"Guardian has an article calling for boycott of corporations that use offshore fronts, presumably author unaware of GMG (Caymans) Ltd?"
("GMG" is "Guardian Media Group", the owners of The Guardian newspaper!)
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Tweet of the day - 28 Dec 2010
From Guido:
("GMG" is "Guardian Media Group", the owners of The Guardian newspaper!)
("GMG" is "Guardian Media Group", the owners of The Guardian newspaper!)
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Diversionary tactics
In an attempt to wipe the Woolas story off the front pages, the old story of Andy Coulson and the News of the World phone-tapping business has replaced it in the left/Labour-favouring parts of the media. For example it has remained up in pole position at Politics Home (PHI) ever since the new bit of the story came out this morning.
It is now gone 8.30 pm, and it is rare for the same story to remain in that position at PHI for so long. When that happens, as it does occasionally, it usually means it is covering-up something they don't want to highlight. UPDATE at 2350: the story has been re-jigged a little and the headline changed, but it's still there in prime position.
I know I am not the only reader to have noticed how the positioning of various stories at PHI and their duration in those positions is very obviously politically motivated and skewed to favour the political left especially Labour. As I have mentioned before, even their choice of "hand picked" Phi Wire links are very strongly slanted.
Here's the permanent link to their item regarding Coulson's voluntary attendance at a meeting at a solicitor's office and his subsequent interview by police - two days ago! Nothing has happened since, apparently, so why did this suddenly pop up today? Ah yes, of course: the toxic Woolas story...
Even more interesting is Harriet Harman's assertion that his (continuing) presence in Downing Street "casts serious doubt over David Cameron's judgement". Now place that next to Ed Miliband's judgement in making Phil Woolas his shadow immigration minister, and one can see just how obviously this is a diversionary tactic. Note that Red Ed himself didn't dare make such a comment and has remained silent, and for the second time in as many days it was Harman who made the statement to the media.
As always, the clues to the motivation behind such media-based stories are there for anyone who looks with just a little extra attention!
Back with Woolas for a moment: it is notable how differently he has been treated by Ed Miliband and other senior Labour party people, as a Miliband shadow cabinet appointee, compared to how they have dealt with Ken Livingstone who has broken the party's rules by supporting a non-Labour candidate in the recent Tower Hamlets mayoral election.
According to those rules, he should have been expelled from the Labour Party; but Labour has no credible alternative to put up against Boris for the London mayoral election in 2012. Therefore they have again made it "one rule for some, another for others" as they have done before, e.g. selecting Jack Dromey (Harriet Harman's other half) for a seat that was to be selected from an all-female short list.
Martin Bright has spotted the Woolas/Livingstone anomaly; and now we can also see just how inappropriate it is for Ms Harman to be making such statements as this one about Cameron's judgement. Tory Bear has noted Labour's Tom Watson's attempts to associate smearing with the current Downing Street set-up, responding with this tweet:
It is now gone 8.30 pm, and it is rare for the same story to remain in that position at PHI for so long. When that happens, as it does occasionally, it usually means it is covering-up something they don't want to highlight. UPDATE at 2350: the story has been re-jigged a little and the headline changed, but it's still there in prime position.
I know I am not the only reader to have noticed how the positioning of various stories at PHI and their duration in those positions is very obviously politically motivated and skewed to favour the political left especially Labour. As I have mentioned before, even their choice of "hand picked" Phi Wire links are very strongly slanted.
Here's the permanent link to their item regarding Coulson's voluntary attendance at a meeting at a solicitor's office and his subsequent interview by police - two days ago! Nothing has happened since, apparently, so why did this suddenly pop up today? Ah yes, of course: the toxic Woolas story...
Even more interesting is Harriet Harman's assertion that his (continuing) presence in Downing Street "casts serious doubt over David Cameron's judgement". Now place that next to Ed Miliband's judgement in making Phil Woolas his shadow immigration minister, and one can see just how obviously this is a diversionary tactic. Note that Red Ed himself didn't dare make such a comment and has remained silent, and for the second time in as many days it was Harman who made the statement to the media.
As always, the clues to the motivation behind such media-based stories are there for anyone who looks with just a little extra attention!
Back with Woolas for a moment: it is notable how differently he has been treated by Ed Miliband and other senior Labour party people, as a Miliband shadow cabinet appointee, compared to how they have dealt with Ken Livingstone who has broken the party's rules by supporting a non-Labour candidate in the recent Tower Hamlets mayoral election.
According to those rules, he should have been expelled from the Labour Party; but Labour has no credible alternative to put up against Boris for the London mayoral election in 2012. Therefore they have again made it "one rule for some, another for others" as they have done before, e.g. selecting Jack Dromey (Harriet Harman's other half) for a seat that was to be selected from an all-female short list.
