View all newsletters
Sign up for our free email newsletters

Fighting for quality news media in the digital age.

  1. News
February 1, 2009updated 23 Aug 2022 6:50pm

Grey Cardigan: End of the Piers show

By Grey Cardigan

There are so many of us queuing up to kick dear old Piers Morgan up the arse that it’s getting to be a bit of a crowded goalmouth.

His facile ‘documentary’ about Dubai has been rightly pilloried from all sides (with both The Guardian and the News the Screws having a right old pop), but no-one seems to have picked up on this wannabe-Wicker’s impact on the economy of those places he visits. Following his programme on the millionaires’ enclave of Sandbanks in Dorset, property prices have collapsed to the point that The Sun ran a spread last week quoting one of the people interviewed by Piers, quaffing bubbly on his yacht, as saying: ‘I’ve lost the lot, a lifetime’s work.”

And now he’s repeated the trick on Dubai. Property prices are down 40 per cent, big brother Abu Dhabi is busy baling out the economy and those who piled their millions into ridiculous artificial islands are finding that their investments are truly built on sand.

I suppose what I find most offensive about this corpulent clown (apart from the fact that he still owes me two grand) is that the former editor of the Daily Mirror and the man who once took on the goverment over Iraq has now turned into an apologist for slave labour. Of Dubai’s notorious import of cheap foreign labour, where Indian workers are essentially held prisoner by employers until they pay off bogus debts, he says in the Mail on Sunday: ‘All that [abuse] was exposed by the media years ago and Sheik Mohammed took action. There is a hotline for workers to call now if they have complaints. From what I could deduce, these complaints are now acted upon.”

Marvellous. A ‘Cones Hotline’ for fucking slaves. Did you ‘deduce’that, old boy, from your cosy chats with the royal family’s various princes, as broadcast on the show? What a cock.

Content from our partners
How PA Media is helping newspapers make the digital transition
Publishing on the open web is broken, how generative AI could help fix it
Impress: Regulation, arbitration and complaints resolution

Topics in this article : ,

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

Select and enter your email address Weekly insight into the big strategic issues affecting the future of the news industry. Essential reading for media leaders every Thursday. Your morning brew of news about the world of news from Press Gazette and elsewhere in the media. Sent at around 10am UK time. Our weekly does of strategic insight about the future of news media aimed at US readers. A fortnightly update from the front-line of news and advertising. Aimed at marketers and those involved in the advertising industry.
  • Business owner/co-owner
  • CEO
  • COO
  • CFO
  • CTO
  • Chairperson
  • Non-Exec Director
  • Other C-Suite
  • Managing Director
  • President/Partner
  • Senior Executive/SVP or Corporate VP or equivalent
  • Director or equivalent
  • Group or Senior Manager
  • Head of Department/Function
  • Manager
  • Non-manager
  • Retired
  • Other
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
Thank you

Thanks for subscribing.

Websites in our network