On the positive side, huuuge support for the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest

[breadandbutterfly]

Cast your vote too if you wish, or just revel in being, if not 1 of the 99%, at least currently 1 of the 87.5%. :)

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2011/oct/17/occupy-london-poll

As JP said on NN,why are the Fib LibDems so beastly to the Tories after they gave them the chance to be in power for the first time in 70 years. Ungrateful shits!

have you got the link?
I'd be interested to analyse them. I remember their poll ratings but not the election percentages.
I look at what lies behind the facts, and note the fact that the Guardian ditched Brown and that Sky released the recordings of Brown in his car talking about Mrs Duffy. They are the events that create the facts and which caused Brown to lose. The facts follow those events.

'As JP said on NN,why are the Fib LibDems so beastly to the Tories after they gave them the chance to be in power for the first time in 70 years.'

Because it is theatre. It's not real.

Because it is theatre. It's not real.

A bit like Big Brother [hwink]

Exactly. Entertain the masses and lead them by the nose in the direction the elite want them to go. A bit of Punch and Judy (PMQs) is always good to fool the public that the "differences" are for real.

bobthebuddha, you are right, the hyped up media Cleggmania, did not show through in the election results.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1274160/UK-ELECTION-RESULTS-2010-Lib-Dems-set-lose-5-seats-Cleggmania-fails.html

That shows how smart the British public is, despite the concerted media Cleggmania drive. I wonder how much worse the LibDems would have done without the Cleggmania clamour?

I never believe the opinion polls, and this proves how far out they are. I think their purpose is to form the "opinion" of the public.

France bans opinion polls one week before an election. They know how they influence the public's vote.

Well I don't tend to go to the DM for facts . I was going to point you to Wikipedia. But then I couldn't vouch for it not being tampered with. Seems everyone's in on this conspiracy if it includes Sky (I'd just assumed they, being a media outlet with a scoop released it for ratings). And we all know how much tampering that progressive Johann Hari got up to on Wiki...

I don't believe they do important things like that for ratings. It is too serious. The ramifications if the result goes the other way are too enormous. Remember the stories of Campbell and Mandelson phoning editors up and sometimes allegedly reading the riot act?

When Murdoch backed Blair and Brown, he would never have released any damaging recordings.

None of the media outlets are impartial. The BBC claim they are, but thousands don't believe them.

Poor Brown, the BBC even filmed his reaction and played it to the public on the 6 o'clock news, holding his head in his hands, on the Jeremy Vine radio show, when Jeremy played the Sky tape to him. By that time Brown was already powerless. I doubt the BBC would have done that if Brown was still kicking.

Brown was abandoned by the Guardian, Murdoch and all the rest. They hyped Clegg up, and knocked Brown down - he didn't stand a chance. Then when the LibDems were discussing a deal with Brown, some of his former lieutenants were against any deal.

Going back to breadandbutterfly's earlier point about web traffic to news sites, have had another look & the statistics are the type of fairly vague ones used to impress advertisers. There's one mention of 'unique' visitors, but no indication of the average time on site, the bounce rate (visitors who arrive & leave straightaway), number of pages they visit & whether they're regular users. A proportion of them will come through having Googled a recipe. You need to know this boring but necessary stuff to take anything meaningful from the top-level figures. Same goes for the Mail too of course

Sure, bob, but if even 1/10 of those are genuine visitors, that's still a sizeable number of people.

claig - not sure why you think that Labour lost the election as the result of a few bad media stories eg Gordon's 'bigoted woman' story. I mean, she was bigoted, and yes, Gordon looked a bit of a prat, but personally I wouldn't have voted Labour anyway, by that stage, despite being a long-term supporter (and I know many who fell into this category) because of major policy errors that Labour couldn't/wouldn't renounce.

They had already lost their core vote - who probably actually agreed with Gordon on the bigoted woman thing.

Statistics showed, if I recall correctly, that many recent converts to Labour ie centrist defectors from the Tories, actually stayed with the party at the last election. But they lost because their core vote deserted them.

I think your analysis is thought-provoking, certainly - but I remain unconvinced that the Guardian wasn't just trying to follow its readers rather than lead them, away from Labour, before the last election. Where does the Guardian's hounding of the Murdoch press, or the Telegraph's expose of MP's expenses fit into your neat conspiracy theories?

I don't know if I stand with the Occupy London crowd because I don't know what they actually want. I'm all for curbing corporate greed, but I would like to hear some concrete, workable solutions rather than vague, idealistic indignation.

Anyway I'm slightly surprised that a Guardian poll recorded only 88% support. Were the only 11% Torygraph readers who just wandered in.

breadandbutterfly, I think that Brown and Labour did remarkably well in the election, considering what they had done. The election actually turned out to be quite close. It should have been an easy hands-down victory for the Tories. It was gifted to Labour to do so well, and the boosting of Clegg was to diminish Tory support, in order to make it a close election.

