Right, reporting back as promised.

It was far worse than I had imagined.

Four long hours of very flaky statistics used to justify the tax collection cameras interspersed with ‘driving for idiots’ instruction that could have been useful (I am all for driver retraining) but was delivered in such a dreary way as to dissipate the will to live in a very short time.

In retrospect I made the wrong decision and should just have taken the points.

Moggy

Sorry to hear that. You still have the option of getting the points (plus a few more) by not seeing another safety camera in the near future.

Just out of interest, what were the ‘flaky statistics’?

what I can see happening is a ConLab government unless UKIP gets a last minute torrent of votes

Geoff.

The latest polls published today suggest no majority, labour 34%, conservative 34%, UKIP 14%, but labour probably will have largest number of seats by a small margin, so a labour led coalition currently statistically most likely.

As I seem unable to post the link on my phone I commend the Telegraph’s Leader today – it addresses a number of your criticisms.

Here is the link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/11423912/The-Telegraphs-promise-to-our-readers.html
I read this, it is full of obfuscation and misses the primary point that it was Peter Oborne who raised the issue, not the Times, Guardian and the BBC. Also Peter Oborne has been backed up by other Telegraph people, and by independent observers who have tracked the Telegraph’s coverage on a number of issues who showed that the coverage by them was considerably reduced compared to all other media outlets.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31529682
https://inforrm.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/was-peter-oborne-right-about-the-telegraphs-coverage-of-the-hsbc-scandal-gordon-ramsay/

For balance – it is worth noting Justin Welby’s reply to the allegations made in the Daily Heil:

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5499/archbishop-justins-reflections-on-Dresden

Bruce

It is not surprising that the Daily Mail got this wrong. It almost invariably does in detail. Anyway, as most people are aware, it doesn’t have a great record historically regarding support for Hitler.
I’ll let Steve Coogan elaborate. This comes from the Huffingtom Post website.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/26/steve-coogan-compares-the-mail-online-to-paedophilia_n_5038280.html
The context is that he was asked why the Mail, and in particular, it’s website is so popular.

the Mail Online, and clearly has an appeal that goes beyond just the curious. That’s hugely popular and all for the wrong reasons. It’s at best creepy and at worst sinister.”

When asked why the print edition, Britain’s biggest selling daily, had such a wide readership, Coogan said that popularity was not a defence for its publishing practices. “It is popular, but things that play on people’s prejudices are very popular,” he told the magazine.

“During Weimar Germany people pointing the fingers at the Jewish community – that was very popular, it was a convenient scapegoat. Interestingly of course the Daily Mail played on people’s insecurity in the 1930s.

“There was an influx of Jewish refugees from Germany and the old Lord Rothermere was an arch supporter of Adolf Hitler. As a newspaper it panders to people’s worst prejudices and people like to have their prejudices reinforced and that’s what the Daily Mail does. The notion that purely by definition of its popularity its beyond reproach is a nonsense.”

Edit:
I should, in the spirit of balance, say that most other print and web based journalism is very rarely completely accurate on items that I actually know anything about.

.Walking together as friends requires talking together in truth. As Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf challenges us: “To remember wrongdoing untruthfully is to act unjustly.”

Much debate surrounds this most controversial raid of the allied bombing campaign. Whatever the arguments, events here seventy years ago left a deep wound and diminished all our humanity. So as a follower of Jesus I stand here among you with a profound feeling of regret and deep sorrow.

Healing such wounds requires enemies to embark on the journey to become friends, which starts with our memories of the hurt we have suffered and ends with a shared understanding of the hurt we have caused each other.

Justin Welby’s words yesterday. I am not religious and disagree with much of what he has said on other matters, but I think the last paragraph is important, particularly the sharing of hurt

No, not at all. The bombing campaign, in general, was justified – Hitler brought it on the German people. It did get more morally dubious as time went on, but that’s war. This specific attack was not justified and we can’t shift the blame.

We are (were?) generally a moral people in Britain, and we fought the war for the best of motives. We don’t like to think we were not always as good as we should have been.

I agree entirely with this post. I seem to remember on one of the tv programmes about the bombing campaign that even some of the aircrew at the time were very concerned about this series of raids

Re6

Your attitude is part of the problem.

I fundamentally disagree with you on this issue, at every level apparently. You will not change my mind, I clearly will not change yours. Perhaps we should leave it there.