Mumsnet Talk

Have just done the usual check around the papers and wanted mners to respond to a query if you can.

Re Daily Mail: the most important story of the day is not the lead, unsurprisingly, nor anywhere near it. It seems an average day for the Mail. There is the usual celebrity bilge down the right column.

So I was wondering, in terms of news choices and news coverage, what kind of thing is being objected to and on what grounds.

For eg: there's a story about school heads being paid over 100,000 a year. If you really hate the Mail, can you explain why in terms of specific stories.

Thanks. I'm neutral, I read all the papers (well not cover to cover but I get across them all online to get a rounded view.

In case this counts: my chosen paper would be the Telegraph, favoured media the BBC and out of the Guardian and the Indie, I'd take the Indie.

I wonder if anyone will respond!

<excited>

Can't give specific examples as I don't go near it (although I do have a bit of a nose when we visit the ILs who are avid DMers) but generally its a bit right wing and misogynisitic. Plus it was pro-Nazi in the 1930's...

(Must confess to not reading any papers any more, I abandoned the Guardian in favour of the Independent but I found that waaaaay to depressing and now the closest I get to the news is listening to radio four in the morning.)

what's the most important story of the day?

Syria

or is it? maybe it's not ..I'm just digging here for opinion

I dislike the DM's obsession with female celebrities appearance and weight.

I must admit I never even looked at the Daily Mail until I read all the vitriol about it on Mumsnet - now I do tend to spend 10 minutes or so checking it out online every day .

But I mean newswise. The actual stories they choose and how they cover them.

Is it just the celebrity news and the editorial that makes people so angry?

"Is it just the celebrity news and the editorial that makes people so angry?"

No, of course not. It's the hatred, as expressed through the choice of stories, choice of headlines, choice of wording, etc. Hatred of:
- women
- the poor
- foreigners (especially asylum-seekers)
- the state and anything it does
- the young
etc etc

The Daily Mail is the best paper in the land. It is the people's paper which is precisely why the progressives don't like it. Stories about head teachers earning over £100,000, BBC executives earning salaries of £1 million etc., council bosses and bin police earning large salaries are exactly what the people want to know about. They like to know how the progressives spend their tax money, which the progressives like to keep quiet. If New Labour HQ don't like the Daily Mail and millions of the public do, then you know that the Mail is on the right track.

No way is it the people's paper. It is semi-fascist bilge - stoking a politics of resentment whenever it can. It hates anyone on benefits, women, refugees, foreigners, left-wingers, teachers, students, trade union leaders, striking workers, public sector employees,, the EU etc etc. In fact, at some point or another it hates everyone, just not all at the same time. Its groundless stories hope to fan the flames of our hatred for each other. It is called 'divide and rule'. It prints lies and scare stories constantly. And it is obsessed with the minutiae of slebs' bodies in a really tedious stupid way.

What makes me angry about the Daily Mail is the twist it puts on even the most innocuous story. If they can find a way to put the blame on immigrants, benefit-claimants, asylum seekers, muslims, single parents etc. then they do, and I find that irresponsible. They take an extreme example of something and extrapolate it to be 'the norm'. In addition, I do not like the way they dumb down scientific discoveries to a black/white good/bad story. They patronise their readers, playing on their fears and propping up their prejudices. There may be some genuinely good material in the middle of it all but, in my opinion, the DM cries wolf too often to be credible.

Brilliantly put telsa.

agree with all except Claig...

I find it distasteful that when they are reporting a story about a death/murder etc they always put in how much the victims house/car/salary is.

Because that really matters when someone has lost a child/partner/parent

I disike it for the very reason that Claig likes it. It feeds on people's pejudices. If you believed everything you read you would emigrate tomorrow!
The embroider innocent stories and give one side.

Sorry -*reasons* not reason.

I am being really careless -prejudices and they.

I am always surprised that the Daily Express escapes this vitriol as very similar to the Mail. Why is that?

Not many people buy the Express-lots buy the Mail!

I see exoticfruits. Mail and Express do seem like clone papers to me which is why I asked.

The headline story about shaming head teachers is a prime example of the disgusting, hypocritical, attitude this paper employs to sell as much crap as it can to the downtrodden lower middle classes.

The Sun is the 'people's paper'.

I do quite enjoy the mindless celeb gossip that you find in the DM - but yes, my objection is the hatred, the shit-stirring - all done with a faux-innocent "but I'm only saying.." tone.

Re the specific story over the school heads; comparatively few would be paid over £100K. You're talking older Heads of very large secondaries there - people who are managing budgets of many millions and staff of well over 100. An equivalent level of responsibility in the private sector would command a much higher salary. But yet the Mail won't say any of that - it's deliberate withholding of information - and for what purpose? How does it help if the public are left thinking these people are over-paid? Shit-stirring of the worst kind.

You can include the Metro in that group too - although at least it's free hatred; and a bit more subtle.

What I don't understand is that even though I don't often look at the Mail Online, every time I do it has at least one story about Kelly Brook. Is she the editor's sister or something?

Yes, Our Kelly is there a hell of a lot. I suspect it has more to do with the stupendous tits and her fondness for bikinis than anything else.

my hate for the dm started years ago when there was an article written by a female journalist on the subject of rape. a few women aroudn chelsea had been attacked in day light, dragged off the street and raped. the so called journalist wrote how terrible this crime was (yes horrendous) and then went on to say that these women would probably find it more difficult to get over than women who didn't have the trapping of a safe, middle class environment. the implication that these things do not happen in such nice areas and that is why it was so much harder for these women. i shook with anger at reading this rubbish, i wrote to the paper (before internet days) and it still makes me rage now. of course i got no reply

the dm never ever fails to make my blood boil with its right wing, misogynist crap they print every single day what is sad is that it is probably the most influential paper as those buying it think its an intelligent paper and take themselves more seriously on an intellectual level than those who may read the sun or mirror

i shall not even start on what i think of their female writers i have a nice day planned

I gave up on it completely when they were advocating 'tough' love for DCs. i.e. you loved your DC if they conformed to your idea of how they should be, what they should do, how they should think and how they should act-if they didn't conform you withheld the love. They were talking about a young, murdered prostitute and the parents and DM were baffled as to why she had gone off the rails with 'a loving family'. It was pretty obvious to me that she wasn't the DC they wanted and never could be. Love for DCs in unconditional as far as I am concerned and you love and bring up the one you get-not the one you imagined.

I also hate the way they take one incident and apply it to everything. e.g. there is a tough class in an inner city comprehensive and all comprehensives are ill disciplined.

'I am always surprised that the Daily Express escapes this vitriol as very similar to the Mail. Why is that?'

exoticfruits is right. The Express is not very influential. The Daily Mail is read by millions and therefore right-on comedians and some New Labour types feel it is important to try to criticise it, in an attempt to turn the millions away from the truth.

'The Sun is the 'people's paper'.'

The Sun was an ardent supporter of New labour and Tony Bliar. I'm not sure that makes it the "people's paper". The Daily Mail has always stood shoulder to shoulder with the people against bin police and all other bureaucrats.

the editors of the sun may have publicly supported labour why i am not sure but their politics (well rantings) have always been right wing didn't change while they were pretending to support blair.

i was very pleased when they announced they were going to support david cameron not that i think anyone was really fooled that had become a left or even middle of the road paper.

I dislike it for a different reason, I think the integrity is really low, especially around the "wonder cancer fighting foods" and "this food causes cancer." I can't believe that any journalist is stupid enough not to understand the phrase "not statistically significant" but it never stops them, and gets past editors etc. I think this paper is responsible for the fact that a lot of people distrust scientists (always changing their minds, studying the bleeding obvious) and that has quite dangerous repercussions.

They obviously don't read any evidence at all, just jump to the most scandalous element, like when they simultaneously ran a story in England and Scotland about how the government were making our daughter promiscuous by offering the HPV jab, whilst in NI running a story about how the government there were letting their daughters die of cervical cancer by not offering it. I just feel such press freedom should come with slightly more responsibility than the Daily Mail displays.

FreudianSlipper, I don't think the Sun is really right-wing. It is Murdoch-wing. It doesn't have the principles of the Daily Mail. The Mail would never have backed Tony Blair; it was always the single thorn in New Labour's side. That is why it attracts such vitriol.

OOh look!! I'm so excited! I'm the first one to get in with this

"Its groundless stories"

groundless? can you expand? do you think they are not true?

bunnywnny - what's wrong in your view with the headteachers story?

"It doesn't have the principles of the Daily Mail"... That's a laugh. The idea of any newspaper having principles. Bottom line is that the DM produces stories they think their readers will pay to read. If that means finding the 'anti' angle in a story, so what? And their typical reader, judging by the output, is a gullible, paranoid creature that believes England (deliberately not 'Britain') was a considerably better place in the 1950s and should be run along the same lines as the writers for Midsomer Murders fashion their scripts.

So far as I can see the Daily Mail has some good old fashioned journalists. Take the Andrew Marr story - that's a great story, an important story. I think is largely staffed by women. It has quite a two fingers attitude to the official line which is always good.

I hate the Mail, and I am much more openly critical about the Mail than I am about the Express or the Mirror etc. Mostly due to the Mail's huge leadership - it is amore of a valid target IMHO, and - also due to it's reach - I am more likely to see a copy of the Mail. (note - not buy!!)

Further to the points mentioned above:
- the Mail's obsession with house prices. Not in the manner of the Express who carp on about the Housing market all the time - that or Diana. But in a more insidious way - working the house price into a news story - where the house price has no bearing at all. As an example, not a direct quote: "the parents of the murdered girl said, form the doorstep of their £450k house in leafy St Albans". Meaning - they are middle class and so we should care quite a lot about them, they are 'our sort of people".

Another is the sly chipping away of equality. Almost every makeover in the mail ends up with the after shot in a skirt or a dress. Never trousers! Always stories about how bad nursery care is, etc etc etc.

Exhales. Rant over. For now...

Eh claig do you work for the DM by any chance????

"Groundless" might be an exaggeration. But they are not above exaggeration for effect.

This story is a horrendous example of their racism. Extractor Fan Removed Because It Offends Muslims Totally biased in favour of the 'hardworking cafe owner', the islamic angle being the headline, and the real reasons for the objection to the extractor fan being completely obscured. And the real reason, incidentally, was that the fan outlet was 12" from the next-door neighbours' front door..... spewing fumes of fried food straight into their hallway. In the list of reasons objecting to the siting of the fan, the idea that the neighbours' muslim friends might be offended by the smell of bacon was a minor addition to a very long & compelling list. And yet the DM reporter deliberatly picked up this one - purely because there was a mention of 'muslim' - and splashed it all over the story as being the principle objection.

That's how the DM plays every story and therefore they cannot be trusted.

Chil - that's the sort of detail I am interested in. Any more? eg take today's paper

I read it because I don't buy papers, only read them online and the Daily Mail has the best online layout imo .

I like reading the celeb stuff, the "weird news" articles and the Femail columns but as with any sort of reporting, I consider myself intelligent enough to see it's biases for what they are and ignore them. Mainly I read the articles and then rant at dh about how much bollocks it all is, we do like having something to rant about with each other, it's very bonding!

Exactly right Gooseberrybushes, the Daily Mail sticks two fingers up to the establishment and shows the people what is being done in our name.

Chil1234, for a Tory, you are very dismissive of the millions of Tories and non-Tories who read the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail does have principles, which is why it released the secret memos on the risk of Guillen Barre syndrome in the swine flu vaccine which no other national newspaper told us about, and why it was probably the first paper in the UK to inform us of Climategate, even when other sources already knew about it, but sat on the truth.

The Mail writes stories that ordinary people care about, not propaganda stories for the literati and chatterati in Islington circles. Your criticisms of Mail readers as out of touch Little Englanders, gullible and paranoid, sounds like something out of New Labour HQ. It is the sort of thing that would give them all a good guffaw at a New Labour Conference, as they sit Canute-like and dismiss the concerns of millions of ordinary voters. You probably agree with Gordon Brown, that Mrs. Duffy, a life-long Labour voter, was a bigoted old woman. The Mail didn't think that. They respect that Labour voter's right to question the Great Labour Leader and stand up for freedom of speech and liberty from officialdom. That's why millions read it. They don't swallow the spin they are subjected to everywhere else.

May I be the first to link to the Daily Mail headline generator?

BTW claig, The Sun's support of new Labour and Blair co-incided with him being repeatedly elected. I don't think this was a coincidence.

Actually yes - good point - the DM is very good on big corporate/political shenanigans in the continuing vaccine story. It published the secret vested pharmaceutical interests of the MP members of the vaccine approval committee.

claig, what's your take on the story Chil linked to? Genuinely interested- I cannot fathom how that is an example of standing shoulder to shoulder with the people...

The Daily Mail may have scooped some good, genuine stories but, as I said earlier, who's going to believe them when they usually fill their pages with such scaremongering crap? I'm dismissive of readers that are prepared to tolerate being patronised with yards and yards of 'you lot will love this one' rubbish and swallow every line without questioning a word of it.

