The Express is 'a threat to Britain'

Okay, so on a day where I claim to be busy, you have two posts from me - but this one's dead quick so it doesn't count.

Haven't really been dipping into the wasteland that is the Daily Express 'Have Your Say' section for a while. I have over the last couple of days, and handily, the paper's keeping us up to speed on what its readers think about immigration with 'Should failed asylum seekers be kicked out?', 'Should immigrants speak English?' and 'Will migration cause riots in Britain?'. Bet there'll be some surprises in those discussions and no mistake.

Anyway - here's how 'Have Your Say' pieces work. Start with a question like one of the above to give the appearance of soliciting an answer in an unbiased manner, follow with a completely skewed account of what is happening so as to make a complete mockery of the idea that the whole thing isn't biased, and sit back and watch as readers fall over themselves to spout some of the most vile stuff you'll ever read in a national newspaper. Of course, sometimes you get one or two people disagreeing - but they're always drowned out by the hatred.

It seems the pretence of a lack of bias has slipped in one recent piece. 'Muslim schools 'are a threat to Britain'', it says, giving readers the opportunity to weigh both sides of the argument in a considered manner before braying like Sand People.

Annoyingly, I don't much like the idea of faith schools. But I don't think they're a threat to Britain, and I hate the idea that not liking them puts me in the same camp as people who can argue:

This is (Great) Britain and as such it is English. So it should be left English.

or:

I never gave ‘racism’ much thought, I have lived in all sorts of communities, here and abroad, this included Muslims communities. And to be honest I am become a racist.

Gah!

**UPDATE - 31JULY** And it's gone. Follow the link above and you'll get a blank page. The Express quietly removes things that get complained about - so somebody probably said something.

More Littlejohn - because I'm lazy and it's easy

Real life is very busy at the moment, so a short one. Following on from 'Money for old rope', we have a new column from Littlejohn, in which he hilariously pretends that David Cameron might have pretended to be black when he spoke to Barack Obama:

It's cool, Baz. My homies put out the word on the street and the skank who stole it [his bike] gave it back up. Teach him to mess with the Notting Hill Massive.

That's your comedy gold right there.

He also defends a senior policeman for calling a BMW 'black man's wheels', on the grounds that he heard a black man say it, so it can't be racist.

Anyhoo - the thing I wanted to mention was this:

Mother of the Free? Not any more she isn't

As well as the Last Night of the Proms in London, regional concert halls around the country stage their own version for those who for one reason or another can't make the Albert Hall.

Every year, Mail reader Rosalind Hilton and her sister attend just such a performance at Bridgewater Hall, in Manchester. Come the finale, everyone unfurls flags - Union, Saltire, Welsh dragon and several other nationalities - and waves them enthusiastically during Land Of Hope And Glory and Rule, Britannia!

Rosalind always takes along a red ensign to drape over the side. On Saturday, she turned up as usual only to discover that flags were now banned on - you guessed - elf 'n'safety grounds.

'It ruined the whole evening,' Rosalind tells me.

Who wants to get up and sing 'Britons never, never, never shall be slaves' when the elf'n'safety nazis are making a mockery of our freedom? Makes you proud to be British.

Here's a picture from the event he's talking about:
(Via Mancester Evening News, by way of the MailWatch forums)

I think there might be some details left out of Rosalind Hilton's account, don't you?

Lastly, he whinges about an inmate in Gitmo who came to the UK seeking asylum in 1994, and given indefinite leave to remain. In other words, his application for asylum was successful. Littlejohn decides not to tell us that last bit, only mentioning the guy wasn't granted citizenship. He does tell us that the guy had lived in Britain for a while and was a resident in Pakistan when he was arrested. He doesn't bother to tell us that he was resident in the UK for seven years, had been outside the UK for less than a year and had actually been in Pakistan for about six months when he was arrested. More about the actual case at the Guardian, where you'll get lots of other details Littlejohn neglects to tell us.

So, going from comedy black-person language (admittedly put in someone else's mouth - and at least he didn't use the word 'bwana', so well done him), through defending questionable racial remarks and accusing someone of not being British enough for not getting citizenship. Couple this with the article about how black people are responsible for knife crime, and I think we've some good evidence that the Mail's slipped through a timewarp and ended up in 1979. Gene Hunt has a lot to answer for.

**UPDATE** One of a few decent comments:

If flags were banned at the prom concert in Manchester on Saturday, what are those red white and blue things everybody is waving in the picture in the local evening paper? Who said you couldn't make it up? You did!

- Val Winters, Manchester, 29/7/2008 09:55

Money for old rope

It's been a while since I bothered to look at anything spat out by Richard Littlejohn. When I look at his picture, I don't have the urge to stuff my tongue behind my lower lip and go 'Urlurrr!' until my face goes red and it hurts a bit, so my mind is probably detoxed enough by now to have another look at whatever he's most recently dashed off in five minutes before leaving his gated mansion and stamping off to IHoP in his flip-flops.

Here's how a Littlejohn column usually goes. Start with a news story - preferably one that's been made up or distorted by the tabloids in the first place, take it to it's furthest extreme, and then use it to back up loads of other made up rubbish.

Yesterday's is a fantastic example. 'A postcard from killjoy Britain ...' Ah, killjoy Britain. The place where I have never had any fun, ever - because fun is banned. Seriously, my facial muscles wouldn't know how to smile.

It starts by mentioning the story about Worcester Council banning ice cream vans from playing their chimes for more than four seconds every three minutes. The bastards.

Then, in an absolute genius bit of spurious linking to something unrelated, he says, "OK, so Worcester isn't exactly everyone's first choice of a summer vacation destination. But just you wait until other councils cotton on." Which translates into real world English as, "I want to moan about the seaside being ruined by PC Gone Mad, but if I didn't use this story I wouldn't have an excuse, so I'm using it anyway. You won't even notice, you morons."

Anyone else notice the slip into the usage of 'vacation' there - because Littlejohn lives in America now. Won't be long before he starts trying to steal our women away with black market nylon and chewing gum.

