Dacre speaks!

[claig]

Great article full of great points. Too many to list, but this is just a sample.

"our crime is more heinous than that.

It is that the Mail constantly dares to stand up to the liberal-Left consensus that dominates so many areas of British life, and instead represents the views of the ordinary people who are our readers and who don’t have a voice in today’s political landscape — and are too often ignored by today’s ruling elite.

The metropolitan classes, of course, despise our readers with their dreams (mostly unfulfilled) of a decent education and health service they can trust, their belief in the family, patriotism, self-reliance, and their over-riding suspicion of the State and the People Who Know Best."


...


"No other newspaper campaigns as vigorously as the Mail and I am proud of the ability of the paper’s 400 journalists (the BBC has 8,000) to continually set the national agenda on a whole host of issues.

I am proud that for years, while most of Fleet Street were in thrall to it, the Mail was the only paper to stand up to the malign propaganda machine of Tony Blair and his appalling henchman, Campbell."

.....


"The BBC is controlled, through the licence fee, by the politicians. ITV has to answer to Ofcom, a Government quango.

Newspapers are the only mass media left in Britain free from the control of the State."

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2455256/PAUL-DACRE-Editor-Mail-answers-papers-critics.html

[claig]

The articles about Stephen Gateley and Lucy Meadows were not Daily Mail editorials, they were the views of individual journalists, they were not the views of the Daily Mail.

The Mail on Sunday columnist, Peter Hitchens, despises the Tories but I am sure that the editor does not share his views.

I think that the Mail was wrong to say that Ralph Miliband hated Britain, but the editor apparently feels differently.

However, I don't think it is in the same league as the Labour candidate for Eastleigh having written

‘In October 1984, when the Brighton bomb went off, I felt a surge of excitement at the nearness of her demise and yet disappointment that such a chance had been missed.

'This was me – the pacifist, anti-capital punishment, anti-IRA liberal – wishing that they had got her. “Why did she have to leave the bathroom two minutes earlier?” I asked myself over and over again.’

I don't know, but did anyone in Labour apologise for that?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2279886/My-disappointment-Mrs-Thatcher-didnt-die-Brighton-bomb--Labours-Eastleigh-candidate.html

[claig]

'Do the voices and views of ordinary people shape public discourse?'

Yes they do, thanks to the Mail and the Telegraph.

The Liverpool Care Pathway was reviewed and changed thanks to the presure from the Mail and the Telegraph who reported on the experiences of family members who wrote in to those papers about the harrowing experiences that their family members went through.

The editor of the Mail takes account of what his readers think and on some issues he supports his readers and argues their case and expresses their concerns to the millionaires in parliament.

[claig]

The Mail listened to its millions of readers who were disgusted by what went on in our hospitals and it called for the resignation of the NHS Chief, whom they called 'The Man With No Shame', even though many of the millionaires in Parliament had confidence in his abilities.

[claig]

'The Daily Mail do not speak truth to power, they are the mouthpiece of an elite class.'

Nick Clegg is the Deputy Prime Minister, he went to a top school and comes from a wealthy background. I think it could be argued that he is more a part of the elite class than the Daily Mail's editor, Paul Dacre.

Clegg says that he rarely reads the Mail. I am not surprised, because the Mail is the people's paper, not the elite's paper, and if he had read the Mail regularly then he would have known what the average state pension in this country is

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1056736/The-old-age-pension-Thats-30-isnt-Nick-Clegg-condemned-touch-TV-blunder.html

Much of our elite despise the Mail.

This is what Clegg said


"If anyone excels in denigrating and vilifying modern Britain it is the Daily Mail."

He said he rarely read the paper, but "every time I do open it, it seems to be overflowing with bile about modern Britain. They don't like working mothers, they don't like the BBC, they don't like members of the royal family, they don't like teachers, they don't like the English football team. The list goes on – talk about kettles and pots."

www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/03/daily-mail-nick-clegg-ed-miliband

[claig]

"The Liberal Democrat leader - who lives in a £1.3million home in London with his lawyer wife - said a single person's pension was 'about £30 a week' rather than the £90.70 it is.

His blunder risked undermining £61,000-a-year Mr Clegg's insistence that he is in touch with the ordinary person and he understands their concerns."


I bet the Daily Mail editor and his team of 400 journalists knew what the state pension was, unlike our Deputy Prime Minister who is a representative of the people.

[claig]

This is what Dacre wrote about the Mail

"represents the views of the ordinary people who are our readers and who don’t have a voice in today’s political landscape — and are too often ignored by today’s ruling elite."

Is it any wonder that so many people don't have a voice when some politicians don't even read the newspapers that millions of them choose to buy and read.

[Custardo]

i hav3e never got over the way they reported the awful deaths of those children and used it as a platform to have a go at benefit claimants. I thought it abhorrent. and i haven't clicked on a link since.

[claig]

I agree with you there, Custardo. That was bad and wrong. They don't get everything right, but they do get a lot right.

[claig]

'He said he rarely read the paper'

Clegg is probably proud of that. This is Britain's second highest selling newspaper. So it seems that he missed out on many of teh stories about the Liverpool Care pathway and the calls for the resignation of 'The Man With No Shame'.

I think our politicians, millionaires or not, should read all of our top selling papers in order to remain in touch with the ordinary people who buy them, so that they can do their job of representing their interests.

[nennypops]

How on earth can the Mail not be responsible for what gets printed in their paper just because it is written by a columnist rather than a news reporter? The very fact that they continue to employ and therefore endorse the likes of Littlejohn is an utter disgrace. Not only was he responsible for the utterly disgraceful article about Lucy Meadows, but he is also responsible for the column that spread the myth that a council was funding hopscotch lessons for Asian women; the one where he accused a man with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair of being like Andy Pipkin; who said that five murdered prostitutes were "no great loss"; who said that he simply couldn't understand how anyone could care about the Chilean miners trapped underground; and who said "If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them." And the Mail not only continues to pay this man hundreds of thousands of pounds for minimal work, it promotes him. They really are utterly disgusting.