I think every bit of media management and spin counts, which is why the parties employ the spinners. The polls showed that Cleggmania was rocketing up and the media were ecstatic in their reporting of it. But the public were much too smart, and the actual results showed that the LibDem vote hadn't really increased much, despite the poll ratings which claimed that teh public were just as ecstatic as the media. I think that some Labour voters did turn out, holding their nose at the Labour party, because they feared a Tory victory. I think that contributed to the close result, when really Labour deserved to be trounced.

I bet that the majority of Guardian readers were not fans of Clegg or the LibDems and I bet they didn't fall for Clegg's "you are the bosses" pitch. I think the Guardian didn't follow its readers, but tried to lead them, just as nearly all the rest of the media tried to do as well.

The Telegraph's revelations about teh MPs expenses was fascinating. Obviously the story could not have been a secret and many must have known what went on, and yet the public were never told for years. I think teh story was even offered to several papers but they didn't run with it. So why would an establishment paper, the Daily Telegraph, run with a story that would ultimately harm the establishment and lessen the public's faith in the system?

The Murdoch story was also no secret and many must have known about Murdoch's influence for years, and yet the public were not made aware of teh extent of the power. The Murdoch story again decreased the public's confidence in the system. Why whwn it had been kept secret from them for years, was it eventually all made public?

I think that most things happen for a reason and there is a reason behind this.

I also think that these Occupy Wall Street demos are happening for a reason at this time, and there is a reason behind them, and they are being supported by unions and partts of the Establishment, and all of teh progressive media, for a reason. I don't think they are what they seem. I think the progressive journalist, Seamus Milne, in the Guardian gives a clue to why the Establishment, the progressives, and as he rightly says, even the Daily Mail, are treating them favourably, when they never treated the original Tea Party protests against banks favourably.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/19/occupy-movement-fire-for-change

I wouldn't be surprised if the Establishment doesn't implement some more climate change taxes to appease the demands of the protestors, many of whom are coincidentally the usual "save the planet" protestors. My guess is that they would like to do that, and pretend that they were forced into it by the protestors. Then they could say that nasty capitalism had been tamed, the planet had been saved, and the public would be fooled into willingly paying more climate taxes to "save the planet".

Milne says

"has now spawned protests in more than 900 cities around the world. The only surprise is it didn't happen sooner.

Three years after the banks that brought the west's economies to their knees were bailed out with vast public funds, nothing has fundamentally changed."

He says "the only surprise is it didn't happen sooner", but of course it did happen sooner, it actually happened 3 years ago, but in true progressive fashion Milne does not want to let his readers know that the Tea Party was a real movement that started these protests. The Tea Party was not supported by progressives and anyone else because it was real, it was not controlled, it was not fake. That's why it doesn't even merit a mention in Milne's article.

Oh and of course, significantly, the Tea Party did not believe the Establishment's and progressives' claims about climate catastrophe and the urgent need to "save the planet".

'they are now championed by the media establishment ? including the New York Times and Financial Times ? on both sides of the Atlantic. Obama has made friendly noises, while his officials say they now plan to "run against Wall Street" in next year's presidential campaign.

In a climate where plutocrats like Warren Buffett are meanwhile begging to pay higher taxes, it's a clear sign of elite anxiety at the extent of popular anger and an attempt to co-opt the movement before demands for more fundamental change get traction.'

When the Financial Times, the capitalist's favourite paper, "champions" the protest, you just know that it's a trick.

The Who wrote a great song, "Won't Get Fooled Again"

What kind of trick. Well part of it will undoubtedly be a climate change trick, to add to all the previous climate change tricks.

In a climate where plutocrats like Warren Buffett are meanwhile begging to pay higher taxes, it's a clear sign of elite anxiety at the extent of popular anger and an attempt to co-opt the movement before demands for more fundamental change get traction.'

When the Financial Times, the capitalist's favourite paper, "champions" the protest, you just know that it's a trick.

I do not have a great deal of time for rich gits but be fair Buffet has ALWAYS been very generous to good causes and supported charities, I think he is genuine.

'while his officials say they now plan to "run against Wall Street" in next year's presidential campaign'

Gordon Bennett, if the Guardian's readers actually believe that, then they probably joined the Guardian in "enthusiastically" backing Nick Clegg, and they probably also believed that "we have only 50 days left to save the planet".

'I think he is genuine.'

I'm not a socialist, so I don't know what they think. But do the left also think "he is genuine"? Do they all believe that "climate change" is genuine? Don't any of them have any doubts about Wall street, Buffett and climate catastrophe? What do the Morning Star, the Marxists or the other left socialist parties think? Do they all believe the Guardian and do they all "enthusiastically" back Nick Clegg?

Off at a tangent there.

I said I think he is genuine as his past actions in supporting charitable foundations with a lot of very generous donations that is fact not opinion.

As for climate change, yes it is happening no argument about that, as for the cause being, man made, partly man made or all natural that is a point of conjecture although I have no doubt that choking up the atmosphere with Carbon Monoxide is not to be considered a good thing.