What's wrong with the Polish? I don't get it

A quick bit of Christmas racism cheer from the Mail today with 'Manchester buses ordered off the road over Polish driver safety fears'.

Check the headline. After some claims that it relates to the training and assessment of drivers (and that the two companies employ mainly Polish drivers) we get:

[...] officers from the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency inspected 28 of the firm's buses and found faults in more than half.

So, the whole 'Polish' stuff is bollocks. Whether or not drivers have been trained and assessed properly has fuck all to do with their being Polish, and the buses are not substandard because they're driven by the Polish. The drivers could all be lilywhite cucumber sandwich eating tories from Surrey, and the buses would still be suspended because over half of them are substandard.

So the Suffolk strangler was Polish, despite not actually being Polish, and these buses are suspended because of Polish drivers despite not actually being because of Polish drivers.

So, Chistmas is not about peace and love and goodwill toward men. It's about attacking Hinduism and being racist about the Polish. Merry Christmas!

More political correctness gone made up!

Remember the simple metric for telling whether a story about political correctness is true? It goes: if it's in the Mail, it's bollocks.

There's another cracking example of 'Political Correctness Gone Mad' reporting in today's Mail. On the website, the headline is 'A school with no Hindus celebrates Diwali'. I've got a paper copy today, in there, the article appears below the story of the Christians getting compensation for being questioned by the police, with the lead-in '... but elsewhere, politically correct madness reigns'and the headline is 'Boy punished for not going to a Hindu festival (at a school that has no Hindus)'.

It's interesting that there's such a difference in headlines, as they change the emphasis quite a bit. In the paper, the story is quite clearly framing the story by saying a boy has been punished for not attending a Hindu festival. But the story itself (in a masterful use of the 'Withdrawn!' tactic) reveals that the boy hasn't been punished, and makes it seem doubtful that there was ever a Hindu festival in the first place. The language of the online version's headline is much milder. It's possible to celebrate Diwali without having a festival, and it makes no claim about the boy having been punished. Because he wasn't.

The story makes a number of claims, and then retracts them at the end, where we find that the boy in the story did go to the Christmas party, and Hinduism doesn't say what the boy's parents (and, by extension, the paper itself) say it does at the beginning of the article.

It starts:

A seven-year-old boy in a wheelchair was left in tears after being banned from the school Christmas party - because his parents objected to him taking part in Hindu celebrations.

But later we find (via the boy's mother) that the Headteacher actually said:

"She warned me I had the right to withdraw Liam from religious education lessons but I did not have the right to pick and choose. I was stunned."

So, in fact, the headteacher said that to remove the boy from the Hindu celebration would effectively be removing him from religious education lessons, as you can't pick and choose which ones to study. Nothing about a Christmas party.

There's an interesting difference in the way the school's Hindu activities are reported in the paper and online versions of the story. Online, they are described as 'school festivities', but in the paper they are 'school activities'. I rather think that the word 'festivities' is being used to exaggerate what the school were doing to make it sound as though they were doing something more than learn about Diwali by participating in a couple of things.

Later in the article, the paper claims that the Headteacher did a u-turn and allowed the boy to attend the Christmas party after all. But an interesting thing is that the Headteacher is quoted later as saying:

"We would not prevent a child from enjoying Christmas activities under any circumstances."

You know what I think? I think the boy was never banned from the Christmas party in the first place. I think that the Headteacher removed the boy from religious education, but the Christmas party was never part of religious education at all, and the parents misunderstood. That's why the Head is so insistent that no child would ever be prevented from joining in the Christmas activities.

The second paragraph says:

Liam Walker's parents withdrew him from school festivities marking the Diwali festival because they believed the religion's karma theory suggested he was being punished for previous sins.

In the paper versions that statement is clarified by saying 'sins in a previous life' at the end. The parents' misunderstanding of Hinduism is repeated a couple of times before the article reveals:

Anil Bhanot, of the Hindu Council, said: "In this sort of case when a child is born disabled, it could be a testing period of some sort for that child. It could also be said the parents had done something bad previously but there are many factors."

Which is another difference the online version has with the paper one. The paper is less selective in its quoting of Anil Bhanot, saying:

"Reincarnation is underpinned by the theory of karma, which is the law of cause and effect.

"People say that if you do bad things you will suffer in future life, but that is a very crude interpretation. In this sort of case where a child is born disabled, it could be that this is a testing period of some sort for the child."

So Hinduism doesn't actually say the things the parents say it does. They would benefit from some education themselves.

There's another little bit worth mentioning. The paper also says:

But in a further indication of political correctness infiltrating the school curriculum, Jesus was banned from his year's nativity play.

Instead A Child For Peace centred around two tribes whose sparring was brought to an end by a newborn child.

Jesus was banned was he? Who do you think the baby is supposed to represent, you fucking morons? Ken Livingstone?

There's a weird undercurrent to this story and one of the other made up Christmas stories, and that's that children only need to learn about other religions if some of them are from that religion. If there aren't Hindus in a school, the children don't need to bother learning about it. But surely, these are the children who would benefit the most from being educated about other religions. So they don't end up barring their kids from attending activities about them because they don't understand them. Strangely though, the paper still thinks that children at non-denominational schools should be taught exclusively about Christianity.

What this story is actually about is a couple of ignorant people stopping their child from learning about Hinduism, because they don't understand it themselves. The Headteacher at the boy's school said that they could only withdraw him from religious education completely and not pick and choose. The parents decided that this meant she'd banned him from the Christmas party, but this was never the case. The boy wasn't punished, there wasn't actually a 'festival' and Hinduism doesn't say what the parents say it does.

So why is the paper reporting this in this way? Why say a boy was punished when he wasn't? Why imply there was a massive festival for Diwali but Jesus was banned from Christmas (when there's a bloody play about him)? Why give the parents' ignorant views on Hinduism at all? Because it is only interested in making its readers believe they are constantly under threat from left wing pollitics rather than representing the truth.

Police killer escapes in pantomme horse outfit

From the BBC coverage of this 'Wanted man may have fled in veil':

It is understood West Yorkshire Police - who have not commented on reports about the veil theory - regard it only as one of a number of possibilities.

And there's slightly more reticence in this Reuters coverage 'Murder suspect may have fled in veil':

Asked whether Mustaf Jama had used a full Muslim veil to evade checks, a spokesman for West Yorkshire police said: "It's a possibility. He could have been wearing a pantomime horse outfit as well. But until we get him, we won't know for sure."

No such caution in the Express's 'Police killer escapes in veil'. And check out that 'Evil Somali' subheading there. Have there been any headlines referring to the Suffolk strangler as an 'evil Englishman'?

Now, if it turns out this guy didn't flee in a veil, do you think there'll be a headline of the same size retracting?

Will there fuck. Express headlines are for exaggerated bullshit remember?

So we have the Mail and the Express using separate murders as tools in their ongoing campaigns to demonise minorities in the same week. Who was forgetting the spirit of Christmas again?

We can see the results of the Mail's one here at nnseek, where Stormfront posting knuckle draggers virtually jizz their knickers over the 'fact' that the Suffolk strangler was Polish.

*UPDATE* The Times has also gone with a similar headline. The front page of the print version uses a new phrase I don't think I've seen before - 'religious correctness'. Nice.

Strangler - must be a dirty foreigner - maybe even Polish! (Or the case of the mysterious disappearing articles)

I wanted to wait until someone was arrested for the Ipswich stranglings before posting about this, so I have.

