Words Dept.

Last weekend my girlfriend bought a coat from TK Maxx in Stockport that contains fur. You wouldn’t know by looking at it, since the fur is on the inside.

TK Maxx doesn’t have a particularly good track record in this area. The chain has been caught out previously, selling real fur marked up as fake. Others have also spotted fur for sale at TK Maxx but say that the store will remove it when it’s pointed out. This doesn’t strike me as a particularly useful policy – who’s to say what happens to it after it’s taken off sale, and how much is actually sold without the store realising it? I don’t want to get into a debate about the fur trade but the simple fact is that TK Maxx claims to operate an anti-fur policy (and presumably reaps the PR rewards from that) so it’s not a very good state of affairs.

In this case, the label states clearly that the coat contains fur. There’s even a sample attached to the tag, so we’re not exactly in Sherlock Holmes territory here. But you don’t expect to find real fur for sale in a high street store, which is why we didn’t notice until we got it home.

We took the coat back today. The assistant looked a bit shocked and it was taken off sale with assurances that checks will be made to remove others. I’m no retail expert but if TK Maxx made these checks before putting fur on sale, or maybe stopped using known suppliers of fur, that would help everyone out.

I see there’s a new trailer for Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow on. It consists of McIntyre making some observation about revolving doors or DIY or flushing the toilet and then has a caption that says “Ring any bells?” Like the fact these things that happen to him also sometimes happen to other people makes it intrinsically funny.

As someone who can’t really be doing with McIntyre’s brand of trite observational “humour”, I am, according to the Guardian yesterday, a cultural snob. The fact that McIntyre has never once made me so much as smile, let alone laugh, is apparently irrelevant. One must, it is argued, accept McIntyre as funny because his mainstream appeal is vaguely “good for comedy”.

I disagree. I think a man being lauded as a comic genius for saying things like “Have you noticed how Weetabix goes soggy when you put milk on it” is actually an unarguable cultural travesty.

Still, Homer Simpson would probably disagree:

Help me. I’m worried I may be one of those “Morrissey apologists” you sometimes hear about. None of my best friends are Morrissey, yet I can’t help empathise with the erstwhile Smiths frontman. To make matters worse, I’ve got form in this area. Three years ago when, in an NME interview, Morrissey expressed some rather old-fashioned views about immigration, rather than simply accept that Morrissey is a dirty racist, I ventured the terrifying opinion that the NME was talking crap.

And so it’s happened again. This time, the Guardian has suggested that Morrissey has reignited a “racism row” by calling the Chinese a “subspecies”. My immediate response to the paper’s interview, imaginatively entitled “Bigmouth strikes again” (exactly the same as the cover-line for the NME piece back in 2007) is not, strangely, that Morrissey is a racist. Worryingly, in light of my otherwise unimpeachable liberal tendencies, it is that the Guardian is talking crap.

Aside from the interview’s rather tired set-up, in which the poet Simon Armitage explores the experience of being a Smiths/Morrissey fan, (“When Morrissey sported Jack Duckworth-style prescription glasses mended with Elastoplast I went looking for a pair in the market,” etc) and thus ends up using the words “I” and “I’m” an excruciating 35 times in the fucking preamble, the description “subspecies” has to be deliberately taken out of context in order to be interpreted as racist. In fact, as Armitage actually states in a follow-up Guardian news story, the word “subspecies” was deliberately chosen by Morrissey because, in a discussion about animal rights, it vividly suggests that the perpetrators of violence against animals are actually below the level of the animals whose rights are being violated. Or, as Armitage more succinctly puts it:

In his view, if you treat an animal badly, you are less than human. I think that was his point.

Now, fair enough, branding 1.3bn people with a culture stretching back thousands of years as a “subspecies” is crude, nonsensical and misjudged. But I guess the point boils down to this: If someone starts talking about various nations and cultures they dislike, and the Chinese crop up in that discussion and are described as a “subspecies”, then yes, fair enough, they are racist. But if someone starts talking about cruelty to animals, and they say they have a particular problem with China’s record in this area, then surely, despite the possibly ill-advised language, this is not really a race issue at all. And the fact that Armitage was there, and he doesn’t think Morrissey made a racist statement in the first place, makes you wonder about the Guardian’s agenda.

So anyway, now I’ve said all that, I feel a bit scared. Am I merely pointing out the weaknesses in a newspaper article, or am I, y’know [whispers] a Morrissey apologist? I fear I must be. Why else would I conclude this post with a link to a horrifying YouTube video depicting animal cruelty in China?

If you ever wanted a snapshot of the mainstream media’s rather depressing agenda and the puerile preoccupations of the public who consume it, you could do worse than searching the phrase #journorequest on Twitter.

I’m not sure what journalists did before Twitter. Maybe they phoned people or something. Nowadays though, all they have to do is type some inane request into Twitter, tag it #journorequest and watch PR companies and wannabes fall over themselves to help out. Maybe.

