Tories valuing different opinions? Yeah right
The unsurprising reaction to Daniel Hannan’s praise for Enoch Powell has been that the Tories should be able to live with different opinions in their midst. On that point, Oliver Kamm’s skewering of Hannan and Powell is worth reading.
Tory MP Nadine Dorries says:
Poor Dan Hannan has had a summer of attack, I had a little of it myself, however, as the Times asks this morning, if an MP can’t say what he or she thinks, what’s the point of us?
…
I have written before on my blog and Dan makes the point this morning, opinion in the Conservative party is valued – it’s a by product of freedom, our core value.
The same point was repeated across numerous Tory blogs in defence of Hannan (who, obviously, preferred to erect free-speech strawmen). But the idea that the Tories respect or foster different opinions within the party is patently rubbish.
It only applies when someone offers a wingnut opinion from the hard-right of the party. In contrast liberal Tories, especially who oppose the god-botherer wing of the party, (Nadine Dorries et al) are pilloried. The most obvious example here is John Bercow, who opposed reduction on abortion legal limits during the HFE Bill last year. He has been a big hate-figure within the party since, attacked continually by Nadine Dorries, lots of writers across ConservativeHome, repeatedly, Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes etc, and across the right-wing press (Quentin Letts, Peter Hitchens and many others).
So when they use the free-speech argument, call bullsh*t.
Only immigrants, sterilisation & euthanasia can save Britain
Now I haven’t actually looked at the statistics, but one thing is clear from the latest Government migration report – Britain is close to bursting point, and it’s only a matter of time before our little island sinks into the North Sea, groaning under the weight of its own populace.
Even the Marxists at the BBC are reporting ‘the biggest population increase for almost 50 years‘, along with the terrifying news that the population has finally balooned past the 61m milestone. The evidence of an impending catastrophe can no longer be ignored: only yesterday I had to queue up in Waitrose behind 3 other people, adding another 5 minutes to my already nauseating weekly shop.
Then, as I was driving home at 6 o’clock, I had to spend nearly half an hour sitting in traffic – caused, no doubt, by hundreds of people all traveling to see their hundreds of children. Make no mistake – there are simply too many people in Britain now.
Normally, it’s perfectly easy for poorly informed commentators like myself to come up with a solution: throw out the immigrants and get rid of the benefit culture that brings them here in the first place. Hundreds of tabloid columnist have suggested this simple scheme ad nauseum over the years, but it’s always fallen on deaf ears.
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Right-wing bias and the BBC
Sunny highlights an interesting article in the recent New Statesman, by Mehdi Hasan, which argues that far from being biased towards the Left, the BBC is pro-Establishment.
What Sunny doesn’t highlight is the ‘twin’ of this article, written by Peter Hitchens, which attempts to refute the contentions of Hassan, asserting instead that of course the BBC is left-wing, though BBC bigwigs are unlikely to notice it, having never questioned their own assumptions in their journey from Oxbridge junior common rooms to White City.
Because the Oxbridge universities are such a bastion of socialism. Beyond such absurdities, however, I think the Hitchens article is much more instructive than its Hasan counterpart. The Hitchens article is mostly waffle, rarely reaching for examples which can be said to encompass the whole of BBC political, social and cultural coverage – whereas the previous allegiances of people like Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson probably do have an effect on coverage – but to dismiss Hitchens is to miss an incisive and important point.
“What troubles the BBC is not a party bias. (…) It is a set of potent cultural, moral, social, sexual and religious assumptions, which touch on all topics from cannabis to the EU, and which affect everything from the plot-lines of The Archers to the use of the metric system on nature programmes.”
Fay Weldon, the only real feminist?
Fay Weldon is plugging her latest book. Shock horror in the Mail and Telegraph, this ‘feminist ‘ is saying women should just accept men need looking after and don’t challenge them too much.