They don't write stories that ordinary people care about. They write the stories that push certain buttons, confirming prejudices and consolidating fears. Stories that sell newspapers, in fact.

In the extractor fan example above, they know full well that their reader wants to believe that muslims are taking over & threatening the UK way of life. So what better than to take a minor local story about the very poor siting of an extractor fan and turn it into a crusade between 'hard working cafe owner' and an alleged islamic objection? So DM readers up and down the country can pore over the story at breakfast and tut 'it's shocking when a cafe owner can't even fry a bit of bacon any more'.

Gooseberrybushes - why the need for specific examples from today's paper? What exactly do you need these for?

I will read it and come back.

Generally I can't stand the Mail as they have a very right-wing slant on general news. However, I do visit their website as they have lots of fun, flaky, celeb gossip on there!

I wondered about OP's agenda too, Hazel... curious, eh?

'Actually yes - good point - the DM is very good on big corporate/political shenanigans in the continuing vaccine story. It published the secret vested pharmaceutical interests of the MP members of the vaccine approval committee.'

Gooseberry, you are exactly right. I am sure they know a lot more than they can publish. But they do let the people see a glimpse of the truth, stuff that the other papers keep hidden. They aren't great, but by God they are better than the others. They are prepared to stick the occasional two fingers up and lets us proles know what is really going on. That is why they are the paper of the people, bought by millions.

TethersEnd - very curious; rather feels like we've been asked to do someone's homework...
Although of course I could not resist piling in with my two penn'orth!

But how do you know with such certainty what ordinary people care about and why, in particular, when the DM has such a high readership and these great yards of comments in agreement, do you think they do not care about these stories?

It seems quite a superior attitude to "ordinary people" to be honest.

For example people do care about how their tax money is spent and the DM gives it to them in spades. You are wrong to simply say "they *don't" write stories that ordinary people care about".

This is what I don't understand to be honest. When it comes to public money they don't care what political position the wasters are: if they are wasters, they may be exposed.

The extractor fan story is a good example of a certain type of slant. I think you can criticise them for the slant, but not putting a slant on a story, as all newspapers do that.

Sorry, what I don't understand is: eg on the public money, these stories are true and they are good stories, and it is the only newspaper doing this. So I don't understand why the hostility to its slant is not tempered by some respect for its journalism.

I too am wondering why you are asking this question.

Here's another classic.... .Swimming Pool Plunged Into Darkness 'To Protect Muslim Women's Modesty' Yet more rubbish designed to satisfy prejudice.

True story was as follows. Like a lot of swimming pools the windows are at ground level and, after some complaints , to protect the modesty of all bathers, they were covered by an opaque film. An opaque film -as anyone with frosted bathroom windows can testify - doesn not mean a room is 'plunged into dark'. That's the first exaggeration. And it was not done in response to complaints specifically from muslim women swimmers but merely several users.

Again..... the DM takes the opportunity to turn a really run-of-the-mill story about nothing at all into a cry of 'political correctness gone mad' with an anti-islamic angle.

These are just the anti-islamic stories the DM cooks up out of nothing at all. So when you see a headling claiming a council official has done X or a benefit claimant has done Y... what's to say it is one iota more accurate? Crying wolf...

The Sun has almost 1m more readers than The Mail.

Hi, I don't have an agenda. I am interested. I'm interested to see exactly where the virulence comes from. I don't work for them far from it.

I didn't say you worked for them

Can I just say freudian, runner, exotic and others, thank you, I am reading your comments with great interest.

oh ok, I thought that was the implication.

Hazel: it's just because, you know, average day. Am not doing a media studies course either. The very idea.

Also, the DM are very good at Photoshop

".....do you think they do not care about these stories?" I'm sure they do care. I'm sure people would care greatly if I published a story in a newspaper that there would be a catastrophic hurricane next week. But if it's a complete fabrication or if my hurricane prediction is based on poor judgement and turns out to be a light breeze then my alarmist story would have been irresponsible.

My own mother, sad to say, is a DM reader. Every other week, she says she's going to give up eating a particular food because it causes cancer or Alzheimers. Frequently she tells me how frightened she is of the muslims or gay people and how they're going to take over Britain because we've all stopped going to church. She scathingly refers to 'single parents scrounging benefits', conveniently forgetting I am a single parent and don't receive any benefits. I think it's sad that such people are being made to care, to get upset and angry about things that are almost certainly not true, or at least not as true as the DM would have them believe.

I agree with Chil that the story is using the muslim angle to attack the politically correct council policies [PC gorn mad' which many Mail readers believe is happening up and down the land. This shop seems to have been in operation for about 9 years with an extractor fan. It is a family business and the woman's husband is a Turkish Muslim. It appears that teh next dorr neighbour who complained about the smell of bacon is not a Muslim but used the argument that his Muslim friends refused to visit him because they didn't like the smell of bacon coming from the shop. According to the Mail, the council made its decision partly on that basisi The woman did say that environmental health had visited many times and said everything was OK. But due to bureaucracy (PC gorn mad) etc. she had to reapply for a licence since an official compaint had been made. And her appeal was then turned down by the council, for reasons that we are not fully aware of. The neighbour seems to have used a number of arguments to state his case, one of which was about Muslim friends refusing to visit. this family's livelihood may now suffer.

The Daily Mail is very often against officialdom and bureaucrats making laws and regulations that change the way of life of the people. I read it as one of those stories showing us the power of teh councils and regulators. I don't think it is blaming Muslims; the woman's husband is Muslim. It is really against loony councils and their regulations. But it does use teh Muslim angle because many Mail readers are worried that their traditions are being changed by councils and regulators, not by Muslims such as the woman's husband.

We know that no Muslim ever objects to the word Christmas etc., because Muslims revere christ as a great prophet. Muslims aren't anti-Christian. It is always councils and officials that spend budgets promoting Winterval rather than Christmas.

The Daily Mail is always against PC officialdom and too much regulation and change of customs and traditions, because it is a conservative paper, and sees itself as against unnecesary change by bureaucrats.

I am really not very articulate, but I will try...

So - the head teachers story today. They publish opinion and not facts. They do not give two sides to the story. Some head teachers are paid a lot of money - it could be 700 or it could be 1600. But this is not put in to context. how many head teachers are there in the country? What is the average head teacher paid? Why are some heads paid more? Because they work in tough schools maybe? What hours do these heads work?
Like someone else said up thread - could they compare this to a comparable job in the private sector? But it doesn't do any of this. It simply states (like it is the only possible opinion to have) that there are people paid too much money from the public purse (i.e. your money Daily Mail reader).

There is another story today 'Can't read or write English? You can still serve on a jury under new rules designed to help immigrants'. Sounds bad doesn't it? People sitting on juries who don't know what's going on and it's being done for the benefit of immigrants too! But actually it is simply rules stating that people who can understand English can sit on Juries, but that if they can't read or write English it doesn't matter. And there is no suggestion that this is done to benefit immigrants at all. Could it possibly be that people are needed on juries and that quite rightly as long as (as with everyone) they are shown to be capable of being on a jury they can be.

It is a nasty, divisive, mean spirited paper.

"I agree with Chil that the story is using the muslim angle to attack the politically correct council policies "

Wrong. The DM is using the muslim angle to perpetuate prejudice. The story 'according to the DM' is not a noble attack on officialdom or loony councils but an example of very bad journalism with an anti-islamic objective.

More here from Tabloid Watch and the story was also covered on the R4 'Face the Facts' programme in an episode about media bias and islamophobia

This is worth looking at too to give a flavour of the sort of nonsense the DM purveys.
The Daily Mail song
www.dananddan.com/?p=68

once again I agree entirely with Chil.

Nasty, women hating, racist little rag. With a particular brand of venom saved especially for Eastern Europeans.

And they pay Jan Moir a working wage.

Do you read Tabloid Watch regularly? Is it left wing?

I agree with much of what Tabloid Watch says, but not their predicatble conclusion. I said the same. The neighbour complained and the neighbour is not Muslim. He used lots of arguments to make his case. The woman's husband is a Muslim and he prepares the bacon and his Muslim friends visit the shop. So the Mail is not saying that all Muslims object.

I think the story is anti the council's regulators.

I think your friend Jack Straw was far more anti-Muslim when he made those statements about women wearing burqas.

I bet the Mail has Muslims working for it. This left wing knee jerk reaction against the Mail is often inspired by its political opponents, who are miffed that millions of citizens buy it, and don't buy their spin.

Did the Mail buy Jack Straw's spin?

An example from today's paper:

Headline: Taxpayer funds £400 guided tours of the supermarket for fat families
Story then goes on to be wonderfully imprecise. Is the council being charged £400 for the people to do this course or £400 for each person - or being given it for free. They just leave the insinuation there, so that all the vile morons can spill their bile in the comments section below (opinions that I never ever hear expressed by people I meet, so I really wonder about them).

The article assumes we will be outraged (and its commenting readers mainly are - as if they only read the headline and take their stance from there) but why - it is actually some sensible food education for people, adults and children, in a deprived area, who are clearly lacking it and prepared to find out more. Why is that so outrageous? This is not journalism, it is alarmist crap presented as journalism (and sourced from the Daily Mirror).

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1380594/Taxpayer-funds-400-guided-tours-supermarket-fat-families.html#ixzz1KdJeb0Xd

I didn't realise the DM had principles-I thought they were interested in what sells the newspaper!

I think the scaremongering is the worst, and it is especially frightening to elderly people who live alone and have no one to discuss stories with to get a balanced view.

I wouldn't mind so much if they tried to get a balance and showed the other side.

"So the Mail is not saying that all Muslims object"

The headline says very clearly "Cafe owner ordered to remove extractor fan because neighbour claimed 'smell of frying bacon offends Muslims'". Straight cause and effect. Muslims caused the fan to be removed. The intention is clear... skim the headline and have your islamophobic suspicions confirmed. Read the story for more confirmation that they're out to get 'hard working cafe owners'. You yourself, claig, are arguing about who was muslim and who wasn't when it was, in fact, religion is completely irrelevant to the outcome of this very straightforward case. You've fallen right into the trap.

The council acted totally normally i.e. removing an extractor fan that had been erected without planning permission and to which the occupiers of a neighbouring house objected. No 'loony council' there either.

The Mail already sells millions of copies to loyal readers. It doesn't need to put shock headlines up to get new readers. It believes in what it does and stood practically alone against New Labour. Unlike the Sun, it didn't court power and invite Jack Straw, Campbell and all the rest to write articles for it. It is not just interested in money. It is interested in the people and the country, which is why it far outsells many of its competitors.

The Mail has an angle. It is a conservative newspaper. It is against PC loony councils, bin police and bureaucrats. It has hundreds of stories like this about the regulators. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the public who buy it in droves, for that veruy reason. Yes, its headline is provactive and misleading, but if you read the article closely, you will see that there is much more to the story and it is really about the non-Muslim neighbour and the council.

But, I agree, that many readers may not read between the lines about the neighbour and his case, and may get the wrong impression. I would prefer it if they made it clearer, who the real target is.

The Mail is implying that it is PC gorn mad. It doesn't say it outright. It knows that most of its readers will believe that, because that is what they think and say in every cab and pub up and down the land.

Tabloid Watch, which is most probably left wing, has chosen to intrepret it as teh council being in the right and following regulations, but most Mail readers will probably see it as bureaucrats following regulations and doing a "hard working" family down. That is the difference in perspective between Mail readers and the people who produce Tabloid Watch. It is probably a difference of perspective between many conservatives, who are anti Big State and the bin police, and left wingers and greens who want more bin and recycling regulation.

The Mail caters to its millions of readers and gives them stories that they discuss down the pub about 'PC gorn mad' and the loony councils. Their readers want to gripe as they pay their taxes and know that their FPTP vote counts for sweet FA anyway.

Exactly claig-panders to people's prejudices! It allows them to be blinkered from the truth as 'the DM said so'-whatever 'other' truth do you need?!

"I would prefer it if they made it clearer, who the real target is."

And there you have most people's objection to the DM in a nutshell. They have targets (immigrants, benefit claimants, single parents, muslims, administrators) and they deliberately fudge stories so that the targets are repeatedly attacked, whether they deserve it or not. The DM is therefore underhand in its objectives, preferring rumour, suspicion and exaggeration to clear, unambiguous journalism. When the Telegraph got the MPs expenses story they ran it extremely well, could defend their position 100% and the rest is history. The credibility of the Telegraph was enhanced as a result.

By contrast, the Mail's fondness for invention and spin means their credibility is extremely poor. Their next story about 'bin police' might be accurate but who's going to take it seriously? The fact that there are so many people in the UK who find the DM agenda chimes with their own opinions is depressing.

Gooseberry, have a read of this book and you will find example after example of the Daily Mail's racist and hateful agenda.

