Does The Telegraph have an infiltrator?

Look at the caption below the photo...

The link (until it's corrected).

Comments

[Simon]

It is a very strange caption that does not relate to the article at all.

In fact we could go further - trim the Commons by 160 - much more affordable.

[rugfish]

This is a his web list of his writings.

http://www.journalisted.com/murray-wardrop

If there's Tory dirt he'll dig it but I see not very much of any Labour muck in his scribblings.

Answer YES, he's an infiltrator so shoot him I say.

[Sally Roberts]

Think there's a gremlin in the print room! DC looks rather over-made up as well.

[rugfish]

Tim,
Talking of infiltrators, have you seen Michael Meacher's blog this morning ?

http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2009/01/when_will_the_criminal_executi.html

[Sammy Finn]

Internal inquiries should begin with Simon Heffer and Rosa Prince.

[rugfish]

Michael Meacher says....

When will the criminal executives at Lloyds TSB be brought to book?

There could not be a clearer example of the collapse of corporate accountability in Britain than the case highlighted two days ago of Lloyds TSB being found guilty of criminal money-laundering over a 12 year period, yet none of the top executives responsible have been held to account. It is the most flagrant example yet of how leaders in business (and frequently in the civil service too) esape with impunity when a scandal for which they are responsible is unearthed. The lax regulatory and prosecuting culture in the UK desperately needs to be changed if criminal and corrupt behaviour at the highest levels is to be stamped out.

Continues.....

[Norm Brainer]

It's a copy and paste job from another article

[Victor, NW Kent]

This sort of insidious attack on Cameron is exactly why I cancelled my daily Telegraph. regard the Times now as much more balanced.

As Simon says there is nothing in the article to support the caption. Elsewhere the Telegraph has a convoluted analysis by a Scottish academic on how it might actually mean more Labour seats. I read it twice and it might make sense after a few whiskies but not cold sober.

[Guido Fawkes]

Will Lewis is clearly the infiltrator, evidence:

He is destroying the paper's Unique Selling Point, it was once the paper with a strong conservative voice.

He is succeeding as the circulation figures show.

[JS]

An unfortunate caption but, alas, very true.

[Maggie Thatcher Fan]

Well they are definitely slow in correcting it, I rang them at 9am to tell them about it. Guido is right, the paper is oft referred to in my household as the Labourgraph, and we have stopped buying it.,

[Craig Barrett]

I too have stopped reading The Telegraph. Their pandering to Brown is pathetic and they appear to have lost most of the decent staff (cost-cutting?). The slipping journalistic standards give the whole paper an air of it having been written by people on work-experience.

I suddenly found that the only part of the paper that I enjoyed was Alex...which I can see online anyway.

[resident leftie]

Well, we can narrow it down to people who think Cameron is feeble minded, but I'm not sure that helps much.

[Opinicus]

Still there

perhaps they mean it..

Many a true word spoken in jest

[Praguetory]

The article itself is also worthy of deep scorn.

Apart from how badly it read, the assertion that a 10% reduction in seats (i.e. 10% increase in average electorate per seats) will signal an end to inner city seats and safe Labour seats in Wales astonishingly poor.

[croydonian]

Having got disgusted with The Times some years back and switched to The Telegraph because it was Eurosceptic, Atlanticist, pro-Israel (that is a shibboleth for me - no intention to stir /that/ up again) and most importantly on our side, I am on the verge of giving up national daily papers all together. Is it too much to ask that there might be at least one serious newspaper that reflects most of my world view?

[Robin]

It originally appeared as the caption to the same photo on Janet Daley's column yesterday under the heading

"Return of the Blairites spells trouble for David Cameron"

That was a straightforward ode to Blairite politicians and attack on Cameron, something that is becoming typical of Telegraph columnists lately

[Man in a Shed]

The Telegraph has gone all weird for some time. There's a lot of government ministers writing articles all of a sudden.

The Times is starting to be a better bet.

( How about a question on this in the next reader survey Tim ? )

[HF]

With Batty Janet and Hefferlump the Laborgraph continually reach new all time lows. As for their socialist colleagues one wonders if the Barclay bros really know what is going on.

[Westminster Wolf]

Will Lewis isn't that political and has come under the influence of the Heffersaurus and his left leaning political reporters.

[OJT]

The Telegraph remains utterly committed to a right-wing agenda. The phrasing of every front page headline is still the polar opposite of the guardian; it is done in such a way as to undermine the Labour government and support the Tories. The opinions and comments that I have seen criticsing the Tory partly have done so on the grounds that there has not been a clear enough / right-wing enough / consistent message that can win.

