As every other blogger has posted their recollections of Indy Ref day I felt that, as is customary for me, I couldn’t see a bandwagon without jumping on.

The major hurdle is that I have no particular recollection of that day, so as with when I’m behind on my time-sheets at work I just checked my sent e-mail folder to see what I’d been up to…

The day started with a short discussion on why I dislike applying mean scores to open-ended numeric questions (household income, for example).  I don’t believe this impacted the voting to any measurable extent.

A little later I shared the day’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic with my boss.  It is reproduced below and its effect on the outcome of the vote should be clear to the reader.

Shortly before 10 I complained that the wi-fi in my office still wasn’t operational.  There is no record in my mails as to whether I considered democracy to be running smoothly.

I completed my time-sheet for the previous week, presumably using the exact methodology I’m using now, and nagged one of my staff to do likewise.

As I was recruiting at the time I reviewed some CVs, made some notes and short-listed some candidates.  Naturally details must remain confidential, but history will show that my selections had a negligible impact on the future independence of Scotland.

Before leaving for an afternoon’s holiday I prompted my colleagues to chip into one collection for a member of my team who was leaving and another for one who was getting married. I also asked them to sponsor me to run naked into the North Sea, but I do this every year, whether Scotland is part of the union or not.

In the early evening I responded to an enquiry as to whether a specific piece of work could be completed early the follow week.  I voted ‘yes’ on that particular matter.

There ends my e-mail trail for the historic day.  I’m just happy to have played my part in it.

Almost immediately after Jeremy Corbyn’s election to the Labour leadership the Prime Minister tweeted this…

This sentiment was tweeted, slightly reworded, by other MPs and more still gave the same story to the press.  This was the party line.

If you’re a Conservative supporter, or just not a fan of the left, it’s a message of self-evident truths.

For Corbynites it’s outrageous name-calling.

The liberal will see it as the ugly face of the party machine.

Or you could see it as the output of a party that gets things done.  They knew, to a man, what their response was going to be and had key people lined up to spread the word through a variety of media.  Twitter took the piss, of course, but if Cameron had been announcing the imminent arrival of hundreds of thermonuclear missiles Twitter would have taken the piss.  Saying that people retweeted the message to laugh at it is to miss the point…they retweeted it. The opponents of the Government played an active part in the dissemination of its message.

Plus, you have to grudgingly admire a party that can so seamlessly get all of its MPs singing from the same hymn sheet, especially when compared to a Labour Party that’s unable to get all of its MPs to even go to the same church.

This is why the Tories win elections, not because of their politics, but because they understand so much better than the opposition how the game of politics is played.

We can rail against that, call it spin, accuse them of having the media on their side and claim it’s unfair, but it looks pretty effective compared to Corbyn’s strategy of handing the media ammunition and then feigning surprise when they shoot him.  Honestly, I’ve no problem with his policies harking back to the 80s, but did we have to forget everything we learned since then?

Labour has damaged itself beyond repair.  If they keep Corbyn then they lose the right of the party; and you just know that Cameron has 20 Labour MPs waiting to jump ship that he’s saving for the point when their defection will do the most damage to a party already on the ropes.  If they ditch Corbyn then they set adrift half a million or more supporters, who will adopt as an article of faith that his left-wing policies would have won an election for them.

I’m sure there are a few Corbyn fans pretty angry by now and I honestly empathise.  I’ve always leaned to the left (at the time of writing I’m a dues paying member of the Green party) and I genuinely wanted him to be brilliant, but he’s just not.  Leave aside the over-hyping of trivia like singing the national anthem, forget his more extreme policies that were dropping within the first 24 hours of him becoming leader, turn a blind eye to his dodgy friends – oh, you already were – and look just at his big show-boating moment, Prime Minister’s Questions.  Tell me honestly that wasn’t Cameron in the role of a professional goal-keeper letting an under-7s football team take penalties against him.  When he said  that there will be some things that he and Corbyn can work together on that was him condescendingly letting one trickle over the line, just to show he’s a nice guy.

