Why councils must ban the Daily Mail!
"Town hall bans staff from using Facebook after they each waste 572 hours in ONE month," proclaimed a recent Daily Mail headline.
This was an astonishing revelation: Portsmouth City Council workers were so addicted to the social networking website that they had broken the space-time continuum – compressing 19 hours of surfing into each working day.
Alas, the reality was more mundane. 572 hours was in fact the total usage for all 4,500 of Portsmouth’s employees. Individual use was a less physics-defying seven minutes a month – or 14 seconds a day. And that was during the peak month; average daily use was 11 seconds.
The Daily Mail subsequently amended its headline, though not before receiving a good deal of ridicule in its readers’ comments. (The original headline still appears at the TaxPayers’ Alliance website, whose prolific cut-and-pasting shows a cavalier disregard for such pillars of capitalism as intellectual property rights.)
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What the left has to fear from Ashcroft / PoliticsHome
A lot of the reaction to the resignations from PoliticsHome, listed on LibCon, has been interesting a> and entertaining. It has also missed the point, in my view.
I won’t go into Michael Ashcroft’s own affairs; they’ve been detailed all over the place. And I think it would be safe to bet the Tories won’t do anything tax havens or press their deputy chairman over his tax/ legal status. But that’s not the issue here.
Will Ashcroft directly influence PoliticsHome or ConservativeHome? I think he’d be foolish too. And he’s not a foolish person. That influence is more likely to be through osmosis, as Sunder Katwala points out, in the style of Rupert Murdoch (who’s newspapers all concidentally supported the Iraq war).
So why buy them?
This is where I think most of my peers miss the point, especially Mark Hanson, Jag Singh and Political Scrapbook, who think he will do hard-hitting TV ads. Erm no: he didn’t pay all that moolah for some camera-men.
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We hereby resign from PoliticsHome… (updated)
Following Andrew Rawnsley’s resignation today from PoliticsHome, we also feel that the decision to sell a majority stake in PoliticsHome to Michael Ashcroft, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will not ensure the continuing political independence of the website.
PoliticsHome has a panel of 100 ‘opinion formers’ that it polls every morning, and then publishes the results of. We have decided to resign from this panel.
Sunny Hundal, Liberal Conspiracy
Tom Watson MP
Denis Macshane MP
Anthony Barnett, ourKingdom
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist
Sunder Katwala, Fabian Society
Neal Lawson, Compass
Sian Berry, Green Party
Lynne Featherstone MP
Catherine Mayer, Time magazine
Martin Bright, journalist
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian
Hillary Wainwright, Red Pepper
Catherine Fieschi, British Council
Stuart White, Oxford University
Rafael Behr, The Observer
Kitty Ussher MP
Sir Jeremy Beecham
Others who have also resigned of their own accord:
Charles Clarke MP
Matthew Taylor, RSA
Nick Cohen, columnist
Tom Harris MP
Nick Assinder
Stryker McGuire, Newsweek
Paul Webster, newspaper executive
This list of names will be updated on an ongoing basis.
If you would like to resign too, please post a comment below or email us.
Update: A follow-up article is here.
How did Nazi admirer become a national treasure?
I enjoyed reading the Alan Clark diaries back in the 1990s. They merit their classic status, in capturing a political age, while the dramatic descriptions of the plotting in the final days of the Thatcher premiership mean they are a historical document which will endure.
As Robert Harris writes in his Sunday Times review, “the universal acclaim for the high literary quality of his diaries, transformed Clark’s reputation. From sinister, adulterous crypto-fascist he morphed into lovable, roguish national treasure”.
And yet Ion Trewin’s authorised biography may be becoming the occasion for a reversal in reputations, with several reviewers focusing less on the personal infidelities for which Clark became renowned as on the extent of his fascist sympathies.
Dominic Lawson led the way, putting Clark bang to rights in a devastating Independent column last week. But this is also a theme followed up by Edwina Currie in The Times, and in Robert Harris’ Sunday Times review too.
This is the Alan Clark conundrum: how were literary talent, and a reputation as an entertaining and incorrigible rogue, enough to make a national treasure of a man who made little effort to hide his pro-fascist views? After all, Clark gained Ministerial Office, and was even able to return triumphantly to the House of Commons in 1997 before his death.
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Jackie Ashley the political strategist
Jackie Ashley, June 2009: “what is silly is to imply that Labour would not make cuts or that they would not have to raise taxes for ordinary families…Better to admit the obvious and draw clear lines between Labour policies and Tory ones. There is a sensible, grown-up argument to be had, and it’s one that Labour could end up winning.”
