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UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.

J

JonathanEx

Member
I worry Warsi might survive this.

In that she's stupid and needs to go for anything, but she's so stupid she might think by going "oh it was a mistake" that makes it fine. She's a Lord and unelected, so doesn't need to worry what constituents think, just has to worry she doesn't get a big punishment.
 
PJV3

PJV3

Member
JonathanEx said:
I worry Warsi might survive this.

In that she's stupid and needs to go for anything, but she's so stupid she might think by going "oh it was a mistake" that makes it fine. She's a Lord and unelected, so doesn't need to worry what constituents think, just has to worry she doesn't get a big punishment.
Click to expand...

Besides the fact that she is an utter Gobshite, i quite enjoy her being around. She shows how low the benchmark to be in a position of power is. The tory grassroots hate her so that's another feather in her cap.
 
D

Dambrosi

Banned
PJV3 said:
Besides the fact that she is an utter Gobshite, i quite enjoy her being around. She shows how low the benchmark to be in a position of power is. The tory grassroots hate her so that's another feather in her cap.
Click to expand...
Everybody with a brain hates her. Are you grouping the Tory backbenches with people who have brains? :p
 
J

Jackpot

Banned
Hope this snowballs into something. Senior NotW journalist says reporters were ordered to dig up dirt on politicians investigating the hacking scandal in order to blackmail them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...ed-to-blackmail-select-committee-7792687.html

and in other news one of Boris's advisers tried to use pressure to intimidate the BBC over it's mayoral election coverage. Because a free press is so "statist, leftist, elitist and corporatist".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/27/guto-harri-press-campaign-against-bbc
 
U

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
I don't think there is anybody I hate more than Tony Blair. The smarmiest of shits.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Did everyone catch this masterpiece on Twitter a while back?

https://twitter.com/beaubodor/status/182576385238384640

Spelling error repeated three times on Independent front page: http://twitpic.com/8zgzu2
Click to expand...

543308906.jpg
 
D

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
I can't bear to see Blair's face or hear his voice so I hope someone posts a summary of what he says here.

I imagine it will be something like 'a load of bullshit'.
 
W

War Peaceman

You're a big guy.
"My absolute priority is to win. I know it sounds unprincipled but I believe it's my role in life."

...

"Yep, sounds like something I would have said,"
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
DECK'ARD said:
I can't bear to see Blair's face or hear his voice so I hope someone posts a summary of what he says here.

I imagine it will be something like 'a load of bullshit'.
Click to expand...

There are a lot of people sending things in to the BBC along the same lines as your post... I hope the people in the room have more sense to look past their own blind hatred and hear what he has to say. It might have only revealed what we suspected all along so far, but he's been the most interesting speaker at Leveson for weeks!

He puts the current lot to complete and utter shame as an orator.
 
D

Deadman

Member
Haha did anyone just see what happened? A guy just ran in to the court and started shouting at blair things about iraq, jp morgan, war crimes etc
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
Another sad show of security at these things. Some hippy can get in the room where a former PM is sitting, and people can put a pie in Murdochs face... I mean, its great in the sense that these people hopefully slightly poo themselves and feel less untouchable... but at the same time, its stupid, and the guy who just ran in is stupid.

Blair had the misfortune to be a sitting PM while George W Bush and his neocon warmonger friends were in power. I've no doubt people believe he's a war criminal, but there is no hypothetical situation in which the tories wouldn't have done exactly the same things. Being in power at the same time as GWB is the largest determinate factor behind his now huge unpopularity... the economy or some other scandal might have gotten to him eventually, but its hard to see how he would have become this unpopular otherwise.
 
CHEEZMO™

CHEEZMO™

Obsidian fan
I have the bestworst timing. Was woken by a phone call, immedately after hanging up I reached over and turned on my telly and then lied back down and closed my eyes. Literally the first thing I heard was a commotion - knowing I was tuned to BBC News I knew something was up, so I opened my eyes and saw this guy getting hauled away shouting. Even look in the corner to check what I was seeing was live.

Wouldn't have known anything if my telly was on mute.
 
D

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
radioheadrule83 said:
Another sad show of security at these things. Some hippy can get in the room where a former PM is sitting, and people can put a pie in Murdochs face... I mean, its great in the sense that these people hopefully slightly poo themselves and feel less untouchable... but at the same time, its stupid, and the guy who just ran in is stupid.

