Tory Spin Merchant Caught Out Over PMQs "Edit"

It's one of those Monday's when I feel that light entertainment is the order of the day. In situations such as these, we are fortunate to have the output of the UK's number one political blogger to amuse us.

Iain Dale: Brown's Spin Merchants Caught Out Over PMQs Edit

You may remember that during PMQs on Wednesday that Harriet Harman is caught shaking her head when David Cameron says "can we ever believe a word the Prime Minister says?". Here's the BBC footage. It's a few seconds into the video. And here's the Sky footage which shows the same.

However, if you watch the version on the Number Ten website it has clearly been edited - or rather, Harriet Harman has been edited out. Click HERE and then click on October 10 WMV.

All broadcasters get the same feed. It can ONLY have been edited afterwards by the Number Ten Communications team. What a disgrace. They are public servants paid for by the taxpayer. They are not paid to save Harriet Harman's or the Prime Minister's embarrassment.

And people wonder why I refuse to promote Number Ten petitions. If this doesn't show that Brown's lot are spinning in exactly the way Blai's oppos used to, then I don't know what does.

I hope Iain has a spittle guard for his PC.

Here are two screenshots of an unrelated part of those same "edited" videos.

BBC

No 10

Can you spot the difference?

Yes, Downing Street's video is 4:3 format and the BBC's is 16:9. This is not a new innovation introduced specifically for this session. The result is that Harriet Harman can't be seen in the Downing Street version. She's is the 4:3 twilight zone.

This can ONLY be the result of a vast leftwing conspiracy, the Number Ten communications team clearly insisting on the 4:3 format when the service was launched because they knew this day would come. What a disgrace...

The comments are equally amusing. In the first, Michael P quite politely points out the undeniably fact that Iain is mistaken. Others joined in and Iain even felt the need to publish one of his famous non-retraction retractions:

UPDATE: A commenter reckons this is because on the No 10 website the videos are in 4:3 whereas the BBC & Sky use 16:9. That is entirely possible I suppose, but if you look at the Cameron wideshot it seems similar to the No 10 site, whereas when it goes to Brown the close-up is far more marked than you would expect.

How gracious. In fact, Iain has yet again refused to state that he was wrong and instead only points out that "a commenter reckons" he's talking complete nonsense. This then allows his band of barking seals to attack the credibility of the aforementioned commenter, despite the fact that he's made an entirely valid point. Like this from "bebopper":

I see the Labour trolls are back. Welcome back chaps. No doubt, you've been nursed in field hospitals during these trying times, hoping forlornly for a ticket back to Blighty.

Well, you're back on the front, so what have you got, apart from aprehension?
Has General Brown promised it will be all over by Christmas?

Textbook.

The entirely valid criticism now successfully dismissed, the thread can continue as normal. "Nice one bebopper" say the next two comments. The next, implicitly boosting the truth of Iain's claim, says "Poor Gordon, mocks and taunts ringing in his ears, no wonder he's becoming so sensitive! Maybe women we'll [sic] like him better now he's to be pitied?".

The modern classic, "The Left has never been about truth - it is about getting power." also makes an appearance in glorious ironicolour. The thread continues with various other comments in support of Iain's post.

And all of this is in a post bemoaning the disgraceful spinning of others. Now that's entertainment.

Democracy in Action

The spin and hype surrounding David Cameron's "unscripted" speech still makes me laugh. Does it comfort you to know that he spent all that time memorising his lines so that he'd come across as talking from the heart? Would he continue to do that if he won the election?

Civil servant: Prime Minister, we have an urgent matter of national security which needs your immediate attention.
Dave the boy wonder: No can do. I'm in the middle of memorising my off the cuff remarks for next week's press conference. Come back in a few hours...

That'll work.

It was impressive that he managed to remember so much, I grant you, but then, Christopher Biggins can also memorise lines (for panto, you know) and I wouldn't want him running the country.

Anyway, his "unscripted" speech was a veritable smorgasbord of crowd pleasing measures adrift in a sea of wishful thinking. Here's one example. He said that "we need to scrap that early release scheme in prisons". I'm afraid I don't have the time to look up the figures but given that most prisoners serve approximately half of their sentence, we're talking here about nearly doubling the number of prison places and the amount of "tax payers money" (copyright of the Conservative Party) spent on the prison budget. Can anyone tell me if this Daily Mail wet dream has been fully costed?

(By the way, I love the way that some on the right criticise the BBC for allegedly adopting a "government should spend more money" approach to every problem. Because the right wing press and the Conservatives never do this... )

There was lots of that sort of thing: national citizen service, increased spending on the armed forces, ending the couple's penalty in the benefit system, a pension "lifeboat" fund and talk of tax cuts too. Just how quickly will the economy have to grow to fund all this stuff? Fantastically quickly, it would seem.

The speech was filled with just the sort of vacuous promise filled guff which brought Blair to power way back in 1997. Blair's broken promises damaged trust in the democratic process in the UK enormously and led to the historically low turnouts of 2001 and 2005. Cameron's decision to adopt a similar approach may well lead to even lower turnouts somewhere down the line. At the risk of sounding over dramatic, I genuinely believe that British democracy could be in a real spot of bother before too long. That will be of no concern to Cameron of course, as long as he wins the next election.