The tabloids dubbed the murderer the 'Ripper', and he had killed a number of prostitutes - but there is something else the case has in common with that of Jack the Ripper. Apparently:

On 10 September 1888 the Manchester Guardian reported that "all are united in the belief that [the murderer] is a Jew or of Jewish parentage[,] his face being of a marked Hebrew type." Sir Robert Anderson, the Head of the Central Intelligence Division, was adamant in his memoirs that the killer was a Polish Jew.

Get rid of the word 'Jew' from that, and we find a similarity with last Wednesday's Mail. In their ongoing campaign to demonise the Polish, the Daily Mail published this story, 'The influx of immigrant workers' as part of its coverage of the strangler case. It's there on the Mail's 'Special Report' list of articles on the subject.

Now, this article doesn't come out and say, 'the murderer is Polish.' It would be stupid to do that, since, you know, he might not be and the paper's evidence would be pretty thin. But what the article does is cleverly imply he could be, while attacking the Polish even if he is not. You see:

Thousands of migrants have arrived in East Anglia in recent years, making the police's task even harder.

They've made the investigation harder, the inconsiderate fuckers. They should have thought of their possible effects on a completely unforeseen serial killer investigation before:

More than 73,000 have been lured by the availability of work in agriculture and food processing.

Look at the dehumanising language right there. People generally aren't 'lured', animals are, unless the reason they were attracted somewhere turn out to be fake, or a trap or the person is a criminal. Criminals are 'lured'. Plus, there's no reference for the numbers, so we can't check. Again. Remember, when we can, we can find out that 3,000 means 100. Or we can find out that reports the paper claims say not to do things to avoid offending Muslims, actually don't mention Muslims once and don't in fact say not to do those things.

Anyhow, these people have been lured to Britain and are hampering police investigations because:

It means police are faced with tens of thousands of people who they know very little about and who speak a variety of languages.

Okay. So far, so sort-of-plausible (if the numbers are accurate, and that's a whopping great if). There are lots of new people in the area, and some might not speak English. Maybe they don't have interpreters in Suffolk, I dunno. I suppose that could make it difficult to interview witnesses or suspects.

We find out in the next paragraph/sentence:

Officers will also be unable to tell if they have committed sex crimes abroad.

Oh. What happened there? A rapid shift in emphasis. We start with police investigations being hampered because of a lot of new people the police aren't familiar with arriving in the area who might not be able to speak English. But with this sentence, we see clearly what the paper is implying - that one of them might be the killer. (Cue some ominous music please). And we don't know because:

Britain is obliged to tell other European countries if sex offenders travel abroad.

But only Ireland has similar legislation.

And we arrive at a familiar xenophobic whine. 'They don't do it, why should we?' mixed with a generous helping of, 'look at how morally superior we are to the foreigners.' Plus, there's some great obfuscatory language in there. 'Britain is obliged to...' you can imagine the Mail readers trembling with rage at the nerve of these bloody Eurocrats making us do things they don't make the French do. Because the 'is obliged to' is passive, making it look as though somebody else is obliging Britain to do this, rather than Britain itself.

More important than that is the implication that one of these immigrants might be the killer, and we don't know because their sneaky foreign government of sneaky foreigners didn't even tell us. Bastards.

"But so far, they've only been talking about European countries. How can this possibly be about the Polish?" you might ask. And that would be because you hadn't read further, you lazy so and so:

The loophole emerged after the rape of a 25-year-old woman in her home near Llanelli, South Wales, by a Polish immigrant.

Josef Kurek, 41, was jailed for life. But Swansea Crown Court heard he had already served nine years in prison in Poland for raping a policeman's daughter.

The article goes on about the case and police not being able to get details from Poland, until the last three sentences:

Prior to May 2004, Ipswich only had small numbers of migrants living there.

The 2001 census records just 7,263 foreign nationals in the town.

The largest numbers then were from the West Indies, India, Germany, America and Bangladesh.

So, they were from those countries. Where are they from now? Well, May 2004 is when Eastern European countries joined the EU and people from those countries could come here as EU citizens. And the example above was about Polish people, so it's pretty easy to work out who they mean. But the figure at the top of the report is likely to be for total immigration, not just that of Eastern Europe - which partly explains why Eastern Europe is only hinted at.

Now, this is a pretty sneaky article to slip in among the rest of the coverage of the murders. But it's not the only implication about a dirty foreigner being the killer that the paper made. From the Mailwatch forum comes this quote from a Mail story:

Paula, a drug addict and mother of three, said she believed her friend Gemma Adams might have been killed by one of the thousands of migrant workers who arrive in East Anglia every year looking for agricultural work.

She had had 'bad experiences' with migrants, she said, who 'think they can do anything to a woman and get away with it'.

Ipswich is just ten miles from the international ferry port of Felixstowe, and one theory being investigated is that the killer could be an immigrant worker.

Dirty foreigners. Anyway, when I was about to type up this post, I wanted to cover that story too, but couldn't find that quote anywhere on the Mail site. So I googled the quote and got a link to this article, 'Desparate police admit strangler is out of control'. But the quote isn't there. Sticking it into google news gives a link to the identical article on thisislondon (the site for the Daily Mail and General Trust's London papers) and it isn't there either.

Also from the Mailwatch forum is this link to a story apparently implying the murderer is a dirty foreigner:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=422790&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

But clicking it gives an 'article not found' message. Is this the same article before the immigration references were removed, or a different article altogether that the paper has had to take down? Apparently, this article is a copy. Either way, it's a bit of a shame because it apparently had comments like:

I am more than happy that the authorities have got or will very soon get the instigator of these terrible murders.
The fact that the guilty party may be an immigrant is absolute complete political dynamite.
Hopefully all governments of this country have understood the meaning of a wake up call.

- Mike, UK

And:

Well said Mike. If the murderer does indeed turn out to be an immigrant then surely even stupid Blair must put a halt to immigration, or at least have thorough criminal and medical checks put into place and tighter border control.

- Cathy, Watford, England

And best of all:

The implication seems to be that allowing immigration will lead to murder! Fred West and Peter Sutcliffe were natives; didn't stop them being serial killers, did it? Every nation has its share of freaks and lunatics, and while there is a place for a debate on immigration, it isn't appropriate to hijack this tragic situation to score cheap political points. Shame on those of you who try. The issue should be addressed in a calm, rational manner and not with kneejerk prejudice. Of course there needs to be better control of the immigration system, but seeing a series of murders as indicative of anything other than someone's personal depravity, at a time when we have no clue who is responsible but we do know five families are torn apart, is stupid.

- Olivia Lee, Cambridge, UK

Well said, Olivia Lee.

Is it possible that someone complained about saying a dirty foreigner did the murders without anything to back it up, so the paper had to remove the references from their websites? Could there have been a deluge of complaints like Olivia Lee's comment, so they had to go? Are the paper just embarrassed now that someone not foreign has been arrested? Is it possible that the paper was not content with not being able to imply the murderer might be a dirty foreigner because of this, so it left up another article doing just that in a milder manner (and I'm sure that headline's changed - it would be rubbish otherwise)?

I think we should be told.

*UPDATE* Another article looks to have been taken down (thanks again to Tuber in the Mailwatch forum). Mentioned here at Radio Orla, it apparently included:

Pole sought by Suffolk police

A migrant worker from Eastern Europe is being sought by police investigating the Suffolk strangler murders, reported Daily Mail on December 15. The man - who has not been seen since Wednesday - drives a dark blue BMW similar to the one in which victim Anneli Alderton was last seen alive. He works on a farm close to where more than one of the serial killer's five victims were found. His BMW has been left parked near his home, and a police forensic team spent yesterday afternoon examining the car for any evidence linking it to the victims. Police believe the man may have vital information which could help them with the inquiry.

