Petite Anglaise author quits blogging for fear of ending up like Liz Jones

Never let it be said that Liz Jones is a washed up old crone with no influence over anyone or anything outside of her Exmoor menagerie of broken animals.

The vapid ex-editor of Marie Claire is inspiring a new generation of authors to give up writing for fear of ending up like her, stuck in a bitter void of self-destructive narcissism with no-one but horses for friends.

Catherine Sanderson, author of the 'Petite Anglaise' blog which earned her a £450,000 contract with Penguin in 2008, has announced that she will no longer be blogging after recoiling in horror at the thought of becoming a tell-all confessional writer like the brain meltingly irritating Daily Mail columnist.

Catherine said in a farewell web-blog post:

I read an article a month or so ago about Liz Jones, a newspaper columnist who has made a living out of sharing every aspect of her personal life, showing little or no regard for the feelings or right to privacy of the partners/lovers/neighbours that she uses for material. It left a nasty taste in my mouth. Personal blogging was something I felt the need to do during a short, pivotal period of my life but, as I hope I demonstrated in my memoir, I realised, with hindsight, that particular path was strewn with landmines. I learnt some valuable lessons from the experience and will always be grateful for the doors which opened as a result.

But now I’ve moved on.

Mail hack Peter Allen, who was responsible for unmasking 'Petite Anglaise' and getting her fired from her job in 2006, rounded off his attemped hatchet job on Sanderson's career with a misquoted and factually inaccurate article describing her decision to quit blogging.

Allen, trying desperately to sound as though he knew what he was talking about, added sagely:

Despite their massive popularity, blogs are notoriously difficult to make any money out of, and consequently have an amateur image which some professional writers can feel uncomfortable with.

A blogger said: 'Shut up Peter Allen you absolute twunt.'

The Daily Mail, newspaper of choice for elderly race hate letter writers

Only a month after its articles were used on the BNP's homepage, and two weeks after the ultra right-wing English Defence League included its pages in an inflammatory propaganda video, the Daily Mail has again found itself used by extremists to propagate racial hatred.

The hat-trick of hatred has led critics to call for a complete ban on the Mail's sick filth immediately.

In news oddly absent from the Mail's own pages, it emerged last night that police are hunting the author of more than 50 threatening and racially abusive hate mail letters to people and organisations throughout the UK. Targets of the anonymous letter writer's ire include the NHS, the BBC, immigrants, politicians, and the EU. Letters have been received at hospitals, schools, mosques and even by the Prime Minister.

Hampshire police, who are leading the search for the poison pen writer, say many of the letters appear to have been sent in response to Daily Mail articles, and clippings from the newspaper are contained in the envelopes. Reports that Fred Bassett cartoons have been found Pritt-sticked alongside calls for 'wogs to go home' are unconfirmed.

Like the Mail's editorial stance, all the letters are offensive and derisive towards a wide variety of nationalities and cultures. Head teacher Janet Fleming, whose school received one of the letters, said: 'I am concerned that the person who sent it is not mentally stable. The language is appalling'. A source added: 'The letters are almost as bad as the comments on MailOnline.'

Discussing the Daily hate Mail letters on CrimeWatch last night, linguistics expert Dr Tim Grant said analysis of the language used in the Mail letters suggests that the writer is probably an elderly female, and that postmarks reveal Portsmouth or the Isle of Wight as the letters' origin.

Anyone who recognises the handwriting, language, or drawings contained in the letters is urged to contact Hampshire police force, and the Press Complaints Commission.

HPV: The Mail's new MMR

Worried parents have been warned to ignore expert medical advice and instead listen to discredited pressure groups for information about the mortal dangers of New Labour's cervical cancer vaccine.

Introduced in September 2008 to protect women against the human papilloma virus (HPV) which accounts for 70% of cases of cervical cancer, the vaccination is designed to play a part in preventing some of the 1,000 deaths each year resulting from the disease. The Cervarix cervical cancer jab is currently given to girls aged 12 and 13, followed by a cervical screening programme in their 20s.

But the Daily Mail has been highlighting the dangers of the HPV vaccination, while ignoring the dangers of HPV, long before its widespread introduction. In December 2007, it was suggested that 'Anyone giving this drug to a girl is telling her, "I think you are a slag"', and encouraging 'promiscuity [and] teenage pregnancy'.

In January it was linked by the newspaper to the tragic deaths of two young girls despite a statement from the European Medicines Agency that 'In both cases, the cause of death could not be identified', and in September, as the vaccine was rolled out to schools nationwide, the Mail 'Revealed' a host of fictional 'serious health concerns about the cervical cancer jab'.

Despite the promise of 'revelations', however, no case was actually argued against HPV other than 'well, not that many women get cervical cancer and the jab only prevents a measly 70% of cases anyway, so why don't they just use a condom?'. Hack Isla Whitcroft summed up: 'Some people feel the programme is a case of taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.'

In April it emerged that the Daily Mail had taken a novel approach to its famous crusades, campaigning both for and against the HPV vaccine in different countries according to the Government's stance on the matter.

Following this familiar pattern, parents learned today of just how rusty and poorly aimed that sledgehammer must be, as health correspondant Daniel Martin suggested a causal link between the tragic death of 14 year old schoolgirl Natalie Morton and the HPV vaccination she had received the same day.

Anti-vaccine pressure group JABS, which also campaigns against the MMR vaccine, called for an immediate suspension of the cervical cancer vaccination programme in the Mail's print edition: 'We must halt the vaccination programme immediately and not put further girls at risk before a thorough investigation is carried out. How many more sever adverse reactions do they need before they act?'

