DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

"Shares in BSkyB have closed nearly 5% lower than they started this morning. In the last week, the share price has dropped a total of 15% - wiping around £2.5bn off the market value of the company."

Happy days!

...making them a steal for one R. Murdoch

They wouldn't dare

Someone wanting to buy a company pushes the share price up.

Conversely, that buyer being prevented from making a bid would push the price back down again.

It would not be possible for RMurd to suddenly turn up at their door with the cash and a bunch of heavies going "right, sell them to me NOW!!!"

don't give him any ideas

don't know if this was mentioned earlier but this thread has become so fat so quickly i've not had time to catch up.

it was just the sheer brazen wankiness of seeing today as a day to bury scandalous news. 'oh they'll all be focussing on clegg being nice to the dowlers, and ooh now it looks like brown was targeted, so no one will notice if we sharpen a huge stake for the state's heart. then the right will know that we were tories all along and that the big society was just the smokescreen we always hoped it would be.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/11/david-cameron-promises-end-state-monopoly-public-services

We definitely need a new thread. The ILX(USA) have had about four politics threads while this one has been going. It's like we're not even an important world power any more.

US threads only get shut cos a wingnut turns up once a month and de-rails them

^^^This could only be accomplished here if DELINGPOLE turned up.

The US politics thread tends to roll over into new thread territory somewhere around 8000 posts FWIW. C. 1500 posts to go until we reach that here!

Under the changes, every public service except for national security, frontline policing and the judiciary will be opened up to providers from the private and voluntary sector.

hoping this means that MPs could be hired from a pool of temp politicians

Makes you suspicious of why Murdoch threw millions of dollars at Myspace - was it just for the passwords? Wonder how many celebrities used same account information for their fan pages as for their email accounts and online banking.

We definitely need a new thread. The ILX(USA) have had about four politics threads while this one has been going. It's like we're not even an important world power any more.

― that was the last arrow in my quiver of whimsy (Ned Trifle II), Monday, July 11, 2011 5:57 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

not until the short-lived cleggeron era comes to a close!

"The last time they counted, just 40 people who had had free school meals were going to Oxbridge - out of 80,000,"

This is a depressing statistic and a marvellous non sequitur. Do people exist who read this sentence and think "oh, well, that would be solved by privatising schools"? Also lol at "the last time they counted" as attribution.

http://www.cjr.org/feature/anybody_there.php?page=all

i'm not in the uk but i don't really buy the thesis that many non-NI papers are still ignoring it ("The day after the statement’s Friday afternoon release, the Independent and Guardian covered the story in depth, with 6,722 words between them; the remaining six newspapers managed a cumulative total of 4,187"), but i thought this was a pretty good article

Top Gear's Jeremy Cuntson in his Mail column:

Milly Dowler’s parents, the Soham families and the rest of the bereaved have been trampled underfoot as vested interests stampeded to settle old scores and advance their own agendas. They are merely ‘civilians’, collateral damage in a much bigger war raging on several fronts.

Two Jags and his ilk are desperate to exact revenge for the exposure of their own indiscretions. Labour has tried to make this about the judgment of David Cameron, who has in turn attempted to deflect attention by threatening statutory regulation of the Press.

The BBC and others are using the scandal to prevent Rupert Murdoch taking full control of BSkyB. The loss-making Guardian and Independent seem determined to take down the rest of the British Press with them.

And:

And as to whether this is Britain’s Watergate, I don’t remember all this furore in the House when Labour’s favourite copper Ian Blair was caught secretly taping his phone calls with the Attorney General.

For the life of me, too, I still can’t see the difference between the Screws hacking into voicemails and the Guardian lionising Julian Assange, who hacked into the security services and then published classified details which got people killed.

I’ve been in this game over 40 years and I know and have worked with many of the main actors in this drama. They were all well aware what they were getting into and will now have to face the consequences. I’m not making any excuses for anyone, just trying to get everything in some kind of perspective.
The people we should care about are the real victims of this drive-by shooting, particularly all those blameless journalists at the News of the World who have lost their jobs and the other non-combatants, who have become pawns in a greater game.

Is that the same Jeremy Cuntson who is bezzy mates with Rebekah Brooks?

Actually it's by Richard Littlejohn, not Clarkson. Don't know how I got confused. You couldn't make it etc etc.

I don’t remember all this furore in the House when Labour’s favourite copper Ian Blair was caught secretly taping his phone calls with the Attorney General.

oof, that's a close analogy. your move, the families of numerous war dead.

Also this bit:

The idea that the official investigation into the police’s role is going to be carried out by a committee chaired by that ocean-going sleazeball Keith Vaz, who has brought the morality of the souk to British politics, is risible.

ts: hacking into phone voicemails to get scoops vs making it all up to suit yourself.

who has brought the morality of the souk to British politics

srsly, what does this actually mean? i.e. fromhis 'viewpoint'?

Aren't they market places where everything gets sold for whatever price is negotiated?

It means he hates the Arabs as well as the Japs and Krauts.

Mark, I think it means Keith Vaz was born in Yemen and that our correspondent is a racist POS.

Gordon currently taking down that elephant damn hardcore

ah right, so it's purely a "say something foreign and get people going "yuk"" then?

Just seemed a really bad analogy, as the natural way of things for a "free market economy" as outed by the RWingers for ever would be... a souk.

outed = "touted", but hey.

to be fair, keith vaz is a massive twat

otm but "the souk" o_O

it's purely a "say something foreign and get people going "yuk"" then?

No. I'd rather not unpack the specific racism of it but really Littlecock is saying

"1. Vaz is an Arab
2. All Arabs are thieves and bribe-takers
3. Unlike our honourable white British Parliamentarians"

with a slice of other racist connotations somehow crammed into the words "morality" and "souk"

xp I mean yeah Vaz is a twat but

i thought it was normal for big committees like home affairs to be chaired by a govt mp btw?

Thanks, I now am clearer.

HAPPY FUNTIMES: http://gawker.com/5820243/jon-stewart-tackles-the-news-of-the-world-scandal

xp

but you are right in a way and if it was National Derrida Day we cd have a bunch of fun with the fact that a souk also functions as a symbol of a v. Smith-ite free market in full effect

Exactly that, yes.

Right, back to the Dexy's thread.

john oliver so bad always

Interesting comment from the thread:

When Murdoch's father was reporting for an Australian newspaper from Gallipoli during WW1, the press was tightly controlled by the military. Murdoch Snr tried to smuggle notes about the casualties sustained by the ANZACs.

His passage wad halted and he was made to hand over all of his written material. Another member of the press had ratted him out. That other reporter was working for The Guardian.

john oliver so bad always

― caek, Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:40 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

shhhhh. let them keep oliver. maybe they'll take brogstocke.

brigstocke

anybody who's too shit to get a gig in the home of Mock the Week has gotta be pretty special

the daily show: i don't get it

newsnight is ~2x funnier

Ed Miliband has always kept News International at arm's length.

http://twitpic.com/5oz37k

He's just trying to memorise the keyword off the Holiday Voucher.

Wait what is wrong with Oliver? He is so much better than mock the week brigstoke types

Could have been much worse, dave Gorman interviewed for the daily show at the same time iirc

John Yates: not even remotely shifty or evasive.

Had a good chat with my 'Met insider' in the pub last night, he reckons Blair, Stephenson, Clarke, Hayman, Yates are all culpable in one way or another... he also reckons they're a bunch of arseholes in one way or another (some stupid, some bad, some even mad(!))

john oliver actually appeared on mock the week a few years back xps

oliver was OK, stewart's OTT reaction drowned out the actual story though.