Baying for Baroness Scotland’s blood
contribution by Steve
Right-wing newspapers are baying for Baroness Scotland’s blood. It was discovered that she had unknowingly been employing an illegal worker. To them it doesn’t matter that she says she was deceived by being presented with forged documents showing everything was legal. If there’s one part of society the right-wing papers hate more than gypsies and preaching Muslims – it’s illegal immigrants.
The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph have already called for her to resign. The Daily Telegraph said, “ignorance is no defence,” which could easily be applied to those who took out taxpayer-funded mortgages or sitting as shadow ministers despite having swindled the expenses system.
Naturally, the hypocrisy has been easily overcome at Conservative party HQ. Willing journalists have gone along with the charade.
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How the tabloids feed right-wing extremism
contribution by 5 Chinese Crackers
The relationship between tabloid reporting and the increase in the BNP’s popularity is an interesting one to look at. We know tabloid nonsense gets churnalised over on the BNP’s website, we know the party advertises and sells Melanie Phillips’ book via its website, and we know the policy of attacking Muslims rather than any other group is based on the prominence of negative stories in the news media, so it seems the tabloids are at least contributing to an environment where far right ideas may seem more attractive to some.
But does tabloid coverage cause people to vote for the BNP, or are the tabloids merely reflecting a rightward shift in public opinion? Let’s take the English Defence League to drum up support for an upcoming event in Manchester.
The video’s a bit rubbish, and amounts to a series of still images juxtaposed against each other to stirring music. Rumbold at Pickled Politics has pointed out the pisspoor crusader imagery, but there is a series of 22 images in the video that are of particular interest to this article.
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The Indy could close by Christmas
Independent News & Media (INME.I) is likely to close its flagship London title The Independent by Christmas, the publishing group’s second biggest shareholder Denis O’Brien said on Friday.
“There’s no point in us as a company subsidising a newspaper that really nobody wants to read in the United Kingdom,” O’Brien told Bloomberg TV in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Irish Economic Forum.
“It’s not a relevant newspaper anymore and this newspaper’s going to be closed by Christmas,”said O’Brien, who has been at odds with the company’s board over plans to refinance a 200-million-euro debt issue that was meant to be paid in May.
Time to ban junk-food ads aimed at kids
Companies spend an estimated £480 million a year on advertising products that are high in sugar, fat and salt on TV alone.
The fact that they continue to do it is evidence that psychological manipulation sells. Now that the government has decided to allow product placement in the film and television industry, this problem is only going to get worse.
Childhood has become saturated with junk food advertising. Do you remember the General licking his fingers on the Kentucky Fried Chicken adverts? The sultry Cadbury’s caramel bunny batting her eyelids on purple velvet, or Tony the Frosties tiger with his bright orange They’re Grrrrrrreat! smile?
Unlike most of the cartoons kids watch, the aim of these characters isn’t to offer education or entertainment.
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Gordon Brown’s poll ratings in freefall
The Times reports today from a Populus poll showing that voters across the country are turned off by Gordon Brown.
39% of voters see David Cameron as lightweight and 56% as substantial. By contrast, 59% regard Mr Brown as lightweight and 38% as substantial.
Mr Cameron also wins the decisive/dithering question, by 69% to 27%. By contrast, 67% see Mr Brown as dithering, and 30% as decisive.
Cameron: 73% see him as likeable / 24% as unlikeable. 72% charismatic / 24% dull.
Brown: 56% view him as unlikeable and just 40% likeable. 86% see him as dull, just 12% as charismatic.
Cameron: 57% believe that he says what he thinks people want to hear / 40% who think that he means what he says.
Brown: 70% to 27% for Mr Brown.
In the personality and credibility stakes, Brown loses massively.
New thinking and old conferences
I don’t always agree with Martin Kettle, but he has a good article here about the need for the political party conferences to move a but more into line with modern day opinion.
I spent about a dozen years going to Labour party conferences from the mid-1980s until the end of the 1990s when I left Britain to work overseas. This period marked their transformation from the weird and whacky to the smug and strange, with a few years in the middle where we had some genuine political debates that shaped the reform agenda of Labour’s first term in office.
I think that this year will be tenth anniversary of not going to Labour’s conferences and – apart from the free champagne and caviar at the various receptions we used to crash – I can’t say I have missed them much. I was a card carrying member of the Labour party from the age of 15 until last year when I cancelled my standing order, but I had gradually drifted away from party political activism long before I left Britain.