Inexplicably, all references to the JABS group have been removed from MailOnline's version of the same article - but references to 'calls for the entire cervical cancer vaccination programme to be scrapped' remained without attribution, alongside a poll asking readers to vote on its future.

A statement from the Director of public health for NHS Coventry, saying 'No link can be made between the death and the vaccine until all the facts are known' was relegated to the last line of the report, while no mention was made of how many cases of cervical cancer might be prevented by the vaccination or how many womens' lives saved each year, or any research indicating that the vaccination is in fact safe.

However, it was noted that 'more than 2,000 have suffered side-effects ranging from rashes to paralysis', and that 'some critics argue [the vaccine] will encourage promiscuity'.

Updates

1) The estimable Lay Scientist has more coverage of the story.
2) The Guardian says that the postmortem revealed a 'serious underlying medical condition' and that the cervical cancer vaccination was 'most unlikely' to have caused Natalie Morton's tragic death.
3) MailOnline has updated its article for the 648th time since first publication, adding a small acknowledgement of the above, buried somewhere near the end. The print version, read by an average 2.5m people, is yet to be corrected.
4) The Mail's original article scores an impressive 90% on Malcolm Coles' irresponsible-o-meter.

STEPHEN GLOVER: If anything, Britain needs more nuclear weapons

If there was one thing humanity learned from the Cold War, it was that nuclear weapons are the key to a peaceful tomorrow.

The continued safety of the world relies on the proliferation of massive person-melting bombs and city-erasing inter-continental ballistic missiles. One need only look to the glorious show of American atomic superiority that ended World War II and led to victory in Japan to see why nuclear weapons are such a force for good.

Sadly, Britain has never had the opportunity to flex her mighty nuclear muscle. While Kennedy and Castro engaged in apocalyptic tête à tête in the 60s, we were forced to play second fiddle, sitting on the sidelines as the big boys played on. Earlier this year, Kim Jong-Il let off some steam with a few well earned missile tests, and in 2008 Iranian children were delighted by two straight days of Uranium-based fireworks generously put on by President Ahmedinejad. But where are our missile tests? Why does Britain never deploy nuclear weapons in war zones? It's not like we haven't had the chance to do so - would our troops still be stuck in Afghanistan if we'd had the courage to use our nukes? I doubt it.

We certainly have an appetite for atomic destruction, the problem is that the fluffy New Labour minds in charge of defense are simply too lily-livered to admit it. Labour famously lost the 1983 general election largely because of proposals to begin pointlessly reducing our nuclear arsenal.

The population reacted furiously, collectively bellowing 'Hey! Labour! Leave our nukes alone!'

Did the glorified bean-counters in Government learn anything from this? Did they hell. The Liberal Democrats and Labour both seem determined to sell off our nukes (presumably to some unstable Muslim rogue state) and even the Conservatives, the spiritual party of mutually assured destruction, seem hesitant to condemn disarmament.

Yesterday, Gordon Brown told the UN Security Council that he was prepared to surrender one of our paltry four nuclear submarines, while David Miliband warbled that the cynical move would "ease tensions around the world". So that's it then; Neptune's majestic Trident is to be sacrificed at the altar of peace.

As Nadine Dorries pointed out, it's not even as if Trident class subs are even weapons of mass destruction anyway. This is gesture politics at its worst, bowing to the misguided peaceniks who don't understand the importance of decent weaponry to Britain's future. Meanwhile, America, China, North Korea, The USSR and even France have hundreds of nuclear weapons and continue to invest in building more. I mean, what does France even need nukes for? To use on themselves next time they get subjugated by some neighbouring state? And the less said of the Soviets the better: rumours in military circles suggest some nefarious plot to explode the Moon. Well, at least they have some ambition, something this country sorely lacks.

Make no mistake; cutting our nuclear arsenal will only make us look silly in the eyes of our fellow nations, like a schoolboy cowering in the corner of the playground, watching meekly on as the big kids play conkers and throw stones at each other. We won't reduce nuclear tensions one iota by scrapping conkers. Conversely, we'll be at greater risk of invasion from Pakistan, or Iran, or one of those other nutcase countries. No, the real reason Brown wants to get rid of our nuclear deterrent is to save money.

What short sighted rubbish. Our entire Trident fleet only cost £20bn, and cutting it by one might only bring savings of a negligible £2-3bn. I think we can all agree this is superb value for money, and Trident has been nothing short of a triumph of efficient spending. Why should it bear the brunt of cuts while our Government squanders tens of billions each year on "pensions" and benefits for illegal immigrants?

The annual defense budget is currently £34bn, so scuttling a single sub would only make a negligible impact. I doubt anyone will notice the savings - it'll only get spent on far less cool projects than atomic submarines, enough staples to supply Whitehall for the next 50 years no doubt, or another new BBC radio station that nobody will listen to.

This newspaper has never been one to call for cuts in public spending, but at times like this it is inevitable that something will have to go. But why can't it be something that nobody wants, like health or education?

If we scrap Trident it will be the first dreadful step towards unilateral disarmament - something nobody in their right mind would wish for. With terrorists hiding in our schools and hospitals, and the Western world fighting the invisible, insidious forces of Islam around every corner, we need nuclear weapons more than ever. The money is neither here nor there.

I fear that in the rush for savings and "economic stability" we are overlooking the most important element of ongoing national prosperity: massive, awesome weapons. With increased investment in nuclear weapons, we could afford to conquer any number of pointless, poorly run nations and start rebuilding our Empire. The profits from a reinvigorated spice or tobacco industry would be more than welcome in these tough economic times, and all it would take is a quick shock, awe and obliterate campaign in India or somewhere like that.

