Tabloid bullshit of the month award - April 2011

It's here! A stay in the country this weekend with no internet connection at all (unless I stood in the garden with my phone down by my ankles) delayed it, but it's time for the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for April 2011. Hurrah!

It's an odd one this month. I decided to avoid all coverage of the royal bloody wedding wherever possible, and the thought of looking at the yes/no to AV stuff fills me with the kind of existential despair I haven't felt since trying to read the Sun for a week. So I went with what I know.

In the end, there is a tie this month. It was so difficult to choose between two potential winners, who were so completely wrapped up with one another that they both have to get it.

Did immigrant crime really double in just THREE years?

'Never trust the Mail on crime and immigration' I said last Tuesday in response to the Mail's 'Migrant crime wave revealed: Foreign arrests have almost doubled in just THREE years' from the Mail, which was subsequently churnalised by the Telegraph and Express.

And now, thanks to hmallett in a comment on that very post, I have a bunch of links to some of the sources, which means I don't have to make a bunch of FoI requests and wait weeks for the results to find out how much shite the Mail is trying to peddle. Hurrah!

Never trust the Mail on crime and immigration

Some things just don't inspire trust.  An email promising to deposit a million dollars into your account, a designer handbag for a fiver at the market with the glue still drying on the logo, an article about immigrant crime in the Daily Mail.

These stories are usually a bit like foreign worker scare stories.  They're about as reliably accurate as a pissed-up gibbon throwing darts at a board sellotaped to a bucking bronco's arse, but they'll do for something scary.  I've explained why a few times over the years.

The government won't cut enough foreign students for the Daily Mail.

Learn from the Woolas

One thing that was so annoying about scaremongering lying liar Phil Woolas being Immigration Minister was his courting of the right wing press while failing to grasp its narrative on immigration.

Here's what it is - 'waah! There are too many of them! The government is too soft! New proposal? Foreigners might still get in. Waah! (We'renotracistokaythanksbye)'.

Barnet Council haven't banned you from telling mother in law jokes

Something that never fails to amuse me in a good 'PC Gone Mad' story is the idea that if an organisation produces guidelines for their staff, they've banned everyone from doing the thing the guidelines advise against.

'Sense of humour failure: Council slaps ban on mother-in-law jokes for being 'offensively sexist'' said the Mail earlier today, while the Telegraph went with 'Council outlaws mother-in-law jokes' and the Star bellowed 'MOTHER-IN-LAW JOKES: BARNET COUNCIL IMPOSES BAN'. All cobblers, of course. Barnet Council themselves said:

"Barnet council does not have a policy on mother-in-law jokes.

"There is no booklet and no ban on mother-in-law jokes.

"Our advice to staff is that they should be polite and avoid giving offence to any member of the public."

Immigration scare tactics. Get Bruce Willis!

When the big hand hits 12...well...I dunno

The 'England is the most overcrowded country in the EU' meme that I looked at in my last couple of posts is just one of many that make up one of the anti-immigration lobby's (MPs, tabloids, MigrationWatch) wider narratives.

Immigration is unusually high in the UK compared to similar countries, we're supposed to believe, and we're about to reach breaking point. We're full up! Something must be done before our population hits 70 million, dammit!

A Liddle bit more digging

After digging and digging himself further into a hole earlier in the year, Rod Liddle has returned to the subject of his quickly blarted out racist blog post about black people and violent crime, claiming to have been vindicated by the Telegraph. Hurrah for him! Vindication!

Or is it?

How left wing papers help push people away from left wing politics

Imagine a new health and safety gone mad story started doing the rounds, but it was pretty obvious that the right wing papers were farting about to make things look more crazy than they were. Yeah, I know - you don't have to imagine it - but if there was a new one, how would you imagine the apparently left wing papers would handle it? The Guardian, after all, is responsible for publishing the excellent 'Conkers, goggles, 'elf 'n' safety? You really could make it up' in response to David Cameron blarting out a speech based on some of this cobblers.

Undesirable associations

"Wuuurgh!  Coodern mayk idd app!" Littlejohn shouts, grinning, rocking back and forward in his seat and punching the air.  He's got another column to write but he's desperate to make today's trip to iHOP - until now he hadn't been able to think of anything to write.