(The rest of the press doesn't come out of it glowingly either)

Do you really think that no other newspaper has known for years about the expenses situation. MPs have been claiming such expenses for years. The Telegraph eventually chose to tell the public. Why?

If the Mail writes an investigative story about the bin police, millions will take it seriously, but they know that their opinions don't count anyway, so they just grumble about it. But at least they know that there is one paper that tells it like it is and stands shoulder to shoulder with them. But, they are under no delusions, that a fat lot of good that will do them.

'The fact that there are so many people in the UK who find the DM agenda chimes with their own opinions is depressing.'

It is certainly depressing for Gordon Brown and the progressives, which is why they pour such vitriol on the paper that tells it like it is.

"The Telegraph eventually chose to tell the public. Why?" Because the Telegraph had inside access to chapter and verse on shocking details like duck islands and moat clearing which other newspapers had not had. If you're trying to tell me that the DM had this information 'for years' and suppressed it... that would be more proof that they aren't a very good newspaper.

And save me your sob story about the poor benighted Mail reader, knowing (because he read it in his favourite newspaper and they 'tell it like it is') that its only a matter of time before the 'bin police' (gay, anti-christian bin police no doubt) deprive him of his civil liberties... and being unable to do a thing about it bar grumble because no-one takes him seriously. Bollocks, old son. Boll-ocks.

A DM Classic

What a lovely eulogy.

I'm genuinely surprised that I have never noticed claig on MN before.

'If you're trying to tell me that the DM had this information 'for years' and suppressed it... that would be more proof that they aren't a very good newspaper.'

I think all the papers knew about it. I am not saying the Mail is great. I think it knows lots more about big pharma, swine flu etc. than it tells us. It only gives us a glimpse, but that is more than the others do.

So you don't think that people were losing their civil liberties? You seem out of touch with most Tory voters, old son. The Telegraph ran a huge campaign about saving civil liberties and the Mail also writes articles about it. One of the first things the Coalition did was to scrap hundreds of socialist regulations and restore many of our civil liberties. You should stop listening to the BBC, which the Director-General said used to have "a massive left wing bias" and start reading some good old Tory newspapers such as the Daily Mail.

'Bollocks, old son. Boll-ocks.'

By that are you referring to New Labour and the bin police or to that major conservative newspaper, the Daily Mail?

I vote conservative and I think the DM is a nasty little rag. And so do most of my Tory voting friends.

The DM appeals to a very specific demographic - I'm not saying people outside of this demographic don't like it, but the typical (male) reader they have in mind is white, aged about 48-62, probably now more likely to vote UKIP than conservative. His wife doesn't work and never has. He's very proud of this and he thinks feminists are basically evil. He's not comfortable with the number of brown faces he sees on his local streets (particularly not the ones who seem to have good jobs and nicer cars than him) and hasn't been for years, but has enough social intelligence to be vaguely ashamed of these feelings. The stories he reads in the DM reassure him that he is just a proper, proud red blood John Bull who loves his country. He always planned when he retired to up sticks and live in Alicante in an enclave with hundreds of similar thinking Brits (where they could ironically moan about bloody foreigners together without ever learning a word of Spanish themselves) but due to the current financial climate he can no longer afford to do so.

But the Daily Mail has a higher female readership. Where I live, lots of people read it. We aren't snob Tories, we don't look down on people who read tabloids. We know that there is often more truth in the Mail than in the broadsheets. What paper do you think the majority of Tory voters read? It's not the Telegraph and the Times. Get a train to London and you will see who reads the Daily Mail. It sells far more than the Guardian, the Independent, the Times and the Telegraph. After the Sun, I think it is the highest selling paper. Do you think there are that many UKIP voters? Do you think all the people reading the Mail on commuter trains are bigots? I bet some New Labour types do, but some of them also thought that Mrs. Duffy was, but then apologised profusely.

The editorial tone of the DM is bigoted, sexist and mildly racist. Gordon Brown's mistake with the "bigot" woman was in not sticking to his guns and saying to her "actually I think you are wrong about x because y".

I am not a snob and do not look down on people because of the size of the paper their newspaper is printed on.

Exactly Georgimama. You can be conservative and against excessive regulation, a big state and wheelie bins without putting a small minded and hateful slant on it.

And claig I quite specifically said I was describing what I imagine the DM to consider their core typical reader, rather than who actually reads the thing. I read it (online). Not because I love it but because I don't.

I'm not much of a Daily Mail reader - but they do occasionally break stories that the other papers appear to ignore.

I've heard that Andrew Marr only talked to them (in today's Mail) when the Mail threatened to publish his 'super injunction' details anyway.

Another story on Sunday was The Nurse who called Lansley a liar is Full Time Union Official. The Mail are the only paper to run with this story, despite it being on Twitter for days.

The Daily Mail is also the second largest online newspaper in the world (after the New York Times). The Guardian is the third, I believe.

I think most online readers are looking on between parted fingers in horror and disbelief that it's real and not a spoof, like me.

The Daily Mail is only the second largest in the world because of the celeb tat that people insist on linking to <glares round at assembled company> I'd like to see the stats for click throughs to actual news of time spent on the site generally.

<whistles nonchalantly re links to celeb tat>

actually I think the celeb tat stories give a real snap shot of their agenda - titillating pictures of Rhianna whilst pretending to be appalled by her (ditto cast of Skins in lingerie), OMG style article about a Kardashian sister who was still BFing her baby at the extreme age of nine months etc etc.

femail is even worse.

<continues to glare with new name>

I fin the DM very confusing as well - am in a blended family so thats bad but I'm working so thats good yet I'm using a nursery so thats bad but at least I'm married now so thats good...argh

If you want the DM to approve of you (Christ knows why you would) as a woman you need to be:

Married
A mother (preferably at least two but no more than four children, ideally boys and girls)
not working until they are all school age (when your job will miraculously accommodate your wish to work 9.30 to 3, term time only)
Husband must be in employment
White
Live in SE England in house worth circa £300,000

I vote conservative and detest the daily mail, whereas my extremely biggoted fil votes labour and reads it religiously. Only he isnt intelligent enough to see through the stories and thats how they keep their readers. He is forever phoning DH to complain about immigrants (which is ironic as he emigrated to South Africa when DH was a kid), people being on the dole (again his DD has been on the dole for YEARS) and how Margaret Thatcher is to blame for everything. Seriously, he even blames her for being made redundant 10 years before she came into power.

Having said that I also get wholly irritated by the BBC as they are so biased and very obvious with it. I am not one of those people who thinks everyone should have the same opinion as me, I love a lively debate but I think if you are a news channel paid for by everyone you should just stick to the facts and stop being so negative.

Okay will go and look.. the home opage is about the human cannon ball which is hardly important interesting news so it immediately gives an impression it is for people who have a fairly low IQ. (I get the Times and FT delivered each day and also the Telegraph at the weekends).

It';s taking me quite a way down that first page to find real news rather than trivia but there has always been a market for that kindo f thing from the Victorian age and earlier. If people buy it they will keep putting it out.

It has become a sort of kneejerk reaction by MNers, desperate to be seen as 'doing and saying the right thing' to respond to the Daily Mail with visceral hatred.

That alone has encouraged me to take a closer look at it and to realise that it makes a refreshing change from the crap peddled by the Guardian. That union official one is a cracker.

That appalling woman is representative of stupid selfish lazy greedy Britain, full of people who think everyone owes them. God she makes me shudder with disgust.

'it is for people who have a fairly low IQ'

Have you read the comments section? That disproves the low IQ. A sharper, more switched-on reader would be hard to find anywhere. But yes, Mail readers not only have one of the highest average IQs among newspaper readers in the UK, but they also have a very high EQ and are interested in human interest stories such as the human cannonball, crime, and celebrities. Some people have said all life is in the Daily Mail, and others have said if you are bored of the Daily Mail, you are bored of life. I wouldn't disagree.

more switched-on readership

Thank you to everyone who has posted.

I have an affection for the Daily Mail because of its two fingers journalism on issues important to me. Plus it has a great columnist I used to enjoy as an erstwhile Guardian reader, Melanie Phillips.

The venom here on mn was puzzling but I now understand it better. I think it's partly because people haven't realised it does do some absolutely stonking journalism.

I don't really care that much about the slant because slant is everywhere, one way or the other, omission, smudging, blurriness, left and right, newspapers and the BBC are branded with it. It's swings and roundabouts.

What has struck home is the very strong sense of mysogyny people have. (spelt wrong, I always do that, like with rythm) Anyway, I haven't read (literally, have seen strapline and haven't read) the lifestyle articles which generate this view so I will take the word of posters here that it's worse than old fashioned and actively regressive.

I was surprised by the description of the hypothetical generic reader. I always thought of it as female.

Now I think of it as mn - but with a different slant. The slant on homelife, childcare, return to work etc is different (slash extreme) but these are the things we are interested in: what we feed our children, affairs, working mums, politics at a certain level, picnicware, disposable income, house prices, public spending. I still would see its demographic as largely female.

Thank you again.

'I think it's partly because people haven't realised it does do some absolutely stonking journalism'

Oh how that made me laugh. You are clearly doing pr for the DM, brave but ultimately a complete waste of time until they stop hating anyone who is in any way 'other'.

And yes I, for one, spend all my waking life thinking about 'picnicware'

Do we have a name for a PR troll if we have had politrolls before? Is it a proll?

Another of the DM 'other' groups are (bailed out) bankers and wealthy tax avoiders. This put them on the same side as both UKUncut and the Guardian, earlier in the year .

No, I'm not doing PR for the DM. Please don't accuse me of lying. They have done some very good journalism, a few examples have been noted on the thread. It will inevitably be hard to concede if you don't like the paper.

I don't think people think about picnicware all the time, that was just a throwaway. Many people who post on mn do have an dilletante interest in the fripperies of life, it doesn't mean they take it seriously.

Tis true strawb.

starb erk

It is very hypocritical - complaining about a lack of moral standards one minute then illustrating a story with a picture with a celeb in a bikini. Also a dear friend was involved in a tragic national story several years ago and the utter tripe that they printed about the event in question upset us all very much.

"complaining about a lack of moral standards one minute then illustrating a story with a picture with a celeb in a bikini."

yes this is bizarre

all the tabloids do it - but yes I agree

Do you just not notice the insiduous nature of the language though gooseberry? That cancels out the few stories a year they might break that are worthwhile.

And dont tell me that we are interested in 'politics at a certain level' either - what level is that? women's level?

I think you're stirring - I'd stand behind that - you're either stirring or you're involved in some way.

Well, your accusation of mendacity really deserves for your whole post to be ignored but I'll take pity on your lack of imagination.

No, it really doesn't cancel it out. Maybe I'm immune to the slant - I read all the papers and I'm so used to reading "through" the slants of all of them, and going to another paper for their take on a story, that I just assume it's part of the deal. I also think there's truth in a slant: in the Guardian, the "slant" does not just work on the reader: it's mutual, a relationship: so I don't feel the readers are victims somehow of the slant. Same with the Telegraph, the Mail, the Indie, even the BBC. I don't think it's a mysterious thing.

It's a big miss that I have not read the articles that have been mentioned that are unpleasantly mysoginistic.

Politics at a certain level: I mean you would certainly not be a Daily Mail reader if you were interested in politics beyond a certain level. You would just read something else.

I think they exploit the the creeping and irrational phobias of their ignorant readers.

Misogyny isnt a 'slant' like a political bias or an agenda - its completely different.

You dont find The Guardian taking against anyone just because they wohm or are travellers or single parents or in fact retired brigadeers or Hertfordshire sahms.

That's the difference.

if you havent noticed it then you are so used to it that it doesnt even register - scary.

Have we had a falling out before - am getting a certain sense of deja vu.

Is the OP for real? Anything to declare OP? Like perhaps you work for the DM??

I wasn't talking about mysogyny as a slant. Not at all. I said I haven't read those articles and I accept the words of the posters on this thread who have.

I didn't say I don't notice - I said I'm immune. They all do it. Quite often you can read a story in one paper and look immediately for the oppositive view and tbh it's only by marrying them together that you get half way there. Neither one will do the full job. You probably notice the slant in the paper you read? And do the same thing? It's so easy with them all being online.

I read the Mail and Telegraph reports today on the sad case of the teenage girl who dies at a party. Both were speculative and used the reported death as a vehicle of commenting about drugs (even though the quoted source said different things in both papers).
The Guardian report, however, said that cause of death had not been confirmed and quoted 'Tony Ryan, headteacher of Chiswick Community School, where the teenager attended, described her as an extremely popular girl. "Her tragically early death is devastating news to everyone associated with the school and all our thoughts are with her family at this time," he said.'
They also said that the family called for privacy at this sad time.

The reporting was totally different. A child had died and two papers, at least were using her death to make a point about the youth of today (booze, drugs... oh and social networking sites had a look-in too). I thought it was appalling.

