Gaunt toes the party line

The latest entry in the (not quite) daily blog from Sun loudmouth Jon Gaunt is an attack on the BBC. Starting off on Jonathan Ross' salary, it expands into a wider rant about the Corporation and how he thinks it could save money. He says that the first things to be cut should be management salaries and then, with no hint of irony:

the excess in the digital channels that no listens to or watches.

Yes, he still has problems with his grammar. But as Matthew Norman pointed out recently, listener figures for SunTalk, where Gaunt has a show, have never been made public. That must be a measure of how large the numbers are...

He goes on:

The axe then should fall swiftly on the ridiculous Asian network and he should immediately privatise Radio 1 and 2.

It's not hard to guess why he's picked on the Asian Network, is it?

Finally, he adds:

Clearly the BBC's domination of the Internet has to be curtailed as they have no right to effectively, with our money, suppress entrepreneurial enterprise with their almost monopoly position.

Hmm. Complaining about a BBC monopoly suppressing 'entrepreneurial enterprise'? Who could he mean?

Surely not Sky News which, like The Sun, is owned by Rupert Murdoch?

And his views are clearly nothing at all like the sentiments expressed by James Murdoch in Edinburgh in August:

In this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy.

Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet.

Yet it is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.

We seem to have decided as a society to let independence and plurality wither. To let the BBC throttle the news market and then get bigger to compensate.

In other words: clip the BBC's wings so the Murdoch empire can earn more money.

Towards the end, Murdoch said:

People value honest, fearless, and above all independent news coverage that challenges the consensus.

Honest like Fox News, presumably. The 'consensus' Fox challenges is known as reality.

(Read Charlie Brooker's excellent take on the Murdoch speech)

Jon Gaunt and the tsunami of cliches

The Sun has quietly dropped the word 'daily' from the 'new blog of Jon Gaunt'. It seems their Littlejohn-lite couldn't keep up with churning it out every day having written 14 entries in five weeks.

And his woeful post attacking Gordon Brown's condolence letter (and Simon Cowell), which included almost too many spelling and grammatical mistakes to mention, has still not been corrected.

Eventhough it's stopped being daily, it's clear that Gaunt doesn't have the original ideas required to write such a regular blog.

For example, here's how Gaunt dealth with immigration in his first post, addressed to the Home Secretary, on 29 October:

the tsunami of immigrants you have allowed to swamp Britain.

He argues this wasn't racist; this blog argued using words like tsunami and swamp suggest he probably is.

The very next day, he wrote about a (non-existent):

secret plan to let a tsunami of immigrants into our green and pleasant land.

A few days later, on 3 November, he was talking about Alan Johnson again, who had:

arrogantly dismissed all our concerns about the tsunami of immigrants that are flooding Britain.

Hmm. On 30 November he was talking about the slightly curious story of a Somalian family living in a large house on benefit:

I am only just recovering form the tsunami of phone calls my radio show received to day from people outraged about the Somalian asylum seeker who is living in a house that is costing the rest of us taxpaying mugs £1600 a week in rent.

A slightly different immigration-related tsunami, but still he links the two.

And then a couple of days ago, guess what? A rant about 'New Labour social engineers' who have, apparently:

denounced any white working class person as a racist if they have dared to mention the tsunami of immigrants that Labour have let in to our green and pleasant land. A tsunami that has deflated wages, taken working class jobs and used up precious resources.

A tsunami of immigrants and they're all to blame for everything. Got that?

And just in case all that language wasn't sounding quite enough like the BNP, he wheels out the racist's favourite:

Britain is full

Even if he must talk about immigration in this way, surely as a journalist, someone who works with words, he can come up with a slightly different phrase once in while.

Ahh, but he's Littlejohn-lite. Of course he can't come up with something new.

Sun apologises, Gaunt disappears

The Sun have apologised for getting Jacqui Janes' name wrong on their website:

(via Rhodri Marsden)

They have not, however, corrected any of the errors on Jon Gaunt's 'daily' blog, including the incorrect spelling of Wootton Bassett.

And it's certainly an interesting use of the word 'daily' when today is Friday and Gaunt's last post was on, errr, Monday.

Gaunt gives Brown an English lesson

The Sun's Littlejohn-wannabe Jon Gaunt has been churning out a daily blog on the paper's website. His weekly column in the printed paper was dropped by new editor Dominic Mohan so we get a dose of his ignorant, 'I ain't no racist but...'- type views online instead.

