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Those wacky xenophobes

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STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:34 / 17.06.03

Okay. We all know the Daily Mail is a racist newspaper. We all know, in our heart of hearts, that after many years, they have somehow in their evilness managed to elevate xenophobia into something of an art form.
And here's the proof. In today's... (for anyone who doesn't know, I have to read this shit for work, I don't buy the fucker, okay?) I read the following headline accompanying a piece on skin cancer:

IS BRITISH SUN SAFER THAN FOREIGN SUN?

(Incidentally, there conclusion was "yes".)

How mad is that? (In terms of sheer ludicrous evil invention, it has to rank up there with the Express' classic "Asylum seekers eat our swans", and Richard Littlejohn's mad rant about how "we don't even know that half of these Algerians are even Algerian!"

Just had to share that with ya!

08:46 / 17.06.03

Unmask yourself. You are a secret Daily Mail buyer and you have revealed you. Hahahaha...

What job do you do?

08:47 / 17.06.03

But... why is it safer?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:47 / 17.06.03

Press Monitoring. Or reading papers and summarising the articles, to put it simply.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:48 / 17.06.03

I think it's safer because we've got less of it... so technically it's not safer at all. But hey... it's British, goddamnit!

08:56 / 17.06.03

That's just...weird. I thought it had been indicated that people in the UK often have a tendency to be careless of the sun as we get it here, because we think it's weak, pathetic, or verging on nonexistent, and thus don't take the proper precautions... and thus it is in some sense more dangerous than slathering oneself with factor 35 and standing in the middle of a desert.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:59 / 17.06.03

No! If the Mail says it, it must be true! For they are the voice of reason! And they always use a capital P for the word Press, which is funny.

09:11 / 17.06.03

Now we know why Johnny Foreigner seems so anxious to come here; to live in a land where the sun's nice and safe, not like it is in his own stinking so-called country.

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:16 / 17.06.03

Well, maybe it's just because we got the big fucking ozone hole that we have more cancer. For which every person in Australia thanks the industrialised world.

Of course, it's probably our just desserts, as we're all convicts anyway. Christ.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:16 / 17.06.03

Yes. Bad, bad foreign sun. And sometimes you go there and they don't even speak English!

(Another classic I've just remembered- forget which paper, either the Sun or the Star- a "horror holiday" story about some fuckwits who were disgusted to find they'd been put in a hotel full of Germans. IN FUCKING GERMANY!!! Sample quote, as far as I remember- "Even the menu was all schnitzels and things...")

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:19 / 17.06.03

Rothkoid... I'm losing track... are you still all nonce-lizards as well?

09:22 / 17.06.03

I am aware of some litigation where a holidaymaker (who was a London taxi driver) sued the tour operator compaining about various things about his holiday in Turkey. Apparently he complained about just about everything while he was on holiday, but his first complaint was that the hotel bar did not serve draught bitter.

09:29 / 17.06.03

Back in the days of Lord Rothermere, The Daily Mail (in 1934) carried the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts". Some things never change.

To be honest, I quite enjoy certain papers' xenophobic, white-van-man style; because it reduces its seriousness somewhat.

It's interesting to note that out of most European countries, the legitimacy of the British far right is about as marginalised as it was in the 30s. (something like .02% of people voting BNP last time cf with 6 million votes for far right in France).

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:31 / 17.06.03

Somebody remind me... why does the EU care if we join them anyway? Wouldn't they be better off just, like, sinking us or something?

WHOAH! Excuse me, I just slipped back into my normal persona for a while there. Must change back. (slips into phone booth)

familyvaluesforeignerscopspickingonmotoristsinsteadofdealingwith
therealcriminalsusedtobeabletoleaveyourdooropenbetterclassofvillain
inthosedayssaltoftheearthandtheylovedtheiroldmumandonlyeverwentafter
theirownhealthscarehealthscareeverything'llkillyounonceseverywhere
isthisPOLITICALCORRECTNESSGONEMAD?????

Whoah. You know like at the end of the Crow movie, when he gives the guy all her pain, all at once? That was like that, but for the Daily Mail. Think yourselves lucky... I missed out the parts about the royal family.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:38 / 17.06.03

But seriously... Jub, I do actually find it more worrying with the Mail than with other papers, much as I like taking the piss. There's a certain... subtlety (yes, it sounds ludicrous, but bear with me)... until I had to read the thing cover to cover every night I'd never realised quite how truly nasty it still is... try it for a while. It's actually not just as Nazi as you THINK it is... it's actually Nazi on a scale a BNP leaflet could never manage. Because it's more insidious. It's a word, a phrase, here and there, couched in "middle-England" reasonableness... the sports pages, the gossip pages, the business pages... it's a constant thread. It's not just the garish asylum seeker headlines. It's actually an underlying ethos.

