Day 3398: Clegg Bought Flip-Flops for Nazi Immigrants… ON EXPENSES! aka the Day the Press went Mad

Thursday:


Put on a happy face, Liberal Democrats: we're WINNING!

The ESTABLISHMENT is closing ranks behind Mr Balloon, attempting to do something – ANYTHING – to block CHANGE: muckspreading on five front pages; Tell-lies-o-graph editor Mr Bendy Broken insisting "it's NOT a smear; it's NOT a smear"; Mr Roger Stavro Murdoch's son, Prince James, and his enforcer, Rebekah Oddjob, busting their way into the offices of the Independent…

The BLATANT-ness of this attempt to snatch back out of the fluffy feet of REAL voters the system that has served their VESTED INTERESTS for so long has provoked a HUGE BACKLASH as people see through the CONSERVATORY PAPERS' dirty-tricks to the PANIC underneath.

But did the Conservatories REALLY want Captain Clegg to spend all day at the top of the BBC news? AGAIN?

And what is Mr Balloon going to do about it? He promised us an ENTIRELY POSITIVE campaign… just like he promised an end to PUNCH & RICHARD & JUDY at Prime Monsters Questions… So he's GOOD at keeping promises. Not.

Is he going to DENY his attack doggies and try to appear the Mr Statesman, rising above the fray? Do they really think that that will wash?

After all, he himself used one of these smears in the first debate, saying Captain Clegg had accepted stolen money and pulling silly faces because he didn't like being reminded that the Liberal Democrats were COMPLETELY EXONERATED.

And that's what's happening with TODAY'S smears too.

The Tell-lies-o-graph: Captain Clegg did something completely allowed and – shock – was completely honest about doing it

The Daily Express: Diana's tears at house-price fall die to Captain Clegg's immigration policy

The Daily Fail: Captain Clegg once said that we should stop mentioning the war, we got away with it once but…

At which point they mentioned the Nazis, so we won automatically.



This is going to be an election where people's votes REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

So MAKE YOURSELVES HEARD!

I am going to get my Daddies to do like Auntie Caron and write to some of the nice but misguided people advertising in the Tell-lies-o-Graph, people like WAITROSE and BEN & JERRY'S ICE CREAM and THOMPSON HOLIDAYS, people who VALUE their good name, and tell them – POLITELY – that they have DAMAGED THEIR BRAND by supporting such an obvious piece of SMEAR.

But you can also join in with the Tweeters of Twitter who have managed to make the IRONIC #nickcleggsfault the top trend of the day.

And don't forget to watch the debate at eight. It's on lots of channels, not just Sky-Bully, including the BBC News Channel and alJazeera, so you can see it on Freeview or Freesat too. Can't do anything about Sky-Bully's HIDEOUS set built out of Union Jacks, though.

It is going to be "mostly" (meaning expect SOME about these smear stories) mostly about foreign policy – so one question:

Captain Clegg: has negotiated with China
Mr Balloon: wants to NUKE China

Who EXACTLY are you going to trust with the keys to the bomb?!


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Day 3372: A REAL Digital Economy: My New Business Model for the Internet

Friday:


It looks like the Times have already lost one reader, thanks to the announcement by Mr Roger Stavro Moredick that from June he'll be charging a pound a peep to look at his august organ.

Liberal Democrat Voice asks how the blogosphere will react, and I'm guessing: "goodbye and good riddance!" If the reactionary old digger WANTS to seal-off his mendacious, meretricious, propaganda rags in self-imposed exile from the rest of the web that's GOOD NEWS isn't it?

But if EVERYONE does that, then the Web Party is OVER!

So here's an idea that might be A BIT BETTER!

First, I have to ask: isn't there a way to run a news/media empire on the web AND make money?

From the Evil Empire's point of view, their news gathering organisation isn't getting any cheaper, but as the readership moves from print to online they get less advertising revenue per reader and NO sale revenue per reader, so it's lose-lose; charging for the online edition may see a big loss of readers (advertising revenue goes down further) but no one expects their readership to fall to NOTHING, so they get a new revenue stream.

