Call the 'newsdesk'

On page 28 of today's Daily Mail there's yet another story about bins. But this time it's not a complaint about collections:


It's not, despite the headline, a 'bin that doubles as a flower pot' but:

British inventor Nick Staley has created a secret shed for his bin, which doubles as a flower display.

It's fairly standard silly season stuff. And the last line of the article suggests there's more to come:

Have you disguised your bin in an attractive fashion? If so, call the newsdesk on 020 7938 6372.

They came from the bins...or not

Last week, Richard Littlejohn wrote:

Residents of a street in Exeter have been told to keep their windows closed because of a plague of toxic caterpillars infesting the area. Meanwhile, as a result of the recent spate of Bank Holidays, some dustbins in Exeter haven't been emptied for nearly three weeks. I wonder: could these stories be related?

Of course, you might think a highly-paid newspaper columnist would try and find out, rather than just 'wonder'. Yet this is someone who isn't known for his exhaustive research, but is known for droning on about bins.

So, are these stories related? Exeter's Express & Echo newspaper reports:

A plague of toxic caterpillars has forced residents of one Exeter street to stay indoors despite the sunshine...

The insects are covered in small hairs which can break off easily in a light breeze and cause an allergic reaction, rashes and, in severe cases, asthma attacks.

But are they coming from the bins?

The caterpillars are understood to be coming from a disused railway embankment owned by Network Rail...

The Brown-tail moth caterpillars are a non-native species that don't have any predators. They have built hundreds of web-like tents on a disused railway bank and in trees in the Ashwood Road allotments...

The council said it inspected the allotments in March because of previous infestation, but there weren't any tents around at the time. He said the creatures has [sic] emerged early this year because of the warm weather.

'Could these stories be related'?

No.

Mail does rubbish churnalism

The Mail is back to one of its favourite topics again - wheelie bins and fortnightly rubbish collections.

Why? Because they might expose 'families' to the plague. Sorry, in caps:


They did much the same story in May 2007, but this research is new.

So the Daily Mail Reporter dutifully goes through all the scary statistics and adds a quote from the microbiologist who did the research:

Dr Joseph Levin, microbiologist from the University of Tel Aviv, said: 'The levels of disease-causing bacteria found in the bins are at a level that I would consider to be dangerous, especially to those with a weakened immune system, such as the elderly or young babies'.

Put that quote into Google and up pops this:


The same research, with the same stats, and the same quote from Dr Levin, in the form of a press release. And Response Source say they make

life easier for journalists by quickly and efficiently putting you in touch with public relations (PR) people.

But the Mail's Editor Paul Dacre said the paper doesn't do churnalism.

Surely he wasn't (gasp) lying?

It gets worse.

At the end of the Mail article it says:

The study was carried out by University of Tel Aviv scientists using UK bin swabs on behalf of hygiene company Binifresh.

'Hygiene company Binifresh'? Oh yes:

Binifresh is the leader in automatic hygiene for wheelie bins. After 3 years of research and development Binifresh has released its first product, an automatic hygiene and odor control device that fits easily and securely to your wheelie bin, altogether creating a cleaner, healthier more comfortable environment for all.

So a company that sells a product (£14.98 plus £2.98 for refills) that claims to make bins cleaner and healthier produces research saying bins aren't clean and healthy.

Imagine that.

And the Mail, with their weird bin obsession, are only too happy to give them a free advert.

Mail gets hysterical about wheelie bins again

The Daily Quail has asked if the Mail is suffering from split personality disorder after a series of recent changes of heart. And he may be on to something.

First thing this morning, the Mail was on its high horse about wheelie bins again - and it was the lead story on the website. Eleven hours later, this story has been reduced to a two-line link under another, which goes to show even the Mail doesn't think it's up to much.

£500 fine if you put out wheelie bin on the wrong day is, as usual, a totally misleading headline. It makes it sound as if you will be fined £500 if you put your bin out on the wrong day.

But that's a considerable exaggeration. The story says:

Families could face fines of more than £500 for breaking wheelie bin rules.

Draconian new town hall tactics mean every adult in a household is hit with a £110 fine, rather than just one.

A family including an adult couple, two children over 18 and a grandparent could, in theory, be hit with five fines totalling £550.

Although in Mail-land every house would be a married hetero couple, stay-at-home-past-18 kids AND their Granny, that's probably not that common a set-up. Indeed, the only example of someone being fined they have produced is a £440 one, and that's a student house.

In Cambridge, who the Mail accuses, a representative states that no house is fined over £110 in total.

The Mail disingenuously claims that sex offenders only have to pay fines of £285

although these are often imposed alongside other punishments.

Yes, like jail. Hardly a fair comparison.

In fact, once again, the truth of the story is revealed late on in a quote from the accused - a spokesman from Leicester City Council, which it is worth quoting at length:

'Our city wardens give letters and information to householders where bins are left outside.

'They follow up with letters or visits, to give advice and explain the need to take in bins. If the situation persists, we try to establish whether there are particular problems stopping people bringing in their bins, so we can advise or help.

'If they still fail to remove their bins, legal notices are sent to every resident over 18 at a property, warning them they have 21 days to bring in their bins or face fines.

