This Royal business

Keir is not a particular fan of the Royal Family, and will not be commenting on the issue, other than this post. If you ever needed any reminding how out of touch the Daily Mail is, and how completely out of time much of the upper classes are:

However, Kate has not escaped speculation as to her traditional suitability as an untouched royal bride.

The Spectator magazine once commented that she 'may still have her V-plates intact'.

From today's Daily Mail

Daily Mail gets its priorities right

Does it criticise Ed Miliband because of his reliance on the unions to secure victory? No. Does it criticise him on his comparative inexperience compared with his brother? No. Does it criticise him for his involvement in the 2010 manifesto? No. Does it criticise him because a survey of Labour rank and file saw his brother as the superior candidate in the leadership race and a PM in waiting? Ummmm, No.

So what then?

Ohhhhh.

More From The Fail

Getting bored of doing this, but feel it is necessary...

YET another terrible, terrible article from the Daily Fail.

"Ephraim Hardcastle" says David Miliband has had jobs "handed to him on a plate".

Well, I guess it is pretty easy getting a First Class degree from Oxford. And then I can't imagine much easier than studying Political Science at MIT; even easier to get onto the course as a Kennedy Scholar.

Ephraim's right, it is totally lamentable that after achieving so much through hard work in education, David Miliband got jobs relatively easily.

I wonder what sort of struggle, hardship and toil "Ephraim" had to go through to get a job at the most vile newspaper in the country?

LetUsFaceTheFuture.

And The Winner....

...for most ridiculous, meaningless, clearly biased, Tory-shagging, anti-Labour tone, total right-wing bollocks of a piece of journalism goes to.....

........ Of course! Who else! The Daily Fail, for this piece of absolute shit.

One that sneaked in under the radar...

...in the vein of '...It's political correctness gone mad!'

At the beginning of the week, Keir's favourite toilet paper published this story

A toddler was ordered off a bus because the foreign driver was 'offended' by his England football T-shirt, his mother has claimed.

Sam Fardon, 27, was allegedly told to get off the service with her sons Dylan, two, and 10-week-old Adam as they made their way to a childcare group.

The unnamed driver, who had a Polish or Eastern European accent, said Dylan's white England shirt was 'offensive' and he threatened to turf the family out on the street.

Obviously the Fail didn't do the most cursory background check, or even speak to the Bus company before running with the story, because if they had, they would not only have discovered that the mother is a thief but also that FirstGroup had no bus driver in the area fitting that description, and had been unable to get in contact with the liar, sorry, the aggrieved party to discuss the event.

Keir wonders what attracted the Mail to the story? Could it be "...who had a [xyz] accent..."? No, it wouldn't be!!!

Obviously the Heil will be running a retraction and apology, you couldn't make it up!

Even more Daily Fail Shubtill

The cherry popping of Elf n Safety shubtill on this blog...

...it seems the toothpick has become the latest victim of the health and safety police - leaving disgruntled diners with food stuck between their molars.

Staff at a luxury hotel chain are refusing to provide customers with the post-meal dental sticks - because they are 'potentially dangerous'.

From the Daily Mail, 22/1/10.

Well a site that I lurk at now and again; the excellent Mailwatch, have extracts from an e-mail conversation one of their posters had with the hotel. It makes excellent reading.

From: xxxx
Sent: 27 January 2010 11:35
To: Customer Services
Subject: OH, NO - NOT THAT TOOTHPICK AGAIN!

Dear Sir/Madam,

I hope this is not a too unwelcome email. I have written to the Portal Hotel in Tarporley to ask for their view on the " TOOTHPICK GATE " furore. In my experience, stories like this often bear little likeness to what actually happened. In the stuff I've seen on the Web, reference is made to Head Office, which is why I'm writing to ask you for your response to the story.

Please note that I'm not a journalist out to set you up!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

R.A.Vant (Mr)

So far so good; ready for the fun part? Because we know the Mail would never, ever, exaggerate or fictionalise certain parts of a story?

From: xxx
To: xxxx
Cc: Customer Services
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 2:39 PM
Subject: RE: OH, NO - NOT THAT TOOTHPICK AGAIN!