Labour followed Jackie’s advice. So how did that strategy end up working out?
Conservative Home, September 2009, “It’s certainly now much easier for the Conservative government to make cuts. Labour has provided cover and, deliciously, Ed Balls has started the process.”
Matthew d’Ancona, September 2009, “What the PM has achieved is remarkable, nonetheless. He has decontaminated the very word he so successfully drenched in ugliness and horror. For more than a decade it was brave at best, and sometimes politically suicidal, to declare oneself a “cutter”. That was thanks to Gordon Brown. With bleak symmetry, it is he who has declared an end to this once-robust consensus. It is he who has given “permission” for others to argue for much deeper cuts.”
*
Conservative Home, September 2009, “George Osborne is now determined to blame tax rises on Labour, too. This is Phase II of the Tory campaign. Phase I has seen all the parties become cutters. CCHQ now want the need for tax rises to be conceded too.”
And the subject of Jackie Ashley’s column today? The need for Labour to set out its plans for tax rises.
Here’s a tip for Ashley’s future columns on political strategy – next time don’t write a newspaper article about how Labour would be more popular if they did what George Osborne wants them to do.
More Daily Mail bollocks on immigration
There are people out there who still refuse to accept the poisonous role played by Britain’s tabloids when it comes to race and immigration.
Many blogs have repeatedly pointed at the most blatant examples of inflammatory red top churnalism. When a concoction of outright falsehoods and half-baked myths is regurgitated and interiorised by millions of readers everyday, it’s not surprising that social cohesion is going out of the window and right-wing extremism is on the rise.
Yesterday came another spectacular example. The Daily Mail features a long piece by Harriet Sargeant titled ‘Feral youths: How a generation of violent, illiterate young men are living outside the boundaries of civilised society‘.
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How the tabloids feed right-wing extremism
contribution by 5 Chinese Crackers
The relationship between tabloid reporting and the increase in the BNP’s popularity is an interesting one to look at. We know tabloid nonsense gets churnalised over on the BNP’s website, we know the party advertises and sells Melanie Phillips’ book via its website, and we know the policy of attacking Muslims rather than any other group is based on the prominence of negative stories in the news media, so it seems the tabloids are at least contributing to an environment where far right ideas may seem more attractive to some.
But does tabloid coverage cause people to vote for the BNP, or are the tabloids merely reflecting a rightward shift in public opinion? Let’s take the English Defence League to drum up support for an upcoming event in Manchester.
The video’s a bit rubbish, and amounts to a series of still images juxtaposed against each other to stirring music. Rumbold at Pickled Politics has pointed out the pisspoor crusader imagery, but there is a series of 22 images in the video that are of particular interest to this article.
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Time to ban junk-food ads aimed at kids
Companies spend an estimated £480 million a year on advertising products that are high in sugar, fat and salt on TV alone.
The fact that they continue to do it is evidence that psychological manipulation sells. Now that the government has decided to allow product placement in the film and television industry, this problem is only going to get worse.
Childhood has become saturated with junk food advertising. Do you remember the General licking his fingers on the Kentucky Fried Chicken adverts? The sultry Cadbury’s caramel bunny batting her eyelids on purple velvet, or Tony the Frosties tiger with his bright orange They’re Grrrrrrreat! smile?
Unlike most of the cartoons kids watch, the aim of these characters isn’t to offer education or entertainment.
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Why is Jenni Russell praising Cameron Come Lately?
Jenni Russell has written an article attacking ContactPoint, the much maligned national children’s database that the government are still insisting on trotting out. The only problem is, she has written it as a piece of Tory hagiography.
We might be able to let her off the title – Another invasion of liberty. And only the Tories are alert – as a bit of subbing hyperbole. I’ve written enough articles for newspapers over the years to know this happens. But she can’t blame the sub for the final paragraph:
Labour will not reverse this; only the Tories might. They promise to review CAF database, ditch ContactPoint for a small, targeted database, and invest in strengthening people’s relationships instead. It’s depressing that Labour supporters who believe in liberties, privacy and humanity should find themselves having to cheer the Tories on this issue.
Will the BBC come clean over G20 cover-up?
In April this year the G20 protests were marked by the death of Ian Tomlinson and some notoriously bad coverage in the national media. But while even papers like the London Evening Standard have tried to make amends, the BBC steadfastly seems to believe its shambolic coverage was entirely fair.
