Daily Express & Daily Star racism: It’s not going to stop
It's not going to stop, but that doesn't mean that it's pointless to be angered by it; or that there's no reason to try and stop it.
It's been going on for some time, as 5cc chronicles today, this pandering to racists, this out-and-out fearmongering about the scale and impact of immigration, this filthy stain on an already tarnished profession of journalism. And it's going to carry on. It's not just one accidental putting of the wrong word in a headline box, or a few mealy-mouthed liberals getting their knickers in a twist over some transgression of the arbitrary lines of political correctness; this is a deliberate policy*.
There's no way that by expressing our anger at the Daily Express and the Daily Star, or by correcting the falsehoods when they appear, or by declaring that we don't want to have anything to do with this kind of lowest-of-the-low reporting, that we're going to change anything. This is the policy. The people who run these businesses believe their readers want to be fed a diet that appeals to racists. They may well be right, but that doesn't make it the truth. And it's not going to stop.
But still, you have to try. We have to try. I'm assuming here that you think racism is a bad thing, and that newspapers misrepresenting minorities to pander to people's very lowest dregs of humanity is not a good idea. I may be wrong, but I like to hope that I am right; without hope, there is nothing. And so while it's unlikely that any of us, individually or even collectively, can stop any of this disgraceful excuse for journalism from appearing on our news-stands, or from making millions of pounds from it, there's everything to hope for.
Today's Express is at it again, of course. Of course it is. After yesterday's atrocity using the archaic racial slur 'ethnics' in a headline - with an accompanying editorial complaining about ethnic minorities being 'over-represented' in professions and linking crime with immigration, while also saying that people who said that Britons were being taken over in the 1960s and 1970s were wrongly labelled as racists - and last week's abomination saying NOW ASYLUM IF YOU'RE GAY - backed up by the memorable NO ROOM FOR GAYS headline in the Star - comes today's little effort.
Is there really 'mounting pressure' for Britain to ban the burkha? I suppose it depends on what you call 'mounting pressure', really. If you think 'mounting pressure' is 'a significant and growing number of people demanding something', then probably not. If you think 'mounting pressure' is 'some rentagob Tory zealot wanting to make a name for himself', then yes, it certainly is. You have to see the front page in the context of the others; it's the policy, it's the pattern, and it's not going to stop.
But that doesn't mean anyone should stop bothering about it. Easy to dismiss the Express and Star as just a couple of nutters shouting in the precinct; but they're 20% Britain's daily newspapers. In the same style as yesterday's Express front page, you could say ONE IN FIVE NEWSPAPERS IS RACIST GARBAGE - but then that would ignore the similar stories being churned out, albeit with a half-ounce more of subtlety, by the Daily Mail and the Sun, and even the Telegraph. It's probably more than 20% of newspapers that happily trot out this vileness on a fairly regular basis, if truth be told.
It's a big and influential target to try and attack, then. And it's not going to happen overnight. We're never going to knock Richard Desmond out of the park in one hit, or smash his polished desk of oak, or stop his boring dirty joke and make him yell. But that doesn't mean it's not worth fighting back. Will targeting advertisers make a difference? It's hard to tell, but Glenn Beck staggers on in the US as brands desert him. Will targeting readers work? It's hard to win the hearts and minds of racists; but there are plenty of people, no doubt, who pick up the Express or Star because it's what they've always done - or because they're cheap - and don't necessarily buy into the politics. There's still a chance for them, and it would be wrong to alienate them by calling them all racist scum - although some undoubtedly are.
But we are many, they are few. And we've got a long way to go before this kind of bilge is regarded as being unacceptable. I don't want to censor anyone; I just want this kind of thing to be seen for the naked racism it is, and for readers not to want to buy it. This isn't about freedom of expression; this is about some people's expression being seen as influential, and important, and somehow representing the truth, whereas in fact it's far from that. The more these newspapers are allowed to keep peddling this awfulness, the more eroded the image of journalism is as a whole, and the less credibility the real, decent, honest reporters have, purely by association.
And I think it's important for very simple reasons. I'm pleased I live in a multicultural society, where people from different backgrounds, beliefs and nationalities can exist together. I feel almost apologetic about saying this kind of thing, as if it's somehow naff or cliched or will be scoffed at as being naivety of the highest order, but do you know what? It isn't. It really isn't. I don't care what the racists say, or do, or try to tell me is the truth; I know what I think, and I'm not going to be part of their lies. Now we're in a recession it's more important than ever that minorities aren't seen as scapegoats or parasites - it's very easy for them to be portrayed as such.