Dear Mr Vant

Thank you for your e-mail. I have not as yet received any correspondence from you directly at the hotel, so will reply via the e-mail as passed on to me by Customer Services.

Unfortunately I do not have a lengthy response for you, except to note the following:

- There is absolutely no directive from Head Office with regards toothpicks, and this was not noted to the guest by the senior manager on duty, as implied by the various articles
- There is no law against toothpicks, and this was certainly not reported to the guest concerned
- The hotel had genuinely run out of toothpicks, and we are at a complete loss as to why the waiter would have come up with the Health & Safety excuse, unfortunately being a casual staff member and University student, we haven't as yet seem him to ask
- The guest concerned had in fact ordered a bespoke meal for himself and his wife, and this was different to the rest of the visiting diners
- The guest was found a "toothpick" once the situation had been brought to the attention of the manager on duty that evening

We have found the articles to be quite amusing, and somewhat out of context, however these are the joys of the media grapevine and a little bit of "story telling". If anything, it has been wonderful publicity for the hotel, and bookings are up.

Nowadays we very rarely get a request for toothpicks, as generally society frowns on the art of teeth picking in public, a somewhat ugly act whilst other are diners enjoying their own meals.

Should you require anything further, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Yours sincerely

What I never, ever will understand is how these stories get to the newspapers? Do the people go themselves, send an email? Did the plonker in the picture think, 'Oh, I know, I'll ring the Mail' as soon as it happened? And as the manager alludes to, what sort of person picks his teeth at the table these days, anyway? (A Daily Mail reader, duuuuh)

Well, to be honest, funnelling Dicky Littlecock, you really couldn't make it up.

Unit4d K1ngDum IndyPundent Partei

There are two upsides to this turn of events:

1. The well known UKIP candidate hopefully splits the ignorant bastard vote in Barking, squeezing Nick Griffin and his ego. (which is important, as the BNP hold 9 Council seats in the area and were only 30 or so votes away from coming second to Labour in 2005)
2. A good old Sunday chuckle.

Of course, quoted in UKIP voters favourite read the Daily Mail, Maloney claimed that the mistake had been his intention all along, and had done it before in fact!

‘I did that on purpose to see how many people pay attention,’ he added. ‘It causes interest. It means people start talking to you.’

He said he had used the same trick on promotional posters for boxing contests

100 of your finest British Pennies to anybody who can find a poster advertising a fight Maloney promoted with words misspelt. More of the same to anybody whose opinion of anyone who has misspells posters for attention is anything other than "twat".

More Mail Non-Stories

The Hillary - Milliband relationship story that the Mail have been pushing for a while is rather amusing. While I'm obviously, no fan of infidelity and adultery wouldn't it be cracking to see the look on Mr Clinton's face when he realised two could play at that game?

However, as with 90% of stories in the Daily Mail, it is based on a single quote from a magazine interview HRC did a few months ago, and quotes from anonymous sources at a NATO summit. The usual Mail rigour was obviously used in researching this.

Well, todays offering is a "snub" "Hilly" has delivered to "Milly".

Mr Miliband, who is favourite to succeed Mr Brown as Labour leader, proudly told them how he had use of Chevening, situated near a lake in a 3,500-acre estate.

Warming to his theme, he gushed: ‘It is a wonderful house with 115 rooms and enormous grounds. It is big enough for all of you to stay. In fact, why don’t you all come?’

A grinning Mrs Clinton – who has confessed to having a ‘big crush’ on the Foreign Secretary – is said to have provoked laughter by teasing him: ‘That would be lovely, David, but you’d better do it before May 6.’

Did this happen? Probably. Snub? No. Joke? Yes. Is it important what is said in private (people forget more and more; these politicians, you know, are real people) about an election in which HRC is most probably going to be rooting for the side she just "snubbed"? No. Is this even really worth their while in writing? No. Have they written it for any reason other than to further riducule the government? No. (Although one must admit they have been quite good at doing that themselves recently)

I cannot wait to see the front page of the Daily Fail if the reds do pull it out of the bag and sneak home. Once I've seen the look on Osbournes face the Mail will be my next port of call.