The Sun: 40 years of crap

UPDATE: Check out the "Page 3 Propaganda" video.

A celebration of the rag's glorious contribution to British culture.

"We're celebrating our 40th birthday in style", announces the Sun today.

A series of self-congratulatory quotes (i.e. from people like Simon Cowell), is the way Britain's own bible belters are kickstarting a series of "sparkling birthday features".

It's undisputed that the Sun managed to push its way to the forefront of Britain's contemporary culture. From shifting the nation's attention towards mammary glands, through their contribution to harmony and cohesion, and all the way to reasoned and fact-based news reporting, the Sun has indeed become the epitome of British phlegm, "a national institution" (according to the Sun itself).

But to spare the Sun the risk of sliding into self-important back-slapping mode, which would be soooo unlike them, we've decided to help them celebrate the rag's history with a short roll of honour of some of its most memorable moments.

It's May 1982 and, in the midst of the Falklands' war, it is announced that the British troops have sunk an Argentine ship called General Belgrano, killing 300 people. The Sun's own contribution comes in the guise of a sombre, level-headed headline: "GOTCHA".

In 1987 the Sun completely made up allegations about singer Elton John and rent boys. They ended up paying £1m in libel damages.

The incident looked positively tame compared to what happened two years later. The Hillsborough tragedy became one of Britain's most dramatic moments. The Sun decided to lend a helping hand by publishing the headline "THE TRUTH", falsely claiming that Liverpool supporters urinated on rescue workers and picked the pockets of crushed victims.

Nothing, of course, like the stalking of Clare Short in 2003. The Birmingham Ladywood MP dared to speak out against Page 3- effectively attempting to deprive Britain's lads of their right to access basic masturbating tools. The Sun's response? As they don't do hysteria, they opted for a subtle, discreet and persuasive ploy.

As Clare Short recounts:

"[t]his led to busloads of Page 3 girls parked outside my house all day in the hope of setting up embarrassing photos, and mock-up pictures of me as a very fat Page 3 girl. They even sent half-dressed people to the house I share with my 84-year-old mother in Birmingham and had people hiding in cars and chasing me down the street in an effort to get embarrassing photographs".

And if the word 'bullying' springs to mind, then get a life. The Sun were only messing about. Like when they unleashed a hate campaign against Swiss referee Uri Meier in the follow-up of the controversial Euro 2004 exit of England against Portugal. After urging readers to "let rip" and send him emails, the tabloid stalked the referee's home in northern Switzerland and published his address. Fed up of death threats and afraid for his family, Mr Meier was soon forced to move.

But if that was just a question of sport, no-one can deny the Sun's contribution to community relations.

Like last year's completely fabricated "Muslim terror hit list" story, or the other about a Muslim bus driver who allegedly "kicked passengers off the bus" so that he could pray. In July 2003, the rag's front page sported the headline "SWAN BAKE: Asylum seekers steal the Queen's birds for barbecues". At least on that occasion the Sun apologised. Five months later. On page 41.

Pay each time you take a dump

You can say what you like about Britain's wealth creators, but you can't accuse them of lacking imagination when it comes down to penny pinching.

Britain's route back to 19th century working practices is looking smoother every day.

News just in is that one of the most successful private-owned companies in the UK, a meat-processing giant with an annual turnover of £466.3m, cut their workers' wages each time they go to the toilet.

Having collected evidence from over 100 workers, Unite the Union has denounced the ongoing practices at Dunbia, where workers are required to clock in and out each time nature calls. According to Cathy Rudderforth, Unite Lancashire official, "it's outrageous that in 2009 workers have to endure the indignity of clocking out for toilet breaks".

Unite have also accused the company of refusing talks with the unions. On their part, Dunbia have come up with the most nonsensical retort in history, claiming that weekly bonuses are paid to compensate for toilet breaks-related cuts. If that was the case, then what's the point?

