Spunt's helpful guide to Britain for fat Americans - Learn about Anglos so you can hate them better

[NerdShamer]

In response, an Irish musician called Ronan O'Rahilly purchased an old ferry and mounted a gigantic radio mast on it, sailing it in international waters as the first British pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, which illegally broadcast the hippest new sounds for only the Heppest of Cats (Daddy-O), causing many a BBC monocle to pop out in disgust (this all makes more sense when you remember that Britain is the nation that spawned Oliver Cromwell). Radio Caroline regularly got 7 million listeners in its heyday, meaning that every day, nearly one in seven people in the UK was listening to it.

So did the radio pirate get arrested?

And do you actually need an license to watch livestreams on the web? Particularly if they aren't by the BBC?

 

[CWCissey]

So did the radio pirate get arrested?

And do you actually need an license to watch livestreams on the web? Particularly if they aren't by the BBC?

The radio pirate got a job as a DJ on Radio 1 I believe.

You only need a licence to watch iPlayer online. And last time I checked, that can be surpassed by putting your postcode as SW1A 0AA or M50 2EQ

 

[benutz]

This is a glorious thread. Hope you are recovering well OP. Some people do their best work on opiods. I hope you are mending and getting all the meds you need.

So many great observations. So accurately conveyed. You've obviously been around a bit OP, and have drunken in what the surroundings have to offer you. Assimilating them, but not being assimilated by them. You taught me a few things I didn't know about my own country. You are of a rare breed. I particularly liked the way you presented the Norn Iron 'problem'. You nailed your colours to the mast there. Took courage. I also get the sense you are non-partisan, and are someone that can be reasoned with, even with opposing viewpoints. You are a credit to this nation.

I hope you can keep your great insights coming.

I don't want to shit up this thread any further. But if I may, here is a great little shitposting website that talks about the merits (or lack of) in whatever particular town in the UK you choose:

iLiveHere - Britain's worst places to live

Britain's towns and cities reviewed by the people who live there. As must read for property buyers, those in the housing market & tenants.

www.ilivehere.co.uk

It's fucking brutal. It's also pretty accurate. Best part are the comments though where other people who live in that town give their own view. It's funny, and that's the main thing.

Just type in the name of the town you wish to know more about, et voila!

Here is a good place to start if you live outside the UK and just want to get a feel for just how bad things are here:

Top 50 Worst Places to live in England 2021​

Top 50 worst places to live in England 2022

We have a new winner, Peterborough has fallen!

www.ilivehere.co.uk

Which leads on the TOP 10 worst places to live...

I won't spoil it for you, but yeah, fucking Bradford.


Awesome sauce!

 

[Return of the Freaker]

This is a glorious thread. Hope you are recovering well OP. Some people do their best work on opiods. I hope you are mending and getting all the meds you need.

So many great observations. So accurately conveyed. You've obviously been around a bit OP, and have drunken in what the surroundings have to offer you. Assimilating them, but not being assimilated by them. You taught me a few things I didn't know about my own country. You are of a rare breed. I particularly liked the way you presented the Norn Iron 'problem'. You nailed your colours to the mast there. Took courage. I also get the sense you are non-partisan, and are someone that can be reasoned with, even with opposing viewpoints. You are a credit to this nation.

I hope you can keep your great insights coming.

I don't want to shit up this thread any further. But if I may, here is a great little shitposting website that talks about the merits (or lack of) in whatever particular town in the UK you choose:

iLiveHere - Britain's worst places to live

Britain's towns and cities reviewed by the people who live there. As must read for property buyers, those in the housing market & tenants.

www.ilivehere.co.uk

It's fucking brutal. It's also pretty accurate. Best part are the comments though where other people who live in that town give their own view. It's funny, and that's the main thing.

Just type in the name of the town you wish to know more about, et voila!

Here is a good place to start if you live outside the UK and just want to get a feel for just how bad things are here:

Top 50 Worst Places to live in England 2021​

Top 50 worst places to live in England 2022

We have a new winner, Peterborough has fallen!

www.ilivehere.co.uk

Which leads on the TOP 10 worst places to live...

I won't spoil it for you, but yeah, fucking Bradford.


Awesome sauce!

Holy shit that site is gold

DYSERTH – WHERE MY MUM IS ALSO MY SISTER​

Legend has it the little village of Dyserth was built on Moel Hiraddug, not because of the quarry that is situated at the top of the tiny mountain, but because they could slope the pavements enough so that the limping from generations of genepool-shallowing would not show.

This village runs the gauntlet for the most dogsh*t deposited on pavements, you literally have to look out for pavement amongst the dog sh*t here. It’s like going in a time machine back to the 80’s when pavements were for dogs sh*tting first and walking second.


Lower Foel and Foel road are the most ridiculous streets in the UK. You can just about get a hot wheels car down the road if you ask the passengers to breath in, if you are ever in need of emergency services and happen to be on these two streets you can forget it! Houses are so close together you can literally take a sh*t in your own bathroom whilst simultaneously sitting in your next door neighbours lounge.

The High Street​

The high street is a blink and miss it affair. There is a failing corner shop that is a actually only getting by as you [definitely cannot do that, for legal reasons]. A spar shop which employs 99% of the villagers. And an overpriced Butchers that is [allegedly] taking full advantage of the fact there is no public transport to buy reasonably priced and better quality meat literally anywhere else in North Wales. The oddest addition to the high street is a farm shop which literally isn’t a farm shop at all. This cafe [allegedly] sells overpriced underwhelming food and seems to have a customer base which [allegedly] consists only of their relatives, which is handy when the whole village is related to you in some way.

