MailOnline edits, then removes, RightMinds post

On 28 July, MailOnline published an opinion piece by Rick Dewsbury about the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

Under the headline The NHS did not deserve to be so disgracefully glorified in this bonanza of left-wing propaganda, Dewsbury said:

But it was the absurdly unrealistic scene – and indeed one that would spring from the kind of nonsensical targets and equality quotas we see in the NHS - showing a mixed-race middle-class family in a detached new-build suburban home, which was most symptomatic of the politically correct agenda in modern Britain.

This was supposed to be a representation of modern life in England but it is likely to be a challenge for the organisers to find an educated white middle-aged mother and black father living together with a happy family in such a set-up.

Almost, if not every, shot in the next sequence included an ethnic minority performer. The BBC presenter Hazel Irvine gushed about the importance of grime music (a form of awful electronic music popular among black youths) to east London. This multicultural equality agenda was so staged it was painful to watch.

Several hours later, the second and third paragraphs of that were changed to this:

This was supposed to be a representation of modern life in England but such set-ups are simply not the ‘norm’ in any part of the country. So why was it portrayed like this and given such prominence? If it was intended to be something that we can celebrate, that two people with different colour skin and different cultural heritages can live harmoniously together, then it deserves praise.

But what will be disturbing to many people is top-down political manipulation – whether consciously or unthinkingly – at a major sporting event.

MailOnline completely removed the article, without explanation, the following day.

(Hat-tip to John Walker, who took screenshots of the original and who wrote about it before it was edited.)

'Dismissing on-pitch racism'

The back page of Thursday's Daily Mail ran the headline 'Blatter's blunder as Suarez charged' above a report about comments made by FIFA President Sepp Blatter on racism in football:

Asked directly by a CNN reporter if racism exists on the pitch, Blatter denied it and said such incidents should simply be settled by a handshake at the end of the match.

The Mail called this a 'blunder' and said Blatter was:

dismissing on-pitch racism with an astonishing response.

But the Mail seemed less concerned about 'dismissing on-pitch racism' last month, when Steve Doughty, the Mail's 'Social Affairs Correspondent', wrote:

Things may not be perfect but, at the end of the day, Gary, there are worse things to complain about.

So, Mr Evra and Mr Ferdinand, I know you feel insulted. But perhaps in this case you could just put up with it and get on with the game.

'Just put up with it'

The Mail's Steve Doughty - who repeated the 'BBC drops BC/AD' myth a week after it had been denied and debunked - has turned his attention to the issue of racism in football.

In the last week or so, two footballers - Patrice Evra and Anton Ferdinand - have claimed they were racially abused by opposition players. In both cases, the accused have denied the accusation.

Here's Doughty's advice:

Things may not be perfect but, at the end of the day, Gary, there are worse things to complain about.

So, Mr Evra and Mr Ferdinand, I know you feel insulted. But perhaps in this case you could just put up with it and get on with the game.

He adds:

Every club seems to be promoting a kick racism out of football campaign, beyond the point of boredom.

And that campaign has responded to Doughty:

Show Racism the Red Card is appalled by Steve Doughty’s article...

It is ludicrous to suggest that players should simply “put up with” racist abuse.

Racism should never be tolerated – unless we want to return to the days where widespread racist abuse was a weekly feature of football, ‘putting up and shutting up’ is not an option. We cannot achieve equality by ignoring racism, equality is something that we must continually strive towards. This is something that football clubs clearly recognise through their ongoing support of anti-racism initiatives, such as the work of Show Racism the Red Card. The steps that have been taken to remove racism from the game are numerous and include: improved legislation, education, fans’ campaigns and bans for racist supporters; these combined actions have all had a positive impact on reducing levels of racism within stadia.

Doughty argues that football clubs are “promoting a kick racism out of football campaign, beyond the point of boredom.” It is revealing that Doughty sees anti-racism campaigns as tedious, as if he believes racism to be a thing of the past, a topic we no longer need to address.

(Hat-tip to Brett)

Express: 'ban migrants'

The front page headline on today's Daily Express screams:


'Britain must ban migrants'.

Macer's Hall article goes on to favourably report the words of Labour peer Lord Glasman, which were published by the Telegraph yesterday. Shouldn't the 'World's Greatest Newspaper' have got the interview first, rather than treating it as front page news a day later?

Here's what the Telegraph reported:

Glasman has previously accused New Labour of lying about the extent of immigration. Now he goes further, arguing – in terms more radical than the Conservative front bench would dare use – that Britain should renegotiate the rules on European workers and freeze inward migration for EU and non-EU citizens, except where employers or universities make a case for a specific, skilled individual.

