Mail BBC Bashing Weather Washout

Another day brings another attempt by the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre to put the boot in on the hated BBC, and today’s specialist subject is Regional Weather Forecasts. “Why does the BBC waste your money on so many weather forecasters? One forecast last week - and a dozen different faces across the country” is the headline on Ross Clark’s rant.

What's f***ing wrong with my journalists' research, c***?!? Er, with the greatest of respect, Mr Jay

Er, hello, this is rather obvious, isn’t it? The regional forecast gives the kind of local detail that the national picture cannot do, for reasons of both time and relevance. But on ploughs Clark: “At a time of austerity, when the Culture Secretary has indicated he is prepared to be radical in reconsidering BBC funding, claiming many families find the annual £145.50 licence fee ‘a lot of money’, how much do all these weathermen — and women — cost?” he demands.

And, guess what, the Beeb won’t tell him: “Strangely, I have discovered this is confidential information. The number of weather forecasters and presenters employed by the BBC is, apparently, a secret ... The Beeb simply refused to tell me how many regional forecasters it employs”.

That, Dacre doggies, may be not unrelated to many of them performing other duties apart from weather forecasts: here in the North West, it is not uncommon to see Dianne Oxberry and Eno Eruotor on reporting duties. And talking of our resident evening forecasters, which one has the Mail featured? Ah well. This is where the Dacre doggies sell the pass big time.

So that's Mel Coles, is it?

Clark’s article has a photo for every regional presenter (what a busy life these Daily Mail hacks lead, eh?). And here’s the North West one, captioned “Mel Coles seems happy in the North-West”. Riiight. We have a problem, Northcliffe House bunker: that is not Mel Coles. And Mel Coles is not at BBC North West. Just so you can see that it is not Mel Coles, here she is.

Er, maybe it wasn't, Dacre hacks

The photo is regular BBC North West weather presenter Dianne Oxberry, who will be spending most of today getting teed off by fellow staff members calling her Mel. But, you may point out, Mel Coles does occasionally pop up on North West weather forecasts – so how can that happen if she doesn’t work there? Simples. The BBC has been making cuts in the number of weather forecasters it employs.

Those cuts mean presenters from BBC East Midlands also record a North West forecast as well as one for their home region – especially at weekends. Yes, the cuts the Dacre doggies want to see happen have, er, already happened. And the effect of those cuts has been most keenly felt at the Daily Mail, where it has caused Ross Clark to get his regional forecasters confused.

You want proper journalism? You won’t get it from the Daily Mail, that’s for sure.

MH17 – Citizen Journalism Shames The Press

“Damning US intelligence puts Russia in the dock” proclaims the Times’ front page lead this morning. Thus the orthodox line: only at superpower level can you find the quality of intelligence to nail Vladimir Putin and his followers. This recalls the aftermath of the then USSR shooting down flight KAL007 after it had accidentally strayed over Soviet airspace.

Old media: the Murdoch Times

The USA had what we now know as Global Positioning System (GPS): their military could see that the Russians were dissembling. But what the Times, and most of the mainstream press would rather not admit, is that, with less and less being spent on proper investigative journalism, but more ordinary people having access to the video technology and the internet, the incriminating evidence can come from anywhere.

And nowhere has this been seen to better effect than in the pursuit of evidence to show that a Buk missile launcher was in the rebel-held area of eastern Ukraine at the time Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down last Thursday. Photos and videos were linked to the towns of Snizhne and Torez by using tools such as Google Earth and local language skills.

Not that you would know this from reading the report fashioned by the Daily Mail, which does not credit those who did the hard work, but instead subsumes the results of their research inside a much longer piece giving a wider picture of the shooting down. For citizen journalism to get the credit it deserves, you have to look in at the deeply subversive Guardian.

New media: Eliot Higgins in sofa over-occupation shock ((c) Guardian)

Here, Eliot Higgins (aka Brown Moses) and his new venture Bellingcat are name-checked. Why is this project important? Ah well. Here we enter a world that the Times doesn’t want to talk about, and the Mail doesn’t want to credit. Eliot has made Bellingcat open for anyone to view for the next 48 hours, so you can see how he and his contributors located the Buk.

HERE he analyses a video showing the launcher driving through what was claimed to be the town of Snizhne. Crowd-sourcing and online tools and maps were all that was needed to confirm that it was indeed taken in Snizhne, the apartment block used as a vantage point, and therefore that the Buk was around 10 to 15km from the crash site around the time MH17 was shot down.

HERE the language skills of Aric Toler are used to pinpoint the location where a Buk launcher was seen minus at least one of its rockets. This was shown to be the nearby town of Torez: the yellow facade of the store was key. There is a Kickstarter open for Bellingcat, and you can contribute HERE. I have already done so, as have around 450 others. If the press won’t do this work, there is one alternative.

You want it done properly? Do it yourself. Please support Bellingcat – today.

Reshuffle – It Was Wonderful. Or Not

Tokenism. Insulting. A takeover by “The Blob”. All sentiments from right-leaning pundits after Young Dave completed his ministerial reshuffle last week. But time is ticking down to next May’s General Election. It is time for all loyal Tory-supporting pundits to come to the aid of the party, however lame the narrative. And so in they all trooped, spin prepared, to tell that it was really rather good. Well, nearly all.

Yes, "Oiky", the pundits like you. But you're still demoted

For starters, having Michael “Oiky” Gove demoted to Chief Whip, according to the odious Quentin Letts (let’s not), was No Bad Thing: “Michael Gove sat in the end-of-bench berth reserved for Chief Whips ... To see the Gover in that august position perhaps reminded one that Chief Whip really is quite some job”. Then he pretended that Young Dave had won last week’s PMQs, as he always does.

Letts told that Philip Hammond was another rather good choice, even suggesting him as future Prime Ministerial material (does he have a wisdom tooth excuse, though?). So Letts is already saying it was all excellent. Bruce “Brute” Anderson at the Telegraph tried to outdo even that: the reshuffle was “just about the most abused ever. In my view, the critics are completely wrong”.

