Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Express Have Your Say: My brain hurts

If you've ever listened to the Jeremy Vine show and thought "Blimey, some of the rum old suspects who phone up are a bit on the bewildering side", or even popped onto the BBC's Have Your Say forum and thought that the people posting messages were often a tiny bit angry, you've not seen anything until you've been onto the Express Have Your Say section.

Here's today's subject up for debate:

Ho ho. Has the 'Harperson' hilarity still not gone away?* Is it still just as pant-wettingly jocular as it always was? See, she's a woman, but the word 'man' is in her name, and she does equality shit and all that, so she's 'Harperson', do you see? Do you get it? It's brilliant, isn't it? It's all grown up and funny and that. Isn't it? Yes. Harperson. Not HarMAN, but HarPERSON. It's the joke that keeps on giving. Just when you think it's not possible for it to be funny any more, it creeps up on you and surprises you, and gets you roaring with laughter again. No point trying to fight it. She's Harperson now. Our journalistic discourse is so advanced that national newspapers can simply change someone's name, it's all funny, and everyone laughs. Can't wait until David Camercunt takes power, that'll be brilliant.

Well, there you have it. These are the lofty heights scaled by Express Have Your Sayers. I'm underselling it really. You try and wade through the debate and you'll find yourself incapable of carrying on. I think it's a first, because this is something that's genuinely unreadable. You can't read it. Go on, try. I'll be here waiting. Try reading the comments. You can't! No-one can. No-one could possibly be able to read it all. There is no way of getting through it all - if you can manage it, I salute you.

But then that level of debate is brought about by the SHOUTY RUBBISHNESS of the questions:

And I think it's there that I've found one of the most perfect internet comments ever. In fact I'm beginning to suspect there are ever more sophisticated bots that turn up on internet sites and leave random comments from a template. Surely it can't be real people doing this, can it?

They will have to get used to beening a Christian country, though, that's true. Ah well, not quite ironed out all the bugs yet.

* You may well, at this point, call me out as a hypocrite for my frequent use of 'Littlecock' to refer to the Daily Mail's star columnist Richard Littlejohn. You may well, quite rightly, suggest that it's not particularly grown-up of me to do so, when there are so many more ways of making him out to be stupid than simply mucking about with his name. That is true, and, insomuch as I do these things, I am a hypocrite. However, for as long as slightly changing people's names in a pointless attempt at humour ("Ram Jam Choudhary", for example, in a recent column that was so brilliant and so incisive, he should be Prime Minister) is Littlecock's stock in trade, he'll always be Littlecock around here.

Everybody Geerts

In all this excitement about some bigoted old ex-Hitler Youth fool popping over to Britain to spread prejudice develop closer links with the many millions who adore him up and down the country, another story has slipped under the radar. It's a story about another hatemongering idiot making a visit to the UK - Geert Wilders, the anti-Muslim filmmaker who was previously invited over by UKIP big cheese Lord Pearson but wasn't allowed into the country over security fears.

I wonder if there aren't some comparisons we could make between the two, both of whom should, I think, be welcomed through gritted teeth and allowed to do whatever the hell they like, so long as it's not chucking horse-shit at a mosque or absent-mindedly doing Nazi salutes. They're both deeply unpleasant human beings who cause division and anger - but that doesn't mean they should be prevented from visiting. I'm a little squeamish about the red-carpet treatment offered up to them, from the politicians who court the hateful ferret Wilders and those who will welcome Il Papa, but I suppose that's the price you pay for being a free society. A little squeamishness is OK.

One thing that strikes me is that there shouldn't be double standards. For example, I'm very relaxed about immigration, and about allowing immigrants to behave pretty much however they want and say whatever they like, so long as it's within the law of the land. I think that's fine. So it would be a bit wrong if I suddenly said that different principles should apply to guests or visitors. If the Pope wants to visit Britain and tell us we're all shit, that's very much up to him. Unlike the Vatican, we're quite comfortable with dissent. And if Wilders wants to pop over here and spout his bullshit, that's fine too, as long as he isn't especially provocative about where he does it. Freedoms of this country shouldn't just be there for those who were born here, in my opinion.