It's time we called for increased public spending, investment in Trident, and a decade of war. It's finally time for some common sense.

Outrage over political correctness gone made up forces council U-turn

Daily Mail readers were jubilant today after forcing Flintshire county council to reverse a fictional case of political correctness gone mad.

Outraged letter writers, none of whom actually live in Flintshire, inundated the council with poorly written diatribes accusing town hall bureaucrats of eroding British heritage by banning the traditional English dish after reading about it in the Mail.

Councillor Klaus Armstrong-Braun, who was interviewed by a Canadian radio station about the issue, said: 'Spotted Dick is part of our heritage. It's political correctness gone mad.'

Despite the inaccuracy of the original Mail article in suggesting that Spotted Dick had been the victim of censorious council executives, pathological liar Richard Littlejohn decided to highlight the case in his twice-weekly diary of political correctness gone mad and comedic human rights abuses. Making it up, he snorted: 'killjoy canteen chiefs at Flintshire council have banned Spotted Dick', ignoring the fact that in reality it had simply been renamed because kitchen staff were tired of an employee making the same unfunny joke about its name every single day.

With a resigned sigh, the council's chief executive Colin Everett said today that the great desert renaming debacle was due to the 'childish comments of one regular customer', and that 'Flintshire County Council will now observe proper tradition and refer to all dishes by their proper name.'

Reports that the Klaus Armstrong-Braun was the source of the daily 'spotted penis' jokes are being investigated. A spokeshomosexual for Richard Littlejohn said: 'This is a victory for victims of imaginary political correctness gone mad everywhere. Just because something isn't true doesn't mean you can't do something about it. Wahey!'

h/t: The Media Blog

Now BBC calls for death of pandas

Cuddly, dewy eyed Giant pandas should stop complaining about being endangered and die quietly, a BBC expert said yesterday.

Autumnwatch host Chris Packham claims that Giant pandas, Earth's cutest bear, are stuck in an 'evolutionary cul-de-sac' because they are too stupid to move out of their native habitat - Chinese forests densely populated by evil foreigners. 'I reckon we should pull the plug', he added coldly, while stamping on a puppy.

Packham believes that money currently spent on pandas would be better spent on less lovely creatures such as wasps and scorpions. BBC Director General Mark Thompson, who is said to regularly binge on dolphin meat and runs the corporation from a desk made entirely out of kitten bones, agreed that cute animals have no place in the 21st Century and that viewers should 'learn to love creatures for their genetic efficiency and compound eyes rather than fuzziness'.

An insider said: 'The BBC despises everything you like, including furry things with big eyes. This is yet another reason not to pay your licence fee and moan that they never make anything worth watching apart from Strictly, Dr Who, Attenborough, The Apprentice, Eastenders, Top Gear, Life on Mars, Torchwood, Panorama, Dragon's Den, and Have I Got News for You. Plus, they always get the weather wrong.'

Labour spends 25.2 TRILLION on quangos, almost

The cost of taxpayer funded quangos - the shadowy, oddly named things that you don't really understand but we use to scare you - has hit an incredible £170 billion, or 25.2 TRILLION yen.

An analysis that involved picking numbers from a hat, discarding the small ones, adding the big ones together, then multiplying the answer by the speed of light in a vacuum (C), has revealed they are swallowing up, let's say, 160 times more money than a certain amount of time ago, or something roughly approximate to that anyway.

In 1997/8, quangos cost a very reasonable £24.1bn, but thanks to Labour cronies given free reign to set up millions more since then, their number and spending have sky rocketed. A guess by our work experience boy puts the number of quangos at 994, while the tea lady says the number of staff employed by them has jumped from 1m a decade ago, to 1.5m today.

The spending on quangos is almost five times the Ministry of Defence's £35.4billion budget, and billions of times more than my wife spends on the weekly shop.

Ludicrous wooly minded organisations like the "Learning and Skills Council" have seen their budget explode from £5.5bn to £11bn.

The Taxpayers' Alliance quote generator said: 'This situation is unacceptable and is costing taxpayers in Britain a fortune. For ordinary people facing pay freezes and redundancies it is an insult for the public sector to carry on creating jobs.' A source added: 'Yes we know quangos aren't related to public sector job creation, but there wasn't an option to generate quango quotes so this will have to do. It's the same principle anyway.'

The Government said: 'You've literally just made all of these numbers up, haven't you?'

James Martin: I hate cyclists THIS much

I don't know much about cars but I know what I hate - and that's cyclists.

I hate the whole tea-infusing, beard-stroking, Green party-voting lot of them. They're just so...gay. What's that? Your dad cycles to the shops? I hate him. Your elderly neighbour bikes to church on a Sunday? Hate her. Your 5 year old has just learned to ride a bike without stabilisers? You better believe I hate him too.

So much do I hate cyclists, that I when I saw a gaggle of them riding through the country lanes near my house as I was taking the new Tesla Roadster for a spin, I drove right up behind them (silently, of course, in my electric car), and just as I got within a hair's breadth of them, slammed my foot down on the accelerator, mowing the hippy bastards down, their pompous, eco-friendly bones crunching beneath the tires, blood staining the asphalt, as the young members of their flock dismounted to watch the carnage with tears streaming down their cheeks, begging me to stop. 'Hell no!', I yelled out the window as I reversed back over the bodies and wrecked bicycle frames to make sure they were all finished, 'not so green now, are you! Hahahahaha!'

