Last post on Gove's Bible nonsense (probably)

Education has continued to become a more horrible place to work since I last blogged. The proposed changes to Ofsted mean that everyone has to desperately revise the way lessons work in order that we can tick the new boxes that mean you know how to do your job. This is even more tedioius and time consuming than you can imagine.

On top of that, the failure of all the teaching unions to keep a coherent strike strategy to stop the pension tax thus far means we're stuck with being screwed even more for at least a while.

And now Gove's managed to find some rich Tory fucks to pay for his narcissistic Bible project. I think I'll see if the English department want ours, since it's fuck all use in RE - as I've mentioned before.

Now Dawkins has chipped in with something fatuous.

I am a little shocked at the implication that not every school library already possesses a copy. Can that be true? What do they have, then? Harry Potter? Vampires? Or do they prefer one of those modern translations in which "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity" is lyrically rendered as "Perfectly pointless, says the Teacher. Everything is pointless"? That is Ecclesiastes, 1:2, as you'll find it in the Common English Bible. And you can't get much more common than that, although admittedly the God's Word translation provides stiff competition with "absolutely pointless" and the Good News Bible challenges strongly with "useless, useless".

Where to start? Labour decided that not all schools need a library any more and the Tories apparently agree. So the first sentence should probably read 'I am a little shocked that not all schools have a library,' which is a sentence I could agree with wholeheartedly. As it stands, it's little more than petulent whingeing. Our school library doesn't have a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which is surely a crime against literature.

Then the further whingeing - 'they don't have a 17th century version of a book that is available in many more accessible versions but which I have a nostalgic attachment to because it reminds me of the old days at public school, but I BET they've got some of those books kids actually enjoy like that Harry Twilight fellow, eh?'

I suppose what's getting to me is the way that this whole issue seems to have become a faux-battleground where middle-England can indulge its nostalgia for some mythical Jennings/Mallory Towers-era of education (a world without If... and with no memory of Kes), and engage in yet another defence of white middle-class privilege against the evil hordes of philistines with their 'pointless'es and their 'useless'es on their Klout Twitterbooks - why, public school-educated white men are the *real* oppressed class!

And this is the battle they pick? Honestly, what do we all actually, in the sense of 'how does this help education' rather than 'how does it make Mail readers feel', gain from Gove's vanity project, other than the chance to bury a book (with his name printed in gold on the spine, no less) at the back of the stockroom?

It's not relevant to Key Stage 3 English or RE. It's not part of any of the major GCSE RE specs and is highly unlikely to form part of the English or Eng Lit GCSE specs either, I suspect. It's not useful for A Level New Testament study either, for the twin reasons of unreliability and inaccessibility. What a pointless, pointless act to become a national priority that requires the intervention of the Secretary of State and multiple comment pieces in newspapers.

So that's it. The only national story relating to RE in my memory and it's a bunch of fatuous reactionary dicks belly-aching about whether people should be made to read more 'thees' and 'thous' than they would be expected to if they aren't from Staffordshire. And RE is NOT ABOUT THAT.

Trust me, I'm a Marxist RE teacher.

Oh, for Gods' Sake

There are many reasons not to like Michael Gove. But aside from his elitism, parochialism, incompetence, viciousness, fundamental opposition to the concept of public service, his general meanness of spirit and possession of less charm than Arnold J Rimmer, his stupidity is what is currently annoying me.

This isn't actually related to the strikes - that's a whole other seething cauldron of outrage. This is his move to put a copy of the KJV in every school in the land - with a foreword of his own.

OK, it's only 2 lines, so it's not worth getting too worked up about. But he's not a Biblical scholar. He can't have anything to add to the text other than his own opinion on it - and who the fuck cares what he thinks about the Bible? It's only a few months since he tried to remove the statutory requirement to teach RE from the national curriculum, and has completely opposed including RE in the EBacc. And judging from his behaviour, he clearly isn't much of a Christian either, so sending round copies of his no doubt awe-inspiring thoughts on the KJV just smacks of arrogance.

What really annoys me about this is not the redundancy of spending money at a time when he's cutting everything else on a book that all schools have plenty of anyway (as the National Secular Society have pointed out).

