Anti-Christmas nonsense arrives earlier every year
So apparently in the US there are circular emails and facebook applications claiming that President Obama has renamed the Christmas Tree at the White House, a ‘holiday tree’.
The facebook application amused me. Much in the way of the age old question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” it asks “President Obama says that they will have a Holiday Tree this year instead of a Christmas Tree. Do you agree with this?”
It’s popping up in discussion forums and on news sites like myFOX. It’s going up as a question on Yahoo.
It’s being posted about on right-wing blogs. No mainstream news organisation that I can see has picked it up yet, but you just know that Bill O’Reilly is waiting in the wings to condemn someone, somewhere for not being Christian enough, as he did with a hapless group of Seattle atheists last year.
continue reading… »
Sun faces backlash on campaign against Brown
Widespread revulsion to The Sun’s political campaign – using a dead mother’s grief to campaign against Labour – was apparent everywhere.
Embarrasingly for the paper, most of the comments underneath the initial article were supportive of Brown. Some even attacked the mother for using her son’s death for political point scoring.
This led the Sun to close comments in a follow-up article in case it faced a bigger backlash from its own readers.
On Twitter, Vincent Moss confirmed:
Newspaper attacks on Brown’s letter/eyesight now starting to backfire badly even among anti-Labour voters, according to my polling expert.
RowanDavies added:
Beginning to think the Sun has dropped a bollock on this Jamie Janes business. Comments on Mumsnet are running 15-1 in GB’s favour.
Behind the scenes there were more examples of back-tracking.
The Guardian reported Rupert Murdoch saying he regretted his editors (note the plural) had “turned very much against Gordon Brown”.
Yesterday, even the newspaper’s former political editor George Pascoe-Watson admitted…
that Brown “cares passionately about the care of our troops”, and said that there was “a danger that public opinion could go against The Sun”.
Paul Waugh at the Standard confirmed the same:
What’s not in doubt is the danger that The Sun runs in overplaying its hand on the whole affair. News websites are full of comments from the public pointing out that while Mr Brown may have blundered, his sincerity is not in doubt in writing letters to the families of the fallen.
Today, the Daily Mirror leapt to the PM’s defence.
Even The Sun today has started back-tracking, accepting that the PM’s letter was “well-meaning”.
Political Scrapbook says the Sun had form for putting words into people’s mouths, illustrating how the paper used a 7/7 victim to push for harsher terrorism legislation.
Quarter of UK MEPs deny global warming too
Recently the Next Left blog surveyed and showed that all the top ten Tory blogs in the UK denied the existence of global warming.
Now Martin from the Lay Scientist blog has done a similar survey of UK MEPs.
By my count, 23% of Britain’s 72 MEPs are either explicit climate ‘skeptics’, or are members of ‘skeptic’ parties who remain silent on the subject (I use the term in quotes since climate ‘skeptics’ are generally about as ‘skeptical’ as 9/11 ‘truthers’ are truth-oriented – googling for things that support your case and credulously accepting them as ‘fact’ isn’t skepticism).
Of those, eight belonged to UKIP, two were Conservative and two BNP.
Views of several other MEPs were not know.
Martin adds:
The 26 Conservatives did better than I expected, perhaps through Cameron’s attempt to rebrand the party as Green Conservatives. Indeed, Tories like Vicky Ford are openly attacking bad science, with quotes like: “To be honest, I get fed up with climate-change-deniers.” Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannan from the Tory fringe pose the last challenge to a European party consensus on the issue, while the views of four remain unknown.
The fringes of the right, who now comprise around 20% of our elected representatives in Europe, are a car crash. The BNP aren’t exactly the most rational of parties, and their views were not unexpected; but UKIP are a much more serious proposition and take a fiercely anti-science line, as you can see from a quick search of their website. UKIP are a climate denialist party.
Read the full article here.
Reforming English Libel Law
There is a growing consensus that English libel laws are not fit for purpose. The list of libel cases that seem to defy common sense grows longer every day. Bloggers are threatened by vindictive vested interests, and football fans on chat-rooms are bullied by their own clubs. Regional newspapers are intimidated into timidity, and publishers punt on commissioning the investigative journalism that is supposed to keep our democracy strong. Scientists who challenge the claims of alternative medicine are hit with writs.
