This week's news round up...

...in order of unimportance - by Johnny Taronja

Egged on by FIFA's eternal president Sepp Blatter (honest - the guy must have been at the helm of FIFA since...forever) Cristiano Ronaldo bewails that he's the victim of "modern slavery". On a £120,000-a-week salary. Whatever happened to:

a) the concept of appropriate wording;

b) good taste.

Piss off, Ronaldo.

*****

The Mirror' s Tony Parsons suggests the death penalty to try and tackle the spiralling surge in knife crime. What do you guys think? They have in the U.S. and it's no crime-free haven. Yet something radical is needed. This week the Cornish town of Redruth adopted a "voluntary" curfew scheme for everyone under 16. What a mess. If it carries on this way, soon it'll be compulsory for tourists and visitors to England to wear a stabproof vest or other forms of body armour at the borders. A bit like required vaccinations when you visit tropical countries. If you fancy a trip to Blighty you may want to take precautions.

*****
Tory MP David Davis defined Thursday's by-election victory as a "stunning message" to Gordon Brown and his government. Some chaps see it instead as a stunning waste of public money. £80,000 - that's how much it cost - to see David Davis voted back into Westminster a month after he'd resigned to prove a totally sterile political point. The East Yorkshire constituency of Haltemprice & Howden saw a pathetic turnout of 34% as both the LibDems and Labour refused to take part in the taxpayer-funded farce. Stunning.

*****
The Iranian regime spent most of the week flexing their muscles. As they launched one missile test after the other, they must have netted John McCain more votes than twenty primetime Fox News specials about Barack Obama's middle name or a whole round of fundraising. Arguing that Iran poses no threat is not going to be easy-peasy.

*****
Finally, the UN Security Council failed to authorise sanctions against the Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe. The reason? Russia, China and -above all- South Africa voted against. This time it's not the usual "evil Westerners/Europeans/Americans" to blame. The horrors of a regime where -only since March- thousands of people went missing and 200,000 were displaced will be remembered as the shame of 21st century African politics. Like Rwanda became the symbol of world inaction, Zimbabwe will end up the icon of crook-eyed, criminal, African brotherhood. South Africa could give Mugabe the boot at the drop of a hat if only they wanted to.

Max Mosley and Peeping Tom

The News of the World and the Sun's history of hard-hitting violations of privacy

It's only a few years since the News of the World ended up in a costly out-of-court settlement after stirring some shit in the Beckhams' household with the alleged text message exchange with Rebecca Loos. A few months later, the Sun unleashed a hate campaign against Swiss referee Uri Meier after the controversial Euro 2004 exit of England against Portugal. After urging readers to "let rip" and send him emails, the tabloid stuck a huge St George flag outside 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 up sticks.

The latest chapter to be added to the News of the World and the Sun's history of hard-hitting violations of privacy concerns Formula One boss Max Mosley. He was filmed and photographed during an S&M session with prostitutes, behind closed doors. The guy is suing and, quite frankly, he has every right to.

The reader can laugh, sneer at or criticise Mosley's penchant for a bit of tough love, but the fact is, the Sun's practice of intruding so violently into people's privacy in order to rake up the dividends has got to end. Mosley's lawyer, Mr Price, was bang on when he contended that to spy on a person's sex life is "disgusting". More to the point, "the role of the News of the World as Peeping Tom publishing for the amusement of the millions sits uncomfortably with its self-appointed role as arbitrator of the nation's morals," he said. Abso-bloody-lutely.

It was also patent that the News of the World was at pains to strike up a sensational story of Nazi undertones. Max Mosley is, in fact, the son of Oswald Mosley, the infamous British fascist leader from the 1930s. To obtain footage of him roleplaying master and servant was, in essence, a gift served on a tray. Before you knew, the News of the World had already come up with the "Nazi-themed orgy" headlines even though the Nazi references were notable by their absence.

It is true that when Mr Mosley talks about how "totally devastating" the ordeal was for his wife and his two sons, the words crocodile and tears spring to mind. But it's simply vile that the News of the World, or any paper, can feel the right to stick their nose into people's privacy.

Ryunfair?

The irony of the European Parliament banning unfair advertising fares on flights and Ryanair talking of scams.