Well its not really a shock, she has been coming out with this crap for a while now. As the interview in The Guardian points out:
She was vilified for her assertion in an interview in 1998 that being raped wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a woman, and a few years ago she complained that feminism had undermined men too much. In her book What Makes Women Happy she advised faking orgasms. Did she feel part of the feminist movement?
“Inevitably, but I never wrote propaganda because it all seemed so evident. It became obvious that you had to be a feminist because it was such a ridiculous state of affairs.” Her contemporaries, she says, “usually come round to my way of thinking in the end. I’m probably the one, the only feminist there is and the others are all out of step.”
Well arrogance aside that she is the only real feminist, it seems that by most criteria she seems pretty out of step.
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Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes: hypocrites
Yeah, we fell for the spoof on the Mayor of Baltimore, as did many others including The Spectator, the Guardian and Baltimore Sun – people who are paid to do more research, you know? And I updated the page as soon as I heard about it, as should be the practice.
But now Iain Dale has gone off on a bizarre rant about churnalism and being caught out on spoofs.
Let’s get this straight. Iain Dale has never been caught out on a spoof has he? Really?
Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes have never taken a press release and regurgitated it as a blog post. Like this or this, for example. No, they’re far too professional to do that. Hypocrites.
Update: And Fawkes always checks his sources too right? (thanks Carl)
The Scum editor wait finally over
The waiting then is finally over. The moment the nation has been looking forward to has arrived. After months of tension, irritation and terrible puns, not to mention writing, the next editor of the Sun, taking over from Rebekah Wade will be… Dominic Moron (surely Mohan? Ed.).
Who he? Well, he’s probably best known for being a former editor of the Sun’s Bizarre showbiz pages, which is increasingly becoming a signifier for going on to “greatness”, with Piers Morgan and Andy Coulson both formerly helming the columns.
More recently he’s been the deputy editor for the last couple of years, although even the sad individuals like myself who “watch” the Sun will have been hard pressed to see any of his personal influence on the paper.
Indeed, he’s even been editing the paper for the last month while Wade, sorry, I mean Brooks, has been getting to know her new husband even better, and I doubt anyone has noticed any difference whatsoever.
The BNP vs Human Rights Commission
Notwithstanding stupidity, or that their full-timers are embroiled in power struggles when not suffering ‘depressive illness’, the BNP are still a threat.
This will not be helped by the announcement that the BNP are to face court over their non-compliance with the 1976 Race Relations Act.
I have no doubt that the EHRC doesn’t see it like this: they have a duty under the law etc etc, it’s not a choice, it’s built into their mandate etc etc. But I suspect that go-to excuse of the BNP is at least partially correct – that the Labour government have a hand in this somewhere. At the very least, it is endorsed by the upper echelons of Labour, as Harriet Harman made clear today.
A great number of people in this country feel alienated from the institutions of power and the ‘respectable’ faces of democracy and civil society. Pitting these ‘respectable’ faces against the BNP will not warn people off the BNP, it will solidify their reputation as anti-establishment.
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Real face of the BNP ‘family festival’ exposed
Yeah I know its the News of The World, but they have done an undercover expose of the real nature of the ‘family’ Red White and Blue festival.
Demos against the BNP event are good, but the numbers won’t match those that voted for them . What is needed is to take apart their arguments, policies and expose what they really stand for and seems like the NOTW has done a good job of that last element.
It’s not enough to shout racist, we need to argue why they are wrong to blame immigrants for a lack of decent social housing and jobs if we are to counter their hate filled message.
Although I’m saying its good the NOTW has exposed this, I’m in not in anyway saying the Murdoch press are on our side, but lets use what they have discovered in our arguments and campaigns.
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Can the Met police change its stripes?
contribution by Helen
Last August, thousands of people camped out at Kingsnorth power station to protest against the continued use of coal power in the UK. There were eye-witness reports and video evidence that police abused stop and search powers, removed their badge numbers, employed sleep deprivation tactics, harassed journalists, arrested any protesters who tried to demand their legal rights, and engaged in unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters and their private property.
