How, when, and why has the phrase ‘rip-off’ managed to enter common lexis? A decade ago, only the seedier tabloids would dared have printed a headline with this kind of slang. But within the last few years, the Daily Mail has picked up ‘rip-off’ and run with it, creating the whole image of a ‘rip-off Britain’.

Today, however, the phrase seems to have gone one step further – and one-step too far in my opinion. The Independent today includes the headline:

Banks accused of rip-off charges for holidaymakers

That’s a broadsheet newspaper printing clichéd slang-laden headlines. Even the story’s pretty old: If you don’t know by now that the banks will try and over-charge you in every conceivable situation – especially when you’re doing something different like going on holiday – then you’re rather slower than the rest of us.

Understandably shocked by this development, I hurried off to check the Guardian and Times style guides. The latter says it is to be avoided, the former hasn’t stooped to including the phrase yet.

It seems the British broadsheet culture still has a pulse… though even I’ll admit that it’s fading fast.

It’s not new, but it’s still worth reading: Ian Mayes, the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor, wrote a column on the scenes in the Guardian office on 7th July. It gives a fantastic insight into the state of a newspaper office in the face of a massive news event.

As many of my UK readers will have seen, Ryanair has been advertising flights using slogans based around the London bombings:

The full-page advertisements, which appeared in national newspapers yesterday, were headed “London fights back” and included a photograph of Winston Churchill in RAF uniform, smoking a cigar and giving the victory sign.

A speech bubble contains a three-line parody of one of his most famous speeches made in June 1940: “We shall fly them to the beaches, we shall fly them to the hills, we shall fly them to London!”

It is now refusing to withdraw these advertisements, despite over one hundred complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. As such, it’s getting itself lots of free coverage and free advertising of the offer through the various reports about it in newspapers. Since people generally go for price over principles, it’ll probably do very well.

And just in case the ads aren’t enough to get newspaper columns wound up, Ryanair would defend the ads thusly, refusing to accept that the advertising provides any kind of marketing boost to the company:

Peter Sherrard, head of communications for Ryanair, which is based in Dublin, defended the advertisements as an attempt “to stand by the people of London after these terrible terrorist atrocities.

“We are trying to ensure that the terrorists don’t succeed in paralysing people with fear, which is their primary objective, and that people continue to lead their lives as normal and continue to fly.”

Ryanair should be making a united stance with other major operators to ensure that visitors return to London.

Clearly, as long as this strategy of antagonism works and provides a profit to companies, it isn’t going to stop. But why do newspapers continue to play into their hands, by initially printing the clearly offensive ads, and then by reporting the complaints about them – often whilst still running them? Do they not realise that it is far more damaging to their newspaper than to the advertiser? After all, the companies who run these ads normally attract through price rather than reputation, but the newspaper still has to convince its readership that it is principled, despite effectively supporting the advertiser’s unprincipled campaign.

This practice is bad for the newspaper business, and until editors begin to realise this, they are effectively going to continue to lose sales. Who needs to buy reams of advertising when the ‘horrified’ copy does it for them?

Away from the world of advertising, it’s worth noting that many of the news networks and newspapers took questionable editorial decisions in their reportage of the London bombings. It is at times like these when the BBC and The Guardian – though more particularly the latter, as the former has more of a statuary duty – show themselves to be genuinely excellent news sources, and in true touch with their readers and viewers. They are not afraid to enter a dialogue with their readers, explaining their decisions, and admitting their mistakes. To do this on such a big news occasions, when controversy is flying, is admirable, but not difficult. To do so regularly, often responding to complaints and queries by just a couple of their audience, is truly extraordinary, and as much as other newspapers (most notably The Independent) have tried to copy it, they’re not nearly as candid and honest. It is rare for rivals, particularly of the BBC, to issue a correction (bombs at seven tube stations and on three buses?), and still more rare to offer an apology. For the BBC to offer a weekly slot on it’s rolling news channel to explain its decisions and accept its faults is brave, and wins it respect.

Will Ryanair ever apologise for it’s offensive advertisements? Yes, but only once the complaints have been featured everywhere, so that the apology can then make a second feature, and continue it’s free advertising. I do hope that newspapers wake up to this soon – perhaps I should write and complain…

Simon Heffer, the Daily Mail:

Of course, we like making jokes about Johnny Frenchman just as much as he likes making them about us. But our jests are underpinned, always, with a respect for the place and its marvellous culture – the fabulous countryside, the superb food, the magnificent wines, the soaring cathedrals and all those actresses.