"We've got to reinterrogate our relationship with the EU on the movement of labour. The EU has gone from being a sort of pig farm subsidised bloc... to the free movement of labour and capital. It's legalistic, it's administrative, and it's no good. So I think we've got to renegotiate with the EU.

His call is to restrict immigration to necessary entrants such as highly skilled leaders, especially in vocational skills. "We might, for example, bring in German masters, as we did in the 15th and 16th centuries to renew guilds."

But exemptions should be made on a case-by-case basis? "Yes. We should absolutely do that... Britain is not an outpost of the UN. We have to put the people in this country first." Even if that means stopping immigration completely for a period? "Yes. I would add that we should be more generous and friendly in receiving those [few] who are needed. To be more generous, we have to draw the line."

So although Glasman does say a temporary halt to immigration might be necessary, he seems to contradict that by saying that he does still want to allow in people with specific skills and that:

we should be more generous and friendly in receiving those [few] who are needed.

Yet the Express have turned 'restrict immigration to necessary entrants' and 'more generous and friendly to those who are needed' into 'ban migrants' - whatever that might mean.

But this headline isn't really about Glasman's words. It's about what the Express thinks and wants. It's in much the same vein as their 'Keep out, Britain is full up' front page from 23 September 2009 and their use of 'ethnics' in July 2010, and it's insidious stuff.

A disgrace

The Express' front page for Thursday:


More on this once the story gets posted in the morning. But the use of the word 'rob' is clearly hugely problematic and exceptionally inflammatory.

For now, a reminder of what the PCC's guidance note on reporting on immigration says:

Similarly, the Commission – in previous adjudications under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code – has underlined the danger that inaccurate, misleading or distorted reporting may generate an atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts.

UPDATE: Inevitably, the Express' article (and editorial) was based on (copied and pasted from) a Migrationwatch briefing paper. Sarah Mulley has explained 'Why Migrationwatch is wrong' in a blogpost for New Statesman.

'I'm not racist, but...'

From the letters page of Monday's Daily Mail, in response to the 'swimming pool cover-up' story:

What is this country coming to when the windows of a public swimming pool in Walsall are blacked out to protect the modesty of Muslim women?

We seem to be letting Muslims take over this country. We appear to be afraid to upset them.

If they don't like the way we lead our lives, let them go and live in a country that panders to their religion.

We are a Christian country, our laws and way of life are built on our religion.

I'm not racist, but I'm getting fed up with opening the newspaper every day to read that we're bowing and scraping to the Muslim community.

Would they get so much freedom of speech in Afghanistan? I doubt it.

Edd Butler, Shoeburyness, Essex

Those editorials in full

The front pages of today's Daily Express and Daily Star were covered in an earlier post.

As if those headlines weren't bad enough, here are the editorials that accompanied them.

The Express:

OUR MULTI-RACIAL SOCIETY NOW NEEDS TIME TO ADJUST

There is no point in hankering after a return to the ethnically homogeneous Britain of the Forties. It is never coming back.

Nor is there much point in complaining that some of those who were pilloried as racists for claiming that immigrants were “taking over” their neighbourhoods in the Sixties and Seventies were telling the truth – though they were.

A new study predicts that the ethnic minority share of the population will soar to 20 per cent over the next four decades. Much of the increase will be down to very high birth rates among some ethnic communities already established here.

The transition to a multi-racial society has happened remarkably quickly and without the permission of the public being sought by the political elite.

Yet things are not all bad. Many immigrant communities and families are making a big contribution to society and are now over-represented in the professions.

Others, alas, have high rates of welfare dependency and criminality. Some have fully integrated into mainstream British culture, others are almost fully insulated from it.

At its best, modern Britain is more culturally stimulating and free than was the case 70 years ago. But at its worst it is a country of resentful strangers living in close proximity to each other but with little in common.

What Britain needs now is a long pause in immigration to allow a core common culture that all ethnic groups observe to become established. Britons old and new need time to get to know each other.

Last week, the Star said there was 'no room for gays'. Today, there's no room for anyone new:

No MORE...WE'RE FULL

In just two generations the very face of Britain will change beyond recognition.

Research reveals that one in five of us will be from an ethnic minority, more than double the current levels.

The groups growing fastest are white, from Europe and America.

Britain has a long and proud tradition of being multi-cultural.

But in recent years the vast numbers of newcomers from Eastern Europe has put our services under intolerable pressure.

Our entire support system, including housing, schools and hospitals, has been pushed to the very limit.

We need a total halt to immigration - now.

Richard Desmond attacks 'ethnics' and 'asylum scroungers'

Today's Daily Star:

Today's Daily Express:


Do you think Richard Desmond, the owner of these two rags, is trying to telling us something?

