Vile anti-Mail 'hashtag' campaign nears completion

Word has reached the Quail's nest that a band of militant anti-Daily Mail leftist PC brigade cyber terrorists are attempting to group all of the links to silly Mail bashing articles on pointless celebrity miniblogging website Twitter.

To do so, they need a short, catchy, and memorable phrase to use as a so-called 'hashtag'. We don't really understand what this does, but it's almost certainly very childish and should be ignored by anyone who sees it.

However, in order to find and ban this sick campaign, we need your votes on what you think the best 'hashtag' might be. Current suggestions can be seen on the poll to the left of this post; the tag with the most votes by Saturday will be used to group all of the raving liberal rantings targeting the Mail. If you have any more suggestions for potential hashtags, feel free to leave them in the comments and they will be added to the poll. Actually they won't, because the poll's locked now. Ho hum.

"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!

Graham Linehan subverts Daily Mail editorial opinion

In an astonishing reverse ferret, The Daily Mail decreed today that the NHS is A Good Thing, and not a bloated misery machine intent on worsening peoples' lives and burning taxpayers' money as previously thought.

Readers were surprised to see on the Mail's front page news of a 'Stunning NHS transplant triumph', in which surgeons carried out five life-saving operations using organs from just two donars in a single 24 hour period.

Described as a 'miracle' by The Mail, the story overturns past articles suggesting that organ transplants are only ever given to foreigners coming over here taking our body parts to use in exotic stews. The newspaper more commonly known for revelling in stories of NHS misadventure and malpractice also praised the 'stunning display of team work' and a 'stunning sequence of operations'. A source said: 'We were stunned.'

The stunning U-turn comes amidst widespread anger at remarks made by Tory YouTube celebrity Daniel Hannan on American stupid person TV network Fox News. Talking to the world's most awful person, Glenn Beck, and the USA's whiniest radish, Sean Hannity, Hannan held up the NHS as an horrific example of 'socialized healthcare' gone wrong and painted a chilling picture of Britain as a third-world nation brutally oppressed by state funded medical provision.

Fox News, owned by arch-villain Rupert Murdoch, who also controls The Times and The News of the World, has been running a series of withering attacks on the NHS as part of a campaign to destroy President Obama's plan to stop poor people dying so much.

But Fox's exaggerated and unjust denigration of a British institution was met with outrage, and a Twitter campaign started by openly Irish comedy priest Graham Linehan using the slogan 'We love the NHS' rapidly became a focal point for people of all* political leanings to express their admiration and support for our national health service. Linehan, who tweets up to 17,000 times a day, told Channel 4: 'Everyone has a story about the NHS helping them in some way. It's important to us, we may slag it off a lot but it's ours.' He also said that Hannan had 'stabbed the NHS in the back'.

Even Hannan's boss, rich toff David Cameron, described his remarks as 'twattish'.

With a tide of fury sweeping the nation in reaction to the Hannan/Fox show, The Daily Mail is keen to downplay the fact that Hannan probably got most of his anti-NHS horror stories from them.

The newspaper has previously described the National Health Soviet as 'The Titanic of health care', 'sickly', 'ailing', and 'on the critical list'. NHS hospitals have been described as 'worse than Estonia's', squalorous, 'grubby', and riddled with patient-killing diseases. It has been repeatedly pointed out how Britons are forced to 'escape the NHS' by travelling abroad for health care, while our socialised system squanders money on advertising, bureaucrats, sex lessons for OAPs, and even doctors. Doctors who, let's not forget, 'kill more people than airline pilots' and 'demand' taxpayers' money just to innoculate people!

Key stories expounded by Fox to illustrate the true horrors of the NHS all seem to have, coincedentally, featured in The Mail. Patients making ludicrous long haul trips just to see a dentist, the taxi driver forced to pull out his own teeth, interminable waiting lists, comparitive survival rates, vital care rationing and terrorist doctors have all found themselves used by Hannity, O'Reilly and Beck as examples of why Britain suffers so terribly under the NHS.