And yes, we'll be footing the bill. I don't like it, but I'm afraid these things happen. My tax pounds, few though they are, go to paying for all kinds of things I don't like - including wars and needless deaths. They pay for a lot worse things than simply allowing some ridiculous old cunt to be prejudiced without getting a bullet through his head. And all sorts of murdering bastards have been welcomed on state visits down the years, munched swan with Her Maj and had cheery talks in Number 10; sometimes you wonder if the carpets are coloured red because it hides the bloodstains. For diplomatic purposes, Cardinal Ratzinger, like dignitaries from other vile regimes, is someone we bow and scrape to. I don't like it any more than I liked seeing George Bush getting all chummy with the royal family or Tony Blair. But. It's one of those times when you have to wince and remember that you're being the bigger person.

I know the odious Ratzinger is not just a very nasty piece of work, but also someone who has openly criticised the policies of the current Government, but that shouldn't affect our ability to be decent towards him either. We can't just say that we'll provide decent security for the people we like, and not the ones we don't. Ratzinger, like Wilders, deserves not to be assassinated.

The same freedoms of course extend to anyone who wants to protest about the visits of these hideous men. If they want to shout abuse at Il Papa while he's on his way to a meet and greet, then that's fine, and people doing the protesting should have their right to do it protected. If people want to call Wilders all kinds of names as the silly-haired bastard is on his way into the House of Lords, that's fine too. And our tax pounds will pay for that, as well, and I don't object at all.

All I would say is that Wilders, unlike Il Papa, would probably delight in a victim mentality. He'd love to be prevented from screening his shit-smeared film and claim that he's the one on the receiving end of prejudice, rather than being the instigator of prejudice. Little racists like him love to portray themselves as being the true minority; they crave the victim status of the genuine minorities they loathe so much. Let anyone have their say, by all means, but not prevent him from speaking, as that's playing into his hands. As well as that, it plays into his agenda, and that of certain media outlets; they will get to show Muslims as being shouty, aggressive, people who close down debates and squash freedom - they may well be portrayed that way anyway, but the less ammunition that gets handed over for free, the better, I think.

The freedom to be a bigot

It's often the people who dislike freedom the most who fight the hardest to gain ownership of the word. So it is with Pope Benedict. Here's an elderly virgin who believes in magic, who oversees an organisation which concealed systematic child abuse for decades, whose views we're supposed to take seriously.

But then it dovetails in nicely with certain agendas. This isn't an attack on any kind of equality, you understand: it's an attack on the Labour party.

Labour equality, not equality. Are the Tories likely to be voting against, then, out of interest? Ah, but that doesn't matter: this is all about the PC evils of Labour being forced onto poor unsuspecting clergy, who only want to make sure the 'natural law' of being able to discriminate against people based on their sexual proclivities is carried out. How on earth can we possibly see anything wrong in that?

The Telegraph's story puts it like this:

Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill, currently going through Parliament, contains a new, narrow definition of religious workers. It means clergy will not be allowed to opt out of the rules and so will either have to go against their teachings by employing homosexuals, or face prosecution.

Let's suppose a highly respected Muslim cleric had told his fellow believers that the law in Britain should not apply to them in certain aspects of their lives. Do you think the coverage would be the same? Would it be discussed in terms of religious freedom, or the freedom to be a bigot?

You’ll see glimpses in the deluge

So. It's been a couple of weeks since I started trying to break out a bit on here and write some different stuff. I am enjoying it tremendously. So before I slope off for a long weekend I thought I'd just write something to reflect on that.