Blair had the misfortune to be a sitting PM while George W Bush and his neocon warmonger friends were in power. I've no doubt people believe he's a war criminal, but there is no hypothetical situation in which the tories wouldn't have done exactly the same things. Being in power at the same time as GWB is the largest determinate factor behind his now huge unpopularity... the economy or some other scandal might have gotten to him eventually, but its hard to see how he would have become this unpopular otherwise.
Click to expand...

Blair totally lost the plot, believed he was doing God's work, and was basically deluded about most things. Especially his judgement and that of others. Power, promising all things to all people, and above all a fixation with Thatcher and wanting his name to be in the history books like her with his war, all went to his head. Not saying things would have turned out much different with anyone else, but he was hardly a good PM to have in that situation.

And yes he's a good orator, most mad people are because they totally believe whatever comes out of their mouth.

The Blair years were like having a stage magician leading the country.
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
DECK'ARD said:
Blair totally lost the plot, believed he was doing God's work, and was basically deluded about most things. Especially his judgement and that of others. Power, promising all things to all people, and above all a fixation with Thatcher and wanting his name to be in the history books like her with his war, all went to his head. Not saying things would have turned out much different with anyone else, but he was hardly a good PM to have in that situation.

And yes he's a good orator, most mad people are because they totally believe whatever comes out of their mouth.
Click to expand...

He's a smart man, I don't believe he believes it was God's work - I think he was sending that message out to our own nutty Judeo-Christians, as well as those on the other side of the Atlantic, in justification and support of what he and GWB had done -- not just to keep them on side, but also so he'd have a captive audience for his little lecture tour he did a while back.

I think he knew that unilateral war was a vote loser, and I'm certain he knows it now - but he gambled on the Atlantic alliance being more valuable than the European one. He met Clinton repeatedly for advice and Clinton wrote this op-ed for the Guardian asking Labour MPs and the public to trust his judgement. Ultimately, I think we softened the diplomatic fallout that the US would have endured by going in without us, because we thought that would be the 'best' thing to do in the circumstances. In 50 years, we'll probably learn that we were promised things, material benefits, for going along with it. I don't think that it was the right thing to do, but the US hawks were going in, and all our efforts to keep the US working within the UN achieved was a televised statement from Jaques Chirac saying he would never support further resolutions that authorised war... the French, Germans and Russians weren't exactly clean or trustworthy at the time, each of them were knee deep in contracts with the ba'athists.

All the shit about legacy is tabloid narrative imo. The papers and the public are so keen to believe things like that, but I don't believe it would have been so simple. Civil servants and generals don't stand idly by and let a PM drag them into a war to further his own legacy, there was ambivilance about it from the beginning and tacit support in some quarters...

I find it interesting that the anti-war protestors outside are also tying Afghanistan to him as though he did something wrong there... again, I think that's just wilfully blind hatred compromising what they are trying to do. At the time, NATO action was unquestioned. We'd just had 9/11 and an attack on one is an attack on all... Tony Blair was supposed to not go into Afghanistan when every other NATO power did?
 
D

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
radioheadrule83 said:
He's a smart man, I don't believe he believes it was God's work - I think he was sending that message out to our own nutty Judeo-Christians, as well as those on the other side of the Atlantic, in justification and support of what he and GWB had done -- not just to keep them on side, but also so he'd have a captive audience for his little lecture tour he did a while back.

I think he knew that unilateral war was a vote loser, and I'm certain he knows it now - but he gambled on the Atlantic alliance being more valuable than the European one. He met Clinton repeatedly for advice and Clinton wrote this op-ed for the Guardian asking Labour MPs and the public to trust his judgement. Ultimately, I think we softened the diplomatic fallout that the US would have caused by going in without us because we thought that would be the 'best' thing to do in the circumstances. In 50 years, we'll probably learn that we were promised things, material benefits, for going along with it. I don't think that it was the right thing to do, but the US hawks were going in, and all our efforts at the UN brought was a televised statement from Jaques Chirac saying he would support no further resolution that authorised war... the French, Germans and Russians weren't exactly clean or trustworthy at the time, each of them were knee deep in contracts with the ba'athists.

All the shit about legacy is tabloid narrative imo. The papers and the public are so keen to believe things like that, but I don't believe it would have been so simple. Civil servants and generals don't stand idly by and let a PM drag them into a war to further his own legacy, there was ambivilance about it from the beginning and tacit support in some quarters...

