Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Time to end the ‘Taliban’ nonsense

Adam Bienkov reports on one of the latest right-wing memes - anyone who says anything you disagree with can be dismissed as 'Taliban'. Bearing in mind what the Taliban actually are and were, it's a pretty shoddy comparison. But then this is the war against political correctness and people who care about climate change, and so it seems that anything, no matter how putrid, goes. If you have one lot of people barking 'fascist' on one side and another lot barking 'Taliban' on the other, it's pretty embarrassing. Well it would be for Boris, if he had any shame.

Septicisle looks at the beyond-parody ineptitude of the Fritzl trial reporting, something which wouldn't be allowed in its form this country because of common-sense victim protection laws. The tabloids have taken their usual stance - do whatever we can get away with, regardless of the ethics - and the result is fairly seedy.

Ben Goldacre of Bad Science reports on Lloyds Pharmacies and carbon monoxide detectors, and more pertinently how the churnalists were happy to ctrl+C and ctrl+V everything they were told without questioning it. Hurrah for the Fourth Estate.

David Semple has some interesting ideas about long working weeks and why the left often seems to be on the back foot when discussing certain issues.

Chris Dillow has some ideas on unemployment and what to do about it, which will be entirely ignored by the national press in the scrum to blame Gordon Brown and point fingers and generally stand around yelling a bit. Looking forward to reading the same article again and again and again later.

The Quail brings news of the exciting power of mushrooms.

And Tim Ireland has spotted that Paula Murray's Wikipedia page has been edited by someone at the Express - to distance the London-based Daily from the Scottish Sunday edition only.

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