Last night the BBC was reporting on the Conservative manifesto. This is a document whose most striking pledge is to fill in some of the potholes in roads that have proliferated due to massive cuts in local authority funding, and to give free hospital car parking to those visiting a terminally ill relative. Just think of the last one. How do you prove your relative is terminally ill? What if there is a chance they might get better? The administration of this system is going to require people to have some form of certificate or token that all hope is now lost. For the car park. The Tories are all heart.
As the News continued, Laura Kuenssberg told us that the battle lines between the parties are now clearly drawn, and the major division is over how much the government “should interfere in the economy”.
Interfere. Not intervene. Not regulate. Interfere. It is a very deliberate choice of word. Let me turn to the Oxford English Dictionary:
Interfere
1) Prevent from continuing or being carried out properly
2) Handle or adjust without permission
3) Become involved in something without being asked
4) Sexually molest
Words matter. Kuenssberg chose a word with powerful negative connotations and no possible positive meaning, to describe the alternative to the Tories. Kuenssberg talking of government interfering in, rather than intervening in, the economy is in itself a very strong and explicit declaration of Kuenssberg’s belief in an Ayn Rand, “Britannia unchained”, free market, ultra neo-liberal world view. To explicitly frame the choice in the election as between the Tories and “interfering” is just another example of the way the BBC slants their election coverage, permanently.
Now I started to draft an article three days ago, before that particular Kuenssberg propaganda masterclass.
Here is what I wrote as a draft three days ago:
“Maybe I am just unlucky. I have had television news bulletins transport me to hear vox-pops featuring former Labour voters in Dudley who now want to vote Conservative to GET BREXIT DONE. I have seen vox pops in fishing wharves in Peterhead and Grimsby, in dismal cafes in Hartlepool, in bingo halls in Yarmouth, in pubs back in Dudley, on high streets in Wakefield, in a shopping mall in Thurrock, in hardware stores back in bloody Dudley again. The country is full of people who want to GET BREXIT DONE, and who will NEVER VOTE LABOUR AGAIN.
The strange thing is that I have not seen a single vox pop from Richmond, featuring an educated woman who is switching from a lifetime of Tory voting because they have become a far right party and are going to crash the economy with hard Brexit. But there are many people like that in Richmond, and indeed all over London, and throughout much of southern England. They exist but are not worth vox-popping, apparently. Because they are not the broadcasters’ chosen “narrative”.
The BBC, ITN and Sky will doubtless defend the very obviously targeted demographic and destination of their “vox-pops” on the grounds that this is the “narrative” of the election. But that is a self-reinforcing prophecy. The public are relentlessly being told that what ordinary people want is to “GET BREXIT DONE” and to vote Tory. But that is actually only what about 40% of the people want. We just aren’t being shown the other 60% as the broadcasters focus relentlessly on areas with the highest leave vote, and on vox pop subjects with the least possible education.”
While that passage was atill on the stocks, last night, alongside the Kuenssberg analysis, the BBC gave us a vox pop from the Rother Valley that fitted perfectly the above description. It came from a Yorkshire Labour seat that voted Leave. It featured Labour voters who will now vote Conservative. The ladies interviewed were perfectly primed with precisely the main Tory slogans. A lady told us she wanted Boris so we could “get Brexit done and get on with domestic reforms”. Another ex-Labour voter told us she would vote for Boris because “he may not be trustworthy, but I like him”. Trust and likeability are two factors the pollsters regularly measure. It is important for the Tories that voters prioritise likeability over trust, because Johnson’s Trust numbers are appalling. How fortunate that the BBC happened to find a little old lady in the Rother Valley who could express this so succinctly!
Or maybe it is not so surprising. With the mainstream media as such a reliable echo chamber of public slogans, perhaps it is not surprising to find the public just echo them too, as they do in North Korea. The state media in the UK is of course not the only propaganda outlet. Billionaires control 87% of print news media by circulation, and are aggressively Tory for obvious reasons of self-interest.
This leads to the incredible circularity of the “Newspaper Reviews” that take up such a high proportion of broadcast news output. The broadcasters “review” the overwhelmingly right wing print media. And who do they invite to do the reviewing? Why the billionaire employed journalists of the overwhelmingly right wing print media, of course! So we have the surreal experience of watching journalists from the Times and the Spectator telling us how great an article in the Daily Mail is, about how Corbyn is a Russian spy and Scotland not really a country at all.
If that was not bad enough, we then get deluged by “commentators” from “think tanks” which are again billionaire funded, like the Institute of Economic Affairs and scores of others, sometimes with money thrown in from the security services, like the Quilliam Foundation and scores of others. It is a never-ending closed circular loop of propaganda.
The truth is that it largely works. Social media is overwhelmingly sceptical of the government narrative, but we still live in a society where the power of mass broadcasting and even print retains a remarkable amount of influence, particularly on the old and the poorly educated. It is no coincidence that it is precisely the old and the poorly educated that are the targets of Cummings’ “Brexit election” strategy. If it comes off, Kuenssberg and her fellow hacks will have proven that the power of the mainstream media is as yet unbroken.
——————————————
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
Alternatively:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.
A surefire way for Scotland to achieve independence is to allow everyone in UK to vote.
The English are mightily sick of the their whingeing, parasitic neighbours North of Hadrian’s Wall, and – being by far the largest population group in UK – would happily vote to say “Adieu”.
The only explanation I can think of for why the Scots would not adopt this approach is that they don’t really want independence, and prefer just to carry on whingeing and spongeing.
OK Nats, your turn to tell me why my analysis is wrong.
Why doesn’t England just take back control and vote to terminate the Treaty of Union 1707. Happy days for all.
There’s no English parliament – nowhere for England to vote for anything. Unless you want to devolve first and faff about for years the way to do what you propose would be an English indyref.
