Amused to hear Peter Allen saying he was going to devote the last part of his programme to the Labour Party….sure he didn’t mean that.
They were of course talking about the ‘car crash’ Labour leadership election and one subject came up was the #toriesforcorbyn windup. A Tory voting caller told Allen that he was going to vote for Corbyn…Allen said that he strongly disapproved and that this was very undemocratic…it would damage democracy.
Hmmm….how about the most influential media organisation in the UK, the BBC, siding with Labour year after year?….or Murdoch siding with Labour for 12 years? Seemed pretty hunky dory then…at least until the Sun switched to the Tories and Brown declared war on Murdoch. Isn’t that ‘war’ also undemocratic, usng the forces of government to smash a free press that doesn’t support you now?
I wonder what Allen thinks of the Guardian and Polly Toynbee…does he similarly disapprove or does he reserve his contempt just for the Tories?….here’s the Guardian’s idea of how to manipulate democracy……
How to vote tactically: a no-guarantees guide to gaming the election
Britain’s rotten electoral system means that once again it’s nose-peg time
Under first-past-the-post Labour, Greens and Lib Dems will have to vote-swap to keep the Tories out.
Talking tactics brings politics into disrepute and disgusts young voters with its calculating cynicism. But that’s what our rotten system demands: head not heart. For those in seats where they know following their heart helps Cameron into Downing Street, vote-swapping is an option that lets them register heartfelt politics while using their head to block the brutality of Conservative plans.
The new vote-swap site already has 100,000 voters signed up – with no publicity. This year vote-swappers could make all the difference.
So Polly Toynbee knows tactical voting is disreputable but is prepared to look away if it gets in the Party she wants to win…head not heart.
Which brings us to Lord Prescott being interviewed by Humphrys this morning (08:10) about Blair’s comment that people voting with their heart for Corbyn need a heart transplant. Apparently this was ‘totally unacceptable abuse’ …can’t see the problem myself. If Blair thinks Corbyn’s policies are wildly wrong and damaging and people are thinking of voting for him solely on the basis of a warm and cuddly feeling then perhaps they do need a change of heart….utopian policies that do more damage than good are not in any way admirable…just delusional. Humphrys made no case for Bair’s defence.
Prescott’s not beyond a bit of personal abuse himself…
John Prescott: You’d have to be a plonker to vote for a Del Boy Prime Minister like dodgy David Cameron
A prime plonker not a prime minister.
Isn’t he calling voters who vote for Cameron ‘plonkers’? Not really any different in substance to saying voters need a heart transplant if they vote for Corbyn.
How about when he declared Cameron a coward...’John Prescott was among the first to spring into the Twittersphere, branding Cameron a “coward” who knew Miliband would “wipe the floor with him”.’
Prescott seems to have a problem with demcocracy and free speech where people voice their opinions…if their opinons differ from his that is…here’s what he thought David Miliband should do…‘He should shut up.’
Yep, very democratic….I guess being a ‘Lord’ has gone to Prescott’s head.
It was amusing to hear Prescott advising Blair, the man who won three elections, on how to win elections…apparently the Iraq war was the cause of Labour losing voters in 2015…hmm…..how about 2005? Wasn’t it Labour that won that election? The invasion of Iraq being in 2003. Margaret Beckett was right about Prescott. Humphrys said nothing but then again he doesn’t have a good record on comments aout Iraq…and the BBC’s standard response to any world problem is that the Iraq war caused it. Well it certainly finished the career of Greg Dyke at the BBC.
Prescott claims that we should all be talking about policies not being abusive…which is why he spent so much of an interview on the BBC’s prime current affairs programme talking not about policies but about abuse and then spending a good chunk more of it abusing Tony Blair. Prescott can’t even remember Liz kendall’s name.
Prescott claimed that the polls indicating Corbyn was in the lead were a Murdoch conspiracy…Humphrys didn’t raise an objection…despite the first such poll being reported by the lefty bible, the New Statesman, only a week ago….
Jeremy Corbyn “on course to come top” in the Labour leadership election
Private polling, seen by the New Statesman, shows the veteran leftwinger ahead in the first round of voting.
Humphrys allowed Prescott to get away with his faux indignation or self-delusion. Prescott is well known as a blustering bully who tries to steam-roller opponents. His conversion to polite, mannered politician, respectful of democracy doesn’t really hang well on him….but then the working class lad who would never be seen dead in the Lords isn’t known for his principled stands…
Asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show if he felt “a prat” accepting the peerage, he said: “No I did not feel a prat, although I did feel I was chewing a wasp at the time.”
Didn’t seem too upset at being called a ‘prat’…..is that not ‘totally unacceptable abuse’ from the BBC?
Not to mention the attempt by the Guardian, the print arm of the bBBC, to rig the US election of 2004 to defeat G W Bush by getting their loony leftie readers to lobby the residents of Clark County, Ohio.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/13/uselections2004.usa11
And the replies from Clark County were priceless…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/18/uselections2004.usa2
“Allen said that he strongly disapproved and that this was very undemocratic…it would damage democracy”
Can’t have all that nasty voting stuff messing up democracy, can we?
Having encouraged participation in their Senior Editors’ Blogs for a year or three during the period 2007-2012, the BBC have been steadily scaling back opinion sharing, discussion & debate via comments on those Blogs and elsewhere on the web-site.
Perhaps now is a good time to write to James Purnell and ask why this has been done? We could ask him why, when the Labour Party is seeking to become even more democratic, the BBC with its three-fold path to educate, inform & entertain is headed in the opposite direction.
Democracy!
Insufficient Labour voters, how can I remedy this?
Here is the solution, let us import three million uneducated Muslims into the UK.
House them, give them benefitus maximus, they will then vote Labour.
Vote, that reminds me, give them votus duplicatus or triplicatus.
What? Tens of thousands of little, British, old ladies will die of hypothermia or starvation because of this policy. Irrelevant.
What? Muslims will start killing British people.
Irrelevant, sorry relevant, this changes the vote in favour of the Labour party. Come on Muslims, rape and kill as frequently as you like. The Labour Public Sector, will take no action, will look the other way, will shred the records.
It’s not only Prescott who has a problem with people expressing their differing opinions- it is a characteristic of the Labour Party generally (not called ZaNuLab for no reason) and their Scottish fellow-travelling nutters the SNP.