Posted by Martyn Norris on Saturday, March 17, 2012,
In :
Media
I know it is easy to mock the Daily Express but I am lazy and it's a Saturday. Is it any wonder that Express readers are confused and angry, take some of this weeks headlines on pensions for instance,
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, August 21, 2011,
In :
Media
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 ...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Friday, August 19, 2011,
In :
Racism
Now, I’m not a fan of
the Daily Express but even by their standards there is an article in
the paper today that could best be described as misleading. The
headline on the top right hand side of the front page reads “Outrage
as police spend £82m on translators for foreign criminals”.
Firstly can I point
out to the Express that there is an online thesaurus so they can look
up, for free, words that mean the same as “outrage” but are
different from “outrage” which seems to appear ...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, May 10, 2011,
In :
Media
Conspiracy theories used to the preserve of the deepest corners of the interwebs, being “discussed” on message boards that you really had to look very hard to find. It used to be all Aliens and the Elders of Zion (which has been shown over and over again (particularly well in David Aaronovitch's book Voodoo Histories might I add) to based on a work of fiction, it's not true, the Jews did not and do not have a plan to take over/control the world) but since the 60's has been a growing movem...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, March 27, 2011,
In :
Media
You have to love the
Daily Express, no really you do (if you can get past the xenophobia
and barely concealed racism obviously) because they exist completely
within their own universe. It is possible that the existence of the
this “paper” goes some way to prove the theory of multiple
universes.
It is thought that
these “extra” dimensions may be as close as just a few
millimetres away but we can't perceive them however if you look at
the leaps of logic and connections that the Expr...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, January 23, 2011,
In :
General
“Please
welcome Ashton Kutcher's dad, Bruce Willis!”
Yes,
there was some news on Friday and we will get to it but let's not to
anything too detailed and in depth, I'm on the wind down for a rather
long holiday. I'm going to be away for a month, to Canada if you are
interested, but if you are a burglar, and you happen to be reading
this, we have left Cerberus
in our hallway and he'll give you one hell of a nip if you try and
break in.
We
are staying with some friends for most of the ...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, January 2, 2011,
In :
Media
"Jo's life was cut
short tragically but the finger-pointing and character assassination by social
and news media of as yet innocent men has been shameful.
It has made me lose a lot of faith in the
morality of the British press and those that spend their time fixed to the
internet in this modern age.
I hope in the future they will show a more
sensitive and impartial view to those involved in such heart-breaking events
and especia...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Thursday, December 30, 2010,
In :
Media
Ah, context free numbers in headlines, what fun you are.
“My, that seems like an awfully big number, will it be compared to something else so that I can get a sense of scale? No, it seems it won’t but as it a large number referring to something I don’t like I shall be offended/outraged/disgusted (delete as appropriate or maybe choose all 3) anyway.”
This is an example of the internal monologue from a reader of this morning’s Daily Express. Obviously I missed out all the bits about...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, November 28, 2010,
Over heard as we came out of the cinema this week, “That made no sense to me, although I haven't seen any of the other Harry Potter films or read any of the books.”
It's been another great week for those that bring you your news, Britain has entered Weathergeddon. Last week it was Royal wedding news and this one has ended with endless pretty pictures of the English countryside covered in a thin but beautifying layer of snow.
The 24hr news channels have dispatched poor corresponde...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, November 21, 2010,
At the beginning of this lovely week that
has just gone to wherever it is that time disappears to, I was thinking of
changing the name of my Sunday posts.
The
“Diana Watch” thing stated out as a simple table on my Myspace page (remember
them?) that logged the number of times that the “People’s Princess” mysteriously
appeared on the front of British newspapers every week despite having died some
9 years before.
I
only did this because I found it sort of odd that she (however...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, October 26, 2010,
Now, it would be fairly easy to portray those who “write”
for the Daily Express as unpleasant, small minded, borderline racist,
xenophobic, black-hearted tossers who think that because our economy is having
a bit of a downturn at the moment it’s perfectly acceptable for our, comparatively,
very rich country to withdraw from the world and slash the Foreign Aid Budget.
God forbid that we should help people who are actually starvi...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, October 10, 2010,
2 tweets from my brother from Thursday
morning.