There are 2 major annoyances that outrank this:

1. He doesn't seem to be in a rush to send out copies of other major religious texts. The excuse for this surfeit of self-promotion is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the KJV. Last year was the 100th anniversary of the first simultaneous English-Arabic translation of the Qur'an. I don't remember a free copy turning up at school.




2. The KJV is not a good translation. Most of the NT is based on a single, late, Greek edition and from an educational point of view the NRSV is much better, being a modern English edition based on decades of study by scholars piecing together a representative text based on the widest possible selection of the most accurate available texts. Personally, I wouldn't use the KJV in teaching.

In short, another day, another reason plethora of reasons to dislike the secretary of state for education.

The Post of Surreal Frivolity, or, Why Kevin Ovenden Has the Head of a Giant Fly

This has nothing to do with anything really, but it's been hanging around the periphery of my mind's eye (not sure where that would be - in the corner next to the Locked Trunk of Teenage Embarrassment?) and tonight seems to be the time to expunge it.

Here it is: I think Kevin Ovenden has the head of a giant fly.

Wait, come back! Let me explain.

I've never met Kevin Ovenden. From what I've seen of his comments on Lenin's Tomb he seems like a sane and interesting commentator. This is in no way a comment on Kevin Ovenden.

On Lenin's Tomb he posts like this:

Perhaps some of you already see the problem. For the rest, watch MY MAGNIFICENT BRAIN.

In my head, Kevin's ID becomes:

See where I'm going with this?

Exactly!

See, I'm not mad! NOT MAD, I TELL YOU!

KEVIN OVENDEN HAS THE HEAD OF A GIANT FLY!!!!!!


Sorry, Kevin. I'm not entirely sure why I had to share this. Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, I'm off to bed. Like the Dread Pirate Roberts, I'll probably kill this entry in the morning.

The Louise Mensch Beverage Scale of Permitted Capitalist Criticism

Following Louise Mensch's remarkable revelation of a new form of critique of political economy on Friday



I have reflected on this remarkable insight. If she's right, then whilst the liberal left are 'swooning at her brio' we're missing valuable research time. As Marxists we are bound by our own credo to rigorous materialist analysis, and beverage consumption is such an obviously materialist habit that it deserves close attention. Let's elaborate this remarkable theory, I thought to myself in my secret underground Marxist lab at Proletarian Towers. And to that end, I have devised the 'Louise Mensch Beverage Scale of Permitted Capitalist Criticism' heretoforeafter referred to as the Mensch Scale.

The Mensch scale is a comparison scale between 0 and 4, where a level 4 subject is permitted full criticism of capitalism up to and including promoting anarcho-syndicalism as an alternative means of the self-reproduction of society, and level 0 represents someone whose consumption of beverages enmeshed in the capitalist system of production should just keep their fucking mouths shut, the ingrate serf scum.

Like the Beaufort Scale, we must have examples so that if we are in conversation with someone we know exactly the point at which any criticisms of the capitalist system or any of its constituent parts goes beyond the permitted maximum. As soon as this point is reached, the correct response is to raise your hand firmly and instruct the vagabond to halt their discourse. 'Cease your mimsy prattle, fool,' instruct the presumptuous ignoramus, 'for the way in which liquids that trickle through your digestive tract AS YOU PRESUME TO PEDDLE YOUR CRITICAL MIND-TURNIPS THIS DAY were produced preclude your being given an attentive ear.'

THUS WILL CONSERVATIVE DISCOURSE TRIUMPH.

As an alternative, you may use the classic 'T' symbol beloved of basketball sportspersons to indicate a 'time out'. In our case of course, the 'T' will stand for actual tea.

Enough elucidation - I realise that you must be gagging to classify yourself, family and friends!

Level 4
Permitted criticism of capitalism = Total. Academies, Goldman-Sachs, concentration of capital, etc.
To achieve level 4, you must drink untreated mineral water collected yourself from a babbling mountain brook near your hermitage. Of course, you must not boil the water before drinking it, unless you mine the metal to create a kettle yourself. Purchasing so much as a camping kettle with one of those little whistle cap thingies on it basically takes you right back to the level of the Koch brothers.

