The Independent and the Daily Mail, two news sources at opposite ends of the editorial spectrum, are in rare agreement over the demise of one of Britain's most-loved nights.
The Independent says fireworks night has "lost its sparkle" and claims that sales of fireworks are down 40% compared to last November.
The Daily Mail cunningly dub the festive events "NON-fire night" and report on 'health and safety killjoys" who are forcing people in Devon to watch a bonfire on a giant television due to concerns over people being hurt by real fire.
Do you still care about Fireworks night? Who's planning to watch some tonight or this weekend? Leave a comment and let me know.
The Daily Mail are back in the Twitter trending topics, this time for writing a piece on science in the followup to the controversy surrounding the sacking of former drug advisor Professor David Nutt, who spoke out against the government's drug policy.
In the article the Mail take a swipe at scientists, calling them arrogant gods of certainty, before kindly reminding readers that Hitler believed that science was the only truth. The scientists on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, who are up in arms about the government ignoring their advice over how harmful drugs are, are then compared to Nazi scientists from WW2.
"I am not suggesting that any British scientists are currently conducting experiments comparable to those which were allowed in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Russia. But I see the same habit of mind at work in Professor Nutt and his colleagues as made those mad scientists of the 20th century think they were above the moral law which governs the rest of us mortals."
The article was originally accompanied online by a picture of Hitler but this has since been removed.
Screengrab of the article before the Hitler pic was taken off: http://twitpic.com/o4c25The Daily Mail are back in the Twitter trending topics, this time for writing a piece... more
In a fairly low key article posted on their site this morning (here: http://bit.ly/3ROUlf), the Daily Mail said the following about the number of complaints made to the PCC about their writer Jan Moir's subjective piece that said Stephen Gately's death was apparently not "natural".
"The Press Complaints Commission has received more than 1,000 complaints and one complaint has been made to the Metropolitan Police."
In fact, over 21, 000 people have complained - more complaints in a single weekend than the PCC has had in the past five years.
Frustratingly for those offended by Moir's piece, the PCC is waiting on a complaint from Gately's family but said it would "consider" the 21,000 complaints.
The Dailymail.co.uk saw traffic jump by 21% as a result of all the fuss.
For more info on the article and the huge internet backlash that followed, have a read of this current.com piece: http://current.com/1fi3i4cIn a fairly low key article posted on their site this morning (here:... more
Of course not but that's not stopped Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir writing an opinion piece that appears to imply the fact the Boyzone singer was gay may have had something to do with his death. Authorities have said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Gately's demise but that doesn't prevent Moir speculating about why he and his partner invited another man back to their apartment, whether drugs were involved and whether the singer's death "strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships."
Twitter's not happy. Jan Moir, #janmoir and Daily Mail are all trending on the site, with people tweeting links to the article, links to the press complaints commission and their views of Moir.
Even Derren Brown is getting stuck in by retweeting Charlie Brooker's retweet (still with me?) of a user's scathing put-down: "Jan Moir manages to walk the difficult tightrope between being a bitch and a c**t."
Apparently a string of tweets from Sarah Brown to Demi went ignored, which the Daily Mail describes as "rather like being ignored at a social function".
I just love how the Daily Mail try to explain Twitter to their uninitiated readers.Apparently a string of tweets from Sarah Brown to Demi went ignored, which the Daily... more
One of the UK's new fangled ID cards has been cracked in 12 minutes by a white hat hacker employed by British tabloid, the Daily Mail.
Security researcher Adam Laurie made an exact copy of a sample card that had been supplied by a foreign student.
Laurie then managed to alter the cardholder's name, fingerprints and switched the “not entitled to benefits” option to “entitled".
If that wasn't bad enough, he added a message on the card asking police to shoot on sight - adding that the cardholder was a terrorist...One of the UK's new fangled ID cards has been cracked in 12 minutes by a white hat... more
A young woman tells the Daily Mail her sad tale of how she became a widow at 23, after her husband died of cancer, and goes on to say she's went slept with 27 men in the year that followed, craving the anonymity of emotionless sex.