As well as the link between a BMW driver and Anneli, there were also reports last night that victim Annette Nicholls was seen getting into a BMW at around the time she disappeared. Five Ipswich prostitutes have been found killed.

And Radio Orla points out:

Ed. What is offensive about the Daily Mail's article is that having said in its headline that a Pole being sought, nowhere in the article is there such a connection, except that someone from East Europe was being sought by police.

That'd be the 'Withdrawn!' tactic. Which clearly wasn't enough to stop this article getting pulled. I kind of hope it was because of threats to sue this nasty paper's arse rather than embarrassment.

The article is also mentioned here at newsik.net, which links to a thisislondon article that has been disappeared. There's also more here at Anorak, which should probably go on my blogroll. The beatroot also covers it well.

The Mail itself includes a broken link to 'Strangler police hunt BMW Pole' from 'Police have fifty Suffolk Strangler suspects'. It has the same url as the missing story above, so we know what's missing now.

Obsolete has more about how nasty this paper is, with coverage of Littlejohn's latest column.

Sun fibba shocka!

I don't want to do any Christmas stories for a bit, but when I read in the Sun that Tony Blair had attacked the Christmas ban I thought he was being a tosser. Even I wasn't sceptical enough to think the Sun was actually, you know, fibbing.

Lucky for us, Obsolete did. And was right. Balir did the exact opposite! See 'Scum watch: So why isn't the tinsel up on MySpace?'

And still no examples of any company anywhere banning Christmas decorations so as not to offend other faiths.

Never underestimate the capacity of the tabloids to make shit up.

At least it's not about Christmas

It's about the Mail's other favourite topic instead, asylum seekers (seems I was hasty in thinking the paper had dropped the references, although they have gone down).

Anyway, this will be a quick one. Hurrah! The article is 'Asylum seekers escape after dozy guards allowed a cigarette break'.

Right there in the opening sentence/paragraph is this:

A failed asylum seeker is on the run after escaping deportation when he was allowed off a coach heading for the airport to have a cigarette.

So it's just one then. The headline makes it sound like it could be loads. It's not as masterful as making 100 look like 3,000 but it's still fibbing. The question is, can the Mail and the Express ever tell the truth in their headlines?

I wish they would just ban Christmas so I don't have to keep pointing out that they're not banning Christmas

I'm getting bored of taking apart individual stories about the banning of Christmas now, but there's room for one more I suppose.

The story is in today's Mail (12 December), with the headline 'Christmas play axed in celebration of political correctness'. The most obvious thing to note straight away is that the headline isn't actually true. The Christmas play has not been axed in order to be replaced by some sort of celebration of political correctness. Children will not be singing songs about banning golliwogs, calling women Ms and renaming manholes 'non-gender-specific-person road entry access points'. They will be learning about Christmas alongside other religious festivals.

I wanted to have a look at this article because it's an indicator of an important strand of the 'banning Christmas' myth I haven't gone into much that has been focused on particularly by the Mail - and that's that Christmas is for Christians and should be celebrated only in a particular way. This school is having a Christmas celebration, but not one focused on Christians and the nativity to the exclusion of everything else.

One important detail that the paper is leaving out is that Knowland Grove Community First School is a non-denominational school. It has no obligation to celebrate one faith over another. Another thing the paper doesn't mention - and it quotes the school's OFSTED report at the end of the article, so it has seen it - is that the school's OFSTED report says:

Pupils' spiritual and cultural development are satisfactory and, although there are examples to be seen in school, both spiritual and cultural elements of learning need to be further developed, particularly aspects of multicultural education. The school is now planning to develop aspects, such as what different peoples believe and how they live, more in lessons as well as in assemblies.

So, there is a history in which the school has been criticised for not doing enough to explain other cultures and the Christmas celebration is part of an effort to address this. Now, you might argue that this is in itself an example of political correctness gone mad. Go ahead if you want to. But to argue that it's a part of a secular PC conspiracy to ban Christmas is stretching things a bit. Remember, this is a non-denominational school so it doesn't have to favour one religion and it is teaching about Christmas in its celebration.

An important fact comes characteristically late in the article (21 paragraph/sentences into a 23 paragraph/sentence article):

The younger two age-groups will present pieces on Christmas and Christingles while Year Two will perform a poem about Hanukkah and Year Three will explain Diwali.

This raises two issues. The most obvious is that Christmas takes up as much time as the other festivals put together. Another is that another major religion's major celebration is left out. Now this may be because Eid is closer in character to Easter than Christmas in that it comes at the end of a period of fasting - but the fact that it's Muslim and would therefore enrage people like the bastions of tolerance at the Mail could well be a factor.

This little nugget is not a direct quote from the headmistress like the two paragraph/sentences that precede it and the one that follows it, so we need to be careful and wonder what might have been left out. It could have included information that the presentation of one of the two younger age-groups took the form of a mini nativity play, for instance. Of course, this is idle speculation and it might have just been cut for brevity - but we really should be suspicious when a paper does something like that. The point I really wanted to make is that one of the direct quotes from the headmistress says:

"Our children have been singing carols and songs in the mall, our Christmas tree is up, and we will be sitting down to our Christmas meal this week," she said.

So, the Christmas celebrations in the school don't only include the presentation, but lots of other specifically Christmassy things like singing carols in the local shopping mall, having Christmas dinner and putting up a Christmas tree.

What the Mail is doing here is arguing that even institutions that are not Christian must celebrate a specifically Christian occasion in an exclusively Christian way. I don't want to delve too deelpy into the subject of whether or not Christmas is specifically Christian - but it really is a Christian appropriation of a Pagan midwinter celebration, many of the traditions we associate with it are Pagan, and a lot were imported from Germany in the late 19th Century. The reason these traditions were imported and that we didn't celebrate Christmas in a big way before they were is partly the result of Christians having banned the celebration as being UN-Christian a couple of hundred years before because of the Pagan influence.

The assertion that Christmas is only about Christians and that any mention of any of the other things we associate with it are examples of a conspiracy to ban it - is part of a wider push in many of the Mail's articles to make 'Christian' part of the default image for Britishness. It's also something the Sun has been attempting, but in such a hamfisted way as to make it even more obvious - arguing that a Carribean interpretation of a Carol's lyrics would be un-Christian even though the Caribbean is a predominantly Christian region while using a Pagan name to describe Christmas in the same article. British is supposed to equal Christian. We also see it in the Mail in the many articles about Nadia Ewedia or Aishah Azmi, where the assertion is made that this is a Christian country, for instance. This article employs the same tactic. It quotes a grandparent as saying:

We're supposed to be a Christian country and all our little ones should learn all about Jesus and Christmas.

The country might be Christian, but the school is not. Think about the implication made by the inclusion of this quote. We're supposed to be a Christian country, so every school - even non-Christian ones like the one in this article - should teach Christianity to its pupils to the exclusion of other religions or beliefs. Don't forget, the school will be teaching the pupils about Jesus and Christmas. They'll even be taught something I - as somebody who went to primary school back in the seventies when we were forced to do a nativity play and the local vicar used to pop round with a guitar to make us sing 'He's Got The Whole World In His Hands' - didn't know. I had to Google 'Christingles' to see what it meant. The Mail objects to teaching the Christian story alongside teaching about other faiths - even though the other faiths get half the time each devoted to Christianity.