Simon Heffer, the Daily Mail:

Our economy is far stronger than [Chirac’s]. We are best friends with the Americans, whom he also hates. We do not surrender to the Germans every couple of years and do not settle our political differences by rioting.

With thanks to The Friday Thing.

The XXX Olympiad is coming to London, which is great news for the country, particularly for sport and tourism. Congratulations to the whole bid team – obviously a job very well done, not least for overcoming the odds which were stacked in Paris’s favour.

The details (as if any more are really needed) from Channel 4:

London was won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic bid. The favourite, Paris, came second with Madrid, New York and Moscow trailing behind.

There were scenes of jubilation in Trafalgar Square when the result announced. Kelly Holmes was in tears after the news broke.

“It is just amazing,” the double Olympic champion said. “It was so nerve-racking, I just cannot believe it.”

Olympic athletes threw their arms in the air in delight and hugged each other in London’s Trafalgar Square as they watched the announcement in Singapore on a huge screen. Champagne was sprayed around under Nelson’s Column and thousands danced in the streets after the announcement was made.

In addition to Kelly’s tears, apparently Kay Burley, that most professional and sober of journalists, was ‘shrieking’ over on Sky News. I’m glad I was watching the announcement on the BBC. Though, on an occasion so unexpectedly happy as this, I think I can even let The Burley’s unprofessionalism go.

No doubt I’ll be posting more on this over the next, erm, seven years, as there are a number of questions unanswered as yet. Will the UK manage to make a good job of it? Well, the team have done pretty well so far, and I have every confidence that they will continue, and produce the best games seen anywhere.

But then, my posting record on the London 2012 bid leaves quite a bit to be desired. Remember this?

London’s Olympic dream in tatters
Did anyone ever think that we had a chance of seeing the Olympic Games in London? It was never terribly likely, and I’m not sure that the bid had a great deal of public support anyway, particularly from those who live further north than Coventry, since it just seemed like (yet again) vast amounts of money would be spent on an event in London, while the rest of the country would be pretty much left out… Of course, if all of this speculation is wrong and Mike Lee (London 2012’s director of communications) is right, then I could end up looking very silly

Erm… excuses… yes… a lot can change in six months… and, as I’ve said, I’m happy to have been proved wrong. What more can I possibly say in the face of being so cringe-worthily wrong? I suppose I could just point out that it might help me achieve this:

98. Go to the Olympics

Anyway, however much I doubted, I think it’s only fair to give the bid team their due: Congratulations again to the whole team, you did a phenomenal job.

One month ago today, Roy Greenslade wrote a very interesting piece in the Grauniad about the Daily Mail’s increasing populist approach to reporting, and its increasing obsession with celebrity as it strives to overtake The Sun as this country’s best selling daily.

It began by listing some recent Mail headlines:

Can you guess the daily newspaper that ran these headlines last week? “Rod’s daughter, Rachel and a new love triangle”; “Just what is tormenting Toyah?”; “Becks’ little boy”; “Prince Harry on patrol”; “Rio in trouble again over stag-night rampage”; “Christmas baby for Penny and Rod”; “Go-go have a shave: George Michael at 41”; and “Big bucks Becks.”

This approach, in combination with moves like stealing Littlejohn and increasing the sports pages almost certainly help the paper to appeal to a broader base of people. But can it ever overtake The Sun? Most people think not. I’m not so sure.

Clearly, the Daily Mail has a narrower appeal than The Sun. But in an age of declining sales, my general feeling is that Mail readers will be more faithful than Sun readers. Particularly if newspaper prices are forced up by the OFT’s plans to open up distribution lines for newspapers and magazines, as seems increasingly likely. A larger core of the Daily Mail’s readers would probably be willing to pay a little more for the paper than Sun readers, who I think would be more likely to desert the paper if prices rise significantly.

So my instinct is to say that there’s a distinct possibility that the Daily Mail’s new direction could lead to it’s sales figures exceeding those of The Sun, but only by it’s sales declining more slowly, rather than a surge in circulation. Time will tell.

There’s a special edition of Channel 4 News tonight, all about the Tsunami Disaster. It includes an interview with the PM, and should certainly be worth watching, as Channel 4 News always is. You can catch it at 6.05pm.

