Uncle Vince has started the day off telling the world and their wife that when the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) makes its recommendation on ways to stop Mr Barclays taking the country to the cleaners again the government should jump on it like a footballer on a Page 3 model.
That's fine for a Lib Dem to say that, they need to keep vegans onside not bankers, but it seems he's wound up the money lenders anyway and they've released the big dogs.
John pleasures a tiny
invisible man
The head of the CBI - John Cridland says it's madness to ask the banks to change their ways. After all they've learnt their lessons and promise to not do it again, fair enough should we leave them on the naughty step? The British Bankers association said it would be better for all (their members) if the reforms were put off - at least until everybody had forgotten about them. It also seems David Cameron has been given a prod in the right direction as it seems any suggestions will be implemented after he's had the funding to fight the next election.
Of course big DC - when he's worrying about putting jobs at risk - is thinking about his own and not about your shelf-stacking get-rich-quick-scheme.
The Telegraph, home of tax dodging slave owning bankers since 1979 - has pre-empted the ICB's report by publishing it's own top ten banking bugbears. The ten things that anger the Telegraph and its readers about banks, bankers and other financial shenanigans are shown in the screenshot here...
Yep nothing to see here. The bankers are all right, now give them your money.
Net immigration is up 20% and while, in truth, this is due to a big reduction in people leaving the UK it's not stopped the Mail dredging up some intense fear-mongering stories about hordes of aliens arriving uninvited.
An interesting question raised here, why does it always happen in Siberia? Whenever anyone ever mentions little green men or probing cows' bums or flying saucers it's always in that God-forbidden wasteland of the east.
The young have been in the limelight over the past few weeks following the violent riots and the record exam results - on an aside it's funny to think that there were probably no more than 20,000 kids who were involved in the riots and there were around 200,000 kids doing A levels and we're going to change the way the country's managed to suit the criminal minority?
Everybody - including me - has had their say on today's youth; David Cameron thinks they're at the heart of Britain's broken and / or sick society, Nick Clegg reckons orange jumpsuits should be their apparel of non-choice, Ed Milliband reckons we're all as bad as each other from MPs down to burglars, crazy racist historian David Starkey reckons its acting like you've got darker skin than you really have that caused the mayhem and it goes on.
Right wing crazies in the Mail & Telegraph reckon the riots prove them correct; the world's gone to hell and we're only minutes away from a Pol Pot type revolution where anyone who's ever listened to Radio 3 will be slaughtered in their beds. Left wing luvvies in the Guardian & Mirror think the A-level results show the kids are alright it's the bastard bankers stealing our money and shipping it all out to Bermuda that'll leave us freezing to death in December when we can't afford 50p for the gas meter. You pay your money and take your choice, until now.
Finally from the swirling maelstrom of opinion comes a guiding light. A beacon that we can all cling to and learn from the wisdom that spouts forth from this fountain of knowledge. Step forward sage of our time... Joan Collins.
Yes Joan Collins that's right. World famous actress, star of Martini adverts (or was it Cinzano - and more importantly is there a difference?) and former UKIP pin-up has spilled her wisdom out onto the pages of the Daily Mail, and as you've probably already guessed, it turns out to be the unstable rantings of a pre-senile rich old woman who thinks today's children are all evil devils. Even her own grand kids.
Realising that she's witnessed so much wrong, and the world should be told, she's had a little Indian slave girl she keeps in a cupboard write down her observations in blood (Probably) and then has paid a tame publisher to print them in a book for her. This is being serialised in the Daily Mail for people who like Grumpy Old Men on the BBC but think it's observations are too clever, funny or communist.
There's much that peeves her, too much to wade through - she's worse than Grandpa Simpson but one thing she's not too happy about is the culture of instant gratification that's prevalent in today's celebrity world.
Instant fame and popularity for wapping them out is no basis for a career in the entertainment industry, some standards must be upheld. This comes from a woman who's early work was a series of soft porn films written by her mucky sister.
Getting them out was for artistic
reasons and not cos she's a slapper
This culture is having a terrible effect on the evil little rugrats of the world, as she says...
"I pity the poor children of today who are exposed to the nasty adult world of profanity, porn and poverty of thought."
Today has been A-Level result day in the UK, the day thousand of teenagers find out if all those hours spent revising photography on Facebook and English Lit on Twitter were time well spent.
It's also the traditional time of year for the Mail, Telegraph, in fact the majority of newspapers to splutter and sneer at the glut of A* results and the lack of failures. This obviously proves that A-Levels have got gradually easier every single year since the journalist in question took their own. I'll tag on a FACT too, just to nail the point home.
No one seems to wonder if the fact that results seem to get better over time (This year wasn't a massive shift upwards but it still shifted slightly) isn't due to the fact that the exams are getting easier but the young are getting cleverer.
The Flynn effect, named for a Kiwi professor who was one of the first to describe it, is the observation that as you re-calibrate IQ tests every year the average score increases. This has been demonstrated in numerous data sets from various countries around the world and indicates that over time people are getting brainier. It also explains doddering old men in Nissan Almeras driving in front of you on roundabouts. You may think the old fella's losing his marbles, but no he's always been that thick, just that in his day being that thick was actually labelled "quite bright". The world's turned into a more complex place since he was at the top of his game, when he probably struggled to get a C grade in his A-Level, and he's no longer got the mental horse-power to keep up.
While it might make you feel good to know you're better than anyone slightly older than yourself, remember that in your twilight years the world is going to be a scary confusing place. In fact maybe it's getting that way now. This photo from the Mail is one of about 900 of attractive, jumping teenage girls happy with their results (As pointed out by Chris Cook on Radio 4 it seems blokes and ugly girls get their A level results on another day if newspaper photographers are to be believed) The thing I find scary confusing is the hairy blonde crash helmet worn by the skulking exam failing youth on the right hand side...