What the Mail is doing in these stories is disguising an aggressive act as a defensive one. Often, the paper is actually attacking things that celebrate Christmas - just in a way the paper doesn't approve of. This school is teaching the Christian version of Christmas. The Royal Mail are producing special stamps to celebrate Christmas. Greetings card companies are producing Christmas cards. But the Mail want to ban them* in favour of things that only celebrate the specifically Christian aspects of Christmas in a rigidly defined way. So what the paper is doing (less in this article than others, as it does have a stronger argument concerning nativity plays) is characterising its own aggressive attack on the status quo (celebrating Christmas with images of Father Christmas, snowmen, holly, Christmas trees, robins, reindeer and with the term 'Season's Greetings') as a defence of a non-existent status quo (celebrating Christmas only with images of the nativity - and exclusively with the term 'Merry Christmas').

The Mail itself is arguing that traditions engaged in by the majority of the population be changed to accomodate the view of a minority. In short, the Mail is behaving in a way that it would otherwise characterise as PC.

* To use the Mail's definition of the word 'ban' as 'not do' rather than the more common actual definition of 'ban' as 'officially prohibit'.

The Independent - rubbish?

There was a godawful article in Saturday's Independent about PC gone mad at Christmas, called 'We wish you a 'PC' Christmas'. The paper does make up for it a bit in yesterday's 'A Christmas confection', but only a bit.

I started reading it expecting to be relieved to see it attack the idea of banning Christmas in more depth than the 'confection' story (I'd read them in reverse order), but it's worth looking at in a bit of depth even though 'confection' partly debunks it.

It opens by saying:

Readers of certain newspapers would be forgiven for thinking that Christmas has been outlawed by the massed ranks of the politically correct left. Are they right? Maxine Frith finds out

As we know, Christmas is not being banned and the papers have either made some big howlers or misled their readers, but this article doesn't pick up on this. The first warning I had that this article was going to be a wrong 'un was this:

Never a paper to miss the chance of a "political correctness gone mad" headline, The Sun ran a front page earlier this week that screamed, "Kick 'Em in the Baubles!", aimed at the party poopers who have banned office Christmas decorations on the grounds of health and safety.

No, it didn't. Not for the reasons Maxine Frith gives anyway. In 'Super soaraway Christmas ARSEPAPER!' I look at the first article of the campaign in some detail, and it's quite clearly about at party poopers who have banned Christmas decorations so as not to offend people of other faiths. The examples are mainly of health and safety rules because the paper couldn't back up its claim about other faiths with any examples at all - but it still framed the attack as one about offending other faiths in quite a weaselly manner. But even the Sun, on today's 'News' section of its website has dropped the 'offensive' line, just advertising the link to the discussion thread with the line 'Christmas decoration ban'.

The Indy article carries on with a quote from a representative of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, who is bound to be unbiased, saying:

"We have talked to the Muslim Council of Britain and other religious groups and they have no problem with people celebrating Christmas," said Mr Midgley.

"It is white, middle-aged, middle-class men with a guilt complex sitting in their ivory towers who are causing all the problems. They are trying to airbrush our traditions out of this country but they are merely alienating the very people they claim they are trying to help."

Of course, a reasonable thing to do after this is to wonder if people are banning Christmas so as not to offend people at all, and - you know - investigate that. But this quote neatly introduces the idea that Christmas is being banned so as not to offend people from other faiths, before the article moves on to examine whether there is a threat to Christmas by regurgitating some of the worst howlers we've seen in the tabloids, and then surprisingly concluding that it has. For instance:

Three out of four employers have banned Christmas decorations from the workplace because they fear they could offend people of other faiths, according to the law firm Peninsula. The survey of more than 2,000 bosses found that half had also outlawed baubles and tinsels because they thought it looked unprofessional.

As we saw in 'Christmas ARSEPAPER UPDATE!', that survey isn't exactly reliable. And as the Indy helpfully points out in the next day's edition:

Asked to name a single example three days ago, the firm has yet to oblige.

An aside - I asked a couple of questions myself after the article taking it apart appeared in the Guardian, and have heard nothing back either. I asked if there were other questions, and where the idea of 'repurcussions on their business' came from in the introduction.

There's also mention of the Acas guidelines of the week before last that I talked about in 'It's ONE LEGGED BLACK LESBIAN DAY for MUSLIMS now!' that could have come from the pages of the Mail itself. It says:

According to Acas, holding a Christmas raffle with alcohol as prizes could offend Muslims, who should not gamble or drink.

As we saw before, the Acas guidelines don't mention the word 'Muslim' once. It talks about some religions not permitting gambling, and not pressuring people to enter raffles - and says you might want to think about not having prizes of alcohol or meat because some people don't drink and some don't eat meat.

There's downplaying of the reasons 'millionaire Vic Moszczynski' was ordered to have his display toned down. Without mentioning that it was only toned down, but still exists, giving the impression of a ban. There's mention of the Royal Mail not having Jesusy stamps. There's a quote from John Sentamu saying that secularists are indeed trying to ban Christmas. There's mention of the halal chicken debacle. There's something about Rick Stein getting abusive emails if he uses farmed salmon - which has fuck all to do with Christmas. There's some mention of Christmas trees being more expensive than usual before the best bit of the article, I think:

If that wasn't bad enough, the good denizens of Burnley, in Lancashire, have been denied the joy of their traditional tree in the market square because the anti-vandal box in which it sat was deemed to be too expensive.

There is still a tree - but in a less salubrious position near the local branch of McDonald's, while the town square merely boasts a crib since which residents have compared (unfavourably) to a shed.

So there's a tree, but it's not big enough and there's actually a Nativity scene in the town square - but this is an example of PC banning of Christmas because people think it's not a very good scene. For fuck's sake.

There are more regurgitations - the school singing a calypso version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, a teacher telling kids there's no Santa and so on - and the article ends with a brilliant kicker. Even though earlier in the article mentions early on that:

Birmingham does not have a religion-neutral "Winterval" festival

The article concludes its investigation into whether Christmas is being banned with:

As Brummies might say, Happy Winterval.

Of course, this might mean the article is really, really clever and we're all meant to infer that all the quotes and examples it uses are bollocks but inverted in a really, like, subversive manner. Or the earlier bits about Winterval and Luminos being nonsense might have been inserted by a sub.

On the other hand, it might just be crap.

How much is an Express headline worth?

Taking a break from the Christmas nonsense, we have a cracking example of how Express headlines aren't worth the paper they're written on in today's edition. (See left - thanks Mailwatch).

I probably don't ned to bother typing this bit, but - the workers were not sacked because they were British, but because they charge more money for their services. If this vital fact had been different, they wouldn't have been sacked. If the Polish workers had charged more than the British ones, they wouldn't have been awarded the contract. They're called market forces. The use of the word 'we' is also interesting. It's the paper's way of implying we should all be scared of foreigners taking our jobs, not just the people in this article.

It's funny that the Express should worry about the treatment of workers quite so much, given that its proprietor made his money in the employment relations heaven that is pornography, but there you go.

It really isn't necessary to go through the whole article point by point to prove it's rubbish, but I have belatedly picked up on a turn of phrase that I've seen here and in the Mail:

thousands of workers from countries such as Poland

'Countries such as Poland' is presumably the phrase the papers can use as a figleaf to attack the Polish. A figleaf that's a bit too small and doesn't really cover very much so you can still see a bit of bollock. It's a small example of the 'Withdrawn!' tactic I talk about in the predictably headlined, 'Withdrawn!'. This article is littered with references to the Polish and Poles, and the article really wants to lay into the Polish by talking about thousands of Poles flooding our shores, but if it said 'thousands of Polish workers', it'd be stretching it a bit, because there are thousands of workers from more than one Eastern European country. So 'countries such as Poland' does the job admirably.