From everybody else's point of view, the BBC, Gruaniad and Tell-lie-graph and the rest will all still be free-at-the-point-of-use, so what's the problem?

Well the "problem" is threefold: firstly how much do you WANT people to be putting things up on the net? This goes to the heart of the issue, not just news and comment but also music and movies and piracy.

I'm not saying that it should be a licence to print money, but producing content – gathering news, recording an album, filming Dr Woo's adventure – all costs money. Even hosting an online diary like mine has costs associated, which at the moment are picked up by Google (thanks you very much) but what if that doesn't last forever? Realistically NO ONE is going to just pour money down the drain merely for the dubious social benefit of, say, letting you read the "wisdom" of Mr Danny Finkenstein.

Secondly, and slightly more ABSTRACT, the Internet THRIVES on inter-connectivity. It's not called the Wibbly Wobbly Web for nothing! And anything that reduces that inter-connectedness reduces the Internet as a whole, reduces, however slightly, the amount of bouncing backwards-and-forwards of ideas. Think of it like this: would YOU like someone to cut off a chunk of your BRAIN?

And thirdly, if Mr Moredick actually makes a go of it, then it will quickly encourage other media providers to go down the same route, turning the WEB into a series of barely-connected ISLANDS.

Let's be honest, all Mr Moredick is concerned about it the MONEY. He's not making a news website for the good of personkind; he's not doing it as a result of peer pressure – actually there's a good chance that he WAS, but because he doesn't feel the peer-pressure is why he feels he can change the game. He's doing it because he thinks it will return more lucre than it costs.

The profits from newspapers have gone DOWN.

That's not JUST the fault of the Internet. Circulation has been declining for AGES, ever since television really, and there's just been a massive recession which has cut both the numbers of people buying papers (an obvious cheap thing to cut out) and the numbers of people advertising in newspapers (an obvious cheap thing to cut out).

Not that it's impossible to make money from newsprint as the rise of the Free Sheets like the Metro and now the London Evening Standard have shown. Though of course Free Sheets too cut into the circulation of the paid-for press.

BUT, if the profit goes down, Mr Moredick looks for a way to squeeze more out of it.

Let me just interject with one important point: "making money" ISN'T a DIRTY WORD. It isn't even TWO dirty words.

Liberals have LONG believed in TRADE, in people being able to benefit from their gifts and talents, bettering themselves by being able to exchange their abilities for then things that they need.

There's a bit of a habit of thinking of the Internet as a new SOCIALIST UTOPIA, where everything is available to everybody all the time for nothing. (Apart from the RUDE SITES!)

It's been said that "people are used to everything on the Internet being free". But this of course is NONSENSE.

People DO pay for the Internet, but they pay for it as a SUBSCRIPTION, whether it's handing over a monthly fee to their ISP or an hourly rate to their Internet Café. It's like a magnificent magazine, with infinite pages. Once you've paid up front, you expect to be able to flip though to whatever articles you like.

So the solution is so obvious I can't believe that no one has come up with it: your media providers should absorb your Internet providers.

People would take out a subscription for Timesonline (or BBConline or Grauniadonline or Virginonline etc…) and that would provide you with your access to the Internet. You would automatically get all the content of the Times website or the BBC website or whichever website you subscribed to.

And then here's the clever bit.

The service providers charge each other for all the people who visit.

You ascribe an agreed "micropayment" value to a webvisit and then the providers can sort it out between themselves – like the bank clearing system – who gets what cash at the end of the month.

So, suppose you subscribe with the BBC, say, and you click through to the Times's website, the Times keeps count of your page views and those of every other BBC subscriber (and every ITV subscriber or Virgin subscriber or Hackney Community Cable subscriber), and at the end of the month they add it all up and say to the BBC: we've had X-million visits from your subscribers, that's X-million micropayments that amounts to Y-million pounds please. (And in return, the BBC says, yes and we have had A-million visits from YOUR subscribers so that's B-million quid back to us; let's settle the difference.)