Predictably a few of the paper's readers aren't happy about this.
"Widows and widowers have the perfect excuse for no-strings sex and many of them take full advantage of their situation. Some of them think that their loss gives them carte blanche to use other people. "
Maria, Dublin, Ireland on the dailymail.co.uk
After all, what's a dead loved one when you've got the perfect excuse to get laid, right Maria from Dublin?A young woman tells the Daily Mail her sad tale of how she became a widow at 23, after... more
The Daily Mail have posted a poll asking "Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue?"
A call out for people to vote "yes" is now trending on Twitter and, so far, 93% of all people who have voted have called for the NHS to allow "gipsies" to go straight to the front of the line.
Ask a stupid question and all that...The Daily Mail have posted a poll asking "Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the... more
So says a fake tan manufacturer and I call bullsh*t! A study commissioned by Fake Bake self-tanner has "revealed" that women with bronzed skin appear 7 lbs lighter than they would with pale skin. WTF. This is JUST ridiculous. Where to even begin?
Let's start with the Daily Mail's headline: "REVEALED: The secret to losing half a stone overnight... Get a tan." Uhm, no. None of this is true. Being tan will not make you lose any weight. There is no secret revealed by this study. This isn't even a proper study, it's a publicity stunt commissioned by Fake Bake to get women to buy their product. And why is it just women who "will look thinner," and not people? Because it's aimed at the people who are more likely to feel subconscious about their skin and their weight and thus more likely to try to get tan to look thin. But heaven forbid anyone promote risking cancer by sunning themselves to cover up their fat rolls!
Not surprisingly, the CEO of Fake Bake says, "By using fake tan women can safely add colour to their skin to give them the confidence they need to step out in summer clothes or put on a bikini to head to the beach. And the deeper the tan the thinner it seems to make women feel. More importantly it means a summer glow can be achieved without the lethal and fatal effects of over exposure to the sun or excessive sun bed use." Thanks.
Now for a look at the self-esteem bashing that continues throughout the article. It starts by referring to white skin as "pasty" and darker skin as "bronzed glow." It sets up anyone without a perfect complexion to feel inferior. Then it follows with a load of unattributed claims: "Almost half of women say they get more compliments from their partners when they have a tan, while 59 per cent say they feel slimmer with bronzed skin... 59 per cent of women feel slimmer when they have bronzed skin and more than a third said they felt even slimmer as their tan got deeper.... 72 per cent said they felt more confident when they had a bronzed body. Sixty-five per cent felt sexier with golden skin. And another 67 per cent said they were more likely to wear skimpy clothes if they have a tan. A lucky 45 per cent said it improved their sex life." Sorry, who is saying this? There's no mention of where these 2,000 people polled were selected from. They could have been Fake Bake employees for all we know. So what if you have a tan and aren't feeling more confident or getting lots of compliments? Maybe your tan isn't deep enough and you should go buy some Fake Bake to sort it out.
Anyhoo... I'll stop ranting about this shameless promotion for Fake Bake. I know this article is from the Daily Mail and maybe I shouldn't expect more... but people DO actually read that paper and don't think twice about what they're reading. I'm going to have faith that they at least have the capacity to see through this and realize it's just advertising disguised as "journalism."So says a fake tan manufacturer and I call bullsh*t! A study commissioned by Fake Bake... more
A lot of rich, spoilt kids' parents read the Daily Mail and lavish their children with gifts. No real story there...
Luckily for the paper, though, they've found a 16-year-old who, in their words, is just "a plain old carpentry student", dresses in ridiculous photo-friendly pimp outfits and has a mother whose sanity can be tenuously questioned.
Teenager Jordan Smith, posing above in the furry coat, is the proud owner of two cars that he's too young to drive, a jetski, a motorbike and his birthday party alone cost a whopping £20,000.