Of course, the obvious point is that if we had decent Unions, this wouldn't happen. New workers could join and have the chance to earn higher wages, and employers would no longer have an incentive to hire non-British workers - especially as they'd be facing strikes if they hired non-unoinised labour. But of course, a right wing paper like this one cannot possibly make that argument - so the way it addresses the problem is by demonising the Polish. Nice.

If I can get all 'a little bit of politics' for a minute, there's a great quote from one of the workers involved:

I’ve also voted Labour all my life but I’ll never vote for them again. Tony Blair is letting people like me down. A lot of us are family men who now have to go back and tell them just before Christmas that we’ve been fired.

Labour ought to be the party that fights for Unions and workers' rights. It ought to be the natural party for people like this guy to turn to, but it isn't any more. And something that is partly the fault of the press is that it's now pretty much seen as the party who support foreigners over British people. So now that the politics of the country has shifted quite a few steps to the right, the only response to a story like this quite a large chunk of people will have is 'Polish people must be stopped from entering the country because they're actively taking our work.' Not 'employers should be prohibited from exploiting any of their workers by paying them low wages.'

The Mail, the Express and the Sun can all pat themselves on the back for at least a part of that.

Very belated bit of irony

If only I was cleverer. I would then have spotted some wicked irony in 'Caribbean - UNCHRISTIAN!'

The headline of the Sun's article was 'Fury at school's PC Yule song', and it moaned about the lyrics of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' being changed to reflect a bit of a calypso flavour because, dammit, Christmas is for Christians!

The irony? 'Yule' refers to a Pagan festival. A Yule song wouldn't be Christian at all. The bozos at the Sun are so ignorant of what they say is their own religion, they didn't even know.

And they're happy to associate Christmas with a Pagan festival, but not the traditions of a predominantly Christian region.

Nice.

More baubles from the Sun

Sorry, I just couldn't keep including the word 'arsepaper' in caps in loads of headlines, but there's a further development in the Sun's moronic 'Kick 'em in the baubles campaign' (to give it its full title). This one's called 'Baubles banned in Job Centre'.

Does it include a list of companies who have banned Christmas decorations so as not to offend people of other faiths? With quotes?

Does it include just one?

Do me a favour.

Sorry, slipped into the Sun's 'partial sentence as paragraph' style without actually meaning to. I'll have to go off to read something for grownups after this. Anyway, the story is about one Job Centre that has disallowed Christmas decorations (and it's not because of offending people of other faiths, but because poor people who can't afford decorations might feel bad) and mentions Greggs not having decorations for health and safety reasons and a museum not allowing cotton wool snow to be stuck on the wall so as not to damage paintwork.

There's not much to say about this other than to point out that the paper don't have a single example of a company banning Christmas decorations so as not to offend people of other faiths. Even though they offer cash to people who own up, and there ought to be thousands of companies who have done just that. Just one wouldn't prove there are thousands, but it would be a start.

Beyond that, the Sun asserts that the reasons behind the Job Centre ban is so that poor people are not 'offended', which is a stretch of the meaning of the word to try to crowbar in at least a bit of the confected reasoning.

Bartlett's Bizarre Bazaar has more about a columnist from a supposedly quality paper picking up on the Sun's earlier article and pretty much reproducing it. Surely, the Independent should be rebutting this rubbish, not regurgitating it.

*UPDATE* Thanks to Andrew Bartlett of the Bizarre Bazaar - there's a cracking story about the War on Christmas in the Guardian today, in which Oliver Burkeman demonstrates why he's a proper journalist and I'm just some bloke with a blog. My favourite quote - don't read it if you don't want to spoil the ending - says:

He [guy from the Christan Muslim Forum] goes on: "You know, we were in Birmingham for a meeting the other day, and there's a big Merry Christmas banner in the middle of New Street." So is anybody at all trying to abolish Christmas this year? "I haven't come across any examples of anyone doing it this year," he replies. "No".

Class.

Christmas ARSEPAPER UPDATE!

That's got to be one of my best headlines yet.

Anyway, I've received a copy of the Peninsula study mentioned in the Sun I talked about in 'Super soaraway Christmas ARSEPAPER!' - or at least, a copy of the press release that talks about it. Hurrah!

There's not a lot of information in it beyond the figures. I emailed to ask whether I could see the study that was sent to companies, and whether the 74% were of the total companies approached, or just the ones who said they'd banned Christmas decorations.

Apparently, the questions were asked in person and on the phone (which I think means there won't be a written version) and the questions as they appear on the press release are in the exact form they were asked. I have a couple of problems with this, but more on that later.

The 74% is of the total number of companies approached, and not a proportion of those who answered by saying they had banned Christmas decorations. So that clears that up. There are still problems with this figure though.

My problem with the question being asked in the exact form as they're written is partly because of the intro to the study, which says:

In a survey of over 2375 employers polled by Peninsula BusinessWise, the Employment Law Consultancy: 74% of employers said that they were banning Christmas decorations because of the repercussions it could have on their business, an increase of 3% on 2005: In comparison to an identical survey carried out by Peninsula in 2005 which polled 2138 employers. [Emphasis mine].

The question as it appears in the press release is:

Do you admit to banning Christmas decorations because you are worried about offending other faiths?

Nothing there about repurcussions on the companies' business. So where does the bit in the intro come from? The figures are exactly the same, so there was either a separate question that returned back the exact number as the question about offending people in both years, the sentence in the intro is an inference taken from the actual question or there is some kind of preamble not quoted on the press release.

In any case, we could quite easily be talking here about sompanies not having decorations because they're afraid they'll lose business. Not because they might face legal action.

Think for a minute about the Lancet study on excess deaths in Iraq since the start of the 2003 war. Whether you support it or not, you can see that the questions asked were about numbers, things that are quantifiable. It isn't easy to ask a question about the number of dead people in such a way as to get a different number from your interviewee. Someone's dead or they're not. The Lancet study apparently got death certificates for over 90% of the people mentioned. But it is possible to lead into a question about someone's reasons for doing something with different information - like something concerning Christmas decorations' effect on business before asking about offending other faiths. Of course, this might not have happened at all - but it adds a bit of doubt to either the outcome of the answer or the claim in the intro about the effect on business.

Beyond this, there are other problems with this question. It is not clear that respondents are being asked specifically about this year, and the question could be referring to a ban on one type of decoration or another rather than all decorations. So people could have answered yes to that question because they banned a nativity scene in 1987. Not because they've totally banned all Christmas decorations this year.

There are other questions included in the press release that also create problems with the first one. They are:

Do you believe that Christmas decorations make the workplace look unprofessional?

To which 47% said yes, and:

Do you believe that Christmas decorations have a negative impact on productivity?

To which 41% said yes. So things are a little less simple than they at first appear. Most obviously, this is because a large chunk of the 74% - up to over half of them - also thought Christmas decorations look unprofessional and have a negative impact on productivity. It isn't a cut and dried, 'I was afraid of offending other faiths so I banned them.'

Now, role play time. Imagine you are a company director who thinks Christmas decorations look unprofessional and make your employees lazy and negatively affect the amount of money they're making for you, what with all that being cheery. Do you:

A) Ban them, and say honestly why - thus making yourself look like a latter day Scrooge?

