Jan Moir's Inferno

Though some of my readers may not believe it, even I, a high-powered business woman earning a decent wage writing erudite prose for many a national paper and with my perfect family, am feeling the credit crunch.

It was under such constraints that I first heard of the 'Poundland' from one of my servant's cleaners where apparently all items cost only a 'pound'. As we were a little low on Beluga and I needed some new crystal champagne flutes I thought it an excellent idea to pay a visit and incidentally write about my encounter with this strange world as a service to my readers.

Learning that those of an unfortunate background tend to be found in such places I decided to dress low-key digging through my extensive wardrobes for designer clothes that were at least two years out-of fashion, ah the hardships I put up with.

The first problem I encountered was that my local 'Poundland' did not possess any customer parking and I ended up parking in a muncipal car-park and having to purchase a 'ticket' from a vending machine. It then seems that 'Poundland' expects its customers to seek it out and I ended up in a section of the town I'd never visited before with other oddly named stores such as 'Cinton Cards' - presumaby a reference to the former US president - and 'Foot Locker' whatever that is.

Then I found it huddled between an 'H. Samuels' and something worryingly called a 'Superdrug'. I teetered on the edge of entering repulsed by both the glaring advertising with its liberal use of exclamation marks and the shell-suited behemoths trundling past dragging their kicking and screaming children along, but finally I plucked up the courage to enter.

I stood for some time at the entrance until I realised that no assistant was about to present themselves to take my order, apparently 'Poundland' is self-service. It was an oddly liberating experience to size up my own purchases and compare products though I was puzzled as to how I would be able to carry anything especially just after my manicure.

Trying to avoid eye-contact I glanced at my fellow shoppers and realised they were all carrying some type of ghastly rigid plastic container. 'Was I supposed to have brought one with me?', I mused. Not being able to see an assistant around (such poor service) I steeled myself and addressed one of my fellow shoppers trying to pick the one with the least clashing clothes, fake tan and eye-liner.

'Could you possible tell me where I might obtain one of those?', I asked pointing at the basket in an affected commin accent so she could understand me.
'Wot one of dese?', she replied pointing at what appeared to be a constipated Budha ornament.
'No I meant the container', I elucidated.
She frowned at me and I made ready to run in case she pulled out a knife.
'Dey're by der entrance', she continued to frown at me.
I backed off with a frightened 'thank you' and made a beeline back to the beginning of my trek. Sure enough piled higgledy-piggledy were a stack of plastic baskets from which I managed to extract one.

With basket in place I felt much more 'at home' and set off from where I started. At long last I found an assistant identified by some strange cardigan type covering.
'Young man', I asked. 'Where do you keep your Beluga?'
'Our wot?', he said obviously confused
'Your caviar?, I explained.
'We don't do dat we got some fish over der dough'. He waved in a general direction: 'Might find something der', he grunted before returning to stacking shelves.

Taken aback both by his unwillingness to escort me and that a store could exist that didn't sell caviar, I wrote off obtaining any champagne flutes and ended up in what appeared to be a gardening section surrounded by the same constipated Budhas I'd seen earlier. There were also some odd looking contraptions advertised as Solar Lights and tins of paint of some hideous shade 'This explains a lot', I thought.

More wanderings and I start to spy products with names I recognise from watching the servants on the CCTV - Cadbury's and Colgate to name but two. I slip a few of them into my basket something for my children so as they can learn to truly appreciate their own everyday products.

I was stymied by the eggs though. Not a sign of British stamped farmhouse organic just a pack labelled '12 Medium Fresh Eggs'. I wasn't sure I wanted eggs that weren't wholly fresh only medium fresh and forgetting for a second where I was I commented on that fact to my current neighbour.
'I don't know,' said the woman, slipping some Rolos and a pack of balloons into her basket and vanishing in the direction of toiletries.

Giving up I headed with the flow to where it appeared we were expected to pay for our items I wondered briefly if I could persuade them to offer me the contents for free if I mentioned their store in a national newspaper, but decided not to risk it in case the crowd turned ugly, or at least uglier than they currently were.

As I stood in the queue I looked at the contents of my basket and was surprised by how much had found it's way into it. Of course it was all cheap tacky stuff and looking at the bulging contents of my fellow queuers baskets I felt some small pity that for them this was obviously all they knew and all they'd ever know - clothes made from shiny artificial fabrics and toys that look like they're about to be broken simply sitting there.

But I pulled myself together by reminding myself that most of their shopping would be paid for by the likes of you and I - honest hard-working taxpayers.

I finally reached the checkout and would you believe they don't accept American Express!


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Over sensitive woman whines over 'tache shot

In the good old days, women knew their place, were mindful of their limits, and carried out their duty to be lovely at all times without complaint.

But thanks to today's politically correct climate of tolerance, acceptance, and gender equality, it seems that even midgets, disableds and bearded ladies are allowed to complain about being publicly mocked for the their grotesque - but hilarious - appearances.

And that's just what happened when The Mail published a candid paparazzi photograph of Channel 4 TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp sporting what might sensitively be described as 'a massive f*cking moustache' above her top lip.

'Kirstie Allsopp keeps stiff upper lip after burst of hair growth in unfortunate location location', the headline guffawed. Daily Mail Reporter (who celebrated his 12th birthday last week) added sardonically:

The 37-year-old's upper lip looked suspiciously dark and and unless she'd just finished a mug of hot chocolate and forgotten to wipe off the evidence, it appears she is need of some me time.

