It’s the 2011 Budget - SIMPLIFIED! (Because together we can become smarter. One lol at a time.) [25/03/2011]

Is that time of year again; THE BUDGET! YAAAAAY….erm….right? Yes it’s the speech where the Chancellor sets out the economic principles for the forthcoming 12 months, which as always descents swiftly into a mire of sound-bytes, arbitrary numbers and hyperbole, which by the end leaves you wondering why you’d even bothered listening in the first place. Osbourne had his ‘turn the bull loose!’ moment when he declared that ‘Britain is open for business!’, which naturally meant fuck all as even the premise that Britain was closed for business at any point is just absurd.

The big story from this year’s budget was that Osbourne had SLASHED petrol by 1p. Yeah, he CHOPPED petrol by 1p. He SLIT THE THROAT of petrol by 1p (that last one was probably a bit strong). The papers naturally bent the specifics of the story to fit their prerogative, with those on the right claiming that Osbourne had saved the country from imminent death and destruction, and those on the left claiming that Osbourne’s budget was so out of line that he may as well of crept into your bedroom at night and given you a papercut with it. And The Mail just moaned regardless of the outcome because, you know, that’s what The Mail does.

The Guardian led with the petrol story, where they used the word ‘lopped’ to describe the reduction in price by a penny. Did anyone guess lopped?

Doing the round of broadcast interviews following Wednesday’s announcement, he told ITV’s Daybreak: “We will be watching like a hawk to make sure that motorists get the benefit of the budget changes and make sure that there’s no funny business.”

“I’m not pretending that this is going to transform the situation over night for families who are feeling the squeeze, but it helps.”

Now what annoys me about this statement is that Osbourne knows that a penny is literally a token gesture, yet he is running with it like he’s some sort of caped crusader, fighting off evil corporations with his petrol pump of justice. ‘Yeah it’s only a penny but it’s YOUR penny. And I will protect it!’.

The Sun essentially claimed responsibility for the 1p reduction, stating that it was the Sun’s demand to give motorists a break – and George agrees!

He said last night: “I couldn’t let Sun readers down - I hope it helps.”

Let them down, George. Let them down. People who read the Sun are idiots and deserved to be punished.

The Sun clarified reason why motorists should be delighted with the change in legislation;

The Chancellor CHOPPED an immediate penny off fuel duty from 6pm last night. He SCRAPPED an inflation-linked 5p price hike due on April 1.

He TORE UP Labour’s hated fuel tax escalator - which would have led to annual rises at the rate of inflation plus 1p.

Instead duty will go up in January, but only by the rate of inflation.

His package means that from next month prices at the pumps will be 6p a litre lower than they would have been.

So he has CHOPPED prices by 1p, but SCRAPPED and TORE UP (I quite enjoy this ‘writing in caps lock’ stuff) the fuel tax escalator, meaning that though it has only gone down by a penny, due to a price freeze it will be 6p lower than it would have been. So motorists have, in a convoluted way, saved 6p a litre on petrol. Fuck me, I’ve never put this much effort into something amounting to 6p. I’ve nicked penny chews as a kid which required less brain-power than this.

So that’s petrol sorted, but what about the rest of the budget?

The Telegraph produced a very lovely winners and losers piece (complete with gratuitous pictures of happy and sad Mr.Men – just in case any of you dribbling plebs couldn’t work out what a winner and a loser was). In the winners section was first time home buyers (£250m of aid made available to people looking to get on the housing ladder, by the government subsidising deposits on new-build housing), low earners (amount that people can earn free of tax will rise by £630 to £8,105 – though still short of the £10,000 figure promised by the Lib Dems pre-election. Cue jokes about Lib Dems and keeping manifesto promises) and Travellers (freeze on air passenger duty). Good news for all you low-earning travellers, looking to get on the property ladder. But wait, if I’m travelling, how can I buy a house? Also, if I’m a low earner, how can I do either of those things? But if I buy a house…

As far as the losers go, according to The Telegraph, they include Pensioners (changing levels of taxation on low earners doesn’t affect them, and higher levels of inflation than expected will significantly reduce their pensions in real money terms), high earners (50p tax rate on salaries over £150,000, removal of personal allowance on incomes over £115,000 and the tightening of tax loopholes), public sector workers (1% increase in  national insurance contributions, 3% increase in pension payments and a later retirement age) and smokers and drinkers (but then they always get spanked by the exchequer. You knew this. Our country is built on the expenditure of weezy buggers and drunks).

The Independent derided the budget as nothing more than spin. They cited it as just broken promises and delay tactics. Despite Cameron’s promise “I’ll cut the deficit – not the NHS”, The Independent stated that;

“In terms of the Government’s pledge to grow NHS spending in real terms year-on-year, this will now be only barely true between 2010-11 and 2011-12.

If 2010-11 spending had not turned out less than planned, there would have been a small real cut in 2011-12.

The Government is sailing perilously close to the wind with respect to honouring this particular pledge.”

And it’s not just the NHS where the Government is on shaky ground, even the chop on petrol prices is being questioned. But wait, what about my 6p?! WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE 6p!?

Labour pointed out that next month’s rise had merely been postponed. Duty will rise in January and August next year, by about 3p on each occasion.

So they haven’t actually cancelled the price increase, they’ve just postponed it? Oh you horrible bastards. So your 6p saving will become a 3p saving next year, but it’s not actually a saving, as it’s only a speculative saving compared against how much you would have paid had the ‘tax escalator’ not been removed by the Conservative party, only to be re-instated later at reduced rate? So in a sense, the Conservatives have ACTUALLY PUT THE PRICE OF PETROL UP? You know what? I’ll catch the tube.

The other major concern espoused by The Independent, was that speculative economic growth was cut for the third time from initial expectation, down now from 2.1% to 1.7%.

The Office for Budget Responsibility said it lacked the evidence to say whether the Plan for Growth, which accompanied the Budget, would lift the UK’s longer-term rate of growth.

It said there was very little the plan could do to improve growth in the short term but that relaxation of planning rules might help in future.

The issue is that a slower rate of economic growth effects job creation, tax revenue and all figures associated with the budget, making the whole process pretty futile if the targets continue to be reassessed so WHAT’S THE POINT ANYWAY?! I would drink to ease the pain, but it’s too fucking expensive these days.

You wouldn’t have found these fears in The Express though, because in their opinion Osbourne is apparently the second coming of Jesus, and his rather dour and uninspiring budget was actually the only thing that has saved the population from a downward spiral into addiction, poverty and death.

GEORGE Osborne last night gave Britain hope that better times lie ahead for all with a “Budget for growth” that slashed fuel duty and cut income tax for millions.

Well, he postponed fuel duty for a year, and lifted the tax rate for a small percentage of the country. But I suppose you could describe that as slashed and cut…

To pay for the package of help for families, businesses and motorists, the Chancellor slapped a £2billion tax rise on the profits of North Sea oil companies.

But then he also,

Cut corporation tax by two per cent from April, along with a host of incentives for firms, which were welcomed by business leaders last night.

So we like it when he taxes corporations, but we also like it when he gives them tax cuts? Jesus, The Express’ rhetoric is about as predictable as a jelly on a Bouncy Castle.

Far more generous than expected, the fuel duty cut was a victory for the Daily Express’s Fair Fuel crusade.

But I thought he did it for The Sun readers? Oh George, you really are a filthy harlot sometimes.

Still confused about the budget? With most of the Daily Mail’s readership being knuckle-dragging lunatics, they described the budget – in picture form!

Say what you want about the Mail, but they know their demographic.

So what have we learnt about this year’s budget? Well; drivers, first time buyers, travellers and low earners should be better off, and the lower fuel prices should have a knock on effect to other areas. Though this may be all bollocks as petrol prices have only fractionally gone down and will reportedly go up next year as planned. High earners, pensions and civil servants will now feel the squeeze, whilst the NHS may also face cuts. Tax increases on oil profits should cover the loss from other sectors, but then tax cuts to corporation leaves us wondering who will make up for this drop in revenue, whilst smoking will now kill you financially, as well as medically. Oh and this stuff may all be irrelevant as if economic growth keeps going the way it is we may have an emergency budget at some point which overrides this one, and we’ll be fucked anyhow.

