It’s fun watching the BBC’s pathetic “Save Gordon” campaign stagger forwards, deeper into the mire. Did you see the prominence given by the State Broadcaster to BBC star and businessman Sir Alan Sugar who has offered Gordon the advice that he should “Kick Out” members of the government failing to support his leadership? Sugar says it is impossible to run a company or government “unless everybody is on side”.Three points here.
One is that were Gordon to do as Sir Alan says and “kick out” those with no confidence in him, he would not have many left in his government! Second, Sir Alan should understand that in business, a leader takes responsibility when things go wrong. Brown runs away from the very concept of being such a leader. Finally I note that the BBC News Channel sought out the views of self-professed long-time Brown supporter Sugar – a clear instance of their desperation to prop up the Great Leader. Why not ask for a balancing view from one of those many business leaders who have had to deal with over a decade of Brown’s crushing oppression as Chancellor?
Funny how it’s only the very rich, and luuvy actors and Grauniad columnists (yep Polly wheeled out again, but she’s risking future BBC appearances by slagging off the great leader) who openly support Labour these days. Probably because they’re the only ones who can afford to I guess.
well thats simple to explain – the elites in any society always love fascism.
and fascism comes in many forms.
but woe betide if the lumpen proles ever get a say in things… i guess our elites still havent gotten over the revolution of 1776.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,”
it is important to read, re-read and read again the above statement. for our Polly Nannies and Alan Sugar Daddies certainly do NOT believe in it.
Personally, I’ve never quite understood why the BBC thinks Sugar is a successful businessman.
But then, I suppose I’m old enough to remember Amstrad. And then what he did to Viglen.
Cockney,
Did you ever get an Amstrad to work? If you did,what did it do? I can’t find anyone who did anything with one.
Sorry GCooper,not got my reading glasses on.
Agreed, where’s Armstrad now? And I’ve never understood why anyone would want to go on that stupid show he does. I’m retired now but if any boss ever behaved the way he does he would either have been fired himself or no one would ever work with him. Bullying, I think it’s called.
The BBC will wheel out any old fuckwit to back Broon.
I’m waiting for the front-page article to come soon:
‘Billy Bragg lends Brown his support’
“Cultural icon and politically neutral saint Billy Bragg has today defended Gordon Brown. Lord Bragg of Awesome said that Mr Brown was the best man for the job, and that anyone who thought otherwise was a smelly Nazi. When asked for a comment, an unnamed Conservative MP said ‘I am a smelly Nazi’.”
The Amstrad CPC 6128 was my first computer. It was, well, pretty shit. I came to my opinion of Amstrad and Alan Sugar in 1990 – at the age of 12 – when they released the 8-bit Amstrad GX 4000 to compete on the just-turned 16-bit videogame console market. The GX 4000 was essentially the CPC 6128 in a different case, but trumpeted as a bleeding-edge videogame console even though it’d been in existence since 1985.
If a 12-year-old kid can realise that Alan Sugar is a fraud and a shyster, it beggars belief how he can still be a multimillionaire to this day.
They copy-pasted most of this from an article Sugar wrote for the Sun over the weekend.
The BBC’s reportage of this contrasts clearly with their supression of the leaked Tony Blair memo, which by all accounts is a far more momentous and important story – yet appears towards the bottom of a dreary “Ministers back Gordon Brown” (and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west) story.
“Ministers back Gordon Brown” That’s where the knives go.
The board backing the manager?
Amstrad were not innovators, they simply made cheap copies.
In fairness their 1512 and 1640 computers and the PCW were quite good machines.
But Sugar never gave a shit about putting money into R&D.
Sugar was a wide boy who made his first fortune flogging appalling Hi-fi systems. Even the name ‘Amstrad’ was a confidence trick. He chose something sounding vaguely Scandinavian to dress-up his cheap tat.
His computers weren’t a lot better.
What Sugar achieved was extracting huge amounts of money from not very discerning consumers who, finally, got wise to him.
It’s funny. I though the BBC made investigative programmes about people like that.
i saw it. they turned it into a news story.
“Sir Alan thinks people are being nasty to gordon, sir Alan gives his backing to gordon. ”
very much in keeping with the doomed ‘make Gordon more popular than Sugar’ theme.