Ryanair confrontational? You're not kidding. The company's display of arrogance and belligerence in the wake of the European Parliament ban on bogus advertising fares is, quite simply, textbook.

Responding to years of customers' complaints across the continent, Strasbourg has finally decided to ban airlines from shameless advertising fares that do not include the taxes and charges passengers have to pay, the sort of 'Fly to Paris for 0.99p' that can end up costing you hundred times as much. So widespread was the parliamentary agreement that the motion was whizzed through without a formal vote.

Yet Ryanair's official response (8 July 2008) via their spokesperson Stephen McNamara was that "no changes" are needed as far as their own website is concerned. It is already "one step ahead of the European Parliament" and in line with "Ryanair's high standards of fare transparency"
Well…the truth is a little different. Very few (aside from Ryanair's chief and his mates) would deny that their practices have been unfair for a long period of time. In the words of Robert Evans, a British MEP, customers "see an advert, a headlined figure, but when they actually end up paying for it it's a lot more than that because there are extras that hadn't been made properly aware to them at the beginning".

This is why, a few months ago, along with other low fare airlines, Ryanair were persuaded to display tax and other surcharges in a dropdown box. You select your cheap flight and along comes a window that sets you a step closer to reality, warning you that it doesn't come that cheap after all. It is unfortunate that when we checked what the feature looked like on Ryanair's website, we found the following disclaimer:

"We regret, due to system slow down issues, we have been unable to display the tax inclusive fare box on this page, since 25/06/2008. We are currently working with our suppliers, including Navitaire & Microsoft to resolve these problems and hope to restore the tax, fees & charges inclusive display shortly".

At which point you automatically wonder: why don’t Ryanair simply advertise the total price up front? Why does the customer have to wait for the elusive "tax inclusive box" (which only comes with "step 2" of booking) and that, as of today, has not been functioning for 15 full days?

So when the European Parliament forces them to stop this practice and Ryanair retorts aloof that they don’t need to make any changes, does it cross your mind, just for a second, that they may be treating 450 million Europeans like a bunch of idiots?

Ryanair has a habit of shrugging off all criticism as "false". An interesting choice of vocabulary. In 2004-05 they threatened court action against a website that collected hundreds of customers' complaints and stories of travellers routinely being conned or treated like cattle, learning the price of "no-frills low-fares" the hard way. Asked to point out which stories, claims or details may have been "false", Ryanair declined and conveniently opted for the silent treatment.

Yet the company should most certainly be handed an award for imagination when it amounts to coming up with new charges. You pay "extra" for checking-in. You pay extra for "priority seats". You pay extra (they've made it into a maze, but the fact is the baggage/check-in fees keep going up, look here) for a bag. You pay (a lot) extra for excess weight. You pay premium (or very high at least) telephone rates if you need any help or have a problem (just take a look at their website: the customer service page is strategically tucked away- there are tons of horror stories online about people who wanted to complain to Ryanair but couldn’t find a way to do so). Most amazingly, Ryanair (though they're not alone here) charge you for paying. Yes, you read correctly.

Imagine you queue at the supermarket checkouts. They've already charged you extra to get in and for using a trolley. Now you are told that you can only pay by card (it's notorious that Ryanair don’t do cash transactions) but they have to charge you to use that card. You have to pay extra for paying. There is a story on thisismoney.co.uk where the writer Sascha Hutchinson was charged £3-50 for using a Visa Debit. When she complained to Ryanair (not a straightforward procedure, as it turned out), she was told brusquely that her claim was "untrue" as she must have made a mistake, i.e. clicked on the Visa credit card option instead. But I've just checked. Sascha Hutchinson was right. Today, 10 July 2008, if you book using a Visa Debit they charge you 5 Euros (of course you only find out as you're about to pay), and double that if it's a return ticket. Who's selling "untrue" stories then?

And what about the joke of marketing flights to Paris, except that you end up at a place called Beauvais an hour and half away from the capital? Of course, no-one expects an airport to be right in the city centre, but is it fair to advertise Luton, Girona and Orio al Serio as London, Barcelona and Milan? They may as well rebrand their Birmingham route "London-Birmingham" or Valencia "Barcelona-Valencia"!

