The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[chrisp65]

 

 

 

[ml1dch]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

 

 

Seems reasonable. Hardly surprising that they'd fall back on the success of their "if you're part of the wealthy elite you don't need to worry about the rules" messaging from earlier in the year.

[bickster]

On 03/12/2020 at 17:44, blandy said:

*not actual crime sprees

Is that because other nationalities just point blank refuse to serve fish with gravy?

[StefanAVFC]

The latest Tory line, parroted by the hilarious named James Cleverly is that the 'Oven ready' deal they bleated on about, was only the withdrawal deal and not the Brexit deal, and anyone who thinks it wasn't, is ignorant or dishonest.

I guess Boris is one of them; in truth, both.

 

Edited December 7, 2020 by StefanAVFC

[bickster]

Why is it that Piers Morgan is one of the few people that actually won't put up with their bullshit answers?

There are a lot of journalists out there that aren't doing what Morgan is doing that should be. Those that aren't should be quite frankly embarrassed for themselves

Morgan is a despicable reptile but at least he's being a journalist, many more aren't. Channel 4 obviously get a pass as they can't even get the Government to appear but the rest....

When it's Good Morning britain that's holding the government to account, you know you're in trouble

[bannedfromHandV]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

Why is it that Piers Morgan is one of the few people that actually won't put up with their bullshit answers?

There are a lot of journalists out there that aren't doing what Morgan is doing that should be. Those that aren't should be quite frankly embarrassed for themselves

Morgan is a despicable reptile but at least he's being a journalist, many more aren't. Channel 4 obviously get a pass as they can't even get the Government to appear but the rest....

When it's Good Morning britain that's holding the government to account, you know you're in trouble

We have truly entered the twilight zone haven’t we, any world where Piers Morgan is the only person displaying any real journalistic integrity is the wrong one.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

Channel 4 obviously get a pass as they can't even get the Government to appear

Same applies to Newsnight - all the serious journo's are avoided as a matter of policy. I thought it might change when that turd Cummins departed. Obviously not.

[Genie]

6 hours ago, bickster said:

Why is it that Piers Morgan is one of the few people that actually won't put up with their bullshit answers?

There are a lot of journalists out there that aren't doing what Morgan is doing that should be. Those that aren't should be quite frankly embarrassed for themselves

Morgan is a despicable reptile but at least he's being a journalist, many more aren't. Channel 4 obviously get a pass as they can't even get the Government to appear but the rest....

When it's Good Morning britain that's holding the government to account, you know you're in trouble

Is it because he’s rich enough to not need his job? I think that’s why he often goes further than the others who don’t want to get into trouble.

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

Is it because he’s rich enough to not need his job? I think that’s why he often goes further than the others who don’t want to get into trouble.

It's because obnoxious, belligerent over-confidence in his own opinions is his brand, his USP.

All that has happened is that at this point, so few political journalists challenge the current government in any way at all, he has the rhetorical space all to himself.

[LondonLax]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

It's because obnoxious, belligerent over-confidence in his own opinions is his brand, his USP.

All that has happened is that at this point, so few political journalists challenge the current government in any way at all, he has the rhetorical space all to himself.

I think the question was why so few journalists challenge the government other than Morgan.

Edited December 7, 2020 by LondonLax

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I think the question was why so few journalists challenge the government other than Morgan.

I would also like to know the answer to that question, though I have some working hypotheses.

[Shomin Geki]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

I would also like to know the answer to that question, though I have some working hypotheses.

Please elaborate! 

[HanoiVillan]

7 minutes ago, Shomin Geki said:

Please elaborate! 

