Why are we still dying for a tan? is one of the Mail's headlines today, a report on "how irresponsible in the sun [...] Brits have always been".

While raising awareness over the dangers of malignant melanoma is certainly praiseworthy, it may be interesting to take a look at how the same paper routinely ridicules pale people.

Take Girls Aloud's Nicola Roberts, for example, the only member of the band proudly shunning the Cristiano Ronaldo/Fanta Orange/fake tan looks.

The Daily Mail seems incapable of writing a piece about Nicola Roberts without involving at least one complexion-related playground insult. Last year, for instance, the very same paper who now asks why our young women are so dangerously addicted to tanning sported the headline Ghostly geisha Nicola Roberts pales in comparison to Girls Aloud bandmate Nadine Coyle on celebratory night out.

A one-off? Not quite. Has she gone too far?, the Mail asked in 2008, clearly troubled by what it dubbed Roberts' "deadly pallor", arguing that "sandwiched between her perma-tanned Girls Aloud bandmates Cheryl Cole and Kimberly Walsh, Nicola, with her exceedingly pale skin, it appears she may have gone too far".

It's not all. Last year, the Mail's piece about Girls Aloud joining Coldplay onstage at Wembley was accompanied by the following headline Seen a ghost? Nicola Roberts pales after Girls Aloud join Coldplay onstage at Wembley.

A few months ago, Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones wrote that Nicola Roberts "was so thin she looked like a ghost".

You can spot a regular pattern here. Britain's moral compass thinks that pale skin is weird, scary and ridiculous in equal measure. Ask yourself how many of its regular or casual readers may internalise the idea that "pale is bad" and be tempted to head for the nearest tanning salon.

Still, don't fool yourself that it's a Daily Mail-only phenomenon. Their main rivals-in-bullying -- the Sun, that is -- hardly fare any better.

Look at this useless, rickety, 4-line long piece that Britain's best-selling paper published last March. It obviously had no purpose other than taking the piss (or "avin a larff, get a bleedin' sense of humour, will ya, geezah?") out of Nicola's complexion.

Girls Aloud has 'ghost star' in Nicola Roberts was the headline, complete with the deep observation that "yesterday she looked more ghostly than ever as she left her hotel. It's enough to give anyone a fright". A proud display of Top Quality Journalism indeed.

"Somehow, dying of ignorance is less shocking than the prospect of dying of vanity", is how today's Daily Mail piece end.

Wise words. But perhaps they could do with sorting out their own lot first. Looking up the words "poison" and "hypocrisy" in the dictionary would be a start.

Still unconvinced? Take a look at this (h/t Daily Quail).

There's nothing more grating than televisual drooling where the privileged or the lucky tell the populace that "there's lots of opportunities out there". Especially during a crisis.

These are strange days indeed.

You get University Minister David Willetts coming up with the remark that "if you can't find a job then you should consider setting up your own business".

Channel Four News choosing to discuss youth unemployment and the labour market not with entrepreneurs, or the unions, or directly with the jobless, but with no less than the winner of TV show The Apprentice, as if he was an authority on the matter...

Said winner of The Apprentice coolly remarking that he "totally believe[s]" in David Willett's words and that the millions who are stuck in post-graduate unemployment or call centre work forget that "there's lots of opportunities out there" and there's "no need for doom'n'gloom", because - remember - we all live in a "knowledge economy", of course.

So the question is: if this is how the real world ticks, then why stop at The Apprentice? If national news broadcasters have got to discuss youth/graduate unemployment and the Blairite legacy of bullshit expectations, why not go the whole hog and invite a Big Brother contestant like Chantelle or Chanelle? Or, even better, a Lottery winner?

They could dish up even more rose-tinted patronising advice and inform the wider public that there's no need for "despondency", because "opportunities" are rife.

And then maybe David Cameron should follow suit and pass a law that makes playing the lottery compulsory.

Yesterday's decision by the Catalan Parliament to ban bullfighting in the Spanish autonomous region was met with glee and satisfaction around the world.

For people like those behind this blog, the Catalan ban on the corrida can only be saluted. Torture and death inflicted on an innocent animal for no reason other than "tradition" and "entertainment" are nothing but an aberration - especially in the 21st century.

This is why.

Opponents of the ban (stemming mainly, but not exclusively, from the Spanish right) regularly point out that, barring a few genuine animal rights activists, the law is backed by the Catalan nationalist parties (Convergencia i Unió and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) purely as a means to stoking anti-Spanish sentiments. In other words, it has little to do with the welfare of animals and all with playing up the difference between Spain and Catalonia.

Until today, I put this approach down to the pig-headedness and spitefulness of Spain's conservative Partido Popular (which - if you're new to Spanish politics - are way to the right of the Conservatives in the UK).