Which leads us to the issue of Ryanair's own CEO, foul-mouthed Michael O'Leary. The man who hits out at the European Union's "scams". The man who is so concerned about the working classes' right to fly that he has no problem squeezing any penny out of them with the cheekiest smallprint-based pricing strategies, one-sided refund policies and "discretionary charges". To listen to him you'd think that, poor thing, he's had a right struggle against the evil of Europe and that he's the Robin Hood of the hard done-by. And yet each week we learn of new Ryanair routes into the depths of Poland or Norway so, one would conclude, it doesn’t look like he's done that bad, does it? He's become a multi-zillionaire in the space of a few years and his company keeps expanding like a tampon in water. Ryanair even finds the time to issue press releases that take the mick out of competitors giving up on certain routes i.e Easyjet packing their bags from Dortmund. Aggressive practices, anyone?

When the European Parliament increased environmental taxes on aviation, O'Leary went on full-on mode. Look at how he lashes out: “These clowns in the European Parliament seem determined to destroy the European airline industry with these discriminatory taxation penalties. When aviation accounts for less than 2% of Europe’s Co2 emissions, and when airlines like Ryanair have invested heavily in new aircraft to reduce our emissions per passenger by 50%, there is no justification for this tax theft by the European Union". Aside from the manipulative "less than 2%" claim (read here to understand the nonsense of it), it's interesting how O'Leary growls "tax theft" and "tax scams".

Michael O'Leary talking about scams, ladies and gentlemen.

Economic doom and the politics of envy

Three months ago this blog took you through the daily life of Glenn Gallop and highlighted the mad increase in the cost of living in Britain. We weren’t dreaming or talking on behalf of a particularly nasty brand of cynicism. In fact our estimates were extremely conservative.

Last week the Sunday Times ran a story about the increasing numbers of Ozzies who are packing their bags and heading home due to the unsustainable cost of living on UK soil (the immigrant-phobic will also rejoice at the estimated 60,000 Poles expected to give up on the land of hope and council tax in the next 12 months - but who's going to care for Nana? They obviously haven’t put two and two together).

On Friday, Ernst & Young released the official figures. Due to a big rise in the cost of everything, real income has fallen 15 per cent. Comparing the current situation with 2003, bills have gone up 110 per cent and council tax 25 per cent. And whether you have a car or ride the bus, you're forking out way more than you used to. "Costs are far outstripping wage inflation" they concluded.

You can be sure though that bonuses and wages at the top end are keeping up though. Does that make us envious? Does it fuck…

Knife crime, a national emergency

Why is it that when there's a massive surge in gang culture and knife-crime, the media are so sure that they have nothing to do with it?

Remember when everyone at school was walking around howling "Arse!" from the Fast Show, or when you couldn’t find a single kid immune from Ali G-speak or, more recently, reciting "Bovvered", ad nauseam from the Catherine Tate Show? Who would argue against television taking credit for the latest catchphrase?
Another example of the media's contagious effect in setting trends is last year's sudden rise in popularity of Victoria Beckham's "pob". Surely our media helped inspire the thousands of girls who headed to their hairdresser's with specific instructions in mind…How about any idiot walking around slurring "Bud-wise-errr" thinking they were being the funniest thing since sliced bread? And remember the grisly "You've-Been-Tangoed" craze? Didn’t it end up in a spate of acts of emulation around the nation's schools?

So why is it that when there's a massive surge in gang culture and knife-crime, the media are so sure that they have nothing to do with it?
Channel 4 and the BBC's recent run of documentaries about Kids, Knives, Broken Lives and Street Weapons failed to analyse that one tiny little aspect. Did gangsta-rap play a part in glamourising anything by any chance? Or the normalisation of televisual ultraviolence and nastiness?

No-one's saying that the media are culpable, for goodness' sake - anybody with a bit of sense would rightly point the finger at the total collapse of parental control and sense of direction, and in turn at the vicious circle of social deprivation and family breakdown. But to think that the media are totally immune from responsibility does sound a bit iffy.

In the meantime, the bulletin of youngsters stabbed to death in London alone since 2008 reached 18 this week. Some may find the comparison offensive, but they've started to outnumber coalition casualties in Iraq. And no-one seems to have the slightest clue about what to do. In the wake of Ben Kinsella's murder last week, The Mirror started the commendable Stop Knives Save Lives campaign. It's great that some papers are finally conceding we're in front of a national emergency and acting accordingly. However, the idea of an amnesty to bring in the blades figures amongst their suggestions to stamp out knife murders. But hadn’t it been tried already in 2006?