(From a data protection point of view, I'd just add that it would be best for a system that "counts them at the gate" – putting toll booths on the Information Superhighway as it were – rather than one that records every website and page that you visit. Just like Google and Microserf absolutely don't do.)

The HUGE advantage, as I see it, is that this places the REWARD on providing CONTENT rather than merely ACCESS. This wouldn't just promote more online content from existing providers, it would encourage webhosting – if you provide a free platform for, say, bloggers then the more bloggers you support, the more visits you get, the more subscription income you receive.

You could even think about having a system where the provider REIMBURSES money to the subscriber if they provide some content that generates a lot of click through.

In the LONGER term, once you HAVE a system like this in place, you can see how it could provide the beginnings of a way of rewarding artists directly for the exploitation of their online works, bypassing the NEED for music piracy. And the best possible outcome could see it as a replacement funding stream for even the BBC, if we can figure out the right micropayment rates to keep up the quality.

Could it work? I don’t know; I'm just a stuffed elephant – perhaps better netheads than MY fluffy one can tell.


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Day 3336: the PCC - Not Worth The Papers Who Pay to Have it Printed aka There's Been a Jan Moir-der

Thursday:


The PCC (Press Cover-up Cronies) have come to the opinion that twenty-five thousand people were wrong and Daily Hate Mail scribbler Ms Jan Moir-der is NOT a LYING, INTRUSIVE, HATEFUL HOMOPHOBE.

But let's be honest, that's a COMPLETELY UNNATURAL decision. Grown-up inquiries don't just lie down on the sofa and drop dead all the charges, so there's probably some very SORDID and DISGUSTING reason why they've rolled over and come to that conclusion.

No, don't worry! Apparently, according to the PPC, it's FINE for me to say that because I've mentioned the facts and the rest is just my opinion.

How it works: the Press Complaints Commission:

So let's have a look at how the PCC works for YOU. So long as by "you" we mean "someone who writes for/owns a newspaper who is looking to get pesky complaints dismissed".

Clause 1 – why the PCC thinks it's okay to tell lies

"Clause 1, […] states that comment, conjecture and fact should be clearly distinguished,"

"The article was a comment piece…"

So, right from the start it seems clear that, in the PCC's opinion, "facts" should be confined to the "factual" parts of the newspaper and that once you're in the "comment" sections anything goes.

"…it was important to recognise that the article had clearly referred to the official verdict on the cause of death that was available at the time ("all the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances"; "acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs"). It was against this context that the columnist had stated her views on the matter."

This is the most amazing DOUBLE-THINK! So long as you state a fact, if you then go on to flatly contradict it, and strongly hint that it's not a fact at all but spin and cover-up, then that's not in any way being deceitful.

In other words, something like…

OPINION PIECE: "Ms Jan Moir-der isn't an evil witch. That's a fact. But that fact isn't true. Come on she's got that gingerbread cottage, and everyone knows that people like that are only interested in luring children into the oven."

…would be fine and dandy under that kind of logic. And it really isn't.

"…the Commission was fully aware of the widespread objection to the reference to Mr Gately's death as not being "natural". This was undoubtedly a highly provocative claim which was open to interpretation, and many people had considered this to be distasteful and inaccurate.

"It was a claim, nonetheless, that could not be established as accurate or otherwise."

Could not be established as accurate or otherwise… except of course by the coroner's post-mortem which, in fact, established AS a fact that Mr Gately's death WAS natural.

And therefore established this statement as A COMPLETE LIE.

And given that the post-mortem was QUOTED in the article itself, Ms Moir-der KNEW that it was a LIE.

"it was clear that this was a broad opinion rather than a factual statement"

No, it was clear that this was a LIE. Only the most WILFULLY PERVERSE interpretation of the facts can allow the PCC here to present Mr Moir-der's out-and-out refutation of the facts as anything other than a DELIBERATE DECEIT.

"Finally, the Commission considered […] the 'happy-ever-after myth'…"

"…the fact that a newspaper had published what might be considered to be an illogical argument (connecting two entirely separate individuals and seeking to draw a general conclusion) in itself did not equate to a breach of the Code."