There’s absolutely no reason why they can’t vote for it in the British parliament. From a constitutional standpoint, that is where the Act of Union will have to be dissolved anyway, when Scotland becomes independent.
Westminster is an English Parliament, it can be only that if it’s English members outnumber the rest ten to one, surely you have managed to work that out ?
You call that an analysis? lol
“ OK Nats, your turn to tell me why my analysis is wrong.”
———-
I’m not a NAT but you sound like one: a throwback to English Nat trolls winding up readers in Scottish newspapers BTL, or Scot NATs false flagging such to fire up the troops at election time.
I know: I may say that but you couldn’t possibly comment.
I wouldn’t even dignify that crap with a serious response. I have no obligations to neanderthals.
“I wouldn’t even dignify that crap with a serious response. I have no obligations to neanderthals”
That is a response.
Johny
Partially correct Johny, but a response to Cynicus; not ‘that crap’.
As I keep repeating, just leave us poor Neanderthals out of this, ya superior bunch of Cro-Magnon honkies!
I’m not sure the poor Neanderthals deserve the sneering press they get. They had larger brains than us, and seemed sociable enough. I rather suspect our aggressive traits were more the cause of their demise, than their inherent stupidity and inability to survive. We wiped them out, like we continue to do with every other species on this planet.
And not just larger brains.
I’m not a Nat, but you’re still wrong. Yes there a lot of voters in England who think “why not have an independent Scotland?” and why shouldn’t the English have a say too, it’s their Union just as much as it’s the Scots’? I would expect that the vast majority of the English couldn’t give a shit either way. It’s only a tiny minority of sour bastards who think them “whingeing, parasitic neighbours North of Hadrian’s Wall”. BTW, you do know that there is quite a lot of England north of Hadrian’s Wall, don’t you?
OK Nats, your turn to tell me why my analysis is wrong…
I haven’t the slightest doubt that it was English votes in the previous indyref that kept us in the Union.* It has been estimated that English people might make up as much as 10% of the electorate in Scotland, although for obvious reasons none of the mainstream media or politicians are very keen to dig down and find out exactly what the number is.
But it was rather telling that the biggest No votes came from Dumfries and Galloway, Edinburgh and St Andrews.
*That and 80,000 or so EU citizens who also had a vote, and who had had it relentlessly explained to them by the BBC in the lead-up to the referendum that a Yes would lead to Scotland being booted out of the EU. I wonder how they feel as, having voted No, they watch us being dragged out of the EU against our will and paying four bllion quid for the privilege…
You seem to want to disenfranchise members of Scotland’s national minorities unless they accept the iron heel of the race whose land you think Scotland is. Perhaps those who cause no problem with the Partei might be allowed some kind of tolerated status? I shudder to think how you must feel about the several million Scots who live in England.
As for “Scotland being booted out of the EU”, your racial hatred has made you believe that 1=2, as racial hatred always does. Scotland has never been a member of the EU. You probably think anybody who notices that is either a foreigner or a race traitor.
Listen: an English person living in Scotland has as much right to have a say in how Scotland is run as a Scottish person does, just as a British person of Jamaican origin living in London has as much right as a British person of English origin living in London to have a say in how that city is run. Jim Crow is in the past.
Francis Urquhart Barr,
Why is it that folk like you want the border at Hadrians Wall? You do know that Hadrians Wall is not the Scotland / England border? Indeed it is quite a tad further South. Perhaps the ‘border’ should be around the Home Counties and the rest of us can watch as a hypercapitalistic sub state dies on the vine.
Lots and lots of Scots do want independence, it is running close to 50 / 50 nowadays. Rants like yours may well push it over the line.
Thank you douglas clark.
” spongeing” Definition.
Common misspelling of sponging by idiots.
If everyone in the four countries of the U.K. gets a vote on whether or not one of those countries can leave the U.K. doesn’t that mean that the three smallest can never leave if the biggest votes that they cannot leave ?
Northern Ireland , Scotland , Wales Imprisoned by England forever because England gets ten times as many votes as the other three added together.
Now the state broadcaster is leading with chief rabbi attack on labour.
An arm of the state, and proud of it. Has it ever been so obvious?
They’re very afraid he might get elected to PM.
You can see this by the fact they’re now throwing everthing including the kitchen sink into this now.
Three new Opinion Polls out today. Let’s see if they can rig those as well.
Speaking of rigging polls, it seems that some of them have a fiddle factor where someone estimates the amount of people from each age group who are likely to vote and adjusts the result accordingly.
https://twitter.com/NuPopulism/status/1195845942240514049
And a blatant piece of meddling in the election by both a religious leader and an ally of a foreign state. So where is the outrage? Instead the sold-out media are amplifying it. We will have no democracy if Jeremy Corbyn is not elected.
The father of Harry Dunn has confronted the foreign secretary on the campaign trail in his constituency where he is encouraging people to vote Dominic Raab out.
Raab was heckled during his final address at a hustings in East Molesey, Surrey, on Monday evening, with one woman standing up to ask him about Dunn.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/25/harry-dunn-family-urge-voters-to-unseat-dominic-raab
Wow, this should rattle some spooks
Please do not watch.this weeks public election debate, it will be another leading questions affair, with strawmen arguments framing the debate, with prevaricated decision on a likely possible outcome being regurgitated at the public.
Todays siren voice Blairing to be careful what you vpte for, meant that 3 years of strangulating opposition and backstabbing into Corbyn has not worked, that it needs the nuclearoptin of an unconvicted mass murder and war criminal to atone to rightwing fascist principles, he, by the way, who has always aspired to it
on his lucrative world travels , neocon fascism
.underlined
Chief Rabbi Mirvis
Verified account
@chiefrabbi
Follow Follow @chiefrabbi
More
CR: “I am delighted to congratulate Boris Johnson on becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party & our next PM. May he be blessed with the wisdom to successfully navigate the political uncertainties we face & bring healing & prosperity to our great country.”