Anyway - he goes on to take the ice cream van thing to its furthest extreme, with hilarious results. But I can't reproduce them here because we live in killjoy Britain where all fun is banned and I might get a fine from a lollipop lady or something for making you laugh. We're then told:

It's happening already. [And then chuntering on about ice cream vans for a bit before...] This is just another manifestation of Britain's killjoy culture. Government at every level works on the basis: find out what people enjoy doing and stop them.

Luckily, I've been lying about fun being banned by killjoys, just like Littlejohn. Most of what he goes on about exists only in the crazy Britain invented in his own head. In another stroke of luck, he goes into some greater detail about that Britain for us, so we can all see what it's like.

In his made up version of Britain:

Councils from Blackpool to Bournemouth are already busy banning donkey rides, on animal cruelty grounds [...]

Here's a screen dump from the real-Britain's Blackpool Council website:


Yes, those would be details of how to get a licence to run donkey rides, because they haven't been banned in real life.

Which takes us to the end of that sentence:

[...] and [banning] Punch and Judy shows, which they ludicrously claim glorify domestic violence.

Here's another section of the Blackpool Council website:


Yes, those would be details of a Punch and Judy show, described as 'guaranteed entertain both children and adults alike!' It's on tomorrow if you fancy it. It's guaranteed entertain after all.

It's impossible to show examples of how his following claims are made up cack, and that's because he doesn't tell us where any of the things he's ranting about are supposed to be happening, and they only mention people trying to have things banned or having deck chairs 'in their sights'. To ban, presumably. Like how donkey rides and Punch and Judy shows are banned in Blackpool.

In Littlejohn's Britain:

Thanks to the food hygiene mentalists, it's become almost impossible to eat fish and chips out of the paper any more.

Note the almost qualifier. Even in his fantasy land, he can't bring himself to pretend eating fish and chips out of the paper is banned, since rather a large percentage of people reading the column have probably just done that - or seen someone doing it, or might even be doing it as they read the column.

More toot-toot fantasy land stuff:

And, as I observed recently, the condiment communists are so hell-bent on preventing your arteries silting up that they're confiscating salt cellars with more than five holes.

Yes Richard. I'm sure they are.

Incidentally, here is a picture of my lunch:


Note the paper.

And here's a picture of the salt shaker I used just moments after taking the last pic:


Note the gazillion holes in the top.

I can't really be bothered with the rest. Suffice it to say that if there really were a bunch of PC killjoys at every level of government intent on banning everything they find offensive, Littlejohn could expect massive fines - if not prison - for printing things like:

There's something intrinsically funny about dwarfs.

Instead, he's the highest paid columnist in the land!

Or, rather the highest paid columnist not in this land, but another one far away where he never has to trouble himself with what's really going on in the real Britain. Good, frankly. If he ever got wind of what really went on here, he'd be back like a shot, gobbling up chips in the paper while busting the back of a donkey with his big arse before stumbling off to an ice cream van and cheering on Mr Punch as he bashes his wife with a stick.

The BNP, honesty and Mothers Against Knives

Oh, did you think we were from Mothers Against Knives? Whatever gave you that idea?

Back when there was a bit of a flap about Richard Barnbrook, of BNP infamy, getting a blog at the Telegraph, I said I'd be checking in for a regular comedy fix. I have remained true to my word, and the bumbling oaf regularly makes me laugh with his ridiculous proclamations about sticking it to the Assembly when what really happened was that he got told off for eating a banana or something. Well, I laugh until I remember who he is and who he represents, and then my smile dies on my lips, but up until then it's okay.

What his blog reveals, among other things, is the relationship with the truth we'd expect from the BNP. Whether he's making stupid claims that get removed when they're shown to be bullshit, pretending things didn't happen in a video by pointing viewers to the wrong point, or just clearly having a fantasy version of what has happened in meetings swimming around his head, the man is clearly not averse to pointing his readers away from the truth.

One example is the creation of 'Mothers Against Knives', a group that appears to sponsor a petition he circulates on his blog calling for undefined 'tough new measures' to bring about the end of knife crime.

Except it doesn't. There is a real group called 'Mothers Against Knives', which apparently wants nothing to do with the BNP and has asked that the party remove all references to it from its literature.

Now, this could be an honest mistake . The BNP may well have nobody who knows how to use Google to see if there's already a group with the name they want to use for their front organisation.

If this was the case, you'd expect the name of the group to be changed to something difficult to confuse with the existing one, the petition changed to reflect the new name and an apology published so that nobody confuses the two.

The actual reaction has been to quietly change the title of the blog post that introduces the petition (after it's dropped off the front page), leave the petition as it is and make no mention about the change either on the blog or in any of the blog's comments.

That new impossible to confuse blog title? 'Mothers Against Knives Steps Up A Gear' has become 'London's Mother's Against Knives Steps Up A Gear'. Score one for openness and honesty!

If the BNP had no idea they were piggybacking a genuine group and could well be confusing people into thinking there was some affiliation between the two when they set things up - they do now. Adding the word 'London' to the beginning of the blog post that introduces the petition does nothing to inform people who might be tempted to sign the form.

Of course, the party may be in the process of changing everything and in the next couple of days there'll be an apology and everything. But then again, maybe not eh?

**UPDATE**The petition on the blog has now had 'London's' bunged on the top in a different font. That's probably about as honest as we can expect.

Let's play a game

The Metroplolitan Police Authority has published new figures for homicide and violent crime, comparing 12 months up to June 2007 with 12 months up to June 2008. How long before the tabloids leap all over the figures and bellow front page headlines at us about them? Go on, guess.

Made your guess? Now read on.

Okay - now I can tell you that the figures show that knife crime has dropped in the capital by 14%, robbery is down by 24%, youth violence is down by 7% and homicide is down by 12%. Here they are in full if you don't believe me.

Want to change your guess?

Of course, we may see some coverage that either:

1. Pretends the figures say something they didn't. Probably by mixing the figures up with some unrelated ones from somewhere else to make it look as though they say knife crime has 'soared'. You know the sort of thing. 'Crime in London 'soars', say police' in the headline, stats revealing that someone not in the police says cake baking has risen by a few percent in the main body of the story, real stats tucked away at the bottom.