From The Grauniad, Friday December 3 2004, page 14….

Washington funds false sex lessons

Gary Younge
in New York

The Bush administration is funding sexual health projects that teach children that HIV can be contracted through sweat and tears, touching genitals can result in pregnancy, and that a 43-day-old foetus is a thinking person.

A congressional analysis of more than a dozen federally funded “abstinence-only programmes” unveiled a litany of “false, misleading and distorted information” in teaching materials after reviewing curriculums designed to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

There are more than 100 abstinence programmes, involving several million children aged from nine to 18, and running in 25 states since 1999. They are funded by the federal government to the tune of $170m (£88.5m), twice the amount when George Bush came to power.

The money goes to religious, civic and medical organisations as grants. To qualify they may only talk about types of contraception in terms of their failure rates, not about how to use them, or the possible benefits.

The survey was conducted by the staff of congressman Henry Waxman of California, a longstanding Democratic critic of the Republican administration’s approach to sex education. His team concentrated on the 13 programmes that are most widely used, and found only two of them were accurate.

“It is absolutely vital that the health education provided to America’s youth be scientifically and medically accurate,” Mr Waxman said. “The abstinence-only programmes reviewed in this report fail to meet this standard.”

Other “facts” include that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, half the gay male teenagers in the US have tested positive for HIV, and condoms fail to prevent transmission of HIV in 31% of heterosexual intercourse. US government figures contradict all of these assertions.

AC Green’s Game Plan — a programme named after a basketball player who said he would not have sex before marriage — teaches: “The popular claim that condoms help prevent the spread of STDs is not supported by the data.”

Mr Waxman told the Washington Post: “I don’t think we ought to lie to our children about science. Something is seriously wrong when federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health facts.”

But government officials said Mr Waxman’s report rehashed old anti-abstinence prejudices for political purposes. Alma Golden, the deputy assistant health and human services secretary for population affairs, said it took statements out of context to present programmes in the worst possible light.

“These issues have been raised before and discredited,” Ms Golden said. “One thing is very clear for our children: abstaining from sex is the most effective means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, STDs, and preventing pregnancy.”

Mr Waxman also criticised some programmes for reinforcing sexist stereotypes to children. One — Why Know — says: “Women gauge their happiness and judge their success by their relationships. Men’s happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments.”

Another programme, Wait Training, says: “Just as a woman needs to feel a man’s devotion to her, a man has a primary need to feel a woman’s admiration. To admire a man is to regard him with wonder, delight, and approval. A man feels admired when his unique characteristics and talents happily amaze her.”

Originally posted on The LBSC

What’s happen to the apostrophe? Was it stolen? I think we should be told. I for one want it back. I’m all for evolution of the language, but this is blatantly nonsensical.

And in other news, the Grauniad have surpassed themselves in today’s edition:

A panel accompanying an article about past Booker prize winners (Booker prize’s long-term fame lottery, page 11, October 21) was wrong to say that Peter Carey’s novel Oscar and Lucinda sold just 13 copies in British bookshops in the previous year. In fact, its sales were more than 3,000. Apologies.

Originally posted on The LBSC

Just under two years after Christopher Price’s tragic death, Liquid News has finally died. Just when Claudia and Paddy were beginning to make it all better again.

Still, the presenters’ and crews’ general displeasure at the axing was cheerily noticeable, with the “Liquid News Helpline” strap (“We haven’t got enough money left for a box of tissues, let alone a sodding helpline. Pull yourself together”), the redubbing of the Kill Bill clip to Kill Stuart (the BBC Three controller), and the “We really shouldn’t tell you this, but the money for the LA satellite feed ran out three weeks ago so all the ‘Latest’ news we’ve been bringing you from Hollywood over the last month was actually filmed in February”.

At least they went with dignity, dedicating the programme to Christopher and reshowing the tribute to him right after.

But that’s it. The end of Liquid. It makes me want to cry. And Christopher Price dying was a WHOLE lot more tragic than the Feeder drummer.

I’m off to sulk now (whilst also looking forward to the new extended 7 O’Clock News in May and, on a completely different topic, GMail. And if you’re expecting me to expand on either of those, you’re about to be disappointed. But please, for the sake of us all, keep your hamster away from the printer.

Originally posted on The LBSC