UK - December 2019 General Election

[IsThisTheLife]

Dumb ****s.

 

[The Don]

Dumb ****s.

Referring to whom ?

If it's the Great British Public^TM then I tend to agree with you. They/We have fallen for a skilfully assembled and well executed set of propaganda points which were designed to hit specific buttons which are important to the British people.

• Portraying Jeremy Corbyn as antisemitic was important because we Brits don't want to appear prejudiced (actually being is a different matter - it appearances that matter
• The affable toff character played by Boris Johnson is a well-proven one
• Tell us that foreigners are to blame and we'll believe you
• Appeal to the Blitz (or Dunkirk) spirit and we'll put up with anything

 

[3point14]

You seem to be of the opinion that the Great British public would have made a fair and objective judgment of Johnson and Corbyn if only the Real Truth had been delivered by an objective and honest press.

But this is something that has never happened and never will. It presupposes that YOU know the real truth and the electorate don’t. Or that the electorate is a fair and impartial judge or that their values are aligned with yours.

Well, yeah. Cos you can compare actual quotes to what's reported. It's not hard.

And it suggests a monolithic press. But the fact is most of what I read was pretty scathing of Johnson, particularly his claims about the NHS on buses and numbers of hospitals built, and yes, his hiding from journalistic scrutiny, his stuffing a phone in his pocket when shown a child on a waiting room floor, his use of racial epithets, his number of children. This stuff came up all the time. The problem is many people didn’t care, just as so many people didn’t care about Donald Trump’s daily or hourly outrages. Seriously, it is not as if this was being kept from people.

And a lot of Corbyn’s problems were unforced errors - dithering on Brexit, history of meeting with the IRA and soft spots for anti-Israeli terrorist organizations, oh and homeopathy.

Nah! Corbyn was useless!

You've bought it hook, line and sinker. Well done.

 

[Darat]

Well, I'm so white it takes me three weeks of sunshine to get to 'pallid' and I don't have any way (unfortunately) to claim another passport, so I while I can't actually prove any of my ancestors hauled big stones around Salisbury Plain I think that if there's an 'ethnic Brit' I qualify, and for what it's worth I completely repudiate any idea that he(?) speaks for me. This whole 'Brexit' project is a massive con job on the British people, sadly it's a well funded and effective one.

I'm a blue eyed red head and two generations back all my family originate from the same place in North Wales. So I'd like to see these Anglo-Saxon invaders kicked out of my country and all these half breeds with their Roman DNA.

On a slightly more serious note, it is astonishing to think that people think Labour is neo-liberal. We had an actual neo-liberal government under Cameron and Clegg, they could work so well together because they were both neo-liberals. And Johnson is cut from the same cloth.

 

[3point14]

I'm a blue eyed red head and two generations back all my family originate from the same place in North Wales. So I'd like to see these Anglo-Saxon invaders kicked out of my country and all these half breeds with their Roman DNA.

On a slightly more serious note, it is astonishing to think that people think Labour is neo-liberal. We had an actual neo-liberal government under Cameron and Clegg, they could work so well together because they were both neo-liberals. And Johnson is cut from the same cloth.

It's almost like people are wildly misinformed. How on earth could that happen?

 

[Information Analyst]

The point is that ethnic Brits, almost everywhere they're still a majority, effectively told the neoliberals to take their pan-European socialist agenda, with its commensurate "wealth redistribution" among the member states, and shove it.

Racist bollocks.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

You seem to be of the opinion that the Great British public would have made a fair and objective judgment of Johnson and Corbyn if only the Real Truth had been delivered by an objective and honest press.

But this is something that has never happened and never will. It presupposes that YOU know the real truth and the electorate don’t. Or that the electorate is a fair and impartial judge or that their values are aligned with yours.

And it suggests a monolithic press. But the fact is most of what I read was pretty scathing of Johnson, particularly his claims about the NHS on buses and numbers of hospitals built, and yes, his hiding from journalistic scrutiny, his stuffing a phone in his pocket when shown a child on a waiting room floor, his use of racial epithets, his number of children. This stuff came up all the time. The problem is many people didn’t care, just as so many people didn’t care about Donald Trump’s daily or hourly outrages. Seriously, it is not as if this was being kept from people.

And a lot of Corbyn’s problems were unforced errors - dithering on Brexit, history of meeting with the IRA and soft spots for anti-Israeli terrorist organizations, oh and homeopathy.

Nah! Corbyn was useless!

Corbyn was useless, but so were May and Johnson. The media's coverage of Corbyn though has become a subject of academic study. This one's a bit old but coverage doesn't seem to have changed much-:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/Mainstream-Media-Representations-of-Jeremy-Corbyn.aspx

 

[P.J. Denyer]

On a slightly more serious note, it is astonishing to think that people think Labour is neo-liberal. We had an actual neo-liberal government under Cameron and Clegg, they could work so well together because they were both neo-liberals. And Johnson is cut from the same cloth.

I can't remember who wrote "We voted for social liberalism but got economic liberalism"

 

[Garrison]

Late on Friday night this decision was slipped out by the government:

UK approves £4bn US takeover of defence company Cobham

A government report found the merger caused some national security risks, but said on Friday concerns had been mitigated to an "acceptable level".
The founding family of the firm said the announcement on Friday evening was "cynically timed to avoid scrutiny".

The great UK clearance sale has begun!

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Late on Friday night this decision was slipped out by the government:

UK approves £4bn US takeover of defence company Cobham



The great UK clearance sale has begun!

Everything must go!

 

[Darat]

Everything must go!

What little we have left...

 

[GlennB]

Late on Friday night this decision was slipped out by the government:

UK approves £4bn US takeover of defence company Cobham

The great UK clearance sale has begun!