Anton at Enemies of Reason has blogged about the Express' front page. He says:

Leave aside that we're all 'ethnics' of one mongrel sort or another; this makes it quite clear what's going on. There are whites and there are 'ethnics'. How much more explicit does it have to be before we start calling it what it is?

As Anton points out, the Express illustrate this 'vile story' with this image of Muslim women:


Yet the article, based on population forecasts from the University of Leeds about what might happen in 2051, clearly says:

The White British and Irish ethnic groupings are expected to grow very slowly, while the Other White category is projected to grow the fastest, driven by immigration from Europe, the US and Australasia.

Funny how the don't use pictures of French, American or Australian women, isn't it?

In the last week we've had 'Muslims force pool cover-up', 'Now asylum if you're gay' and now this.

Maybe they should change their claim to the World's Nastiest Newspaper.

As for the Star, the story of Abdi and Sayrug Nur, who are unemployed and have seven children, has been doing the rounds for a few days, since the family moved into a house Kensington which the papers claim is worth £2m. The Sun, Mail and Mirror have all written about it.

Yet the Star is claiming sole responsibility for having the family 'booted out':

Ministers last night vowed to kick out a family on benefits from a £2million home after a hard-hitting Daily Star campaign.

Your favourite newspaper intervened to stop Somali spongers Abdi and Sayrug Nur continuing to milk the system.

Alas, a few sentences later:

We demanded answers from the Department for Work and Pensions and they have agreed to evict the family.

Officials said they would remove the Nurs when the new rules come into force next April.

So the Nurs will apparently be moved when the rules change next April. Funny the Star did say that it would be in nine months time when it probably would have happened without the Star's 'hard-hitting campaign' anyway.

And look again at the headline '£2m asylum scrounger'. £2m represents the value of the house they live in, so he hasn't 'scrounged' £2m. The papers are up-in-arms about the £2,000 a week the local council is paying for the house - but that goes straight to the owners, so he doesn't get that either. (The Mail claims the rent had been £1,050 per week, but this was raised to £2,000, the maximum available under housing benefit rules, but there's little anger directed at the owners of the house.)

Also 'asylum'. Nur sought asylum in the UK in 1999 after working for the Red Cross in Somalia. It was granted and so now he is a refugee. But the Star and its ilk want to associate 'asylum' with 'scrounging' and so continue to label him as that.

And clearly the Desmond papers want to continue to demonise Muslims, foreigners, immigrants, 'ethnics' for their own miserable ends.

(Jonathan has also written about the Express front page here)

Boy definitely not thrown off bus for wearing England shirt

Further details have emerged from Staffordshire about the case of the boy who, it was claimed, was thrown off a bus for wearing an England shirt by an Eastern European driver.

Or wasn't, as was fairly obvious from the very start to all but some stupid believe-any-anti-English-fairy-story tabloids:

A mother who claimed her two-year-old was ordered off a bus for wearing an England shirt has been branded a liar...

First Bus commercial director Paul De Santis said: "We have interviewed every single driver in the vicinity at the time and have not been able to find anyone who knows anything about the incident or who matches the description given to us.

"The complainant also stated she went to the office in Newcastle later that day and reported the incident.

"We can't find anyone who knows of any report and we did not have a lady on duty that day like the complainant said."

Miss Fardon was also asked by the bus company to provide details of witnesses.

But the firm says it has been unable to contact two of them, while the third gave information which conflicted with what Miss Fardon said.

Mr De Santis added: "I have come to the conclusion that, particularly from the point there was no Eastern European driving the services on the day in question, that the incident did not happen. Nothing we have subsequently done in terms of contacting drivers and speaking to witnesses has changed that."

And if all that wasn't enough, and just to make absolutely clear this story was complete rubbish from the start:

Miss Fardon has now withdrawn her complaint.

And the result:

Mr De Santis added: "There have been one or two unsavoury incidents with our members of staff over the incident. We are very concerned that this has caused that and our drivers are not happy their reputation has been damaged. We now want to draw a line under this and get on with doing our job."

And that is what happens when the media helps to spread lies.

It's interesting that several comments both on this blog picked up that the mother was called Sam Fardon and that someone with the same name, of the same age, from the same area had been in trouble with the police (for stealing) in 2004.

Yet so-called journalists such as Fay Schlesinger, who wrote up the story for the Mail, didn't bother doing any checking on either her or her story.

Back on 27 May, this blog argued that the Mail, Mirror and Star - who wrote about Fardon's original claims - should have followed-up with the results of First's investigation.

They didn't.