A Tory endorses a Tory. A Tory dislikes Corbyn. Shear electioneering by a religious leader.
Chief Rabbi Mirvis
Verified account
@chiefrabbi
Follow Follow @chiefrabbi
More
CR: “I am delighted to congratulate Boris Johnson on becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party & our next PM. May he be blessed with the wisdom to successfully navigate the political uncertainties we face & bring healing & prosperity to our great country.”
Congratulations!!!!
“Mr Johnson reportedly met with Steve Bannon last week during the latter’s visit to London.
Mr Bannon used to be the editor of Breitbart, a far-right news site. During his tenure, the site ran a number of articles using antisemitic language to criticise prominent Jews. Bill Kristol, a Jewish conservative writer, was labelled a “renegade Jew”, while Anne Applebaum, the Jewish writer and historian, was described as helping to further “attempts to impose a globalist worldview on citizenries that reject it… hell hath no fury like a Polish, Jewish, American elitist scorned.”
In a sworn statement in 2007, Mr Bannon’s ex-wife described a number of antisemitic remarks she said he had made “including that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats”’. July £0th 2018.
@Tarla – Why do you say Mirvis is a Tory? Supporting the Tories as he is doing in this election doesn’t make him one. Even if he is a member of the Tory party that won’t be an important identity for him and it won’t be the reason he is attacking Jeremy Corbyn.
Here’s what is the reason: Labour in their manifesto are promising
* an immediate suspension of the sale of British weapons to the Zionazi regime that are used “in violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians”;
* to ensure accountability “for breaches of human rights and international law (…) such as (…) the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip”; and
* the immediate recognition of the state of Palestine.
Chief rabbi calls black people ‘monkeys’
https://www.timesofisrael.com/chief-rabbi-compares-african-americans-to-monkeys/
I can quote chief Rabbis too.
Different Frank. I don’t like to hear the term “African Americans” you never hear ” Eoropean Americans” or German Americans etc..all Americans are immigrants/refugees except those taken there in chains in hulls of ships followed by sharks, as half would die on way and be thrown overboard. American Dream my arse.
The intervention by the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis , who I’d wager nobody outside the Jewish faith has heard of, is a disgrace.
The way community ‘leaders’ are being used as political weapons is a disgrace. Probably preaching to the choir here, but the evidence is for the claim of widespread antisemitism within Labour never has existed. It is, and always was, completely bogus, an invention. And the way this nonsense is now leading the news again, looks highly contrived and coordinated, it’s deeply sinister in an election campaign.
Maybe this is what running the gauntlet looks like?
Ephraim Mirvis is the guy Theresa May went to dinner with after she won the Tory leadership and therefore knew she would become prime minister but before she attended to the less important matter of visiting the monarch to be formally appointed in that position. Source: Jewish Chronicle. That rag says that “other guests” were also present, but they don’t identify them. Were any of them foreign “diplomats”, I wonder? What did they talk about? Did May report any conversations with them to MI5? Mirvis is from South Africa but perhaps the apartheid there wasn’t murderous enough for him, because he moved to Palestine, a country occupied by the Israeli regime that commits crimes against humanity that in Britain he has unashamedly praised: “Israel has no choice but to use force in Gaza, says chief rabbi“.
What’s his visa status? How many “Australian immigration points” do Tories propose to give this racist thug?
I couldn’t give a toss about what he says – everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
But the BBC leading the news with it and making it their top story on their website, I find deeply problematic.
Notice he doesn’t endorse Johnson, because Johnson is hardly a paragon of moral virtue, is he? Once conspiring to have a journalist ‘roughed up’.
A big thing is being made out of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s investigation into the Labour party. That body is led by David Isaac a man of the Jewish faith who is allegedly associated with Bright Blue – Bright Blue is an independent think tank and pressure group advocating for liberal conservative ideas and policies.
Mirvis is a propagandist for state terrorism and he should have his visa removed.
Ephraim Mirvis born in South Africa, moved to Palestine.
ROFLMAO
Geez, comedy writers would struggle to produce better stuff.
Hopefully when the Labour government invites the Palestinian Ambassador to present his credentials on 13 December, Home Secretary Diane Abbott can inform Ephraim Mirvis that he is being expelled.
The anti-Semitism myth may play well in Labour’s internecine struggles with the Blairites because there are a lot of middle class left-wingers who care about that sort of thing, but in the country at large, the vast majority either don’t give a damn, or can see it for the smear that it is. Of those few that do care either way, most probably think it is a good thing.
The Tories are making the same mistake they did with Project Fear: aiming their campaign at the numerically inferior middle classes.
I doubt that. I have friends whose entire families and extended friendship circles have switched to the Liberals, because they are actually gullible enough to believe that anti-Semitism myth. They don’t mind voting for someone who is okay with nuclear warfare and indiscriminate mass-murder though. It is just not okay to be anti-Semitic. But otherwise, you can be as evil as you like.
Would you describe them as working class?
Absolutely. Imagine if the Archbishop of Canterbury had done something like that.
These people need to realise if they rob the British people of their election that can create real and widespread anti-Semitism. It doesn’t exist to any real extent in the Labour Party and it won’t all be Labour Party voters who turn against them. It will be a perfect storm for the far-right because they have the excuse of political interference; the left can be blamed for it; and the grassroots can start looking for new leadership which somehow got into bed with the Israelis. That may suit Tommy Robinson but it’s likely seen as a betrayal by the average neo-Nazi.
