Monday, July 11, 2011

I never bought a copy of the Screws of the World, and now I never will.
Not to say I haven't read it. I once had a job loading bundles of papers for distribution, and we got a buckshee copy of each paper. As far as I recall the main content of the Screws was court cases involving prostitutes or pimps. It was also known in those days as 'The Whore's Gazette'. Then there were the stories of Church of England clergymen buggering choirboys. Add a bit of sport, and that was the paper's version of "all human life ...".
Come to think of it, I may never have bought a Murdoch-infected paper; I know I haven't since the Wapping anti-union war.
In his book, "Diary of an Exile"*, The author Dónal MacAmhlaigh tells of selling the newspaper The Irish Democrat round the pubs on a Sunday lunchtime. One man refused to buy, informing him that the parish priest had warned against reading the Socialist paper. Same fellow, MacAmhlaigh noted, had a copy of the News of the World in his pocket. No clerical strictures on filth then.
All that was before Murdoch got a hold of the paper, then it was downhill from there.
Now that the Screws has been killed off by its owner, let's hope that the public transfers the proposed boycott to other Murdoch titles, in particular the the one sometimes referred to as "The Scum". Does anyone believe that that paper's muckspreaders weren't up to the same felonious activity?

* The original Irish language title (Dialann Deorai). The English title, "An Irish Navvy", strikes me as stereotyping.

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