Fair do's

I've always been a little suspicious of fair trade products. I'm torn between the ideas that they're just a ploy for stealing money from hippies or that if free trade and global capitalism is so good at dragging the poor kicking and screaming from abject filth then it's not needed at all. The farmers are using it as a way to upgrade their sky sports package.

Either way there's obviously been a press release issued today as The Mail, The Mirror and the Express have all copy & pasted it onto their website and passed it off as news. (Churnalism.com is my newest friend)

Obviously having copy / pasted their afternoon away the journalists (Professionals don't you know!) didn't have time to actually bother reading the article and so sold it as a positive that fair trade sales have increased massively over the past few years.

Again I'm not too bothered if people want to pay more for their bananas in the hope they're helping a farmer see how Spurs do in the Champions league, carry on Rainbow-Child say I.

The Telegraph however has a different view. They've obviously received the same press release and decided they'd actually put some thought into a story pointing out some of the fallacies that the hippies may be falling for. I'm quietly impressed with them, regardless of whether you agree with them or not it's refreshing to have an honest opinion put forward.

And my favourite honest opinion was put forward in the comments by LordBarnet, and seconded by five of his minions:

Shouldn't really laugh at him as looking at his other comments it appears he's either a mental racist or suffers from keyboard Tourettes. Tweet

Not too bright

George Arbuthnott is thick. That can be the only excuse for what might be the most retarded story ever published.

According to Professor Arbuthnott "A Mail on Sunday survey has revealed it is now almost impossible to buy a direct replacement for the old-style pearl lightbulb in any of Britain’s major retailers."


I've just been to the Co-op and bought a direct replacement for an old style pearl lightbulb. If people are finding it difficult to buy the bulbs they certainly shouldn't be allowed to install them.


There's even more light bulb madness dissected over at minority thought. Why are they making people so angry?

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Plenty to hide...

A few days ago there was a story in the Mail about a Liverpool school banning footballs from its playground. As this is just the sort of story the paper likes to drama-queen up from absolutely nothing I decided to look a little more into it and undertook my in depth investigative approach of copy / paste into Google.

Unfortunately it appeared to be an almost true account of what happened (The main difference being it wasn't 'elf 'n' safety dictators making this happen it was a Headmaster scared of being prosecuted by the parents of the precious little children and their knowledge that where there's blame there's a claim).

However during my intensive sniffing around on the subject I came across this story in the Liverpool Echo.

Really that's exactly what the story is about. A 42 year old gran caught getting frisky with the family pet - who I don't imagine is quite as erudite as Brian Griffin.

Brian Makes his move

This made me think of the Daily Mail's apparent indignity at the upcoming 2011 census. I had assumed they were firmly against it because they just can't bare being told they had to do something.

 "You're telling me I have to complete the form? I shan't, I won't and I shan't. It's probably costing me a king's ransom in taxes and is only done to please the Muslims / Gays / Public sector workers / Benefit scroungers (Circle the scape goat you're particularly angry about today.)"

Maybe there's more to it though? Maybe they don't want to complete the form because they've something a lot more sinister to hide, A.N. Wilson is dead set against it.

Now there's absolutely no evidence that A.N. Wilson will have to admit his Basset hound is his nearest and dearest - he seems more distressed at the cost, at a time it appears he's having to take a pay cut - but it does make me smile to think of all the real dog 'lovers' out there worrying about how to fill in their forms.

"No Sheba I'm not ashamed of us, but you must understand ours is a love that cannot be spoken. Now pull yourself together. Walkies!" Tweet

Restraint shown!

The Mail has shown a remarkable amount of restraint in its coverage of today's absence rates released by the ONS.

Despite the evidence being there for the shouting it barely mentioned the fact that public sector workers take, on average, more time off work due to sickness than private sector workers.

If only the same could have been said for the Daily Telegraph.

The 0.8% difference in absence rate is enough to drive many retired Brigadiers into fits of rage. Those days of absence are costing them tax pennies. If there was less sickies maybe we could afford a lovely little top rate tax cut perhaps they could pay the extra to get their gold plated blunderbuss polished by a pretty little Thai boy.

The story misses the point that if you look at the figures broken down by occupations it's the jobs that have to deal directly with members of the public, and are the lowest paid, that have are off ill the most. Care assistants, education assistants, customer care assistants, nursing assistants all paid a pittance and have to deal with the baying masses, is there any wonder they don't fancy work when they've got a cold? These are also the type of low paid jobs that tend to be full time employees in the public sector and casual workers in the private sector. If you're a casual worker and your unwell its a choice between getting paid and getting better. Therefore they're much more likely to drag themselves into the care home for a shift.