(I should add that Gordon Brown is hardly an innocent bystander in this. More on that in another post.)

Apologies for the temporary lack of posting. I seem to have some sort of infection and it feels like my brain has been replaced with twice as much cotton wool as will comfortably fit inside my skull.

I still managed to raise a smile when I heard that Dave the boy wonder, who is about to start his speech as I write this, will be speaking "from the heart" today. Apparently, rehearsing and memorising a heavily scripted speech will give his words a thin veneer of added credibility and sincerity.

Isn't it great to see our politicians putting aside their obsession with spin and presentation and tackling the big issues head on?

The King of Spin

Sometimes Iain Dale almost writes these posts himself.

Yesterday, he attacked an article by Sunny Hundal on Comment is Free. In the article, Sunny argues that then BBC is increasingly bending to the will of the vocal rightwing internet lobby which seeks to undermine its credibility.

Rather than tackling the wider point, I want to focus on one part of Iain's post. It is this:

But now we come to the most idiotic part of Sunny's article, for in this next paragraph he actually admits that there IS a liberal bias within the BBC, which surely undermines everything which precedes it.

Now, to my main point. For many of us on the liberal left, the BBC is a useful if somewhat increasingly dumbed-down antidote to the hard-right propaganda of most of the press. It keeps us vaguely sane, so we support it.

Quite a revealing admission, wouldn't you say?

This is quite revealing but not in the way Iain imagines.

If you read the entirety of Sunny's article, it is obvious what he actually means. As I explained in the comments to Iain's post, what was meant was that the BBC has been an impartial and credible antidote to the rightwing output of much of the media (septicisle also makes the same point but better). Sunny fears that this impartiality and credibility will be lost if something is not done to counter the pressure applied on the BBC by the rightwing press and the internet lobby. Iain has, either deliberately or unintentionally, misrepresented what Sunny wrote. He certainly didn't contradict the entire thrust of his article by admitting that the BBC has the sort of bias Iain claims it has.

No-one else took up the challenge but Iain himself decided to defend his position.

I have not deliberately misrepresented him at all. I can only go on what he wrote and interpret it. You and I may have different ways of interpreting what he wrote, but that does not mean I am deliberately misrepresenting him. I know Sunny and like Sunny, but I was suprised at the weak arguments he put forward in this rather ranting article.

I say defend...

Iain's "defence" is that there are different interpretations of what Sunny wrote and his is as valid as mine. Apparently, Iain does not accept that there is actually a true and accurate understanding of Sunny's meaning, merely interpretations of what he wrote. That explains why he has no interest in trying to get to the truth of the matter.

In an age when those on the right continually attack the supposed relativism of the left, I find this quite amusing. There is no spoon.

Update

I see that the links to individual comments on Iain's blog are not working again. You'll have to scroll if you want to see them.

Update 2

Thanks to Tim for pointing out that it is possible to link to individual comments on Iain'a blog. Links adapted accordingly.

They Hate Our Freedoms

See here for details.

There's an obvious parallel here. In the United States, there is a large section of the political right which has managed to detach itself completely from reality. Michael Ledeen is a case in point. This group employs a number of techniques to spread their fatuous propaganda and have had considerable success. Deliberate attempts to muddy the waters of accepted facts are not uncommon.

Most notably, they ferociously attack the "liberal media" whenever it dares to challenge their "facts" or any part of their fantastic belief systems. Blogging has become one of the key tools used to mobilise their credulous base to apply pressure when necessary. This is blogging not as an enabler of two-way communication but as a platform for propaganda. Any attempts to challenge or even discuss the "holy orthodoxies" in the comment sections of these blogs will either be ignored or met with a horde of mockery and abuse. In this way, they are generally able to avoid having to acknowledge or correct factual errors and evade participating in any serious discussion about their beliefs.

By using these techniques, this group have moved the goalposts to such an extent that much of the media in the US now feels in must provide "balance" by reporting their bizarre beliefs as if they were credible.

In the UK, Dale, Staines and Biased BBC are attempting to adopt a similar model and the BBC is their primary target. Unity explains why here:

The reason that the political right have such an issue with the BBC is not that the BBC is markedly biased against them so much as, in defining the middle ground in news journalism - not what is neutral but what is reasonable - it provides a clear benchmark against which the biases of other news outlets can be readily assessed and evaluated by the general public.

The existence of the BBC as a respected news source means that people like Michael Ledeen have no credibility in this country when they claim that Iraqn was responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks.

For most people, that can only be a good thing.

Update

Bush Announces American Withdrawal From Reality. Heh!

The Credulous Conservative

Yesterday, Tim Mongomerie of ConservativeHome fame gave his opinion on "the surge" in a post on Comment is Free. It is an astonishing piece in many ways.

Here is just one point which was picked up by myself and several other CiFers. Mongomerie, referring to General Patraeus's testimony, wrote this:

He presented independently verified data that showed a significant reduction in fatalities - particularly in Baghdad.

Independently verified data? Really? I must have missed that.

What link does Tim use to substantiate this claim? A link to an NGO perhaps? No, it's a link to the slides produced by the Pentagon to accompany the general's statement. Not hugely independent then.

Perhaps this independent verification refers to something Patraeus said in his testimony which I missed. I checked. What Patraeus actually said (pdf) was this:

Two US intelligence agencies recently reviewed our methodology, and they concluded that the data we produce is the most accurate and authoritative in Iraq.