Then I discovered that in certain parts of Catalonia there is indeed another "traditional" fiesta which is even crueller and more monstrous than the old corrida. The Catalans call it correbous and, in many of their towns, it's considered a major celebration.

Look away if you can't stand cruelty to animals.

Because the correbous consist of setting a bull's horns ablaze in front of thousands of onlookers and a merry background of fireworks and firecrackers. The bull is hemmed in within the perimeter of the town's main square as all access passages are fenced off, which is how the torture (or "game", according to the same Catalans who frown upon bullfighting) unravels. The result is an agonising animal running around terrified - sometimes even for hours on end.

Now, courtesy of the Catalan nationalist parties, the law that yesterday put a ban on bullfighting did not include the correbous. Not only that. The same catalanists who backed the anti-bullfighting campaign were very vocal in defending the right to set bulls' horns on fire. Convergencia i Unió even tabled a Parliamentary motion which would officially "safeguard" the correbous in the name of "collective interest"!

Their justification? Staggering though it may sound, they too cling on to "tradition". Which is to say, the same lame argument that supporters of bullfighting bring forward each time the morality of their beloved corrida is questioned. "Without bulls there's no party and without party there's no people": that's how a Catalan nationalist MP publicly defended the correbous a few months ago.

Perhaps, simply, the word "hypocrisy" does not translate amongst the people of Convergencia i Unió and other Catalan separatists.

When you consider the hideous double standards, it becomes apparent that bullfighting was banned purely as a hated symbol of "Hispanity".

Because in the warped mindset of Catalan nationalism, animal cruelty is bad if it comes from the other side of the backyard, but not if it's of 'their own' variety.

[Guest post by Stuart R.]

In January 2009, Oliver Stone traveled to Venezuela to interview President Hugo Chávez, and examine the way Chávez has been portrayed in the U.S. media. Was Chávez really the "anti-American" force the media claimed he was?

Once the journey began, however, Stone and his crew found themselves going beyond Venezuela to several other countries, and interviewing seven Presidents in the region, telling a larger and even more compelling story.

In a series of casual conversations, Stone sits down with Presidents Chávez, Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex- President Néstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raul Castro (Cuba).

This is the only screening of the film in Birmingham so book early.

South of the Border will be screened at Birmingham Central Library Theatre at 7pm on Friday 6th August. Tickets cost £4.50.

You can book online or by phone calling 0121 303 2323.

It's not often I do any sort of writing anymore, and its a hell of a lot longer since I did anything politically motivated but something in the past few days just hasn't sat right with me.

Look at the picture and take a minute to think of exactly what that frontpage headline says and what they're getting at. Got it? Good.

Now I reckon most if not all of the people who read this post will think the same thing.

The Daily Express is implying that in the near future, one in five people in Britain will be non-caucasian. And just to make sure that their dear readers' anger is pointed in the right "ethnic" direction, take a look at the photo that accompanies the online version of the story.

You see that don't you? It's two women covered head to toe in the dreaded niqabs. And just to hammer home the point that these horrible ethnics are going to be taking over, one of them is pushing a pram. Probably with a terrifying little brown baby inside that will take a school place from a good Christian white child.

Now obviously the Daily Express likes to do this sort of thing. When its not talking about how house prices and single mothers killed Princess Diana and abducted Madeleine McCann, its talking about foreigners. And the way it talks about foreigners is getting worse. Some headline examples we've had in the past few months from the Express and its sister paper the Daily Star:

"The BBC puts Muslims before YOU!"
"Keep Out! Britain is FULL UP!"
"Strangers in OUR OWN COUNTRY!"
"Foreigners take ALL new jobs in Britain!"
"Foreigners take 90 PERCENT OF ALL NEW JOBS!"
"Foreigners take 85 PERCENT OF ALL NEW JOBS!"
"Foreigners take 70 PERCENT OF ALL NEW JOBS!"**

Basically if you're not a white, British, Christian, straight person, the Express and Star have got it in for you.

The reason yesterday's headline got me thinking though was that it sits an awful lot closer to home for me, and many many of my friends on Facebook.

The Daily Express takes its figures from a study commissioned by The University of Leeds. Now I know for a fact that no department in any university would be OK with a newspaper turning a study into out an out racism, but especially so because Leeds is a very open and welcoming environment. The amount of multicultural and multilingual societies at the uni is really impressive, and a very good thing in my opinion. So I delved a little deeper.

It turns out that the report clearly states that the biggest rise in any "ethnic grouping" (horrible term imho), is going to come from white/caucasian immigration from Australia, Ireland and the United States.

Notice something those countries have in common? English speaking. And this something that MIGHT happen by 2051.

It's not a prediction, it's a population forecast, and as I learnt from my geography lessons at school and in uni, population forecasts are horrendously unreliable.

