Sim-O

The Press Complaints Commission. In a nutshell is there to make help rectify inaccuracies in the printed media. It doesn’t help itself when itself is inaccurate.

The PCC recently claimed that the public has not lost confidence in it, but according to PCC Watch, the PCC needs to be clearer.

In it’s defence the PCC claimed 1700 rulings issued and more than 550 complaints resolved, but…

It is hard to understand how the PCC reached that figure. The 2009 annual report did not use the term ruling and the 2010 report is yet to be published. In the 550 resolved complaints the PCC does not come to a ruling – and Abell’s language suggests that the numbers are distinct. The PCC only actually adjudicated 44 complaints in 2010, of which 24 were not upheld. The PCC’s website records complaints about just 527 different articles.

and claimed more to have prevented more intrusive information being published more than 100 times whereas it cannot prevent anything, it can only advise.

and with the poll The PCC conducted to get the 79% of people have no concerns about the PCC, they used a company called Toluna…

Toluna is not a member of the British Polling Council, the self-regulatory organisation for opinion pollsters. Its services are not used by newspapers to commission opinion polls. Neither the questions asked of respondents nor the full results of the survey have been published.

It’s not really good enough for an regulatory body and pretty much sums up the PCC as whole.

The New Statesman…

So I was sent to do a feature on Moulin Rouge! at Cannes, which was a great send anyway. Basically my brief was to see who Nicole Kidman was shagging – what she was doing, poking through her bins and get some stuff on her. So Murdoch’s paying her five million quid to big up the French and at the same time paying me £5.50 to fuck her up . . . So all hail the master. We’re just pawns in his game. How perverse is that?

The Sun is a little bit peeved today because it’s freedom of speech is being restricted again and can’t report on someones sex life (istyosty link). I can certainly see why.

A SENIOR executive at a British bank bailed out by the taxpayer has gagged The Sun from revealing an affair with a colleague.

High Court judge Mr Justice Richard Henriques leapt to his defence in a ruling that delivered another blow to free speech in the UK.

Why shouldn’t the Sun be able to report on someones carnal activities? This person worked at a bank that received taxpayer money. We should be able to know everything about them. Doesn’t that judge know who we are? We’re bloody taxpayers, don’tcha know?

The married banker, paid a substantial six figure sum, began the illicit affair before the credit crunch erupted and plunged the country into recession.

Look! He’s paid not just a six figure sum, but a ‘substantial’ six figure sum. What is the judge playing at? Doesn’t he know the bigger the salary the more right we have to know about who he is sticking is knob in?

He was present when the Government was forced to spend almost £1trillion to prop up the banks. Ministers are axing thousands of civil servants to pay for bankers’ mistakes and more than 50,000 workers in the sector have lost their job in the past two years.

This is outragous! He was there when the government gave the banks all of *our* money. Where ‘there’ is, is irrelevant. Was he present at the bank, present in government, in his girlfriend at the time the government handed over the whopping big cheque? It doesn’t matter. He was ‘there’. We demand to know. He is connected to the government, however remotely so he must’ve been telling us not to cheat on our spouses. He must be hypocrite. How can we tell unless we know who he is?

If he’s not connected to the government or not, he gets paid a big fat wodge of dough so he must be a role model for the kids. Either way the public must know who he’s been shagging, where, when, how often and in what positions. It’s in the public interest. This information being kept from us could be a game changer in the way we live our lives.

These people cannot get away with dicking about on their poor, poor wifes without retribution. And I want the Sun to deal it.

One bank insider told the Sun: “Given what was going on at the time they got together, I’m surprised either of them had the time or the energy.”

Jesus snapping arseholes! There’s more! He got paid a big bundle by a bank and he still had free time away from the bank. What were they paying him for? Surely he must’ve been skiving, or bonking on company time. It’s the only explanation. As for having the energy to for all this horizontal excercise? Well, there’s only one explanation. Drugs.

Yeah, ok. Drugs might not be the *only* explanation for someone having enough energy to bonk their girlfriend, but how do we, the public, know unless this man is exposed to public scrutiny?

I don’t know about you but I won’t be able to sleep at night thinking about how this man that worked at a bank was shagging someone that wasn’t his wife… er, without reaping the vengeance of the public.

I demand to know!