HERE’S TO ANOTHER GREAT YEAR!

The Kids Aren’t Alright; Nepotism in the Modern Media (15/03/2011)

(Visit us at shoutingatco.ws. We don’t bite……hard……)

Nepotism is just about as British a quality as there is. If you think of the stereotypical hallmarks of British culture, you think of red phone boxes, Bobbies on the beat, taking breaks in sport for a cup of tea, The Archers and Nepotism. We have a Royal Family. We have a class system. Our whole society is set up in such a way that the standard of your life will almost certainly depend on who you were lucky (or unlucky) enough to be born to.

The media is one area that has been touched by the big oily cock of nepotism. The public responses to spoilt children getting an undeserved leg-up in the industry have ranged from searing outrage to ‘…meh. It’s live at Studio Five. The exhumed corpses of Hitler and Stalin could present it and it would still be pretty fucking trite’.

The traits of someone who has got a position due to their name rather than ability tend to be blindingly obvious. It’s a bit like when as a child you return home with a stick man drawing or a potato-prints picture, and your parent puts it on the fridge to keep you happy. Only instead of the fridge, it’s the Tate Modern (though one should add, If Damien Hirst put some potato prints in an art gallery, no doubt you’d get some hipster berks in Hampstead claiming the this was a conceptual study in the organic nature of art, and how its formation has been changed by the technological impact on art and artists. And then their beret would fall off…).

When children of the famous get work in low-end publications and broadcasters, the response is more ridicule than outrage. Chloe Madely dropped out of University after one term to pursue a career in media. She stated that:

“I left Leeds University after a term because I was just so over the whole education thing.”

Which, you know, are the usual phrases to appear in the patois of hard-working, budding media personalities. After stints on Big Brother’s Big Mouth, Live at Studio Five and – quelle surprise! –The Richard and Judy Show, Chole had the nepotism stick wagged firmly at her, but she claimed that she had the talent to make it on her own. To prove this to dissidents nationwide, she felt the best way to get herself across as a credible broadcaster was to strip for FHM, and appear on shows such as Celebrity Quitters (A show were ‘celebrities’ give up smoking) and Dancing On Ice (A show where celebrities dance……on ice). Hmm….

Then you have Georgina Littlejohn. Son of Richard ‘spawn of Satan’ Littlejohn, she was vilified by critics due to her appallingly down-market writing, with pieces such as ‘Make-up free Lucy Davis looks tired and fed up’ and ‘Winehouse shows signs of overindulgence as she lets it all hang out by the pool’, a story about Amy Winehouse looking a bit fat, which contained possibly the finest sentence in the history of the printed press;

She might be drug-free, but Amy still succumbs to Mr Niccotine – ironically, an appetite suppressant

(note – she did indeed spell Nicotine wrong)

The thing with Madeley and Littlejohn is that, though it’s wrong that they have a very basic grasp of spelling and sentence structure and yet get given prominent media jobs, it’s not like they’re doing stuff to make people envious. If it’s not these two doing banal reality TV or sniping celebrity columns, it’ll be two other dribbling tosspots, just sans rich parent.

However, it’s the children of the affluent who have gained exposure through credible outlets that have faced the most intense public scorn. A famous example which saw the Guardian draw widespread criticism was Max Gogarty’s ‘Max, 21, hits the road’, a self-penned article in the Guardian’s travel column by some utterly repulsive hipster twat who was going to document his ‘gap yah’ in India, where particularly highlights were to be;

Debauched beach parties, the dodgy days with “washing machine” tummy, the messy late-night stumblings into bars and, of course, all that bullshit about finding myself.

Now I speak for everyone when I say that, if I want to watch some odious British tourist get pissed on a foreign beach, I’ll pop on ‘Sun, Sea, and A + E’.

The Gogarty article read like a pure satire, like it was a typical pastiche of the ‘Shoreditch Twat’, or the pitch for a Nathan Barley movie. Every single sentence made you want to punch a wall;

Spending any sort of money I earn on food and skinny jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted two-month trip to India and Thailand. Clichéd I know, but clichés are there for a reason.

Are they? Really, Max. Are they?

Some of turns of phrase would make you utterly wince with their deplorable lack of self-awareness.

I’m kinda shitting myself about travelling. Well not so much the travelling part. It’s India that scares me. The heat, the roads, the snakes, Australian travellers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited. But shitting myself.

So a heady mix of racism, xenophobia and scat humour there. It’s what I look for in my daily Guardian.

Suspicious were raised over how someone with this standard of writing could get a column in the Guardian, and then proceed to piss off the entire country in a few short paragraphs. It transpired that Max’s father Paul was a travel writer for them, which caused uproar amongst the internet community.

Despite an editor’s rebuffing that he got the gig due to him contributing script to the TV show Skins, the general consensus is that saying he ‘wrote’ for Skins just made poor Max’s case worse. His blog was pulled and he never wrote for the Guardian again.

However bad Max Gogarty’s writing may have been, never will you read a worse column that this piece in magazine ‘NYLON’ by everyone’s favourite ubiquitous daughter; Miss Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof.

Now before I start spouting hyperbole everywhere , I should add some perspective; I’ve read Liz Jones, Jan Moir, Quentin Letts, Sally Bercow, Max Gogarty, Binkie West, Richard Littlejohn, Peter Hitchens, Sarah Palin, ex-girlfriends’ glossy magazines, birthday cards from 4-year old nephews, the back of toothpaste packets on the toilet, The Da Vinci Code and Nuts magazine’s ‘women’s sex confessions’; and yet even with all this competition, Peaches Geldof’s ‘British Invasion’ column in NYLON magazine is the worst thing I have ever read.

Peaches Geldof left independent Queens College, London, with a U in Politics. Though her painfully shit level of education would leave most people cleaning out bins for a living, it was enough to secure her columns inElle Girl, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, ES Magazine and Cleo Australia. It must been a really strong U. Like on the U/F boundary. However, Peaches’ ‘Pièce de résistance’ was an article she wrote forNYLON magazine in 2008 (I should add, ‘critically acclaimed’ NYLON magazine).

Never has a column made me feel as misanthropic as this. At least when reading Littlejohn, you know that he’s a prick that provides shocks for laughs. But with this article, you could only assume that Peaches was sitting there writing putrid metaphor after putrid metaphor, thinking ‘this is fucking gold this is. I’m like a modern day Sylvia Plath’. Opening with the most vomit inducing sentence in the history of digital media;

The sun glows a burned orange as it sinks behind a skyscraper, a car horn screeches irritably, the wind whistles through the acres of willows in Central Park:  New York, the most offbeat and eccentric city in America, is my new home.

the article just goes from bad to worse:

Her high-pitched hyena laugh filling the office as Marvin strums his guitar and dreams up ideas for the next issue.  I feel like I’m part of a movement—a magazine that encapsulates everything cool and strange and interesting.

Yeah, a movement. It’s like fucking Solidarity in there. That’s all Lech Walesa did anyway; wrote in a shite magazine about the latest retro fashion to hit Krakow, and boom; workers had rights. IT’S A MOVEMENT BITCHES!

I grew up there [London], walked its cobbled streets a thousand times, and frequented its infamous haunts.The skies are always grey and the weather is freezing, but the place is alive

The cobbled streets of London? The fuck are you on about? Jesus, someone pass me the sick bag. Or just fucking shoot me in the head.

The whole article reads like a cross between a D level English GCSE paper, and a ‘my first metaphor book’. And that’s just the standard of writing, the content is even worse.

Highlights included buying a sequined flannel shirt in Colorado for a dollar off an old Mexican woman, who told me it was a family heirloom; Max purchasing a James Dean printed metal lunchbox and using it as a makeshift handbag; being chased by a homeless man wearing a Slipknot T-shirt in Iowa; going vintage shopping in a Pittsburgh store where a 10-year-old kid in a 1970s flared pantsuit and fedora sold us the entire stock of clothes for fifty bucks.  (Max loved this store and later changed into an ‘80s red silk evening dress to present the American Eagle music festival in Pittsburgh, to my amusement and his Chester French bandmate’s confusion.)