But Ms Allsopp, who hosts dull property show Location, Location, Location, failed to see the funny side of the harmless pointing and laughing, accusing The Mail of 'pathetic journalism'. On her Twitter weblog internet journal-site, Allsop claimed that her new Italian plumber look was simply a result of hormones 'from the birth of my sons'. Speaking to recovering drug addict Richard Bacon on Five Live, she said she had chloasma, a condition that causes discolouration in the faces of recent mothers.

'I was just gobsmacked', she said. 'It was such a silly, nasty piece. Don't have a go at something thousands of women suffer from after having a baby.'

She also suggested that The Mail was somehow insensitive to feature the story on the same page as an article about a young girl driven to suicide by bullying, before going on to challenge Mail editor Paul 'Darth' Dacre to a fight behind Tesco.

Following the petty furore, Thought Police stormtroopers - possibly working under orders from the PC Brigade - ordered the 'controversial' article to be withdrawn from Mail Online. It is estimated that the frivolous complaint has already cost The Mail approximately 17 visitors and millions of yen in lost revenue.

Fortunately, the image, showing the slumbering lip caterpillar in all its furry glory, is still hosted on MailOnline's servers for all those with an under-developed sense of humour and misogynistic streak to marvel at.

Full text of the original article here.

Fury as soft jobs shorten dole queues

New Labour was accused of trying to stem Britain's growing unemployment problem yesterday, as it emerged that fully paid jobs are to be dished out to people who don't even have jobs.

The cynical ploy to massage embarrassing unemployment figures will see TENS of thousands of 'soft' public-sector jobs created in a £1billion scheme to provide work for the feckless. In a perverse attempt to further frustrate the fine traditions of Great Britain a total of 150,000 taxpayer funded jobs are to be created for lazy layabouts, who probably don’t want them anyway - paid for by you.

The scheme, spearheaded by Yvette Cooper, will see ridiculously easy new positions created for meddling Social Workers, Teaching Assistants with cushy holiday entitlement and Carers whose only responsibilities are wiping arses and taking care of society's most vulnerable people.

But critics have branded the move 'indulgent.'

The TaxPayers’ Alliance insta-quote machine seethed nonsensically: 'The public sector has failed to cut back in the recession...soft jobs like Social Workers or Home Carers would be indulgent even in good economic times, let alone in the current climate. When times are tough we have to make sure they are even tougher for the poor and the vulnerable.'

Also: The Mail on the same topic.

The Spectator brands the screamsheets' treatment of the subject 'sneering philistine right-wing pomposity'.

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Why you should worry about Camp Godless

You would be forgiven for thinking the BBC had introduced yet another trendy new presenter for its dumbed down, perniciously liberal 'yoof' programming yesterday.

Suspiciously small, cynically personable Samantha Stein was given excessive airtime yesterday by Satan's favourite broadcaster to promote the latest assault on traditional Christian values. We didn't actually see her on the telly once (Living+1 being The Quail's station of choice) but reports suggest that the state-funded broadcaster gave her over 24 hours of live coverage and allowed her to press the buttons and turn the dials that control Broadcasting House.

So what was this oh-so-fashionable, T-Shirt wearing, possibly single mother doing with our the BBC's valuable airtime? The answer is sure to disturb any responsible middle-class mother.

For Frauline Stein is the public face of 'Camp Quest', a blasphemous take on the much-loved and ever-popular Christan summer camp, where children have flocked to sing Kumbaya, practise flagellation and baptise each other for generations. There are no such japes at Camp Faithless, however: infamous Communist John Lennon's anarchist anthem 'Imagine' is the hymn of choice here, and instead of blind faith, trendy open-minded critical thinking is hailed as the one true path. Unsurprisingly, Britain's own arch-daemon Richard Dawkins is among Camp Quest's sacrilegious supporters, having donated hundreds of pounds and, reportedly, gallons of goat's blood to the cause.

Dark Lord Dawkins, author of the militantly anti-Christian 'God Delusion' book, hissed: 'Camp Quest encourages children to think for themselves, sceptically and rationally. There is no indoctrination', he lied, 'just encouragement to be open-minded, while having fun.'

But critics fear that it is little more than an attempt to indoctrinate children with heathen view, closing their minds to the truth and discipline of organised religion. In the past, Dawkins has been accused of eating children's souls and criticised for comments that his own pagan deity, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, will one day best our heavenly Father in a great battle and destroy all non-believers. The BBC are understood to be negotiating live broadcast rights for the noodly Armageddon.

23 year old Stein, the camp director is open about her desire for Camp Godless to warp the spongy young minds in her care. She cackled: 'I think that people are possibly getting tired of the influence that religion has in society, possibly an unearned influence, and trying to come up with alternative things that will instill values that they want to transmit to their children.

Ironically, Stein is currently undertaking a Masters degree in religion and contemporary society at King's College, London. Born and raised in darkest Buckinghamshire, she is one of seven sisters born of the unholy union of a snake and a she-wolf. As Stein explains it, she was raised to 'make up my own mind'.

At her totalitarian style camp, young followers are encouraged to take part in such ludicrous activities as 'Hunt the unicorn', where the children are told by Camp Quest's cult leaders that demonic flesh-eating mono-horned abominations have surrounded the site and eaten their parents. The elders convince the children that the nightmarish unicorns can't be seen or touched, and that they will have to devise logical plans for escaping before the creatures can open the gates of Hell and consume the world. Insiders have recounted horrific tales of some children being so terrified that they have spontaneously combusted with fear. A 'winner' - the child that has displayed the best use of cold logic and heartless reason - is given a ten pound note signed in blood by Dawkins himself.

