UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
PCC rules on Moir’s Gately column
The press watchdog has rejected a complaint over a controversial Daily Mail article which described the death of gay Boyzone singer Stephen Gately as not “natural” and “more than a little sleazy.”
Singer Gately, 33, died in Majorca last October and a post mortem concluded that his death was caused by fluid on the lungs.
Mail columnist Jan Moir, in an article headlined “A strange, lonely and troubling death,” wrote that something was “wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun.”
“Whatever the cause of death, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one,” she wrote.
Moir’s article sparked a furious response and a record 25,000 people, including Gately’s civil partner Andrew Cowles, contacted the Press Complaint’s Commission, with some arguing the piece was homophobic and had broken the law. The Crown Prosecution Service later ruled that no crime had been committed.
In its ruling, the PCC said that the article did not breach any guidelines and columnists should be allowed to air their views, however contentious.
PCC Director Stephen Abell said: “In the end, the Commission, while not shying away from recognising the flaws in the article, has judged that it would not be proportionate to rule against the columnist’s right to offer freely expressed views about something that was the focus of public attention.”
Remembering the dead – or “poppy fascism”?
This week, hundreds of thousands of people will join the annual act of remembrance to commemorate those who have died in war, proudly wearing a poppy to honour the fallen.
However the simple flower emblem, which has been used since shortly after the end of World War One as it was the only thing to grow on the devastated battlefields of Belgium and northern France, has once again become an issue in itself.
Is the decision to not wear one an act of disrespect?
The Daily Mail newspaper is running a campaign, demanding that Premier League football teams have a poppy embroidered onto the shirts they wear this weekend. Twelve clubs initially said they would do so, but as the Mail turned its ire on those that didn’t, all bar two — Manchester United and Liverpool — have now agreed to make the gesture.
The Mail said football teams wearing the poppy sent out a “powerful message of solidarity” to Britain’s armed forces.
“All too often footballers – on and off the pitch – set a dreadful example to their young supporters,” the paper said in its editorial. ”It would be to their eternal shame if Manchester United and Liverpool snub the opportunity to demonstrate that their sport can be a force for good.”
Footballers are by no means the first to be criticised for failing to wear a poppy. BBC, ITV and Sky News presenters and reporters all wear a poppy when they appear on our screens following complaints in the past, and even producers on “Strictly Come Dancing” have come in for criticism this year for suggesting contestants should not wear the emblem because of health and safety fears. They have since backed down.
As schoolkids, we were annually forced to wear those atrocious fake flowers which one also saw festooning many shop windows and churches. At an early age, it struck me the remembrance process was being co-opted and primitively exploited by rather shady characters, the same people who were harrumphingly marginalizing pacifist viewpoints into oblivion.
As an adult, I am more certain than ever that these would never be the priorities of an evolved society.
Unchristian comments about BBC’s new head of religion?
The BBC is coming in for flak about its religious coverage, much of it centring on its incoming head of religious broadcasting.
The publicly funded broadcaster has appointed Aaqil Ahmed from Channel 4, a move that has dismayed a Church of England member who is proposing to discuss the matter at the church’s General Synod, the church’s parliament.
Nigel Holmes, a former BBC employee and lay member of the synod, has tabled a private members’ motion for the upcoming meeting in July.
In a document to go with the motion, which has to attract 100 signatures to be discussed, he accused Ahmed of heading up a Channel 4 religious department that was sensationalist and biased against Christianity.
“Many of the Channel 4 programmes concerned with Christianity, in contrast to those featuring other faiths, seem to be of a sensationalist or unduly critical nature,” he wrote.
“From this point of view it is worrying that the Channel 4 religion and multicultural commissioning editor, Aaqil Ahmed, who is a Muslim is soon to be responsible for all the religious output from the BBC.”
He also said BBC coverage of religious affairs had been falling over the years, and the BBC 3 output covered religion “from the angle of the freak show”.
The appointment of Ahmed is simply a “visible” means for the BBC to demonstrate that it complies with the law.The 2002 amendments to the Race Relations Act require that all public service organisations will “actively promote diversity”. The amended legislation does not specify how this should be done but places the burden of demonstrating compliance with the law on the persons responsible for those organisations.The way in which they do this varies from (technically illegal but tacitly accepted) positive discrimination in employment to achieve informal quotas of employees from minority groups, to the commonly perceived “loonie” actions of public authorities in banning the display of the national flag, etc on the grounds that such displays are not “inclusive”.Employing Ahmed and similar figures places the BBC firmly in the “compliance zone” of the legislation. Hence the BBC’s diverse collection of TV presenters intended to represent and promote acceptance of all colours, faiths, etc, etc in British society.
