Sim-O

If you’re going to shout outrage at someone for boasting about drinking and drink-fuelled antic, don’t boast about drinking and drink-fuelled antics.

If you’re going to shout outrage about people having sex, don’t work for pornographer.

I’ve just been looking at the new Mail Watch site, seeing who the editors are.

It’s been relaunched because, in the words of site owner BigDaddyMerk…

…because it’s what this site needs, it’s what it’s always needed.

I’m looking forward to some excellent posts because of the rich seam of bullshit that is the Daily Mail, but look who Tim and Merk have got to mine it. A team almost, almost as good as the one on The Sun Lies.

Good grief. The Sun is on the shortlist for the Press Gazette British Press awards.

So, what awards are they up for? First off there’s Gordon Smart for Showbiz Reporter of the Year. Yes, apprently he’s a really good reporter. It must be true, it’s in the Sun!
Also shortlisted is another showbiz reporter of the Suns’, Richard White. Who?

Next is Tom Newton-Dunn, the Defence editor, who is on the list for Best Specialist Journalist. Again, the words ‘Could do better‘ spring to mind.

Best website and Dickie Pelham for best photographer are next. No comment one way or another on those two.

Our monumental Baby P petition has also been included in the Campaign of the Year shortlist.

I suppose it is worthy of an award, although rather than Campaign of the Year I would’ve thought the Baby P campaign would have sat better in the Best Use of a Lynch Mob catagory.

For the Cudlipp Award, there are two nominees. The Millies and Panoramic Posters. The Millies has failed to impress who they were honouring, namely the ordinary guys and girls in the army and the Panoramic Posters, well I haven’t a clue what that is as the only mention of it with a search on Google is in this page detailing the awards shortlist.

The final two awards are for Scoop of the Year. The first is “Ashley Cheats on Cheyl”, which is really worthy of an award, the private life of a footballer, cheating on his popstar wife. Great.
The second is of a bit better quality, and probably the only one that should be on the list is “Starberks”, about how the Coffee company keep a time running all day wasting a huge amount of water.

The standard of journalism must be pretty low if this is the standard on the shortlist [unfortunatley, I can’t see who else is on it as I am on my work computer and the Press Gazette site does work on it for some reason. I’m not at home later either, to update. Oh well.]

Do you remember Gordon Browns’ Britishness ‘thing’ he had a while ago? Where we would all walk around being British and proud of it. But no-one could really define what being British was about. Every one had different ideas about being and to be British.

Well, the daily mail have had a fantastic wheeze and have come up with a very simple definition…

According to the new statistics, published yesterday, foreign-born people make up one in nine of the population of the UK as a whole.

However although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants.

See? Easy isn’t it? If you are fresh into the country, with your new passport in hand, you’re not British. If you were born in Britain, but one or both of your parents were born outside this country, your not British. If you were born here in this green and pleasant (ha!) land but one or both of you grandparents weren’t, you’re not British.

Some nice clean straight forward rules, with no grey areas to confuse things. It helps to identify us from them and keep them them for a few generations to come so we have a nice underclass for all the horrible low paid jobs no one wants to do and someone to blame when the shit hits the fan.

Well, I have a better, simpler idea that would even the knuckledraggers of the BNP could understand, although would not like, but who cares, huh?

Anyone with a British passport is British.

What? You want more rules? Well, that’s it. Maybe for immigration figures the amount of new passports issued could be counted, but when a baby is born to British passport holders, that baby is British. Why would it be anything else? I hasn’t gone anywhere. It may have a Pakistani or Nigerian or Polish background in it’s upbringing, but what’s the problem with that? Seriously I’d like someone to explain in a way that doesn’t either make me want to laugh or punch them in the face.

I don’t know why, but it amazes me that after 70 years and 11 editors after the Mail sympathised with the Fascist that they would still be sitting on the same side of the fence, pushing the same agenda of hate and bile.

————–

An open letter to Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, from Sunder Katwala:

Dear Mr Dacre,

I was disappointed to read reported in today’s Daily Mail that the newspaper regards it as a mistake to consider that the children or grandchildren of immigrants are British, but rather would classify us as “second or third generation immigrants”.

although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants.

I hope that your proposed reclassification of Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry as not British, as second and third generation immigrants descended from the foreign-born Phillip, will not distress them too much.

But it does seem most ungrateful, when Winston Churchill was voted ‘greatest Briton’, to now strip him of that status because he had an American mother. (However strongly your newspaper disagreed with Churchill’s criticisms of appeasement in the 1930s, isn’t it now time to let bygones be bygones?)

Perhaps you could let us know who the Daily Mail thinks is truly British. I can see you probably think it is too late for my children – as “third generation immigrants”, currently aged under 3 – but perhaps there might be a tip or two they could pass on to their descendants.

So, given our shared interests in integration and citizenship, it would be terribly kind if you might let us know whether there is anything that those of us who were born here as British citizens could ever do so as to become British in your eyes.

Yours sincerely,

Sunder Katwala

So, my wife and childrens’ passports and birth certificates are lying then, eh?

Via Tygerland

*Subtitled: The Daily Mail are cunts

jdc325 – Hypocritical morons:

The Daily Fail are calling people who failed to protect their children by getting them inoculated “morons” and characterising them as “middle-class twits”? Really? After everything they printed about not trusting MMR, or Blair, or the scientists who spoke in defence of MMR? After everything they wrote about Saint Andy being a brave, charismatic doctor determined to ferret out the truth? After all the references to a conspiracy of silence surrounding MMR? It appears the trend now is for papers to criticise those who failed to have their children protected against measles, mumps, and rubella with nary a mention of the sustained campaign by the mainstream media (including themselves) to cast doubt on the safety of MMR.