But evidence collected during our own undercover investigations suggests that there may not even be any unicorns at Camp Quest, and the game is just a fiction designed to indoctrinate the children to think 'rationally'. Cruel, I think you'll agree.

Stein explains: 'We are not trying to bash religion, but it encourages people to believe in a lot of things for which there is no evidence.' For this reason, the young Camp-goers also study astronomy, tarot cards, and horoscopes, before being told that such things are merely 'pseudo-science' - at Camp Quest, it seems that anything unsupported by evidence or sense is deemed silly.

The camp has already proved controversial, not least in its implicit criticism of other faith-based children's camps and possible connections with Satanic worship.

Impartial commenters such as Jim Hammett, chief executive of Christian Camping International, says 50,000 young people a year enjoy a Christian summer camp.

'Despite comments to the contrary, they are not indoctrinated,' he says. 'They are presented with Biblical material that they can make their own minds up about and decide whether it is something they wish to consider further.'

The hypocrisy of setting up an atheist summer camp in reaction to the enduring success of faith-based camps is not lost on the Church of England, which accuses Dawkins and his followers of aping religious traditions, in particular with regards to the children's camp. 'We would defend the right for anyone to set up an event like this, as long as the young people are happy to attend,' said a Church of England spokesman.

While we couldn't actually find anyone besides Hammett and the CoE bloke to criticise Camp Quest (and even they didn't actually say anything about it - what a waste of time these bloody interviews are - 'defend it's rights', ffs? You're a man of the cloth for Christ's sake), it is quite clear that the unholy summer resort is facing a growing body of calls for stricter controls and a reversal of its anti-Christian message.

These voices can be ignored no longer. No loving parent could fail to be worried about the horrors residing with Camp [Devil] Quest.

Allergic to microwaves! How Wi-Fever leaves DJ Steve in imagined agony

We've all heard of people with real medical conditions such as agoraphobia or being ginger, that tragically prevent them stepping out of doors.

But spare a thought for Steve Miller, who is unable to set foot in most ordinary public places because of an entirely imaginary disease.

The opportunistic hypochondriac claims he is allergic to Wi-Fi and that the suspiciously invisible beams make him feel dizzy, confused and nauseous whenever he comes near a wireless hotspot or laptop. DJ Steve, who is apparently best known by his stagename Afterlife, told the Sun: ‘I feel like an exile on my own planet. It’s almost impossible to find somewhere without Wi-Fi nowadays.'

Although there is no research to support the existence of Wi-Fi allergy, or Wi-Fever as we have decided to call it, experts at The Daily Mail say one in 50 people suffer from the make-believe condition, also known as electromagnetic sensitivity. Studies like this, which found that participants who mistakenly believed they had been exposed to Wi-Fi signals were just as likely to report symptoms of Wi-Fever as participants who had actually been exposed, should probably just be ignored.

It is unclear why DJ Steve does not experience Wi-Fever in the vicinity of other sources of electromagnetic radiation, such as mobile phones, televisions, and visible light.

Coincidentally, DJ Steve's new Afterlife album, titled 'Electrosensitive', is out now on Defected Records.

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The Quail wants YOU

Respect, riches, fame, a tan. All things that will never be achieved by blogging.

Despite this, an ever growing number of otherwise well-adjusted members of society continue to flock to the bleak void known opaquely by regular people and the mainstream media as 'The Blogosphere'. It's been three years since Time Magazine patronisingly named 'YOU' person of the year for, among other things, scribbling nonsense in the rationality vacuum that is the internet, instantly rendering it uncool, but still blogs proliferate like Swine flu on the pages of tabloid newspapers.

Against this backdrop of exponential new media growth, traditional media - especially newspapers - find themselves increasingly marginalised as they flail about online desperately trying retain the odd visitor with an inane mix of fear, sensationalism, titillation and low relevence/high traffic/short-tail keywords.

For newspapers to survive, they must become more professional, more trustworthy, more accountable, and more responsible. Presently, a great many are amateurish, deceitful, largely unaccountable and irresponsible.

To effect change in the way newspapers operate, they must be made aware that readers are dissatisfied with their content and object to being lied to and manipulated. It only takes a cursory glance at The Mail, The Sun, The Express or The News of the World's frontpages to see that they care little for actually conveying news to the masses, and yet these titles are still the most widely circulated in Britain.

In fact, most of the content carried by the above four is comically stupid. It doesn't end there either; all of the national news outlets run poorly researched, reactionary rubbish with sad regularity. As aspiring graduate journalists fight for firecely contested unpaid placements on national newspapers, useless, willfully ignorant columnists like Richard Littlejohn, Allison Pearson, Carole Malone, and John Gaunt churn out endless streams of outrage-inducing drivel. I don't think newspapers can improve while this pattern continues.

They're crying out for some consistent skewering. I've been pointing and laughing at them for nearly a year now, and there's a host of excellent blogs which do the same (if you haven't already, bookmark or subscribe to The Enemies of Reason, MailWatch, The Sun Lies, Tabloid Watch, Angry Mob, Stirring up Apathy, Five Chinese Crackers, Obsolete, Eric the Fish, Hagley Road to Ladywood, No Sleep Til Brooklands, to name a few).

The problem is, the sheer volume of crap produced by the mainstream media is so vast it's impossible for an individual, or even a circle of bloggers, to wade through it all. It's hard enough keeping up with The Mail's prodigious bowel movements of banality, let alone the rest - and that's just the papers. There's plenty of nonsense on TV too.