It is well known that there are significant rivalries between the various sections of the US national security apparatus but they do all ultimately work for the same government. To suggest that three arms of that apparatus backing each others claims has anything to do with independent verification would clearly be absurd.

Furthermore, these intelligence agencies stand accused of fixing the intelligence and facts around a predetermined policy to enable this war in the first place. This was made clear to the British government way back in July 2002. Forgive me if I don't automatically assume that the statements of these agencies are god given gospel. (This may be a cliché but it is a cliché because it is true.)

After years of fatuous US government pronouncements on the situation in Iraq, pronouncement which have proved to be facile time and time again, only the most credulous individual would continue to take these claims at face value. When it comes to Iraq, healthy scepticism of the US government's proclamations is not an optional extra but an essential component of any attempt to get to the truth of the matter.

But not, apparently, for Mr Montgomerie. He's clearly not an idiot and I'm pretty sure he's not writing satire so what is he doing? The only answer I can come up with is that he's propagating and propagandising statements which he himself knows not to be true. For the greater good, you understand...

The Cock, the Chicken and the Egg

David Cameron's appearance on Newsnight last night was interesting. I see he's been working on his super sincere "I've got gravitas" face. Impressive...

On marriage, he said something which had me scratching my head.

The evidence shows that marriage is a good institution that encourages people to commit to each other and to stay with each other.

He then acknowledged that some marriages do break up, fair enough, but what evidence is he referring too which demonstrates that marriage encourages people to stay together? He helpfully outlined it:

There is some very interesting evidence that Iain Duncan Smith put in his report which is that if you take an unmarried couple with a child, by the time that child reaches the age of five, half of them have separated. The figure for married couple is one in twelve.

Well, that is certainly evidence. I'll even give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's true for now. What conclusion can be drawn from this evidence, Mr Cameron?

That to me is a figure we really have to look at and think marriage is a good institution, we should back it, and I think including in the tax system.

In summary, the argument is that because married people with children tend to stay together longer than unmarried couples, the institution of marriage causes these couples to stay together longer.

Hmm...

The detailed reasoning behind this argument is apparently contained in a previous report called Fractured Families. A helpful link to that report is provided in the newer one (pdf, page 13) but, alas, 404 Not Found doesn't really advance the case a great deal.

Without being able to access the details, it does seem like there might be just a tiny wee hole in this "evidence".

In the conclusions to the new report we find this comment (page 107):

As the chairwoman of OXPIP [an organisation which helps parents to bond with their children] said to us, ‘Marriage is the natural consequence of two adults being able to commit to each other because their own emotional development is secure and has given them the necessary confidence.’

To put it another way, marriage might well be a result of the relationship between two people who are already more likely to stay together than other couples.

The figures quoted by Cameron certainly don't prove that marriage "encourages people to commit to each other and to stay with each other". They might just as easily suggest that people who feel they are ready to get married under the current legislative framework are people who are already more likely to be able to maintain a stable relationship over a prolonged period. If the second suggestion is true, Cameron's policy proposals are only going to increase the divorce rate by encouraging marriages between people who are not actually ready to make that commitment.

Bizarrely, as if this has somehow registered subconsciously in the minds of the authors, they wrote this as the response to the comment on marriage as a natural consequence of emotional development:

It is for this reason that we have resisted incentivising marriage although our measures strongly encourage it.

Wibble.

We'll Say Anything, We Will

There seems to be something in the air this week. On Monday, Tory poster boy Iain stuck it too the big supermarkets for being beastly to traditional Conservative voters. Maybe he believes that putting political expediency before principle is a good way to rebuild public confidence in the integrity of the political system.

Yesterday, the Tories launched "It's Time to Fight Back" (pdf) proving first of all that they really didn't think very hard about the title of their document on ways to decrease violence in the UK.

The report contains this:

Parents need the support of wider society. Too often, the positive lessons learnt by children at home are undermined by negative lessons taught by popular culture... [T]he music industry, and in particular the lyrics and videos of rap, hip-hop and R&B... often explicitly popularise gangs, guns, a culture of unconstrained acquisition, and...

Hold on a minute there. Promoting "a culture of unconstrained acquisition" is a negative lesson? For the Tories?

Now you really are 'avin a giraffe.

Oh dear. It looks like Iain's dog whistle is malfunctioning. That post was only supposed to be noticed by farmers and other country folk, not people with awkward questions about his apparent abandonment of conservative free market principles (see the comments for details). Iain almost sounds like one of those supermarket hating lefties who want us all to eat only beetroot grown on our communal grounds or something...

Ah, the hazards of politics.

Since the Grant Shapps "1234 incident", I've noticed that Iain Dale has written a few posts on the subject of Labour and the interwebs. Today, taking the lead from Dizzy, he suggests that the Labour Party has been up to no good filming interviews in parliament without permission from the Serjeant at Arms and loading them up onto Google video.

In this case, you can almost hear the straws crackling under his grasp. 15 Labour MPs have filmed interviews in the same spot in Westminster Hall. Given that the filming of interviews is specifically allowed without need for permission in one part of Westminster Hall and given that one of the MPs filmed was the one who gave the answer linked above, I think it's safe to assume that permission wasn't require in this instance.