Famous Level 4s: none.

Level 3
Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = TNCs, sweatshop labour and the military-industrial complex.
To achieve level 3, you are allowed to drink water from the tap, despite its being produced by privatised water companies. You *must not* add Robinsons' Barley Water to it to make a weak lemon drink, however.
Famous Level 3s: basically, this is John Harvey Kellogg.

Level 2
Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = privatised train networks, quality of the gifts in Kinder Surprise.
To achieve level 2, you may drink tap water and fairtrade tea and coffee. On no account must you purchase this coffee from some kind of franchise or drink Ribena. THIS WILL RENDER YOUR UNHAPPINESS WITH TRAIN JOURNEYS NULL AND VOID.
Famous Level 2s: Lucy Mangan, probably.

Level 1
Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = the speed of service in Nando's. AND NOTHING ELSE.
Level 1s will drink Fentiman's lemonade at National Trust gift shops, then think NOTHING of washing it down with R Whites. Why don't these people just FUCK OFF AND DIE? They probably drink Ty-Phoo, the despicable BASTARDS.
Famous Level 1s: YOU. If you're LUCKY.

Level 0
Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = What on earth makes you think you can criticise capitalism, you insignificant, smelly turd? IT PROVIDES YOUR BEVERAGES.
Level 0s would drink Coca-Cola at a Showcase Cinema, EVEN IF SOMEONE WAS WATCHING.
Famous Level 0s: given the size of the sample, it was hard to narrow it down, but here's two:

Luis 'Chile' Eduardo, Columbian Sinaltrainal union official working with employees of Coca-Cola bottlers, who routinely receives messages like this:

The Paramilitaries of Magdalenena Medio, The Black Eagles, call on the terrorist Coca-Cola trade unionists to stop bad mouthing the Coca-Cola Corporation given that they have caused enough damage already. If there is no response we declare them military targets of the Black Eagles, and they will be dealt with as they prefer: death, torture, cut into pieces, coup de grace. No more protests![1]

Erol Turedi, one of the Coca-Cola Icecek (Coca-Cola Turkish subsidiary) workers sacked for asking for a wage increase and organising union representation in their workplace. At a demonstration where 200 sacked workers walked into the Dudullu plant,

'1,000 police [were] drafted in to cope with the 200 protestors. The Cevik Kuvvet - 'robo cops' in full body armour - mass outside and are deployed into the building in groups. They fill the corridors. They occupy the balcony. They take the floor above the workers. Hundreds of police appear in the atrium, with riot shields and batons at the ready. The police charge nets six arrests and forces the protestors into a corner, the women and children huddled at the back by the walls. The men stand in front of them. They have linked arms together in an effort to protect themselves and their families, but when the assault finally comes their efforts are proved to be instinctive rather than practical. In front of them are 1,000 police and behind them the children have started to cry.

Finally Coca-Cola's managers agree to talk to the union. So while the police corner the families downstairs [union] President K and the union lawyer go upstairs for talks. It is late afternoon when they gather in a meeting room, which is small. Around a table, which is large. Alongside the managers, which is essential. And next to the police ... which is baffling.

... If events were going badly upstairs, events downstairs took an unexpected turn for the worse. On the frontline Erol looked out at the police - 'they just pulled down the gas masks and that was when we knew.' ... Their eyes widen as they tell of stumbling into each other in panic and blindness, gasping for breath. Thye curse the polie as children were separated from their parents and the men beaten with riot sticks. And they hold out their hands when they talk of being bundled into the police wagons outside, of reaching up to the small windows to gasp for fresh air - only to be sprayed in the face by the police.[1]

Shut up! You drank Coke! What do you think you're doing, Level 0s?
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[1] Mark Thomas, Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola, 2008

How Not to Get a Good Night's Sleep

I was about to go to bed when I thought I'd check up on Lenin. It turns out he's had an article in today's Graun about the Murdoch implosion, which obviously I'm finding satisfying on a number of levels. Specifically he was commenting on Ed 'Twat' Miliband's decision to stick the boot in now the beast is wounded*.