With this in mind, I'd like to cordially invite you to come and laugh at the nation's purveyors of piss-poor journalism with me. I firmly believe that humour is an excellent tool in exposing tabloid shoddiness, and making the spouters of bile and inciters to hatred an object of amusement is a great way to let everyone know how silly they really are.

So, next time you stumble across some moronic slap-dash piece in the paper or on the web, take the piss and send it in so we can all laugh at it together. The more people are aware of just how ridiculous news reporting often is, the better. If the papers themselves come across people laughing at them (and they do look out for this stuff), great. If readers who may not have otherwise realised how much rancid piffle they're being spoon-fed find it and get irritated by it too, even better!

I've set up a form thing HERE where you can send in your own parodies, piss-takes and interesting stuff about stupid news (or 'Quails' as I like to call them). Hopefully it will work. It's pretty easy: find an article, strip out the gumph, and rewrite it to say what the author really had in mind. It can be as short as a few lines or a single image or as long as five or six paragraphs.

Happy Quailing!

Build it and they will come, hopes Martin Clarke

MailOnline webmaster Martin Clarke is unhappy with the way HitWise and ComScore measure web traffic and wants monitoring firms to take into account what content users are actually engaging with.

With sales of the dead tree Mail plummeting faster than Lord Rothermere's favourite zeppelin, Clarke believes the key to securing future Mailish success lies in convincing media agencies that readers are engaging with the paper's pernicious brand of ultra-conservative right-wing intolerance and not just staying long enough to knock one out before sodding off to grab the nearest box of mansize Cleenex:

"The obsession with opaque monthly unique visitor figures does our industry no favours. British newspaper websites need to prove that they are doing more than providing free content to third party aggregators who deliver low value casual users.

In these difficult times we have to build dedicated audiences who make a conscious effort to visit us as trusted providers of news and spend significant amounts of time engaged with our content."

In other news, here's 36 and a half tits, super-freaky pictures of a woman's arms, some cheeky side-boob action, and some toss about Lindsay Lohan's feet.

Femail Special: Lady Joneseses' Lover

Chapter the first (I)

- In which Lady Jones describes her blooming sexuality

"I fall in love with horses the way most women fall in love with men." Closing my eyes, I can still feel the warmth of those heady days of youth sliding over me, days spent riding across acre upon acre of virgin countryside, my raven locks tossed carelessly in the wind as I sit atop my friend, my partner, my steed. It's fair to say my first pony was my "inaugural crush" - the first creature to imbue in me a throbbing desire for the touch of another. "My dormant sexuality was, I suppose, lurking not too far beneath the curry-comb-wielding surface."

While other girls were dreaming of their first kiss or holding hands with human boys, my thoughts were full only of ponies. I thought about them in bed, my chest heaving as I tried to conjure their intoxicating smell. A powerful, ruddy smell, enough to make you tremble. Straddling those majestic equine denizens left no sense unaroused; the whip of the tail, promising dark passion, the sight of those fine shoulders, moving mellifluously just abreast of my slender young thighs, the feeling of abandon as the mane slipped between my fingers.


Even walking the family dog I would make believe it was a miniature horse. Fashioning a small stick into a whip I would tap him on the haunches and slap my buttocks, trying vainly to make him canter as my friends the horses did so beautifully. Occassionally I would mount the unsuspecting animal, amidst a cacophony of startled yelping. It was a sad day when Father told me I had broken poor Pompey's spine. He was paralysed from the head down, all thanks to my passion for ponies. As I stood watching while the vet administered the lethal injection to end Pompey's misery, I couldn't help blaming him for his own demise: 'Well, he just wasn't horsey enough', I whispered to myself.

One wonderful teenage day, I made the step up from ponies, lovely as they are but a little too platonic for my taste, to a great king among horses named Cavalier. He was a tall, dark beast, easily excited and thrillingly wild. I gazed as he galloped wantonly about his paddock, and I knew I had become a woman.

Chapter the second (II)
- In which Lady Jones becomes dissatisfied with the company of men

Ours is essentially a tragic age, in so much as a lifetime partnership is only acceptable conducted between two parties of the same species. To this end, I married a man, in a way paying lip service to the crushing expectations of modern society. It was rather hard work: there was no smooth road into the future: but we went round, or scrambled over the obstacles in a vain attempt at normality.

Everything had become grey. Then, one long weekend, my husband and I decided a holiday was in order and off we trudged to the Cotswolds. If only I were aware of the explosive awakening about to take place! With resignation, I had expected our break was to be spent having sex, me staring blankly into the middle distance as he thrashed around above me, but, owing to my increasing detachment and dissatisfaction with the banal touch of a man, it was not to be. But, joyously, close to our cottage resided a stables offering riding lessons. My heart lept such as it had all those years ago, and I decided to quietly replace my husband with the thrill of riding. I kept it secret, as one might while conducting an affair. It was forbidden, and it was enrapturing.

The next day, I approached my steed with excited hesitation. This was my man. And I was his damsel. That it was female mattered not a jot; I think of all horses as strong, sensual men. "I sank my nose into her neck and suddenly that smell hit me. It was heady, hot horse."

Chapter the third (III)
- In which Lady Jones purchases a she-horse

After that dangerously erotic weekend, I was addicted. The smell of horse hair penetrated my mind once again, entangling my thoughts like an illicit love squid. Daydreaming, I would find myself sketching horses with exaggerated, sinewy legs, rippling backs and firm hides. I would lose hours browsing images of nude stallions online, enthralled by imagined situations in which I might find myself alone atop a mighty beast, riding until the early hours of the morning.