Just as he thought it was time to raid the archive again he's come across news of a specialist police association getting a big grant from government for obvious supernatural cobblers.  The perfect thing to go with the others - and this time he's got actual evidence of taxpayer's money actually being spent rather than a vague worry that it might at some point in the future.  "Don't panic!"

When policy is based on made up nonsense

My favourite type of tabloid appeasing fake announcements of policy intent are the ones based on moral-panic reporting by lame news outlets that turns out to be wrong in the first place.  Those ones are really pointless and waste everyone's time.

Winterval: The beast that wouldn't die!

Winterval.  It's probably one of the most famous PC Gone Mad myths there is.  Just like every teacher told the story of someone at their last school who leant on the back legs of their chair and broke their back to scare us into sitting properly, the papers have used Winterval alongside classics like Baa Baa Green Sheep to scare us into not thinking about things like inclusiveness or bothering to be polite to people if they're not white, male, British, straight or able-bodied for over a decade.

Still not banning Christmas

 A couple more, "they're banning Christmas," style stories from the Mail.  I've been prevented from looking at these by catching the dreaded swine flu, so you get two for the price of one in this post.  Lucky old you.

'Pull the other one! Christmas cracker gags to keep the PC brigade happy' is a story that has been picked up by the Express, Telegraph and Sun.  According to the Mail, this is what happened:

Political Correctness is MARXISM and was started to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY as we know it

Since I was less than impressed with my sojourn into the pages of the Telegraph and feeling even less sure about what Political Correctness Gone Mad actually is, I thought I'd head over to the Campaign Against Political Correctness to find out.  They get mentions in the press, they have a representative in Parliament who is also the go to guy for quotations in fatuous tabloid stories and they got a founder member elected as Mayor of Doncaster, so they must be able to help.

Potlitical Correctness is STALINISM and should be REPEALED by patriots and democrats

Since looking at tabloids can rot your brain, I thought I'd enlighten myself with some refined and incisive commentary, so I headed over to the Telegraph for something that doesn't just pretend to be posh. Maybe I'd find some intelligent, decent arguments about Political Correctness to challenge myself with.

Big mistake. I came across 'We must outlaw Political Correctness as ruthlessly as it has trampled on our liberties' by Graham Gerald Warner instead. Apparently:

The relentless onward march of Political Correctness is fast turning us into a Stalinist society.

From the 'political correctness is anything we don't like' files...

Watford Council has banned parents from playgrounds in case they're paedophiles! Wuurgh! Perlidigol-Creckniss-Gawn-Mayyd, yoo-coodern-mayyk-id-upp!*

See, 'Parents banned from watching their children in playgrounds... in case they are paedophiles' (check the comments), 'Council bans parents from play areas'. To be fair, Smellyface's inevitable coverage doesn't make any PC claims for once, but more on that in a bit.

Barnbrook suspended from Barking & Dagenham Council, made to go on ethics training

Richard Barnbrook has finally been suspended for a month from Barking & Dagenham Council for lying about the number of knife murders in his area. Tory Troll has more, including the full set of sanctions, which mention ethincs training. Ethics and someone from the BNP? Can you say 'cognitive dissonance'? Barnbrook probably can, but only with great diffculty.

The tabloids and right wing extremism

Just who are these blackshirted fellows?
The relationship between tabloid reporting and the increase in the BNP's popularity is an interesting one to look at.

When is an immigrant not an immigrant?

Yesterday, Anton Vowl linked to a columnists take on the 'immigrant baby boom' figures in the Telegraph's 'Britain needs a middle-class baby boom'. The veil over the racism was so tattered and threadbare as to be completely transparent.

Quick prediction

Hello people. Light posting at the moment - wouldn't you know it, just after taking a break real life gets so heavy that everything else is a minor distraction, but I'd like to do four things.

The most violent country in Europe?

Bus stop outside Lidl in Penge High Street yesterday
"I'd like to think this [printing misleading headlines that bear no relation to the truth of a story] doesn't happen in the Mail - I'm not going to hold my hand on my heart and say it doesn't. It does happen in some areas of the media."
Paul Dacre, 2009