Scandalous, I'm sure you'll agree.

Still, to give him his due, he did update the post with a sort of acceptance that the videos probably weren't against the rules. What class.

PS: the reason why it was Iain's blog I commented on rather than Dizzy's was because of Iain's post title. Iain has something of a record when it comes to putting forward dodgy propositions in the shape of questions.

Update

I had mistakenly attributed a shred of decency to Iain when I suggested that he'd accepted that the videos were not against the rules. In the comments yesterday evening, he told me he'd done no such thing and that Dizzy was checking with the Serjeant at Arms. I have to admit that I wasn't sure whether Iain and Dizzy would be hugely forthcoming with the answer if it wasn't the one they wanted so I sent an email to the parliamentary authorities asking them to clarify the position regarding those videos.

This morning, I received an reply.

Dear Mr. Hamster,

Filming within Westminster Hall is permitted by the House authorities and was cleared by our office.

I wonder if that'll be enough for Iain?

Who Invented the Internet?

Apologies for the lack of activity here recently. There are a number of real world reasons for this which I won't bore you with. Normal service will resume shortly.

In the meantime, here's a little something for you. I started writing this last weekend before the offline world so rudely interrupted. This is a reworked version.

The question which has been on my mind recently is, can there ever be objective reality in political debate? (For a deeper discussion as to whether there even is such a thing as objective reality, you'll need to go to a philosopher. For the purposes of this, it is enough to accept that a tree in the woods has either fallen down or it hasn't. It's status can be checked and an objective reality can be agreed.)

Politics is all about differences of opinion of course but it seems to me that more and more time is spent arguing over the facts rather than the policies which address the facts. This is, I believe, one of the reasons why so many people are disillusioned with politics. The economy is booming/on the verge of collapse, crime is rising/falling, we're winning/losing the war and so on. It's not an edifying sight so see politicians squabbling over the facts in this way. Who wants to live in a world where nothing is real and everything is a matter of opinion?

Here's an example. Rather than tackling a big issue, I thought I'd start with an inconsequential one. The opportunity arose when Dizzy wrote a response to Tim's post on Dizzy. I felt no need to leap to Tim's defence, he's a big boy and can certainly look after himself, but I did decide to try to make a wider point.

Dizzy had written this:

Where [sic] Gore invented teh Interweb (All Praise the Gore!), he invented the blogosphere.

The "Gore claimed he invented the internet" meme is pretty widespread, it has to be said, but is it actually true?

On the face of it, it appears unlikely. Why on earth would a politician make such an extraordinary claim, one which was certain to be subject to endless ridicule?

Objectively, we can say that Gore never said the words "I invented the internet", What he actually said is recorded here.

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

And, as Snopes points out, what Gore meant was that "he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development the technology that we now know as the Internet". In context, this is obvious; he just said it very clumsily. Indeed.

As to whether that claim was valid, here's what two of the "founding fathers" of the internet had to say about Gore and the claim:

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

And he won an award for it too.

So, although it may be a matter of opinion as to the extent of Gore's contribution, his claim certainly wasn't entirely baseless. Essentially what we have here is a politician bigging himself up clumsily but with some amount of justification for the part he played in promoting the internet.

Objectively, we can say that Al Gore never claimed to have invented the internet in the way that was claimed by Republicans.

I decided to see whether Dizzy would agree so I submitted this comment:

"Where Gore invented teh Interweb..."

Urban myths are neither clever nor funny.

There is, I think, a difference between being politically partisan and being a truth distorting propagandist.

That was a bit rough but it's my understanding that Dizzy's a big boy too. Dizzy's response:

Curious Hamster, urban myth are funny if their intended target audience is Adam from Cross Pond who is, of course, simple great.

I have to admit to not understanding fully what he's saying here (and I've not had the time to find out about Adam and what he has to do with this) butDizzy does at least seem to accept that the Gore claim is an urban myth. Fair enough.

Not everyone was convinced though. Since PragueTory also appeared in the comments to that post, I also had a go at asking him the question that he's gone through hoops to avoid answering recently. Slightly cheeky perhaps but I couldn't resist:

Apologies for going off-topic but since PT is here, I would like to ask he ever got round to looking at the evidence of Guido's "beyond the pale" activities? (I won't "spam" the relevant link. PT knows what I mean.)

I only ask because people may be starting to think he's a coward who runs away when he's not got any answers and I'm sure none of us wants that.

Anyway. Must dash, Got stuff to do this afternoon. I'll check back to see if any answer is forthcoming later.

And, when I came back later, PT had responded. Of sort:

Stop giggling at the back. He only said he created the internet. Oh forget it. Let's all laugh and point.

Oh, how I laughed.

The effortless way he avoided the question is evidence of a real master at work. I did reply but, alas, although my comment was submitted well before Dizzy shut the thread down (due to a discussion between him and Tim, it seems), it never appeared. It has, I'm afraid, disappeared into the interweb ether.

In any event, attempts to get PragueTory to answer a straightforward question are probably doomed to failure from the very start. Perhaps that's why my comment didn't get through; maybe Dizzy realised that I was wasting my time with him. And what chance do you think I'd have had of getting PT to accept that Gore never actually claimed to have created the internet if the thread had remained open?