What of the Gove sacking? “The removal of Michael Gove was the most dramatic aspect. It aroused great alarm and despondency: would this mean the end of the Gove reforms? There is a simple and emphatic answer to that: absolutely not. Mr Gove was not only a good education secretary. He was a great one, and he brought to his daunting tasks radical energy, indomitable courage and a profound idealism”.

So that’s another inhabitant of cloud cuckoo land, then. But there was no shortage of eager pundits wanting to talk up Cameron’s new team, as witness Matthew d’Ancona, whose Gove take is, er, interesting: “Cameron had tailored an entirely bespoke role for his friend and colleague ... It is certainly true that Gove had discussed a move of this sort with both Cameron and Osborne”.

You think that was barking? The peroration was even more out there: “This reshuffle was not a victory for Left or Right, men or women, but for sturdy Tory pragmatism. It is this which has guided Cameron’s career for 20 years. More to the point, it is this which he believes, with growing confidence, will steer his party to victory next May”. Cue endless re-runs of that Smash advert. Anyone care to dissent?

You betcha, says Sarah: at the Spectator, under the title “David Cameron’s Stepford Ministers” [ouch!], Melissa Kite observed that “As women routinely break through the glass ceiling purely on their merits, in arenas from banking and law to engineering and information technology, Cameron presides over the last bastion of soft misogyny”. No invites to 10 Downing Street receptions for you, Ms K.

And she may have something: Cameron is, after all, a former PR practitioner.

Gaza – Mad Mel v Mandela

The situation in Gaza has become desperate: hospitals have been overwhelmed,  mortuaries are overflowing with the death toll rising beyond the 400 mark, most of those civilians. So when a huge demonstration took place yesterday in London, one might have thought that even the most hawkish right-wingers would pause for thought. But not Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips.

Definitely not Fair and Balanced

Mad Mel was at her screaming, intolerant worst. That the Israeli Government might be overreacting and indulging in disproportionate behaviour was not allowed to enter. Anyone dissenting from her view was hell-bent on the destruction of Israel.

The demonstration was her main target. “‘From river to the sea’: London demo reveals true aim of Gaza mob is racist destruction of historic Jewish Israel” she frothed, not realising that Israel is, historically, just 66 years old.

And note that a peaceful demonstration is, in the retelling, a “mob”. But there was more: “Hamas double war crimes ignored; instead Israel defence against them called war crime. Mass moral derangement in UK”. The Guardian doesn’t agree with her.

But someone does: “Douglas Murray calls out real agenda for pro-Gaza demonstrators as Jew-hatred. All decent folk should share disgust”. Yes, I’m disgusted that anyone should take an Islamophobic bigot like Murray on trust.

That, though, did not concern Mel: “Largely Muslim Jew-hating Gaza demos London and Europe threaten harm not to Israel but Europe, says Douglas Murray”. Citing Murray in support even once is bad. Twice ... you figure it out.

And then there was a suitable canard to finish: “As others have observed, if Gaza demilitarised there would be peace and no dead Palestinians. If Israel demilitarised there would be genocide”. And what kind of comparison is that?

It’s a pretty poor one. And we can get some idea how poor when considering how someone who experienced decades of the Apartheid regime in South Africa viewed how Israel is behaving towards the Palestinians. Nelson Mandela noted that “The so-called ‘Palestinian autonomous areas’ are Bantustans. These are restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli Apartheid system”.

He continued “Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children”.

Before Melanie Phillips talks of “demilitarisation”, she should heed those words. But she, and too many others, will not. There is no military solution available in Gaza.

Owen Paterson – The Curse Of Booker

The Telegraph’s serial fraud Christopher Booker had no doubt about the real hero of sorting the Somerset floods, when dispensing his dubiously sourced pearls of wisdom the weekend before Young Dave’s cabinet reshuffle. “The real unsung hero of this story has been our Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson” he told readers. The fact that it stopped raining might have also helped, of course.

“For years now, Paterson has had the powerful ‘environmental’ lobby foaming at the mouth, because he has dared to question so many of their fashionable delusions. But it is hard to think of any minister whose decisive, down-to-earth leadership has been more effective in helping to solve such an immense practical problem” rambled Booker, as he heaped praise on his new hero.

His words were more effective than he could have predicted: soon afterwards, Paterson had been summoned by Cameron to be given the hard word, and he was out, replaced by Liz Truss. The sacked MP duly found solace in somehow allowing his thoughts to be heard by Mail On Sunday political editor Simon Walters, in a move which may not find favour at 10 Downing Street.

“If you sack me it is a smash in the teeth for the 12 million people who live in the countryside. I am one of the few Conservatives who really understand them ... If you chuck me out you are rejecting everything I have stood for ... I can out-Ukip Ukip” he is reported to have recalled, with “A Senior MP” telling “Owen was shocked to be told he was losing his job. The PM said he had to make way for new faces”.

Who was that “Senior MP”? Most likely Paterson himself, rather like the “Well-placed source” who said “Mr Paterson launched a passionate defence of his record, saying: ‘I have been every bit as radical in environment as Michael Gove has been at education and Iain Duncan Smith with welfare ... I have not been afraid to take on the greens on everything, from fracking to GM foods, the badger cull, even bees!’”

So that’s a routine level of counter-briefing, then. But despite his refusal to go quietly, and mildly inconvenient stance on a number of issues, Booker has rushed to defend Paterson: “It is hard to recall recently a more direct political insult than his contemptuous sacking of Owen Paterson as our Environment Secretary; a man who, below the media radar, has been the most effective of all his ministers”.

There was more: “Cameron’s treatment of his most effective minister is not just an insult to Paterson – it is also an insult to the countryside and to the political process; a surrender to those who put mindless spin above the need to see our country sensibly and intelligently run”. One might think that, after cursing Paterson once, Booker might stop and think. Who knows what fate may befall the MP next?

