This Muslim Weekly piece by Mike O’Brien is absolutely dispicable. Can you imagine the furore if this kind of thing had been published in the mainstream press:

Can anyone seriously imagine that Michael Howard or Charles Kennedy would be able to significantly influence George W. Bush? If they do, then they need to join the real world.

Worse is to come:

let‚s [sic] compare Tony Blair with previous Prime Ministers. He is the first Prime Minister to have ever read the Qur‚an [sic], to quote from it and to talk about it. Can anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher or John Major doing the same?

How can a Government minister possibly get away with this sort of thing?

The public is to challenge Tony Blair on the country’s key political issues during a gloves-off televised debate.

This is what my long conversation last week alluded to: I was asked to take part in this programme. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately for the PM), things didn’t work out, and so I don’t feature. But it should be worth watching nonetheless – you never know, it might include Mr Blair’s Iraq homologue of Mrs Thatcher’s “Nationwide” moment about the sinking of the Belgrano. Five, 7pm.

This is the inherent problem with DEC campaigns for single disasters. As I’ve said before, it would be much better all round if it was up to the charities to divide the income between all of their projects, sending money where it is most needed, and not spending disproportionate amounts on one particular disaster.

But does Tony Blair want Ken Livingstone to say sorry for what he said, or just for the offence that might have been caused by it? 😉

I do love stories like this, where you just know that the Daily Mail is going to pick it up and have a field day ranting about ‘wars on motorists’ and ‘rip-off Britain’, and at the same time the broadsheets will pick it up to have a bit of fun with it.

The Dublin Airport Authority has voiced regret after an ambulance waiting for a seriously injured patient was clamped by airport police.

You have to love how seriously the Daily Mail takes itself. The thrid story on it’s homepage right now is Help! My son’s locked in a suitcase. And the copy reads just like a parody:

To a boy of three playing hide and seek, the suitcase in the corner seemed like the ideal refuge.
But it turned out to be a prison.

As Tiger Fawley climbed into the rigid, watertight case, the lid slammed shut, trapping him inside.

The fourth story under the clearly widely defined category of news is about teens not knowing the price of milk. Oh, and it’s £1.51 for six pints at Tesco, so put me in the ‘knows’ category please. Also making a front-page appearance is The man who is allergic to his girlfriend.

The top story, as if you need to ask, is about Michael Jackson’s influenza.

There’s nothing on the front page of the site at all about the suicide bombing in Beirut, Tory immigration plans, or the latest in the Ken Livingstone row. Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to cover the latter. What was it he said?

Although we uniquely have some brilliant newspapers and first-rate journalists, their standing is dragged down by what must be some of the most reprehensibly managed, edited and owned newspapers in the world.

They have a disgraceful record, none more so than the Daily Mail

When it was first set up [in 1896] its first campaign was against Jewish refugees coming to London from the pogroms. It continued its anti-Semitism in the 1930s, fighting any proposals that Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler should be admitted to this country.

Had Britain lost the war and had the Nazis controlled Britain, Lord Rothermere and his cohorts would have been at the front of the queue of collaborators.

In truth, my problem with the Daily Mail is not its politics, nor even what it covers (which is lucky, because otherwise I’d be close to agreeing with Ken Livingstone). The Sun, The Mirror, and the Daily Star cover very little actual news as well, yet I have no problem with any of those. The Daily Mail gets my goat because it likes to present itself as well above its station. The red-tops do their job, and they’re aware of their role and have a slightly tongue-in-cheek attitude. The Daily Mail likes to present itself as a respectable paper, when, in actual fact, it is clearly anything but. This is no more clearly displayed than in their celebrity coverage, where they are frequently outraged and appalled at the celebrity culture, whilst also covering it in the closest detail (as I’ve already discussed in relation to Big Brother – in fact, if you do a search on ‘Daily Mail’, you may begin to wonder whether I’m unhealthily obsessed). And that’s the secret of its undeniable success, and also why it is so dangerously powerful.

Back to the quality media: Having read The Times a couple of, erm, times recently, it has picked up somewhat from its quality for the first few tabloid (sorry, compact) editions. It’s still very much in the deplorable format of one story per page, hung around a graphic, but at least the journalism is back at the standard where it should be, and the front-page banner creep has been stopped. And the Murdoch obsession seems to have been reigned in just a little (though it’s still clearly present).

The Grauniad is making the best move in the down-sizing game, by becoming a midi. That way, it carefully side-steps the problems with the tabloid format, whilst also being a bit more manageable. The problem is the considerable length of time this is taking them. The only thing that’s been worrying me since the announcement was made last September is this:

Most importantly, from the reader’s point of view, it will not leave the Guardian’s journalism untouched, particularly in the manner and tone of presentation.