And then there is the problem of forum shopping, or “Libel Tourism”:
Britain is a pariah state, shunned by its allies and exploited by the unsavoury. The state of English libel laws (Scotland’s provisions are a little better) is so embarrassing that a number of US states have enacted legislation to protect their citizens from our courts. London is the global centre of libel tourism. From Middle Eastern potentates to Russian oligarchs, the rich and powerful use our legal system to bully people who try to hold them to account.
That’s John Kampfner, former editor of the New Statesman and Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, introducing the Index/PEN report into English libel laws. The report is the result of a year long inquiry that took in the opinions of publishers, lawyers, journalists, novellists, NGOs and bloggers, and identifies ten challenges for libel reform.
First amongst these the problem of burden of proof, which in libel lies uniquely with the defendant. The report recommends reversing this, and requiring claimants to demonstrate falsehood and damage. We also recommend reducing damages in libel to £10,000 and establishing a low cost libel tribunal that would allow bloggers, and others of slender means, to defend libel actions without having to re-mortgage their children.
You can read the rest of our recommendations at www.libelreform.org, a new hub that will co-ordinate the campaign for libel reform, in collaboration with Sense About Science. We need to lobby MPs to sign an EDM calling form reform, and to pressurise both the Tories and Labour to join the Liberal Democrats and make libel reform a manifesto commitment. The campaign for libel reform has already attracted the support of writers such as Monica Ali and Andrew Motion, and makes bedfellows of newspaper editors Alan Rusbridger and Peter Wright. If you are fed up with the wealthy and big corporations using English laws to suppress free speech, then we urge you to join them, and sign-up to the campaign.
Pants off to impropriety
I’d like to shout out for an unsung hero of improper, joyful, self-actualising women everywhere: Knickers Girl.
When a Sun photographer snapped Knickers Girl – aka 20 year old teaching assistant Sarah Lyons -cavorting in Cardiff centre with a pair of pants around her ankles, she instantly became the face of female reprobation up and down the country. Never mind that she wasn’t exposing any naughty bits; never mind that dancing with a pair of knickers around your ankles is perfectly legal behaviour; never mind that the pants in question weren’t the ones she’d been wearing, but a comedy pair of David Hasselhof knickers a mate had picked up in a bar.
Never mind that poor Ms Lyons was on a course of antibiotics and hence was actually stone-cold sober at the time: the new postergirl of binge-drinking ladettes everywhere has been suspended from her job pending a disciplinary inquiry, for the dubious crime of having fun in public. And they say sexism in the workplace is dead.
continue reading… »
Julie Bindel does transphobia again
Julie Bindel is wrong again. She was wrong in 2004 when she said that “I don’t have a problem with men disposing of their genitals, but it does not make them women” and she’s shockingly wrong in a recent article for Standpoint mag that I can only describe as hideously transphobic.
There’s a lot in this article to take issue with. Other bloggers, such as cave of rationality have discussed it from a human rights perspective, specifically the human rights that she fails to apply to trans-gendered people.
I want to examine it through her discussion of biology as destiny, when she says:
transsexualism, by its nature, promotes the idea that it is “natural” for boys to play with guns and girls to play with Barbie dolls. The idea that gender roles are biologically determined rather than socially constructed is the antithesis of feminism.
Melanie Phillips explains Gramsci
Sometimes a particular combination of headline and author catches your eye and you just know where the article is going to go. So I must admit a certain sense of keen anticipation when I spotted the words ‘We were fools to think the fall of the Berlin Wall had killed off the far Left. They’re back – and attacking us from within’ in conjunction with the name ‘Melanie Phillips’.
At first reading, the piece appeared to be a corker, right down to the stab at summarising Gramsci for a Daily Mail audience. Sure, I know that idea sounds counterintuitive, in a ‘Richard Littlejohn outlines his debt to the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr’ or ‘Seumas Milne ponders the downsides of Serbian nationalism’ kind of way, but to my mind that just made it all the better.
So imagine my disappointment, dear reader, when a quick Google revealed that both the underlying thesis – not to mention chunks of text – are simply rehashed from a 2007 piece authored by Linda Kimball on the US far right fringe website American Thinker. It transpires that Ms Phillips may not have read Prison Notebooks after all, and really should cut Kimball in for at least 50% of the presumably not ungenerous fee she got for the feature.
Why New Labour should pick a fight with The Sun
The conventional wisdom is that a political party shouldn’t pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, even if it attacks them relentlessly. The White House has been pushing back at Fox News and yesterday Lord Mandelson said the row over Brown’s letter to the soldier’s mother row was being “orchestrated” by a paper that was actively campaigning against Labour.
