[The Weeping Angel]

The allegation is that the media have published stories which are untrue. That allegation is unfounded if those stories are actually true.

Unfortunetly they're true

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Pan on a pushbike the Guardian doesn't half publish some shite sometimes.
Especially when penned by this unflushed Corbynite turd.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... mer-unions

To understand how Keir Starmer’s team sees class, it helps to know a story. It’s told by his head of strategy, Deborah Mattinson, about a series of her own focus groups. She asked people to bring in a symbol of their social status, and started with those who called themselves middle class. At the first session, an overwhelming majority turned up with the exact same item. What do you think it was: a graduation photo? Keys to their Audi? A prize bit of home decor?

Wrong. Five out of the eight chose a cafetiere, while a sixth person waved Twinings Earl Grey teabags. The indiscreet charm of the British bourgeoisie clearly lay in its hot beverages.

It gets worse

Pride. Respect. Work. In many ways, Keir Starmer is as class-conscious as John McDonnell – but Starmer’s are class politics as marketing strategy, a self-consciously sheepish roll call of buzzwords and symbols. It is part and parcel of how the international socialist now wraps himself in the union flag, or the party’s new membership cards are stamped Putting the Country First (a move spotted by none other than the leader of far-right party Britain First). No gesture can be too forced, no flagpole can go unmolested. If the focus groups showed that working-class men tattooed “MUM” on their chests, the KC would doubtless be off like a shot to the nearest ink parlour.

Starmer did an event sponsored by a buy-now-pay-later lender, while Peter Mandelson appeared on a panel discussion sponsored by Amazon. The former leader of Scottish Labour hailed the arrival of the “first private sector government in Labour’s history”. This isn’t just the canapes talking: it is a deliberate dragging backwards of the relationship between the party of labour and big corporations. The ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband made the case that businesses that dodged tax or underpaid staff or hacked phones could not be considered good businesses. But now Labour’s outriders claim it is “the party for all businesses”. Welcome, predators!

With friends like these...

[Andy McDandy]

On the one level, what the fuck?

On another level, why not a cafetiere or some teabags? It's not particularly personal, you wouldn't mind showing it to strangers, it doesn't get the dirty giggle a bunch of car keys do, what's his problem?

On a third, while he recognises that class isn't simply a case of working with your hands/at a desk, he immediately falls back on the cliches.

And finally, he's avoiding the fact that for all of their economic brilliance, not many people who mattered (and yes, in our style of democracy, all votes are not equal, this is imperfect reality) wanted Corbyn/McDonnell in power. Yes, the current situation is shit, but that doesn't mean people are crying out for Year Zero.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband made the case that businesses that dodged tax or underpaid staff or hacked phones could not be considered good businesses. But now Labour’s outriders claim it is “the party for all businesses”. Welcome, predators!

That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?

You might as well claim that Labour is saying fraud and corporate manslaughter is OK because "all".

[davidjay]

The flag thing - Denis Healey nailed it decades ago. The unit of British loyalty isn't to their class, it's to the country. The left have always had a problem understanding that.

[Youngian]

The flag thing - Denis Healey nailed it decades ago. The unit of British loyalty isn't to their class, it's to the country. The left have always had a problem understanding that.

It’s Labour’s job to make sure voters see where loyalties of the Tories and their bankrollers lie. Follow the money and it’s Belize, Cayman Islands and Dubai.

[Youngian]

Unlucky anti racist cartoonist Steve Bell has been smeared yet again with antisemitic allegations. He’s almost Tracy Ullman’s satirical cartoonish portrayal of Corbyn.

The Guardian has apparently declined to publish a depiction of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu by cartoonist Steve Bell, reportedly telling him the artwork perpetuated an anti-Semitic trope.

The cartoon depicts Netanyahu preparing to cut a Gaza-shaped hole in his own abdomen with a scalpel.

Bell posted the blocked cartoon to Twitter/X on Monday, saying that after he filed it that morning he received a “cryptic message” from Guardian editors saying: “pound of flesh”.

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice the antagonist, Jewish moneylender Shylock, demands “a pound of flesh” as security for a loan made to his Christian rival, Antonio.

https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/n ... netanyahu/

Bell feels the need to reference an obscure explanatory caveat for the cartoon

[Abernathy]

Here’s Tim Fenton’s take :

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2023/1 ... wh2S3GQZxc

[The Weeping Angel]

Including this fuckwit

Anonymous said...
Well, here we are: worse, worserer and going to get even worserer. As forecast.

There was no "mistake". Viner and co, stopped, thought about it.... and sacked Bell anyway. That milquetoast rag will never be any different.

Whenever a political issue reaches a crunch point it can always be found under the nearest stone with its right wing pals. Peddling lies about Jeremy Corbyn was merely typical. A thoroughly disgusting hypocritical propaganda worm. House "news" bulletin for the Micawber Tendency. Always was, always will be.

See details in Capitalism's Conscience: 200 Years of the Guardian edited by Des Freedman (Pluto Press 2021).

[Tubby Isaacs]

Good thread here. Why on earth does the Guardian get people who know nothing about a subject (in this case, Poland) to write about it? Will Hutton has been around forever. Maybe this stuff was acceptable in his heyday. It isn't now.

[Boiler]

See also: Adrian Chiles.

I blame Viner.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Guardian has an excellent rolling news blog and its heart is in the right place. Apart from that though...

[kreuzberger]

Travel and Food - both excellent.

And then there's Marina-na-na-na-na-nah...

[Youngian]

Good thread here. Why on earth does the Guardian get people who know nothing about a subject (in this case, Poland) to write about it? Will Hutton has been around forever. Maybe this stuff was acceptable in his heyday. It isn't now.

Brexit did make a guest appearance in the election. Listening to Nick Robinson interviewing Radek Sikorsky who was in the Tory Bullingdon circle at Oxford while exiled from Poland. He admitted he was a Eurosceptic back then because he believed the lies in the British press about Brussels. It inspired him on how to deal with the supine propaganda media in his own country in this election which had become just the same as the British press. The diplomatic former FS refused to be drawn on what he now thinks about his old pal Boris. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p ... 0632685936

[mattomac]

John Crace and Marina Hyde are the two things I read from it now.

[The Weeping Angel]

Lordy

They're not going to make a movie or miniseries over George Monbiot's columns

[Andy McDandy]

Their lifestyle pieces have already had a go at this:

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Shouldn't that read 'Morden Wank'?

[The Weeping Angel]

[Abernathy]

Well, quite. The sole reason why I still won’t respond positively to the Graun’s regular entreaties for my cash.