Well that sounds like a swell day out. You two spongers fluttering about a charity shop, cause, like, you’re just so alterative, yeah? The whole thing could be paraphrased as ‘me and my rockstar boyfriend go clothes shopping with daddy’s money’;

The whole piece is a mess of hackneyed cliché, mawkish metaphors and garrulous language which come together to form this awful mess of an essay. Naturally, the response to the article was overwhelmingly bad. The article got 302 comments, and so much attention that it was written about it in an English paper. Like Max at the Guardian, her weekly column was scrapped, and she now only makes the odd fleeting experience where she say what tracks she thinks are JUST OMG SOOO AMAZIN RITE NOW!

The basic lesson we can learn from this, is that if you’re after a bit of attention for a gutter press column or downmarket TV tit-bit; putting a famous relative on it will get you popularity and hits. However, if you try and use a surname to get attention or as a favour to a friend in a serious journalism column, you will be utterly crucified. So maybe as a rule of thumb, for serious journalism; employ people based on their ability and experience, rather than who’s loins they were sired from.

Just a thought, like.

‘Kicked and Humiliated’; how the newspapers covered the Lib Dems by-election performance. (04/03/11)

This week saw the town of Barnsley get the most attention the place has had since Barnsley Town FC’s shock promotion to the Premiership in 1997 (what a team it had though, eh. Eric Tinkler, Neil Redfern, Lars Leese, Clint Marcelle. True greats of the game). The big talking point was the Liberal Democrats getting an absolute hammering in the polls (similar to some comprehensive hammerings Barnsley FC received in that fateful season) finishing in lowly 6^th place (difference being that Barnsley FC would have sold their collective grandmothers for a 6^th place finish in ‘98).

Labour coasted to victory in the Barnsley Central by-election, in spite of the jailing of the party’s previous MP for expenses fraud, with the Lib Dems slumping to sixth place.

UKIP ended the night with a huge rise in its share of the vote and most to celebrate.

The result was particularly grim for the Liberal Democrats whose vote fell sharply despite the party fielding an experienced candidate in Dominic Carman, son of the celebrated barrister George Carman.

Yeah, even with Labour’s previous MP in the area being sent to jail for expenses fraud, it was still a cakewalk for them, which really makes you appreciate how much people hate the Lib Dems right now. Real burning hatred. Turnout was only 36.5%, and of the share of the vote;

Dan Jarvis (Lab) 14,724 (60.80%, +13.53%)

Jane Collins (Ukip) 2,953 (12.19%, +7.53%)

James Hockney (C) 1,999 (8.25%, -9.01%)

Ends Dalton (BNP) 1,463 (6.04%, -2.90%)

Tony Devoy (Ind) 1,266 (5.23%, +3.58%)

Dominic Carman (LD) 1,012 (4.18%, -13.10%)

The Conservatives were beaten to second place by UKIP, while the LD’s were worryingly beaten by the BNP. Bet the Tories are annoyed they didn’t get Darren Gough to run as a candidate now. He is used to being on a sticky wicket. He can cause big swings in unfriendly conditions. He always fends off tough opponents with a straight bat…….that’s it, that’s all the cricket puns…..

The papers were unified in the view that the Liberal Democrats took a heavy defeat, only disagreeing on the semantics and hyperbole.

The Daily Mail claimed that the Lib Dems ‘were HUMILIATED into sixth place’, with voters turning against them because of ‘U-turns on issues like University tuition fees’. The Guardian also went for‘Humiliated Lib Dems’, while in the Telegraph’sview the Lib Dems ‘got a kicking’. The Telegraph also printed Clegg’s response to the aforementioned kicking;

“The result in the by-election last night was obviously a bad result for the Liberal Democrats.”

“I have no doubt that people will try to use this single result to write off the Liberal Democrats. They have done it in the past and we have proved them wrong and we will prove them wrong again…The truth is that it was a no-contest for any non-Labour candidate.”

Which probably explains why he failed turn up and support LD representative Dominic Carman. You know, because it was a no contest. Which he failed to mention before the election. Of course.

The Daily Express described the event as a ‘Barnsley Kicking’, which I believe is a sexual position. Right? TheExpress added that Clegg ‘has insisted he would not be knocked off course’. Call me naïve, but wasn’t it this complete disregard of your electorate’s opinions that got you into this mess in the first place?

The Independent led with ‘humiliated’ also, but focussed their article on the nature of the candidates who beat Carman and the LDs.

The extent of the Lib Dems’ slide surpassed all predictions, with advance speculation suggesting that one or both of the BNP and Ukip might overhaul Mr Clegg’s party.

To be beaten also by an independent candidate with no party machine behind him – unemployed ex-miner Tony Devoy – is particularly embarrassing for the Lib Dems.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage claimed that his party ‘are now the voice of opposition in British politics. The Lib Dems have lost that mantle’. Which is fair enough. As the old fable goes, you take the Barnsley Central by-election, you take the country. Oh wait, no-one says that. In fact, if we’re gonna be reactionary and base the country’s opinion on one electoral seat, then I have as much right to claim that Greens are the real voice of opposition, considering, unlike Farage’s party, they actually managed to WIN a seat. What about that eh, Nige?

LD party president Tim Farren stated that “perhaps the biggest story is that 70% of people didn’t think it was worth bothering.” And you can’t blame the people, really. What are their options? You’ve either got Labour who were in power when we got into this current economic mess, you’ve got the Conservatives who are cutting taxes for the super-wealthy and cutting state provisions for the poor, or the Lib Dems who seem to have a morbid obsession with revoking on their promises. The electorate is hardly spoilt for choice.

There is always the Monster Raving Looney Party, I suppose.

NEWS: Elation and apprehension expressed following Mubarak’s resignation (12/02/2011)

Friday’s protests in Cairo proved to be the final scenes for Hosni Mubarak’s presidency, and his resignation saw the end to of 30 year autocratic rule of Egypt.

The reaction amongst the media, public and politicians was a mixture between joy of apprehension. On the ground, it was a moment of elation for the Egyptian public. Activist and Noble prize winner Mohammed El-Baradi described it as ‘The greatest day of his life’, while Ayman Nour, the only person who ran against Mubarak in the previous rigged election, stated that “This nation has been born again, these people have been born again, and this is a new Egypt,”.

Mubarak’s authoritarian rule was a mixture of fear and external support. He had governed with an iron fist for thirty years, following the assassination of predecessor Anwar Sadat. His presidency established an ‘us v them’ psyche towards the Muslim Brotherhood, which also saw him receive mass amounts of aid from the US, and them turning a blind eye towards the abhorrent human rights abuses during his leadership. He claims his aims were to bring stability to Egypt, though his idea of stability was only accessible through police brutality, corruption and rigged-elections.

Upon his announcement, many went on the attack at Mubarak. MSNBC stated that:

He resisted calls for reform even as public bitterness grew over corruption, deteriorating infrastructure and rampant poverty in a country where 40 percent live below or near the poverty line.

Whilst the Guardian were even more searing in their criticism;

The police state drove many into the hands of extremists. And this, it was often said, was Mubarak’s deliberate policy. The Muslim Brotherhood was useful to him because the threat it represented, which he exaggerated, silenced much western criticism of his human rights abuses. In truth, he was always more afraid of the pro-democracy movement than the Islamists – a fear that proved to be well-founded.

Apprehension following the resignation was two-fold; some feared that the Army would continue to rule with brutality, while others feared that free and fair elections would see Egypt descend into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Independent felt that toppling Mubarak may have only been the first step for Egyptian democracy.

There was a note of caution in the background, however, over how far the military under Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak’s veteran defence minister, are ready to permit a democracy.

“This is just the end of the beginning,” said Jon Alterman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “Egypt isn’t moving toward democracy, it’s moved into martial law and where it goes is now subject to debate.”