“Shell” would be a less coarse substitute for “sack” in your final sentence 🙂
The vox pops and opinion polls are two sides of the same propaganda coin. The newspapers most likely manipulate or selectively publish the polls, then the BBC and other broadcasters go out and track down people who back up the ‘findings’, creating an echo chamber of pro-Tory opinion. Some of the answers are so pat I’ve actually sometimes wondered if they are even members of the public. For a long time it struck me as strange that day after day a high-brow radio station like Radio 4 would give such prominence to the regurgitated slogans of random people who appeared to have little between their ears – until I realised that it was propaganda, intended to reinforce Tory messages among casual listeners.
As for Laura Kuenssberg, she may not be deliberately biased. She just isn’t all that bright. And I think that is deliberate. Notice on radio shows how much better the stand-ins so often are, and so in political journalism how much more astute, say, John Pienaar and Chris Mason are to their Political Editor. I finally realised the obvious – that it is a deliberate ploy, so that the bosses control the message and exert leverage on the chief who is constantly afraid of losing a vast salary.
It seems that increasing numbers of people are seeing through the ghastly Tory-media-establishment monster – let’s hope it is enough to defeat the Tories at this election.
I suspect the Tories propose their own supporters to the BBC, who obediently trot out and harvest their comments.
I suspect all this bias, manipulation and lies are laying the groundwork for the long con, whereby the establishment plans to steal the election with the excuse a Tory win was long-predicted by the polls and the many “random” guests who said they’d never vote Labour. But anybody with a bit of sense and most people without any can see the popularity of Corbyn’s Labour and the dislike of Johnson’s Tories. The Tories have been wantonly cruel to too many people and too few have gained from this cruelty so the numbers are against them.
I just do not see them winning honestly but I know they’re crooked enough to steal it, especially as they’ll be out of power for at least a generation, and they may never get in again without a total reinvention.
Oh ffs – the tories by the minute are tin eared and digging bigger holes for themselves – i don’t know if I should laugh or cry – the poor distressed Dunn family, it is heart rending.
Fucking tory scumbag Raab.
‘Raab was heckled during his final address at a hustings in East Molesey, Surrey, on Monday evening, with one woman standing up to ask him about Dunn, whose family and friends were kept outside for the duration of the event due to purported concerns about overcrowding.
Raab was later confronted by Tim Dunn, Harry’s father, and friends of the late 19-year-old as he left the building and was ushered into his official car. Police officers and security staff were stopping people from blocking the exit, while the crowd booed Raab and shouted “coward” as he drove away.
“We were receiving live tweets from Harry Dunn’s family members, and his father, who travelled down with family members, to go into the hustings and speak to Dominic Raab,” said Rebecca Little, a local resident who stood up to address the foreign secretary.
“I was shut down by the shouting when I stood up but I could see other people in the audience saying ‘come on, let them in’. There were several security detail preventing the family from coming in but they have a right to enter the hustings.’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/25/harry-dunn-family-urge-voters-to-unseat-dominic-raab
WHERE is LAURA???
Raab ran away. Perhaps he wanted to do something about the “overcrowding” of the pavement?
We need a crescendo of such “events” which show the Tories up, every day now. Cf. “sleaze” stories in 1997. C’mon Seumas!
Laura is probably in conversation with Isaac and both Dominics about whether she should say something and, if so, what. But what’s getting said on Sh*tter and Faecebook? Any film of the Raab runaway?
The intervention of the Chief Rabbi is a big mistake by the Tories. It’s a card that should not have been played That it has been suggests panic among the Tories. Nobody cares that much about anti-semitism, because it’s not a real problem. Jews in Britain are doing fine (compared to Muslims, to take one example). but thrust the issue down everyone’s throats, and that will annoy people. And the main reaction will be voting anti-Tory.
In technology and gravity we trust. As time passes and more and more elderly people return to the soil, those left standing are increasingly more tech-savvy and inclined to draw information from a variety of sources.
I actually have a lot of faith in young people — we all moan about them, their obsession with selfies and ‘the self’ etc., but teenagers today, as I see it, are much more civilised and conscientious than they were when I was one.
The mainstream media bias that English lefties think they discovered all by themselves is actually a world that was colonised by free-thinking Scots many moons ago. Don’t worry, though, there’s plenty of room for us all (providing you don’t try to rope us into that British working class movement scam and assume you know what’s best for us again).
Craig summarises the problem when, talking about the lies and propaganda, he says “the truth is that it largely works…” That’s true but it can also backfire dramatically. The Brexit vote itself is proof; voting for Brexit for the millions that did it was, in their minds at least, an act of revolutionary defiance. The establishment and every economics “expert” under the sun was telling them not to do it. They told them it would be cataclysmic and destroy the economy. It didn’t stop them.
I don’t rule out the possibility of a similar backfire in this election. Even dim Brexit voters must see that bias is off the scale right now. They must also see that they are suddenly on the same side as millionaires, the BBC, much of the establishment, and an array of forces that Brexit was supposed to hurt. When those guys are on your side, you know you’ve really fucked up somewhere. Always.
“They told them it would be cataclysmic and destroy the economy. It didn’t stop them.”
No, it encouraged them.
Quite so, it encouraged us to be even more sure we wanted to Leave the undemocratic E.U.
Today we learn that the overwhelming majority of undemocratic LibDem supporters are middle class.
The LibDems have the lowest percentage support among the working classes.
The Brexit party has the highest percentage support of the working classes.
The Labour party has equal support among the middle classes and the working classes.
Vote LibDem get middle class undemocratic shit rammed down your gullet.
Concern about the lack of democracy in the EU spread like a disease amongst those who had not had their immune systems fortified by the education jab.