Do helmets of straw offer much protection
when you fall off your bike?
Obviously experimenting with a new way to drag in readers it appears the Health (now with extra super-dangerous advice on how to get, avoid or cook up a tasty treat made of cancer) section is utilising tongue twisters as headlines.
Or maybe it's the punchline to a racist joke about Ambre Solaire unexpectedly finding its way into a Chinese takeaway?
Note - there's no link to the story as it appears the cool http://istyosty.com/ website that allows you to link to Daily Mail stories without having to link to Mailonline itself has been threatened with legal action if it doesn't jack it in. This is such a shame and I certainly hope the good people / person responsible finds some clever way of moving the site to Nepal or the Arctic and letting vindictive bloggers like myself keep away the six or eight hits a day from their advertising revenue that obviously keep the wolves away from Paul Dacre's door.
Have a look at the site - especially exhibit B showing an example of the Mail copying someone else's work and passing it off as their own.
A particularly odd story in the Mail's Femail section about some spurious research into female orgasms and their relationship to the noise she makes brought out a ream of crazy comments.
Many of them seemed over pleased with their - or their partner / victim's - sexual prowess but my favourite comment, one that made me spit my tea out over the keyboard, came from sexpert Lenny in Brighton.
Like Columbo after asking "one more thing' or Sherlock Holmes standing up after his third pipe Richie Littlejohn has cut through the smoke of burning furniture and the fog of looting to nail down the root cause of the madness that's engulfed the country over the last few days.
Unfortunately he's hidden this pearl of wisdom in an enigma of random thoughts each purporting to have some vague link to the last one. It's like reading the notes from a nutjob's word association test.
It seems to all stem back to an Ikea opening that went wrong in 2005. This is obvious because it's just down the road from where the fighting kicked off and therefore there must be people who got a bit pushy for a cheap occasional table involved in trying to burn down Tottenham. This angry shopper theory is much more likely than there being a link to the riots that actually occurred in Tottenham in 1985. The riots that were probably attended by the parents of today's looters who told stories about their night of notoriety - their one big night where they mattered and people sat up and paid attention to them.
Or maybe not. Dick explains how it might actually be down to racism - not the BNP type that he hates so much but the Turkish or Albanian on Black racism - brown on black - which shows they're as bad as the BNP themselves. Then he goes on to explain how it's down to unemployment, or really it's benefit scroungers who don't want to work like the upstanding Polish who come over here willing to work and in no way stealing our, erm, shops.
Or it could be flooding deprived areas with money instead of razing them to the ground, or a culture of greed or spiritual poverty or magic for all he knows. He doesn't care what the cause is really, in fact it's an exciting time for him. This is the day he's been waiting for to show the people he's right, we really are going to hell in a handcart.
Sniff these...
What's obvious to most people is that the violence has nothing to do with the shooting of drug dealer Mark Duggan. This incident was the catalyst that many bored and greedy kids were searching for in order to add a little excitement into their empty lives. Lives that normally revolve around getting caned and finding excuses to have beef with other no-marks. People who want to be rich but don't want to start by cooking fries in McDonalds. People who've realised you don't need to? The first night of violence showed that if you took a bit of a risk you could get away with plasma TVs and crap trainers for free; the coppers couldn't keep up with it all. Isn't that what life's about? Taking risks to make cash, everybody has the right to be rich, take what you want - not what you need. Just because you didn't know or care what was happening when you were at school that's no reason you shouldn't be successful. Setting up a small business giving local people what they want - crack or hookers - gets you the cars and cash and you never have to go near a name badge or mop.
The Broadwater farm riots of the 80s were provoked by social inequality, poverty and racism, they were an expression of anger and a desire for revenge against sleights both real and imagined. The riots of 2011 haven't been provoked by anything political or social they're an expression of a desire to have a laugh, be a big man and get whatever you want.
A hundred and eleven years ago would probably seem like a golden age of freedom and power to your common or garden Mail reader.
The happiness that a world free from the EU, hoards of immigrants, grasping public sector workers bathing in bath-tubs of pound coins and being taxed by the hilt to pay for all this would bring the majority of their readership to a joyful judder followed by a blanket of bliss.
Unfortunately - as this story shows - the editorial stance even back in the glory days was one of terrifying forbearance of the future and a desire to suck the happiness of life and replace it with fear of, well everything really.
As you see - concerns about the drop in population (Would immigration help here maybe???) Cancerous towns, bringing wealth to Northerners and in turn stealing it from the impoverished land-owning families - I believe the Duke of Westminster's family are still trying to come to terms with the loss os cash over a century later.
On a positive note looking into the future they did manage to predict the channel tunnel (first proposed in 1802) so kudos there.
The celebration / commiseration special edition was published on the eve of 1901 and the start of a brave new century, but a lot of worrying stuff was going on in 1900.
The Labour Party was formed, or as today's Mail would have it "First steps to anarchy as the work shy plot to steal companies from under your nose"
The Mines act stops children under 13 working at the coal face; "Now do-gooders increase the cost of coal - will you freeze this winter?"
Jews fleeing persecution in europe make the east end their home; "Christians forced out of their own homes to make way for immigrants who refuse to fit in"
Zeppelins make their maiden flights; "Terror from the skies - flying machines show German scientists have gone too far"
Women start to campaign for the vote; "Suffragettes: first votes then trousers, where will this madness end?"
The number of horses on the streets of London leads to a massive problem with manure; "Horse-shit zealots want to tax your hay"
And so it goes on, the unhappy lot of a Daily Mail reader terrified the world's out to get him and his cash. It's unbelievable to think it's possible to keep up that level of anxiety for over one hundred years, it must be exhausting.
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