But the police were not meaningfully challenged by anyone with the authority to do so. In fact, it wasn’t until after events were repeated at the G20 protests in April 2009 that official questions were asked about the policing of dissent in the UK.
Early this year, cyber-liberties activist Cory Doctorow covered all this in the Guardian about Kingsnorth camp.
Ironically, the article was delayed due to an administrative error, resulting in its publication shortly after the G20 protests. It was already true, even before the same mistakes were made all over again: and in April, it could just as easily have been talking about the events earlier that month.
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New migration figures butchered by Daily Mail
Journalism and statistics go together like Dog the Bounty Hunter on a dinner date with Tolstoy.
Usually, tabloid statistics come from some press release sent out by a company with a vested interest, from a “report” by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, or from an NGO, quango, or think-tank.
Sometimes, though, an ambitious journalist will tire of rewriting pre-compiled reports and studies and decide to go and look at the statistics for themselves. This is a risky thing to do because the journo is well aware of their lack of training in stats and the potential for time-consuming redrafts if they make a mistake.
Such is the case with Sue Reid’s “SPECIAL INVESTIGATION” on migrant workers and unemployment in yesterday’s Mail, headlined “Revealed: The areas where there are more migrants chasing jobs than locals“. Sue seems quite proud of her data-mining, as there’s a little photo of her looking pleased with herself next to the words “SPECIAL INVESTIGATION”.
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What difference a bit of research can make
One of the following articles was based on a couple of anecdotes, copying down some government spin and personal prejudice on the part of the author.
The other was written after doing some proper research and reporting the opinions of people who work day-to-day to help unemployed people. Can you guess which is which?
Jenni Russell, Nov 2008 – “We must dare to rethink the welfare that benefits no one:
The left has long been blind to the dependency culture that deters adults from flexible work and damages their chlidren”
Jenni Russell, August 2009 – “Some talk about welfare to work. The poor know it as welfare to destitution: The unemployed are being forced to take huge risks with their security when they move into the world of low-paid labour”
Baby P coverage was both sexist and misandrist
contribution by Lara Williams
Now identified – the woman who stood aside as her partner and his brother subjected her son, Peter, to an unparalleled and disturbing, sustained abuse and torture – Tracy Connelly is woman who’s face will be burned into the public conscious for years to come. And it seems – so will the outrage, anger and hatred of the abuse suffered by ‘Baby P’ – which has fallen almost exclusively on her shoulders.
Described as everything from a ‘sex obsessed slob’ and ‘evil mother’ to a ‘woman defined by abuse’ – Tracey Connelly has been the chief focus of the story – whilst her partner Steven Barker and his brother (and their lodger) Jason Owen have bafflingly played second fiddle in the ongoing media saga.
The lack of equality attributed to all involved in this case is both sexist and misandristic.
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How Twitter challenges right-wing dominance online
If there was one important point to note about Hannan-gate last week, it was that right-wingers had little or no opportunity to re-shape or hit back at developments in the media. The row started off as a broad defense of the NHS (#welovetheNHS) and some broadcasters (notably Channel 4) went down the route of ignoring Dan Hannan MEP initially and focusing on attacks by the American right on the NHS.
But by Friday afternoon and the weekend he became the central focus and the Tories were very badly on the defensive. By this point the libertarians and Tories who had previously tried to ignore the growing noise gave in and started whining that people were ignoring the issues while only focusing on personality. This is typical from from bloggers who spend half their time rating MPs on their performance at PM’s Questions. But what did you expect? They start accusing others of being ‘Stalinist’ while saying they want a ’sensible discussion’.
But a new precedent has been set and you’ll see right-wingers increasingly (and desperately) trying to change the narrative and pretend all this wasn’t a big deal.
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Churnalism that helps the Tories
The Guardian’s headline yesterday was about Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne attacking City bonuses. This was based on an interview by John Harris. Now, I quite like John Harris – I think he’s a good writer and has a good feel politically for a lot of the audience that he’s writing for.