The LibDem party are completely out of touch with the working classes, they do not care for us at all, their concerns are partly with homosexual/transgender concerns but mostly about feather their own nests by pretending to care about ordinary people, which they do not, a prime example is Nick Clegg, who now has a rather lucrative position with facebook.
The trouble is, if the bias favours your “side”, you don’t care very much. And England (apart from a brief period after WW2) is a very xenophobic, nativist, anti socialist country which tends to an awe-struck idolisation of the wealthy. And very poorly educated, especially with regard to politics. Most people just disdain and hate politics and despise and distrust those who are interested in it.
‘As an antisemitism crisis threatens to engulf the Tory party, Laura Kuenssberg runs to the rescue’:
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2019/11/19/as-an-antisemitism-crisis-threatens-to-engulf-the-tory-party-laura-kuenssberg-runs-to-the-rescue/?
‘..An antisemitism scandal has struck the Conservative Party, with two candidates facing accusations of alleged antisemitism. But instead of holding the party’s feet to the fire over its issues with racism, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg attacked Labour instead. It’s starting to feel like there’s no crisis big enough Kuenssberg won’t overlook in service of the Conservatives…’
Slight case of hyper-hypocrisy; must be something in the water at Portland Place.
Kuenssberg, the bbc , and the Tories are panicking right now. Lying and propaganda are only necessary when the truth is awkward for you.
Ergo; the more intense the lies get, the more threatened they must feel.
I kinda watch all this from a safe distance. I wish I could see what Kuenssberg et al are seeing right now because it must scare the life out of them. Their panicking and lies, editing the Boris clip etc., is the best sign yet that we are heading for a major upset in this election.
My son, who is a youngish middle-ranking city bankster, lives in South West London. I guess you would call him educated (grammar school and Imperial College.) He is a long standing Tory party member. He is also a dedicated Remainder and has had several runs with his local constituency MP who is Tory but also a Brexiteer
My son, who worked in America for a leading merchant bank, before returning to the UK a couple of years back, is a committed Remainder. He regards himself as an international citizen of the world and thinks nation states belong to the past. He has always voted Tory. This time, holding his nose, he is switching to the Liberal Democrats, purely as the Remain Party. He thinks they will win the seat.
He sounds like a blast.
Two Labour supporters in their seventies assaulted while out campaigning this weekend. One a 75 year old woman thrown across a car bonnet by a thug and left with broken ribs. The other a 72 year old man punched in the face and left with a broken jaw. Not a dicky bird about either incident on the BBC.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50552115
A perfunctory website report of a supposedly isolated incident. (It’s actually the sixth attack on a labour campaigner since the election started.) Meanwhile the BBC news channel melts down over the latest tired smears of a tory chief rabbi.
I think it’s a mistake to call him a Tory. He is a leading figure in the Jewish lobby which at the present time is supporting the Tory election campaign. Things could change and the organisation could switch to supporting some other party. He has no loyalty to the Tory party.
I think in this case he is personally a long term Tory. Also an aggressive supporter of Israeli expansion. Not normal stances for a Chief Rabbi.
Since nominations closed, two Tory and one LibDem candidates have been stood down for anti-Semitism. The accusations appear to be a mix of genuine anti-Semitism and IHMA fabrication. Mirvis must know this and yet he attacks Labour.
To a certain degree Labour (and particularly McDonnell) are culpable for not facing down this IHMA nonsense earlier.
It is not about.antisemitism for them .They know all the polling consistently shows antisemitism is far more rife among Conservative party members and has decreased in Labour once Corbyn became leader.
For establishment journalists of their stature it iis solely about preserving class privilege. They are ferocious interrogators and smearers of anybody who threatens a more equal society.
From now until 12 December is not going to be plain sailing for Labour.
1. Once upon a time the mainstream social-democratic party in a NATO country – a party which had a long record of being very friendly with Israel – had a youth organisation that backed divestment from Israel of the country’s enormous sovereign wealth fund. BLAM! Enter an admirer of Melanie Phillips, Jeremy Clarkson and the English Defence League by the name of Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people.
2. Earlier this month, MI5 lowered Britain’s state of terror alert to the lowest it has been for five years. Priti Patel, a woman previously sacked from the British government for holding private “talks” with the Israeli government without informing the Foreign Office, including about how to funnel British government money to the Israeli army (imagine if that was Russia), was the minister who held responsibility for MI5 at that time (as indeed she still is). She has also cooperated with a Zionist vigilante organisation called the “Community Security Trust”.
3. Patel had been brought back into the Cabinet by Boris Johnson, a man whose stepmother’s family controls the notoriously pro-Zionist firm Marks and Spencer and who has been the favoured politician EVERY time the Zionist lobby in Britain has openly involved itself in a major election campaign – namely both times he stood for London mayor and in the ongoing general election campaign.
This could get a LOT nastier.
Extensive interview by Kate Burkey of Chuka 3 parties in so many months in which most of the time wadtspent in Kabour and anti Semitic and chief rabbi. Little attack on Johnson.
The Canary articles – ‘A secretive propaganda unit is manipulating our social media – But it’s not Russian,’ & ‘The Tories run a secret welfare state for rich people that costs taxpayers up to £180bn a tear.’
Meanwhile the Tories are proposing very strong anti traveller measures, amounting to some, to ethnic cleansing but nobody seems to care.
Nope.
Morality is a very selective thing in the UK.
You can be as discriminatory, bigoted and racist as you like, so long as you stand with Tories and bankers, and don’t criticise the Israeli state and all the cultural propaganda of the Israeli state, and then you are naturally anti-Semitic.
If you protest and point to any other form of genocide than the Holocaust, you are anti-Semitic.
If you disagree with what some guy posing as a rabbi says, you are anti-Semitic.