Only Entertainment​

The only entertainment in the village is guessing which local pub has been closed by the council for illicit activity this week and watching the school run mums drive literally from their house 2 meters away to fight with other cars to park on the curb outside the school and block the entire road system up.

The school is small and intimate, and by that I mean ran by the only people in the village not to fail all their GCSE’s. The headmaster’s activity is [running a great school with a high degree of professionalism, we are not getting into that legal quagmire!] [when faced] with the onslaught of ch@vs that bring their kids to run amok in the playground before and after school. It is also clear that there is little to do in the village by the ratio of spawn to parents.

Rancid Council Estate​

If you don’t live in the fire hazard that is upper Dyserth then you live in the rancid council estate that is lower Dyserth. They tried to disguise the despair that this estate gives by putting it next to a rather pretty waterfall. Rent arrears are clearly spent on cars in this area if the BMW’s outside a 2 bedroom flat with 6 kids residing in it is anything to show for peoples expenditure. People visiting the waterfall can be heard saying ‘what’s that funny smell?’ every time a resident of the estate opens their front door, they certainly aren’t using their money for zoflora and Bold washing powder.


Next to the waterfall is a honesty box for visitors to pay 50p to wander onto the private land to have a look at the natural beauty. This rusted over in 1956 and contains only buttons. Next to the honesty box is a building that sometimes sells ice cream. The opening hours for this lovely well appointed shop are ‘When we can be arsed’. They can never be arsed [allegedly].

Dyserth has a large Mormon community. Even John Smith and his goggles can’t fool a local into accepting an outsider. Royston Vasey is alive and well and transformed to Dyserth. If you have the audacity to buy a house here thinking you will assimilate into the lovely local life, you have underestimated its inhabitants, they will sniff you out and ostracise you.

If you thought Rhyl was an absolute dumpster fire, scratch the surface of this pretty village and you will find even more depravity cast behind the pretty facade.
But the Waterfall is beautiful.

 

[Shining Wit]

It's fun to look up your town on that site and know exactly what pubs they're talking about even though all the names have been removed

 

[Spunt]

Next post is in the works, sorry it's been a bit slow. Should have something tomorrow.

Anyway, this is an unaltered snip of the BBC News front page as of 3 minutes ago. See which of these pieces of "News" makes you the angriest:

 

[Death Grip]

Next post is in the works, sorry it's been a bit slow. Should have something tomorrow.

Anyway, this is an unaltered snip of the BBC News front page as of 3 minutes ago. See which of these pieces of "News" makes you the angriest:

View attachment 2375981

The one about photography inspiring girls has not quite got me raging but is definitely causing emotional discomfort.

 

[CWCissey]

Yeah the insect photography one raises my eyebrow the most.

First one is about Escape To Victory, which is a great little movie, third and fourth ones seem like legit pieces and the last one seems a bit reactionary but I think I need to read the actual article to make an actual judgement.

EDIT: It's just a puff piece about Upfest, the artwork itself is by the same artist and it is a genuinely cool idea. Although the more interesting story is the metalheads vandalising some of the other artworks.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Next post is in the works, sorry it's been a bit slow. Should have something tomorrow.

Anyway, this is an unaltered snip of the BBC News front page as of 3 minutes ago. See which of these pieces of "News" makes you the angriest:

View attachment 2375981

None of them really draw anger tbh. They all just sound like stupid fluff pieces.

 

[Pickle Dick]

@Spunt

I'm eager to hear your thoughts on British media. I've always felt your country's media, television in particular, was a little more centralized compared to that of good ol' America's media.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

@Spunt great thread mate. Enjoying the hell out of it, the political breakdown had me laughing like a hyena.

Out of curiosity, the Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard cases got a huge amount of play on the American right- how were they seen over there?

 

[CWCissey]

@Spunt

I'm eager to hear your thoughts on British media. I've always felt your country's media, television in particular, was a little more centralized compared to that of good ol' America's media.

It kind of is, a lot of Television (and radio!) falls under the BBC umbrella, but we do have a couple of other companies created purely for competition purposes.

ITV is the main rival to the BBC, they run on a commercially funded model (3 minute ad blocks run every 15 minutes or so). It's actually really politically neutral to be honest, but it has a body count. I'm not even being hyperbolic, a couple of ITV shows have led to the deaths of people!

Channel 4 is a bit of a hybrid. It's subsidised by the licence fee but it runs ads too. It started off nobly, aiming to give new creators a chance to prove themselves but it's a lefty hellhole now. Just look at their treatment of that Simpsons episode where Homer gets a gun.

Channel 5 is the last of the terrestrial channels. It shows car crash TV mostly.

There's a fair few subsidiaries and other channels plus all the satellite shit but they're not really important.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Next post is in the works, sorry it's been a bit slow. Should have something tomorrow.

Anyway, this is an unaltered snip of the BBC News front page as of 3 minutes ago. See which of these pieces of "News" makes you the angriest:

View attachment 2375981

Not anger, not any emotion really. I feel apathy towards this, this is the sort of dumb shit that I expect from any news source.

