The Mail and “Facebook is Satan dot com”
This is a guest post by Nik Johnson. Enjoy his blog or follow him on Twitter. If you'd like to submit an article for Enemies of Reason, based on something you've read in the papers or just want to get off your chest, email me at antonvowl at live dot co dot uk.
It’s always a joy when two of the Daily Mail’s narratives combine: Immigrants killing house prices, Jonathan Ross offending the Queen or hoodies smoking and upsetting a minor celebrity on holiday in a bikini. Now it’s the turn of Facebook to face off against one of the Mail’s biggest perceived problems in this country: The Big Brother, surveillance society.
In this article, a mother allows her 11 year old daughter to register for a Facebook account. Never mind that Facebook itself says you must be 13 or older, but “the age restriction isn't policed and it's easy to give a false date of birth.” Which is fine then. If people leave their front door open, then it’s not like their TV is policed. That girl with the short skirt on? Totally not policing her body.
So already, the mother has admitted to lying to get her daughter into an entertainment site that she’s not old enough to access. Of course, this isn’t some scummer on a council estate using a stolen laptop and sponging off the state to feed her 19 children by 24 dads. Would the Mail have any sympathy with her then? No. This is what she’s all about:
We live in an affluent village in the Home Counties. My daughter is in her first year at a high-achieving comprehensive school with an outstanding Ofsted rating. She rides horses, loves dancing and is in the top set in her school year.
So, now her affluent, horse-riding daughter is on Facebook, she can be left alone to socialise with her friends, like a normal child. There’s no way Mum would do anything mental, like snoop on her daughter in the way that New Labour did.
One afternoon she accessed Facebook via my mobile phone and then forgot to log off - inadvertently allowing me to remain logged on as her and giving me admittance to her online life. For a week, I was able to eavesdrop on her and observe her conduct.
Oh, right. She, er, did. But that’s okay, because it’s for her daughter’s own good, because she’s using a service she’s too young for. But that’s okay too, because Facebook is THE DEVIL DOT COM.
How would you feel if your mother had read your diary, or somehow listened in on your childhood conversations? Jesus, what if she could read or hear what you say in the pub, on the Internet or while trying to coax your wife into anal sex?
Especially the moment I read my daughter describe me as a 'f***ing cow' to one of her friends after I grounded her for an unrelated misdemeanour. 'I hate her,' she wrote of me, which passed like a knife through my heart
Oh yeah, and kids say things like this. Constantly. But now her poor daughter will be terrified to even think about anything, in case her mother is hovering over her shoulder or sitting at home reading along on her phone, then printing the results in the bloody newspaper. Welcome to the world of massive privacy insecurities.
All instigated because mummy bowed before a tantrum and let her little girl onto the Internet, and instead of parenting her properly and using Facebook with her, spied on her:
Did I feel guilty for spying on her? To begin with, I admit I had a few misgivings and felt I had let Clare down by not trusting her. But the terrifying things I learned meant that horror and dismay very quickly replaced those feelings.
So that’s fine then. And of course, as a caring parent who is “dismayed” by what she reads, including her darling 11 year old daughter calling someone a “bitch”, and a status update that says “I’d like to stamp on her head” (although probably in irritating teen speak, so “id l1ke 2 stmp on hrdisgj”), her reaction is to close her account.
My first instinct, of course, was to take her off the site altogether - however much Clare insisted my surreptitious observations were unfortunate, but not typical of her life online. I also knew that eventually she would find her way back on to Facebook. So I made Clare a deal. Between us, we would go through every so-called friend on her account and delete anyone she didn't know in person. Anyone who had posted abuse would be blocked.
Oh, right, er. Hmm. Because that worked well last time.
Clare agreed that she would never accept requests from strangers to become her Facebook friend ... I quickly learned that Clare not only accepts friendship requests from kids much older than herself whom she doesn't even know - she also approaches strangers so that she can be seen to have as many Facebook friends as possible.
Mum is a liar, daughter is a liar. That’s the real moral of this story. Regardless of the medium they use.
A plague of fucking vultures
The front page of the Daily Star is never a place you go to for j0urnalism, or quality news, or, well, anything other than a celebrity in their pants really. But today's edition marks out a truly horrible new low.
Have a good look. This is the way it's going. A picture of someone on a hospital bed, covered in bruises. Unconscious. And with a fucking great camera shoved in his face.
THIS is Paul Gascoigne lying unconscious in his hospital bed after the car crash that nearly killed him.
