David Aaronovitch, in his final column for the Guardian, describes what happened when he, a left-winger, decided not to oppose the Iraq war.
All of a sudden I began to experience the left from the outside. And the first thing that struck me was its capacity for smug certainty and uniformity of response. Look at the cartoonists, whose work trumps debate. You may have Blair the poodle, Blair with blood-stained hands, Blair the liar, Bush the absurd chimp, but never, ever, Galloway the consort of tyrants or Kennedy the comforter of “insurgents”. Look at the millionaire publisher Felix Dennis, who read out a poem on the Today programme in the middle of the election (a poem, incidentally, written more than a year earlier). “Why do they do it? Why do they do it? Why do they stand on their hind legs, Lying and lying and lying and lying?” This was, he explained, aimed mostly at Blair for having lied. He wasn’t challenged.
It was beyond argument. Dennis, I’d guess, had never been challenged. Not by the researcher, the producer, the editor, his pals, not by anyone. Like a lot of middle-class anti-Blairites, I don’t think he had ever heard the contrary case put.
OT did anybody else watch newsnight yesterday? They had a one sided piece on the future of the conservatives. Some pink shirt wearing former advisor to IDS was the only person they interviewed.
He argued that the Tories needed to ‘dance on the grave of Margaret Thatcher’, stop pushing ‘nasty’ policies, such as opposing unlimited immigration, and consider changing their name to ‘the Progressive Party’.
Absolutly Incredible.
Expect them to interview, or quote other left wing so called Tories such as Portillo, Heseltine, Berkoe etc in the coming days, as if they are the voice of the Conservative movement.
Whatever happens, the Tories would be fools to allow the liberal media to select their new leader.
No party should choose it’s leader to please the media.
The more you appease the media, the more you box yourself into a corner, and the more control they have.
Slightly bizarrely in this piece on the shadow cabinet reshuffle they completely fail to mention why Letwin is departing – rumour on Sky was that he wants to pay more attention to his City career.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4533555.stm
I forget where I saw it – Sunday Times maybe – but the best advice that I’ve seen given to the Conservatives is to stop trying to be The Daily Mail party and start being The Economist party.
Looks like Felix’s politics haven’t changed much since the Oz days, despite having become one of the crassest capitalists in the country.
At the time of the Oz trial the judge said Dennis was “Very much less intelligent” than the other two. It’s hard to be less intelligent than Richard Neville these days, who’s gone completely moonbat, but perhaps Dennis is still managing it.
Ho ho, Aaronovitch may just be another liberal mugged by reality. At least roughted up a bit:
“All of a sudden I began to experience the left from the outside. And the first thing that struck me was its capacity for smug certainty and uniformity of response.”
You can give us the credit for spotting that first, David.
Monkey –
Bercow was on 5 Live earlier today. It’s all so predictable.
Cockney –
By the Economist Party do you mean be a bit wishy washy and get their facts wrong? I’d say they’ve been halfway there for the last eight years.
Cockney –
Letwin is actually going to be shadow agriculture minister (I had to find that off the Sky News website). I notice how they left that off the list of shadow cabinets appointments, I suppose it’s not suprising as the beeb has wanted to be rid of the countryside for some time – it’s mainly where the tory constituencies are.
“I suppose it’s not suprising as the beeb has wanted to be rid of the countryside for some time”
Any idea how the BBC is planning to get rid of the countryside, Ted?
Mass paving of fields? Selective damming and inundation? Forced movement of the rural population?
Enquiring minds demand to know.
I caught a phone in about school bullying on You & Yours today. Particularly interesting was the way in which one of the callers was bumped off the line, obviously at the behest of The Management.
Her son had been assaulted repeatedly by other students at a school in Holland. Asked what the bullying had been about, she said that the main culprits were some Moroccans and Algerians who had held parties in the School playground to celebrate the events of 9/11.
At this point, the presenter cut in on the hapless caller and announced that the motives for this assault were clearly political, and very complex, too complex to discuss further on Y & Y.
Hmmmmm. Any bets on whether our caller would have been cut off so unceremoniously had she been, say a British Asian mother, complaining of a racist assault against her child by white students? Or an assault by ‘fundamentalist Christians’ on Muslim students?
Anonymous – “Any idea how the BBC is planning to get rid of the countryside, Ted? Mass paving of fields? Selective damming and inundation? Forced movement of the rural population?”