 

[Spunt]

British Newspapers

One of the more confusing things about American politics for me as a Brit is trying to work out the difference between its media organisations, particularly its newspapers. Everyone talks about the New York Times and Washington Post (or was it the Washington Times and New York Post?) as if everyone knows what their politics are or how seriously you should take their stories, which almost nobody here does. So I'll assume that the British media (excluding the BBC, which I've already covered) is equally confusing to outsiders. So here's a guide to the UK's main news media. I'll have to do TV channels separately because this post took me all day as it is and there's new Rimworld DLC.

I can't go into detail, but I used to work a job that involved fielding questions from journalists, and even the lightest remaining skidmarks of respect for them I still had on the y-fronts of my psyche were thoroughly bleached by the experience. As Null provided yet another example of in his recent front-page post, all journos are lying, biased desperate scum who deserve hatred, mockery and derision. So let's get started.

As with most of the rest of the West, British newspapers aren't as big of a power bloc as they used to be. In common with American media, competition from the internet has caused them to panic, and their responses have ranged from trying to demonise the entire internet, becoming more outrageous and clickbaity, or just going out of business (or in the case of Buzzfeed UK, all three).

British newspaper journalists are notorious for their lack of morals (and heavy drinking) and there have been some incredible scandals over the years, I'll cover the ones I remember.

I don't know if it's done this way in the States, but in the UK newspapers are divided into "Broadsheet" and "Tabloid" categories. This used to refer to the physical size of the pages, but most "Broadsheet" newspapers have reduced the size of their pages in recent years to make them easier to read on public transport - the only market for newspapers that is still thriving. So "Broadsheet" these days refers more to newspapers with more po-faced, serious content, and "Tabloid" to more sensationalist rags. There's also a sub-category of Tabloid called known as the "Red-Top" Tabloids due to their tendency to put their names in white on a red background, and these tend to be the scum-rags aimed at tattooed plebs.

Most British newspapers have a separate Sunday edition, with numerous supplements, more sports reporting (most British sports are played on Saturdays so match reports are an important part of Sunday newspapers) and more in-depth analysis of things. Often these Sunday papers have completely different names and staff than the weekday editions, but are under the same ownership and almost always have the same political outlook.

Broadsheet Newspapers

The Times

Politics: Centre-Right
2019 Circulation: 417,000
Sunday version: The Sunday Times
Target demographic: Boomers

The Times is the house newspaper of the more centrist factions of the Tory party. It is one of the oldest newspapers in the world, and has a similarly geriatric readership. If you own a monocle, are a retired Army Colonel, go "Harrumph!" and complain about Kids These Days, this is the newspaper for you. It is deeply small-c conservative in its outlook (though almost all its readers vote Tory as well), but is fairly moderate, and was the only right-of-centre newspaper to oppose Brexit. Its Sunday version, the imaginatively named Sunday Times, has so many supplements (for things that Boomers like, such as holidays to boring places, gardening, wine, expensive houses) that your average Boomer's crumbling spine cannot even bring it home from the shops. Probably just as well, as I think just reading them causes your body to assume you're 200 years old and spontaneously grow hair in your ears. Because Boomers are the only people who read newspapers these days, the Times is the best-selling British broadsheet.


Lifting the Sunday Times killed more Boomers than the coof

The Times is owned by News International, under the control of Aussie tycoon Rupert Murdoch. At 90 years old, Murdoch is now almost old enough to read his own paper.

The Daily Telegraph



Politics: Right
2019 Circulation: 360,000
Sunday version: The Sunday Telegraph
Target demographic: Angry Boomers, Tory student activists, Men too old to wear jeans but who do so anyway

The Torygraph is a similarly venerable institution to the Times, but has a slightly more right-wing, edgier outlook. It would not surprise you to find out that Jeremy Clarkson has a column in it, in fact those familiar with Clarkson will be able to grasp the Telegraph's political outlook fairly easily. The Telegraph is linked with the Tory "Head Bangers" faction - pro-Thatcher, anti-EU, generally hawkish, and is the most right-wing broadsheet altogether. Like the Times, many Tory politicians have columns in the Telegraph and many ex-Telegraph people are involved in the new right-leaning TV channel GB News that recently got targeted by Twitter Activists who told its advertisers that it was racist, transphobic etc. depite it not having broadcast a single programme at that point.

The Telegraph is owned by the mysterious and not at all weird Barclay brothers - think the Bogdanoffs mixed with Howard Hughes. They live alone on a private island in the Channel Islands that they run as a feudal barony complete with a motherfucking castle (the weird semi-detached constitutional relationship between the Channel Islands and the mainland UK pretty much allows them to get away with this, as well as paying almost no tax). They are almost never seen in public and I'm sure nothing odd is going on there and that Hilary Clinton is not involved.


Nothing bad has ever happened here. Nothing.

The Independent

Politics: Liberal
2019 Circulation: None
Sunday version: The Independent on Sunday (defunct)
Target demographic: People who find cricket too exciting

The Independent used to be a major broadsheet newspaper, but now is slowly coughing its last days away on an internet ventilator having ceased its print edition in 2016. Why did the Indy die? Well its nickname of the Indescribablyboring might give you a clue. The Independent tried to be a sensible, centrist paper that tried to cover stories as objectively as possible. It utterly failed, because it quickly gained a reputation for soft-left politics that put it in competition with the Guardian. Worse, its pretence that it wasn't a liberal paper drove off liberals, who preferred the Guardian because it was at least honest about its leanings. And actual centrists took one read and discovered:

1 - It was clearly left-wing despite its protestations to the contrary
2 - Its house style was so dry and boring that prolonged exposure could turn your brain into cheese

The Indy was dull, so unbelievably dull that it resembled a French newspaper, right down to having hardly any pictures on the front page, because pictures took up room that could be filled with Serious News.