After a misleading feature on kettling for the BBC website, Guy Aitchison from Our Kingdom and Stuart White from Next Left decided to jointly complain to the BBC in an open letter in May.
They made points covering these areas:
- Partial and incomplete reporting of events amounting to misinformation
- Grossly inaccurate statements about police tactics
- Poor follow up to the story of heavy-handed policing
- Lack of investigative impetus
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How journalists were fooled by anti-terrorism ‘expert’
contribution by Richard Bartholomew
Following his confession last month, BBC Radio 5 Live’s Donal MacIntyre programme tonight interviewed Glen Jenvey about how he hoaxed the Sun in January into publishing a bogus story about a Muslim plot to attack British Jews.
Jenvey’s antics came to light because of Tim Ireland’s investigations at Bloggerheads. Bloggerheads does get a brief credit, but unfortunately there is nothing about how Tim uncovered the truth or about the campaign of abuse and harrassment he suffered in the months that followed. However, Jenvey has told me in an email that he wants people to know that he is also sorry for that.
Tom Mangold’s report for Donal MacIntyre comes in the wake of an article published at Spinwatch about Jenvey and some of his associates.
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The logic of the ‘left-wing’ BBC
Here’s a BBC reporter on Radio 5 Live (around 47 mins and 30 secs in) quizzing Ian Gray, Scottish Labour Leader, on the political response to Diageo’s decision to a) slash 900 jobs in Kilmarnock and b) turn down flat alternative plans put forward. This is the same Diageo plc which posted £2bn profits on August 27th.
I just wonder, when we face public spending cuts two years from now, whoever wins the election, with what authority do politicians push through those spending cuts when you criticize companies for looking for efficiencies in their operations?
Get that? Remember it well, because it’s a new interviewing tactic thought up by those clever BBC journalists in the wake of Labour’s admission that it’s planning spending cuts as well as the Tories. I’m sure we’ll hear it lots more.
And just marvel at the logic that lies behind it:
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Creating the ‘Prime Mentalist’
So. Rumour has it [well, Guido has it] that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is taking a course of mood-stabilising anti-depressants. Several blogs and broadsheet columnists of all stripes have gone public with the allegation that Gordon Brown is taking “heavy duty antidepressants known as MAOIs (Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors)”.
This rumour, along with what Guido reminds us are “the stories of rages, flying Nokias, smashed laser printers, tables kicked over and crying Downing Street secretaries subjected to foul-mouthed tirades”, have led many in the national press to suggest or imply that Brown’s leadership is inherently undermined by his alleged mental health difficulties, as well as by the medication he supposedly takes for those difficulties.
We have no way of substantiating this rumor, but let’s for a moment run with the assumption that Brown is taking anti-depressants.
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Apparently the Tories saved the economy!
I realise that Ben Brogan is political commentator at the Daily Torygraph but even a pretence of impartiality is nice sometimes, no? His latest wheeze: Let’s give Dave and Osborne the credit for saving our rating
Dear god. That is some serious leap of logic. Let’s ignore the fact that lefties were arguing for ages that public debt was not at unprecedented or dangerous enough levels to bankrupt the economy. Let’s ignore the fact that Osborne and his crew got it completely wrong over nationalisation and had to humiliatingly accept that later. Let’s even ignore the economy is only bouncing back so quickly because of a stimulus the Tories argued against and Labour nevertheless pushed through.
Their own treasury secretary was still arguing yesterday that our credit rating was going to be downgraded even though it wasn’t. Let’s ignore all that to give this sorry shower of shadow ministers full credit for making rubbish arguments throughout shall we?
What Brogan is doing is offering a talking point for the Tories as the economy starts to recover – they should claim credit for being right all along. You’ll soon see this repeated across the same right-wing media that was recently claiming we were on a path no different to Zimbabwe’s. All that hysteria around quantitative easing will be forgotten as Tories rush to scrub their memories and start fresh.
The Nadine Dorries legal action – something odd
It comes as no surprise that Westminster journalists have faithfully repeated whatever gets published on Guido Fawkes, but there’s a few odd things about Nadine Dorries’ legal action against Derek Draper and Damian McBride.
For a start, here’s a statement by Draper to the Telegraph.
[edited]
So I’d like this cleared up.
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The BNP and our sick democracy
The question of whether the BNP should appear on Question Time raises a worrying question for the health of our democracy.
Matthew Syed thinks the BNP should appear, on the Millian grounds that:
The more oxygen they are given to publicise their views, the more the British people will choke on their bigotry and hatred.
