That this is the most critical election since 1945 is not in doubt. Though it is being fought on the battlefield of Brexit, the war is about control of the state. The incumbent political class, with control of the Lords, the civil service, the NGOs, the broadcasters and media, the global business clubs and the universities, are naturally reluctant to see their power challenged by we oiks and upstarts. They really don't like democracy, and this election is rattling them. This is in fact a good thing - as rattled opponents make mistakes, and expose things they would rather keep hidden.
Yesterday it was the turn of Channel 4 News, which every sentient adult in the country knows quite well to be deeply biased towards the globalists and supranationalists and as a result their hatred of the Conservative and Brexit parties doesn't just seep into their news output but paints it. They thought they would be clever and 'empty chair' the Conservative and Brexit parties with lumps of ice. Hee Hee.
Two problems. The first, which is now the subject of an official complaint to Ofcom, is that broadcasters are under a legal obligation to ensure a balance between political parties during an election. Not leaders or particular candidates, but parties. In other words, the broadcasters don't have the power to dictate who appears to represent those parties on such events (which they clearly imagine that they do). We'll have to wait for Ofcom's post-broadcast ruling, but there is hope that this skirmish will bring the role of broadcasters out into the open. If Ofcom rule that broadcasters do in fact have this extraordinary anti-democratic power, it must be challenged in the courts. Secondly, I suspect that the public will turn against Channel 4 over this - we are less susceptible than they imagine to this kind of thuggish bullying.
Also this week has seen the unprecedented intervention of not just the Chief Rabbi and the Archbishop of Canterbury but the Hindu Council in warning against Labour's racism. Momentum's violent thugs and bootboys out on the campaign trail are threatening and intimidating candidates, and anyone brave enough to venture onto Facebook or Twitter will have experienced the hate and abuse online from those thugs with a note excusing them from games. Labour, after Corby's evisceration on live TV, have resorted to lying about the NHS.
However, it's the party stars who tell the biggest story. For Labour, we have hardly seen hide nor hair of Emily Thornberry, Kier Starmer, the Benn boy and their other southern metropolitan gobs, all of whom you couldn't avoid before the campaign. That's clearly because the party knows it's just about lost its northern leave voters, so want to keep those at risk of mistaking chip-shop mushy peas for guacamole away from broadcasters. And then there's Boris.
Have you seen Boris' recent appearances? His election broadcast last night? Is it me or is he misfiring like a badly tuned engine, without that mellifluous fluency and spontaneity that we are so used to seeing? Fraser Nelson imagines this might be due to the tightness of the leash on which they're holding him, but remember also that in barely four months in office there has not been an hour during which he has not been under the most unimaginable strain. Fingers crossed.
18 comments:
I think the Brexit Party is used to this sort of thing, but it must come as a shock to the mightily entitled Tory party.
It's official... Channel 4 says "fuck the tories".
And for once... I agree with that esteemed portal, it is time they were forced down from that high horse and had it demonstrated to them that people are not going to be endlessly shafte....
Or dear.
Radders,
Ref. the Boris problem; you can answer this for yourself/us. From your own experience, tell us how much business you would have succeeded with in the northern shires if you had lied, delayed, obfuscated and otherwise abused their trust?
I sincerely hope those labour seats go to TBP, and not the Tories.
Ch4 doesn't actually have the power to summons anyone to attend its show trials, does it?
Hell, let the Tories repeal Freedom Of Information, and then they can Take Back Control to where they've always wanted it.
Like Andrew Marr on the BBC, Channel 4 doesn't bother to hide its left-wing bias. Both speak to, and on behalf of, the lefty-metropolitan class. I doubt many "oiks" bother watching either.
Emily Thornberry had been due to appear on Iain Dale's LBC show this week - the day the Rabbi's bombshell landed. She cancelled at short notice and Labour declined to put up an alternative so Iain spent the entire hour reporting on and discussing Labour's anti-Semitism with a series of callers, many Jewish. How ANYONE can contemplate voting for these thugs is beyond me.
I've never rated Boris as a serious campaigner. He writes well; he's good in a "meet the people" walkabout and with lightweight issues where he can joke and bluster his way through. But he's pretty hopeless in a bare-knuckle fist-fight, which is what we're in. The CONs don't have a semi-house-trained pole cat at their disposal any more - and they rejected the one they could have had batting for their side.
Good one Channel 4. We wanted to see the organ grinder, not the monkey.
But gobby Boris could lose the Tory's modest majority in a heartbeat, so don't take the risk, keep him away from the front line. That is why Boris has been a bit err muted.
Surely the plan is to take a little bit of flak on the Channel 4 flunkout and save their small stock of credibility for the Neil interview. The Tories will figure they can afford some loss and to chicken out again would be worse.
All very boring, wait for December 13th and listen for the sound of manifestos being shredded. After which we can enjoy Silent Night.
The point here is that Michael Gove was going to appear and I really fail to see why that would have been an issue.
