Politics

[Isegrim 9737]

19 minutes ago, Meenzer said:

Incidentally, we're all cool with Boris's dad being our diplomatic representative in the coronavirus crisis, yes?

If he not just passes on the message to the pm but the virus too, then it’s great tbh

[Gemmill 44487]

31 minutes ago, Meenzer said:

Incidentally, we're all cool with Boris's dad being our diplomatic representative in the coronavirus crisis, yes?

 

I can't work out how he's able to type and simultaneously pull the corners of his eyes back. 

[Rayvin 5186]

Richard Burgon  has just proposed  that the party put forward a new pledge that Labour members can veto military action by any future Labour government

 

[Gemmill 44487]

Burgon is a genuine no-questions-asked halfwit. Tells you everything you need to know about Corbyn that that cretin was regularly getting airtime during his leadership. Matt Forde does a great impression of him on the Nandy episode of his podcast which I linked recently. Although Nandy won't have it cos she takes shit from no man. 

 

Surely Rayner is going to get the Deputy Leader job. 

[Rayvin 5186]

You would hope so.

[Dr Gloom 21845]

Burgon

[Gemmill 44487]

 

 

from a fellow Labour MP. Predictably Abbott thinks it's great. Equally predictably the Wigan Warrior has said she couldn't disagree more with Burgon. 

 

 

[Isegrim 9737]

 

[Anorthernsoul 1221]

Fucking hell 

 

 

[Alex 34897]

And hasn’t there been several votes in the commons on capital punishment since we joined the EU? And apart from anything else it would only add more red tape to an overburdened legal system 

[Alex 34897]

Apart from that though.,..

[Ayatollah Hermione 13835]

I give it 6 weeks before someone earnestly suggests a purge

[ewerk 30366]

On 1/14/2020 at 12:12, Rayvin said:

Although maybe a purge simply is the quickest way through it now. 

@Rayvin was suggesting that weeks ago the bloodthirsty monster.

[Rayvin 5186]

 

Your memory is impressive.

[Monkeys Fist 42129]

8 minutes ago, Rayvin said:

Your memory is impressive Mr.Ewerk. 

FYP

[ewerk 30366]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51432440

 

FFS Labour.

[Anorthernsoul 1221]

Didn't take long for his name to be tarnished. They're all snakes.

[PaddockLad 17124]

In Westminster and Washington, relations between the government and journalists are at their lowest ebb. Routine lines of communication have been severed as political leaders use the electronic media to get their message out directly, bypassing the traditional mediators in print and on the airwaves.

In Whitehall the stand-off flared into an unprecedentedly ugly incident in the foyer behind the shiny black door of
No 10 Downing Street last week. First a security guard divided accredited correspondents into separate groups on either side of a carpet. Next Boris Johnson’s communications director, Lee Cain, himself a former reporter on The Sun and The Mail on Sunday, gave the order: “Those invited to the briefing can stay — everyone else, I’m afraid, will have to leave.”

After some argument the journalists all walked out in solidarity, among them Laura Kuenssberg, Robert Peston and Beth Rigby, from the BBC, ITV and Sky, and representatives from all the national newspaper groups. David Frost, the government official spearheading negotiations with the European Union, did not get to deliver his briefing.

Why should Johnson or indeed Donald Trump care? They spurn the mainstream media (MSM), yet both men are enjoying soaring popularity. The real challenge is for the MSM to persuade the public that they should care, in their own interest. The self-regard of those, like me, doing this job doesn’t matter. What is important is that readers, listeners, and viewers are increasingly missing out on the information they need to function as independent citizens in a democratic society. Instead they are being manipulated by elected governments anxious to avoid being held to account by any outside force, be it parliament, the judiciary or the media.

Downgrading the MSM has been a cumulative process in which some powerful organisations have connived for their own selfish advantage. The BBC, for example, has consistently undermined collective attempts by the broadcasters to stage proper leaders’ debates at election times, in favour of their shouty Question Time formats. Sneering at the Westminster lobby as Freemasonry is a cheap shot. Newspapers are partisan. Individual journalists have their friends and sources and should compete with each other. That is not the issue.

 

 

At stake is whether the government should deny the public the facts and background to the decisions it takes. Information which should be available on the record, and of a type which was briefed freely in the past, is now being handed out as a favour to selected journalists in the expectation of favourable coverage. Even neutral analysis is unacceptable, otherwise
No 10 would have included on its admission list wire services such as Reuters and specialist correspondents.

Although the Johnson administration likes to be seen as radical and transformative, its behaviour continues a depressing trend to politicise the provision of official information which began in the New Labour years.

The difference today is that the executive branch seems willing to do away with any of the traditional checks and balances to unfettered government including the free press. And thanks in large part to the arrival of digital media, the clout of the MSM has been so eroded that a malign government could effectively snuff it out.

