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The Political Thread

Started by The Legendary Shark, 09 April, 2010, 03:59:03 PM

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TordelBack

Jings, that Fox and Friends 'interview' was something to behold.  If some septuagenarian with a badly dyed combover started ranting like that on the bus, I'd get off several stops early. How could anyone want that incoherent crank as their First Citizen? 

Professor Bear

Cynical man that I am, I wonder if the Windrush Scandal coming to light a week before local elections in which the Tories will be heavily reliant upon a core base of racists is just a coincidence or actual design.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: TordelBack on 26 April, 2018, 11:01:51 PM
Jings, that Fox and Friends 'interview' was something to behold.  If some septuagenarian with a badly dyed combover started ranting like that on the bus, I'd get off several stops early. How could anyone want that incoherent crank as their First Citizen?

On the plus side, by publicly stating that Cohen wasn't his lawyer and that they only had a 'business relationship', he's just completely torpedoed any thought of invoking attorney/client privilege in his dealings with Trump.
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Theblazeuk

This Windrush debacle has been my first forced, sad admission that the BBC has fallen a long way from what it should be doing. Every day another story about Corbyn & Anti-semitism allegations is pinned to the UK News front page, but they've sidelined Windrush into minor articles that never get stuck to the main pages and repeat the governments (exposed) lies from the first couple of days.

If it wasn't for Channel 4 et al, they'd have been able to kick this into the bushes like everything else.

Used to think the BBC was only slightly guilty and its bias ultimately balanced out, but last few years have been something else. The omnishambles carries on and on without mention, even where it prominently causes scandalous harm and distress for no reason other than more omnishambles and xenophobia.

No wonder people keep voting Tory.

Tjm86

Quote from: Professor Bear on 26 April, 2018, 11:23:20 PM
Cynical man that I am, I wonder if the Windrush Scandal coming to light a week before local elections ....

I can understand the cynicism, just not the faith in the current government's competence.  Let's face it, if you got an invite from them to an all night drinking session at your local brewery, you'd make sure you took a hell of a lot of booze with you, wouldn't you? (Actually, I'd be more likely to tell them where to go but that's another story).

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: Theblazeuk on 26 April, 2018, 11:33:57 PM
Every day another story about Corbyn & Anti-semitism allegations is pinned to the UK News front page, but they've sidelined Windrush into minor articles that never get stuck to the main pages and repeat the governments (exposed) lies from the first couple of days.

I've always been pretty pro-BBC, but the anti-Corbyn bias is undeniable, IMO. Take a look at this story on the suspension of a Conservative candidate and note that the word "antisemitism" doesn't appear once.

By contrast, the preceding day, they reported on Marc Wadsworth "antisemitism hearing". Not a hearing to decide whether he could stay in the Labour party, not even a "hearing on allegations of antisemitism", despite the fact that the case against Wadsworth is incredibly flimsy.* Antisemitism.


*He'll probably be expelled today. If Labour wants this to go away, it's going to require a lot of expulsions and at the very least the scalps of Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker. Except that it won't go away — the net effect will be that anyone the Labour right wants to get rid of can simply be removed by screaming "antisemitism" at them.
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CalHab

Quote from: Theblazeuk on 26 April, 2018, 11:33:57 PM
This Windrush debacle has been my first forced, sad admission that the BBC has fallen a long way from what it should be doing. Every day another story about Corbyn & Anti-semitism allegations is pinned to the UK News front page, but they've sidelined Windrush into minor articles that never get stuck to the main pages and repeat the governments (exposed) lies from the first couple of days.

If it wasn't for Channel 4 et al, they'd have been able to kick this into the bushes like everything else.

Used to think the BBC was only slightly guilty and its bias ultimately balanced out, but last few years have been something else. The omnishambles carries on and on without mention, even where it prominently causes scandalous harm and distress for no reason other than more omnishambles and xenophobia.

No wonder people keep voting Tory.

As a Scot, I reached that conclusion some time ago.

Polls tend to show that trust in the BBC is lowest in Scotland. Which is not really surprising, considering how dire their coverage of the independence referendum was. In that case, I think it was a mix of a couple of high-profile biased reporters and the rest of them taking their lead from London, rather than Scotland. And why wouldn't they, BBC Scotland has very limited resources and staff, no significant autonomy and anyone with any say is based in London.

The Corbyn thing has different roots, though. You'd think that the election would have caused a moment of self-reflection in the BBC.

Professor Bear

Quote from: Tjm86 on 27 April, 2018, 07:11:26 AM
Quote from: Professor Bear on 26 April, 2018, 11:23:20 PM
Cynical man that I am, I wonder if the Windrush Scandal coming to light a week before local elections ....

I can understand the cynicism, just not the faith in the current government's competence.

