Exclusive: Offspring Of "Respectable" Parent Act Their Age On Facebook

A super sticky Sun special from the Evil Flea

The Sun has learned through something called the "Bristols Network" today that a grown adult related to another grown adult who used to advise the Government on their drugs policy, has had some photos taken of him and put on social-devilry site Facebook, in which he looks like he might be STONED or perhaps just a bit tired and acting silly, smoking what we think is maybe a SPLIFF but could equally be a tobacco roll-up cigarette.

Professor Nutt's son Steve, 24, also made some bad jokes about terrorism, on more than one occasion, probably because he's paranoid from all the crack he smokes.

His sister, who is also related to the grown-up who used to advise the Government on drugs, also courts controversy on her account, appearing to be drinking VODKA whilst under the age of 18.

This definitely PROVES that her father was wrong when he said that he was more worried about his children drinking alcohol than taking drugs.

Meanwhile Professor Nutt's eldest son, Johnny, 26, is seen in photos WITHOUT ANY CLOTHES ON in snowy Sweden.

The Sun's own Katie, 24, from Durham had this to say: "It's wrong to put nude pictures on Facebook - the privacy options just don't make good business sense." (To see MORE of Katie, turn to page 3 now!)

Steve Nutt, when asked about the Facebook pictures, had the gall to accuse the Sun of paying one of his friends to give us the photos. [Ed: how did he find out?]

Science disproved by seagull

A special sciencey dispatch from Eoinin McAlpine of the Mobar Gazette

God-hating scientists and the BBC say it's one of the most expensive and technologically complex machines in the world, but that didn't prevent the Large Thingy Collider from being dismantled entirely by a seagull.

The £4.4 billion 'Satan Machine' overheated after the seagull, possibly sent by Jesus Himself, dropped a piece of bread into a high voltage installation which was probably diverting taxpayer funds from something more meaningful.

The problem was noticed by interweb boffins who were monitoring LTC data online, presumably taking only a brief respite from their usual pestering of hardworking journalists via confusing web hate-site Twitter.

Hilariously, it's not the first setback for the anti-God machine. After being switched on last year in an effort to eradicate family values, it broke down within days due to a leak of helium, which is understood to be the party drug currently en vogue with Kids These Days.

The LTC attempts to hasten the spreading of immorality by firing family values campaigners into each other at almost the speed of light. This creates a vacuum, which is filled almost instantly by hardcore pornography, crack cocaine and massive amounts of gayness.

The device's experiments are expected to bring about the end of the world as soon as the problem of divine intervention can be solved.

Unwilling as usual to accept the existence of God, the series of technical glitches the LTC has suffered has resulted in some members of the notoriously carnivorous scientific community speculating the machine is being sabotaged - by itself. Dr Miles Dyson mumbled something about the LTC being self-aware, adding that its obvious mechanical depression and fondness for self-harm was pretty much the only thing saving humanity from total and utter destruction.

Some physicists have said that time-travelling particles from the future could be damaging the machine in an attempt to thwart any further experiments. Crazy old Dr Emmett Brown warned of possible disruptions to the space-time continuum and insisted that people keep their speed below 88mph.

A.N. Wilson: These proud titans of truth will destroy us all

Appropriately named Professor David Nutt, who was chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was finally sacked last week for saying things the the Government - and more importantly, the Daily Mail - did not agree with. He hissed that alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than the murderous devil weed cannabis, and that riding ponies was more of a risk to your health than stuffing your face with ecstasy and washing it down with Vodka.



What Nutt wanted to do was to dictate "evidence" based "research" to the Government, blinding them with "facts" too distasteful to be true. His pernicious brand of empiricism threatened to undermine the common sense belief that drugs are bad mkay and was rightly crushed. But even more frighteningly, his dogmatic adherance to the religion of science betrays society's increasing dependence on reality rather than blind faith. You know who else abandoned morality for science? A.N. Wilson knows.


Also see 'He blinded me with science' by Dave Cross.

Thanks to Sam Eaton and Bruce for the pics and James O'Malley for the audio (if you're using a reader you may have to click through to access the player).

The decline and fall of the commentariat

Lezard: So you don't like something you don't understand? Fascinating.