Hi Lady - anything to declare? Like reading the thread?

If you really think this is some media survey, or PR research, report it. They know I'm just a ropy old hasbeen who spends too much time here.

Indeed, eggsit, it was reported on the BBC that they not yet know the cause of death - nor will they for several days yet. But the Daily Mail and Telegraph seem to know more than the pathologists.

Maybe they have better contacts.

Personal insults? Deary me, how very unMail like.

I mean the Mail and Telegraph, not the leftie press.

But not charged, smallwhitecat - arrested on suspicion.

All papers have a slant, but the last thing I need is a slant that encourages me to believe that as a white middle class taxpayer I'm some kind of persecuted victim. I always noticed that if my lovely, but not terribly bright, MIL suddenly came out with xenophobic comments or started hinting that she was being fleeced by people on benefits, there would be bound to be a copy of the DM lying around the house. (MIL btw inherited her own wealth, but also got DLA in later years).

Well, Lady, you've accused me of lying. So that makes you.. what? Personally insulting, I'd say. Grow up petal.

No, but I expect factual reporting, not hysterical headlines such as 'Ecstasy death girl, 15, 'idolised drug-taking musicians and was hooked on the internet'.

And how rude, smallwhitecat.

I questioned if you had anything to declare, which is not an accusation in most people's lexicon.
A question you still have not answered, btw.

DM outsold The Sun for the first time last week.....just thought you'd like to know

as a matter of law you need reasonable grounds for suspicion to arrest someone - which means there has to be some evidence

Careful, smallwhitecat - thankfully people are innocent until proven guilty in the UK, and that would be in a court of law, not in some silly MNer's head. We've been here before very recently, when a landlord was arrested for murder, villified on MN and in the press, and then found totally innocent. I expect you were one of the people baying for his blood, too - after all, you need reasonable grounds to arrest someone, right?

Thank Christ the justice system is slightly more sophisticated than you are.

You told me to trot off to my deadline. Accusing me of being a journalist and writing this for an article.

Er yes, I've answered it, several times - why do you think I told you to read the thread.

Your confrontational tone is unnecessary, but entirely in keeping with your paper of choice.

Then you'll know all about the difference between 'arrested on suspicion', 'charged' and 'proven guilty', smallwhitecat. All different.

So you stand by that headline as an entirely reasonable one then?

'DM outsold The Sun for the first time last week.....just thought you'd like to know'

...when we talk about sales of the DM, do we mean circulation? Just that there appear to be an awful lot of free ones floating about (eg Tesco delivery, motorway services etc)

(was offered free copy by Tesco delivery man. When I took it and said 'ooh, always good to know what the Enemy's thinking' he replied 'most people tell me to shove it up my arse )

I hate the way the DM has a big headline that is actually totally inaccurate and just reinforces the prejudices of the terminally ignorant.

One example of this was a headline which said something along the lines of '£10 for an overdraft if you're Muslim' but £25 if you're not'. The actual article was about a bank account introduced by LLoyds (I think) which had no overdrat facility and didn't pay any interest on it. Yes it would be attractive to muslims because of their religious beliefs but it was open to everyone irrespective of religion and the marketing wasn't even specifically aimed at Muslims. If you did go overdrawn then it was £10 a day.

The other account offered had an automatic £250 overdraft facility plus paid interest of the balance. If you went over the £250 overdraft limit you would be charged at £25 per day. Seems quite reasonable to me as you would have already borrowed £250 but no this was used as another excuse to Muslim bash because reading some of the on line comments it's clear people read what they want to believe. I would go as far as to say it's an example of the DM trying to incite racial hatred.

Sales, not circulation.

Yet again Lady showing that you haven't read the thread. And it was you who started the confrontation. Should I assume you are a DM reader?

To add to the drug-related death story: I would say it's almost inevitable that they will not be working on assumptions and inferences from the arrest, and that someone has been given a nod.

I don't think it's absurd - I am happy for the BBC to report that the cause of death is unknown, and won't be discovered for a few days. I would much rather hear/read about facts, rather than hearsay/speculation/arrests which may well turn out later to be completely false.

Okedokee: interesting insight.

The BBC can't go beyond that.

A nod equals responsible journalism in DM land? Really? It would explain a lot.

What, the BBC can't go beyond the facts? Respectable is right.

Perhaps papers should only ever report what they are told on the record. Perhaps they should be pr mouthpieces. Maybe some people would like that.

i wouldn't.

Things are much looser nowadays, thanks to tinterweb. They used to be so strict about "a man is being questioned" etc etc.

I mean SWC - I agree - we don't need any more press restrictions than we have. These injunctions demonstrate that.

I actually asked if a nod equals responsible journalism in DM land, hence the question mark. Stop twisting my words and if you consider reporting abusive posts as cowardly then that is indeed your prerogative.

Ok - "a nod equals responsible journalism?"

Shows what you know.

You started a fight - you didn't like the response. Didn't I ask you to grow up earlier?

Why so aggressive, GB?

Er - somebody accused me of lying. Would you like it?

No, I wouldn't - but I think you may have made your point, more than once.

In the 80s when I was a student <gimmer> everyone hated The Sun because it was the most powerful paper in the country and the best-selling one.

Now they hate the Mail for exactly the same reasons.

It also, thanks to the internet, has a huge presence in the US. Thanks to this web presence, thousands of mnetters, who would previously have been embarrassed to buy it, now spend large chunks of their day reading it and then posting outraged links on here

I don't read the Guardian, smallwhitecat, if you're referring to me. GB, more than one poster has accused you of lying, but you've been especially vicious towards LadyMary.

read the first OP, then jumped to the last page.
I am a teacher (oooh, get me and my pinko liberal tendencies, LMFAO!) and think the DM is homophobic, racist, and shit-stirring crud of the worst kind and read and taken seriously by fuckwits the land across.

It's obsessed with weight and image - and read by a frighteningly large number of people who surrended their critical faculties as soon as they made it their daily read of choice.

Just saying... (And I would insert a wink, but it's a Royal wink, thus shit as well, and I'll not dirty my post with it)

I'm a 'Guardianista' reader. Did you guess, smallwhitecat? LOL. Jesus. I love threads like this.

Head teachers are welcome to earn over 100k, if you ask me.

In a big secondary school, their responsibility and accountability is HUGE. Being responsible for the hiring and firing of over 100 staff, the well being of students, the teaching and learning, the hours they have to put in, etc etc.

A reasonable salary.

Oh - is this thread not about this?

Lady Mary has continued to jib and swipe. But that's ok with you?

I suspect SWC may be onto something.

smallwhitecat - the reason people get 'aggressive and rude' is because often the DM attacks their very morality and the way they live their life and encourages others to get all sanctimonious and judgey without all the facts too - at its worst it discourages people to mix and entrenches society in a way that is completely divisive.

When you read things in other papers that you disagree with politically - they are only at odds with your pov and not you in general.

GOd no, I love em. Fighting generalisations and fuckwittage in the classroom, spoken from the mouths of babes is grist to my mill. Wonder where some kids get their opinions from. Really, bring it on!! I will take my fairy wand of self righteousness and bash all the bigoted homophobic muslim-bashers that read the DM right on their little, blond highlighted heads. And take their Boden catalogues from their white tipped, podgy (but I'm trying really hard on the no carb diet from FeMail...) little hands whilst I'm at it.

Come on - you can do better than that...

Having read through the whole of this thread, I have one question. Why don't you just NOT read it?

I abhor The Sun. Have flicked through it in the past and realised that I hate their obsession with which celebrity is shagging another, using any opportunity to flash a bikini clad 'babe', actually expecting the reader to believe that the page 3 girl actually has views on the news of the day.

Those who 'hate' the DM seem to be the ones who spend all their time going through it with a fine tooth comb in order to note their grievances.
In fact ,some have admitted to reading the DM "but only online", as if that is any different to reading the actual paper.

If you don't agree with it, don't read it and let those who do want to read it do so.

Problem solved...simples.

I read this a couple of years ago Intresting read but it really spoiled news for me as it made me aware of what I was missing, which up until then I hadn't noticed. In particular it spoiled BBC television news and I revertted to radio news though BBC radio 4 was ok. I have since got rid of the the tv as my aireal broke and not had it repaired and part of that was the intrusion from the news.

This last month has been interesting as I have friends complaining bitterly about the "wedding" coverage on the television news, I don't see it and can ignore the stories in the online news I see.

I can't say whether I recommend the book or not, it was an eye opener and certainly made me aware of how dangerous the Times is rather than just the DM, though there was a whole chapter dedicated to the DM and how and why it works the way it does.

I think identity's posts indicate that aggressive, vicious prejudice is often attached to the person rather than the paper they read.

Love this quote about the book, ivykaty:

Metro
'this timely rallying call is essential reading - for those who write newspapers as well as those who read them'

Metro is a sister paper of the Daily Mail!

I just think it's wrong to pigeonhole someone just because of the paper they read.

swc - they would be comment/named column pieces though and not the general tone of the paper.

angrymomma - if only it were that simple but cultural bleed means that its actually important to disagree with things that you dont like as misogyny and homophobia, even casually, have real life consequences - indeed violence against certain groups is on the increase.

Well I read DM and, as far as I'm aware, I don't hate anyone.

TBH, if I was forced to read The Sun everyday, I would very soon hate all men, and not just some.

lizard -- you are demonstrating that a reader of a paper can't necessarily identify its slant in news coverage as well as comment

Quick check-in to say: thanks to those on both sides who posted. Very interesting, and I found some of the bitterness especially revealing, for example one of Freudian's posts and there were others. I appreciate that people have tried to articulate their dislike rather than just go "ugh".

swc, am not generally a fawner but tis not the first thread where I have found yr brevity but cogency v v readable

Gooseberrybushes - lizard would only be demonstrating this if you or swc had some actual evidence showing the bias swc claims exists in the guardian. It needn't be a high bar, just a link to a couple of news articles that "are very insulting about, for example, people like me [swc]; comfortably off (or would be, if not for my necessary outgoings), prviately educating (in a manner of speaking anyway), right-wing, not keen (or able, frankly) to pay much more by way of tax."

I can't recall ever seeing such articles.

You also have repeatedly said that you think that people are failing to acknowledge that the Mail produces some good journalism, and have cited the story on heads' pay as an example. I think that this is an example of the worst type of journalism:
- it's not news. Heads have not suddenly had massive pay hikes. The fact that there's been a large increase in the number of heads being paid more than 100k is psychologically important but simply reflects the fact that they used to be paid only just less than 100k and have had payrises. It's a story that could have been written about any senior leaders in the public sector at any time (albeit by picking a different number to get outraged about)
- it's designed to stoke a furore by focusing on a pointless number. It doesn't show how heads are systematically overpaid (eg showing how head pay has outrun inflation / pay of heads in other countries / pay of peer professions / improvements in pupil attainment [although obviously the Mail will never acknowledge that any systematic improvement in pupil attainment is real, because all such improvements must inevitably be caused by a relaxing of standards]). It relies on people thinking that 100k is automatically "too much". It ignores the obvious question, "what is the appropriate pay for the teachers who run schools, then?"
By doing this, it makes is much tougher for schools to pay their heads 100k+ and attract the best leaders. That matters because research shows that a strong leader is one of the most significant factors driving pupil attainment. And before anyone asks, yes of course pay matters to heads, just as it does to everyone else.
What I find personally invidious about this story is knowing that Paul Dacre sanctioned publishing it. Dacre is the best paid editor on Fleet Street, and has earned £1m+ for the last five years. So he has no objection to people earning lots of money, so long as it's him. He just objects to anyone being funded by the taxpayer being paid well to do a good job. Well, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. And I'd prefer not to have monkeys running the nation's schools, myself.

Gooseberry, just a tad patronising. If people's opinions are sought, they will be given. They may be revealing or not, but it's not for you to thank graciously with one hand, whilst kicking in the teeth with the other. However, glad to have been of use, however you may have taken the postings.
You can go and pop that spoon of self-righteousness back in your mouth now, my dear...

and incidentally, learn to distinguish between 'vicious prejudice' and just a 'tad' of irony in a post. Still, if you will judge people by what they read / opinions that they have, rather than try to get to know them without flaming straight back, what can one expect.

Hmmm. Now. Was I being a little self-consciously ironic and self-deprecating then, or not? Jeez. I just don't know. Maybe I'll go find something more interesting to do instead. I am usually a Babycenter frequenter. I am genuinely surprised at the level of viciousness that people seem to post on here. And how right wing MN is. Still. Each to their own, eh?...

(and slhilly - excellent point raised in your last para....)

Thanks, LMIATW!

I dont know why I'm bothering but still..

Yes thank you gooseberry - I can identify bias in news coverage - it comes from the top down obviously and filters through the news outlet. What I was disagreeing about was the difference between bias and inflammatory reporting.

if you need examples of some quantitative research on this I can direct you to some articles in the BJR or MCS that will illuminate issues like this for you.