2. Bangs on about how you can't trust police statistics. Except when they tell you there are more black people involved in committing knife crime, and more white victims. Then you can even pretend 'unknown' victims means 'white', even though the one explanation for who those unknown people are says they're black. And it's alright to include that explanation even though it contradicts one of the main premises of your article, because it assumes the black victims are villains anyway.

3. Attacks lefties for ignoring the truth. Why are you ignoring the truth? Feral youths on the streets have knives that can freeze your spleen. Won't someone think of the children's spleens?

But we'll probably see nothing but tumbleweeds.

I got these stats from Mark Easton's marvellous blog at the BBC. The comments there include the most perfect distillation of the first sentence in no. 2. You can't trust police statistics because:

If you beleive other government figures accidents are down at speed camera sites.

That is why they are covering up the fact that a motocyclist was killed last week at a camera site because he braked and the numpty behind him in a car tail-ended him.

It is not an isolated case. Norfolk "safety camera partnership" and the bbc are covering up the footage that the BBC had clearly showing braking for speed cameras causing accidents.

I'll beleive crime is reducing when i see it. three people I know have had their motorcycles stolen this year that is up from one last year a 300% increase. My partners car was keyed this year thats up from no times last year.

Priceless. Accidents can't be down at speed camera sites because this fella knows of some accidents at some speed camera sites in Norfolk. Crime can't be down in London because he knows some people who had their motorbikes nicked and someone who had their car keyed last year (in Norfolk, by the looks of things).

Hat tip to Anton Vowl at the ever-cool Enemies of Reason for this one. Top spot, that.

74th best left of centre blog? Let's make it 75th!

Apparently, Iain Dale is in the process of getting together his list of the top political blogs in the country. Some other bloggers aren't playing for one reason or another.

I'm not playing either, but then I didn't play last year. I was only dimly aware of the whole thing until I found out I'd been rated the 74th best left of centre blog in the UK. No-one fucking tells me anything.

This year, I've checked things out and was horrified to find out I was listed as a Labour blog in the listings. I'm not one of those bloody Cylcons, so I got that fixed. (Mind you, the 'Faint Praise' link on the right would be funnier if it included something that categorised this place wrongly, so I should have left it alone).

Beyond that, I don't really give a monkey's raas about it. If you're voting, vote for me if you like. If you don't, don't - it's not my fault your mum's a slag.

And yes, this entire post was a set up for that last gag.

It's not an urban myth - some bloke told me

I bang on a lot about how newspaper reports often resemble urban myths, and sometimes even seem to create urban myths of their own. It's not often you get to see existing urban myths perpetuated by a gullible press, but it happens.

So, it's a turn up for the books to see the old favourite about peeing on the electrified rail turning up all over the press. Here it is on Channel 4 - 'Man died 'urinating on live rail''

The idea that peeing on an electrified railway line can kill you was pretty much debunked as a myth by Mythbusters. Apparently, wee doesn't come out in a constant stream, and breaks into droplets before it gets far enough to hit the rail. You'd have to virtually be laying on top of the thing before you got close enough.

"But it got onto Channel 4 News - the police confirmed it - it must be true. This must be the exception." That's what you might think. But check the actual wording of the ITN report on Channel 4 News:

British Transport Police confirmed the 41-year-old was electrocuted at Vauxhall station in south London last week.

He walked on to the track from Platform 1, a BTP spokesman said.

According to reports, the Polish tourist went to find somewhere discreet to go to the toilet but his urine splashed on to the live rail.

See the shift? British Transport Police confirmed a man was electrocuted after he'd walked onto the track. That's all. Mysterious 'reports' insert the bit about dying when his wee splashed the live rail. I sometimes think that in stories where sources aren't being protected, anonymous sources should alway be referred to as 'some bloke' just so readers are aware of how much stock to put in them.

The Sun's version 'Killed peeing on live train track' says this:

It is thought his urine splashed on the line and he died instantly when a 750-volt charge leaped up at him.

Ah - that clarifies things. 'It is thought'. By who exactly? Maybe 'It is thought' should be qualified with 'by hacks who think it would make a better story...'

This one's been reported all over the place, but connected with what I talked about yesterday, the Mail's version is headlined, 'Polish tourist killed by urinating on 750-volt electric railway line'. See - the nationality of the person involved is now important enough to put in the headline.

The Mail has a 'Polish people are stupid comedy bunglers and it's dangerous because they might not understand Britain' narrative going on. This is probably best illustrated by a couple of stories likening Polish people to Borat from late 2006, or 'Manchester buses ordered off the road over Polish safety fears', which actually revealed later in the story that in fact the bus company involved was found to have faults in over half their buses. You might have thought that would be more relevant to their buses being ordered off the road, but there you go. The paper also blamed the Polish for the police not being able to find the Suffolk Strangler straight away (after having to remove stories that spuriously reported that the strangler was Polish - but that's a different, nastier story).

So it shouldn't be a surprise that the paper thinks it's relevant to put in the headline that it's a Polish person involved in the comedy-penis injury story that regrettably ended in death because he just didn't understand that the UK is different.

But he was killed weeing on the electrified line. Must be true. Some bloke said.

What a difference a year makes

That door slamming? That was all sense of perspective running out of the door.

One of the things I've learned about newspapers - especially the tabloids - in the couple of years that I've been writing this blog is that their purpose is not actually to report the news. When I started, I understood that they spun the news a certain way, but I don't think I realised the lengths to which newspapers go to crowbar events into pre-prepared narratives. I used to play a game with the Daily Mail - 'Spot the Asylum Seeker Scare Story' - try to guess the number of pages before the first scare story about asylum seekers. I normally didn't have to count very far.

What I didn't appreciate at the time was how far stories like those were invented. Sure, I realised that the paper would have taken something that happened and exaggerated it out of all recognition, but I hadn't realised how many of them were based on thin air, or were actually based on lies. I've blogged before about how the figures the Mail (and other tabloids) use in a story - especially an immigration scare story - don't actually matter. They're just window dressing for pushing whatever the paper wants to push at any given time - like how Immigration Is A Bad, Bad Thing. To push this idea, the paper is not beyond exaggerating figures it knows to be misleading before being exaggerated, repeating figures from months ago and pretending they're new, or just pretending reports have said things they actually haven't.