For various reasons I think this is the correct position to take.
The left has to stop becoming scared of the media and push back.
Encouragng over-reach
I suspect that most sensible Britons will look at The Sun’s hysterical attack yesterday as politically motivated. Even some of his most outspoken critics were sympathetic. The Sun newspaper is, like its sister organ in the US, actively campaigning for the opposition and both have tied their flags to the mast. This means their audience already knows there is a political agenda, which somewhat neutralises them.
And both have been getting over-excited in an attempt to attack the governing party and that means further loss in legitimacy in public opinion. Pushing back even slightly, as Obama and Mandelson have done, will invite even further hysteria from them and make them over-excitable and lose more legitimacy and so on…
Bolsters the base
Neither Obama nor Brown have much to lose in potential voters since their opponents are already campaigning hard against them. But it does bolster their left-wing base that hates the media orgs passionately. It also helps develop a victim mentality which is needed to get the activists out and push back even harder. The Sun’s political influence on its voters is already over-stated and it has lost 35% of its circulation since 1997.
continue reading… »
Tory Michael Gove offers support for controversial school programme
Since my last article on Steiner-Waldorf education in which I argued, that pseudoscience is not a valid educational choice, things have moved on somewhat.
In the last week or so Plymouth University has discontinued both its BA and Foundation degree courses in Steiner education, the only such courses in the UK.
Unlike Stockholm University, which took the same decision after concluding that the course literature contained ‘too much myth and too little fact’, Plymouth University have decided to axe their course due to poor recruitment and retention of students, although it is looking at incorporating a Steiner option into its existing BA course in Education Studies. They blame the government’s decision to withdraw funding for second degrees for the demise of these course. The excellent UK Anthroposophy blog has a rather more prosaic take.
Despite this obvious setback, the Steiner-Waldorf Schools Fellowship is pressing ahead with its efforts to get its nose into the state-funding trough by arranging a ‘special pre-election seminar about possible developments in the state funding opportunity for Steiner schools’. This will take place on the 17th November 2009 at the Charity Centre in Euston.
And if you haven’t already guessed the ‘possible developments in state funding opportunity‘ are those already indicated by Tory Shadow Education Minister, Michael Gove:
Under the Tory proposals, new schools entering the state system would be free from the constraints of the statutory national curriculum.
Mr Gove believes many parents think the particular teaching styles “and atmosphere of the environment” at Montessori and Steiner schools would suit them and their children.
This event has, to say the least, an interesting line-up of guest speakers.
continue reading… »
TPA condemn firefighters for saving trapped duck
The TaxPayers Alliance today even criticised firefighters for saving a duck.
The Press Association reported today that firefighters were described as going “beyond the call of duty” during the six-hour rescue of a pet duck from a water pipe.
Watch manager Chris Barton, from Stroud Fire Station, said the service had a humanitarian role and was able to answer the call as no other emergencies were going on.
Nevertheless a TaxPayersAlliance spokesperson fumed:
Whilst no one likes to see a duck suffering, animal rescue is not the central job of the fire service. In this case there were no emergency calls pending, but calls can crop up at the last minute which could be much more pressing than the rescue of a duck.
Jonathan Calder at Liberal England retorted:
Amazingly, though, the same thought had occurred to the Gloucestershire Fire Service. The Independent report quotes Chris Barton from Stroud Fire Station as saying that if there had been an emergency the crew would have broken off from the duck rescue and returned later.
Isn’t it remarkable how sensible some people can be, even if they are not clever enough to work for right-wing think tanks? The trouble is, people who work for right-wing think tanks tend to be the sort of people who can imagine nothing better than an evening at home sniffing their money. Dead ducks mean nothing to them.
Give me the British people’s sentimentality about animals instead.
Indeed.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed. You can also get them by email and through our Facebook group.
» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
|
62 Comments 15 Comments 23 Comments 8 Comments 24 Comments 19 Comments 16 Comments 83 Comments 203 Comments 85 Comments |
|
LATEST COMMENTS » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Oliver posted on Job snob? No, I've got the T-shirt » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Hannah posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » mr_hopkinson posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Amy Finlayson posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pagar posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Oliver Conner posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pjt posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Lee Griffin posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » JIm posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » BendyGirl posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Liza Harding posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » rentergirl posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? |
