On the left, from my personal collection, the Daily Mail from May 2nd 2000, the day after the May Day anti-capitalist thingy in Parliament Square. On the right, today’s Daily Mail after the pro-hunt thingy in Parliament Square.
[My photos from 2000 | Mail cover from MailWatch]
Never a truer word said ! That exact thought went through my head yesterday, i.e. my personal thoughts are that if this had been ‘the working classes’ the reporting woud have been entirely different!
I am not sure I understand the comparison, but I am confident in one thing: UK security is all about watching things happen on screens, be they traffic, breakins or protests. The police no longer seem to know what to do when confronted with people that are not on a video screen.
The solution is surely to put the police out on the streets where they will (1) be a part of the community and begin to understand the community and (2) will actually know what it is like in the real world and therefore actually do something.
But why are yioy reading the Daily Mail?
I picked up that issue to commemorate May 1st 2000 and because it was so screamingly inaccurate it was worth hanging on to. I do like to flick through it occasionally to remind myself what a significant proportion of middle England are thinking, or being told to think. It’s usually after this that I think about emigrating.
The comparison is that when it’s lefty anarchists causing trouble then the Mail is all outraged but when it’s nice middle class countryside dwellers then it’s Blair’s fault for not listening. Not saying either are right but the Mail is wrong in both cases.
I grew up in a house for which the only Daily news paper was The Mail. I found it truly depressing. My father still gets it and I asked him a year or so back why this was. He told me that it’s always had a really good crossword.
I remember distinctly reading the Daily Mail for the last ever time when I was 16 or so, they got it at my boarding school. I was reading a Julie Burchill column when I realised it always made me only angry …
since then, my dealings with the mail have been confined to “oh, look, they’ve published LIES about [a major charity I used to work for] again and we need to WASTE HALF A DAY preparing a response so that the shop volunteers will have something they can say to all the hordes of upper middle-class bigots who will come in and hassle them about this for the next six months.
Oddly, since I switched to working for the Council, this pattern continues with the local Mail, though they aren’t as bad; perhaps because the people they’re talking about live close enough (socially as well as geographically) that they might get punched if they were as completely unmotivated to check their facts as …
ah, you can fill in the rest. Sorry, the red mist rose for a moment there … I’ll get my coat …
Actually my question was rhetorical. It is always good to read what the other side thinks once in a while – know your enemy and all that.
I have to be amused by the statements coming from Westminster these days. It is as though MPs have finally woken up to the fact that policing is not working any more – they have finally come to terms with what many of us (and me in only 18 months of living in the UK) have come to realize – the police are not doing what they are paid to do.
Living in the country, I have mixed feelings about the hunting ban. While I dislike the pomp and elitism of the hunt, I also appreciate that what goes on is traditional, is necessary and has no valid replacement (trapping, gassing, anyone?) Minorities these days can be put on a pedestal or have their legs cut from under them according to the political whim of the ruling cabinet. What I would really like to see this government address are some of the serious issues at stake in our society. The ban on fox hunting reminds me of Argentina President Galtieri’s reason for going to war and taking the Falklands – his domestic policy was in tatters and he needed a distraction. Seems like Labour are in a similar position?
While I share the widely-held revulsion at the horrible activity that is fox-hunting, I also share your reservations, Pete’s Dad, about Blair’s rationale for pushing through a ban so keenly. Surely there are more important matters for a Labour government to deal with? Is this move not a sop to the class warriors on the left? Speaking as something of a coffee-bar class warrior myself I am not particularly impressed with the lack of subtelty shown. Must do better, Tony, if you are going to win us left-leaning folks firmly back to your cause.
As for the Mail, my dad used to read it as well, and used to give the same excuse as Paul R’s- the crosswords, and frigging Fred Basset! Eventually me and my sister bought him a bumper book of each of these features for Christmas, to take away his excuse. Now he reads the Times and the Newcastle Journal. Fair play!