Words Dept.: category

There’s been a not wholly positive reaction to Manchester Confidential’s “redesign” today. It looks quite a lot like the old site although it’s somehow more grotesque. It’s cluttered, it’s dominated by an almost misanthropic shade of yellow and looks like it was conceived in about 1999. By a drunk. ManCon has unleashed the dogs of war [...]

I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to pay for an ID card. £30 for the privilege of owning a little pink bit of plastic that has the same basic purpose as a passport – while at the same time handing over your fingerprints to the government – holds [...]

AA Gill is a cock. To shoot an animal through the lung for the purposes of “naughty fun” is plainly disturbing and not in the least bit entertaining. Gill seems to see himself as a latter-day Hunter S. Thompson; an intrepid gonzo-journalist with a penchant for firearms and anappetite for illicit adventures involving red-blooded, macho tomfoolery. He is desperate to escape the truth, which is that he is a balding art school graduate (and former drunk) who has made a living by writing about whether or not some carrots have been satisfactorily boiled.

According to several newspapers yesterday, Kellogg’s is planning to use lasers to burn its logo on to individual corn flakes in an attempt to foil impostors. Metro, The Telegraph, The Daily Record and Marketing printed this as fact. Since journalists don’t seem to have realised that the story is made up by some PR people [...]

It’s easy to buy into the Sun’s rhetoric that by not backing Labour at the next election, as it will officially announce tomorrow, the paper will somehow guide public opinion in favour of the Tories. You can almost sense the “Sun wot won it for Dave” headlines now. I’ve just watched the Sun’s political editor [...]

Apologies for not getting back to you. I’m here now, it’s OK. I’ve been thinking a lot about newspapers recently. About how I never buy one anymore except when I’m going on a long train journey, about the supposed closure of the Observer (which isn’t now happening), about what I can’t help thinking is gross [...]

Has anyone else noticed that the Guardian has published some absolute garbage recently? A couple of weeks ago they had that stupid piece that implied comedian Richard Herring was some kind of a Nazi-worshipping racist and today there’s a piece on the website called “Women watch men strip for fun. Men watch women for darker [...]

I thought it was about time I mentioned that I’m quitting my job and going back to university. I will be finishing at Estates Gazette (which, in case you didn’t know, is where I work) on August 14 and will, from September, be studying for an MA in television documentary production at the University of [...]

Since saying sorry has become really rather fashionable in the last week or so, perhaps it would be appropriate for the Sun to apologise to its readers for its misleading coverage of the story of 13-year-old Alfie Patten. Following a court ruling, it can now be reported that Alfie never fathered a child, despite specific claims to [...]

This must surely rank as one of the most remarkable and ridiculous moments in the short history of 24-hour news channels. Carrie Gracie, a presenter about whom I’ve had my doubts for a while thanks to her uncomfortable flirting with fellow anchor Simon McCoy every morning, gets completely flummoxed during an interview and admits to [...]