Guess which distinguished BBC correspondent has made these carefully neutral predictions for people to watch in 2011?
Sarah Palin: The momentum is there to nominate her, so how will the world react to the possibility of a Moose-huntin’ right-wing mom as president?
Ed Balls: The Labour Party’s prince across the water (or the corridor) will have a hard time biting his lip if the new party leadership does not improve.
Julian Assange: He ain’t done yet!
The answer is here (clue – he works for Newsnight and he doesn’t vote Tory!).
And the ‘Revolutionsromantiker’ continues, breathlessly:
“There is a new zeitgeist within protest movements in Europe (on the left) and the US (on the right) – new ways of online organising and a new plebeian individualism. I am keen to see what happens.”
The old dialectic would seem to be beckoning …..chaos, the birthpangs of the new socialist utopia, eh Paul!
When he was asked for a ‘personal look ahead’ for 2011 on Correspondents Look Ahead, Mason told Stephen Sackur:
“I’m looking forward to seeing how this student movement zeitgeist in Britain plays out in the wider economic, cultural even, sphere. They say the 20th Century didn’t really start until Picasso painted Demoiselles d’Avignon, five or six years in. I think maybe the 21st Century in Britain didn’t begin really start until we saw all these sort-of situationist students with their skinny jeans out there. And let’s see what becomes of them because it’s not predictable. They’ve sidelined the traditional Left and I think they’re rediscovering 19th Century liberalism.”
Time to bring back an image (courtesy of DB) from last year:
Is that man a tad obsessed with students and with jeans? I hate the way he goes around in denim when he is doing his reports on Newsnight. He must be forty if he’s a day. On second thoughts I should make that fifty. Who does he think he is – Student Bob? It’s long after time for him to get some grown-up trousers. He can well afford them, unlike the students. If he can’t find something suitable in the sales, perhaps the Beeboid Wardrobe department can help him out.
They’ve sidelined the traditional Left and I think they’re rediscovering 19th Century liberalism
WTF ? A bunch of students who want (mostly working class) tax payers to subsidise their lifestyle have rediscovered 19th Century Liberalism. He really isn’t that well educated is he !!
Does this idiot know what he is talking about? I don’t think he means liberalism I think he is mixing up communism with liberalism.
“In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as possible in order to allow the exercise of individual freedom.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
Now I’m sure the “students” were not advocating individual freedom, rather the opposite. They wanted everyone to pay for therir future.
When a democratic socialist site like Harry’s Place has Paul Mason down as an SWP poster boy it’s a safe bet to say he is. Harry’s Place (which I love reading, its so depressing to think there are no lefties out there who genuinely believe in democracy) makes the point at the end of the link that I was going to make. The question is, why is the Tory led Coalition Government not making the strongest possible representations to the BBC to remove this left-wing extremist from his post?
What political projects will Mr. Mason, Father of the Chapel, organise for licencepayer-funded ‘Newsnight’ in 2011?
More BBC-NUJ strikes?
More overt political support for US Democrat Party?
More ‘Newsnight’ participation in agitprop ‘student’ 1968-style demos in London?
Talking of biased predictions…Mark Mardell’s prediction for 2011 (on Correspondents Look Ahead) was that “Obama will get his political mojo back”.
Given that he predicted that Obama was going to hold on to both houses of Congress in the mid-term elections during the previous year’s edition of the show, we probably shouldn’t put too much confidence in his latest prediction of success for Obama. It smacks of wishful thinking.
Mardell, living up to his reputation as a partisan reporter, also had another sideswipe at the Tea Party:
“..the Tea Party movement, which is saying ‘We want austerity! When do we want it? Now! Who do we want it for? Er, well, other people really.'”
And his ‘personal look ahead’ for 2011 was:
“Well I think the interview I would most like to do is with Sarah Palin. I don’t know whether we’ll get that. She’s not particularly fond of the BBC.”
I wonder why!
I’m far from sure that Mrs. Palin really gives the BBC any thought.
It shows how narrow-minded and bigoted Mardell is when he wants to interview Sarah Palin – who is not an elected official and is not a mover and shaker, nor makes national news (outside the Entertainment section) at all these days – more than Govs. Chris Christie or Tim Pawlenty or Bobby Jindal or Rep. Ron Paul. Any one of them would more likely be a better candidate to oppose his beloved Obamessiah than Palin, and all of them are far more representative of the Tea Party effect than she is.
But then, Mardell isn’t prejudiced against their religious beliefs or speech patterns.
“Given that he predicted that Obama was going to hold on to both houses of Congress in the mid-term elections during the previous year’s edition of the show, we probably shouldn’t put too much confidence in his latest prediction of success for Obama. It smacks of wishful thinking.”
Mardell is truly the Derek Acorah of British journalism.
Its not a prediction it is what he wants to happen. The BBC don’t know the difference between predictions and wishful thinking.
There was no open thread so I psoted it here.
The story of “the women who was setenced to be stoned to death sues two germans reporters”
In the BBC story no mention of the fact that the Iranian regime pressure very often people in making false confessions. The BBC just repaets what Press TV says. Contrast it with CNN.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/01/02/iran.stoning.suit/index.html?hpt=T2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12103639
An other report yesterday about the bombing of a church has the following paragraph;
“In recent months, Copts have complained of discrimination, while some Muslims accuse churches of holding converts to Islam against their will.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12103248
First the Copts haven’t complained just the last few months. They have been discriminated against for years if not decades.
Second it is Coptic girls who are kidnapped and forced to convert and to marry a muslim. The police of Egypt doesn’t act against these kidnappings. To state the reverse is perverse.
Ah, but there is, he mutters, Yoda-like… more….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2010/12/ten_things_that_are_probably_g.html
It is… interesting… that his rose-tinted view of the future does not get its head out of Labour’s fundament long enough to look around and ponder that, while the rest are indeed also pretty vile, Miliband E’s merry crew caused pretty much all of it and yet somehow have managed to assemble a collection of all the talentless that even the electorate they spent the last decade bribing with other folks’ money can’t stomach their hypocrisy, thuggery, failure to grasp realities, fiscal ineptitude and all-pervasive incompetence.
Sadly, these features make them near irresistible to their equally public-fund-addicted fellow travellers at the BBC, who I predict will continue to act as a £3.6B PR agency for them and any other cause beloved of a small minority whose world view is shaped but not affected by the pleasant prospect of near limitless pay, perks and pensions to do whatever they please free of responsibility or accountability.
Unique.
I wonder if this is the same “Comrade Paul Mason ”
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker2/index.php?action=viewarticle&article_id=1000458
Obviously – Yes.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/understanding-crisis-paul-t105475/index.html?s=840e6822ccd6dd6ce559be5553f4c49b&
Ex-membership of the Workers Power party, recent lectures at an Alliance for Workers Liberty conference, interviews with (and glowing reviews from) the Trotskyite permenant revolution website, speeches at the Socialist Workers Party conference and other SWP-affiliated events, anarchist book fairs…the world of Paul Mason, the economics editor of the BBC’s flagship Newsnight.