Point is, much though I enjoy Richard's writing, CiF becomes an even worse bearpit than usual under his articles. A brief survey of the comments suggests at least 3 sub-species of Trollus Cryptofascistus.

• The 'cynic'. This is a common troll endemic to CiF threads. Cynics usually acknowledge that something is not good but then proceed to offer up whatever banal platitudes they use to ensure they don't actually have to do anything about it and lets them drown out the little squeals of guilt that occasionally erupt from the dustier layers of their reptilian hindbrains. These trolls' comments usually have the effect of siding with the aggressor against the victim - ach, you see it every day in the playground, bless them. Typical examples include iamaliberal:

Labour - the party with the bravery to kick someone when they are already down.

• The 'clearly a hack'. Typical examples include Ilohan:

Whilst the media, liberal commenators, Ed Miliband etc get in a hysterical tizzy about events that happened years ago and are, in any case, a side effect of having a free press....1000s of people are losing their jobs in Derby cos we have no meaningful industrial policy**...

But some dodgy phone tapping is a national crisis...

I don't know...but have we al lost our minds?

• The 'Sir Thickington Thickalot'. These are generally just your examples of either pig-ignorance or outright barefaced lying. Possibly a witches' brew of both. Examples include flatpackhamster:

Did you know that Richard Seymour, the author of this article, is an active member of the Socialist Worker's Party? Did you know that his party campaigns for totalitarian rule and glorifies the Soviet era?

The last ones do at least have comedy value. However, it brings out the worst in me.

--------------------------------

* For the record, it's great that he is sticking the boot in, long may it continue. However little confidence I have that it will, should Murdoch manage to pull something out of the bag to stop the rot and begin reinflating his rancid bladder of a media empire. Maybe he could do something about his unfortunate tattoo whilst he's at it.

**PS - it's not because 'we have no meaningful industrial policy' - at least, not in the sense I suspect Ilohan means. It is, as ever, because of the way capitalism runs industry. And if you want to stop the job losses, there's a public meeting next Tuesday.

UPDATE: Having grabbed a few hours sleep, I've come to the conclusion that in fact this is a pretty normal CiF crowd. And in some ways, isn't that the biggest disappointment of them all, eh?

Hahahaahaaa

Off to a strike meeting in a minute, but this tickled me:

'Is US TV too leftwing?'

And as an example of leftwing, the Graun's put up a picture of The West Wing. I shit you not.

Dear America,
Thank you for reminding me how comparitively unfucked our political discourse still is and how vitally important it is that, to paraphrase Lenin, you be removed from your position and replaced with something which differs in all other respects from you.

Yours etc

The Proletarian Tide
(dictated but not read)

Xmas - The Prologue Continues.

Funny Thing...

... but I've become so familiar with the sleazy, dishonest ways that the Fail does business that I now only have to read as far as the words 'the author, James Slack' to know exactly what's coming next.

How long before he becomes an entry in the OED?

Slack, vb. To repeat casually racist and factually inaccurate tropes about asylum, immigration or brown people for the purposes of meeting tabloid deadlines and reinforcing readers' prejudices about 'foreigns'.

'Hey, are we meeting Tozzer down the Dog and Hammer later?'
'I dunno, it'll just be another Slackfest.'

A Party You Just Don't Want to Go To.

I get emails from Cage Prisoners. It's a worthy cause. Sometimes though, you think 'was that really how you wanted your header to look?

Ad Criticism

Watching the new series of Peep Show. Here are some random thoughts that occurred during the ad break.

Does that bloke do all the ad voiceovers, or just anything to do with telecommunications?

Attention CGI'd-to-look-sort-of-plasticine new fathers: this is how it works in a maternity ward - if you don't tell the nurse, she will just keep giving you more babies.

Davidoff isn't going to be the person people want him to be any more. He's going to interfere with children.

Everyone involved in Skoda needs to die.

McDonald's food is not xmas themed and everyone involved in this pathetic attempt to persuade us that it is should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

I always knew this day would come, and wondered how it would be, yet now that it has I feel strangely ... serene*

The inevitable is happening, apparently, and one of the few women politicians that can make Thatcher seem vaguely human - or at least remind you that in the good old days evil villains used to be vaguely intelligent - might try the presidential run that everyone has been expecting from her.

