The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[Davkaus]

To accept him back as a Labour member but not as a Labour MP is a very curious move.

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

To accept him back as a Labour member but not as a Labour MP is a very curious move.

I suspect it's because the former is legally challengeable, and an unlikely case to win, while the latter is 'purely political'.

[blandy]

11 minutes ago, darrenm said:

Yes, Pete. Do they control you?

So if the right wing media is controlling you, how come y'know, you think the tories are nasty and Labour are nice (paraphrasing enormously)?

As for me, I hold similar-ish views to you (I think) on a fair chunk of politics, and again I'd never ever vote tory in a General election. So the Murdoch spell isn't working on either of us. Curious.

So no the media do not control me. At best/worst, the information I get through the media may affect my short term feelings - "look at those poor people suffering, that's awful", "look at that Politician doing something good/bad/stupid/lying", "look at the planet burning..." - and though it's whichever outlets choice to run or not run that item, the outlets editorial comment on it "the bad thing is good" has no impact.

If I were to read the Daily Heil or Express today, I wouldn't suddenly start voting Tory and hating foreigners, or cheering Brexit. I'd start hating myself .

 

[HanoiVillan]

7 minutes ago, bickster said:

Sorry Hanoi, can't agree with this. Firstly as has been pointed out, he's never had a problem saying nothing to the press when it suits him

Secondly, it was known that the report was coming out on that day and an instruction from Starmer had been to not comment on it that day (to give the victims of AS their chance to respond first) but many people, friends and allies of Corbyn tried to persuade him no to say anything that day. Friends including Angela Rayner and John McDonnel plu others.

His statement was no off the cuff reaction to the press hounding him, it was a deliberate and considered act made after much debate with him and his comrades comrades in the preceding days. It was clearly more important to him to get his 2p in and knowingly take the attention away from the victims of Labour Party AS than it was to be quiet for a day or so

That for me absolutely highlights the type of man he is. At face value he accepts that there has been some AS in the Labour Party but he really didn't want to give the victims any space to have their say. He knew that his statement would grab all the media attention in this story and went ahead to change the narrative at their expense

Fair enough, you seem to know more of the context than me. To be honest, I'm not invested in whether or not he's a good communicator or makes good decisions all the time about when to hold press conferences or the wording on press releases - I think it's pretty clear that he is not always a very good political communicator. 

I don't really think it has any bearing on whether suspending him was a good or wise decision, and Starmer has not cited, as far as I can see, 'commenting too soon after the release of the report' as a reason for the suspension.

[darrenm]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

So if the right wing media is controlling you, how come y'know, you think the tories are nasty and Labour are nice (paraphrasing enormously)?

As for me, I hold similar-ish views to you (I think) on a fair chunk of politics, and again I'd never ever vote tory in a General election. So the Murdoch spell isn't working on either of us. Curious.

So no the media do not control me. At best/worst, the information I get through the media may affect my short term feelings - "look at those poor people suffering, that's awful", "look at that Politician doing something good/bad/stupid/lying", "look at the planet burning, the solution..." - and though it's whichever outlets choice to run or not run that item, the outlets editor comment on it "the bad thing is good" has no impact.

If I were to read the Daily Heil or Express today, I wouldn't suddenly start voting Tory and hating foreigners, or cheering Brexit. I'd start hating myself .

 

I don't think it's as simple as that.

We all have unconscious bias. We all have prejudices that are created and shaped by everything around us. Media is one part of that. This is standard psychology.

Where I think you and I are able to be better than most of the rest of the general population is being 1. quite technically savvy (I can only assume this on your part from what I know of you), 2. consuming media from multiple sources, 3. able to recognise obvious bulls**t.

I don't think it's arrogant or narcissistic to be fairly comfortable that you or I are better than the average at resisting untruths. I know that a lot of the lefty stuff from Twitter etc is bollocks (not sure if that's classed as a warningable word) and I see that a lot of people don't spot it. For example the LFI are paying for Starmer rubbish. The video of Shai Masot apparently offering money to take down the left as evidence of Israel's interference in British politics crap. I see people getting taken in by that. I'm happy that because I'm not taken in (I'm hated by both the Corbynites and Blairites on Twitter ) I'm doing an OK job at keeping a critical eye.

[Wainy316]

33 minutes ago, blandy said:

If I were to read the Daily Heil or Express today, I wouldn't suddenly start voting Tory and hating foreigners, or cheering Brexit. I'd start hating myself .

That's because your views weren't shaped by these rags.

For instance, my Dad used to bring the Sun home every day and as I read it (and looked at the bewbs) my early world view would become shaped by columns such as 'The Sun Says'.  I was ignorant, it was the line I was fed and I was on board with all the 'political correctness gone mad' and the 'foreigners are taking our jobs and being awarded 50 bed mansions' bullshit.  Luckily I was too young to vote at the time.  

Once I started consuming info from elsewhere my experiences and horizons broadened and my general view on things flipped more or less 180 over time.