One summer's day I happened across Lizzie, a once gallant mare who had been cruelly adandoned but, thankfully, rescued by some kind heart who took her in, fed her back to health, and cared for her like I yearned to care for my own. In a flash, I emailed the woman to propose a deal. I wanted her. I had to have her.

The woman replied, 'no', but I wasn't having it. 'Do you know who I am?', I thundered back, 'I am a career woman with a BMW and a Gucci tote. I have meetings with men, and we discuss things like grown ups. I know people, powerful people', I wrote.

The next day I awoke to find a new email from the pathetic usurper in my inbox. Lizzie was mine.

"I'm in love with Lizzie, of course I am. I go to bed thinking about her and I wake up longing to see her."

Chapter the interminable (IV)
- in which Lady Jones rides the beast

These days are a blur of emotion, sensation, skin-tingling wonder. I ride Lizzie hard. Is her girth too tight? No, not tight enough. Make it tighter. I alone have complete control over Lizzie, as she pounds the verdant pastures behind my massive county house. Just as I reach tipping point, anxious that I've gone too far, ridden too hard, I relax, let go of the straps and breathe deeply, renewingly. I stare at my manor. It's huge. I'm really rich. I am complete with Lizzie between my legs, where she should be. She tenses, and I feel a ripple transfer from her to me, through me. It's almost as if we are one. Does she see what I see? Does she see the BMW and know what it symbolises? My wealth and good breeding? It is a cross I must bear that I can never make her understand just how privileged I am, but I sense that she knows. 'Steady', I whisper into her ear. 'I'm here for you', I breathe duskily.

Epilogue

Recounting all of this reminds me of something a marriage counsellor once told me. Well, I say counsellor, he was more of a shaman. I met him on a particularly expensive vacation in Peru, while travelling the world observing the Earth's poor with disdain. Sitting cross legged before a crackling fire, he began shaking his bone-hewn staff and said to me in funny, foreign tones: 'Mrs Liz, I see you one day, living alone on a hill. I see great riches, fine clothes, splendid cutlery. You will write words to describe your existence. Many will call you inane, but you are strong, you care not. You are alone, apart from the animals. So many animals. Do not let others tell you it is wrong, I understand.' I remember thinking how strongly his hut smelled of animal faeces. He may have been the only man I could ever have spent my life with.

It doesn't matter. I have Lizzie.



Extracted from an extract originally appearing in The Daily Mail of The Exmoor Files, by Lady Liz Jones. If you can't get enough of Liz's egotistical ramblings, order your copy with free p& p from The Review Bookstore on 0845 155 0713.

MailOnline infested with foreigners

Almost three-quarters of Mail Online readers are foreigners who don't even live in Britain but probably want to move here to claim benefits, it has emerged.

Shocking new figures have revealed that of the 29.3m people inexplicably visiting the Mail's online internetular hypertext webhate site each month, only 8.3m (28%) are decent British folk, while 72% reside in far off lands such as Iran, Africa and Wales.

While some of the foreign visitors can be accounted for by the millions of expats living in Spain who have been forced out of their homeland by two terms of New Labour tax-grabbing multicultural political correctness gone mad, fears are growing that a large proportion of foreign readers may be visiting Mail Online to learn more about Britain before coming over here to take things such as jobs and your house.

There are also concerns that overseas terrorists could use Mail Online to build a picture of modern Britain and it's people in order to explode things, somehow tomorrow.

Despite the influx of virtual immigrants, Mail Online publisher Martin Clarke said he was pleased that the site's strategy of filling its pages with pictures of scantily clad female celebrities on holiday, judicious use of popular keywords, and focus on the banal had delivered a 91% year on year rise in daily traffic. On average, 1.7m surfers got lost searching for celebrity nip slips and upskirt shots and ended up on Mail Online every day, said a delighted Clarke.

ComScore figures for May 2009 also reveal the increasing amounts of time MailOnline readers spend on the boob 'n' bile filled site.

MailOnline’s UK readers spend longer on the site per day than Telegraph, Times, or Guardian readers and spend more time looking at each page, presumably one-handed.

Mail reviews film without watching it

Never let it be said that The Daily Mail was a newspaper that stood by and watched impotently as its own industry crumbled about its cloven hooves.

While others have struggled to remain relevant in the fiercely competitive 21st Century media landscape by innovating online or unveiling risky new advertising strategies, The Mail has unveiled its killer new media hand by recruiting a crack team of writers able to pontificate without knowing anything about their subject matter. It is thought that the new strategy will generate efficiency savings of, like, a million-and-eight per cent or something.

Condemning sick filth Antichrist, a new film by 'art-house' Dutch Danish director Lars von Trier, 'broad-minded critic' Christopher Hart managed to criticise the BBFC, the EU, the Dutch Danish Government and Western civilisation itself, while boasting that he hadn't actually seen it:

You do not need to see Lars von Trier's Antichrist to know how revolting it is.

I haven't seen it myself, nor shall I...merely reading about Antichrist is stomach-turning, and enough to form a judgment.

As Ernest Hemingway said of obscenity in a justifiably disgusting image, you don't need to eat a whole bowl of scabs to know they're scabs.

Now the anonymous moral guardians of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), in their infinite wisdom, have passed this foul film for general consumption.

It doesn't shock or surprise me in the slightest that Europe now produces such pieces of sick, pretentious trash, fully confirming our jihadist enemies' view of us as a society in the last stages of corruption and decay.

