I know I should stop look at the Daily Express' website, it's not good for me. I have stopped going to the Mail's site because, as we all know, that only exists to drive advertising revenue, Melanie Phillips writes something offensive, for money, everyone has a look, see how many page hits we get, we will now charge you more for advertising space.

Anyway, back to the Express, a paper that “crusades” (there's a word to make a liberal uncomfortable) against moral decline but is owned by Richard Desmond, porn baron (apparently he hates it if you call him that. Oh and anyone else notice the irony in him once publishing a magazine called “Asian Babes” given his papers (he also owns The Daily Star) views on non-White people which I believe can be summarized thusly, “We don't want them coming over here but if they do they must be “babes” and willing to show a camera man their Yah-Yahs and lady hole”. Funny story, a patient once refereed to her woman's secret place as her “Mary”, this amused me as I had just been dumped by someone of that name) and once described Big Brother contestants as “attention-seeking numpties” but now has a section of its website dedicated to the show and only speaks of it in glowing terms since its return to television, coincidentally on a TV channel that is also owned by Mr Desmond, and they have been pushing an article written by David Cameron in today's paper quite hard, getting it quoted on many a news bulletin, so I thought I would have a look.

First up, the Express' website is awful. It's almost impossible to navigate and keeps trying to open pop-ups. There are far to many adverts as well but I digress, oh what a surprise you are all thinking. The Express has 2 versions of the story on it's site, one that contains the full text of what he has written and one that has summarized it and been spun by the paper. One is 16 paragraphs long and the other is much easier to find and is only 3 paragraphs long. Can you guess which one has the most comments on it and therefore, I assume, the most readers? Why, yes it is the 3 paragraph version, how did you guess?

The headline on the print version and the longer piece on the website reads, “Human Rights In My Sights”. Now as a statement of intent that means nothing. It gives us no idea on what the PM is thinking, however the fact that is on the front of the Express does add a little context, I would imagine that he is against them.

In the headline on the short version it says “David Cameron vows to fight hated EU law” by which they mean European Human Rights legislation. Now I have to admit that I think campaigning against Human Rights legislation is a bit odd. Are they saying that they, and their readers, want fewer Human Rights? That they don't want their freedom of speech or religious freedoms? I know they think that these laws only apply to non-Express readers but that isn't true, they apply to everyone in the EU, equally.

The sub-headline on the print version however is “David Cameron vows to fight hated EU law and teach our children “morals and manners””.

Photobucket

What personally? Is he offering to come round and personally spank our, well your, children and tell them not to have sex before marriage? This seems to be trumpeted as a good thing. It is at this point I get confused by Conservative newspapers and some Conservatives in general. What they claim they want small government, although just large enough to execute its citizens if they break some of it's laws, unless it comes to things they care about. They don't want schools to teach sex education, parents should do that but they do want, as does Mr Cameron, schools to instil discipline and morals into those same children which I though was definitely a parental issue. “Well they are not doing it” is the retort, "so schools should". They are not teaching their children about relationships and safe sex either I reply, “well that's different” is the response. They claim that there is too much interference from Government in business, they should be free to get on with it without all this red tape and regulation and Health and Safety legislation is reducing profits. That is of course until a Bank makes a profit, fuel, gas or electricity prices go up or some one is killed at work. Then they are clamoring for more regulations.

Anyway back to “ David Cameron vows to fight hated EU law” which blasts out form the page. He doesn't. I've read it a couple of times. He definitely doesn't. He says things like “we need a concerted fightback against the wrong-headed ideas, bureaucratic nonsense” with no reference to EU law and “and misrepresenting of human rights”. Ah ha. He uses the phrase again in the next paragraph. “I am determined we get a grip on the misrepresentation of human rights”. Fair enough. He offers no examples of when this may have happened of course but but pretty much all of the cases that the Mail and Express use as “examples” of why “human rights are bad m'kay” are people claiming that something is a breach of their human rights and going to court over it, they rarely print the outcome of these cases where the judge says “don't be silly, it's not”. If Mr Cameron is going to crack down on “misrepresentation of human rights” cases by newspapers then I think we can all get behind that.

