Daily Mail: A Skewed Sense Of Values

Sake.

Constantly updated by Mail Online, we are now on the 'promiscuity pill'.

If, like Cuba, we demanded or made generic drugs, the cost would be negligible.

PS The NUJ has responded to today's Daily Mail front page that refers to HIV medicine as a 'lifestyle drug' under the headline ‘What a skewed sense of values’.

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said:

"LGBT NUJ members have contacted the union today in response to the Daily Mail’s front page this morning which chose to regurgitate out-dated homophobic tropes that we had hoped had gone away by now.

"It is not just gay men who are affected by HIV and medicine is not a lifestyle choice.

"It is deeply troubling that the Mail continues to pit members of the public against each other when accessing healthcare - the NHS should be adequately funded by the government so it can care for all of us."

Well done the NUJ, my union.

PPS Some interesting letters in The Times (then they start wanking on about Sharia Law and Melanie Phillips again). 

Orlando: Missing

The Daily Mail were alone among British newspapers in not putting the Orlando massacre on their front page today, plumping instead for a combination of good old fashioned racism and royalty (The Daily Star gave it a small space in the bottom left corner).

If you're looking for the story in the print edition, you'll find it on page 10 (ten).

Admittedly this one must be a bit of a mindfuck for right-wing bigots; 'mad muslim kills filthy queers'.

Many also noted with disbelief how BBC News stayed with the Queen's 90th birthday celebration in The Mall.

PS Roy Greenslade in Media Guardian on this 'extraordinary decision'.

Lance Price: Madness

A controversial writer who worked as a spin doctor for Tony Blair was paid taxpayers’ money to give media training in Armenia.

Lance Price picked up more than £8,000 from the Foreign Office for a week of sessions with local journalists in the capital, Yerevan.

On his return to London in October 2013, Mr Price tweeted: ‘Back in London after great week in Yerevan with @UKinArmenia supporting British Days and talking media, politics and minorities.’

The British embassy in Yerevan tweeted a picture of one of Mr Price’s training sessions.

Mr Price, 57, started his career with the BBC but was appointed Alistair Campbell’s deputy at No 10 in 1998.

After leaving Labour, he found himself in the limelight after giving the first inside account of Blair’sregime in a book called The Spin Doctor’s Diary'

The Mail.

Who are just a teensy bit obsessed with foreign aid (and homosexualists and Tony Blair).

Note the two examples of this 'madness' they highlight...

Daily Mail: Oops! Sorry Bout Dat

Scotland Yard is under pressure to shelve its VIP paedophile murder inquiry after it emerged detectives had ‘grave doubts’ about the testimony of the key witness.

Officers have not found a ‘shred of credible evidence’ to back up claims that a string of senior Establishment figures were responsible for murdering three boys in the 1970s and 1980s.

Many detectives believe the inquiry – which has already cost the taxpayer more than £1million – is doomed and should be wound up.

Senior figures in the separate judge-led public inquiry into historic child sex abuse and in the Crown Prosecution Service have been told informally that there appears to be no substance to the allegations made by a witness known only as ‘Nick’.

Nick is an alleged abuse victim who was described by a senior Met Police detective last year as being ‘credible and true’.

Amid claims that Yard chiefs are ‘too scared’ to pull the plug on the inquiry, 30 officers in the cash-strapped force are probing the astonishing triple-murder allegation, linked to Dolphin Square in Central London.

It can also be revealed that police initially took Nick’s account seriously because he has a respectable managerial job and does ‘not fit the stereotype of a child abuse fantasist’.

But there are now fears he is a ‘Walter Mitty’ who has made up the murder allegations

Police have not been able to identify any of the alleged victims, discover any bodies or find any credible independent witnesses.

Sources say a number of officers have ‘grave doubts’ about Nick’s account but fear that saying this in public could put child-sex victims off contacting police.

Details of the Met’s fears over the allegations have emerged after former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor accused police of a ‘gay witch-hunt’ when he disclosed that he had been questioned over the alleged murders.

Nick says he was abused at depraved sex ‘parties’ from the age of seven, and claims to have witnessed horrific acts at the luxury Dolphin Square estate between 1975 and 1984.