Anyone - even the verbose literary critics of the most troubled newspapers that prop up one of the country's most antiquated professions - can see how inane "Twitter" is. Eurgh! I am unable to even utter the foul beast's name without spraying my page with bilious condemnation. Twit. Ter. Twitter twits, twats, and twunts. Too many "T"s make a tit. Stupid, terrible, tragic, pathetic Twitter. See the theme? I do. I'm a literary critic. Alliteration. The basest of rhetorical devices, esteemed only by the most inconsequential poets, banal linguistic noise whose only function is to trip up prose and stifle comment. Authorial madness. The essence of hate. Twitter.

Heavens! That it has come to this. Plato, Aristotle, Homer and Ovid never tweeted. Keats may have admired the nightingale's tune but he never imitated it's nonsensical warblings. It's the accessability I abhor; every two-bit pyjama wearing basement writer can write, publish, and bore the world with their incessant blogging, tweeting, tumbling and posterous-ing, while literature lays dying in the gutter. With this accessability you may wonder why I haven't signed up myself, just to see what it's like before writing an excrutiating 500 words of high-browed pretension on the subject. Why? Why haven't I? Why do I refuse to dip my toe into the torrent of background noise, egotistical rantings, pointless ravings, and probably psychologically damaging profanity pouring forth from the denizens of the web?

Because I'm a WRITE-OR, that's why! Why should I deign to read what I imagine is a slew of ill-informed nonsense and egomaniacal ejaculations when I myself write all that needs to be read? Common people may not write and expect to be read. That is the privilege of the few, to bestow upon the many. This is true insight. Just because everyone wrote exactly the same thing 12 months ago doesn't make it any less brilliant.

And with that, adieu, twats!

Cohen: Beware the bleating of the marginalised journalist.

People have always whined. God knows I do an awful lot, but that's alright because I'm paid to. In the good old days, a large tract separated the amateur whiner from the whinee. The outraged housewife from Tunbridge Wells was forced to pen a formal letter of complaint, and by the very process of writing, consider her objection to whatever triviality it was that ignited her wrath. Then she would sit and wait as her scribbled missive winged its way to its target, then wait some more for a dismissive response. This is how moaning should be: a futile excercise in being ignored.

But now spontaneous groups of angry individuals coagulate with alarming ferocity on the interwebs, enabled by Facebook and Twitter. Mass protests flare up from nowhere as offense spreads at the speed of light through angry networks of geeks taken aback by a bigoted article in the Daily Mail, or a light-hearted quip with racial undertones aired on a BBC show nobody watches. Jan Moir's sneering heterosexist slurry of hate attracted 22,000 complaints after it went viral on Twitter. But does nobody see the hypocrisy in campaigning for free speech while simultaneously criticising an article you don't approve of?

Of course, freedom of speech includes the freedom to disagree with what others say. So in the case of Jan Moir it's ok. But is it ok when people are disagreeing with something like Andrew Neil's supposed racist biscuit remark? No, of course not, because I don't think Neil meant it in a racist way. Andrew's script, and the offending hobknob joke, was written by a lady with a black husband so it can't be racist. Therefore, to express an opinion contrary to my own, that a seemingly questionable remark is questionable, even though, actually, it probably isn't (by my own measure anyway), is surely an affront to free speech.

Ok, wait. I'm losing track of what I was trying to say. Freedom of speech=good, obviously...but criticising journalists is bad...no, that's not right, er...ah yes, use Twitter to criticise, that's ok, but don't do it when the thing you're criticising isn't objectionable by my standards and...er, mobs, yes, don't join mobs. Right. So, clearly, Twitter is a great medium through which to express shock or disapproval, but if a large body of other Twitterers also express that same disapproval, it's a mob and you mustn't join in. Mobs are bad, m'kay?

What it boils down to is that I, as a columnist, am uncomfortable in the face of large scale criticism. Jan Moir wrote some repugnant drivel, sure, but what if it was me? The whole point of columnists is to write opinionated, agenda-driven unverifiable polemic. That's freedom of speech! But when the tide turns, and all the little internet people rise up against us in baying mobs to point and laugh and condemn what we say, it's just not on.