I don’t think Cameron is a nice guy.  I can’t hear him say a sentence without feeling that it’s been carefully calculated to within 0.01 of a voter how much support it will gain, but that’s sort of the point…if the Conservative Party were Skynet then Cameron is the Terminator they’d build, and Labour’s response, who is looking more like Marvin the paranoid android armed with a home-made catapult, isn’t going to stop him.

We have wandered into a one party state, not through evil machinations of the right, but by the failure of the left to present a coherent and credible alternative.

But we’ve just had a brilliant example of how entryism can fuck change a party. We’ve reached a point where it’s going to be easier to steer the Conservatives than rebuild Labour, so now’s the time to join up with the only party that can win in 5 years time.  Maybe we together can steer them to the centre, or maybe we can just level the playing field by shafting them as comprehensively as we’ve shafted ourselves.

I’m here today to talk about a very serious issue – Twitter addiction.

The UK Government now estimates that up to 10m people in this country may be Twitter users, many of them teenagers, too young to drink or smoke, yet free to legally interact with social media, even when it involves members of the opposite sex or people with views at odds to the government’s own!

That is why the Home Office is today launching its “Twitter: Know the facts” campaign, to educate normal, decent people of the terrible dangers that come with this “social” media.

FACT 1: It starts with friends

It’s all too easy for children, teenagers, vulnerable adults and husbands to be drawn into Twitter because their “mates” use it.  These “mates” are typically keen to encourage them to set up their own accounts, pretending that doing so offers a richer and more rewarding social life, seemingly oblivious to how little time they now spend away from a keyboard or not staring at their smart-phone.

If you fear somebody you love may be at risk from Twitter users then start by looking at their friends.  Are they pasty and introverted?  Do they sometimes spend hours trying to think up terrible puns? Do they get twitchy if a sentence goes on for longer than 140 characters?  Do they use Twitter street slang, such as “retweets” or “favs”?  If so then it’s likely they are addicts and heavy users and it’s important to get them away from your loved ones and family as soon as possible.

FACT 2: It doesn’t stay with friends

Most people would be shocked to discover that upon opening a Twitter account you are “pushed” towards following other people, with the software making recommendations as to who you should follow…even suggesting people you don’t personally know!  Up to 98% of new users will follow Stephen Fry, even though he has the capacity to “tweet” non-stop hate-speech or sexually explicit images, should he wish to do so.

Even at this early stage Twitter users can slip straight into hard usage, typically replying to all Stephen Fry or J K Rowling “tweets” with “Plz follow me!”.  This sort of shameless behaviour isn’t just promiscuous, it’s un-English!

FACT 3: Celebrity users are a gateway to hard “tweeting”

Within the first month of “tweeting” most users will become addicted to getting “retweets” or gaining followers, and will begin obsessively checking their phones, tablets or PCs.  “Favs”, the methadone of Twitter addicts, may satiate them temporarily, but they will return within hours to try to be the first with a quip, pun, point of view or reference to Fight Club.

This need will drive them away from mainstream celebrities, carefully vetted by our over-intrusive media, and into the seedy worlds of minor celebs, punsters, parody accounts, Scottish lawyers or people who inexplicably want you to visit Wakefield.

This is the first stage of full-blown addiction, although the addict will normally still claim that it’s “harmless fun”.  However, by this stage 98% of Twitter users will un-follow Stephen Fry, realising that for him Twitter has become impossible, because of the thousands of people replying “Plz follow me!” to everything he tweets.  Research shows that by this point more than 60% of Twitter users will have developed abhorrent views. They may start to believe that some news sources are biased, that the government sometimes misleads them, that some issues are more complex than they first seem, or even that it’s acceptable to support the Green Party!

If you suspect that your friend, child or lover has reached this stage then they need professional help – call 999 and ask for a paramedic specialising in Twitter addiction.

FACT 4: It will not stop naturally!

The first time Twitter user will get a “buzz” when they are “retweeted” and will, initially, be delighted when 20 people follow them.  Within months that buzz will have worn off and they will be complaining that they only have 300 followers and got a measly 5 retweets on something they thought was good.