This paper does and shall remain a supporter of our politics.

[Rebecca Baty]

I agree with Victor above. Although the times has some truly stupid correspondents its overall journalism is of an infinately better standard than the Telegraph which went down the preverbial toilet some years ago.

Curiously the indy also periodically does some very good journalism, particularly its in depth coverage.

[Mark Fulford]

ConservativeHome, Norm Brainer has pointed out that this was simply a copy-and-paste slip from one of Janet Daley’s tiresome tirades. Perhaps you should add that explanation as an update to your introduction, lest you are accused of sensationalizing a simple slip by turning it into something it’s not.

[Matt]

Anagram of Rosa Prince is A Ripe Scorn.

Fits, doesn't it?

[Matt]

Mark, that caption should not have been used in ANY article. Should it? It's not a defence or a reason. It is merely an excuse.

[Paul Oakley]

It's gone now. Another victory for CH. Hooray!

[michael mcgough]

After Sunday with Marr,this.Is there a conspiracy?

[Jeremy James]

If you want to see Labour being eviscerated, read CiF - particularly the threads on any Toynbee/Ashley piece.

What do Daley and Heffer think they are up to? Trying to re-ignite the flame of pure Thatcherism?
Cost the Tories two elections, that did.

[NigelJ]

I still find the DT a generally good read. the comment pieces have always been intended to "stimulate debate". Hefferlump is hilarious - he makes my dad seem modern (and he is 81) - he (Heffer not my dad) is the most pompous buffoon ever to put pen to paper (or should that be quill to parchment, whilst the great man is listening to his "wireless" as he calls it!)> The DT is still and always be the best paper for conservative supporters.

[stanislav, a young polish plumber]

WE ARE THE MEDIUM AND WE ARE THE MESSAGE, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Perhaps it is just the protracted demise of the antique press, perhaps the residual effect of ownership by the criminal, Conrad Black and Lady Amiel – a criminality unrecognised by all then at the Telegraph because one would need to be a journalist and not just a celebrity to spot it, Sir Max – maybe it is the current ownership by a pair of freaks, the Bizarro Twins, MediaevalismsRus and the stink of decay rising from the Undead, the predictable, redundant, irrelevant writers like Daley and the purple gorilla, Heffer, scribbling for a dwindling handful of Dave-disappointed Tories but whatever the historical causes, however many the greedy, useless charlatans clinging to the wreckage, the Daily Telegraph really is, well, sinking in shit.

Lacking its own behemoth, motor-mouthing Jeremy Klaxon, the Telegraph employs, instead, an equally bumptious, empty-headed, simile-generating buffoon, in the lardy form of the part-time Mayor of London, Bo-Jo, oafish in English, Latin, Greek and Bullingdonese; Boris, having sacked the Police Chief, Bendover-Blair, and a slew of his own brilliantly chosen go-fers has little left to do, now, London runs itself, really, - apart from the crime, the recession and the looming, disastrous, money-eating chasm of the Jowell Games, that is - leaving him free to pursue his journalism and - usefully for one dedicated to public service - keep in touch with his money; modern Tories, like Peter Hain, Michael Gove, Neil Kinnock, Lord Mandelstein de los story rentboys, Alan Milburn, William Hague, Tony and Imelda Blair and Wee John Reid have perfected balancing their duty to the public with whoring their offices, the former takes precedence in the four-yearly festival of competitive promising, the latter occupies the rest of their time.

The Telegraph, eternally lamenting failures of public duty, sees no dichotomy, no irony, in its moonlight employment of the part-time Mayor of London, even though it is errant on two counts, firstly, in that the gaffemeister has an entire PR machine at his disposal as Mayor and should not use a so-called national daily as a bully pulpit and secondly, if his writings take even an hour of his time –and given their quality they could hardly take more – then that is an hour which should be devoted to the service of the people of London, his primary employers; it is simply disingenuous to suggest –as is implicit – that BoJo’s journalism is a harmless if immensely lucrative hobby; senior public servants simply should not have external employment, however po-faced, sanctimonious and hypocritical the justification of they and their employers. Two years too late, incidentally, perhaps prompted by the blogosphere, the Leader of the non-oppositional Opposition, parting his hair this way, then that, as if coiffed by focus group, has recognised the public scepticism towards, just for instance, the shadow foreign secretary being so steeped in directorships and “speaking” engagements that he could be the sole subject, form the content of an entire business directory.