I find it interesting that the anti-war protestors outside are also tying Afghanistan to him as though he did something wrong there... again, I think that's just wilfully blind hatred compromising what they are trying to do. At the time, NATO action was unquestioned. We'd just had 9/11 and an attack on one is an attack on all... Tony Blair was supposed to not go into Afghanistan when every other NATO power did?
Click to expand...

The God stuff didn't come out till a lot later, that was his own personal justification for the decisions he was taking and the very serious consequences of them.

He's a clever man, but clever men are also highly prone to losing the plot. You had irrational decision making at the highest level, that filters down, muddies the water, and as everyone acknowledges Blair is very convincing. He had an inner justification that didn't need to be supported in the way it should have been, and it affected everything. His judgement was wrong, the public and MP's were misled as a result, and it's something he still refuses to acknowledge.

His cross to bear, it will always be with him, and rightly so.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/educatio...hy-do-some-people-hate-Jews-in-GCSE-exam.html

Bizarro questions from AQA but this bit caught my eye:

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, branded the move “insensitive”.

He told The Jewish Chronicle: “To suggest that anti-Semitism can ever be explained, rather than condemned, is insensitive and, frankly, bizarre. AQA needs to explain how and why this question was included in an exam paper.”
Click to expand...

Kind of missing the point here I think. Understanding the cause for something (i.e. EXPLAINING it) is the first step to COMBATTING it.
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
godelsmetric said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/educatio...hy-do-some-people-hate-Jews-in-GCSE-exam.html

Bizarro questions from AQA but this bit caught my eye:

Kind of missing the point here I think. Understanding the cause for something (i.e. EXPLAINING it) is the first step to COMBATTING it.
Click to expand...

He's a blustering idiot and an ideologue, and he's getting a bit too down in the weeds for his role IMO...

It's as though he's distilled the Daily Mail mentality into pure form and lives by it now. NO! NO TALKING ABOUT IT! CONDEMN IT! I think you need to understand what something is and why some people might be driven to it if you want to condemn it at all. We don't combat racism by simply pointing at people and going "BAD! NAUGHTY!": We have been having adult discussions about racism and inclusivity for decades. In terms of History, its very important, I think - to understand what had happened in Germany during and following the first Great War, and why large swathes of people in Germany found it convenient to have a scapegoat... the political and historical context to something like Kristallnacht. Otherwise, it's like you're playing into this characature that people suddenly turn evil en masse. God forbid kids have knowledge about Israel and Palestine, the politics, geographical and religious elements involved, and how that might feed peoples' prejudice.
 
D

Dambrosi

Banned
smh @ Gove and Osbourne. Well, at least I didn't vote for them!

I do wonder if, through having to suffer five years of this bunch of incompetent ideologically-obsessive douchebags, we're being weaned into accepting a technocratic government imposed by the IMF like Greece's, just in case our economy tanks with the rest of Europe's and threatens to take the world's with it. Anything would be better than the current shower of shite at this rate. :p

Actually, I mostly wonder if our country will have any assets left to strip in three more years.
 
PJV3

PJV3

Member
Gove has been boring the Leveson enquiry into oblivion, he quotes ancient Latin phrases and responds in cliches. Apparently Dacre is the greatest editor of the modern age or something.

Nothing has been learnt besides the fact that Gove is an arse licking toad, and he should appear on just a minute.
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
Dacre, greatest editor?

He's good at what he does, I guess. He once instructed one of his writers to "make them laugh, make them cry or make them angry" - and that's what the Mail does everyday... with a heavy emphasis on trying to make people angry.

Unfortunately it seems to think the best way to do that is through bleating rants in support of family values that ultimately boil down to archaic patriarchy / sexism, and of course, their patented brand of xenophobic racism and fearmongering about the non-white, non-middle class.

I picked up a copy of the Mail someone had left on an airplane the other week, and on about page 4/5 there was an article about a black thug who was father to a million kids or something, and on the opposite page - to my horror - a story about this well off huntsman, middle aged and white of course, accused of rape - and the headline and general tone of the article came down in defence of the huntsman... it basically implied that the woman had probably given consent and could not be trusted, as her husband had turned up on the scene when she made the allegation. No attempt at impartiality whatsoever, the language was wholly sympathetic to the accused. It truly is a vile rag sometimes.
 
D

Dambrosi

Banned
Former Number 10 advisor and Murdoch stooge Andy Coulson detained by Glasgow Metropolitan Police on perjury charges over the evidence he gave as a witness in the Tommy Sheridan trial. Oops.

