The Sun is searching for the greatest living Briton. Apparently that would be "the ultimate accolade", though I don't really understand how being the seen as the greatest living Briton would be a greater accolade than, say, being the greatest Briton of all time.
All in all, it's typical Sun nonsense. At least they included Tim Berners-Lee on the list (even if they did describe him as the "creator of the internet").
If you're going to vote. Please vote wisely.
This was never going to go down well with the Daily Mail crowd
South Park, the cartoon series that has pushed the bounds of taste for a decade, has perhaps produced its most spectacularly offensive episode yet.Certainly Her Majesty is unlikely to be amused by a programme that shows her blowing her brains out.
The scene begins with a clearly alarmed Queen receiving a call on her mobile telling her that an evil British plot to conquer America has gone awry.
She then reaches for a handgun, places it in her mouth and shoots herself. She can be seen tumbling from her throne and in the final image her bloody corpse is depicted lying prostrate on the palace floor.
It's only just been published on their site as I write this and currently there's only one comment (which, surprisingly, is in favour of the programme), but I suspect that the comments on this story will be apoplectic before too long.
It's worth pointing out that South Park is currently shown on an obscure cable channel in the Uk. If it wasn't for the Mail running this story, the vast majority of its readers (indeed the vast majority of the UK population) would have been unaware of this programme.
It's interesting to watch how quickly (or otherwise) internet memes get to the mainstream media. It's three weeks since a number of bloggers started writing about Conservapedia and today the freebie London paper Metro ran a story on it.
And they seem to rather miss the point of it. Their headline is "Weird, wild wiki on which anything goes" and that' really not what Conservapedia is about. It's not "anything goes", but rather "only one particularly bizarre kind of misinformation goes".
Also they seem to have missed that one of Conservapedia's main aims is the elimination of "foreign spelling of words" The Metro article points out that Conservapedia spells "paedophilia" as "pedophilia". But that's just a consequence of Conservapedia's policy of using US spellings. It doesn't indicate any lack of intelligence on the part of Conservapedia's editors (though, of course, there's plenty of evidence of that elsewhere).
I suppose it was a quiet news day in the Metro office and they just pulled something interesting from the front of the "weird and wacky" file. Shame they couldn't have come up with something worth reading like, for example, Bobby Johnson's piece in the Guardian.
A slight piece of exaggeration from the Croydon Guardian. They are talking about the success of Levi Roots' Reggae Reggae Sauce (as seen on Dragon's Den). They claim that
The sauce was literally flying off the shelves in the Balham branch of Sainsbury's on Thursday night
Well I've been in the Balham Sainbury's a couple of time in the last few days and I certainly haven't seen any evidence of flying sauce.
"Literally" has a very specific meaning. I think that the word the journalist was looking for is "figuratively".
This story was in yesterday's londonpaper.
Writers earn just third of averageUK authors earn 33 per cent less than the national average wage, a survey revealed today.
I'm not misreading it am I? The headline says something completely different to the text.
Of course, it's just maths. So it's really not important.
Today the Daily Mail is very angry about the possible end of free banking.
Banks and building societies are moving to kill off free banking as they prepare to unveil record profits of more than £40 billion.Industry leaders claim compulsory monthly fees on current accounts, which are common in North America and Europe, are the 'fairest' way to charge.
And it really doesn't require a crystal ball to predict their readers' reponse.
Little wonder so many people are leaving the United Kingdom and setting up homes abroad!
Well if they do introduce charges for ALL current accounts, I shall move my money to another source and go back to paying my standing orders personally! It's disgusting, they make millions from investing our money. what more do they want, blood?
Ah, the old country is living up well to it's nickname. 'RIP OFF BRITAIN'.
This is a particular favourite:
It's high time we had an alternative to banks. If they are making these obscene profits, where are they making their profits from, if not their customers? Banks should not rule the world, they are criminal institutions. It's called usury.