While the army were remained tight-lipped, the Armed Forces Supreme Council reaffirmed that they were committed to moving to country towards a democratic model, stating that they were “to sponsor the legitimate demands of the people and endeavour for their implementation within a defined timetable”.

Now obviously, the fear with simply axing the head of a regime is that the mechanics still remain untouched. What it will depend on is the pressure that The US puts on the Egyptian army following the resignation, considering the aid that the regime is so dependent on. In a statement to the press, President Obama claimed that;

The Egyptian people have made it clear that there is no going back to the way things were: Egypt has changed, and its future is in the hands of the people.

Other world leaders weren’t as positive as Obama. In Israel, where Mubarak had become a key ally for the country, they hoped the resignation “would bring no change to its peaceful relations with Cairo”. The worry, for some, is that a more extreme party would gain power, in a similar vein to the Iranian revolution of 1979. The Telegraph went one further, citing fears that this revolution could lead to calamitous scenes in the wider region.

“The escalating confrontation has raised fear of uncontrolled violence in the most populous Arab nation, a key US ally in an oil-rich region where the chance of chaos spreading to other long stable but repressive states troubles the West.”

Anyone that has studied the region would surely agree that the fears are completely unfounded. This revolution is totally different to the Iranian one of 1979. The Iranian revolution was a pro-Islamic, pro-theocratic, pro-Khomeini, anti-shah and anti-western movement. The Egyptian revolution is pro-democracy. The only thing they have in common is that they are both in the Middle East. If anything, it replicates the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czech-Republic. I don’t see why they’ll free themselves from one dictator and plunge themselves into another. I cannot see the Muslim Brotherhood (who are only a fringe party anyway) getting into power. It just expresses baseless fears by countries that have no understanding of the area and of its people. Hence why they were so happy to keep a tyrant in charge for so long.

Wherever Egypt goes now remains to be seen. One hopes that the revolution doesn’t get hijacked by a group or political party, and that power does indeed remain with the people.

NEWS: Daily Star accused of supporting the English Defence League (EDL); Sorry, weren’t they already? (10.02)

The continuing wave of far-right groups attempting to gain mainstream legitimization continued today with a front-page story on the Daily Star concerning The English Defence League (EDL).

THE English Defence League is set to break into mainstream politics with a bid to get MPs in Parliament.

It wants to field official EDL candidates in national and council elections.

The party’s boss Tommy Robinson said: “We aren’t ruling it out. I think this country needs a party that’s not afraid to say things some would consider unpopular.

“My hope is still that the Tories will take a tougher stance.”

“We are a single issue group and at the moment we would rather have a dialogue with the other political parties – but that could change.”

So in a sense it’s a bit of a non-story; Far-right group with no real interest in turning political making an unsubstantiated threat against the Conservative party. Hardly worth the headline ‘EDL Go Political’. They themselves say that they are not a political party, but are a single issue group. A pressure group if you will. That single issue was outlined by leader Tommy Robinson;

He said the organisation’s main aim was to outlaw the Koran then adapt it to fit in with British society.

He said the only way to do this would be to force Muslims to realise the words of their holy scriptures are outdated.

He said: “They have got a responsibility to sort out their religion. They have to reform their religion so it fits in.”

One key statement that people drew out of the story was a statistic at the foot of the piece which claimed that;So the group is – in their own words – an anti-Muslim pressure group. Call me short-sighted, but I can’t see that going political. At least the BNP had a manifesto with policies (I should add, it was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read, blaming – amongst other things – battery farming on immigration. Your guess is as good as mine).

In the Daily Star phone poll yesterday, 98% of readers said they agreed with the EDL’s policies.

This lead many observers to claim that the paper was now supporting the EDL. This was certainly the claim of the more left-wing newspapers. In a column by Roy Greenslade in the Guardian, he questioned the neutrality of the piece.

The story cannot be read as anything other than a cheer-leading, uncritical piece on behalf of the EDL. Triumphalist in tone throughout, it required no between-the-lines deconstruction to grasp its intention – to build support for the group among its readers.

Greensdale cites a long list of flattering EDL articles that have appeared in the Daily Star recently as evidence of a shift in support to the EDL. As well as this, Greensdale states that reaction of EDL members has been incredibly supportive of the article.

The Star’s coverage is manna from heaven for the EDL. Stephen Martin, who wrote on Facebook: “TODAY i sat there with my daily star with PRIDE, the pictures and banners were fair, the write up was fair, the Star comment was fair and 98 per cent back us… We have a voice now, 25p a day, if they have 74,000 new readers, we have a BIGGER voice.”

This worrying approval of EDL supporters towards the article was also reported by Steven Baxter in the New Statesman.

At the time,I looked at the reactionon nationalist and EDL message boards and blogs, and found it was highly positive. One blogger wrote, delightedly, “This is the first article I have read, from both the national and regional media, that hasn’t been critical of the EDL,” and hoped for more in the future. It would seem that wish has been granted.

Undoubtedly, the nature of the response towards the article from supporters has left critics united in the belief that the Daily Star is now supporting the EDL. In the Independent, Ian Burrel’s article also looked at the nature of recent pieces on the EDL, echoing Greensdale’s statements;

A day earlier the newspaper had run a story saying that the EDL would “fight for heroes” and claiming that two Muslim councillors had “snubbed” a soldier by not rising to their feet when he was being given a standing ovation for winning a George Cross.

The EDL boss said that, unlike bumbling BNP leader Nick Griffin, 51, he would be a sure fire hit on the show,” the paper said. The article appeared alongside the Star’s coverage of upheaval in Egypt, a piece that began: “Thousands of illegal immigrants willflee riot-torn Egypt and flood to Britain.”

The worry within left-wing circles is that giving an extremist group a national voice will spread and purport their ideas. Sorry, call me naïve, but how would that make their content any different? The BNP and EDL has constantly been used by right-wing critics and papers as a tool to legitimize them against accusations of racism. ‘I can’t be racist, I hate the BNP’, is a line regularly rolled out by the likes of Richard Littlejohn and Robert Kilroy-Silk. Just being ‘against the BNP’ doesn’t give you immunity from having your comments condemned, or carte-blanche to make race-baiting statements. Regardless of whether or not the Daily Staractively supports the EDL, their content will be the same. It’ll be anti-Muslim stories without cessation; the only difference will be that they won’t have the temerity to claim innocence.

Today’s Newspapers in 4 Minutes! George Monbiot shows that we’re not all in it together, Assange in court, Richard Littlejohn confuses himself, and Footballer meets Z-list celeb; with sexy consequences! (08/02/2011)

• Come, have a 4 minute education - for free! (Fuck school, this is where it’s at).

George Monbiot’s article in the Guardian caused quite a stir within Twitter and other inconsequential social media outlets. It was about the government being bloody bastards again, this time by cutting taxes of super wealthy business (while the same government claims that they have so little money they are having to cut council jobs, NHS spending and privatise forests. Hmmm…)

If you’ve heard nothing of it, you’re in good company. The obscure adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009 have been missed by almost everyone – and are, anyway, almost impossible to understand without expert help. But as soon as you grasp the implications, you realise that a kind of corporate coup d’etat is taking place.

This has been the main tool of the current coalition; ambiguity. It’s very easy to bemoan a woman on benefits with several children, but high level macro-economic decisions that cost the county BILLIONS; not so easy to dissect, given that some of it is so complicated I’d have more chance with ‘Advanced Japanese’.

Monbiot lays it out clearly:

At the moment tax law ensures that companies based here, with branches in other countries, don’t get taxed twice on the same money. They have to pay only the difference between our rate and that of the other country. If, for example, Dirty Oil plc pays 10% corporation tax on its profits in Oblivia, then shifts the money over here, it should pay a further 18% in the UK, to match our rate of 28%. But under the new proposals, companies will pay nothing at all in this country on money made by their foreign branches.

These new laws would Britain on par with a tax haven like Switzerland. So in a period of austerity when Osbourne, Cameron and that utter sycophant Clegg were making sweeping cuts all over the welfare state, he made sure he kept the biggest cut for corporation tax.

So how did to come to pass, considering it was absent from the manifesto?