I have limited skills and I am afraid I am not very good at organising people, or things, or anything. All I able to do, as able as I am to do it, is to write about this stuff and to challenge it when I see it, and to call it out for what I believe it to be. It may make no difference at all; it may be a tiny drop in the ocean. But I can't just sit back and let it sit there unchallenged.
It's not going to stop, but sales of newspapers are declining - apart from the cut-price Daily Star, which is why it's important not to dismiss it as simply some kind of comic that no-one reads. People are getting their news from other places now, and they're more and more sceptical about the printed page. It's going to take time, and it's going to be a slow process. But anything that fights it is worth it. Don't ask whether it's worth it or not to try; just try. We may not get anywhere, but let's try.
* It could have been even more explicit. It was only staff standing up to their employers that saw the "Daily Fatwa" edition of the Star fail to make it into print, so we were spared the 'hilarious' sight of "What Britain would look like under Muslim rule".
Express scum update: Star scum
Where the Express goes, the Star usually follows, but removes all trace of subtlety and nuance.
You might remember how the Express's big red ALL
got used by the Star
with a slightly more offensive and unpleasant headline.
So today's Express disgrace that I looked at earlier is boiled down by the Star into something even more hateful and unpleasant:
No-one is proposed to 'open the floodgates to gay asylum seekers'. But of course that's the impression the Star wants to give, firstly because it wants to create a scary thing to raise the hackles of its more kneejerkable readers; and secondly because they actually don't care about whether what they say is true or not. It doesn't matter. They don't care. If you think they care, you're wrong, because they don't.
NO ROOM FOR GAYS. You might wonder if it's just a bit of flamebait, and that, by talking about it and linking to it, people like me or you are contributing to the Star's mission to be as popular and populist as possible - in some way, it might be argued, we're just doing the Star's advertising for them.
Well, I don't think so - I think that credits them with altogether too much nous. I don't think they're taking part in some sophisticated marketing campaign by being as outrageous and offensive as possible; I think they're just trying to be as outrageous and offensive as possible, because they think their readers want that. And who knows, maybe they do. Maybe there are countless thousands of people reading the NO ROOM FOR GAYS headline and thinking "Hooray! Thank goodness we won't be opening the floodgates to gay asylum seekers! If there's one thing worse than an asylum seeker, it's a gay asylum seeker!"
But do you know what, I don't care. This kind of vicious pandering to prejudices is worse than lowest common denominator - it's the very lowest of the low. Where the Express goes, the Star follows, but removes all trace of subtlety or humanity. While the Express is a fairly crude weapon, the Star is a Stone Age flint axe. These people are scum, they enjoy being scum, they like being scum and they choose to be scum. They don't accidentally cause offence; they don't care whether they do or not, because they really want to appeal to the most unpleasant kinds of people. This is 20% of national daily newspapers, and as I said earlier they taint all their peers with their actions.
So is this all hot air just going to achieve nothing? Will there be a big fuss which will blow over, for the newspaper owners to swirl the brandy round their balloon glasses and tut-tut at the silliness of the general public who claim to hate their products but still keep on buying them and advertising in them? That's up to me and you.
If you think these hatemongers are getting away with it, and their vile views are unrepresentative of the British public and their possible readers, the only way to let them know is to tell them, and their advertisers, that you find it unacceptable. If advertisers see their brands and products are in a toxic environment, perhaps that might make a difference. Censorship? Never. Fighting back? Absolutely. Put down that pitchfork and get a keyboard, and get writing.
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.
The mephedrone panic continues
The moral panic over mephedrone, or meow meow, or Clarky's Cat, or Slip Me On The Thigh With A Big Banana, or whatever you want to call it, continues.
This comes after the deaths of two men were trumpeted by our friends in the screamsheets as being definitely due to the deadly meow meow - yet still the final reports on the deaths have yet to be concluded. In the meantime, a dozen or so people will probably have died from taking heroin, their deaths and the misery for their families going largely unreported. But who cares? Who cares when there's a new bogeyman to scare the kids?
The Evening Standard did an interview with the Government's former drugs adviser Professor David Nutt the other day which I found pretty interesting. It began:
When two teenage boys and a 24-year-old woman die and a new - and, at present, legal - drug called mephedrone is the prime suspect in their deaths, parents inevitably panic.