From then it’s just a slippery slope until they have 5,000 followers and are regularly hilariously joking that Stephen Fry refuses to follow them.  Their life has become their “brand”, they will have no interest in normal human activities, unless they might provide tweetable material, if forced to take a break from Twitter, perhaps to attend the funeral of a parent or spouse or you, they will start apologising for not tweeting.

They are now trapped in the “twitter bubble” from which they cannot escape unaided.  If they keep tweeting for the rest of their lives then eventually they will die!  There can never be sufficient followers or retweets for them.

FACT 5: You can help

You can easily help out your friend or loved one with just three simple steps, but I’m really close to 400 followers and I just thought of a good Corbyn joke, so I’ll pick this up next week, OK?

This blog post has moved to here.

Apologies for the inconvenience, but I really didn’t want to leave it to be surrounded by my usual bad jokes.

Inspired by @strnks viral ‘How Friends should have ended’ I have decided to revisit the depressing ending of the classic late 70s/early 80s space-opera Blakes 7.

If you’re too young or too drunk to remember the series followed the adventures of Rodger Blake, a political dissident convicted in a show-trial conducted by the evil galactic federation, who managed to get his hands on an alien-built spaceship, Liberator, that was the fastest and best at fighting ship in the galaxy [Inspired by show creator Terry Nation buying a Datsun Cherry, which had features unheard of in British cars of the period, such as rust-free door sills and starting].

Blake built a crew of other opponents of the federation, only ever hitting on the titular number 7 by counting AIs, a pro-type Raspberry Pi and, occasionally, stage hands who’d carelessly wandered onto the set.

Blake himself was thought killed at the end of the 2nd series and his 2nd in command, Avon Ladycalling, took over, further proving that sacking the man who drew the title card was a terrible mistake, missing apostrophes or not.

In the latter half of the 4th and final series Avon learns that Blake is still alive, and posing as a bounty hunter on a planet called Guada Prime, which was an agricultural world and not a fancy cheese as you may have thought.  Avon and the other =RANDBETWEEN(1,6) members of his crew go to this world and pretty much all end up dead.  Avon shoots Blake, believing him to be in bed with the Federation and its evil ruler, Servalan (Annie Lennox).

Federation troops rush in and surround Avon, who gives a half smile and raises his gun…and then the screen went black, shots were heard and Blakes 7 ended forever.  Myself and the show’s other fan have carried the mental scarring caused by that bleak ending for more than 30 years, but now it’s time to show how it really ended…

COMPLETE DARKNESS. SHOTS RING OUT

LIGHTS COME BACK ON TO REVEAL AVON, STILL STANDING, SURROUNDED BY A RING OF DEAD FEDERATION TROOPS.

SERVALAN IS BACKED AGAINST THE WALL, A LOOK OF TOTAL SHOCK ON HER FACE (IF SFX CAN’T MANAGE TOTAL SHOCK THEN LIGHT SURPRISE WILL DO)

THE CAMERA PANS ROUND THE ROOM TO REVEAL JEZ CORRBIN HOLDING TWO LASER PISTOLS.

SERVALAN: Jez Corrbin!  The clone of the man the Federation pounded into defeat 1,000 space years ago!

JEZ: That is correct, Servalan.  I have returned to end the hated Federation!

AVON: Me and my crew will stand behind you, Jez!

AVON LOOKS AT THE PILE OF CORPSES AT HIS FEET

AVON: Mainly me.

SERVALAN: This is madness, Jez, you can’t hope to defeat us. We have 50,000 ultra-death class star cruisers in this quadrant alone, we have mind control drugs, we have labour camps, we have battered the population of this galaxy into docile submission.

JEZ: The people of the galaxy will rise up to support me.  You will be crushed, Thatcher Servalan!

SERVALAN: Really?  They didn’t rise up to support the man you’re a clone of.

JEZ: That was a millennium ago.  Since then they have grown sick of the evil grip you exert on the galaxy and the freedoms you deny its citizen.

SERVALAN: We’re polling quite well, actually.

AVON: Polls prove nothing, Servalan, you know that!