And are we right to guess that the policy does not apply to managers each time they take a dump at work?

Let's just hope that Dunbia's appalling practices don't pave the way for Britain's "wealth creators" at large. Otherwise a simple cistitis or spell of diarrohea at work will not just be painful, but costly as well.

1 million affordable homes

The long-term benefits of public intervention in the housing sector.

Most people are aware that waiting lists for council homes have hit an all-time high. Trouble is, courtesy of industrial-scale tabloid bombardment, most people would probably blame immigration and single mothers.

The reality, however, is different.

Here's the facts. It is true that the queues are dramatic. The crisis brought a massive increase in repossessions (65,000 homes this year and 45,000 in 2008). At the start of 2009, 200,000 extra families (not people, families), were added to already long queues: 1,8 million families are waiting their turn as opposed to 1.6m in 2008.

Yet how many people are aware that there are one million fewer homes available for rent from councils and housing associations than in 1979?

Read that again: one million fewer affordable homes than twenty years ago. And don't forget that, compared to 1979, today the UK is home to an extra 4.5m people, which can only highlight the urgency of the issue, especially as construction in the private sector has also ground to a halt.

Earlier this year, it emerged that in Scotland there are fewer council houses for rent now than there were 50 years ago (see here for details).

This is why today UNISON launched a report "urging the government to remove all legal and financial barriers to council house-building", calling for 1 million council homes to be built in the lifetime of the next Parliament.

The benefits are obvious. Along with a new generation of high-standard sustainable homes (learning from the recent past mistakes of estates built 'on the cheap', both in the private and public sector) and the chance to replan and regenerate entire areas according to local needs, the programme would benefit the wider economy. Think of all the jobs and training opportunities that would be created and the impulse it would give to the supply chain.

Yes, it would be a massive public investment, but it's one that would bring both long-term benefits and be definitely in the interest of the wider public.

According to UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis, council housing "can also help to prevent another housing and debt bubble by providing more affordable homes".

Grief-scavenging and the Sun

Preying on corpses and leftovers. Literally.

That's what the tabloids have always excelled at, from the atrocious "Gotcha!" during the Falklands war, through Hillsborough and beyond.

But the pathetic, grief-scavenging that filled the Sun pages in the last few days sinks to new lows, even for Rupert Murdoch's own brand of gutter journalism.

Let's not beat around the bush. What sort of mother is prepared to hand over her grief to a tabloid for cheap political pointscoring while her dead son is still warm? And if this sounds brutal, how would you describe what "Mum-at-War" Mrs Janes and the Sun have done?

Believe it or not, even the Daily Mail -through Stephen Robinson today- found it distasteful, noting that "it is most unfortunate that [Mrs Janes] has found herself and her son's death open to ruthless manipulation by a newspaper with an axe to grind". Robinson added:

"'Outraged Jacqui, 47, hit the phone's loudspeaker button to record the call,' the Sun newspaper reported yesterday, as though that is the most natural thing in the world for a bereaved mother to have done when the Prime Minister rings, before passing on the cassette tape to reporters".

Free of charge, one hopes?

Was Morrissey right to walk offstage?

Luck is not on Moz's side these days, but the episode highlighted how gigs are often spoiled by aggressive, hyperactive idiots.

You may have heard about this already: after he collapsed on stage in Swindon two weeks ago, mid-way through his second song in Liverpool, Morrissey was smacked on the head by a plastic bottle of beer. This prompted him to say "goodbye" and walk off stage (see video here).

Websites have been debating whether Morrissey was right to storm off or whether he overreacted and let down the thousands who'd paid £35-plus to see him.

The Guardian opened an online thread: "Was Morrissey right to walk off stage after being hit by a bottle?". Amidst trite puns based on Smiths song titles (he obviously thought he was being terribly original), a journo called David Simpson found the time to write that Moz's "refusal to carry on does seem a bit excessive". Some pointed out that it's not fair that up to 8,000 had their night spoiled by a single idiotic bottle-thrower. Others wrote that that's the "spirit of rock'n'roll" and that you've gotta take it on the chin etc.

