Sacrifices of a Brave British Mother
Today's serving from the Mail is the first I wish to comment on. I'm deliberately not going to link to the story directly (more later), so allow me a broad summary. Clare Campbell, Mail writer, and self-proclaimed "successful author" has fallen on hard times. Having had an income in 2008 of £100,000 she and her husband put their elder children through private education. Their youngest son has also been through private nursery, private primary school, and private secondary school. Now, despite a large drop in income since the recession, they cannot bear to send him to state school to complete his education, because it just did not "seem right". State schools in their area apparently have mediocre exam results and the boys "slouch round in scruffy uniforms".
Therefore Clare and her husband have gone through their own period of austerity economics. She provides handy, practical housewifely tips to highlight the substantial belt-tightening the family has been through. New purchases of designer frocks from Harvey Nicks are out, replaced by the reuse of existing designer pencil skirts and suits that can be "shortened, lengthened or paired with High Street accessories "at very little extra cost". Her husband now swears by TK Maxx for his fix of designer gear. Prada fragrance is out for Clare. A daily visit to Starbucks is replaced by coffee made at home. Apart from popping in for the rare treat of "the odd bag of posh pasta", she has ditched (delicious!) Waitrose food and started buying groceries at Aldi or Lidl. Her beautiful flower garden has been turned into a home-grown vegetable patch (sound the "spirit of the War" and "dig on for victory" klaxons). Meals out are now only permitted in the likes of Pizza Express.
Perhaps most tear-evoking is the fact that annual holidays to Brazil have been replaced by mere city-breaks to Munich. ALL of this is hardship is being endured in order that her son will not have to go to a state school.
 |
| Munich: that dangerous, seedy holiday destination of the penniless |
It is of course, frankly extremely easy to piss yourself at the absurdity of this article. It's hard to see how growing your own vegetables can make much of a dent in a £15,000 a year school bill. One meal for four in Pizza Express can easily cost more than many families spend on a week on groceries. People go years without buying new clothes, let alone having expensive designer ones to modify and accessorise with new items from mere "High Street" stores. Munich is one of the most affluent, chic and luxury cities in Europe, with prices to match. A week at Butlin's or self-catering in Benidorm it is not. In a previous Mail article, Clare reveals that she lives in "leafy Wandsworth" where a family Victorian terrace costs around the £1 million mark, property prices are on the rise, and the area is described as a magnet for London's high fliers. Her neighbours include bankers, doctors, a High Court judge and "retired lady diplomat".
I've never been one for the politics of envy and nor do I gloat at the thought of anyone falling on what they feel are hard times. Nonetheless, the use of her expression "put my family through this" to describe the economies she has implemented, is self-pitying and shows utter ignorance and even contempt for what literally millions of other families are experiencing. Times might be relatively tough for her, but for her to be such a vocal sympathy sponge in a national daily is somewhat stomach-churning.
Her personal spending decisions are likewise entirely up to her. If she has made a private decision to forgo her shopping trips to Harvey Nicks to pay for her son's school fees, fine and dandy. For her to set herself up in the Daily Mail as some kind of latter day Joan of Arc martyr ("I'll buy food at Lidl and clothes at Primark rather than take my son out of his private school") for having done so just, however, invokes a massive "fuck off" in my book. I'd also throw into the mix that I went to a not particularly great comprehensive school and it didn't stop my going to Cambridge. The phrase she uses to describe state schools ("a poverty of expectation") again deserves a similar expletive as it offends the many excellent professionals who work in the state sector.
The reaction on Twitter (and perhaps surprisingly in many of the Mail Reader online comments left on the story) was predictable. It consisted of a mixture of outrage, amusement and my "go and engage in sexual acts" responses. Why then publish it? I'll set out my thoughts after a couple of paragraphs on the second recent story I'd like to highlight.
Gypsies: "We're on our way to Britain"
The front page of the Christmas Eve edition of the Mail was much more their standard fare. Again, I'm not providing the link: this screen shot and picture further down tell you all you need to know.
 |
| Merry Christmas, Love, the Mail |
According to the Mail, this tidal wave of immigration (will anyone remain in Romania or Bulgaria?) will not be comprised of be hard-working tradespeople, people prepared to put up with low wages to do menial jobs, or young professionals. Only those living in the gypsy slums will apparently have the economic ability, forethought and incentive to come here. Their aim will be not to work, but to claim benefits. It will only be Britain that is the target for this mass immigration, not the wealthy countries of say Sweden, Denmark, Germany or the Netherlands, some of which are closer, all of which are subject to the same EU rules, and all of which have substantially more generous welfare states.
Presumably everyone knows of the infamous "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!" 1930s Mail headline which praised Mosley's British Union of Fascists. It appeared around the same time as Lord Rothermere's article in which he predicted that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". I once read another less well known Mail story from this time about the arrival of Jewish refugees in Britain. What struck me about it is that you could substitute the word "Jew" for "Eastern European immigrant" and the language, rhetoric and content would read just like a modern day Mail story. The foreign speaking, odd-looking, benefit-seeking Jews have now assimilated and the apocalyptic visions of the Mail have been transferred to a new group to distrust and spread fear and hatred about. It's a different century but it's the same poisonous bile.
