Again, it’s like the Savile stuff: immediate coverage was wall to wall old film of Sir Jimmy laughing it up with Prime Ministers and royals and then, from day two onwards, it was all BBC, BBC, BBC all the way. The entire unbroken focus.
flyingrodent
@flyingrodent.bsky.social
wrld.org
Annoying smartarse
Watching the press angrily blame each other for the rapey media figure that they all embraced at one point or another, is not encouraging me to believe that We will now Take Responsibility for ensuring This does not happen again.
Yeah, I think the students are probably correct that having a weird little Secret History sect on campus clustered between Michael Gove and Nigel Farage, is not good. That’s before we get to the electoral crimes or the joining up with the press to hound colleagues to death.
Seems to me that the offending here carried on right through the Savile revelations, Operation Yewtree and the ferocious media backlash against “ideological witch hunting” of famous important guys, so I guess women’s bravery is about the best bet we have here.
It looks to me like it’s much the same as Britain: the centrists have pushed it and pushed it until they exhausted their welcome and have - apparently quite gladly - flown the plane into the side of a mountain, rather than accept they aren’t very popular and they don’t have many ideas anyone wants.
That does look a bit like the spooks are above the law, doesn’t it
www.bbc.co.uk
MI5 will not face contempt of court charges despite admitting its evidence was a lie
Remember that time Dominic Cummings told Parliament Tory PRs could send basically anything, any old shit, to BBC and ITV politics correspondents and they would excitedly read it out on TV, regardless of merit? I do
www.theguardian.com
Pay Attention by Laura Kuenssberg review – a BBC reporter’s howl of frustration
In Britain, two MPs quit the Labour Party, were plastered across broadcast and print media telling people to vote Tory in a dubiously funded PR stunt campaign and were then rewarded for it with peerages by Boris Johnson. Nobody even blinked at this, it wasn’t an issue.
Let’s be clear: it is not like that your man Ramsay here does not understand public infighting is damaging. The problem is that *he has been shown the British press will repeat everything he says at astonishing volume and will cheer him on to destruction*, just as they did with Labour and the SNP.
“Turning down the heat” is a euphemism here, because the actual practical way to do that is to convince the British press and their crackpot internet friends that they have won a crushing victory over this particular minority group, a thing that will never happen www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
www.theguardian.com
‘Progress takes time’: Stonewall CEO on turning down the heat on the trans debate
Yeah, there’s functionally no limit on how badly certain people can be treated. A country with even trace elements of liberalism does not have four thousand people arrested on vexatious charges. A political/media class that isn’t horrifically bent does not, at very best, watch it in sullen silence.
This strikes me as an excellent example of how there is, functionally, no actual political debate happening in Britain. Everyone who matters - government, opposition, media and various experts - agrees that it’s time for more scything benefit cuts. The only question is how to get them done.
Again: the international fascist movement.
My take is less “this man could do no wrong” and more like: whatever he did, it was obviously wrong for the British press to very publicly kick him to death, and this is aggravated by comments at the time very clearly showing half the press were absolutely loving it and pushing for more and nastier.
I think “exposing one of the most prominent, secretive and famously criminal men in politics as a secret partner for foreign intelligence agents and notorious sex offenders” should be viewed as an entirely different profession from “destroying the lives of black academics, apparently just for fun”.
Somebody ripped out the capacity of the British state to make and do things, and now we can’t even fight wars. If only we had some idea who was to blame
Again: the international fascist movement.
I think this becomes quite understandable in the context of an international fascist movement that has swept much of the planet in a decade, with horrifying and very extreme consequences for the entire species
A pretty straight choice here: regulate your billionaires, or billionaires will end democracy.
To have one crank Nazi criminal advisor may be regarded as a misfortune; to have two looks like carelessness www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
www.theguardian.com
Former Tory candidate suspended over contract killer claims was adviser in Kemi Badenoch’s office