An insider said: 'Perhaps today heralds the dawning of a new Mailish editorial stance on the NHS. Either that, or it's a cynical attempt to jump on the bandwagon started by that Linehan bloke on that Twitter.'


* Well, everyone except hardline 'Libertarians'.

Pesky kids probably behind Twitter crash, says expert

Twitter, the boring interweb micronetblogging website used by bad actor Ashton Kutcher to publicly humiliate his wife and by normal people to talk about their breakfast, mysteriously vanished this afternoon (or so we're told).

For approximately three hours, office workers found themselves with nothing to do but work, as popular advertising tool The Face book also crashed under the sudden influx of Twitter twats desperate for their post-lunch social networking fix. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerburg said: 'Yessss! It's like 2005 all over again!', but half an hour later added: 'Oh f*ck'.

The twoutage also had a significant effect on business: sales of fax machines rose by a reported 700% during the three hour period, while social media experts advised their clients to 'just buy TV ads or something'. Analysts estimated that global productivity rose by 8,000% and declared the recession over.

Unfortunately, normal service resumed at around 5pm.

Experts warned that future disruptions were likely because Twitter is rubbish and could be taken down by a child equipped only with an abacus, and people should delete their accounts and buy newspapers to be on the safe side.

Unknown technology and digital media consultant Colin Sweetman told The Daily Mail: 'It's probably the most common form of attack on a website because you don't need to be particularly bright to have a go at it. It's relatively unsophisticated. Quite often it's a 14 or 15-year-old or a university kid, not a skilled programmer, just someone with a bit of computer knowledge and nothing better to do with their time.'

Internet expert Sweetman's website E-Volutionary.net currently redirects to an unassociated domain name and displays a 'Page not found' error message when visited.

* Update *

True to form, the Mail has edited it's original article beyond all recognition now but the link remains the same (the piece is on its third rewrite now - in all fairness, it is difficult writing about stuff you have no idea about.)

Contradicting the Mail's original stance that the twoutage was probably just the work of some teenage nerd in his mum's basement, they now reckon it was evil commie hackers and perhaps even the Russian Government. Sources fear the event marks the beginning of 'Cold War 2.0'.

Commenter Barry from Woking warned: 'the Russians are way ahead of the rest of world when it comes to cyber attacks. if we ever fall out with Russia, they will blow the UK off the internet.'

For some reason, all quotes by, and references to, web expert Colin Sweetman have disappeared.

Son of God tells bloke: 'Get your hands offa my woman, motherf****r'

FORGOTTEN music couple Delta Goodrem and her portly fiancé Brian 'Spud' McFadden have consulted security experts and PR agencies after being cyber-stalked on confusing web phenomenon Twitter by none other than the son of God, according to the lager-sodden hacks at news.com.au.

As the celebrity couple flew out of Sydney on a charity tour (Delta Live 2009) yesterday, the usually mild-mannered Jesus was talking of murder and rape on a Twitter stream. He described himself as the 'last new soul of our kind', leading to speculation that it may not be Jesus after all, and could in fact be the second coming of the hardest working man in show business – James Brown.

The threats delighted Goodrem and prompted the celebrities to consider issuing a restraining order in order to prolong the media exposure garnered thus far. The lamb of God is known by the online username 'Savior Mankind' [sic], presumably because @Jesus was already taken.

While the Twitter phenomenon continues to grow in popularity at a rate that far surpasses the security measures in place to protect its users and the learning abilities of scotch-addled tabloid journalists, 'Saviour Mankind' was continuing to profess his love and 'ownership' of Goodrem, weeks after telling her he had saved the world to be with her.

Fearing comment from Goodrem and McFadden would provoke the Twitter-stalker, Goodrem's publicist said the singer's management team was dealing with the issue quietly in the hope it would not inflame the matter, in between commenting publicly on the matter to nationally syndicated new outlets.

We're very much aware of this matter - but we've been advised to not make any comment at this time, other than this comment, her excited representative Jennifer Fontaine said last night.

