If I had to choose the stupidest thing I had seen on the internet today (and believe me, it would be a tough choice) I would have to choose this comment on the Daily Mail site about Google Maps increased coverage of the UK’s roads:

Damn those brass instrument players, breaking into our homes by checking an out of date image on the evil internet.

I would like to believe it was a spoof but know only too well how a certain type if puny human relishes getting all outraged.

One of the things that annoys me about the Mail reader most (and also the writers due to it not being an accident) is their inability to read the crummy outrage-inducing articles properly and go straight into NIMBY alert. This is aided by the usual Mail writer tools of quotation marks around words and phrases that are known to not be proper facts and the use of the popular “I reckon” rentaquote folks to go from point A (the fact) to point D (the “I reckon D will happen because A did”) bypassing points B and C all together. A good example appeared today in a story about how a council is trialing a system where households who reduce their non-recyclable waste could be rewarded, which ended up as a Nu-LieBore want to stealth tax us nice middle class people for emptying our kitchen bins ZOMG!” :

The first pay-as-you-throw rubbish scheme is to be launched this year, raising fears of nationwide bin taxes. Under the controversial plans, binmen will weigh each household’s weekly rubbish, with the council paying cash ‘rewards’ to the least wasteful homes. Town hall chiefs say the scheme is designed to encourage green behaviour. And they insist those who continue to fill their dustbins will not be fined.

But critics say the pilot will lead to a system of rubbish incentives and fines in which large families pay more to have their bins emptied and electronic microchip ‘spies’ are placed in every wheelie bin. 

Who are these handy critics? Apart from The Mail…

 Liberal Democrat-run Bristol City Council is applying to the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs for permission to trial a voluntary scheme. Under the local authority’s plans, residents of 2,362 homes in the city will be invited to take part in a sixmonth pilot. Volunteers will be given a microchipped wheelie bin so the amount they throw out can be weighed and recorded, and the amount of waste per person calculated. Residents will get cash payments depending on how much they manage to reduce their waste.

Gary Hopkins, the council’s environment spokesman, said: ‘The scheme will encourage residents to think about what they are throwing away and act as a thank you to those who help us by reducing their waste. It will be completely voluntary, so people only sign up to it if they want to take part.  There will be no penalty for participants who don’t manage to reduce their waste.’

So far so good. This sounds like a sensible idea to anyone concerned about wastage, landfills and the cost of getting rid of all that rubbish, right?

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council is already running a scheme in which residents are rewarded for recycling with vouchers they can spend in local stores. The Tory authority won the backing of David Cameron for its incentive scheme. But if Bristol gets the go-ahead, it will be the first council to provide cash incentives for those who cut the amount of rubbish they send to landfill.

So no Labour councils have been involved so far? OK. Glad that is clear.

The Conservatives’ local government spokesman Caroline Spelman said: ‘There’s a clear benefit in piloting genuine rewards in voluntary schemes to help people go green. However, Labour ministers are still planning to impose bin taxes in any Labour fourth term, despite the unwillingness of councils to play ball. Labour intend to impose bin taxes through back-door routes such as unelected Joint Waste Authorities and making them compulsory in so-called eco-towns.’

She reckons.

Dare we look at the readers’ comments?

I blame Liebore for people not being able to read simple stories.

Too true, the readers did not like this comment.

It’s a well known fact that there were death camps for people who were bad at recycling during World War 2. Yes. 

I can only conclude that they are happy being wilfully ignorant lazy fuckers which is a shame.

Tax Payers Association must have been on holiday… but guess who’s paying for it?

OK. I shall stop right now.

