Daily Mail fail

[Gooseberrybushes]

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!

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.