You don’t have to look far to find out. Almost all the members of the seven committees the government set up “to provide strategic oversight of the development of corporate tax policy” are corporate executives. Among them are representatives of Vodafone, Tesco, BP, British American Tobacco and several of the major banks: HSBC, Santander, Standard Chartered, Citigroup, Schroders, RBS and Barclays.

So essentially, the lunatics are running the asylum. Brilliant. And let’s not forget that this isn’t the first time that Cameron has let big business decide the rules which bind them. In November, the Guardian reported how the Department of Health was allowing fast-food companies like KFC and Mcdonald’s to write and dictate the government’s policy on obesity.

The groups are dominated by food and alcohol industry members, who have been invited to suggest measures to tackle public health crises. The alcohol responsibility deal network is chaired by the head of the lobby group the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. The food network to tackle diet and health problems includes processed food manufacturers, fast food companies, and Compass, the catering company famously pilloried by Jamie Oliver for its school menus of turkey twizzlers. The food deal’s sub-group on calories is chaired by PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps.

You – quite literally – couldn’t make it up. I’d be fuming right now, if I wasn’t so utterly apathetic towards everything. Ooh look, a squirrel…

The Telegraph talks about statements from Julian Assange’s lawyer. He hits out at everything and everyone; the prosecution, the courts, the evidence etc, involved in Assange’s case, basically saying what most have been over the preceding months, that the facts of the Assange case are a bit – let’s just say – ‘suspicious’.

He said: ”In my opinion, having studied the case file, as well as other material I was permitted to inspect but not to take copies or notes of (SMS/text messages from the complainants’ mobile telephones) the case is one of the weakest I have ever seen in my professional career.

”Even leaving to one side evidential problems, I can see from the SMS/text messages, in which the complainants speak of ‘revenge’, obtaining money and speaking about Mr Assange in the press, that they may have a hidden agenda, which casts serious doubt on their accusations and their trustworthiness.”

I think we can safely assume that Assange is entering a ‘not guilty’ plea.  Assange is fighting against being extradited to Sweden for trial; with his lawyer claiming the extradition would be a ‘breach of Human Rights’. More to follow…

The Daily Mail! Guess what? Littlejohn is back! Hooray! What do we get today? PC gone maaad? EU bureaucracy? Gay Muslims in hoodies? No actually he talks about discrimination and how bad it is.

…………………………………..wait, what?

You can hurl the most vile smears at anyone these days, provided you insert the word ‘Tory’.

Take the case of the Conservative MP Paul Maynard, who suffers from cerebral palsy and was cruelly mocked by Labour members in the Commons.

If the lads from Top Gear had insulted Tories instead of Mexicans they would have been hailed as heroes by the Left.

Last week a moderate students’ union leader in Leeds was subjected to a barrage of abuse from demonstrators who called him ‘Tory Jew scum’ — despite him being neither Jewish nor a Conservative.

But like ‘Tory’, ‘Jew’ is now an acceptable insult on the Left. So virulent is their hatred of Israel that all Jews are ­considered fair game.

Ah I see, so rather than it being a story about how ‘we are the world we are the people’ what Littejohn is actually saying is; ‘aren’t left-wingers utter shits!’. Great, I’ll file it under everything-Richard-Littlejohn-has-ever-written, then.

So the man who wrote spare me the’ people’s prostitutes’ routine is joining the PC brigade then? No, not quite. In fact he gets confused at this utter alien position of bemoaning discrimination half way through his piece, and manages to intersect a few ‘Political Correctness gone mad’ anecdotes into it.

In Wiltshire, a health watchdog has had its funding withdrawn because its chairman was overheard referring to ‘jungle drums’ at a ­public meeting in a local scout hut.

Mrs Anna Farquhar, aged 70, was using the expression to describe gossip, in much the same way as others might have said ‘the grapevine’. But she was immediately branded a racist by a humourless fanatic called Sonia Carr, who describes herself as a member of the Wiltshire Racial Equality Council.

But, Richie; I thought we’d turned the corner?

Littlejohn’s article could be paraphrased as ‘don’t say anything against the Conservatives you liberal twats, but everyone else is fair game’, which is about as useful a piece of political rhetoric as me covering my nose in ink and attempting to write a review of ‘The World according to Clarkson’ with my face. i.e not very.

Finally The Sun, where – brace yourselves – a footballer has slept with a Z-List, reality TV celebrity, whilst in relationship with another women.

*Faints through shock*

Claudia Ciardone, 28, who appeared in Argentina’s versions of Big Brother and Dancing on Ice, told the country’s telly show Intrusos: “I was with Carlos Tevez before, during and after the World Cup. Until I realised he was already in a relationship, and so I broke up with him.”

So for all those out there would needed a ‘footballer in infidelity EXLCUSIVE’, here you are.

Have a reconstruction of Julian Assange enjoying a Brandy (brought to you by Bill Hader).

Today’s Newspapers in 4 minutes! The tabloids talk about Oil and Jordan, while the other papers are concerned about the Middle East…(02/02/11)

Lovely news!

The Guardian continue with their impressive coverage of the Egyptian protests, where Mubarak has announced that he will step-down!…………………………..later……

Egypt’s embattled president, Hosni Mubarak, bowed to the pressure of millions of people massing on the streets, pledging to step down at the next election and pave the way for a new leader of the Arab world’s largest country.

Mubarak said he would not be a candidate for a seventh term but would remain in power to oversee reform and guarantee stability… “In the few months remaining in my current term I will work towards ensuring a peaceful transition of power,” Mubarak said.

“I have exhausted my life in serving Egypt and my people. I will die on the soil of Egypt and be judged by history” – a clear reference to the fate of Tunisia’s president who fled into exile last month.

Quite why Mubarak thought he was in a position to negotiate, considering he has lost support from the US and the Military, I have no idea. It’s a bit like when a drunk is asked politely to leave a bar, only when to respond with ‘I’m alright! I’m alright! Let me just finish my drink and I’ll go!’, before being turfed out.

The US welcomed the comments by Hosni.

But Barack Obama gave an equivocal welcome to the speech by saying that “change must begin now” while praising the “passion and dignity” of the demonstrators in the streets as an inspiration.

Whereas the protestors weren’t so keen

None of them were appeased by Mubarak’s announcement. If anything, they were emboldened to step up their protests and to push their demands further. Many were saying that not only must Mubarak leave immediately but that the whole of his National Democratic party regime had to go and should be put on trial.

“If he’s here until September then so are we,” said Amr Gharbeia, an activist who is camping out in the square.

And neither were the opposition parties

Mubarak ordered his new vice-president and intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, to begin a dialogue with opposition groups, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood. “Omar Suleiman approached us, and we have rejected his approaches,” Essam el-Arian, a Brotherhood spokesman, told the Guardian. “As long as Mubarak delays his departure, these protests will remain and they will only get bigger.”

What Mubarak doesn’t seem to realise is that he has NO POWER WHATSOEVER. He’s not in a position to offer terms to the protestors, allies, military, opposition etc. What you have here is a man who has ruled with an Authoritarian fist for 30 years, with no concept whatsoever of people telling him to, essentially, ‘fuck off’.

I give it week before he’s trying to get asylum in Saudi Arabia.

The Telegraph lead with the latest Wikileaks cable which states that there was an aborted 5^th suicide plot on 9/11. The men in this ‘team’ had a last minute change of heart, and instead returned to Doha, Qatar.

The men flew from London to New York on a British Airways flight three weeks before the attacks and allegedly carried out surveillance at the World Trade Centre, the White House and in Virginia, the US state where the Pentagon and CIA headquarters are located.

The Qatari suspects – named as Meshal Alhajri, Fahad Abdulla and Ali Alfehaid - flew back to London on a British Airways flight before returning to Qatar. Their current location is unknown and the FBI have launched a manhunt for them.

This comes as part a number of Wikilieaks cables released concerning Al Qaida, including one about Gordon Brown ordering Pakistani prime minister Asif Ali Zadari to kill Bin Laden.

In December 2009, the former prime minister told Asif Ali Zadari to “take Osama bin Laden out” during a private telephone conversation. Pakistani officials were reportedly “unhappy” with Mr Brown’s aggressive language.

