You couldn't make it up ... could you ?

Newspapers.
A misnomer if ever one existed.
Opinion papers is more accurate.

The problem with news papers is that they cannot possibly report the news anymore - by the time their publications hit the streets their news headlines could be up to 24 hours old and their buying public will have received every snitch and morsel of the story via the multitude of 24 hour news channels that most of the UK population have easy access to now.

So what service can the newspaper editors provide ?
They give their opinion.

Which is fair enough, and we see now that most newspapers have a particular mode of reporting and a particular agenda to present, whether its anti-government or pro-government, sports weighted, gossip weighted, green issue weighted - whatever the agenda they have become daily news issue discussion magazines rather than news breaking forums.

Which has led to a problem.
What do you do on a day when there simply is no news to discuss, let alone break ?

The answer is - you make some stuff up.

Take two examples yesterday which got all of the daily newspapers into a froth and allowed some of them to present their anti-muslim, anti-integration stances yet again ...

This is the first of the stories to hit the streets.

Its a fairly straightforward story of a specially trained, armed police officer who is part of the highly specialised London based Diplomatic Protection Group, who was assigned to protect the Israeli embassy in August at a time when Isreal was undertaking its raids on civilian and other targets in Lebanon - and was being criticised by every sane country in the world for doing so, except the USA and the UK of course.

The officer in question has a Lebonese wife who has relations still living in the Lebanon and co-incidently he is of the muslim faith.

To anyone with half an ounce of sense there is a very clear conflict of interest there and even if the officer had carried out his duties as required then he would have left himself and the Metropolitan Police open for all sorts of criticism if anything had happened while he was on duty.

He quite rightly asked for advice from a senior officer, stating his conflicts, and the senior officer quite rightly withdrew him from the Isreali embassy and gave him other duties.

End of story - common sense prevails.

Not quite.

Some agenda chasing buffoon in the Met got hold of the story and leaked it to the press and so yesterday we were entreated to headlines that screamed of preferential treatment to muslim police officers and asked whether we had reached a situation where police officers could pick and choose their duties now - none of which had any relevance to the case in question.

It kicked up such a fuss that the Metropolitan Police have refered the case right to the top of the tree and the Deputy Police Commisioner is now launching his own enquiry.

Its called "Making Up News Madness"


The second example is here.

Former Home Secretary, former Foreign Secretary, elder Labour statesman Jack Straw is under fire this morning for asking muslim ladies to lift or remove their facial veils when they visit his MP surgery in his constituency of Blackburn.

Those who know Jack Straw (and those of us who just see him on the TV) know that he is probably the most reasonable, most level headed of all the MP's at Westminster, its why he was chosen to represent us and the diplomatic corps as Foreign Secretary, and I would expect that any such request that Jack Straw makes would be made in a reasonable, pleasant manner.

Indeed he makes the point himself that none of the muslim women so requested have refused his request and that he always ensures that another woman is present in the room with him when he conducts such surgeries - its a reasonable request from a reasonable man and even the British Council for Muslims have supported him in stating that the decision to remove a veil or even a burqa from a muslim womans face is the womans own choice, they do not offer an opinion in the matter.

Its simply a matter of politeness and Jack Straw says that he prefers to see a persons face when he is talking face to face to them - its actually a human trait, we read almost everything from the eyes and it adds so much to a conversation when you can actually see the persons face - its not quite the same issue but when I spent some time working in Barbados (oh yes, it was a tough contract that one), it was considered the height of rudeness, in that extremely polite society, to speak face to face to someone while still wearing sunglasses, you always removed your sunglasses when you spoke to someone, always.

End of story - common sense prevails.

Not quite.

Some agenda chasing buffoon in the press corps has read Jack Straw's throw-away comment as one of the vilest anti-muslim comments that they have ever heard and have whipped the British press and TV news up into a lather this morning over this non-issue, even though all of the muslims that they interviewed on the streets so far have failed to be enraged by the comments.

Its called "Making Up News Madness"


You couldn't make it up really.