Richard Littlejohn Is Not Motivated By Malice On Twitter: Just Everywhere Else?
RICHARD Littlejohn says Twitter is crap. It’s not like proper news source with proper hacks writing proper stories. It’s not like the Daily Mail Reporter, who conjures up this kind of brilliance.
Richard Littlejohn, May 24, 2011
And, no, I didn’t find out through Twitter. I’ve never used Twitter in my life. IMHO (as I believe they say on Twitter) everything which appears on so-called social networking sites is either wrong or motivated by malice. So I take any information I read on the internet with a malt shovel full of salt, unless it comes from a trusted source.
Richard Littlejohn , September 5, 2009
Reader Nick Paterson-Morgan drew my attention to the following announcement in The Times:
My first reaction was that this must be a wind-up, probably placed for a bet by someone at the swine flu hotline with nothing better to do. We rang The Times advertising department and they assured us it was genuine.
There’s no mention of a Mr Pong, or any father’s name for that matter.
If true, which I still doubt, somewhere out there in Shropshire is a single mother called Kate Pong with quins, variously named after an American pop singer, a model and the U.S. President.
You couldn’t make it up.
You could. The Newport Advertiser did not take the Mail as a trusted source and researched the story:
Newport mother, Kate Pong, has sensationally given birth to five beautiful babies this week.
That was the news published in Tuesday’s announcements section of the Times paper.
But after a little digging from the Advertiser team we found things were not quite as they seemed.
For the proud quintuplet mother is in fact a dog.
Got any more? Yep. There are those wheelie bins, the ones the Mail tried to ban.
English Heritage yesterday threw its weight behind the Daily Mail’s campaign to stop the march of wheelie bins.
The organisation – which manages some of Britain’s most important historic buildings – said the bins were an ‘abomination’ that blighted our streets.
Having told readers that they must be removed from our streets to preserve our national identity, the Mail then delivered this:
£500 fine if you put out wheelie bin on the wrong dayFamilies could face fines of more than £500 for breaking wheelie bin rules.
Draconian new town hall tactics mean every adult in a household is hit with a £110 fine, rather than just one.
Because a fine is far more draconian than an outright band, right? Deep in the story, were the actual facts. A council spokesman stated:
“They follow up with letters or visits, to give advice and explain the need to take in bins. If the situation persists, we try to establish whether there are particular problems stopping people bringing in their bins, so we can advise or help. If they still fail to remove their bins, legal notices are sent to every resident over 18 at a property, warning them they have 21 days to bring in their bins or face fines. We issue fines only if all these steps fail to resolve the problem.”
All you need to know about the Kyoto ‘deal’ is that the rest of the world ignored it, while here in Britain it has been used as a catch-all excuse for everything from the extortionate tax on petrol to fining people £500 for putting out their dustbins on the wrong day.
Posted: 26th, May 2011 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