The only question is whether this is to be (a) welcomed, because she's so patently unelectable and the Republican machine is divided so might not be willing to pull the same scams they did for the last fucknuckle; or (b) feared on the grounds that enough people might be pissed off with Obama not to vote and enough people are downright insane enough to go to a voting booth and pull a lever marked 'Palin'?**

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* Yes, you have heard this before.

**Yes the allusion to a gallows was in there - obviously in this case a self-operated one.

NEWS!

(imagine it being shouted by a drunken Johnny Vegas for full effect. Yes, I've been watching Attention Scum! too much recently)

Since people neither I nor anyone who reads this blog will ever meet* are getting married, completely understandably nothing else appears to be happening today.

But just in case you were under the delusion that EVENTS can still happen even when the NEW MARIE DIANA is GOING TO UNDERGO AN ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE before the Earth has next rolled around to its current position in its orbit of a ball of flaming hydrogen 1.4 million kilometres across and 150 million kilometres away, here are some illusory gobbets of THINGS.

• Despite compensation being offered to the Gitmo detainees, Shaker Aamer has been held without charge for more than 9 years now. Cage Prisoners will be holding a rally about his case in London on 11th December.
• Sussex University is under occupation by students calling for no rise in tuition fees.
• Cameron has stopped paying his photograher from general taxation.
• Viktor Bout, arms dealer and scumbag extraordinaire, has been extradited to face trial in New York.
• Francis Maude is ConDemNation's Mephistopheles (and a mysterious organisation run from a private house near Stratford on Avon has direct access to the whips' office). OK, I was a little slow on that one.
• The President of the European Council thinks Ireland could destroy Europe. Go, you priest-infested backwater you! Honestly I have no idea whether this is a serious possibility or pointless hyperbole. My instinct is the latter, but who knows? We all remember the damage Father Dougal Maguire could cause with a poorly placed comment, and I assume the republic is basically just like a sitcom about priests.
• There's probably loads more STUFF too. But I can't process more than however many news stories this was in a single day or it all goes out of my ... thing. You know, with the hair and the eyes. Inside that.
• Yeah, that.
  

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*Although to be strictly honest, I did used to work for his dad. He is the one who's dad is Charles, right? He's not the other one? I get confused.

When in doubt, blame the victim.

A classic right-wing move when one of their policies turns out to be very bad for people is to blame the victims of that policy. There are probably a gazillion examples but when I saw IDS's nauseating plans, the first one that leapt to mind was Norman Tebbit’s ‘on yer bike’ attitude at a time when Thatcher’s policies had just cut 2 million jobs from the economy.
It is an exact replication of the same calculated idiocy (by which I mean that if you look at it for a moment you can see how stupid it is, and assume that the ministers responsible are cretins rather than what is actually the case: they are committing deliberate acts of evil in public), whereby employment secretaries conveniently forget that we don’t live in an industrial democracy, and most people don’t have much choice about work, and assume that the reason there is so much unemployment must be because there are so many unemployed. Therefore, goes the ‘thinking’, if you make life hard enough for people who have 'chosen' to be unemployed, this will incentivise them to find the work that 2.5 million of their comrades also seem to be a bit too lazy to find.

Actually, a more accurate title might be: When in doubt, don't just blame the victims. Beat them up a bit more. 'Hey you, you haven't got a job! That makes you basically a criminal, yeah? Here's a bin bag and a rubber glove. Off you go.'

I think what sickens me most is that it’s not even new. I’m assuming that when drawing up the policies, one of the remaining civil servants/photographers were sent round to get some clippings from a 1981 copy of the Times.

Have You Ever Wondered How Epic Modern Poetry Might Sound if Read by Stephen Hawking?

Wonder no more with Alan Ginsberg's Howl:

Next: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner followed by John Milton's Paradise Lost.

ATTENTION SCUM!

With apologies to Simon Munnery (and Stewart Lee, who directed).

Will Britain's Lingering Xenophobia Save Multiculturalism?

The Germans are a little behind the times. Over here, racists have been claiming that 'multiculturalism has failed' for ages - ever since racist attacks started being taken seriously by the police, in fact.

