Interesting post at Conservative Woman by Nicholas Booth helpfully deflating the Al Murray balloon and – shock/horror – questioning his motives in claiming that he will be standing against Nigel Farage in Thanet South.

I doubt Al Murray (or his alter ego, The Pub Landlord) will be doing any door stepping in the constituency but, if he did, what sort of returns would he get? How likely is it that even one householder would suddenly be convinced that Ed Miliband is the best man to bat for Britain on the international stage? So, what can Al Murray’s motivation be?

Here’s some news just in. His publisher – Random House Penguin – is launching a new Al Murray product to coincide with the election publicity campaign. Given the long gestation period of a book, this must have been months in planning.

Murray is a moderately amusing one trick pony entertainer. His background, of course, is very “posh” but, unlike James Blunt, he covers his origins up with with a mockney accent (in character, natch) and has fashionable liberal/left views. Above all his alter ego is constructed to caricature and demonise the white van men. Thus, naturally, he escaped the sneers of Chris Bryant re posh boys/girls dominating our cultural scene.

While he remained merely a marginal showbiz celeb very few of us gave him any thought. But the move into “politics”, while probably a very shrewd PR move by his managers and agents in terms of media coverage, has made him a legitimate target for criticism – and he doesn’t like it. A man who makes belittling and embarrassing individual members of his audience a big part of his act appeared to be very sensitive to such slings and arrows when they were fired at him on Twitter (see @almurray) complaining of name calling etc.

For people like Murray satire is very much a one way street…

But the prize for the biggest Murray blooper must go to former left wing Daily Mirror hack Tom McTague, now slumming at at the Mail. After a well researched in depth investigation into UKIP ace reporter Tom came out with this gem about Farage

His election bid was also dealt a blow after stand-up comic Al Murray announced he would stand against Mr Farage as his TV character ‘The Pub Landlord’.

I’m sure the man who duffed up Nick Clegg and is making both Labour and the Tories very nervous is shaking with fear at McTague’s revelations….

Thus thundered Simon Walters, ace reporter, otherwise known as  Political Editor For The Mail On Sunday

Nigel Farage was in another race row last night after asking supporters to rate ‘blacks, Muslims and Eastern Europeans’ in a game – with prizes of cash and a Ukip golf umbrella.The ‘rate an immigrant’ survey is part of a Ukip private survey of members aimed at helping the party draw up its policies.Sent last week by Ukip chairman Steve Crowther, it asks members to say ‘how close they feel’ to a number of groups.They include ‘Blacks, Asians, Muslims, English, Eastern Europeans and Whites’ as well as the four main political parties.Ukip activists are urged to rate each on a scale from 0 for ‘not close at all’ to 10 for ‘very close.’But the survey was slammed as a racist stunt after details were leaked to The Mail on Sunday.Last night, senior Labour MP Margaret Hodge condemned the Ukip survey as ‘shocking’

Gotcha, UKIP….we’ve finally caught up with you. It’s Hate An Immigrant week and obviously the biggest prizes will go to the biggest haters. Another coup by the fearless UKIP sniffers at the  Mail

Except ………….there is something that was missed by ace reporter Simon Walters and his team…..the survey was designed and distributed on behalf of UKIP by a team of highly respected academics. It was framed to gain an overall picture of UKIP member’s views and attitudes. Simon Walters took a set of perfectly acceptable questions, a regular feature of many of these surveys, and pimped it up as a “race quiz”. A shoddy piece of reporting that, regrettably, is often par for the course for the Mail.

Here is your UKIP Members Survey.   Please help UKIP by completing the Members Survey.

Your Answers Help the Party and You Can Win Great Prizes!

Three academics are helping us. They are Professor Matthew Goodwin (University of Nottingham and author of Revolt on the Right),
Professor Harold Clarke at the University of Texas and Professor Paul Whiteley at the University of Essex, who are former
Directors of the prestigious British Election Study.  Professor Clarke is distributing the survey.

That’s this Prof Harold Clarke

That’s this Prof Matthew Goodwin

That’s this Prof Paul Whiteley

Now, are Mr Ace Reporter Simon Walters of the Mail on Sunday and the very wealthy Labour MP Margaret Hodge (who gained a Third Class Degree at LSE) really ready to accuse these three highly distinguished academics of putting together a racist quiz for the entertainment of UKIP’s membership?

I really think we should be told….

Listen to most of the political class and media pundits talking about UKIP and there are two dominant narratives

UKIP HAS PEAKED AND WILL FADE AWAY AT GE 2015

UKIP IS JUST A PROTEST VOTE

Hmmmmm…..

UKIP HAS PEAKED AND WILL FADE AWAY AT GE 2015

John Harris at The Guardian

supporting Ukip is essentially an act of defiance and a hostile media is one of the forces Ukip’s most enthusiastic fans think they are resisting. Indeed, the place of the media in this story shows the rise of Ukip to be as much a cultural phenomenon as a political one.  Tellingly, a lot of Ukip supporters defiantly describe themselves as “English”, a deep, complex identity that transcends the dry stuff of elections and voting behaviour. At its core is a latent anger about snobbery and the supposed sidelining of the white working class, and antipathy towards most things considered “politically correct”, which can explode in response to stories and events that are said to fit that basic narrative. Ukip will not win all of the Westminster seats it is targeting, ……But make no mistake, Ukip’s support now runs deep and wide, the public’s faith in mainstream politics shows no signs of any revival and through 2015 and beyond, what Nigel Farage calls his “people’s army” is hardly likely to go away.