“It's at this point of the morning I
wish I'd been lazy and driven in to work rather than cycle”,
followed 57 minutes later by, “In ambulance on way to hospital
having been knocked off my bike. Suspected broken leg.”
He had indeed broken his leg, in
several places, but the rest of him was fine. Friday afternoon for
him consisted of a rather long surgical procedure to put all the
broken bits of bone back into some sort of orde...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, October 3, 2010,
“Well, there used to be a
bloke called Peg who had a wooden leg. He used to set himself on fire and then
jump into the Lido to put it out”
“What would Health and
Safety think of that?”
“They don’t let you do
anything these days.”
It was announced at the beginning
of the week that Catherine
Walker had died. She was a very successful fashion designer but differed
from many others in her field by shunning the limelig...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, August 8, 2010,
You try and give something up and it pulls you
back in. It's a bit like Scientology in that respect.
I was going to stop doing this “every sunday”
thing, for a while at least, because the podcast
is staring to take off and it takes quite a bit of time to do both. That and I
don't want to repeat myself.
After last weeks posting no one commented at
all on me stopping so I thought “The readers, or lack of them, have spoken...
“So can I ask you why you are applying for asylum in this country Mr John?”
“Well, I am a Gay man and in my country that is illegal. If I am caught being gay then I will imprisoned or worse, I could be put to death in a series of excruciatingly painful ways.”
“Well, that is very interesting. So if you are a caught being gay in your country the government of that country may kill you.”
“I didn’t get into Vet
School so I became a Doctor.”
Has there been a Princess Diana based front page this week?
Of course there has,
but the Express also distinguished themselves on Wednesday
by completely ignoring the devastation being caused to the Gulf coast of
America, the animals and fish that are dying and the peoples whose livings are
being destroyed such as shrimp fisherman. They even ignored the rather po...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Monday, April 12, 2010,
I don’t wish to come across as all Anton Vowl but if you even so much as
glance at the Daily Express that is what will happen and today is no exception.
“Strangers in our own
Country” screams the headline and is reinforced in the by-line, “’English’ pupils
are now the minority in 1,500 schools throughout the UK”.
So is this true and what do they mean by “English”.
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, March 21, 2010,
[if !mso]>
Can I apologise for this
week’s entry. If it seems a little hurried and cobbled together but there is a
very good reason for that, it is. The end of the week has been a little poor
for significant other so not had much time to do this but, he says with the
utmost irony, the show must go on. I’m doing “jazz hands” now if you are
interested.
Thank you the Daily Express! Your ability to
entertain has not...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, February 28, 2010,
I'm sorry, have I fallen
asleep and woken up in the 1980's? (Although Homeopaths think it’s the 1880’s
and Prince Charles,
the 1780’s). Am I in Life on Mars? (or whatever the 80’s sequel was called)
Monday night/Tuesday morning a car bomb
exploded in Newry,
Northern Ireland. Fortunately no one was hurt despite the fact that
it went off whilst the area was being cleared.
There has been a recent upsurge in terrorist
attac...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Saturday, February 13, 2010,
Unbelievable, he stole my idea. Well there was a little passing credit to me but mostly, he stole idea!
This week I have invented (is that the right word?) a new law of Physics/journalism. We shall, from now on, refer it as Martyn's Law ( I thought about Norris' Law but there are too many S’s at the end.) The law states that, in right wing newspapers, the actual number of facts containted within a columists polemic IS inversaly proportioned to the number of times they use the phrase "in...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, February 7, 2010,
Today’s opening question is, how many of you met a Minister
of State this week? Come on be honest, did you? No, of course you didn’t. I,
however, met Andy Burnham, Minister for Health, my ultimate boss. He seemed
like quite a nice bloke. Slightly ill-fitting suit though.
I did ask on twitter
if anyone had any questions for him and I received a few suggestions, most of
which were appropriate, one was less so. Unfortunately my b...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, January 24, 2010,
I seem to be the luckiest person in the world.
Last year I was chosen to help a Kenyan Prince to help him transfer his money
out of the country (small fee to me) and now this,
Dear E-mail
Bearer,
You
have won the sum of £500,000.00 GBGBPin
the British Online.
Sweepstakes
Promo head on Sat 16 Jan 2010.Your Your e-mail address