Hard to imagine Cam not getting some splash damage over this.

Oh, and GPs have voted to go on strike - not over the selling out of our NHS, but over new Coalition imposed conditions on their pension schemes, even though they'd already agreed new terms beforehand.

I'd type "Typical Tories", but at this point it seems almost meaningless.

EDIT: Are you kidding me? The first doctors' strike in almost 40 years and nobody's arsed? Are you all too busy putting out the bunting for the Jubilee street parties like the Mail told you to? Sheesh.
 
M

mclem

Member
Hunt appears to be unravelling at Leveson. Maybe I'm overreading it, but I'm not sure I see him lasting beyond the jubilee. Heck, if it wasn't *for* the jubilee, I'm not sure I'd see him lasting beyond the week.
 
G

Guerrillas in the Mist

Member
Dambrosi said:
Former Number 10 advisor and Murdoch stooge Andy Coulson detained by Glasgow Metropolitan Police on perjury charges over the evidence he gave as a witness in the Tommy Sheridan trial. Oops.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier. Tommy must have had some sort of release condition that involved not talking to the press, as he's been very quiet lately.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
In retrospect, it's now very obvious why Murdoch ordered the bid to be dropped as soon as the shit started hitting the fan.
 
M

mclem

Member
I do have to wonder if Osbourne will have to give evidence now given he's been associated with some of these texts.
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
I was late for work this morning because I was hypnotised watching Hunt...

"I did not interpret my role to mean all social relations were suspended with everyone associated with the bid"

errm... that's exactly how you should have interpreted it. You shouldn't have been put in charge of it in the first place.


Not only was he in contact with Michel and the Murdochs in an inappropriate way before all this kicked off, he ignored advice to refrain from external contact about the bid. On the day the Vince Cable revelations emerged, his behaviour does not to suggest to me he had his impartial head on... he basically said to Number 10 - "I'm worried we're fucking this up", and later that day he gets a text from Georgey Osborne saying "I hope you like the solution".

They are knee deep in this. There is no doubt in my mind they were acquiescing to the Murdochs until this scandal hit.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
radioheadrule83 said:
I was late for work this morning because I was hypnotised watching Hunt...

"I did not interpret my role to mean all social relations were suspended with everyone associated with the bid"

errm... that's exactly how you should have interpreted it. You shouldn't have been put in charge of it in the first place.
Click to expand...

Seriously. He should have treated it like jury duty. Still, no surprises to get this behaviour from a Tory (or a politician in general).
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
You know what's always been amazing and borderline offensive about this? The fact they took one man out of the job for being biased, and then instated another who was simply biased the other way. We all knew it at the time, his comments were already on record. I mean, you either have to be stupid to not have the forsight to see that this is what happens, OR you have to have an obscene amount of arrogance to believe that the people and the press will simply overlook it and let it go. This is clearly a case of the latter. Cameron / Osborne take us for chumps!
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Speaking from my own experience, a lot of people I know were pretty outraged that they were so barefaced about it at the time. After Hunt's hyperbolic comments about Sky being the reason why the world is jealous of British TV and his pathetically cronyish comments about how we need to support 'wealth creators' like the Murdochs instead of the BBC, virtually nobody I knew thought that he could be trusted to be impartial, though at the time we didn't quite suspect that he was also bezzies with Murdoch, just a slimy c***.
 
M

mclem

Member
The inquiry hears that Hunt's special adviser on the media, Sue Beeby, asked him whether he could give "our two favourite journalists" an exclusive.
Click to expand...

There now follows a brief and childish interlude where I get amused at the fact that Hunt's special advisor for the media is, apparently, CBeebies.
 
J

Jackpot

Banned
Louise Mensch has taken the Comical Ali role.

Mensch said:
@GeorgeMonbiot certainly at face value, because Jeremy is an honest man of total integrity, and no MP in the Commons wld suggest otherwise.
Click to expand...

Mensch said:
Hunt is a first rate minister who did nothing wrong.
Click to expand...

BBC said:
Conservative MP Louise Mensch tells BBC Radio 4 that there is no question whatsoever that Mr Hunt lied to parliament - "it's absolute complete and total rubbish".
Click to expand...

BBC said:
Ms Mensch says: "He has been completely exonerated today."
Click to expand...

Despicable woman with zero integrity.
 
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