It is hoped McFadden, an avid Twitter user since recently learning the alphabet, has unwittingly fuelled the exchange by responding to Saviour Mankind's persistent and frequently threatening Tweets.

At one point the perplexingly anti-Semitic Saviour tried to justify his obsession by asking McFadden: 'How do you explain the fact that Delta lets me follow her and you don't?'

McFadden is reported to be drafting a fourth and final response to the question, thought to be something along the lines of 'Erm…I dunno.'

Mr. Mankind has a number of websites. On one, he states he is schizophrenic and hears voices but still believes himself to be a messiah and thinks Jesus was probably also schizophrenic, which has led to widespread confusion in the news.com.au offices and debate over whether schizophrenia is an actual mental condition or just another one of those social networking thingies.

McFadden responded by googling 'Jewish', 'immediately', 'Spanish', 'inquisition', and 'Australia', then huddled in a corner complaining of a headache.

Strictly adhering to the absolutely-no-comment-apart-from-this-one-and-all-the-other-comments-we’ve-made position being taken by the Goodrem camp, McFadden yesterday tweeted Saviour Mankind: 'You are close to harm! I have your address and if something unfortunate happens to you I will be very sad! Be careful.'

Jesus, or whoever he is, is reportedly trembling in his little internet sandals.

This Quail by Eoinin McAlpine, editor in chief of The Mobar Gazette.
To submit a Quail, click here.

Twitter breaks your brain, say experts

Twitter is breeding a generation of emotionless sociopaths hell bent on nothing less than the total annihilation of humankind, a study hasn't shown.

According to hypnotherapist and BBC 3 psychologist Felix Economakis, the machine gun quick stream of 24-hour news, email, social networking sites, microwave ovens and colour TVs are overloading our brains with microscopic digital germs of doom.

Emitted by many common household appliances and absolutely everything on the internet, the so-called 'Gigagerms' wreak havoc with the easily corrupted empathy cells and compassion enzymes that make up the brain's squishy 'moral compass'.

Dr Economakis believes that web surfers have been at risk of losing their morals since the birth of broadband, but the problem has been amplified by the surge in popularity of evil social networking video game Twitter.

He said: 'Our poor brains are definitely suffering information overload...Our brains' attention levels are finite. When everything is screaming at us, we start withdrawing so that normally nice people become unempathetic. Brains brains brains.'

Twitter, originally known as Skynet when it was founded by parent company Cyberdyne in the late eighties, poses the most significant risk because updates are presented too quickly for the sluggish human mind to process correctly, the studies show.

Such an 'information overload can trigger the brain's 'fight or flight' response - and sideline more compassionate, thoughtful responses to news and information', Daily Mail science editor David Derbyshire added nonsensically.

Preliminary findings from similar research have indicated that Facebook and Twitter usage is also associated with reduced Midi-Chlorian counts, and may even reverse evolution when used with third party applications such as Tweetdeck which speed up the stream of information crashing into users' faces.

An expert said: 'These studies are irrefutable, and are based on rock-solid science. Everyone should stop using these silly internet things and buy more newspapers before something awful happens.'

Google Street View must be banned NOW

Google Street View, the online website that allows burglars to rob your house without even stepping outside, came under fire today as The Daily Mail issued a rallying call to middle-class curtain twitchers to 'Stop it in it's tracks'.

Applauding the heroic actions of the furtive residents of Broughton in Buckinghamshire who martyred themselves at the wheels of a Google 'spy car' so commoners wouldn't be able to look at their lovely mock-Tudor houses and manicured bushes, The Mail asked plaintively why Parliament is taking so long to ban the sick service and protect us from 'The Google monster'.

Sources at Google revealed that the monster, a purple seven bellied frog-like creature with modems for eyes and keywords for arms, is kept chained up deep within the bowels of the Californian company's central lair and fed on a diet of usernames, passwords and internets.

In an exclusive interview with privacy crusader Paul Jacobs, who led the resistance force against the terrifying spymobile as it attempted to photograph his property, luddite Robert Hardman conveyed in vivid detail the epic battle of Broughton as the little Englanders repelled the invasion of their local town for local people by minions of the 'smug California-based cyber empire'.