UKIP IS JUST A PROTEST VOTE Tim Black at Spiked

And this is why UKIP’s emergence is so potentially significant. The withdrawal of the party-political establishment from the public, its separation from the people it is meant to represent, has finally been seized upon. The emperor is wearing deeply unpopular clothes. Or to put it another way, UKIP is effectively confronting the political class with its own estrangement from vast swathes of British society. To those who have long been condescended to, whose views and lifestyles have been dismissed as backward or unhealthy, UKIP offers a voice. To those whose sense of dislocation amid so much politically championed social change have been ignored, UKIP offers a bulwark. And to those who have found little to vote for from the mainstream political melange, UKIP offers an opportunity. (It’s no surprise that a survey of UKIP voters at last year’s Eastleigh by-election revealed that over 20 per cent had not voted at previous General Elections.)

Fascinating….and what is strange is that both Harris and Black are left wing commentators. Strange that they can be a little more perceptive than the “experts” at supposedly right wing organs like the Telegraph, the Mail and Spectator…..but then they don’t have to keep in with Tory HQ

Anyone who has the remotest sympathy for the abused underdog will have felt for Nigel Farage as the major parties and much of the media have lined up to trash him.

How true….as Peter Oborne pointed out in a characteristically trenchant article a few days ago

Much of the media has obediently been doing the work of the three main parties. The BBC’s normally admirable political editor, Nick Robinson, interviewed Mr Farage in the tones one might employ for a convicted international war criminal.

Agreed – though maybe Stephen could have signposted this before the election? Anyway better late than never’

But then Stephen goes one hundred percent porkie pie…

 Most newspapers of Left and Right (though not the Mail) have depicted Ukip as an extremist party inhabited by fruitcakes, crooks or dangerous lunatics.

ROTFLMAO!!!

Did Paul Dacre or Lord Rothermere tell you to slip those brackets in, Stephen? Because the Mail, just as it did before the local elections of 2013, has been the pack leader in publishing and constantly recycling both the smearing titbits thrown to them by the industrious zero hours interns at Tory HQ and garnering unsubstantiated quotes from former colleagues of Farage who clearly had an axe to grind……leading to that surreal moment when the Mail had to settle out of court for spreading a false story about Mrs Farage.

Pull the other one, Stephen…..

Conservative councillor Danny Mayzes was temporarily relieved of his responsibilities at the council last year after posting a controversial comment on Twitter on October 8. He was also suspended from the Conservative Association in Clacton.

While watching the film Machete, in which vigilante gangs battle illegal immigrants on the Mexican border, Mr Mayzes wrote: “Am watching Machete – now that’s how you DEAL with immigration issues lol”.

Oh, wait a minute, I see what happened….he’s not UKIP but a Tory so it’s OK for him to “apologise” and “move on”

Update: The Daily Mail has belatedly put up a piece on Mr Mayzes but notice there is no “storm of protest” or demands for David Cameron to “get a grip” on his party – and no refererences to a shamefaced Tory HQ trying to deal with yet another Tory scandal…I wonder why?

The results?

LABOUR 37%

CONSERVATIVES  27%

UKIP 18%

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS  11%

(Survation interviewed 1,017 people on Friday Oct 11^th)

That’s right, as Iain Martin wrote a few days ago, despite the over hyped Godfrey Bloom “meltdown” and several subsequent weeks of non mention in the media, UKIP’s polling is holding up very respectably.

Oddly enough, the Mail “forgot” to say much about this aspect of the poll, concentrating instead on the fact that most respondents supported Adam Afriyie ‘s idea of having a referendum on leaving the EU in 2014 rather than 2017.

Since the Mail has never been at all friendly to UKIP and has consistently sought to undermine the party with sneers and innuendo  their lapse of memory is par for the course. But try to find any reference to this poll anywhere else in the media and you’ll draw a blank.

Hmmmmm…draw your own conclusions on this?

Meanwhile repeat after me

UKIP is just a flash in the pan so we’ll ignore them

UKIP is just a flash in the pan so we’ll ignore them

UKIP is just a flash in the pan so we’ll ignore them

Ah, media pundits and politicians, that must make you feel better…..

Believe me, this is why the BBC, the Guardian and the legions of the liberal left are fanning the flames of faux outrage over the Daily Mail. They want all the press to reflect only the “approved” world view of the taxpayer funded BBC.

God help us if that comes to pass….

America gripped by second night of fury over not guilty verdict for neighbourhood watch man who shot black teenager armed only with a bag of Skittles

A quartet of low level  UK Daily Mail hacks who appear to get paid for cutting and pasting “human interest” stories from the US media could not resist parroting the “skittles” meme so beloved of those who portray Trayvon Martin as just some innocent kid walking along the street with a packet of sweets.