The Guardian’s tone is one its great strengths. To change it would be suicide.

I am, somewhat unfortunately for them, against Tory plans to test the health of migrants.

On the one hand, it would clearly reduce the burden on the NHS, which is largely a good thing. But at what cost?

Combined with the other proposals put forward by the Conservatives, it risks creating an immigrant under-class. If we are only to take a given quota of the best skilled and most healthy specimens, it begins to sound like these people are being treated as nothing more than commodities. This can’t really do much to help social integration.

A later story on the Labour response to the proposal claims:

Labour rubbished Michael Howard’s plans for HIV checks on immigrants this morning, calling them “untested, uncosted and chaotic”.

This just makes the government look silly. Clearly, any proposal when it is first put forward is untested. So that’s an unfair allegation. It’s only uncosted because the government have failed to keep an accurate check on the health of immigrants to this point in time. And how can anybody claim that the system, which has yet to be implemented, will be ‘chaotic’? I think Des Browne must just have been a bit desperate for a word to finish his pattern of three, there.

The Lib Dems, in the form of Mark Oaten, have come flying to the rescue with some sensible and wise words:

Their shadow home secretary, Mark Oaten, said: “This is another worrying step in the war of words over asylum and immigration between Labour and the Conservatives.

“They are in danger of pandering to prejudice rather than challenging it.”

It’s beginning to become a consistent pattern here that I’m favouring Lib Dem policies. But I don’t particuarly want to be taxed to death once I’m earning, and I should (hopefully) qualify under the next government.

It’s an interesting puzzle, but if I were judging purely on today’s annoucements, I’d have to vote Lib Dem, as they are the only party who have spoken with any degree of common sense.

From today’s Society Guardian:

The publication of the mortality rates of individual surgeons could have a “devastating effect” on the quality of care, leading some to refuse to perform risky operations, senior doctors warned today.

Is this not obvious? The surgeons who want the best figures will choose the patients least likely to die. Those that take on the difficult cases will be demonised by the media.

Common sense can see that – unfortunately, the Labour government can’t. Which is yet another reason why they have to go.

This piece by David Aaronovitch in today’s Grauniad is (as usual for him) fantastic, comparing the relationship between the Great British Public and Tony Blair to a marriage. Just as Mr Blair himself almost suggested:

And it’s not a bad idea to think of it in terms of it being like any relationship: you, the British people, and me, the person you chose as your Prime Minister

Though it does conjure up some thoroughly disturbing images of our PM:

When I first became leader of the Labour party, everywhere I went, I could feel the warmth growing, the expectations rising.
At first the sex was great, wasn’t it? Remember that night in 1997? You always moist, me always (let’s be blunt) totally rampant.

Oh, and I also wanted an excuse to post that brilliant picture of Mr Blair.

As a big fan of the original, I expected that I would hate this – yet I was pleasantly surprised. I liked how the CGI characters had kept the look of the original puppets (not trying desperately to update it as with Thunderbirds), and I liked how they kept the plot line largely similar to the original. Though, having said that, I haven’t seen their hats being used very much, and in the original series Captain Scarlet was Court Martialed for removing his on a mission. I also wasn’t too keen on the freaky eyes of the Mysteron characters (surely that’d give away the difference between normal people and Mysterons far too easily?) and the inadequate explanation for how Captain Scarlet became indestructable but not (permanently) evil.

The new musical score was excellent, and the whole show had a lot more glossy drama about it than the puppet series, which actually added to the show, particularly with the much greater use of characters’ first names.

Lieutenant Green’s sex change came as a bit of a shock, and really makes you question how far we’ve come in the past few decades – the original Lieutenant Green was the token black character, whereas now he’s the token woman, in a typically subserviant and almost secretarial role to Colonel White. Are we moving forwards or backwards here?

I was very happy with the new version of this. It’s almost as good as the original (better in some ways), and if it wasn’t shown at a time when I’m normally in bed, then I would watch it regularly.

This was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. So this really isn’t a very positive review. The comedy wasn’t funny, most of the acting was terrible (save for Penelope Wilton and and Lucy Davis, who played relatively small parts), the horror wasn’t horrific, and the storyline was generally poop. Even the ‘subtle’ background stuff wasn’t subtle – or funny. The film was so bad that I felt I was battling to keep myself from switching it off, just in case the ‘good’ bit was coming up.

I usually like typically ‘British’ comedies, that most of the country fails to understand. This, though, I did not like. It was just bad. A complete waste of ninety minutes of my life (and, even for a film as short as it was, it didn’t seem to have enough plot to sustain interest).

This isn’t a film that’s worth watching, and much less a DVD that’s worth buying. It’s absolutely terrible.