No, me neither. For PT, reality can go whistle. It's certainly not nearly as important as the opportunity to take cheap shots against political opponents. And there are more and more bloggers who do this. The accepted granddaddy of this sort of thing, "Guido Fawkes", likes to claim that Tim Ireland's exposés of his behaviour are somehow part of a Brownite plot orchestrated by Tom Watson. Anyone who's read Bloggerheads for any length of time will know that that's utter bilge of course but repeated often enough, some will start to believe it. And with that, objective reality in politics becomes just that little bit further away.

George Orwell famously wrote that "politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia". Sadly, the political blo****ere now looks to be going the same way.

It could be argued that this invasion of partisan spin and bull onto the interwebs is an unstoppable and inevitable result of modern politics and human behaviour. Perhaps it is but we'll never know for sure if we don't at least make the effort to stop it. And that's one of the reasons why I'm on the blogroll here (not the bogroll) and why I think you should be too.

(By the way, in the interests of transparency I should also say that I think Al Gore is a bit of a git. But not because he claimed he invented the internet. He didn't.)

The International Commitment Buffet

Here's a wee follow up to yesterday's post on weapons of mass destruction.

It looks increasingly likely that Tony will need Tory support to get the vote on Trident through the Commons. As such, I was particularly interested to see what Tory blogger Iain Dale had to say about the issue. All the boxes were ticked.

Always nice to see Labour MPs reverting to type and playing fast and loose with the defence of the nation, isn't it? Predictably they are likely to be joined in the No lobby by the LibDems who can't quite make up their minds as to whether Britain should even have its own nuclear deterrent.

Fast and loose indeed. That'll be that radical, dangerously naive, irresponsible minority of crazies...

Then, Iain demonstrated perfectly the point I made yesterday about what renewal at this time really means.

They say that in this post cold war era it is not as relevant and therefore could be scrapped. The truth is that we don't know who our enemies are likely to be in ten, twenty or thirty years time. It may indeed be ragtag terror groups like Al Qaeda, but it may also be nation states with nuclear capabilities. The precautionary principle ought at least to come into play here.

So, when would Iain agree to fulfil our commitment to work towards disarmament? I tried asking:

The truth is that we don't know who our enemies are likely to be in ten, twenty or thirty years time...

I'm curious to know how this fits in with our commitment under the NNPT to "pursue negotiations in good faith on... a Treaty on general and complete disarmament" (Article VI).

If you base this decision on the precautionary principle, it seems unlikely that you could ever commit to complete disarmament. In that case, you would certainly be in breach of the disarmament pillar of the NNPT. How then could you expect to have the moral authority to insist that other countries abide by the non-proliferation pillar?

Is it Tory policy to withdraw from the NNPT or would they, like Tony, just ignore the international obligations they don't fancy adopting?

And do you know what? Not one single person replied or even acknowledged that comment.

As you can imagine, my surprise at encountering this turn of events was entirely non-existent. It's the radioactive elephant in the debating room.

A few principled souls, probably from the left of the Labour Party it has to be said, will undoubtedly raise the issue in the debate tomorrow. All they'll get for their trouble is a barrage of ridicule and scorn.

Because the idea that we should abide by our international commitments rather than picking and choosing to suit ourselves is patently absurd...

Selective "Outrage"

For those not aware of it, Tim posted about the hypocrisy of one PragueTory on Friday and there's a follow up here. Dear oh dear.

So, when is beyond the pale not beyond the pale? Personally, I'd say that unjustifiably smearing someone as a paedophile actually is beyond the pale in all cases. PT appears to think differently. I've been waiting all weekend for an explanation as to why this is but no answer was forthcoming.

So, here's a short post dedicated to PT (and one of his commenters).

Another Rightie Goes Beyond the Pale

The Right definitely dominate when the blogosphere comes to posting things that are completely beyond the pale. And it seems like the material is coming thicker (pun intended) and faster than ever.

"Guido Fawkes" (who has boasted of his use of illegal tax evasion strategies) wrote that Mark Oaten was "a slaphead who most mothers would feel uneasy seeing near a playground". This comment was made last year.

Remarkably "Guido" is allowing his comment to stand.

There can be no doubt that the left occupy the erudite, blogging high-ground while the right prefer the low swamp of attack and innuendo

Right?

No, obviously not. Because, you see, I realise that although "the right" has it's fair share of tossers, hypocrites and bastards just like any other group of human beings, it would be unfair on the many decent people of the right to extrapolate that sort of behaviour in this stupid generic way in an attempt to gain partisan political advantage. It would be misleading, dishonest and well, just not very nice.

That obviously isn't a concern shared by everyone though.

PR, Not Principles

Dear oh dear. I wasn't going to blog this but Alan Duncan's waffle on Question Time has spurred me on.

Here's the original interview with Patrick Mercer in the Times. It doesn't seem to me that his comments have been reported out of context. Bear in mind also that the interview was specifically concerned with the formation of a new anti-racism trade union being set up by servicemen from former colonial countries, an idea Mercer described as "complete and utter rot".

With that in mind, Mercer has only himself to blame. The main problem, it seems to me, is that he demonstrated a far too relaxed attitude towards racist abuse in the army.

