Brexit Thread III - How to instantly polarise your country without even trying

[EnglishEdward]

I find the paper copy of the guardian has unnecessarily long articles and so tend to read the paper copy of the '1'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_(newspaper)

https://inews.co.uk/

which is owned by Johnston Press

although it too suffers from guest Blairite speakers and resident hysterical remainers such
as Nick Clegg and Ian Birrell and often leaves it up to its readers to check basic facts.

I beieve that The Morning Star is the only left wing print newspaper in general circulation in the UK:

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/

It is also the only one that really puts forward the perspective of (trying to be organised labour in the UK), the trade unions.

 

[Arakhor]

'Hysterical' remainers, eh? Good to see that you're keeping a reasonable perspective on things.

 

[dutchfire]

A True Leftist™ paper would support, not investigate, Russian attempts to meddle in the UK's domestic politics in favour of Brexit.

 

[Hrothbern]

The Guardian was a Trust, and one meant to be managed by its employees who were eventually promoted to members of the trust. The trust was disbanded and it is now a company, with management gradually being taken from and appointed by outsiders. Notice the possible differences? Guess how Alex Graham (a TV producer) and Vivian Schiller (an american formerly from the NYT, NBC and twitter) got their places there, because I can't!

But I can give you a hint, from the few existing public records on the company. Among the 13 board members sit Neil Becket (chairman), CEO of Virgin Media Holdings, Ole Jacob Sunde, chairman of Formuesforvaltning AS (norwegian "wealth management"), and Anthony Salz, executive director of N. M. Rothschild & Sons (the infamous bank) and executive at Barclays. You can also make a guess at how these got in the board. Oh right, the Guardian sold most of its assets and put the money in a fund managed by bankers! Perhaps, just perhaps, they have a vested interest in the welfare of the City?

And I bet you did not knew about the change. The current management hides it as much as they can, you'll have no navigate through a few pages and past a declaration that they do" honest, fearless journalism free from commercial or political interference since our foundation in 1821" to discover that.

Now tell me Arakhor, is this what you believe to be the leftist newspaper of record in the UK?

yes
Just take them over with money... censor inconvenient info... plant misleading info.... but not too much in order to keep the customer profile intact for better efficiency of influencing.....
The journalist team in the sandwich between paying their mortgage and their career and ego on the one hand and their convictions on the other hand. The frog in the slowly heated water.

One of the fundamental rights modern democracies are imo missing, is the right for citizens to be properly informed.
Properly.... meaning enabling citizens to make up their minds to exercise their right to vote fed by proper information.
The freedom of press means only that the government is heavily restricted in interference... and NOT that the governmental interference was eliminated, and we still get misleading and no proper information.

The newspapers, that evolved parallel to the evolution of the enlightnment and democracies, also driven by the tech of the printing press, took care of that news & info & opinion feature.....
but because of their existence.... inhibited the coding of a fundamental right on proper information, although in the progress towards democracies, so many other fundamental rights were coded into the constitutions.
Here a nice article on that centuries long struggle: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...b5c-9807-8bcb031257ad/?utm_term=.48f7c97a537b

After a centuries long struggle with governments to get the freedom of press, after the revolution around 1900 where the income of advertisements could financially support a newspaper and journalists could free themselves from the traditional owners, from the control of rich or strong poltical groups, after a kind of summit with Watergate......
The drying up moneystream from advertisements and subscribers in our TV and digital world, has brought newspapers back to square 1, and again dependent on the rich and/or strong political groups.
If you want, as a full or part time journalist, to publish good info and opinions, you have to pass the censorship of these newspapers.... or own your own newspaper.

Going digital online does not reach the masses, because digital online is flooded with non-info and fake info. Both by happenstance as deliberately.
The instant culture of today, addicted to juicy bullet news, no help at all.
The strongly fragmented identity & bubble culture no help at all.
EDIT: here BTW from that very Guardian a nice article on the Chinese influencing incl the FFF strategy and the Flooding. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/16/how-china-censors-internet-information

Somehow I do not understand leftish movements.
If you started a hundred years back a new political party, the first thing you did was founding your own newspaper, to report your own info, to explain your own analysis on developments.
If you did that right, you could faciliate and finance a lot of party activities with the subscribers money.
How weak is the left currently that it cannot find the support by "the many" to finance that and get something of big enough scale size to have an impact ?
How weak are "the many" that they let themselves be toyed around like driftwood ?

