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Tag-Archive for "daily-telegraph"

A plague on both your homes May 16

I may write more about the MPs’ expenses scandal over the coming days. It’s a fascinating piece of car-crash current affairs, watching those who lectured us that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” suddenly turn out to have had something to hide themselves. It’s been a bad week for MPs, but hopefully, in the long run, a good week for politics, as the institution of Parliament, set in its arcane, superior ways, is brought down to earth with a thud.

The Telegraph‘s circulation has risen – the main objective for the newspaper, of course – but it hasn’t helped its journalistic reputation by putting what appear to be genuine scoops like the Elliot Morley and Shahid Malik affairs alongside innuendo and prurient invasion of privacy. There are two issues muddled together: those cases where MPs were dishonest, and those cases were MPs took advantage of a flawed system (albeit one which they, en masse, had the power to clean up).

Labour blogger Kerron Cross pleads for us to remember that MPs are human too, as fallible as the rest of us when it comes to making expenses claims. As I’ve said in a comment submitted to his post, I sympathise with that, and some of the claims highlighted by the Telegraph are simply errors – both clerical errors and errors of judgement.

Kerron stands up for Morley, who is accused of pocketing mortgage-related expenses for over a year after his mortgage was paid off:

Take Elliot Morley, one of the most villified individuals this week. One of things most people will tell you is that Elliot is one of the nicest (and most boring) MPs in Parliament. For whatever he is being accused of now, I can’t think of a man less likely to be implicated in a major scandal.

I’m a forgiving sort and am prepared to believe, if this is the outcome of the various inquiries, that Morley really did make a clerical error. The trouble, though, is that the Government of which he was part loves its macho posturing. Say Morley had continued to claim job seeker’s allowance for 18 months after getting a job. Do we think this Government would be satisfied with “Sorry, it was a mistake and I’ve paid the money back”?

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In which the Daily Telegraph grinds my gears Dec 22

Warning: this post contains pedantry. Normally I’m very forgiving of the odd typo here and there, even in the “professional press”. We all hit the wrong button sometimes. Not everyone has a solid education in the classics (I sure don’t). There are probably typos in this very post. But the story I’m about to blog about is so rubbish that I’m afraid I’m going to pick out a couple number of examples that should have been subbed away to reinforce what a poor article it is.

I should also warn you that this post, unlikely almost every other post in the four-and-a-half years I’ve been writing this blog, contains a bit of swearing at the end.

David Tennant could star in Doctor Who musical version cried the Telegraph on Thursday. No idea whether this story reached the hallowed pages of the dead tree version, but there it is on the website, screaming out its headline. Ah, “could”.

Will Howells could climb Mount Everest

Paracetomol could make monkeys dance

I’ll not labour the point. So it’s an article speculating wildly about the unlikely possibility of one of the remaining Tennant specials being given over to a Buffy-style musical episode (not that the obvious Buffy parallel is ever drawn).

Tennant , who will next be seen in a BBC Christmas Day special, is due to leave the show in 2010.

Extra space after Tennant. The most minor error in the article.

Dr Who mastermind Russell T Davies, who is a fan of classic Hollywood musicals, especially Doris Day’s Calamity Jane, wants to bow out with show stopper, it is understood.

“It is understood”? Hello, old friend. No named source then? Oh, and that’ll be a show stopper you mean. On second reading, there are far more typos than I remember.

Tennant is currently recovering after a back operation which forced him to pull out of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet in London, said in a radio interview he would not be tied down for a long run.

There’s either a missing “who” there or two sentences run together.

However a musical episode could see the return of Billy Piper, a former 90s popstar, and even Kylie Minogue.

OK, now we’re getting to the juicy stuff. First off, she’s not Billy, she’s Billie. But, more importantly, here we are again with the “could”. What evidence is there for this? Bugger all. Our hack has noticed that two actresses from the new series have had pop careers and chooses to include this in the article via the entirely spurious – but at the same time undeniable – claim that both “could” return. Christopher Bloody Eccleston could return, supported by Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford and the entire Berlin Philharmonic but it’s not very likely.

Tennant, who has played the 10th doctor since 2005, has only one other project announced for next year. A film version of Stephen Poliakoff’s 1939, in which he plays Hector.

I mean, were the subs all out at a Christmas party the day this piece got through?

And mischievously he has been tipping his friend, and former Cold Feet actor James Nesbitt.

What, he’s been tipping two people? Or perhaps Tennant has only been tipping his friend, and former Cold Feet actor, James Nesbitt.

“It’s Jimmy Nesbitt who will be taking over. Jimmy Nesbitt got into touch to say ‘please tell them it’s not me. I spend all my day going round saying its not me, I couldn’t take over from David.’ “I would urge the public of Britain that if they see Jimmy Nesbitt in the street to go up and congratulate him.”

Extraneous double quotation mark there.

Russell T Davies, who revived Dr Who said in a recent interview that a female Dr Who might be a strong possibility.

More comma abuse. I should send a link to Simon Heffer in the hope that he explodes.

But whoever wrote this appallingly put together travesty of an article has saved the best for last.

Joanna Lumley was once tipped to take over from Tom Baker,

As far as I know, this is bollocks. I don’t know whether this is true or not. Jo-Jo Lum-Lum has many times over the years been suggested as a female Doctor (indeed she played the role in 1999 in The Curse of Fatal Death) but I’m not aware that she was mentioned as early as 1980.

I’m prepared, though, to be generous and consider that someone from the newspaper has done some research and turned up this fact. Or I would be were the sentence not concluded thus:

but Colin Baker got the job.

For fuck’s sake.

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“Ben Smythe is 5ft tall” Mar 25

While we’re having a go at online news stories… The Telegraph demonstrates the problems that can come from updating an existing news story.

Last night, they posted the welcome news that missing boy Ben Smythe had been found ‘safe and well’. In a story about the search for him and his recovery, a photo caption that previously provided useful information suddenly goes a bit Private Eye:

Ben Smythe

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Biometric passports not secure – another blow for ID cards Nov 17

theguardian, working with No2ID, have carried out an excellent investigation into the new “more secure” biometric passports, of which three million are already in circulation. These passports contain information on RFID chips – entirely unnecessary for a valid passport – from which a hacker can extract your biometric information, making it possible to clone the information into a forged passport. So much for security.

Compare the reactions. Nick Clegg:

“Three million people now have passports that expose them to a greater risk of identity fraud than before. We need an urgent redesign of the biometric passport and a recall of all insecure passports once a new protected design is available. In the interim the government should provide commercially available RFID-shields for passports to those with the insecure design.”

The Home Office:

“This doesn’t matter.”

And these people want us to trust them with our biometric data on a giant national database.

While we’re talking about civil liberties, here’s an excellent quote about 90-day internment from today’s Telegraph via Radio 4’s newspaper review:

Habeas corpus is a fundamental part of the British constitution. The liberty of subjects must not be subordinated to the preferences of a prime minister, however trustworthy, or to the convenience of police forces. Mr Blair sometimes acts as if being locked in a cell for 13 weeks was equivalent to waiting for holiday snaps to come back from the developer.

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