With friends like Christopher Booker, no politician is in need of enemies.

Top Six – July 20

So what’s hot, and what’s not, in the past week’s blogging? Here are the six most popular posts on Zelo Street for the past seven days, counting down in reverse order, because, well, I have to go into town later. So there.

6 Toby Young Plagiarism Hypocrisy The loathsome Tobes, in a particularly mean-spirited rant, asserted that a head teacher who had re-worked a letter to pupils from the USA should be sacked, if only for plagiarism. He would know about plagiarism, as he’s been called out for it previously.

5 Tory Tax Attack Unravels Young Dave made another of his rabbit-out-of-hat claims during the last PMQs before the summer recess. But his interpretation of Harriet Harman’s words was disputed, not least by Iain Dale, on whose LBC show she said them. He’s a former Tory Parliamentary candidate.

4 Guido Fawked – Anti-Semitism Hypocrisy The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog are hot on what they see as anti-Semitic attacks. But that hasn’t stopped one of their number doing just that, so they could kick Ed Miliband.

3 Guido Fawked – A Sketch Too Far Simon Carr’s obsessive hatred of the Labour party spilled over into inexcusable abuse as he said Ed Miliband was “like a spastic marionette”. And this from a blog whose owner is a Tory donor.

2 Gove Has Gone Let joy be unconfined! Young Dave bowed to the inevitable and demoted Michael “Oiky” Gove in the face of his mounting unpopularity and inability to keep his polecats under control.

1 WLFS – The Horrors Continue More unfavourable news arrived on Zelo Street on goings-on at the West London Free School. And there could be worse to come.

And that’s the end of another blogtastic week, blog pickers. Not ‘arf!

Russia – We Must Do Something

The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by what looks to have been a missile fired from a Russian Buk mobile anti-aircraft battery has led some among the punditerati to remarkably hyperbolic conclusions. This is somehow the act that shows Britain is no longer a world power, as if it was right up until someone loosed off that missile before figuring out what he was firing at.

On the other hand, Vladimir Putin is held to be the one with real power, and the West is painted as disinterested, which is a strange line for a press that pretends to be free and fearless to take. Daily Mail Comment, the authentic voice of the Vagina Monologue, wails “As Flight MH17 is shot down over our continent, almost certainly with weaponry supplied by the Kremlin, where are the statesmen of stature?”

That the “statesmen of stature” are not going to order up a nuclear strike on Moscow does not enter. Instead, the Mail blames, well, Brussels. “Don’t look ... to the EU, where the know-nothing former local council officer Lady Ashton, ludicrously in charge of foreign affairs, has poked the Russian bear with a puny stick by attempting to lure Ukraine into the Brussels fold”.

Cathy Ashton has achieved more through quiet persuasion than Dacre has by his repeated bludgeoning of anyone of dissenting view (see my take on that HERE). But we in the West are painted as powerless, and this, according to Max “Hitler” Hastings, is because Putin is a liar. Cathy Ashton is derided as “ridiculous”. European leaders are mere “marshmallows”.

Over at the bear pit that is Telegraph blogs, there is a yet more screaming click-bait take by the increasingly deluded Dan Hodges: the shooting down of an airliner that was not owned by a British carrier, was not built in Britain, and was not flying to, from, via or over Britain, signalled the end of British “soft power”. Perhaps “soft power” prevents aircraft around the world from crashing.

Why oh why oh why are we not doing something – in Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Ukraine? The urge to scratch the interventionist itch, so catastrophically indulged by Hodges’ hero Tone, keeps returning. We should spray money we supposedly don’t have up the wall to show these Russian, Middle Eastern and African Johnnies that we know what’s good for them.

If we take the line being pushed by Hodges, Hastings and Dacre – that we’re powerless because we’re not intervening, but relying instead on the “soft power” of trade and aid, then where does this leave China, which is less inclined to military excursions, rather than, er, trade and aid? Does that render China powerless? Was the West powerless because it didn’t go to war with the USSR over KAL007?

Belligerence does not equal strength. But that’s too hard for pundits to understand.

WLFS – The Horrors Continue

After the spin and denial from the loathsome Toby Young, more news arrives on Zelo Street regarding recent events at the West London Free School (WLFS). And the picture it paints is a particularly grim one. How grim? My information suggests that, unless the school improves across the board, and rapidly, it will soon have to be taken over by an academy trust that knows what it’s doing.

Is Tobes' time in the Weinbunker at an end?

Yes, folks, things are that bad. One might expect, then, that the press would be all over WLFS, but then, so far, Tobes has managed to satisfy them with spin – except, I’m told, the Evening Standard, which had started to get a sniff of the school’s problems. Their investigation, though, seems to have been “bought off” in exchange for that recent exclusive which I covered last week.

My latest information confirms that former head Sam Naismith was caused to resign after it was discovered that he was running a consultancy in the school’s time and on its premises. Two other staff members were involved, and both have either left, or are in the process of leaving. Tobes no doubt has his form of words at the ready, but, in effect, all three were given the sack.

Several recent departures from the teaching staff have cited a worrying variety of reasons for moving on: that the leadership team is not up to the job, discipline has deteriorated, with enforcement of standards and sanctions thought inconsistent and even contradictory, teachers feel overworked, not all the staff are considered to be pulling their weight, and that all of this is getting through to the pupils.

So it is, apparently, not unusual to hear them tell that “everyone keeps leaving us”. Things are no better for new teachers, many of whom are on their first teaching job. Those expecting some kind of structured induction programme are coming away disappointed. Worst of all, when it comes to teaching the new Govian GCSEs that Tobes has previously lauded, WLFS is not at present fit for purpose.

The tale of woe extends beyond the core curriculum: I’m told that a recent school trip had to be hastily rescheduled after the teachers who should have been accompanying it slept in and failed to show. And a particularly worrying allegation has been made regarding the funds that are intended to follow, and be used exclusively for, children with special educational needs.