It doesn't surprise me that Antichrist was heavily subsidised by the Danish Film Institute to the tune of 1.5 million euros.

In artistic terms, it is the equivalent of food poisoning.

If I were to see Antichrist...it would poison my mind and imagination, with explicit, ferocious scenes of sexual violence that would stay with me for ever.

Hart added mystically: 'I don't need to research things to write about them. I just know.'

* Update *

Some bloke rambles on about The Mail's Antichrist review, and Chris Hart himself replies.

Liz Jones has shocking moment of self-realisation

Liz Jones has finally realised what everyone else already knew:


The Mail's fashion editor and long-running columnist said: 'I had an inkling all along really. I am so vacuous it's offensive.'

Update

News of Liz Jones' patronising fake pointlessness spreads.

The Quail's guide to successful commenting

A number of readers have expressed concern that comments made underneath Daily Mail articles never see the light of day. Many assume that some malevolent leftist force is at work - possibly the PC brigade - working tirelessly to suppress freedom of expression in one of the country's finest newspapers. It's that thought police. Isn't it?

Well, no. Such suspicions, fortunately, are unfounded.

While it is true that getting a comment published on Daily Mail articles is often a frustrating and ethically questionable exercise in futility, it is not an impossible task. Follow a few simple rules and the comment guardians will gladly accomodate your misinformed rantings alongside such luminaries of the commentariat as Cllr Chris Cooke, Dave (expat) or perhaps even the incandescent Jacqui Weems of Southampton.

The first - and most obvious - rule of Mail commenting is to always agree with the article. Nobody likes a troublemaker and, ferchrissakes, there's a reason why these journalists get paid to write this stuff while you sit at home in your dressing gown bellowing pointlessly at the internet with nobody around to hear: the hacks are always right. If they weren't, they wouldn't be working for Britain's most influential newspaper would they?

Secondly, spend some time becoming versed in the vocabulary of the permanently outraged. Angry people who read the Mail identify one another by way of a particular set of linguistic cues, known as 'lazy rage inspired metaphones.' For example, when referring to 'people', Mail commenters divide the species into two distinct subgroups; good people (known as 'taxpayers') and bad people (referred to variously as 'students', 'the unemployed', or 'immigrants'). Our Prime Minister is known as 'MacBroon', and the party he represents is 'Za Nu liar bore' (often shortened to 'ZaNulab' or even 'Nulab') Your comment will not pass moderation unless it adheres to these simple lexical principles. [Study the Daily Mail dictionary if you need inspiration.]


The third rule to remember is that all comments should strike a balance between patriotism and utter disdain for this country. Remember, you love Britain - or you would if it weren't for its geography, the Government, the majority of the population, the weather, and the BBC. These are all shameful aspects of Great Britain that you should mock with vitriol, but you must never criticise the country itself or compare it infavourably to other nations. Only Stalinist Guardianistas do that.


Fourth, bear in mind that everyone else is absolutely insane and the only reason any organisation does anything is to ruin everything and pander to minorities. If you're commenting on a Mail article, feel proud that you're among a very small group of people blessed with the extraordinary ability to see through the liberal fog that clouds the judgement of everyone else on the planet. This especially applies to courts, which only make judgements based on the opposite of common sense - or 'uncommon nonsense' - and scientists, who make everything up simply to grab your tax pounds from irresponsible money-burning Government quangos. For these reasons, use as many exclamation marks as possible in your comments and illustrate your thesis by asking rhetorical questions to demonstrate your inability to even begin to cope with the madness of everyone else.

The above are general guidelines. Specific types of article demand a particular type of comment; when discussing legal action taken by a minority against a company, for example, a race claim, you MUST use the words 'Here we go again!!!' and make reference to the fact the complainant was simply motivated by the prospect of a large cash settlement. Any piece regarding so-called 'global warming' must imply that 'climate change' is nothing more than a Government conspiracy to increase taxes and that sea levels aren't going to rise because if you put an ice-cube in a glass of water and it melts, the water level doesn't rise. Richard Littlejohn's columns require a brief interjection about how he should be the Prime Minister.


It is prudent to quickly discuss style guidelines. Comments that misCapitalise random words, punctuate like a small child with an ellipsis machine gun, insert inappropriate symbols such as '#' and '/', and SHOUT at least one in five words, will stand a far greater chance of passing moderation. The comment guardians pay little due to one's ability to write accurately - poorly expressed views display an admirable passion for the topic, while simultaneously demonstrating that a high school education is unnecessary when the University of Life has shaped your world view.


Study the above carefully and before you know it, you'll have comments published daily. There's nothing like seeing your own inarticulate drivel slouching proudly beside the nation's most misinformed people.

Daily Mail wants to keep Nigerian criminals in Britain

In a surprising U-turn, The Daily Mail said today that instead of being sent back where they came from, Nigerian criminals should remain in Britain to take your job and rob your house.

Confusion erupted as the newspaper more commonly associated with its pro- 'put-them-all-on-the-first-banana-boat-back-to-Africa' stance on immigration also decided it would rather spend more taxpayers' money keeping brown nogoodniks here than save cash by helping to build a dedicated facility in some far-off African land where they could be pleasantly forgotten about.

Currently there are around 400 Nigerian convicts festering in UK jails who can't be deported thanks to absurd EU laws designed to protect their 'human rights'. Amnesty International claims that the country's jail conditions are 'appalling' and extraditions could be successfully fought by arguing conditions are inhumane.