But I am certain that he knows less than I do (which is very little) about different models of financial regulation and how the Tory proposals for revamping the regulation of the financial sector would enable them to prevent banks from handing out big bonuses.
Harris is also a sucker for any argument about how even the Tories are defying stereotypes and making New Labour look timid and in the pockets of the rich.
The result was a front page headline which was very favourable to the Tories – mission accomplished for the Tory spin machine.
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The different ways newspapers can make money
Almost all the discussion of how newspaper should make more money has been based on the implicit assumption that the only business model available is ‘put some content behind a login that requires people to pay‘.
Up against that is the argument ‘but lots of other news is available for free, so why would anyone pay?‘
But there are actually quite a wide range of business models.
The existing model
Both the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have shown how paywalls can work. It hasn’t worked for some, but is there any reason to believe the current demarcation is set in stone with no scope for future changes? No. The Guardian looks to be thinking about a variant on this where the paid-for content is more like the benefits of club membership than the specialist news approach of the FT.
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The Tories who want to cripple the NHS
Senior people within the Conservative party and conservative ‘movement’ are stepping up their attacks on the NHS. We know at least where this stems from: Obama is trying to extend healthcare coverage to everyone in the United States (a key promise he campaigned and won the election on!), and wingnut Republicans there are using Tories here to bolster their case.
Yesterday Don Paskini pointed to a US magazine claimed: “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”
Hawking hit back saying: “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS…I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”
And yet this sort of wing-nuttery has become mainstream within the Conservative party here. Why doesn’t Cameron say anything about it? Why don’t the media hold him to account for his own people’s views?
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Real Women – Really Patronising?
The Lib Dems have now released the full version of their conference policy paper on women’s issues, ‘Real Women‘ (pdf), which is the one that’s recently grabbed a bit of media attention over what seem to be some fairly anodyne proposals to limit the use of digital retouching in adverts aimed at children and young people.
I do have one rather big problem with it – it looks absolutely abominable.
A face and a name come to light
Is she as you imagined her? The slackened jaw; the furrowed brow; the baffled, vacant expression. Does she fit the image you had of the callous, ‘sex-obsessed slob‘ who puffed smoke, glugged booze and watched porn whilst her boyfriend & lodger tortured her son to death?
Ultimately, of course, it doesn’t matter. It won’t bring Peter Connelly back, won’t prevent further abuses from happening, won’t stop other helpless little boys & girls from being murdered by the people in their care. All it satisfies is some short-lived curiosity for a face & a name.
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Exclusive: Guardian considering charging for “members’ club” (updated)
Senior executives at the Guardian newspaper are considering launching a “members’ club” for newspaper readers.
The move, as you can imagine, is being considered to boost revenue at the liberal-left newspaper.
This follows Rupert Murdoch’s own plans to install paywalls across News International’s websites.
A survey sent out to registered members by the Guardian yesterday stated:
The Guardian is considering launching a members’ club which will provide extra benefits in return for an annual or monthly fee.
These benefits might include, for example, a welcome pack, exclusive content, live events, special offers from our partners and the opportunity to communicate with our journalists.
The members’ club, the survey added, would be put in place to “support the Guardian financially”.
It wanted their opinions on the “members’ club” and asked what would entice them to sign up.
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The bizarre journalism of psychologist Oliver James
contribution by Zarathustra
The psychologist Oliver James – author of Affluenza, The Selfish Capitalist and innumerable what-does-it-all-mean think-pieces in the press – has recently been churning out a series in the Guardian entitled Family Under the Microscope. Each week James offers a stunning revelation about the psychology of family life.
Some of these revelations are either dubious or just outright wrong. At times the reader is left wondering how much this says about psychology and how much is about Oliver James’ view of the world.
1. For example, James recently announced which demographic in the UK is most at risk of severe mental illness. Guess which it is. Homeless people? Single mums on benefits? Refugees from war zones? Nope. It’s middle-class teenage girls.
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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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