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What's the PM going to announce?

Ah, OK, didn't see that bit. For what it's worth, I share some of max's concern about the state of mainstream media in the UK but I find most of the stuff he links to garbage (why do all those people on YouTube channels shout so much?).

So Secular Talk (Kyle Kulinski), The Young Turks - both left-leaning, liberal progressive channels - not right-wingers pretending to be left-leaning, like CNN..

RT... all 'garbage'?

Really??

I have linked to Styxhexenhammer for entertainment purposes, which I made clear.

EDIT: I just seen your clarification, so no worries, and no need to respond.
 
Whenever this question of media bias comes up I honestly wonder where people have been for 50 years.

Surely we have learned by now how to read between the lines?

It seems to me that those who protest so loudly are infuriated that some media does not match their own prejudices.

This is pure BS.

Jack
 
What you fail to see/accept Gassor is that the drop in support for Corbyn's labour is directly proportional to the severity of the right-wing/Blairite/media slur campaign against him.

On the morning of the Brexit result polls showed that Labour were very close to the Tories. Then it all kicked off with the carefully choreographed live on air resignations and so on...
Absolutely. I've posted a chart of Labour's average poll ratings since Corbyn was elected leader (for the first time) at least twice. It shows a slight but unambiguous trend upwards in support for Labour until the "coup" after the EU referendum last year, when there is a catastrophic drop of about 10 percentage points. Yet the very architects of the coup have the nerve to blame Corbyn for Labour's poor showing in the polls.

I could search for the chart and post it again but, since none of the people who criticise Corbyn bothered to reply the first two times (I wonder why?), I'll save my energy.

To be clear, I believe Corbyn's time is up (after the GE - unless, against all odds, Labour do well) but the party should stick with core elements of his agenda, including anti-austerity.
 
The Guardian is really patchy and often quite right-wing. I will always look at a Paul Mason article because he makes sense and is an economics expert. I am not so interested in Owen Jones who has criticized Corbyn for a while.

Their main Guardian columnist is Polly Tonybee. She has slated Corbyn, and socialists in the Labour Party, since before he was elected leader. She really doesn't like him. The BBC and other broadcasters wheel her on as a left wing commentator. The situation is laughable.

Jack
Mostly agree but I think you're too black and white. Owen Jones is a good commentator who supported Corbyn initially and just happens to have lost patience. I hate the way Corbyn's leadership (which I initially supported) has become a cult of personality (you must be either for or against him, nothing inbetween; and if you're against him, you're a traitor). Even Polly Toynbee has her moments - she can be excellent when exposing the utter vindictiveness of Tory benefit cuts and the plight of poor families.

I agree about the BBC's skewed treatment of political pundits. The Sunday Politics almost always has two right wing commentators (including one extreme right winger) and one very soft-left commentator. No idea how that can be called balance.
 
Absolutely. I've posted a chart of Labour's average poll ratings since Corbyn was elected leader (for the first time) at least twice. It shows a slight but unambiguous trend upwards in support for Labour until the "coup" after the EU referendum last year, when there is a catastrophic drop of about 10 percentage points. Yet the very architects of the coup have the nerve to blame Corbyn for Labour's poor showing in the polls.

I could search for the chart and post it again but, since none of the people who criticise Corbyn bothered to reply the first two times (I wonder why?), I'll save my energy.

To be clear, I believe Corbyn's time is up (after the GE - unless, against all odds, Labour do well) but the party should stick with core elements of his agenda, including anti-austerity.

I agree that he should go if they do badly, and of course that the party should stick with the core elements of his agenda, but there is a dynamic which I shan't mention for fear of derailing this thread - think part of his foreign policy - which will mean that the same people who have been after him from day one will do everything they can to ensure that Corbyn does not leave like-minded people in control.
 
When May was appointed PM the BBC were literally sycophantic (is that a word?).

It was like a Coronation. Norman the Gnasher all but jumped around with joy and all the BBC studio lacked was party balloons and champagne.

How some people did not see this is beyond me.
 
When May was appointed PM the BBC were literally sycophantic (is that a word?).

It was like a Coronation. Norman the Gnasher all but jumped around with joy and all the BBC studio lacked was party balloons and champagne.

How some people did not see this is beyond me.
Yup. The easiest ride I've ever seen given to a politician. Unbelievable.
 
Absolutely. I've posted a chart of Labour's average poll ratings since Corbyn was elected leader (for the first time) at least twice. It shows a slight but unambiguous trend upwards in support for Labour until the "coup" after the EU referendum last year, when there is a catastrophic drop of about 10 percentage points. Yet the very architects of the coup have the nerve to blame Corbyn for Labour's poor showing in the polls.

I could search for the chart and post it again but, since none of the people who criticise Corbyn bothered to reply the first two times (I wonder why?), I'll save my energy.

Just think Drood what the situation would now be like for Labour had the right-wing elements of the party got behind Corbyn 100% on the morning of the Brexit result, and the media had not acted at the behest of erm....whoever...and treated him as they should.

He could now be favourite to be the next PM.
 
Whenever this question of media bias comes up I honestly wonder where people have been for 50 years.