So the last thing they want to hear is that, in fact, alcohol is probably more dangerous than meow meow, as mephedrone is nicknamed, and is certainly more harmful than a host of other recreational drugs, such as LSD, magic mushrooms, cannabis and ecstasy.
But this is the grim warning from fellow parent Professor David Nutt, the former government drugs adviser.
"For me, as a father with four children, aged 18 to 26, the drug that I know could kill my kids is alcohol. It is the drug that has caused the most damage to my kids' generation and I think we have got to be honest about that," says Nutt, sitting in a modest meeting room at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) - the independent charity, he jokes, "which is responsible for all this".
And it concluded:
These kinds of arguments prompt Nutt to suggest that "some sort of regulated use for MDMA or mephedrone where people, maybe in clubs, could have access to small amounts, safe amounts under guidance" would be better than the current system of banning drugs and forcing them onto the black market.
Presumably, if that is how Nutt feels, then he wouldn't object to his own children trying mephedrone in controlled doses. "If I found my children were taking mephedrone I would do as I always do and tell them the truth," he says.
He has the same attitude with all drugs. "I would say: 'If you get on to heroin, you are at real risk of dying. Heroin, crack and crystal meth are the drugs you really want to avoid and it would be very distressing for me to know you were taking those'. With alcohol I'd say: 'I know you drink but whatever you drink, try to do it in a way where you don't put yourself at harm'. And with other drugs: 'If you are going to use them, just be aware that the harm of criminalisation may actually be more dangerous than the drugs themselves'."
Does this candidness about drugs extend to his own experiences? "I've never tried it [mephedrone] and I've never tried MDMA. I've hardly used any drugs, I'm a bit weedy really. I'm an old man from a different generation. I hardly even smoked cannabis because I get wheezy, but I'm not against people smoking [cannabis]. And I do drink."
As the Government and Professor Nutt have found, the truth sometimes hurts. But there's far more to lose if people shy away from it.
A pity, then, that the headline was:
Because that really isn't quite what David Nutt was saying. I don't think he was suggesting that clubs handed out wraps of mephedrone as you walked through the doors; or if he was then I've got things a little bit wrong.
You might say, oh, but that's the line, isn't it? Can't have a story without a line. But I'd say: how about you treat your readers as if they have something other than cotton wool in that void between their ears, and you imagine they might be able to read what you've got to say without putting a trashy misleading headline like that on the top? Because you know what happens. When one does it, they all do it. And here's the Daily Star:
Though that has been superseded today with a slightly different headline, the slightly less sensational but altogether less grammatical:
Ah well. But the story is still the same, and the implication is the same: This man is saying that clubs should just just hand out mephedrone, like it's sweets. But it's not quite that clear-cut. Adults having access to mephedrone (presumably for sale) in a controlled environment is not the same as that bloke in the gents toilets with the aftershaves and packets of chewing gum handing you a packet of mephedrone with a cheeky wink. It's really not the same thing at all.
But that's how it works. Professor Nutt could have spoken eloquently for a day and a half about the dangers of alcohol or heroin, and the relative risks of mephedrone and other more panicked about substances, and the headline would still have been HE WANTS MEPHEDRONE HANDED OUT IN CLUBS. It's not just the search for the 'line', it's something else on top of that, too, I think; a need to be sensational in the midst of all this panic, to try and ride the wave of hysteria.
A lot of people, unfortunately, will have done just what the Star did: take the headline as the story, when it wasn't like that at all. Can't we have a reasoned discussion on these things? Must it always be a BAN in one pan of the scales or HANDED OUT in the other? Is there really nothing in between for a mature society like ours? Not if you read a lot of what's in the papers, there isn't.
Simply the best at misleading you
Have a look at this front page. What do you think the story is?
Does it read to you like Cheryl Cole was pregnant and she had a miscarriage? The fact that it's referred to as 'HER BABY' might make you think that. If you glanced at the online version, you could be forgiven for coming to the same conclusion:
It's referred to there as a 'LOST BABY', which is a fairly common idiom for a miscarriage. But that's not it at all:
CHERYL Cole was planning to start a family with estranged husband Ashley when he was exposed as a love cheat.
According to her brother Andrew Tweedy Cheryl Cole, 26, was working out how to combine her career with motherhood just before they split.
So, that's no baby that ever existed at all. The baby wasn't really lost in the sense of how most people would understand 'lost baby'; it was 'lost' in the sense of a lost opportunity to perhaps have children if the couple had stayed together, which they didn't.