[HanoiVillan]

There seems to be an awful lot of decisions being taken off-the-cuff in a highly reactive fashion TBH. From a press conference:

This is pretty shocking:

 

[Demitri_C]

3 hours ago, darrenm said:

It doesn't work like that. The newspapers create the news and the TV stations amplify it.

Every Sunday morning, Marr gets out the overwhelmingly right wing papers to discuss them.

Every night, the BBC news will make whichever news story from the paper their lead story - generally that's something which they think the nation can use as the talking point du jour e.g. Jeremy Corbyn

All of this stuff gets recycled and regurgitated but it all starts with whichever narrative an editor wants to create. Don't underestimate the power of the newspapers. As long as they exist, they control what people think, whether people will admit it or not.

Sorry darren but i dont agree. The sun has some influence but i think there are more non sun readers as opposed to the ones who are.

I think people are manipulated yes but the majority that won the last election? Not for me.

Even the north voted for tories thats how much they detested the labour party under corbyn.

The labour party has to take responsibility for the mess of the last election

[blandy]

2 hours ago, darrenm said:

I don't think it's as simple as that.

We all have unconscious bias. We all have prejudices that are created and shaped by everything around us. Media is one part of that. This is standard psychology.

Where I think you and I are able to be better than most of the rest of the general population is being 1. quite technically savvy (I can only assume this on your part from what I know of you), 2. consuming media from multiple sources, 3. able to recognise obvious bulls**t.

I don't think it's arrogant or narcissistic to be fairly comfortable that you or I are better than the average at resisting untruths. I know that a lot of the lefty stuff from Twitter etc is bollocks (not sure if that's classed as a warningable word) and I see that a lot of people don't spot it. For example the LFI are paying for Starmer rubbish. The video of Shai Masot apparently offering money to take down the left as evidence of Israel's interference in British politics crap. I see people getting taken in by that. I'm happy that because I'm not taken in (I'm hated by both the Corbynites and Blairites on Twitter ) I'm doing an OK job at keeping a critical eye.

That's a (welcome) expansion on

Do they control what you think, Darren? - Yes, Pete. 

And I think it's closer to my view - I believe that we perceive much of what we find out about the world through the information we receive - and obviously that's in significant part second hand via media, plus friends, family, personal experience and all the rest. And absolutely we all have biases and prejudices, I agree. And also I share your comment about social media bollex - I think that's far more hazardous than mainstream media, even the likes of the Murdoch Press.

I'm also conscious that I am persuadable, and I don't think that's a bad thing - not just by media, but also by discussion and so on. And also I can be stubborn in holding certain views, but not being able to explain why particularly well. I don't know if I'm better or worse than others at any of it - well better than some, not better than others, I suppose. I hope I'm technically savvy - it's my job, after all (engineering).

But also I know people who are perhaps less qualified than I am, but who are nevertheless sometimes quicker to pick up on things, or who see things I don't or from an angle I haven't even considered. I mean I know someone who (when the Brexit Ref was going on) said "I don't know anything about it, so I'm not going to vote" and I thought that was smarter than anything I'd come up with - I mean she felt she didn't understand and wasn't arrogant enough to think her view/vote should be based on her limited take. But me, I didn't know enough, either (who did?) and I voted (reluctant remain).

So I kind of go against the notion that we started with "the media control us and what we think" - I just don't think it does. It maybe influences some people a tad, but I think social networking which creates echo chambers is far more sinister. I don't tend to read just one paper, but even if you take the Heil or The Times or something - they will contain stuff very critical of Johnson, or Tories, or Pandemic handling. Social media on the other hand will spread rubbish about 5G causing it, or it doesn't exist....I mean that's dangerous. Murdoch wanting to use his tabloids to curry favour with Politicians to his commercial advantage is vile, but is less and less effective, to the point of almost irrelevance.

The other thing is if say a person is a Hard anti -EU Brexiter, or for that matter a Corbynite (or both), then most of the rest of UK opinion is going to be at odds with their outlook - so they will think "the media is against us" when in reality the media is reflecting the other and more widely held opinion. Their social media will be full of like minded people all saying the same garbage about "the enemy".

Sorry, went a bit a rambling' there.

[blandy]

2 hours ago, Wainy316 said:

That's because your views weren't shaped by these rags.

They weren't, but I was exposed to them as a child. Maybe because I left home quite young and found other papers that stopped it, maybe I just never felt the content reflected what I thought, I dunno.

[darrenm]

4 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Sorry darren but i dont agree. The sun has some influence but i think there are more non sun readers as opposed to the ones who are.

I think people are manipulated yes but the majority that won the last election? Not for me.

Even the north voted for tories thats how much they detested the labour party under corbyn.

The labour party has to take responsibility for the mess of the last election

OK, thought experiment.

People overwhelmingly liked the Corbyn Labour policies:

So why did people vote against the policies they wanted?

They didn't like the leader? Is that really enough of a reason for most people when most people don't know a lot of him?

If it was the leader, why haven't Labour increased the vote share by more than a few points and still not to more than when Corbyn was leader in 2018?