B) Ban them, and say it's because you don't want to offend people of other faiths, thus making yourself look like a victim and another group of people look like the Scrooges?

Even if you answered A, there are a lot of bosses here whose decision was a far more complex one than the article - and the press release - implies. Funny how these questions got left out of the Sun's coverage.

There are more problems with the survey itself:

• We don't know how random the sample is. These could all be companies located in areas with a high number of ethnic minority residents. That doesn't necessarily excuse the bosses or mean that they're right, but it would make them more likely to worry about other faiths.

• We don't know what kinds of businesses they are. In the story, the picture of the Sun office included in the report, and the references to employment law (not to mention the fact that this study has been done by an employment law consultancy) give the impression that it's employees who bosses fear might be offended. But as the intro mentions repurcussions on business, it seems that some of these companies are worried about offending customers. This would be especially true if they're located in an area where they might expect a large number of their customers to be from other faiths. Again, it doesn't excuse the bosses or make them right.

• We don't know how many of the companies are clients of Peninsula. A company that approaches an employment law consultancy for advice on what to do about Christmas decorations are far more likely to have banned Christmas decorations at some point because they thought they'd get in trouble than some random company.

There is one other question in this study - and I've saved it till last because I have a massive, massive problem with it. It says:

Are you aware of your legal requirements to celebrate all faiths?

Which gives the impression that employers have legal requirements to celebrate all faiths. They don't. Via the national Secular Society website's coverage of this issue, 'Claims That Christmas Has Been Banned by Employers are Exaggerated and Misleading', I see that Acas says:

ACAS guidance on the Employment Regulations says on religious observance in the workplace: “4.1 The Regulations do not say that employers must provide time and facilities for religious or belief observance in the workplace.”

The full Acas report on religion is here.

I only just discovered this detail after typing all the above, but just think about that. This definitely indicates that this study should be treated with extreme caution. It's like I said in 'Christmas ARSEPAPER!' Are we really to expect that an employment law consultancy doesn't have a vested interest in making the danger of legal action seem imminent and high enough for a company to need - an employment law consultancy? Especially when they ask as part of their survey whether employers are aware of their requirements to celebrate other faiths - when in fact they have none, or at least very few.

Unsurprisingly, I have a problem with the rest of the blurb in the release. It says:

The workplace is now the latest in an increasing number of places affected by the wave of political correctness being imposed on festive traditions. This comes after a number of local councils across the UK banned Christmas decorations and traditional festive activities in shopping centres, streets and public areas.

Name one. The best the Daily Mail could come up with was one that changed the name once in 1998 and don't do it anymore, and one who tried to change the name of Christmas decorations, but actually didn't. Five years ago. So name one of the 'number of councils'.

It also says:

Bosses are now taking similar action to ease fears of offending other faiths and excluding minorities. Some employers even believe that such festivities have a negative impact on the productivity of their staff.

The second is unconnected from the first - and the first could easily be a cover for bosses who really believe the second.

And:

Employee’s are bemoaning their lack of representation of their own faiths and believe that they are being excluded in the workplace by Christmas festivities. Therefore to avoid any difficulties and possible litigation many employers have banned Christmas decorations such as Christmas tree’s and tinsel from the workplace.

Never mind the dodgy apostrophes - where are these employees bemoaning their lack of representation? And name some employers who really have banned Christmas trees or tinsel so as not to offend other faiths. And please show where it says that this is necessary.

Next:

Every employee has the right to celebrate their faith’s festival in the workplace if they desire to, and if an employer is unaware or refuses to acknowledge this, they may well be liable to litigation.

That Acas quote again:

The Regulations do not say that employers must provide time and facilities for religious or belief observance in the workplace.

And Acas also says:

Many religions or beliefs have special festival or spiritual observance days. A worker may request holiday in order to celebrate festivals or attend ceremonies. An employer should sympathetically consider such a request where it is reasonable and practical for the employee to be away from work, and they have sufficient holiday entitlement in hand.

Note the reasonable and practical.

And just think for a second. If bosses have a requirement to celebrate their employees' religious festival in the workplace, aren't employers breaking the law by banning Christmas celebrations? Clearly not. So this sentence seems just a little overstated doesn't it?

If they can outright say something like this, can we really trust the rest of the study?

Next:

Christmas trees and decorations may well be a thing of the past in many workplaces this Christmas as political correctness culture has spread to the workplace. Although employers who are enforcing the ban are sceptical and dismayed by this trend, they feel that they have little choice in the matter due to the threat of litigation; as they have to protect themselves, their reputation and their livelihood.

I'm saying it again, fuck it. If employers have a legal requirement to celebrate their employees' religious festivals, then they're breaking the law by banning Christmas decorations. But as Acas said, "The Regulations do not say that employers must provide time and facilities for religious or belief observance in the workplace."

Finally, the important thing to remember is that even if 74% of employers have banned all Christmas decorations this year because of offending other faiths, then they're being bloody stupid! There's a massive Christmas tree outside the Houses of Parliament! I've been in Parliament at Christmas, there are decorations all over the shop! If it was illegal to display Christmas trees and decorations, Parliament would know about it, you fucking oafs! They actually, you know, write the law.

As opposed to consult about it. For a fee. To companies who might be worried about being sued because they've read a shocking study that suggests they might. That you produced in the first place.

Nice.

Is this real? This can't be real. No, seriously. It can't

I just picked this up in the Mailwatch forum, but this can't be real. It must be a wind up.

The Mail reports on David Cameron courting the Asian vote by having a curry in 'Cameron courts 'diversity' vote with curry', and one reaction is not, 'What a patronising tosser', but:

I completely agree with Mandy, from what I have seen of Cameron, I will not be voting Conservative (as I have done all my life), but BNP.

- Sue W, U.K.

It's the thid time I've said it in two posts, but what the fuck?! This post is a reaction to:

How about this for an idea David.... Lets stop all the time & effort celebrating diversity & minority cultures until we get the norm for the majority sorted out. He's another Blair like disaster waiting to happen. Is there any alternative to the BNP these days for middle Englanders who are fed up with being ignored?

- Mandy, Sheffield, UK

I'm seriously surprised that even a Daily Mail reader can react to the Conservative leader having a fucking curry by saying they'll vote BNP. It's like the worst sort of caricature you could ever imagine. What the fuck?! Try to get your head around that.

Seriously. This can't be real! Nobody is that reactionary. Nobody.

Fucking hell.

Super soaraway CHRISTMAS ARSEPAPER!

I wondered how long it would be before the Sun chipped into the 'Save Our Christmas' bollocks. They have today with their moronic 'Kick 'em in the baubles' campaign, with the story on their website headlined 'Tree's a silent nightmare'. This one's an echo of their summer campaign to get people to rebel by being exactly the fucking same as everyone else I talked about in 'Super soaraway ARSEPAPER!' (catchy headline, huh).

Its opening three paragraphs/sentences are a sight to behold:

THIS is an explicit picture of a decorated Christmas tree — branded shocking, dangerous and offensive by PC killjoys.

The Sun prints it without fear and without shame.

Our bold decision to publish and be damned flies in the face of the snowballing attempts to strip Christmas of all its meaning — and its fun.

What the fuck?! Seriously - what the fuck?! 'Without fear and without shame', something that's in pretty much every house and loads of major public spaces. They really do think their readers are stupid don't they? How can you be flying in the face of anoyone to show a picture of a Christmas tree? There's a massive one in Trafalgar Square, and one outside the Houses of Parliament.