Laughable
i heard this on radio five lies.
jeez. siralan (surely lordalan soon) started off by saying he didn’t know anything about politics but that he thought gordon brown was fantastic etc etc.
the bbc interviewer did not have the wit to ask why he was expressing his opinion if he dodn’t know anything. SAS then let rpi – bad outlook for world economies, problems all caused by american housing market etc etc.
i swear you could practically hear him turning the pages of the script hastily couriered to him.
sugar, bbc and gordon brown – all incompetent and selling us “a load of old toot” as siralan would say.
Please remind me… when did Alana Sugar leave the sinking ship called Tottenham Hotspur?
Unbelievable that the Beeb’s website seems to consider Alan Sugar’s advice is more newsworthy than the leaked memo by Blair.
In fact, the only coverage I can see is a couple of paragraphs at the end of this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7539858.stm
In fact, the Blair memo was picked up well by Sky http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Cabinet-Big-Guns-Back-Gordon-Brown-As-Mail-On-Sunday-Claims-To-Have-Secret-Memo-From-Tony-Blair/Article/200808115065449?lpos=Politics_3&lid=ARTICLE_15065449_Cabinet%2BBig%2BGuns%2BBack%2BGordon%2BBrown%2BAs%2BMail%2BOn%2BSunday%2BClaims%2BTo%2BHave%2BSecret%2BMemo%2BFrom%2BTony%2BBlair
and also covered in detail by the Times, Channel 4, Mirror, ITV, Reuters… well, in fact, everyone.
But not the Beeb.
No doubt the BBC supply the caveat at the end of each Sugar interview: “Alan Sugar was knighted by the Labour government”. Of course, if they didn’t, it would suggest they weren’t doing their job properly
The carpetbagger capitalists,snake oil salesmen,usurers,crooks,shysters,fairground shouters,pressure groups, economic pimps,slash’N’burn speculators and profiteers have done very well out of Gordon Browns rule at the treasury/No10!
An economic house of cards built on shifting sands supported by lies and deceptions.
ONE MILLION MANUFACTURING JOBS LIQUIDATED SINCE 2001 IS JUST ONE RESULT OF THE ECONOMIC POLICIES OF GORDON BROWN!
Who cares? So what? let them eat cake?
More indentured clients(for life)of the state? There are always lots of jobs in the Nu Stasi state sector for those who will tow the party line?
and a state broadcaster(BBC)to bring the joys of the Nu USSR to the grey masses?
archduke: The words from the Declaration that matter most today are ‘with the consent of the governed’– that consent can be withdrawn at any time. In a healthy society, the catalyst can be almost anything, since the vox populi is heard often and early.
But Britain isn’t healthy. What price denial? I don’t know, but it’s unlikely to be good. You’re gonna find out.
I don’t agree with Gibby Haines that that Siralan is a “fraud and a shyster”. Siralan is a guy who – 30+ years ago – spotted a gap in the market (cheap PCs) and went for it. I purchased an Amstrad 1640 and it was bloody good for the time and the cost compared to what else was on offer at the time. However the perceived success of Siralan is based purely on that one bet which he won bigtime. He is not a success in the mode of Bill Gates or James Dyson: Siralan wouldn’t know how to build a substantial corporate organisation any more than he knows anything about politics. His expertise on “The Apprentice” is limited to pedestrian observations on selling: on every other aspect of business he is as much at sea as the putative apprentices.
However, the world of the corporates (M&S, Shell, MicroSoft) is not his forte and, to be fair, he’s never claimed to be anything else but a trader who struck it lucky – but struck it lucky because he kept on trying. His present £800 million empire is essentially a property business which, frankly, has not been difficult to create in the last 20-30 years in the UK given the seedcorn of £100+ million created by his success with Amstrad. Far from criticising Siralan, Britain could do with more of his go-getting style. However, don’t lets confuse very successful (but limited) trading a la Siralan with “big business”. They ain’t the same.
The BBC chooses Siralan as a spokesman for “business” because the BBC makes “The Apprentice”. (It hasn’t hurt Siralan at the BBC that, as a consequence of being completely out of his depth, he has bought into the whole New Labour package.) This is an aspect of the BBCs continual “cross-selling” of its programming and dumbing down while it does so. For instance, the intelligent, relevant and educative comments of Suzy Klein & Co on the Proms are sidelined by dragging on the likes of Deborah Meaden (admittedly a piano prodigy as a child but not exactly an informed music critic) to discuss Dragons’ Den and the all-purpose luvvie John Savvident (who knows as much about Bruch as I know about Corrie) to discuss nothing at all but over-emote while doing it.