I think you'll find it's the same reasons people went outside and clapped for heroic NHS workers then a week later were calling them lazy tiktok video makers who weren't worth a pay rise: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8245313/Fury-endless-showreel-NHS-staff-dancing-fooling-coronavirus-crisis.html

Quote

 

[darrenm]

8 minutes ago, blandy said:

Hard anti -EU Brexiter, or for that matter a Corbynite (or both)

No such thing as both  

[bickster]

The rejection of Corbyn by the electorate was as much more to do with the rejection of him, his own politics and how poor a leader / communicator he was than than it was a rejection of policy

But as you mention policy, why isn't the big one, the really big most important policy of the time in that list? You know begins with B, the policy that Corbyn / McLusky et al stitched up in the composite at conference that lead to the absolutely fudged policy that made Labour look like a bunch of buffoons?

[Wainy316]

See for me, when deciding who to vote for, I prioritise factors in this order:

1. Policy

2-100. Everything else

[ml1dch]

8 minutes ago, darrenm said:

OK, thought experiment.

People overwhelmingly liked the Corbyn Labour policies:

So why did people vote against the policies they wanted?

It's a graphic that is often brought to discussions of this nature, but I would argue that conspicuous by its absence is the same for the other side(s). I'm sure YouGov will have done the same polling for other parties' policies. 

If I had to guess, there are probably plenty of Tory manifesto policies that, decoupled from the Tory brand, might also have majority support.

This isn't meant as criticism of the point, but without the comparable data for the other side, it's difficult to really put it in any context.

[darrenm]

3 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

It's a graphic that is often brought to discussions of this nature, but I would argue that conspicuous by its absence is the same for the other side(s). I'm sure YouGov will have done the same polling for other parties' policies. 

If I had to guess, there are probably plenty of Tory manifesto policies that, decoupled from the Tory brand, might also have majority support.

This isn't meant as criticism of the point, but without the comparable data for the other side, it's difficult to really put it in any context.

Completely fair point. I'm actually struggling to think of the Tory policies in 2017. We all know that in 2019 it was nothing apart from 'Get Brexit Done'

The pension lock u-turn and the dementia tax are all I can think of.

[Davkaus]

1 minute ago, darrenm said:

We all know that in 2019 it was nothing apart from 'Get Brexit Done'

 

Which one presumes would have incredibly high support across Europe after how we've behaved in the last few years  

[blandy]

12 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

It's a graphic that is often brought to discussions of this nature, but I would argue that conspicuous by its absence is the same for the other side(s).

Exactly. By their nature manifestos tend to promise apple pie and motherhood. The things that matter to people are often the policies they don't like, not the ones they do. It's not always rational either. And further, there's (I think) the issue of weighting - maybe for example someone trying to get on the housing ladder might feel a policy to do with housebuilding, or interest rates, or incentives for first time buyers might go for a party promising those things, despite not liking their policy for rail or defence or education and preferring the other party's position on those things.

And the leaders do matter. You can have all the manifesto promises in the world, but of someone is unsure (or worse) about the leader, they might stick with the devil they know. And then there's tactical voting...and safe seats and the need to win the marginals, or a particular sector of the population's votes.

The tories did much worse than predicted in 2017 because in large part May was seen as a terrible leader and the dementia tax fiasco, and fox hunting stuff lost the tories and awful lot of votes. And people back then didn't know as much, or hadn't seen as much of Corbyn as they had in 2019, so he was more favourably looked upon. I don't think the Skripal thing had happened in 2017 either, and that exposed Corbyn badly.

And the point about not remembering much from the Tory manifesto last time - most people don't read them anyway, but what they do hear is messaging. "Get Brexit done" seemed to outweigh free broadband, nationalising everything and all the rest - it was a better (if completely dishonest) message for the time.

[ml1dch]

7 minutes ago, darrenm said:

Completely fair point. I'm actually struggling to think of the Tory policies in 2017. We all know that in 2019 it was nothing apart from 'Get Brexit Done'

The pension lock u-turn and the dementia tax are all I can think of.

I had a look at the 2019 one while I was putting the post together, for inspiration.

A case in point, in the 2019 one there was a promise to "establish a democracy commission, to look at the constitutional power balance".

Stripped from it's Tory connection, I think that sounds like an excellent idea.

Add it back in and I think I'd approach it with the same enthusiasm as my daughter going to work for Charlie Elphicke. 

[bickster]

31 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

I had a look at the 2019 one while I was putting the post together, for inspiration.

A case in point, in the 2019 one there was a promise to "establish a democracy commission, to look at the constitutional power balance".

Stripped from it's Tory connection, I think that sounds like an excellent idea.

Add it back in and I think I'd approach it with the same enthusiasm as my daughter going to work for Charlie Elphicke. 

Yep, I was about to post that if by some miracle those policies were the Tory Manifesto (The Corbyn ones), I still wouldn't vote for the Tories. I wouldn't ever trust the Tory Party an inch no matter what they promised.