Of course not! That’s John Prescott’s job!
Cockney,
Does the economist get more readers than the Daily Mail?
Robin
no, it doesn’t, but
a) Economist readers aren’t a dying breed
b) the politics of the Economist haven’t just lost the Conservatives their 3rd successive General Election in a row.
c) The new look Tory front bench owes much more to the ‘Economist’ than it does to the Mail.
What has happened to Andrew?
steve j – The Conservative Party would be committing suicide if it started basing itself on the Economist. The last time I looked the Daily Mail appeared to be in very rude health indeed – not a dying breed at all. Mark Steyn writing in The Telegraph today gets it right (as usual): “economic conservatism isn’t enough for a conservative party.” To follow The Economist (Bercow/Yeo/Letwin) model of social liberalism in which elections become a battle over who’ll contribute more towards child care facilities would be disastrous.
David H – what could be more disastrous than the last 3 election results?
‘last time I looked the Daily Mail appeared to be in very rude health indeed – not a dying breed at all.’
as a newspaper, not HMG opposition. they’re happy with a 67 seat Labour majority.
Well pulling more votes in the wealth generating part of the UK is a start (ie England). A decent Conservative leadership coupled with any sort of move to the left with Labour (sans Blair) will ensure a Conservative victory in 2009.
Er…the ‘start’ should have happened in 2001. If this is the start, then 2009 is not going to happen – this is a lower gain and total than the Labour Party in 1983.
‘. A decent Conservative leadership coupled with any sort of move to the left with Labour
In order: the first would be lovely,
the second is unlikely.
Poor economic performance on Brown’s part may swing a split Con/Lib semi-surge next time round, but really? A swing to the left with Labour? I don’t think so.
Gordon Brown isn’t exactly a centrist and by 2009 I would wager the public might be a bit sick of public spending/taxes which are approaching those historically of communists states.
The conservatives main problem is ideologically defining itself, again.
> by 2009 I would wager the public might be a bit sick of public spending/taxes which are approaching those historically of communists states.
right…..
I was talking seriously about the recent (and upcoming) UK elections, you used the phrase ‘communists states’
> The conservatives main problem is ideologically defining itself, again.
no. Their main, and total, problem is getting votes.
They’ve been wonderful at ‘ideologically defining’ themselves, to almost total voter indifference since meltdown.
SID Snott
Back in the late and early seventies, there was a bohemian Coffee house in the old Brompton road called ” the Troubadour”. Founded by a Canadian by the name of Michael van Blomen and his marxist wife it became the meeting place for the anti establishment.
Copies of OZ and IT were sold over the counter along with CHe and Ho Chi Min posters.
Iremeber Felix dennis and Richard Neville were regular visitors and it is there that they learnt the warfare of leftist dialogue.
It is not what you say, but the clothes you are wearing while you say it that matters.
They exemplified the meaning of the word “PSEUD’ which became so popular later in the writings of Private Eye.
Last year i revisited London and bumped in to an old friend “Yougoslav Angelo”, the founder of Personal Computer World Magazine in an old flat in Baywater.
I could not repeat what he had to say about Felix Dennis and how he got the publication from him!
A little googling has brought up an article on Angelo, the newsagent from Baywater, who started Felix up on his road to millions.
David Leach owned the flat in Ifield road where the first editions were drawn up. he was a struggling blues guitarist.
Meyer Solomon went broke and i bought him a ticket to America to visit his girlfriend . Never heard from him again.
Angelo lost interest and wanted to sell. I passed on the info to Sheila Black ,a formidable.charismatic and intelligent Ex Times journalist from Earl’s Court. I believe she arranged the deal.
http://www.visit-croatia.co.uk/aboutauthors/articles.htm
Being “Economist” in approach is exactly where the Tories have gone wrong in the past. People on the Economist have no understanding of real people’s lives. That’s why the Tories ended up alienating millions of voters with their privatisation policies which threatened the economic security of millions of people. Although the Tories have more or less abandoned privatisation all the recent talk about efficiency savings was bound to make lots of public sector workers wonder what that meant for them.
The Economist has always been pro-immigration – just like the CBI. They have no feel for cultural issues like what it means for your locality to become dominated by people from abroad who don’t even share your language and who subscribe to an extreme ideology like Islam.