AVON GOES TO FIRE HIS GUN AT SERVALAN, BUT ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS HIMSELF IN THE FOOT INSTEAD.

AVON (HOPPING): Ow! [TO SERVALAN] Your right-wing media attacks can’t stop me, bitch!

JEZ (TO AVON): Please don’t use insults.  If we’re going to take down the Federation it must be through a message of hope, a promise of freedom and re-galacticising interplanetary transport.

SERVALAN: You’re an old fool, Jez. The people of the galaxy may say they want freedom and peace, but what they really want is stability, a few more credits in their space-pockets and somebody willing to stop migrants from the Andromeda galaxy getting in.

JEZ: You underestimate the human spirit, Servalan, that was always your downfall.

SERVALAN: Yeah, right, that’s why we’ve been in power for 1,000 years – constant underestimation.

AVON: Can you just address the Andromeda migrants thing, Jez?  I’m not to sure about that.

AVON’S GUN GOES OFF, SHOOTING HIM IN THE OTHER FOOT.  HE FALLS TO THE FLOOR.

AVON: Ow! [TO SERVALAN] You’re only attacking me because you’re scared of me! I’ll show you!

AVON BEGINS RANDOMLY FIRING HIS GUN AT THE CORPSES ON THE FLOOR, SHOOTING AT BOTH EX-FEDERATION TROOPS AND HIS OWN FORMER CREW-MATES.  THE NOISE WAKES BLAKE WHO WASN’T DEAD, BECAUSE PLOT.

BLAKE (SITTING UP): Jez!

JEZ (TO BLAKE): Yes, Blake, I’ve returned to lead the fight against the Federation again.

BLAKE: Hang about, I was doing that a few years ago, and your tactics are out of date.  The galaxy has changed and you need to adapt.

AVON: ENOUGH!

AVON SHOOTS BLAKE OVER AND OVER AGAIN

AVON: He had that coming. He was a convicted criminal, you know.

SERVALAN: I’ve had enough as well. I’m leaving you to it.  When you’re in a position to take over the galaxy give me a shout.  See you in 1,000 years, boys.

SERVALAN EXITS

JEZ: Thank you for your support, Avon, even though you’ve crippled yourself and killed somebody who was on our side.  Now, in this room, we will spend the next 4 years plotting Servalan’s downfall.

AVON: And sending those Andromeda bastards back!

SCREEN FADES TO BLACK

JEZ (VOICE-OVER): OK, firstly; the planet Malvin-A really belongs to the Canis Major galaxy…

And that’s how it *should* have ended!

Apology: This is actually a serious blog, without even attempts at humour.  Normal service will resume shortly.

If you haven’t been following Louise Mensch’s Twitter timeline for the past few weeks then, firstly, I wouldn’t blame you – she’s a terrible person – but, more importantly, you may have missed her trying every trick in the book to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign.

She started treating him as a joke candidate, sporting a Corbyn twibbon on her profile picture and encouraging her followers to do likewise (some of them still do), pre-empting The Daily Telegraph’s disastrous article encouraging its readers to sign up to vote Corbyn.  She has joked about how easy it would be for the Tories to win in 2020 if they faced Corbyn and mocked the opposition being in disarray.

As Corbyn went from rank outsider to unexpected powerhouse her tone changed, she fretted about the need for the government to have a strong opposition, although she never explained why such was needed (to be fair, it may be hard to explain in 140 characters, especially for somebody so strongly behind Cameron and whatever he’s doing).

As it came to light that Corbyn has found himself with supporters who have some decidedly unpleasant views, including holocaust denial, she switched her attention to that and, for all of her faults, she can be incredibly single-minded. Her and her followers have gone to great lengths to root out everybody who Corbyn has ever supported, shared a platform with or met with who may also have been fostering abhorrent views.  Although her blog on this subject has been widely read it didn’t gain the traction she hoped, spark any real interest from the national news or cause the Corbyn campaign any significant headaches.