At times I do worry that I write a bit too much - part of this whole thing had come with the intention of writing less often, but better, but that doesn't turn out to have been the case. If anything, I appear to be writing more than ever, which isn't quite what I'd been hoping for. I worry that perhaps a bit of quality might be lost and I might be spreading myself a bit too thinly. But then I think: no, actually, quality isn't a finite thing. Sometimes you can write three or four things in a row that you really like, and then not do some for ages, but that doesn't mean your first post back will be any good, because it probably won't be. Writing, for me at least and I may not be a typical (or indeed good) writer, is something I need to keep doing to get better at it. A lot of the time I think I'm trying to outdo myself, which is probably no bad thing. I also seem to be fluctuating from not swearing at all to swearing a great deal, not sure why, but I'm not overly concerned. Some things, like Fucking Bigtrak, need a good swear.

I really liked this as well, which I discovered this week. Me, a 'deluger'. That makes me smile, that someone would take the time to set up a list and put me in it, because they wanted to read what I wrote, despite the fact I also occasionally (or even frequently, who knows) annoyed the hell out of them. It's a handy workaround for people you want to read but who turn up a bit too often, like me. So I don't mind if you'd rather list me as a 'deluger' so you can take a breather when I'm rabbiting on a bit too much; it's probably a more elegant solution than my unfollow-refollow business. I'm rather proud of being a 'deluger'.

And there are glimpses of better things to come, I think. There are always glimpses, and that's often enough. A couple of weeks ago this blogging lark didn't seem a great deal of fun; now it seems more fun than ever.

Obviously this post is one of the rubbish ones you have to wade through to get to the good ones, but that's unfortunately how I seem to be doing things at the moment.

I'll stop over-analysing. And writing.

Now.

By far the greatest team

As a football fan, you'd better get used to defeat, because it happens all the time. Those of us who struggled through school - and continue to limp along, in our adult lives - knowing we'd never get bragging rights, because our teams would never be a Liverpool, an Arsenal, a Manchester United, are used to that feeling more than most.

Each defeat on the pitch is a little tragedy, one which seems to be more and more easy to deal with as time passes and I get a bit older. That's to be expected, though there's a bittersweet feeling attached to knowing about that. You wish that you did care as much as you used to; you wish that it felt as marvellous as it used to when your team manages to win; you wish it felt as painful as it used to when they don't.

But there are other defeats, too. Longer-term defeats. The kind of defeats that are harder to take - when the club you follow, or love, or whatever verb you have nowadays, can't pay its bills, so starts to fall apart. That's what is happening to Crystal Palace, a team I've followed for many years, though I haven't been to see them in a long time because of one thing and another - now they're in administration, facing relegation and a long, hard slog to get back to reality. It's a harder kind of defeat to process in your mind, because there's something about the whole sport that seems to be wrong if this kind of thing is allowed to happen. But it does happen. Palace weren't the first and they won't be the last.

Of course it's worth pointing out that it's right that clubs should be penalised for not being able to pay their debts and going into administration. You have to remember the creditors, many of which are local businesses, who haven't been paid, and who may well not see any money at all. It's not fair to anyone if clubs were to be allowed to accumulate vast amounts of debt, say "Whoops!" and then kick off again five minutes later with a clean slate.

I suppose you could say it was never the fans who borrowed too much, knowing how much money was coming in and how much was going out. It wasn't the fans who ran up the debts, so why should they suffer? But in all this, I wonder how much responsibility may, or should, be placed with them - or us, if I include myself, which I should. Were we the ones who told our clubs to reach too far? Were we the ones who demanded success, who felt that a few seasons in the Championship wasn't good enough, who urged those in charge, regardless of their competence or otherwise, to do whatever it took to reach the promised land of the Premiership, at any cost?

In a lot of ways you can look at it like the disease of English football anyway - the route-one demand to stick the ball up there as quickly as possible and hope that it gets bundled in is comparable, you could say, with the demand to punt a team to the top of the football pyramid without years of consolidation. We just don't want to build up from the back. We'd rather forget about all that fancy Dan stuff, pick a team full of tall players and hoof away, keeping our fingers crossed that it'll be all right. We get big target men as chairmen, and hope they'll manage to fluke our teams over the line, rather than creating a better chance of success by constant pressure, good hard work and a focus on development. Do we wait and hope the young players come through the ranks? Or do we demand that managers go out and buy journeymen pros who keep the local kids out of the side?