Yawn… The opinion of Sir Alan Sugar is not the opinion of the BBC.
Any media organistion in the UK which is in its right mind is going to give coverage to these kind of comments by someone like Sugar.
Also, isn’t it a little disrespectful not to entitle this post, ‘Sir Sugar Me’?
The carpetbagger capitalists,snake oil salesmen,usurers,crooks,shysters,fairground shouters,pressure groups, economic pimps,slash’N’burn speculators and profiteers have done very well out of Gordon Browns rule at the treasury/No10!
Anti-semitic?
Joel (who else?) writes: “Any media organistion in the UK which is in its right mind is going to give coverage to these kind of comments by someone like Sugar.”
Nonsense. The BBC is, as Umbongo explained, simply cross-promoting two of its products: ZaNuLabour and Sir Alan ‘dodgy’ Sugar.
“Any media organistion in the UK which is in its right mind is going to give coverage to these kind of comments by someone like Sugar.”
And most in their right mind would – and did – give far more coverage to Blair’s memo as a story of greater significance.
In fact, Joel, what is your explanation for the BBC news website deciding the Blair memo wasn’t worth covering as a story?
‘And most in their right mind would – and did – give far more coverage to Blair’s memo as a story of greater significance.’
As did the BBC. Or weren’t you watching/listening?
Joel | Homepage | 04.08.08 – 2:04 pm
As did the BBC. Or weren’t you watching/listening?
I was away for the weekend and saw/heard no BBC output.
This morning I looked out for the story on the BBC news website. Apart from a brief mention at the tail end of a story about something else, I couldn’t find it.
Did the BBC news web team (which, we are assured by P. Horrocks is now ‘integrated’ with the TV and radio news departments) choose not to write this up as a substantive story in its own right?
If so, why?
If not, where is it?
I think Joel was watching his fantasy BBC again.
While the rest of the media gave the Bliar memo the full coverage it deserved, the BBC very largely ignored it.
Erm
I used a CPC 464 green screen -played Elite on it 16 hours a day for 6 months – nothing wrong with it.
And the dirt cheap sereo? So what? It cost £99 at the time and played yer LP’S CD’S AND TAPES!
Remember there were a lot of POOR people who bought his gear [or borrowed it in the case of extreme poor like me at the time]
Why Is alan sugars success in marketing stack it high sell it cheap stuff getting attacked – he IS a successful buisness man.
I doubt you guys would be attacking him if he praised Maggie ,now would you? Or Dave?
Think!
Aqnnon 12.33,
“Antisemitic?”
No I am not a beeboid, sorry to dissapoint you!
Cameron: Er nope! As I said, Sugar did do a good job, BUT he was no inovator. That was Sir Clive Sinclair.
All Sugar did was make cheap copies. It still needed the likes of Sinclair, Gates, Jobs and others ot create the market.
Cameron writes: “And the dirt cheap sereo? So what? It cost £99 at the time and played yer LP’S CD’S AND TAPES!”
Sorry, I meant to write ‘dirt cheap THIRD RATE stereo’.
Just like his computers, Sugar’s ‘Hi-fi’ flattered to deceive. There were always better value products out there if you had the wit to look for them.
That people were gullible enough to buy it (and some still sufficiently to think it was worth the money) is precisely why he made a fortune.
Believing that a street market shyster’s opinions on politics are worth a damn is delusional.
In fact, Joel, what is your explanation for the BBC news website deciding the Blair memo wasn’t worth covering as a story?
I don’t think Joel ‘does’ questions, Hugh.
He just drops in now and again, scatters a few insults about the posters and commenters, posts some limp defences of the BBC, then runs for it.
That is why I say he’s a troll.
Gcooper
“Just like his computers, Sugar’s ‘Hi-fi’ flattered to deceive.”
So could you perhaps educate me the massive differences between a spectrum 48k and an amstrad cpc 464 at the time that made the amstrad so unpopular? [thats sarcasm by the way,the amstrad sold massivley well because it was a good product].
Also the sky boxes never seemed to be on the front page of the sun for being so bad did they.
No,one detects a sniff sniff of the middle classes here who loathes the “lad done good” story. Or are the buying masses all stupid oiks who will buy anything. Thats the idea stoopid!£££££
Back to your pesto methinks, or is it mushy peas?