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24 thoughts on “Blog Button: Vote Cameron Get Murdoch”

  • Control

    Craig,

    Are you going to do a post on the attack on Tim Torlot in Yemen? Do you think it has anything to do with the fallout from the Jennifer Steil debacle or is it just a reflection on the worsening security siutation?

    Be interested in your thoughts

    -Control

  • Richard Robinson

    “You have all stopped talking. Is the website broken?”

    Maybe no-one else can find much way of engaging with your monologues ?

  • Duncan McFarlane

    Love that button – will add it to my blog as soon as i get time. Murdoch is possibly the closest thing to the devil that exists. I’m sure he has a human side too that we don’t get to see though.

  • Abe Rene

    I swear, he looks like Lord Tebbit. But here’s a question: he may be a very wealthy man (lucky so-and-so), but how does that make him a villain?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Abe, Davros is THE villain.

    Now, J.K. Rowling is also super-rich, but she’s not a villain, she’s an all-round good egg, I sense.

    Whereas Davros Murdoch… oh, where does one begin! Better, surely, to ask, “what exactly might be good about this man that anyone might deign to question his villainous credentials?”

  • Abe Rene

    Suhayl: “Davros” might sound like a James Bond baddie (although Stavros Kojak might beg to differ), but what villainous things has he done, exactly?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    I’m sure people have penned theses on the subject. It’s never-ending.

    http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14556

    But in the long view, it’s really not about one man. When he dies (unlike Davros, he is not immortal), the systemic damage he has done to the media will not be rectified. He is emblematic and paradigmatic of corporate forces of control and oppression. A cartelising and hegemonising of the world of information, a fashioning of the global MSM into a Pandora’s Box of War. Where, then is free speech, where is hope? Where is peace?

    Murdoch is the eminence noir of fundamentalist capitalism.

    Rosebud.

  • Abe Rene

    Suhayl: Creating daleks might be criminal from the point of view of the Time Lords, but in this imperfect world,

    what has Davros actually done which is so terrible even by our not-too-high standards?

  • Abe Rene

    Suhayl: having checked the links and one or two others, “Citizen Kane” appears to be a capitalist, whose main aim is profit. Thus he will support any party that appears to be winning, and support dictatorships that further his business empire. His main misdeed appears to be the manipulation of the media instead of encouraging a free and independent press.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    Abe – his tabloid newspapers lie constantly in order to both make money and uphold deals with leaders of political parties who’ve given him further deregulation of media ownership in return for backing them and making up lies about anyone who opposes them.

    The Times newspaper is about the only one paper or TV station he owns that has any decent editorial standards on not printing blatant lies and which actually does good investigative journalism.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Well, Abe, ‘he who controls the TV station controls the nation’, as they say. So exerting control over the world of information and destroying a free media is an act of war against the peoples of the world that enables and actively supports the actual slaughter which goes on on a systemic basis – the slow and fast killing of millions of people. I would say that is a crime against hu,manity. I would say that makes Rupert the Red-Nosed Reindeer a thorough villain.

    of course, one man’s villain is another’s hero. And so, if one holds neocon fundo capitalist ideological views, and if one holds imperialist views, then he’s a hero.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq

    “an act of war against the peoples of the world that enables and actively supports the actual slaughter which goes on on a systemic basis – the slow and fast killing of millions of people.”

    Powerful stuff Suhayl – luv it.

    I wandered back here after ‘Clark’ prompted and I realised my site crashed for a while – attack?

    Sorry I have to re-publish ‘Andrews’ link to Richard’s book blog and David Yelland’s powerful piece in full in the hope, the slightest chance, the expectation, the wish we can break into the human time warp that controls the perpetual swing of the political pendulum.

    Make no mistake, if the Liberal Democrats actually won the election ?” or held the balance of power ?” it would be the first time in decades that Murdoch was locked out of British politics. In so many ways, a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote against Murdoch and the media elite.

    I can say this with some authority because in my five years editing the Sun I did not once meet a Lib Dem leader, even though I met Tony Blair, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith on countless occasions. (Full disclosure: I have since met Nick Clegg.)

    I remember in my first year asking if we staffed the Liberal Democrat conference… I was told we did not. We did not send a single reporter for fear of encouraging them.

    … While it would be wrong to say the Lib Dems were banned from Murdoch’s papers (indeed, the Times has a good record in this area), I would say from personal experience that they are often banned ?” except where the news is critical. They are the invisible party, purposely edged off the paper’s pages and ignored. But it is worse than that, because it is not just the Murdoch press that is guilty of this… All proprietors and editors are part of the “great game”. The trick is to ally yourself with the winner and win influence or at least the ear of the prime minister.

    The consequence of this has been that the middle party has been ignored, simply because it was assumed it would never win power. After all, why court a powerless party?

    So, as the pendulum swings from red to blue and back to red, the newspapers, or many of them, swing with it ?” sometimes ahead of the game and sometimes behind.

    Over the years the relationships between the media elite and the two main political parties have become closer and closer to the point where, now, one is indistinguishable from the other… .

    We now live in an era when very serious men and women stay out of politics because our national discourse is conducted by populists with no interest in politics whatsoever. What we have in the UK is a coming together of the political elite and the media in a way that makes people outside London or outside those elites feel disenfranchised and powerless. But all that would go to pot if Clegg were able to somehow pull off his miracle. For he is untainted by it…

    The fact is these papers, and others, decided months ago that Cameron was going to win. They are now invested in his victory in the most undemocratic fashion. They have gone after the prime minister in a deeply personal way and until last week they were certain he was in their sights.

    I hold no brief for Nick Clegg. But now, thanks to him ?” an ingenue with no media links whatsoever ?” things look very different, because now the powerless have a voice as well as the powerful…

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq

    Duncan,

    Thank-you so much, I would be proud to see the banner on your site. We go back a long way, our paths strangely parallel since 2001. I hope that banner is a convergence that symbolises the beginning, the starting point when it really is time to ‘finally take back power for the majority.’

  • Richard Robinson

    “Murdoch setting the agenda”

    A politician lets Sky News pin a microphone on him, and then doesn’t think that they might listen to it ? I’m almost inclined to like him for maintaining such mindboggling naivety.

    *almost*, I said.

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