Westminstenders: Constitutional History

[RedToothBrush]

The Supreme Court case continues
(ruling possible Friday but likely Monday)

The new NI proposal is bollocks and Johnson didn't get why until it was discussed in Europe.

There was a press conference in Luxembourg which looks good for Johnson.

Johnsons approval ratings are up.

And we are making no obvious progress to anything but no deal...

It just means he has someine half decent doing his twitter account.

Different markets, different "truth"
but it always seems the UK market that has to have its sun news so heavily slanted

Roy Greenslade@GreensladeR

See how @TheSunn^ reports the same story about Boris Johnson's Luxembourg visit differently.

Compare the relatively straight version in the Irish edition with the heavily angled version in the English edition.

UK English market

BBC changing tack in reporting this now. Picking up on the " there is no press" and stating that the Dad was concerned about (admitted) inadequate care. Parent first..... who happens to be Labour activist.
Must be reading your comments Red .

See also The Irish Sun headline I posted earlier BCF!

I’m glad this gentleman told me his problems.

Why is the state of the NHS that angry father’s problem, Boris? The NHS is in crisis and that’s a problem for everyone

I despise the Sun. Brexit aside they have behaved despicable recently.

I really hope people take note and stop buying it.

It's a Toxic brand and enough is enough. No more lifes should be ruined by that paper.

re the 30 September deadline:

interesting that it is Macron and the Finnish PM who gave this deadline, taking the steering wheel within the EU,
then informing Tusk

Macron - unlike BJ - understands v well how the EU works,
hence his visit to Helsinki - who currently hold the rotating EU Presidency - to get Rinne on board
Macron does seem to have run out of patience with the current / previous EU policy of letting the UK dither endlessly

This is the Finnish journalist breaking the story originally:

Jenni Virtanen✔@JenniVirtanen

BREAKING on #brexit:

Finnish PM Rinne and president Macron decided to lead on EU's brexit politics in Paris today.

They put on a new deadline to PM Johnson: proposal on 30.9 the latest or "things are done".

Rinne will inform Tusk and Johnson.

I'm also pissed at the number of journalists defending Laura Ks professionalism.

Bullshit. If she got it wrong, don't be afraid to point it out and explain. Don't fucking excuse it. Admitting you've fucked up is OK. Denying you've seriously missed the journalist point and the complete story is not good enough and damages the entire profession a lot more.

🍰 & 🍫 @ Red.

Of course Laura K is now providing a distraction to the fact that Johnson lied about the press being there.
It's unreal. Absolutely bloody unbelievable. I keep thinking I must be going mad.

PMK, as a corbynista (I fucking hate the term cos it’s just a method of delegitimising a point of view) we’ve been trying to point out how partisan kussenberg and most of the political commentators are beyond partisan to the Tories but we get shouted down by the ‘everyone claims bias at the bbc do it shows they must be doing something right’ but it’s getting harder for them to hide it now especially to the critical thinkers that inhabit westminstenders

PMK, with another Newsthump article newsthump.com/2019/09/17/drunken-boris-johnson-staggers-into-supreme-court-and-demands-trial-by-combat/

Biased reporting and sucking up to authority is terrible journalism

Going after a fairly ordinary low level bod - one of a 500,000+ Labour membership - and highlighting him to your 1.1 million Twitter fans ....

That's so irresponsible it goes beyond being unprofessional.

I'm going to be out of the loop tomorrow and will miss your great input and probably the Supremes too. I'm called up for the minding of sickly little ones, don't tell Laura.
Take it easy out there!

DH and I agree it was poor reporting and we much prefer the BBC to Corbyn.
Hoping LK will see sense and apologize.
Everyone screws up at work from time to time, adults own it and move on.

Justanother, I think it has been getting progressively worse but not because they are partisan but because they are forgetting critical thought.

Journalists tend to cultivate particular relationships in order to get the inside line. That's fine as long as the apply critical thought to it.

What strikes me, is particular politicians (of various parties) are now exploiting that and cultivating the journalists rather than the other way around.

Rather than risk upsetting their source, journalists are just repeating the political line unfettered and unchallenged. That's happening increasingly as politicians get more authoritarian and hostile to any kind of scrutiny.

Thus you have this dynamic where the extremes are getting heard more without scrutiny. Rather than it necessarily being the right or left getting more mileage.

You can see it in the BBC where its towing a generally pro government line, but on the flip to that a very 'liberal identity' social ideal with regard to politically correct identity politics.

That's due to a failure of journalistic standards rather than outright partisanship of one political strand or another. Its failing to go outside and see if it's raining.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@DmitryOpines

In light of what's happening to the parent of the sick child who confronted Boris Johnson, I draw your attention to this Chris Cook piece.

In it, he catches Dominic Cummings in a blatant lie.

Rather than accept it, Cummings goes full offense and attempts to discredit Chris.


Chris Cook@xtophercook

Finally, finally: I’ve written a piece about me and Dominic Cummings

Spinning out of control

https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/09/18/190918-cummings-and-i/content.html?sig=V3ep8Di90VEsADMEg8fZ7UUHeKwBE-FtKNLriRS7hGY

Even after I won a legal battle against Dominic Cummings, it became a test of strength from which he refused to retreat

If you publish a story implying that a cabinet minister committed a criminal offence, you should expect some serious blow-back,” my editor drily told me.
But I didn’t. Not really.

I also didn’t expect a year of lawfare.
I didn’t foresee thousands of civil service hours spent on my articles.
I didn’t imagine £12,000 of public money would be spent on barristers. I didn’t expect the vitriol.

In short, I didn’t expect Dominic Cummings, now the man behind Boris Johnson’s premiership.

At the time, in 2011, he was a special adviser to Michael Gove at the Department for Education.
It was long before he rose to prominence as a strategist for Vote Leave, one of the pro-Brexit campaigns.

But returning to the 250 pages of legal argument and evidence in our legal wrangling, as well as the hundreds of related tweets and articles,
you can already pick out the working methods of the man who would become the prime minister’s consigliere.^
....
It all began when I was education correspondent at the Financial Times.
I was handed a trove of documents by a source, including print-outs of emails sent by Cummings and Gove, then education secretary.

These were government messages – concerning official business – but were sent using a network of private email accounts.
In other words, it was a back-channel system of communications, kept secret from untrusted officials.

This was deliberate.
In one email, Cummings had written to his colleagues:

“i will not answer any further emails to my official DfE account or from conservatives.com
– i will only answer things that come from gmail accounts from people who i know who they arc.^
i suggest that you do the same in general but thats obv up to you guys
– i can explain in person the reason for this…”

This isn’t an embarrassment this is part of my job.

What should be an embarrassment is the blatant lying about the press not being there but he has the hide of a rhino and the awareness of a colonic bacterium

Oh and the whole thing started because of 'both siderism' - where the BBC (and others) try and put up two opposing views. But rather than put up a couple of moderates who have common ground the tenancy has been to find unrepresentative political extremes which has then in turn normalised them and pushed the public away from the centre.

And there hasnt been very good critical scruntiny of those extremes either.

See the rise of Dear Nigel.

PMK

twitter.com/essexpoliceuk/status/1174300972081979394?s=21

In other news Westminsterenders favourite Mark Francois provides his own diversion dressed as a police officer.

I kid you not.

So that's what happened to a journalist who did his job professionally and held the govt to account

Publish and be damned
And the journalist was damned
For being a good professional

Easy why many prefer to suck up to the fuck ups