Vapid, schizophrenic tabloids, grrr.

With regards the HPV: Ireland. Catholic. Probably more need of it; to quote Billy Connolly, 'I'd like to thank the Catholic church for the rhythm method of contraception, without which I wouldn't be here.'

;-)

The explanation, I think, is that the Daily Fail ask only one question about what "line" to take:

"Which side of this issue will be more controversial, scare-shocking-headline-grabbing, and will shift more extra copies of the Fail?"

In the UK that is typically the anti-vaxx / vaccine-scare line they have clung to so assiduously. In Ireland it may be the opposite, which gives them a good chance to goose the Irish Catholic establishment.

The Fail have no loyalty to, or much interest in, truth. Only sales.

That is indeed incredible and well done for exposing it.

I have highlighted this story and your post on it on my blog too here.

Please don't use the word "schizophrenic" as a synonym for "of multiple personalities". It's factually incorrect and perpetuates an unfortunate stereotyping of the mentally ill.

"Schizophrenic" is defined in the dictionary as: "Of, relating to, or characterized by the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic elements." I wasn't aware that this definition was offensive or inaccurate. I'll change it at any rate, and apologies for any offense caused.

That's very kind of you, many thanks for the link!

Good stuff. Well written too. Dr Ben G has linked here, should get more traffic and more exposure for Mail's "evil" hypocrisy

Many thanks :) A few people have Twittered this as well, my hit counter is burning today...

The Irish Daily Mail just takes the p*ss. Most of the stuff that shifts copies by the bucketload in the UK (ie the Royal Family, Euroscepticism and Ireland-hating) just doesn't fly at home (funnily enough). It amuses me, shuttling back and forth between Dublin and London to observe the sheer retardness.

Ah, my cynicism, see how it grows....!

Got cut off from previous!

Its all too funny to notice how the content changes between here and there. Oh how I loathe thee DailyFail, but this has just taken the proverbial pastry....

This makes for fun reading, even if it is Wikipeida -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Daily_Mail

Sorry about that - famous bloody comedy writer Graham bloody Linehan went and put me on his Twitter feed, the bastard! Took the technical people a while to cope with the sudden surge in hits!

I really, really want to read the two editions on a regular basis now to compare. Wait, what am I saying, I hate the Mail enough already!

There is method to it: the Mail likes to fulminate against whatever current government health policy happens to be. UK government plans to introduce vaccine? The Mail's against it. Irish government plans to cut vaccine? The Mail's against it. The Mail basically likes being against things.

Wow Jim, that's hilarious.

Seeing that we're fighting the good fight here against offensive stereotypes here, I'm glad you contributed your point. After all, we Irish Catholics are only a bunch of unhygienic, knuckle-dragging barbarians! Of COURSE we would need a life saving vaccine more than other developed nations, because we clearly are a nation of ignorant sexual deviants.

Thanks so much for your kind words. Ass.

Oh get over yourself Anon. I am Irish too, and whilst I'd bemoan the fact that I have family who still practice godbothering, I certainly don't consider them 'unhygienic, knuckle-dragging barbarians'; sentiments that were not inferred by my original point.

Perhaps it was a snide jibe, but the church's often contradictory interference in conjugal matters still presents an epidemiological factor worth considering.

Lighten up mo chara.

I don't think that in *this* particular instance, the RC church is a factor. The Minister for Health's quoted reason for holding back the introduction of the vaccine is cost. The cost argument is debatable, but I've seen no evidence of religious meddling - and the media usually jump on such meddling when it exists. It seems that the clergy and usual groups have been wisely quiet in the cervical cancer debate, so for once I think the RC church is off the hook.

Also worth noting that Ireland's birth rate these days is only slightly higher than Britain's (its teenage birth rate is actually much lower). So either the rhythm method has become a lot more reliable or the Irish have discovered other means of preventing pregnancy.

It's interesting that anti-Mail sentiment in this comment and one other are tinged with an attitude towards Ireland that's a little Mail-like in its presumption. The abandonment of the HPV vaccine programme is a consequence of the Republic starting to go bankrupt. It has nothing do with the Catholic church.

This is old news. During the devolution debate, 'The Sun' was both for and against Scotish independance depending on which side of the border it was printed. And I don't suppose much hysteria abouit immigration appears in its Polish edition either.

