BCF an old post from 2017
Talk Brexit
FirstPrev
12
NextLast40
Westminstenders: The Continuing Saga of the Prime Minister Who Didn’t Know When to Quit1000Show OP
10/06/2017 16:31Butterymuffin
Newcastle under Lyme was the seat where many students who had registered were told they couldn't vote and weren't on the list. Some had to be very persistent - good chance that that majority would have been higher if they'd all been able to vote.
✕
ADVERTISEMENT
10/06/2017 16:31RedToothBrush
David Frum @davidfrum
Brexiteers promised 350 million pounds extra PER WEEK for NHS if UK quit EU. They delivered dementia tax instead.
David Frum@davidfrum
That the winning argument for Brexit was a (deceptive) promise of more govt spending should have been a warning to anti-EU Tories
Faisal Islam@faisalislam
As I put it to a former Vote Leave staffer working for May at one of the debates: "Corbyn's using your own tactics against you". He nodded
Labour's potential trap. It must deliver buses.
10/06/2017 16:47RedToothBrush
Ciaran Jenkins@C4Ciaran
Ruth Davidson tells #C4News "it's really clear" we need to "look again at the way we approach Brexit."
She's saying this to more than one media outlet. Talking about potentially working with other parties.
Like Yvette.
10/06/2017 16:52Badders123
Curiouser and curiouser.....
10/06/2017 17:02HashiAsLarry
Are the grown ups about to make a coup?
10/06/2017 17:03HashiAsLarry
Stage a coup
Not build a home for chickens ffs.
Sorry, sleep deprivation still bitingly!
10/06/2017 17:06Badders123
Well they have been rather like headless chickens of late.....
10/06/2017 17:07whatwouldrondo
This line is about Timothy and Hill but sums up May and quite a lot of the Tory Party too, the inconvenient truth and complexity of reality "He added that they exhibited a “desire for total control” and said that “under pressure, it looks like a model that is intolerant of reality” .www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/10/nick-timothy-fiona-hill-resigns-prime-minister-theresa-may-election
10/06/2017 17:17WeakAndUnstable
Heidi Allen@heidiallen75 6m6 minutes ago
Deeply unhappy w idea of a formal coalition w DUP. We should run w minority Gov & work Xparty on big issues. UK demands grown up politics
10/06/2017 17:19Badders123
There are some sane Tories!
Who knew!?
10/06/2017 17:29todgerthedodger
But will Heidi do anything about it? Cross the floor?
10/06/2017 17:29Badders123
Phone.in Westminster must be red hot today
10/06/2017 17:30TheElementsSong
Just catching up with the thread, thanks for so much interesting food for thought and shock at everything so far. When did reality turn into a high-stakes political melodrama?
...
Random thought while I was out today:
You know this annoying new trope (seen it on MN as well as in the media) about how 80% of the electorate have voted overwhelmingly for Brexit therefore we need to go harder harder harder (like a pr0n film hmm)?
For most voters, there was no real option except Red or Blue because of FPTP...
So if Blue had won their "expected" landslide, they'd of course be triumphantly saying the electorate voted overwhelmingly for Brexit...
But if (in fantasyland), Red had won a landslide instead, they'd still be saying the electorate voted overwhelmingly for Brexit...
It's basically the most childish level of "Heads I win, Tails you lose" isn't it?
10/06/2017 17:32squoosh
With Nick and Fiona now gone she must feel increasingly vulnerable. She used to pride herself on not having any pals in the party. Bet she wished she'd nurtured a few friendships now.
10/06/2017 17:41RufusTheRenegadeReindeer
You know this annoying new trope (seen it on MN as well as in the media) about how 80% of the electorate have voted overwhelmingly for Brexit therefore we need to go harder harder harder (like a pr0n film hmm)?
Christ really
Is that what some dumb nut half wit chuckle head twats think
Fucking hell i need to punch something...and we have only just replaced the doors
10/06/2017 17:47RedToothBrush
After the last week I decided to order a book about propaganda and political communication one of my lecturers who really inspired my thinking on this thread wrote. Much of his work was about war propaganda. He died in 2010 but was a leading voice in this country on the subject and also did training courses for BBC journalists and others in addition to doing undergraduate and post graduate courses. I should have actually bothered to buy it and read it 20 years but me being me, I never did.
Anyway, this book was first published in 1990 and updated in 1995 and 2003 with an epilogue. I have the third addition
The first paragraphs of that read:
In the previous edition of this book, published in 1995, the epilogue began with the start assertion that we are in an age of propaganda. This is even more appropriate to the twenty-first century than to all the other centuries before it, as outlined in this book. But the somewhat optimistic tone in that earlier edition now has to be tempered in the light of the experience of the so-called 'war' against terrorism. Then, the epilogue suggested that there was nothing to fear about either the prominence of propaganda or the necessity of conducting it on behalf of democratic values. The picture is now a little more mixed. I would still maintain that we need more propaganda not less. We need more attempts to arouse our participation in the democratic process, which depends for its survival on public opinion. This is even more the case in light of declining electoral turnouts and the debacle of the 2000 presidential election in the United States. We need more propaganda about issues of universal concern to all human beings, regardless of race, creed, colour or nationality. We need more propaganda to counter the hate-inspired propaganda of certain factions attempting to undermine peaceful co-existence between peoples. This this was not done effectively in certain parts of the world after the end of the Cold War may indeed have been one of the root causes of the 11 September attacks.
Eight years earlier, Walter Lippmann had written:
"Within the life of a generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government... It is no longer... to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory, we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify"
So, in an age of propaganda, the only course of action open to us is to learn to identify it for what it is - merely a process of persuasion that forms a part of everyday life. It can be used for good or ill, just like any other form of communication, but its very pervasiveness in contemporary society is reflective not just of the multiplicity of media but also of the plurality of mediators who exist for getting us to think - and do - something which serves their vested interests.
Those interests may, or may not, coincide with our own. If they do, we tend not to label it as propaganda. They become our shared value system, our common set of 'truths'. It is only when we meet someone from outside this system, whose views of the world are quite different to our own, that we can begin to appreciate that there may be another way of looking at things. We can accept or reject that different way, but we ignore it at our peril. In globalised, communications-rich environment it is unlikely it can be ignored anyway. There are those who equate globalisation with Americanisation, and they don't like it. The attempt in the United States after 9/11 to understand 'why they hate us so much' at times failed to give due emphasis to the enormous amount of support Washington has from around the world in the fight against international terrorism. But the agonising also reflected a failure of American propaganda to project itself as a benign 'force for good in the world'. The Romans hadn't really worried too much about this aspect of their power in the ancient world and nor had the European empires of more recent times. But the communications revolution had changed the environment in which power now had to operate. In its democratic manifestation, it now needed to be explained. It could no longer be left to speak for itself.
It does go on, and covers even more stuff which just echoes so incredibly well with real events but I thought that enough for here.
He smoked like a chimney and was only 56 when he died. I really wonder what he would make of the last year. I was far from a good student not least for the fact I never read this book which was top of the reading list, but I think something must have gone in...
