Short changed

It's been a while. Some things have changed. The Evening Standard for one: Their "who the hell did the design for this?" website has got new fonts, an ever-changing "hot topics" menu, a fast scrolling headlines menu, and a couple of other menus for good measure.

Unfortunately Andrew Gilligan is still lurking in there somewhere. Though on the plus side the incomprehensible layout does make it harder to find him.

The Daily Mail: Stabbing the government repeatedly.

From the Press Association:

"Stabbings have fallen in areas targeted by a police crackdown on knife crime, Home Office figures reveal. Figures from knife crime hotspots revealed the number of youngsters admitted to hospital with stab wounds fell more than a quarter between July and September compared to last year."

"In the 10 Tackling Knives Action Programme areas where there was increased use of stop and search, fewer youngsters were caught with knives - down from one in 30 to one in 65."

The Daily Mail, who you would think would applaud the success of stop and search, instead launch a criticism of the figures:

They claim that by probing "a little deeper" it is clear this is "more an exercise in spin than substance".

Let's see what their probing has revealed:

"Firstly, the figures relate to the ten 'hotspot' counties only. This is despite worrying evidence that a culture of knife carrying has spread to all parts of England."

So what is this "worrying evidence"? Maybe if I scroll down the article I'll find out. Keep scrolling... keep scrolling... It's got to be here somewhere, surely?

Moving on:

"Also, we are not told what the impact of pouring huge levels of police resources into knife crime has been on other offences. Has mugging or alcohol-related violence been allowed to soar, as officers concentrated on the Home Secretary's latest priority?"

Good point. Do tell us - Have they soared? Yes? No?

"This has happened with previous Government initiatives."

Which initiatives? Well? Anyone?

Great investigative journalism there: Who needs stats when you can rely on your copy of the Mail to provide some good old-fashioned rhetoric. It's the finest form of criticism.

On the subject of stop and search. Here is some advice from the Home Office website:

"You should not be stopped or searched just because of your age, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, the way you dress or because you’ve committed a crime in the past."

Yes, that's right: A middle-aged white stockbroker is just as likely to be stopped as a black teenager. Fact.

(I would provide you with some stats. But I can't be bothered.)

Boris: Partying in the face of gloom

Q: How does someone who earns 15 times the average salary refer to the recession?
A: "What recession?"

Hot on the heels of complaining about people whingeing about house prices, Mayor Johnson tries to make sure people know he is as out of touch as possible:

"Eat, spend and be merry - this is not the end of the world"
Telegraph.co.uk, 28/10/08

"This isn't some disaster movie about a virus from Mars. It's a recession, a downturn, a correction of a kind that is indispensable to any kind of human activity, and it does not require us to go around under a special kind of credit-crunch pall. It does not mean we have to cancel all parties and talk in hushed credit-crunch tones... This is the moment for a life-affirming splurge..."

"...if we ban holidays for the British Establishment, where will it end? What about restaurants? What about taxis? What about going to a film on a Saturday night?..."

"...There is nothing remotely impolite, in these circumstances, about spending money and being seen to spend money. Far from it."

On that basis, I'm going to log off and go to the pub. For those of you with debts, who have been made recently redundant or struggling with mortgage payments, I say: f*** you all.

Swindon: Helping you put a foot on the accelerator.

The Swindon speed camera result is in.

I think I've said enough about this before.

Boris: Voting on the basis of race to fight voting on the basis of race.

So Boris has endorsed Obama, to the disgust of many of his fellow right-wingers.

Over to Boris:

“If Obama wins, then the United States will have at last come a huge and maybe decisive step closer to achieving the dream of Martin Luther King, of a land where people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I can’t argue with that. He has a point. If he wins it will indeed be a huge step… wait… what did you just say Boris?

“And then there are millions of white Americans who will undoubtedly vote Obama precisely because he is black.”

So let me get this right: Boris is telling us that there are millions of white people who will vote for him BECAUSE of the colour of his skin, which will be a step closer to a land where you are NOT judged by the colour of your skin.

