Renewing Dacre’s contract is beginning to look like a big mistake.

Anyone know where the cowardly little man is, by the way?

Where do you usually find lice, cherub 😉

Apologise for what exactly? The MoS has already apologised for the intrusion into the family funeral. Apart from that, there’s little, if anything, to apologise for.

Ed Miliband introduced his father into his political speeches, so he can hardly complain when his father’s views are robustly criticised. Ralph Miliband was a revolutionary socialist, and so it is reasonable to assume that (like every revolutionary socialist I have ever known) he despised all British institutions – and everything that flowed from them.

Fighting fascism in WW2 is not evidence that he loved Britain: only that he hated fascism more than Britain.

Doubtless, though, the psychopathology of leftism being what it is, he engaged in some doublethink and casuistry – so that (perhaps) he could admire the English landscape while being utterly opposed to the institutions and economic structures that produced it.

As for the Mail, it’s crude populism is not to my taste, but no-one is off limits as far as it is concerned. Today, it is calling out (occasional Mail contributor) Liam Fox for submitting a 3 pence mileage claim:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2446476/Liam-Fox-claims-3p-100-yard-car-journey-walked-minute.html

3.
Assume eh?

When the guardian tried to smear David Camerons father, they said it was in the public interest.

@TONE #3:

Ed Miliband introduced his father into his political speeches, so he can hardly complain when his father’s views are robustly criticised.

And if his father’s views had been robustly criticised, I would entirely agree with you that EM couldn’t complain. But his views weren’t criticised. The DM made up a set of views that they wanted to criticise, and attributed them to RM.

As posted before, I’m a floating voter who wouldn’t vote for a party led by Kinnock or by Blair. I can therefore claim a certain detachment from the partisan fray in assessing the parties now.

What strikes me nowadays is how much of the attack on Ed Miliband by the Conservatives and their allies is personal and how little has to do with substantive policy issues. Could this be, I wonder, because of their political need to distract attention away from that piece by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times on 26 September:

Osborne has now been proved wrong on austerity
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c2fc7352-25de-11e3-aee8-00144feab7de.html#axzz2gyF7hrCs

Britain’s economy is still running 3pc below where it was in 2008Q1 and average real disposable incomes are back at the levels of 2004. There are still about a million 16-24 year-olds not in employment, education or training. In July, “Long-term unemployment increased by 32,000 to 915,000, putting the number of people out of work for more than a year at its highest level since 1996, Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures revealed.”

RL @ 6:

“And if his father’s views had been robustly criticised, I would entirely agree with you that EM couldn’t complain. But his views weren’t criticised. The DM made up a set of views that they wanted to criticise, and attributed them to RM.”

His revolutionary socialism was criticised robustly and crudely by the Mail, and I would call that criticising his views. And, from his revolutionary socialism, the Mail drew the crude but not unreasonable conclusion that he hated Britain – after all, if you want to destroy all the UK’s institutions, what is there left to love or value? And drawing crude but not unreasonable conclusions is not the same as making things up.

Ed Miliband is over-reacting. He should simply have said in effect:’Leave my father out of this: he was a revolutionary socialist, I am a social democrat’….

8.
Fortunately, Ed Miliband is not you. For someone who finds the Daily Mail style crude, you do a fine job of parroting them.

tone: Why are you barking at a YouGov / Sunday Times poll?

TONE –Doubtless, though, the psychopathology of leftism being what it is, he engaged in some doublethink and casuistry so that (perhaps) he could admire the English landscape while being utterly opposed to the institutions and economic structures that produced it.

Getting a bit carried away there old son. Don’t think that the Monarchy or the class system are responsible for the Yorkshire Dales. Is that the psychopathology of the Right? Remember – engage brain before frothing.

vomits over comment No.5. Some of which also lands on TONE.

@7 Bob

“What strikes me nowadays is how much of the attack on Ed Miliband by the Conservatives and their allies is personal and how little has to do with substantive policy issues”

Maybe it is becuase until recently Milliband did not have many substantive policies? Now Milliband has given them plenty to attack.

I cannot access the FT article, but how does the paragraph you quote prove that so called austerity hasn’t worked? We will never know what would have happened under alternative policies. Even if you knew the exact outcome of different policies it would not be fair to compare them over such a short time frame. It is the long term that counts – short term extra borrowing may quite well have long term negative consequences.

The Daily Mail is a joke of a newspaper whenever you post a comment on their news articles online they just delete them if they don’t agree with them. This results in quite frankly censorship and only the threads that support them, it’s a bit pathetic that they can give it out but can’t take it…

The guardian is also as ridiculous where they just hire nasty spiteful people to write articles to cause as much con traverse as possible. Then do the same with deleting people that call them for it.

I hope they all get taken down or heavily legislated by the government.