Parliament set to make another costly mistake?
Parliament’s election of a new Speaker is supposed to solve a lot of the woes it has brought upon itself by the expenses scandal. But it won’t, newspaper editorials predict.
The House of Commons needs to appoint somebody who can restore the integrity of the chamber and public trust after many MPs were found to be claiming for lavish and sometimes inappropriate expenses.
Instead Westminster in its search for a replacement for Michael Martin has resorted to old fashioned “unparalleled cynicism” and “horse trading”, the papers say.
The media’s favoured choice, former Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe, looks set to be overlooked to preserve vested interests, they believe.
The Conservatives are resisting the early front-runner John Bercow, despite him being a Tory, because of his switch from right-wing to left of centre, media reports said.
Labour only backed Bercow early on because their “sole purpose in electing him is to discomfit his fellow Tories who loathe the sight of him”, wrote Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail.
The Daily Telegraph said in its editorial: “There has been an atmosphere of horse-trading. Candidates have found themselves attracting support from unlikely quarters because one faction wants to spite another.”
MPs shoot themselves in foot over expenses
The online release of MPs’ expense claims has only served to further dent their already battered reputation.
Forty-two days after the Daily Telegraph began to investigate MPs’ expenses the Houses of Parliament finally got round to publishing official details of them. Or rather it didn’t, as lots of key information was blacked out.
Britain’s newspapers spelt out their condemnation – in black and white – of this supposed exercise in freedom of information.
The Sun labelled MPs “Blankers”, the Daily Mirror led with the headline: “Blackwash”, while the Daily Mail posed the question: “Just how stupid do they think we are?”
Commons officials insisted that the information that had been blacked out was done to protect MPs’ security, but the consensus of Britain’s media was that the political classes had shot themselves in the foot.
“Yesterday’s exercise in obfuscation suggested the House of Commons has learnt nothing,” opined the Daily Telegraph’s editorial, with the paper promising to publish an uncensored version of every MP’s expense claim on Saturday.
“The Portcullis House edition of the dossier does not so much slam the door behind a bolted stallion as painstakingly construct a new stable in order to house a dead nag,” wrote the Guardian.
Anybody who has ever worked for a boss or colleague with a limitless sense of entitlement will recognise the behaviour pattern. Don’t wait for them to learn or adapt – they never will. Their perspective is to vaguely observe that things have unaccountably (but temporarily) gone wrong with the universe’s processes for adapting to them.
The term ‘Narcissitic Personality Disorder’ fits perfectly.
To use an aussie expression ‘trust them as far as you can spit a fridge’
Reform of UK’s monarchy laws – enlightened or meddling?
Discussions between the British premier and monarch to reverse religious discriminatory laws going back 300 years have sparked consternation in a conservative newspaper while attracting little response from the Roman Catholic church.
Proposed changes of the 1701 Act of Settlement would allow a future king or queen to marry a Roman Catholic, but would still preclude a royal of that faith becoming monarch.
It would also give female heirs an equal claim to the throne.
Nevertheless, Steve Doughty writing an analysis piece in the Daily Mail suggested it was an attack on Britain’s constitution, heralding the end of the monarchy as we know it and the Church of England.
“The trouble with pulling down pillars of the constitution is that you never know what may fall with them,” he wrote.
“Tinkering with either the 18th century law or the principle of primogeniture would put a question mark over the future of the monarchy, at a time when its popularity has been rocky.”
He said repealing the Act may lead to calls for a return of the Catholic Stuart dynasty.
The Archbishop of Westminster, whose representative said: “It is anachronistic and discriminatory and he is sure it will be repealed at some point.” no doubt knows a thing or two about anachronistic and discriminatory organisations. Not sure that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor should be indulging his prejudices so readily. Hasn’t he read his history?
Brown flatters, but are we still best of friends, papers ask
“Brave” was how most of the British press responded to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech to both houses of Congress in Washington.
Brown was the first European leader to be invited to Washington by the new U.S. administration and was only the fifth British prime minister to speak to a joint session of Congress.
The front pages of the broadsheets were dominated with the speech and leader writers agonised on whether the so-called special relationship between the two countries is still intact.
With an eye on the upcoming G20 meeting of leading nations in London on April 2, Brown called for the U.S. and their European allies to work together through the global economic crisis.
He was praised for his warning against protectionism and his “passionate” plea on tackling poverty in Africa.
It was a speech where Brown “rose to the occasion”, Peter Hyman, former speechwriter to ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrote in the The Guardian.
“Yesterday, Brown didn’t just give us substance but a little style too.”
They always say a mans best friend is his dog.