But this runs into Paul Sagar’s objection – that QT is not a platform for debate but merely a zoo in which soundbites are vomited into an audience who clap like hyperactive seals.
There’s a danger that Nick Griffin could actually emerge well from such a show.
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BNP on Question Time: a farce made in heaven
The BBC has to let Nick Griffin appear on Question Time, for at least two reasons: legal and prudential. The legal reason is that the BBC is constitutionally sworn to treat all political parties equally. The BNP now has two MEPs; for the BBC not to allow it to speak would be a clear case of politicised partiality. It has to invite Griffin.
The prudential reason is that excluding the BNP will play into the party’s myth that it suffers from a conspiracy perpetrated by liberal elites stifling the opinions of “ordinary” people. If the BNP operated a no-platform policy vis-a-vis Griffin, this would substantiate the myth of persecuted outsider underdogs his party has crafted with effective electoral results.
Taking the prudential point, one could go further and argue that the best way to tackle the BNP is to debate them: putting them on a platform makes them easier to shoot at. On this point, I’m convinced of the classic liberal arguments espoused by Mill in On Liberty: the best way to destroy a pernicious opinion is to publicly expose it; the most counterproductive way of tackling such an opinion is to try and stifle it.
Except – and here’s the irony – QT is highly unlikely to achieve that, for the simple reason that QT is not a platform for debate. It’s an opportunity for political figures to sound-off their own prejudices without being subjected to scrutiny. And its format necessarily makes this so.
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Leave me and my potential babies alone
Shock, horror, disaster: the population is exploding! Yes, the recently-over-reported demographic expansion of 1%, incidentally mitigating the encroaching pensions crisis, has kicked off a chain of explosions – explosions of racial paranoia, class hatred and misogyny.
According to Amanda Platell of the Mail and Melanie McDonagh of The Telegraph, what this means is that middle class, “Anglo-Saxon” women now have a duty to have more babies in their twenties. I have a spare set of sewing scissors around if anyone cares to unpick the various strands of racism, misogyny and class prejudice going on in those assumptions – let’s just say that it’s all intersectionally fucked.
I’m going to work on the assumption that by “Anglo-Saxon…women”, McDonagh means to say is that ‘white women should be having more babies.’ And despite my Mediterranean-Slavic heritage, I’m fairly sure I’m one of the nice young lilywhite gels McDonagh wants to see breeding like paranoid supremacist bunnies.
To which my response is: fuck. Right. Off. I’m not going to be told when and how and with whom I may breed, by anyone, thanks.
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Feminists aren’t letting down Muslim women
For some reason, these past few weeks have seen a great deal of attention paid to the relationship between Islam and western feminism. The latest issue of Standpoint features lengthy essays by Clive James & Nick Cohen who both argue that feminists have let down their Muslim sisters by failing to protest with sufficient vigour at the atrocities carried-out in the name of Islam.
Meanwhile, The Guardian’s CiF ran a series which asked “can western feminism save Muslim women?” To this, The Heresiarch acidly replies:
No. Western feminism is too bogged down in its own limitless self-regard, arguing ad nauseam about the evils of sexually stereotyping adverts, or why female bankers don’t get quite such enormous bonuses as their male equivalents, to care about anyone else. Least of all the millions of subjected women living in conditions they cannot begin to understand.
Now, I have a huge amount of respect for Heresiarch (as well some for Clive James, and a little for Cohen), but this kind of statement reminds me of the folks who run around lazily claiming that hip hop’s only about violence and misogyny. Sure, there’s plenty of hip hop which is violent & misogynistic, but if you think that’s all there is, then you’re clearly not listening to enough of it.
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The danger that Murdoch poses
Finally then, we learn some of the identities of those who were targeted by various national newspapers and magazines via Steve Whittamore, the details of which have previously been kept back by the Information Commissioner’s office.
And what an obvious collection of searches in the wider public interest they are. Whether blagging their way into BT’s databases to get home addresses and ex-directory numbers, the social security system, the DVLA or the police national computer, these are names to conjure with.
Some of these uses of a private detective to obtain information could have been in the public interest: politicians from all the main parties are also represented, among them Peter Mandelson, Peter Hain, Chris Patten, Peter Kilfoyle, a couple of then union leaders. Most though are just scurrilous attempts to back up gossip.
The other thing that Guardian’s obtaining of the information signifies is that it also knows exactly which journalists or even editors were themselves requesting information, as Whittamore also kept their details, maybe in case he was caught and so he could attempt to bring them down with him.
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» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civil cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
» Is this the end for the socialist left?
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