Last summer, the tabloids were in the throes of a frenzy about a missing girl.

The Daily Express included mentions of the missing girl on around 100 consecutive front pages. That's a third of a year devoted to one missing child, although approximately 100,000 children go missing in the UK every year. There are a few reasons for the overwhelming coverage of the story, but the main one is that the abduction took place abroad, so the tabloids were free to print all sorts of speculation that would have been illegal had the child gone missing in the UK.

The interesting thing is that within all the reporting of what is a specific event, the tabloids managed to fit the story into regularly reported narratives, some of which had little to do with the story. One of the main threads of the coverage was the apparent incompetence of foreigners, this time in the form of the Portuguese police. Another was scaremongering about child safety. Perhaps most surprising was the ability of these papers to crowbar the kidnapping story into the general anti-Muslim narrative that the papers like to run.

From memory - and I have to work from memory since the Express has removed all the stories from its website - there were at least three stories in the Express about the girl being kidnapped by Muslims, which I made a brief post about at the time. The Mail had ''Stop the car, there's Madeleine': Witness sees her dragged by Muslim woman', 'Witness: Seeing 'Madeleine' in Morocco sent shivers down my spine', 'Bosnian police slow to react to new Madeleine 'sighting'', 'Madeleine hunt turns to Balkans after girl is heard crying for 'Daddy'', 'Third 'Madeleine in Morocco' sighting: 'I'm still convinced it was her,' says woman' and 'Madeleine: Eight possible sightings of her in just two days' which says, "[one witness] said the girl was accompanied by three women dressed in Muslim attire who were pushing three pushchairs" in one of the eight sightings, and in a sighting in the South of France, a "tall, swarthy man" was described with the child.

After the main frenzy died down, the Daily Star published the front page headline 'Muslim Sicko's Maddie Kidnap Shock'. The story didn't actually include details about Muslims kidnapping Madeleine McCann, as the headline promised, but details of how some Muslims on the internet had suggested that the McCanns might be responsible for the kidnapping of their daughter. The Daily Star, along with other Express Newspapers had to pay £500,000 and print an unprecedented front page apology to the McCanns just weeks before for the exact same thing.

Along with that apology and fine, several papers have now had to pay compensation to Robert Murat, another innocent person the papers smeared. The Tapas 7, friends of the McCanns, have also reportedly attempted to sue the tabloids for being smeared.

These legal wranglings are the result of the paper disregarding the actual truth because the reality didn't seem to fit into a proper internal narrative structure (separate from overarching narratives like 'foreigners are stupid' or 'Muslims are nasty'). Stories like this need a villain. They need an Ian Huntley, or a John Venables and Robert Thompson, and if they don't have one, the papers will invent them. Ask Colin Stagg, Robert Murat or maybe even Barry George. The truth is subordinate to the creation of a coherent narrative.

So, it should be no surprise that this summer's frenzy seems to have little basis in reality. As Septicisle covered, the newly released BCS figures show that the percentage of violent crimes involving a knife actually dropped marginally since last year, and the Metropolitan Police figures show a drop of 16% in recorded incidents. There may be areas where there are rises in knife crime, and there may be a rise in the number of young people involved, although that remains to be properly measured - but it is clear that the overall figures don't warrant the relentless press coverage of the last few months.

But the figures don't matter. What does matter is the narrative - this time a combination of the common one that the country is going to hell in a handcart, and another one that our youth is feral, criminal and out of control. There's another, new thread - but more on that later.

You know all caution about reporting the truth has been thrown out of the window when you see headlines like 'Britain on alert for deadly new knife with exploding tip that freezes victims' organs'. Yes. I'm sure Britain's on the alert for that. It's probably one position above the sharks with lasers.*

Another story in the Mail, linked to on the website with the headline 'Shock figures reveal no part of Britain is safe as knife violence spreads EVERYWHERE' is 'Thugs committing 350 knife assaults EVERY DAY, as blade menace spreads to rural areas'. This story displays willful ignorance of actual figures, since it ignores every part of the evidence in the BCS of knife crime falling, although it does mention an overall drop in crime and that, 'Firearms offences recorded by police rose 2 per cent last year to reach a total of 9,803, while homicides were up three per cent to 784.' Instead of reporting the drop in knife crime, it reports the actual break down of knife crime figures, which were released for the first time this year and therefore impossible to compare with what has happened in previous years.

In fact, that might be a reason for the absolutely bonkers coverage of knife crime so far this year. Last year, the first government stats for the number of Romanians and Bulgarians who came to the UK since the two countries joined the EU were released. In the run up to the figures' release, the Mail reported that the number of Romanians and Bulgarians coming to the UK was 60,000 in one story, and 150,000 in another. The real figures showed that 8,000 came in the first three months, but by then 8,000 looked way too low since the paper had already poisoned the well for its readers. Late last year, the Mail unleashed another deluge of anti-immigration stories (even more so than usual) in the lead up to the government publishing its first ever report about the effects of immigration, ensuring that by its release anything positive in it would look absurd. It could be that the deluge of 'Blade Britain' stories has come as the result of a perceived threat to a staple tabloid narrative.

Even if it's not deliberate, the Moral Panic has had the effect of poisoning the well of official figures, at least with some commentators. See Neil Clark for one, or Keith Waterhouse for another in 'The British Crime Survey? It's all lies, damned lies and crime figures', whose ignorance of how polling systems work can only be wilful. Unless, of course, he's incredibly, incredibly stupid. I wouldn't know since I don't often read Mail columnists. I get enough opinion in its news coverage. [Hat tip to The Popular Front for the Liberation of Discordia for that one].

There's one thing missing from the feelgood hit of this summer, and that's a villain. Who's responsible for the stab party on ALL our streets?