I say good on you, Morrissey. If there is something I've never understood, it is all those ejits who spend money on gigs only to act like the girl in The Exorcist on speed. Seriously. Fair enough you're excited (that's the whole point), fair enough you feel some adrenalin running. But the moment some people make it into a gig they simply turn into demented juvenile cavemen with little actual interest in the concert itself.

It's always puzzled me. And sometimes put me off going altogether - though luckily only for a few seconds.

I always conceived going to gigs as a rare (and expensive) chance to see your favourite artists in person. To savour their music live. To see how they play those songs without overdubs. To watch them on stage and study their movements, appreciating each moment.

And yet, there's always a sizeable minority that spoils it for everybody else, acting like absolute twats, trampling on people, kicking and pushing Heysel-style, chucking bottles into the crowd and various other acts of barbaric aggression.

And I'm not talking about gigs where you expect this as routine (I expect someone to make the point that old Sex Pistols' gigs were defined by such actions, "rock'n'roll, duuude"). Morrissey live is hardly Napalm Death material.

According to some people, it doesn't matter you've forked out £40 or so. You make it into a gig and you're expected to give up your basic rights not to be elbowed in the stomach, pushed or shoved around like a sack of shit.

And funny how it's always the males, have you noticed? Good old testosterone pumping through the veins, right? Perfectly in line with the old delusion that being manly equals acting like some Hyperactivity Disorder-ridden dickhead with anger management issues on top.

So this time I don't blame Morrissey for getting pissed off. And as for the objection that "it's not fair that Moz let one person spoil it for 8,000 fans": how many would it take then to justify his storming off? Would twenty bottles be acceptable, or would his critics still blabber that 7,980 fans suffered from the action of 20 idiots?

Good Bye Lenin!

Imagine if the former DDR hadn't walled people in.

This film came out in 2003 but I watched it again last night inspired by all the Berlin wall-related news reports. Today is in fact the 20th anniversary of when the Berlin wall opened, kickstarting the process of reunification between East and West Germany and the end of the Cold War.

Good Bye Lenin! is the story of a family in East Berlin. It's 1989 and, in the midst of the popular protests that will lead up to change, Alex's mother (a devoted East German socialist), suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. By the time she comes round, Berlin has changed at the fastest pace imaginable.

An entire regime has been swept away, a fact rendered most obvious by the most mundane details. Old East German food and drink brands all but disappeared in weeks. Western cars and billboards populate the streets, TV is already radically different and so is a job market where celebrity 'cosmonauts' have to resort to driving taxis to make ends meet.

Afraid that his mother's frail heart may not be able to bear all this, Alex decides to maintain the illusion that nothing's changed and that the wall's still there. The extent to which he's prepared to go is touchingly comical. Alex begs his neighbours to play along and travels the length and breadth of Berlin in search of disused East German goods that he can show his mum. But the best bits are the fake TV broadcasts, which Alex is able to knock up courtesy of his friend Dennis, an aspiring film director.

And here I stop, because it's not my intention to spoil the story. Debates can carry on forever as to whether the sudden end of East Germany was a good thing or not, or whether people's expectations where quickly betrayed by the ruthless but inevitable structural changes.

What's amazing about Goodbye Lenin! though, is how all of the above is depicted at a human level, with a family tragedy centred around our innate fear of change and penchant for illusion and denial. Ultimately, it's a story about the passing of time and society's evolution. Just imagine if the changes that happened to us in the space of forty years were all condensed within a month or two.

Except that this is exactly what happened in East Berlin, where the binge of changes proved so sweepingly exciting that it's almost as though nobody took time to notice that an entire world, the same world millions had grown up in, had slipped away in an instant.