Ok…

Regardless, deciding that one of the reasons you are voting for someone is because they are black is surely not the best approach. It certainly shouldn’t be seen as qualifying someone to run a country. It’s like voting for someone on the basis that they are funny, right Boris?

On a side note, he also says:

“If Barack Hussein Obama is successful next month, then we could even see the beginning of the end of race-based politics, with all the grievance-culture and special interest groups and political correctness that come with it.”

Special interest groups? Political correctness? What could he be referring to? Let’s refer to what his PR man said back in June:

“And over the changes to the Rise festival, the heartbreaking news for the London Left is that beyond the usual suspect participants, such as National Assembly Against Racism (secretary: Lee Jasper) and the Cuba Solidarity Campaign (what were they doing at an anti-racist event, by the way?) no ordinary Londoner, black or white, gives a damn. Rise-type events had a purpose in the Eighties, when antiracism needed to be made fashionable. But that battle won, it is not nowadays clear how a bunch of overwhelmingly white people going to a pop concert advances any cause beyond the participants' own feeling of righteousness.”

He’s also one step ahead of you Boris. Forget the “beginning of the end”. As you can see, Gilligan told us the battle has been won already. And Richard Barnbrook is proof of that.

The good, the bad and the politics of the media.

The trouble (or benefit) of lengthy reports is that by being selective you can take the best or worst of the results to form the basis of any news article.

For example, The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has released a report entitled "Growing Unequal: Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries."

The report finds that "the gap between rich and poor has grown in more than three-quarters of OECD countries over the past two decades" and "economic growth of recent decades has benefited the rich more than the poor"

However, if you study the details it reveals that Britain is one of the countries where income inequality has decreased since the mid 1990's.

Despite this, the shortening has not outweighed the big increase in inequality that took place between the mid 1980's and the mid 1990's, and therefore over the whole period (mid 1980's to mid 2000's) income inequality has increased slightly.

So the report produces positives and negatives.

Now, depending on your politics you could take two approaches: One would be to acknowledge the recent decrease in the UK since 2000, which the report’s author, Mark Pearson, describes as ”remarkable”. However this would mean, by implication, that you accept that the decrease has taken place under the current Labour government.

The other approach would be to concentrate on the whole period covered by the report, which, although technically correct, glosses over this reduction.

Let’s see this in action, with two news sources reporting the results:

First, the BBC, with the positive slant:

“The gap between rich and poor in the UK has decreased since 2000, an international survey has concluded.”

Now the Telegraph, with the negative approach:

“The gap between rich and poor people in the UK is one of the widest in the developed world, a report has found.”

This means the right-wing leaning Telegraph, although they do acknowledge the recent UK decrease further on in their article, has avoided concentrating on any possible Labour success.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But I’m not so sure.

Tube doors: They'll be the new Routemaster

The Germans are at it as well. Routemaster designing.

It's all part of the Routemaster competition that the Standard will go totally CR-AZY about next month when the winner is revealed. It'll be plastered on the billboards, splattered all over the paper, and Gilligan will have an orgasm. The champion will get loads of dosh, and maybe a big Blue Peter-style badge in the shape of a bus.

A colleague at work, who recently arrived from South Africa, commented the other day: "I didn't really follow the London Mayoral Elections, but I know there was a lot of talk about the Routemaster"

A thought suddenly entered my head. I might stand for London Mayor on another relatively insignificant point, and try to somehow blow it out of proportion to make it a key decider in the election, using safety as a good angle again.

This will be it:

I would complain about the time it takes for tube carriage doors to shut.

"It's too quick", I would say. "At least 2 people have had their fingers slightly hurt in the last year when they were running onto a tube carriage. And 6 people got their coats caught."

And then it would spiral out of control.

Paxman would be drilling me on the time it takes for the doors to shut:

"How long do they take to shut? Is it 1 second or 2 seconds? Answer the question!"

Andrew Neil would catch me out on my figures on a live debate:

"You said it would cost £1,900 to change the time it takes to shut the doors. Actually it'll cost £1.9 million pounds. That's 1000 times what you said."

The audience would all laugh. But then vote for me anyway. I mean what's money when you've got the principle of door-shutting times, eh?