Where once would have read From Our Own Correspondent, every tuppence-halfpenny, semi-literate, uneducated scribbler now has a by-line, often a photograph. The ‘paper’s great liberal humanitarian, Bron Waugh, is long gone, and apparently irreplaceable, no voice of Anarchy, however genteel, ripples the Telegraph’s lifeless, dirty waters; AN Wilson, the last of the great Telegraph writers and Craig Brown, the most talented parodist, come and go but are swamped by nieces and God-daughters and mistresses prattling about absolutely nothing; by Andrew Marr sharing with us the domestic intimacies of at least one of his families; celebrity and lifestyle features, not worth the paper they’re written on, many from the narcissistic, exhibitionist, snarling, vampire mind of the barren and loveless Professor Greer, spread and multiply like pox; guides on how to make and mend - but in a diamond-studded and gold-threaded sort of way - abound as a hopelessly out of touch editorial team attempts to make contact with a non-existent readership; ageing, now sedate punks and hesitant, borderline BNP-ers are courted with drivel from the atonal, entirely talentless nonentity Billy Bragg (in his own words a “career folk singer”), the only man in the world capable of giving folk music AND the three-chord trick a bad name, a graduate of the school of millionaire, Establishment stalwarts like the bad-tempered, chubby, little Ian Oxbridge and the zany, whacky, Pearl Merton, bless her doped-up, scrambled-egg mind; Mark Steele and his sotto voce, Radio Four, revolutionary socialism; all stipended, licensed fools, licking the hand that feeds them; all in the charmed circle of celebrity, pissing out on the rest of us, from the BBC, the Hoonian, The Times and The Telegraph.

Celebrity writers, or - next best thing - somebody’s wife or daughter; trash and nightclub gossip; ridiculously, extravagantly, impossibly unobtainable consumer goods – Klaxonism, this Bentley is the best yet, they give me one, but you can have one for just a hundred and fifty grand, if you’re lucky - and insanely over-priced mail-order offers, tin-plated Telegraph garden shears that fall apart confronted with a twig, for only ninety five pounds, p&p extra, this is the Telegraph’s toxic a la carte, empty celebrity, gossip and trash; the Telegraph, from being from a decent, well-written, reliable and proudly right-of-centre newspaper, not everyone’s cup of Moet but you knew where you stood – good on business; good, if limited, on politics; good on foreign affairs; excellent on science AND arts; fabulous photo editors; readable, even on sport - has mutated into some horrible, cowardly, indifferent organ of propaganda for the New Rulers; filth and junk and the rabid dribblings of the obese, the overpaid, the utterly worthless; Heffer, shoe-horned into a shiny suit, bursting at the seams with phony indignation, grown purple with unrequited self-regard; jowly, petulant, a nasty tub of virulence, malice and greed, one of God’s truly horrible bastards and, dismayingly, the current voice of the Telegraph, selfish, bloated, authoritarian, know-it-all and too stupid to see its own irrelevance, that it is handmaiden, not to Truth and Justice but to the Tyranny of the amoral, the well-heeled, the corrupt, the criminal.

Probably written by ebullient, insomniac jackanapes deputy editor, Andrew Pierce, from SkyFilthAndMade-UpMidnightNews.com, where he spars, facetiously, with a languid, overfull and fetchingly tie-less Toilets Maguire, the NewTelegraph, the other day, printed a “leader” or “opinion” piece on what it might have termed, were it literate, the over-extent of the criminal law; instead it bumbled along, talking about, Gosh, how many things Labour wanted to jail us for; the piece was, frankly, unmemorable, frothy and lightweight, but the writer sought to cover his failure of cogent political analysis with a hand-towel of faux libertarianism, Up With This We Shall Not Put; Whaddawewant ? Dunno, Something; When Do We Want It ? Dunno, Sometime, it was the like the most vacuous bloggerspiel, vague, blustering discontent but its intent was to persuade us that the nasty, secretive, malformed hobgoblins running and writing for the NewTelegraph give a flying fuck about individual liberty; ho-hum, Andrew.

Here in the North, the US-owned JockHerald, mindful of its catastrophic drop in circulation and influence, its more or less total irrelevance to all but its chums in the Holyrood Parliament –as in Westminster, they give each other awards - briefly embraced the new media, the open forum, the open-ended message boards but found rapidly that not only the politicos but their ambassadors, the bogus journalists, like Knowledgeable Iain McWhirter and Caring but Funky Ian Bell; the tired, past-retirement commentators, Tom, Jock and Harry, received glorious, fiery shovelsful of Jock contempt and derision in direct proportion to their toadying to the various party chieftains, subalterns and streetbrawlers; the owners, too, were pilloried in their own cyberpages and the experiment was stopped and while the Jock Herald hacks were forced, ignominiously, to apply for their own jobs – and they did - the punters, if they wanted to comment on the house of cards presently run by Three Salaries Salmond, Donald McTrump and the Jock Tribesmen’s Party first had to first “register” for censorship; it’s freedom of speech, Jock, but not as we know it.

