[Cyclist]

I'm surprised to see our esteemed Culture Secretary hasn't already got his own place.


A Twat speKEs his BraNeS

Removal of advertising from GB News ‘shows democracy being undermined’

Oliver Dowden has warned that basic democratic values can no longer be taken for granted.


Democracy in the UK is being undermined by a “small but vocal minority”, the Culture Secretary has said after multiple brands pulled advertising from GB News

Oliver Dowden has warned that basic democratic values can no longer be taken for granted after the upstart channel saw the withdrawal of advertising from companies such as Ikea, cider firm Kopparberg and Octopus Energy...


...“Across the West, our values of tolerance and freedom of expression increasingly risk being undermined by a small but vocal minority.”

GB News has faced accusations it will be broadcasting US-style partisan news shows in the UK, and campaign group Stop Funding Hate challenged advertisers on social media...


...Mr Dowden said the channel seeks to “empower” those who feel their “concerns have been unheard”.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gb-n ... 41556.html

Where do you start with this load of old bollocks?

[RedSparrows]

Still waiting for the explanation of how telling charities like the National Trust what they can explore/examine at their properties doesn't contradict telling universities they must protect free speech from the all-pervasive woke crowd.

Whilst also really telling unis what they should or should not teach.

[Andy McDandy]

Oh no, it's a consistent position. It's "nice organisation you've got here, shame if any funding were to be cut".

[Bones McCoy]

These cunts see Free speech as a one-way street.

Some are sop entitled to be horrified that others have different opinions.
Others simply see themselves as all that is right and good, and anybody disagreeing is a wrong-un: Except useful idiots like George Galloway, Kate Hooey and (((Dan Hodges))).

[Nigredo]

He's trying to get in on that culture war grift, nobody will remember him sitting on his thumbs whilst the majority of the nation's independent music venues and theatres were circling the drain (such activities are only for snooty metropolitan liberal elites after all) but they will remember Dowden sticking up for Olly Stone's frozen peaches or for implying Marcus Rashford is a radical extremist for taking a knee before football kick offs.

Our own flavour of Trumpism basically, with racists being emboldened, aided and abetted by the establishment.

[RedSparrows]

Well said, Oblomov. Art, music, design and literature can all get fucked so long as the base are spitting furious.

[Andy McDandy]

Well, we've got the X Factor, so who needs to go to gigs? Students and hippies, that's who. And as long as we chuck out a film about the royals, a sitcom spin-off, or a Churchill biopic every now and again that's our glorious film industry saved.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Remember the ministry in Nineteen eighty-four that turned out trashy porn and sentimental songs for the proles?

Tory culture for the non-U.

[mattomac]

Wasn’t his reaction to the crown much the same.

He was out last week dismissing the knee on the same day as sticking up for Ollie Robinson over his historical tweets.

He is of course the guy who stood still when Cheltenham went ahead and the fans from Spain rocked up into Liverpool, he stood so still that it was the FA who pulled the leagues not the Government allowing none league to continue that Saturday.

He is an absolute cunt and he is another with deaths on his hands.

[davidjay]

This is the world we voted for - no convention, no procedure, no traditionally independent body, is free of interference and influence from a government driven by cronyism and corruption.

[Cyclist]

Goodbye fair, balanced and objective news reporting. Gammon TV is here to stay.

Sir David Attenborough has warned that the government is pursuing “short-sighted political and financial attacks” on the UK’s television networks, as ministers prepare to announce plans to privatise Channel 4...

...Dowden is expected to unveil plans for Channel 4’s future on Wednesday, amid heavy speculation that he will propose privatising the broadcaster, whose news output has long angered some in the government.

It comes amid an upheaval in the broadcasting sector which has found itself in the middle of a government-backed culture war, with ministers strongly defending the new right-of-centre GB News at the same time as the BBC comes regularly under attack...


https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... v-networks

[Nigredo]

Does this mean government ministers will actually start appearing on C4 News now?

[davidjay]

Does this mean government ministers will actually start appearing on C4 News now?

We used to have a "Questions to which the answer is No" section.
.

[Nigredo]

Wasn't sure where to put this so apologies if in the wrong place as it isn't really tied into Oliver Dowden.

I met an interesting chap last night. He was a rugby-playing bartender from Romford and I lazily write him off as a boorish Brexit headbanger.

Not so. Turns out he was actually a lefty arty creative who'd lived abroad for 4 years and he was an extra on HBO dramas (though his scene got cut), and had a wealth of film and TV knowledge. And being involved in the arts let him explore other perspectives and circumstances and lifted the mask on the bullshit of the British "stiff upper lip" that caused both his dad and grandad to suppress their emotional traumas until it manifested itself in verbal and physical abuse.

Interesting bloke and it's a shame he's only in town for a few more weeks.

So obviously there's a lot to be said about my awful prejudices but also (hopefully) even more to be said about the arts creating empathy and alternate perspectives and understanding. No wonder the Conservatives want to control it and the humanities.

[Youngian]

Remember the ministry in Nineteen eighty-four that turned out trashy porn and sentimental songs for the proles?

Tory culture for the non-U.

One of the weakest concepts in the novel which smacks of a sniffy intellectual at a loss as to why more people read Jane comic strips in the Daily Mirror than Homage to Catalonia. The concept is still in currency; the numbskull public too brainwashed by Love Island and X Factor to notice the brilliance of Jeremy Corbyn.

[Boiler]

[mattomac]

Have they got a candidate? Or are they running the leaflet?

[Yug]

Time to resurrect this one for the Wrong Dishonourable Deputy PM.

[Youngian]

Can’t pick up anything from Dowden, what’s his motivation, is he mean or kind, has he a sense of humour or any hinterlands? A scary walking mannequin.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Dowden actually doing PMQs. Did they have to fiddle with the gravity in the chamber to stop him floating off like Angel Delight in the old advert?

Rayner attacks Tories over lost £21bn of taxpayers' money as Dowden says Britain 'cannot afford Labour'
Rayner says a public accounts committee report this week says £21bn of taxpayers’ money has been lost.

Dowden says the government is trying to recover that money. Labour plans a £28bn spending spree that would add £1,000 to everyone’s mortages, he says. He says Britain cannot afford Labour.

The Labour money he's talking about is for green investment. As with the Dale Vince stuff, good luck with convincing people that this is a disastrous policy..