He has described being driven by a chauffeur, along with a terrified 12-year-old boy, to a luxury townhouse where he watched as a Tory MP strangled the other child.

Nick said he saw a second boy being murdered in front of a Tory Cabinet minister in 1981. A third boy died in 1979 after being run over by a member of the gang, he alleges.

In November last year, Nick told the BBC that his abusers ‘created fear that penetrated every part of me, day in day out’.

But the Mail has been told that when Nick is challenged on his version of events, he ‘becomes emotional and the interview is stopped’.

A source said: ‘When he contacted police, he had a well-rehearsed script and initially appeared believable. But when you scratch under the surface of his claims, there is nothing there.

'The notion of an organised paedophile gang of a former prime minister, MPs and Establishment figures is just nonsense.

‘Police have not been able to identify any victims. There is not one shred of credible evidence to support his allegations. The police investigation has been exhaustive but they have drawn a blank.’ ...

Daily Mail.

Quick summary for busy readers: The Mail here is kinda admitting it's been publishing a load of utter errant nonsense about Operation Midland and a supposed 'VIP paedophile ring' for years.

A six year-old could have seen this was all as laughable as an alien abduction story.

And shame on the Sunday People and Tom Watson MP for being such prime colluders in this lunatic - and yes, homophobic - episode.

Gay News Media: Under Fire

Gay Star News.

Dear idiot,

The BBC is not 'under fire'.

The Daily Mail has just been indulging in its favourite sport - bashing the BBC - and has made-up a story by phoning two rent-a-quote Tory MPs to get them to say how OUTRAGED! they are.

Surely that should be the angle in the gay news media?

If you're too thick to see that - and you can't defend someone who's being attacked by the right for being pro-gay - then you shouldn't be writing for the gay media.

yours etc

Pink News.

Dear idiot,

Please see the above.

yours etc

Fagburn

Daily Mail: Exclusive!

Getting the Great Bard to write about Sir Cliff is quite a scoop, yes.

Poor sod.

General Election 2015: Never Mind The Ballots...

THIS is clearly the most important thing happening in the UK right now!

Nigel Farage: It's The Way He Tells 'Em

Naughty Nigel enjoying a nice fag.

Nigel Farage was last night accused of homophobia after footage emerged of him making a joke about ‘fags’ in a best man speech.

The Ukip leader’s final hours of election campaigning were overshadowed by the release of the video of his brother’s wedding.

The singer Rod Stewart, who was a guest at the July 2001 wedding, appeared visibly uncomfortable after Mr Farage used the word ‘fags’ as part of a joke about the death of a man at Michael Barrymore’s house, which happened months earlier.

Mr Farage yesterday pulled out of a planned visit to a bingo hall shortly after he was contacted by the Mail about the film.

He claimed that he had intended ‘no malice’ with the joke, but did not apologise...

Mr Farage, who appears much younger in the video with a full head of black hair, says that he would like to start the speech with some ‘housekeeping’.

He said: ‘As far as smokers here are concerned there’s good news and bad news for you. The bad news was we were not allowed to smoke until the coffee was served.

‘But the good news for us who are smokers is that we are far better off here than if we had been at Michael Barrymore’s house.

‘Because there they removed all the ashtrays on the basis that now they chuck all the fags in the pool.’

Daily Mail.

Now this is funny.

Not Nigel Farage's joke about the death of a gay man, obvs.

How long have the Mail been sitting on this video?

And was it released now as a final pre-election bombshell?

And did they think this would turn their readers off Farage, rather than warm to him even more?

And finally, you may want to read this Observer interview with Barrymore from 2002, where he attacks his 'trial by tabloid'.

PS Did this play a part in NF pulling out of answering questions from Pink News readers?

Daley Male: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!

The latest front page from Daley Male Online.

Transgender Kids: Fear Of Change

So, as well as paying for women to have Double D breasts because they're depressed they were born with Double A's; as well as paying for fatties to have gastric bands because they refuse to stop stuffing their faces, the NHS has now decided that our hard-earned cash should be spent treating three-year-olds who think they were born in the wrong body. Seriously?