Yeah, tube doors. I'll write that down. Number one pledge. Just above crime.

Standard exclusive: Boris cares. Fact.

The Standard today leads its City Hall section with the exclusive news that Boris Johnson gives a damn.

The article, headlined "Boris Despair Over Knife Deaths", reveals that not only is Boris a human being, but he has also formed a cunning plan.

A ground-breaking key part of his long-awaited policy on tackling knife crime will be a pledge to provide "better education" to the disadvantaged, a novel approach which is comparable only to the pledges to provide better education which have been made by every major political party in the past few years.

On a completely unrelated note, there is a link to the Standard's Beat Knife Crime Charter, although this may or may not go the same way as the Save Our Small Shops Campaign, which went strangely silent after an article on the 6th August in the paper which reported that Boris had been accused of reneging on his pledge to, er, save small shops. (Coincidence of course).

So now the Standard has informed us about the despair that overwhelms Boris on a daily basis, we can expect further revelations from them. These may include:

"Boris cries when he watches Ghost."

"Boris is watching over us. Like God. Only closer to home."

"Offical Standard poll: 99.99% of Londoners believe Boris is doing a fab job. Remaining 0.01% are idiots."

Drivers: Pity them all

Motorists have a tendency to annoy me. Certain types of motorists, as I've discussed before, go beyond that.

I've never been convinced by the argument that all those who drive in London need to do so. Granted, some do. But for many it probably falls within the other categories:

1) Those who prefer to drive, maybe because they have an inherent fear of public transport and the "high-pitched beeping noises" they make.

2) Those who drive just to make a point: "It's my human right to drive" types. The sort of people who get in the car just to go to the corner shop 100 metres down the road, struggle to find a parking spot nearby, spend ages hunting for a space, and then inevitably end up walking 200 meters to get back. But it doesn't matter to them. Because they have made a principled stand, even if they do end up looking like a pr*ck.

The last group are the sort of f*ckwits who have Clarkson's crap books on their shelves (I think I've made it quite clear before exactly what I think of him).

Which brings us to recent news. First is the less than shocking news that Boris has decided not to follow Ken's idea for a 20mph city-wide speed limit.

Let's ask the Standard's readers what they think:

"I always wondered where the surveys were to see how many people get hit in 20mph zones rather than how many survive – I suspect the total is very high given that in a street where children might be playing, a driver would be much safer with his eyes on the road than constantly on the speedo."
- St, London

You suspect? By this logic why have a speed limit at all? That way you needn't look at the speedo at all. Brilliant.

"refreshing to see that you will still be able to drive across london in less than a day. spend the money on teaching kids not to run in the road! 0% of people not hit by a car because they looked where the hell they were going died."
- Jonty, london

Yeah, f**king pedestrians. Make them run.

"People of London - this is what you voted for.
and it's flippin fantastic news....Yippee!
Common sense makes return to London. KenCuckoo world voted out!"
- Ethan, UK, formerly East London

Some great analysis there to round it off.

On the same day the Standard provided a nicely spun article which apparently was supposed to persuade everyone just how badly the congestion charge is hitting some of us:

”Company car drivers have collected more than £1 million in fines for driving in the western extension zone without paying the congestion charge, new figures show.”

What? They have been fined for not paying it? The cheek!

David Brennan, managing director of LeasePlan, was given a chance to air his peculiar take on it all:

"Drivers will pay the majority of these fines themselves but employers spend a great deal of time processing the documents.

The charge itself is a big enough burden for companies to shoulder, but there are also implications due to the administration costs that come with these rocketing levels of fines.

With many businesses already struggling in the downturn, the last thing they need is the hassle of managing so many fines.”

The administration costs? Is that a joke? How about you pay the damn charge in the first place and you won't need to worry about administration costs.

So, using the Standard's regular policy of having no right to reply, the article apparently teaches us that fine evaders are hard done by, deserving of our sympathy and form the basis of another reason why we should abolish the charge.

This is just taking the p*ss.