Don't fall for this PC cultural marxist babble - Schizophrenic is a perfectly good term to use in this situation.

For those who had trouble accessing this overnight and at times today, the problem was a bug in some site code which I've now fixed. Shouldn't have any more problems.

As someone with a degree in the subject of psychology, the term "schizophrenic" to mean "holding two contradictory views" or "to have two co-existing personalities" is inaccurate.

There's nothing "politically correct" about not using Schizophrenia (or schizoid) incorrectly; it is simply incorrect usage, just as people often use "bipolar" interchangably in this context. That is incorrect as well. While it may be offensive to some who suffer from this disorder, the more important thing is that it is simply incorrect and, to paraphrase a children's film, "does not mean what you think it means."

Schizophrenia is a disorder of the mind with distinctive set of symptomology depending on the type expressed. (Example: I work with a women who was a paranoid schizophrenic and truly believed that "Mr. and Mrs. Hitler" were her grandparents; she would go into hiding on Holocaust Remembrance Day because she feared "the Jews" would send her to Israel to face war crimes because of her grandfather. Another was a catatonic schizophrenic who did not interact with others around him; he was hospitalized after his family left him alone for a few hours and, while they were out in the garden, he set the house on fire.)

Doublethink is currently an accepted term for what you were attempting to say, I believe. Or, if you want to say the Daily Mail is synonymous with mental disorder (and that's a perfectly apt and valid metaphor) you might want to say that the Daily Mail is suffering from an acute dissociative identity disorder, which is the current DSM IV term for what's commonly referred to as "multiple personalities" and commonly mistaken for schizophrenia.

"There's nothing "politically correct" about not using Schizophrenia (or schizoid) incorrectly; it is simply incorrect usage"

If it's "simply incorrect" then why do Random House list it as meaning "a state characterize by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements"? And that's in addition to the dictionary I quoted above. I don't particularly want to get into an argument about this, but I don't think you can say that my initial usage was wrong in the linguistic sense. I'm slightly curious about the status of this definition now!

"Schizophrenic" is a perfectly intelligible and inoffensive word with an everyday meaning alongside its medical one. The etymology of the word makes it appropriate to describe something that appears to be the product of a split mind. Isn't the real problem with "schizophrenia" not its misapplication in lay-speech, but its clumsy misuse as a diagnosis? Perhaps dealing with the plank in your eye before attacking a relative mote would be a good idea.

If I say I pissed myself laughing at your post, I imagine you will not infer that I suffer from incontinence. ;)

People only find this sort of thing suprising because of their insistence on thinking of [insert organisation here] as monolithic. The Daily Mail is made up of a large number of journalists, and, like any other group of people, they disagree with each other about all sorts of things. Ben Goldacre has now linked here, and seems to be similarly baffled by the phenomenon, despite the fact that he himself has had a big fight with his own paper, taking them to task at great length for the crap they put on their front page. The Mail are no more baffling than The Guardian in this respect -- less so, in fact, as we're talking about The Irish Mail and The British Mail, two different papers. Why on Earth wouldn't some Irish journalists disagree with some British journalists, just because they're working under the same brand name?

I think you've missed a few points here.

Firstly, they think it surprising because many newspaper groups have a strong editorial policy that dictates how organs across the group react to stories - for example the Times and Sun, the Guardian and Manchester Guardian and so on. It was assume that the opposition of the Daily Mail to the HPV vaccine in particular stemmed from their "moral" editorial stance, what with it being the teen-sex jab and all.

Secondly, your assertion that these are "two different papers" is deeply flawed - the Irish edition is basically just the British edition with a different layout and a few Irish-centric stories. They share much of the same content and even the same columnists,  along with most of the same staff.

Thirdly and following on from that, we're not talking about some Irish journalists disagreeing with some British journalists, we're talking about the editorial stance - set by the same London-based people. And that's why this is a noteworthy story.

"PC cultural marxist babble" however isn't. Get out. This isn't the Monday Club.

It's actually a rather interesting question to what extent this could be called schizophrenic. The word "schizophrenia" (schizo- meaning split) was originally coined because of the belief that in schizophrenia the different faculties of the mind (perception, belief, will, emotion) were not coordinated properly.