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Dan Hannan ‘excusing racism’ at Obama
The Daily Mirror reports:
David Cameron was dragged into the US race row yesterday after one of his rising stars said that he understood the anti-Barack Obama feelings.
Euro MP Daniel Hannan said fellow right-wingers should admit that racism was behind the attacks on the President.
Daniel Hannan says on his blog:
He was both black and white. He was a Protestant brought up among Muslims. He seemed to have family on every continent. Like St Paul, he made a virtue of being all things to all men.
On one level, the strategy worked brilliantly. But it could hardly fail to leave a chunk of people feeling that Obama wasn’t exactly a regular guy. Hence, for example, the surprising number of Americans who question whether he was born in the US.
So apparently Obama wasn’t a “regular guy” on account of having lived outside the US and having being “exotic”.
He goes on to say that most American conservatives see Obama’s ethnic background as a point in his favour. Of course, like these people who went to the rallies.
All that isn’t examples of racism see. It’s just ordinary citizens worrying about expanding government. (more at Media Matters)
Labour’s Parmjit Dhanda said: “Hannan’s remarks are a disgrace. He needs to wake up to the modern world.
“It’s excusing racism. He is implying if you have what he calls an ‘exotic’ background you can be treated differently.
“Barack Obama is as representative of what it means to be an American as anyone else.”
And we were under the impression that right-wingers thought race didn’t matter. Apparently it does, if you’re “exotic”.
Labour supporters less likely to vote
Mike Smithson at Political Betting highlights some crucial stats about Labour voters – they are dispirited and less likly to vote compared to likely Conservative voters.
And that too by a significant margin.
He adds:
In previous elections Labour has benefited that in seats where it mattered, the marginals, it found it easier to get its people out. Where it doesn’t matter, in Tory or Labour strongholds, then supporters have been much less motivated to vote – one of the big drivers behind the the seat calculations and a key reason why the system seems to work against the Tories.
Why Tory ideas on welfare reform won’t work
Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice have published a report which they modestly claim is “the most far-reaching review of the welfare system in 60 years”. It can be downloaded here.
At the core of the CSJ’s recommendations are measures to make work pay, and reduce the working couple penalty. To encourage claimants into work, the report recommends more gradual rates of withdrawal of benefits.
It says there should be only two benefits for working age people: Universal Work Credit “earned” through participation in welfare to work schemes, which would integrate benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance and Income Support; and Universal Life Credit providing additional income to people with low or no earnings. The report also advocates changes intended to reduce penalties for socially constructive behaviour such as marriage and cohabitation, saving and taking out a mortgage.
Some quick thoughts:
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Punished by Tories ‘for challenging extremism’
The former Conservative MEP Edward McMillan-Scott today wrote of his shock of being expelled from the party for ‘challenging extremism’.
He said in the Guardian today:
Extreme right parties like the BNP did well in June’s Euro-elections in 13 out of the EU’s 27 countries. But my stand was against Kaminski, who negotiated the deal with Cameron and used it to make his controversial Polish party respectable. This represents the rise of disguised extremism – the widespread “entryism” into mainstream parties that must be stopped.
He was barred from discussing Polish MEP Michal Kaminski on BBC Radio this morning.
He outlined his criticism of Kaminski:
A storm erupted over Kaminski’s use of the antisemitic term “Poland for the Poles”, although he denies saying it, and the Observer gave details of his opposition to an apololgy for the notorious wartime Jedwabne pogrom. His role as leader of the ECR – compensation for losing the vice-presidency – led to outrage from rabbis in Poland, France and the UK .
His “Go home foreign workers” stunt and remarks about Poland’s EU partners are a matter of record, as anyone handy with Google Translate can discover. He denied being homophobic but the BBC broadcast a clip from Polish TV using the term “faggots”. Even the interviewer protests, but Kaminski repeats it: “What should I say, they are faggots [pedaly].” All this sits uneasily with Cameron’s “liberal conservatism”.
A row has been going on over Kaminski for a while, which became especially ferocious when the New Statesman’s James Macintyre reported that Jewish leaders across Europe had condemned David Cameron for his alliances across Europe.
On Tuesday the Left Foot Forward blog reported that Angela Merkel’s CDU party had recalled its London representative Thomas Stehling to Germany because of David Cameron’s decision to withdraw from the European People’s Party.
In May, the Guardian reported that, “Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany appeared to threaten to withhold cooperation from the Conservatives” while Pöttering “angrily described Cameron as untrustworthy.”
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