South of the border, it’s the same, as the motherfucker of parliaments waltzes us into totalitarianism, its partner, the Heritage Press, flattering, flirting, slow- quick-quick, slow-quick-quick, the mainstream whore, rouged and corseted, nipped and tucked, all fur coat and no knickers, is the belle of the ball.

A friend, the other day, posting harmlessly on one or other of the NewShitTelegraph’s worthless blogs - some windy, self-congratulatory old bag, some botoxed, will o’ the wisp, scrawny airhead, some cadaverous, aged debutante playing at journalism – received a startling message. He had mentioned, in terms by no means inflammatory or disrespectful, much less scatological, that the blogger was less than neutral and quite engagingly suggested that the ‘paper was so far up Labour’s tailpipe as to be part of the fuel injection system’ – hardly the stuff to make adults blush, let alone contribute to the nation’s moral decay; the message he subsequently received, however, read, in unfriendly white letters ‘gainst a blue background YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and a few seconds later, again, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Dieser TelegrafWarnungen did not say what he had been warned about or if he had the right to query or appeal this “warning,” just YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. We should be grateful. This will be the form, the custom, in the near future as Smith and Brown, the ghastly, bronchitic freak, McNutter, the bully Milburn, Jack Torture and their chums, all across the house, tasered-up in the police forces, scanning our mails and calls, get into their goose-stride, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, IT IS UP TO YOU TO KNOW YOUR OFFENCE.

The Telegraph is saying to our friend, not only do we know best but we leave it to you to acknowledge the form and the depth of your disobedience. It is totalitarianisme parfait; you must police yourselves, in our interests.

As the Telegraph is kow-towing to the fairyqueens, the gangsters and vandals of GlobaCorp kick down the doors of democracy and march us to re-education. Yet the Telegraph and the rest unwittingly reveal the extent of our peril; chattering to one another, on Question Time and in The Spectator, while corralling and intimidating our friend on their banal and peurile blogs they serve no purpose but their own. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, they say, not only an army of government thugs and surveillance and eavesdropping and Ihr papieren,bitte but the press, too, shall keep you in line. Prettyboy Mr Burnham, the insolent Mr McNutter and the NewTelegraph shall decide what is acceptable. And what is not.

We must boycott them, even online. Every click keeps them afloat a second longer as they brag feverishly to their advertisers of their potency. The Telegraph, as a reasonable newspaper, is finished, awash with shit, sinking in shit and if it can it will take us with it, down, down into Davy Jones’ shitlocker; how dare a newspaper insult its readers with YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED? At Guido’s we encounter Fuck Off and get a refund on the way out, so much friendlier, more democratic; there, in les journales ancien, it is as though the compact of self-interest between State and Media were already struck - you scratch my back and we’ll whip theirs.

You May Not Have Your Say, Comment Is Not Free, It Is Not Your Telegraph. NewLabour, NewTory, NewTelegraph, New ID Card, New Dictatorship. Here, on the shores of the blind, the one-eyed man is King. You have been warned.

[Paul Oakley]

Tim - I know you can jazz up postings with italics and bold type. Is it also possible to produce text in green? Might be helpful for stanislav.

[parabellum]

Well said stanislav @ 16.09.

The Labourgraph have almost finished destroying the last vestiges of respect for their brand, and the employment of the useless, idle, vacuous, illiterate, self-regarding, insufferable, yet sensitive ex-Mirror hackette Rosa Prince, whose execrable blog was the source of the warnings, is testament to the rag's demise.
I urge readers to register for censorship, and tell the Labourgraph what they think of Prince. You know it makes sense.

[Peter-Chuah]

Since MPs have good wages and excellent fringe benefits, each MP must do an identified job in parliament, as well as putting acceptable number of attendances for identified committee meetings and debates in parliament. The number of MPs could be reduced to the ratio of (say) one MP representing every 250,000 people. MPs must be working full-time and not doing another job, apart from some occasional paid work that supports their work as MPs. The value for money for the amount of fringe benefits MPs claimed must be audited, verified and published every year. This will help to check their indiscretions in spending taxpayers’ money.