It's a mixture. Mainly, young people are demonised - partly because the BCS doesn't record under 16s, so the papers (and Keith Waterhouse) can cling to the idea that we're all doomed in the face of actual figures, and partly because they fit in with a pre-existing narrative. Last month, the Mail crowbarred the knife crime hoo-hah into an attack on immigrants in 'Mass immigration to blame for series of crime 'spikes', chief constable warns', which was a suitably dishonest twisting of something Chief Constable Julie Spence said about recent immigrants not knowing it's illegal to carry knives. Oh, and it was someone else that mentioned the crime 'spikes', not the Chief Constable.**

This weekend though, developments are beginning to look more worrying than the scapegoating of migrants. Because now, apparently, the villain of the piece is black people.

'Over half of young knife suspects are black, Scotland Yard figures reveal' is a headline from Sunday. In itself, there's nothing wrong with reporting the stat, providing it's accurate. Of course, the paper focuses on the age group in the stats that shows the greatest proportion of black people accused in standard tabloid scaremongering style, but there's something a bit more distasteful than usual about that standard focus when we're talking about black people and violent crime.

The most irresponsible reporting comes in the paper's coverage of the ethnicity of the victims.

The article includes a handy table, subheaded 'THE EVIDENCE'. The table juxtaposes the number of under 18s accused of knife crime with the victims, as if to say that these perpetrators are responsible for crimes affecting these victims - and the text of the piece handily informs us that:

A highly-sensitive report reveals that 124 of the 225 under-18s legally 'proceeded against' for knife offences in the past three months are from the black community.

Yet in the overwhelming majority of reported cases of knife crime involving young people, the victims are white.

Notice how the last sentence doesn't tell us the actual number of victims. That could be because the number of victims is much higher than the number of people accused - partly because some may be victims of people over 18, and partly because there will be more crimes where nobody is accused than crimes where someone is. In not mentioning this discrepancy, it makes it look like the accused are responsible for all the crimes with a victim - and make it look as though young white people are overwhelmingly the victims of young black people in knife crime involving under 18s.

That aside - the biggest problem with that quote is that it isn't true. The table shows that in the victim's ethnicity isn't known in the overwhelming majority of knife crime reported to the police.

Although the paper offers this explanation for the number of people not specifying their ethnicity:

One possible explanation is that in many cases, the victims are black gang members who did not wish to co-operate with police, meaning the figures do not necessarily give a complete picture.

it doesn't bother to go as far as suggesting that victims might be black people (gang members or otherwise) who didn't report anything to police at all, for fear of reprisal. In any case - look at how even the victims of knife crime are villains who don't want to co-operate with the police if they're black. But only if they're black.

Also, since the paper admits that these figures are incomplete and it finds the time to mention this:

Since January 1, 16 teenagers have been stabbed to death in London, forcing Scotland Yard to launch a high-profile campaign targeting youngsters and hot-spots of knife crime.

you'd think that paper would find the room to report that of the teenagers stabbed to death in London this year (20, according to the London Paper, which in a perfect example of tabloid scaremongering about knife crime includes one person stabbed with broken glass, two people who were shot and two people who were beaten to death in its 'London knife crime teenage fatalities 2008' gallery), only three were white. You'd think that would be relevant in an article that pretends to examine the ethnicity of knife crime victims in London. You'd think an article that looked at figures that showed that the largest number of knife crime victims' ethnicity is unknown would mention the number of black victims of the most serious knife crime possible, but this one doesn't. Do you think the paper would ignore this figure if it showed that only 3 out of 16 teenage victims of knife murder in London were black, and around 10 were white?

Seriously?

In not including that figure, which is arguably the most relevant of all, the paper is doing the BNP's work for it. Yes, we say this all the time about the right wing tabloids - but in this case the Mail really is. Richard Barnbrook is making quite a lot of figures he claims to have that show that black people are responsible for 42% of knife crime in London. This stat is almost certainly something he's got confused with the number of black people accused of crimes involving an offensive weapon - but he's asked about this twice in Mayor's Question Time. Where he's going with this is anyone's guess - but mine would be that he wants extra sanctions against black people. Probably stop and search - but who knows? Now, he has an article in a supposedly respectable newspaper to back him up - and so does the wider BNP, which goes on about unreported white victims of violent crime perpetrated by black people (or Muslims, depending on who the shovel headed goons want to demonise on which particular day). Whatever Barnbrook wants to lead up to, this article slots perfectly into BNP propaganda, and it does so by ignoring very relevant details.

So, in a year we've gone from tabloids using a definite news event to fill space and perpetuate certain tabloid narratives, to tabloids pretty much inventing a moral panic, and using that to fit certain tabloid narratives. Last year, that included painting foreigners as incompetent and possible child kidnappers. It ended up with the tabloids demonising Muslims.

This year, it includes painting young people and foreigners as being responsible for knife crime. It's ended up with demonising black people for being responsible for knife crime perpetrated mainly against white people, even though only 3 out of 16 victims of stabbing murder in London have been white (one of whom was stabbed with glass and not a knife).

That's a nasty development. And a nasty regression to 1981. How far the tabloids go with this remains to be seen, but it feels like a mark has been overstepped.

Another question that will never be answered is this: if this summer's tabloid bonanza were about specific individuals rather than vaguely defined groups, how much money would the papers have had to pay in compensation for misrepresenting the truth?

*Yes, I know the wasp knife exists - it's just stupid to think it's going to be a major problem when it's just as easy to do damage to a person with a normal knife at a fraction of a fraction of the cost.

**Brilliantly, this article was written by James Slack, who on 17 April this year wrote 'Analysis: Spinning and a gullible liberal media led to 'migrant crime wave myth' headlines', which asked - in all seriousness - 'Even if accurate, the coverage would have begged several questions, not least who had claimed there was a migrant crimewave in the first place?'

This is despite the fact that he writes for the paper that published 'Chief constables called to crisis summit with Jacqui Smith on immigrant crimewave' on 7 February. The author? James Slack. Priceless.

**UPDATE**As if by magic, the table from the Mail appears in Richard Barnbrook's blog, with even the scant context given the figures by the paper removed. Hurrah for the Blackshirts!

The truth about knife crime?