To keep the ball rolling and apparently ignorant of the maximum ‘an idea is not responsible for those who believe in it’ she has taken to trawling Twitter for any tweet from a Corbyn follower which does not meet the standards she has set.  On one hand her criteria have been extremely broad; anybody who mentions ‘Zionism’ is an anti-Semite, anybody who uses the terms ‘cunt’ or ‘bitch’ is a misogynist, but on the other she has turned up some tweets of truly horrific racism…

And retweeted them…to her 94,000+ followers.  She has given an unbelievably wide platform to these horrible little tweeters and amplified their voices a thousandfold.

As she’s a journalist, not a scientist, there’s been no effort made to see if any of the other leadership candidates have similar undesirables in their followers, nor has that effort been made with any wider group of politicians.  She’s interested only in discrediting Corbyn, not actually determining if he holds the views she’s rapidly and rabidly spreading, or if his supporters are more inclined towards those views than the general population. In most cases she’s not even interested in establishing if the original tweeters are even supporters of Corbyn.  Given that some of the tweets she’s shared include people complaining about Labour’s ‘open door’ immigration policy you have to suspect they’re not from people sharing a hymn-book with Jeremy himself.

As it emerged that a cat had been granted the right to vote in the leadership contest she switched to a last-ditch stand to suggest that the election was hopelessly compromised and should be cancelled and re-run.  Her last hope it seems to avoid David Cameron having to “fight for decency every week across the dispatch box and totally crush Jeremy Corbyn’s vicious ideology”.

In her whirlwind of fury that socialist ideology may have found a toe-hold in UK politics posting a picture of her own search terms is really just a blip of stupidity to finish off her campaign of bullying, muck-raking and doing herself what she claims to hate Corbyn for – giving a voice to anti-Semites.

Reproduced below, Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on the occasion of his historic victory of the Labour leadership contest

Thank you, thank you everybody!

I have so many people I need to thank for my rise to leader of the Labour party, and many others who I’ve been advised to avoid thanking.  Unfortunately I have very little time before I’m ousted, so I’ll try to be brief.

I like to think I’ve run a clean campaign; I’ve been accused of being an idiot, a political dinosaur, a Marxist, an anti-Semite, a terrorist sympathiser and, in a bizarre twist right at the end of the campaign, an actual literal dinosaur.  However, I have focussed not on my naysayers, but on the issues – how we must help the poor, build homes, support education, leave NATO…and so on.

But now that I stand here it seems obvious what the priority really is, and if I only have time to implement one policy (which is a very real possibility) let it be this one…

Effective immediately I’d like to announce the dissolution of the Labour Party.

The party is over.

Bevan has left the building.

I know this will come as a shock and a disappointment to many of you, but really, look who’s addressing you as party leader.  We tried our best to pick a leader and all we got was a fight like chucking out time at the Scottish Parliament and three people who couldn’t even beat me.  The only people who have come out of this with any kind of political gain are the Conservatives…on which note I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing George Osborne a speedy recovery, we’re all hoping that he will regain his eyesight very shortly.

During the campaign I saw an Internet web-log article entitled ’13 reasons not to support Corbyn’ and number 9 was suggesting that, under a good leader, Labour could hope to gain enough seats to make the Tories a minority government.  That’s when I realised Labour had become just political noise, getting in the way of parties that had fancy things like principles, ideology and competence.  From where we are now it’s too much to hope that we could dream of cobbling together even one of those three before May 2020.

Don’t be too sad to see the party go, it’s not like it leaves a yawning chasm in the UK political scene.  If you’re on the left there’s the Greens…that’s where I would be going if I wasn’t as toxic as a cup of tea from Vladimir Putin and as crazy as trying to get high by smoking live weasels.  If you want a centrist party there’s the Lib Dems who, for all of their failings, at least managed to elect a new leader without causing David Cameron to have to buy bigger swimming trunks.  And, of course, over on the right there’s the Conservatives and that there UKIP, with their sensible policy of always electing the same leader.

That’s pretty much it, really.  We did a lot of good things; workers’ rights, minimum wage, human rights, freedom of information and all that jazz, and it’s just a shame that we then screwed the pooch on pretty much everything else.  We’ll be using the remaining party funds to give people their £3 back, unless they were cats all along.