On the one hand, the situation which he describes is probably an accurate reflection of life in the British army. On the other hand, he doesn't appear to be in any way concerned about that situation. His attitude does, in fact, come very close to condoning it as part and parcel of army life.

Racist abuse is unacceptable. End of. Mercer appears to have a rather more ambivalent attitude towards it when it comes to the army. It may very well be the way it is but that doesn't mean that it's the way it should be. And yes, the army is a tough place but that doesn't mean that gratuitous racial abuse is acceptable there any more than it is in any other walk of life.

His second controversial statement, that he "came across a lot of ethnic minority soldiers who were idle and useless, but who used racism as cover for their misdemeanours" may well have some degree of truth to it. Although Mercer's claim that he'd seen "a lot" of this is highly questionable, I'm sure that it does happen on occasion. If you want to claim that a particular ethnic group doesn't have it's fair share of chancers, layabouts and scroungers, you're probably not quite connected to reality (white Europeans included of course). But the way Mercer expressed that was clumsy in the extreme.

What really interests me is the way that Tory HQ handled this and that's where Alan Duncan started to stray into the realms of fantasy. Duncan seemed to think that the BBC was somehow to blame for the initial lacklustre reaction of the Tory party. He suggested that BBC Online had phoned Tory HQ and put a partial quote to the spokesman and that that was the source of the initial minimal "it's a private matter" response (it's about 7:30 mins in to QT if you want to check).

Here's the quotation from the original Times Online article:

The Conservative Party, in which Mr Mercer serves as a frontbench spokesman with responsibility for homeland security and anti-terrorism issues, said that his comments were a personal matter and refused to discuss them.

"These are the personal views of a highly decorated former commanding officer talking about his real life experiences in the British Army," a party spokesman said.

Nothing to do with the BBC then and if the Tory spokesman didn't get the full picture before supplying that reaction then they should be sacked too.

It was only after the bad publicity generated by the remarks that Dave decided to take bold action and announce that Mercer's comments were "completely unacceptable". It was nothing more than an empty exercise in damage limitation after Dave realised that to do nothing would be to damage his shiny new Conservative brand.

He's so like Blair, it's almost become parody.

Politics
pol·i·tics (pŏl'ĭ-tĭks)
noun.

1. The art or science of vacuous marketing goons attempting to sell their worthless wares to the gullible.
2. The activities or affairs needed to fool just enough of the people for just enough time.

Someone wake me up if we ever actually get politics for adults in this country.

On a positive note, I see that the Gurkhas are finally going to treated fairly for risking their lives to protect us. I wonder if Mercer thinks that that's "complete and utter rot" too?

That's not the way to do it

I've just been watching this week's PMQs and the thing now seems to have descended completely into farce. What ever happened to shiny PR man's vow to avoid Punch and Judy politics? He's going through the same stages as Blair only more quickly.

Actually, there was a point in Blair's career where many people genuinely and optimistically did believe that he could lead us all to the promised land. Cameron seems to have missed out that stage altogether. All things considered, this is probably not a bad thing.

And what's with the speaker allowing Blair to go on and on about Conservative policy? OK, credit where it's due for managing to find anything to say about Tory policies given their scarcity but that isn't what PMQs is supposed to be about.

But then, what would be the point in asking quacker Blair about policy? You might as well ask a man standing on a gallows with a noose round his neck what he wants for breakfast tomorrow.

And when Sir Menzies did actually ask a serious question about the unsustainable role of the Attorney General, an area in which public confidence is eroding by the day, Blair simply gave him the brush off:

The position of the Attorney General, and the role that he carries out, has been there for hundreds of years, in our constitution, and I believe it to be the right role.

This from Blair, the archetype of the pathological moderniser. This may very well be the first and only time in Blair's career that he's decided he doesn't know better than hundreds of years of history and tradition. How unsurprising that it's in an area which really does need reform but where the maintenance of the status quo is of benefit to the ruling party.

By all accounts, we're going to have to put up with a few more weeks of this before Blair finally goes. Most pundits now seem to agree that Blair will announce his departure after the local elections in May. In one sense, this unprecedented long goodbye is sort of fascinating. Like a car crash is fascinating.

And remember that memo?

He needs to go with the crowd wanting more,
He should be the star who won't even play that last encore.

And he's planning to leave after the local election results have come in.

You've got to wonder whether he even realises that his departure will be marked by a chorus of boos as he and his entourage struggle to avoid the hail of rotting vegetables.

Update

Here we go. Do your own booing.

Strawmen For Adults

18 Doughty Street's fearless campaign to attack strawmen in full public view continues apace. Iain is pleased. Look at that straw fly!

The strawman that Iain and co. are proudly thrashing this week is that everyone on the left hates Bushmerica. It's hardly an original construction, it has to be said. In fact, you've got to wonder whether they had to pay royalties to the Republican Party for use of that battered old thing. Surely not. Look at the state of it.

Still, let's get into the spirit of things and add a couple more blows to the mix

The Little One

1. I am opposed to the foreign policies of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.
2. I am not opposed to the existence of the United Kingdom.

There's a difference, you see. I strongly suspect I'm not the only person on the left who realises this.

The Ironic One

Using accusations of anti-Americanism in an attempt to stifle, disparage or misrepresent political dissent is, well, unAmerican. Well it is, isn't it?