Now the story has been completely debunked, and the woman has withdrawn her complaint, it would be inexcusable for them to avoid telling their readers that fact.

(Hat-tip to Adrian)

Failing to tell both sides of the story

The tabloid coverage of the 'ban' on England football shirts became even more ridiculous when the Mail published Driver orders toddler off bus for wearing 'offensive' England football shirt. It never even sounded likely.

It was a mainly a cut-and-paste job from this local newspaper article.

Based solely on the say-so of the mother, it was claimed the driver, who had a Polish or Eastern European or dodgy-foreign-sounding accent, was offended by the two-year-old wearing one of those 'banned' England football shirts. It's political correctness gone mad, etc.

The following day, the Star and the Mirror repeated this tale (along with countless other websites and forums), based solely on the word of the Mail.

But by then the local paper, The Sentinel had returned to the story. They reported that First Bus had received thirty complaints - mainly, it seems, from people who had read about the incident.

One witness who had claimed to have been there said it happened on Monday. But that was the day the Sentinel published the story. The mother said the incident occurred the previous Thursday...

Paul de Santis, from First, told the paper:

"As time has gone we have reached the conclusion that the incident did not happen.

"We have not been able to find any credible witnesses. And we have not been able to confirm the identity of the driver at the centre of the allegation.

"We belive it to be highly unlikely that it happened. If this is the case that is extremely concerning to us. It's not only damaged our reputation, but could have put our staff in danger through potential reprisals."

And First issued an offical statement:

We have carried out a full investigation and can't find any evidence to substantiate this claim. No driver fitting the description given was working on any routes in this area at that time. Our buses were busy around the time yet no one else has been in touch with us about this alleged incident.

We expect the highest level of professionalism from our drivers and such an act would not be tolerated. However, in this instance it now appears that no such incident took place.

Here's the thing: this statement has been in the public domain for two days.

And yet neither the Mail, Star or Mirror have deemed it necessary to inform their readers' about it.

So either they don't want to correct their earlier story, and look like they may have got something wrong, or they are happy to let the myth of banned England shirts rumble on because it suits their PC-gone-mad, Britain-under-attack-from-foreigners agenda.

Or more likely, both.

(More over at Enemies of Reason)

About that ban on England shirts...

As anyone with a Facebook account already knows, a depressingly large number of people believe the 'PC brigade' is planning to ensure no one steps inside a pub while wearing an England shirt for the entire duration of the World Cup, if not for all time.

None of them seem to have been much thought as to whether this was either true, likely, or even possible.

It seems to have started in the Sun, with the headline: Bid to ban England tops in World Cup pubs.

Unfortunately, once you read the first line of that article, with the all important 'could be banned' by 'killjoy cops' you knew it wasn't actually happening.

The more you read, the more it unravelled:

The advice comes in a letter from the Metropolitan Police to pubs in Croydon, South London.

Among World Cup guidance, it suggests 'dress code restrictions - eg no football shirts'.

So it's 'advice', rather than some all-encompassing, this-must-be-obeyed diktat. A Met Police spokesman said (when it was issued several weeks ago):

“There’s no obligation to follow the advice. It’s a series of suggestions sent to pubs in Croydon.”

And it's a letter from one police force, to pubs in one part of the country (where there were riots when England lost to France in the Euro 2004 championship - the advice also included plastic containers and extra security on the door).

And the advice it asks landlords to consider is actually 'no football shirts', not 'no England shirts'.

But apart from all that...

Sunny Hundal and Anton at Enemies of Reason (here and here) have already posted on this story, and debunked it, but as if to make it absolutely clear, the Met Police finally denied the story yesterday:

A spokesman said: "This letter contains a series of suggestions to make pubs safer for everyone.

"However, licensees are not obliged to follow our advice and there is no policy to stop the wearing of England shirts."

And an Inspector from West Midlands Police also denied there was any ban on flags:

"It is nonsense. Police officers are football fans too and patriotism should be an important part of enjoying the tournament in a fun and friendly atmosphere as long as people are sensible."

What is frightening is not just that people still manage to get whipped up by believing an obviously bogus story in the Sun, but that it unleashes a streak of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment despite it being both untrue and nothing to do with either group.

'Shite like this'

When David Cameron appointed Baroness Warsi to the Cabinet - the first female Muslim to have that honour - the reaction of some people on the Sun's messageboards was loathsome:



'They should have nothing to do with running our country'. Having been born in Yorkshire, how is Britain not Warsi's country?

Newspaper website messageboards, like the interwebs in general, do attract extremist views - anyone who saw the gloating of some Mail readers over the death of an illegal immigrant would know that.

