Well done Ed Miliband for speaking out about the Daily Mail's article on his father

[claig]

The Daily Mail used a low tactic of accusing Ed miliband's father of hating Britain.

I think it was a nasty thing to do. Just because someone is a Marxist and may criticise some aspects of the country or its instiutions does not mean that they hate Britain.

[HesterShaw]

Off topic, much? :o

[limitedperiodonly]

I'm afraid I scrambled for the remote yesterday. I found her very yowly.

[HesterShaw]

(though I may have to get better at French).

[HesterShaw]

Oh goodness, I'm completely in love with her!

[claig]

On youtube there are some clips of her busking live in the street in Montmartre. She is better live than in the studio, because the studio can't capture her raw feeling, power and energy.

This is the same song "Je Veux" live in the street.

[HesterShaw]

I'm going to look up Zaz.

[claig]

Well said, HesterShaw.

I have been reading up on Zaz, they call her "la nouvelle Piaf".
It doesn't get much better than Piaf.

[HesterShaw]

France has produced some of the most elegant and beautiful composers of music ever

[claig]

It is some of the best music in the whole world.
The ignorant buffoon.

The reason that English artists have been so successful is because of the English language, and they only followed and initially copied the American artists.

To claim that the French can't do pop shows the fool's insularity and blinkered understanding of the world outside his BBC studio.

[PetiteRaleuse]

Ooh yes, good job she didn't understand that. Just because french music isn't to British tastes on the whole doesn't mean to say it hasn't got a huge following in France and Canada.

[claig]

We mentioned the condescending views so many of our elite and supposedly educated class have towards the French earlier on.

On the Andrew Marr Show this Sunday, they had the brilliant Frrench singer Zaz on, whom I have never heard of. I was blown away, it was amazing.

But luckily she didn't speak too good English so she couldn't understand Andrew Marr's clumsy, insulting, condescending question to her

"Has French music come of age, do you think?"

That idiot showed his ignorance and his rudeness at the same time.

[PetiteRaleuse]

Extremists in any field give the moderates a bad name but they are a necessary evil to help put things in perspective I think.

[MadameDefarge]

extremists with little self control are the bane of all political parties. elected or no.

[Custardo]

i think what you are saying is that there are rude people whatever the politics...no?

there was an article the other day ( forget which paper) which looked at why tories always say the left are 'misguided' loony left etc.

[Chipstick10]

There are many left wing posters who are beyond rude. Some are down right scary. Wishing death and pain on Tories. Lunacy I call it.
Why is it only right wingers who are nutters? Don't get it!

[claig]

People laud these bullies like Campbell, but in my opinion, he has ruined the great Labour Party's credibility.

The Labour Party is also one of our greatest institution that goes back over 100 years and was responsible for great advances for our people.

We read how some of this New Labour gang of bullies and bounders were pissed off their faces, how they swore like troopers and punched chairs and threw mobile phones and called some of their lifelong voters bigots and looked as if they were about to knock out in a fit of fury, anyone unfortunate enough to be present in the office, if a Daily Mail headline was not to their liking. They have discredited the great Labour Party.

The spinners, the corrosive corrupters of the truth have destroyed its credibility and it will take them years to recover and during that time they will not be able to effectivly serve teh people


I don't want these same spinners, or any others like them, to be anywhere near the BBC, because spin destroys the trust the people have in the BBC.

[claig]

I love the BBC because it is one of our country's greatest institutions and we watch it from before we can talk until we die.

I am sorry that it is losing its credibility with many people because it is not impartial enough on issues of lesser importance. I hope it strikes a better balance so that we can all believe what it says about the polar bear a bit more.

[PetiteRaleuse]

It's not competition from the BBC as a website or paper that they fear, it is to do with commercial local interests. I'm trying to find an explanation for you, it is a long time since I read up on it.

[claig]

'Convincing yourself that losing the CEO of an organisation due to government pressure, as happened with the dossier, was not an existential crisis for the BBC, is as clear a sign as could be of wilful blindness.'

Greg Dyke - leftwing,
Campbell - Coward-baiter and leftwing
Blair - Tory
BBC - Blair Broadcasting Corporation

Patten said that the Savile Crisis was an even bigger crisis. Yes some people got sacked and reshuffled, but was there real change?