So maybe there's a lesson here - treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen.

Excellent.

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One born every minute

New Labour's hidden agenda to darken the complexion of the country in order to drive up its pool of voters is uncovered in todays Daily mail comment.

They've done their research obviously - you don't go around making accusations like this just to drive an anger / fear agenda - they've got their figure of "3.2million foreign born immigrants" setting up home in the UK from respected (and by respected I mean right wing pressure group) MigrationWatch UK

MigrationWatch are a pressure group who "are concerned about the present scale of immigration into the UK". So it seems to me that they might have a reason to make things seem worse than they are. An example of this is one of the quotes from their homepage "England is already, with Holland, the most crowded country in Europe (except Malta)". In a similar vein it would be correct to say that Bats, along with Birds are the most common flying creatures (except insects). It's a nonsensical piece of information that allows the soft minded pantyhose wearers of the BNP to misunderstand and scream about the UK being the most overcrowded place in the universe, or even that Bats are stealing worms from the mouths of our malnourished cock-er-nee sparraws.

But anyway back to the Mail's main point. Tony Blair's belief that the darker your skin the the more lefty your voting intention. What on earth would make the god-bothering war-monger think such a thing? Perhaps, deep down inside he's a raging racialist, who believes - despite all the evidence -  that anyone who comes to the UK does so with only one agenda; free money and healthcare. Perhaps this anger is what spurred him on to follow his jug-eared Texan friend into battle, the opportunity to reduce the potential immigrants still alive.

Or perhaps the Daily Mail just makes shit up in their regular drunken editorial Nazi dress-up parties. Richard Littlejohn has a pair of speedos he thinks were once worn by Goebbels. 

No one seriously thinks this is Richard Littlejohn voting for another story
about Gypsies in an editorial meeting

(A more reasoned look at this story can be found at Minority Report)

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End this Human Rights insanity

Is this really the opinion of the Daily Mail?



Human rights are for pussies

 To be honest I'm not really being fair to the journalists (By TIM SHIPMAN and JACK DOYLE) here. They're certainly not calling for an end to the rights of children and the introduction of compulsory water boarding for social workers. In reality they're asking - in a somewhat drama queen manner - for an end to hiding behind Human rights law; and end to people ignoring the spirit and exploiting the letter of the law.

David Cameron agrees, as he said it was "completely offensive’ to ‘have, once again, a ruling by a court that seems to fly completely in the face of common sense.’ He added: ‘I am appalled by the Supreme Court ruling.’ This was in respect to the ruling that sex offenders could be given the right to challenge their position on the sex offender's register.

I find myself agreeing with him. I don't believe there's anything you can do to stop what makes up people's sexuality, regardless of how horrific it is. So why would people be able to say they'd ' changed' and no longer had the same urges. The Daily Mail agrees with this standpoint...oh no wait a minute does it?

They were disgusted that a psychologist faced being struck off for promising to make men prefer Jordan to Peter Andre. So in their opinion you can change your sexual desires by talking and whatever else head doctors do - ink blots have something to do with it and laying down I think.

So maybe that's not their point. Maybe their point is it it bad and naughty to ignore the spirit of a law and comply only with the letter. The baddies have been poring through the HR legislation to find ways of bending the meaning and weedling their way round the aim of the legislation.

Yeah that's what's got their goat. Unless of course it's tax legislation and your trying to make money to spend on curtains in your (Insert current value of property here)
mock-tudor, home-counties, wife-swapping pad. No the official position of the DM is that it's morally implicit that you do whatever you can to avoid paying tax. The less money going into the country's coffers and the more going to Chinese purveyors of tat the better off we'll all be.

No, the real reason they're so damn mad is it's criminals that are benefiting and that - as everyone would agree is just not cricket. These people have been caught fair and square and now are crying "Oh Oh it's so unfair we were caught, what about my rights" etc etc.

Ah but that's the same position the paper takes on speed cameras. It's not fair that people are getting caught breaking the law and then getting punished.

I don't know what they believe and I don't think they do either. Some people say the editorial team put out so much crap on a daily basis because they don't have time to read any of what's written as they're too busy indulging in same sex sauna sessions and drinking Buckfast. That's what some people say. Tweet

What has been seen cannot be unseen

The Daily Quail: The PCC has told us to remove our article so we'd like you to remove any evidence it ever existed from your blog, thanks.

The Daily Mail has requested the Daily Quail removes the blog linked from t'internet.

He replied with quite some panache; take a gander.

Once something's been on the internet it never leaves. It's important you remember that the next time you're messing about with your nan's bloomers, a vacuum cleaner and your web cam.

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