When I got home I typed the whole thing out and sent it into the Mail for the Sunday motoring column. What a hoot! 'The readers will love it', I thought, 'they loathe cyclists nearly as much as I do.' Skimping on an actual review in favour of a bloodthirsty tale of murder won't matter, they'll see the joke.

A couple of days later, I leaf through the Live! supplement to find my piece, but find, to my outrage, that they've only gone and toned it down, removing the best bits (the multiple homicides) to replace with some weak crap about hooting the horn and merely forcing the cyclists off the road! It's political correctness gone beserk. As if that wasn't bad enough, shortly afterwards I start getting calls from the limp-wristed ponces at "Cyclists Weekly" or some shit, having a go for tooting my horn at their mates! If only they knew the truth!

To add insult to injury, the next day the lily-livered shits at the Mail remove any reference to badgering cyclists from the online version of the article, without bothering to add a note explaining the edit. Now it just reads like incoherant babbling, and the bit about hating cyclists seems irrelevent and stupid. Damn those sub editors all to hell! Oh well, at least the BBC have a copy of the original.

You'd think that would be it, but no, the lametards at the Guardian pick it up and mock my love of buttery cooking. Apparently Tour de France biking twat Robbie McEwen wants to 'punch me in the face', and some American biking homo thinks I'm 'a douche'. Fucking thought police. Time to cobble together an insincere apology before the papers stop giving me free cars to test drive I guess.

The whole sorry saga has made one thing clear at least. I hate cyclists more than ever.

"Hi, I'm a reporter..."

Part two of The Quail's twice-yearly guide to reporting the news.

This week: Research.

Step 1: Decide on an agenda for your story. Don't worry if you feel as though you don't have enough facts to decide on an agenda just yet - make one up! Readers don't care about facts anyway. Do try to tie your agenda into an angle your newspaper is already hammering away at.

Step 2: Establish a conclusion before you start researching your article. This way, it's easier to tell whether or not the evidence you uncover is worth including or ignoring. You don't want to waste time finding evidence that contradicts your conclusion.

Step 3: Interview some people. This makes it look like you're "objective" and gives your agenda an impressive air of credibility. Just make sure to ask leading questions - ordinary, non-journalist people don't really know what to think about anything, so help them say what you want them to say. Don't worry if you don't like talking to real people - you can do all the research you need from the comfort of the office. And now, thanks to Twitter, you can even do your interviews online!

Example:


Step 4: Cobble some suitable responses together, add some pictures, and write about how it confirms the agenda you decided upon in Step 1, and the conclusion you established in Step 2. Send the finished thing to your editor - you're finished!

Sinister supermarket scheme to slay common sense uncovered

Special dispatch from Eoinín McAlpine in Bournemouth.

The Bournemouth Echo, mouthpiece of the endangered middle classes of the south west, carries an exclusive front page exposé of a sinister plot by a supermarket to remove common sense from its shelves and replace it with political correctness gone mad.

Hard-working and decent mum Lynn Hutchings fell victim to the Co-op’s draconian liquor laws, which seek to punish honest folk for allowing their helpful children to carry their booze to the counter for them.

The acquiescent, zombie-like Co-op checkout girl demanded Lynn’s 12-year-old son George produce identification before refusing the sale on the grounds that she considered Lynn to be buying the bottle of rosé for George, even though rosé is a girl’s drink.

'Whatever happened to common sense?' cried grief-stricken Lynn, who was forced to dramatically hurl her Co-op loyalty card upon the counter and cross the road to Waitrose, who happened to be all out of political correctness gone mad but did have a special on common sense, pink wine and chocolates.

Trying to make sense of the biggest news story of the year thus far, outraged Echo readers leapt to the defence of Lynn and George.

Sleep deprived commenter 'Yawwwn!' from Bournemouth likened Roségate to other examples of political correctness gone mad, such as the banning of hot cross buns in hospitals and the Union Jack being banned from town halls, both of which are probably because of non-Christians:


Rhetorically named 'Was Charlie', channelled George Orwell to predict a bleak future in which mothers with babies in prams are refused alcohol on the grounds that their upwardly mobile infants are probably buying the booze for their mums:


Summing up the whole sorry saga, however, was the impressively literate Kevvo Squarter, so incensed by the ridiculous policies of the Co-op that he felt sporadic punctuation and capital letters would best express the lunacy of the whole thing:

Things aren't the same as they used to be, which is really bad

One of the worst things about politically correct, touchy feely modern day New Labour Britain, is how wonderful things from yesteryear have been twisted now into shameful objects of burning reproach.

I remember with a melancholy fondness the days when you could call a spade a spade without fear of the PC brigade jumping down your throat, telling you not to use such words for fear of offending all the other garden tools (of course, when I say spade I mean paki), or those dizzy summer afternoons spent hunting down the queers and playfully bashing their little heads in with pebbles from the village pond. It was the only way to keep the gene pool healthy.

Those magical times existed before silly, bureaucratic words like 'hate crime' and 'bigotry' were even invented. Then, our bountiful motherland lay serene in the knowledge that she was protected by a fierce nationalism running through her people; suspicion of foreigners wasn't the shameful secret is has become today, but an integral part of being British, and the desire to protect the indigenous population from dark, un-Christian forces from across the Channel was encouraged. Patriotism, bolstered by fear and loathing of the shadowy beings from far flung lands, was proud and strong. Men were prepared to give their lives fighting back the malignant tide of exotic foreign forces lapping at our shores, while others colonised distant lands for the greater glory of the Empire.

Make no mistake, England has a long and illustrious history of which only the most cynical could not express reverence. Our subjects feared and admired us, and our people were proudly monochromatic. Everyone can agree that, throughout the ages, it is England that stands alone as the great benefactor, bringer of peace, and cleanser of nations.