If you object to the voices and traumatic memories of worldwide indigenous people being squashed, you are naturally an anti-Semite.
If you say that we need to concern ourselves with future generations rather than dwell on the past, you are anti-Semitic.
If you are a little critical of the Tories, the investment banks, the mainstream press, you are anti-Semitic.
This is really very sick how the term has been politicised and abused like this, and used as a way of discrediting and abusing decent people, and makes me want to throw up violently.
Meanwhile, the very kinds of people that have always created an atmosphere of anti-Semitism are right in front of us; they are the ones pointing their fingers and making the accusations.
What is most worrying, though, is that all these allegations of anti-Semitism seem to be designed to foment racial hatred, hostility, violence and animosity.
The old trick of sewing divisions.
Broad assertion. What measures for what offences? There are vafious types of travellers : Irish tinkers, Romanies, Latter day hippies, even Roma (east European gypsies.)
Naaa they are all able to survive when times will get hard. But what value have bankers and or money when you cant grow food or hunt other humans who cant get away fast enough? Will society organise around a sustainability value?
What of unsustainable Cities who create pollution , need large amounts of energy and are unable to grow food for themselves?
What use do large urban connotations have when the weather patterns dont support a 24/7 society anymore.?
It starts now, victoria falls are marking the beginning of a drought in southern Africa which will put 100 million people into poverty and need for food?
We might be able to feed people for some years, but when our harvests fail and farmers scratch their arses, decisions will become stark and succinct.
Whatever panacea we are being sold by these eyewashing snakeoil merchants, the inevitable can not be avoided unless we take drastic actions.
Multiply your carbon reduction goals by 5 says the UN, whilst the last Pentagon report from August explains the problems with keeping a large military going after 20 years, due to climate change. Scientists are mopting that we will be lucky to have another 70 harvests of varying quality and success.
This puts the current neocon status quo into the hospitals sincerety ward, they argue for more of the same whilst watching it fail. Maybe lemmings do throw themselves of cliffs afterall.
Sleep tight
The Tories are desperate. Their big attack on labour now has nothing to do with policies but just a rehash of the AS story. Including recruiting certain known Tories
As a matter of general interest, how large are the Jewish and Moslem votes respectively in the UK at present?
Jewish population 0.4% – at the last census
Muslim 10 times bigger.
No more than 30k (NOT HUNDRED) Labour voters are self identified Jews – representing some 20-25% of that religious population of voting age (<300k TOTAL POPULATION IN THE WHOLE UK) ,
SIXTY percent have ALWAYS voted tory and may well do so again – unless thy realise they are being used as human footballs by politicians and Chief rabbi who represents foreign interests and it's criminal prime minister Nutty.
This ugly and dirty religion and politics shit stirring is now being extended!
What absolute dirt have they got on Welby? Is he a friend of Handy Andy? Did his speaking in tongues get videoed?
Dirtier and dirtier by the hour.
The treatment of the Dunn family stopped from entering Raab's hustings – is what Welby should be attending to rather than pandering to mossad or whoever has the goods on him. If there is a hell he has booked his place.
Surely, being cynical, the Labour anti semitism debate /row leaves a lot of British voters cold? . And, being even more cynical, there is more to be gained from making the party appealing to the Moslem voter?
Look here missus – you sense something is very wrong, correct?
It is the stirring up of ordinary religious god botherers by their priests, mullahs and rabbis that is the dog whistling being implored by the chief rabbi and archbishop.
They are extolling an extension of the xenophobia released by the desperation of the ancient City, to achieve an escape from regulation and transparecy being imposed across the EU, by a HARD only brexit.
Conditioning of the whole population – propoganda – has been around a long long time – the Christian churches have used it effectively for a millenia. Kippers were conditioning as well as the proto kippers on the spectrum, alt-rightists etc. Austerity is the hot bed for that propaganda. When you are made to be thirsty and than offered water for believing something – you do. Orwell wrote of the method of such terror in 1984 of the fate of Smith in room 101.
They the bastards of the ancient CITY and their minion politicians and media presstitute storm troopers are mercenary thugs or minor family apparatchiks in that empire – they are with this election in a bind and cornered like plague ridden RATS or rabid dogs – there is no ‘negotiating’ with them, there is no honorable ‘surrender’ by them – they fight to the death.
For the first time in centuries they can be stopped – the crumbling empire can be subdued peacefully from it’s very centre by the choice the unexpected voters can deliver on Friday the 13th. (A very APT historical day and date!)
WE, a bakers dozen million or so, can achieve emancipation for the whole human race by standing up to the ancient barons and declaring ourselves ‘SPARTICUS’! Break free of the mental chains, stand up and walk out of our self imposed room 101. Get past our conditioned ‘brexit gladiator’ personae. Emancipate ourselves from that mental slavery. It is as simple as that.
No Pasaran!
No they are bored of the deliberate destruction of a political movement born out of workers rights, you know the one’s who put the aftetnoon tea and biccies into reality for some who get rich on their hard work.
And yes islamophobia comes in all shades.
I am Jewish but the rabbi does not speak for me. He is not elected, the Jewish community is not homogeneous and I challenge the bullshit poll, repeated ad nauseum by Radio 4, that 87% of Jews in the uk feel threatened. The shitty Gaurdian repeatedly fails to publish letters by Jews who call out the rabbi and his racist invective. The findings of the poll are simply accepted by the Robinsons and Keunsbergs of the media. Typically lazy and shit “journalism”.
Yup. The funny thing is that there are many people from Jewish faith who are working very hard to get Labour elected – that is my point to Mary this is nothing to do with religion and everything to do with Absolute Power.