For centuries, polemicists have enjoyed the right to offend and misrepresent with impunity. The age of the angry non-professional writer empowered by social media to spread word of inaccuracy and rally others to their cause threatens to bring that to an inglorious end. What will we be left with? A vacuum of opinion. Well, not a vacuum exactly, because all the Twitterers will have their own opinions. We'll be left with an imbalance between the superiority of highly-paid writers to make readers agree, and the previously silent majority who read and disagree, but don't get paid to twitter their thoughts. So, yeah, the many shrill voices will swamp the few. Surely that's not free speech? Does that make sense? Have I made any sense whatsoever? I think it probably does, and the likelihood is that I have. Crikey, that's a long paragraph. Nobody is going to tweet this. Ack. Well, at least it's better than that tiresome Lezard chap. I'm Orwell, and he's Byron. No-one likes Byron anymore. My head's hurting a bit now, so it's time to sum up with a concise and highly quotable last line.

Give me a minute.

Ok.

Got it.

This assault on the exclusive and God-given right of journalists to free speech must end.

Also see: Jon Henley - Twitter is a danger to free speech, yada yada yada for 2,000 words

The ladyboys that can ruin your career

Radical feminist writer Julie Bindel caused controversy last week with her comments about the ‘dangers’ of transgendered people in an article for sane, rational and in-no-way-foaming-at-the-mouth-reality-denialist magazine Standpoint. Quail correspondant Adam Fish reveals what Bindel's first draft may have looked like.

Last year, I was nominated for the Stonewall Best Journalist in the World award. This seemed only fair, as I am indeed the best journalist in the whole entire world, better than Woodward and Bernstein, better than Hunter S Thompson, and loads better than Seymour Hersh. But the spineless bastards wouldn’t give me my rightful prize. Damn them! Why? Why would they refuse to honour the glory that is Bindel? Could it be because they just thought that, while I may be a decent writer, my impact on the lives of others was less than my fellow nominee and eventual award-recipient, that jumped-up agony aunt Miriam Stoppard? Could it? Could it Hell! I’m a better writer than Stoppard any day. The cow.

No. I’ll tell you why I didn’t get that award: because of those transgender bitches! Those goddam he-she motherf'ckers have been hounding me for five years. Hounding me, I tell you! They even sent a baying mob to abuse me at my moment of glory! A baying mob! Look at them! Look at their evil faces, their deranged and heavily-made-up eyes, their emotions unhinged by unnatural hormones coursing through their veins! Look at them! One-hundred-and-fifty people they sent to pick on me. One-hundred-and-fifty people! Ten brave souls came out in my support, but what could they do? They were outnumbered literally fifteen-to-one! And some of those so-called ‘girls’ are pretty big, you know! And some of them even have penises (more on that later)!

Thank God I had that police escort. Oh, some might say this ‘escort’ was just the ordinary police presence sent to keep trouble from happening at the awards, but I know the truth. It was a special police escort laid on only for me, in recognition of the heroic risk I was taking in facing down this baying crowd of gender-benders like a modern-day Boudicca. Did the tranny-appeaser Stoppard get a police escort? I think not! So ask yourself – who is really the more important journalist? It is me.

And why were they harassing me, these ‘transgendered’ terrorists, these cross-dressing criminals? All I did was write one little article in 2004 which they didn’t like. Imagine! Not liking a piece of the glorious, world-changing super-journalism that is the collected works of Bindel. The cheek! And why did they object to my beautiful work? Was it my decision to call it ‘Gender Benders, Beware’? Was it the fact that the piece was illustrated with a mocking cartoon showing a so-called ‘trans’ individual to be the figure of ridicule he so obviously is? Was it the fact that I sweepingly declared that all trans ‘women’ wear ‘fuck-me shoes’ and ‘bird’s-nest hair’, and that a world inhabited solely by these alleged ‘trans-sexuals’ would resemble the set of the musical Grease? (Ed – can I just insert a huge quote from the Guardian piece in this article? It’ll help nudge up my word count. Ta very much, Julie).

No. It was because they – the transsexuals – have an agenda. Quite simply, they want to destroy feminism. They want to return us to the days when girls played with Barbie dolls and boys played with guns. Yes, that’s exactly the world ‘men’ like Patrick Califia want to return to! If you think this sounds like a ridiculous notion, ask yourself this – are you a famous journalist? Have you ever been nominated for an award? No. No you have not. I have, and because I am a famous journalist you should believe me when I tell you that all so-called ‘trans’ people believe that gender is biologically determined and not socially constructed. Don’t talk to me about Judith Butler, bitch! Did Judith Butler ever win a Stonewall Award? She did not. Whereas I did. Morally. That award was mine. If it hadn’t been for those pesky meddling trannies I would be looking at that award on my mantelpiece right now, and that Stoppard cow knows it. Bitch.