[nennypops]

I think what I really loathe about the Mail is the way it targets certain groups (notably benefit claimants and Muslims) and produces article after article which invites its readers to hate them whilst hiding the true facts - for example the fact that the reality is that the largest elements of the benefits bill are pensions and child benefit. There are times when it becomes all too similar to the sort of thing they were writing about German Jews in the 1930s.

[claig]

'How on earth can the Mail not be responsible for what gets printed in their paper just because it is written by a columnist'

The Mail believes in free speech and a free press free from state regulation. It allows lots of conflicting opinions. It doesn't enforce a party line with pagers and scripts that are on message. Littlejohn is one of my favourite Mail journalists. I don't agree with everything he says, but I respect his right to free speech.

It doesn't target benefits claimants and Muslims. It didn't target J K Rowling when she was on benefits and it doesn't target the millions of Muslims in this country. It does speak out about what it thinks is wrong, such as some unemployed people getting more on benefits than people who go to work or some people living in homes in Mayfair paid for out of benefits while the majority of people can't afford to live there.

[claig]

"Why, then, has Labour – under your leadership – not opposed it? Should I assume that you support it?

I am disturbed by what I view as a dangerous trend in our country. There is a clear demonisation of sick and disabled people, routinely labelled as ‘scroungers’ by the media, and driven by frequently skewed statistics issued by the DWP."



www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2182685/When-going-stand-sick-disabled-Mr-Miliband.html

[claig]

The Mail doesn't disagree with gay lifestyles. Some of its top journalists are gay and lots of MPs that it admires are gay.

The Mail wants what is best for the country and it is a campaigning paper that campaigns to the millionaires in Parliament so that they put right what the Mail thinks is wrong with the country.

It doesn't believe in sclerotic 1970s socialism because it believes that that is what brought the country to its knees in the 1970s. It doesn't believe in fat cat bosses and New Labour style 'knighthoods for services to banking' because it believes that we as a nation have been ripped off by reckless spivs in suits. It doesn't believe in council bosses on large taxpayer funded salaries imposing £100 fines on pensioners for not closing their bin lids. it doesn't believe in pensioners being forced to make a choice between "heat or eat" because of spiralling fuel bills caused in part by millionaires in Parliament imposing green taxes and providing taxpayer subsidies to rich landowners for erecting inefficient windmills. It doesn't believe in violent criminals getting off with lenient sentencing. It doesn't believe in illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes not being able to be deported after they have served their sentences. It doesn't believe in people being allowed to die of dehydration in our publicly funded hospitals in one of the richest countries in the world.

It writes articles on those subjects day in day out in the hope that the millionaires in Parliament will do something about them and improve the lives of all of the millions of people in this country.

Even if some of these rich MPs "rarely read" the Mail or don't know what one of our pensioners gets in state pension, the Mail will not stop writing about it and putting pressure on an out-of-touch privileged elite to do something to improve the lives of the people.

[claig]

It objected to Blair and Co and their "dodgy dossier", it was against their corrosive spin that destroyed the people's faith in politicians, it didn't believe in Brown's "end to boom and bust", it didn't trust New Labour's wish to introduce biometric ID cards and DNA databases, it objected to New Labour's attack on our civil liberties, it didn't believe in their claims of "education, education, education" and their vaunting of a rise in standards, when we have recently been told how low down we have come in world league tables for numeracy and literacy.

It didn't believe in New Labour.

Don't believe in what they say about the Mail. They want to "change its culture", they want to regulate it and stifle its opposition to their failing policies and transparent spin, because as Dacre so rightly said the Mail is "their most vocal critic".

Don't believe the lies and spin of the master spinners against the paper that opposes their lies and exposes the truth.

[claig]

They wrote a serious article about anorexia and the pressure of body image. They write serious articles about children being bullied at school and of the tragedies that it can sometimes lead to. They campaign for filters on the internet to prevent the proliferation of porn. They campaign for a better future for children and adults.

Yes, they write articles about people's bums looking big in this, or of Prince William losing his hair etc, but these are not the core of what they do. These are gossipy type articles that some readers like to read, but they are peripheral to what the Mail is all about.

Jonathan Powell, Blair's ex-chief of staff, said in an interview something like the paper the politicians really fear is the Daily Mail. They don't fear it because it writes about overweight or balding celebs, they fear it because it sets the political agenda and holds them to account for what they are doing to the country.

They fear it and want to "change its culture" because as Dacre said, it is "their most vocal critic".

[moondog]

I liked his piece. It was also useful for him to have pointed out that Milliband is somewhat suspect in bleating about family loyalties when he shafted his brother.
Daily Mail is great. I love reading it and the Guardian on the same day.
Total hoot.

[claig]

'But can't you see the irony about publishing an article about anorexia and then all its coverage of women's bodies?'

No, I think you are overplaying the issue. They wrote a serious article about anorexia and then in another separate article they said that soeone was overweight. So what? Sarah Millican always makes jokes about her body and so does Jo Brand etc. Is it only the Mail that is not allowed to write about womens' and mens' bodies and looks, when that is what lots of people like to actually read in gossipy articles about celebrities?

[moondog]

Check out all the MNers telling Alistair Campbell they want to shag him on the webchat. Can you imagine the uproar if it was a load of blokes saying the same to Teresa may or Rachel Reeves? Ye gads, the indignant self righteousness would lead doubtless to yet another smug MN campaign.