There are lots of "adult" reasons why 18 Tory Street's "attack ad" is unconvincing. The whole premise of the thing is wrong on many levels. In fact, it's just the sort of thing you could imagine the Swift Boat Veterans for the Tories doing.

By the way, viewing the video in question will confirm beyond doubt that Beau Bo D’Or was bang on the money.

What Would Sophocles Do?

Remember that Beckett interview with John Humphries on Today a while back? Here's a reminder:

Beckett: Mr Ross' basic thesis is that in some way, there was an assertion that Saddam Hussain was a threat directly to the U.K. You and I are both speaking from memory now but I don't recall that argument being one that was used. It...

Humphries: Sorry, Tony Blair didn't tell us Saddam Hussain was a threat to the United Kingdom?

Beckett: Wait a minute, wait a minute. What was said throughout was that Saddam Hussain was a threat to his region and that he had the intention and the desire to be a threat much more widely...

Humphries: 45 minutes?

Beckett: John, you and I both know that was a statement that was made once and it was thought to be of such little relevance and perhaps people began to quickly think 'I'm not sure about that'. It was never used once in all the debates or questions in the House...

Humphries: It didn't need to be. It was on the public record.

Beckett: Oh come on. No-one thought it was relevant. Nobody thought it was actually a big sweeping statement.

It's still extraordinary.

Anyway, I was just poking around TheyWorkForYou looking for something else when I found this written Q&A from 19th March 2003:

Paul Flynn: To ask the Prime Minister what plans he has to publish amendments to his assessment in the document 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction' presented to the House in September 2002 arising from the evidence of UNMOVIC inspectors on Iraqi (a) bases, (b) presidential palaces and (c) uranium imports.

Tony Blair: I have no plans to publish an amended version of the dossier presented in September 2002, the contents of which still accurately reflect our assessment of the position with regard to Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes.

Let's play spot the liar.

If Beckett was telling the truth about the 45 minute claim, if, as she put it, "people began to quickly think 'I'm not sure about that'", the statement by Blair six months later and one day after the war started is totally indefensible.

Perhaps Gilligan was wrong to say that the government "probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong or questionable" when the dossier was released. Perhaps. Beckett certainly appears to have confirmed that the government knew it was questionable before the war started.

And when Nick Robinson* stripped down Blair's waffle today, it laid bare the ridiculous nature of his position. Again.

Iraq is what should have brought Blair down. Here are some clues as to the reasons why it won't.

And here are the dots being joined up beautifully.

The people who attended the largest demonstration in this country's history weren't fooled by Blair's "evidence". To hear various Conservatives, the very people whose job it is to scrutinise the activities of the government, complaining that they'd been being tricked is derisory. They could have listened to Robin Cook but they were too busy cheering Blair on.

And all this in the name of defending democracy.

If the ancient Greek playwright's were still with us today, I don't think they'd be struggling for inspiration.

* I'd like to say a few more things about Nick's post and might do later if time allows.

Move along now. Nothing to see here...

Swift Boat Veterans for the Tories

This post is about 18 Doughty Street. Yes, yes, we're all obsessed leftist moonbats over here.

The thing is, living in a country where the Sun and the Mail are the two best selling daily newspapers, us on "the left"are quite used to having our views misrepresented, marginalised and ridiculed. We're used to not getting a fair hearing in the mainstream media.

(In recent weeks, I've submitted three comments to right of centre media websites; two to the Telegraph and one to the Sun. Not one of the three made it past their moderators. On the other hand, I've never had a comment removed from Comment is Free and it's awash with people expressing anti-Guardianista views. There may be an interesting point there about hypocrisy and defence of the right to free speech in the media.)

We tend to be less hostile to Auntie because she's obliged to be politically neutral. As a result, of course, the Beeb looks to be to the left of much of the rest of the media. Claiming that this is proof of a left bias at the BBC rather silly. This claim is part of a concerted effort to move the "centre" to the right. That's not to say there's a grand conspiracy at work, just a number of right wing media owners and editors all working towards a goal which they believe will benefit themselves and their companies.

This would be all well and good if Murdoch, Wade and Dacre played fair but they don't. For example, the Scum currently sells in Scotland for 15p and it has boobs. I know a fair few people who buy it, some for the sport, some for the boobs but I've never heard anyone say they buy it for the news. But there is a drip, drip, drip effect going on there which pushes a particular political agenda and ridicules another.

And it's worth restating the suggestible nature of the human condition. You, yes, you, are suggestible. Advertising is a multi-billion pound industry for a reason. Have a quick peek in your kitchen cupboards and check how many brand names are in there. Why didn't you buy the cheaper no brand option? We're all suggestible to some extent.

And it's the way that Wade and co. go about things which really damages any possibility of honest political debate. As I've already said, a key component is misrepresentation of the other view. Us "leftists" are well used to having our views turned into strawmen.

So, it's just a tiny bit irritating to see the same thing starting to happen on the interwebs.

Anyway, on Friday, Iain Dale wrote that:

Leftist bloggers seem to think that this blog and 18 Doughty Street are somehow funded by some shady Americans.

As a "leftist blogger" who has been writing about 18 Doughty Street, I decided to make it clear that I wasn't in that camp. I was also curious to know whether Iain could provide any examples of leftist bloggers making these claims:

Iain, could you could provide information as to which "leftist bloggers" have been writing about that? The only time I've ever seen that suggested was in anonymous comments made on your blog. These suggestions are very easy to refute and to ridicule.