The picture shows how the football legend’s face took the brunt of the smash that left him lying in the road choking on his own blood.
Well, thank goodness we have the photo to show us that his face took the brunt of the smash. We'd never have known otherwise, would we? There is an attempt at some justification underneath the photo, which goes like this:
The former footballer, who witnesses said was not wearing a seatbelt, was given emergency treat-ment by para-medics before he was rushed to Newcastle General Hospital, where this picture was taken by a close pal.
Friends said he wanted it published to warn others of the dangers of accepting lifts from possible drink-drivers.
Well, seeing as Gascoigne is in no fit state to answer back, I guess we'll have to take that on trust, won't we? There's a chance that he did authorise the photo, of course, in order to make a little bit of money, or to publicise the dangers of drink-driving, perhaps. Even then, the treatment by the paper is deeply unpleasant. The way the Star trumpets its EXCLUSIVE photo of a former footballer's smashed-up face: THE FIRST PHOTO, as if there's been a race to stuff a camera in the face of an accident victim. And maybe there has been, for all we know.
One pal said last night: “This picture shows just how lucky he is to be alive.
“Every time he looks at it he must count his blessings. He is a very lucky man.”
Well, maybe not that lucky, eh. Maybe he'd rather not have nearly choked to death on his own blood and been left scarred for life by a car crash. But this is the world of tabloids, where the bloody face of an accident victim is something to shout about, and something to be proud of having first.
This, I'm afraid, is the way it's going. It was Richard Desmond's OK! magazine which published a photo of Michael Jackson as he lay dying - or already dead - round about this time last year. Photos of Gary Coleman in a coma, near death, were recently sold for $10,000. It's no accident that the Star shoved the word DEATH so prominently in the headline, next to a photo of an unconscious person that at first glance looks like he might even be dead. This is where we're headed.
Paul Gascoigne has, of course, been the victim of the tabloid vultures before. The Sun charmingly roared about his SUICIDE BID back in 2008. And if you think it's just the US media who swarm around the dead, soon-to-be-dead or possibly-already-dead, then don't forget the Daily Mail calling Carol Barnes a lonely drunk as she neared her final days; speculating about the private life of Michael Todd just after his body had been found; or raced to dump sleaze on MP Piers Merchant just hours after death; not to mention nasty speculation about missing TV presenter Mark Speight, while he was, as it turned out, contemplating suicide; or speculating once again on the motives behind a 'suicide bid' from model Noemie Lenoir
Maybe Gazza did consent to his photo appearing in the paper; maybe he just wanted the cash. Maybe he didn't have anything to do with it. Whatever the truth is, it's still pretty low to splash his bloodied face all over the front page and jump up and down about the fact you've got the exclusive, then go big on the word DEATH to try and make it even more shocking. You just know with Gascoigne that the vultures are circling, and they have been for some time. It's not pretty. And anyone who buys that paper is feeding it.
Digital Spy ran a story about the Coleman death photos, in which one of those highly convenient 'sources' is quoted as saying:
"They are going to sell a crazy amount of magazines," a source said.
"Yes, it's an ugly decision to run pictures of a man in his hospital bed minutes before he died, but dead celebrities sell."
An ugly decision - but dead celebrities sell. Living ones do too, of course, but we're all just waiting for the next Diana. Or the next big celebrity death. And if there are photos of them on their deathbed, then what? Don't think that the press in this country will be above printing them. They're certainly not above lurid and deeply intrusive speculation, which is if anything even more hurtful to the families than the photos.
Essentially, they're just a plague of fucking vultures. And they're not going to stop if, as is claimed, 'dead celebrities sell'.
Thanks to Tom for the tipoff.
Bongo Bongoland and the Mail
The Mail last year, reporting on a BNP candidate:
Race hate remarks... like what?
"Can they not be nice people in the fucking Congo or... bongo land or whatever?" If that's race hate, then I wonder what this letter is, in today's super soaraway we're-not-racist-and-we-don't-like-the-BNP-oh-no Daily Mail?
It was the ever-lovely Tabloid Watch who found this rather unpleasant letter first - and thanks to John for the photo. (I also like the 'the woman on the One Show' letter below, claiming that a perfectly understandable Northern Irish accent is 'indecipherable'.)
The original Bongo Bongo Land came from Alan Clark, I'm led to believe, and it's since become a bit of a byword for "that bit of the planet below Europe" for all thick and mildly xenophobic types. I've even used it myself (ironically, please note) for a kind of wearyingly ignorant attitude towards foreigners. Speaking of which, let's never forget this absolute classic:
Does anyone really give a monkey's about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them.