As a great big geek I just had to mention this:

She battled the Argentine army abroad (I must have missed Private Thatcher) and the unions at home. But Margaret Thatcher never knew she was also under attack from outer space.
Left-wing scriptwriters hired by the BBC during the 1980s tried to inspire a ‘Tardis revolution’ by using Doctor Who as propaganda to undermine the Tory prime minister. In one serial they caricatured her as a vicious and egotistical alien ruler who banned outward displays of unhappiness among her downtrodden people and used a secret police to oppress dissidents… In the adventure, screened in November 1988, the Doctor persuaded the oppressed drones, who toiled in factories and mines, to revolt in a deliberate echo of the miners’ and printers’ strikes.

This was hardly a secret in 1988. I was 15 and fully aware of the Thatcher influence. How is this news? Oh yeah, because the BBC is a disgrace and the licence fee is an unfair tax and boo hoo hoo…

In a serial the following year the Doctor gave an impassioned speech about the evils of nuclear weapons, which borrowed heavily from material obtained from CND.

The Doctor? Being all anti-war? Whatever next? That never would have happened in the good old days: William Hartnell’s Doctor was infamous for breaking up miners’ strikes (scab!) and shit-stirring on alien worlds.

This shocking non-news caused Mail readers to set their outrage mode to BBC Bash setting:

Oh poor poor Mister Griffin. Neo-Nazis were also in that season (and I mean that in the season 25 of Doctor Who sense, not in fashion).

The Mail blatantly nicked this story from The Times as a lot of it was practically identical.

Sylvester McCoy, from The Times:
“We were a group of politically motivated people and it seemed the right thing to do. At the time Doctor Who used satire to put political messages out there in the way they used to do in places like Czechoslovakia. Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered. Those who wanted to see the messages saw them; others, including one producer, didn’t.”

(Script editor Andrew Cartmel) assembled a number of “angry young writers” to produce storylines that they hoped would foment anti-Thatcher dissent. They included Ben Aaronovitch, son of the late Marxist intellectual Sam Aaronovitch, and Rona Munro, who went on to become a scriptwriter for Ken Loach, the socialist film-maker.

I think there may have been a lot more to it that that but never mind. The Times had a further bombshell:

A spin-off Doctor Who children’s novel called Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, which was published under licence by the BBC in 1987, featured a despotic villain called Rehctaht — Thatcher spelt backwards.

Gasp! I now have something to blame for my loony leftiness. Damn you, Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, you ruined my childhood.

I think the Times commenters surpassed the Mail’s for once:

Twat.

Wanker.

The story (about the so-called scandal) even featured on Newsnight last night where Terrance Dicks’ massive face appeared and said that stories inspired by politics were a bad idea for Doctor Who. Hundreds (thousands?) of geeks then shouted at their tellys about all the stories in the 1970s that did precisely that. Oh shame.

A full version of the Newsnight story, including a rather pointless studio discussion is on the Blogtor Who site. No complaints as yet from men made of sweets, OAP cannibals or 1950s Welsh holiday camps…

Shocking news in today’s Daily Mail:

Seven-year-olds will be taught to oppose sexist and homophobic bullying in schools.

A shake-up of sex education will also see children learning to ‘ recognise and challenge stereotypes’.

The Government also wants to make sex classes compulsory for 15-year-olds.
Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, launched the guidelines yesterday, saying they would help young people ‘understand the importance of marriage and other stable relationships’.
They would also equip children to cope with television, the internet, films and magazines which persuade them toward having early sex, he said.

Sounds sensible to me, and this kind of thing would have been most appreciated in my schooldays era as that was not exactly a barrell of laughs. I wonder what Mail readers think?

Exhibit A: The flabbergasted person:

Reading, Riting and Rithmatic? Replaced by Rogering, Rimming and Rolling about in a gay manner of course! Can someone please ask Flippin Heck how a spider crab writes?

Exhibit B: The sensible outsider:

Massive thumbs down from Maily Wailers as they love bullying, but nice try!

Exhibit C: The CAPS LOCK MENTALIST:

YESZ!

Exhibit D: The baffling commenter:

I am returning my gay megaphone to the gay shop first thing tomorrow.

Exhibit E: Me:

No idea how I got in the positive with the opinion arrows.