Well, some combination of the following I guess:

• It's a government of journalists, who know how to push journalists' buttons. Johnson and Gove are Newspaper Men, and not only do they have lots of friends in the industry, but they know how to string along journalists to make them focus on what they want. The classic example of this is the Brexit negotiations. It suits the government for the public to be kept in a state of high anxiety about this; it means that if there is a deal, there will be a wave of relief they benefit from, and if there isn't, well, they got their excuses in early. But there is absolutely no reason for the public to care about leaks from the negotiations; what will be will be, and there's honestly no reason to think that Laura Kuenssberg is really informed about what the eventual outcome will be, so there's no need for negotiation coverage to be front and centre. Yet there it is, powered along by a breathless parade of juicy leaks, dark hints, off-the-record quotes with powerful analogies etc, leading the 6 o'clock news despite the fact that there is no news about it. They just know how to keep journalists interested.
• To come back to the social links, I think they're important too. Britain always has a small elite, but Johnson and his allies are more central to it than eg May and hers were.
• A lot of Britain's journalists concluded that the right outcome of the 2019 election was for the Conservatives to win, because they regarded the alternative as fundamentally illegitimate, and so there are some sunk costs.
• Journalism is a shrinking industry, journalists are not immune to the need to think about their careers, and there are two right-wing TV stations launching next year which need staffing, and will be run specifically to support the government.
• One of the effects of first-past-the-post is to erase the large proportion of people who *don't* vote for something, and instead replace it with an understanding that a particular place or group of people are a monolith. You can see this in coverage of the north of England, which you would be forgiven for concluding, from the tone of said coverage, is full of nobody except angry pensioners who want to bring back flogging but love the NHS. The effects of the electoral system are to turn a large popular vote victory into an absolutely enormous parliamentary one, and give the impression the country is more Conservative-leaning than it is. This is also compounded by the fact there haven't been any elections for the narrative to reset over (one big positive about leaving the EU for incumbent governments is that voters have lost the opportunity to give them a meaningless bloody nose).

[choffer]

 

[StefanAVFC]

I'm not into the whole David Icke conspiracies, but Matt Hancock is the only person who has ever made me reconsider that.

[Seat68]

27 minutes ago, choffer said:

 

Its a pretty fallow Oscars field this year, might be worth a go. 

[bickster]

You know when Footballers do that bet you can't say X in the post match interview thing, for a bit of a laugh amongst their team mates.

Yep, well the cabinet are doing in now

[blandy]

10 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Well, some combination of the following I guess:

• It's a government of journalists, who know how to push journalists' buttons. Johnson and Gove are Newspaper Men, and not only do they have lots of friends in the industry, but they know how to string along journalists to make them focus on what they want. The classic example of this is the Brexit negotiations. It suits the government for the public to be kept in a state of high anxiety about this; it means that if there is a deal, there will be a wave of relief they benefit from, and if there isn't, well, they got their excuses in early. But there is absolutely no reason for the public to care about leaks from the negotiations; what will be will be, and there's honestly no reason to think that Laura Kuenssberg is really informed about what the eventual outcome will be, so there's no need for negotiation coverage to be front and centre. Yet there it is, powered along by a breathless parade of juicy leaks, dark hints, off-the-record quotes with powerful analogies etc, leading the 6 o'clock news despite the fact that there is no news about it. They just know how to keep journalists interested.
• To come back to the social links, I think they're important too. Britain always has a small elite, but Johnson and his allies are more central to it than eg May and hers were.
• A lot of Britain's journalists concluded that the right outcome of the 2019 election was for the Conservatives to win, because they regarded the alternative as fundamentally illegitimate, and so there are some sunk costs.
• Journalism is a shrinking industry, journalists are not immune to the need to think about their careers, and there are two right-wing TV stations launching next year which need staffing, and will be run specifically to support the government.
• One of the effects of first-past-the-post is to erase the large proportion of people who *don't* vote for something, and instead replace it with an understanding that a particular place or group of people are a monolith. You can see this in coverage of the north of England, which you would be forgiven for concluding, from the tone of said coverage, is full of nobody except angry pensioners who want to bring back flogging but love the NHS. The effects of the electoral system are to turn a large popular vote victory into an absolutely enormous parliamentary one, and give the impression the country is more Conservative-leaning than it is. This is also compounded by the fact there haven't been any elections for the narrative to reset over (one big positive about leaving the EU for incumbent governments is that voters have lost the opportunity to give them a meaningless bloody nose).

