Planet Andrew Neil I guess, as he is the genius behind the Barclays rags.

And Neal has a degree in winuttery in all its forms. Heavily promoting the discredited ‘bell curve’ when he was at the Sunday Times. In addition, he pushed the HIV is not aids theory that came from the nuttiest of wing nuts.

American wingnuttery is his specialty. How the BBC can turn over it’s political coverage to thi fool I don’t know.

It probably goes back before then. I started my physics degree in 1983 and at the same time a mate of mine started a nursing degree. I remember when he first said that he was doing a degree I commented (in my youthful ignorance) that I thought that nurses “just learnt it on the job”. Quite rightly, he put me right on that one.

It’s a toss up…

I agree, from what I’ve seen (I did in fact keep a bit of an eye on it previously, despite my poor humorous protestations to the contrary).

And there’s the worst part. If it’s getting worse, not bothering with basic research anymore and simply aping a rightwing American style, but ALSO (as Stepney happily notes above) increasing its circulation year on year to its highest ever (while solid fact reporting local/regional newspapers of the fact bemoaned by Mobiot in CiF a couple of days back go down the swanny, for example), then it’s all bad news.

And when Sky becomes Fox…………….

Martin @18: Well I wouldn’t go that far, though actually, now you mention it….

How else do we explain Fraser Nelson’s late conversion to vaccine and AIDS denialism?

Melanie is a disease. A virus. She destroys all she touches with her lunatic tendrils. She is no friend of left or right. She is the bringer of journalistic death.

It’s true. She really said that.

Yes, the first bit was supposed to be a passing joke, but I’m a socialist so clearly can’t do that kind of thing very well.

Planet Melanie is a special planet.

1) It is a right-wing, Tory-supporting magazine
2) Boris used to edit it

I suspect this counts as “barely aware”, and I’m not sure why I would’ve needed to know more.

as for #6, if Paul had written an article complaining that the Spectator wasn’t as good as it used to be, that’d be a fair comment. But he didn’t. Dale et al did write an article suggesting nursing training is going down the pan, without really knowing anything about the subject.

Just last year its ABC average circulation was almost 77,000 — the highest ever sale in the magazine’s 180-year history and the 12th consecutive half-year increase.

“Did you see that interesting article in the Spectator this week?”

I’ve challenged some of Fraser Nelson’s stuff on there before. Nelson shoehorns and bends statistics in an endless quest to make it seem like conservative economics “works”.

Love the front cover posted above. If ever an image showed how gratuitously the Right misunderstands our relationship with th EU, that is it.

…Have they never heard of Google?”

Hmmm. Nuff said.

Well it’s been going since 1828 old fruit and is the country’s oldest political journal.

For one involved in politics, your ignorance is astonishing. Or is it?

I should have thought that was obvious. The being very behind the times and not understanding things the Major government did (DDA 1995 is another glorious example) are also touchstones.

I suspect some of it is deliberate mental airbrushing of the period from 1990-2005, i.e. from when Thatcher went to when the Tories became electable again.

Until recently I was only barely aware of a magazine called the Spectator

Really? Blimey. It’s been going quite a while you know…