Misheard

Sometimes, mishearing a story on the news can make it so much more interesting.

Today while driving to work I was sure – twice, no less – that I’d heard a story about the Buddhist National Party using photos of the military in its advertising.

Turns out, it was actually the British National Party who were doing so.

But still, the Buddhist National Party? I’d vote for ’em.


Mail and Moir

While we were away over the weekend, I kind of missed the furore about Jan Moir’s Daily Mail column about the death of Stephen Gately in which she spreads more rumours and bigoted claptrap than I’d wish to read.

What surprised me more though was the number of complaints about this article. (At the time of writing this, the PCC has received more than 21,000 complaints) Yes, it’s an offensive, bigoted piece and breaches three conditions of the PCC code of conduct – and let’s not forget that Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, is also the chief honcho at the Press Complaints Committee. Oh, the irony. But really, when did anyone expect anything but hate-filled, bigoted writing from that shit-stain rag which camoflages it’s vitriol and hatred as ‘news’?

As Deeply Flawed But Trying wrote far better than I can, the Daily Mail has a long and vicious history of being a nasty hate-filled rag of bigotry and loathing. Hell, most of the time it doesn’t even like its own readers, let alone the rest of the nation/world. Charlie Brooker (as usual) had his own well-written point of view on it too.

I’m glad to see the Daily Mail being complained about at epic levels – but it should’ve happened years ago. I’d love to see the Daily Mail sued for inciting racial hatred, religious hatred, and homophobia. It’s a divisive, nasty, vindictive rag, and should incur the wrath of balanced people every day – not just for one ill-written article on one day.


Gagging the Press

While Private Eye covered this in some detail last week, the shit appears to have officially hit the fan today with the Guardian’s announcement that it has been barred from mentioning a certain question to be asked in Parliament this week. From the story…

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

The question (according to other sources) is about Trafigura, and their toxic oil dump back in 2007. And this is what it’s all about…

61 N: Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

It’s all publicly available in this list of Parliamentary questions – which makes the entire media-gagging order look pretty fucking stupid, and more and more as though Trafigura et al. have something to hide. Which is pretty fucking stupid in itself.


Chopped and Chipped

Bah, HumbugNow this is my kind of Christmas Spirit.

Random mobs of ‘tree-surgeons’ going round, cutting down christmas trees and shoving them through the chipping machine.

Sadly it’s not the case in this instance, which appears to be more “mistaken identity” than “Bloody christmas”.

Which is a pity.

Still, it gives me an idea for later in the year…


Too little, too late

There’s a story on the BBC today – a headline story, no less – that extra police patrols have been placed on the street in Leicestershire where Fiona Pilkington lived with her daughter before killing them both after years of taunts and intimidation.

Ms Pilkington killed herself and her 18-year-old daughter when she set fire to her car in a lay-by in October 2007.

So it’s taken two years for those extra patrols to be put in place – conveniently (from a media and PR perspective) just after the inquest verdict came out that the lack of action/response on the part of police was at least partially to blame for the deaths.

Talk about locking the stable door once the horse has bolted. In this case that horse has run away, broken its leg, been put down and turned into glue before Leicestershire police have got round to doing anything about it.

Way too little, way too late.


Priorities

Today I’ve found myself repeatedly annoyed by news coverage.

There appear to be two main stories today :

  1. Tsunamis kill at least 90 people in Pacific
  2. The Sun newspaper changes allegiance from Labour to Conservative

Yet every media outlet I’ve seen today has those stories in the opposite order, and that annoys me.

Somehow, UK politics appear to have taken precedence over (at least) 90 people being killed.


Mind Crime

Over the last week or so, I’ve been churning this post around in my head – and it’s still a work in progress. I’ve written about it before on a couple of occasions, but in the last ten days there have been two big – and well-publicised – court cases based around conspiracies, and planning to commit offences.

In one case, two boys in Manchester were supposedly planning to blow up their school  – and have now been found innocent of all charges, and there’s a small ruckus going on about whether the entire thing was actually a total waste of time and money. The second one (although it actually came first chronologically) was of course the ‘liquid bomb’ plot to detonate bombs in mid-air on several flights. They were found guilty, and this week got sentenced to incredibly long terms ( between 32 and 40 years each)

Now I can’t deny, I find I have a real problem with people going to court to answer a case that they were thinking about doing something bad.

Obviously, I haven’t been in the court hearings on either case, so I don’t know the true weight of evidence in either case. I just find myself uncomfortable with the concept of having people get taken to court and going through epic legal proceedings for an offence that has been talked about, but not actually committed.

Mind you, in my opinion terrorism is the ‘child porn’ of the 2000s, it’s the Big Bad Thing where people appear to say “Oh, well if [the accused] was into that then they’re beyond the pale, just lock ’em up and throw away the key”. It’s the “Ultimate Offence”, or whatever.

I suppose that the difference between the cases is that with the aeroplane bomb plan the people had actually put together the things they needed, whereas the Manchester one appears to have been more about talk and ‘let’s do that’ discussions, rather than serious preparation.

Even with that though – and I totally acknowledge the difference between ‘planning’ and ‘making the things necessary in preparation’ – I keep coming back to the entire concept of being able to be tried for an offence that hasn’t actually been committed. After all, isn’t that pretty much what Orwell described in “1984” as “Mindcrime”?