<hides thread>

www.thepoke/dailymailtubemap.

just in case anyone needs clarification re: the DM's concerns and interests.

Daily Mail fail is an oxymoron. For that reason, I have asked MNHQ to pull the thread at the earliest opportunity.

If anybody starts a "Guardian fail" thread, I shall not be making a similar request.

Well it is a fail. Has anyone seen how today they have illustrated an article about photographer Bruce Davidson with a picture of the 13-year younger actor of the same name. Does anyone there have research skills?

Mail Online is a totally different entity to the newspaper - it's very showbiz driven and contains a massive amount of content that does not appear in the newspaper.

And, yes, Online is staffed by a very young, inexperienced team who make loads of cock ups

Lizard: my comment is a response to this:

"swc - they would be comment/named column pieces though and not the general tone of the paper"

I'm sure you don't really imagine that the left-wing papers restrict their bias to the comment pages?

Sl hilly: I have not cited the heads' story as an example of good journalism. I offered it up to be dissected, one of the day's stories.

"Gooseberry, just a tad patronising."

You were tremendously unpleasant. I asked for views, and you gave tremendoulsly unpleasant views. They demonstrated that tremendously unpleasant views are attached to the person rather than the newspaper they read.

Claig: they just rhymed, that's all. I should have put Daily Mail fail? Or Daily Mail?

Still don't you think the responses are interesting?

whoops, my bad. you did, though, say that "They have done some very good journalism, a few examples have been noted on the thread."

what examples on this thread and more generally did you have in mind of their good journalism?

Nancy66 Mail Online is a totally different entity to the newspaper - it's very showbiz driven and contains a massive amount of content that does not appear in the newspaper.

So the picture of Jesus's face on a jelly bean in the newspaper over Easter was quality journalism then?

The exposure for example of vested interests on MPs' committees concerned with vaccine approval, the swine flu vaccine story, that sort of thing.

More generally I would say local authorities which will always and forever need the piercing light of exposure on their activities, quangoes, the BBC (much as I love R4) etc. These are bodies that need to be afraid and aware, and never complacent, that spending irresponsibility is at risk of exposure.

They've also had a go at Green and his activities, they haven't been as good on Blair's mysterious financial dealings as they should have, but they will go for the corporate if they can as well as the public sector. It's all two fingers - if they can have you, they will.

Was that question for me, eggsit?

Papers have moved on since the Times C1860. Sometimes they run stories intended to amuse. Isn't it awful

No Gooseberry, it was just a rhetorical question following Nancy66's comment on the online paper being much better quality than the newpaper!

Aha

<shamefaced at reading the jellybean story>

<really quite embarrassed>

following Nancy66's comment on the online paper being much better quality than the newpaper

...i actually said the complete opposite

Yes you did.

? This is what you said:
'Online is staffed by a very young, inexperienced team who make loads of cock ups'

exactly - online is inferior.

Not sure how you can misinterpret that...

And you think a story about Jesus's face being found on a jelly bean is a 'superior' news story? It was in the newspaper.

it's a bit of lightness....so what? it's a tabloid. You want serious buy the FT

Gooseberrybushes, I was only joking about the oxymoron aspect. The Daily Mail can never fail, because it is a great paper, in my opinion. The responses have been fairly predictable in their disapproval of the Mail and aren't representative of the population as a whole, but that is normal on MN.

I think you have borne the brunt of some nasty comments, because you are seen as partial to the Mail.

The Mail contains light stories such as Jesus's face on the jelly bean as well as deeper political stories. That is why it sells in huge numbers. It appeals to many different people. It covers everything from the light-hearted to the serious. Ok, it's not po-faced. If you want that, try the Guardian.

People like to laugh, they like stories about kindness and wonder. That's why the Mail has stories of jellybeams or pets that help their owners or other acts of goodness. There are stories about celebrities and actors etc. The Mail reader can only take so much of Gordon Brown, whereas the Guardian reader can never get enough of him.

The Mail is the last place I would turn if I wanted a story of kindness and wonder - my God, that is a joke!

In real life I have heard far more harsh comments about the DM than on mn and form surprising quarters.

I think excoticfruits summed it with it feeds peoples prejudices, the DM is clever in that it writes what is wanted and gives people the news in a way it is wanted, a bit of doom and gloom, a bit of blame that section of society for are woe's, put these people down and it will make us feel better about ourselves.

This is from today's Mail and is a good cheerup story is typical of what many readers like to read. They need cheering up after seeing the picture of Gordon brown and reading about how he wasn't invited to the wedding.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381183/Pet-dog-saves-owners-life-smelling-breast-cancer.html

Today's paper also has a great positive story about 3 brave female police officers
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381109/Meet-3-hero-WPCs-brushed-aside-shotgun-corner-fleeing-armed-robbers.html

and here is a story from today's paper which is a typical Mail story about the ever-amazing wonders of the politically correct thought and language police

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381136/Are-pets-really-companions-Academics-new-PC-vocabulary-dub-vermin-free-range-animals.html

The Mail has it all. That's why people choose to read it from front to back. They decline free offers of other papers, because in comparison they find them back to front.

My wife calls me pet... this is what a daily mail reader said after reading claigs last story

Was that reader John Prescott?

why, does John Prescott read the DM?

I would imagine so, if he wants to remain informed.

I guess so, where else would you find out about renaming pets companions, who got to go to the wedding in your old bosses place and whether Bristol Palin supports gay marriage There aren't any relevant boxing matches listed though?

'Companion animals' has been a PC alternative to 'pet' for years - is this news?

Politicians need to keep in touch with the views of the people while riding in their chauffeur driven jags. That's why they read the Mail to find out what the people think and care about. Not all of the people are interested in heavy political topics. The Mail caters for all of the people. It has light stories and deeper stories. Miliband admitted that labour lost touch with the people over civil liberties and immigration. I am sure that some of his thinktank now read the Mail to keep their fingers on the pulse. It's no use them reading the Guardian. That's just preaching to the converted. they need to find out what the millions more Mail readers think.

Its regurgitated news and its free

''Companion animals' has been a PC alternative to 'pet' for years - is this news?'

Wow, that's news to me. It must be news to other Mail readers too, or the Mail wouldn't be publishing it. Mail readers are not au fait with the latest trends in politically correct thinking, they are not as progressive as Guardian readers.

But the daily mail isn't written by the readers, it is written by the journo who buys the stories the same as all the other papers, apart from the stories like the pc pets story which is old and free. So by reading the DM the politicians will find out what the jornos write not what the readers think. In any case its Murdoch that sorts out what the politicians think he chooses that part.

Good point. But clever journos know their readers well. They actually read their comments and letters and understand where the readers are coming from. They aren't Oxbridge educated preachers in their expensive , all expenses paid, ivory towers, pretending they are with the proletariat, like journos in some papers. Ivory tower politicians who call their lifelong voters bigots and rarely hear the opinions of real people down below, would do well to get their info secondhand from journos who are nearer to the pulse of the nation. Agree that Murdoch teels many of them what to think, but the clever ones can talk a good game, can act like Sir John Gielgud and convince us that they are 'straight kinda guys'. They can affect their mockney accents, learned late in life, years after theri education at public schools, and trot out headlines form the Mail in their attempt to woo the public to their cause.

You make a good point about the journos. it sounds like many of them just filter stories and the news. But the best selling newspapers like the Mail obviously do a better filtering job, because they give the public what they want.

A quick google finds:
The Society for Companion Animal Studies (SCAS) was established in 1979 to promote the study of human-companion animal interactions and raise awareness of the importance of pets in society

...so there's a use of the term thats over 3 decades old and actually not really an example of 'politically correct thinking' as they use 'pet' too.

I did actually scan the first couple of pages of a DM today (at the garage,,, not mine obv ), couldn't get past article on p3 with photo highlighting some "weathergirl's" cellulite... ringed picture of rather more toned than average adult female leg. sorry, is it news that most grown women have dimply fat reserves on the back of their legs? Is this an issue that needs prominenent news coverage? Was it supposed to be a 'cheerup' story?

I'm not interested in those stories, but many readers are. I don't look down at them. Everyone is interested in different things. The Mail obviously thinks that many of its readers want to read that, so it writes about it.

I don't read about sustainability etc. in the Guardian, because I know it is BS. But other readers just find it boring. Everyone has different interests. A good politician needs to understand the interests of the public, even if those interests don't interest the politician. They can't afford to sneer at the public and what they read. Otherwise, as they found out in constituencies up and down the land, come election day, they will have to vacate their seats.

That's why Clegg told us "you are the bosses". They tell us that our opinion counts, that they want to hear our views, they want to have a "Big Conversation" with us. But their mistake was to call it "Big", they tried to big it up, to hide the fact that it was all a sham. Why not just have a conversation and leave the patronisation behind? Why not just respect what people think, what interests people and what people read. If they were clever, they wouldn't play to their own gallery and sneer at the Daily Mail. Instead they would try to woo the millions that read it and win them over. But they can't hide their contempt for the readers of the Mail, those millions of bigots, many of them foolishly interested in cellulite rather than sustainability, they've lost touch with the people and that's why they are destined to lose and lose again.

I don't understand why claig thinks "the people" are all Tories.

They aren't all Tories. but the Tories won the election and the Tories got the largest percentage of votes, and the Sun and the Daily Mail have the highest sales figures and most of their readers are on the right. Labour have a smaller proportion of voters backing them than the Tories. So they need to win over Tory voters. The Tories must be rubbing their hands to see the fools on the left sneering at the Mail and scoring own goal after own goal. No wonder they lost, the final score went against them. They created a deficit and time ran out to make up their goal deficit. They had the wrong coach and the wrong strategy. Have they learnt their lesson? So far, it doesn't seem like they have changed their tactics at all.

But what about the last thirteen years, when the Mail was still very right-wing and Labour won three elections?

Labour won first of all because of Tory sleaze. Even I voted for them then. But after that, they only won because they had the backing of Murdoch, the Sun and the Times. Blair was smart, he attracted many of the Tory voters who had voted consistently for Thatcher. The Sun boosted Blair and many Tory voters fell for it and voted him in. Blair affected his mockney accent and made sure that many of his Cabinet (public school boys, ex-Marxists, the lot) wrote articles in the Sun.

They still sneered at the Mail's readers, because they hold the people in contempt. But they could get away with it, because the Sun sang their praises. But finally, the Sun turned on them, while they were still tittering away at that paper, the Daily Fail, and of course it was then inevitable that they themselves would fail.

Hmm.

Exposure of vested interests re vaccines / swine flu were not stories that stayed with me, I must say. But a quick google reveals this story, which appears to be the usual nonsense: Roy Anderson sits on a committee concerned with resilience and recuses himself whenever vaccines are discussed. But the Mail publishes anyway, thus pointlessly sullying his good name. Nice.

I've never seen a useful story examining the activities of LAs or the BBC in the Mail. Useful, to me, means highlighting meaningful malpractice or systematic overspending amounting to a material percentage of the organisation's budget - not another sodding story on CEs being paid 200k or an overly extravagant office party, which accounts for three-fifths of fuck-all. But that would require some decent analysis, so I doubt it'll ever happen.

Re having a go at Green, that doesn't really cut the mustard for me - it's a story that's been thoroughly reported in other papers. A decent news story tells me something I didn't know about previously.

By the way, none of the examples you've cited were previously mentioned on this thread. So when you said people have referred to good articles in the Mail before, what did you have in mind?

So far, I've not seen anything that's moved me away from my original belief that the Mail produces overwhelmingly more harm than good in the UK, due to its vicious hatred and overweening power.

slhilly, I think Gooseberybushes was partly referring to the articles that I brought up - the secret swine flu memos warning of possible Guillen Barre syndrome, which other organisations like the BBC had to discuss after the Mail made it open knowledge to the public. It was the same with Climategate. The Mail told the public about that before the BBC did. There are other political stories that the Mail broke about New Labour, which even the Daily Telegraph didn't run. I read the Mail alongside other papers, so I can spot when they release stories that the others are late on or which they don't touch. Gooseberrybushes is right that they do stick two fingers up and report on principle. They are now sympathetic to Blair and Brown because they have not been invited to the wedding. They are not purely partisan. They had a go at the bankers and the regulators too. They are in touch with their public, who also are not partisan. That's why I and millions of others buy the Mail - we don't buy it to read hatred, we buy it because it tells us things that the others ignore, hide or won't touch. I don't agree with their slant on everything and they have leftwing contributors like Suzanne Moore too.

If you don't like it, don't read it. But millions of ordinary people who look forward to their Daily Mail are not all hate-filled bigots as some on the left would like to paint them.

Brown & Co. and the gaggle of spinners doubtless wish that the Mail wasn't so popular and wish they had something similar to push their party line. But that is the real world, the one with real people, looked down on by the party spinners from the rarified atmosphere of their ivory towers. They call the ordinary people bigots, these Oxbridge educated elite. They say Mrs. Duffy was a bigot. But ask yourself who the really intolerant bigots are, who look down on the people they claim to represent.