It carries on:

A survey of 2,300 employers revealed yesterday showed an astonishing 74 PER CENT have banned office decorations for fear of upsetting followers of minority faiths.

You know what? I'm calling bullshit. I think this stat complete rubbish. At the very least it'll be an exaggeration of things like not putting trees next to fire exits or prohibiting certain kinds of decoration. There is no way, no how that 74 per cent of 2,300 employers have completely banned office decorations so as not to offend minority faiths. The study is apparently from a law firm called Peninsula BusinessWise - but the Peninsula BusinessWise site doesn't mention it. I smell something very dodgy indeed.

Remember from 'The Sun gets the TB-jeebies' how the Sun treated the AIDS stats? They claimed over 70% of all new cases were from people born outside the UK, but the over 70% were only of the people who specified their country of origin, and the real figure we could actually say for certain were born overseas was closer to 40%? I strongly suspect that's the case here. The figure gives the impression that 74% of 2,300 companies have banned Christmas decorations because of fear of offending minority faiths, but that's probably only 74% of those companies that have banned decorations - which might only amount to three or four. The beauty of the AIDS story is that it was possible to see the real figures to check. You can't here. I've emailed Peninsula to ask for a copy of their research results, but I won't be holding my breath. Still, just ask yourself - have three quarters of companies banned Christmas decorations? At all? *UPDATE* See 'Christmas ARSEPAPER UPDATE!' for an update. (There. I think I've got the idea that there's an update across).

The MD of Peninsula is quoted later, saying:

Spokesman Peter Done said: “Christmas trees and decorations may well be a thing of the past in workplaces as the political correctness culture spreads. Employers feel they have little choice due to a threat of litigation.”

Threat of litigation does not equal offending other faiths. And why might bosses be afraid of being sued? It couldn't possibly have anything to do with tabloids exaggerating threats and pretending Acas have said things they haven't said at all, could it? Perish the thought.

And a company that:

[Wants] to support your business growth by allowing you to focus on your business priorities, whilst we take the worry out of employment, tax, health and safety issues and legislation.

[And] will ensure that you have up to date contracts of employment, and policies to support them (we’ll even write them for you !). You will have access to a 24 Hour Advice Service, plus indemnity, to guide you through these difficult moments when documentation does not help.

Couldn't possibly have a vested interest in making companies think the threat of litigation is an imminent and complex thing which needs consultation by companies just like itself at all, could it?

Anyway, between those things from Peninsula are a bunch of distorted stories. Hurrah! They begin:

A COURT banned a millionaire from putting up his annual charity light display outside his home.

This gets mentioned in more detail later, but notice how it's left here with no further explanation to give the impression that he's been restricted because of offending minority faiths. Honest, eh?

Next:

A SANTA was prevented from touring a town because his sleigh does not have a seatbelt.

There's also more about this later, but at least the paper mentions the seatbelt so we know it isn't about offending anyone.

Next:

VILLAGERS planning a festive party were told by council chiefs it would be cancelled unless they carried out a “risk assessment” on mince pies made by the Women’s Institute, and

This seems to be referring to this story, which is about assessing the mince pies' nut content. So it has absolutely fuck all to do with minority faiths.

Next:

TRADERS hoping to bring Christmas shoppers into a city centre on a festive train were told it would be banned until councillors could talk about it — in January.

There's also a bit more about this later, but there's sod all to do with offending other faiths here either.

After this and the quote from the BusinessWise guy, there are a couple of quotes that bolster the impression that these are all about offending people. We get:

Muslim Labour MP Shahid Malik said: “Many fellow Muslims will be horrified the liberal PC brigade want Christmas cancelled to avoid offending us. We actually relish this time of year.”

and:

Tory MP Philip Davies, a member of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, said: “I’m tired of white, middle-class do-gooders ruling things are offensive when they aren’t.”

Although these quotes give the impression that the things mentioned above were stopped because they offended other faiths, none of them were. We find that out later.

Next though, we have:

The Sun has told in the past of jobsworths axing nativity scenes for fear of causing offence — and staff banned from hanging baubles in case they injured themselves.

And they were probably a lot of old cobblers too. But this is another assertion that things are banned so as not to offend anyone. So we have an article that opens with the assertion that three quarters of companies are not having Christmas decorations because of offending other faiths, a bunch of examples of Christmas stuff being banned, and then a couple more assertions about things being banned to avoid offending other faiths.

It's only then that we get the real stories behind the paper's earlier examples.

First, we get the detail about the millionnaire, and find out that:

Yesterday it emerged that flamboyant millionaire Vic Moszczynski has been prevented from putting up his usual 22,000-light outdoor display in Sonning-on-Thames, Berks. Some locals reckon it attracts too much traffic. And a county court injunction served two months ago restricts him to just 300 bulbs.

Bear in mind that the paper's 'some residents reckon' stuff is the paper deliberately downplaying something reported by the BBC as:

Wokingham District Council said it was forced to take action, due to "a substantial rise in crime and anti-social behaviour as well as disruption, annoyance and harassment to the surrounding community".

It put the total cost of police and warden patrols in the area over the Christmas period at £7,455.

Patrols are stepped up due to the hundreds of visitors who turn up.

Beside all that, putting up 22,000 lights is not the same as putting up a Christmas tree. And the reasons for it being stopped aren't to do with offending other faiths.

More information about the Santa's sleigh follows:

The touring Santa was grounded in Leighton Buzzard, Beds. Round Table fund-raisers have towed him around in a float for 45 years. But now they have been told it cannot be insured because it breaks health and safety rules. It has no seatbelt and no protective barrier to stop Santa falling off.

So, it's not a sleigh, it's something on a float. And it hasn't been banned. All these people have to do is put in a seatbelt or a barrier. Again, nothing to do with offending other faiths.

This is then followed by the bit about the mince pies and the Christmas train. Neither of which have anything to do with offending other faiths. Of their four examples of employers banning Christmas decorations, only one is actually to do with decorations, and they weren't banned but toned down. Not one concerns an employer banning decorations.

It's a pretty dishonest tactic to frame an entire article around things being banned because of offending other faiths and including examples without informing readers that these things have nothing to do with offending other faiths until the end, where few readers ever reach. Quotes from people reacting to something the paper tells them are often used to bolster the claims of an article when they do nothing of the sort. All the Shahid Malik quote shows is his rection to being told by the Sun that companies were banning Christmas stuff so as not to offend people - rather than a genuine reaction to anything that has actually happened. The other quote is from someone who happens to be a member of a pressure group and already pre-biased. But both together help reinforce the reader's impression that this is all to do with offending other faiths, when the only specific examples it mentions are not.

It's interesting that the Sun couldn't find a single specific example of anyone anywhere having Christmas trees banned. The entire premise and moronic front page splash is completely confected to give the paper's dim readers something to froth about. Again, the whole thing is set up in a jokey, fun, let's-all-join-in atmosphere with its opening funnies about explicit pictures of Christmas trees and headlineds about kicking baubles so that if anyone says, 'hang on, this is all bollocks!' they're instantly marked as a killjoy. The sad thing is there are probably really a lot of complete goons who'll think they're being all edgy and rebellious by putting up a Christmas tree at Christmas. Twats.

*UPDATE* There's a link on the front page of the site today (7 December) that says 'Are Christmas decorations offensive?' linking to their discussion board. They haven't been able to produce a single example yet of anyone banning Christmas decorations because they're offensive. If the Peninsula report they quote is right and they're reporting it correctly, there should be over a thousand employers they could use, but we haven't seen a single one. I haven't had a reply from Peninsula yet either. Funny that.