Clearly a little disgusted by his circumstances, the Daily Mail lists his many luxuries and then explores with cod-psychology why he came about them.
"The questionable psychology behind Suzanne's habit of indulging her eldest son's every whim is complicated further by her burning desire for him to be famous - a desire Jordan himself has now picked up on with some enthusiasm. (This, despite having left his state school with few qualifications, and currently attending a carpentry course at college.)"
Since when did academic qualifications become a requirement for becoming famous? Why should anyone care how his mum spends the money she earns on her own son? And why the hell is he wearing those stupid coats?A lot of rich, spoilt kids' parents read the Daily Mail and lavish their children with... more
Did you know that playing World of Warcraft is addictive to its players on par with cocaine? It's true!* Too bad you don't get the by-product of a slimmer physique and coke-fueled sex benders...
But after a boy in Laholm, Sweden was hospitalized following a 20-hour-plus World of Warcraft bender, the results were clear: WoW is dangerous, WoW is wack.
This has since lead Sweden's Youth Care Foundation to brand the massively multiplayer online role-playing game as "the cocaine of the computer games world" and send Daily Mail editors into a tizzy.
That accusation of World of Warcraft's addictive properties was levied author Sven Rollenhagen, who said: "There is not a single case of game addiction that we have worked with in which World of Warcraft has not played a part." Scary!
It's all very alarming though. So if you like being alarmed, we'd suggest clicking over to the Daily Mail.
* Probably not actually true, except on Bizarro World.
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lolDid you know that playing World of Warcraft is addictive to its players on par with... more
The Daily Mail put one of their reporters in a fat suit and a frumpy frock and sent her to London Fashion Week to see how people would react to her. Not surprisingly, she got loads of attention from the under weight over styled crowds in attendance... the negative kind. She was given looks, pointed at, laughed at and at the end of the day couldn't take another minute of feeling like "a circus freak" and had to leave.
Now, I'm not surprised by what she experienced at all. The fashion world has never pretended to have room for plus sized people. I'm more surprised by the Daily Mail feeling that they had to strap someone in a fat suit to get this story... actually, who am I kidding. I'm not surprised they did it at all.The Daily Mail put one of their reporters in a fat suit and a frumpy frock and sent... more
Just as the fervent criticism of anyone and anything that could be held responsible for the snow and the after effects was subsiding, the Met Office have issued warnings of a new front of mindless finger pointing heading towards Britain today.
The Daily Mail and the Telegraph had finally managed to strap its leading columnists into strait jackets and calm them down when the news broke. At the Mail's office in central London Melanie Phillips chewed through the straps and immediately penned a provocative piece about how single mothers, immigrants and gays are responsible for the inadequate amount of gritting vans across the country.
"I don't love my daugher and I never have!" 33-year-old mother of two Shelley Price narcissistically tells the Britain's second best-selling paper, the Daily Mail. Amazingly, she's even posed for a picture with said shunned child, just in case the kid's school-friends weren't sure it was definitely her..."I don't love my daugher and I never have!" 33-year-old mother of two Shelley Price... more
Parents erupted in fury at a British airport after a flight taking them to the home of Santa was cancelled.
At Manchester Airport on Saturday among 160 passengers where stranded when their flights to Lapland - the magical home of Father Christmas - were cancelled.
Each had paid £400 ($876) for the trip, the Daily Mail reported.
"How do you tell two little kiddies who have been looking forward to seeing Santa all year that now they can't," said Ian Edisbury, 67, who with his wife Jean, 67, was taking their grandchildren Megan, 8, and Nathan, 6, on the trip.
"It was heartbreaking. Nathan just burst into tears.
"Children, all in their Santa hats and reindeer horns, were standing around crying."
Excited children and their parents and grandparents had gathered at the airport since 5am, the Daily Mail said.
They were first told there would be a delay as the airline operator changed aircraft.