Fingerprinting Gypsies: pro and against

The UK press have been unanimous in their condemnation of the Italian Government and their controversial programme to fingerprint all Gypsies in the country, including children. But is it true that it's a return to the old days of Mussolini? Is it that simple? Let's analyse the two sides of the argument.

- In favour.

This week, in Verona, eight Romany Gypsies were arrested for using children in hundreds of robberies. It emerged that they had been caught 123 times and used 93 different aliases. Now I ask you: is that normal?

The initial reflex may be a chilling one, especially when you read the headlines drawing comparisons between the Nazi persecution of sixty-five years ago and the current singling out of an ethnic group as part of a crackdown on crime. So is the birthplace of fascism at it again?

It is a fact that the British press absolutely love linking anything they can to the old Nazi/Fascist days, whether it's incest in Austria, the election of a right-wing Mayor in Rome or England taking on Germany at Euro 96.

Sixty-five years on and they seem disturbingly - perversely - fascinated. It's no surprise, therefore, that when the Italian government plans a census of the Gypsy population and the British papers answer with cries of "mass deportations, torture and death" (The Times, Saturday 5 July 2008), there are several logical steps missing.

So let's hear it out from the new Italian Government (of whom I'm no fan - at all) and the Red Cross.

I may be easily persuaded, but when I read their justification, I no longer felt a sense of unease. Here it is, plain and simple. Out of the estimated 152,000 Romany Gypsies who live in Italy, an (again) estimated 60% live without papers. Out of this 60%, their kids don’t go to school, they live in camps with horrendous levels of hygiene and are involved in all sorts of "activities" that allow them to "make a living", so to speak.

You just need to travel to Southern Europe, Italy and Spain for example, and have a look at the amount of Gypsies begging -baby in tow- or forcing their kids to do so. Take a look at those digging into rubbish bins, for good measure.

And if you class yourself an observant person, keep your eyes out in the Madrid metro, or Barcelona, Milan and Rome, and check out who's got the lion's share in pickpocketing. It may make you feel better to think of this as a generalisation (and yes, of course stealing and pickpocketing isn't the Gypsies' monopoly, nor did they invent it), but go check for yourself. And they're highly skilled, those kids. You see them hopping from carriage to carriage, nodding and winking at each other until they've identified a particularly careless prey, wallet dangling out of their pocket. It's not unusual to spot Gypsy kids, boys and girls, as young as six caught by helpless police at an underground platform. Helpless because, unless the offenders are identifiable, there's absolutely F.A. they can do. Who are these kids? Have they got a fixed abode? Why aren’t they at school? Who are their parents?

Although it is fair to say that not all Gypsies live and work illegally, it is simply intolerable to have such large numbers of people choosing to live outside the law. This week, in Verona, eight Romany Gypsies were arrested for using children in hundreds of robberies. It emerged that they had been caught 123 times and used 93 different aliases. Now I ask you: is that normal? The fact itself that the government can only estimate the tens of thousands who are in Italy and estimate the number who live in camps and estimate those who carry out illegal activities is a sign that a serious clampdown is needed.

Critics of the plan argue that the Italians can hardly claim their country was crime-free before Gypsies settled in such high numbers.

And it's true, but at least the authorities could reasonably keep track of offenders and re-offenders and organise their social services (i.e. custody, young offenders' institutes, rehabilitation packages, social security, council housing and the rest) accordingly. With such large numbers of people, many under 14, without a known identity or address, the authorities end up with their hands completely tied and their duty to protect the population all but a pointless exercise.

The idea of fingerprinting and photographing them may not instinctively be the most comfortable one - but is the alternative any better? And those who are crying out at the "Nazi methods": is it left-wing, instead to feel at ease when tens of thousands of kids are sent out by adults to rob and steal without any hope of an education and a better future?

- Against.

There is not a single example in history where the targeting of a single ethnic group, may the purpose be a clampdown on crime or social engineering, ended up free of wretched consequences.