Finding the 1984 style eye-wagon parked at the end of a cul-de-sac, Jacobs called for reinforcements to force 'matey from snooper command' to turn back and get off their land. The fearless band of men and women - a couple of housewives, a nurse, a Tory councillor and an energy consultant - stood firm as the sneering, dark eyed driver vainly attempted to squirm his way past the resolute human chain. Some witnesses report seeing the driver smacking his lips with a forked, serpentine tongue and scratching at what appeared to be a tail within his trousers.

After an hour and a half fighting with the man and poking him with pitchforks, the residents successfully ejected him from the village and he was forced to drive away in humiliation, as the victorious villagers cheered the removal of another threatening 'out-of-towner'.

Rebel leader Jacobs, who suffers from a lisp, told Hardman: 'I rather lost it, I'm afraid, and I used a word that I don't use very often.' It is thought the word was susurrus.

Hardman, without a shred of irony, described Jacobs as an 'international freedom fighter' and, predicting a forthcoming war against the Google machines, said that 'copycat rebellions now seem inevitable.'

But the Broughton incident has led to threats from cyber terrorists of a day of rampant unchecked photography in the small village as retaliation for Jacobs's successful counter-insurgency.

Organised on the hyperweb site 'Twitter', internet people are planning to descend upon the area to take hundreds of their own photographs in an attempt to force webocracy upon the brave little Englanders.

They have already begun posting pictures of the village online and used the photographs to post burglary masterplans and images of middle-class residents running in fear from the savage glare of their cameras. It is thought house prices have already begun to tumble as a direct result, while crime levels may have risen by a certain amount as well.

The organised orgy of aggressive imaging has led to increased calls for Twitter, which exposes children to pornography, prostitution and drugs, to be banned along with Street View and all other new things.

Facebook and Twitter Bully Your Children, Says Newspaper

Facebook and Twitter - but not MySpace - are encouraging online 'cyberbullying', a newspaper claimed today.

According to CyberMentors, a new social networking site set up to allow young victims of bullying to talk to peers about their problems, 50% of 11-18 year olds have been subject to some form of cyberbullying, but 29% had never told anyone about it. As many as 70% of all young people have experienced some form of bullying more generally.

The CyberMentors site, run by support organisation Beatbullying, has won praise from Gordon Brown and Education Secretary Ed Balls, and counts Mozilla, The National Union of Students and The Department for Children, Schools and Families amongst its partners.

But The Daily Mail took issue with Beatbullying's statistics, claiming that the number of young victims of online bullying was actually 17% lower, at one in three.

Describing as-yet undisclosed research, reporter Mark Prigg named Facebook and Twitter as the two biggest progenitors of cyberbullying, despite the fact that neither were named in the CyberMentors press release, other than to highlight Facebook's commitment 'to find new ways of preventing cyberbullying'.

Prigg went on to imagine a terrifying case that may or may not have happened once but might happen in the future maybe, where: 'bullies have even set up Facebook groups allowing dozens of people to band together to abuse schoolmates or colleagues.'

It is thought that Facebook actively encourages normal children to become bullies with competitions to 'Find the meanest jerk' and rewards for those voted 'Most efficient tormentor of Year 7 kids'. Twitter probably does the same somehow.

Readers reacted with world-weary incredulity at the short-sighted attempts to protect children from trivialities like intimidation and torment:

Helen from Cheshire recommended that those misguided enough to believe that bullying was hurtful or in some way unpleasant should grow up:

While warm-hearted J from Sheffield agreed that it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and bullying was an inevitable, and enjoyable, part of Darwinian evolution:


But it was Skitter Brown from Scotland who really hit the nail on the head, suggesting a simple, quick and effective way of remedying all of the modern evils caused by Facebook and Twitter in one fell swoop:

Sources from the internet said: 'I can't quite believe that we'd never thought of that. Let's just turn the whole godless thing off!'