Did you know the British population was widely forecasted to have reached 80 million by 2010? Thought not. Yet funnily enough the Express doesn't mention this until the very end of the article, something which most Express readers will miss thanks to the headline and accompanying photograph screaming at you that those horrible brown people are going to get us.

On a personal note, after reading the article it turns out that I'm also one of the dreaded "ethnics". Yep. Seriously. I'm one of those people who've come over here and stole your jobs, benefits, women, cheese etc. My grandparents are Irish, therefore that makes me an ethnic minority. Funnily enough, the Express seems fine with that.

**Over a period of about 6 months they kept changing their minds.

Due to personal circumstances this blog is on hiatus. If you fancy taking over temporarily please apply. Required: good punctuation. Must be cynical, sarcastic and in favour of workers' rights. Must have struggled at least a few times in life to pay bills and rent. Please refrain from applying if you are a tabloid reader (unless you read them for pisstaking reasons) or if you run a business and screw your employees. DSS recipients and Smiths lovers welcome.

Five years ago, already. This same morning in 2005, four suicide bombers committed one of the vilest, most ruthless, most disgusting atrocities in British history. They hit London at its core and took the lives of 52 innocent people sitting on three underground trains and a double-decker bus. May they rest in peace.

In the immediate aftermath of May 6, I was expecting the Lib Dems to have performed better. When the exit polls came out I was sure that they would be proved wrong, but in the end they were almost spot on. In fact they had been a bit generous to us.

I spent most of the night in the National Liberal Club amongst other Lib Dems. Generally the feeling seemed fairly flat as the bad results came in. However, as the night wore on and it started to become clear that the Lib Dems would hold the balance of power, I got more excited. I was hoping for it to end up a doubly hung parliament (where the Lib Dems could have formed a majority with either of the other two parties) which would have given us maximum bargaining power however it was not to be.

I knew though as I walked out into the street at around 7:30am with fellow party members that politics was about to change quite fundamentally and I was very excited.

Later on, the news that a deal was being struck between David Cameron and Nick Clegg took a bit of getting used to, but it was the only game in town in the end. I blogged on the Tuesday morning when it was still looking possible that the party could try to strike a deal with Labour that we should take the Tory deal.

I am certain that a wobbly rainbow alliance built on the foundations of a minority Labour/Lib Dem coalition would have been disatrous. In the end I am a political realist. The deal we struck was the only politically viable one and I think we actually got a good deal all things considered.

And here is why. The country and its finances were (and are) in a mess. We have to get them sorted. The way that the public voted has ensured that no single party can command a majority. So the Lib Dems went into coalition with the Conservatives I think primarily to ensure that there was stable government for the country.

However we have got more than that. We have been able to get a significant chunk of our programme into government. We have already seen in the budget an increase in the tax threshold for the lowest paid by £1,000 and I fully expect that to rise further in later budgets helping the lowest earners and increasing incentives for people to work too. We have seen capital gains tax increased from 18% to 28%. Neither of these things would have happened if the Tories were in power on their own.

There are lots more policies as well as these headlines when you drill down and this will continue to be the case for the lifetime of the government.

In addition to this, we have 5 cabinet ministers including the universally respected Vince Cable in charge at Business and Chris Huhne who has impeccably progressive green credentials as Environment Secretary. Huhne has already assured our party at conference that there will be no public subsidy for nuclear, for example. I am far from sure that would have been the case under a government with a solely blue hue.

To those that keep crying "betrayal!" at the LibDems, this is what I have to say.

Firstly, I am not really clear what my party is supposed to be betraying. We are not some adjunct of the Labour Party. We are our own political movement with our own traditions and political identity. We are fighting in government for as many of those to be put into practice as possible.

The other thing I would say is that, if you are in favour of electoral reform, then accusations of this sort are rather baffling. A more proportional system would inevitably lead to coalitions where parties from different traditions have to come together and compromise.

Of course the Lib Dems have to defend what the party is doing in government (and I do not agree personally with the whole programme by the way) and fully expect the opposition to hold us to account. But I think it should be on the policies themselves, not some notion that we have betrayed something or someone. That is singularly unhelpful and I think will eventually backfire on Labour.

As for the leadership race within the Labour Party, I think the major problem that Labour have is similar to that of the Conservatives in 1997. All the main contenders are very closely associated with the previous discredited government. There needs to be some fresh thinking.

One of the reasons I could never have considered joining Labour is their woeful record on civil liberties. It was visible again the other day when Ken Clarke made his comments about prisons questioning whether banging up more and more people was the right approach. Straight away Jack Straw wrote a piece for the Daily Mail painting the government as "soft on crime".

This is the sort of approach that people are sick of and the new leader whoever they are needs to get a grip of. Otherwise Labour are risking spending another decade or more in the political wilderness as the world moves on without them and they are still fighting the political battles of the Blair/Brown era.

Mark Thompson is a Lib-Dem member and activist. He blogs at "Mark Reckons".