So don’t be surprised if Ofsted arrive on the WLFS doorstep mob-handed in the near future. Meanwhile, some on the governing trust have taken exception to Tobes taking to a variety of publications to sound off about matters educational, if only because of the possibility of blowback if and when WLFS is revealed to be found wanting. The end of Tobes’ time as CEO may be closer than even I imagined.

Anyone with further information on the WLFS debacle – email address is at right.

Mail Swallows Its Gove Spin

There can be no sadder sight in journalism than those who have been deliberately spinning and talking up politicians who do not otherwise merit their position keeping up the pretence, even after that politician has been removed from office. Thus it has been with the thoroughly deserved demotion last week of Michael “Oiky” Gove, and the desperate wailing of pundits in its wake.

Yes, "Oiky", you're sacked. Off you go

This refusal to confront reality – that Gove’s flagship Free Schools policy had gone over a billion notes over budget, that some of them had been forcibly closed down, with others courting a variety of controversy over location, probity, organisation and standards, together with his alienation of the teaching profession and many parents - is most noticeable within the Northcliffe House bunker.

Yes, at the Daily Mail, Gove is still not unadjacent to some kind of earthbound deity. Pundits are rallying round to his wife Sarah “Vain” Vine, who has taken “Oiky’s” defenestration particularly badly – only yesterday she was happily Retweeting another supportive article on the subject – with one message, that Young Dave was wrong. Typical of the supporters is Amanda Bloody Platell.

Awww bless!

“My fellow columnist Sarah Vine’s tweet after her husband Michael Gove was demoted from Education Secretary to Chief Whip bears repeating. ‘Biggest losers in today’s reshuffle?’ she asked. ‘Bright kids at low-achieving state schools.’ Indeed. For the PM to put his own future before that of children is despicable; to boot out one of our greatest education reformers is unforgivable” she whined.

And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. One, as noted, Ms Platell takes the spin that Gove is some kind of “great reformer”, which he was not. And two, the author of that Tweet was not Ms Vine, but LBC host Julia Hartley-Brewer. Thus the lousy quality of Daily Mail journalism summed up in one. But support is at hand from Simon “Enoch was right” Heffer.

Award-winning journalistic accuracy in action

The Hefferlump tells that “the greatest damage has not been done to Mr Gove — who will surely rise again — but to generations of children who will now not benefit from his radicalism as Education Secretary ... What is so depressing is how  Mr Gove’s demotion perfectly symbolises the short-termism that characterises David Cameron’s whole approach to politics”.

He goes on (unfortunately) “For the Prime Minister ... nothing matters but the re-election of one David Cameron”. Rather than handing Labour a majority so that the Mail’s clueless pundits can moan even more loudly, you mean? Gove pissed all over his colleagues, he wouldn’t keep his SpAds in line, he presided over the spraying of taxpayer funds up the wall, and the public hated the sight of him.

Amanda Platell and Simon Heffer think that’s A Very Good Thing. Er, hello?

Daily Mail Endorses Daily Mail Sexism

The obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre found itself once more accused of routine sexism, and gratuitously objectifying women, this week in the aftermath of Young Dave’s jolly good cabinet reshuffle. Selecting only the younger female new recruits to Government, the Dacre doggies went over the top as they talked of the “Downing Street catwalk”.

Behold the arbiter of what constitutes acceptable behaviour

This was compounded by calling the likes of Esther McVey and Liz Truss “girls”, although they are 46 and 38 respectively. There was leering talk of “thigh flashing”. Ms McVey is then reported to suggest the Mail’s behaviour is fine, because she “has laughed off her new title of Queen of the Downing Street catwalk as 'fine if it inspires girls to go into politics'”.

There was much mockery of the Mail: Nick Clegg Tweeted a photo of his outfit the following day with the comment “What I wore to the office today. Fingers crossed the Mail approves. Hope I don’t look too ‘80s cabin attendant’”. Becky Barrow, leaving the Mail for pastures new, said “One thing that I will not miss about working for the Mail: unspeakably awful and demeaning spreads about women”.

 Cheryl Gillan was appalled: “I sat at the breakfast table with my male colleague, saying I cannot believe we have all these exciting politicians into key positions and what people are talking about it is what they are wearing, their makeup, how tight their jacket is and what their shoes look like. I think it's just insulting. In the same way, when I left office, I was very cross with the media treatment”

Yes, the Mail was made the butt of jokes across the political spectrum. How to respond? Simples. It’s Friday, so it’s the deeply unpleasant Jan Moir, the Glenda to end all Glendas. “Call me sexist, but women's clothes DO matter!” she harrumphed. “What an utter disgrace against taste, against humanity, among all the hard-fought gains women have made over the centuries” she blethered. It is? How so?

“I’m talking about Liz Truss pairing black shoes with a blue handbag. Has the woman gone mad? It’s as if Accessorize and the concept of tasteful mix-and-match had never happened ... the fact of the matter is that women are extremely interested, not to say fascinated, by what other women wear. I know I am”. Well, that’s telling me, and no mistake. And, as the man said, there’s more.

“Just look at Penny Mordaunt, an MP for whom I have enormous admiration, sailing into No 10 in a fabulous dress like a magnificent purple ship. I felt like cheering; her dress was so modern, perfect, appropriate — and just a little bit joyous, too. It said something about Mordaunt, something rather life affirming. And what is wrong with that?” So that means more of those “unspeakably awful and demeaning” spreads.

The Daily Mail approves of its own behaviour. Isn’t that a remarkable coincidence?

Guido Fawked – Anti-Semitism Hypocrisy

Those wondering why using terms like “marionette” when talking about Jews was not a clever or sensible thing to do, following my adverse comment on the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his superannuated sleazebag sketchwriter Simon Carr’s abusive characterisation of Mil The Younger the other day, are in luck: The Great Guido himself has told us why this is A Very Bad Thing.