'We issue fines only if all these steps fail to resolve the problem.'

So it's not as if you put your bin out a wrong day and you are instantly fined, as the Mail led everyone to believe. Transgressors are visited, written to, and then given 21 days to sort the problem. If someone can't be arsed to drag their own bin in off the pavement within three weeks, then there clearly is a problem.

The Leicester spokesman suggested bins left out were blocking pavements and being set on fire. As the Mail's hilariously inept Not In My Backyard anti-wheelie campaign raised the spectre of arson attacks on bins and was based largely on how ugly they think the bins are it seems curious that measures to get them off the pavements, out of sight, and possibly away from troublemakers with matches, are now a bad thing.

But one thing never changes at the Mail: ludicrous scare stories to get Middle England riled.

Mail reveals new 'wheelie bin' evil

Surely the Daily Mail wouldn't do something as tasteless as try to exploit this man's death to boost its anti-wheelie bin campaign?

Although tragic, it doesn't appear to be worthy of being the 'top story' on the Mail website.

Melanie Phillips joins Mail attack on BBC

The BBC finds itself in the crosshairs of the Daily Mail once again. The whole of page 5, part of the editorial and a Melanie Phillips op-ed piece of today's edition are all devoted to attacking the Beeb. Partly because of expenses and partly that in order to broadcast over 170 hours of the Glastonbury festival on TV, radio and online, it had to send quite a few people to the event. Shock horror.

No word that the coverage was of a very high standard with viewers being able to pick and choose between everyone from Lady GaGa to Neil Young, Status Quo to Amadu and Mariam.

(The Telegraph, The Sun and the Star have also covered the Glastonbury angle, although all these stories are almost identical.)

The Mail says the BBC 'sent' 415 people to cover the event, but given that nearly half (190) were technicians and in total only 125 of the 415 were staff (the rest freelances and short-term contractors) it doesn't seem that excessive.

But according to rent-a-BBC-bashing-quote Tory MP Philip Davies it's 'another example of of how the BBC is bloated'. The Mail editorial dimisses it as a 'mass junket' to which all are invited.

The Mail claims all this cost an 'estimated' £1.5m although it doesn't even begin to explain where this figure has come from.

And then Melanie Phillips steps in. At one point she sniffily dismisses BBC presenters for 'knowingly' referring to the festival as 'Glasto', without realising the headline on the earlier story is, er, BBC's Glasto army. As Mail subs knowingly call it.

She admits that 'a huge outside broadcast...can't be covered with a handful of staff,' which is rather more generous than the editorial can manage. But she's more concerned with why the BBC is covering Glastonbury at all:

Glastonbury might be popular among the young, along with a bunch of superannuated hippies vicariously revisiting their lost adolescence.

In other words: How dare the BBC provide programmes that might be 'popular among the young'? She goes on:

It's hard not to conclude that Glastonbury...is an event with particular appeal for those of a certain age who were teenagers in the Sixties and Seventies. Which, by an amazing coincidence, just happens to be the age of many senior BBC executives.

In other words: How dare the BBC provide programmes for people who are between 43 and 68?

If the BBC weren't providing programmes for these age groups, or indeed covering major arts events, that would be wrong. But as this is modern music, it's not really important to the likes of the Mail and Melanie.

She turns this, as the editorial did, into a rant against the BBC and its expenses, claiming the publication of them caused 'such outrage'. Although the death of Michael Jackson rather ovetook the story, there was very little evidence, outside of the pages of the Mail, that there was 'such outrage'. (Maybe this is the same type of 'outrage' that led it to launch its 'Not in the Mail any more' campaign against wheelie bins)

But the evidence of her own outrage is quite odd. She points out that 'no fewer than 47 BBC executives were paid more than the Prime Minister's salary of £195,000,' including Director General Mark Thompson's £816,000. Which leads her to ask:

is he really saying that his job is four times as important as the Prime Minister's?

At which point, she should answer this question: Is her boss, Mail Editor Paul Dacre (paid £1.62m per year), really saying that his job is EIGHT times as important as the Prime Minister's? (And twice as important as the DG's?)

It would be interesting to know how much Melanie is paid as well, so we can see how many times more important she thinks she is than the PM.

Mail's new campaign

The Mail's ludicrous front page about wheelie bins (when will they drop this tiresome subject?) marks the launch of a new Not In My Front Yard campaign. The aim? 'To stop monstrous wheelie bins engulfing our streets'.

But is it? Because the Mail explains:

Now the Mail is calling on town halls to let council tax payers choose between wheelie bins, ordinary dustbins or biodegradeable bags.

But if wheelie bins are such a monstrosity, why does it want to give people the choice to keep them?

Its evidence is thin. It has taken a few selective snaps from around the country on collection days, when bins are inevitably more visible, as if to prove the problem. A load of black plastic sacks on a roadside would probably look quite bad too...

On the day Romanians have been forced from their homes in Belfast after a series of racist attacks, the Mail believes the most important issue to campiagn about is how bins look. Here's something for the Mail to try: something on anti-racism, to campaign against the BNP and the anti-immigrant attitudes that led to those attacks. That would be of far more value to people in this country, rather than campaigning against some sodding plastic boxes.