It reminds me of this previous attempt from the 'Simply the best' Daily Star:
When the implication was that they'd had a secret reunion - something you might have suspected through the use of the phrase 'secret reunion' and a paparazzi picture. But the photo turned out to be years old and the 'secret reunion' was something that hadn't even happened, just something that had been suggested.
You might ask why this story about the baby that never was got onto the front page of the Star in the first place. Well, I have the answer to that:
That wouldn't be the 'Star' magazine published by the Daily Star's owners Northern & Shell, would it? Why yes, it would.
My favourite bit of the whole thing, though, is the refreshing honesty in putting 'news' in inverted commas. More 'news' here... if you can call it that. Just about the most accurate thing in the whole story.
Back together? Well no, but…
Daily Star front page today*:
You might be forgiven for thinking, having read that, that Ashley and Cheryl are back together, given the 'Ashley and Cheryl back together' headline. It's a clever mislead, not maliciously deceptive, just a way of trying to get you to join the dots and come to a conclusion that isn't explicitly stated anywhere.
Look at the photo, for example - it's a snatched paparazzi picture to give you the impression that the estranged couple have been spotted out together in the 'secret reunion' mentioned in the second headline. But no, this picture comes a set that were taken in August 2008, where this alternative photo was used by the Evening Standard:
The Star cunningly never say this is a picture of the couple out together now - they just put up a snatched photo and leave you to make your own conclusions. They're hoping you'll buy the paper after a quick scan in order to read the story, which isn't a great crime of course.
But it does go to show what kind of techniques newspapers like the Star will use to try and make you leap to the wrong conclusion. The headline actually means "Ashley and Cheryl might be back together for one meeting, if this story about Roman Abramovich (for it is he who is the 'mystery cupid') is real". The picture is actually just a stock photo that might lead you to think this is the 'secret reunion', whereas in fact it's nearly two years old, and taken during happier times. There are no outright lies and no real deception; it's just a story from nowhere. One day it'll be Ashley & Cheryl; one day it'll be something else and someone else.
* Thanks to the ever-brilliant Beau Bo D'Or for finding the Star front page. I haven't used the whole paper because it's got some bollocks rumour about Jon Venables, quickly dismissed as a 'theory' - the guessing game just keeps carrying on with that one. By the end of the week he'll probably have been blamed for half of all the crimes in Britain.
Simply The Best
Simply the best. When you brand yourself as that, you'd better be good. You'd better have some substance to carry that... oh Jesus. What the fuck's this?
What the...? My eyes! There's John Terry, and he's almost three feet taller than Wayne Bridge! And a world exclusive about Peter Andre - I bet they were fighting off the Washington Post for that one. Ooh, and a free Creme Egg if you buy a 40p newspaper, that's almost - very almost - tempting. Bonus Cheryl Cole, doing nothing whatsoever of any interest at all; but I think you get fined if you don't put her somewhere on a front page nowadays, regardless of there being any developments in her life apart from continuing to exist.
It's easy to mock. Look, I'm doing it now. It's not wrong to mock. You really should mock when something deserves mockery. The Daily Star - or in this case, the Daily Star Sunday - is one of those things. All very well for people to try and insist that you should take the high ground all the time, but come off it. You don't even need to be on the high ground to look down on the Daily Star; just wearing some inner soles in your shoes will do it. What a fucking atrocity.
It's not for you, people will say. Sure, it's a load of women with their knockers out next to barely intelligible scribblings, but it's wrong of you to try and think that you're above it.* And what's the harm in a bit of fun? Not everyone wants to read long and tedious articles written by no-marks like you. And I'd say, I know, that's why the vast majority of people don't, but that's beside the point; this is a newspaper that has hundreds of thousands of readers and proudly claims to be Simply The Best - it can't be "The World's Greatest Newspaper" because that self-proclaimed title has already been taken by its stablemate, the Daily Express - so why not see if it really is simply the best? What's the harm in that?
A lot of people ignore the Daily Star when they come to write about tabloid newspapers. I think this is probably an oversight on our part, because for one thing it sells an awful lot of copies. We might not want it to, but it does. Its circulation is going up, despite the slump in newspaper sales, largely because of an aggressive pricing strategy. It's even got money to burn on TV adverts telling women that they should give it a go because it's 'not just for boys' and that, apparently, 500,000 women read it. Half a million women.