Beautiful empathy and concern for the genocide in Rwanda, there. And the author? Of course, it was Richard Littlejohn, now the Mail's star columnist.
Peter Hitchens depresses me. But I won’t kill him.
I know Peter Hitchens is a proll - a professional troll. His entire reason for existing is to try and say something sufficiently outrageous or unjustifiable that it gets him some attention. He has no logic to his arguments - it's just a series of random thoughts, which if they came from anyone else would be instantly ignored as the slightly twatty ramblings of an idiot. But because it's the Hitch, someone who's mysteriously regarded as being intelligent, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he is elevated to a level beyond the average pub bore - or the average crap blogger - to someone who gets a column in a national newspaper.
He's written two pieces today, and while one of them is entitled "Israel wasn't tough enough", it's not that piece of flame-bait that I want to concentrate on. However, it does give an indication as to the kind of schtick these people have - think about an issue, think about the most contrarian and least plausible position that a human being could possibly hold, then go for it and take it to the nth degree. If you were to indulge in the kind of 'psychobabble' that Hitch rips into in the piece I'm about to look at, you might say he is like an infant rubbing shit over his face to try and get attention from his parents. But that might be unkind. To shit-covered infants.
No, the piece I want to talk about is one in which he speculates, without any evidence whatsoever other than the clunkings in his tiny brain, that antidepressants were somehow to blame for Derrick Bird's horrific crimes. He writes:
Patrick Purdy, culprit of the 1989 Cleveland School massacre in Stockton, California, had been on anti-depressants. Jeff Weise, perpetrator of the March 2005 Red Lake High School massacre, was on anti-depressants.
Anti-depressants were found in the cabin of the ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski. Michael McDermott, culprit of the 2000 ‘Wakefield massacre’ in Massachusetts, was on anti-depressants.
Kip Kinkel, culprit of a 1998 murder spree in Oregon, was on anti-depressants.
John Hinckley, who tried to kill Ronald Reagan in 1981, was on anti-depressants.It is both interesting and worrying that, with so many such unhinged and otherwise inexplicable killings perpetrated by people taking legal medication, the official world has been so slow to look into the matter.
It’s so much easier to pass a pointless, populist gun ban.
Not really, Hitch. Hey, you appear to have left out all of the examples of people carrying out mass murders without having been prescribed antidepressants. But I forgot, we're in 'only connect' territory, where whatever dumbfuck theory you come up with is legitimate, because you can just go searching for the things that confirm what you think, while discarding anything - even if it's a majority of the evidence - that doesn't fit your tedious little theory. And of course there are the other explanations, one which anyone can grasp if they bother to think about it - that the prescription of antidepressants might be because of depression, which may have been a contributory factor (if not the main factor) in the murder-suicides, and that it might not have been the antidepressants which caused the violence; rather, they may have been an attempt to deal with a depressive symptom of a much wider personality disorder.
No. Of course not. If you're Hitch, it must be the antidepressants causing the murders. I love the way he says it's 'so much easier' to pass a 'populist' gun ban; whereas in fact, it is he who is doing the 'so much easier' in all of this, while attempting to represent himself as the deep thinker. He isn't. He's just a jerk, a tedious attention-seeking little prick. I don't know if he's entirely deluded by his grandiose dream of being so much more clever than everyone else in the world; I don't know if he's just being provocative for the sake of it, and doesn't care at all whether what he says might be accurate, or truthful, or entirely misleading, or just trolling bullshit. I don't know, and to be quite honest I don't care.
Of course, this is the Daily Mail, where mental health issues are breezily dismissed with what you might call a depressing regularity. Janet Street-Porter recently lied like this:
No, it isn't. It's not the new trendy illness at all. (I'm aware, by the way, that JSP doesn't write the headlines, but that stinking article wasn't unfairly represented by the headline, which was a reasonable summary of the hateful 'never did me any harm' just-world fallacy unpleasantness below). But this is the kind of attitude that you get from the nasty prolls of the Mail. I wonder whether it might have anything to do with the kind of "every man for himself" attitude of the libertarian right, or whether these people are simpletons who are unwilling or unable to wonder that other human beings might possibly experience the universe in a different way to the way they do. If it's the latter, I pity them really, because they're emotionally still just children. If it's the former, I despise them.