Alex's illusion of an East Germany that is still alive and well must have been the equivalent of us trying to recreate the 1960s forty years down the line- like decorating a house without PCs, microwaves or DVD players and with analog TVs that can only show BBC1 and ITV .

The make-believe world of Goodbye Lenin! is also touchingly political. It dreams up an entire ideology that bypasses the reality of a 40-year-old dictatorship. When Alex plays his final fake news report and Sigmund Jahn makes his imaginary speech as president, this is what he says:

"Socialism isn't about walling yourself in. It's about reaching out to others and living with them. It means not only dreaming about a better world, but making it happen. Therefore, I have decided to open the borders of the GDR".

Herded into carnage

350,000 British students a year feel the need to hire a specialised company to help them get shitfaced.

I've heard of money paid to personal shoppers to help the wealthy look trendy. I've heard of hired job interview coaches and career advisors; style experts a-la Trinny and Susannah; private remedial teachers and even dog groomers.

But to pay someone to help you knock back shots on a night out is just in a league of its own. £10 for a white t-shirt with the word 'Carnage' on it and the chance of spotting your face amongst the online photos of paralytic young people in nightclubs. Wow. That sounds like fun.

Yet this is what 350,000 UK undergraduates have been doing each year since 2004- securing a company called 'Carnage UK' an annual turnover of £3,500,000.

Which can only be explained by galloping levels of social ineptitude.

I mean, how sad can you get if you can't even get to know people in your course or halls of residence? Is suggesting a night out such a daunting prospect that you've got to delegate Carnage UK to do it for you, in the sad hope that getting wankered on an industrial scale or vomiting all over the pavement may help you make friends and maybe even get a blow job?

And if even the Sun, normally so sympathetic to lairy larffs and tits-out-for-the-boys, finds it so sad (see here and here), then this Carnage stuff really must be loser-material.

Not convinced yet? Take a look at the recent photo (see top) of a shitfaced 19-year-old ex public schoolboy emptying his bladder on a WWI memorial in Sheffield.

*UPDATE- I've just come across a document online (a letter, in fact), written by the Group Managing Director of VLG, Carnage's parent company. Dated, 16 September 2008, it says: "We would also like to state that we currently do NOT operate ANY UK events under the slogan ‘It’s gonna get messy.’" I then checked one of the Carnage UK Facebook pages. It says: "Carnage UK will be gracing the streets of Brighton once again to provide YOU with a night to remember! Remember..it's gonna get MESSY!"

Also on the subject: "Retch, student, retch"

He's not wearing a poppy!

The witch-hunt begins.

Three years ago Channel 4 newsreader Jon Snow was inches away from being publicly slain. His crime? Not wearing a poppy on-air.

"There is a rather unpleasant breed of poppy fascism out there- 'He damned well must wear a poppy!'", he said, adding: "Well, I do, in my private life, but I am not going to wear it or any other symbol on air".

On Wednesday, Mark Steel was called a variety of names for pointing out some of the contradictions of the current poppy hullabaloo and, more recently, the Daily Mail went hysterical at the fact that some Premier League clubs are not wearing poppies on their match-day shirts. "Morally bankrupt" was one of the gentlest comments hurled by their baying mob.

And so here we are again. Remembrance Day, something that originally had a meaning, a day to commemorate the dead (soldiers and civilians) of World War I, is drowned into a sea of triviality by the same brand of people who'd look at you in dismay if you dare say you didn't cry for Princess Diana.

A day that was intended to honour those who lost their lives to rid the world of nazi-fascism, a symbol-ridden ideology that imposed the wearing of labels and badges such as the yellow Star of David or pink triangles, ends up being turned into a witch-hunt where symbols are forced down people's throats.

So we learn that you can only remember people and respect the dead if you wear a badge as ruled by Britain's own breed of Bible Belters.

How's this for an alternative: don't buy the Daily Mail, the only British paper that actively supported Hitler in the 1930s. The money you save, hand over to the Royal British Legion.