In 2003, in a desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy, the Indy not only switched to a tabloid size, but also suffered a sudden, violent shift in style to a shreiking, desperate leftist rag with gimmicky front pages and a doom-laden obsession with climate change and how evil the Tories were. Again, this was nothing that its readers couldn't get elsewhere and the end came not long after. It's still online but nobody cares.


You didn't realise Boring could be so versatile, did you?

The Guardian



Politics: Left
2019 Circulation: 141,000
Sunday version: The Observer
Target demographic: Dangerhairs, Men who wear socks with sandals

The Guardian (formerly the Manchester Guardian until 1959) is a British institution, in a weird sort of way. It is the in-house paper for all lefty types, and its ludicrous stories and famous tendencies towards hilarious typographical errors*. It is also imfamous for allowing just about any lunatic to write opinion columns to the extent that insane "Why Paedophiles are the Most Oppressed Minority Ever" opinion pieces have become an internet meme that has spread well beyond our shores. "Guardian Reader" has become British shorthand for a clueless white urban liberal who makes big pronouncements on behalf of minorities who are just too primitive to understand what's best for them, the poor dears.

There's now a small industry of trolls making fake Grauniad** opinion columns. See if you can work out which of the following are actually real Guardian opinion articles:

Spoiler: Answers

They're all real.

The Guardian also once brought us the most unhinged opinion piece of all time.

Despite a Tabloid switch in 2018, the Grauniad has been bleeding 20,000 print readers a year for a long time now and it will probably go the way of the Independent soon. But unlike the Indescribablyboring, the Guardian has a healthy online readership and its online presence is the biggest leftist news source in the UK and very influential abroad too.

The Grauniad is also the place where public sectors job postings appear - much hilarity can be had browsing through the listings looking at all the stupid, overpaid non-jobs, until you realise that you're paying for all this (unless you're American, but if you're American you're paying for the US military who can waste money in ways the British can only dream of). Highlights from my last trawl through included such job titles as "Racial Harassment Co-ordinator" and "Domestic Violence Advocate" which sound remarkably based to me.

*The Guardian holds the world record for the most typographical errors in a single article in a 1980s piece about Pope John Paul II that somehow made it to print depite entirely missing the letter "e", referring to him as "Th Pop" throughout and discussing his "swping rorganisation" of the Vatican. It also managed to misspell the word "misspell" TWICE as "mispell" in its own correction columns. It's still at it:




**Supposedly the Guardian once managed to spell its own name wrong at one point and it has stuck.

The Financial Times



Politics: Neoliberal
2019 Circulation: 180,000
Sunday version: FT Weekend
Target demographic: Stock market types

The FT, despite its name and broad political outlook, is not related to the Times, but is almost as old and has always been the default broadsheet for City of London type people, with an emphasis on financial and business reporting. It is printed on salmon-pink rather than white paper, presumably because that makes it easier to see the Cocaine you're snorting off it.

The FT, thanks to its moneyed audience, strong sales in the Far East and its thriving and high-powered jobs section, is one of the few British Broadsheets in good financial shape, and it was sold in 2015 to a Japanese investment group for over $1.3 Billion.

Tabloid Papers

The Daily Mail



Politics: Hard Right
2019 Circulation: 1.2 Million
Sunday version: The Mail on Sunday
Target demographic: Shrieking Karens, Reactionary Anti-Vax Housewives, Urban 4x4 Drivers

The Daily Mail exists to cause rage. Rage in its readers, by convincing them that Genetically-Modified Asylum Seekers carry a new strain of Islamic Tranny AIDS that lowers House Prices, and in its non-readers by its blatant fearmongering, misinformation and poorly-researched articles even by British Tabloid standards. With Buzzfeed UK being shut down in 2019, the Daily Mail's "Mail Online" site is now the UK's premium source of untruthful clickbait bullshit for bored housewives to share on Facebook to terrify each other. The Mail is the only right-wing paper to specifically target a female demographic, and its assessment of the average British woman's cognitive capabilities is not a flattering one, clearly.

The Mail's favourite kind of article is the health scare - particularly cancer. Mail "journalists" will mis-read a scientific paper and treat it as incontrovertible evidence that quinoa or whatever "causes cancer" and send it out to its small army of Karens who will stop feeding it to young Archibald and Tabitha immediately, until next week when the Mail published another badly-researched headline saying that quinoa actually *cures* cancer and cancer is actually caused by bath towels.

Oh, and the Mail was an enthusiastic supporter of Fascism back in the day.

You may get the impression from the other posts I've written in this thread (and elsewhere) that I'm personally quite right wing. And you'd be right (and a retard kike tranny nigger, obviously). But the Daily Mail can fuck off. Do you know why it's so easy for the Left to portray the Right as a bunch of credulous morons who like to hate and rage rather than think? Because the Daily Mail panders to those exact people and is very successful at it. I wonder if the Left feel the same way about the Guardian?

The Daily Express

Politics: Right
2019 Circulation: 320,000
Sunday version: Sunday Express
Target demographic: Barry from the Norf, who luvs Princess Di, 'ates them foreigns and their Euros. Simple as.