To be honest I'm just in a foul mood. If you want to know what I think then you can read my earlier, (relatively) calmer post. For now though I'm going to log off. Otherwise I might decide to track down Ethan, Jonty and co. and beat them to death with their gearsticks.

Simon Jenkins feels the pain.

The controversy surrounding Ian Blair's resignation generated understandably extensive discussion across the media, which led me to inevitable news surfing, seeking out the various takes on the whole event.

My web travels led me to the Times, where Simon Jenkins provided some light relief with one of the most ridiculous (and arguably offensive) comparisons I've read in quite a while:

"As for the shooting of innocent men by Blair’s buccaneering gunmen, it tallies with my own experience of being stopped by a loud-mouthed, rifle-toting officer in an unmarked car for allegedly “driving dangerously” round Hyde Park Corner."

Ok, I get it.

On a similar note, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed the homes and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, it tallied with my own experience of when a gust of wind blew my umbrella from my hands onto the pavement below, where it got all dirty. Bad times.

You see, Simon understands. He really does. He shares De Menezes' pain. (Apart from the being shot in the head bit).

How to insert unrelated HE'S A W*NKER sentences.

One of the worst, but sadly often used tactics bad journalists employ is to insert random, completely unrelated sentences into news articles, with the sole aim of attempting to influence the reader's perception of the story (or in this case the individual involved).

Here is a prime example, from yesterday's Evening Standard:

"Peter Mandelson was set to have an operation for kidney stones today after being rushed to hospital at 3am by health minister and surgeon Lord Darzi.

Mr Mandelson, 54, began complaining of abdominal pain over the weekend. Yesterday, as he was having dinner with a friend at his £3.5 million Regent's Park home, the pain worsened and he rang for medical help."

And here is proof that it works:

"Never mind the kidney stones - how can he afford a 3.5 million pound house??"
- Delphine, Oxford

"And how has he managed to buy a 3.5 million pound house?"
- P Istaker, London

"£3.5m home...Sleaze all over again."
- Asw, Hong Kong

"How did Mandelson come to be in possession of a £3.5 million home?
How is it that these 'socialists' usually seem to end up loaded?"
- George, Durham

Etc

What about another hypothetical example, one that the ES would not use?:

"Mayor Boris Johnson today announced his plans for a new initiative into tackling gun crime. Johnson, who owns a top of the range Ferrari, said he was pleased with the plans."

Except that would be ridiculous.

Disclaimer: As far as I know Boris doesn't own a Ferrari. And if he does, who gives a f***. It's of no relevance. At all.

Jeremy Clarkson, Swindon and a pile of stones.

On the most recent episode of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson managed to achieve what I thought was impossible: He made me dislike him even more than I do now. We’re talking Melanie Phillips levels here.

How? He congratulated, to rapturous applause from the audience, Swindon Borough Council’s Councillor Peter Greenhalgh, for leading the Conservative-run council’s proposals to withdraw funding for speed cameras.

As the Independent reported, Greenhalgh recently labelled speed cameras “a blatant tax on the motorist”, and suggested that “there are much more important things we as a council should do instead of acting as a law enforcement arm of this government."

Meanwhile, back at the Top Gear studio, Clarkson, Hammond and co. reached orgasmic levels of excitement, and promptly awarded Councillor Greenhalgh the 'Top Gear Trophy of Excellence' for “services to common sense in the face of blatant Government stupidity”, before cutting to a picture of a throne (which, if I had my way, they would tie Clarkson onto before placing it on the fast-lane of the M25).

And so the story began to spread, virus-like, across the internet forums: A victory for common sense! A brave stand against attacks on the innocent motorist! A battle against the tax-stealing government! A step towards ending the nanny state! And so on.

SwindonWeb, an unofficial website which aims to cover “anything and everything to do with Swindon”, gave their local readership a chance to comment:

“Doing 70 in a 30 is wrong, but I’ll bet most people get done doing 40-45 in a 30. And on a dual carriage that's not the crime of the century!!!!!! God I hate the government."
L J

Exactly, what’s wrong with 45 in a 30? That’s only 50% above the legal limit.