I always suspected the cats.

Finally I’d like to thank my fellow candidates and wish them well for the future.  I believe that Liz is embarking on a UK tour to find everybody who used the ‘RedTory’ hashtag, Yvette is thinking of moving on to a political party that understands politics and Andy…well, wherever somebody has need for a suit that can talk, Andy will be there.  I, for my part, will be guest host on ‘Have I got news for you’ in early 2016, providing the BBC makes it through the winter.

Goodnight to supporters of the Labour party, and goodnight to my supporters, and a goodnight to the entirely wrong number of people who were in both those camps. Lights off!

Welcome to the UK’s premier problems page, edited by Colin the Crazy Corbynite, who will answer all of your questions , on any subject, with ill-informed, racist and misogynistic rants.

This week our first letter is from A. of Bristol.

Dear Colin,

My wife and I have been happily married for nearly 20 years and have always enjoyed a varied and exciting sex life.  Recently, however, I have found myself becoming less interested in such things.  For example, during a recent camping trip we were alone in a remote corner of the campsite and when I had finished blowing up the double air bed my wife…

Blair bed?  You got into bed with Blair?  If you support him then you’re a war criminal and you should be tried in the Hague and hung!  Rest assured, Corbyn will make you stand trial when he becomes PM!  NEXT!

WA, also of Bristol, writes…

Dear Colin,

My husband, a recently retired man of stoical nature, has lately been feeling under the weather, but refuses to burden the “poor overworked staff of the NHS” with his problems.  Amongst other things I am worried about a mole on his shoulder, which has increased noticeably in size and become a very dark brown with…

BROWN!  Brown is the fool who wrecked the economy, just look in the papers you stupid, gormless slag!  When Jeremy Corbyn is Prime Minister you and everybody else who supported Brown will be lined up against the wall and shot like dogs!  Bitch!

ZXZ of Bristol wrote this week asking:

Dear Colin,

Marx, my faithful Labrador, has been my constant companion for the last 15 years.  We’ve been through some rough times together but he’s always been there for me.  Even when we became homeless and had to search bins for food he always offered me first refusal on any morsel he found, and he never failed to put his warm body between me and the cold wind and rain.  Now he’s troubled by arthritis and the vet…

Yvette!  It’s always fucking Yvette with you champagne socialists, isn’t it?  If you’re supporting Yvette then you’re an insult to people like me, who’ve been life-long Labour party members for the past 6 weeks!  If you want to talk about Yvette then fuck off to the Tory party where that sort of thing is welcome!  #RedTory!

AAA Aaron Aardvark Builders Ltd, of Bristol, writes…

Dear Colin,

As Bristol’s leading independent building contractor I found myself needing to hire somebody to do the books for me.  The woman I’ve taken on seems to be having some problems dealing with the ‘robust’ nature of the banter amongst a firm of old school builders, who are just trying to offer the best prices for high quality work in the area.  Her bookkeeping is excellent, to give her her dues…

DUES???? Do you know [Unfortunately, for legal reasons, it has not been possible to publish all of Colin’s reply to this letter] international banking conspiracy, mate.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Vote Corbyn and get them all sent back where they came from!

Our final letter of today comes from JC, of Bristol…no, hang about, he’s from Islington.

Dear Supporter,

I’d like to thank everybody who has supported me in my campaign for Labour leader, but remind them it has always been my wish that we do not resort to personal attacks or name-calling…

Look everybody!  It’s another fucking bleeding-heart liberal.  I tell you, mate, if it was left to people like you it would be lefties, poofs, women and Muslims running this bloody country.  Not that Muslims haven’t got the right idea about one thing…you know what I’m saying?  They all called in sick on 9/11 you know.  Really, it’s true.  Makes you think, doesn’t it?  Now my mate Dave reckons…

Unfortunately that’s all we have time for this week.  Colin the Crazy Corbynite is appearing throughout August at EDL demos across the country, and is on standby to appear on Newsnight any week where it looks like they need somebody to kick a fight off.

Next week we hope to bring you Andy Burnham’s problem page, if we can edit Andy Burnham’s problems down to one page by then.