We used to have an alternative to banks. They were called building societies. And they were accountable to their members (i.e. the people who had accounts with them) rather than their shareholders. Of course, we don't have many left now because the greedy British public has voted to change them all into banks. I bet the £500 or so that most people got out of the deal has all been spent. Does it look like a good deal now?
But my main problem with this whole debate is the concept of "free" banking. Banks are businesses. They need to make profits for their shareholders. You need to pay for using their services. There are three common ways that this happens:
None of these are free banking. They all cost the consumer money. It's like "commission-free" foreign exchange. Jsut because there's no separate charge on the bill, it doesn't mean you aren't paying for it.
There is, of course, an interesting debate to be had on the subject of bank charges and profits. Do they really need to make that much money? If they switch to a model that charges by transaction then how much will savings interest rates increase by? Which charging model best suits different types of bank customers? There are many areas that the media can cover on this topic.
But intelligent debate isn't helped by shoddy journalism like the Mail's and the use of emotive terms like "free banking". It doesn't exist. It never has and it never will. Get used to it.
Update: It seems the BBC made a similar mistake yesterday.
The Daily Express is in apoplectic mood today having discovered roadsigns in the UK that are written in Polish. The way they discuss it anyone would think that it's one of the signs of the apocalypse listed in the Book of Revelation.
Even better is the reaction of their readers on the comments page. I can just picture them pounding away at the keyboard with purple faces and a vein throbbing dangerously on their temple. Many of them are threatening to leave the country. I wish they'd hurry up.
The Daily Mail fearlessly exposes the secret language that paedophiles are using to tempt your children into unspeakable acts.
Or, perhaps it was a slow news day and a lazy journalist just decided it was time for another "dangers of the internet" story.
Oh, I know there are real dangers out there, and children do need to be taught not to be too open with strangers they meet on the net. But the vast majority of this chat is just teenagers fooling around with their friends. This kind of scare story doesn't achieve anything useful.
NIFOC
The Telegraph web site was relaunched recently and they are promoting this with an advertising campaign. I've seen many adverts on the escalators in tube stations.
But these adverts have some very strange wording on them. They claim that the Telegraph site is "the UK's most visited quality newspaper web site". And there's a logo which is probably from the organisation who created the statistics that the Telegraph are quoting from. There's a similar claim on the new site ("Britain's No.1 quality newspaper website") together a logo which links to this page on a site owned by a company called Hitwise.
Now these kinds of claims are pretty rigorously tracked by the advertising standards people, so I was interested to hear the Telegraph making them. Everything I've read before says that Guardian Unlimited is the most visited UK newspaper site. For example this report from Alexa has GU at number 29, the Sun at 48, the Times at 50 and the Telegraph at 97. So I wondered how the Telegraph could get away with this claim. Perhaps it has something to do with the word "quality". Is it possible that they are equating a quality newspaper with a broadsheet newpaper? The Telegraph and the Financial Times are the only remaining national broadsheets in the UK - so that would certainly explain how the Telegraph can claim the title. But it's a bit of a stretch to claim that the Times, the Guardian and the Independent all stopped being quality papers when they moved from the broadsheet format.
Perhaps I should just contact the Telegraph, or Hitwise, and find out what their definitions mean. Because currently it's all a bit confusing.
Update: Simon Waldman (who knows a bit about this topic) discusses the Telegraph's claims.
Here we go again:
A CATHOLIC schoolgirl was asked not to wear a crucifix on a chain because it breached health and safety rules, her father said today.Samantha Devine, 13, was told to remove the crucifix and chain to comply with school rules.
She attends The Robert Napier School, a non-denominational mixed school, in Gillingham, Kent.
Her father, Danny Devine, 30, of Canterbury Street, Gillingham, told the Medway Messenger: "It's just political correctness gone absolutely mad. It's a harmless crucifix and she wears it as a symbol of her religion.
This'll be the front page story on either the Mail or the Express tomorrow. Or maybe both.
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