Is it not extraordinary, then, to learn that some people claim not to swell with pride at the thought of stirring victories of battles past, tribes conquered, and dragons slain, but, perversely, to desire the promotion of a universal (not national) brotherhood? Since when did we win wars by befriending the savages? Who decreed that we should not just welcome the enemy at our gates, but invite him in and offer up our finest tea and biscuits while he defecates on our couch? 'Oh, don't get mad', they say, those liberals up there, above, on their balconies with the carvings, and the strings that they pull, 'Oh no, don't shout, it's just their way, it's what they do. Let them be', they'll say.

Today, unnecessary foreign wars are deemed unacceptable. Now, rather than brutally convert the Muslims to save them from themselves, we let them in to settle in our towns and cities, and we don't bat an eyelid as they take our jobs, and wives, and motor vehicles, and shoes. We are told not to view the Other with healthy suspicion or cross the street lest he eat our eyes, but to welcome him to the neighbourhood without so much as a brick through the window. Nationalism is abjected in favour of the black hell of multiculturalism, while the old patriots die in their urine sodden chairs in the nursing home, weeping as their grand-daughters marry young Indian boys from China. 'Katherine', old Tom whispers under his tattered blanket, 'Young girl, why? why do you renounce your land, and your mother, your people, home, why, did she really hurt you so much? how did it happen? when did it start, and how will it end?', they scream in silence, and sit, and stare, as robins die in the snow outside the window.

These are strange new times, indeed. For two thousand years everything has remained the same, magnificent and strong like a great stallion bursting with its own virility, but now things are changing. The noble steed has withered, his testes shrunken by decades of progressive thinking from a narrow, arrogant elite. New people and novel ideas spring up all around; things change, and I am scared.

Children are no longer beaten or scolded for speaking before the age of 5. Now they are little people, with feelings and thoughts and words all of their own scurrying about, hiding in corners with their liberal ideals and Marxist values. Schools preach tolerance, and foreign languages, but dismiss national pride. Women can vote. Wars are discouraged. Sodomisers are welcomed with open arms and an imported French kiss. The guns rust, the cannons were silenced long ago. Names change, 'Adam' and 'Jack' are pushed aside by 'Mohamed', and 'Salazar'. Science has replaced God, and history is dead.

Everything has been turned upside down. With a ruptured heart and poisoned blood, this is the way England ends.

PR people: This is what happens when you send a press release to the Mail

From MailOnline's terms & conditions:

You must not submit any material to our Site that is defamatory, malicious, threatening, false, misleading, offensive, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, blasphemous or racist

A spokesman for Anycorp said: 'We're absolutely fine with our advertising being hosted along side misinformed rants about the Islamification of Britain and tirades against Churches turning into Mosques and things like that. And if our press releases are used by commenters to shout about ethnics robbing the indigenous folk, that's cool too.'

More at MailWatch.

The remarkable prescience of Jonathan Cainer

Aries; prediction for the week ahead:

What is it that you know now that, just a while ago, you didn't know? Mind if I ask you a question? Are you sure that you know it? I see.

Well, actually, that's the wrong answer. Regardless of what it is, it's wrong! If you are sure, you are prematurely sure. See how you feel a lot later on. If you are not sure, you are merely refusing to admit what it is you are sure of!

Again, you need to see how you feel later on. Sorry to be so annoying, but deep down you know something. The time, though, is not yet right to concede as much to yourself or to anyone else. Change the topic for now. That's the only right way to proceed.*

Now that's cleared up, you're ready for the week ahead. Unless you're not, of course. Either way, you can be unsure of it. What is "it"? Who knows.

Be sure to sign up to Grand Wizard Cainer's startlingly lucid predictions here, for the low, low sum of just £5.95 per month!

* I didn't make this up. This is actually the kind of stuff he writes.

MELANIE PHILLIPS: Now endorsed by the BNP

Special report by Claude.

Mail columnist book now officially on sale on far-right online shop as 'recommended reading'.

This should come as no surprise. For years now, at least twice a week, Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips has been banging on about immigration and what some people refer to as the "Islamification of Britain".

So here we are. For all the Daily Mail's disclaimers that they're anti-BNP (often recited as foreword to some virulently anti-immigration "opinion column"), the consonance is so striking that the BNP website is now selling Melanie Phillips' own book Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within, along with right-wing nut classics such as Vienna 1683: Christian Europe Repels the Ottomans.


Quoting several paragraphs from her book, the BNP site refers to it as "recommended reading" as well as "a revealing insight into the Islamist threat facing Britain".

So, as some citizens begin to connect years of tabloid headlines lashing out at the same target and the recent surge in far-right demonstrations across Britain (for a small but representative selection, please see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this), here comes the BNP's official endorsement of one of the Daily Mail's star columnists.

Melanie Phillips can now be proud: a bunch of white supremacists, sexists, homophobes and holocaust deniers are now officially amongst her biggest fans.

Cross posted from Hagley Road to Ladywood.

Keep spreading the love, Littlejohn fans!

A quick update on what some poorly informed journalists might call a 'Google bomb'.


The Quail's Littlejohn fan banners are now first row Google image results for the terms 'Richard Littlejohn political correctness gone mad' and 'you couldn't make it up'. Likewise, searching for the Floridian columnist's name along with the words 'mbongo mbingo', and 'Tolstoy' throws up the banners as the first result and third line result respectively.

Win!