His Monday blog attacks Gordon Brown over the letter to a dead soldier's mother. At time of writing, it is noticeable that the story is well down the Sun's homepage. The Guardian are reporting the Sun's political editor was unsure about the tone of the coverage and the comments left on the story by readers are more sympathetic to the Prime Minister than the Sun probably hoped.

Gaunt begins his outburst by calling him 'Brown Pants Brown', a woeful attempt to ape the woeful nicknames Littlejohn gives people. He refers to Brown as 'unelected' twice, which follows on from his Friday blog when he called him, errr, 'unelected'. Littlejohn also uses repetition instead of original thought and frequently calls Brown 'unelected'. And Littlejohn's column today also included an attack on the Prime Minister...

Brown is well known for suffering serious problems with his eyesight and having poor handwriting as a result. Gaunt says it was insult to all British troops that he was:

scribbling a note that even a five year old could have bettered.

Of course, Gaunt's blog is the absolute pinnacle of brilliantly written, grammatically correct English. Oh, no it isn't:

If they had spent as much time working out how we were going to finish this and the Iraq war as they did spicing up the dodgy weapons of mass destruction dossier perhaps less lads would be coming home in body bags.

'Less lads'?

Then there's this paragraph, about The X Factor:


Spot the missing apostrophe, the missing 'd', the missing capital 'T' and an erroneous capital 'T'. Like the rest of the blog, a few commas would help too.

However, hopefully that is a firm promise to go underground if 'Jedward' release a single. Because they surely will and then we could be spared Gaunt's tedious blogs and radio shows.

Oh, and his numerous errors, such as:
and:
and:
Would a five year old be able to better Gaunt's use of capital letters? Let's not forget, Gaunt is meant to be a journalist. He's meant to be able to write.

He also berates Brown for his spelling, saying he couldn't even:

be bothered to check the spelling of the lad's name.

Of course, Gaunt thoroughly proof-reads everything and would never, ever get any spelling wrong when it relates to dead soldiers. Would he?


'Wootten Basset'? Doesn't he mean Wootton Bassett? And surely it should be 'in' not 'at' Wootton Bassett.

Towards the end of his rant, amid a series of insults ('disrespectful buffoon', 'unelected, deluded fool') he adds that Brown:

has always exhibited disdain for our troops as emphasised by the 46 seconds he spent talking about them during his party conference speech.

He's criticising Brown for not talking about Afghanistan enough. Clearly Gaunt would never do such a thing. For example, in the 11 days since his blog began he has written about Afghanistan three times, and - being charitable - on two other occasions he's talked about poppies.

But that would be a lot less than the eight times he has written about something he clearly regards as more important: The X Factor.

Indeed, the Monday blog post has his views about Brown and Afghanistan sandwiched between two pieces about the tedious 'talent' show.

The Sun broke this story and has run with it - with help from their friends at Sky - so it was inevitable that their 'star' columnists would have their say.

But isn't it ironic that Gaunt accuses Brown of bad writing and spelling errors, while his own blog is so appallingly written?

Amanda Platell: inane, hypocritical and apparently, not racist

After last week's dismal Amanda Platell column, would this week's be any better? It doesn't start well. Here's the first paragraph:

Andre Agassi was always one of the most popular tennis champions on Centre Court. With his 17 major title wins, he was also one of the most successful players.

17 major title wins? That's certainly an interesting 'fact'. Agassi won 17 Masters Series Titles - which remains a record - but he also won eight Grand Slams. So that would be 25 major titles.

Having once again displayed her inability to do basic research, she thunders into a rant against Agassi for his admission he used drugs and lied about it during his playing days:

No mention that crystal meth destroys your brain and your life. No shred of remorse in his confession. No warnings to vulnerable children. Just a despicable bid to flog a few books.

Of course, since Agassi's autobiography hasn't actually come out yet, she has no idea if any of these things are in it. She selectively quotes this bit:

He said he felt 'a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought. I've never felt so alive and hopeful - and I've never felt such energy'.

Without mentioning this bit:

But the physical aftermath is hideous. After two days of being high, of not sleeping, I’m an alien. I have the audacity to wonder why I feel so rotten. I’m an athlete, my body should be able to handle this.

Which hardly sounds like someone:

bragging about the illicit thrills.

Who does she target next? Kate Moss. Yes, another one of those younger women she seems to loathe so much. She's upset about Moss' new dress:

Why?

A neckline so scooped it touches her navel and a skirt only just long enough to cover her modesty? Perfect for the office Christmas party - if you work in a lapdancing club.

