Daily Mail in useless rag shocker. (Daily Mail)

Member Name: leicesterpaul

Product:	Daily Mail
Date:	20/11/08 (142 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very absorbent, burns quite slowly if you fold it right.

Disadvantages: It's a hideous tissue of repugnant bigotry and nonsense.

Taking the old cliche of an alien landing on earth and looking for examples of human behaviour and norms, it is often tempting to wonder what a visitor to our planet would think humanity was playing at, were he to lay eyes on a copy of the Daily Mail. Given a cursory explanation of the concept of newspapers, our visitor would pause to think and then ask "And this "news" of which you speak - is it always about 'speed cameras' or 'Polish immigrants'?"

The Daily Mail is not so much a newspaper, as the concept of fear turned into liquid and vomited onto a few squares of cheap newsprint. It has some genuine practical uses - if you forget the date, for example, or wish to know what's on TV - but it fulfils the role of a "newspaper" about as well as a small pocket torch fulfils the role of "floodlights". That is to say it gives a wholly unsatisfactory overview of things, illuminating only a small part of the matter.

The Daily Mail imagines itself as a sort of moral conscience for the nation - and this would be reasonable enough, if the nation was filled with people so right-wing that they daren't get a suntan for fear of catching sight of themselves in the mirror and shouting a racial epithet. Take their recent reaction to a joke from TV irritant (and I use the term as a compliment in this case) Jeremy Clarkson, wherein he suggested that lorry drivers have a tendency to kill sex workers. The paper flew right off the handle, quickly pulling suitably outraged quotes from taxi drivers' and prostitutes' union reps, looking to stoke the bonfire on which Clarkson should be burned.

Compare this with the same paper's mouse-like quietness when their own columnist Richard Littlejohn reacted to the *actual* murder of five *real* prostitutes by stating that their deaths were "no great loss" and that no tears should be shed for them. He even made a rib-tickling joke where he used a double-entendre on the expression "missionary position". Laugh? I nearly purchased a sniper rifle and a portable clock tower. Littlejohn, somehow, gets the credit for "saying what we're all thinking but don't dare say", when in actual fact he says the things that he's thinking because he was allowed to inhale Tipp-ex thinners as a toddler.

To suggest that the Mail is only for irresponsible rabble-rousing and thinly-disguised hatred for the working-class would be unfair, though. It delivers hard news stories that you just won't find anywhere else (unless you're in the habit of standing under bridges listening to Special Brew enthusiasts). Did you know that Polish immigrants are eating our swans? Now you do. Not much info on the increasing difficulties faced by single mothers trying to feed a young family - unless the single mother tries to knock up a swan korma of course. No, the Mail goes to the big issues first, the stories that other papers are afraid of tackling.

In one recent case, I was enlightened by the Daily Mail that local councils had banned their workers from using Latin phrases - because it might confuse immigrants. A quick online search brought the surprising revelation that this story had been taken from the Sunday Telegraph, had key passages removed, and then placed in the Mail with a different journalist's name on it. Cripplingly tight journalistic standards they have at the Mail. You need to be able to do Google searches and everything.

You DON'T have to include the key points in the stories you pinch, like the representative from the Plain English Campaign explaining that the current average reading age of UK citizens is TWELVE. So if they can't manage English, perhaps Latin is a step too far. But why let that interfere with a good ol' bit of immigrant-hatin'?

You may have guessed at my point before I reach this concluding paragraph, but here it is for those who weren't sure. I'm not a big fan of the Daily Mail.

Summary: I've only given it a star because the review wouldn't go up with none.