Brown here exercising all his people skills to full effect. He can add Zadari to his hate list, alongside every other person he has held a conversation with.

The Daily Mail headline concerns a story about petrol. Ah I see; how the events in the Middle East will affect the region’s economy? Na, how petrol down the local pumps has gone up a few pence.

The Daily Mail has been exquisitely myopic during the Egyptian/Tunisian protests. Despite a minor story about police brutality in Egypt, most of their coverage and readers concerns has centred around British holidaymakers in Tunis and Cairo, because, you know, forget Egyptians too poor to afford food, some dick pratting around on a fucking lilo in Sharm-el-Sheik is the real cause for concern here.

Fuel retailers are profiteering by refusing to pass on to drivers falls in the price they pay for petrol.

The average wholesale price paid by fuel companies has fallen by 2p since January 11, from 41p to just above 39p.

But prices at the pump have climbed to all-time highs. And in a further slap in the face for British motorists, almost every other European country has seen fuel prices fall.

Yeah! A slap in the face! What about your rights! Etc. As someone who doesn’t drive (I just love those ruddy polar bears so much) I’m not sure about the squeeze this will put on drivers. But I can tell you what riles me up:

The boss of BP warned yesterday that the rising price of oil – which reached $100 a barrel this week because of the political upheaval in Egypt – would only add to the woes of motorists.

Those selfish bloody Egyptians.

To really gauge the response of your average reader, it’s all about the comments section. Noel from Mansfield offers this interesting insight.

Errr, hate to say this, but it has fallen by around 5p per litre in the last week here, down to 121.9 for a litre of unleaded again. And we are still one of the cheapest in Europe for petrol.

Hmm, interesting. So it turns out we’re all getting a bit carried away over nothing? Yeah, that got 80 THUMBS DOWN, whereas Tom from Romford received a whopping 388 THUMBS UP for this gambit:

This is scandalous. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT CAMERON OR YOU OUT NEXT TIME ROUND. We are fed up being ripped off.

Basically, what the Daily Mail readers are saying is ‘DON’T LET FACTS GET IN THE WAY OF US HAVING A MOAN!’. Which, you know, is nice.

The Sun! The Sun, which these days is essentially a glorified, down-market Radio Times with a few ‘holidays to France for a quid’ deals thrown in , gives top billing to Jordan and her husband’s divorce.

JORDAN will file for divorce from Alex Reid in eight days - on their first anniversary.

Meanwhile the model piled on the agony for Alex by claiming she fell out of love while watching him lose a brutal cage fight.

She told her shocked husband that seeing him get pummelled by champion Tom “Kong” Watson in the five-round bout had made her realise he was not the man for her.

They say love conquers all obstacles. Well it appears that love couldn’t quite conquer Tom “Kong” Watson’s sweet left jab.

Anyway, expect to see ‘Alex Reid: Fighting Back!’ and ‘Katie Price: My Next, Next, Next, Next Chapter’ on ITV3 in the near future.

NEWS: The Daily Mail are up to their old tricks again, as NUS President Aaron Porter is ejected by students from protests (29/01)

Today (29/01) protests were held in reponse to widespread cuts in public spending and continued anger towards the rise in tuition fees.

In their march through central London to Parliament, the protesters chanted slogans including: “No ifs, no buts, no education cuts” and banged drums.

Anger at government proposals to raise university tuition fees to £9,000 from next year and scrap the Education Maintenance Allowance were the main focus of the slogans and placards. One drew an analogy between events in north Africa and the UK and read: “Ben Ali, Mubarak … Cameron, you are next.”

A major talking point raised from the marches was the revolting against NUS leadership, in particular student president Aaron Porter.

Aaron Porter had to be escorted to safety by police this morning as he made his way to his offices in Manchester.

Protesters shouted ‘Students, workers, hear our shout! We want Aaron Porter out!’ and ‘Aaron Porter we know you, you’re a f******* Tory too!’

Eggs and oranges were also thrown by a handful of the protesters at Shane Chowen, the NUS vice-president, when he tried to address the crowd.

Essentially, students have grown apathetic and resentful towards the NUS’s leadership, especially president Aaron Porter. Some see Aaron Porter as using the NUS to boost his media profile in an attempt to gain himself popularity within the upper echelons of the Labour Party. Aaron Porter has been ubiquitous with the protests, and many think he is simply a self-serving political wannabe, who is trying to frame himself as ‘face of the students’ despite the fact that most of the protestors don’t feel like he represents them or the campaign (or for that matter, think he’s doing a good job as the NUS president).

The Daily Mail framed their story about the protests solely on unsubstantiated reports that anti-Semitic abuse was aimed at Porter. According to The Mail;

One photographer reported chants of ‘Tory Jew scum’ directed at Mr Porter, who is facing calls to step down as NUS president by members of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, who claim he has ‘lost the confidence of the movement’.

And for some reason, they felt that these chants, reported from ONE PHOTOGRAPHER were enough to earn the headline;

STUDENT UNION LEADER PULLS OUT OF SPEAKING AT FEES RALLY AFTER PROTESTORS HURL VILE RACIST ABUSE AT HIM

That ONE sentence earned that headline. Whatsmore, it’s comes as contrast to counter reports in the Guardianthat claim;

Some of the protestors in Manchester turned on Porter – who had been due to speak at a rally in the city – calling him a “Tory too”.

So clearly someone is talking shit here.

It could be feasibly accepted that a small minority may have aimed anti-semtic abuse at Porter. But to base your whole story on this unsubstantiated report, and to label all protests as privy to it, is slanderous bullshit.

The Daily Mail will use any excuse to portray students as violent, rioting, racist thugs, so it would come as no surprise that they have contrived to frame their story in this way. It shouldn’t be detracted from the real message that students aren’t happy with the NUS or their leadership, and feel like now is the time for change.

NEWS: How the Newspapers have reported the Egyptian protests (28/01)

So if you’ve been living under a rock (or possibly a Mubarock!….No? Too soon for puns?) you’ll have missed the coverage of the protests in Egypt. There has been civil unrest in response to President Hosni Mubarak’s (who has ruled for 30 years) Authoritarian practice. There have been widespread reports of Human Rights abuses and corruption, in a country that still does not have free and fair elections. These follow the Tunisian protest in Tunis earlier in the month, in what is turning into a wave of calls for democratisation in a volatile region. Mubarak has legitimized his authoritarian rule by speaking out against Islamic Extremism, with an ‘us or them’ approach to governance, often speaking out quite strongly against the Muslim Brotherhood (which has won him – possibly undeserved – support from Western governments). However, growing socio-economic problems in the country have seen the population (particularly amongst the younger demographic) grow apathetic towards Mubarak’s ‘McCarthyite’ orating.

Two thirds of Egypt’s 80 million people are below the age of 30, and many of them have no jobs. About 40 percent of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day.

“This is a turning point in protest culture,” Amr Shobky, a political analyst who joined the protest, said. “Ordinary Egyptians have taken to the streets with one collective demand that goes beyond provisional ones like minimum wages”.

Khalil Anani, a political analyst based in London, said: “The determination of ordinary civilians is more significant here than any religious motivation.”

Egyptian protests usually draw only a few hundred people. The large numbers and coordination across several cities have given this week’s events a force unprecedented since Mubarak took office in 1981.

 Egyptians of all backgrounds and ages have taken part but university graduates made up the bulk of the crowd at the start of the protests.

 “We are here to change Egypt,” yelled Samia Metwali, 22. “Teargas or bullets will not stop the power of the people.” (Editing by Alison Williams and Philippa Fletcher) [REUTERS]

The UK media’s response has been (perhaps unusually) united on supporting the protestors who have been persecuted by the government, with the media particularly highlighting police brutality and media blackouts.

The Guardian’s running blog (and correspondent) have detailed how the police moved in immediately on protesters following Friday prayers, using tear-gas, rubber bullets and ‘kettling’ civilians, including Nobel Prize Winning Laureate Mohammed ElBaradei. This was despite ELBaradei’s bold claims that he had joined the protests in order to revolutionise Egypt ‘through peaceful transition’, and that the Egyptian government was ‘on its last legs’. It would appear however, that the government is going down fighting.