You'll have to draw your own conclusions about WHY Ms Moir-der might choose to stoop to "illogical arguments" or what, shall we say, "prejudice" might lead her to include an unrelated death and not recognise that she was being illogical. Or for that matter why no one on the Daily Hate Mail editorial staff thought to suggest "hang on, this doesn't connect to the rest of what you're blathering about".

Clause 5 – why the PPC thinks it's okay to piddle all over someone's shock and grief

"Newspapers are under an obligation under Clause 5 to ensure that publication is handled sensitively at a time of grief."

Sounds good, doesn't it.

"In coming to a view on this aspect of the complaint, the Commission considered that the context of its publication was paramount. The article was a comment piece by a columnist whose regular readers were aware of the provocative nature of her articles."

In what way does that EXEMPT her and the Hate Mail from "an obligation to ensure that publication is handled sensitively at a time of grief"?

They appear to be saying that if you are PROVOCATIVE then you can say what you like, regardless of how people might be feeling, regardless of whether it's hurtful, harmful or even just old fashioned disgusting, and people jolly well ought to know better if they get offended by reading you.

Which, interestingly, is very much NOT what the Daily Hate Mail thought when PROVOCATIVE Islamic trouble-maker Mr Anjem Choudary wanted to make a COMMENT piece in the CONTEXT of being in WOOTEN BASSETT.

But after all, if it's on page 37 there's no way anyone might find out about it unless they were LOOKING for it. Because, you know, people had told them about the hurtful things that your paper was saying.

"It was also relevant that Mr Gately was a famous individual in a successful pop group. His life had attracted a large degree of public and media attention, as did his death. The immediate context of the column was therefore a body of public comment about what had happened to Mr Gately, and the forthcoming event at which his life was to be celebrated by many."

The only POSSIBLE interpretation of that is that the PCC is saying that the piece was fair comment BECAUSE it was a deliberate attempt to SPOIL that celebration of Mr Gately's life. Is it just me, or doesn't that make the article MORE offensive, not less?

Clause 12 – why the PCC thinks it's okay to be homophobic

You might think – given that the whole POINT of Ms Moir-der's drooling was to link Mr Gately's LIFESTYLE to her disturbing fantasies about DEATH that it would be unarguable that she came to this opion through a prejudicial opinion about the way gay daddies live. But no!

"Clause 12 makes clear that the press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's sexual orientation. The question of whether the article was homophobic or discriminatory to gay people in general did not fall under the remit of the Code."

In other words, you can say WHATEVER you like about gay daddies IN GENERAL, so long as you don't refer to the SPECIFIC individual whom you are slandering.

Isn't that ACTUALLY BONKERS – how is it less bad for you to be homophobic to LOTS of people than to ONE person in particular?

But in that case how DO you get away with calling Mr Gately's death "more than a little sleazy" and "dubious events" and "strange and lonely", never mind all the snide asides of the "…could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk" kind, without it being in some way "prejudicial or pejorative"? Here's how:

"There was a distinction between critical innuendo - which, though perhaps distasteful, was permissible in a free society - and discriminatory description of individuals, and the Code was designed to constrain the latter rather than the former."

That is clearly self-serving nonsense: WEASEL WORDS – literally, because it's saying if you USE weasel worlds you can say whatever you like. Something like this...

OPINION PIECE: "There are some REALLY SORDID HYPOCRITES out there. Incidentally, Ms Jan Moir-der is someone whose actions in private* would make you BARF! Nod. Wink."

(*writing for the Daily Hate Mail)

...ought to be really OUT of ORDER because the IMPLICATION is clear, even if the cover of DENIABILITY is in place. That's the whole POINT of innuendo: that everyone KNOWS what you mean without you having to say the incriminating words. But it's the MEANING not the WORDS that is important. If you're going to have a code that claims to protect people against HATE SPEECH then you really HAVE to do people for being HATEFUL even if they do it SLYLY. Perhaps ESPECIALLY if they do it SLYLY.

