Top Six – July 1

So what’s hot, and what’s not, in the past week’s blogging? Here are the six most popular posts on Zelo Street for the past seven days, counting down in reverse order, because, well, I’ve got some London photo stuff to edit. So there.

6 Mail In Malicious Maths Muddle The Mail had claimed that Britain’s schools were worse than those in Albania at maths, and that they had a World Economic Forum report to back them up. Sadly, they had been fiddling the figures, and had then conned a gullible Tory MP into giving them a quote.

5 TPA – Welfare Whoppers The so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance pitched a Very Big And Scary Number and claimed it was the UK’s welfare bill. But they didn’t say that this also included state pensions, pension credits, and Disability Living Allowance, although they were talking about housing benefit claimants.

4 Diamond Geezer Proves HIGNFY Right Barclays’ boss Bob Diamond was definitely not going to resign after his bank was caught fiddling interest rates, thus proving that the opening sequence of Have I Got News For You, showing a casino behind the facade of a high street bank, was not exaggeration at all.

3 Blame It On The Indians After RBS suffered a non-trivial software problem that fouled up its customers’ business royally, it was suggested that the person responsible might work in India. This enabled the Mail to go into why-oh-why mode about foreigners, while not of course being at all bigoted.

2 Littlejohn And A Motor Race The least funny pundit known to mankind thought he was on firm ground when he penned one of his allegedly amusing spoofs on the idea of Formula 1 coming to central London. But the result was just an excuse to check off all the usual boxes of prejudice, together with showing that he hasn’t seen a race for years, or indeed, travelled around the capital either.

1 Guido Fawked – Cartoon Bang Out Of Order Yes, he’s always in the Top Six: the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines, who styles himself Guido Fawkes, confirmed that he has fallen out of love with self promoting Tory MP Louise Mensch, as his Monday morning cartoon brought a nasty misogynist attack on her. Another fine mess. And sound judgment from Ms Mensch.

And that’s the end of another blogtastic week, blog pickers. Not ‘arf!