Amnesty International, Unicef and the Catholic Church are only three of the many organisations who reacted in revulsion at Silvio Berlusconi's Government plan to fingerprint an entire ethnic group. People often forget that Romany Gypsies were persecuted (and killed) in the hundreds of thousands during the Holocaust.

Of course, this is not what the Italian Government has in mind. But when you blanket target a whole ethnic group for whatever governmental purpose, the implications are disturbing and drawing a line becomes increasingly difficult. There is not a single example in history where the targeting of a single ethnic group, may the purpose be a clampdown on crime or social engineering, ended up free of wretched consequences.

Mugging, pickpocketing and robbing didn’t start with the Gypsies. It was only until recently, for instance, that people from Northern Italy would complain of the alleged criminal inclination of their fellow compatriots from the South.

After all, hasn’t Naples got a reputation as the capital of pickpocketing? Didn’t those tourist guides warn you to keep your jewellery at home and avoid flashing your brand new camcorder when you wander round the old town's alleyways?

So, perhaps, if fingerprinting is intended to cut down street crime, the Government may record the entire population, whether they hold an Italian passport or not. Recent high-profile robberies featured people of Romanian, Albanian or Bulgarian citizenship. Are they planning to fingerprint them as well? Where does it stop? Why just the Gypsies?

Also, by legally sanctioning their "different status" (i.e. by saying that only certain ethnic categories are to be fingerprinted and/or photographed), the Government is running the risk of exposing Romany Gypsies to increasing episodes of hatred and xenophobia.

Not to mention the whiff of populism emerging from Silvio Berlusconi's Government. It is ironic that phone tapping made possible the recent arrest of a Romany Gypsy criminal gang. Berlusconi and his coalition government want to restrict police powers to listen in on potential criminals.

Never has the saying that "you should set your own house in order before preaching others" sounded more appropriate.

Berlusconi's disagreements with Italian magistrates are well-known and problems of corruption and organised crime that are so endemic in Italy could do with taking a priority over the anti-Gypsy crusade. Yet the Italian Government is passing the fingerprinting measure by "emergency decree", something usually reserved for natural catastrophes.

More magazine v Mischa Barton (and the merchants of anorexia)

One would love to line up those peddlers of nothingness, Beauty Editors, Beauty Assistants, Fashion Editors and Beauty Gurus and analyse their fat rolls bit by bit.

Last week's More magazine surpassed itself. Second-rate gossip and oh-my-god-look-at-this-D-list-celebrity's-sweat-patch aside, More and similar magazines' sole raison d'etre is the usual, incessant, repetitive litany of "tips" on "how to get an amazing body", "lose weight" and achieve the dream of a "flat tummy".

Week in week out, they line their pages with instructions for a-leaf-of-lettuce-a-day crash diets that will make you look good on the beach. They market impossibly perfect bodies as the one and only thing that would allegedly turn you into a sexy, cool, popular young female. A "fit" body that is sold as the only desirable ambition (aside from the latest A-list fashionable bits and pieces of course). Which makes their token stories of "how I beat my eating disorder", "anorexia" and "bulimia" even more perplexing.

Printing out pea-sized-brain-style vacuity dressed as "exclusive news" is fair and legitimate. But perversely and (not so) subtly perpetrating eating disorders is not. Look at this shit. Under the banner "THE WEEK'S BIG QUESTIONS", page 20 of More (issue 548 - no, before you say anything, I didn’t buy it, I just came across it somewhere!) sported the headline "WHY DOES POOR MISCHA HAVE SUCH BAD CELLULITE?", alluding to Misha Barton's cellulite supposedly disfiguring the back of her thighs. Sure enough there was a photo of the pleasant-looking OC star taken from the front accompanied by another, oh-my-gawd (!), showing the back of her legs. Perfectly normal legs of a human being. Yet, according to More, even Misha Barton, someone who is -surely- thinner than at least 90% of the female population, has a body to be ashamed of.

If THIS WEEK'S BIG QUESTION actively portrays Misha Barton as someone who should sort out her diet and fitness regime, imagine how More readers who are not as superthin as her are made to feel. More's Beauty Editor, for instance, is quoted as saying that "Mischa's love of Taco Bell and Starbucks may explain why she's battling wobbly bits". One would love to line up those peddlers of nothingness, Beauty Editors, Beauty Assistants, Fashion Editors and Beauty Gurus and analyse their fat rolls bit by bit. If hell does exist they'll be probably forced to stand in a circle, guts out, bingo wings and double chins in sight with an army of photographers gawping and giggling at their (perfectly human) imperfections. Because, effectively, that’s what they make a living out of themselves.