MySun also attracts such comments, but the moderators do little to remove them once the appear.

So we get this:

And this:


And this:


The last two comments were in reaction to the case of Bashir Aden, an asylum seeker from Somalia.

How has the immigration debate gone so awry that immigrants are referred to as 'shite' and 'excrement'?

The Sun's own house rules state:

Prohibited content includes, but is not limited to content that, in the opinion of Provider:

14.1 is offensive;

14.2 promotes racism, terrorism, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual or links to websites that promote the same;

How do comments such as these not fall foul of that?

The Sun's sensitive coverage of Haiti

The huge earthquake that hit Haiti earlier in the year saw tens of thousands of people killed and injured, hundreds of thousands left homeless and several highly-populated areas were wrecked, including the capital city.

Good job the Sun is sensitive enough to reflect the magnitude of that without resorting to racist stereotypes.

Oh, wait:

In an article on February 3, we implied two thirds of Haitians drank goats' blood while practising voodoo. We are happy to make clear this is not the case.

This apology actually appeared on page 10 of the 16 April edition. Did they really need to wait two-and-a-half months to correct that?

Recommended reading - links

A few links to other blogs with some excellent posts:

Five Chinese Crackers: The onward march of racism in the Express - The racist rag's disgraceful front page headline 'Strangers in our own country' pretends our schools are being over-run by foreigners.

Angry Mob: Richard Littlejohn's 'permanent opposition' - Littlejohn claims he has 'no party political affiliations' yet comes out for the Conservatives (shock!) for the General Election.

Five Chinese Crackers - A look at the PCC's ruling against Rod Liddle. Unlike Liddle, 5CC produces the evidence.

Angry Mob: Really bad journalism - the tabloids claim a boy was left up a tree by a school because of health and safety, forcing the headteacher to put out two statements saying it's 'untrue'.

Jon Slattery: Labour MP tells constituent: 'Life can only get better - if you stop reading the Daily Mail'.

Angry Mob: A catalogue of lies - Round-up of four nonsense articles from the Mail, including three health and safety lies.

One, with the headline 'Environmentalist fined £4,000 after catching the wrong kind of crayfish' only revealed later in the article that he had in fact illegally caught 40 crayfish, and cooked some of them. If he'd been an immigrant, it's unlikely they would have been so sympathetic.

And in 'Council bans dogs from parks leaving owners wondering where to go 'walkies'', there was no blanket ban, as implied. Instead, the truth was that:

The vast majority of the orders ban dogs from fenced-off children's play areas - they do not ban dogs from the council's four Green Flag Award-winning parks which are popular with dog walkers, or from the vast majority of open space in the district.

The handful of village playing fields which are now subject to exclusion orders were included at the request of the various parish councils who felt such action was needed as dog fouling had become a serious problem in those localities.

The Mail's rules about who is 'British'

Sunder Katwala has written a couple of interesting posts over at Next Left about the Mail's attacks on Nick Clegg's background in the wake of the leader's television debate.

On 17 April the Mail ran this headline:

Clegg, the panto Yorkshireman: He plays the Northerner, but he's really from the Home Counties and is as posh as Dave

This seemed particularly hypocritical given the Mail's front page a week earlier:


James Chapman's article said:

Gordon Brown set the tone for a class war campaign yesterday by mentioning his 'ordinary middle-class background' while his Labour attack dogs launched spiteful attacks on David Cameron's privileged upbringing.

Whereas Stephen Robinson's article on Clegg said:

Clegg...admits his upbringing was 'affluent' - his father owns a 20-room chalet in the Alps and a chateau near Bordeaux.

Friends speak of the close and loving family that was young Clegg's world until he was sent away as a boarder at Westminster School, where fees are now close to £30,000 a year.

Adding:

But those friends, who comprise smart European business and political people, British media folk and a smattering of theatrical types such as Sam Mendes - who directed him in a student production at Cambridge - must have choked on their ciabatta when Clegg reinvented himself as a Yorkshireman, speaking passionately about 'my city of Sheffield'.

How dare a politician be friends with 'smart' people who are European.

So do as we say, not as we do when it comes to spiteful attacks on people's upbringing, apparently.

But then the Mail gets really ugly:

Despite his Anglo-Saxon name, Nick Clegg is by blood the least British leader of a British political party, the son of a Dutch mother and a half-Russian merchant banker father.

Why does this matter? And what point are they really trying to make with that statement?

They upped the rhetoric in the Mail on Sunday the following day, with the headline:

His wife is Spanish, his mother Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin doctor German. Is there ANYTHING British about LibDem leader?