This however was rather too subtle for most people (Anonymous probably included) and it became taken to mean "multiple personalties".

Arguably, if you hold that the Irish Daily Mail and the British one should be coordinated but aren't, you could kind of see how it would apply. Although only in a rather subtle sense. I'd stick with calling it "ridiculous" myself.

See my reply above. Although note that it refers to the original meaning of the word "schizophrenia" - today schizophrenia is not really thought of as being "psychic splitting" (although maybe it should, it's not a bad theory if you ask me.)

Many thanks for the reply, that made a lot of sense :)

Sorry, I agree with the doctor. Using the correct words is important as it may lead to misinterpretation. Doesn't have anything to do with being 'politically correct', especially since I'm against most things that are PC.

I think the Mail should clarify which nation's women it wants dead, the Irish or British? It's the indecision which is causing the problems.

Ahem

Love your site :)

Don't you absolutely want to hack into the Mail computer and make it publish the Irish edition content in the UK? Because I do. But I don't know where to start and it's illegal.

Maybe a bit less illegal would be making the Irish online edition be much higher ranked in Google than the other one. I suppose that can be done legitimately simply by making any Mail story citations in your web pages point to Ireland. Persuade other folk to do so by, um. I dunno. For fellas, tell them the Irish edition has lots of pictures of pretty Irish girls?

That's all very well, but the evidence is on my side here. You're the one baffled and amazed by a quite ordinary event. Seriously, this is ordinary. Similar thing happened a few weeks back -- a piece in The Mail offered an opinion different to that of the editorial stance on MMR, I think it was -- and the Bad Science crowd were baffled then, too.

Incidentally, The Guardian used to be called The Manchester Guardian and isn't any more: it's the same paper. So you name them as two different papers in the same group and then immediately follow that with "your assertion that these are "two different papers" is deeply flawed" -- this is a joke, right?

> They share much of the same content and even the same columnists, along with most of the same staff.

Just like The Guardian and The Observer, then -- and, like I said, Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre had a huge bloody great fight with The Observer and not one commenter on the Bad Science site ever thought of saying "My God! Can't this paper make up its mind? This just shows how stupid they are! They don't even know what they think!" My point is a simple one: Guardian readers are able to understand that Guardian journalists are human beings with their own opinions, but are repeatedly incapable of comprehending that the same might be true of journalists working for other papers, especially The Mail.

To repeat, we are not talking about journalists within a paper disagreeing, we are talking about the entire paper adopting a different editorial position in two countries, something that is very rare (I can think of perhaps only a couple of previous examples). And irrespective of how "baffling" or "unique" it is, it is still noteworthy, and still evil.

PS - I'm also slightly amused by the irony that this story is so uninteresting to you that you've felt the need to come by on both Wednesday and Saturday and rant about me writing it, lol.

You seem to be conflating one columnist having his own opinion, and a single news entity maintaining diametrically opposed editorial policies on an important matter of public health. One is not surprising, the other is; particularly when the policies in question are so heavily moralistic in tone.

Co-ordinated editorial policies like this are a corporate decision, and when a single corporation maintains two completely contradictory policies, it is most certainly worthy of note.

"The Daily Mail position on vaccines is whatever happens to sell newspapers"

That can be said for any newspaper about any story. The bottom line is all that ultimately matters.

Agreed. Why does this surprise anyone?

Double standards by the press you say??

- Quotes -
A thing that seemed to drive the right wing mad was seeing ordinary people talking about politics. The Sun wrote that “this is a film people must not see.” But interestingly enough, in its Irish edition, it’s headline was something like “Damien and the boys tan the Brits at Cannes.”
- Quotes -

more... http://www.isg-fi.org.uk/spip.php?article251

Ha, that's a very nice spot, thanks

The story is uninteresting. Which is exactly why the way Guardian readers react as if it's the most interesting thing ever is interesting.

Besides, I'm a blogger. I'll waste time writing about any old crap. If you want to define "interesting" as "stuff Squander Two will devote time to arguing about with strangers on the Web", well, I'm warning you, you're going to let a whole lot of trivial crap through that door.

No, you're unnecessarily complicating my point. It is simply that humans disagree with each other. You think this doesn't apply to the editorial policies (decided by groups of humans) of news organisations (comprised of humans).

