Congratulations to the Huffington Post. Not only have they managed to recycle discredited BBC polling information into a story…

…They’ve also managed to get some of their much loved side-boob in too. Double boobs.

Guido thought that the Huffington Post UK editor Carla Buzasi might have had a new year resolution to clean up her site, especially given how much she complains about people writing about women and their bodies. Last year we saw her stoop as low as printing pictures of children in swimwear to try and harvest Google search engine traffic. And what does their Political Editor Mehdi Hasan, who has the audacity to attack other publications for failing to respect women’s “dignity”, have to say about it all?

Not very much it seems. No new leaf either, instead the HuffPoUK have hit the ground running this year with a classy post about a mother and daughter incest porn duo. Conveniently they managed to get all the key search words like “PICTURES” and “Mother & Daughter Porn Duo”  into the headline so pervs typing that into Google will land at their post. There is the obligatory gallery of half naked snaps of the two as well, of course.

Is the desperate quest for traffic really worth peddling such filth?

According to the most read article on the Huffington Post this morning “If you type the key words ‘children’ and ‘bikini’ into an Internet search engine, you’ll find tens of thousands of results for child bikini contests.” In that sentence is the explanation for why the search engine optimised website is running a story – with a picture* – of an under-age girl in a bikini.

The editorially left-wing website campaigns against The Sun’s page 3 photos yet hypocritically boasts “Side Boob” – paparazzi pictures of celebs revealing more boob than they might wish – is the most popular part of the website. This is an attempt to have their cake and eat it, Carla Buzazi, the editor of HuffPo oversees a site with content bordering on soft porn that professes to be right-on when actually it is commercially cynical.   It poses as a left-wing operation – going as far as hiring left-wing firebrand political commentator Mehdi Hasan – whilst simultaneously pretending to be a Luxembourg-controlled corporation to avoid UK taxes. In 2011 after AOL paid $315 million for HuffPo the unpaid blog writers filed a class action demanding a share of the payout. AOL fought the claim and paid the striking writers not a cent. Is Mehdi proud of his employer?

Former political editor Chris Wimpress has quit the site, he’d had enough and directly blamed Mehdi’s appointment, other staff are keen to escape and applying for jobs elsewhere. 5 staff have resigned in recent months, 3 without jobs to go to. Jimmy Maymann, AOL’s senior vice-president responsible for HuffPo told the Monaco Media Forum last week that AOL are unwinding the integration with HuffPo, “we’ve taken a step back — Huffington Post, within AOL, is a standalone business. Only with that way can you unlock the full potential…We are giving a two-year period to break even…”  Claiming “right now AOL is a good owner for Huffington Post and we’ll keep it.” A signal the site could be sold by AOL in the not too distant future…

*We have blurred the image. HuffPo’s editor Carla Buzazi told Leveson that the site had joined the Press Complaints Commission and abides by the PCC Code of Practice, that picture almost certainly breaches the code.

Guido has been greatly enjoying the Huffington Post’s coverage of I’m a Celebrity, in particular their entire posting “Helen Flanagan Shows Off Weight Loss As She Strips In Jungle Shower (PICS).” Not even the Mail would also include a gallery of 29 “Almost Nude” shots that leave Page 3 looking like a walk in the park. Talking of the Sun, it seems the lefty liberals over at HuffPo are hardly consistent in their policy:

How long before they join their US counterparts and have a whole section of the site devoted to “sideboob”?

UPDATE: HuffPo UK Editor Carla Buzasi is very passionate about this subject:

There’s been an awful lot written about women’s bodies recently. What with the endless articles devoted to Kate’s boobs, the revelation that the ‘average’ woman spends 17 years of her life on a diet, not to mention the ongoing political battle about who gets to decide when she keeps or doesn’t keep her unborn child. All in all, that’s a lot of column inches devoted to fatness, thinness and everything in-between. No wonder we’re all so f*cked up about our figures. The fascination with bodies, celebrity or otherwise, isn’t exactly something new, of course, and shows no sign of abating. But here’s a thought: why don’t we just stop?

No comment.

The PM’s shirt is over-starched. Tsk tsk.