I don't agree with a fair part of that, really. I mean there's some truth in it, and you've clearly thought about it, but I have a different opinion:

It's not a government of journalists, who know how to push journalists' buttons. True,  Johnson and Gove are ex-Newspaper Men, and have some friends in the media, but journalists, even Tory ones, are keen on any story about splits, about arguments, about misconduct and so on. You can cite PPE, Priti Patel, Covid Deaths, Brexit rows and all the rest - they don't control the media and they can't make them focus on what they want (though you're right they try - spin has been around for a long time). Brexit negotiations I think you pick a bad example - because the government has forever been saying "no deal is better than a bad deal" and "Britain will prosper regardless" and other such lies - far from wanting the population to be terrified, they're sending the opposite message "don't worry". Most of the government is not ex-journos, and they frequently appear awful when trying to put across even the simplest of messages.

When you say "there is absolutely no reason for the public to care about leaks from the negotiations; what will be will be.. so there's no need for negotiation coverage to be front and centre" I think that is miles off - the media is the media - they want and need to fill time and space with stories - they always have, and Brexit is a huge story, it'll affect the nation for decades. Like with Covid and the US election people are interested and they can fill their pages or airtime with stories and analysis and so on. 

Social links - sure. But this isn't something unique to this Government, or the tories even. They're not even very good at using their links to control the message. I'd say the narrative is the Government is under pressure, much criticised, whether over Cummins, PPE, Brexit, NHS, Schools, Universities or whatever. Even in the Tory Press.

The idea that Journalists are angling their coverage to get a job on yet to exist Right Wing networks is a step too far for me. Regulations on broadcasting mean that TV cannot be "biased" anyway. 

And the last point about "the effects of first-past-the-post is to erase the large proportion of people who *don't* vote for something, and instead replace it with an understanding that a particular place or group of people are a monolith. You can see this in coverage of the north of England, which you would be forgiven for concluding, from the tone of said coverage, is full of nobody except angry pensioners who want to bring back flogging but love the NHS". I agree that there's a lot of kind of broad brush shorthand stereo typing of parts of the nation that aren't London and the South East - we desperately need a better distributed country in terms of media, Government, resources and all the rest - England and the UK is far too London-centric.  But that doesn't explain why Piers Morgan is one of the few to effectively challenge the Government - he's another London-centric plonker, isn't he? But also what he is, is not a reporter, he's not a News journalist - he's a day time telly presenter, with a background in journalism. As a presenter/interviewer with a high opinion of himself and a desire to be noticed, he's well positioned to "grill" in the style of Paxman. What's much more of a factor is that the modern day Paxmans are denied access to Government figures by the Government - serious news cannot do the grilling if no one shows up. I agree with you that the media in general is too shallowly briefed, too surface level to expose the lies and evasions, and that is a major failing, and partly that's caused by resourcing, you're right there - reporters having to cover too wide a range of stuff to delve deeply into any single issue.

Totally agree the electoral system is broken and it gives unrepresentative power to whoever is elected (the tories in this case) - but what that has to do with the media not challenging the government sufficiently I dunno?

The main reasons why Journos are not effective as they should be, for me, are the Government avoids allowing itself to be interrogated. And this spreads beyond the media - they avoid select committee hearings too. Our unwritten constitution is being essentially undermined, they're pushing and pushing and nothing's pushing back - Judges are enemies of the people, media is fake news, scrutiny is lefty sympathisers... it's all very Trumpian. Social media, too is a big driver - if a government can put out whatever on social media, they don't need the MSM. It's deliberate sidelining.

[snowychap]

 

[Chindie]

Democracy is what we want it to be. And what we want is a dictatorship with a coronation parade every 5 years to keep you quiet.