Fetch Gordon Fetch.
Has “Auntie” got it right?
After a week of media frenzy, the BBC hopes it has taken action to end the crisis caused by the crude prank call made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on the latter’s Radio 2 show.
Brand has quit and Jonathan Ross has been suspended after the presenters left lewd comments on the answerphone of 78-year-old “Fawlty Towers” actor Andrew Sachs. The head of Radio 2 Lesley Douglas has also resigned.
The outcome it would appear has left no one happy. Most commentators feel the BBC took far too long to act on an issue that had clearly angered the public with more than 30,000 people making a complaint.
Many newspapers feel Douglas was unjustly sacrificed, taking the rap for mistakes made by production staff she had little or nothing to do with. The Daily Mirror said she was a “big loss to weak BBC”.
What it means for the BBC is unclear. Its governing body, the BBC Trust, says lessons must be learned and editorial guidelines tightened without jeopardising creativity and “edgy” programmes.
Those like the Daily Mail, a regular critic of the broadcaster, want the corporation to go further, citing other “highly offensive” jokes, including one about the Queen, that have appeared on the BBC since the row erupted.
Others worry that fear of causing offence will make the BBC safe and irrelevant.
“who will watch him now” asked Offended of Tunbridge Wells.
Well I will, for one. And so will the millions of people who used to enjoy watching him before the mindless hordes of vacuous Daily Mail readers got onto their blue-rinse bandwagon. Those professionally-offended minority will not dictate to the quiet and sensible majority what we watch or listen to.
Hard as it may be for them to believe, but they speak for nobody but themselves, and I find their presumption that they in some way speak for the country simultaneously insulting and worrying.
Thatcher’s dead, get over it. (You mean she’s not? Ah well, another week or so…)
Editorials praise Brown’s energy package
Unions and energy watchdogs lashed out at Gordon Brown’s aid package aimed at helping householders cope with soaring energy bills, saying it was ”too little, too late”. Even pensioners’ charities gave a frosty response.
But newspaper editorials on the whole were supportive, describing it as “bold politics. More importantly, it was good policy”, as The Times said.
From The Guardian to the Financial Times, the editorials praised the “eminently sensible” measures which concentrated on big companies helping householders to lag their lofts and cavity walls.
It may not have delivered on the pre-hype, but the editorials blame the government for bumping up the publicity in a desperate attempt to boost its poor showing in the opinion polls.
But the government resisted the temptation to impose a windfall tax on big power companies — a target on so-called excess profits.
Instead, the utility companies have been persuaded to invest 910 million pounds in helping householders pay the cost of insulating their homes.
The editorials said the government was right to resist pressure from Labour MPs and unions to impose a tax.
Editorials should not praise Brown’s energy package, but should point to his huge lies and huge hidden tax on energy
Palin – the next Thatcher or Diana?
The British press, like their American cousins, doesn’t seem to able to get enough of Sarah Palin.
The self-described hunting, shooting and hockey “mom” is the “biggest hot-button political story in the English-speaking world”, says Martin Kettle in The Guardian on Friday.
Newspapers have devoted pages to the previously little-known governor of Alaska and now Republican vice-presidential candidate.
But while she was described as the next Margaret Thatcher by the American media in the Daily Telegraph, the British media have concentrated on drawing parallels with psychiatrist Dr Melfi from “The Sopranos” TV show or the late Princess Diana.
“She joins those women, such as Diana, Princess of Wales and Carla Bruni, who were picked to fill a gap at the side of a prominent man and promptly upstaged him,” writes Bronwen Maddox in The Times.
Her colleague Andrew Billen draws on Palin’s joke for inspiration: what is the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull — lipstick.
“It has been applied liberally to Mrs Palin’s pleasing face, less hockey mom than Dr Melfi from The Sopranos or the Specsavers model, a sexy lady who knows it but won’t show it. Her hair was down but her neckline was up.”
I read this excellent article with a great interest. Thank you. It is so obvious the Obama camp is paranoid that is why they don’t stop trashing Sarah Palin who runs for number 2 not 1.
Yes I agree that Sarah is both M Thatcher and Diana.
Sarah is smart and beautiful, a few ugly women love to attack her because they are jealous of Sarah.
Let me tell these radical left “McCain will be the President of the United Stated and Palin will be the Vice President of the United States.”
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The Wall
The PCC ruling is correct!
If journalists were not allowed to report stories that offend some people then many reports would just not be publishable. If the person who had died had been an MP, or even worse a banker, I’m sure that the PCC would not have been called into action and the story would have been heralded as “in the public interest”.
This is another case of a vocal minority wanting to impose their views on the common people and control the media.