Labour’s BSkyB windfall
In the 1990s, there seemed to be two kinds of people in the Labour Party. Those who treated winning the election as the top priority, and those who were unwilling to enter into any kind of Faustian pact with Ruperttest
Media Integrity
Mail untruths Pt 3: work-life balance row
An article in today’s Daily Mail willfully misconstrues the findings of a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report. While the article says the research goes against Government work-life balance policy, the report itself says the opposite.
Independent half right on costs of fiscal black hole
The Independent today headline, “£2,840 – cost to every family of filling public finance black hole.” The problem is that the number is only half right.
Mail’s quango deception
The Daily Mail this morning falsely and maliciously lied about the cost of quangos.
Heffer: Underclass of single parents lead to criminality
Simon Heffer in today’s Telegraph (“The underserving poor will be Cameron’s biggest headache”) repeats the myth of: “an underclass of single parents that sociological surveys since Charles Murray have shown lead to poverty, criminality and underachievement by their children.” In fact,test
Daily Mail crowd estimate out by 2,000 per cent
The Daily Mail headline screamed, “A million march to US Capitol to protest against ‘Obama the socialist’.” But American bloggers at Left Foot Forward’s sister site, Think Progress, have revealed that the organisers inflated the attendance by over 2,000 percent.test
Stark choices in weekend polls hide true public sentiment
When offered a greater choice in opinion polls, the public offer a truer reflection
Mozart and Lily Allen: Not such strange bed fellows
In a story about the launch yesterday of the National Year of Music by Ed Balls, the Express highlighted the explicit content of music by NDubz, Lily Allen and Guns N’ Roses, claiming it will “dumb down music for millionstest
Tabloid hysteria over Equalities Bill wide of the mark
The Equalities Bill, will, for the first time, outlaw discrimination on the grounds of socio-economic background.
Spectator’s spectacular U-turn on climate change
One of Ian Plimer’s central claims – reported by Melanie Phillips for The Spectator – is that Arctic sea ice is in fact growing. This assertion is, of course, simply wrong. But this week’s magazine, in arguing for new fossil fuel extraction in Arctic wilderness areas, carries the reverse claim. Are we witnessing a new editorial line on climate change – or is the magazine simply unconcerned about contradicting itself in the starkest terms on the biggest issue of our time?