Payment for MPs second homes mortgages should be interest with perhaps a fifth of the value of the interest only mortgage to be paid by the MP himself or herself. Also travelling, postage, stationary, remuneration of ‘staff’, etc should be audited for value for money, as well as evidenced by receipts, tickets, staff job descriptions, wages slips, etc. In any case a ceiling of say £95,000 must be set.

[JS]

To call a paper the Labourgraph when it has writers like Heffer and Daley is clearly just stupid. If Cameron listened more to the views of Heffer etc., rather than the clique of wet liberal minded admirers of New Labour with their woolly ideas who seem to surround him, then we would once again have a Conservative party worth voting for.
At the moment true Tories have no option but to abstain.

[stanislav, a young polish plumber]

WE ARE THE MEDIUM AND WE ARE THE MESSAGE, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Perhaps it is just the protracted demise of the antique press, perhaps the residual effect of ownership by the criminal, Conrad Black and Lady Amiel – a criminality unrecognised by all then at the Telegraph because one would need to be a journalist and not just a celebrity to spot it, Sir Max – maybe it is the current ownership by a pair of freaks, the Bizarro Twins, MediaevalismsRus and the stink of decay rising from the Undead, the predictable, redundant, irrelevant writers like Daley and the purple gorilla, Heffer, scribbling for a dwindling handful of Dave-disappointed Tories but whatever the historical causes, however many the greedy, useless charlatans clinging to the wreckage, the Daily Telegraph really is, well, sinking in shit.

Lacking its own behemoth, motor-mouthing Jeremy Klaxon, the Telegraph employs, instead, an equally bumptious, empty-headed, simile-generating buffoon, in the lardy form of the part-time Mayor of London, Bo-Jo, oafish in English, Latin, Greek and Bullingdonese; Boris, having sacked the Police Chief, Bendover-Blair, and a slew of his own brilliantly chosen go-fers has little left to do, now, London runs itself, really, - apart from the crime, the recession and the looming, disastrous, money-eating chasm of the Jowell Games, that is - leaving him free to pursue his journalism and - usefully for one dedicated to public service - keep in touch with his money; modern Tories, like Peter Hain, Michael Gove, Neil Kinnock, Lord Mandelstein de los story rentboys, Alan Milburn, William Hague, Tony and Imelda Blair and Wee John Reid have perfected balancing their duty to the public with whoring their offices, the former takes precedence in the four-yearly festival of competitive promising, the latter occupies the rest of their time.

The Telegraph, eternally lamenting failures of public duty, sees no dichotomy, no irony, in its moonlight employment of the part-time Mayor of London, even though it is errant on two counts, firstly, in that the gaffemeister has an entire PR machine at his disposal as Mayor and should not use a so-called national daily as a bully pulpit and secondly, if his writings take even an hour of his time –and given their quality they could hardly take more – then that is an hour which should be devoted to the service of the people of London, his primary employers; it is simply disingenuous to suggest –as is implicit – that BoJo’s journalism is a harmless if immensely lucrative hobby; senior public servants simply should not have external employment, however po-faced, sanctimonious and hypocritical the justification of they and their employers. Two years too late, incidentally, perhaps prompted by the blogosphere, the Leader of the non-oppositional Opposition, parting his hair this way, then that, as if coiffed by focus group, has recognised the public scepticism towards, just for instance, the shadow foreign secretary being so steeped in directorships and “speaking” engagements that he could be the sole subject, form the content of an entire business directory.

Where once would have read From Our Own Correspondent, every tuppence-halfpenny, semi-literate, uneducated scribbler now has a by-line, often a photograph. The ‘paper’s great liberal humanitarian, Bron Waugh, is long gone, and apparently irreplaceable, no voice of Anarchy, however genteel, ripples the Telegraph’s lifeless, dirty waters; AN Wilson, the last of the great Telegraph writers and Craig Brown, the most talented parodist, come and go but are swamped by nieces and God-daughters and mistresses prattling about absolutely nothing; by Andrew Marr sharing with us the domestic intimacies of at least one of his families; celebrity and lifestyle features, not worth the paper they’re written on, many from the narcissistic, exhibitionist, snarling, vampire mind of the barren and loveless Professor Greer, spread and multiply like pox; guides on how to make and mend - but in a diamond-studded and gold-threaded sort of way - abound as a hopelessly out of touch editorial team attempts to make contact with a non-existent readership; ageing, now sedate punks and hesitant, borderline BNP-ers are courted with drivel from the atonal, entirely talentless nonentity Billy Bragg (in his own words a “career folk singer”), the only man in the world capable of giving folk music AND the three-chord trick a bad name, a graduate of the school of millionaire, Establishment stalwarts like the bad-tempered, chubby, little Ian Oxbridge and the zany, whacky, Pearl Merton, bless her doped-up, scrambled-egg mind; Mark Steele and his sotto voce, Radio Four, revolutionary socialism; all stipended, licensed fools, licking the hand that feeds them; all in the charmed circle of celebrity, pissing out on the rest of us, from the BBC, the Hoonian, The Times and The Telegraph.