I'm well aware of how much love you all have for the straight-talking, repressed, homosexually obsessed Mail man, so I imagine you're asking yourselves how you can help promote the Littlejohn banner collection to spread word of his genius even further. Here are a couple of suggestions.

First, if you're writing about RL on your blog, linking his name to the image location of the banners will help push them higher in Google's image results (click the banner to find the image URL in your address bar. It will look like this.) You don't have to actually use the picture in your post if you don't want to, so long as the text is linked; Google will read the text and associate it with the remote image.

Similarly, if you're writing about him and you use the words 'You couldn't make it up', or 'political correctness gone mad', a link to the image URL will help boost search engine ranking of the pictures.

Secondly, the more people who use the banners on their own blogs, the better! Feel free to nick them for your own use, but if you do, make sure you enter 'Richard Littlejohn' and the phrase being used (ie, 'political correctness gone mad') as alt text. If you post the image to your blog or website by grabbing the image's URL from the Quail, you don't have to do anything as this is already set, but if you save it and upload it yourself, just make sure to save the copy with a relevant title such as 'Richard Littlejohn' or 'you couldnt make it up', and also to edit the alt="" image HTML (this blog shows you how). This helps searchbots understand what they're looking at.

Third, sit back, relax, and congratulate yourself on helping spread the Littlejohn love!

P.S. This is the sixth image result for 'Richard Littlejohn', and is one of the most grotesquely brilliant pictures I've ever seen.

Tara Hamilton-Miller: Beyond parody

Some choice slivers from Tara Hamilton-Miller's achingly hip article 'How cool are David Cameron's Conservatives?' in the painfully trendy Telegraph:

For them [generation X Tories], David Cameron choosing to be interviewed in the fashion magazine Grazia and Boris Johnson appearing on the front of a London Fashion Week special issue of Elle magazine embody all that is fresh and forward-thinking about their party.

 ...

shadow home secretary David Davis – rugged, straight out of The Eagle comic – was seen as a dead cert to take the crown. Then David Cameron delivered his no-notes, “this is me” speech and a packed Empress Ballroom was left confused: all of a sudden there was another contender, and he was rather impressive.

...

One shadow minister says: “We’re not cool, we’re needed.” The Tories understand they are well placed to appeal to families and to re-engage with women.

...

The Tories are keen to bring lost creative souls into the fold. Many are interested: lots of men with irregular shaving patterns and statement spectacles are definitely sniffing around...Tony Hadley, lead singer of Spandau Ballet, is a Conservative.

A Tory spokesman said: 'Word, dude.'

LIZ JONES: These ugly one eyed yokels aren't doing themselves any favours

So I'm relaxing in a fabulous New York penthouse sipping Perrier when I get the call from one of my hundreds of lackies back home. 'One of the filthy locals has fired a shotgun at your pewter mailbox', she says. 'Call the police at once, Sooty', I reply.

Great. I better jet off back home to Exmoor. I pray there are still first class seats available on the next plane out of JFK.

Back at my vast country house, a young lady officer has been dispatched to deal with the vile hate crime against my letter box. She asks if there's anyone who might dislike me enough to shoot my property. 'Almost everyone in Britain', I say. 'People get very jealous of my expensive clothes, BMW, and whimsical lifestyle. I can tell you're envious, just standing here taking notes in my beautiful hallway', I observe.

She doesn't reply. Probably a lesbian, overcome with lust having noticed my Gucci perfume.

I suppose the atrocity could have been carried out by one of the many hairy, inbred mutants that live in these parts. Oddly enough, a local publican became quite vexed by a column in which I savaged the culinary experience offered by his establishment in the Daily Mail. The loathsome place didn't even have Beluga caviar - what was he expecting!

Apparently, a few local men had reacted equally inexplicably after I wrote, hilariously, that 'men with their own teeth are a bonus' out here in the sticks. I'd also described the people of Exmoor as mostly 'toothless', and the area as 'faintly Amish'. Really I don't see what the fuss is about - if I was some backwards country type and a high-flying young columnist gave me and my little village some valuable column inches, I'd thank her.

But instead of thanks, I get snide remarks from green-eyed local women in the supermarket. The other day I was there to buy my usual very expensive Claret and the finest Italian ham, when I heard a group of the old hags gossiping. One accused me of not even trying to join in, another said I was ‘just like Michael Jackson’.

A pox on your shabby, poorly maintained houses, I thought to myself. If immaculately coiffed locks make me the deceased King of Pop, pop me in the ground full of prescription painkillers. And if attending the fashion show of a local designer (one of the more cosmopolitan, less asthetically disgusting locals) doesn't count as 'joining in', I don't know what does. I even donated a whole day with me at London Fashion Week and lunch at the Ivy as first prize in the Dulverton raffle - not easy, given that I'd have to sit with a foul bumpkin for an hour or so in a beautiful restaurant, with the all the other diners staring at his dung crusted finger nails, wondering if he was my 'friend'. I dread to think! Thankfully, nobody bought a ticket.

Come to think of it, these grotesque local 'people' owe me a life-long debt of gratitude. I've given a whole host of the little weavels jobs on my expansive land: I employ a local gardener, tree surgeon, equine vet, two chiropractors, an equine podiatrist, a holistic shearer, an ecologist – oh, and a Somerset firm built my manege, where I allow local girls to exercise their ponies, free of charge, no less! They should be paying me to be seen on my property - I would have given my right arm to be allowed within ten feet of a glamourous London career woman when I was a girl!