The Daily Express is very similar to the Daily Mail, but isn't as successful. It does not specifically target women, but also does not specifically target men the way the Sun does, which leaves it with a bit of an identity crisis. Whereas the Mail is broadly Tory, the Express is more for UKIP types.

In 2000, the Express was bought by softcore porn and celebrity gossip mag tycoon Richard "Dirty" Desmond, who caused an exodus of staff in the previously very socially conservative publication. Since then, the Express has been sued for libel more often than even the Daily Mail, committing classic Tabloid hypocrisy in condemning Kids These Days for their loose morals in one article while running lurid sex stories in the next. (On one memorable occasion in 2009, it excoriated the by-then adult survivors of a 1996 school shooting for daring to drink alcohol and have sex, an article "researched" entirely by stalking their Facebook profiles).

The Express gets weird fixations for certain stories. For example, missing British child Madeleine McCann, who disappeared while on holiday in Portugal in 2007, resulted in the Express featuring the case on the front page for 100 successive days, desperately trying to keep the story alive by reporting every little piece of rumour and gossip as a "Big New Lead" and engaging in every conspiracy theory it could get its hands on. Eventually it accused McCann's parents of murdering her and lost a subsequent multi-million pound libel case by said parents and assorted randoms it had casually accused of abduction, murder and paedophilia without a scrap of evidence.

But the Express' obsession with Maddy McCann was nothing compared to its obsession with Princess Diana after her death in 1997. In a series of events definitely unrelated to Richard Desmond's close friendship with loopy Egyptian businessman Mohamed Fayed (whose son, who Diana was banging at the time, also died in the same car crash she did), the entire paper was soon taken over by the story for literal years. And like the McCann case, they would splurge any potty conspiracy theory they could find (most of them from Fayed) all over the front page. This got so bad that on the 6th November 2006, the day Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death, the Express decided, unlike literally every other paper on the planet, that the real story was SPIES COVER UP DIANA 'MURDER', of which I could only find a thumbnail pic.

Still, I'm sure they're over that story by now. It's been 24 years for fuck's sake. Let's take a look at their front page on the 1st July this year, a day on which the British Army finally left Afghanistan, the Wimbledon Tennis tournament restarted after the coof, the British government announced second vaccine boosters for the elderly and on the eve of England's football match with Ukraine, the Express went with:

Spoiler

FOR FUCKS SAKE

(I believe that front page is at least about 80% Princess Diana by surface area a bit like the interior of her car.

Metro



Politics: Perhaps slightly right of centre
2019 Circulation: 1.42 Million
Sunday version: None
Target demographic: Commuters

The Metro is the country's most-read newspaper, though it is helped considerably in that regard by being free, funded instead by advertising. It is given out at railway stations and other public transport hubs, to give commuters something to read on the train. It started in London in 2003, but has since launched editions in every British city with substantial public transport networks. As a result, the Metro is the bane of those tasked with clearing out the mountain of rubbish from the streets and train cars of Britain's big cities, and is as familiar a sight to the seasoned London commuter as "homeless" Romanian women working their way down the train to shove their revolting babies in everyone's faces and demanding money for the privilege.

The Metro is too lightweight in its reporting to have much political heft (it's designed to be read in 45 minutes) and has basic news stories, dating, sports, puff pieces, restaurant reviews and the like. It's tedious and vapid, but it has a captive audience and reading it is certainly a better option than looking around the carriage, because doing the latter might cause you to accidentally make eye contact with someone and consequently be killed by them.

"Red-Top" Tabloids

The Sun



Politics: Right
2019 Circulation: 1.41 Million
Sunday version: News of the World (Defunct), Sun on Sunday
Target demographic: Fat men with football tattoos

The Sun is the best-selling newspaper in the UK (only the free Metro has a higher circulation and even then only slightly). It is found on the dashboard of every kebab-fuelled trucker, the tables of every bloodstained flat-roofed Council estate pub and in the pocket of every lager-swilling football hooligan in the country, except those in Liverpool*.

The Sun's story is one of scandal, titty pictures and gigantic political influence. The Sun, with its usual humility, credited itself with Tony Blair's election in 1997 after it switched allegiance from the Tories to Labour for the only time in its history. And it may have been partly right, given that for many of its poorly-educated, politically unengaged readers it was and remains their only source of news and opinion. When the Sun switched its allegiance back to the Tories in 2009, Labour promptly lost the next election, meaning that the Sun has backed the winning party in every single UK general election since 1979.

Knowing their demographic, from 1970 to 2013, the Sun would famously run a picture of a topless model on page 3 of every issue. The girls would be well paid and many launched careers on the back of it, but Our Betters decided this was no longer acceptable in Current Year (nobody of course asked the girls themselves, poor stupid wimminz don't know what's good for them after all), and the Sun bowed to pressure in 2013 and ended the tradition.

The Sun's Sunday equivalent was the notorious News of the World. Known as the "News of the Screws" because of its obsessive coverage of celebrity sex scandal and gossip. But it was the paper itself that would get caught up in the biggest scandals.

