Telegraph gives the fascists a platform
via Jim Jay, it looks like the Telegraph website is hosting a blog by BNP London councillor Richard Barnbrook.
So far Barnbrook has written three posts, including Lily Allen and the BNP, and Blame the Immigrants. Fits right in with Telegraph editorial policy then.
Jim Jay points out:
Among other exciting proposals ubergrupen fuhrer Barnbrook has for us in his “Blame the immigrants piece” include;
- The police should disobey the government and pursue their own sort-of-legal agenda. He adds “A free society is one where the police can do their job the way they want to do it.” Although most of us would call that a police state rather than “free societies”, but the haircut knows best.
- You know there never was any violent crime until we started letting in darkies and their communist friends. “Most of it [knife and gun crime] is being done by immigrants or by the sons of immigrants who have been protected by a despicable government desperate for the Ethnic Block-Vote.”
- But what is to be done with our streets over run with all these “ethnics”? In order to clean up the streets send in the army. Yes. The army. I’m not joking, that’s what our man in the Eagle’s Nest is proposing. To get rid of guns on the streets we’ll fill the streets with… oh hold on.
- If the commies oppose this sensible measure? Well the “human rights lawyers can scream all they want.” Presumably in a basement somewhere, whilst Brownshirts tear out their fingernails.
10 pt test for bloggers on defamation
Over at mbites, journalist Mike Butcher has published some information and advice relating to defamation and blogging.
Bloggers should therefore be aware of the 10 point test below from Reynolds v Times [1999] UKHL 45. Most critical are the requirement that the subject of the article must be given the precise allegations that are to be published and a meaningful opportunity to respond to them and the gist of that response should be published in a balanced way.
The table below is designed to act as a prompt or checklist.
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Andrew Gilligan’s employer promoting holocaust denial
You may remember I exposed Andrew Gilligan’s hypocrisy two weeks when I pointed out he also worked for the television channel Press TV, funded by the Iranian government.
Andrew Gilligan likes to make a great deal of noise about how he’s such a progressive and left-wing journalist…yada yada. He even commented in that blog-post stating:
The fact is – leftwingers can be liars and phonies too, and any journalist worthy of the name will sink his teeth into the leg of anyone who deserves it, regardless of their political views. And that, I suppose, is the difference between us.
Thank you for giving me the license to write this update then…
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Where will right-wing bloggers turn to?
Now that the Tories are dead-certs to get their greasy hands on the rudder, it will be interesting to see which way the right-wing blogosphere will turn.
Because although some like Iain Dale will merge indistinguishably into the new establishment, others especially those on the Libertarian Right will face more of a dilemma.
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New Statesman gets editor
The editor of Granta, Jason Cowley, has been appointed as editor of the New Statesman, reports the MediaGuardian.co.uk.
The Fritzl case and media hypocrisy
This weekend has not been a good one for the dangerous freaks and dissenters among us. I spent it mostly in the garden under a scrap of boiling London sky, contemplating all the things I’m suddenly not allowed to do anymore. That, and reading the papers, most of which have spent the post-Boris comedown wanking grotesquely over the Fritzl case.
In case you’ve spent the past month hiding in a box, this is the big Austrian incest story that made headlines across the world when it emerged that a grandfather in his seventies had imprisoned his daughter in a custom-built dungeon under his house and fathered seven children by her whilst the rest of the family lived upstairs in complete ignorance.
Horrific, utterly, stunningly horrific. And not something you’d ever see on these civilised islands, of course.
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Labour’s useless prisons
Whilst the weekend papers were regurgitating the ‘revelations’ in Cherie Blair’s autobiography (did you know Gordon & Tony don’t really get on? Yeah, I was stunned too!), the former Prime Minister’s wife was plotting to make an even more audacious attack on his successor. Why, you might ask, didn’t this feature prominently on Andrew Marr’s Sunday show or get plastered across the tabloids as a ‘Bollocking For Beleaguered Brown’? Well, probably because she was attacking him on a matter of substance.