Yes, it's not as if Amanda would ever wear something with a low neckline, is it?


No, never.

Ahem.

But why is it that any woman who wears a low cut, short length dress is instantly a stripper. Does she hate women that much?

Well not all women. After all, last year when Liz Hurley went to an Elton John party with a low cut dress and cleavage everywhere, Amanda said:

Leave her be...long may Liz do so, heaving bosom and all.

It's almost as if she is using her column to attack anyone she doesn't like, whether it fits in with what she has previously argued or not. Imagine that.

And, incidentally, if she had bothered to look further than a very carefully posed publicity shot, she would see the dress in question is nothing like as revealing as she is claiming:


Next!

In a week when there's a famine in Ethiopia, 132 dead in suicide bombings in Baghdad, 100 killed in a market blast in Pakistan and 12 murdered in Kabul, what does Foreign Secretary David Miliband talk about? Why Tony Blair should be President of Europe, of course.

Interesting. The Presidency of Europe has been one of the big stories of the week, so it would be incredible if the Foreign Secretary hadn't talked about it. In any case, he had probably been asked about it.

Funnily enough, Amanda herself doesn't discuss any of those events other than that passing mention. And that was after the bit about a sequin dress. Still, at least the paper she works for covers such big news stories prominently:

OK, so Monday it was something about grandparents. Must be on Tuesday's front page:

Oh no, that was the one about the scandal of Daily Mail readers becoming criminals because they break the law. How dare the law!

Nope not Wednesday or Thursday either. They'd have to do one of those tragic events on Friday rather than, say, some complete non-story about a rock star's daughter wearing lipstick:

Oops.

Next it's the weekly pop at immigrants. And don't forget - Amanda is Australian. Because she seems to sometimes:

A mother who objected to ethnic minority staff being present at the birth of her child may be charged under the race discrimination laws.

I deplore racism and am aware our NHS would collapse without its army of fine foreign nurses, but perhaps the mother had a similar experience to me when I was last in hospital.

Or, perhaps, the mother was just a racist. Still at least we know Amanda

deplores racism

which come as a surprise to anyone who remembers this column of hers. And that's the second time she has said she deplores racism this month. Does she think people might think otherwise?

She then goes on to refer to a plan to

flood Britain within immigrants.

Obviously, because she deplores racism, that must be one of those good 'floods'. And then:

all they have really succeeded in doing is alienating the white working class, landing our schools with unmanageable numbers of non-English-speaking pupils and opening the door to the vile BNP.

Funny, but that sounds very familiar. Has Amanda been reading Jon Gaunt's thrilling new daily blog? Because on Monday he wrote:

I am no racist...

I and thousands of other Brits are having sleepless nights in between queuing for hours to see a doctor or a dentist, and to get a our kids into a school where the majority speak English and not a variety of languages from round the globe due to the tsunami of immigrants you have allowed to swamp Britain.

Again, that must be one of those good tsunamis and a totally positive use of the word 'swamp'. Because he's not a racist either.

The two are exactly the same. Referring to floods of foreigners taking your place in the healthcare line, suggesting your kids' education is suffering (although the difference between not speaking English and not speaking English as a first language is wilfully ignored) or in other ways suggesting immigrants are benefitting where you aren't is exactly the language the BNP uses.

But Gaunt and Amanda - they're not racist. Oh no.

Moving on, she celebrates the success of Today and Woman's Hour but suggest they wouldn't be commissioned today because:

Three hours of news and politics, with no screeching celebrity presenters? Unthinkable!

This from someone who loves Strictly Come Dancing (except Alesha Dixon) - a two hour programme of celebrities twirling around to elevator music.

And also from someone who presented the not-at-all missed news and politics show Morgan and Platell with Piers Morgan. How horrific is the thought of those two on television at the same time? Although she would probably claim as former newspaper editors they were serious journalists. Stop laughing at the back.

Anyway, she is really making another point that's well worth making:

As for Woman's Hour, it would be renamed Persons Of Unspecified Gender Hour.

Haha! Do you see? Because three sentences earlier she referred to 'Harriet Harperson'. It's about 'political correctness gone mad'!

It's also about some dismal, overpaid, know-nothing hack coming up with feeble jokes about the week's events. And this is just after she attacked someone else for being unfunny. Yes, really.

She targets Frankie Boyle for his Rebecca Addlington joke on Mock the Week (note to whingers: the clue is in the title):

While I'm all for free speech, Boyle's jibe was cruel, unfunny - and, above all, unjust.