There are clues as to which one it is. Hitchens comes out with some stuff that's so patently absurd that you have to wonder if he really thinks about anything at all before he starts typing:
It’s possible an old-fashioned village constable, on the spot, might have done something to halt Derrick Bird, or have realised something bad was going to happen before it did.
Why? It's not explained. Don't you go thinking that Hitchens ever actually explains the long-range salvoes he launches at his targets; they just keep getting lauched. It boils down to: "Somehow, everything is bad, because, oh the Left, and things aren't what they used to be, therefore, yes, I'm right." And that, somehow, is seen as being satisfactory. Hitchens doesn't have evidence; he just guesses. He just wonders aloud:
Was Bird taking the anti-depressant pills that are now prescribed so readily by NHS doctors to so many people whose lives – like Bird’s – have gone down the drain?
I don't know, was he? Maybe you could wait a bit before you decide that it was antidepressants that made him do what he did, if you don't even know that he was even taking them? No...? OK, just wildly speculate away. It's not as if there are several grieving families this week and it might be a tad disrespectful to them, if they themselves might be taking antidepressants - or may even be prescribed them to try and cope with the awfulness of what has happened - to say that it might make them killers, just like the man who took their loved ones away? Oh hang on, it is.
I'm quite happy to say that I am still taking antidepressants. To the best of my knowledge, I'm not about to go and start murdering people at random. It might be true to find evidence that some murderers take antidepressants, but at the same time, you will find evidence that a lot of them also drank Coca-Cola, or ate potatoes, or took aspirin, or drank beer. And a lot of others didn't. Hitchens is so woefully wide of the mark, so far from establishing a causal link, that it's embarrassing that any publication, anywhere in the world, would consider his pitiful waste of words worthy of putting on a printed page. All that ink... all that paper wasted. What a waste.
I know Hitch is a proll, and that creating any kind of response, even if it's a weary "Jesus Christ you twerp, what the fuck have you written this time, you shambolic fool?" is exactly what probably drives him. But these kinds of myths don't help anyone. It's disrespectful to the victims of this tragedy to be idly speculating about such matters, without any evidence whatsoever to back it up. Not that Hitchens cares, you understand. For him, it's business as usual. Israel wasn't tough enough. Mass murders are caused by antidepressants. There, job done.
See what you want to see
Official figures now show that the UK is experiencing net emigration to, not immigration from, the former A8 countries of Eastern Europe, as Mark Easton explores in his blog over at the BBC:
Armed with this information, what do you think the most immigration-obsessed newspapers did with it? Did they lead off on the net emigration to the former A8 countries?
Well...
Oh.
And...
Ah.
Of course I wasn't expecting them to rejoice at the net emigration, or lead off on it at all; because that's not the point, and that's not what they're there to do. These stories are about seeing what you want to see, not what you don't want to see. I don't dispute the figures they're using, but it's a good example of cherry-picking what you want from a set of figures to find the thing which most represents your point of view.
So if there's news that more people are leaving than arriving, that's not good enough - find instead the scariest-sounding stats about people earning the right to citizenship, then dress it up with the most pejorative language you can dig up, calling it having passports 'handed out' - you know, like sweets. 'Handed out' is a classic misleading bit of journalese, and we've seen it before used in reference to allowing people access to certain recreational drugs in a controlled environment. How to make it scarily misleading? DRUGS HANDED OUT! Job done. The Mail adds a bit of spice to the mix by pearl-clutching about homes in the Southern heartland - horrors! Will they be building migrant hostels in Abinger Hammer?
The Express, meanwhile, just goes for a big scary number. If in doubt, big scary number. Wurrggh! Look at the hundreds of thousands of 'em! And, oh look, not quite the space there to mention the thousands who are emigrating... ah well. Maybe in tomorrow's paper...? Well I wouldn't hold my breath.
See what you want to see. If the whole picture isn't scary enough, then just use a snapshot of the scariest bit. It's not lying; it's just not quite the truth.
Littlejohn: cunt
Today's Littlecock* returns to an old theme, how women who worked as prostitutes must be called prostitutes once they've been murdered. It's almost exactly the same stuff he came out with in the wake of Ipswich murders some years ago, though this time he's decided against saying their deaths were 'no great loss' (which he did last time) or that murder was an occupational hazard for them. Must have left that bit off when he was copying and pasting his stuff over.
If you've never seen this response by Stewart Lee to the first time Littlejohn came out with this tedious shit, enjoy it now. The Littledick stuff begins at 4.53 but it's a beautifully crafted thing and well worth seeing in its entirety.
* I won't link to him. You can find it.