But proposals from the the UK Border Agency would see 400 criminals relocated to a 'comfortable' purpose built facility costing the British taxpayer a staggering £1million. Female chief executive Lin Homer claims that the deal to work alongside African authorities in constructing a prison with 'acceptable' standards would actually save money by stemming a drain on British penal resources. The cost of keeping prisoners in UK cells is £30,000 per year - or £12million per year for a job lot of 400 Nigerians.

Completely ignoring the £11million pound saving to be made, Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance hooted: 'It's an absolute scandal that British taxpayers may foot the bill for a Nigerian prison', before scurrying back under his limpet encrusted rock in a crab-like fashion to look for detritus to feed on.

A confused local man said: 'This is outrageous political correctness gone bonkers. If anything, we should be encouraging more Nigerians to come here to sleep with our wives and claim benefits. I think it's disgraceful that the Government is spending less money while simultaneously easing the strain on our overcrowded jails - especially at the height of a recession. Additionally, I wish the BBC would increase the licence fee.'

Yet another woman cries rape as crazed wife tries to murder disabled husband

Men were warned last night to exercise caution when dealing with women, after a spate of false rape claims, attempted murders and suspected regicides.

Gary Wood of Walker, Newcastle was thrown into jail for almost three hours after psychotic fantasist Natalie Jefferson viciously accused him of rape. Newcastle Crown Court heard how Jefferson, of Fellgate, South Tyneside, agreed to meet Mr Wood in Newcastle's Gateshead before going for a drink in nearby Jesmond. Later the same evening, Mr Wood was confronted by police officers who explained that his date had cried rape and that he stood to have his life ruined because of her claims. Thankfully, Mr Wood was released without charge after detectives saw through Jefferson's pernicious womanly lies.

The case follows a string of other single women, too busy drinking and working to have children and marry, who have falsely accused innocent men of rape. Experts estimate that cries of rape probably outnumber actual rapes, where the 'victim' was probably asking for it anyway, by a certain amount, maybe.

In another chilling incident, womens' weakness for money was highlighted as Chelmsford Crown Court heard how openly female mother-of-three Tracey Roffey tried to suffocate her wheelchair-bound husband after learning insurers would pay a six-figure sum if he died. Not satisfied with a husband and three children, Roffey is understood to have been motivated by the prospect of a potential £350,000 insurancepayout which it is thought she planned on using to buy ear-rings, necklaces and other woman things.

The attempted murder follows the trial of a jealous Australian woman accused of setting fire to her husband's genitals after seeing him with another woman, and the wife who paid hitmen to assassinate her husband, before running him over in a 4x4 when the hit failed.

A local man said: 'Rape and murder have always been traditionally male crimes and now these womens are taking even that away from us. I can't even remember the last time I read about an actual rape in the paper - you can't leave your house these days without being accused of a sex crime by a binge-drinking high flying female lawyer. It's feminism gone mad.'

The tyranny of the gay agenda

Iain Duncan Smith and his band of super Tories at the Centre for Social Justice are to issue a report which will shape Conservative policy on the family. It is widely expected to put the God-given sanctity of marriage at the heart of family life, make divorce more difficult and promote marriage preparation classes and 'family relationship centres', as well as tax breaks for married couples.

Hooray!

The report comes not a minute too late, following countless years of social engineering designed by Labour to do nothing but obliterate traditional familial values of a mother, father and two children sitting round a stone fireplace telling ripping tales of Grandad's adventures in the Great War.

Four decades of allowing the liberal intelligentsia of both the right and the Left free reign to undo the seams of the nuclear family under the multicoloured banners of so-called 'freedom', 'equality' and 'queerity' have wreaked untold havoc upon Britain. Is it any coincidence that we find ourselves entrenched in the worst recession since the early twentieth century just as David Cameron, or General Pinkochet as he is known in some circles, apologises for Section 28?

High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge recently observed that family courts are groaning under the weight of cases involving damaged, miserable or disturbed children. In the glory days of yesteryear, when homosexuality was still punishable by a good spanking and a day in the stocks, family courts were of course full of smiley carefree youngsters, untroubled by the uncertainty of when daddy would return from Hampstead Heath or why mummy was wearing trousers and a string vest.

And yet, for years, anyone who drew attention to the fact that gays were ruining the Earth and upsetting Jesus was pilloried as a bigot who wanted to turn back the clock to some mythical golden age. 'Waiting for a real rain to come?', they would sneer at me as I'd snort coffee into my newspaper with rage at the licentiousness of a hotpant wearing pair of queens sashaying past, flaunting their selfish lifestyle choices for all to see.

But those queens have become a symbol for the erosion of family values against a backdrop of family breakdown.

The ConservaTories' admirable desire to restore the holy union of marriage to the rightful centre-piece of the British family is sadly undermined by their suspiciously flamboyant leader's recognition and, indeed, support for 'gay rights'.

A liberal society should be tolerant of gay people – just as it should tolerate the disabled, the obese, and spiders.

But, unrestrained, tolerance can go too far. Surely society would crumble if it were to allow raging homosexuals the same rights as non-perverts; imagine your horror if, for example, you discovered your young son’s favourite teacher was gay, or a lesbian was driving your taxi.

Cameron's apology last week for the Tories' brave attempts to stop lunatic lefty councils distributing gay propaganda in schools provoked widespread scorn - including the gays themselves, who saw it as political posturing to win the fabulous vote.