It’s perhaps a little lazy but the process is, at least, entirely open, which I suppose is an improvement on the days when lifestyle hacks just phoned up their London PR friends when they needed some “real-life” story. Still, it feels weirdly uncomfortable to have the base practices of journalism laid bare for all to see. Most of these requests tend to involve something “saucy” or prurient, or simply reveal journalistic laziness/incompetence (“Does anyone know the PR contact for so-and-so?”, etc.) The cleverer PRs have also realised that they can tout their clients to lazy hacks by re-appropriating #journorequest for their own ends.

Anyway, here’s a selection of my favourite #journorequests from the last few days. They’re presented (mainly) without context or explanation, just as they appear on Twitter.

We’re looking for people who’ve had sex at work for a naughty confessions feature. Any used will be paid. Please get in touch #journorequest

I’m looking for a 13 year old girl who is pregnant for a magazine feature. Please message me if you’re interested #journorequest

Anyone know the press office for Odeon/ Vue cinemas? #journorequest [Dave's tip: Financial Dynamics does the PR for Terra Firma, the private equity firm that owns Odeon; Vue's corporate website lists Clarion Communications as their PR company and provides a phone number]

Seeking women who think they’re absolutely marvellous looking and can’t stop admiring themselves in the mirror #journorequest

Looking for people who have taken the new ‘legal’ high ‘ivory wave’ #journorequest

Anyone out there tried this new recreational drug, ‘Ivory Wave’? It’s meant to be a rival to Meow Meow. Get in touch #journorequest

Ooh – I’m also looking for someone who’s had sex at work – will need to be pictured and identified for #journorequest

#journorequest Tiens Tianshi Toothpaste is launching in UK this September ….DM for more info

Does anyone know who does then PR for Aresnal / The Emirates? #journorequest [Dave's tip: Google > Arsenal Football Club > Contact us > Club switchboard > 020 7619 5003]

Need to find unemployed overweight women who think their weight stops them working. Good fee. DM me. Pls RT. #journorequest

I’m seeking examples of celebs who have had, or are planning to have, a Victorian themed wedding #journorequest

And so it continues. Forever.

By the way, does anyone know where I can find a medium-sized bag of heroin at a reasonable price? #journorequest

Two months after the election, the utter awfulness of the Liberal Democrats has hit me in the last few days with some degree of clarity. Of course the Tories are a bunch of shits – everyone knows that already. But the LibDems are even worse.

As the last few weeks have passed, the staggering hypocrisy of Nick Clegg and the rest of the LibDem front bench has become truly apparent. Think back to the election campaign. Clegg was the man who repeatedly described the Tories and Labour as the “old parties”. A campaign poster criticised the Tories’ 20% “VAT bombshell” and voiced opposition to early cuts. Clegg said the Tories have no mandate to make cuts and “take our jobs away” in traditionally working class areas of the UK, like south Yorkshire.

Here’s an extract from an article Clegg wrote in the Independent in March:

The Conservative Party strategy is now clear: personal animus towards its opponents; shameless scaremongering in the financial markets; double standards in its own policies. David Cameron’s spring conference speech carried one message only: vote for me, because I really really hate the other guy. George Osborne’s economically illiterate warnings of meltdown in the money markets carried one message only: vote for us otherwise we’ll get the markets to tear the house down.

These are all now positions that, in a matter of just a few weeks, the LibDems have cheerfully disowned.

The LibDems’ argument seems to be that they can better influence policy as part of a formal coaliton agreement. This is utter crap. The party could just as easily influence policy if the Tories formed a minority government alone and the LibDems negotiated concessions on a bill-by-bill basis. The problem with this approach is that Clegg doesn’t get an overblown job title and a (shared) grace-and-favour country house to doss about in. The man is transparently in it for what he can get out of it.

Spare a thought, though, for local LibDem councillors and other activists who one assumes have maintained – unlike Clegg – at least a modicum of genuine political conviction. In many UK cities, where the Tories are hated, the LibDems are looking at the electoral wilderness. This point was made by former council leader Warren Bradley last week, as well it might be. He is completely screwed.

Politics has had a tough time recently. Nobody in the real world relates to or trusts politicians and apathy is rife. Nick Clegg cannot look anyone in the eye and say that the LibDems have not worsened the situation.

Here are a few instantaneous thoughts on the sad closure of Crain’s Manchester Business, which was announced today. As a local business journalist who was very occasionally (ahem) scooped by the paper, it goes without saying that I have lots of respect for their journalists. But here’s a few quick thoughts on what went wrong:

1. They didn’t sell enough adverts. Sounds fairly obvious but estimates suggest Crain’s would have had to have made up to £25,000 a week in advertising just to break even. Anyone who ever picked up a copy of Crain’s will have noticed that there weren’t very many adverts in it, and their “no discount” policy is well documented. However, assurances were made that the title would have five years to start making money. Perhaps the recession accelerated that process; after two-and-a-half years, the magazine has closed.

2. They were too fearless. Crain’s always seemed to me to have a sort of fearlessness about it, which was great. But it’s not difficult to imagine that its “no bullshit” approach did little to endear it to potential advertisers used to their cosy relationship with the MEN. I was told by contacts from time to time that they’d stopped talking to Crain’s, supposedly because the paper had messed up some story or other. But from what I could see Crain’s very rarely got things wrong, it just printed things that others either missed or ignored. This got up people’s noses.