Your average three-year-old can't decide whether he wants fish fingers or baked beans for tea. So how on earth would he know he was born in the wrong body? And how would such a young child be able to express that kind of emotion?

It all sounds like PC nonsense to me. However, not according to experts at the Tavistock and Portman Trust - two NHS hospitals which specialise in gender issues - which says the numbers of Under 11's referred to them has quadrupled in the last four years. And nearly a third of those were aged between three and four.

But are those children really concerned about gender issues or is their thinking being influenced by other people i.e parents who themselves might be transgender? Parents who might have wanted a girl instead of a boy or vice versa and are unconsciously projecting that onto their child? Or might they just be idiots who have looked at something their child has done and come to a completely uninformed conclusion about it...

Oh dear. This is more Daily Express or Daily Mail than Daily Mirror.* 

Mail Online.

Note the grand total of three year olds who've been referred to the NHS is two.

That number again... TWO!

And puffing that the number has quadrupled (in six years) when the earlier number was just 17, is what's known as base rate fallacy.

And what's wrong with offering them counselling?

Ho hum...

Transgender kids is clearly this month's thing.

Here's Louis Theroux more level-headed look at the media's latest moral panic broadcast on Sunday.

Paris Lee wondered, What's the big deal?

The issue of trans children became a national talking point thanks to Louis Theroux's bold BBC documentary Transgender Kids. #TransgenderKids trended for hours on social media and, aside from the usual ignorance and bigotry, which I expected, there was also an outpouring of empathy, understanding and support for the families featured. Good. This is what happens when real people are allowed to tell their own stories.

Much of the media coverage I've seen so far has focused on the ages of the kids Louis interviewed - some, like Lady Gaga lover Camille, as young as five. How could they possibly know? Aren't they too young? What if they're making a huge mistake? ...

In my head though I couldn't help but respond with a question of my own, one that Camille's parents eventually voiced: "What does it matter?" What's the big deal if a feminine boy or a masculine girl changes their social gender? What is so wrong about supporting them to transition socially, or to delay puberty with blockers? People who object are usually seeing it from their own subjective point of view. But it's not about them. The idea of changing gender terrifies most people who are not trans precisely because they are not trans - the same way that the idea of not transitioning seems awful to trans people.

Just let kids be who they need to be. If they can transition one way, they can transition back again...

Indeed.

Why do some people get so worked up about policing gender norms?

And what are the alternatives?

Conversion therapy?

Suicide?

PS It doesn't have to be this way, Paris Lees on trans teen suicides, Attitude.

* Edit: You may want to compare and contrast this with How can a child of three need transgender counselling?, asks Libby Purves, in the Mail, Thursday.

Never ceases to amaze me how willing people who have ZERO experience, expertise or understanding of trans issues feel their opinion matters.
— Paris Lees (@ParisLees) April 9, 2015

Daily Mail: Bold Seekers Of Truth!

'Afraid' to talk about race? Guess how long since The Mail last wrote about it.

The front page of the Daily Mail today featured ex-Racial Equality Commissioner Trevor Phillips, saying that talking about race is taboo in today's society.

"Britain is silencing debate on race issues," cried the newspaper - touting a Channel 4 documentary Phillips is presenting on the topic, 'Things We Won't Say About Race That Are True'.

Has the British media REALLY been shying away from the topic? Has the Daily Mail? ...

Great takedown of the Daily Mail's not so covert racism - now usually done under the cover of Islamophobia - in the Daily Mirror.

Mail Online: Look & Learn

1. Do rimming.

2. Fuck around.

3. Be insanely jealous about him fucking around.

4. Don't cancel your Grindr account.

5. Endless bickering about fuck all.

6. Leave him after a few months (repeat to fade).

Mail Online.

PS Ms Cox actual top tips are wonderfully patronising.

Amanda Platell: Oh, Go Fuck Yourself

Mail Online.

Who is 'WE' here?

Daily Mail: Won't Somebody Please Think Of The Children!

This is the Mail's front page story from February 4th. 

It is - needless to say - an absolutely nonsensical distortion.

What, for the love of Kinsey, are 'sex lessons'?