"Nice one make a change for Swindon to lead the way, now to get the boys in blue to give us a break as they think its now a good excuse for them to take over and rake in the cash. Bike cops with laser guns police camera vans, Get back to work and catch some real criminals."
mikeyb

This is the tipping point: ‘Mikeyb’ uses the phrase which sums up all that infuriates me about a large proportion of motorists: Their beliefs that speeding, careless driving – and even drink driving – are somehow not crimes. (Or at most are just minor crimes).

“The police should concentrate on real criminals”: Those that oppose any interference in their motoring lives seem to operate from this mindset.

Except it’s not a human right to drive. It’s a luxury – it should be earned. To argue that clamping down on abuse of this luxury is an attack on your civil liberties is absurd.

Yet for some people the ‘unnecessary’ enforcement of driving laws is more than just an annoyance. It becomes a matter of principle:

A petition on the 10 Downing Street website to scrap speed cameras, set up by the pressure group 'Safe Speed’, attracted over 28,000 signatures.

The Safe Speed campaign was founded by the late Paul Smith, who died last year. Immediately under the heading on the homepage of their website is a lone advert which seems almost a deliberate attempt to alienate any potential convert who may have otherwise been prepared to give the site a chance: “A very significant number of prosecutions are defective. The trick is to find the defect. A good firm of specialist lawyers may well be able to help. Safe Speed recommends…”

The central theme of the entire campaign, once you’ve boiled it down, is summed up by the following: “As soon as we increase regulation individual responsibility is reduced”.

By regulation, he primarily means speed cameras and strict speed limits. The former is an easy one – Smith sets out to try and prove that speed cameras simply do not work and can be counter-productive, and (to his credit) steers away from the cash-raising argument in favour of what is reported as being 5,000 hours of research.

The latter is more complex. His argument is hard to pin down. He begins by claiming he “welcomes properly set speed limits”.

But then goes on:

“Speed limits do little to modify the speed of traffic, and should never be used to attempt to modify the speed of traffic”.

Overall it is clear that although he argues for more variable limits, on the whole he means increasing the limit, the most extreme example being on rural roads:

“This is where we see the most problems with modern speed enforcement. The safe speed on British rural roads varies from 0 mph to over 150 mph, yet we have a "one size fits all" 60 mph national speed limit.”

Yes, that’s not a misprint. He is seriously suggesting you can safely drive on some rural roads at over 150 mph.

So if speed limits (and cameras, etc) detract from “individual responsibility”, what does he mean? And what, ultimately, is his solution?

“This leads us towards a very, very simple road safety strategy - if we can make our average driver just a little bit more like a class one police driver then we should expect accidents to fall. In order to achieve this we need to feed it right at the foundations of individual responsibility and attitude.”

I see.

Shortly after the Swindon story broke, the Independent ran an article entitled: ”The Big Question: Do speed cameras work, or are there better ways to make our roads safer?”

Rather fittingly they chose Swindon itself when arguing the case.

After a page of discussion, it reaches a few conclusions for and against speed cameras. So, do they work?

“Yes...
- Studies have shown that a reduction in the speed limit to 20mph in built-up areas causes a 60 per cent fall in accidents
- Evidence from Swindon showed a 30 per cent reduction in the numbers of people killed or injured since cameras were installed
- At 10 of the sites in Swindon where cameras were introduced, no road accident deaths have been recorded

No...
- Critics say it's not speed that kills but tiredness and careless driving. It's this that should be targeted with safer driving campaigns
- Speed cameras are being used as an easy way for the authorities to bump up their revenues, antagonising the public
- Cameras are counter-productive in creating a tendency for drivers to break the speed limit when they are not around”

This pretty much sums it up: The argument in support of cameras uses statistics, the arguments against do not. Worse, the opposing points actually drift from the question itself. The fact that speed cameras may be used as a money raiser is hardly an effective criticism of their effectiveness. And the third point is just bizarre. Surely if drivers break speed limits when cameras are not around then this is even more reason to keep them, unless this is some sort of twisted protest?

If I decided to start throwing stones inside a nightclub, it would raise two questions. The first would be: Why would you bring a pile of stones into a nightclub? To which I would respond: Ok, it is not the best analogy, but stick with me.