They probably learnt their arrogance at public schools like Fettes. They laugh and call the paper of the people, the Daily Fail. But everytime they do, they add to their coffin yet another nail.

Climategate, Climategate....let me see. Oh yes, I remember now, that "story" about a "scandal" that turns out to have been complete and utter twaddle, but is now used by lots of idiots to justify their continued trumpeting of denial of climate change, a position that - extraordinarily enough and doubtless entirely coincidentally - allows them to continue wasting energy on the most astoundingly profligate scale. That "story". What a relief that it was published.

I never thought or claimed that the Mail was partisan, in the sense of supporting one political party to the exclusion of others. After all, Dacre and Brown were, maybe still are, good buddies. The Mail specialises in hate, which is something different. It hated my forbears in the 30s when it supported antisemitism and fascism, and it hates others today. Its expression of hatred is always slick (it pioneered the question mark headline as a method for saying something that could not be said directly), and is a constant trope.

I don't like the Mail. I don't read it. But that's not the end of it. Other people read it. They believe its idiocy. They soak up the hate through their skin, without realising they're doing it. They are, in consequence, vile about state employees, the poor, the sick, women etc etc. My MIL is a case in point - she reads it and regurgitates its bile about asylum seekers on a regular basis (which incenses me, given that she is the daughter of refugees who fled from Nazi Austria in the 30s). Thus, the country shifts in the direction of stupidity, bigotry and hate.

(And Suzanne Moore is leftwing in the same sense as David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen - sort of, ish, not really.)

So they are all idiots, us Mail readers are all idiots, in fact the majority of the public are all idiots because they don't believe in climate catastrophe and don't belive that "we have only 50 days left to save the planet". the New Statesman ran an article a few years ago saying that polls showed the majority didn't believe the claims on climate made by the elites. They asked what could be done? how should the elites adapt their message to convince the masses? Are the masses really all idiots or can they spot 'a straight kinda guy', can they name a spade a spade and a Blair a Bliar?

What's to be done? Ban the hate, ban the Mail, re-educate the idiots and stop Mrs. Duffy asking questions of the Great Leader. That's why they will continue to lose and lose again. They won't engage with the public, they won't listen to what they say. They think they can spin their way out of it. They employ wonks and twonks from the best universities in the land. That'll put the public back in line. But the public are smarter than all of them put together, they've seen it all before, they deal with Del Boy street traders everyday, so these Oxbridge policy twonks don't stand a chance.

claig, I really don't understand this thing about Oxbridge-educated elites. Dacre went to UCS and Leeds, which is as good as - UCS is one of the most academically rigorous private schools in the country. Do you really imagine that journalists at the Mail aren't Oxbridge-educated in the same numbers as journos elsewhere? Is there a factual basis for such a belief? And is there any factual basis for your contention that politicians look down on people, beyond the Gillian Duffy thing (which demonstrated that he thought she was a bigot, but does not show he thought people in general were bigots). And is there any factual basis for your implied contention that the staff on the Daily Mail do not look down on their readership? Because it sounds from here like you've told yourself a story in the absence of facts to back it up.

Is it idiotic to wilfully ignore the consensus view of the vast majority of working scientists working across a huge range of topics because the answer is discomfiting? Yes. It's of a piece with the religious idiots who won't accept blood transfusions, except that instead of killing just themselves / their family, these idiots have a chance of ruining the lives of billions of people.

Why create a strawman about banning? What would be your motivation in doing that? Oh yes, it makes you look more reasonable and me more unreasonable - but it was you who said it, not me. I believe in a free press, even when the result is a paper as dispiritingly vile, hate-filled and stupid as the Mail.

Of course they look down on us. They all do. They are all spinners. I have heard that a high proportion of Sun journalists are from Oxbridge. Don't know if that is true, but wouldn't surprise me, because they want to spin the ordinary people in what they think is the best way they can.

Of course many of them look down on ordinary people, like that Labour candidate in Scotland referred to the pensioners whose votes he was after as "coffin dodgers", and like Brown claimed that people who didn't believe in anthropomorphic climate change were "flat earthers".

I haven't got proof, I can only draw conclusions from how some lie to the public. It's no coincidence that the clever public coined the term Bliar.

Brown didn't just call Mrs. Duffy a bigot, it was her views, shared by millions, that he initially thought were bigotted. But he had a quick rethink and said he was "a repentent sinner" when the millions or ordinary people found out what he really thought.

People aren't as stupid as the spinners think. Proof is that the majority don't believe in climate catastrophe, in spite of the avalanche of spin.

They also don't believe the hate that you see in the Sun or the Mail. Give people credit, they know how to spot spin, they can spot a Bliar, they know how to read between the lines. That's why they voted New Labour out.

OK, claig, I asked you to provide some facts to support your arguments and instead you just rehashed the same lines. That's pointless. "I don't need proof" sounds like you've swallowed the single most pernicious element of the whole of the Mail's way of thinking, hook line and sinker.

They stick their fingers in their ears and sing la la la to avoid listening to what the public think. Like King Canute they sit all majestic on their thrones and ignore the tide of public opinion, the opinion of those idiotic bigots always destinmed to fail and read the Daily Mail. Their leader was Humpty Dumpty, they sat him on the wall and thought they'd spin us all, but Humpty had a crashing fall when the public turned out to vote in the halls. Now all the wonks, twonks, plonks and planks can't put him back together again.

The solution is simple, all they have to do is start telling the truth, then the public will return. But they won't learn, the truth is too simple for them, they've studied political theory and PPE, the simple things the public idiots know, they can never see.

what does claig mean about 'sustainability being BS'? what is BS?

I didn't say "I don't need proof", I said "I don't have proof". I know that things aren't always black and white, the world is complex, the truth is hard to find, that's why I try to find it as best I can, that's why I, and millions more, read the Daily Mail

'what is BS?'

sustainability is BS

No, BS is bullshit

why is sustainability bullshit then?

donnie, whole new topic. I don't want to derail this thread and get into that. It is a huge topic that can lead in lots of different directions, all of which eventually end up in a brick wall.

The same brick wall that the spinners sat Humpty Dumpty on, by the way.

Incidentally, claig, re the "millions of people believe it" thing....
1) millions of people believe that climate change is real. So what makes your millions better than those millions?
2) the truth or falsity of a claim is not related to the number of people believing it. It is related to the underlying facts and the power of the explanations

"pop goes the weasel". That probably refers to a shadow cabinet member. Hard to pick one, we are spoilt for choice. Maybe it was Nostradamus who wrote "Humpty Dumpty".

claig what I find weird about your postings are your numerous references to 'the people' - exactly who are your 'people'? and what is your bizarre Humpty Dumpty analogy about?

Yes millions believe it. We will see in time who was right. I am convinced the fraud will be outed and one day they will tell us "oops we got it wrong". But I may be wrong, we will have to wait and see.

I am a Tory, I have faith in the people, I read the people's paper, the Daily Fail. I trust the public, not the twonks. I am like Orwell, I believe that "hope lies with the proles". So I am reassured to see that us proles are shoulder to shoulder in the majority in our belief that climate catastrophe is not real.

I know that spinners, weavers, plonks and twonks prepare all sorts of reason and all sorts of arguments. But I like many of the public know that many of them are just more Bliars.

Humpty Dumpty is Gordon Broon and his fall in the election, due to his spinners misjudging the mood of the people.

The people are the voters. Of course, they also voted for Brown, but I am talking about the majority swing away from Labour. Humpty's spinners misread the public mood, they preached to the converted, they weren't down with the peeps, they were flipping houses and referring to Mrs. Duffy with expletives and bleeps.

claig....the more I read your posts the more I see that you have no idea what you are talking about. You sound like someone who has learned a few phrases off by heat and has got so used to repeating them that you think you wrote them yourself. You keep referring to 'the people' = which people? . And in what way do you align yourself with Orwell exactly? I think you will find it is Winston Smith who believes that hope lies with the proletariat.

Also, why do you say Gordon 'Broon' ? are you taking the piss out of the fact that he is Scottish? what exactly does that add to the weight of your argument?

sorry should have said

"i know that spinners, New Labour sinners, plonks and twonks"

I am just mocking Brown, in the way that he has been mocked many times before by others. Just like I mock Blair by saying Bliar. I am not mocking Scotland or the Scots, I am sure that many Scots have also referred to him as Broon and Doom.

"By the way, none of the examples you've cited were previously mentioned on this thread."

Yes they have, and I added the more general bit. Your bad again. Get some coffee.

it's all these little made up words and cliches you use which make your comments sound so infantile. I expect you say 'elf'n'safety' as well. Just like the nice Mr. Littlejohn.

So much for 'the people'!

Well I think they are funny. But I am that idiot, I read the Daily Mail.

I do occasionally say elf'n'safety, just like Littlejohn and millions of others. I also use the term jobsworf. That's what the people I know do, but I don't move in New Labour Islingtonista circles. i also eat fish and chips, something they would never ever do.

I'm just a Tory, just one of the people, just one of the idiots who reads the Daily Fail.

claig I have just looked at the Maily Mail online and among its stories are loads about celebs and how thin/fat they are plus another close up picture of a women MP and a story about how she is 'showing too much cleavage' for Parliament or something like that. All the other items are linked to the royal wedding (even the Syria one is wedding linked). Is that typical ?

also, the fish and chips thing? what is that all about?

Are you very familiar with Islington? I am.

You sound a bit unhinged to me, claig. Too much vino last night perhaps?

The Daily Mail is a comic book, like The Sun and The Mirror.

Oh and Paul Dacre is part of the Islington elite he pretends to despise. He lives in Barnbsbury, the really posh bit of the borough.

I am not familiar with Islington, but have heard it is the haunt of New labour types. I think it's safer to steer clear, because I don't want to receive a horrific fright. I've heard it's all lattes and dinner pattees and they can't tell wrong from right. I've heard the streets are thronged with spinners and New Labour sinners all shouting and braying on their mobile phones. I've heard they negotiate places in public schools and arrange internships, while laughing at the fools and idiots in the public who read the Daily Fail. I've heard they call the public bigots. I don't think they are my type. I'm just a plain old Tory, I just read the Mail's stories, I'll stick to my fish and chips. I only read the Daily Mail, so I'm not really hip.

'You sound a bit unhinged to me, claig'

I'm not surprised. You probably also though that Mrs. Duffy, from up North, was a bigot.

Just skimread this thread and one thing jumped out at me. The Daily Telegraph paid for the leaked expenses details. It was offered to them by the whistleblower, John Wick. No major investigative journalism was involved. As I remember, it wasn't the only newspaper to have been offered the information, it was just that it was the only paper willing to cough up the asking price.

TBH I felt bad at the time for Heather Brooke, the journalist who spent 5 years trying legally to get full disclosure of MP's expenses which the Telegraph achieved overnight by dropping a wad of cash.

so....you know nothing about Islington except the crap you have heard from the DM, which you believe?

pmsl! you are sooo hoist by your own petard there, claig!!

oh and btw I grew upand went to school in Isso and my dad stilll lives there. I am a council estate girl.

Truthfully? you are talking out of your arse, girl.

Very good point point blondepinhead. I don't believe it was any secret. I think they all knew. I think they call it "Westminster gossip", stuff about which the people (the voters), in whose name things are done, haven't got a clue.

Ok, donnie, I stand corrected. I hope your dad reads the Mail and returns Islington to the charming area it undoubtedly used to be, and very possibly still is.

claig, I live in Islington. I also vote Conservative, in the main.

<stands back, waits for claig's head to explode>

no claig..my dad is still on the council estate and reads the morning star! he is a communist.

leaving this thread now as I can't do dialogue with dimwits.

well done, blondepinhead, for holding the fort. Fortunately the cavalry have arrived. Cameron has swept to power and got rid of that other shower. Hold on, because the tide is turning, the people are learning, Brown has gone and the sea is blue, and the Daily Mail's sales are rising too.

'I can't do dialogue with dimwits'

You sound like Gordon Brown, he didn't like talking to Mrs. Duffy too.

You're made for ech other. Keep voting for them, they're your type of folk.

I like yuor style Claig and it is telling that those who disagree with you have to resort to puerile insults. Pathetic.

One of my good friends is a broadsheet journalist and tells me there is noone more elitist and condescending than the Guardian gang who make a big show of fist waving and being down with the people.

Utter shite.

claig, the tory party didn't actually sweep to power but had to pair up with another party as they didn't get enough votes to rule on thier own. The tory party didn't win the election they got a few more seats than labour. To win an election and sweep into power you need to have an over all majority.

claig why do you write in rhymes? are you preparing for some kind of anti left rally and flag burning ? because actually you sound like a member of the tea party.

thanks moondog. It's not hard to flush out who the real haters and bigots are. It's always the sanctimonious who are the biggest bigots, the po-faced inquisitors convinced that they are right. They brook no disagreement, they can't discuss. They write millions of people off as idiots and bigots, too dimwitted to bother talking to. Their mind is closed, they brook no dissent, they sneer and jeer. They truly are the bigots, I fear.