Comparing reactionary articles can be fun!

Two articles about an identical issue show how the Mail and the Express take different approaches to things, and how the Express has become even more red-faced and rectionary. You don't even have to read past the headlines to find that out - the Mail's headline is 'Migrants to be quizzed on benefits but not British history' but the Express's is the beautifully subtle 'Migrants taught how to scrounge'.

The first point, one that is suggested by both headlines, is that the tabloids now seem to have dropped their demonising of asylum seekers. This would normally be a good thing, but it looks as though they're replacing them with immigrants in general, and using the term 'migrant' as a catch-all pejorative phrase. The funny thing is - I think the tabloids started targeting asylum seekers in the 90s so they could claim not to be racist. They could claim to be critiscising people for what they do, rather than who they are. I'm pretty sure attacking immigrants wholesale would have had them branded racist, which is why they went the whole 'bogus asylum seeker' route in the first place. But the political climate seems to have shifted so far to the right that it passes without comment when immigrants, or 'migrants', to use the new pejorative label, are attacked wholesale as a group.

The Mail's article is the less frothing of the two. As is obvious from the headline, the paper is critical of the fact that people are being taught about their rights and entitlements and not some Whig interpretation of history. There's a quote from David Davis the paper uses in the classic Mail technique of ignoring its own actions:

'What ought to be taught to settlers is Britain's noble traditions of democracy, freedom of speech and tolerance. This is at least as important as how to deal with Government organisations.'

Anyone arriving on these shores and being taught about freedom of speech and tolerance would only have to open one of our many tabloids before busting a gut with laughter. In fact, they wouldn't have to go that far if they looked at one of the Express's infamous 'BAN IT!' headlines. Imagine being told how amazingly tolerant we are, and how much we value free speech and then reading yesterday's Sun story objecting to the lyrics of one song being changed in a Christmas concert. Imagine arriving from the West Indies and sending your kids to the school in the story, with other parents threatening to boycott the Christmas celebrations because one song was to be changed to something influenced by your culture. Imagine reading this article, which seems to be arguing for the suppression of information about your own rights. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd end up being sceptical of everything I was told from that point forward.

The thing that readers of this story might miss is that the citizenship test has been extended to people who aren't even after British citizenship. The test is actually including more stuff and applying to more people, but never mind that. It is included in the article, but in the middle of outrage about something else.

But the paper's main point is that the history section is left out of the test while stuff about people's actual rights are being iincorporated, and dammit, that's just not on. It quotes this:

Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'These tests should place greater emphasis on our proud history and great achievements. We want settlers to work and to integrate into our community, not to claim benefits at the expense of taxpayers.'

There's an assumption in all this that people who know when the Normans invaded and when the Magna Carta was signed will be less likely to claim state benefits. Which is just weird. 'You know what? I was going to not bother getting a job and scrounse of your generous benefits system instead - but then I had to answer some questions about Mary Queen of Scots and now I've changed my mind'. And do you think his 'proud history' includes the invention of concentration camps and massacring poorly armed natives to nick their land and their stuff? I think perhaps not.

What this article entirely fails to do is point out how much benefit, if any, most new immigrants can expect to receive. In leaving this important information out, readers can be given the impression that these people qualify for a whole raft of new stuff. Houses, swimming pools, gold-plated BMWs, the lot. But as the Ministry of Truth pointed out a few weeks ago, this is far from the case.

Another thing the paper neglects to mention is that by including a section about what benefits people settling in the UK are entitled to, there will be less time taken up by people attempting to claim things they're not entitled to. So it's a bit more important than knowing a few dates.

There's also an assumption implicit in this article that if people wanting to settle in the UK are told about what benefits they can receive, they'll be straight on them and not bother getting a job. That's a bit patronising to say the least.

The Express article surpasses the Mail's indignation with rage, and has less emphasis on the history angle. Of course, it starts with the headline - which is today's front page headline - but it kicks off the first paragraph with:

MIGRANTS hoping to settle in the UK are to be taught how to rake in state hand-outs.

Check out the language on that! 'Rake in state handouts'. They'll be living like kings while we slave away providing their gold-plated BMWs, diamond-tipped canes and Cuban cigars rolled in the thighs of virgins.

It continues:

They will be shown how to claim benefits, demand equal rights, make full use of the NHS and get parental leave.

I demand that this be stopped right now! How dare they be told how to use the NHS. They should battle through illness or die so we don't have to pay a penny. How dare they 'demand' equal rights with the rest of us. The cheek of it! They're different and foreign and should know their place.

There's a fantastic bit of nonsense that follows:

Yet ministers have again ruled out any requirement that newcomers learn about Britain’s history.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “If the Government was serious about tackling our burgeoning welfare bill, then it wouldn’t be doing so much to flag up at every opportunity the benefits that immigrants are entitled to.

A few poinst about this:

The effortless lead in from ministers ruling out the history test to Matthew Elliott gives the impression that Elliott is a Minister, or Shadow-Minister or at least something attached to government. As I was leading into the quote, I almost typed that he was a tory MP before rereading it and spotting that he's some bloke from a special interest lobby group, and the same one quoted in the Mail.

The assumption is also here that the second newcomers to the UK know about benefits, they'll chuck any idea they might have had of working and lord it over all of us on Income Support.

It seems as though he's advocating keeping entitlement to benefits secret in order to avoid this. Think of how insulting that is to immigrants. 'Keep the benefits secret or they'll never bother to get a job. And don't tell them about the NHS so they battle through illness or just die so we don't have to pay'. Okay, the paper was indignant about immigrants being told about the NHS and not this guy, but still. That's how nasty this article is.

The article then quotes those fine, upstanding bastions of tolerance, MigrationWatch:

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, added: “It is far more important that people should be aware of the history of the country than get access to the welfare state.”

It's worth pointing out that MigrationWatch are just a couple of old blokes. Not some big, respectable think tank, but two guys who don't like immigration. Why does any paper even bother to listen to them? Yeah, okay - that was a rhetorical question.

Anyway, that's so boneheaded. More important to know the history of the country my arse. Tell that to the bloke whose finger is half hanging off as he tries to enter Casualty.

The rest is all a bit blah, but we do find out that the questions inivolve more than just how to receive benefits, including:

The chapters even give practical advice on buying a house, using solicitors, utility companies, money, education and transport – and pubs.

So there's far more on life in the UK that people will be tested on. You'd think the papers would rather immigrants knew what society is like now rather than hundreds of years ago - but maybe they want to be able to spot immigrants by their ruffs, tights and snuff habit.

Of course, an article like this in the Express can't pass without having a dig at Eastern Eurpoeans:

However, thousands of people are failing to take English language lessons because courses are being clogged up by Eastern Europeans.

Damn those Eastern Europeans! Come over here, burden our system with interpreters in schools because they don't bother to learn English and then clog up English classes by learning English. Er. . .hang on.

The article ends with this fine piece of objective questioning:

*Do you think we are teaching migrants to scrounge? Comment NOW at Have Your Say.

The whole article is about teaching migrants to scrounge. The fucking headline is 'Migrants taught how to scrounge'. What are the readers supposed to end up thinking?

The final point I want to make is that both articles make something of the fact that people who fail these tests are allowed to retake. This suggests that both papers are actually less bothered about immigrants learning about the UK before entering than weeding people out and rejecting them. Not really demonstrating that fair play and tolerance much, eh?