Clegg was born, raised and educated in Britain - as the Mail on Sunday profile makes clear. So why are they asking if there is 'anything' British about him - and thereby implying there isn't?

As Sunder points out, this follows on from the Mail's claim that the British-born children and grandchildren of immigrants are not really British.

It's hard to work out exactly what these comments about Clegg are meant to achieve, other than to suggest he's not quite 'one of us' and therefore not to be trusted. But would they ever make this point about, for example, Prince Charles or Winston Churchill?

But it seems the Mail are setting their own arbitrary rules about what constitutes being British. They don't use the word 'indigenous' - as favoured by the BNP - but they don't seem too far away from that.

If the Mail wishes to attack Clegg and his party, it should do so on the basis of their beliefs, their policies, their ideas, their voting record.

But they should leave the snide remarks about race out of it.

More recommended reading

An excellent post by Anton at Enemies of Reason about this disgraceful Express front page:

The story also appeared in the Mail.

As Anton says:

Let's not pretend, please, that the Express would have put this on its front page, had it not involved immigrants.

Moreover, since all burglary charges were dropped, it's not clear that they stole anything. Certainly not a house.

Anton again:

This week there'll be plenty of times when people who aren't immigrants will be up in the dock for criminal damage - and worse - but will they get reported on the front page of the Express? I really doubt it.

Over at Angry Mob, Uponnothing has looked at one of the Mail's latest attempts to attack the BBC for no reason at all. Apparently, BBC1 showed some sport on a Saturday. Shocking, eh?

Today, they're trying to claim there's a story in the fact some people on the BBC messageboards (a favourite source of Mail stories about viewer 'fury') were complaining about an expert on the Antiques Roadshow having less than spotless fingernails.

Essential stuff from the Mail.

Talking of essential, the Mail was publishing 18-month-old stories on its website yesterday, as highlighted by Will Sturgeon at the Media Blog. Remember the one about the Welsh road sign that had an out-of-office reply printed on it?

Apparently, no one at the Mail did, despite the fact they covered it at the time.

The story appeared on the 'most read' list of the BBC website over the weekend (yes, using the BBC site for a 'story', again) and without checking the date, the Mail mindlessly copied it.

How newspapers influence their readers

Over at Angry Mob, Uponnothing has written about the brainless comments left on the Mail website about the treatment of Gurkhas and immigrants.

The gulf between what Mail readers (and indeed, Mail columnists) think immigrants, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers each get when they come to Britain, and what they actually get (or more likely, don't get), is immense.

And another comment on another story on the Mail website today showed the same thing:


So Steve believes illegal immigrants register to vote and he pays taxes just so they can claim benefits and housing for a 'lifetime'. You might think that would be hard to do while remaining 'illegal'.

Yet the Mail moderators think this nonsense is a legitimate comment to be posted.

And, sigh, at least 721 Mail readers agree with them.

Richard Littlejohn: alleged journalist

As Jan Moir showed, the Daily Mail likes to insult the recently dead.

Today, Richard Littlejohn launches into an entirely predictable rant about Michael Foot, explaining how everyone who has praised the former Labour leader over the past few days - including those who worked closely with him - were all absolutely wrong.

The obituaries seemed to agree on one thing: he suffered from asthma in his youth.

The BBC say Foot was:

Turned down by the military because of his chronic asthma.

The Guardian refers to Foot being 'plagued by asthma' as a young man. The Telegraph says he had it too. Even Mail columnist Quentin Letts agreed Foot suffered with asthma, in a column he wrote in 2007.

But Dr Littlejohn? He knows better. He refers to it as:

alleged asthma.

Charming.

He also criticises Foot for not enlisting when the Second World War broke out:

We still don't know the real reason Michael Foot managed to avoid military service.

And by 'we' he means 'I don't believe his story'. Because, like the BBC, the Mail's own obituary pointed out:

Foot immediately volunteered to serve but was turned down because he had weak lungs.

Elsewhere in today's column, he tells Ashley Cole to shave:

Frankly, I've no interest in Ashley Cole's sex life, only whether he's going to be fit - mentally and physically - to play for England in South Africa.

One observation, though.

He should lose the beard he's grown since his troubles with Cheryl began.

It makes him look as if he's stepped straight out of an Alky Ada martyrdom video.

See? Because if you're skin isn't white and you've got a black beard you have to be a terrorist! It's 'funny' because it's true!

Ahem.

And he's not done there, either. The death of MP Winston Churchill this week leads Littlejohn to tell this side-splitting story:

Churchill, who died this week aged 69, always struggled to escape the shadow of his famous grandfather and wearily expected to be reminded of this on the doorstep.