Craig, you are right as far as mainstream media goes, but you, as ever, ignore the massive influence of social media and the subversion by the tech giants of what used to the public arena for debate. You should read Surveillance Capitalism, or the research on Open Democracy, but I know you are not really interested. The traditional media are now an adjunct of these influences, who have privatised and shattered the public arena into granularized silos which are easily manipulable. That is why there is no real public debate on policy – where are the tories? Refusing to put spokespeople on to radio and tv, apart from a few token appearances, no manifesto to speak of, and the constant regurgitation of slogans, memes and fake memes and alternative ‘facts’ – all well-honed strategies of online trolls and the alt-right, who have adapted with alacrity to a world without consensus. It furthers their agenda to create a climate where everybody accepts that there are no facts, just opinions which don’t require evidence or support, just constant repetition. Trump is the epitome of it, and Johnson his little mini-me. The common thread is of course Bannon and the hedge fund US right who support Johnson and the use of brexit as their wedge issue in Europe. Retreating into a Scottish independence movement isn’t going to ameliorate the damage.
I disagree fundamentally with the analysis. You are on social media now. It is the only recourse we have to escape the monolitihic narrative peddling of the mainstream media. The biggest problem with social media is the gatekeeper corporations – twitter and facebook can simply turn off 80% of traffic to this site and sometimes do for short periods. Google has already downgraded this site into virtual search invisibility.
The biggest danger is the people who want to end further the freedom of social media on the basis that they consider this freedom abused by people – like Steve Bannon – saying things they do not agree with. Or want to close down internet freedom on the excuse of countering paedophilia or terrorism.
It is a subject that interests me greatly, Ian. But what I find worrying is people like you who decry “a world without consensus”. That is actually a deeply sinister sentiment.
There is a word for the global consensus Ian desires, it is gleichschaltung.
(responding to Bayard at 11:53, because conversations are so dislocated here).
Yes. Noted with anxiety.
Craig.
Have you read “the age of surveillance capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff.
I highly recommend it.
Thanks for replying, Craig. Of course I am aware I am using social media, but as you point out, this small niche is already subject to corporate manipulation, making it near invisible, which in turn makes my point. And of course, promoting other agendas in its place. But you seem to think I, or others, are therefore advocating closing down internet freedom, such as it is. Which is a complete non-sequitur. Nobody is suggesting such a thing, as far as i am aware. But they are very concerned about the almost total domination of a handful of tech companies which are being exposed more and more as ones with rightwing agenda – as Zuckerberg currently is. Beitbart as a ‘trusted news source’, lol.
So I completely reject that, if that is your insinuation. We need more open access and more transparency, with less monolithic control and gatekeeping. Obviously. But the point is that many people are still naively unaware of the control and manipulation which goes on on these platforms. And when you get more deeply into it, as you will if you read books like Surveillance Capitalism, is how far beyond simple gatekeeping and suppression of voices this goes. It is far more extensive, with a structural cross border network of influences evading any form of democratic control or oversight. And that is, of course, the beauty of it, and one which Bannon and co have been very quick to appreciate and deploy to their advantage. With frauds like Johnson, Farage and Trump benefitting. Notice how Johnson was very quick to deny Bannon had written his speech for him, which Bannon was quite open about.
Your last comment baffles me. Perhaps you didn’t understand, or I didn’t make clear. Depends on how you are interpreting consensus I suppose. I mean some basic tenets of human behaviour and social responsibility, as well as the expectation that we can have informed debate based on some common goals. They are very keen to undermine all those old-fashioned notions, splintering society into isolated nodes which have little power and are easily manipulable. Social media tech enables this. That is what i would call sinister, and why there is little debate about policy in this election, just sloganising, fake claims which relish their fakeness, don’t apologise for it, but promote falsehood as a quality common to all politics in order to undermine any notion of genuine democratic representation or accountability. You find criticising that sinister?
The Jewish Voice for Labour has several articles worth reading… but don’t get the coverage the anti-semitic witch hunt does…
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/
There’s a circle here… claim there’s anti-semitism in the Labour party… with nonsense like its an existential threat to the Jewish community in Britain… then find the Jewish community is afraid…
The Zionist argument is that anyone who thinks Israel doesn’t have a right to exist is anti-semitic. Further… if you meet someone who thinks that you are anti-semitic. Israel was founded on the Deir Yassin massacre and the Lydda Death March… and is maintained by refusing to allow expelled refugees to return. Belief in Israel’s right to exist is turning a blind eye at best to ethnic cleansing… but the Zionists turn justice and racism on its head… and the British media largely buys into it…
I think that the three polls due to be out today are a possible trigger for the revival of the anti-semitic discussion.
Labour look like they are narrowing the gap so expect more attacks.
Maybe the MSM has had preview of the polls and BBC Producers don’t like what they see?
There is always a reason for choosing the media narratives for the day.
ICM has the ‘lead’ down to seven points:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#2019
Others?
I think they’ve been trying to push it all the way through.
Maybe I’m a bit harsh in saying belief in Israel’s right to exist is turning a blind eye at best to ethnic cleansing… the at best would be having two incompatible positions… claiming that you don’t approve of the ethnic cleansing but believe in the state upon which it was founded. Well the ethnic cleansing was an essential part of its creation…
The Arch Bishop of Caterbury dresses up as a putrid dead cat and flings himself upon the publics breakfast table.
A troubled priest!
An old schoolmate of Boris Johnson’s. Now leader of the Tory party at prayer.
Once again this morning the news is alight with the Jeremy Corbyn and Labour antisemitism scare stories.
This comes, of course, because Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has wrote a (scurrilous) piece for the Times, enflaming the antisemitism fears and smears, in which he states that:
“A new poison – sanctioned from the top – has taken root in the Labour Party.”