A cell in Borstal, taken by Flickr user Flipsy (Creative Commons)
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Evening Standard circulation falls
The engrossing London mayoral elections failed to help the London Evening Standard, which saw its circulation drop again last month. We’re shocked to hear the newspaper’s ‘fair and balanced’ coverage wasn’t appreciated more.
Cameron’s Quarterly
There has been a great deal of suspicion in the blogosphere regarding the political integrity of Total Politics, the new venture run by several former 18 Doughty Street operatives, and Politics Home, the hideous spawn of Stephan Shakespeare (the original financial progenitor of 18DS – yes, it’s all a bit incestuous). Both titles have taken measures to buttress themselves against these predictable criticisms, by creating cross-party advisory boards as a check against bias. It’s easy to understand why a nascent political publication or website would be concerned about appearing to favour one political party and take steps to provide evidence of its fairness. But what about an existing publication, especially one that hasn’t historically been particularly political?
The worries I have are in regard to Condé Nast’s GQ, which is edited by one Dylan Jones. In 2006 GQ featured David Cameron on its front cover, a rather surprising departure from the disrobed Hollywood sirens who usually adorn it. There is nothing necessarily wrong in the leader of the Conservatives starring on a magazine cover, I guess, but as a subscriber to GQ (a valentine’s day present), I have noticed the distinguishable stench of political bias throughout the magazine of late. continue reading… »
Andrew Gilligan’s hypocrisy
I guess should have mentioned and emphasised this little-known-fact earlier. But for a little while I had some respect for Andrew Gilligan’s journalism. Once he went way over the top and sold his soul to the Evening Standard’s vendetta against Ken Livingstone, that evaporated.
First, a bit of background.
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Richard Barnbrook: The Great White Dope
When the BNP’s Richard Barnbrook stooped forward to give his victory speech this weekend, both the main candidates and the news channels left the stage. Which was a shame. Because a better demonstration of the real man’s character and party could not have been found.
Now I have always thought that the ‘no-platform’ approach is wrong. To deny the far-right a voice is to give them a status that they do not deserve.
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New Labour and its insecurity
The post-mortems – the mot juste, I think – on New Labour have missed a point.
The party is paying the price for the fact that the New Labour project was based upon profound, and now crippling, intellectual insecurity.
Put yourself in the shoes of New Labour’s founders in the 80s and early 90s. You see that traditional social democratic arguments for redistribution don’t work. You see Labour’s traditional support base, the manual working class, declining in numbers (pdf). And you see a managerial class winning what you want – wealth and power.
What do you do? You abandon traditional Labourism, in favour of an appeal to Mondeo man and Worcester woman.
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Was it the Standard wot won it?
So, it’s the weekend after the week before, and an alliance of gameshow fans, 4×4 drivers, suburban curtain-twitchers, BNP second-preferences, Labourphobes and the thoroughly fed-up, mostly from places that don’t even count as London, have foisted a Thatcherite mayor on our generally left-leaning city. continue reading… »
BBC: Dog Whistle
Like Sunny, I’m annoyed with the BBC too.
A woman named Suzanne Holdsworth has been released from prison, after her conviction for killing a child she was baby-sitting was deemed unsafe. Apparently, it is likely that toddler Kyle Fisher had a pre-existing disorder that could have caused his death.
All this was reported in a matter-of-fact tone on the news last night, but the editing told a different story. The shot of Mrs Holdsworth we saw as she left court was of her taking a weaselly drag on a king-sized cigarette. And the interview with her partner (who made a very salient point about how, although he was delighted, no-one should forget the dead child) was spliced with a cut-away shot of his tattoos – a bulldog, with ‘England’ emblazoned below. The grammar of the shot renders the segment a dog-whistle to the middle-classes: “Chav Scum”.
Since Mrs Holdsworth is now facing a retrial, that’s unfair on her. But it also reinforces prejudices within our society. The BBC needs to get beyond these cliches.
BBC: From dumb to dumber
I’m with Nathaniel – frankly I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm to care for how many seats Labour lost or the Tories won or whether the Libdems had a great night. But what the hell was the BBC coverage about?