Celebrity writers, or - next best thing - somebody’s wife or daughter; trash and nightclub gossip; ridiculously, extravagantly, impossibly unobtainable consumer goods – Klaxonism, this Bentley is the best yet, they give me one, but you can have one for just a hundred and fifty grand, if you’re lucky - and insanely over-priced mail-order offers, tin-plated Telegraph garden shears that fall apart confronted with a twig, for only ninety five pounds, p&p extra, this is the Telegraph’s toxic a la carte, empty celebrity, gossip and trash; the Telegraph, from being from a decent, well-written, reliable and proudly right-of-centre newspaper, not everyone’s cup of Moet but you knew where you stood – good on business; good, if limited, on politics; good on foreign affairs; excellent on science AND arts; fabulous photo editors; readable, even on sport - has mutated into some horrible, cowardly, indifferent organ of propaganda for the New Rulers; filth and junk and the rabid dribblings of the obese, the overpaid, the utterly worthless; Heffer, shoe-horned into a shiny suit, bursting at the seams with phony indignation, grown purple with unrequited self-regard; jowly, petulant, a nasty tub of virulence, malice and greed, one of God’s truly horrible bastards and, dismayingly, the current voice of the Telegraph, selfish, bloated, authoritarian, know-it-all and too stupid to see its own irrelevance, that it is handmaiden, not to Truth and Justice but to the Tyranny of the amoral, the well-heeled, the corrupt, the criminal.

Probably written by ebullient, insomniac jackanapes deputy editor, Andrew Pierce, from SkyFilthAndMade-UpMidnightNews.com, where he spars, facetiously, with a languid, overfull and fetchingly tie-less Toilets Maguire, the NewTelegraph, the other day, printed a “leader” or “opinion” piece on what it might have termed, were it literate, the over-extent of the criminal law; instead it bumbled along, talking about, Gosh, how many things Labour wanted to jail us for; the piece was, frankly, unmemorable, frothy and lightweight, but the writer sought to cover his failure of cogent political analysis with a hand-towel of faux libertarianism, Up With This We Shall Not Put; Whaddawewant ? Dunno, Something; When Do We Want It ? Dunno, Sometime, it was the like the most vacuous bloggerspiel, vague, blustering discontent but its intent was to persuade us that the nasty, secretive, malformed hobgoblins running and writing for the NewTelegraph give a flying fuck about individual liberty; ho-hum, Andrew.

Here in the North, the US-owned JockHerald, mindful of its catastrophic drop in circulation and influence, its more or less total irrelevance to all but its chums in the Holyrood Parliament –as in Westminster, they give each other awards - briefly embraced the new media, the open forum, the open-ended message boards but found rapidly that not only the politicos but their ambassadors, the bogus journalists, like Knowledgeable Iain McWhirter and Caring but Funky Ian Bell; the tired, past-retirement commentators, Tom, Jock and Harry, received glorious, fiery shovelsful of Jock contempt and derision in direct proportion to their toadying to the various party chieftains, subalterns and streetbrawlers; the owners, too, were pilloried in their own cyberpages and the experiment was stopped and while the Jock Herald hacks were forced, ignominiously, to apply for their own jobs – and they did - the punters, if they wanted to comment on the house of cards presently run by Three Salaries Salmond, Donald McTrump and the Jock Tribesmen’s Party first had to first “register” for censorship; it’s freedom of speech, Jock, but not as we know it.

South of the border, it’s the same, as the motherfucker of parliaments waltzes us into totalitarianism, its partner, the Heritage Press, flattering, flirting, slow- quick-quick, slow-quick-quick, the mainstream whore, rouged and corseted, nipped and tucked, all fur coat and no knickers, is the belle of the ball.