Most notorious was the "Phone Hacking" scandal, whereby News International journalists (mostly working for the NotW, but also for the Sun and the Times) would "hack" into the notoriously lax security of early-2000s mobile phones by calling them, having them go through to voicemail, then enter the default voicemail PIN to hear the victim's voicemails, which would then be used to source stories. Victims included politicians, celebrities, members of the Royal Family and even teenage murder victim Milly Dowler, who had News of the Screws journalists call her phone while she was still missing (before her body was found) and listen to her voicemails - which then auto-deleted, destroying evidence and hampering the Police investigation. Several News International journalists were jailed, and a campaign for regulation of the media was launched by actor Hugh Grant, whose voicemails were hacked and who had been caught by the LAPD not long before in his car with LA prostitute Divine Brown, who was sucking him his penis. It was possible that messages Brown left on Grant's voicemail may have been picked up by the NotW and forwarded to the cops, leading to the bust.

During this time Rebekah Wade, the NotW's editor, married actor Ross Kemp, famous for portraying tough guys in his role as petty criminal Grant Mitchell in the ludicrously popular British soap opera Eastenders, as well as fronting military or survival-themed trash TV like "Ross Kemp on Gangs", and "Ross Kemp: Extreme World". Wade was arrested for assaulting Kemp in 2005, which was ironic given that the Sun was campaigning against domestic violence at the time. It also emerged that she was cheating on him with fellow journalist and successor as NotW editor Andy Coulson, who would later be jailed for his part in the phone hacking scandal and go on trial four times for perjury and bribery.


(Ross Kemp doesn't get the Tough Guy roles any more for some reason.)

In response to the Phone Hacking scandal, Rupert Murdoch shut down the News of the World in 2011, marking the end of 168 years of uninterrupted publication. Its successor, the Sun on Sunday, has many of the same staff but much a much lower profile and circulation than its predecessor.

In 2015 The Sun's Anthony France became the first and so far only British Journalist to be convicted of bribing Police officers to release confidential information. His employers threw him under the bus and denied all knowledge (and refused to pay the costs associated with the case, lumbering him with them personally).

*The people of Liverpool hate the Sun because in 1989 it ran a number of false stories about the behaviour of Liverpool FC fans during the Hillsborough disaster, where a stampede/crowd crush killed 96 people. These stories included allegations that ticketless Liverpool fans had caused the crush by trying to surge past the barriers, and had even urinated on paramedics trying to resuscitate their fellow Liverpool fans on the pitch. It turned out that the source for most of these stories was in fact South Yorkshire Police, whose callous and incompetent crowd control was the real cause of the disaster. Good ol' British Bobbies, eh? Though bear in mind these stories were very believable at the time, because rioting Liverpool fans had caused a stampede and the collapse of a retaining wall at Heysel stadium in Belgium just four years before, killing 39 Juventus fans.

The Daily Mirror

Politics: Left
2019 Circulation: 508,000
Sunday version: Sunday Mirror
Target demographic: Fat factory workers, Council estate NEETs

The Daily Mirror is the biggest Left-wing newspaper in the UK, and is thoroughly pitched at grubby Northerners from mining towns wot 'ate Fatchaa', simple as. Its heyday was in the 1960s, but following a series of scandals and financial disasters it's a shadow of what it once was - but it is still popular and influential. It always has been, and remains, the unofficial mouthpiece of the Labour party.

Back in the day, the Mirror was owned by corrupt fat Czech tycoon and noted Ceaucescu fan Robert Maxwell, notorious for using Britain's draconian libel laws to silence all dissent and criticism. After the powerful Jewish financier with extensive criminal networks (widely believed to have been a Communist spy) "fell off his yacht" in totally non-suspicious circumstances that definitely didn't involve Hilary Clinton in 1991, it emerged that his company accounts were complete fiction. It turns out that Maxwell had been raiding his employees' pension fund to cover his empire's gigantic losses, and that the proud billionaire socialist had lined his pockets with his workers' own money (sounds like a perfect match for a Lefty newspaper to me). The Mirror nearly went out of business but was merged with the regional newspaper group Trinity to form a new newspaper group, Trinity Mirror. A new editor, formerly editor of the Sun and the News of the World was appointed in 1995, and Americans may be familiar with him - his name was Piers Morgan.

What kind of man is Piers Morgan? Why is he in the States now and scared to come back home?

First up was the "City Slickers" scandal, in which the Mirror's finance team hyped up worthless stocks that they owned in a classic pump-and-dump scheme. Morgan bought nearly £70,000 worth of shares in the failing computer company Vilgen, which he sold at a profit following his own paper's attempt to ramp up the price. Two Mirror journalists went to prison, but Morgan managed to weasel his way out.

Morgan had a public feud with Satirical magazine editor and TV personality Ian Hislop, after appearing on the TV show Have I got News for You in which he admitted that he had arranged for his journalists to follow Hislop home after Hislop made a joke at his expense. During the last ever flight of Concorde, TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson confronted Morgan about paparazzi photos Morgan had published of his wife, and poured a glass of water over his head. They met again during an awards ceremony, at which Clarkson beat him up.

But his luck wasn't going to hold. In 2004, Morgan posted a number of pictures supposedly showing British soldiers assaulting and urinating on an Iraqi POW. The pictures were laughably obvious fakes (you can tell the guy in the pictures is Iraqi because he's wearing an IRAQI FLAG T-SHIRT guys, you know, like Iraqis always do, plus the "soldier" is wearing non-army issue boots and is wearing most of the rest of his uniform and equipment wrong) but Morgan stood by them.



When it emerged, to no-one's surprise, that they were shot in the back of a lorry in a car park near Leicester, Morgan went full lolcow and doubled down, refusing to apologise or even admit they were faked, so he was sacked on the spot by the paper's owners and physically escorted from the building. To this day he flip-flops between maintaining they were real or saying they might be fake but "reflect what was really happening", an excuse that would do many of our favourite cows proud.