'Good morning, I'm Winston Churchill, your Conservative candidate,' he announced to a chap who answered the door on a local council estate.

The man looked him up and down, curiously, then said: 'Do you know, you're the first white man called Winston I've ever met.'

Haha! Because casual racism is so funny! And worth repeating 18 years later!

Now isn't that worth over £700,000 a year?

Elsewhere he does another of his 'hilarious' imaginary phone conversations - something he last did a variation of on 24 February.

In Tuesday's column, he did one of his 'hilarious' imagine-if-this-was-going-to-happen-in-the-future articles, which managed to squeeze in yet another mention (is it up to double figures yet?) of the gold reserves.

Oh, and if 'hilarious' imagine-if-this-was-going-to-happen-in-the-future articles sounds familiar, that's because he wheeled out that dead horse the week before with a flight of fancy about a possible war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, an article that was (surprise) littered with mistakes.

He said:

A recent spending review even proposed merging all three branches of the services to save money.

Errr, not quite. For one, it wasn't an official spending review but a Green Paper of reform. Secondly, it never proposed what he claims. The Mail's own report on it said:

The future of the RAF and Royal Navy were thrown into doubt last night after the head of the Armed Forces said their merger should be 'debated'.

A 'debate' about merging two of the armed servecs isn't the same as 'proposing' the merger of all three. Later, Littlejohn returned to the theme:

the Government is already talking about scrapping the RAF... We're down to the Red Arrows and a couple of Spitfires from the museum at Hendon.

The Government could always prevail upon civilian airlines to provide transport. I'm sure Richard Branson would be happy to oblige.

Of course, 'scrapping of the RAF' wouldn't actually mean Britain would suddenly have no planes, just that they'd be assigned to the Navy and Army. Presumably he's exaggerating for comic effect but when it's not funny, it's hard to tell.

In the same section, he referred to:

air-sea rescue has been sold off to the French

which isn't entirely true either - it's been sold to Soteria Consortium, which is made up of:

French defence company Thales, helicopter operator CHC and the Royal Bank of Scotland

And CHC is Canadian.

Next he wrote:

Faced with an Argentinian gunboat, the Royal Navy would be ordered to drop their weapons and surrender without a shot being fired, just as they did in the Shattal- Arab.

Shattal-Arab? Surely that's Shatt al-Arab?

And twice he referred to

Port Stanley

which, granted, is widely used, but the capital of the Falklands is actually called Stanley.

Then in a desperate effort to cram in as many of his witless catchphrases as possible:

If we actually captured an Argentinian combatant, we would have to release him immediately for fear of infringing his yuman rites.

Otherwise he could be flown back to London in a private jet, where the BBC could interview him about how he was tortured and he would be in line for a book deal and shedload of com-pen-sayshun.

And that's before elf 'n' safety have got in on the act and ruled the entire operation too dangerous. Meanwhile, back in London, the Not In My Name Crowd would be having a field day.

Gasp. Just what is the point of saying those things in that way?

See what he did there: it's about those Muslims back from Guantanamo. It seems he has to mention it every week, no matter how irrelevant it is. Such subtlety in his - ahem - 'satire'.

Talking of satire, the Mail made this apology for Littlejohn on 9 February:

In a satirical article on January 12 and on the morning of 2 February we mistakenly referred to Broadmoor hospital as a prison and suggested in the first story that it had padded cells.

We are happy to make clear that Broadmoor does not have any cells.

As a high security hospital it supports patients suffering from serious mental health problems accommodated on wards.

In addition, Ian Brady has never been a patient at Broadmoor. Our online stories have been adjusted to omit these errors which we regret.

If you search the Mail website for 'Broadmoor' this does not come up in the results. Surely they're not trying to hide their apologies, are they?

The use of the word 'satirical' is a little confusing - surely that isn't an accurate description of Littlejohn's drivel? But this was certainly him.

And that wasn't the only apology recently.

On 12 February, after his rant about torture ('I don't condone torture. But...'), he turned his fire onto lazy fat people:

Obesity isn't an illness, it's gluttony. They should all be told to get off their fat backsides and find a job.

In his next column he rowed back:

Some readers have complained that there are people who are obese for medical or severe psychological reasons, a point I am prepared to concede.

Littlejohn making crass generalisations? Surely not?

Oh and on 8 February he had to apologise for accusing Cambridgeshire Police of doing something that was done by Cheshire Police:

I managed to get my constabularies in a twist

he said, to little comic effect. (And he seems to have twisted some of the facts of the case he was discussing, too).

One more. Also on 12 February, he wrote:

And while we're at it, when did every boozer start serving Thai food? I've lost count of the number of times I've looked at a long and complicated pub menu for something simple and been confronted with frozen crispy duck pancakes.