A friend, the other day, posting harmlessly on one or other of the NewShitTelegraph’s worthless blogs - some windy, self-congratulatory old bag, some botoxed, will o’ the wisp, scrawny airhead, some cadaverous, aged debutante playing at journalism – received a startling message. He had mentioned, in terms by no means inflammatory or disrespectful, much less scatological, that the blogger was less than neutral and quite engagingly suggested that the ‘paper was so far up Labour’s tailpipe as to be part of the fuel injection system’ – hardly the stuff to make adults blush, let alone contribute to the nation’s moral decay; the message he subsequently received, however, read, in unfriendly white letters ‘gainst a blue background YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and a few seconds later, again, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Dieser TelegrafWarnungen did not say what he had been warned about or if he had the right to query or appeal this “warning,” just YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. We should be grateful. This will be the form, the custom, in the near future as Smith and Brown, the ghastly, bronchitic freak, McNutter, the bully Milburn, Jack Torture and their chums, all across the house, tasered-up in the police forces, scanning our mails and calls, get into their goose-stride, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, IT IS UP TO YOU TO KNOW YOUR OFFENCE.

The Telegraph is saying to our friend, not only do we know best but we leave it to you to acknowledge the form and the depth of your disobedience. It is totalitarianisme parfait; you must police yourselves, in our interests.

As the Telegraph is kow-towing to the fairyqueens, the gangsters and vandals of GlobaCorp kick down the doors of democracy and march us to re-education. Yet the Telegraph and the rest unwittingly reveal the extent of our peril; chattering to one another, on Question Time and in The Spectator, while corralling and intimidating our friend on their banal and peurile blogs they serve no purpose but their own. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, they say, not only an army of government thugs and surveillance and eavesdropping and Ihr papieren,bitte but the press, too, shall keep you in line. Prettyboy Mr Burnham, the insolent Mr McNutter and the NewTelegraph shall decide what is acceptable. And what is not.

We must boycott them, even online. Every click keeps them afloat a second longer as they brag feverishly to their advertisers of their potency. The Telegraph, as a reasonable newspaper, is finished, awash with shit, sinking in shit and if it can it will take us with it, down, down into Davy Jones’ shitlocker; how dare a newspaper insult its readers with YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED? At Guido’s we encounter Fuck Off and get a refund on the way out, so much friendlier, more democratic; there, in les journales ancien, it is as though the compact of self-interest between State and Media were already struck - you scratch my back and we’ll whip theirs.

You May Not Have Your Say, Comment Is Not Free, It Is Not Your Telegraph. NewLabour, NewTory, NewTelegraph, New ID Card, New Dictatorship. Here, on the shores of the blind, the one-eyed man is King. You have been warned.

[Clive Goddard]

I too am about to give up on the Dreary Triviagraph. I have grown increasingly tired of shallow reporting, the loss of some first rate writers, the unfinished paragraphs, the recycled news from the weekend editions, the pro-liebour articles, the endless reporting of surveys on the most trivial matters and so on. And the never-ending so-called lifestyle pages leave me absolutely stone cold. It has been severely dumbed down, to the point where it is trying to emulate the truly awful Daily Mail. When my current subscription runs out in a couple of months that's it I'm afraid. Sad after nearly 40 years, but there we are - it's clearly heading for the rocks. My father has taken the DT for just over 60 years but he too has had enough.

Congratulations Mr Lewis, you are presiding over the destruction of what was once a great and hugely respected newspaper of our time.

[Jack Stone]

The priority i think is not cutting the numbers of MP`s but actually getting them to be full time.

[Clive Goddard]

I too am about to give up on the Dreary Triviagraph. I have grown increasingly tired of shallow reporting, the loss of some first rate writers, the unfinished paragraphs, the recycled news from the weekend editions, the pro-liebour articles, the endless reporting of surveys on the most trivial matters and so on. And the never-ending so-called lifestyle pages leave me absolutely stone cold. It has been severely dumbed down, to the point where it is trying to emulate the truly awful Daily Mail. When my current subscription runs out in a couple of months that's it I'm afraid. Sad after nearly 40 years, but there we are - it's clearly heading for the rocks. My father has taken the DT for just over 60 years but he too has had enough.

Congratulations Mr Lewis, you are presiding over the destruction of what was once a great and hugely respected newspaper of our time.

[stentorian cobblers]

I gave up on the Telegraph after a few weeks of that hideous Brown cheerleader, mary drivell. A glance at the broadsheets online day to day will do me now. And at today's prices, particularly at the weekend, I'm saving plenty of pennies, too!

As for the DT's circulation: not much boasting in the paper about that any more is there? Hardly surprising. A lot of people seem to feel the same way I do: their current owners/management, in their pathetic strategy of repositioning "their" paper slightly to the left of The Times have fired so many quality writers, while bigging-up hopeless windbags like Heffer, that it's simply not worth the cover price any more.