At 7:10 this morning on BBC R4’s Today programme I sat through a five minute, splenetic, vituperative, one sided tirade against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party from rabbi Julia Neuberger whom she accused of “licensing racism”.
Nick Robinson (founder-member of Macclesfield Young Conservatives (YC); former Cheshire YC Chairman; former Chairman of the National YC; and former President of the Oxford University Conservative Association) did not only not challenge her on any of her accusations but fed her leading questions throughout.
It’s disappointing that Labour did not put anybody up to respond, but Alf Dubbs replied to support Corbyn at 8:10. He, however, was constantly challenged by Robinson throughout, citing previously and regularly debunked accusations, and sought to undermine every point that Dubbs made.
Robinson was then followed, of course, by Kuenssberg who gave a further one sided review of the controversy.
All of that, of course, was punctuated by hourly newspaper reviews providing further one sided fuel to the fire along with more, unchallenged, one sided commentary from Martin Bashir.
The way that the Today programme handled this this morning reminded me of the Daily Mail’s 2017, pre-election day, thirteen page assault on Jeremy Corbyn accusing him of being a “terrorist sympathiser”. It was that despicable, that one sided, and that relentless.
The coverage was a travesty of public service broadcasting and must surely be a contravention of Ofcom regulations.
A future High Court of British Democracy would see large fines and prison sentences being handed out here for crimes against democracy
Robinson is a Corbyn constituent.
He wrote a book that happened to mention the pro-Hitler views of Lord Reith, first head of the BBC.
His family were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany too, incidentally.
I’m no fan of Corbyn but I’m pretty shocked that the chief Rabbi in England has said The Soul of the Nation is at Risk. Referring to Corbyn becoming PM.
I take it the Rabbi in question has bought into the fake anti-Semitism mantra in Labour propagated by his political opponents and reinforced by the bias media.
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/top-uk-rabbi-slams-labour-says-soul-of-nation-at-risk-1.8186455
It’s an all out attack. Even Swinson is on the bandwagon. Hope Nicola doesn’t feel obliged to follow the bandwagon.
Rich for someone that defends Israeli nukes and slaughter, epitome of a supremacist:
Chief Rabbi: Israel would not survive without weapons
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/gaza/11033513/Chief-Rabbi-Israel-would-not-survive-without-weapons.html
Israel has no choice but to use force in Gaza, says chief rabbi
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/israel-has-no-choice-but-to-use-force-in-gaza-says-chief-rabbi-s6ld2p3kcsb
…and of course, there is no jewish lobby, yea right..
RoS…here is what the main religious leaders are saying…
https://twitter.com/milneorchid/status/1199316528329625602?s=09
Just a little reminder of how to get a job with BBC political department
https://twitter.com/maximiliangapes/status/1199259788619735040?s=19
Oops…meant this one ffs
https://twitter.com/milneorchid/status/1198571453387608064?s=19
And why being a BBC editor requires geniuses only….
https://twitter.com/milneorchid/status/1198857954633617411?s=09
Since nominations closed two Tory candidates have been stood down for anti-Semitism.
Amjad Bashir, Leads North East. Paraphrase, “Jews return from trips to Israel brainwashed”.
Ryan Houghton, Aberdeen North. Something vaguely supportive of Holocaust denier David Irving.
Pressure is also on Tory candidate for Lincoln, Karl McCartney to stand down for anti-Semitism. Paraphrase, “the EU is in the pay of international financier George Soros”.
LibDem candidate for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, Wahid Rafiq has been stood down for anti-Semitism. Something definitely anti-Zionist that can be interpreted as supportive of the Jewish faith.
Two Labour nominations for seats dropped out before nominations closed due to accusations of anti-Semitism.
Kate Ramsden, Gordon Aberdeenshire. The Government of Israel was behaving like “an abused child that becomes an abusive adult”.
Gideon Bull, Clacton-on-Sea. Referred to a fellow councillor as “Shylock” in open debate, was called out at the time and immediately apologised.
And yet Mirvis chooses to direct his fire solely at Labour. This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with a certain Eastern Mediterranean country.
On George Galloway’s Twitter page yesterday is a photo of the war criminal Alistair Campbell out on the stump with Lucian Berger, the same Campbell who in 2005 portrayed Michael Howard as Fagin in a cartoon while New Labour strategist Alan Milburn mocked-up Howard’s head onto a flying pig. Yet Berger works with Campbell and lies about Corbyn being the anti-Semite? These lies from the Blairites are no doubt in league with the Tories and Lib-Dems, and likely aided by Mark Regev and the state he represents.
All liars who are going to bring about the very thing they say is going around, who will no longer have the traditional anti-fascist left to call to their defence after they’ve broken it politically in the service of a foreign state. If the Tories win ie. steal it, and we veer to the extreme right, they will have to deal with it themselves. After all they created it, and the left will have its own serious problems to deal with.
Interesting
https://mobile.twitter.com/maximiliangapes/status/1199259788619735040?s=19
Scroll down to LFTV
I also posted that link…though in error. It is a succinct defense of Corbyn…although one wonders WHY the defense? Or am I in error or has someone actually provided,You know,evidence that the Labour leader is anti Semitic?
Boris Johnson is handling the Scottish Conservative Party, “No IndyRef 2” launch just now. We could call, it a manifesto launch but we all know the only fucking thing in it will be “No IndyRef 2!”.
Shouldn’t this be a job for Supper Ruth? Nah, that’s right, she only does paid gigs these days.
Corbyn is speaking in measured tones in N15 confirming that anti semitism will not be tolerated in the Labour Party.
Guardian’s Live Feed of what Corbyn and Johnson are saying.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/nov/26/general-election-parties-attack-each-others-spending-plans-after-manifestos-lay-differences-bare?page=with:block-5ddd17728f087b800b621612#liveblog-navigation
.