If Ms Moir-der had said what she said but about BLACK people, then her career would be over; she would be UN-EMPLOYABLE. And rightly so. If she had said it about JEWISH people, she would have made herself ARRESTABLE in several European countries.




Ultimately, the PCC's defence of the odious Ms Moir-der is "free speech is too important for us to say people shouldn't be allowed to say stupid, horrid, deceitful things".

And on those grounds, THEY ACTUALLY HAVE A POINT.

She kind of DOES have the right to spout her horrid nonsense. And twenty-five thousand people have the right to call her the most hated woman in Great Britain. That's how it goes.

But they have to bend their own rules completely out of shape in order to say it. Under their actual rules, she's bang to rights and ought to have been severely censored. Double meaning intended.

The PCC's code of practice – in fact the PCC itself – exists as a framework to PROTECT free speech from Government legislation. It is saying: "look we will make sure that we do not lie or defame or distort or intrude or be blatantly bigoted and in return you won't bring in a raft of laws to silence us when it's really important."

And that's where this judgement is REALLY REALLY damaging.

Because if the Press thumb their noses at the LARGEST EVER protest about an article, if they break their own rules, and worse OBVIOUSLY break their own rules, then they are inviting the Government to take self-regulation away. People will DEMAND that the Government takes self-regulation away.

And then, next time someone discovers a scandal like the MPs' Allowances shock, the Government will super-injunction the Papers into silence.

You don't lie about "fire" in a crowded theatre. And you don't tell obviously homophobic lies about a much loved young man who has tragically died. Because the CONSEQUENCES are so much worse than the giggle you get out of doing it.

After all, a toothless tiger is STILL better than a sabre-toothed Government poodle!

Think about that, Ms Moir-der. You, lying, intrusive, insensitive, homophobic but above all desperately STUPID playing-into-Hard-Labour's-hands Government stooge.

Though that's just my opinion.


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Day 3218: Why are people allowed to tell lies in newspapers?

Friday:


Well, I know: freedom of speech. But FACTS are FACTS. Surely freedom of speech is freedom to voice OPINIONS, where there are different ideas about things where there is NOT a known answer, like politics or who makes the best sticky buns.

It's not the freedom to make unfounded assertions that contradict known evidence.

And yes, I know some people say that there are NO facts at all, only points of view, but that's just a RUBBISH idea.

Look, I am nine: some things are RIGHT and some are WRONG.

And telling lies is WRONG.

So, Ms Jan Moir.

A week ago, Ms "Grimpen" Mire put poison pen to paper to write the article that has received more complaints than any other in the last five years. I'm sorry, I'll read that again: the article that has received more complaints than EVERY other in the last five years, added together.

A lot of people, including me and my daddies, were quite sad to hear about the sudden death of a nice young man called Mr Stephen Gately.

Ms Mire, was NOT upset – she saw an opportunity. She "wrote" [Daddy suggests the verb "daubed"] an article for her "paper" – for which she was presumably paid money – in which she not only indulged her own rather sickening fantasies about the possible deaths of other much-loved famous people, like Mr Robbie Williams or Ms Kylie Minogue, but also described Mr Gately's life as "sleazy" and his death as "unnatural". She also, with spectacular ill-grace, accused the poor boy's grieving mother of lying.

Can you imagine for just one second how that poor mummy must have felt?

The terrible news that she's lost her little boy, then the horrible human thoughts set in that something horribly horrible – drugs? murder? naughty games gone wrong? – something must have happened, then – guilty relief – the expert in charge tells you that it was a tragic tragic accident, a heart condition, the sort of "ordinary" disaster that out of the blue affects a small number of people every week. And THEN this horrible woman starts flinging the dung around, like she's picked up every evil rumour and bad thought that has floated like scum across the surface of the Internet and gigglingly printed them up like they mean something.