But, on a lighter note, the Mail's "high society columnist" (tr: royal arselicker) Nigel Dempster's just been banned from driving for two years for drink-driving! (Funnily enough, the Mail's the only paper that story doesn't appear in today.)

Oh yeah, and the judge called him a liar as well.

10:09 / 17.06.03

Sure, it *is* worrying, and the Mail is insidious. I'd just prefer to see these sort of opinions touted in tabloid papers - and repeated in bloke-down-the-pub conversations (it was amazing how many people became experts on feet after Beckham broke that bone - "yeah well, that's cos it was hes 3rd metacarple, if it'd been he 3rd metacarsal, we probably would've been in trouble" blah blah blah) than actually voted for in the elections. Perhaps giving people this sort of "respectable" outlet for their hateful greivances prevents the sort of stronger (political) racism you get on the Continent.

10:23 / 17.06.03

Chairman M, isn’t the Maily Dail running a promotion which gives away free plane tickets to Johnny Foreignerland at the moment ? How do they reconcile that with the dangers of foreign sun ?

You’re right, the Mail’s just plain unpleasant, but in a crafty way, like someone at a party who seems pleasant and plausible, but should really be taken out the back and given a damn good kicking.

When there was a stabbing recently in the East End of London, the Mail managed to mention house-prices half-way down the second of three columns under a sizey headline. Now that’s classy.

10:29 / 17.06.03

Is the Telegraph more or less evil? A different kind of evil? They had a nice headline on the weekend that "your granny can't get a hip replacement because of all the foreigners with AIDS in the hospitals"

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:32 / 17.06.03

DaveB- that's different, obviously. We're allowed to go to Johnny Foreigner's place as much as we want, and even set up home there if we feel like it. It just doesn't work the other way. No, they have yet to explain why. But, like Oprah viewers, I'm calmly awaiting instructions (god bless The Onion).

It's great- within pages of each other, they have articles on the evils of immigration, and the wonders of emigration. Truly, it's an art unto itself.

Yeah, Jub, I do agree. It's the insidiousness that worries me- with the Sun or something, you know you've always got that "OUR BOYS RIGHT OR WRONG" thing going on, cos they shout it (and of course, the Star... who don't care as long as there're tits... the Star's classic piece of reportage on the Middle East situation HAS to be "Teenage suicide bomber hid explosives IN HER BRA"... the actual bodycount came WAY down in the story). I dunno... I just have particular hatchets out for the Mail, cos it makes me angriest. Though I think I'm getting Stockholm Syndrome... the nights when I don't get to read it, I feel cheated of my does of righteous indignation!

Gimme a few days and I'll rediscover my hatred of the Mail on Sunday... PETER FUCKING HITCHENS!!! Look at his picture! It's like David Byrne if he'd been to Nazi boot camp and eaten some pies while he was at it! And possibly a whole lemon.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:34 / 17.06.03

The Telegraph is evil. (Although they do have Zoe Heller, Ben Schott, and Armando Iannucci, all of whom rock.) It's just a less... tawdry kind of evil. The Telegraph makes me think of someone in a pub I'd be able to disagree vehemently with over a few pints. With the Sun or the Star, I'd be getting my head kicked in. But the Mail... I might just be the first to turn violent.

10:38 / 17.06.03

DaveBCooper - this is the classic Private Eye method of taking the piss out of the Mail (obviously Pte Eye isn't always the most forward-looking of periodicals itself in some respects, but you can rely on it to dish the dirt on the press at least)

NUL POINTS EUROVISION DISASTER COULD LEAD TO FALL IN HOUSE PRICES

Britain's home-owners sat watching in horror over the weekend, as the UK's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest failed to get a single point.

With each vote cast against Britain, the euro rallied against the pound on the currency markets, destabilising the whole UK economy and leading to what is believed to be an outbreak of SARS in key property hotspots...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:45 / 17.06.03

Sorry... I'm just going off on one here, and I promise I'll stop soon. But you're ALL RIGHT!!!

The Mail is like, I dunno, Alison Steadman in Abigail's Party, always envious yet somehow worshipful of those better off (hence the house price/royal family fixation). Only, like, a Nazi version, who just KNOWS that if it wasn't for all those foreigners, us ordinary English people would be able to live like that. Oh yes we would.