Getting shirty
A lot of people are still very angry about England shirts. If you take a gander at a search for the phrase "I'm not racist but..." on Openbook, you find:
Oh dear. The use of caps lock is particularly wearying, isn't it? What's surprising is that if you look at the search results, you'll find that a lot of these coves haven't copied and pasted the bollocks about the England shirt in its entirety and have gone and typed it out themselves. What a waste of time and effort! But there you are. You can see how the original message - itself a load of old toot, as I've mentioned ad nauseum over the past few days - gets added to and manipulated along the way.
No matter how rubbish the story about 'cops going around pubs and clubs is', you can see from the reaction to it that it pushes all the right buttons - outrage, dismay, political correctness, and so on. So it's not surprising to read this (warning: links to the Mail), on the website of our favourite news outlet for stories about things which have really happened, oh yes:
A toddler was ordered off a bus because the foreign driver was 'offended' by his England football T-shirt, his mother has claimed.
Sam Fardon, 27, was allegedly told to get off the service with her sons Dylan, two, and 10-week-old Adam as they made their way to a childcare group.
The unnamed driver, who had a Polish or Eastern European accent, said Dylan's white England shirt was 'offensive' and he threatened to turf the family out on the street.
Is it true? Did the nasty "Polish or East European" driver tell the little boy to get off the bus because his evil England shirt was offensive? Even if he did say it, isn't there a chance that it might have been a joke that was lost in translation? Nah, fuck it. That would mean doing something other than getting your readers worked up into a PC GONE MAD YOU CAN'T EVEN RITUALLY SET FIRE TO GOLLIWOGS ANY MORE WITHOUT BEING CALLED A RACIST frenzy - and who wants to read about that?
This story neatly combines a couple of tabloid folk myths in one: firstly, the England shirt ban story; and secondly, the 'nasty bus driver' story. We've seen the second before in terms of the driver who didn't let a bloke with a tin of paint on the bus. As we saw then, this is the kind of story that pops up from time to time. So when you combine the 'bad bus driver' element with the 'England shirt ban' element, you've got a win-win story.
Look. This bus driver might have been a really nasty "Polish or East European" bastard, and he might have been really spiteful to this kid because of his England shirt because he found it offensive - he really did find it offensive, genuinely so, somehow, because he's foreign and that - and he might have told the kid to get off the bus, and he might not have been joking, and all this might be true. And if it is, he sounds like a nasty mean Mr Bus Driver, and no mistake.
But you have to wonder, don't you. Because it doesn't matter if it's true. The Mail knows that. They couldn't give a shit whether it's true or not. And you can see that by what I'd say is a deliberately misleading description of the 'England shirt ban' mythology:
Last month the Metropolitan Police suggested that some pubs ban customers from wearing England shirts during screenings of this summer's World Cup matches to stop the risk of violence.
Except that's not it at all. Because 'England shirts' were not mentioned in any communications. And the Mail should know that. I'm almost certain they do know that. But what would the point be in being accurate about these things? Why not just dangle the maggot into the water and see who nibbles it?
We don't know who this driver is, what he said, what he meant by it, whether someone got the wrong end of the stick, or anything. We can guess. My guess would be that the driver tried to make a joke and something got lost in translation. But I'm fully prepared to entertain the idea that this was just a horrible East European immigrant bus driver. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter what actually happened, because it presses all the right buttons.
Foreign bus driver? Check. Nasty bus driver? Check. Immigrant not integrating properly? Check. Foreigner 'offended' by England shirt? Check. Links with the non-existent shirt ban? Check. It's all there. It's got all the ingredients to keep this going. So you can pretty much nail it on that the next CAPS LOCK status updates you'll start seeing polluting your news feed will be mentioning this incident, as if it definitely happened, and look, I'm not racist but... and so on, and so on.
And before you know it, this story will become entirely accepted as true, and that will be that.
*update* FirstGroup have released a statement about the story (thanks to Stewart in the comments for letting me know):
Following an alleged incident involving our service and the refusal of a young passenger wearing an England shirt, the following statement has been issued to the media. Paul De Santis, Commercial Director for First said: "The claim made about one of our drivers' behaviour is a very serious one and we have been in touch with this woman several times to try to establish what actually happened.
"We have carried out a full investigation and can't find any evidence to substantiate this claim. No driver fitting the description given was working on any routes in this area at that time. Our buses were busy around the time yet no one else has been in touch with us about this alleged incident.
"We expect the highest level of professionalism from our drivers and such an act would not be tolerated. However, in this instance it now appears that no such incident took place.
