THOSE SMEAR MAILS – WHO IS TO BLAME?

Anyone else caught this interview with Armando Iannucci on Today this morning? It allegedly concerned parallels between story lines in his TV programme “In the Thick of it” and the current McPoison Gate. I noted that Armando was able to get the sly line in that David Cameron also has spin doctors around him and so the culture of spin and spite evident in the current case was likely to continue under the Conservatives. BBC subtext; they are all the same, Save gordon.


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157 Responses to THOSE SMEAR MAILS – WHO IS TO BLAME?

  1. Valentinus says:

    Good. I agree, Tim. Now we can get back to the real scandal of current British party politics: the possibility that the running of this country might once again be handed over to a oligarchy of recession-proof multimillionaire old Etonians, restoring our standing as the most genuinely class-ridden democracy in the world.

    Anybody priced a pen at Samantha Cameron’s shop recently? I reckon the average price is 1150 GBP. For a pen. Nice to think how close these agreeable Cameron people are to the struggles of credit-crunch Britain.

    BBC picked that one up yet? Wonder why.

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  2. TPO says:

    an oligarchy of recession-proof multimillionaire old Etonians
    Valentinus | 16.04.09 – 1:59 pm |

    As opposed to an oligarchy of recession-proof multimillionaire champagne socialists and Glaswegian ex-metal workers filling their snouts at the trough.
    No thank you.

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  3. TPO says:

    After Germany was defeated everyone and their dog became a dedicated anti nazi
    Cassandra | 16.04.09 – 8:07 am |

    Just as in France everyone was a member of the resistance.
    About three months after D-Day my father was hospitalised with a stomach wound. In the same ward were a number of soldiers who had accepted and drunk bottles of wine given to them by the French. The wine had been laced with acid.

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  4. George R says:

    ‘Spectator blog’:

    Martin Bright, ex-Political Editor of ‘New Statesman’:

    [Opening extract]-

    “The revelations over the weekend about Damian McBride’s pitiful smear campaign have probably delivered the fatal blow to Labour’s chances of winning the next election. The only possible excuse for writing such filth would be that it served the interests of the battle against the Tories. It has had the opposite effect. Most decent people would think twice about voting for a government that permitted such a culture to exist in Downing Street.

    “The poison expressed in McBride’s infantile strategm has fed back into the bloodstream of the party he was supposed to be serving (let’s not pretend for a moment that he was acting as a civil servant in this).”

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/3541501/it-doesnt-get-any-worse.thtml

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  5. George R says:

    Nick Cohen:

    ‘Hauling ourselves out of the Quagmire’

    [Concluding extract]:

    “There is a dreadful tendency in Westminster journalism to pretend that the world twas ever thus and there is nothing new under the sun. In fact the spectacle of aides to a Prime Minister plotting to spread lies about the mental health of the wife of a political opponent IS a disgusting novelty – the end of a cumulative process of degradation. I say ‘the end’, but of course unless people make a stand it won’t be the end and we will carry on downwards.

    “Tom Paine said in ‘Common Sense’:

    “‘A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.’ ”

    “The key is to break the habit before it forms, think it wrong right away and say so loudly.”

    (Are you listening, BBC?)

    http://nickcohen.net/2009/04/15/hauling-ourseleves-out-of-the-quagmire/

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  6. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Valentinus | 16.04.09 – 1:59 pm |

    Anybody priced a pen at Samantha Cameron’s shop recently? I reckon the average price is 1150 GBP. For a pen. Nice to think how close these agreeable Cameron people are to the struggles of credit-crunch Britain.

    BBC picked that one up yet? Wonder why.

    They don’t want to shut down that kind of business. Think of the VAT on that, man! The tax on one pen alone could cover the weekly Jobseeker’s Allowance for three “youths”. Money for them doesn’t grow on trees, you know. Since Mr. Brown can’t base his spending on revenues from The City any longer, he’s got to go somewhere. Let the toffs keep buying their baubles.

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  7. AndrewSouthLondon says:

    Valentinus:

    Anyone who wants a pen can get one for free – just go into any of the few remaining bank branches – preferably a government owned Scottish one – and yank a biro off its chain. After all you’ve already paid for it.

    The £1100 Cameroon pen has as much to do with writing as a Rolex has with telling the time. They’re both just useful jewellery. What’s your problem? (as though we dont know, Mr class-envy peddler)

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