Martin Bright has spotted the Woolas/Livingstone anomaly; and now we can also see just how inappropriate it is for Ms Harman to be making such statements as this one about Cameron's judgement. Tory Bear has noted Labour's Tom Watson's attempts to associate smearing with the current Downing Street set-up, responding with this tweet:
"To hear @tom_watson talk about smears and No10 is like asking [Harold] Shipman about care for the old. Bare faced lie when he said it wasn't political"Tom Watson is of course known to have been associated with the Derek Draper/Damian McBride/Ed Balls/Kevin Maguire "smear unit" that was such a scandal a year or so ago, as well as doing very well from "Smeargate" financially.
It's a cracker!
Well, certainly a firecracker, as Richard Littlejohn writes in his usual uncompromising style column about the "nasty little country" that Britain became during the Labour years, the main story relating to a 2004 Act of Parliament concerning fireworks.
The tale of a "ratting-on-your-neighbours hotline", what looks like it could well have been a neighbour with whom the victim had already had a dispute, and police who were perfectly prepared to spend time and effort on a trivial matter while real criminals go uncaught, is so characteristic of many I have read about all over the on-line community.
Traditional media, bloggers, social networking, the bloke in the pub - you name it, I've probably had at least one real-life experience recounted that is in the same general category as the Littlejohn-reported fireworks one.
It will take a long, long time to unravel all the bad stuff that Labour built into our nation's legislature and procedures, and the police are almost certainly as riddled with Common Purpose and other such subversives as the rest of the public sector has become, so I don't expect to be able to trust the police again for many years to come.
Until that time, and even beyond, we need the Littlejohns of this world to keep reporting such incidents and reminding us of what is still going on in this "nasty little country" as he puts it - Labour's legacy Britain.
The tale of a "ratting-on-your-neighbours hotline", what looks like it could well have been a neighbour with whom the victim had already had a dispute, and police who were perfectly prepared to spend time and effort on a trivial matter while real criminals go uncaught, is so characteristic of many I have read about all over the on-line community.
Traditional media, bloggers, social networking, the bloke in the pub - you name it, I've probably had at least one real-life experience recounted that is in the same general category as the Littlejohn-reported fireworks one.
It will take a long, long time to unravel all the bad stuff that Labour built into our nation's legislature and procedures, and the police are almost certainly as riddled with Common Purpose and other such subversives as the rest of the public sector has become, so I don't expect to be able to trust the police again for many years to come.
Until that time, and even beyond, we need the Littlejohns of this world to keep reporting such incidents and reminding us of what is still going on in this "nasty little country" as he puts it - Labour's legacy Britain.
Friday, 22 October 2010
Spending Review - the response
What has happened in much of the national media since the Comprehensive Spending Review statement and debate on Wednesday has been predictable.
Labour have condemned the public spending reductions, conveniently forgetting who it was who created the current mess and what their own stated plans were. Many of them do not even understand the way public finances work: not only Alan Johnson (the shadow chancellor) but also Andy Burnham has come unstuck in being shown not to understand the difference between debt and deficit, let alone grasping the nature of a structural deficit and the fact that this doesn't diminish during periods of growth.
The BBC and the obvious left/Labour-supporting national newspapers slanted their reporting as expected, making all manner of wild claims, even contradicting each other. For example, one of them claimed that "the poorest" would be hardest hit whereas another was convinced it would be "the squeezed middle" of society to bear the brunt. Even the dreaded Polly Toynbee was rather put on the spot on the BBC's Question Time that began an hour or so ago as I write this, and was uncharacteristically quiet in between her turns to speak, on nearly every such occasion.
That was a very interesting QT, coming from Labour heartlands and with an audience that David Dimbleby for once openly admitted was made up of public sector employees and the like (it always is: they bus them in from other areas, just as they admitted doing on this occasion). Despite all of this and the obvious "planted" questions and the inevitable pre-planned ambush for the Conservative on the panel, it didn't really work all that powerfully, and was if anything quite a lot tamer than other QTs in recent weeks.
As usual I kept an eye on the Biased-BBC Live Blog; and these are interesting to look back on for the comments that contributors made. Perhaps I might join in myself one of these weeks!
This media bias does work, of course: if it didn't those behind it would be trying something that did work instead. Tonight's YouGov poll - the first since the CSR - has voting intention figures of 41% (Con), 40% (Lab), 10% (Lib Dem); and government approval of minus five percent. The Labour figure has been consistently close to the Conservative figure for weeks, and it really doesn't warrant it/ Are people in the country so stupid? Surely they can't be!
Update: if such people were to read this, they should understand the truth far better, twenty times over.
Labour have condemned the public spending reductions, conveniently forgetting who it was who created the current mess and what their own stated plans were. Many of them do not even understand the way public finances work: not only Alan Johnson (the shadow chancellor) but also Andy Burnham has come unstuck in being shown not to understand the difference between debt and deficit, let alone grasping the nature of a structural deficit and the fact that this doesn't diminish during periods of growth.