The actual story is that Tristram Hunt, the Shadow Education Secretary has said Labour want to do more to tackle homophobia in schools.

Readers will find this out if they read the Mail's story to the bitter end.

It is impossible to paraphrase - or indeed to parody - the above article by Stephen Glover, so I won't bother.

This isn't his first I abhor bigotry but.. piece by the way.

PS I'll be feeding stories sloooowly throughout the day, pretty randomly, but will re-order them chronologically at a later date - cause it's my blog and I can do what I want. K?

The Express says what we're all thinking.

Daily Mail: Neanderthal Man

I entreat you not to misunderstand me. It would break my heart if any son of mine felt I was such a bigot that he couldn’t tell me he was gay, or thought that I’d love him any the less for it. I’d also like it on record that I came round long ago to civil partnerships, and I’m a little ashamed of my initial opposition to them.

But as I understand marriage, it’s an institution for child-rearing and mutual support between the sexes, which means the real thing can only be between a man and a woman.

Of course, you’re welcome to say that my views are Neanderthal and don’t matter a damn. But it is surely an incontrovertible fact that many millions share them.

I strongly suspect, too, that some of my other objections to the Fry-Spencer match will have occurred to many, if not most, parents of 27-year-olds.

But here is the truly remarkable thing. In all the copious coverage of the engagement over the past eight days, I’ve detected only two raised eyebrows. One belonged to the Mail’s own, ever-brave Amanda Platell, who drew disapproving attention to the age-gap. The other was a throwaway line from our equally doughty Sarah Vine, who floated the idea that a part of Mr Fry’s appeal to his fiancé may lie in the latter’s showbiz connections.

But no other paper that I’ve read has suggested there’s anything otherwise remarkable about this forthcoming marriage — let alone anything iffy or rum. Nor has anyone attempted to exploit the story for comic potential — odd, surely, since both participants are comedians.

Even the Sun — notorious in the past for such headlines as ‘Pulpit poofters’ on a story about gay vicars — treated the story exactly as it would have done any heterosexual engagement, reporting: ‘Loved-up Stephen Fry is “deeply touched” by the response to our revelations yesterday that he plans to marry toy-boy lover Elliott Spencer.’

Tom Utley in the Daily Mail. 

Textbook stuff, you Neanderthal hate-filled old bigot.

When people come out with crap like this, there really is nothing to say.

Daily Mail: A National Disgrace

Sir Nicholas Hytner will soon finish his stint running the Royal National Theatre. One of his parting gifts to us is John, a dance-influenced production about unprotected sex in gay saunas.

How brave! How enlightened! Perhaps not. Perhaps this is just a seamy, sorry exercise, shorn of morals, commissioned in a moment of silliness by an artistic director who, for all the hyped indulgence and baubles he has received from the Establishment and the London Evening Standard, has had an erratic tenure...

It starts with clever depictions of the disruptive upbringing of a man called John and his sexually violent father. After about 15 minutes of this impressive if explicit material we switch to a gay sauna full of men showing us their whatnots, in at least one case semi-erect

For the next hour, sauna sex is everything. We are told of an orgy of 15 men. We see two blokes seemingly pleasuring themselves. There is a ballet of buggery, an offstage gay rape, endless talk about what complete strangers get up to in saunas. One charming scene is devoted to the amount of excrement left in saunas after a busy night. You taxpayers are helping to fund this...

Having written in support of gay rights since the late Nineties, I hope I can say without being accused of homophobia that John is, despite the artfulness of its performers, a disgrace.

Not that Sir Nicholas will mind. He will rub his little millionaire, State-enriched hands in glee at having created controversy. He has his knighthood already. There is even talk that he will soon be sent to the House of Lords, there to moralise and legislate over us.

This, folks, is the state of art and politics in 21st- century Britain.

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail.

Queeny Quentin's really got her knickers in a twist about this. 

Textbook stuff.

And how ironic that his 'review' will sell a shedload of tickets.

Andrew Pierce Watch: Cakewatch

Daily Mail.

Who else could the Mail get to write this but your actual gay Uncle Tom, Andrew Pierce?

Hmmm, I wonder if he 'll use his much-loved 'as a gay man...' line.

