Quite right too. We wouldn't want to besmirch the memory of Diana with anything tawdry, would we?

Via, of course, the brilliant @dianainheaven.

MigrationWatch job application

Dear Sir Andrew,

I am very excited by the opportunity advertised on your website for the position of director of research, with a corking starting salary of £45k. I mean, kerching! But I'm getting ahead of myself. What I mean to say is "I should like to offer my humble services and I am looking forward greatly to the challenge. I'm a confident self-starter with a bulging contacts book and yadda yadda you get the general idea with all that."

Admittedly, I haven't attended one of the 20 universities you consider good enough, and I don't know very much about statistics. But I think with this role, an absence of knowledge about statistics is very much an advantage. How else could I be expected to prepare a press release which implies that it's Britain's immigration policies which have meant our total of migrants is three times the world average, when the reality is very different, other than being ignorant about statistics? How else, other than by an ignorance about statistics, would I be able to put together an opinion poll with the options "Delighted", "Wouldn't mind", "Slightly worried", "Very worried" and "Don't know", about some extrapolated figures that may not even prove to be accurate? If I knew about statistics, surely I wouldn't do that.

I mean, the only other explanation would be that you deliberately skew statistics in order to reach a pre-decided conclusion or create the wrong impression, misleading journalists and their readers alike; but I know that's not the case, because in your job advertisement you're very clear about being an 'independent' think-tank - and independent think-tanks wouldn't have agendas, would they?

You say in the job advert that "MW is now recognised as the leading source for independent expert commentary on matters relating to migration into and out of the United Kingdom," and that sounds like an organisation I'd love to be part of. I should love to highlight the positive effects that immigration has had on Britain as well as those that may be perceived as negative. I know that as a leading source of independent expert commentary, you wouldn't want to be seen as being just a bunch of red-faced old bastards going "Wuurgggggggh! Foreigners!" and complaining about every aspect of immigration; so I'm sure you would like to use statistics to show that immigrants aren't all bad, and have benefited our country greatly. At MigrationWatch, we - look at me! "We". Feet under the table already! - need to provide the real facts that will help the public decide about immigration; and I know that, as an independent think-tank, you wouldn't simply want to say the same thing again, and again, and again, and again, always putting one side of the argument and never the other - that's not in the spirit of independence, is it?

We could, for example, use some statistics to try and calculate how much tax and national insurance our hard-working immigrants are paying - not just the big-earning footballers, of course, but the humble shopworkers and tradespeople as well - and compare it with greedy tax avoiders who are draining the life out of Britain. These are just a couple of suggestions; I hope you don't mind. I'm very keen to show you that I'd be able to take on a variety of roles for this vacancy.

If you do not consider me suitable for this position, I do have another suggestion as to the ideal candidate: Chris Grayling. I have a feeling he might be seeking alternative employment in the very near future, and he clearly has the kind of grasp on statistics that you're looking for. If, for whatever reason, you would prefer not to have me working for you, it would be nice if he could get a look-in, as he's having a hell of a time at the moment.

Thank you very much for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
With love,
Anton.

Hooray for freedom!

Last year a tabloid newspaper reported that a Premier League manager had been caught visiting a brothel, but did not name him or identify the location.
At the time, the newspaper blamed “creeping privacy laws” for preventing it from publishing further details.
It followed a number of cases in which wealthy and famous individuals had successfully used the Human Rights Act to gag the media.
But a landmark ruling by Mr Justice Tugendhat last week swung the pendulum back in favour of freedom of speech, when he revoked an injunction granted to John Terry, the Chelsea and England captain, which had blocked reporting of his extra-marital affair.

Thank goodness for that pendulum swinging back in favour of freedom of speech - otherwise we wouldn't know which football manager it was who visited a brothel. I mean, can you imagine a world in which we weren't allowed to be told about who had done that? You know, someone who'd never said anything about family values, or campaigned on such, and so wasn't a hypocrite, but who just happened to visit a brothel, because he wanted to pay someone to have sex with them? Can you imagine a world in which we weren't allowed to know that?

Isn't it a much more wonderful world in which we can look around us and thank ourselves for the freedom - freedom! - to know who's been to a brothel and who hasn't. Ah, freedom. Free at last! Hooray for the pendulum of freedom!

I imagine the newspapers will use the pendulum of freedom, so wonderfully swinging back in the direction of the righteous and just, in order to expose genuine corruption, point out wrongdoing, and set things to rights. And it won't just be a series of shabby exposes of sex antics of celebrities, will it? I mean, they will use this freedom properly, won't they...?

In for a penny, in for a pound

After ensuring my place in hell yesterday thanks to calling the Pope a "ridiculous old cunt" and "an elderly virgin who believes in magic", I may as well add treason to the list. I say 'treason' but I wouldn't think it treacherous to label a well-meaning twerp a well-meaning twerp. And yes, it's Prince Charles, the future face on our stamps and banknotes, that I'm on about.

''I was accused once of being the enemy of the Enlightenment. I felt rather proud. I thought hang on a moment, the enlightenment started over 200 years ago," he said.

Hang on, so did the entirely unfair and unjust principle of hereditary monarchy - I imagine you'll distance yourself from those outdated ideas as well, Charles? No, thought not. Put the Enlightenment into context, in an era when this fool's ancestors ruled through the 'divine right of kings', and it's perfectly understandable why Charles should dislike it so much. Gone are the dog days when monarchs fought it out among themselves to see who had the biggest guns and the fastest ships; now the wretched proles are allowed to take charge through some ghastly principle of democracy. Ugh. Isn't it?

The Prince also proclaimed that he battled hard on issues despite facing ''unbelievable abuse''.
This comment came as he talked about his recommendations that bird boxes be built on Foundation properties.

I'm with him on the bird boxes though. Nice to have birds nesting in places. But don't ideas about conservation come from, oh I don't know, more than 200 years ago? Should we ignore them, because they're old, and therefore automatically outdated, unlike the principle of some people getting huge privileges just because of which fanny they slipped out of, which is somehow all right in Charles's modern-thinking world?

Our future head of state, ladies and gentlemen.