Sunday 23 January 2011

Mail, you owe me a new bullshit-detector. Mine just exploded.

We all know that the Mail's headline writers have a somewhat... uncomfortable relationship with reality. So when I saw an article entitled "Gay messages built into maths lessons for children as young as FOUR", my bullshit-ometor immediately went into hyperdrive.



These are the first two lines of the story: "Young children are to be taught about homosexuality in their maths, geography, science and English lessons, it has emerged. As part of a Government-backed drive to ‘celebrate the gay community’, maths problems could be introduced that involve gay characters".

Oh, and look - there's a big picture of two men holding hands, with the caption "Same sex: Geography lessons will explain why homosexuals move to cities and language classes will teach gay vocabulary (picture posed by models)".

Right, that makes it perfectly clear what's going on then, doesn't it?

Oh, wait. This is the Mail.

What this story is actually based on is the fact that Schools Out, a LGBT pressure group, are to offer free downloadable lesson plans that mention LGBT people, as well as so-called 'normal people' for use in schools, to coincide with LGBT History Month.

Because Schools Out received some money from the Training And Development Agency For Schools (TDA) to help develop these lesson plans, and the TDA are a non-departmental public body (FYI Mail, nobody calls them 'quangos' any more), that makes these plans "[g]overnment backed".

I read the TDA's PDF file about their role and remit, and how they hope to implement it, by the way - and at no point is any plan along the lines of  "Step 3: Indocrinate small children into becoming morally-degenerate, godless deviants by letting them know that not all families are headed by two heterosexual WASP parents, thus facilitating the downfall of the UK" mentioned. Just so you know.

Of course, the Mail then go with the traditional contradiction of the headline, when half-way through the article, they admit that it's all bollocks: "Although the lesson plans are not compulsory, they are backed by the Department for Education and will be available for schools to download from the Schools Out website.
Sue Sanders, from Schools Out, said: ‘All we are attempting to do is remind teachers that LGBT people are part of the population and you can include them in most of your lessons when you are thinking inclusively.’ David Watkins, a teacher who is involved in the scheme, said: ‘When you have a maths problem, why does it have to involve a straight family or a boyfriend and girlfriend? Why not two boys or two girls? It’s not about teaching about gay sex, it is about exposing children to the idea that there are other types of people out there,’ he added." (Sensible parts emphasised)

Of course, the rest of the article is like a Mail reading bigot's wet dream. For no reason whatsoever to do with the story, it mentions
  • 'And Tango Makes Three', which for some reason, they view as 'the Left's' version of 'Mein Kampf'*.  
  • A frothing soundbite from their favourite rent-a-gobs, the Tax Payers Alliance, as John O'Connell popped up with this little pearl of knee-jerk stupidity: "‘Parents will wonder if this is a right use of funds and time, particularly when we keep hearing how tight budgets are". 
  • "British schools tumble down international league tables in maths, English and science". 
The article also contains lots of lovely phrases like "[t]hey will also mean youngsters are exposed to images of same-sex couples", a line which is so full of both stupidity and malicious bile that it made me wince upon reading it.

The comments aren't a pretty sight either. At 07.15 on 24/1/11, the best rated comment was this:
"Over my dead body would that subject have been taught to my son when he was four. That's too young, sex in any form has no place in the minds or the environment of young children. They'll have time enough in their lives to have to think about it, they should be allowed to have their childhoods in peace." - Rose, Ireland, 23/1/2011 22:35 (375 green arrows). You have to applaud Rose's commitment to ignorant-twattery that she managed to miss the entire story in the article by a country mile, really.
In fact - the six worst rated comments, all with a minimum of 80 red arrows, were all people pointing out that the story is bullshit. Think about that. There's at least 80 people who read this article online and either a) failed to see the glaring contradictions in the headline and article, or b) are that opposed to acknowledging the existence of LGBT people to children, that they're prepared to ignore it.


*Seriously, they hate those damn penguins.



7 comments:

  1. I wish mainstream media would just go away and die. I really do. There are enough real issues in the world for people to get up in arms about, so why do they feed them this bullshit?

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  2. People forget, papers are there to sell papers and not to inform.
    With people being people, they will always gravitate to the biggest pile of made up bile they spot, hence completing the circle of non factual filth.

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  3. I often wonder who these newspaper people are and why they push particular agendas which, quite frankly, are based on ignorance. Their agenda seems to be not to enlighten people with un-biased clearly reported news but to twist a few facts into a *story* and rely on people not checking up on them. What is it they wish to achieve by turning different sections of the British people against others. Sowing such discord is a pretty evil thing to do (and I use the word evil in a very pure and traditional sense of that word). Who are these people and who do they think that they are?

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  4. This story was run in the Telegraph first (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8275937/Gay-lessons-in-maths-geography-and-science.html), and the Fail version was essentially the same. This makes me think it was either plagiarised, or created from a press release.

    It's interesting to see how the headline has changed. Last night, it read, "Children as young as FOUR to be taught about homosexuality under plans to ‘celebrate gay community’". Changing it to, "Gay messages built into school maths lessons for children as young as FOUR" is disgusting sensationalism about what is, essentially, a perfectly sensible scheme.

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  5. Agreed. I'd much rather my little sister grew up in a world with a 'gay agenda' than one with a 'bigoted-fuckwit agenda'. The whole thing is just sickening.

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  6. Okay Fail, let's see:
    Alan Turing - Mathematician: Code Breaker and Computer Science Pioneer - oh, and Gay. Chemically castrated because he admitted to being homosexual and took his own life aged only 42 as a result of the effect the chemicals had on him. I wonder how much more computer science and mathematical theory might have advanced had he lived?
    Leonardo da Vinci, - genius, mathematician, did a bit of painting and was, apparently, gay. He was accused of sodomy on 2 occassions and whilst charges were dropped, it seems these accusations affected him and made him paranoid.
    Alexander the Great - conquered the world - gay. Interestingly he caused a scandal when he fell in love with a courtier, not because the courtier was male, but because he was Persian, so there must have been some Fail readers even then.
    Sergei Eisenstein - Latvian - Director - gay
    Hadrian - the Emperor
    David Hockney - Bradfordian - gay
    Richard the Lionheart
    TE Lawrence
    Eleanor Roosevelt
    Carravaggio
    Michelangelo
    Erasmus
    Keynes
    Ludvig Wittgenstein
    Aristotle
    James Dean
    A few Popes

    and just for the sake of balance:
    Ronnie Kray and Dale Winton

    What would our world be like without them I wonder?

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  7. Strategy meeting; I'm surprised you don't have a copy already.Please see below for details of Agenda.

    The Gay Agenda;

    1. How using a combination of long division and foul smelling compounds, our Lesbian Ninja Unit shall convince the nations most
    attractive ladies to join with us.

    2. Achieving the target of 99% of all bars becoming a lesbian version of Coyote Ugly; only our girls will dance wearing naught but bikinis. Any examples of best practise regarding Coyote Ugly-ing would be appreciated.

    3. How best to ensure comfortable shoes are tax exempt to all the ladies in our team.

    4. Convincing Britain to go for the veggie option.

    5. Next weeks fell walking.

    6. Any other Business

    7. Close

    ReplyDelete