It sounds heartless at the moment to say that we are in the grip of a moral panic about knife crime, but it's true. We are. You can't go anywhere near a newspaper without absorbing the terror of being stabbed by a monosyllabic hoodie. Like all good moral panics, this one has caused hastily thought out policy announcements to be blurted out by politicians - but is that reaction warranted?

It must be said before we go on, that 'Moral Panic' doesn't necessarily refer to things that aren't happening at all, but often refers to things that are happening, and that have been exaggerated beyond the level of threat they pose.

I haven't posted much about this, since it has been done very well elsewhere. Sunny has a good post up at CiF, Septicisle, John Band and Anton Vowl also have good takes (actually, John Band has a couple), and Mark Easton of the BBC has two great posts on his blog. There isn't an awful lot left for me to say.

But I do have a couple of things to add. You'll be hearing the figure of 14,000 stab victims a year being taken to hospital all over the press. A figure that seems to have originated at the Independent. As Mark Easton points out - this figure not only includes people assaulted with a sharp object, but manages to include people injured as a result of coming into contact with a knife, sword or dagger by accident. Take those out and you remove nearly half of the Indy's 14,000 figure.

Of course, I understand that some people who have been assaulted with a knife will lie about it being an accident - but there is no way no how that everyone injured by sharp things are pretending they've not been stabbed. Just adding these together and shouting about 14,000 knife victims is something I'd have associated with the Mail or the Express rather than the Independent, but there you go.

Mark Easton says this:

A trawl through the hospital figures for all age groups strongly suggests that knife crime is rising: a total of 5,700 admissions for "assault by sharp object" in 2007 compared with just under 4,000 a decade earlier.

But have a look at the figures from 1998/99 (PDF), and check the methodology at the top of the report. You'll see these things:

For the 1998/99 financial year, Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) has collected nearly 12 million records detailing episodes of in-patient treatment delivered by NHS hospitals in England.

and:

The HES database is assembled from records originally generated by the patient administration systems within nearly four hundred separate NHS Trusts.

Now have a look at the methodology of the 2006/07 data (PDF), where you'll see these things:

For the 2006-07 financial year, Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) has collected more than 15 million records detailing episodes of admitted patient care delivered by NHS hospitals in England.

and:

The HES database is assembled from records originally generated by the patient administration systems within over five hundred separate English NHS trusts and independent sector organisations.

So, the new data records three million more incidents from over 100 more NHS trusts. Surely, that accounts for some of the increase, even if it doesn't account for all of it. Maybe that's why the NHS data includes this disclaimer:

You must exercise great care when comparing HES figures for different years. Fluctuations in the data can occur for a number of reasons, eg organisational changes, reviews of best practice within the medical community, the adoption of new coding schemes and data quality problems that are often year specific. These variations can lead to false assumptions about trends. We advise users of time series data to carefully explore the relevant issues before drawing any conclusions about the reasons for year-on-year changes.

Sod that - 14,000 KNIFE VICTIMS! SHIT YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!

Another stat that has popped up has been in the Daily Mail. According to the Mail, it has 'Revealed: The truth about knife crime - it has soared by 35 per cent in some parts of Britain'. The story includes a handy Daily Mail table - hurrah! - that reveals that in more than half of the police forces in England & Wales, the number of knife crimes actually dropped.

18 of them recorded a drop, 2 remained the same and 14 got worse. Of those 14, only 4 recorded a rise of 35% or more, and that includes Cumbria, which went up from 8 to 13, and North wales, which went up from 14 to 29. A more accurate headline would be 'The truth about knife crime - it has dropped in most parts of the country'. Sod that - KNIFE CRIME SOARS! SHIT YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!

There is one other factor in these figures - the Mail is comparing stats from last January - March with this April - June. It may be the case that the differences in rates are accounted for by seasonal difference, or it may not. One thing's for sure, since this is the paper that's given to distorting figures to make them as shocking as possible, I would be quite surprised if I found out that a straight seasonal comparison was as shocking as the figures the paper did use.

It's incredibly difficult to guage the extent of the problem in amongst the flurry of skewed statistics and shouty headlines we're seeing at the moment. With even the Independent joining in with the hyperbole and hysteria, how can anyone actually arrive at a proper considered conclusion?

Is knife crime rising in some places? Sure. Does this fact deserve media coverage? Definitely. Are knife victims getting younger? Most probably. Is it a crisis that deserves drastic measures like curfews and automatic imprisonment for anyone carrying a knife, nationwide? Difficult to say, but probably not.

Neil Clark has a not very good piece up over at CiF, in which he makes this great point, made entirely of straw:

By denying the scale of the problem, and pretending that rising violent crime is an invention of rightwing tabloids, the liberal-left are, in effect, defending a society that is far from being a progressive, leftist model.

Now, I can't claim to speak for the liberal-left (or Sunny Hundal, who Clark is mainly talking about) but I am not denying the scale of the problem - I'm trying to find out what the scale of the problem is. I'm not pretending that rising violent crime is an invention of the rightwing tabloids - I'm questioning whether anyone - including the left wing broadsheets - are giving an accurate representation of one specific element of violent crime. From my reading of Sunny's piece, I think he is too.

You would have thought the liberal-left would be attacking – and not defending such an atomised and dysfunctional society.

That's a bit of a leap. In any case - questioning whether current media coverage of a specific area of crime is accurate is not the same as defending an 'atomised and dysfunctional society', or 'defending a society that is far from being a progressive, leftist model'. It's questioning whether current media coverage of a specific area of crime is accurate. That's all.

I would have hoped that the liberal-left - and everyone else for that matter - would want to base their view of the world and the problems faced by society on as accurate evidence as possible. Not just jump on the latest bit of media hyperbole as a springboard to political grandstanding, whatever side they were on. But I'm naive like that.

*UPDATE*Excellent article over at the BBC - 'Is knife crime really increasing?', which includes this:

Doug Sharp, professor of criminal justice at Birmingham City University, said knives had been a problem for many years in cities such as Glasgow.

He said it was hard to know if things really were worse today.

"It's very difficult to say in terms of absolute numbers, because it's only very recently that we've started to keep statistics that are specific on knife-related violence.