In my view the Tories need to regroup around policies that do appeal to the silent majority of working families. They will back a war on scroungers and criminals. Labour could never copy such policies.
I’m not sure quite sure where you’re coming from Steve Jones. The taxes/public spending of many parts of the Uk are approaching that found historically in communists states ie extremely high state spending. To put it more simply for you:
People will want to pay less tax
Hope that clears it up.
Back to the thread.
The key point re the BBC in the rticle was that they happily regurgitated as boring trite poem, anti the war, with no-one at any level on the staff of Today raising any question about its fairness or its news pertinance. Even Michael White of the Guardian has been mocking the Today presenters on their obsession with Iraq. But still they carry on – no doubt feeling vindicated. They attribute any Labour loss of votes to Iraq – not to people’s impatience and annoyance at the gross inefficiency of many Lbor policies, the huge increases in health and education spending without commensurate improvements in services, the total incompetence in areas like immigration and crime.
It would be fatal for the Tories to go down the Bercow line. Next time it will need some strong medicine to sort out Labour’s mess, but Bercow and wusses like him will be prattling the Today soft soap.
OT “BBC awaits staff strike decision”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4535731.stm
Go on, make my day!
Dreadful piece on Radio 5 live just now.
Italy is to screen the film “Submission” on tv in the next couple of days.
Shamelessly, the reporter spins this to imply that the Berlusconi-controlled media is doing this to raise fears amongst the electorate over immigration.
The real impact of the film, and the consequences of it for those involved was smoothed over in true dhimmi fashion by the BBC.
OT.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4535187.stm
“Tens of thousands listened Mr Bush’s speech in Tbilisi”
Look narrow focus picture, and lie about numbers it was well over 100 thousand.
Eamonn,
What’s hysterical about that discussion is they’re completely wrong. I know, BBC don’t know what they’re talking about shocker.
According to the Guardian, Submission is to be shown on one of the state broadcaster’s RAI channels and not on a Berlusconi channel at all.
Sorry but doesn’t anyone know why Andrew has stopped posting at this blog? He used to be one of the main writers.
David Field
Whilst I agree with you on the immigration front, it wasn’t privatisation which alienated millions so much as the Tories being the party in government when the economy went south, the pound was forced out of the ERM, interest rates went throught the roof and George Soros filled his pockets.
Millions were quite happy to jump on the share owning train or simply enjoy the wonders of having a phone line put installed in less than 3 months. In hindsight the Tories should have thrown the ’92 election, sat back and enjoyed the Kinnock show.
OT
Can anyone explain why so little has been made by the Conservatives and the conservative press of the fact that despite out polling Labour in England the party got 92 less seats!!!
If it was the other way round the BBC, Guardian, Independent and Labour would still be moaning about it.
Remember moonbat bingo? Yesterday I left this message in the have your say
box on the new Tory cabinet:
“The problem for the Tories isn’t their leader, it’s their ideology. Britain has evolved, and as such it is only a matter of time before the dinosaurs go extinct. The general election proved that most Britons are already too smart to be deceived by cheap slogans, or to be seduced by the politics of prejudice. Fifty years from now, the only people who will be interested in the Conservative Party will be historians.
Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf , Dundee, Scotland”
Does the name sound familiar? Well it should, because it is the infamous Iraqi information minister!
…and they actually published it!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4534385.stm
😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆
Monkey, you are abusing their message boards now. Do you seriously expect the moderators to check every name against a list of possible pseudonyms. Fair enough, you know who this is, but Mohammed is the commonest name in the world. I’ve got half a mind to email in to report you.
Didn’t The Economist support the ERM? I think the FT did.
> Sorry but doesn’t anyone know why Andrew has stopped posting at this blog? He used to be one of the main writers.
He has been overthrown and killed in a (virtual) palace coup. His erudite and considered posts were spoiling the reputation of Biased BBC as a bunch of raving loonies.
(Seriously though, I expect he’s just busy, and will hopefully be back posting soon.)
Bad monkey. Go and sit in a corner. The cause against the Evil Empire isn’t advanced by silly tee-hee stunts like that. You merely lend credence to those who represent the posts here as the stuff of fantasists.
Monkey,
So the secret to getting posted is to use a muslim sounding name!
I think they “clocked” my Tobias Hebebcy (biased bbc) bingo entries.
Can somebody take a screenshot? They’ll probably take it down once I’ve been rumbled.
