Thread 41 How many more MPs will Sunak lose?

[BIossomtoes]

New thread. I took the liberty - the old one was at 999!

Yes, that sounds completely correct to me. They don't understand psychology at all. Tone deaf on so much and for so long. They've kept the old screenplay from Brexit and just rinsed and repeated it without keeping current or adapting it to new challenges. I saw a bus yesterday with "Become part of the immigration team" on it with a skinhead man looking dazed and worried next to it. I actually had to wonder if that was the person they wanted to join up or the person they wanted to keep out. It was most bizarre to be following a bus wondering who it was meant to be aimed at. Not women, clearly.

The late Lyall Watson in the introduction to "Omnivore" demonstrates how what things eat determines what they look like, thus allowing us to understand the prey-predator symbiosis.

He demonstrates by assuming if you know all an animal eats is ants, then they will probably look like .... and builds up to why anteaters look like they do. He finishes by saying his "prediction" might have some errors somewhere. However there is one thing he predicts with 100% certainty. And that is that anteaters are doomed. They have gambled all their evolution on a niche.

I am wondering if the print media are the anteater here ?

I think you can also see this with the ST's active obsession with a certain issue which doesn't resonate as much with voters as they think. They are doggedly pushing it up the agenda - not because they care one little bit but because they want it to gain the perhaps more middle class bit of Culture Wars traction.

If you spend enough time with people with similar views, you come to think of your views as typical of the population and people with views that most people would see as far left / far right just seem a bit left or right to you.

The psychology is fascinating - echo chambers, selective exposure

I guess we all do it to some degree.

Agree. And otherwise the ST is doing quite a bit of good reporting at the moment - The contaminated blood stuff, broke both the Wragg and Menzies stories IIRC. But the story you are talking about seems to be being reported differently. Given the security implications you’d expect the Wragg story to be getting most coverage across media given that he’s still sitting as an MP.

Certain organs of the print media have become their own echo chamber.

And it is clear as day if you have any of the plethora of news aggregators ("driven by 'AI'" donchaknow") visible on your desktop. The MS Start tool eventually highlights a ouroboros of stories from the Express, Telegraph and Mail. None of which resonates with real people.

("AI" will just go the way of outsourcing and then offshoring. You will get rid of the most costly part of your operation and discover there's nothing to replace it. It's already happening ....)

Isn't it demographic? Basically newspapers are read by old people (I include myself in this description). The average Conservatife voter is now in their 70s. I have no idea about the Mail. But the idea of the newspaper as the dominant source of news is dying. They are informing (if that is the right word) a smaller group of people.

So they are not the titans they were before.

I agree 💯
There was some ridiculous story about LGBT education in Scotland the other day. Impossible to find the original source and the right wing media were just circle jerking on it. It is very obvious.

All interspersed with breathless articles on "British Seniors" which tells you all you need to know.

Andrew Rawnsley’s take on the Tory attack on Rayner.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/21/the-tories-are-playing-a-risky-game-with-their-relentless-pursuit-of-angela-rayner

I think that is actually a bit naive. The right wing media still have enormous influence.

The Daily Mail is the most read paper in print and online.

But is it read in the same way ?

Nobody I know believes any of the newspapers actual prints the news - even (in fact especially) the ones who buy them.

Is it possible the shrinking rump of print readers are less susceptible to their rags agenda ? How many really are just doing the crossword ?

DM readers are enormously susceptible. Look at the Meghan vitriol. DH parrots stuff from The Times pretty unquestioningly. I'm not sure DM readers are massive crossword fans....

James O'Brien has an excellent couple of chapters on media ownership in How They Broke Britain.

I agree to a point but what I have noticed is the disconnect in the comments to the articles in increasing amounts. You can still see the bots churning out the regular rubbish but the interactive comments where people respond to responses usually show they're off target in a few areas. I think even on here someone said the comments on a DM article were uplifting! Would never have had that peak Brexit!

I just think that younger people don't consume news as generations who had physical newspapers did. Political parties now focus on social media much more, and this seems to be more important in terms of informing opinion and votes. It's the format that is changing and if you look at the DM online it is full of tiny little nugget articles to respond to this. But it's not journalism as it was 20 or 30 years ago. I think this change will carry on. It's one of those changes that will suddenly be very obvious when the generation who were raised with a physical press newspaper aren't the dominant group anymore.

I guess they don't care about young people as much because they aren't big voters.

The point really is the media moguls' reach extends beyond print media. Their tentacles are really very long.

I must say I find the sneery judgemental contents on here quite telling. So a person reads the daily mail so what. It doesn’t mean they lack reasoning. It doesn’t mean they don’t ‘do crosswords’. Perhaps they read it watch news in tv, talk to others - perhaps they don’t - and make decisions that differ from yours. That’s life.

I grew up in house where my parents had The guardian delivered each day (no Sunday edition). So I grew up reading that paper. I remember reading Julie Burchill columns. Which I enjoyed. Long before they sacked her for understanding that biological sex exists. And that bloke with a big nose (there was a big black and white photo of him each week), didn’t like his journalism then. Now I’m older I understand why. He was sneery personified.

My parents still get The Guardian delivered 6 days a week. It informs them, as well as the BBC news / reviews and Newsnight. So that in its own way is quite biased. Though my parents would not judge readership of another paper. They wouldn’t dream of voting for anyone else but Labour. Even today.

I fully expect to be castigated (or maybe ignored, sit in your hands and don’t respond to the outlier on this thread, for goodness sake!). Still just a reminder, try not to be so fcking snobbish about others reading habits.

Anyone who reads the Mail these days and takes most of it seriously is lacking in intelligence.

that bloke with a big nose do you mean Will Self @Lion400 ?

I don't think pointing out what the Mail is and what it does is sneery. It's also been pointed out on this thread that there is a disconnect between what the Mail thinks its readers want and what they actually feel, as evidenced by the comments. That isn't sneery either.

Nor is pointing out the disproportionate amount of influence the right wing press still have in the UK. It's at the root of so many of the things that are wrong in the UK today.

I'm old, and I remember when my DC were little that the Mail constantly slated working mothers - but they also slated stay at home mothers. Basically, as a woman you couldn't win. You still can't with the right wing press - they are bastions of misogyny. Pointing that out isn't sneery either.

I'm old, and I remember when my DC were little that the Mail constantly slated working mothers - but they also slated stay at home mothers. Basically, as a woman you couldn't win.

And yet the DM was the goto paper for women

Basically, as a woman you couldn't win.

With that I agree.

Yes. I remembered his name after I’d posted. Awful fella.

Good author.

The comments seem interesting on the Mail. They were critical of Boris and they don't care about Angela Rayner, and they don't much care for that bloke in the Spectator who talks about his use of prostitutes. People are more complicated than the DM might pretend. It is often viewed but I am not convinced it's considered to be "informing". A generation ago I agree with @pointythings that it was. And it was homophobic and misogynistic and nasty. It really did reflect a view. These days it's mostly got its tongue hanging out for celebrity women with the odd prurient article for old times sake. It is nowhere near as horrible as it once was.