He is as good a vehicle for anti tory bias as Boris. The same questions could have been asked, the same "spontaneous" outrage could have been generated with the same contrived headlines.
Actually, the fact that it WASN'T Boris could have been used to beat the Tories more. After all, sending a minion to this forum of titans shows Boris's contempt for the planet and those who care.
But that assumes the the red Marxist, the orange cult of lunatics and the "journalists" of channel fourth reich had a functioning brain cell between them.
Instead we get this puerile tantrum.
Fuck me, with enemies like this who needs friends!
You're missing the point.
The Ch4 debate was about Climate - never mind Brexit, the economy, global trade, NHS etc..... it was a PROPAGANDA EXERCISE on behalf of the Globalist shitbags that want to hamstring Countries, Governments, businesses and people over a NON-ISSUE that has been so effectively handled as to make any form of even LOGIC discussion look like child abuse.
The whole idea - and the comments from those that were stupid enough to participate - was ludicrous, fatuous fabrications of imaginary wealth-spending that is neither affordable, effective or necessary but created entirely to give succor to the banksters that need some form of 'currency' (carbon tax) to continue their rape of economies.
Farage has a decent approach to the Climate Change bullshit and can make a good argument against it but no-one can oppose the massed hysteria as shown by the participants in that debate, supported by corrupt media.
Stop talking about who did/didn't attend that C4 debacle and concentrate on WHY they didn't and address the issues that brought that about.
I'd love to hear someone talk about SAVING money (no HS2, no Overseas aid etc) instead of the tit-for-tat promises of ever more 'fabulous' amounts of money - billions, trillions etc. Moronic.
If C4 really had wanted a debate about the “climate emergency” rather than provide an opportunity for themselves - with the aid of 5 party leaders - to attempt to destroy BJ then they would have allowed an alternative view to be expressed and to debate :
- The difference between plastic and other forms of pollution and temperature rise.
- A discussion as to whether temperature rise, if it exists, is man made or a natural change as has happened throughout the planet’s history.
- The futility of unilaterally destroying the UK’s economy in the pursuit of halting the whole world’s climate change. Particularly when the technology, let alone the infrastructure, does not yet exist to provide the huge quantities of reliable carbon free electric power needed to eliminate the need for fossil fuel power.
- Whether climate change, if man-made, as well as pollution and the eating up of the planet’s resources, is not better served by curbing population growth instead.
It was a LEADERS debate for pity's sake. Any number of climate scientists, say, could have put the other side better than Corbyn etc. too, but what would have been the point then in an election?
Why should the Tories have direct editorial control over the programmes in which they are invited to appear? Because that is exactly what they demand, evidently.
" the technology, let alone the infrastructure, does not yet exist to provide the huge quantities of reliable carbon free electric power needed to eliminate the need for fossil fuel power."
Yes it does. The problem with nuclear power isn't that it doesn't exist, but that it has high construction costs and doesn't make money for the fossil fuel companies.
Don Cox
Who would want to watch C4 trying to tie a liar into knots anyway.
If he grew a pair and said what we all know - that the whole climate/extinction/fantasy was bollocks he would clear up. But then he wouldn't get anywhere the levers of power if he wasn't bought and paid for by the rulers.
I would prefer to sit with a glass of wine and watch a large block of ice melt than listen to the creepy leaders try to prove that they are just as virtuous as the wierd St Greta person.
You know, that mightn't have been a bad idea.
Five or whatever blocks of ice and whichever one melted first, they would be the winner.
It would be a lot more scientific than the risible shite that was actually shown.
It wasn't (or shouldn't have been) a 'leaders' debate. Such specific subjects should be left to the relevant policy promoters of the parties concerned. The media use their 'environmental correspondents' to push the meme, why shouldn't the political parties?
And ISTR that in order to de-carbonise the WORLD's power supplies we would need (globally) to build a nuclear power station every 36 hours for the next 30 years (don't quote me on the actual figure, it's something I vaguely recall from a Youtube video so it might be every 1.5 weeks, not 1.5 days. Either way, it's risible).
As mentioned above the idea that we have the capabilities to even replace the current power structure with something 'green' is total BS. How long is it going to be before we get even ONE nuclear power station going? 20 years? 25 years?
Dave, what you think it should have been is neither here nor there.
It was BILLED as a LEADERS debate.
Channel Four would have been cheating the public if anyone else appeared, therefore.
Not that you would care one jot about such reprehensible conduct, however.
Channel 4 had no business billing it as a "Leaders' Debate" when they didn't know how many leaders would appear, if any.
A small TV channel is not entitled to instruct anyone to appear in its programmes, and certainly not to give orders to the Prime Minister.
Don Cox
@JPM
Channel Four also bills itself as a "news program" - clearly another misrepresentation as they are entirely and demonstrably a propaganda program.
'Billing' something is an irrelevance and no guarantee of content.
Your bluster over the issue reveals your typical left-wing stance of believing only the facts 'you' state are the correct ones.
Fine, well don't grumble when you put on the football and find a cookery programme being shown instead then.
Post a Comment