I’ve long suspected that the (D)HYS team is peopled by complete idiots and Monkey’s Moonbat Bingo stunt has just confirmed it.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/pipc10042003.html
Pick a card, any card, and attach the name to a plausible sounding liberal opinion. See how many get through. I’ve just done one with Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash (aka chemical sally).
“I think that Mr Howard has finally got the right balance between modernizers and traditionalists. The Conservatives have traditionally been a broad church with a wide appeal, but in recent decades have tended to marginalize the left wing of the Party.
I feel that this imbalance has lead to the Tories poor performances in recent elections. Hopefully Howard’s reforms are indicative of a wider acceptance within the party of the need to return to the centre ground, and not simply a flash in the pan. ”
Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash (chemical sally) Burnley, England
Lets see if they go with this one. 😉
The good news is, the BBC’s voted to go on strike later this month. Their union thinks the British licence payer should continue to pay for the totally unnecessary staff whose jobs are being cut. Of course, you could argue, and I have, that they are all unnecessary, given the world of free enterprise broadcasting out there.
Four hundred terror attacks happen in Iraq a month, like today’s suicide bombings. Who in their right minds can call this situation a success?
P.S. Verity, Mark Thompson is not proposing to cut staff to cut the licence fee, but rather to cut staff and then hire more for other projects in a year’s time or so, like digital television. By which time he will have spent £25m on redundancy payouts. Makes sense? No? Thought not. We should all be supporting the strike.
Basil,
Iraqi’s.
Basil,
Spending on digital TV brings forward TV freedom day, when the TV tax can be consigned to Room 101 and replaced with subscription.
Basil, I at no time indicated that I thought they were cutting staff to cut the licence fee! The BBC hasn’t the least intention of retreating from one penny of their mandatory public funding until we pry their cold dead fingers off the licence.
I said the staff are striking because they think their colleagues who are redundant should be kept on the payroll. It’s only public money after all!
Rob Read – Given that they spend most of their life preening in commercials praising themselves and their programmes, one wonders why they fear the institution of a simple subscription service so much.
A little off topic perhaps.
Heard a little comment on tonight’s Radio 5 Live.
One of the announcers mentioned Michael Grade giving a speech on impartiality, saying something along the lines that he believed the Beeb’s ‘impartiality’ should be retained.
The announcer editorialised along the lines of: ‘there is some argument that with a more diverse media that impartiality is no longer required, and that media should become partial – like Fox news and ‘shock jocks”.
Only gave ‘right wing’ examples of bias. Of course, the left media is completely impartial.
I’ve been hanging around here for a while now and from the pro-BBC people who pop up now and then I haven’t read one unarguable reason, just one reason that cannot be rebutted, as to why the BBC should be.
Maybe it’s the fact that they haven’t had a penny from me in years which keeps me sane. Boys and girls, burn your licences and cancel those direct debits. You have nothing to lose except your … erm … liberty … and job … and home … and family.
But then that IS the ‘unique’ way that the BBC is funded!
Pete_London: “I haven’t read one unarguable reason, just one reason that cannot be rebutted, as to why the BBC should be.” Sure, one reason YOU think can’t be rebutted or argued against. But tell me what it is then that’s keeping the millions & millions of people who are still paying the licence fee from following your noble course of action? It must of course be the stranglehold the BBC has over their consciousness, a stranglehold that – via their pernicious propaganda pumped out 24/7 – prevents those millions of people from independent thought and rising up as one to oppose the telly tax and refuse to pay it. Or is it the threat of the law, the threat of imprisonment, a threat only brave souls like you feel able to face down, while the masses are so downtrodden and subservient they feel compelled to pay the hated tax? Much as they did over another hated tax, the Community Charge? Or could it possibly be that most people, who may well agree (like me) with many of the sentiments on this blog concerning bias, who may think it ridiculous that BBC staff are going on strike over clearly justified cuts, still reckon £10 a month is actually a total fucking steal for the breadth and quality of (most of the) broadcasting and online content we get in return? Yes, it’s compulsory, but then so are many things in life (income tax, road tolls, speed limits) but none of those have come close to broadening my horizons, keeping me informed or entertaining me. And they’re mostly a lot more expensive. Like Sky.
Monkey scores another direct hit on the overpaid, no-talent feeders at the public trough. All of whom will, with any luck soon be on strike.