Still, since a quick visit to the Mash today I have a message for everyone who's worried about the rise of the far right in the UK. In the words of i was a cub scout, I want you to know that there is always hope.

Since the immediate reaction of satirists to quotes like:

The comments come amid rising anti-immigration feeling in Germany.

A recent survey suggested more than 30% of people believed the country was "overrun by foreigners".

was to reach for the big blood-red button with a swastika on it,


perhaps anti-racists can break the seal on the 'you know who else thinks multiculturalism has failed?' bottle.

What I'm saying is, whilst this story's given the morons a field day,


it does seem that the anti-multiculturalism crowd have just permanently godwinned themselves. Nice.

I forgot just the one thing...

At the time of the Terry Jones Qur'an burning idiocy I was a bit blase about it. He was so obviously a massive wanker that there didn't seem to be anything much to say about it. In fact I was fairly thoroughly agreed with the Daily Mash on the subject.


But I forgot. The most basic lesson. The one that anyone who's had contretemps with racist organisations should remember.

Idiots. Copy. Each. Other.

Six men arrested after Koran burnt on 9/11

One man in a grey Adidas tracksuit and white trainers, who has a blue cloth wrapped around his head as a burka-style mask, makes a series of obscene gestures towards the book as it burns.

Laughing, the tracksuited gang shouts “This is for the boys in Afghanistan. September 11, international burn a Koran day, for all the people of 9/11.

“This is how we do it in Gateshead, right.”

One man then attempts to add more fuel, but instead sets the plastic petrol can on fire. He then kicks the book across the yard, leaving a trail of flames which he is forced to hastily stamp out.

For the record: no it isn't, you twunt. That's why you got arrested. For an encore, the EDL turned up to an SWP branch meeting to try and assault my comrades, and assaulted two Irish Centre members of staff for good measure.

What a bunch of twunting twunty twuntbags.

In short: copycat crimes are a symptom of people who haz teh dumm in the worst kind of way.

Look, it's over there! Insists Gove.*

The so-called "no touch" rules that discourage teachers from restraining or comforting schoolchildren are to be abolished as part of a "new deal" for teachers, the education secretary, Michael Gove, said yesterday.

Personally, I didn't get into this job to hug kids but to teach them. If I can support pupils, that's fine, but I don't want children to see me as part of their extended family either. I'm a professional with a job to do, not a babysitter.

Slightly less callously, and more in tune with what I most especially dislike about this idea, it's important to have a clear 'don't touch the kids' policy for several reasons. An atmosphere where pupils need to fear the teachers physically is a bad atmosphere for learning. It erodes trust between teacher and pupil. Also, kids can be very antagonising and badly behaved - pretty much every school I've worked in has been in a deprived or inner-city area and had behaviour issues of one kind or another. The last thing a stressed teacher approaching the limits of their temper needs is to feel that there is some leeway around physical contact with the kids. It's better for us as well as for them.

I know of schools - heck I've worked in them for brief periods - where there are panic buttons on the walls and teachers carry walkie-talkies. There was one school in Newcastle (not one I've worked in I'm afraid, although one I did visit on one or two occasions in my previous professional life) with metal detectors and an on-site police officer. There are serious behaviour problems at these schools.

But:
(a) there is no miracle solution to this - bringing back the birch will not make the pupils better, in fact I'd say that it would be more likely to prolong the cycle of violence.
(b) violence in schools is always found in the most deprived parts of the community, those most suffering from joblessness and poverty. The very problems, I should point out, that Gove and his government are doing their level best to exacerbate.
(c) this is a tiny minority of schools. In most schools teachers do not feel threatened by their pupils. Certainly I never have. And even if this should change in the future, and some pupil does sincerely make a threat against my personal safety, any putative moves back towards corporal punishment will be a terrible backwards step. How can we teach children that violence solves nothing if we are prepared to use it ourselves?

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* I can't help but feel this is the first salvo in an attempt to blame bad behaviour and school problems in the coming years on pupils, as schools are sapped of vital resources, much-needed refurbishments are shelved and class sizes grow.