 

[innonimatu]

I beieve that The Morning Star is the only left wing print newspaper in general circulation in the UK:

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/

It is also the only one that really puts forward the perspective of (trying to be organised labour in the UK), the trade unions.

Thanks, I did not knew of that one. I sometimes find good pieces in The Independent, only because they still keep around some old journalists who believe in moving around and checking their sources rather than being spoon-fed. Some very few, and I dunno how much longer.

The sad situation is that newspapers are, now more than ever, unprofitable. Their owners finance them to buy political influence. It has become normal and expected for them to exercise influence over content. Usually that was done through the editor, and sparingly. Now self-censorship is very much on everyone's minds: "the owners will only keep the paper afloat if we please them".

 

[innonimatu]

Somehow I do not understand leftish movements.
If you started a hundred years back a new political party, the first thing you did was founding your own newspaper, to report your own info, to explain your own analysis on developments.
If you did that right, you could faciliate and finance a lot of party activities with the subscribers money.

There are still old style leftist movements who operate newspapers, but I'm not sure they were ever profitable. Those usually only reach their own supporters, as a means to expand support they are not effective. As a means of fighting against the mainstream press serving interests that seek to weaken all opposition, they are invaluable!

How weak is the left currently that it cannot find the support by "the many" to finance that and get something of big enough scale size to have an impact ?
How weak are "the many" that they let themselves be toyed around like driftwood ?

The left was fragmented, starting in the 1960s, and then again in the early 1990s. That last decade was deadly to many "old-felt" (marxist) movements. A lot of people did thought it was the end of history at hand, and prosperity for all... when it turned out that it was an orgy of looting and debt build-up, as a prelude to the transfer of political power to the creditors and the wealthy, on a global scale... by then many old leftist movements had disbanded. The really commit leftists who believed capitalism was intrinsically evil had had to be replaced were dispirited. The opportunist politicans (for there are always these) had turned coat (thing the italian PCI for an extreme example) and carried the parties in the absence of strong opposition to their "new way". Blair's "third way" for a british example.

And those who wanted to weaken leftist movements found a winning strategy that just keeps on giving: identity politics. A rehash of divide and conquer. All they need is a few useful idiots, or sometimes useful opportunists, to keep it going, play the role of leaders of this and that faction (create those factions) and keep up distractions. This had been tested in the 60s, but back then people were too poor to fall for it en masse. Only in the wealthiest country (the US) did the 60s create a widespread wave of hedonism and fascination with the self. In other places that only caught the sons of the wealthy. It wasn't the students of Paris that scared the french government in 1968, it was the prospect of their protests serving as catalysts for a wider worker movement! Which the PCF threw its weight against, in a monumental strategic error. This too is what weakened the left: it could have advanced its agenda and failed to do it. That must have felt as a betrayal to supporters. No wonder then that people later started joining narrower causes, or abandoned leftist ideals altogether to focus on a selfish opportunism of making it on their own for their own.

What happened to the UK Labor Party during the 1980s? How did Tony Blair and his acolytes capture it? And the Conservatives, what happened after John Major? I believe that Thatcher's destruction of industries but especially her destruction of cooperatives played a role in weakening the Labour Party and opening a way for Blair to capture it. It dispirited many in the former industrial heartlands, and gave an illusion of wealth to others: a two-sided attack on Labour's traditional ideology. Dut I never followed british politics closely enough to have a good idea about how that happened.

 

[Kyriakos]

Right-wing dictator meets with general Pinochet

 

[Arakhor]

That's a very old joke!

 

[Lillefix]

That's a very old joke!

Made me laugh though.