"Previously the weapon would only have featured in the charge.

"What we do know is that in the Metropolitan area [London] recorded incidents of knife crime are lower this year than at the same point last year.

"In terms of the prevalence of knife crime, we do know anecdotally and from research in respect of young people and gangs in certain parts of the UK, knives have been a problem for many, many years.

"The use of knives and their use by violent men goes back to the turn of the 20th Century."

Prof Sharp said many current problems related to the fact that more young people were carrying weapons.

"We do have a very specific problem today and a problem we should be seriously worried about.

"Research that I and some others have done show that knives are being carried more by young people.

"It's more likely that young people, who are faced with a situation when threatened, are likely to draw their knife."

Seems to sum it up. Knife crime doesn't seem to be soaring, but it looks as though more young people are carrying. Sod that - YOU WILLGET STABBED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT! SHIT YOURSELFRIGHT NOW!

How many times can satire die?

On a day when the Express reveals that 95% of the readers who bothered to take part in its poll want to withdraw from the EU*, earning it the 'No Shit Sherlock' award for today, it includes glowing coverage of an open letter from Jim Davidson to the Home Secretary about crime in the UK. The paper also includes the full text of the letter, which is something to behold. In it, Davidson manages one of those 'you don't live in the real world' type comments:

Go out, to any town in the UK, on a Saturday night when the clubs turn out. I dare you.

This is despite the fact that he doesn't actually live in the UK, so quite how often he's in any town in the UK on a Saturday night when the clubs kick out is anyone's guess.

Davidson was prompted to write his letter by this event:

Last week I was in the UK and in one of England's prettiest villages I was threatened and assaulted by a thug. A witness and I called the Police to remove this person from my face! (The police station was 100 yards from the incident.)

What he doesn't seem to realise is that this didn't happen because Britain is broken or crime-ridden or anything like Escape From New York - it happened because Jim Davidson is a cunt. If you were Jim Davidson, you'd think Britain was out of control too from the amount of times you got called a fucking wanker in public.

Anyway, I digress. The beauty of all this is that the country Davidson is singing the praises of because of its wonderful legal system is Dubai. The Dubai who's legal system is based on Sharia Law. Here's an example of what sort of punishments people in Dubai might face:

Dr Khalifa Rashid Al Sha’ali, Dean of the Faculty of Law at Ajman University, said if a man and a woman who are not related are caught alone in a private place, they face a jail sentence or lashes even if they were not involved in any suspicious act.

Great. The Express actually endorses Sharia Law as practised in the Middle-East now.

This would be an interesting poll for the Express to set its readers - give a list of crimes and punishments set down in Dubai's legal system without actually telling them the laws have anything to do with Sharia - and see how many get supported. Wonder if Jim Davidson likes the fact that "Article 177 of the Penal Code of Dubai imposes imprisonment of up to 10 years on consensual sodomy." Probably loves it.

* Here are some other things Daily Express readers would support:

- The return of National Service
- The return of the Birch
- The return of the Mack

Oh and "NO TO SHARIAH LAW IN BRITAIN!" Except maybe when Jim Davidson supports it without letting you know he's talking about Sharia.

BNP PWNAGE?

As I mentioned in my last post that explained where I've been in the last week or so, Barnbrook's blog is back at the Telegraph. Of the comments I've made (which I've done because it's important - and easy - to show how bad his arguments are in case anyone lurking might get taken in) one deserves it's own post - because you won't be able to read it below the blog post it refers to. Why is that? Because he's deleted the entire post.

Did he do that because of my comment? Have a look at my comment below the fold, and then decide.

The basic premise of the original post, "Throw the lot out" is that Barny thought he was in a dream because what was happening around him couldn't be happening in Britain. Cue a list of sub-Littlejohn rubbish that he said was all Labour's fault (yawn) and the only answer was to vote BNP. Here's the reply:

So much rubbish in such a short piece. It's difficult to know where to start. I've put your words in italics.

"When I read a few days ago that babies who don't like spicy food were to be reported for racism, it didn't really surprise me, however it will have shocked many people."

Here's the National Children's Bureau's reaction to the media coverage you base your statement on:

"‘It is an excellent resource which has been specially designed to help teachers and nursery leaders recognise what is, and just as importantly, what is NOT potentially racist behaviour and attitudes in youngsters in their care.

References to use of the word ‘yuk’, ‘spicy foods’ and reporting young children to local authorities, in this 366-page book, have been misrepresented and misunderstood as a consequence of that.’"

And as for Labour being responsible:

"This book is being funded by NCB from book sales alone – and not from government funding or from any grants, as has also been reported."

(www.ncb.org.uk/Page.asp?o...)

"Abu Qatada walks free, and yet he has been described by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, as a "truly dangerous individual" who was "heavily involved, indeed at the centre of terrorist activities associated with al-Qa'eda."

No other government would allow that to happen unless of course that government happened to consist of the most wicked spiteful individuals. Labour is full of nasty politicians who hate the British people."

Here's Jaqui Smith's actual reaction to the news:

"I am appealing to the House of Lords to reverse the decision that it is not safe to deport Qatada," she said. "The government's priority is to protect public safety and national security and we will take all steps necessary to do so."
(www.guardian.co.uk/politi...)

It's worth noting that he hardly 'walks free' since "He must wear an electronic tag and must not attend a mosque or lead prayers or religious instruction.

Abu Qatada must also stay in his west London home for at least 22 hours a day, and cannot attend any kind of meeting. He is also forbidden from using mobile phones, computers or the internet"
(news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/74...)


"Labour want to keep the terrorists here because they depend on the votes from the Muslims, and the Muslims have assured Labour that they will always vote for them as long as they don't come down too hard on any suicide bombers or jihadists."

And the Royal family are actually lizard-like aliens who feed on the blood of babies beneath Buckingham Palace. Meanwhile, in the real world:

"But the unpopularity of the Iraq war drove away many Muslim supporters. Fewer than half chose Labour at the last general election, according to the polling organisation, MORI. And other trends suggest the Muslim vote can no longer be taken for granted."
(news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_po...)