I like rhymes because I like language. I find rhyming is great fun, just like making puns. I like a cup of tea, I told you I'm a Tory. I also like a party, provided its not the New Labour Party.

ivykaty44, I agree with you. For comic effect, I had to pretend that Cameron swept to power, but of course it sadly wasn't true. But it will happen at the next election, the country will go true blue.

I don't think I'm in the same fort as you, claig. Our local MP is Labour and I think he is fantastic (have met him, think he's doing a really good job of representing our borough). He's got my vote. That's why I said 'in the main'. Should have said on average, but it's a close thing.

The Daily Mail doesn't represent my opinion. No newspaper does - I can think for myself. I will read any and all, from the News of the Screws to the Indy, and local newspapers too. However, from what I've seen the Mail and the Express definitely differ most from my personal opinions. My FIL claims they represent the opinions of 'Little England' - I think he's probably right, although in my own little lefty corner of the world I don't generally come into contact with them.

Agree with everything telsa said on page one.

The daily mail encourages a spirit of personal dissatisfaction by comparison. Whether that's with personal looks and body image in comparison to that of celebs, or personal finances and living standards in comparision to those on benefits, public worker pay in comparison to private worker pay etc etc.

Most of the reporting is completely and overtly biased.

Claig is not for real. Claig is a DM-bot. Weird how some people get their kicks.

Where is the place called 'Little England'? I have never been. I only know of England and everyone's views count. We have equality in the land, and the voters decide. The Daily Mail is the second highest selling paper in England. Is large little is wrong right? In the world of New Labour that's probably right.

I agree with you. You should read all opinions, and I don't agree with everything the Mail says. But unlike you, I am with the large numbers of people, who do agree with much of what it says. But that's democracy, that's why we live in the land of the free. It's not Little England, it's just good old England. A cup of tea, a chocolate biscuit, a copy of the Daily Mail, only New Labour could call that a fail.

Do you know of/read any Theodore Dalrymple Claig? If not, you should. He is a prison pcychiatrist and social commentator who is just brilliant.

Brilliant exposes of the holier than thou left wing brigade who indulge in this onanistic orgy of self congratulation.

thanks moondog. I did used to read him a long time ago, and I remember that he had a good insight. He used to write for one of the papers, but I can't remember which one. You are right, I really should read more of his stuff. He has a lot of inside knowledge. I remember him writing about the drunks and violence that can occur at A&E departments. It was very vivid and disturbing. he had seen it firsthand.

Moondog he is dry in the extreme and gives a vision that there really is no hope left and we are certainly sunk, doomed for ever we will never agian see the sun rise

He hasn't been reading Gordon Brown's speeches on the planet, has he?

No he's been reading your posts on this thread

. In which case he will be very well-informed.

PS Thanks to whoever recommended this book. I've never trusted any part of the media to report the truth without bias, and I have been known to write down only the verifiable facts of a reported story so I can get past the hype <weirdo alert>. Looking forward to reading this book and becoming even more sceptical about the press

'I've never trusted any part of the media to report the truth without bias'

you're right. But what about that book itself? The author used to or still does contribute to the Guardian. Will he mention the Guardian in the "flat earth" category? Or will it be the usual suspects? But it is still a good book as it gives a different perspective on the media and the truth.

Apparently he does. He references all major British newspapers including the Times and the Guardian as well as international news media, according to one of the many reviews on amazon.

It sounds good.

Actually, re Guardian/Mail/vaccines.

The Guardian should be at the forefront of investigating this sort of corporate shenanigans. But it's taken the "calm down dear" approach. The Mail said, cor blimey what's going on here then.

This is the sort of massive corporate-government collusion affecting ordinary people that ought to be probed and poked and kept in the public eye, not ignored and put down.

Reading all the left wing intolerance being spewed out here it can't be too long before the Labour Party becomes the New BNP.

After all both the BNP (Nationalise Industry, Nationalise Railways, Workers Councils. Read the BNP manifesto if you don't believe me) and the Looney left aren't exactly poles apart.

You won't see too many "right wingers" (which the BNP aren't) supporting their aims.

Plus immigration the political right are in favour of mass immigration (cheap labour) whilst the left wing are anti because of the dilution of the workers wages.

Curbish, your post is so ridiculous as to have made me actually laugh out loud.
Yes Claig, Dalrymple has written for the Telegraph and Spectator.
It all makes for gripping reading, a a clearsighted swathe through the claptrap spouted by people who consider themselves to be 'thinkers' but who are, in reality, lemmings.

eh??? Curbishly - the political right are in favour of mass immigration?

Did you mean to type that? Are you serious? Genuine question, I must add....

"Plus immigration the political right are in favour of mass immigration (cheap labour) whilst the left wing are anti because of the dilution of the workers wages."

Did I miss the memo about it being "Let's all talk complete bollocks day" today?

I hate the mail (read it online) but it lures the reader in just to see how bad it is - like a car crash. Plus it's online format is easy to navigate and read and like to read the comments though they scare me if this is what much of the british public truly believe - either that or all the far right and BNP supporters flock there to try and make it seem that that is the mood of the public.

It's headlines are inflammatory and totally misleading always including 'exclamation" marks which people take as fact rather then hearsay - they know exactly what they are doing. They know that many readers skim and don't actually read the whole article but get the gist from the headline. I always end up totally frustrated and angry at it's stories - it is a god awful racist and sexist and every 'ist' little newspaper - but i still read it so don't think that every reader is a fan.

I would honestly be ashamed to write for this paper and many of the writers probably have totally opposing vies to what they write - but hey that's what the paper demands and what they get paid for.

So why do you read it if you hate it so much?
It's obviously doing something right.
Every bugger and their mum on MN seem intimately acquainted with it.

Would that the virtuous deathly dull left wing publications had such a circulation eh?

also, the amount of times I've read a story about anorexia and the pressure on young girls to slim and be thin and how we have to fight this. Then turn a page and there is a huge story on Princess Bea's horrendous wobbly bits and cellulite - let's everyone joke and laugh at the fatty. Horrible hypocritical paper. Though lately i've wondered if they are doing a sort of reverse phsycology (sp?) where they slate some poor woman's body and the outraged public get together in support of poor bint.

I read it as it's a kind of fascination - and I like to see what spin they put on stories. It's also interesting to see the public's reaction to whatever slant. i never believe or take anything at face value in the Mail though.

You are right in that they must be doing something right as so many read it whether they hate it or love it. The editorial team are very clever - fair play to them for that.

It's all about markets not news.

An editor's job is to sell newspapers

They have a target market

The DM's is Surrey woman, in garden with her dahlias. What she really cares about is rubbish collection, council tax, immigration and dropping standards at the BBC. She doesn't care what Syria does as long as they don't do it on her lawn.

Bingo, the DM does its job very well. It is an excellent product.

One of my favourite features was 'match the turkey gizzard neck to the celebrity face,'

loved that one

Who featured?
(As in people we know, not turkeys. Obv.)

It was a while ago but Madonna (obviously) Nigella, Fern Britton were among them.

Also enjoyed: 'What is your body's real age?'

"Oh dear, credit controller, Anne, 37, of Droitwich has an estimated body age of 73! Remember Anne, 'a second on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!'"

For me This article is Daily Mail Gold.

It has celebrity (Elle McPherson), family (on the school run), fashion (in high waist jeans) style (looking amazing at 46) and nostalga (dressed as a Charlie's Angles).

Ticks so many boxes.......

Charlie Angel obviously .

Have read the whole thread.

Of course every paper is biased. I read the Times, Guardian Telegraph and Independent.

Now I want to clarify claig, did you vote Labour in 1997???? If so PMSL.

"looking amazing at 46" is classic DM, isn't it

Also "after giving birth just 3 days ago, look who's back in her skinny jeans!"

And

"baby misery for 40 year old career girl ....- didn't she realise her biological clock was ticking?"

Yes to my eternal shame, I did vote labour in 1997. I was so sick of the Tory sleaze and arrogance that I fell for Blair. The whole country did the same. But I soon grew out of that.

Just checking!

But didn't you carry on voting for him? For that there is no excuse

I didn't vote in 1997. Too young! Next two elections, didn't vote in first, voted labour in second. Last one just gone I voted green.

I don't vote for the man, I vote for the policies. I could not stand Blair but when I did vote Labour, I looked past his (smug) face.

"looking amazing at 46" is classic DM"

True - but it's got me seriously considering dieting.

<Maybe I should stick to the FT - too easily led>

Same as me. It wasn't Blair that turned me off. It was Labour policies.

I agree the DM run one-sided stories and what's with all the celebrity news... mostly from people and shows I've never heard of (and can't be bothered to google)

PS: I wouldn't call The Sun 'a newspaper'.

Well there you go. I would have myself down as a natural labour supporter but they were in power too long and their policies just didn't cut it any more. However I couldn't vote Tory as don't agree with their policies so went wild! I've no idea how I'll vote in the next election...

You can't really predict what you will vote. In the past I have also voted LibDem. But I was younger then and still learning. Now I know more, but I still wouldn't rule out changing again. We are all influenced by what is going on at the time, the mood of the nation amd by what the assorted media are pumping out. But, anyway, at the end of the day, it doesn't make a lot of difference. Blair was Thatcher-lite. It is the non-voters who are smartest of all. They have always knowm that "they are all the same".

Ooh can't agree that non voters are the smartest.
I think it is immoral not to vote.
People have dies for the right.
It must be treasured

I think in a free country, you have the right to abstain. I didn't like the socialist Peter Hains's campaign in favour of compulsory voting. Some people are not interested, some don't care, and some object to all the choices. That is freedom.

Maybe.
That sounds a bit of a left wing 'don't judge' type comment to me though.

I am of a 'don't judge' view. If people prefer to read about cellulite and celebs in the Daily Mail rather than sustainability in the Guardian, then that is their free choice.

It is really the socialists, like Hain, who wanted us to have compulsory voting. They know best, they make the judgements, they judge what we should eat and how much we should drink. They are really the ones who push sustainability and impose regulations. They are the ones who fine pensioners for not closing their bin lids. They are the ones who disapprove of the people's choice to read the Daily Fail in droves. They called the lifelong socialist, Mrs. Duffy, a bigot. They are against choice - against choice in schools and in many other things too. Choice is freedom. Choice is conservative. The people chose to vote the socialists out. They chose freedom, they judged it was time for a change.

Actually I agree - voting shouldn't be compulsory. However, I think voting is a social responsibility - for living in a free country etc everyone should vote, or spoil their paper if they don't agree with any parties on offer.

I am thinking more of the trendy liberals who refuse to 'judge' the workshy, the feckless, the scroungers and the whingers who are concerned chiefly with their 'right's yet have very little thought for their responsibilities.

The people who have been so infantilised by state subsidised busybodies that they think it is the government's job to babysit them.

I think a little more judging would do us all the world of good.

But, as you suggest, the leftwing promote seemingly liberal views whilst being controlling in the extreme-particulalry to those who do not subscribe to their point of view (witness current shenanigans involving free schools as detailed in Private Eye and Spectator.)

Yes. The real authoritarians are the loving socialists. They removed many civil liberties. If they had won, they would have removed yet more. It was the LibDems, always in favour of liberty, and the Tories who scrapped these infringements and regulations. They had a bonfire of the Labour vanities and finally restored sanity.

>People aren't as stupid as the spinners think. Proof is that the majority don't believe in climate catastrophe

Funny how some of us think that proves the exact opposite

Some things aren't a matter of 'belief' but of looking at data and understanding statistics. Not the forte of the DM journos I suspect.

It's nto the forte of any journalist.
That's why they are journalists and not scientists, amazingly enough.

Moondog, I'm liberal but judge a lot. I don't think people should scrounge off the state, but recognise that the state has a role to play to help those in need. Inequality will always exist but the state can help make life easier.

If a mag like New Scientist can find literate scientists to write for them, why can't mainstream newspapers? Journalism doesn't exclude the possiblity of being an expert (or at least, more or less competent) in the field you cover.

Yes, Grimma, we all have different views. The majority of the public don't agree with the view of the elites on global warming. Here is a quote from the socialist magazine, "The New Statesman".

"Global warming is a threat that is going to wipe out civilisation as we know it. The liberal elite and political classes are signed up to the message that, unless we take urgent action within ten years, we are all literally doomed to burn up.

But who else believes them?

Beyond the corridors of Westminster and the offices of environmental pressure groups, where global warming and sustainability are buzzwords of the moment, British consumers continue flying, driving and buying with unchecked enthusiasm. The gulf between the pronouncements of our politicians and what the majority of people think and do, could scarcely be wider."