1930s anti-Semitism using a Marionette caricature

As the Holocaust Chronicle shows, during the 1930s there were a number of portrayals of Jews as “puppet masters”, with those they thus controlled therefore mere marionettes. This was also confirmed by the Fawkes rabble when they launched an attack on Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell, although Bell had deliberately used glove puppets and not marionettes.

Bell’s suggestion that Israeli PM Binyamin Netenyahu was manipulating William ‘Ague and supposed Middle East envoy Tone was milked heavily by The Great Guido, to the extent of Staines ordering up a crude Hitler characterisation from his resident and not very talented cartoonist. The message was clear: the Fawkes folks were hot on any suggestion of “Jews as puppet masters”.

Now look at Carr’s “sketch” from Wednesday, which asserts that Ed Miliband “dances at the despatch box like a spastic marionette”, following that with talking of his “convulsive string master taking another swig of the meths”. Quite apart from the barrel-scraping abuse of “spastic”, there is a clear instance of anti-Semitism – from a blog that likes to pretend it is hot on anti-Semitism.

And, on top of the rank hypocrisy, Staines will have known full well that Carr had a tendency to this kind of behaviour. Take this sketch from March 2011: “Over here we have the tall, well-dressed captain of the Upper Blues, popular with the grown-ups, easy way about him with the younger boys. And over there, that specimen is the head of the Lower Reds with the ears, teeth, and peculiar mouth”.

Ready? Here it comes: “Not exactly swarthy, but not what you'd call properly English either. Something rum about him”. And what, Simon, would you have meant by that? Something Middle Eastern, perhaps? As in “Disney could use him as a model for a villainous vizier in the Arabian Nights. Do you get him up in the morning by rubbing his lamp?” Swarthy. Not properly English. Rum. Perhaps Middle Eastern.

Then Carr introduces his “marionette” jibe, and we know exactly how “swarthy”, “not properly English”, and “rum” he means. How very far-right 1930s. How very nod-and-wink. How very driving-it-round-the-houses-to-avoid-a-direct-Jewish-reference. And how blatant does the combination of anti-Semitism and hypocrisy have to be to give off such a stench that someone calls a halt to it?

Staines and his pals have revealed their true colours. They’re totally out of order.

Malaysia Airlines MH17 – We Have Been Here Before

Air crash investigation, by its thoroughness and impartiality, helps prevent recurrence of accident types. So it is the worst feeling when an aircraft crashes and it becomes clear that we have been here before; that it really should not have been allowed to happen. Thus the feeling in the aftermath of yesterday’s downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine with the loss of 298 lives.

Modern airliners like the Boeing 777 do not just fall out of the sky on spec. The aircraft was en route from Schiphol to Kuala Lumpur and in level flight at well over 30,000 feet. Meanwhile, rebel forces in eastern Ukraine had been happily potting military aircraft recently as part of their campaign against the Government in Kiev. But, it is thought, these were all flying at rather lower altitude.

Someone, though, had got hold of a Buk surface-to-air missile launcher, which can take out an aircraft at up to 70,000 feet. They then loosed it off without correctly identifying what they were firing at. Yes, we have been here not once before, but arguably twice, and both involved the same catastrophic loss of life. The first such incident that comes to mind happened in the Strait of Hormuz in 1988.

The warship USS Vincennes, without correctly identifying its target, shot at and destroyed an Airbus A300 flying Iran Air flight 655 from Bander Abbas to Dubai. The death toll of 290 remains the worst involving an Airbus aircraft. Worse, the subsequent evasion and dissembly by the USA helped set in train events that led Abu Jibril’s gang to bomb Pan Am flight 103 the following December.

There was a precursor event even to this appalling mistake: in 1983, during a period of heightened tension between the USA and then USSR, Korean Air flight KAL007 deviated from its flight path between Anchorage and Seoul, the error taking it so far to the north that it crossed well into Soviet airspace – worse, this was clearly understood to be prohibited airspace.

The pilot of the interceptor that rocketed the Boeing 747 correctly identified the type of aircraft. But he had his orders, and the “intruder” had already flown over the Kamchatka peninsula: why would a civilian airliner do this? The 747 was on the point of exiting Soviet airspace and a spur of the moment decision was made: 269 people died. The USSR was in the doghouse for some time after that.

And the USSR’s successor nation, the Russia of Vladimir Putin, is now well and truly back in that same doghouse. Just as his predecessors in the Kremlin, and the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush, his reaction thus far has been to deflect and dissemble. But if his armed forces are so inept that they can’t stop the Buk falling into yet less competent hands, it is nobody’s fault but theirs.

We should never, but never, have to re-learn those lessons from the 1980s.

Toby Young Plagiarism Hypocrisy

The loathsome Toby Young has a new bee in his bonnet: plagiarism. And not just any old plagiarism, but the kind practiced by one of those rotten lefty teachers who have been cheering to the rafters after Young Dave dispensed with the services of Michael “Oiky” Gove at the DfE, leaving a disconsolate Tobes to blubber into his reassuringly upmarket Waitrose muesli.

Tobes remains stuck in the Weinbunker

Rachel Tomlinson, head teacher at Barrowford primary school – that’s near the Lancashire town of Nelson – had sent a letter to pupils along with their Key Stage 2 (KS2) test results. The letter “told them the tests do not always assess what makes them ‘special and unique’”. Ms Tomlinson, however, “denied the letter was telling pupils that test scores did not matter”.

She explained “We never give pupils the message that academic attainment isn't important - what we do is celebrate that we send really independent, confident, articulate learners on to the next stage of their school career”. And she made no secret of her having modelled the letter on one available from the web: the original featured in a blog from the USA.

So far, so uplifting, but for Tobes, this is clear evidence of how our education system has gone to the dogs: “Nicky Morgan should read this. It will give her a good idea of just how much more work there is to do when it comes to improving England's state schools”. Barrowford primary was rated “good” at its last Ofsted inspection – the same rating achieved by Tobes’ West London Free School (WLFS).