The truth about the 'gay rights' agenda is that it aims not just to promote acceptance, but actively encourages the idea that gay is preferable to straight; that 'different' is better than 'normal' and 'wrong' righter than 'right'.

Militant gays claim that 'lifestyle choice' means gay relationships should be treated identically to heterosexual ones.

But the core reason for family breakdown is precisely the view that marriage is merely a 'relationship' for people to choose or not from a menu of destructive alternative lifestyles.

It is not, and here Cameron's absurd fruit-baiting tolerance falls apart. If he were to truly believe in the peerless position of marriage as the best choice for loving families, he would legislate against the amoral 'relationship choices' vying for support against it. Heterosexual couples in a relationship for longer than two years need to be told to stop pussy footing around and tie the knot, while a stern message needs to be sent to the gays to just stop it altogether.

Their vicious selfishness, which manifests itself in the first degree by denying billions of perfectly viable sperm the right to become cared for children in a nuclear family, similarly denies thousands of quite decent women the right to a husband. Thus, homosexuality's assault on the family is two-fold.

Of course, I'm no intolerant, hate-filled, bile-mongering homophobe, but I sense much truth in the words of the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who has called upon homosexuals to 'repent and be changed'.

I'll leave you with this mind-puncturingly logical argument: since Christianity holds that sexual relations should be restricted to a man and a woman inside marriage, aren't those who promote homosexuality and alternative relationship choices upholding their own intolerant doctrine?

And you can't argue with a Bishop can you?

Mail readers: 'Hitler wasn't all bad you know'

Fury erupted today after F1 squillionaire Bernie 'Grumpy' Ecclestone attempted to pass off the Daily Mail's political ideals as his own.

The 78 year old racing tyrant criticised modern politicians as 'weak' and praised fellow dictator Adolf Hitler's ability to 'get things done'.

'In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done,' he said.

Ecclestone suggested that Ady H was simply misunderstood and tricked into genocide by bigger boys: 'In the end he got lost, so he wasn't a very good dictator because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it... so either way he wasn't a dictator.'

He also blamed democracy itself for failing the modern world: 'It hasn't done a lot of good for many countries - including this one,' he said without a shred of irony.

Not content excusing just one of history's greatest villains, the 2ft tall Formula 1 despot went on to praise other ridiculously evil 20th Century icons of wickedness: 'We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He was the only one who could control that country. It was the same with the Taliban.'

Mail commenters agreed with Darth Ecclestone's perfectly rational sentiments; Jake from London brushed aside Hitler's murder of countless millions of people, and instead celebrated the Fuhrer's bang-on social and economic policies and fight against Communism, whilst justifying the Holocaust:

Les Blakeman from Lakenheath agreed that democracy is little more than corruption waiting to happen and that dictatorships are the way to go, while basement-dwelling professor of Greek language M.O. from London dissected the word itself and came to a chilling conclusion:

Meanwhile, John from Halton nodded sagely in agreement with the Saddam apologism, and Fernando from Vilamoura kept his empathy with Ecclestone's pro-genocidal dictator musings simple:


But the award for best comment of the day went to owner of eye-buggeringly awful website and fan of national socialism BNP supporter Councillor Chris Cooke, who, in a rambling and confused post, praised Hitler's efficiency and ballsy 'to hell with the consequences!' attitude, compared the Nazi leader with the world's greatest Mongol, described David Cameron as a 'Pinko' and suggested that Oswald Moseley's son would be a better Prime Minister than any Labourite political figure (or something):

Mail in Hay-something Island double fail

Remember the chap who won 'The Best Job in the World' - a £70,000 caretaker position looking after a tropical island paradise, whose only responsibility was to make sure cute widdle turtle hatchlings got to the ocean safely?

Well he's only got one of those Twitters hasn't he?

And get this - the idiot only went and wrote on his Twitter 'leaving the chefs table and chocolate room on Hayward Island after a stunning gastronomic presentation.’

Ha, idiot! As everyone knows, it's not Hayward Island, it's Hayman Island! What an idiot. Hahahaha!

You'd have to be a real moron to get a simple fact like that wrong wouldn't you?

Especially if you were a national newspaper with a circulation of two and a half million and your sneering at somebody getting a name wrong.

* Update *

Also, this - the triple fail: Angry Mob

Daily Mail to merge with Closer magazine

Closer, the celebrity gossip magazine aimed at the vacuous and shallow, has acquired The Daily Mail, the newspaper aimed at the angry and white, in a deal analysts have described as 'unholy'.

The Mail will be distributed as a four page bound insert in the centre of Closer, and will concentrate on reporting press releases from Migrationwatch and The TaxPayer's Alliance, as well as providing useful tips on how to stay heterosexual in summer. A spokesman said: 'Four pages is more than enough now we're not carrying celeb stories about how fat Lily Allen is on our main pages. Readers will be able to flick through the mag for that, while we can focus on the fear and loathing. It's just easier this way.'

News of the merger will come as no surprise to regular Mail readers, who have become used to finding as many as 60% of stories sourced from the glossy idiot rag. It is thought that mailonline.co.uk, the newspaper's online internet website, has been running at a 10:1 Closer/actual news ratio.

In June, The Mail based pieces about Sophie Anderton's 'new curves', Kerry Katona's fall from the wagon, Anna Friel's insomnia, Jessie Wallace's diet, Chantelle's non-diet, a fat insomniac, a woman who looks like Jordan, a woman who looks like Britney, a man who had a face transplant, a bloke who found a girlfriend on Twitter,and Posh Spice's spots, on 'articles originally appearing in Closer'.