Firstly, is that really what 'every boozer in the land' does?

Secondly, since when were crispy duck pancakes 'Thai food'?

Now isn't that worth over £700,000 a year?

(Hat-tip to the Mailwatch Forum and Guy Clapperton)

Followed by the....what?

Yesterday, a homophobic comment on the Mail website, which crept through while moderation was switched off, somehow avoided being deleted.

But this comment was moderated and approved for publication:

The vile rhetoric of Leo McKinstry

Leo McKinstry is a nasty, intolerant man who gets paid to churn out deeply unpleasant, utterly charmless and endlessly repetitive rants on the Express op-ed page twice a week.

Yesterday's column was one that has been seen many times before: Britain is crap, and it's all the fault of Labour and the immigrants. In 'Labour is guilty of a sickening act of national betrayal' he writes:

Many parts of our towns and cities no longer resemble Britain.

All sense of social cohesion has been lost. We no longer have a common culture, shared heritage or even universal language.

'No longer resemble Britain'? He doesn't say explicitly that there are too many people around who aren't white, but he might as well.

Later, he makes a direct link between immigration and violent crime:

the consequences of mass immigration: the violent crime; overcrowded transport and overstretched hospitals and schools.

It's really quite depressing to read these views getting such a platform. But it's hardly a surprise - he's being repeating the same things for years.

At the start of February, when calling Gordon Brown the worst PM in history, McKinstry said:

Our sense of national identity has been destroyed by the twin forces of mass immigration and multi-culturalism.

Hmm. Sounds familiar. He goes on to claim the Government is engaged in a:

desperate appeasement of militant Islam

although fails to produce much evidence for that. As usual.

In the column before that, 'We are betrayed by Labour's sick, so-called justice' he says:

the Government wilfully destroys our borders, appeases militant Islam, turns London into the global capital of jihad

Ah. That again. But London? More than, say, Afghanistan or Pakistan? Really?

The previous week, in an article about how he would save billions of public spending, he advocated abolishing the entire overseas aid budget as well as the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and its 'politically correct bullying'.

And, of course, the immigrants and Muslims got a kicking too:

It is particularly outrageous when the benefits go to grasping migrants who have made no contribution to our society, as highlighted by a string of recent cases where new arrivals have been given housing benefits worth more than £100,000 to live in luxurious houses in west london, far beyond the dreams of most Britons.

Why should we be required to support in our jails foreign criminals who should be de- ported, or give welfare hand- outs to Muslim extremists who want to blow us up? This abuse of the taxpayer has to end. Radical surgery of the state would be a gain, not a pain.

The lack of capital letters and other formatting errors, incidentally, mark all McKinstry's online articles - it's not clear why.

'It is time to stand up to this plague of violent crime', he raged on 18 January. Guess who's responsible for that, according to McKinstry:

Mass immigration has not only shattered social cohesion but also brought a vast influx of criminals into our society. According to police figures, one murder in every five is committed by a foreigner.

That figure is totally untrue, but just because it's not true, doesn't mean he won't keep mindlessly repeating it.

Then there was 'Immigrants squat in your house and you're powerless' on 14 January, in which he claimed:

large swathes of our country have been taken over by hordes of migrants who have made no contribution to our society yet still believe they are owed a living by the British public.

His two rants before that didn't mention immigration or Islam, but on 28 December normal service was resumed:

For Brown has wilfully put the British people at risk from terrorism by promoting the Islamification of our country, appeasing the radicals and encouraging the settlement here of over two million Muslims.

A 2009 Labour Force Survey put the number of Muslims in Britain at 2.4 million. As there were 1,591,000 at the time of the 2001 census, Brown hasn't encouraged - or even overseen - any such thing.

This blog had previously exposed the repetitive nature of McKinstry's columns - he refers to Labour as Marxists who loathe Britain repeatedly too - as well as their inaccuracies.

But the far more serious concern is that his rhetoric is so inflammatory. In his world, migrants are benefit-grasping, violent criminals who ruin Britain and are responsible for most of the problems in the country today. Muslims are all would-be terrorists who are constantly 'appeased' (a carefully chosen word given its historical context) by Government.

McKinstry never writes anything in praise of immigrants. Indeed, he never mentions immigrants at all unless it's to castigate them or blame them for some ill.

And who does that benefit? It certainly doesn't help that 'social cohesion' he claims to be so worried about.

His language often sounds much like the language of the BNP. So it's no surprise to find a thread with the title 'Fantastic article by Leo McKinstry' (about one of his efforts on immigration and the Government hating white people) on the Stormfront forum.