He therefore has little room to talk, but he’s going to anyway: “Yes, Nicky Morgan, you should read this letter – and then encourage the local education authority in Lancashire to sack Ms Tomlinson. She doesn't have any confidence in externally-moderated Key Stage 2 tests. She thinks if children don't do well in them it's their fault, not hers. She's encouraging practices at her school that will entrench inequality. And she's a plagiarist”.

Quite apart from the characteristically mean-spirited tone, Tobes has clearly not bothered to do the most basic research before shooting his mouth off – no change there, then – and, although he isn’t going to tell you this, plagiarism is one area where he has no room to talk.

Tobes’ memoir of his time at Vanity Fair in New York, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, stood accused of plagiarising an article for the New York Times by John Tierney. Graydon Carter, who both hired and fired Tobes, asserted thus. His excuse? That British journalists and authors were “a little less precious about this kind of thing”. So Toby Young says plagiarism is OK. Then he doesn’t.

Toby Young is an ocean-going, unprincipled hypocrite, and shameless with it.

Guido Fawked – A Sketch Too Far

Gratuitous abuse directed at Mil The Younger is not a new thing: this is, after all, the stock-in-trade of countless Z-list pundits across the right, from the whole range of newspapers to ostensibly serious magazines to online publications to the blogosphere. One might have thought the market to be near saturation, and the scope for scraping the barrel exhausted.

Worst tribute band ever warms up. Allegedly

But that thought would have been misplaced, after the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines invited otherwise redundant ex-Independent sketch writer Simon Carr to join his obedient rabble. Staines told that “Simon is a great parliamentary sketch writer and he's been around for absolute [sic] ages. We have always been pretty viscious [sic] and Simon isn't afraid of upsetting anyone”.

So what is Carr – the one at left in the photo above, who looks like a refugee from The Addams Family – giving The Great Guido? Just how “vicious” is this titan of the retelling? And the answer is, not very – unless you rate 1960s playground abuse. And forget any adherence to the real world: “Oh, it’s such a time to be a Tory. The best reshuffle in modern times has put the party onto an election-winning footing”.

No, don’t laugh: his boss is now taking his orders from CCHQ, remember. And doesn’t Si let us know it: “Every week Cameron looks easier, calmer, more in control of his party”. Of course he does, and if I had wings, why, I’d just off and fly. But then he tries “vicious”, and it all goes wrong. Miliband, he tells, “dances at the despatch box like a spastic marionette”. Have a think about that.

“Spastic”. That’s so low, it doesn’t get out of the sewer. And then we have “marionette”. Ed Miliband is Jewish. Hello Simon! You do know that calling “marionette” at Jewish people is a no-no, don’t you? Whatever – he clearly thinks that yelling “spastic” is fine, so he’s hit bedrock already. The only problem for Staines and his pals is that he’s clearly still digging.

Perhaps he can raise the tone – how about that lame excuse for binning “Oiky” Gove? Ah yes, this was delivered in “Cameron’s ave atque vale, major public school, inner Temple way”. Oh I say, that’s so toweringly intellectual I bet he could almost soil himself! Gosh, he’s just too good for mere sketches! Before we know it, he’ll be slipping big words like “corrugated” and “duffle-coat” into his musings!

But this was only a side-show: soon it was back to the abuse, as he went back to calling “marionette” at a Jew, talking of Miliband’s “convulsive string master taking another swig of the meths”. Hello again Simon! You do know that your boss has a criminal record, don’t you? And you do know how he came by it? What a combination: plastic intellectual and playground bully tribute act.

No wonder the Independent binned Simon Carr. Because it is. And he isn’t.

Tory Tax Attack Unravels

It happened with his response on Accident and Emergency (A&E) waiting times, and now it’s happening again: Young Dave proudly pulls a rabbit out of the hat at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), only for his argument to fall apart a few hours later. “Yesterday Labour announced – in an important announcement – that it is now their policy to put up taxes on middle income people” he told triumphantly.

And, as with the A&E figures, that attack on Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman depends on a highly selective interpretation of what she actually said. Those less charitably inclined might say that it requires the simultaneous twisting of her words together with a suspension of disbelief. So what is at issue? Ms Harman said “I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes”.

However, and this is a significantly sized however, the context was not as Cameron suggested – that those on middle incomes would pay more than they do at present – but that they pay more than those on the lowest incomes. This conclusion was reached not by me, but Sophy Ridge, the Sky News political correspondent. But some pundits out there had already decided otherwise.

“Isn’t the way for [Harriet Harman] to end today’s row to come out and say she wants no further middle class tax rises in future?” demanded the Sun’s non-bullying Tom Newton Dunn. Christopher “No” Hope of the Telegraph was of similar mind: “This Harriet Harman quote spotted by the Tories while everyone was covering the reshuffle is turning attention back on Labour’s tax plans” he drooled.

But, for true idiocy, you had to look to Dan Hodges, still taking his bat home the longest way he can find: “Reason [Harriet Harman] saying Labour wants to raise middle class taxes is a problem is because Labour does want to raise middle class taxes”. That, of course, was not what she said, but so obsessed is Hodges with putting the boot into his old party that he went off and blogged about it.

Could anyone be yet more blatantly partisan about this one? You betcha, says Sarah: the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole, tame gofer to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines, told that “Expect to hear more about these Harman comments. Good old fashioned ambush”. Good old fashioned lying, more like – but Master Cole knows all about that sort of thing. Sadly, though, one observer dissented from his view.

Iain Dale judged that “The Prime Minister was somewhat careless with the actualité / overegged the pudding re [Harriet Harman’s] middle class tax comments”. And why should that matter? Iain is a former Tory Parliamentary candidate, and Ms Harman said what she said ON HIS LBC SHOW yesterday afternoon. The difference is that he, like Ms Ridge, has put the comments into context.

Far too many of the punditerati found this too challenging. That’s not good enough.