The Telegraph also spoke at length of clashes between police and protesters despite the words of Imams who ‘had been instructed to tell their followers not to take to the streets’ following Friday prayers.

Thousands defied those calls and within minutes of prayers ending, riot police in Cairo were firing tear gas and water cannons at protesters in Cairo shouting “down, down Hosni Mubarak”.

The Telegraph also wrote at length about the widespread communications crackdown by the Government. The use of social media was very useful in the spreading of news and support following than Tunisian protests earlier this year and the Iranian student riots of 2009, following disrupted elections results. The Government felt that this was a key weapon to remove from the protestors’ arsenal.

Egyptians outside the country were posting updates on Twitter after getting information in voice calls from people inside the country. Many urged their friends to keep up the flow of information over the phones.

Egypt’s four primary internet providers – Link Egypt, Vodafone – Raya, Telecom Egypt and Etisalat Misr – stopped moving data in and out of the country early on Friday morning. Cellphone, text and Blackberry Messenger services were also in what appeared to be a move by authorities to disrupt the organisation of demonstrations.

The Daily Mail led with footage of an unarmed protestor being gunned down by police. This fucking baffles me, as the Daily Mail readers LOVE police and HATE protesters and any sort of deviation from the law (well, except tax evasion. And driving laws. And parking fines. And..wait hold on, these guys hate the law. They are like anarchists or something). The Daily Mail’s footage shows 22 year old Mohamed Atef from Sheikh Zoweid, Northern Sinai, being shot in the head following demonstrations.

The Daily Mail also briefly documented Barak Obama’s response to conflict, which was a textbook, straight down the middle, tick every box, realpolitik gem where he maintained support for Mubarak, and yet showed sympathy to the protesters.

‘I’ve always said to him that making sure that they are moving forward on reform - political reform, economic reform - is absolutely critical to the long-term well-being of Egypt,’.

‘You can see these pent-up frustrations that are being displayed on the streets.’

The Sun also covered the story, not that you’d know mind, because it was hidden halfway down the page in a small corner, deemed not as newsworthy as ‘PREM STAR’S 4-IN-A-BEN ROMP WITH 2 BRUNETTES; FILMED!’. So it’s good to know that The Sun have their priorities sorted.

(For a constant live-blog of events, click here for Guardian coverage.)

—————————————————————-

BEST DAILY MAIL READER COMMENT

A rock could of killed someone, teach these thugs a lesson.

- scott, Eaton Bray, 28/1/2011 13:44

I mean, you couldn’t make it up. You just couldn’t.

GUARDIAN: Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre gets 70% pay increase to £2.8m (13/01/2010)

The Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, saw his remuneration package rise by 70% last year to £2.8m.

Dacre, the editor-in-chief of Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, reinforced his reputation as the best-paid editor on Fleet Street thanks to a £1m bonus after a record operating profit for the paper last year.

He was paid a base salary of £1.63m and also received an annual cash allowance of £127,000 and a further £25,000 in benefits, as revealed in the Daily Mail & General Trust’s annual report, published today.

To be fair to Paul Dacre and the Daily Mail, 2010 was a great year for race-baiting, homophobia, moaning about ‘elf n safety’ and ‘political correctness gone mad’, reactionary anti-EU nonsense, celebrity tittle-tattle and irrelevant stories about fringe members of the royal family. So, he probably deservers it, in a way……

THE GUARDIAN: We’re Arizona shooting victims too, says Tea Party co-founder (11/01/2011)

Trent Humphries says there is another innocent victim left by Jared Lee Loughner’s killing of six people and wounding of 14 others in his assassination attempt against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It is his Tea Party movement and, more particularly, his family. The killings, he says, are evolving into a conspiracy to destroy his organisation and silence criticism of the government.

Fuck. Me. Do these people have absolutelty no shame?

Full article here —> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/11/arizona-shootings-tea-party?CMP=twt_gu

(for more on Arizona shooting and tea-party comments: http://lostintransgressions.tumblr.com/post/2670421712/news-arizona-congresswoman-fatally-wounded-so-to)

NEWS! Smart University students are actually dumb University students, and it turns out we’re NOT all in it together… (02/01)

New year = New News! Yeah, erm, great…

The Guardian lead with the Ford prison riots;

Two separate investigations will be held into the New Year’s Day riot at Ford open prison where balaclava-clad inmates torched buildings in protest at a clampdown on illegal drinking.

The prisons minister, Crispin Blunt, confirmed today there would be an internal Prison Service inquiry and a police inquiry into the violence, which is estimated to have caused about £3m damage.

It appears that prisoners in this case do, in the words of philosopher Danny Dyer, ‘love a good tear up’. From the outset the protest looks largely pointless. Ford prison is an ‘open prison’, and a place where inmates coming to end of their sentence go. This is the sort of prison that you find Daily Mail readers moaning about, because the inmates are allowed books, tvs, windows etc. In the process of the riots ’accommodation blocks, a gymnasium, a mail room and recreation room with 10 newly installed pool tables were destroyed’ and I’m struggling to get my head round why people with access to half decent facilities, who themselves are nearing then end of their sentence would find the need to riot for being clamped down for taking part in illegal activities, loosing recreational facilitis and jepordising the chance of release in the process.

This has been a long time waiting to happen. Staff have been running around trying to breathalyse prisoners. It’s been reminiscent of the end scenes of The Benny Hill Show - the only thing missing was the music. It’s very difficult when you have a very small staff.

Yeah, just like Benny Hill, from that famous ‘crims go arsonist’ episode. One of my favs. 

…The Daily Mail do the unprescendanted move of criticising the Conservative party. Wait……wait……wait, what?

Senior MPs were accused of ‘highly insensitive conduct’ last night after celebrating the New Year with lavish holidays or by sipping champagne at an exclusive Commons fireworks party.

Among them were Chancellor George Osborne, who defied austerity Britain by taking a luxury break at Prince Charles’s favourite ski resort, Klosters…Meanwhile tycoon MP Zac Goldsmith was reportedly sunning himself at a £8,000-a-week villa in the Caribbean over the New Year

Conservative Mps in ‘saying one thing but meaning the other’ shocker. Despite Osbourne claiming that we ‘were all in it together’, it appears, in fact, we’re not. With VAT increasing to 20% on the 1^st, coupled with tax increases and benefit cuts, luxurious holidays are now something that most will not enjoy. Osbourne remained tight lipped on the issue, but The Mail managed to provide a detailed account of what hospitality various MPs enjoyed. John Bercow, speaker of the house and the man with the most punchable face in Britain, hosted a party with ‘pop singer Duffy, EastEnders actor Ross Kemp, soprano Lesley Garrett and the Speaker’s Labour-supporting wife Sally,’.  Jesus, no coke and stippers or anything. Even our corrupt MPs are boring.

Best user comment 

We brits are always out for what we can get, that is why socialism will never, ever work in this country. These so called toffs are no different than the rest of us. This was the attitude that that built an empire, take, take and take some more, just live with it.

- Richard Scammell, Some minor province of the EU., 02/1/2011 12:15 

What. A. Twat.

… The Daily Telegraph cover concerns over the dumbing down of university grades:

Degree results obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show six out of 10 students were handed either a first or an upper second in 2010, compared with just one in three graduates in 1970.

Rather than examine the possibility that students and teachers may be improving, the first assumption is; dumbing down.

Imperial College London and Warwick both granted 80 per cent firsts or 2:1s last year, compared with 49 per cent and 39 per cent respectively in 1970.

At Bath University the figure was 76 per cent last year compared with just 35 per cent in 1970. 

So you’re telling me that 3 of the best universities in Britain have awarded a massive amount of upper class honours? Well I am gobsmacked.

There are so many factors to examine when looking at the data. More students going to university means a more competitive job market. Then you have to take into account EU labour laws which mean an even more competitive job market. There could also be improving teaching standards, and also the factor that now students pay for education, they have more incentive to do well?