"Far from banning England shirts on our buses First is fully supportive of England's World Cup campaign and we are, in fact, currently fitting good luck banners featuring England flags on all our buses in England."
Who wrecked the bid? Not us!
The Mail on Sunday decided to run a secretly taped private conversation in which Lord Triesman speculated about possible bribery in international football. The Mail on Sunday decided that would be a good story. The Mail on Sunday decided that even though there was no proof for Lord Triesman's claims, and even though they were claims made in a private conversation and never intended to be made public, making them public was the right thing to do.
So when the Daily Mail wrote about England possibly having 'lost' the 2018 World Cup, who did they blame? The Mail on Sunday, for printing a load of speculation dressed up as earnestly held opinion? The Mail on Sunday, for bringing a private conversation out into the open in which a public figure said something which he might not say in public, and which was therefore apparently in the public interest? The Mail on Sunday, for trying to flog a few papers with a pointless story that tells us nothing?
No. Obviously not. They blame the 37-year-old 'girl' (yes, a 37-year-old 'girl') who did the recording - not the national newspaper who made a private conversation between two people into a public statement to millions.
The 'girl who brought down FA chief' is, in the online version, 'the woman who could cost England the 2018 World Cup.' If in doubt, when you work for the Daily Mail and something goes wrong, blame a woman. Blame the woman for taping the conversation, not the Mail for printing it. Melissa Jacobs (she does have a name, honest) is described in fairly dribbling terms:
The woman who cost Football Association chief Lord Triesman his job is revealed as a flame-haired 37-year-old with an impressive academic background.
As the Labour peer reflects on his speedy exit it is not hard to see why a man of 66 might find Melissa Jacobs with her slim physique and ivory skin alluring.
You can almost hear the reporter's erection banging against the desk as he wrote that, can't you? But maybe I'm doing 'Daily Mail Reporter' a disservice there, and perhaps it's a woman who cobbled together that bundle of masturbatory tripe. Either way, the narrative is simple: sexy lady made the silly old man lose his job, not us! You could have written it like this: "The man who cost Football Association chief Lord Triesman his job is revealed as a slapheaded 61-year-old with a disgraceful background in printing intrusive garbage as editor in chief of the Mail group" but then I doubt that Paul Dacre would have seen the funny side.
During their hour-long conversation - which was secretly recorded - he made a series of indiscreet claims about the football industry and people in it.
Indiscreet? I don't know, he was only telling one person. He didn't know that that person was taping the conversation so she could presumably flog it off to the highest bidder and get it plastered all over the papers. Maybe that is 'indiscreet', I don't know. Maybe everyone, everwhere, ever should just assume that everything they say is being recorded, and none of us should ever speculate about anything, ever, just in case someone we thought we could trust is planning to shop us to the tabloids for a few grand. Maybe that's how we should all live our lives.
England had been one of the favourites to host the tournament in eight years' time. But Lord Triesman's astonishing comments threaten to fatally hole the country's chances of success and led some critics to dub him World Cup Wally.
He suggested that Spain may withdraw its bid to host the 2018 World Cup if Russia, which also wants to stage it, helps it to bribe referees in this summer's tournament.
Of course, it doesn't help that Lord Triesman is a Labour lord; that's another reason why he turns up in the Mail's crosshairs. But is it really his 'astonishing' comments that have 'fatally holed' England's bid, or is it the fatal holes at the Mail who have astonished the rest of the country by deciding to make the private public? I imagine they'd have been happy enough for Lord Triesman to resign; but the idea that England's bid may have been scuppered by their own tawdry little tale could be a little bit counterproductive.
Other newspapers are less than impressed - but don't worry, they won't attack the Mail openly:
There are all sorts of reasons why people might not think a 2018 World Cup bid is a good idea - but the Mail haven't done that. They argued that it was vitally important that we heard some speculative gossip from a leading football figure, which may well have no basis in reality at all, may not even be a strongly held opinion, may have been idle speculation, may have been said merely to impress someone by representing a degree of secret insider knowledge, and so on, and so on. There's nothing wrong with secret recording when it's genuinely in the public interest or breaking a real story - but was that really what we got from the Lord Triesman 'revelations'? I don't think so. I don't think it was evidence of anything other than what someone might say in an unguarded moment.
After all that, though, has the bid really been wrecked? I don't think so. But it's telling that the Mail decide to blame everyone except themselves if it has. Blame the 'girl' - don't blame us!
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