The biggest English export

Isn't it weird to be driving anywhere in the world and suddenly hear Basildon-born Depeche Mode on the car radio, Madness' ultra-heavy Cockney twang or the Gallaghers' nasal Manc voice?

"There's some corner of a foreign field, that is forever England", were the famous words from Rupert Brookes' The Soldier. For those of you who are well travelled, and don't like to see things from a militaresque angle, I suppose Brookes' words can be turned into "there are radio waves that are forever England". Music is, in fact, the corner of England you're most likely to find abroad.

How weird to be driving anywhere in the world and suddenly hear Basildon-born Depeche Mode on the car radio, Madness' ultra-heavy Cockney twang or the Gallaghers' nasal Manc voice. With the exception perhaps of some French electro blasting out of your taxi drivers' car stereo, no other country is so likely to export such thriving levels of music and youth culture.

I was speaking to some Portuguese lads the other day and they looked at me in amazement when I told them that the one they like isn’t actually an American band, but an English one instead. You should have seen their face when they learnt that Pink Floyd actually hailed from Cambridge and not somewhere in the mid-West. I once had to convince one that Led Zeppelin weren't a New York band; he was obviously unaware of the proud Black Country roots of singer Robert Plant. And the Rolling Stones too, they're English for goodness sake! No doubt, the US can claim they came up with rock'n'roll and exported some remarkable music along the way, but it's unbelievable how so many European citizens expect anything that isn’t The Beatles or Oasis to originate from America.

In spite of its small size, Britain is the cradle of music-inspired movements that have been appreciated and copied around the world. It's quite a sight when you walk down the streets of provincial towns round Europe and see young punks sporting Sex Pistols t-shirts or kids humming a Franz Ferdinand song. But aside from punk, the fashionable Mod scene also originated in the UK and so did heavy metal, new romanticism, indie, goth and Britpop. Whereas in most European countries pop and rock music are considered an exclusively teenage-affair or something confined to the extreme fringes, Britain is the only place where any forty or fifty something can routinely hold a music-related conversation. And they will then proceed to put you to shame with all the gigs they've been to in their life. The planetary success that UK bands have enjoyed in the last forty years also convinced those who pull the strings that such a profitable export is to be cultivated. The music weekly NME has long been cherished as a national institution, and a number of music monthlies (Q, the now defunct Select, Mojo, Uncut and others) and television programmes (The Tube, The Word, Later With Jools Holland, Top of The Pops, etc) have punctuated British pop culture in the last few decades. I don’t know if figures exist, but the UK's live music circuit can probably claim it shifts a bob or two. Following a tradition that started in the Seventies with Glastonbury and Reading as pioneers, Britain's outdoor summer festivals have mushroomed up in the last fifteen years, offering tens of thousands of people the chance to come together to appreciate live music on a large scale.

I will never forget my trip outside Manchester's Salford Lads Club in 1995. The otherwise grotty place, located in an incredibly rundown part of the city, was handed a touch of worldwide notoriety when The Smiths posed outside its front door in 1986 for what was to become The Queen is Dead album official photo-shoot. I was simply blown away by the amount of scribbles jotted on the outside entrance, tributes and declarations of love that had been left by hordes of people from all over the world. Fans from France, Hungary, Sweden, America, even Japan had trekked all the way in praise of the most characteristically Mancunian band. Years after their split, their music still obviously inspires an army of people worldwide. No other creative crop in the world can claim the same level of infatuation and personal involvement that British music has managed to instigate in the last few decades. The Smiths, in particular, are part of a family tree of popular culture and eccentricism that stretches back to Auden's writing and on through Larkin's poems, Shelagh Delaney's films and - even most recently, Ken Loach's gritty realism or Mike Leigh's kitchen-sink - epitomising the unrivalled gift of self-expression that the British have. In the words of writer Michael Bracewell, that "mixture of bitterness, resignation and hatred", that "ambivalence towards England - their simultaneous love and hatred for the country and its culture" that is the "refining element of their lucidity"