 

[Kyriakos]

Are you referring to Varoufakis' Adults in the Room book?
https://www.amazon.com/Adults-Room-Battle-Europes-Establishment-ebook/dp/B01ICK4IWK

It gets some decent review here.
https://bostonreview.net/politics/j...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

It is also going to be made into a movie, by Costas Gavras (of various known films)

 

[Arakhor]

May has promised to fund the new £20bn birthday present for the NHS, partly with a "Brexit dividend". Either she's still counting on low-information voters prioritising lies over reality, but the £350m a week claim was already shown to be a gross exaggeration over two years ago, because once you deduct the UK's tax rebate and maintain the UK regional funding we'll no longer receive, there'll be a mere £171m or so remaining and that's if the economy doesn't decline any further and leave the supposed dividend buying even less.

Check out these three links from the New Statesman if you're interested in reading more about it.

 

[Ajidica]

May has promised to fund the new £20bn birthday present for the NHS, partly with a "Brexit dividend". Either she's still counting on low-information voters prioritising lies over reality, but the £350m a week claim was already shown to be a gross exaggeration over two years ago, because once you deduct the UK's tax rebate and maintain the UK regional funding we'll no longer receive, there'll be a mere £171m or so remaining and that's if the economy doesn't decline any further and leave the supposed dividend buying even less.

Check out these three links from the New Statesman if you're interested in reading more about it.

How does that work with the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish NHS? I thought that due to devolution funding and administration for the regional NHS was given to the regional governments and not Parliament.

 

[dutchfire]

May has promised to fund the new £20bn birthday present for the NHS, partly with a "Brexit dividend". Either she's still counting on low-information voters prioritising lies over reality, but the £350m a week claim was already shown to be a gross exaggeration over two years ago, because once you deduct the UK's tax rebate and maintain the UK regional funding we'll no longer receive, there'll be a mere £171m or so remaining and that's if the economy doesn't decline any further and leave the supposed dividend buying even less.

Check out these three links from the New Statesman if you're interested in reading more about it.

The announcement basically says that the NHS budget will grow slightly less than in an average year and bends and twists itself to confirm two main parts of Tory mythology:
1) There is no magic money tree and every funding increase has to come from a decrease somewhere else.
2) Brexit is a success.
It would be nice if not only 2) but also 1) was debunked.

 

[Arakhor]

The Shadow Chancellor mentioned in the BBC article that if anyone else had else had come forward with that plan, it would have been dismissed as a magic money tree, yet the Tories always seem to know where one is for the taking. That is of course also ignoring we won't even have a Brexit dividend for several years, due to agreeing to replace our funding commitments.

How does that work with the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish NHS? I thought that due to devolution funding and administration for the regional NHS was given to the regional governments and not Parliament.

That I don't know. I assume that they would have to make money available for the other parts of the country, whether or not the regional govts spent it on their NHS services or not.

 

[Kyriakos]

The Shadow Chancellor mentioned in the BBC article that if anyone else had else had come forward with that plan, it would have been dismissed as a magic money tree, yet the Tories always seem to know where one is for the taking. That is of course also ignoring we won't even have a Brexit dividend for several years, due to agreeing to replace our funding commitments.



That I don't know. I assume that they would have to make money available for the other parts of the country, whether or not the regional govts spent it on their NHS services or not.

What happened with the scottish mps leaving the commons during MMQs? ( ). Is devolution actually threatened?

 

[Arakhor]

That depends on how you define devolution, but I'd say almost certainly not. There's no apparent upsurge in wanting to vote for independence, May already blocked calls for a new "indyref" until after Brexit, the Sewell Convention doesn't appear to be endangered and the SNP walkout (whilst undoubtedly precipitated by the shameless Tory filibustering) was definitely engineered beforehand.

 

[Kyriakos]

Because what bbc viewers need is another political corpse revived:

Best comment:

"Never a frown
With Gordon Brown"

 

[Broken_Erika]

Best comment:

"Never a frown
With Gordon Brown"

====DANGER====
CHEESE LEVELS CRITICAL

 

[Cheetah]

So I hear the Lords sent another anti-May bill to the Commons?

 

[Takhisis]

Do you mean this?

Lords vote to give MPs 'meaningful vote' on final deal in blow for May​