Not that academies count for much nowadays, anyway. You can hope that one of your kiddies gets good, but your chances are limited. The best players in your catchment area will have been siphoned off by the Premiership big boys long before you've ever had a chance to see them in action. You might get them back when they're 25 and have failed at the top level, but that's about it. Even if you do manage to develop a teenager, they can nip off when the time's right, leaving you with minimal compensation, and you might get a couple of sell-on fees, but that's pretty much that.

It's hard to take because these little collapses happening up and down the football league are just a symptom of something going quietly wrong with a national sport which hands out billions of pounds to clubs who can't fill their stadiums with enough paying punters. Talk about the gap between rich and poor getting wider - nowhere is it more extreme than in the recession-free bubble of professional football. On the one hand, massive clubs with huge squads, pots of TV money to burn and the ability to run up monumental debts secured by bigtime investors; on the other, smaller clubs who tried to be like the massive clubs, but didn't have the backing, or the fanbase, or the luck, or any combination of things, and who have ended up falling back down to earth with a bump.

The football league is littered with those noble failures. Some came back, and some might never recover from the pain of financial collapse. The fans kept coming through the turnstiles, but it wasn't enough. It isn't enough. There was a time when the lifeblood of a club were the fans who were prepared to turn out and watch the games - they could legitimately claim to have some bearing on the fortunes or otherwise of the badge they supported. No longer. Now it doesn't matter if the top teams play to empty stadiums, with no fans caring one way or the other at home - the millions will still pour in.

I started off writing this, thinking that I would say that I didn't care so much about things any more - that this decline in the club I used to watch twice a week was somehow a disappointing lack of disappointment. That was what I was going to say, anyway. But then I started writing this, and I started feeling quite nostalgic, and then that nostalgia made me angry for the way in which that sport I used to follow is not the same one that's there in its place now. There are all kinds of things that can make you feel nostalgic about football - a memory of a particular match, or a goal, or just the experience of going.

For me, it was just the being there, being part of something, being among all those other people, who had come to this same place by car and train and whatever, and who all were singing the same songs, cheering the same players, being part of the same thing. It actually makes me angry that that feeling is dwindling, because it's that feeling I loved so much. Does it matter if you don't have the cash to try and reach the very top? Does it matter if you don't gamble, but don't go under either? Isn't just the being there, enjoying what you're being part of, enough? Or must there always be that insane desire to think that the game little triers in front of us under the floodlights are really "by far the greatest team the world has ever seen"?

They aren't, and you know they aren't, but to me, somewhere, the whole experience is the greatest thing the world has ever seen. I haven't been to a match in years involving my team anyway, but I suddenly want to go and see one, now there's the threat of it possibly being taken away for good. I suppose that's how football gets you, why you can never really get away. No matter how much you tell yourself it doesn't matter, it still does. It still hurts to lose. And somehow, that's a thing that brings me comfort.

Yes. Yes they do.

Psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa doesn't mince his words in his column for Psychology Today:

British Newspapers Make Things Up

Most people reading this will probably, at one stage or another, had that exasperated, angry moment when they realised that what they were reading in their newspaper, presented as fact, was patently not fact at all. Then there was probably that other moment, when we realised it wasn't just the red-top tabloids who were capable of lying to us, but even the big-boy newspapers who claim to be respectable. Kanazawa has written about it before, and has now seen that moment of realisation strike a colleague:

In the earlier post, I explain that, by the American standards, all British newspapers are tabloids because they don’t distinguish between what is true and what they make up. I knew this from my own experiences of dealing with British journalists, but, as it turns out, even the British government admits, in an official government publication, that British newspapers make things up and report them as facts.