So she believes in free speech, but not for people who tell jokes she doesn't think are funny? That'd be like saying, 'I'm not racist, but look at all these foreigners flooding here to ruin the education of white kids'.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Funny is clearly a matter of taste, but when did comedy have to be safe and just? Or is cruel and unjust fine, as long as it is funny?

Presumably it's not cruel or unjust to say someone is 'vacuous,' 'asinine' and has a 'chainsaw laugh'?

It's hypocritical to complain about pretending you can't say 'woman' and 'man' any more, but then saying certain jokes shouldn't be told.

Week in, week out, we see Amanda's pathetic attempts at comedy (and journalism) and yet she is trying to tell comedians what jokes they should tell.

Imagine her in another time, writing angry letters to Groucho Marx for:

Why don't we get married, and take a vacation? I'll need a vacation if we're going to get married. Married! I can see you now, in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove!

Cruel. Unjust. Funny.

But cruel is having to suffer her drivel every week. Unjust is how she gets work in the media and other people - people with talent - can not.

And funny? Nope, can't think of anything funny about her.

Gaunt defends white blonde immigrant; makes racist claims about others

Jon Gaunt's latest diatribe is another against 'every Tom, Dick and Abdul' (how many more times does he have to use this feeble Littlejohn-like 'joke'?).

He's on his high horse. A woman has arrived in Britain without the proper papers, so she was detained for 11 hours and then put on a plane home. Gaunty was delighted.

Except he wasn't. Take a look at the woman in question and see if you can guess why...

Yes, she's young, blonde, female and white.

But does she even need a visa? According to the UK in Australia (FCO) site:

Most Australian citizens visiting the United Kingdom for a holiday or short business trip do not need a visa provided they meet the requirements of the Immigration Rules.

Since he claims she was only here for a friends wedding, it appears there is a bit more to this story than Gaunty suggests. Imagine that. But even if not, it's still striking double standards based solely on skin colour. And he's not done yet.

He goes on to claim illegal immigrants - all those Abdul's - only come to this country for 'a lifetime of hot and cold running benefits' without apparently knowing illegal immigrants would of course get no such thing. Because they're illegal immigrants.

He goes on: 'those in control of immigration (I use the term very loosely) would rather let in those who want to leech off us at best and preach hatred at worst'. So there it is - the two options which, in Gaunty's world, encapsulate the motives of all immigrants. To claim the best thing immigrants do is 'leech of us' is insidious racism and, as it's an opinion piece aimed at a group, there's not the slightest thing the Press Complaints Commission could do about it.

Gaunt defends free speech - but only for some

Jon Gaunt has got little more than self-interest on his mind with his latest ranting column attacking Jacqui Smith for adding American shock-jock Michael Savageto a list of people banned from the UK.

A profile in the Telegraph reveals he's said: "Get Aids and die, you pig," the American radio "shock jock" told a purportedly homosexual man who once badmouthed his teeth. He has plenty more vitriol to go around. Latinos "breed like rabbits" , Muslims "need deporting" and as for autistic children, "in 99 per cent of cases it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out".

Savage has said he planned to sue over the banning, despite saying in 2006 he thought all Muslims should be banned from the US. Does he think they should all sue him?

Although claiming it's a free speech issue, why would Jon Gaunt want to defend a loudmouth, intolerant, right-wing radio presenter? Oh, wait...

He rather gives it away when he mentions that: 'Even DJs like me can be sacked for calling a councillor who wants to ban smokers from adopting a “health fascist”'. In fact this is a blatant lie - the direct quote of 'health fascist' should in fact be 'health Nazi'. Although clearly it's beyond the wit of Gaunty to know that fascist and Nazi are not interchangeable insults.

But when the infamous Luton protests happened Gaunty was suggesting they should not have been allowed. He wrote of Gillian Parker: 'As chief constable of the Bedfordshire force, her act of appeasement [just to add another Nazi reference] to Muslim fanatics by allowing them to demonstrate and ruin what should have been a proud day for the people of Luton was an insult to the brave men and women she is meant to lead.'

In his latest column he writes: 'In a mature democracy, all voices and opinions should be debated.' But that only appears to be for anti-Muslim opinions like his and Savage's.

'Now, more than ever, it is time for us to stand up and fight again — for the right for every true Brit to say what he thinks, when he thinks it.' Notice the use of 'us' and 'true Brit' as if there are people - and we know who he is thinking of - who aren't 'one of us' or 'true Brits'. Perhaps if his paper reported on today's survey on how Muslims feel loyal to the UK, he might learn something.