> when a single corporation maintains two completely contradictory policies, it is most certainly worthy of note.

Seriously, you think so? Cause I've been working for corporations for years and the fact that their policies routinely contradict each other ceased to be noteworthy after my first few weeks. Whenever my employer (not just my current employer, but every employer I've ever worked for) yet again makes a decision that seems to contradict what they were doing only two days ago, the response of every colleague I've ever known has rarely gone much further than eye-rolling. It's too routine to get worked up about. And either you work for corporations too, in which case you know exactly what I'm talking about, or you work in the public sector, in which case it's far worse, or you've never had a job. If you want to tell me you work for an organisation that never contradicts or counteracts itself... well, now, that is news.

All I'm saying is that most of the people reacting with such amazement to this story, when any organisation other than The Daily Evil Mail does the same, don't even notice.

<i>"This story is uninteresting! It should be banned! I'm going to come back every few days to repeat again how uninteresting I find this story!111!!! You're all stupid!!!11!"</i>

*yawn*

OK.

I just commented earlier that I find this interesting.

I don't know what you think I think should be banned.

I haven't shouted at you.

And I thought I was just debating an issue with you here. Do you get upset when people who agree with you visit your blog every few days? I think I just got the wrong end of the stick when you responded to my points as if you were actually interested in discussing the issue or something, and so I stupidly responded in kind. If you really just want anyone who disagrees with you to fuck off, you could save yourself a lot of time by stating that in your blog's header. You know, "Comments from non-sycophants unwelcome." Something like that.

Far too much of this amongst the Bad Science crowd, to be honest. For all that everyone likes to claim that it's evidence that's important, anyone who fails to toe the Guardian's political line on that site tends to just get invective hurled at them. Which is a great shame, as you're driving away a lot of people who agree with you on the scientific points.

Finally, at least I'm civil.

Go on, say "*yawn*" again. That'll prove that you're right and I'm wrong, using evidence. Yay science.

You're being deliberately obtuse here. If the Daily Mail and its Irish edition were two distinct entities, you'd have a point, but they're not. A newspaper is pretty much defined by its editorial policy; it dictates its style, tone, readership and image. It's a carefully crafted position, and when the same paper takes two completely different lines in separate markets, it is for a calculated reason. Of course, within any organisation there will be differences of opinion; that's human nature. However, we are talking about one organisation, which trades specifically on its opinions, deliberately maintaining two entirely contradictory top-down policies.

Top-down is the key here. This isn't equivalent to two lawyers disagreeing on how to prosecute a case, or two programmers disputing what technology to use. This is one company disagreeing with itself. No, it's not vastly surprising. It is amusing, though, and serves to further illustrate the venal opportunism with which certain organisations operate. More importantly, it (hopefully) gives a reason for readers of either paper to question why it says what it says. Like I said: worthy of note.

"And either you work for corporations too, in which case you know exactly what I'm talking about, or you work in the public sector, in which case it's far worse, or you've never had a job."

Good old attempts to discredit; they never get old, eh? That you then follow it up with the usual lame presumed tu quoque garbage ("oh, well you only care because it's your ox being gored") speaks even less well of your honest intentions. What's still more strange is that now you're accusing people of only attacking certain papers, when just earlier you specifically pointed out an instance where Ben Goldacre took the Guardian to task himself. Could you make your mind up? Are we shameful one-eyed partisans, or woeful unemployed naïfs? It'd be nice to know.

I still think you just don't know the difference between an editorial and an opinion piece by a columnist and just aren't admitting it. That's the only thing that could explain your arguments.

As someone with a mental disorder, I am deeply offended by any suggestions I might have anything in common with the Daily Mail.

How about "two-faced" ?

I really, really want to read the two editions on a regular basis now to compare. online Masters degree Wait, what am I saying, I hate the Mail enough already!Diploma Program

And either you work for corporations too, in which case you know exactly what I'm talking about, or you work in the public sector, in which case it's far worse, or you've never had a job."Degree Program | Online degree schools

I just have to say, have you ever considered the fact that they have contradictory opinions to be the result of different editorial boards? I used to work for an editorial board and I believe it's quite possible that since the two different editions have different audiences that they have a different board of editors with different opinions.

I looked into it at the time - to save costs, the paper uses basically the same team, same editorial etc.