Can you imagine how Mr Gately's husband must feel about this? Practically airbrushed out of the coverage of the funeral already and then smeared with the implication that he went off to bed ("I've got no proof but not alone fner fner! By the way, I don't even have to underline the prurient assumption that that's BAAAAAD!") leaving his hubby to die on the couch.

What a horrid thing to do.

What I want to know is WHY, why would we even LET someone like that print a load of lies in a newspaper?

It is NOT an "opinion" to claim "there was nothing natural about this death". That is a statement about the facts: either poor Mr Gately died of natural causes or he didn't. The coroner said that he did. Ms Mire had NO grounds for questioning or challenging that assessment. So her article is just a LIE.


Now, she has written a "response" [Daddy suggests the noun: "screed"] to all the complaints.

She unpologises for the TIMING of her article, but not for the blatant LIE.

And then she tells ANOTHER lie:

"If he had been a heterosexual member of a boy band," she asserts, "I would have written exactly the same article."

Exactly the same? EXACTLY the same?

So after the sudden unexpected and tragic death of a HETEROSEXUAL young man, she would have written that: "it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships"?

It would have been BIZARRE NONSENSE to have written any such thing.

But more than that, while I would suggest that it would still be a really PRETTY STRANGE thing to say even if she had changed the wording to "the happy-ever-after myth of straight marriage", I do not for one picosecond believe that she WOULD have drawn such a conclusion from a tragedy involving a "nice straight boy".

To suggest that the first article made no link between Mr Gately's sudden death and his sexuality is A MONSTROUS FALSEHOOD. The first article doesn't say anything BUT "he died because he was gay".

Snide little innuendoes are laced throughout the piece, all with the same undercurrent:

"Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again" …unless they're gay.

"if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy" …because he was gay.

"Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately’s last night raise troubling questions" …about them both being gay.

And NOTHING links the tragic suicide of lonely Mr McGee to the tragic accident of happily-partnered Mr Gately EXCEPT that they were both gay.

(One could just as easily link Ms Mire herself to any notorious heterosexual suicide, with equal lack of any real meaning… for the most ludicrous possible example: "the death of the German Reichsfuhrer, the former longtime companion of German model Ms Eva Braun, and now the dubious events of Ms Mire's last article raise troubling questions". It doesn't MEAN anything because there is NO real connection – apart from them both receiving the support of the Daily Fail – just the SINISTER SUGGESTION of one put in your head.)

To deny that she used homophobic words is almost MORE wicked – it is the "I didn't do anything wrong!" barefaced deceit you might expect from a naughty little girl caught with her hand in the cookie jar. In anyone over the age of FOUR it is CONTEMPTIBLE.


I don't think lies like that should be allowed.

Newspapers have ENORMOUS power, but are accountable to practically no one.

Now there's a very simple and easy comparison to make: the BBC.

Ahh, you might say, but the BBC gets public money and the Daily Fail is a private company. OK, in that case the Daily Fail can pay me back my share of EVERY PENNY that it got in advertising. Because I had no choice in them getting that money, so they owe me – either accountability, or I'll take the cash.

Yes, that would be fair: either you can sign up to an accountable oversight commission, and that probably means a PARLIAMENTARY one – yes, I'll take MPs over journalists any day of the week – or you are banned from taking advertising.


So, last year, on the BBC Radio Two, Mr Russell Brand and Mr Jonathon Ross caused offence to a great many people when they made some silly rude phone calls to Mr Jonathan Sachs. (Not to be confused with Mr Andrew Sachs, the Chief Rabbi.)

Egged on by – of all papers – the Daily Fail, a record number of people (over forty thousand) complained. Mr Russell lost his job. The person in charge of Radio Two lost her job.

This year, in the Daily Fail, Ms Mire has caused offence to a great many people by telling a vicious lie.

Egged on by absolutely nobody, a record number of people (over twenty-five thousand) have complained. So, Ms Moir should lose her job. The person in charge of the Daily Fail should lose his job. Both of them, in fact.

No other outcome would be JUST.

PS:

I am indebted to Mr Stephen of the Glenn and the Cardiff Blogger for reading the Daily Fail so that we don't have to.

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