The so-called lobby system is widely misunderstood. As in David Hare’s play Pravda, it is routinely portrayed as a conspiracy between ministers and elite insider journalists to mislead the public. Not in my experience. Over more than 30 years as a lobby member, the reason I attended briefings has been to get more information out of government to pass on to our audiences.

The battles in Victorian times for a press gallery to report on parliament and for the lobby to report from behind the scenes were all about access. Eventually they were established with the permission of parliament as an institution, not by agreement with individual MPs, parties or governments. That is why governments have always been irked by their existence. The behaviour of Johnson’s team follows John Major, Tony Blair and David Cameron’s advisers in attempting peevishly to change the physical arrangements for briefings to make life more difficult for journalists and to try to take back more control for themselves.

This government no longer seems to feel an obligation to be straight with the public by respecting the conventions by which the MSM gained access to some information as of right.

At my first No 10 briefing, Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham introduced himself and told me that because my organisation, the somewhat controversial breakfast franchise TV-am, had been accepted by the parliamentary institutions, I would have the same access as the BBC and ITV. He was as good as his word.

Access then included regular interviews automatically with the prime minister and other ministers, and weekly briefing sessions with the leader of the House, John Biffen, and the deputy prime minister, Willie Whitelaw. The Labour leader Neil Kinnock also held a weekly round table until he tried to exclude some papers during the Wapping dispute. Then, as last week, the lobby collectively refused to accept these terms and cancelled the meetings.

None of this automatic access is still in place today. Substantive open briefings and regular extended news conferences no longer take place. Civil servants are afraid to provide context, deferring to politically motivated special advisers (spads). No wonder the chief spad, Dominic Cummings, publicly sacked and humiliated the Treasury media adviser Sonia Khan last autumn for speaking out of turn. He has now “joked” that half the spads will lose their jobs in the government reshuffle this week.

Last week Johnson proudly told MPs: “I am a journalist”, but his career in print was notable for its partisan brio rather than devotion to facts. As prime minister he has gone along with avoiding interviews and question-and-answer sessions. He has threatened the BBC and political journalists with radical change. As shown with his Brexit night video, he has expanded the government payroll to include technicians capable of getting his message out on social media without calling in independent MSM professionals.

Attacking and sidelining the MSM as “fake news” has worked for Trump. But his irrepressible public comments and tweeting give him far more exposure than any leading UK politician. He also enjoys the full-throttle support of the Fox News channel and much of talk radio. Cummings, of course, would like to remove the strictures mandating impartiality for news broadcasters here.

But how did the president celebrate his acquittal in his impeachment trial? By holding up newspaper front pages. Perhaps he was trolling his harshest critics or perhaps he unwittingly demonstrated the importance of independent mainstream media as something to trust and fight for.

@AdamBoultonSky

[Gemmill 44487]

 

 

 

[Alex 34897]

Kuenssberg taking a principled stand and pretending to be a journalist now that it doesn’t matter 

[ewerk 30366]

The media can moan about loss of access to those in power but until their pay masters tell them to turn the screw then they're pretty much impotent. Although the influence of print media is waning it is still pretty significant. If they start to go on the attack then the government will begin to pay attention.

[Rayvin 5186]

I really think the media are in trouble. By being partisan over important issues they've broken trust with the public who don't have the desire to support them now. The BBC are a good example of this in recent weeks - they pulled punches on Johnson because they believed that impartiality means you can only expose an equal amount of bullshit, irrespective of how much each side is spewing - and they helped cause this crisis by giving Farage such extensive airtime.

 

And so now, there is no one in their corner. Same for the rest of the media although the right wing outlets will of course simply become the Russia Today's of the new right wing order. 

 

The internet talking heads will replace them and then we really are fucked.

[Rayvin 5186]

In more positive news, I see the left did some damage in Ireland. Winning the highest number of votes but failing to get  an equivalent number of seats (they didn't run enough candidates it seems).

 

So despite links to a terrorist past, it seems that the left can succeed. Good luck to Sinn Fein in forming some manner of government.

[NJS 4375]

40 minutes ago, Rayvin said:

In more positive news, I see the left did some damage in Ireland. Winning the highest number of votes but failing to get  an equivalent number of seats (they didn't run enough candidates it seems).

 

So despite links to a terrorist past, it seems that the left can succeed. Good luck to Sinn Fein in forming some manner of government.

Unfortunately I get the impression their success isn't necessarily based on being left wing - it seems to fit the pattern of just being a vote for change against the status quo in the same way brexit was. 

 

Only thing that makes me think I could be wrong is the bias towards youth In the vote makeup. 

[Rayvin 5186]

Fair comment tbh, since that's the same phenomenon that has played out everywhere. But it's better that the left takes advantage of that than the right.