The Daily Mail would be over the ☻ if it realised the odd sort of anti-respect you have for its influence. It is, in the main, a hole in the air to me -- the sort of thing I will read if someone has left it lying on a table in Costa where I happen to sit. Mostly I look at their rather good funny pics -- Garfield &c; and am usually glad if there is a Melanie Phillips piece, as she is a v good commenter of her sort with whom I often find myself generally in agreement. But I really do feel there is something a bit pathetic in these emotional campaigns waged against perfectly respectable professional organs of opinion with sad little jokes of putting *s in their names to equate the to being called 'The Fuck' or some equivalent prissy unmentionability. Really below even your usual level of incomparable wit.

"Hurrah for the Blackshirts" was a personal piece written by its owner, Northcliffe, 80 years ago (Count them: eighty). It was 6 months before the infamous Olympia Rally, after which the paper changed its tune; and had certainly withdrawn its support by the time of the marches of 1936 -- Cable St &c. Can't you find a slightly more recent stick to beat them with? Like I say: all a bit pathetic.

~M~