3. There isn’t enough news (and a lot of it is boring). I think I might have said this before, but how many business magazines does a place need? As well as the MEN, which has had its own problems over the last two years, there’s also the long-established Insider, which rightly increased its news/online efforts immediately after Crain’s launched. (Disclaimer: I freelance for Insider.) The free-to-access Business Desk North West, which has done well under the editorship of former MEN Business Editor Chris Barry after launching less than a year after Crain’s, has further queered the pitch, while there are also various sector-specific business news websites like How-Do and Place North West. Crain’s should be commended for, in the main, having a proper news agenda that avoided recycling press releases. But there has to be a limit over the amount of business coverage people actually need.

4. It had no local roots. Manchester is the seat of the industrial revolution. Parachuting an American brand into a city as rich in business heritage as Manchester, albeit with a crowd of highly capable local journalists, was always going to be risky. And, when things don’t go to plan, a US owner isn’t going to weep over the closure of an outpost thousands of miles away. The writing was perhaps on the wall when Crain’s parted company with Manchester-based publisher Arthur Porter in January, in slightly mysterious circumstances.

5. The timing was wrong. Launching a business magazine in autumn 2007 was a terrible idea given the banking crisis, property crash, unemployment bubble and recession that followed. All this is easy to talk about in hindsight, perhaps, but the fact remains that Crain’s timing was absolutely bloody awful.

The New York Post’s headline yesterday “USA wins 1-1″, in reference to Saturday’s World Cup match between the USA and England, is actually a subtle joke. I know it’s difficult to grasp the idea that Americans understand humour but the front page actually contains self-deprecation and two amusing historical references. The only reason I mention this is because the British, with our claims to not only inventing football but also inventing irony, have totally missed the gag. Instead, we are smugly laughing at the thick Americans who really don’t understand anything about “our” beautiful game.

So here’s a breakdown of the New York Post front page:

1. The idea of a 1-1 win is obviously ludicrous. Americans understand this. They have draws in baseball and basketball from time to time. The paper is almost certainly making a jokey reference to an infamous 1968 headline relating to a college (American) football game, in which it was reported “Harvard beats Yale 29-29“, after Harvard scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds of the match. So, actually they’re being quite clever.

2. The clearly idiotic concept of “winning 1-1″ is a self-deprecating gag, a joke at the expense of the USA itself, which, in the eyes of the rest of the world, especially Britain, famously doesn’t understand football.

3. The subheading refers to the Battle of Bunker Hill. This episode in the American War of Independence is classed as a pyrrhic British victory, where massive British losses were sustained. So, again, it’s quite a clever and subtle historical joke.

It’s worth bearing in mind that the USA gave us Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Larry Sanders Show and The Simpsons, whereas Britain came up with Carry on Camping, Mr Bean and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. Just saying.

I always thought the Labour Party was about achieving things on merit, rather than as a result of an accident of birth. That’s why the dismal tokenism that resulted in Diane Abbott scraping together enough nominations to get on to the ballot paper for the party’s leadership makes the Labour Party look ridiculous. The idea of David Miliband and Harriet Harman gifting Abbott a nomination because they want to show how committed they are to, you know, black women and stuff, is absurd and patronising. It also makes Abbott look rather silly.

Elsewhere in today’s news, it has been revealed that Charlie Brooker (who clearly regularly mines by blog and Twitter stream for inspiration) intends to marry former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq. Brooker’s involvement in this C-list celebrity story brought out the worst in users of the allegedly popular social networking tool. He maintains massive cuddleability among that certain brand of free-thinking, straight-talking, pathetic, greying liberal comedy wannabes who populate Twitter, meaning Huq’s name quickly started to trend. But might I offer the following tip to Brooker fans: If you want him to like you, and you obviously do, it’s probably best not to do what I saw someone do earlier, which is to call his wife-to-be a whore. Especially if you mention @charltonbrooker in the tweet.

And James Corden. Something to do with James Corden. You’ll have to Google it.

Warm Bologna night
Right foot volley David Platt
No penalties

Word reached me this week of the High IQ Haiku World Cup Project. I’ve never tried writing haiku before but this idea appealed.

They’re inviting haiku relating to the forthcoming World Cup, or to World Cups past. So I went with Italia 90, the first World Cup I properly remember. Obviously this was the World Cup that first gave England its penalties complex but I thought it’d be a bit obvious to go for the semi-final heartache-type angle. It is, however, about another specific moment from that tournament.

If you can remember the opposition team and the name of the assisting player then I award you an imaginary £5. Well done!

Earlier this month, as part of its Manchester Celebrates Jaguar event, Jaguar lent me a sixty grand supercharged XFR for the night (complete with 5.0-litre, 510bhp V8 engine). So I thought I’d make a short film out of it.

The journey starts at the City of Manchester Stadium in east Manchester and continues through Manchester city centre via Deansgate and St Peter’s Square to Old Trafford. Luckily I managed not to crash the thing. Although that probably would have been quite an exciting ending.

Jaguar Manchester from David Quinn on Vimeo.