I realise that people are increasingly becoming apathetic to politics. But that’s most likely because our politicians are not very interesting and our democratic institutions aren’t all that democratic.
Surely its NOT because we’re dumb idiots who have trouble paying attention or understanding how percentages move up or down. Jesus, I felt deeply patronised last night, especially by the idiot who dreamed up those pathetic graphics that Jeremy Vine had to refer to every five minutes.
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Am I being too cynical here?
So David Cameron admits that he hasn’t exactly kept to his promise of “ending Punch and Judy politics”. Well there’s a surprise. The king of sarcasm, Justin McKeating, nails it:
David Cameron has admitted he has not managed to keep his pledge to “end Punch and Judy politics” – blaming the fact that calling the Prime Minister a cycloptic psychopath has proved a better strategy.
“I will absolutely hold up my hand…this is a promise I couldn’t be bothered to deliver,” the Tory leader said.
“Look, what would you do? You can spend all day formulating policy and listening to the petty concerns of voters. But when your spin doctors tell you that portraying the Prime Minister as a hapless, lonely weirdo is an easier way to win the general election, you jolly well need to sit up and listen.”
He said prime minister’s question time was “an adversarial system” adding: “Of course we don’t have a policy worth a candle. When standing up and making thinly veiled innuendoes about the Prime Minister’s sanity has proved a sure-fire way to get ahead in the the opinions polls, who needs them?
“I do accept that I take a rubbish approach. It is rubbish. I don’t make any apology for that.”
Writing in the Daily Mail, Peter Oborne, perhaps the only reason to read that paper, said this last week:
There is always a herd instinct in British politics and David Cameron has confidently placed himself at the head of an ugly, baying mob. Like all mobs, Cameron’s brutish band of brothers has little interest in decency or decorum.
…
Just like the Tory leader today, Tony Blair very rarely attacked his opponents on matters of policy. Instead, like Cameron, he concentrated on personal issues. Blair portrayed John Major as weak, dithering and the victim of events. Cameron does exactly the same to Gordon Brown today.
Admittedly, I’m not a fan of this silly politics either and anyone who’s surprised Cameron went back on his promise should really go back to the comments section of Guido Fawkes and stay there.
But are attack ads so bad? The Libdems unveiled two attack ads this week, with Boris and Ken in their sights, and both have been universally panned by commenters on Libdemvoice. Ok, they’re not funny but I don’t see a problem with attack ads.
Aren’t they the future, given that there are no broadcasting rules on YouTube and the Libdems can release as many as they want without worrying about Ofcom? Who wouldn’t be seduced?
Will the British public really be repelled by it all? Or is it more that we wish the public would not be seduced but as soon as its proven they work (like in the USA), then everyone will jump on the bandwagon?
The top ten Boris videos
I’ve never seen so many videos against a candidate for a British election. If there’s one thing the Mayor elections has shown, its that there are plenty of creative Boris-stoppers out there.
Of course I couldn’t limit this list only to ten. If there’s any important ones you think I’ve missed out, let us know in the comments. This list also includes the Kate Nash ‘dickhead remix’ that was taken off YouTube!
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Index debates Kollerstrom
Unity from LC and Brendan O’Neill from Spiked debate whether it was right that Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom be stripped of his honorary post at UCL after bloggers uncovered his views.
Peter the Prophet
Ah, those Hitchens boys and their messianic resolve. This time, it’s the runt of the family:
I sometimes wonder why I bother being a prophet. All my predictions of horrible things come true, and nobody does anything about any of them.
The BBC have discovered that there are now quite a lot of grannies in this country in their 30s. They interviewed Tara Bailee, 36, who goes clubbing twice a month, has (of course) split up with the father of her daughter Rickeita, who got pregnant at 15 and has (of course) split up with the father of her daughter, Lexie.
Study shows media bias on Iraq
An empirical study examining every story about Iraq on ABC and CBS News between 1st Aug 02 and 19th Mar ‘03 – 908 stories in all – showed the networks were biased towards invasion. More: The Monkey Cage.
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» 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
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» 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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