I hope somebody keeps a list. Next up, reneging on the promises made to our commercial fishers?

 

[angrysoba]

Well, yeah. Cos you can compare actual quotes to what's reported. It's not hard.




You've bought it hook, line and sinker. Well done.

Bought what? The Tory propaganda machine? Okay, tell me what I have read, where I have read it and how I bought it hook, line and sinker.

And then tell me where you found the true knowledge that enabled you to seen what the stupids couldn’t.

 

[catsmate]

Gammons.

With chips. And maybe an egg. But no pineapple.

 

[3point14]

Bought what? The Tory propaganda machine? Okay, tell me what I have read, where I have read it and how I bought it hook, line and sinker.

And then tell me where you found the true knowledge that enabled you to seen what the stupids couldn’t.

Start with post 1367 and the assessment of the London School of Economics.

Then find an article, any article, about the election from any of the major Tory newspapers. Compare the headline and tone of the piece with any actual quotes.


Then go and look at the reasons, some quoted in this thread, why people voted Tory and imagine how they've become that badly informed.


The Tories lie. They are led by a man who lies for money and they lie without shame and, most importantly, without being brought to account by the majority of the press. They've lied their way into office. The press corps let them.


Edit: My apologies, it was a lousy tone cos I'm pissed off with the whole damn thing. I didn't mean to sound like such a git.

 

[catsmate]

Dumb ****s.

Brexit supporters? Bigots? Racists? Stupid people?
But I repeat myself...

 

[Arcade22]

Corbyn was useless, but so were May and Johnson. The media's coverage of Corbyn though has become a subject of academic study. This one's a bit old but coverage doesn't seem to have changed much-:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/Mainstream-Media-Representations-of-Jeremy-Corbyn.aspx

Considering that Corbyn has been completely unrepentant about publicly praising and defending the IRA (notably he explicitly refused to specifically condemn the IRA bombing campaign, instead just condemning bombings in general), he totally deserves the negative coverage he received.

Note that the IRA is far from the only terrorist and militant insurgent group he's been overly sympathetic to. Likewise no one forced him to deliver an eulogy for Fidel Castro, as if he was some kind of freedom fighter (hint: Fidel Castro fought against freedom, not for it). That he often ends up in company with the likes of George Galloway and other authoritarian anti-liberal leftists is not just some strange coincidence. He even called Castro a "champion of social justice" for ***** sake!

 

[LondonJohn]

Everything must go!

Well, um, firstly, that takeover was arranged several months ago - it was held up while a detailed assessment was made around national security considerations. That decision (that the takeover was not a threat to national security) was made quite a few weeks ago, but had to be held back from announcement due to the pre-election purdah rules.

And secondly, the actual takeover itself had/has nothing whatsoever to do with the UK Government. Cobham is not, and has never been, a publicly-owned entity. The takeover was nothing more or less than one private company launching a takeover bid for a plc, and the shareholders of the plc (who do not include the government, remember) making their own decision about whether to accept the takeover offer. Cobham's shareholders (not the UK Government, remember.....) voted to accept the takeover offer a few months ago, but the deal was entirely subject to UK Government ratification.

The only way in which the UK Government was involved in this deal was on account of Cobham's involvement in extremely sensitive and secret defence systems. This resulted in a clause in Cobham's constitution that all corporate M&A activity must be subject to UK Government scrutiny and approval. And that's exactly what just happened.

Oh and I'm *surprised* that so many people apparently cannot see the opinions of the Cobham founding family for what they are. They've just lost the company they built. But purely on account of the fact that another company could make an offer to Cobham shareholders that was so much higher than Cobham's share price that the shareholders were persuaded to accept the offer. Perhaps the Cobham family should instead focus their reflection on just how/why the company was trading at such a discount to the offer price..........

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Start with post 1367 and the assessment of the London School of Economics.

Then find an article, any article, about the election from any of the major Tory newspapers. Compare the headline and tone of the piece with any actual quotes.


Then go and look at the reasons, some quoted in this thread, why people voted Tory and imagine how they've become that badly informed.


The Tories lie. They are led by a man who lies for money and they lie without shame and, most importantly, without being brought to account by the majority of the press. They've lied their way into office. The press corps let them.


Edit: My apologies, it was a lousy tone cos I'm pissed off with the whole damn thing. I didn't mean to sound like such a git.

How would doing that show that angrysoba had fallen for Tory propaganda?

 

[Planigale]

Start with post 1367 and the assessment of the London School of Economics.

Then find an article, any article, about the election from any of the major Tory newspapers. Compare the headline and tone of the piece with any actual quotes.


Then go and look at the reasons, some quoted in this thread, why people voted Tory and imagine how they've become that badly informed.


The Tories lie. They are led by a man who lies for money and they lie without shame and, most importantly, without being brought to account by the majority of the press. They've lied their way into office. The press corps let them.


Edit: My apologies, it was a lousy tone cos I'm pissed off with the whole damn thing. I didn't mean to sound like such a git.

The problem with Corbyn is that he failed to show popular leadership. The labour party were ineffective during the Brexit referendum, and their policy on Brexit was unclear in the election. I suspect part of the issue is that Corbyn was/is pro-Brexit. The Tory government was at least clear at the time of the referendum that the government supported remain. If the labour party had been able to come out in support of the then government on that one issue I think it would have changed the outcome.

The problem with this article is that we have no idea whether press coverage is worse for Corbyn than for Johnson, May, Cameron, Brown, Blair, or the other leaders of the opposition during this period. Certainly far more seemed to be said about Johnson's private life than Corbyn's. The Labour party certainly seemed to have far more policies than the Tories at the election, not necessarily a good thing. Some policies seemed weird like the free broadband for all by re-nationalising BT.