Despite my charity, I'm treated like a stranger at best, and an intruding, patronising, rude, egotistical, shallow, insensitive, superior, arrogant outsider at worst. Far from the Exmoor's image suffering because of my derisive, insulting columns, it's these gossiping women and shotgun wielding maniacs who are really to blame. I wish they would all just shove off and move somewhere else, leaving me to enjoy my lovely farm, and sleep with my horses.

Maybe it's boredom or inbreeding that makes them like this. Perhaps they're not even human, having spent so many years working with animals and manure - maybe they've morphed into the countryside and devolved into wretched beings of the earth, distrustful of rich and successful women like me.

I just don't understand these narrow-minded country folk sometimes.

Liz Jones's fabulous new book, The Exmoor Files (critically derided even by The Daily Mail) is available now in The Quail's bookstore.

Brits and accident rates in the Balearics

Why is it that British tourists are so unlucky?
A special investigation by Claude.

Newspapers are reporting that a 44-year-old plumber from England was involved in a brawl and beaten to death while on holiday in Magaluf, on the south-west coast of Mallorca (more details here).

Aside from the fact that each story should be considered on its own merit, it would be deeply wrong to speculate on a tragedy we know nothing about. What invites some reflection, however, is how some people chose to read the events. For instance on -hear, hear- the Daily Mail.

Some comments were so idiotic that even a number of Mail readers felt the need to highlight how beastly British tourists (especially on the Balearics) behave while holidaying abroad.

Amongst the commenters, 'Mowdiwarp' from Huddersfield writes:

Spanish say they hate the British but by heck they like our money! Wouldn't dream of going back to that God-forsaken country ever again and am quite willing to let the cheap booze and terrible food sellers find alternative ways to earn a living!

while someone called 'nonpc' opnionates: "Isn't the EU wonderful? We are all pals together. I never liked Spain".

Then there's those who complain of a surge of "Brit-bashing" abroad, while others suggest we all "scatch (sic) Magaluf from next years holiday list". Finally, my favourite, 'Derek MacDonald' from Saigon, Vietnam, wonders: "Is this the same Spain that refuses to fight terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan?". Quality.

So let's have a quick look at this alleged 'Brit-bashing'. But, as we do so, let's not even consider that entire regions and islands have been completely ravaged in order to allow millions of 18-30 Brits to play Club Reps on the streets of Ibiza et al. Let's ignore the impact that turning peaceful villages into giant hedonistic dancefloors (remember the old advert "danceathon, drinkathon, bronzathon, partyathon"?) may have had on the locals.

Let's overlook the tons of vomit and piddle exported each year on to the alleyways of the Mediterranean. Let's not reflect on the fact that the word "Ibiza" is no longer a place to visit but has become like a warmer annex to Ministry of Sound. Let's not even consider what would happen if the opposite had been inflicted by "foreigners" upon British cities.

What we'll do, we'll just look at some facts. For instance, the fact that, like noted by Spanish blogger Antoni, it really looks like "the anglosajones have a special inclination for the risks associated with gravity law". In a piece called Siniestralidad turistica ("Tourist accident rate"), Antoni pieces together the staggering amount of Brit-involving accidents on the Balearics, to the point that you wonder if the insurance premiums for Brits abroad hasn't hit sky high already.

An unbelievable amount, and a wholly British exclusive, seems to be associated with falling from their holiday balcony while pissed (see here for an example).

However, there are many other accident types and the clockwork regularity with which they make the news each summer is just breathtaking. There's the British tourists who get done for dealing; those gang raping their fellow tourist; those who overdose after partying; those who stab people in nightclubs; and those who get into more fights, assaults, brawls.

The frequency is unbelievable, as is the lack of variety in the nationalities involved.

So, perhaps keeping things into perspective may be a good idea, and rather than blaming the Spaniards' exit from Iraq for some spoilt British kids not being able to control their liver, knob and repressed selves, some people could do with an honest analysis of why Britain, each summer, is capable of exporting so much barbaric dross.

Cross posted from Hagley Road to Ladywood.

Supermayor Peter Davies: Doncaster could learn from the Taliban

Peter Davies, the equality hating Mayor of Doncaster hailed as a 'Supermayor' by the Daily Mail, believes the town could learn valuable lessons from the 'ordered system of family life' enjoyed by Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

He gurgled: 'The one thing that can be said about the Taliban is that they do have an ordered society of some sort and that they don't have hundreds of cases of children under threat of abuse from violent parents as we do in Doncaster...even a regime as hideous as the Taliban at least appear to have sort of decent sort of family affairs.'

As aides begged him to stop talking and take his pills, Davies added:

'We in this country have created mayhem through lax social policies of disregard for marriage and the family and we have created mayhem in society.'

Insiders believe Davies is planning sweeping reforms of Doncaster social policy including corporal punishment for women exposing flesh above the ankle, introduction of the death penalty for adultery and homosexuality, and a ban on all future local elections. Supporters called the plans 'refreshingly oppressive'.

Since taking office he has slashed his salary from £73,000 to £30,000 (possibly to save up money to invest in torture equipment), scrapped Doncaster's free local newspaper (to stifle dissent), and vowed to withdraw funding for annual Gay Pride, International Women's Day, and Black History events (just for fun).

A local man said: 'He was already half way to becoming a one-man Taliban anyway.'

Davies was described as 'a breath of fresh air' by The Daily Mail last Saturday.

LITTLEBRAIN: The inconvenient truth about Britain's worst columnist

The preposterous figure of Richard Littlejohn has apparently been reincarnated as something called a Daily Mail ‘columnist’. That’s a new one on me. Wasn’t Keith Waterhouse called a columnist?

I’ve no idea what a columnist does, but I would imagine it involves a lot of first-class research, investigation and considered, astute opinionating. There’s probably a hefty salary thrown in, too.