The answer to all this fantasy nonsense is to vote BNP. Lucky for everyone it is all a dream of yours.

I posted this, went away for a couple of hours and when I came back to see if there'd been a reply the entire post had been deleted. Now, this could have been for reasons unrelated to my comment, but it could well be because of an unexpected bonus of the way Telegraph blogs work.

Although people were worried about Barny getting a blog with the Telegraph's name on it rather than some generic blogger address (hey, like this one) was that it would give a bit of added respectability. The upside of that is that as far as I'm aware, blogger's can't delete individual comments - that has to be done by administrators.

The only recourse for people made to look stupid in a comment is to delete the entire blog post. That doesn't even remove the comment. It's still there in the profile of the person who made it.

This is great news for people who want to out argue the BNP here. There won't be any comment deleting shenanigans, and Barny might even have to take down his whole nonsense post if you make him look sufficiently silly. And what could signal that someone had been pwned more than that?

Where am I?

I haven't been posting an awful lot around these parts. It gets like that sometimes when you have a real life and a boss who regularly demands the moon on a stick before asking where the bloody unicorn they demanded last week is.

It's not made much easier when you're an idiot who starts doing things elsewhere that you should be doing on your own sodding blog. More on that below the fold.

Firstly, this week I sent an email to the Churners at The Churner Prize to see if they knew anything about this batty story. I didn't expect them to reproduce the whole thing - but it's there if you want it in 'Oh, just F-Cup'. It's a pity I didn't do a proper post on that, since it would have given me the opportunity to include a picture of a pretty, large breasted young woman in a bra for totally legitimate reasons. Hey - maybe that had something to do with why some papers covered it. Do you think? I'm looking at you, the Daily Mail.

Secondly, I posted a very short message in a discussion on MailWatch about the so stereotypical it could almost be a parody Daily Express headline, "NOW BURGLARS WILL NOT BE JAILED". Read the comment here, but the basic jist is that the 'will' is withdrawn pretty swiftly - some burglars might not get jail. But then that's nothing new. This Hansard Written Answer shows that rather a lot of burglars weren't jailed as far back as 1997, which was considered scandalous at the time, it would seem. What's happened since then? Burglary has steadily dropped every year and is now lower than it was when records began in 1981. When will these wishy-washy liberal judges ever learn?

Lastly, Richard Barnbrook's blog is back at the Telegraph. And it's very lame. I've been commenting on some of the posts - trying in some of them to get him to answer whether this heartfelt invitation for graduates to come to live in Barking extended to people born abroad, or descended from people born abroad. Of course, that's a question that can never be answered.

He answers yes, he shoots himself in the foot since he's specifically told the graduates they can "meet a nice British girl and want a nice environment for your children to grow up in". Can't be telling dark skinned men to get involved in mixed race relationships eh? Plus, you know, he's the BNP. He can't be inviting immigrants to live in Barking and Dagenham. Why, you could almost release a pamphlet called 'Africans for Essex' if he did that.

He answers no, then the BNP's attempts to appear fluffy and cuddly and absolutely not racist no sir would be exposed for the sham it is. Of course, it's obvious from reading the thing that he only means white people (and bizarrely, only straight men and lesbians at that), but it's funny he can't admit that.

I have made one specific comment there which deserves its own post, so - on to posting BNP - PWNAGE?

Last acceptable racism?*

It's a bit of a cliche to point to some article in a crap tabloid and say, "imagine if it had said that about Jews/black people - wouldn't be okay then, would it?" But it's a cliche because it's such a useful way to expose how nasty something is, and perhaps get people to wonder if some things should remain acceptable.

A Mail journalist offering to pay black people to break the law so they can be photographed to prove how black people break the law would cause outrage. Ditto a hack who offered people money for unverified horror stories about how they'd been screwed over by Jews. The same being done to Polish people barely raises an eyebrow.


Today's Mail includes the wonderfully headlined, "Caught in the act: The 'gipsy' child thieves who could teach Fagin a trick or two". Note the scare quotes around 'gipsy'. They're not there to mark out the paper's idiosyncratic spelling of 'gypsy', which is allegedly there to avoid censure for racism. It's there because the paper doesn't actually know whether the 'gipsy' child thieves pictured in the article and the basis of the headline, are actually 'gipsies' at all.

Here's the withdrawal, three sentence/paragraphs in:

Both youngsters are pickpockets and both are also almost certainly the offspring of Roma gipsies.

And the caption beneath the second photo:

Pinch point: Another boy, also probably a Roma, dips into a bag outside Milan station

These pictures that might be of 'gipsy' kids pickpocketing and might not (and we have no idea when they were taken, how long a break there was between the two incidents, or even if they've been staged by the agency that took them) are used to frame a story about how the Italian interior minister has apparently vowed to fingerprint all Roma children.

Think about that for a second. Of all the ways it's possible to report the idea of a whole set of children being fingerprinted whether guilty of a crime or not (or even anywhere near a crime), the Mail chooses to do it by talking about 'gipsy' child pickpockets being able to teach Fagin a thing or two, illustrates it with two massive pictures of kids the paper alleges to be 'gipsies' pickpocketing and doesn't even get around to mentioning the fingerprinting kids until a third of the way in.

There is some attempt at balance in the story by including some single phrase quotes from a magazine opposing blanket fingerprinting, which is hidden among sentence upon sentence from people supporting it or emphasising how much Roma children are involved in crime. Still, by reporting the story in this way in the first place, the Mail has made it clear where the paper's sympathies lie.

Now - time to go back to the chestnut from my opening paragraph. Imagine Boris Johnson listened to Barnbrook's ravings about the number of black people involved in knife crime and decided that the best way forward would be to fingerprint every black person in the capital under the age of 21, just to be safe. Outcry, right?

Now imagine a newspaper reported that event in an article with a headline shouting about black people committing knife crime, including pictures of people in hoodies with knives - who might not actually be black - and using the opening third of the article to bang on about how black people stab everyone before even mentioning the fingerprinting measures.

What would you think of that paper?

*That would be a no. There's the Poles and Muslims to go after as well.