Hahahaahaaa, pt 94

This is priceless. If you're in the doldrums because the new Labour leader is marginally less ghastly than the one the Graun have been crowning since the election but still nothing to get excited about, at least look at how terrified teh Fail is. First there's this:
Ed Miliband is the Thatcher of the Left, apparently, allowing daring newshound James Forsyth to use 'doomsday scenario' and 'insurgent' to describe the narrow victory of Ed over David.*

But this hysteria is not only confined to the reactionary press. The Graun's coverage isn't much better, with the following making it in at paragraph four:

MPs who supported David Miliband warned that Ed Miliband's reliance on the union vote was a "disaster" for the party – leaving it open to charges that its leader would be in the pocket of its leftwing paymasters, and wide open to attack from the Tories and rightwing elements in the media.

Or, 'you can't vote for Ed, the tories won't like it!' Inspired.**

But by far the best has to be this:
Ed Miliband in Not Married Shocker!
Love the caption under the photo, using the word modern in the way only the Fail can (i.e. as a pejorative)

And check out the opening paragraphs...

As the son of a North London Marxist intellectual, you might expect Ed Miliband to have a less than conventional approach to traditional family values.

And the birth certificate of his 15-month-old son, Daniel, would appear to bear this out, as it includes everything except any mention of the boy’s proud father.

Although the section headed ‘Father’ is blank, Daniel’s mother Justine Thornton is named, along with her Manchester birthplace and profession, barrister.

Daniel was born on June 2 last year and the birth ­certificate was signed by Justine in Camden, near the couple’s London home, five weeks later on July 9.

There is no suggestion that Ed Miliband is not Daniel’s father and when asked why his name is not on the register, a spokeswoman for the new Labour leader suggested he simply had not had time to fill in the form.

'Paul, we've reached the bottom. I think we've scraped our way through the wood. Look, I can see the floor. Can I stop now?'
'No, Daily Mail Reporter, you may not! Scrape, damn you! Scrape! If only we can shriek loud enough, maybe people will start to think this is an actual problem of some kind! Can you find a picture of a saucily-dressed young mother of the kind Ed might well shack up with when his hedonistic sex-crazed mind takes its fancy? The kind that our readers fear will make them go blind if they see, and induces in them a fear of their own repressed and furtive attitudes toward intercourse?'
'Not in time for the first editions, sir.'
'Damn, just run one of him and his partner looking happy and suggest there's something immoral going on beneath the surface, and that this is somehow anybody else's business, then. There'll still be plenty of pics from the X Factor to lure the punters in.'

EPIC FAIL, Daily Mail.

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*Special mention goes to alluding to a fear of 'Ed's willingness to indulge the party' - the Fail's genuine fear of Labour members as feral beasts who do not know their place and will be coming for your Buy to Lets and begonias given the slightest nod from on high.

**In many ways this election is of course an indictment of how far Labour has fallen to Thatcherite nonsense, that the union vote is being seen as a problem for the Party. But there we go. And don't give me any of that 'unelectable' nonsense either. See here (unless you've got the book, which goes into more detail).

So anyway, I was just wondering...

Let's not worry for a second about the ex-Nazi* whose office (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Inquisition) was not exactly enthusiastic about pursuing allegations of child abuse but still lays claim to a billion followers complaining about the 'marginalisation' of Christianity. I was more thinking about his now legendary speech yesterday. Just after the Nazi reference. This bit.

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a 'reductive vision of the person and his destiny'

Now I've already had a dig at his Nazi past, as has everyone else on the internet. Just thought it might be worth mentioning that Italy and Spain were both heavily RC nations in the 20th century, and, well you know what bastions of human freedom they became. So you don't need to look as far afield as ... well one doesn't want to appear indelicate, does one? As far afield as You-Know-Who to find a place for the Vatican at the fascist table. Phew, I think I managed to avoid Godwining this piece. Close call - that Ratzinger and Nazism, it's just going to dog him like a child-sex allegation at the Criminal Records Bureau, isn't it? Sorry about that.

Damn, I mentioned them! Three times!

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*Yes, I know it was the law when he joined the Hitler Youth and I know he was only a teenager, but in fairness, he started it.