Littlejohn is in Florida as usual this week, delivering a lecture on how an MP is being paid too much to waffle on about rubbish he's not qualified to talk about. That’s right, he lives halfway round the world and yet somehow feels entitled to judge British politicians and pontificate that Britian is going to hell in a handcart - while enjoying a pay package that overshadows MP's pay by around 600%.

Don’t people like Littlejohn have any idea how ridiculous they are?

What astonishes me is that anyone, especially in my trade, takes him seriously. Littlejohn is a circus act. Come to think of it, that puppy in the Andrex adverts has considerably more gravitas than him.

Yet, in some quarters, he’s treated as a proper person. Richard used to have his own show on Sky News, and has been honoured as 'one of the most influential "journalists" of the last 40 years'. The Guardian even reviewed his turgid, critically derided book as if it were an authentic contribution to English literature.

The only thing authentic about this old fraud is his hatred of Britain, hackneyed, tiresome hypocrisy and self-importance.

I didn’t christen him Littlebrain without reason. This was the man described as a 'medical mystery' when doctors discovered his head contains nothing but gollywog stuffing and mucus, and that the walnut sized cluster of cells euphemistically described as his 'brain' is in fact located in his scrotum.

Once he returns from his gated mansion in Florida, he will embark on a tour of Britain, lecturing schoolchildren about political correctness gone mad, and teaching them how to spell fone-ettik-lee. We can assume he won’t be making it up.

We are asked to believe that he is a born-again Bernard Manning just 'telling it like it is' - including his contempt for foreigners and regular derision of 'poovery'. But according to the Graun, he is obsessed with homosexuality and is himself an immigrant to his adopted country.

All you need to know about Littlejohn is that the rest of the world ignores him, while here in Britain thousands of people believe he's a proper writer and should probably be the next Prime Minister.

In one sense, I suppose you could argue that Littlejohn was a success, since he gets paid a whopping £800k a year for his job at the Mail, despite even his own readers starting to realise he's just a lying, intolerant, misinformed, bilious old twat of a shit who thinks his readers are so thick that they'll lap up whatever nonsense he vomits up in his crushingly unfunny columns.

That inconvenient truth has not deterred his continued employment by the Mail, even though sales are plummeting and profits hitting rock bottom.

Paul Dacre's ridiculous obsession with ‘Dickie Littlebrain’ is just another example of how out of touch newspaper editors are with their audience, and the very concept of journalism.

As a result, the Mail is facing the looming prospect of staff cuts and ever decreasing circulation in the not-too-distant future.

But you won’t find Littlejohn fretting about joblessness in his turreted mansion.

Just as MailOnline gets enough traffic to celebrate its dominance of the British newspaper website arena, so Littlejohn, too, thinks that the little people are actually visiting MailOnline to read his column, ignoring the truth that the vast majority are turning up just to take the piss and marvel at the fact that such a loathsome bore is capable of such dim-witted rubbish week after week.

A more self-righteous, deluded ass you’d be hard-pressed to find outside of, er, the pages of The Daily Mail.

But our esteemed ‘columnist’ will relax in the rear seat of his limo or down on the Keys, tucking into the finest food paid for by his massive newspaper salary. And to hell with the dwindling readership, flood of negative comments and utter lack of respect from any other writers.

He will continue to leave a trail of faeces-stained, poorly constructed analogies as he sits in America tapping away at his typewriter, lecturing the rest of us on how we’re all responsible for Broken Britain and elf'n'safety gone mad.

In the great debate about nonexistent political correctness, this freeloading, flatulent, bile-spouting fool is about as relevant as the Paul Dacre's opinions of journalistic integrity and press freedom.

Also see Tabloid Watch for more discussion of today's Littlebrain column, including the story of Uncle Dick's abject inability to use Google.

MailOnline does not focus too much on celeb stories, says Mail

'Martin Clarke, publisher of Mail Online, has dismissed suggestions that success of the website was down simply to the volume of show business and celebrity stories it carries.

Clarke told Press Gazette: "It does annoy me that people say its all driven by search and showbiz stories because it’s actually not driven by either…"'

[hat-tip: Tabloid Watch]

From Alexa:

'Keywords that generate a significant number of queries on internet search engines and drive traffic to dailymail.co.uk. Ordered by the global popularity of the search terms, in combination with the number of website hits generated on dailymail.co.uk.'

Is the Mail suffering from split personality disorder?

Fears were growing today for the mental health of the Daily Mail, as the newspaper founded by Hitler's chum enacted yet another astonishing reverse ferret.

Only two weeks after declaring the NHS 'A Good Thing' despite years of vitriolic fury directed at Britain's health soviet, and a day after the shock revelation that they can spell 'gypsy' but just don't want to, the Mail has decreed that wife beating and violence against women is bad afterall.

The U-turn comes less than a month after angry single man James Slack argued that women are beating men up left, right, and centre, and that school lessons highlighting the dangers of domestic abuse are nothing more than a waste of time and resources, and that Harriet Harman is a cow.

For an in depth investigation by a concerned blogger into the Mail's pathological duality, see 'Now the Mail WANTS wife-beating lessons for children as young as five' at MailWatch.

When is a gypsy not a gipsy?

When it's not a putrid, benefit robbing, doctor stealing scumbag, but a supermodel playing dress up, that's when.


An expert said: 'There are two types of pikey: the cheeky pretend ones that we like, such as Brad Pitt in Snatch and Kate Moss here, then the bad ones that exist in reality. We don't like those ones. The different spellings let readers know which ones they're dealing with.'