PMQs – Itch-A-Sketch 21

The last Prime Minister’s Questions before the Summer recess has brought a very full house to the Commons. So what is Mil The Younger going to chuck in Young Dave’s general direction for his end of term treat? Inflation getting away from wage rises could be one topic. The reshuffle could be yet more fruitful, especially the dumping of Michael “Oiky” Gove as an electoral liability. So here we go.

He did it again: Cameron hesitated. Not that most of the press will let you know that, but yes, he hesitated, and more than once. It could have been the persistent heckling of “Auguste” Balls, whom Dave was once again trying to paint as being the real Labour leader, but time and again our Prime Minister almost tripped himself up.

Miliband, on the other hand, had his questions prepared and soundbites – predictable as some of them were – sharpened. And he had congratulations for Dave. Yes, really he did. Congratulations, that is, for listening to people and binning “Oiky” Gove [laughter]. So why did he demote him?

Dave had his tractor statistics at the ready: look at all those Free Schools! We’re doing better than the other lot did [not sure about that one]! Why don’t Labour want to talk about employment? [it’s Questions TO the PM, Dave. Try and keep up]

Ed was not letting this one go. He was, for once, rather enjoying himself. Why did he sack Gove? Here Cameron really took the biscuit: George Young was retiring at the next election, and he wanted the very best candidate to replace him. Yeah, right: replace Young with someone who goes round picking scraps with colleagues and can’t control his SpAds. Dave could have been arguing in his spare time.

Miliband switched to the plight of those in poverty. Dave countered: there were record numbers in work! There were record numbers of jobs! There were, not to drive this one round the houses too much, record numbers of tractor statistics.

It wasn’t just the Labour leader mentioning the reshuffle, which was not exactly done at a time favourable to Cameron’s next PMQs appearance. Why, Jack Straw asked, had he binned the Attorney General? Where, Fiona O’Donnell asked, was the publication of his tax return?

Dave deflected: look at what Harriet Harman said on the radio! Ed’s job is going to be reshuffled by his colleagues! The other lot don’t want to talk about what I want to talk about!

Cameron was almost relived to have Charles Kennedy giving him the lifeline of an opportunity to kick the SNP. The noise accompanying his standing up, the former Lib Dem leader noted, was just like the old days.

That summed it up: Cameron and the same record tractor statistics. Not convincing.

Sarah Vine Is Unhappy

The demotion of Michael “Oiky” Gove, while almost universally popular among those in the education profession and with many parents, has been greeted with dismay by true believers in his particular gospel of spin and bullshit. Nowhere has this been seen to better effect than in those papers that have supported him so slavishly, and especially in the ramblings of wife Sarah “Vain” Vine.

Now she's definitely not getting Sam's place

“I should have known something was up when my husband Michael Gove came home after his customary Saturday afternoon trip to Daunt’s book shop with a volume called Chief Whip: The Role, History And Black Arts Of Parliamentary Whipping, by Tim Renton” she observed in her generously-remunerated Daily Mail column today, diplomatically waiting until after the event.

But one does not have to look far to see she isn’t enamoured of the reshuffle: “It’s been a good week for women. More women in the Cabinet, more women in the Church. But will it actually make a real difference, or is it all just tokenism? My theory is that all ordinary women really want is for the people in charge to actually listen to them. Whether those people happen to be male or female is immaterial”.

Yeah, what “ordinary women” really wanted was for her “Oiky” to remain a Really Very Very Important Cabinet Minister, so there! And in this she has the backing of that part of the press for which her husband used to work, and where she now works: as Roy Greenslade has noted, the Sun, Times and Daily Mail have all attacked Young Dave for dumping Gove.

Meanwhile, Sarah has been busy Retweeting those whose messages run from the Ron Hopeful to “You’ll miss him now he’s gone” genres. So she Retweets Paul Goodman at ConHome telling “Gove appointment may also be recognition of need to modernise Whips’ Office and end Black Book culture”. Or, of course, it may be an act of desperation fuelled by the belated realisation that “Oiky” is a liability.

Also getting Retweeted is Julia Hartley-Brewer, warning “Biggest losers in today’s reshuffle? Bright kids at low achieving state schools. Michael Gove was the best thing that ever happened to you”. I love this outpouring of authoritative hindsight, based on the kind of information not available to mere mortals like me and all the other plebs who long ago concluded that this king was stark naked.

But Sarah tells us her real feelings when she unequivocally recommends a Mail rant by Max “Hitler” Hastings, titled “A shabby day’s work that Cameron will live to regret”. Alumni of Charterhouse and University College Oxford are just so knowledgeable when it comes to state education provision. But good of Sarah Vine to tell us what she really thinks: it’s just not fair to Herself Personally Now.

Pity she’s not so fussed about all the teachers her husband has been demonising.

Toby Young Says I Was Right

Last month, after I had exposed the reality of the goings-on at the West London Free School (WLFS) that led up to the sudden departure of former head Sam Naismith, the loathsome Toby Young took exception to what I had written, accusing me of “libelling” him and spreading “malicious falsehoods”. However, and in this case there is a significantly sized however, Tobes has now come clean.

Tobes still there in the Weinbunker

In what I suspect he expected to be a puff piece for his introduction of new WLFS head Hywel Jones, Tobes was challenged on the slightly inconvenient fact that the school was now on its third head teacher in three years, and that Naismith had left not just in mid-year, but during term time. The Standard says the departure “shocked parents”. Tobes agrees that it “looks strange”.

He then tells that “What he would really like to do is establish an elite hockey academy but I am not sure his passion lay in creating the kind of school that the founders always envisioned”. And this is what I said last month: “But let us start with the ‘consultancy’ set up under the aegis of Naismith, which was, I’m told, a hockey academy”. Spot the difference, anyone?

So what did Tobes have to say after I posted that? Here it comes: “To my knowledge, Sam Naismith at no point set up a ‘hockey academy’ during the course of his employment at the school”. There were other points rebutted with the rather similar “I know nothing about ...” and “I know of no instances in which ...”, which makes one wonder what the WLFS CEO really does know about his own school.