Who else is behind this? Psychologists! Reactionary 1950s psychologists who coined the term ‘gender dysphoria’ in an era when men were men and women were doormats. You might say that many trans people are not exactly happy with their identity being considered a psychological ‘disorder’, with being pathologized and considered to be cases in need of a cure. You might say that many modern trans people, like Kate Bornstein, have a more nuanced, fluid concept of gender than this 1950s ‘Mad Men’ style fantasy I’ve just alluded to here. You might even say that suggesting all this is a conspiracy for which psychologists are to blame makes me akin to some of those Scientology weirdoes – but, I repeat, who is a famous journalist? I am. Why, I’m so famous that I’ve gone from writing for the Guardian, one of the UK’s trashy, downmarket so-called ‘newspapers’, whose filthy ‘Berliner’ pages pass through the grubby hands of 335,615 people a day, to writing in Standpoint, a magazine catering to an intellectual elite of 20,000 (appr), so high-toned a magazine in fact that many newsagents say simply ‘eh?’ when asked for a copy, and which regularly features contributions from such fame-hungry media whores elite high-end intellectuals as Clive James, Alain de Botton, Melanie Philips and Julie Burchill. Do you associate in such lofty company, dear reader? You do not. So kindly keep your silly little Scientologist comparisons to yourself.

(Ed – could we get one of the researchers to include some tedious filler statistics here? Try to weight them so that they make it look like all transgender ‘women’ [I’m going to ignore trans ‘men’ from this point on, penis-coveting traitors to the cause that they are] wind up seriously unhappy with their lives, and possibly include some NHS stats to make them good and angry that taxpayer’s money is being spent on giving people sex changes instead of helping out TV channels ran by Pizza Restaurant Entrepreneurs who happen to be related to centre-right magazine editors? I’d do it but it would involve research, and a journalist of my calibre doesn’t bother with such things. Thanks ever so – Julie)

It’s all really disgusting, too, the stuff these people get up to! Sex-change ops for men involve fashioning a so-called ‘mangina’ from their dirty old penis, uuurgh! And women who have it done get given testosterone injections so they grow nasty scratchy hair on their faces, yuck! Also, it’s a ludicrous term anyway! Here, look at this definition of transgenderism I’ve included here unattributed but have clearly taken from a staff manual at some educational institution or other (clearly not a government department or anything official but ignore that). According to this a girl playing football is transgender! They don’t want our girls playing football, people! Now do you believe me about the psychologists? Now do you believe? Would Stoppard have uncovered such a conspiracy? The answer is no. She would not.

Oh yeah. They’re doing it to kids too! I totally saw a programme about it on Channel 4! (Ed – get some more stats in here please, thx J). Kids! The children, will nobody think of the children? The trannies won’t! They want your children! They want them in their sick tranny club! They want them to play Sandy in their never-ending production of ‘Grease’! The filth! Scum! The bastard award-denying tranny bloody bastards! Aaaaaaargh!

And they’re rapists! Did you know a so-called ‘transexual’ was convicted of rape and then sent to a women’s prison – even though he had a penis? It’s true! (Ed – check if this is true. J) Never mind that a transsexual ‘woman’ in a male prison would themselves be at risk of rape by inmates, never mind that if ‘she’d’ started on the hormones ‘she’d’ be less physically strong and therefore less able to defend ‘herself’ against attack and there might therefore be a case for moving ‘her’ to a women’s prison for ‘her’ safety, never mind that do you see? This is why they want to have a sex change people! They want to get into women’s prisons and then go rape-crazy on the inmates! With their penises!

Do you want that, readers? A world where penis-wielding fake ‘women’ go on a never-ending rape spree through female correctional facilities? Is that what you want? ‘Cause that’s what’ll happen!

That’s what’ll happen, readers. Mass rape of female inmates by devious transvestite bastards. And to think, it could all have been prevented if they’d heeded my warning. If they’d given me that award. But they didn’t. So cheers, Stonewall. Cheers a fucking bundle.

(Ed – I think this is substantively finished now. Just get one of the c ‘n’ p monkeys to pad it out with some long-winded quotes from internet discussion forums, stories about policemen being victimised and slippery-sloping about amputee-fetishists, would you? I’m off to put in Stoppard’s windows. Again.)