Exhibit F: The serious point raiser:

We would rather kids put up with horrible lives until they kill themselves or go a bit loopy: the silent majority speaks.

Nice people.

Would The Daily Mail ever put the Haiti story on their front pages? Surely with all the 24 hour news coverage of developments they would find something they perceive as worth featuring?

Not when you can moan about poor old middle class English people having a higher heating bill due to it being rather nippy and you have a Miss Marple DVD to give away. Add some royal tedium and hey presto, what earthquake?

Old wimmin avin’ babies? Eh? What’s all that about? Plus daughter of famous old rockstar bloke is heavily insinuated as having done a bit of the drugs. Shocking.

Anyway, here’s a link to the DEC where Mail readers and normal people can do something to help.

With tens of thousands dead and millions displaced after the horrific earthquake in Haiti you would think all the national newspapers would have it as their lead story yesterday, wouldnt you? Even the Daily Star had it on their cover, admittedly only a small box as some tits and celebrities (or was it celebrity tits? It’s all the same to me) took the main story…

All national newspapers except one.

Can you guess which?

Well…

If some middle class Brits (no not the record industry awards) were amongst the dead then it may have been a different matter but dead brown people do not matter all that much to this particular target audience. That tiresome hacker (no not this one), that bloody MacCann woman and a free Poirot DVD are far more important.

Surely The Mail would learn their lesson and put Haiti on the cover today?

Of course not! A Daily Express-style batshit health story, Beyonce in a leotard (or something) and a little bit more free Poirot!

Bravo, you shits.

I do so love it when so-called journalists earn a small bloody fortune by rehashing pre-existing flimsy newspaper stories and conveniently don’t bother to check any of their facts (far too much work when you already have an agenda-driven piece ready to publish), causing their sheep, sorry, fans to get all defensive. Take the England-hating Florida resident Richard Littlejohn who managed to re-use what was at best a stretch of the truth along with one of his favourite crowd-pleasing dollops of bullshit:

Smyleene Myleene Klass allegedly got told off by police for waving a kitchen knife at some garden intruders from the safety of her window, according to her agent whose job it is to get her publicity. Agent bloke Jonathan Shalit said :

‘Myleene was utterly terrified. She was aghast when she was told that the law did not allow her to defend herself in her own home. All she did was scream loudly and wave the knife to try and frighten them off. She is not looking to be a vigilante, and has the utmost respect for the law, but when the police explained to her that even if you’re at home alone and you have an intruder, you are not allowed to protect yourself, she was bemused.’

Littlejohn loved this as it gave him the opportunity to hate our police force from the safety of his gated Florida mansion but if he had done anything resembling research he would have seen this quote on BBC news from the police force in question:

“Officers spoke to reassure the home owner, talked through security and gave advice in relation to the importance of reporting suspicious activity immediately to allow officers to act appropriately. For clarification, at no point were any official warnings or words of advice given to the home owner in relation to the use of a knife or offensive weapon in their home.”
Mr Shalit could not immediately be reached for further comment.

Funny, that.

The big lie of the day was this little nugget of a paragraph, ironiclaly written by someone whose columns give out pretty much the same message as the BNP’s website:

The equalities commission is within its rights to prosecute the BNP for dragging its feet over lifting the ban on non-white members. But these Toytown Nazis need to be beaten at the ballot box, not in court. Sending Nick Griffin to prison on a technicality will only feed their sense of victim-hood and martyrdom. Especially when other overtly racist organisations – the Black Police Association, for instance – are free to carry on with impunity.

The Black Police Association, you say?

What? This Black Police Association?