But what do I know. I only went to University and fraternized with other students, rather than sit behind a fleet street desk and twist data to push whatever bullshit prerogative my editor has told me to, so…

…finally The Sun talk about Russell Brand tweeting a photo of self confessed ‘make-up addict’ Katy Perry sans slap.

Singer Katy, 25, appeared pale, greasy and spotty in the picture - and didn’t seem happy to be caught on film.

You decided:

News: It’s a Snow news day! (fnarr) 23/12

You know how, like, when it snows and stuff, roads get icy. Did you? Well the government didn’t! Why didn’t you tell anyone you silly git! -10 temperatures have left roads “incredibly treacherous with snow and ice”, as people in the know failed to realize that a few inches of snowfall would leave our piss-poor roads and train-lines like ice-rinks.

There are numerous cancellations and delays on East Coast, First Great Western, ScotRail and First Capital Connect services due to snow and ice.

Network Rail, will be under intense pressure to complete the work on time after the fiasco of Christmas 2007.

The biggest disruption this Christmas will see no trains from Essex and East Anglia running into London’s Liverpool Street station closed from Christmas Day until Tuesday Dec 28. Services will resume for three days, before stopping for the New Year Bank Holiday weekend.

Think we need the vikings to re-invade to sort the mess out. I’ll get the Swedish embassy on the phone.

But its not just the train-lines; airports have canceled flights en masse.

Heathrow was forced to cancel two thirds of flights on Monday and Tuesday, effectively cancelling Christmas for hundreds of thousands of passengers.

According to internal BAA documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph, the airport also had fewer snow ploughs than Gatwick, despite being more than twice its size.

But its not all bad news:

Colin Matthews, the chief executive of BAA, yesterday relinquished his annual bonus and admitted that Heathrow had not been adequately prepared for a bad weather which grounded more than a third of flights on Monday and Tuesday.

But Mr Matthews, who earned more than £1m last year, is still likely to receive a separate six-figure payout based on the company’s financial performance this year.

Oh well thats alright then! Good for you Mr Matthews, you epic, epic, twat.

Most people - well, most sane people anyway - will point to climate change as the reason for the freak conditions.

Official UK climate projections published last year predicting hotter and drier summers, warmer and wetter winters, rising sea levels and more floods, storms and heatwaves, provide a basis for analysing many of the risks threatening vital infrastructure. But URS a global consultancy and management company, also warns that ports and airports could face as yet unquantified threats from changes in prevailing winds, although it admits evidence on which such predictions could be made is, as yet, scanty.

Furthermore, “an estimated 18m motorists were urged to take proper precautions”, so who knows, Christmas may be saved after all! Hooray! It would make a good film actually: man meets girl, girl likes man, man makes epic cock up somehow (they always do in these films), he drives home for Christmas, so does she, they both get stuck in traffic and see each other gridlocked at the junction 21 turning for Bedford; they kiss! I think I’ll call it; Love on the M1. Now me personally, I’d rather have a lobotomy than watch it, but idiots out there lap this shit up. I caught my sister watching ‘Boyfriend for Christmas’ yesterday. I was sick a little in my mouth.

Anyway, here’s some high-vis sheep:

NEWS: Schools are failing…but it’s alright, we’ve got X-Factor! (14/12)

I need to do Christmas shopping, and am puzzled as to what to buy for my sister. Thing is, she is very tight with her money, and previous Christmas highlights have included a calculator and a copy of Rugby World magazine, despite the fact I have never expressed any interest in rugby whatsoever (I have my suspicions that she either found it or was given it). I’m gonna feel like a dick if I buy her something thoughtful and nice, only to receive bargain bin socks in return. And it would be MY FAULT, as she’s got previous……

…..News! Guardian and The Telegraph both cover the story concerning ‘1,000 schools falling short of their targets’. Wait, I thought once we had them eating healthy stuff they’d be like mini-mensas? F**k you, Jamie Oliver. According to the study;

The tables, compiled from government statistics, reveal that in 962 primaries, fewer than 60% of pupils can write a proper sentence using commas or tackle basic arithmetic in their heads by the time they leave – the standard expected of their age group.

Well I could have told you that. We leave in an age where ‘OMG, I fink u r g8’ is considered prim and proper sentence structure by the ‘yoof’ of today. I recently saw on facebook this little gambit;

wat r dese comments mean, lolz? Xxxx

English, motherf**ker: Do you speak it?

The Guardian pump their article full of stats and numbers that prove every child under at the age of 16 is a fizzy drink guzzling, computer game playing, simpleton. Nick ‘Gibbo’ Gibb (He’s probably not nicknamed that), the schools minister, said;

It is unacceptable that after seven years of primary school, these children are not the standard in English and maths that they need to be to flourish at secondary school.

In order to save the failing schools, plans are to turn them to into ‘independent academies’ or merge them ‘with high-performing schools nearby’. Basically privatise, coscut, and use them as poltical point-scoring devices. But, it means more money to spend on failed World Cup hosting bids. Hooray!

The Telgeraph outed the over-achievers and under-achieves. The boffins over at Manuden Primary, Bishop’s Stortford had ‘every pupil exceeded the standard expected of an 11-year-old’, whilst at Starks Field in Enfield, ‘no pupils achieved a good standard of English and maths’. Yeah, but who would in a fight? Meanwhile, the ‘worst attendance record was Crays Hill primary in Billericay, Essex, where more than half of pupils were classed as persistent absentees’. But that’s not really their fault, as their neighbors on The Only Way of Essex has shown them that as long as you have knock-off jewelery, a healthy supply of fake tan and absolutely no-sense of dignity or self-respect, you get your own TV show! So who needs school!

The Daily Mail didn’t run this story and instead for opted for a study concerning the economic constraints of ‘Middle Britain’.

The research was carried out by analysts at Experian, who examined nationwide data ranging from income and housing type to favourite internet sites and shopping habits.

It identified more than 400 social and economic factors to define Middle Britain and has produced a detailed ­picture of the country’s largest social group, accounting for 13.1million people, or one in five of the population.

Fine, except the Daily Mail decided the headline of this story should be:

HOW SIKHS AND HINDUS BECAME THE BEDROCK OF THIS COUNTRY

Yes, a moot point that was mentioned in one sentance of the article became the headline for the sprawling piece. This was the whole invlovent of Shiks and Hindus in the article;

It was found that long-established Hindu and Sikh families now have an above average likelihood of being classed Middle Britons.

The headline could easily have been ‘majority of Sikhs and Hindus work and pay tax in Britain’. Instead, it was essentially ‘look at these foreigners! Coming here and taking our……class structure’.

The response to this from the readers was like infighting at a UKIP party conference, with responses ranging from ‘Sikhs are alright, its the Muslims that are the trouble’ to ‘everyone none white is evil’. Such as;

I agree with James of Liverpool: you never hear of these people getting Brahms and dusting up the neighbourhood, slapping their kids about or blowing folk up - all they want is peace and harmony, just like (most of) the rest of us. I don’t mind them living next door to me.

to

More left wing brainwashing of the public,they are not christians the bedrock of society is christianity,and left wing rubbish like this only attemts to dilute the British culture more!

It’s a bit like two bald men fighting over a comb.

The Sun talk about X Factor winner Matt Cardle, and his past life of ‘Drugs and Rock’n’Roll’. So the usual stories of excess, was it? All night raves, TVs thrown out of hotel windows, 10 in a bed orgies? Nah, turns out he smoked a joint once. The bloody rebel.

‘“I was a rebel, drifting about having a laugh and a drink with mates. I never went mental but I was stupid.”

But he did admit to smoking cannabis, telling how he and he friends got stoned at music festivals watching their favourite bands.

Sounds MAD! Keith Richards eat your heart out. But wait, what’s this?

The pranks took a serious turn after he was arrested when cocaine was found in the car he was driving.

Cocaine?! Here we go!

He was let off when the drugs were found not to be his.

…oh.

Anyway, here’s a photo of Konnie Huq dressed as Katy Perry, FRONT PAGE NEWS courtesy of The Mail.