The Daily Expresses petition to Downing Street about pulling out of Europe has taken a distinctly "you will not take our freedom" sort of slant, but considerably more shitter than Braveheart was. They had Mel Gibson and a huge army pretending it was the olden days, standing in a field. The Express had to make do with a load of gaudy bin bags full of petitions and a self conscious looking man pretending to be St George and holding a shield made out of cardboard (and I bet this was what he went into media for.). Hollywood this aint! To be fair though they recruited a small army though. They may not have had woad smeared over their faces, or dirty hair and mucky beards (though they should have done this in fancy dress, it would have been well funny.), and an Irish guy with pluck. No all we got was a few dowdy looking Eurosceptic MP's, an Express columnist who was probably there on pain of sacking, and one of the readers who had obviously been paid to turn up and offered a free pub tea into the bargain for showing up.
So far so shit. Why do I even comment on this ridiculous PR stunt? Well it is the wording of the article that tickled me. The Express bigged up the whole thing with this ludicrous comment that shows they haven't quite figured out how this democracy thing works.
"DAVID Cameron was yesterday given the clearest message yet that the UK should leave the European Union."
Hell, we aren't going the way of Egypt are we?
"Editor Peter Hill led a delegation to hand over the bulging sacks of petition coupons signed by 373,000 of our loyal readers."
Er. No. Cancel the threatening flybys of the capital.
373,000. Fucking hell I mean a skateboarding cat on youtube can get more hits than that! I actually checked to see what sort of thing could get 373,000 people to be vaguely interested in something, by getting a comparative viewing figure on youtube, and a video called "I'm Nicki Minaj!! Ask Shane #26" actually topped that by a few thousand. (It's well over 400,000 at the time of writing.) Yes a spoof video of a Noel Gallagher lookalike wearing a Lady Gaga wig, and dancing to a comedy rendition to the tune of "Video Killed the Radio Star" with some camp Jango Fetts as backing dancers (honest) drummed up more interest than a political campaign by a piss poor national newspaper. Why doesn't Richard Desmond ask Shane to do a comedy video of himself dressed up as Gwen Stefani, accompanied by some Hobbits, who take it in turns to shit on a large pretend Euro, whilst dancing to backing music of Hazee Fantasees "John Wayne is Big Leggy" that has had the lyrics changed to "Fuck you, Hermann Van Rumphoy" It could work.
I mean seriously for a national paper crusade, 373,000 signatories for a petition is pathetic. the Express has a daily circulation of around 640,000. That's just circulation. It is reckoned total readership is roughly 2.5 people per single paper. So about 1.6 million perhaps saw this crusade. There were apparently four petition cut outs per paper, so it isn't a case of to few slips to go round. Hell one person could potentially post all four to have four fake signatories. How the hell is this a clear message to David Cameron that we should cut our losses and leave the EU? On the basis of a petition signed by 0.74 percent of the UK population aged over 18. That's the level of popular support the Monster Raving Loony party had for it's policy to paint grey squirrels red to balance the numbers out a bit! Not a monster blow to the establishment that the Express editorials are claiming was it?
I had to laugh at this comment by a Downing Street spokesmen:
"A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We will respond in the usual way.”
Which translates to "We'll wait till you've gone home and then we'll burn the bloody lot of them."
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