In a rather unbalanced piece which veers dangerously near to sympathising with  the “miscarriage of justice” mantra being orchestrated by both the radical left and the liberal elite there is, unsurprisingly, no reference to the longstanding  pre trial campaign mischaracterising and denigrating George Zimmerman waged by the establishment media.

Initially seized upon by the Democrats as an opportunity to kickstart Obama’s 2012 campaign it has now been hijacked not just by old time race card hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton but also by the tarnished apparatchiks of the Obama administration who see it as a useful tool to divert attention from their own lacklustre performance.

But skittles as a symbol of innocence might not be such the match winning factor that the shallow Mail scribblers obviously hoped for. We know that Martin’s high school career was not particularly trouble free and that he might well have not been unfamiliar with marijuana. It has also been suggested that the possession of skittles and fruit juice are two thirds of the recipe for something a little more streetworthy.

Not that the Mail and others would allow a burgeoning myth to be deflated by a cooler appraisal of events. After all  we all remember how that Tawana Brawley proved such a useful martyr for Al Sharpton…

You can read about the result of the police investigation here, here and here

Police investigating the incident have said that they are satisfied that comments originally attributed to Alex Wood, 22, had never appeared on his Facebook account and may have been photoshopped or doctored to appear as if from Wood.

Unfortunately this latest news appears not to have been reported yet in the Daily Mail or the Telegraph who both bigged up the original  “story”….

Nothing either from Tory Party HQ who “helpfully” passed the “information” on to those papers.

Doubtless there will be a big spread at the weekend….

To understand one of the main reasons why, despite massive spending, British secondary school students are under achieving in comparison with their peers in Eastern Europe and East Asia, look no further than this report in the UK Daily Mail.

Mother hauled before a court for taking her son, 13, out of school to attend her Caribbean wedding
• Frances White refused to pay town hall fine for her son’s 11-day absence
• She had asked Marple Hall School for permission a year in advance
• When headteacher refused, she took her son to St Lucia wedding anyway
• The 31-year-old is due to appear before magistrates next week

An eleven day Caribbean wedding – just one example of how bloated the wedding industry has become. Once, of course, second weddings were fairly discreet affairs, quietly despatched in modest registry offices with no bridal gown or over populated reception. Even first weddings were generally organised within a limited budget so that the balance could help furnish the first home.

But no more of that – modern brides want the gowns and the beanfeast and the furniture and the exotic honeymoon for every one of their weddings and a gargantuan industry has grown to feed those wishes – strange, really, at a time when more than half the couples living together are not married….marriage is dying but weddings are big business…

So Frances wanted her big exotic wedding and she wanted her thirteen year old son to give her away and to create a memorable moment for all involved then she wanted him as part of the honeymoon….want, want, want, want….. then the school had to spoil her dream by pointing out that she could have chosen to get married some time during the thirteen weeks the school was closed.

But, she sobbed, that would be too expensive and it would spoil her dream….so she took her two sons out of school for the eleven days and immediately sent a signal to us all that education is a low priority in her world.

Of course, one can say, the world (especially the UK it seems) is full of people who prefer their gratification instant rather than deferred, so why make a fuss?

The fuss, my friends, is not to do with Frances White who, in every other way, is probably a loving and caring parent – it’s to do with a) the attitude of the Daily Mail and b) the views of those readers who commented.

The Mail reported Frances White as a woman wronged by a jobsworth bureaucracy, a view, unfortunately echoed by the majority of the commentators. If DM readers are representative of Middle England (as it frequently claims) then Middle England puts education fairly low on the agenda when faced with weddings and holidays….in other words, schooling must not interfere with our social life, no way, matey….

The Daily Mail has always been drooling with delight at any report of indiscipline in schools or falling standards of attainment – yet whenever a head excludes a pupil for wearing jewellery or not ignoring proper uniform they publish a picture of some little scrote pretending to be downcast plus “parents” who often look like escapees from the cast of “Shameless”. Anybody with half a brain would realise that the exclusion is the final act of a farce that has been going on for months, a deliberate pushing against the boundaries by families who see education not as the key to aspiration but as a drag on their tribal mores.

Interestingly the DM highlighted this in their piece on the OECD Report

British children’s poor reading skills are said to be partly because they spend too much time on computers rather than reading books, but are also a tragic reflection of the education they have received.
Nor has it helped that the UK has a relatively low proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. And having some of the world’s ‘best-educated’ parents has not improved the standards of Britain’s children – raising serious questions about the effective role of parents in UK schools.

Serious questions indeed – and the lack of parental concern in 21st century Britain is buttressed by the Daily Mail which seeks to undermine any attempt by schools to inculcate into parental minds that, unless we publicly value the process of education we shall slip further and further behind countries like China where parents will make every sacrifice to install a love and respect for learning in their children.

Shame on you, Frances White, for sending a message to your sons that schooling should never be allowed to interfere with social pleasures – and a curse on the morons at the Daily Mai – and it’s readers – for proclaiming Frances White as a martyr.