But then fury erupted when entire tour was cancelled because the pilot said the plane was too big to cope with treacherous weather conditions in Lapland, the newspaper said.Another classic from the Daily Mail.....
Parents erupted in fury at a British... more
The European Union is costing Britain a staggering £106,000 a minute, a think-tank has revealed.
As the UK teeters on the brink of what experts predict will be the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Government has surrendered £55.8billion to Brussels this year.
That is equivalent to paying a whopping £900 for every man, woman and child in the country.
Cutting back on payments to the EU could fund a 6p cut in income tax, according to a hard-hitting report by the Eurosceptic Bruges Group.
They branded it a 'scandal' that Britain was contributing so much money to the super-state when struggling families were being forced to tighten their belts as recession looms.
UK Independent Party MEP Gerard Batten, who wrote the report for the think-tank, said: 'As we enter what looks like the most serious economic crisis since 1929 membership of the European Union is a luxury that the British people simply cannot afford.
'It is clear that the EU is holding up economic recovery. To get Britain out of recession, we must get Britain out of the EU.'
Robert Oulds, director of the Bruges Group, said: 'There is a desperate need to reinvigorate the British economy by reducing the burden of taxation.
'Slowly, all three main political parties are beginning to realise this but none have come up with a convincing plan as to how this can be done.
'Now that the costs of EU membership have been exposed, we now know that the tax cuts that are so desperately needed can partly be found by freeing us from EU control.'
The report, published today, calculated that the full financial cost to Britain of being part of the EU was £55.8billion - up £400million on the previous year.
This was made up of the Treasury's £4.7billion net contribution to Brussels, plus a £3billion handout to other EU bodies, such as the European Space Agency and the European Investment Bank.
The controversial Common Agricultural Policy costs the UK an additional £16.8billion while the Common Fisheries Policy adds up to another £3.3billion. Some of this is paid direct to the EU, whilst being part of the policies means food on our tables is more expensive.
Finally, red tape imposed by the EU has cost British business about £28billion, according to statistics calculated by the European Commission's vice-chairman Günter Verheugen.
The Bruges Group says that leaving the EU would boost tax revenue and free-up sufficient funds to allow the Government to cut the basic rate of income tax by 6p.
The report was unveiled as the Conservatives blasted the Government's failure to shake up the Common Agricultural Policy.
Ministers gave up £7billion of the UK’s EU budget rebate on the grounds that the farming system would be reformed.
But this did not happen - a failure Environment Secretary Hilary Benn conceded is a 'missed opportunity'.
The Tories also revealed how the Government missed a crucial opportunity to influence the reforms by failing to send a minister to a key European summit on the issue last May.
Shadow agriculture minister Jim Paice said: 'The Government gave up £7billion of taxpayers' money for vague promises of common agricultural policy reform which it has signally failed to achieve.
'The failure to secure sustainable reform comes with a huge price-tag, at a time when the UK economy can ill afford it.'
He said it was 'absolutely indefensible' that UK ministers did not attend the crunch talks.
'The UK should be at the forefront of these talks on the CAP, food security and environmental protection, not just to promote the interests of British farming, but to ensure that EU policy most effectively responds to the challenges of rising demand for food,' he said.The European Union is costing Britain a staggering £106,000 a minute, a think-tank... more
Despite this strong view, it was not clear if the mass resignation would apply to tabloid writers and self-appointed guardians of the nation's morals. Mail editor Paul Dacre was unavailable to clarify the point as he was busy beating a servant to death for overcooking his toast.Despite this strong view, it was not clear if the mass resignation would apply to... more
Welsh Opera singer Katherine Jenkins has told The Mail on Sunday that she took cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis before she became famous.
She told former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan that she snorted up to three lines of cocaine a night. She said she fell in with a "bad crowd" when she moved to London as a teenager.
Welsh Opera singer Katherine Jenkins has told The Mail on Sunday that she took... more