The BBC and the obvious left/Labour-supporting national newspapers slanted their reporting as expected, making all manner of wild claims, even contradicting each other. For example, one of them claimed that "the poorest" would be hardest hit whereas another was convinced it would be "the squeezed middle" of society to bear the brunt. Even the dreaded Polly Toynbee was rather put on the spot on the BBC's Question Time that began an hour or so ago as I write this, and was uncharacteristically quiet in between her turns to speak, on nearly every such occasion.
That was a very interesting QT, coming from Labour heartlands and with an audience that David Dimbleby for once openly admitted was made up of public sector employees and the like (it always is: they bus them in from other areas, just as they admitted doing on this occasion). Despite all of this and the obvious "planted" questions and the inevitable pre-planned ambush for the Conservative on the panel, it didn't really work all that powerfully, and was if anything quite a lot tamer than other QTs in recent weeks.
As usual I kept an eye on the Biased-BBC Live Blog; and these are interesting to look back on for the comments that contributors made. Perhaps I might join in myself one of these weeks!
This media bias does work, of course: if it didn't those behind it would be trying something that did work instead. Tonight's YouGov poll - the first since the CSR - has voting intention figures of 41% (Con), 40% (Lab), 10% (Lib Dem); and government approval of minus five percent. The Labour figure has been consistently close to the Conservative figure for weeks, and it really doesn't warrant it/ Are people in the country so stupid? Surely they can't be!
Update: if such people were to read this, they should understand the truth far better, twenty times over.
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Politics Home
Although it can be a useful enough resource, if used cautiously, there is a strong leftward emphasis at Politics Home. This manifests itself in the way a lot of their articles are presented (one might almost say slanted), the sometimes rather odd nature of their own polling, and the now hand-picked "Phi wire" links running across the top.
I was alerted to all this by what I have read on a few other blogs during the past year or so, and the last of the above features is perhaps the most interesting. When the feed was from the "top 100 blogs" there was no further control over what was being linked to. Now there is that editorial control, and someone there can opt to allow a link or not. This leads to distinctly lop-sided results. For one simple example: only occasionally does any of top political blogger Iain Dale's posts get linked. Most do not. Why?
Only the five latest five thus selected links appear on the public "Phi Wire" nowadays, and this, funnily enough, makes it easier to see the site editor's intentions in the way they select posts. One can look for the political direction of each linked post, in some of which instances is obvious from the edge colour shown there, though not all (e.g. the media links) are thus colour-coded. We all know which papers have what slant, though, don't we?
By watching throughout the day, one can easily see a pattern. Of the five latest selection, there will almost always be a majority that are from the political left: 3 to 2, 4 to 1, occasionally all five will be from the left. The most-covered newspaper is the Guardian, by a long way. There is rarely, if ever, anything from the Mail ot the Sun, but plenty from the Mirror. The other papers (and bloggers) are still putting out as much, equally good, material as ever, as is easy to spot-check at those media websites at any time. I have done so myself on a number of occasions.
During the Labour conference last week, the pattern was the same, and during this week's Conservative conference, it's still that way round, more often than not critical of the Tories' policies being announced there. It was just the same before the election, by the way, so that isn't anything to do with it either (i.e. which party is/was in government).
Thus the only consistency is in the "Phi Wire" editor/selector's bias, and it becomes very obvious if one watches the feed. I might spend a day logging every single link and listing them here, with times, all colour-coded, after the conference season has ended. I think that would be an illuminating exercise!
I was alerted to all this by what I have read on a few other blogs during the past year or so, and the last of the above features is perhaps the most interesting. When the feed was from the "top 100 blogs" there was no further control over what was being linked to. Now there is that editorial control, and someone there can opt to allow a link or not. This leads to distinctly lop-sided results. For one simple example: only occasionally does any of top political blogger Iain Dale's posts get linked. Most do not. Why?
Only the five latest five thus selected links appear on the public "Phi Wire" nowadays, and this, funnily enough, makes it easier to see the site editor's intentions in the way they select posts. One can look for the political direction of each linked post, in some of which instances is obvious from the edge colour shown there, though not all (e.g. the media links) are thus colour-coded. We all know which papers have what slant, though, don't we?
By watching throughout the day, one can easily see a pattern. Of the five latest selection, there will almost always be a majority that are from the political left: 3 to 2, 4 to 1, occasionally all five will be from the left. The most-covered newspaper is the Guardian, by a long way. There is rarely, if ever, anything from the Mail ot the Sun, but plenty from the Mirror. The other papers (and bloggers) are still putting out as much, equally good, material as ever, as is easy to spot-check at those media websites at any time. I have done so myself on a number of occasions.
During the Labour conference last week, the pattern was the same, and during this week's Conservative conference, it's still that way round, more often than not critical of the Tories' policies being announced there. It was just the same before the election, by the way, so that isn't anything to do with it either (i.e. which party is/was in government).
Thus the only consistency is in the "Phi Wire" editor/selector's bias, and it becomes very obvious if one watches the feed. I might spend a day logging every single link and listing them here, with times, all colour-coded, after the conference season has ended. I think that would be an illuminating exercise!
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