No wonder Conservativehome and Guido are becoming so popular. Keep up the good work.

PS: The other day while we talking about this very thing on the phone, my brother said, "It looks very much to me like some grim lefties have hijacked his illustrious organ." (I think he meant the editor). Ouch...

[Alex Swanson]

"Trying to re-ignite the flame of pure Thatcherism?
Cost the Tories two elections, that did."

Not this tired chestnut.

The fact is that if you actually go back and read the 2001 and 2005 manifestos, you find few serious policy differences between the parties. Of those Tory policies regarded at the time as "right-wing", such as staying out of the euro (Hague's main theme in 2001) or curbing immigration (Howard's alleged extremism in 2005) almost all have now been adopted or even exceeded by one or even both main parties and are regarded as mainstream.

[Spent Copper]

Nice to see you back again Stan and well put. I see you haven't lost any of your touch.

[Spent Copper]

Nice to see you back again Stan and well put. I see you haven't lost any of your touch.

[Martin Cole]

Thanks stanislav... best read for ages!

[Matt Wright]

I used to buy the Telegraph every day without fail but stopped about 2 years ago. Its lost the plot.

[Joe James B]

I still usually take the Telegraph, but vary my newspapers (always have a bit), partly because of different political views in the family, but also because I like to have my views challenged a bit.

I've noticed it's got quite ranty and inaccurate.
Last week it had some very sloppy mistakes in the Obituary of Sir Alan Walters.
It referred to the tough economic policies in the early 80s, and started to describe the 1981 budget. But then it suddenly referred to some alleged incident where Mrs Thatcher had order Geoffrey Howe to re-write his budget the following year "in 1996".
In fact, I think this incident was over-blown, but it wasn't in 1982 either, it was the same infamous 1981 budget.
It just shows someone writing it who is fundamentally confused by the order of events.

[Andrew S]

Why bother with printed news at all? The internet is a far more effective medium.

[anne allan]

I thought it was just me - I have found that the Telegraph has less and less worth reading. In fact, I find myself skimming through it. I have noticed that it seems to have lost a great many of its top writers and replaced them with some very odd bods. And all that lifestyle rubbish and obsession with films- purleeeze. Ditch 'em.
If I wanted to read the Daily Mail, I would buy it.

[Matt Wright]

Yes I switched to the Times but I find that paper spoils its credibility occasionally by falling for blatant Govt spin in the form of exclusives. There doesn't appear to be a decent serious paper at the moment.

[C List and Proud]

Heffer displays the horrible trait of authoritarianism mated with nostalgia - it really was better in the old days, when we strung the bastards up - Party is irrelevant to this trait as Howard/Widdecombe and Leigh display on the right, and Jack Boots Straw and his new student Jacqui Heels ably demonstrate on the left, with their cheerleading for extended detention without trial.

When I buy anythng other than the Evening Standard or my local weekly - ES for its instant reporting on the news I missed during the day and the sudoku, local for the letters page and local politics, it is the Times (again, for the sudoku, but the reporting is vastly superior to the DT and one can always laugh at Kaletsksy's latest mea culpa) or the Guardian - especially if Polly is writing - it brightens my day to know that such a contradiction in terms exists as she.

[NigelJ]

good comment C List - the amusing thing about Heffer and his "old days" approach is that he actually isn't even 50 yet! the perfect incarnation of the "young fogey"

[Andy]

The beauty of the Internet is that one can access all versions of the news on line, and I do. It's particularly interesting to read the foreign views on what's going on over here.

[Joe James B]

The FT is actually excellent, if you want objective information, aswell as some interesting comment.
Need another paper aswell though.
The Telegraph is about every three days for me.

[shergar]

Bryony Gordon. This clueless third-rater's presence in a previously respected national newspaper a sad testament to the imminence of the end times. Prepare, friends. Prepare.

[Dave]

I happen to think JS at 10.46 yesterday had it about right!

[parabellum]

shergar - yesterday @ 21.42 - the worst of the lot is the startlingly appalling, but thankfully extremely idle, ex-Mirror hackette Rosa Prince. You would not believe the crap she produces if you hadn't seen it with your own eyes. Then there's a guy called Neil McCormick who has been brown-nosing that blue-tinted twat Bono for 3 days on the trot to the deafening sound of silence. The rag is finished.

[Howard]

The first place to start any cut back is the House of Lords.
The US with a population of around 305 million has 100 Senators.
The UK with a population of around 60 million has 743 in the Lords.
What are they all doing?