A tragedy comedy in three parts

This is why you can keep Piers fucking Morgan.


Daily Star

Politics: Inconsistent
2019 Circulation: 330,000
Sunday version: Daily Star Sunday
Target demographic: Council flat ditchpigs

The Daily Star was created by the then-owners of the Daily Express in 1978 who thought the Daily Express needed a "less upmarket" equivalent. Given that the Daily Express is about as classy as a truck stop blowjob, this gives you some idea as to the IQ level at which the Star is aimed. In general, the Star's "reporting" makes the News of the World's look like fucking Watergate. It started as a lefty paper but its politics have been all over the place and in 2011 one of its reporters quit because he thought the paper was too supportive of Tommy Robinson's alt-right English Defence League, so fuck knows at this point. Its target audience of baboons in tracksuits don't know what a "politics" is anyway.

Like its bigger brother the Express, the Star has a habit of being sued for libel a lot, and losing. It got in with the Sun on claiming that drunk Liverpool fans caused the Hillsborough disaster, accused Madeleine McCann's parents of murdering her, completely made up an entire interview with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and once even falsely accused Rockstar Games of planning a GTA game around a then-recent series of shootings by an escaped convict near Newcastle, going as far as to phone relatives of the gunman's victims to get their horrified reactions but not going so far as to speak to Rockstar themselves or make any other attempt to verify if the story was true.


But it looked so plausible.

--

Next time: British TV

 

[TheImportantFart]

@Spunt another fantastic post, but I'm slightly disappointed this wasn't included:

This was broadcast in 1987 and it still holds up.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Neat rundown. What's the paper that finds a breakthrough for Alzheimer's/cancer every couple of weeks?

Next time: British TV

Ooh, are you going to cover soaps?

 

[Least Concern]

Another well-written rundown. Thanks.

With regards to American newspapers, the only one that's a real tabloid in the British sense would be the righty New York Post, which stands in opposition to the lefty broadsheet New York Times, both of which are regional to the New York area (though the Times has pretensions of being the whole country's paper of record). We typically use the word "tabloid" to refer to any sort of magazine printed on newsprint which would usually be published weekly at most, and typically feature stuff like celebrity news and gossip, how to lose weight drinking kale smoothies, and other Karen-oriented pablum, or, back in the day, obviously false "Bigfoot Spotted with Elvis in Colorado Diner"-style fiction - no actual news. Thus the word "tabloid" is often used to dismiss either a news story or an entire publication as unimportant, sensationalist, or false.

There are two national newspapers which you can expect to find anywhere in the country; center-leftist USA Today and neoconservative Wall Street Journal.

On the whole, though, newspapers have died a death in America and New York is unusual for even having two daily regional newspapers left to oppose each other. Most places, even major metropolises, only have one anymore.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

On the whole, though, newspapers have died a death in America and New York is unusual for even having two daily regional newspapers left to oppose each other. Most places, even major metropolises, only have one anymore.

Pretty much. It's amazing to pick up the Cleveland Plain Dealer and think back to how big and thicc it was 20 years ago. You see other special interest papers that are usually free via ads. Cleveland has the Scene, which usually has some sort of investigative or general interest story, with the rest being restaurants, nightlife, etc.

Then there's the Call and Post, which I suppose you could call a "historically Black newspaper". Idk about it's current ownership but it's been around a long time and focused on/aimed at the Black community.

There's also a series of "Observer" newspapers focused on very local news and events for various Cleveland neighborhoods, suburbs, or groups of the above (The Collinwood Observer, The Euclid Observer, etc)

There's also Crain's Cleveland Business for srs businessmen doing srs business. They're owned buy a paper of similar name in Chicago that does business press in multiple cities.

And of course, in America the papers being truly local/regional probably died in the 90s-00s along with what is now iHeart Media buying up all the local radio and local TV also being absorbed by megacorps. The Plain Dealer is owned by Advanced Publications, a big publisher that owns Conde Nast and lots of other publications.

 

[Pickle Dick]

Next time: British TV

I think I ought to give you a rundown of American TV so you have something to compare that with.

Spoiler: Not a rundown at after all

As us Jesuslanders know, we have have five major television networks - NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and The CW - plus PBS.

NBC (full name: National Broadcasting Company) is the oldest of all of these networks; it was founded as a radio network in 1926, and eventually launched their television network in 1939. It has a fairly extensive library of programs (helped by the network being a sister of Universal, giving it a pretty decent catalog of movies to broadcast during certain periods of time), including Saturday Night Live, their annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade broadcasts, as well as their catalogs of crime and medical dramas, and their infamous late night talk shows (both of which are only slightly better than the other examples listed below). It's also a very news-heavy network, even having two cable spinoffs for that very purpose: The market-focused CNBC channel, and the absolutely notorious left-wing MSNBC channel (think of it as the left's Fox News, with only a slightly better reputation. You may recognize NBC and their properties for their famed Peacock logo, which had gone under many revisions until 1986.