Surely we have learned by now how to read between the lines?

It seems to me that those who protest so loudly are infuriated that some media does not match their own prejudices.

Well TPA I absolutely agree. Us smart people can easily read through the bias and distortion and come to an informed opinion on UK and world affairs. We are very smart indeed :)

However, our informed and educated opinion counts for exactly one vote and is cancelled out by all the brainless gob-shites and disinterested idiots that make up the majority of the UK populace. Most of them couldn't find their arse with both hands, swallow media bias willingly and go back for more.

The Tories rely on working class idiots to keep them in power and frame their pitch to them, aided and abetted by their media friends.
 
When May was appointed PM the BBC were literally sycophantic (is that a word?).

Sycophantic is indeed a word. The word sycophant has a strange derivation; from the OED:

'The origin of the Greek word, lit. = ‘fig-shower’, has not been satisfactorily accounted for. The explanation, long current, that it originally meant an informer against the unlawful exportation of figs cannot be substantiated. It is possible that the term referred originally to the gesture of ‘making a fig’ or had an obscene implication'.
 
I know sycophantic is a word because on that Simpsons episode when Mr. Burns sold the power plant to a group of Germans the next scene was of Smithers learning sycophantic German.

You looken sharpen todayen, mein Herr.

Joe
 
I know sycophantic is a word because on that Simpsons episode when Mr. Burns sold the power plant to a group of Germans the next scene was of Smithers learning sycophantic German.

Joe

It's also used on the Velvet Underground track 'The Murder Mystery':

'To Rembrandt and Oswald
To peanuts and ketchup
Sanctimonious sycophants stir in the bushes
Up to the stand with your foot on the bible
As king I must order and constantly arouse
If you swear to catch up and throw up and up up
A king full of virgin kiss me and spin it
Excuse to willow and wander dark wonders
Divest me of robes-sutures Harry and pig meat
The fate of a nation, rests hard on your bosoms
The king on his throne, puts his hand down his robe
The torture of inverse and silk screen and Harry
And set the tongue squealing the reverse and inverse'.

Which makes perfect sense, of course.
 
The Shorter Oxford includes sycophantish as an acceptable adjective. i.e. to be somewhat like a sycophant. I find this refreshing as it smacks of Generation X, valley-speak and whedonesque dialogue becoming mainstream.

Note: whedonesque is not yet a word commonly adopted by lexicographers. So please use it as often as possible.
 
Well, this thead has taken a pleasing detour. 'Sycophantic' is a lovely word to say. So too, oddly, are 'obsequious' and 'toady'.
 
The vote in favour of an election was somewhere in the region of 500 so Labour's stance would not have changed anything. If Labour did not agree they would have been seen as hypocritical and/or afraid.

The vote needed a two-thirds majority in favour.

If Labour and SNP had voted together against that would have been 44% of the MPs against a vote.

I agree with you though that the press would have vilified them. So what? You think they won't be anyhow?

May is not afraid to appear afraid.

Stephen
 
I see Gina Miller is crowdfunding a tactical voting campaign for a soft Brexit.

https://www.gofundme.com/whats-best-for-britain

I have great admiration for Ms Miller, but if Theresa May is seeking a bigger majority to override the Redwood/IDS lunatic fringe then a reduced or unchanged Tory majority might backfire ?
It's not clearcut. If the DM is to be believed, the Tory manifesto will promise hard Brexit.

Good article from Alan Moore (yes, him!) here:

http://momentumnorthants.org.uk/alan-moore-statement/

I don't agree with everything he says but I strongly identify with his comments about his parents (which mirror my experience).
 
It's not clearcut. If the DM is to be believed, the Tory manifesto will promise hard Brexit.

Good article from Alan Moore (yes, him!) here:

http://momentumnorthants.org.uk/alan-moore-statement/

I don't agree with everything he says but I strongly identify with his comments about his parents (which mirror my experience).

Very nice post. I don't think that Nulabour were as bad as he says, and principles are not so valuable without power, but he writes very eloquently.

I think Corbyn's wing of the labour party would be more popular if more people could remember a time before the NHS.
 
What you fail to see/accept Gassor is that the drop in support for Corbyn's labour is directly proportional to the severity of the right-wing/Blairite/media slur campaign against him.

On the morning of the Brexit result polls showed that Labour were very close to the Tories. Then it all kicked off with the carefully choreographed live on air resignations and so on...

There may bave been a blip in the polls showing Labour very close to Tory, but to make any real headway in terms of forming a government they would have needed to be a good bit ahead.

From the start Corbyn has been well short of the kind of support needed to become a PM.

The most obvious point is that YouGov’s latest poll (in 2015) shows that Corbyn is the first new opposition leader to have a negative initial rating. With two, Michael Foot and Iain Duncan Smith, the positive and negative scores were in balance. Everyone else started out with a positive score

At present he is nearly as unpopular with the UK electorate as Trump and Putin. To blame this on a right wing media is ridiculously condescending to the public at large. People read the papers that reflect their interests and views but are not so vacuous as to believe everything they read. You don't, so why do you think everyone else is so different?
 


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