And he signed off with this broadside: “Tim, I'm used to being libelled in the public square – it comes with the territory. But can I ask you to stop libelling members of the school's staff? These malicious falsehoods about a group of dedicated, hard-working professionals have got to stop”. Well, on at least one of those counts, Tobes has now come as close as can be expected to admitting I was right.

He could also come clean over the delays to building work at Palingswick House in Hammersmith, where it is now admitted that “contaminants” have been found. Spit it out Tobes – the building has a problem with asbestos, and removing it will take time and cost us taxpayers yet more money. Instead, he waffles on about the superior attributes of what he calls a “classical, liberal” education.

“Broadly the difficulties we had have been in finding heads who really understand what’s involved in a classical liberal education and what the founders’ vision is for a traditional knowledge-based education ... In Hywel we have found the head who ideally we would have begun with” Tobes tells the Standard. But he lavished similar praise on Packer and Naismith – and look what happened to them.

Still, confession is good for the soul, even if Tobes won’t admit it to me directly.

Guido Fawked – Spying And Tradecraft Fail

If ever one needed a straw man argument to be amateurishly constructed and as a result made horrendously ineffective, one of the go-to “experts” in this field would undoubtedly be the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole, tame gofer to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog. Master Cole has seen an opportunity to kick the deeply subversive Guardian, only to flunk it.

I don't need to understand spy thrillers, cos I'm on telly!

The paper’s editor Alan Rusbridger has visited whistleblower Edward Snowden in Moscow. No secret was made of the visit; Rusbridger’s credit on the photo of Snowden holding a framed piece of the ceremonially destroyed computer internals from the spooks’ visit to the paper shows this clearly. But Cole pretends otherwise, and in doing so goes all wrong.

“The Editor Who Went In To The Cold” proclaims the post heading, alluding to The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. But neither novel nor film was set in Moscow, and the photo used was, in any case, not taken from the film, but the final scene of the BBC adaptation of Smiley’s People, this too not being set in Moscow. But then, that was all before Cole was even born.

Shoot the Photoshopper!

The post feigns concern: “Alan did leave his mobile phone at the hotel right? His spy tradecraft is clearly less than brilliant”. Ah, Master Cole’s shonky grammar gives away the authorship. Tradecraft, eh? How about that photo, then? The original showed the moment George Smiley (Alec Guinness) came face to face with his old adversary Karla (Patrick Stewart) on a winter night in Berlin.

The original monochrome image ...

Karla’s weakness – his mentally ill daughter – and his improper diversion of funds to pay for her treatment in a Swiss clinic has been discovered by one of Smiley’s old contacts. Karla’s efforts at concealment and suppression have failed; his stark choice is to come across to the West or be exposed. The two spymasters exchange one last glance before Karla is taken away to be debriefed.

... and colour still from the TV series

Sadly for Master Cole, he couldn’t find a profile photo of Rusbridger to substitute for Guinness, and in the process has messed up the latter’s neatly folded scarf. The still photo, taken from just to the left of the main camera used in that shot – compare the orientation of the cobbled surface and the searchlight in the background – was taken using monochrome film. The TV series used colour.

I’m sure Snowden and Rusbridger will love the idea of being compared to Stewart and Guinness, however amateurish the Photoshopping (Snowden looks like he’s cricked his neck). In the meantime, perhaps Master Cole could do a little of that often-absent research, so he can tell one John le Carré vehicle from another. The DVD of Smiley’s People is readily available.

So he can get his straw men sorted in future. Another fine mess, once again.

Clueless Pundit Reshuffle Special

Could it get any better after the obscenely overrated Michael “Oiky” Gove was ushered out of the Department for Education? It certainly could: following behind was a phalanx of variously clueless right-leaning pundits, spinning for all they were worth on the Gove demotion, or the lack of movement for Iain Duncan Cough, left in post because nobody wanted to go near his shambolic “reforms”.

Yes, at times like this, we need a pointless sacrifice, and what could be more satisfying than to see Tory cheerleaders sacrifice what remains of their credibility in the belief that those outside their part of the Westminster bubble will do any more than laugh at them, in the manner of extras on a Smash advert? So who would care to lead off? How about the epitome of cluelessness himself?

That would be Tim Montgomerie, gifted a job at the increasingly downmarket Times as a reward for grovelling to Rupert Murdoch. Monty was spinning Gove’s ousting. Desperately badly. “If Tories lose, Gove will be in key position. Chief whip always very close to a lot of MPs. That matters in a leadership election. A lot”. Bullshit.

Meanwhile, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, in irony free mode, told “Saving grace: that Iain Duncan Smith is still in welfare. He’s now the last reformer standing in this Government” and then followed that with “Sad day for those of us who thought the purpose of Government was to govern. Seems year 5 of this Parliament will be all about spin”. And what did you just say about the useless Duncan Cough?

Back with the Gove demotion, another swallowing the spin was Philip Collins at the Times: “Nicky Morgan. The new Estelle Morris. Gove should have stayed there until 2020 and finished the job properly. Now the system will blob back”. That “Blob” stuff was for the more impressionable members of the public, Phil.

Gove’s successor was also on the mind of the Member for the remote constituency of Manhattan Upmarket, Louise Mensch, who asserted “Nicky has PLENTY grit. Wikipedia her. Stood THREE TIMES in Loughborough before winning it”. Ms Morgan stood once – in 2005 – before winning. Piers Morgan will not be surprised.

And what about the supposed return of Liam Fox? Mark Wallace at ConHome was disappointed: “Good point by [Paul Goodman] – there doesn’t seem to be a cabinet place for Liam Fox after all”. As if the Tories would gain any credibility, other than with fringe pundits, from letting the SOB back into Government.

The punditry of the New Conservatism is at least consistent: consistently lame, that is.