And you just KNOW the Mail "want(s) to listen to Demis Roussos!!!"

Hah! I loved it when the planespotters got busted (and I'm sorry, but they KNEW they were breaking the law in Greece- they ALL had a photocopy of a handout from some planespotter's organisation or what-have-you in their luggage, which specifically warned against taking photos on Greek airbases- and I'm still not convinced they weren't actually spies) and the Mail actually printed a list of Greek products to boycott. Writing my shopping list has never been easier. Never eaten so much feta in my life.

10:50 / 17.06.03

the Mail actually printed a list of Greek products to boycott

Logic no doubt being number 1 on that list.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:52 / 17.06.03

Dunno if it was #1, but it definitely made the top 5!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:55 / 17.06.03

And interestingly enough, I don't think Demis Roussos was mentioned... aha! my theory is starting to work!

Mike Leigh's got a lot to answer for, you know...

11:14 / 17.06.03

The Sun had a lovely cartoon yesterday.

A UK immigration desk staffed by a couple of uniformed chaps in nice white shirts faced with a queue of grimey looking, skinny people wearing rags, They were dark skinned, and the chap at the front was carrying a scythe with the word AIDS written on it. The caption was something along the lines of "reason of visit?"

They're coming to kill us you see.. They're compelled to come here with their filthy virus, infect us all and kill us!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:24 / 17.06.03

Yeah, the "filthy foreign virus" thing at least has a certain consistency... I used to be confused as to whether they were lazy and wanting handouts or coming to steal our jobs. According to the Mail, it's both. I obviously don't understand foreigners at all.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:26 / 17.06.03

Aaahhh shit! what happens if they come over here and we give 'em CJD? Then our moral high-ground's fucked!!! Oh bollocks!

Where's Kipling when you need 'im?

11:41 / 17.06.03

He's off making exceedingly good cakes, obviously. But not Black Forest or Battenburg*, that's foreign muck.

*Unless it's renamed Mountbatten, in which case it's as British as the day is long...

Brigade du jour

22:13 / 17.06.03

Stoatie, I may never QA the Mail again, I never realised how much it means to you to get this bile out of your system in a provocative yet non-violent way. I get my working-time catharsis from the Sun (that's the British Sun, not the foreign Sun) meself.

But the fact remains that my mum and dad read both of these papers (albeit only at the weekend, like that makes it all right) and this makes me want to cry.

Sorry to everyone else who doesn't understand the QA reference - I do the same job as Stoatie, and this is technical terminology that I use so as to feel part of some underground coven of night workers.

Peace brothers and sisters.

Hattie's Kitchen

06:36 / 18.06.03

Sorry to everyone else who doesn't understand the QA reference - I do the same job as Stoatie, and this is technical terminology that I use so as to feel part of some underground coven of night workers.

I too work in the same place as Stoatie and Felicia, and sat next to Stoatie for two years, and I remember fondly our fights over who got to read the Daily Mail, and how his face crumbled when I got to it first...

Innit weird, I loathe that paper with a passion, much in the same way I loathe websites like God Hates Fags, BNP etc. yet I still feel compelled to check on them furtively, just in case my capacity to be appalled by them is lessened somewhat. Fuckbuckets of anger.

06:51 / 18.06.03

I don't work at the same place, was just wondering if you'd seen Richard Littlejohn show on Sky news (I think he's another fav of yours Stoatie) - I only caught the end of it last night, very scary they were discussing Section 28 and the fact that getting rid of it might stop gay kids being bullied, he's argument was that fat kids also get bullied. Not quite sure what his point was?

It seems scarier when you can actually hear him....

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:16 / 18.06.03

Oh God, Littlejohn... I really hope he got bullied at school. Actually, it would explain a lot...

07:42 / 18.06.03

Do you remember that interview when Will Self tricked him into saying his book was more complicated that Tolstoy. Comic Genius.

11:05 / 18.06.03

I loathe that paper with a passion, much in the same way I loathe websites like God Hates Fags, BNP etc. yet I still feel compelled to check on them furtively, just in case my capacity to be appalled by them is lessened somewhat.

This is a really good point. I know that its very easy for me to get lost in my own world of me, where the birds sing a pretty song etc. I guess I like to have faith in the human race and believe that there is an intrinsic drive towards health and happiness in everyone. Yet, this kind of crap really challenges that viewpoint. Maybe thats why I avoid the papers etc.

Thanks Stoatie for nudging me awake again.

Comfortingly, I can also chuckle away to myself with glee at the thought of all of the Non British people we would never support and treat at work on the sly.

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