He goes on to say “We are looking at creating our own British Bill of Rights. We are going to fight in Europe for changes to the way the European Court works and we will fight to ensure people understand the real scope of these rights and do not use them as cover for rules or excuses that fly in the face of common sense.” Ok, most people's common sense is rubbish so that's a bad idea and but don't we already have a Bill of Rights. Um, yes we do, look it's here. It's from 1689 on it goes on about things like freedom of speech in Parliament and certain constitutional requirements of the Crown to seek the consent of the people and as Wikipedia points out “the Bill of Rights is further accompanied by the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 as some of the basic documents of the uncodified British constitution”. Oh and “the Bill of Rights cannot be altered in any realm except by that realm's own parliament” IE the EU can't make us change it. But if he wants to reduce the number of time-wasting, speculative HR cases then maybe that would help improve the image of this set of laws. Maybe not though.

He makes a claim or two within the piece and, of course, offers no evidence for these claims but, suspiciously, all of his claims seem to fit his agenda, how neat. Things like “We need a stronger police presence on the streets, deterring crime and catching criminals instead of filling in forms or wasting time on phony targets. That is what people want. That is why elected Police and Crime Commissioners is a powerful idea; they will make policing more responsive to what the people in your neighbourhood need, to keep you safe.” Really? I only ask because it seems to be a rotten idea to me. In the US it seems to have politicized the police, with those seeking law enforcement office stating which areas of crime that they think the electorate want them to focus on. This cannot be a good idea. Things that are against the law are against the law and everyone is equal under the law.

“The greed and thuggery we saw during the riots did not come out of nowhere. There are deep problems in our society that have been growing for a long time.” Ah Mr Cameron, where might that greed have come from? Go on see if you can have a bit of a guess. Have there been any Prime Ministers that have pushed an agenda of greed and selfishness? Of profit over everything? Who cut state support for many? I'll narrow it down for you if you need a hand, say since 1978? Anyone come to mind? I was thinking of your parties social and economic wank fantasy, Margaret Thatcher.

We live in a capitalist, consumerist society that promotes conspicuous consumption over all things. Buy things that are new and shiny and pretty, you don't need them and they won't actually make you feel any better but we will tell you that they will until such time as you have actually bought one and then we will tell you it is out of date and you need this newer one to fulfill your life. Now, we know you can't afford it but here, borrow all this money, it's OK, look you can have this card so you don't have to worry about it being real money. Yes, you are in serious debt but everyone is doing it and the interest rate is really low, what could possibly go wrong? It's you patriotic duty to spend your money, it's the only way we can have year on year GDP growth and without that we will have a recession and everyone (poor) will loose their jobs, is that what you want? Do you want to be responsible for you and your friends loosing their jobs? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?! No? Well get out there and buy stuff.

Yeah, I no idea where this culture of greed came from but are you really the best person to lecture people on greed, on wanting nice things? Remember we have seen the inside of your Downing Street kitchen. How much did you spend on that? Was any of it your money? We have seen what MP claimed expenses for. We have seen a cavalier attitude towards the World's financial stability from bankers driven by profit and bonus only. Some might describe those things as greed but not you. Oh no, you think that only poor people, with their faces pressed up against a closed JJB Sports longing after a new pair of Nikes, are capable of greed.

He goes on you know, “a decline in responsibility, a rise in selfishness, a growing sense that individual rights come before anything else.” Is actually ignoring all of the 80's? Selfishness, decline in responsibility, bankers again anyone?

One last thing about this article, as I mentioned before Mr Cameron brings no evidence before us for his claims but there are one or two hyper-links in the piece. Are these links to evidence or supporting claims? Are they links to definitions of some of the longer words or more abstract concepts? No, they are randomly inserted adverts for shiny things that we might want to buy.