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[Starver]

Having trawled the internet, I have found the author is apparently Harriet Sergeant, of the Daily Mail. Not being a United Kingdomer, I can't comment on ths Daily Mail's or her accuracy.

While you couldn't get the full name (and could easily be confused over the gender) there was a clue as to the un-named author's name:

“It’s the funniest thing, Harri, man,” he confided,[...]

I don't know about the reporter's own rep, but The Daily Mail's general image amongst just about everyone but Daily Mail readers centres around it blaming everything 'bad' from everything from cancer to Bird Flu to lowering house prices to the bins only being emptied once every fortnight on immigrants, single-mothers, 'the gay gene' and probably (in particular) lesbian single-mothers arriving from abroad.

Their stance is basically right-wing (as if you hadn't already realised that from the writing), and they famously favoured Hitler's approach in the '30s, albeit that a lot of water has passed under that bridge since then...  They did support New Labour in 1997, but it might be argued that in its headlong dash to encompass Middle England, New Labour might well have become even more right-wing than the Tories on various issues...  (Only to be trash-talked by the Daily Mail, since then.)

I am friends with a married couple who read the Daily Mail.  And accept the paper's opinions as being generally along the right lines.  As a completely unreliable benchmark, for where this puts them on the political compass, they tend to think that Mrs Thatcher's policies weren't thorough enough and Reagan was a bit too left wing and libertarian for their liking.   They frequently discuss what they'd do if one or other of them were Prime Minister of the UK (or President, given their additionally republican stance), and I can safely (if inadvisably?) say that the general population would notice the difference in day-to-day life if either (or both?) were!

[ed boy]

Having trawled the internet, I have found the author is apparently Harriet Sergeant, of the Daily Mail. Not being a United Kingdomer, I can't comment on ths Daily Mail's or her accuracy.

That particular article was from the Times (well, Sunday Times), not the Mail. I couldn't link to it directly, as their website had it behind a paywall, so I copied and pasted.

As for the newspaper, the Times is a very good one. Although it does have a political bias, all of the big newspapers here do, and the Times is a lot less biased then the others.

[counting]

Benefits need to decrease gradually as your income increases, not outright stop as soon as you get any job.

Like we need to get some mathematicians to get some fancy equations that create a gradual decrease in benefits and increase in taxes as you get more income. Because there should not be a point where making $1 more should mean you earn less money after taxes.

The single mothers thing just reeks of shaming young and/or single mothers to me, though.

Negative income tax. Interesting thing. And warfare trap is a heavily discussed topic related to this.

[Starver]

As for the newspaper, the Times is a very good one. Although it does have a political bias, all of the big newspapers here do, and the Times is a lot less biased then the others.

Yes, after my description of the Daily Hate Mail, I would support the premise that The Times ("...of London", for you furriners who need that kind of distinction) and Sunday Times[1] are not as right-wing.  However, they are both currently part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire (having been tainted by similar allegations related to the ones that led to the News Of The World being shut-down).  Also all the 'Times'es (including, if not especially, the Financial Times[2]) tend to make me think of pin-striped businessmen and well-heeled city-workers residing in the London suburbia and commuting Monday to Friday while honouring personal pretensions towards upper-class activities (such as having horses in a stable or even partaking in fox-hunting, back when it was legal) on weekends.

The Paywall thing should have pointed me towards thinking it was The [Sunday] Times, however, given how they were one of the first to go that way.


As a (two-to-three-decade old) indication of the relative positioning of some of the national UK papers (or at least their readers) there's a famous quote from the sit-com "Yes [Prime-]Minister":

I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country[3]; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

...and when his Permanent Secretary casually enquires about "The Sun"..

Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.

Anyway, for something more indicative of political leanings (though not degree): if the following image embeds well, this is from an article in The Guardian...

Spoiler: Image (click to show/hide)

HTH, HAND, hope it's not too much of a derail.


[1] These days siblings, but actually started off as different publications, would you believe...

[2] There's also the Times Educational Supplement, which I don't believe was read by the close relative of mine who was a teacher, so again I associate with the "higher class" of teaching staff.  But perhaps left on the staff-room table for everyone to read and look for better jobs in.

[3] Ok, not exactly confirming my previous description, but I always found it odd that the paper which is so generally female-orientated has a supplement for women (called the "Fe-Mail") as well.