The second (and obviously more relevant one) is: Am I doing anything wrong? This seems a ridiculous question. Of course I’m doing something wrong, stupid and dangerous. I’m throwing stones around a dark room that is full of people. There is a pretty good chance I am going to hit someone and do some real damage.

But then again, maybe I’m not intending to hit anyone. Maybe I’m just enjoying throwing my stones. Maybe I think I’m an excellent shot and there is very little chance I will strike some bystander. And I’ll be damned if any nanny state starts infringing on my rights to hurl stones around. They should go and concentrate on real criminals – burglars and the like.

Granted, this is possibly the most ridiculous, convoluted analogy you could make, but I think the general point is reasonably clear.

I could drive at 50 mph on a road with a 30 mph limit, I could have a drink or two more than I’m supposed to before stumbling into my car, but still fool myself into believing I can handle it. (And I’m not going to have some PC government telling me otherwise!)

As for the effects: If I were mugged in the street, I may lose some valuable possessions, and it may be a traumatic experience, an event which could take a while to get over. But if I were hit by a car doing 50 mph when they should be doing 30 mph, I will probably not need to worry about my emotional state, because I’ll most likely be dead. Which is worse?

But somehow vast numbers of people don’t see the average careless or speeding driver as a criminal (unless they’re poor, working class teenagers from a council estate). Whole campaigns are set up to attack the laws and regulations which govern how we can drive, groups rally in support of a man who destroys speed cameras, and a councillor who plays political football with people’s lives gets a standing ovation from Jeremy Clarkson.

Right-wingers are wimps. Fact.

"Scientists studying voters in the US say our political views may be an integral part of our physical makeup.

Their research, published in the journal Science, indicates that people who are sensitive to fear or threat are likely to support a right wing agenda.

Those who perceived less danger in a series of images and sounds were more inclined to support liberal policies."

Want to know more about why some of us are namby-pamby, wimpy right-wingers? Then read on.

The Andrew Gilligan Dictionary

For those who find themselves puzzled or frustrated when browsing the articles of award-winning journalist Andrew Gilligan, I have provided a series of definitions for some of the key words he uses which should clear up any confusion.

The Gilligan Dictionary
(Click links for examples of usage)

Bendy-buses: Death on wheels; a vehicle which produces “high-pitched beeping noises”.

Crony: A person who works or has worked with Ken Livingstone.

Experts: Individuals whose opinions matter, but only in certain circumstances. Often wrong.

Hypocrisy: A valid journalistic method to correct previous statements, employed when the focus of a news article changes.

Inverted Commas: A tool to underplay any attacks and mock critics (For example: “Scandal”).

Ken Livingstone: Satan.

Lee Jasper: A measure of corruption (For example: “I know Lee Jasper, and Ray Lewis is no Lee Jasper”).

Nit-picking: Any form of criticism directed at Boris Johnson. (Also known as ‘over-reaction’ or ‘whingeing’).

Olympics: A positive or negative event depending on the time or situation.

Routemaster: A conviction made flesh.

Tim Parker: An individual whose importance is dependant on his employment at City Hall.

Truth Check: A method of analysing the policies of individuals (Unnecessary in certain circumstances).

Boris kicks non-existent staff out the building

From Britain's most impartial paper comes news of a "cost-cutting shake-up" at City Hall.

Here is my favourite little snippet:

"The Mayor said he wanted to streamline the Greater London Authority with around 100 job losses."

But then later on:

"He aims to cut the number to less than 700, although some of the posts that will go are already vacant."

Last time I checked (unless you're being very pedantic) getting rid of empty posts doesn't strictly class as job "losses", as the headline and initial paragraph states.

It's all in the semantics. It is true that removing as yet unfilled posts is still technically cutting. But the intention of the article - and indeed the headline - is to instil in the casual skim reader the idea that 100 overpaid wasters are literally going to be thrown out by their shirt collars.

Sniping aside, I'm genuinely interested to know how many of the cuts are vacant posts. "Some" is a touch vague.