People have been having fun applying for a job at the Daily Mail.

I would apply, after all I’m quite suited to the Mail.

• I can write beautifully, as this blog can attest to
• I’m not bothered about immigrants one way or another, although if I’m paid I’m sure it can’t be too hard to work up a bit of angst.
• I’m all for the betterment of wimmin. Especially through the careful use of fear and criticism, including but not limited to commenting on how much weight they might have lost/gained and reminding the little ladies of the consequences of leaving pregnancy too late because of selfishly pursuing a career.
• I don’t trust doctors and haven’t had my children vaccinated with the MMR – or I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t forgotten and accidentally took them down to the doctors surgery at their appointment time.

I think it would be quite fun working for the Mail. The only thing that’s stopping me from applying is, well, what category does the Mail fall into?

Does working for the Mail give you cancer or does it cure cancer?

I’ve been given QI’s The Second Book of General Ignorance and in it there is a little about snakes which includes this little gem…

Another use of the cloaca in some snake species is ‘popping’. This is where air is expelled from it in short sharp bursts, indistinguishable in timbre and volume from high-pitched human farts. The foul smell (and surprise value) help keep predators at bay.

(background)

As if you didn’t already know, but Northern and Shell, the publishers of Richard Desmonds media titles, has stopped paying its subscription to the Press Board of Finance (PressBof). As a result, they have been excluded from the self regulation system run by the PCC.

There’s enough comment about the blogosphere on it, but my post, written yesterday, is over at Expresswatch, if you’re interested.

Yes, alright, it’s the Daily Mail. Again…

Christmas has been banned by the Red Cross from its 430 fund-raising shops.

Staff have been ordered to take down decorations and to remove any other signs of the Christian festival because they could offend Moslems.

The charity’s politically-correct move triggered an avalanche of criticism and mockery last night – from Christians and Moslems.

Christine Banks, a volunteer at a Red Cross shop in New Romney, Kent, said: ‘We put up a nativity scene in the window and were told to take it out. It seems we can’t have anything that means Christmas. We’re allowed to have some tinsel but that’s it.

‘When we send cards they have to say season’s greetings or best wishes. They must not be linked directly to Christmas.

‘When we asked we were told it is because we must not upset Moslems.’

Mrs Banks added: ‘ We have been instructed that we can’t say anything about Christmas and we certainly can’t have a Christmas tree.

This Christine Banks woman needs to learn a bit more about the seven fundamental principles that make the Red Cross what it is and allows it to do what it does. To be fair, she probably has done now.

All seven of those principles, especially the neutrality one, mean that it can be trusted by *everyone*. Because they have that trust it means they can get to people in need that other organisations can’t get to. The Red Cross isn’t a Christian organisation that might surreptitiously try and convert people from other religions. The Red Cross doesn’t have a political view, making dictators or aggressors in wartime stop them from visiting prisoners. If you want an example of what the Red Cross’ fundamental principles enable it to do then look at Dafur. No other aid agency is allowed in except for the Red Cross.

This neutrality and the trust it brings with it is very special to the Red Cross and consequently all the people that it helps. The Red Cross couldn’t carry on as it is without it.

By not having Christmas trees or other decorations the Red Cross isn’t trying to be politically-correct. Well ok, maybe it is but only in the sense that it can’t afford to show allegiance or favouritism towards one form of dogma over another. Being apolitical and areligious is the best and easiest way to stay neutral.

The Red Cross could celebrate the birth of Christ, but to maintain their impartiality and neutrality they would have to celebrate every single other religions special day. You’d struggle to do that in your own home, never mind in such a large organisation. The chance of getting something wrong or forgetting a date and being accused of insulting such-and-such a diety is immense.

The Red Cross doesn’t ‘do’ Christmas, but it certainly hasn’t banned it, as you’ll note by visiting this page.

That article by the Mail is not a recent one, though. It could’ve been written yesterday, but it wasn’t. The Mail is still pushing the ‘Christmas is banned’ line and they still read the same today as they did ten years ago. That article is from December 2002. It is not dated, the only thing that gives it away is the mention of Sangatte, the French refugee camp near Calias, which was closed in 2002.

Why is it relevent now, after eight years? Well, because this story about a misunderstanding between the Red Cross and one of their volunteers is still haunting them…

Yesterday, we started getting some comments on our Facebook page from people angry with us for ‘banning Christmas’, which we haven’t, and the story now seems to be spreading on some American websites.