No, I don't think that the BBC is always a slavish part of the Establishment. they have freedom on issues of less importance, but when it comes to issues of national importance, then of course they are subject to the Establishment and I agree that that should be the case and is only right. I don't believe that they are independent.

Many leftwingers dislike what the BBC did at Orgreave during the Miners' Strike. I can understtand why the BBC did what it did, because that was a critical issue.

The problem with the BBC, in my opinion, is not on the big issues (where they have no independence), but on the small issues where they should show independence and yet nearly always back the left rather than the Mail reader.

[HomeHelpMeGawd]

As I say, cognitive dissonance and wilful blindness - fully on display here. I might add, a willingness to make unwarranted assumptions about other individuals, such as your ascribing to me a faith in the Establishment.

Convincing yourself that losing the CEO of an organisation due to government pressure, as happened with the dossier, was not an existential crisis for the BBC, is as clear a sign as could be of wilful blindness.

You assert that Mail readers have sharply honed critical faculties and a heterogeneity of views. But you are unwilling to acknowledge a fact that challenges your personal orthodoxy that the BBC is always a slavish part of the Establishment. I think that's a great shame

[claig]

In fact, all this stuff about the Mail being anti the BBC for commercial reasons is I suspect false. The Mail, the people's paper, doesn't fear competition from the BBC in any way because it knows that the Mail's readers don't believe much of what the BBC says. The BBC has lost its credibility.

I suspect the BBC fears the Mail because they know that the public is awake and they know that the issue of truth is at stake.

I listened again to that great Muse track called 'Uprising'. These lines spell out what the battle for press freedom is all about

"keep us all dumbed down and hope that we will never see the truth around"

"and all the green belts wrapped around our mind and endless red tape to keep the truth confined"

"They will not force us, they will stop degrading us.
They will not control us, we will be victorious"

And at the vanguard in the fight for freedom will be the Daily Mail.

When they took on the Daily Mail, they took on the wrong enemy.

[claig]

No, i remember now, the BBC has no fear because it is impartial and unbiased and politically neutral, so it will not take positions on issues such as climate change which are in any way controversial.

[claig]

Is the BBC worried about its independence and press freedom on its internet sites etc. Is it with the Mail, and the people, and most of the rest of our media in opposing state regulation or doesn't it care, because it may already be regulated and already back the socialists, enemies of promise, enemies of freedom and enemies of a free press in their attempt to stifle political dissent?

[claig]

BBC - Blair Broadcasting Corporation

Existential crisis? You're taking the piss!

[claig]

'I understand very well that the typical Mail reader likes to think of themselves as a doughy fighter against the Establishment.'

The Mail reader doesn't like to think it the Mail reader does distrust the Establishment, which is probably very different to your faith in them, and Dacre understands that well and reflects the views of his readers.

Whether Dacre shares the Mail readers' views, i don't know, but given that he has lasted for so long in that role and delivered such success for the Mail, my assumption is that he shares many of the same concerns as us and that he is a principled man.

'In doing do, the Beeb ended up fighting an existential crisis'

Existential crisis? Don't believe it. A good tale but I doubt it. In fact, Patten, I think, said that the Savile crisis was the biggest crisis that the BBC had faced over the past many years, even more critical than the dodgy dossier affair. But of course, the Savile affair was not an existential one either, because tghe BBC is part of the Establishment and we read today in the Mail

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2445381/Jimmy-Savile-victims-paid-little-1-500-compensation-BBC.html

The BBC is above real censure because they are opart of teh great and the good and the public pay for them.

I never quite bought all the Gilligan, BBC stuff and the supposed battle with the old mucker, Coward-baiting Campbell. The end result was that a good man, Dr Kelly, had his name was revealed. But I haven't really looked into it, so I don't have a full understanding of it.

'I'd love to see any contemporaneous headlines from the Mail inveighing against the dossier or arguing that the country should not go to war'

I don't know if it argued against the war, i can't remember. But, Mail readers do not believe everything the Mail says. The Mail loves Thatcher but Petite's mum, a dedicated and doubtless doughty Daily Mail reader, does not. The Mail reader can spot spin and is rarely taken in. The Mail reader has an alacrity of mind, a grasp of facts and a critical faculty that some have described as being similar to Occam's Blazer.

The Mail has all points of view. There were articles against the Kosovo War and articles for. The Mail does not shy away from debate, and there are probably some articles that support the BBC and the Establishment too, but most Mail readers skip those because they understand that those ones are spin.