Most British people consider the Times of London to be the most respectable “broadsheet” newspaper (as opposed to “tabloid” newspapers) in the UK... Last week, the Sunday Times published an article with the headline “Blonde women born to be warrior princesses.” The article reported that “Researchers claim that blondes are more likely to display a “warlike” streak because they attract more attention than other women and are used to getting their own way – the so-called “princess effect.”” The Times article quotes the evolutionary psychologist at the University of California – Santa Barbara, Aaron Sell, and his findings are purportedly published in his article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, written with the two Deans of Modern Evolutionary Psychology, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby.

As it turns out, however, none of this is true, as Sell explains in his angry letter to the Times. He and his coauthors do not mention blondes at all in their paper and they don’t even have hair color in their data.

For newspapers, though, including the Times, who may have done the stuff themselves or simply C&V'd it off a fellow publication, none of this matters. It doesn't matter what the contents of things actually is, so long as it makes a good story. You can see this in a couple of ways, and I'm always torn. Is it agenda-driven nonsense on a mission to distort, or is it simply ignorant contempt of telling the truth and desperation to make 'a good story', no matter how misleading it might be? I think it varies. Perhaps we can be charitable and say the Sunday Times story was simply crass journalism and highly ignorant. That might be better.

This is eerily reminiscent of my own experience with a British journalist. He interviewed me in 2006 about one of my articles, which demonstrates, among other things, that the average intelligence of a population is positively correlated with the health of the population everywhere in the world, except in Africa. The headline of the article he wrote? “Low IQs are Africa’s curse, says lecturer.”

Kanazawa doesn't mention the publication by name, but it was the Observer. Like I said the other day, it's important to get these things right, because of the effect they have on the people involved; but there's an additional element. Look at the glee with which that headline was snapped up by the Stormfront ultra-nationalist forum:

That's why it's important to get things right. Sure, it might be 'a better story' if you can hammer someone else's quotes and carefully thought out academic views into a couple of handy paragraphs that don't quite say the same thing, but there's nothing wrong in reporting something complicated as being complicated - in fact, it's demonstrably harmful to do so, playing into the hands of extremists.

I hope American and British readers (and readers throughout the world) will finally wake up to the reality of British journalism: You just cannot believe what you read in British newspapers. I’d further call on my academic colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic never to speak to British reporters. You have absolutely no control over what they say about you and your scientific research.

The only hope is that there are greater opportunities nowadays for those involved in damaging newspaper reports to voice their concerns and put their side of the story - not just as a couple of sentences 'for balance' at the end of the article, but by publishing a response that can be widely seen through the internet. That's something positive, but it wouldn't even be necessary if we could trust our press to get things right, to represent things accurately without misleading. But I am not so sure we can.

Thanks to @flinderella for the nudge!

Mail & ME update

You'll remember a while ago the Mail asked "Is ME real?" and then said sorry for having done so, blaming it on a 'junior' staff member.

Well today it's pleasing to see that there's a solid amount of coverage of the Kay Gilderdale story - here, and here, and here. Interesting reading it is, too.

The cheeky unfollow/re-follow

I don't like watching other people's arguments. If I wanted to do that, I'd go down to Ikea on a Saturday afternoon. So when I see people arguing with each other on Twitter, I tend to find it pretty irritating.

It's just a personal preference, and yes, I understand that there can be some fun to be had by a good old electronic virtual ding-dong - I should imagine for some people it's like cyber sex but without the happy finish. But it's not really my kind of thing. And I don't really like to play gooseberry while I watch a couple of other people going at it all afternoon.

Which is why, sometimes, I use the tactical unfollow for a few hours to let things breeze away. Think of it as a mute button for those times when you're having a row with someone else and I don't want to be the sad-faced kid sat at the top of the stairs, wondering whether mummy and daddy are going to be living in separate houses.

It's just a personal preference and I will follow back when the dust has settled and everyone's friends again. So don't go getting all hissy and blocking me because you think I've unfollowed you for another reason - and yes, this means you, Power, you tool - because that's all there is to it.