And what is the result of this anger? Cancellations of donations. A volunteers time may be free but the equipment and other resources the Red Cross needs certainly isn’t. The Red Cross needs those donations so it can carry it the work it needs it’s impartiality for. This article, *eight years* after it was written, is still having a damaging effect on both it’s finances and it’s well deserved and much needed reputation.

There is a claim common to all tabloids that nobody believes them. This is proof that that claim is wrong. People do believe them. Not only do people believe the lies, people act on them too and that is why the media needs to be more accountable to the truth.

I try not to do pedantry, due to usually getting it wrong or making a glaring mistake myself, leaving myself open to ridicule. I should be used to it by now.

I do have an issue with a phrase that keeps popping up recently, though. It is to do with the recent discussion about how retracted rape claims are dealt with. Not the actual guidelines but a phrase that is used, especially by the BBC. It’s a variation on…

…falsely retracted claims…

As far as I can see there are two reasons why a rape claim would be retracted 1) the claimant has been pressured to withdraw it or 2) the rape didn’t actually happen.

For either of these reasons the claim is actually retracted. The second reason the claim itself maybe false but the retraction is real. Surely because a retraction either happens or it doesn’t you can’t ‘falsely retract’ a claim?

The phrase that should be used is…

retraction of false claims

How come the media is getting this wrong, it seems so glaringly obvious.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

(Posted using my phone so, please, excuse the spelling)

Whoever’s compiling the statistics for the Department for Work and Pensions could do worse than get the Mail and Express involved as they seem to have the inside knowledge.

The Mail goes with the headline…

1.6m benefits claimants have never had a job ‘because it does not pay to work’

The article underneath doesn’t back up this claim, presumably because the headline can be a total lie and still be ok with the PCC. As FullFact.org state…

Unfortunately there are no statistics available for the reasons why people have never worked. Although the Labour Force Survey does record a person’s reason for currently being out of work, this would not necessarily be the reason they have always been out of work.

Therefore there is no way of knowing precisely how many of the 1.6 million have never had a job due to caring responsibilities or disability.

The headline is only the bit of the article that gets read by *everyone* that looks at it. Not everyone reads to the bottom of articles. Nearly everyone reads past the first couple of paragraphs, but *everyone* that looks at that article reads the headline.

It doesn’t matter that there are no figures for why people have never had job. The Mail doesn’t even say how many of those 1.6 million are claiming any sort of benefit. It’s just pulled the headline out it’s arse.

There will be some people that have never had to work because they have a spouse that earns enough for them not to work. There will be others that cannot work because of disability or are carers. There will be a bucket load of teenagers that are included in this that aren’t in full-time education that have never worked because they haven’t had chance to get job, despite wanting one.

But no. Every one of those 1.6 million people are lazy, workshy scroungers sponging off the state because ‘work doesn’t pay’. Or as I like to put it, capitalism sucks.

Now about that headline, this is the paragraph where I make it ok by stating that an expert says that, no, Daily Mail headlines aren’t truthful. They’re a load of bollox, isn’t it?

*the Express is not quite as forthright as the Mail, but still goes on in the same vain.

Here’s a good site for all you Media-Watchers – istyosty.com.

Isty-who? I hear you ask.

Istyosty is a proxy service that seems to be dedicated to providing a way to read the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Express, but nothing else, without giving the papers the hits.

This is what they say, it might explain it a bit better…

WTF?

This site was set up after reading this. I thought it would be more fair to the statistics if only people who actually liked the daily mail appeared as a “hit” on the site. We are a proxy service enabling users to view that particular site without necessarily visiting it. Pages are cached here for a few days so many hits on a particular story will only count as one initial hit on that website (until the page is re-cached). Hits to the homepage however, are updated every few hours to keep it reasonably current. This system has the added advantage of providing anonymity from their invasive tracking and the advertisements from companies that should know better (we strip the ads, referer information and the javascript by default).

… and they say it’s legal.

So, if you’re linking to one of these three rags and and don’t want to increase their hits, because as far as they and their advertisers are concerned every hit is an approving hit, use an Istyosty link.

(They’re also on Twitter – twitter.com/itsyotsy)