In fact, in the spirit of "reaching out", if you point me at any leftist blogs making such claims, I'll happily tell them they're talking crap. 18 D... is funded by Stephan Shakespeare, Tory candidate for Colchester at the 1997 G.E. and ex-mayoral campaign manager for Jeffrey Archer. 18 D... is funded and run by British Conservatives, not Republicans or neo-cons.

Fair enough, I thought. Attempt at a little humour without being needlessly rude. To be fair to Iain, his reply was quick and courteous (he's also fixed the link to individual comments feature which is nice):

Curious Hamster, I have seen it on several sites over the last few weeks, ever since the onslaught on me started. People have queried both my funding and that of 18DS. Someone kept editing my Wikipedia entry to that effect too.

As you say, the only source of funding for 18 Doughty Street is indeed Stephan Shakespeare, something we were totally open about right from the start.

So, no examples for me to go poke fun at. I was disappointed. I did have a sniff around the history of Iain's Wikipedia page - didn't find any mention of funding but it was hardly an extensive search - but it was really the leftist bloggers making those claims I was interested in. Guess I'll just have to keep an eye out for these elusive creatures.

But Iain is quite correct about the openness of the declaration of funding for 18 Doughty Street. Sort of. The relevant section of the 18 Doughty Street FAQ says:

Doughty Media Limited is the company that owns www.18DoughtyStreet.com. The directors of the company are Stephan Shakespeare, Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie and Donal Blaney. The company is wholly owned and funded by Stephan Shakespeare, the co-founder and Chief Innovations Officer of YouGov Plc.

And I've no reason to doubt that this information is absolutely true. Other information which might be considered relevant, however, makes no appearance.

It is perhaps understandable that Mr Shakespeare is no longer keen to remind people of his close asociation with Lord Archer but some sort of indication of his party political affiliations on that page might just add a little bit more credibility to Iain's claim of total openness. At the moment, the inclusion of his YouGov credentials and omission of his party political credendials creates an impression of political impartiality which isn't entirely accurate.

I also asked Iain another question but over-egged the pudding slightly in my attempt to keep my comment reasonably short:

On a related note, can you confirm that 18 Doughty Street placed an advertisement which stated that it would be "like Fox News"? (Please don't try to spin this; the report I read suggested that 18 D... is a vehicle for the promotion of British Conservatives in the way that Fox News is a vehicle for Republicans in the U.S.)

That report appeared in the Register (via). Iain's answer was interesting:

On your last point, we are not a news channel. However, if people want to say we are like Fox News, I have no objection to that at all. Fox News is highly professional. I am not aware of an advert that said that, and I think it is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the editorial role of Fox News and the Republican Party.

Fox News is totally independent of the Republican Party just as we are totally independent of the Conservative Party. We have a centre right editorial line, in the same way that the Daily Telegraph does. That does not make us slaves to the Conservative Party and more than the Mirror is a slave to the Labour Party.

"I am not aware..."

I'm starting to understand how Paxo feels.

As I said, I over-egged the pudding slightly on the connection between Fox News and the Republicans but "Fox News is totally independent of the Republican Party"? Crikey!

No doubt, the Swift Boat Veterans were totally independent of the Republican Party too.

But let's just repeat one of the lines above, written by 18 Doughty Street's director of scheduled programming:

We have a centre right editorial line, in the same way that the Daily Telegraph does.

Given that that newspaper is commonly called the Torygraph, I can't decide whether Iain is pulling my chain here or what. In any event, Iain's description of 18 Doughty Street's editorial line is not quite the same as the one in their FAQs:

Does 18 Doughty Street have a particular editorial line?

Yes. We are anti-establishment.

A large number of issues that matter to voters going about their everyday lives are deemed too sensitive to debate, or the major political parties have adopted a consensus that prevents fresh, innovative solutions being considered for problems that have plagued Britain for decades. We raise issues where an unhealthy consensus has developed (such as on state funding of political parties or on Britain’s membership of the EU) and we ask questions of our guests from a perspective from which they have rarely been questioned to date.

No mention of centre right there. Perhaps there should be. Just for the sake of openness and transparency.

(By the way, it surely can't be just us lefties who think it's bizarre that this venture, owned and staffed by conservatives, describes itself as anti-establishment. Unless I've misunderstood the whole point of conservatism, it's just silly. We establishment radicals should not stand for it...)

The fact is that 18 Doughty Street is owned and operated by members of the British Conservative Party. The specific purpose of the channel is to promote a right of centre agenda. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to conclude that promotion of this agenda will include attempts to help the Tories win the London mayoral election, other local elections and the big one; the next general election.

Of itself, there's nothing wrong with that. The way they've sought to present their agenda, however, doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence in the future of British politics.

Update

Credit Beau Bo D’Or

Update 2

And another. Heh.

Unity has spotted Iain displaying his extensive knowledge of local politics to amusing effect.

The People's Republic of Camden?

In light of a recent refusal to address certain questions, this might go some way to explaining the existence of the Great Firewall of a certain Tory blogger.

(The above recycled from Unity's comments because Unity got in first with the Little Blue Book joke.)