It's not the government in charge of election PR, it's outside firms and the UK media.  Mainstream outlets have lost control of the narrative, so they have to shift their focus to distraction tactics instead.

IndigoPrime

BBC news and current affairs has multiple problems, not all of which are down to bias, but that have combined to result in the mess that currently makes the organisation look pretty poor:

- A huge influx of Tory-backed/Tory-led people into key roles (including the person who selects Question Time audience members).

- A lack of interest in/expertise for critical think pieces/explainers about the most important issues. The BBC's analysis on things to do with Brexit is often embarrassingly bad.

- A stick-in-the-mud attitude towards terminology (such as migrant). This alone put my wife off of the corporation.

- A tendency to parrot rather than investigate. This has often been the way with the BBC, which strives to be impartial, but it's a massive problem when added to:

- A lack of understanding regarding balance. Too often, we'll see the BBC cover a subject and 'balance' it with a counterpoint that gets roughly equal coverage. This is insane. You shouldn't be running stories on climate change and then spending half your time talking to a denier. And this is worse with Brexit, where the corporation has repeatedly invited rapidly pro-Brexit MPs and MEPs to opine, broadly ignoring those who are against it. (See how often Farage and Hannan are interviewed versus the likes of Charles Tannock and Catherine Bearder.) The corporation also frequently sets up 'debates' to be arguments, and misleads guests as to the nature of an intended narrative. (I've been caught in that myself once, although fortunately for nothing especially important. They did make me come across in a manner that made me feel rather angry though.)

And earlier today, you have the BBC's economics editor blaming British GDP growth issues on crap weather, when the figures for France and Germany aren't nearly as bad. The BBC ignores Brexit and reduces the entire story (that the economy is fucked due to Brexit) to chatting with bricklayers about the fact the weather was rubbish. Just awful.

Tjm86

Quote from: Professor Bear on 27 April, 2018, 11:49:55 AM
It's not the government in charge of election PR, it's outside firms and the UK media.  Mainstream outlets have lost control of the narrative, so they have to shift their focus to distraction tactics instead.

That is a fair point (albeit slightly tinfoil hattish, but reasonable in the present circumstances).  I wonder if the bigger problem now is that people tend to give more credibility to BTL comments than 'news' articles themselves rather than pausing and thinking about how accurate or evidence based the comments might be?  As an example, a comment about the Smeeth / Wadsworth case suggested that the gentleman near Ms Smeeth that made the 'anti-semitism at an antisemitism event' remark was in fact a Sun journalist but has offered no proof.  How many took this as gospel rather than unsubstantiated rumour?

The Legendary Shark

As the word "Semitic" most commonly refers to the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, then "anti-semitic" must refer to people who hate Jews, Christians and/or Muslims.

This means that, in calling certain Christian and Muslim people "anti-Semitic," the BBC is actually being anti-Semitic.

And that's when they started shooting at me, Your Honour...

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Professor Bear

Quote from: Tjm86 on 27 April, 2018, 03:47:34 PMAs an example, a comment about the Smeeth / Wadsworth case suggested that the gentleman near Ms Smeeth that made the 'anti-semitism at an antisemitism event' remark was in fact a Sun journalist but has offered no proof.  How many took this as gospel rather than unsubstantiated rumour?

Not many, I imagine, as identifying him would entail scrutiny of the video and that would make it clear she was fed the line by another person.  This is actually the first I'm hearing of it, and I follow lots of Twitter commies left wingers.

Objectively, though, it's still pretty rum: a man accuses someone of working with the media to discredit the party and the first thing that person does is go straight to the media to discredit the party.  Said person was last seen at the head of an all-white mob of MPs hounding a black man out of the party while the Daily Mail cheered them on.  Bizarre times.

Tjm86

The video is on the Evening Standard website IIRC.  Wadsworth's comments are drowned out by someone's phone to a certain extent (and Smeeth's shouting) but it is very clear in regard to the comment before she gets up and stalks out dry eyed.  It's been interesting nosing around the different reports into the event and the varied interpretations presented.

I would agree that Wadsworth is guilty of very poor judgement and bringing the party into disrepute.  It would have been far more effective to leave out the MP's name and leave her to put her foot in it independently but hey ho.  As you say, the hounding of an ethnic minority member out of the party does raise questions regarding partiality.

Professor Bear

For what it's worth, I think his race is likely incidental to his being a lifelong anti-racism campaigner, which seems to be the target of choice for Labour's far right - especially Brummie loudmouth (and close friend of Jacob Rees Mogg) Jess Phillips, who seems to have had an amazing knack over the years for being in antagonistic relationships with lefty people of colour.

Anyway, I'm just glad that Brexit will be a great success and leave us better off than we were.

Dandontdare

At least Amber Rudd has officially scrapped those targets that didn't exist yesterday