Have you recently had a falling out with your daily newspaper?  Has it said something you don’t agree with, perhaps endorsed a political candidate who you know nothing about, other than they’re the wrong person?

This can be a troubling and confusing time, so relax and follow the simple flowchart below to find out how to react…

Hello,and welcome to part 3 of The Daily Telegraph‘s ‘How to be a journalist’ course.

By this stage in the course you’re familiar with the rules of cricket and you should know how to uncritically publish a document sent to you by a senior Conservative.  Today we’ll be looking at constructing an article on human rights.

The situation regarding human rights is complicated and nuanced, so you’ll need to study the map reproduced below:

Areas outside the red boundaries suffer “human rights abuses’, where people are treated in an appalling fashion.

Areas inside the red boundaries are decent places, with trustworthy governments, where human rights cases are simply brought to vex the legally mandated rulers or score some points for the PC lobby.

You’ll now understand how tricky it can be to convey that depth of information in a 800 word article, so let’s look at how you’d do it.

Step 1 – The bait

To get the reader on your side from the off highlight a court case that they’ve probably got an opinion on.  It doesn’t matter if the case is connected to human rights, it doesn’t have to be particularly recent – so long as it was memorable – and it should be easy to summarise in the popular mind as “isn’t it ridiculous, eh”.  It could be bakers being forced to make a gay cake, prisoners demanding hard-core pornography or even somebody making a civil claim against a ‘fast-food’ restaurant for their coffee being too hot.

Step 2 – The rile

Your reader’s blood pressure is starting to rise, now it’s important to get them a bit madder, so that they won’t notice what’s going to happen next.  Give a summary of the most annoying parts of the case and verdict.  You’re not a court stenographer, so don’t feel that you need to go into all of the details, especially if they do anything to suggest that the judicial system isn’t broken.

Step 3 – The switch

Now that your reader is good and angry with the stupid courts you’ll want to divert that anger to human rights cases.  Even if the original case was nothing to do with human rights you can jump tracks with a simple, “in similar cases, involving human rights..,”, or “putting on in mind of human rights cases, such as…”.  If you’ve got absolutely nothing then why not build a straw man so big that Edward Woodward would crap himself and suggested that judges have been ’emboldened’ by the Human Rights Act.

[Aside – The Human Right Act is properly known as ‘Labour’s Human Rights Act’, ‘Blair’s Human Rights Act’ or the ‘Much derided Human Rights Act’.  Take care never to refer to its existence in neutral terms!]

Step 4 – The shuffle

Some readers can get the Human Rights Act muddled with the European Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe, EU agreements on free movement, obligations under international law and a whole host of other things that sound like the work of Johnny Foreigner, so as a journalist it’s your job to muddy the waters as much as possible and mix all of these things together.  This will help the reader form the unbiased opinion that everything that separates modern Britain from a 1950’s postcard of cricket on the green is the fault of the HRA.

Step 5 – The solution

Fixing all of the problems of the world is beyond the scope of a single newspaper article, so it’s best to simply the solution down to “Vote Conservative”.  If, God forbid, there’s a Labour government then they are making the situation worse and should be voted out.  If, as currently, there’s a Conservative government with a small majority, or in a coalition, then they need to be given a wider mandate.  If there’s a Conservative government with a large majority then you’d be a fool to counsel against voting for them.

This solution leaves the reader with the warm feeling that their vote wasn’t just them selfishly grabbing an electoral bribe, but is actually helping fix something that’s wrong with the world.  They relax, leave it for the government to sort out with no more stupid questions for the electorate and have their simple brains fooled into thinking that your article is “brilliant”.

Example

We’d like to thank Baron Tebbit for the sample text for this module, which is a textbook example of how it should be done.

Coursework

Write your own article on the Human Rights Act and suggest a solution to the problems it causes (hint: Conservatism!).  For extra credit cite it as the reason for migrant camps in Calais.

Next time: In part 4 of the course we’ll show you how to explain that tax cuts for the wealthy are a natural consequence of nationwide austerity measures.