Unfortunately, the public are not playing ball, some smell a rat. What's to do? The New Statesman asks the bigwigs what they can do to bring the public along.

We'll have to wait and see what happens. Maybe more Climategates will be outed. Maybe the public will have access to more Climategate style "data and ... statistics".

The elites are losing public opinion. The more they lose it, the more hysterical they get, the fewer days we have "left to save the planet". The more hysterical they get, the more the public disbelieves them. And so it continues, until one day, maybe someone will call time and say "it's a fair cop, guv, the game is up"

Actually, I don't think there will be a catastrophe because enough scientists and technologists are quietly beavering away finding solutions. Ignoring the ignorant, and carrying on doing what needs to be done.

A wise person once said "there are lies, damned lies and statistics".
Whoever said it probably had global warming in mind.

GrimmatheNome, at least we agree. There will definitely be no climate catastrophe. the public will be proved right. The socialists will claim they "saved the world", just like Gordon Brown said. They will say it was they who "saved the planet". They will award themselves Nobel prizes for "saving the planet" from anthropomorphic climate change. But the public will carry on as normal and vote them out at the next available opportunity. The public, those pesky voters, those readers of the despised and vilified Daily Fail, never believed them from the start.

Just like Mrs. Duffy, the public dared to question the liberal elites over climate change. Damned bigots one and all.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments, and the tendency of people to disparage statistics that do not support their positions. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point."

Indeed. I expect the naysayers are using bad statistics to bolster weak arguments

I don't know anything about 'liberal elites'. Just a bit about science.

Most effective 'green' technologies are of course the product of private enterprise anyway - nice when they can get state support especially for startup, but as ever it'll be supply and demand. I think your political reading of this is way wide of the mark.

The bankers used statistics. Labour's economic forecasts were based on statistics. We all know that it all ended in tears. The public don't need to argue statistics with the people who produced the "statistics" of Climategate. The public know it's not about statistics. They know it's about politics and politricks. The public can't be fooled as opinion polls consistently show. Those clever bankers house of cards came tumbling down. Who knows what fate awaits the anthropomorphic, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, tipping point, "50 days left to save the planet" global warmers.

"Labour's economic forecasts were based on statistics"

So are the Tories'? Not sure what the point is? Statistics is perfectly valid discipline, it's how you use the numbers which makes the difference.

Grimma, most things on this earth are really about politics and power, not science. Scientists are used by those in power. The Manhattan Project was worked on by scientists but created by those in power. Looking through a microscope is just the microcosm, the macrocosm is always power and politics. Money makes the world go around, and power, money and politics determine policy and fund budgets.

There's enough food to feed the planet. There's no need for people to starve. But things won't change. It's not about technology, it's about politics and power.

'it's how you use the numbers which makes the difference'

Quite, and so we are back to spin and politics. It's no different to election claims etc.

>The public can't be fooled as opinion polls consistently show.

Ah, those statistics are valid are they? The ones that do support your argument? The laws of nature aren't influenced by opinion though, unfortunately. 'The public' have in the past been fooled by all manner of pseudoscience.

The problem with bankers is they didn't have anything approaching a valid model. They may have (mis)used statistics but that wasn't the root of the problem ... the problem was essentially that they set up a system based on thin air rather than real assets.

>There's enough food to feed the planet.
yes, at the moment. Because scientists and technologists worked out how to increase yields. Fertilizer, GM, pesticides....

''The public' have in the past been fooled by all manner of pseudoscience.'

But not this time.

'the problem was essentially that they set up a system based on thin air rather than real assets.'

agree with that. The public suspect that the '50 days to save the planet' pulpit preachers, thumping the pulpit and preaching doom and armageddon, may be exactly the same.

GrimmaTheNome, scientists are great. They're not the issue. The public are in favour of science and medicine and the combustion engine and the railways and their computers and all the things that clever scientists have created. It's the liberal elites that the public don't believe. Just read the comments section in that notorious paper, the Daily Fail, and you'll see what the public think. Of course, Gordon Brown calls them "flat earthers", but that only makes the public believe him even less.

I've never heard a coherent explanation for what earthly motive there would be for a 'liberal elite' to fabricate climate change. I can easily imagine motives for capitalists on both sides of the issue - carbon technologies versus 'green' technologies both making money from supplying to the demands. Hence my bafflement at your political take.

Grimma, it's not about money, it's about the opposite, it's about impoverishment. There is a reason. Climategate was exposed, but that had nothing to do with money.

Gooseberry - there are many reasons to despise the Daily Mail, but this woman's experience sums up a good many of them.

nosleeptilbrooklands.blogspot.com/2011/01/true-story-of-daily-mail-lies-guest.html

It's about cutbacks, downsizing, and an end to growth, it's about "sustainability".
It's about "cuts, cuts and more cuts", just like the other cuts we see reflected in current policies. It's about impoverishment and a reduction in the standard and quality of life. And that is only the start, just like the ideological cuts that you are seeing now in other spheres are also only the start. It's not real, it's ideological, it's political.

Sorry, that still makes no sense at all. I think you've been suckered by some sort of conspiracy theory.

OK, we'll have to disagree.
But think about the other cuts that you see and ask if they are all necessary or if some are ideological. If they are ideological, why should that be. What's the point?

Probably some cuts are ideological. The reason may be because the spending was ideological in the first place. In some cases the spend will have been reasonable and the cut wrong, sometimes the other way round.

claig "GrimmaTheNome, scientists are great. They're not the issue. The public are in favour of science and medicine and the combustion engine and the railways and their computers and all the things that clever scientists have created. It's the liberal elites that the public don't believe. Just read the comments section in that notorious paper, the Daily Fail, and you'll see what the public think. Of course, Gordon Brown calls them "flat earthers", but that only makes the public believe him even less."

This is beyond weird from someone who doesn't accept the conclusions of scientists in relation to climate change, and thus rejects the consensus view of marine biologists, oceanographers, meterologists, geologists, glaciologists, dendroclimatologists, zoologists, palynologists, and many dozens of other scientific disciplines. Wtf, did you think that Al Gore and someone with a PPE degree dreamt up climate change in George Monbiot's lounge one evening as a wicked means of attacking our western lifestyle?

"Wtf, did you think that Al Gore and someone with a PPE degree dreamt up climate change in George Monbiot's lounge one evening as a wicked means of attacking our western lifestyle?"

Yep. I truly believe there are some chumps out there who actually think it is all a plot.

slhilly, you are so credulous, you believe what the liberal elite say. Did you also believe there were WMDs? The socialist magazine, "The New Statesman", told you of the gulf between the people and the political elites. All of the millions who don't believe it, are all fans of science, they are grateful for all the benefits that it has brought. They are not 'flat earthers' as Gordon Brown said. The majority don't believe the global warmers, they're not all daft. They don't believe the elites, Al Gore of Harvard University, George Monbiot, of Stowe public school and Oxford, and all that sillio.

They think the cuts are ideological, just like the cuts and taxes of global warming. They understand what the ideology is, and what lies behind it. They understand the ideology of the elites.

The million and millions that "The New Statesman" wrote about who doubt the dire warnings of the political elites, weren't surprised by Climategate or the mistake of the IPPC over the Himalyas. They expected it, they understand the game. They know there will be more before the game is finally up. They know that in time, one day, the elite will admit defeat.

The people will be victorious, and the Daily Mail will report "how glorious", come that pleasant day, when the people, the masses, finally hold sway.
The Guardian will be confined to the dustbin of history, the drum that they banged will be broke, everyone will finally realise what the public always knew, global warming was a joke.

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-himalayan-glaciers-mistake

"Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the IPCC, added that the mistake did nothing to undermine the large body of evidence that showed the climate was warming and that human activity was largely to blame. He told BBC News: "I don't see how one mistake in a 3,000-page report can damage the credibility of the overall report."

Reminds me of Blair's "45 minute" claim. These reports all seem to be the same. What a shame. Who's to blame?

Morning claig and the rest of you. Need a 2nd coffee before I can read all your posts! Will get the Daily Mail today to get Royal wedding stuff..will probably tut but thoroughly enjoy it..
Have a nice day all of you.

Why do the elite do it? Why do they use simplistic headline grabbing arguments like "45 minutes" and "that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035"? Because they think the public are stupid, they say they read the Daily Fail. They call them idiots and laugh at how easy it is to fool them.

They have to frighten the public, to scare them to do as they are told, now there are only "50 days left to save the planet", shut up and do as you are told.

but claig, you are yet again failing to address the main point: it's not the "liberal elite" only who are saying that climate change is real. It's scientists. You know, the people whom you say "are great" and "not the issue". So why don't you believe the scientists? Is it simply because you don't like some of their fellow travellers?

I'd like you to explain very clearly why you don't believe the scientists who are telling you that climate change is a grim reality we have to deal with. We all know what you think about the sodding liberal elite but what about the scientists?

Morning, 2BoysTooLoud. Have a great day. I will also buy the people's paper today.

Is there any other issue where you happen to disagree with the considered professional views of lots of dedicated scientists, by the way? Do you disagree with them about the epidemiology of smoking? or the formation of pulsars? or catalytic chemistry? or the propagation of stress through quake fractures? or is it just climate change, presumably because the "liberal elites" have taken a view?

slhilly. It's about power and politics. Many scientists disagree with the IPCC scientists, but the elite don't give them a great voice in the media. The powerful have the money, they fund projects, they fund studies, they fund the IPCC.

Nothing has changed, power remains the same. The Church had lots of scientists who claimed the sun revolved around the earth. It was the brave anti-global warmer, Galileo Galilei, who stood alone and took the elite of the time on. They called him an idiot, because he didn't read the Guardian, he, naturally, read the Daily Fail. But today, it is him we praise. The elite faced defeat, and history will again repeat.

Let's wait for the people's saviour, the new Galileo. He will assuredly come from the ranks of that great newspaper, the Daily Mail.

I don't disagree with catalytic chemstry, because it is purely scientific, and the elite politicos like Al Gore don't pay any attention to it.

Daily Mail, Fail?
Impossible, an oxymoron of the highest degree.

Those ranked against the Daily Mail and its good, honest readers are:

The chatterati, the litterati, and yes the illiterati, those who with the truth play karate, the fibberati, the cheaterati, the liarati, the Bliarati, the hierarchy, the high and mighty and they all accuse the honest Mail readers of a fail. But just as the Devil never reads the Bible, the global warmer never reads the Mail.

Sorry one more important opponent of the Mail, I forgot to add.

The Labour Party

Oh and also

Moriarty

Sherlock Holmes's devious, cunning old foe. There's nothing underhand to which that scoundrel wouldn't turn his hand. He read the Guardian every day, while the Mail was delivered daily to Holmes and Watson, those illustrious addressees, at that famous Baker Street address of 221B.

Eh? So this liberal elite who you claim are promoting the idea of climate change have secretly managed to control the right-leaning Times, Sun, Mail, Express, and Telegraph, as well as the Guardian and Indy? Rupert Murdoch is all part of the conspiracy, is he?

Do you actually understand what liberal means, or do you think it just means "people in power"?

Ahh... well if Arthur Conan Doyle says it, it must be true. I expect the Mormons are secretly the ones controlling the climate change lobby

Really Claig, pop your tin foil hat back on, you'll feel much better.

Yep. The liberal elite are not in charge of anything. Blair and Brown haven't been invited to the wedding. The liberal elite work for the truly powerful. By the way I take the phrase "the liberal elite" from that famous magazine, beloved of socialists, "The New Statesman", quoted below

""Global warming is a threat that is going to wipe out civilisation as we know it. The liberal elite and political classes are signed up to the message that, unless we take urgent action within ten years, we are all literally doomed to burn up.

But who else believes them?"

The Mormons, good God-fearing people, have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Apart from the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle hated them - that was my point.

Claig, I have literally no idea what point you're trying to make. I've read and reread your posts and while the individual words make sense, sometimes even whole phrases, added together they are completely devoid of any kind of argument - I can't find anything to agree or disagree with because I have no idea what your point is.

Arthur Conan Doyle didn't hate anyone. The Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes thing was a joke.

I can't help, because I don't understand why you don't understand my point.

I'm not an expert on the Mormons, but I just googled them, and as I suspected, it seems they are not believers in global warming. I also suspect that they don't read the Guardian, but I am not sure.

Why is it that Mormons DON'T believe in global warming

But it didn't surprise me to find that Charles Manson is an evangelist for global warming

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378178/Charles-Manson-breaks-20-year-silence-40th-anniversary-gruesome-Sharon-Tate-murders.html

As ever, you can't go far wrong if you read the learned contributions of the Daily Mail's readers in their comments section.

A contributor, called Jim, from Los Angeles, states

"So now Al Gore has Osma Bin Ladin and Charles Manson championing his scam. HAHAHA."

Some would even claim that Jim, from Los Angeles, is wise beyond his years, because he keeps up and is all ears. There's no flies on Jim, they can't fool him. He reads the Daily Mail, every day without fail.