I've picked on the Daily Star on Sunday today, though, because it has a story at the top that is a classic example of tabloid bollocks. Those of you who see the Sport or Sunday Sport on the news-stands will be familiar with the '[CELEBRITY'S NAME] NAKED PICS FURY' story, in which a celebrity is supposedly furious that someone has Photoshopped her (it's always a woman) head onto some porn star's body - which of course gives a wonderful opportunity to print the offending pics, as well as tricking the potential reader into thinking it's actually going to be that celebrity's naked flesh in the paper as they rush home for what they hope will be a frenzied masturbation session. You know the kind of thing. Today's 'Jackson autopsy video fury' story is the same kind of thing, but without the frenzied masturbation - at least I hope so.
What it's trying to tease you into thinking is that this is the actual video of Michael Jackson's autopsy! Imagine that. Well, you don't have to imagine it, and it's not real anyway; it's just a reconstruction for a TV programme. And some people are a bit annoyed about it. Apparently:
A SHOCKING TV documentary on Michael Jackson’s death has caused fresh trauma for his family and fans.
It shows a King of Pop lookalike on his death bed and being hauled to and from a mortuary slab in a gruesome re-enactment of the time before and after his heart stopped.
Who are these traumatised family and fans? Well, there isn't anyone actually quoted as such, but...
A source close to the Jackson family said: “They support 100% the programme’s well-researched assertions that Dr Murray failed to do his job properly and is responsible for Michael’s death.”
But the source added family members expressed horror that a Jackson double was used in death bed and mortuary scenes, adding: “Imagine how his three children must be feeling.”
Imagine. Still, so long as you don't go putting pictures of what appears to be a dead Michael Jackson on the front page of a national newspaper, that wouldn't... oh. Anyone else care to say anything?
Although a VH1 spokesman refused to comment yesterday, an insider on the music network said: “We feel we uncovered some important truths and sometimes the truth isn’t easy to swallow.”
That'll be a no, then.
A programme appeared on television. No-one's actually furious, or at least we can't find anyone who is, but if we put a still from it on the front page and make it seem like it might be the autopsy of Michael Jackson, that might bring in a few dumb readers who are drawn to the macabre. We'll bulk out the story with an 'insider' and a 'source', given that we can't find anyone to talk to us, or can't be bothered, or whatever the reason is, but there you have it. Simply The Best!
* And besides, they'll tell you, it's actually quite difficult to write interesting tabloid stuff. That's what so many people say; I've heard it everywhere. Somewhere, at some class at school that I must have missed because I was off with the raging squits, they teach you that it's actually much harder to write for the Sun and Star than it is for the Times or Telegraph. People say this to me all the time, as if it's true. And then I look at the newspapers in question, and I think, no it fucking isn't. I've heard what you've said, I've checked the evidence for myself, and I don't agree. It seems easy to write for the Sun or Star because it is. It seems less complicated because it is. It might seem easier to write this blog than Doctor Zhivago, because it is. It's easier to ride a bike than fly a jet aircraft. It just is. I know I'm swimming against the tide on this one, but there you are.
Katie Price and the value of celebrity
I've written before about the allegations Katie Price has made about being raped. They were widely reported, especially by Richard Desmond publications, as the interview in which they were contained appeared in Desmond's OK! magazine. The other papers covered it, but not to the same degree.
Now, though, there's been another spike in interest in the story - it's much bigger news than it was before. Why's that? Well now it turns out that Price has said an unnamed celebrity was behind the attack on her. All of a sudden, it becomes a bigger story, appearing on the front page of every tabloid every day this week so far. Today's papers are a good example:
Celebrity raped? Meh. Celebrity raped by celebrity? Wow! I don't know if I'm alone in feeling a little queasy about this state of affairs. I also think the use by the Sun of the phrase 'celebrity rape' is fairly grim as well - this from a paper which used the chortling headline "By gum" the other day to describe alleged sex attacks by a dentist. And is "I didn't rape Jordan" really a story? Whatever you think of Katie Price and her desire to be in the papers, this whole business does not reflect well on tabloid papers in this country.
The Express, meanwhile, has gone back to familiar territory in what is clearly a new policy to return to the old favourites:
The same old tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories; the same old nonsense. I even discovered today that the Mail have recently been delving into this drivel thanks to Lauren Booth's article implying Our Queen of Hearts may have been slaughtered because she was about to single-handedly destroy the arms industry. The sort of guff you'd laugh off if it appeared in a student magazine, but not something worthy of turning up in a national paper.
It seems little changes.
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