Why Does the Mail Do It?
The answer is really very simple, of course. They're a business and they are an extremely successful one at that. Just like any other publication, their revenue has to come either from the sale of hard copy editions, or through advertising revenue. The Mail is the UK's second largest selling newspaper, with sales of almost 2 million a day, and a readership of over 4.3 million people. Their obnoxious mixture of fear, hate, prejudice and social aspiration sells to a sector of the primarily lower middle class market that they know so well.
The paper is heavily slanted towards Conservative Party voters and provides them with the fodder that confirms their view of the world. Stories such as the brave plight and sacrifices shown by Clare Campbell in no longer shopping in Waitrose reinforce the Government's message that we are "all in this together". Her "sacrifices" show that anyone can get through these austere times if they darn well pull their socks up and dig vegetables in the garden. She is the embodiment of people "doing the right thing" (to use Cameron's favourite line) and represents the antithesis of Osbourne's mythical millions who keep their blinds down in the morning because they're out of work and on benefits.
The story also provides a not-so-subtle parallel with the simplistic Coalition household economics approach to the national deficit:
But — like Britain itself — although our long-term prospects for financial recovery were good, the balance in our joint bank account remained alarmingly low. We were earning less than a third of what we once had.At the same time Campbell provides an odd model for lower middle class Mail readers' social aspirations. In these austere times it's now cool to be posh and rub shoulders with the great unwashed in Lidl - just as long as certain clear social differentiators are in place. In this case it is that you live in a £1m home, you're wearing designer dresses that you've altered the hems on, and it's all just to keep your son in private education. The story even mentions that she bumped into a friend of hers in the local Lidl - and then immediately explains that the friend is from a Pilates class and is married to a hedge-fund manager. The snobbery is stomach-turning.
 |
| They've even managed to find a hoodie wearing gypsy. Full marks! |
The Bulgarian Gypsies story is much simpler. It is pure fear and xenophobia: the bread and butter of Mail journalism. They've been doing it for decades and will do it as long as people want to read this type of thing. The target group will change (they will always be weaker in some way), but the sentiment of dislike of the outsiders is as basic and primitive as cave-dwellers' not liking people who aren't from their tribe.
Neither Clever, Nor Sophisticated
None of this is clever, or sophisticated. The Mail has been poisoning the minds of generations of Britons for over a century now. It has been responsible for reinforcing and indeed creating a reality in this country that I abhor. I say "creating" because taking the example of the EU, I'm quite sure the increase in the unpopularity of the European political project over the last 20 years has been down to a steady supply of negativity and untruths from the Mail (and other right-wing British tabloids) that feeds into the fertile ground of latent prejudices in this country. This stuff sells because people want to hear it, but it also shapes and entrenches opinions.
The cleverer stuff, however, comes in with the "click-baiting". In order to sell advertising space, the Mail online has to produce readership statistics. There will always be people (the same demographic as those who buy the paper) who will read this stuff online. In addition, however, there is a big group out there who wouldn't ordinarily go near the Mail with a bargepole. Many of them are well represented on Twitter and they are located just a click away from boosting readerships numbers. Clicks make points, and "points make prizes" for the owners of the Mail. This is important stuff in terms of revenue: after the New York Times, the Mail is apparently the world’s second-biggest news site by traffic, with some 40 million unique visitors.
Looking at both recent stories I've highlighted (and in particular the Waitrose Martyr one, which today spurred the creation of the hashtag #prayforclarecampbell) it is hard not to think this is all extremely deliberate and manipulative. The Mail knows Twitter is out there and that there are many liberal/left leaning people using it. With each successive hideous piece of writing on the Mail Online, the warnings have been going out on Twitter - do not click on this, it's just deliberate baiting to cause outrage from people who will disagree. Even the paper's repeatedly expressed dislike of Twitter as a medium can be seen as a giant trolling exercise: who will take objection to this and post the links? We, the gullible, of course.
Despite all the warnings and this knowledge, we still do it though. It's like a car crash: we don't want to see people mangled in a wreck on the other side of the carriageway, yet who just drives past and doesn't slow down to sneak a look? Heavens, I've just written an entire post devoted to the paper I loathe: what it deserves is everyone to ignore it, not to comment upon it. The problem is that when people tweet about a story, even without linking to it, curiosity so frequently gets the better of you. If we object to the Mail exploiting us and don't wish to boost its advertising revenue, we really will have to smarten up a bit and hold our tongues on Twitter. You *really* don't have to search for and click on the two stories I mention here: I promise I have not misrepresented them and everything you need to know is here.
In summary, this by @WelshDalaiLama presents matters beautifully (and "read" encompasses clicking on their links):
