Country Life: Too Many Syllables

Some bullying members of the militant homosexual lobby are on the virtual warpath because Country Life have run an advert for Coalition 4 Marriage.
Many people are leaving complaints on the magazine's Facebook page. 
Good for them - though I can't say I'm particularly arsed about it.
Is anyone surprised Country Life have done this?
This is the third place to my knowledge where C4M has tried to place adverts - and they all show who they see as their natural constituencies.
Guido Fawkes blog has run a banner ad - take a look at any comments section and you'll see most of his readers are really nasty and scarily right-wing.  
I got into a brief Twitter row with editor Paul Staines about this.
He defended his actions by tweeting; "It is an advert by pro-marriage Christians. Not homophobic. I ran adverts for Ken Livingstone. Advertisement <> endorsement."
When asked if he did endorse it, came the reply; "Don't know, don't care. I just count the cash and re-stock the wine cellar."
The Womens' Institute were widely praised for refusing to run an ad for C4M last month.
They used the opposite argument to Mr Fawkes; "As WI Life is the national membership magazine, any promotion of your campaign could be seen as an endorsement... to members. We do also welcome all women to the WI and this campaign could offend many of our members."
Good for them.
The WI are often caricatured as being hilariously Middle England, and I guess C4M may have thought they'd be a shoo-in.
It's instructive and satisfying that that is no longer the case.
And Country Life?
It's the inhouse magazine of Upper England.
Though I can't pretend to read it every week, it's essentially a series of adverts for multi-million pound houses, broken up with advertorial about multi-million pound houses - note the cover above shows Country Life's idea of a smaller country house.
Plus there's a few pictures of posh totty debs, and some doubtlessly positively gripping articles about hunting, shooting, dogging and farming.
Of course Country Life ran the ad!
What do you expect from the Coalition 4 Inbreeding?

Update: Email from Julia Dawson, Complaints Executive, Advertising Standards Authority, on Tuesday, saying the ASA are to investigate complaints that the "70%" claim on the C4M ads is misleading...

Leveson Inquiry: Guido Fawkes Vs William Hague & Christopher Myers

'Guido Fawkes broke a story about William Hague sharing a room on a trip with his political adviser [Christopher Myers]. Staines says he had pictures of the adviser in a gay bar that he sold to the News of the World for £20,000 but the paper never published them.
"They chose to buy up those photos and take them off the market," he says.
"It's clear to me the News of the World was in regular contact with Downing Street and perhaps to curry favour they chose to buy up those pictures and took them off the market." Staines links this to former NoW editor Andy Coulson, who left to work for No 10.
'Barr suggests the paper did not run the story because Hague issued a statement denying the "malicious allegations".
'Staines replies: "They bought them after the public statement."

Paul Staines aka right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes talking at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday.
Seems ironic this comes out (and Myers is seemingly outed?) in the Leveson Inquiry, presumably it's covered by courtroom privilege...
If true, it is most noble of the News of the World to stop a leading Tory being mixed up in some potentially embarrassing gay story.
Good for them!

Update: 'News International, the owners of the defunct tabloid, declined to comment on the allegations, saying they were not prepared to disclose details of payments made.
'But two former executives at the paper confirmed the deal, on condition of anonymity. They said the purchase was negotiated via the paper's political staff, and authorised by the editor, Colin Myler.
'One source claimed Myler bought the picture in order to "keep it off the market for a week" because he was planning to expose allegations of spot-fixing at Pakistan cricket matches, and wanted it to dominate the headlines that week.
'But, according to Staines's testimony, he sold the photograph the week after the cricket story, which ran on Sunday 29 August 2010, along with printouts of on-line chat from a website.
'The following week, after a statement by Hague describing his happy marriage and denying any gay relationships, every Sunday paper bar one carried news stories about the issue, with speculation about the foreign secretary's future. The sole exception was the News of the World.'

The Guardian - Online version only.
The last three paragraphs do not appear in the print version.