CBS (full name: Columbia Broadcasting System, though they've not legally been that for decades) was founded in 1927, just a year after NBC launched. To this day, it has arguably one of the best lineups of shows of any of these networks; formerly home to beloved comedies and western shows like Gunsmoke and I Love Lucy (not to mention the countless other shows it was well known for in its heyday, see: MASH, Dallas, As the World Turns...), it still maintains a superb variety of television programs, including their reality shows (like 'em or not), comedies like Big Bang Theory (recently ended), and their exemplary lineup of crime shows (you may recognize NCIS or CSI) and annual reruns of Christmas specials (speaking of which, it also airs their unofficial broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade every year, and manages to do so via some workarounds). It's not as news-heavy as NBC, but its still known for their recognizable news shows like 60 Minutes and Face the Nation. Sadly, the network is also known for hosting two of the worst late-night talk shows that have disgraced the nation: Late Show with Stephen Colbert and the Late Late Show with James Corden, and I'll just leave it at that. The network is known for their iconic "Eye" logo, which has remained unchanged for over half a century (it debuted in 1951).

ABC (full name: American Broadcasting Company) was founded in 1943, though it has roots to NBC dating back to 1927, having become an independent network by the former year. Being owned by Disney, ABC's programming tends to skewer towards a younger audience; it has a few Disney-related holiday specials (on top of the other holiday specials it airs), as well as an extensive lineup of reality and game shows (you may have heard of The Bachelor/Bachelorette, Shark Tank, Dancing of the Stars, etc.) They have a fairly substantial lineup of news programming, including Good Morning America and 20/20. Being a sister to ESPN, the network also has a large catalog of sports programming, including E-Sports and X-Games. Their one late-night talk show offering, Jimmy Kimmel Live, is rather notorious for its overreliance on celebrities to compensate for the show's host being an unfunny lefty dullard.

Fox (full name: Fox Broadcasting Company) was founded in 1986, though it wouldn't begin airing with a lineup of shows until a year later; being a much younger network compared to the above, it doesn't have any connection to radio broadcasting (although several radio networks have been launched under the Fox brand since). Easily recognizable for its lineup of animated shows (don't pretend you don't know what The Simpsons or Family Guy is), Fox also has licenses to broadcast every sports under the sun, including racing, football, soccer, golf, etc. It doesn't have much in the way of news programming on its own (other than Fox News Sunday), but it has one particular notorious cable news spinoff: Fox News. It's the most watched cable news network, and is infamous for its heavy conservative leanings, much to the ire of every SJW and libtard. The channel's political views are obviously divorced from that of its more liberal sister network (especially since most of the shows airing on Fox aren't even owned by them anymore, instead they're owned by Disney, but that's another story).

The CW (full name: The CW Television Network) was founded in 2006, formed as part of a merger between two other television networks: The WB (full name: The WB Television Network) and UPN (full name: United Paramount Network), both formerly owned by present-day WarnerMedia and ViacomCBS. As a result, ownership of The CW is split evenly between the two, although given the programming, the network clearly has more influence from the former. It's easily the least traditional of the five major networks, not having any connection to radio, lacking any national news programming (stations rely on their local news instead), and also lacking any late night talk shows. The network clearly targets the youngest of audiences, being home to a variety of fantasy-related shows ('member Supernatural?), and having a limited amount of shows that attract the attention of older audiences (including being the present home of Whose Line Is It Anyway)

And as a bonus: PBS (full name: Public Broadcasting Service). It was formed in 1969 (it would be officially launch a year) as a continuation of NET (full name: National Educational Television), which was privately owned by the Ford Foundation. PBS, on the other hand, is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (they also fund National Public Radio, or NPR, technically making that network a sister to PBS). Given that CPB itself is funded by the government, they're largely get money from taxpayers; think of it like the BBC and their television license, but because PBS itself isn't directly funded by the government, they do air limited advertisements (a certain program will proclaim that it is funded in part by a business or organization), as well as having "pledge drives" in attempt to get viewers to buy whatever they have in stock (DVDs, posters, etc.). Aside from all the technical aspects of PBS (and the assorted controversies over public media funding), the network has a reputation for its heavy emphasis on local programming, meaning that one major show on the network could be produced by one affiliate (referred to as a member station) , while another could be produced by another affiliate (not to mention, PBS doesn't have a nationally-set schedule like the main networks, the member stations are allowed to customize their own schedules). The programs range from the documentaries (Nova, Nature, Finding Your Roots, etc.), general entertainment shows (Austin City Limits, Independent Lens, Masterpiece, etc.), the usual news shows (PBS NewsHour, Washington Week, etc.), lifestyle shows (This Old House, Ciao Italia), as well a set of more miscellaneous programming (MotorWeek, Antiques Roadshow, etc.), and a set of British imports (BBC news programming to name one). That's not to mention the shows that they have either acquired (Democracy Now! to name one example), are distributed by American Public Television (America's Test Kitchen, again to name one), or air as part of the PBS Kids brand (you know, the programming block overaged autists are madly obsessed with?) Overall, PBS has a reputation for its high-brow content, and controversies over its political leanings.

Wow, I made that longer than it had to be. I just wanted to give you an idea of what our country's television scene is like. I went into such detail because I've always thought the British television scene is either largely homogenous or otherwise largely consists of imports from other countries, on top of seemingly not having any television stations in your country per se (compared to the innumerable amount of affiliate stations combined here in the U.S.)

 

[Thomas Talus]

@Spunt another fantastic post, but I'm slightly disappointed this wasn't included:

This was broadcast in 1987 and it still holds up.

I read through the whole post thinking "if someone hasn't posted the Yes Minister clip, I'll do it myself."