All it would have taken was a glimpse at their homepage but why bother when repeating a myth / lie can so your job so much easier? Several people tried to point out this ‘white people cannot join the NBPA’ story (a favourite lie of a certain type of puny human) but were all downrated by the Mail’s comments vote system…

Criag didn’t like me very much but then to him I am some kind of loony lefty. His point made no sense to me (quite literally, I am not just being flippant)…

Craig never did explain how I would be upset if there was a white police officers association, even if it did let white people in. Did he mean that it would only have black police officers in it until they would be made to change their entry policy to include white people? Why would black people want to join a white police officers association anyway? And why would a majority group need to have their own minority interests group?

Then my head exploded so I had a cup of tea.

It’s been Snow Panic! week this week, except here where I have been relatively calm about the weather. More hot drinks and a wooly hat is all I need, although the emptiness of Office Town yesterday was a bit like a really cheap post-semi-apocalyptic film. Anyway, never one to let the chance to publish a load of old wank, The World’s Greatest Newspaper went all predictable and gave me more retweets on Twitter than ever before when I caught an early glimpse at one of their headlines:

Panic begins by encouraging readers to panic about gas supplies being low which is always the case with gas supplies so shut up. Also: it’s Diet Week at the world’s greatest newspaper. No change there then, and no I do not want my starsign’s coffee grains read thanks.

CHAOS in the Express! The infamous “Weather = Climate” head/desk nonsense returns! Diet Week has gadgets to “fight the flab” which is kind of cheating. Did Skinnier Than Before Woman Who Was Off The Telly use them and then split up with Man Who Was Off The Telly? Do we care? No. PANIC!

After encouraging all that PANIC! we are told to keep calm and carry on. It’s hot on the other side of the world so here are some boobs. Phew! Diet Week shows how you can lose weight and keep it off forever but I imagine it involves getting someone to take a chainsaw to your arms and legs.

The infamous retweet story from yesterday:

Yeah those biased scientists, eh? What do they know? I reckon…

… he’s not biased at all, what with having written a book about the climate change ’scam.’

Tomorrow: World freezes over, Express builds giant Diana effigy out of snow.

Final batch of Express shite:

Category Seven: SWINE FLU STORIES
Swine Flu (PANIC!) was the perfect event for The World’s Greatest Newspaper as it combined several of its main agendas. If only Princess Diana could have had it too, it would have given the ‘journalists’ an excessive amount of journo-jizz:

Love the panicking headlines followed by a headline moaning about people panicking… and bonus anti-points for the obligatory having a go at migrants. Such a quality newspaper.

‘Fish diet cuts your chance of going blind’ on the Pig Flu Kids front page also deserves a mention so I have linked to the original story. It is, like almost all of their food stories, involving tests on mice. No singalongs please.

I am of course now dead from piggy flu as is everyone who has ever read this blog.

Another day, another load of best worst covers from the self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Newspaper…

Category Six: LUNATIC DIET STORIES
Like their Batshit Health Stories only more specific due to being slightly rewritten press releases from organisations who want their bullshit promoted to idiotic morons who’ll believe any old tripe:

The Tea Council got a nice bit of publicity this year when the independent expert the Express quoted was on their payroll so I imagine The Breakfast Club is not just an 80s brat pack film.

Food Top Trumps continued with Coffee beating Alzheimers, Tomato Pill beating Heart Disease (but what about good old plain Tomato?) and then Broccoli beating Heart Disease and probably scoring higher than Tomato Pill as it is real food and not just a pill. Who knows? It’s all bollocks.

Eggs were previously not good for you in Express World (???) then became good until some foreign eggs came over here by sneaking into our egg cartons and made eggs bad again. Luckily Apple Juice was around to help Coffee with Alzheimers by being a blody miracle.

Apple Juice may well be a miraculous drink but Appletize was still dangerous due to being a drink of the fizzy variety (let’s not mention the free Pepsi previously given away). It’s so hard to keep up with all the developments. Sweetener was a silent killer so another reason to switch to savoury but then that was ruined by hidden salt killing loads of people every year…. silently. Shhhhh!

Tomorrow: Swine Flu, if we are not all dead from it as predicted by the Express.