As a gay man in a civil partnership, I was often heckled and abused for opposing gay same-sex marriage.

I regard the law as a cynical political stunt by David Cameron in his misguided attempts to detoxify the Conservative brand and win new voters. He failed miserably - alienating countless core loyalists.

At the time the Bill was being debated in the Commons, I argued it could trigger a backlash against gay men and women if it was used to discriminate against those with strong views about why same-sex marriages are wrong.

The public was given repeated assurances that freedom of conscience would be respected if the law on marriage was changed. Those promises seem pretty hollow now.

PS Fagburn does think the threatened legal action against Ashers is using a sledgehammer to crack some Christian nutters.

Graham Norton: It Must Be Love

If I had to choose between booze and work, I would pick work without hesitation, but what is the point of life if you can’t sometimes release the inner moron? It goes back to the glass of wine I have on my chat show — I know exactly why I’m drinking it, and while I may later end up flailing around a dance floor like a member of the living dead, I like to think that I am in control of the bigger picture.

Of course, I may be wrong.

The big question is: do I have a problem? On one level, I obviously do because I drink far too much. But on the other hand, my rationale would be: where’s the harm? Yes, it makes me fatter than I’d like to be and perhaps I would sleep better if I occasionally went to bed sober, but my work has never suffered because of drinking.

And besides, surely life would seem a little dull with no vices at all.

The Daily Mail - who appear to have bought the serial rights to Graham's memoirs. 

Note how they bashed Stephen Fry recently when he wrote about his lapsed cocaine use, yet this is framed not as a 'battle with the bottle', but a 'love affair'.

Not sure what else is to come, but hopefully the Mail will find a bit in Norton's book where he's slightly disparaging about the BBC. 

That and him on the misery and impossibility of gay love and that.

Mr Norton, pictured recently, after another fun night out.

Update: An alert reader points out the Mail On Sunday published this 'Kiss and piss' a year ago. Thank you 'anon'... x

Stephen Fry: Still Hated By The Daily Mail

At least Keith Richards never pretended to be a role model. The truly nauseating thing about Fry’s druggie posturing is that, in the very same book, he sets himself up as a moralist.

An ardent atheist, he rails against ‘cheating, thieving, adulterous and hypocritical clerics’, before seizing the moral high ground on questions ranging from political correctness to Israeli politics.

For my money he can’t have it both ways — noble philosopher and Leftie at the same time as he is writing about his ‘wicked, wicked ways’. But then doubtless Fry sees himself as a modern-day Lord Byron . . . poet, sensualist and debauchee...

He comes across as immensely pleased with himself. He can’t help boasting on every page about his famous chums (house-sitting for Douglas Adams, the Hitchhiker’s Guide author), his glamorous partying (stepping in to prevent argie-bargie between rock stars Liam Gallagher of Oasis and Blur’s Alex James), his superstar encounters (Al Pacino was mistaken for a tramp at the Groucho Club in Soho) and his luxury lifestyle (‘motoring down to Cliveden’ in his Aston Martin).

But the truth is, when he’s bunging powder up his nose or leaning out of a window, as he does one night at his club, to vomit on the pavement below, Fry is no different from the druggies and binge-drinkers piling out of the pubs any Friday night across Britain.

At moments like that, Stephen Fry — a man of enviable talent and accomplishments — is just a common lout.

The Daily Mail puts the boot in (again).

This has been going on for donkey's, of course.

Poor little Daily Mail scribblers, must be agony trying to figure out how to deal with a 'national treasure' who represents so much that their readers love, yet also so much they loath.

Typo Of The Week: Pink News

Pink News.

Damn you Daily Mail and all your pesky communist columnists!

PS Good piece in Sunday's Observer on LGSM's Mark Ashton; The real-life triumphs of the gay communist behind hit movie Pride.

PPS Apparently, Stephen Beresford is 'in talks' about turning Pride into a West End musical. Oh dear...

Mind you, maybe that means there's still hope for my feel-good musical about the Poll Tax riot.

PPPS On reflection, it can be a musical on condition that director Matthew Warchus gets Tim Minchin to write the songs. K?