How bollocks spreads in the world of Web 2.0, with Iain Dale

Part three of our infrequent guide to reporting the news.

This week: social media

The dead-tree press is increasingly using so-called "social media" to promote content. It can be a daunting, confusing, often sticky experience, but using the "internet", or "webb", to your advantage is becoming an important part of proper journalism (the kind you read in newspapers).

With just four simple steps you'll be able to force your made up rubbish into the faces of millions of "surfers" - your editor will thank you for the extra readers!

Step 1: Make up some nonsense as usual, either by literally just inventing a story or by twisting some new directive/announcement/press release beyond all recognition to fit your agenda. In our example, we'll take a rather boring guideline update issued by Watford Council and pretend it's politicalcorrectnessgonemad. Add the keyword "paedophile" if the story involves children to really get people going.


Step 2: Once your piffle has been published, the fun begins! Ensure that readers are unable to vent their outrage (or correct you) on the article itself by turning comments off, but adding super-handy "meeja" buttons. This will encourage people to rant about your article in other internetual places, thus compelling others to visit your page to see what all the fuss is about.


Note: Don't give people the option to share your story on Twitter - it's a dangerous place where agendas are picked apart by orchestrated mobs and the truth uncovered by annoying web pixies. You're far safer with more modern options like MySpace and Fark.

Step 3: Syndicate and localize your content. By sending your story to local news comics like the London Metro, you make it seem like politicalcorrectnessgonemad is truly on your readers' doorstep. The more scared or angry they are, the more likely they are to share it when they get home or to the office.


Step 4: Now it's time to let your imaginary case of politicalcorrectnessgonemad go viral. This can be a frightening prospect - what if one of these interweb people finds out it's all a load of invented rubbish? What if the council itself issues a statement revealing that you made it up? Not to worry! You can rely on the heavy-weight bloggers (the same ones, coincedentally, we promote as the foremost authorities on blogging), to be taken in by your story however nonsensical it is!


By this point you can rest assured that your agenda was so compelling that the internet people were willing to lack past the gaping holes in reason and ignore the vast chasms of bollocks upon which your story was based. The important thing - the subtext - has gone viral.

Step 5: The beauty of "social media" is that there is no step 5! Sit back and relax as the heavyweight bloggers who didn't bother to check if your story was actually true twitter it for you. Your made up bollocks will now be discussed, retweeted and relinked by the blogger's friends and associates - your imaginary case of politicalcorrectnessgonemad has become real.

It's important to remember that making your story go viral with "social media" is mainly about appearing innovative and cutting edge rather than actually increasing traffic by any meaningful amount. In this case, for instance, we only gained 63 extra visits and half of those were probably people laughing at Iain Dale for recycling made up news. Such are the dangers of Twitter.

But don't lose heart! The important thing is that your story got re-recycled in the blogosphere and commenters blindly agreed with their blogger lord that, yes, politicalcorrectness has indeed gonemad. Even if those readers didn't visit your story, you still managed to indirectly convince them that Britain is going to hell in a handcart and it's all the fault of those darn lefties.

Result!

Update: Bonus churnalism from the Graun and Heresy Corner (tagline: 'Countering complacency, received opinions and incoherant thought')

COMMENT: Why can't minorities just get a sense of humour?

It's common knowledge that racist jokes are hilarious, and - as eruditely pointed out by half-chin-half-man Bruce Forsyth, who is not at all old fashioned and out-of-date with his views - anyone who can't stand being called a "paki" should get a sense of humour. Because it's funny, don't you see? To call someone a word laced with hateful undertones. The highest form of wit.

Anyway, Andrew Neil made a quite brilliant quip recently about black MP Diane Abbott being a "chocolate hobnob". A joke which works on so many levels, but one which a hard core of liberal loony political-correctness-loving extremists have somehow deemed "offensive". These people clearly have nothing better to do than to be offended by completely harmless jokes and should get a life. And stop eating babies. Which they definitely do.

What's next, I ask you? Will we be banned form calling Germans "krauts" or calling the French "frogs"? It's political loony leftie madness health and safety gone bonkers Britain, and is probably somehow tied in to that shady EU which plans to take away all our rights, kill the Queen and have us work 24 hours a day growing onions for the French in slave labour camps in Germany. Or something.

Meanwhile, the irony of whipping up a storm of fuss about Jonathan Brand and Russell Ross and then dismissing another similar incident is entirely lost on us.

By Richard, via.