The Sun:

HEARTBROKEN TV star Lorraine Kelly has told of her agony over the murder of her local Big Issue seller.

Tragic Paddy McDade was found in his flat last month in what police described as a “particularly brutal” scene.

Now GMTV favourite Lorraine has paid tribute to the 37-year-old who worked outside Dundee’s Marks and Spencer store.

The Scottish Sun columnist said: “I used to buy my Big Issue from Paddy whenever I was in Markies.”

Speaking to the mag, she added: “He was always so cheery. He’ll be sadly missed.”

Heartbroken? Agony? Lorraine must’ve known Paddy very well to be in such grief, otherwise Lorraine would just be ‘shocked’ or ‘saddened’.

Could the Sun be exaggerating their columnists feelings?
The Suns’ piece says ‘Speaking to the mag’ so nobody at the Suns’ office has spoken to Lorraine and the piece has been lifted wholesale from The Big Issue…

Lorraine spoke of her sadness when she heard of the death of Paddy McDade, who used to sell the magazine outside Marks and Spencer in Seagate.
“I used to buy my Big Issue from Paddy whenever I was shopping in Markies,” she said. “He was always so chatty, optimistic and cheery even when the rain was hammering down. He will be sadly missed.”

Ah, ‘sadness’. Ms Kellys’ heart is still in tact, spared of agony for someone she barely knew. The words she spoke in the Big Issue are pretty stock for a celeb that had a passing acquaintance with someone.

Thanx to the Sun, though, she has a couple of extra emotions added and viola, Lorraine seems more sensitive and caring and so, when she writes her column, you know she’s not a hard nosed woman, but is writing from the heart and has our best interests in mind.

Cross posted at The Sun Lies.

Beau Bo D’or spotted the London Evening Standard setting their stall out on the Israeli elections, and then deciding to tone it down a bit.

They may have changed the headline from…

Israelis go to polls to choose between three warmongers.

to…

Israelis go to the polls in tight election race.

but the webmaster at the Standard forgot one little detail (click to enlargen)…

I read a piece in Asian Voice at the weekend. It was sharing page 2 with Keith Vaz.

It reads…

What is a life worth?

Readers will remember that in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mumbai, our Kapil Dudakia in ‘Kapil’s Khichadi’ had discussed how our MPs had voted on the Mumbai EDM. Below is a comparison between EDM37 (Mumbai) and EDM585 (Gaza). It does make for some interesting reading

and the little box they have shows exactly that…

The piece itself asks why so few MPs found the time to sign the EDM on Mumbai but did the one on Gaza.

The reasons why could be anything, from simply the Israel/Palestine issue being fashionable, or the ‘Israel lobby’ doing it’s thing to Mumbai being attacked by individual. A group consisting of, basically, criminals, not as in the case with Gaza, a nation state demolishing anothers territory.

The piece continues…

Interestingly the so called self proclaimed champion of the victims of war, George Galloway of ‘RESPECT’ Party failed to sign up to the Mumbai EDM. Even more interestingly he found the time to rush and sign the Gaza EDM. For a party called ‘RESPECT’ it certainly does appear to show any support or respect for the victims of Mumbai. Maybe this says a lot about Mr Galloway, his politics and his perception of right and wrong! So what does all this prove?

It proves nothing. If the wording of the EDMs had been printed would’ve shown…

EDM 37

TERRORIST ATTACKS IN MUMBAI (No. 2)
03.12.2008

Vara, Shailesh

That this House unreservedly condemns the terrorist outrage in Mumbai; offers its sympathies and condolences to the victims and families of victims of the attacks; and expresses its support and solidarity for the government and people of India.

A good, worthy EDM. But it’s also the second on the Mumbai attacks.

The first is EDM 36

TERRORIST ATTACKS IN MUMBAI
03.12.2008

Gardiner, Barry

That this House expresses its outrage and disgust at the terrorist attacks on Mumbai; is appalled and deeply saddened by the suffering of so many victims and their families; sends its wholehearted solidarity to the people of Mumbai and India; notes with pride the support and succour provided by the Indian community in the UK; and urges the world’s greatest democracy to continue to stand as a beacon of peace and tolerance in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi.

(That in my mind is an even better EDM, but then, that’s just me.)

Now, for the Asian Voice piece to carry, the EDM on Gaza would have similar wording. Wouldn’t it?

EDM 585

DEC GAZA CRISIS APPEAL
26.01.2009

Burden, Richard

That this House is astonished by the refusal of the BBC and Sky to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Gaza Crisis Appeal; considers that the explanations given for this decision by BBC spokespersons are both unconvincing and incoherent; and draws attention to the fact that people wishing to obtain information about the Gaza appeal can contact the DEC by visiting www.dec.org.uk.

EDM 36 and 37 are condemning the attacks on Mumbai and EDM 585 is astonished at the refusal of the BBC to broadcast the DEC appeal. The EDMs are completely unrelated.

Maybe if the Mumbai EDMs had been about an appeal to help the victims that had been refused airtime or EDM 585, the ‘Gaza’ EDM, had been condemning Israel, or the Palestinians for that matter, then yes this piece would have some merit.

It doesn’t excuse or explain why so few MPs signed the Mumbai EDMs, but to compare it to EDM 585 like that smacks of jealousy at best, and at worst trying to imply racism of some kind.

See that? That’s the very definition of beauty, that is.

The Mail readers must be creaming their pants at the sight of it.

Not one, not two but three stories about the BBC offending people.
Three! It doesn’t get much better than that, eh?

Rebakah Wade speaking at the Cudlipp Lecture:

The quality of our journalism will make or break our industry, not the recession

If that’s the case, a few papers should expect to disappear soon, then.