brexit negging when yr mandate is is trash: or further chronicles of a garbage-fire

There is a kernel of something interesting with the Cambridge Analytica stuff and people are absolutely correct to be worried about Legatum’s influence - the Chandler brother are scum - but rather than cover the fairly prosaic but essential story of how a convergence of big data and vulture capitalism are more or less openly driving us towards hard Brexit, she seems intent on turning it into conspiracy thriller.

xps

Hyping it up conspiracy-wise not necessarily the wrong approach *cues up Burial*

It is totally the wrong approach when the conspiracy falls apart with five minutes of Googling and the reality is that a pair of foreign oligarchs are driving the Brexit agenda to exploit declining asset values and push deregulation imo. It is missing an open goal.

Applebaum is currently plugging a Ukraine famine book, meh! Bad luck that the 2nd volume of Kotkin's Stalin is out now and is beautifully written, impeccably researched and covers the same period with proper historian craft.

Byrne is perversely almost right with his ‘is a fortune made in Putin’s Russia driving hard Brexit’ tweet - though not for the reason he thinks. The Chandlers made their money pre-Putin and have made a career, since then, on repeating the trick of destabilising countries, buying up assets cheaply, pushing for ‘market reforms’ and flipping their holdings for multiples of what they paid for them. The fact that they are supposedly the most influential think tank wrt May and Brexit should be a scandal - but Byrne and Cadwalladr seem incapable of connecting the dots without routing them through the Kremlin.

do you think the correct focus will be applied by govt/media in a short-term timescale

Lol

i know skinnock was married to a dane: somehow i hadn't taken in that it's the former danish pm

This clip of Stephen Kinnock and @HelleThorning_S is absolutely incredible. Just after the exit poll at 10pm- you can tell who's been a former PM. #LaboursSummer pic.twitter.com/V9WL3OR6yk

— Jack Evans (@jackcevans) November 20, 2017

i never thought he was destined to be a high-flier but now…

is he the white knight of the remoaniacs now or something

he is nothing now

Labour's 'red prince' filmed naked in a bubble bath
Stephen Kinnock, described as Labour's 'red prince', appeared in a little-known Russian television film in 2007

The film ends with Mr Kinnock casting meaningful glances at the two other women. Mr Kinnock has rarely spoken about the scene, other than to describe it as "awkward".

the "red prince" references to him have completely died since the election, as he has in any meaningful sense continued to be alive.

mark, what are those kinnock clips from?

tbf the last searchable google reference to Skinnock as "red prince" was in the Torygraph a year before the election. But he was definitely still acting with carefree Red Prince impunity within the PLP a full year after that. That clip is funny though!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09gtywy/labour-the-summer-that-changed-everything

this be where it be from, Jed.

caveat: apart from that particular moment it is probably shit.

thanks Cal

if i'd've realised it was going to be Kinnock's Spinal Tap i'd've watched that last night

It’s absolutely fucking hilarious. Beyond The Thick Of It levels of hilarity.

A worried Kinnock SR post exit poll: Well it's still very perplexing, Steve...

its okay. it makes a lot of people look like prats, deservedly. But its just so incurious about corbyn. especially in the earlier part when you can clearly see the bbc was gathering footage of corbyn's demise. There's a part where they interview a disabled man who is a non-voter turned labour member under corbyn. I wonder, given all the Tory party has been doing to the disabled population of the UK over the last 7 years if there might be any connection? this program is not really interested in people's stories unless they're a hapless and ridiculous looking mp. still found it very entertaining, stephen kinnock is hard to watch without cringing.

also, unbelievable the moment where helen cadbury appears delighted that all these brightfaced young people have shown up to help her but doesn't make the momentum connection (momentum was very active and organised about sending volunteers off to extreme marginals like hers)

i do think she comes across most sympathetically in the first half mind

wtf I thought these craven blairite shits were supposed to be ‘media-savvy’

I already spent way too much time listening/watching Labour voters who hated Corbyn on the BBC during the election campaign, to not be a bit jaded by much of the first half.

over the last month during my brief periods of lucidity I've been thinking a fair bit about the long history of working class people who hate socialism - it's definitely the second flank of the Blairite project, the useful idiot wing imo but never mind that now, i'll elaborate when I've thought it thru some more

i’d be keen to hear it tbh

I already spent way too much time listening/watching Labour voters who hated Corbyn on the BBC during the election campaign, to not be a bit jaded by much of the first half.

Like every single day of the election campaign.

is he the white knight of the remoaniacs now or something

Here's the thing - no one cared about or rated Kinnock Jr beyond a few bubblicious Westminster hacks and the odd Dan Hodges type comedy troll. Even in the event of a leadership contest the Labour right would have coalesced around an Yvette Cooper or similar and not this lightweight.

Looks like the LM cru (Fiona Fox, etc) were instrumental in the BBC failing to cover the BMJ austerity death report:

The BBC reports extensively on the NHS including budget pressures as evidenced by a recent report by Hugh Pym ‘NHS battle for money: Where will it end?’

Our audiences expect the BBC to provide impartial and well sourced news they can trust. We carefully considered whether the BMJ Open study merited reporting including verifying it with other sources and on this occasion we concluded it did not. The Science Media Centre, an independent body that peer reviews scientific news, has raised concerns that the conclusions were “highly speculative” and should be treated with “caution”.

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2017/11/20/distorting-the-news-on-economic-murder/

I read that the BBC have done a joint study with BMJ before, and covered other papers of their's, it's only now they aren't considered "credible". I'm cancelling my license debit, seriously fuck these people.

it's still v depressing to watch Kinnick and his wife discuss the exit poll - "that's a hung parliament" /no shit, sherlock/ but kinnock replies, "is it?!" to which she says "she could still do it though..." cut to Kinnock Sr. doing some sums on a bit of paper working out how may can still have a majority. in both cases, you realise they are hoping for a tory majority.

still, the part where she tries to talk him out of going in front of the cameras is hilarious.

Incapable of reading BMJ as anything other than Big Martin Jol

I'd even trust that cunt to be more honest and impartial than the BBC, seriously they expect people to pay license fees when they behave like a fucking lowdown shit-eating Murdoch rag.

i’d be keen to hear it tbh

Blue Saturday

well I got down the gist of it but it's not really thought thru or elaborate

there was another "excess deaths" study published in February which I believe the BBC also declined to report on.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/nhs-cuts-excess-deaths-30000-study-research-royal-society-medicine-london-school-hygiene-martin-a7585001.html

Fiona Fox has written quite a few in-house blog posts for the BBC on science and journalism. Hard to really know where she's coming from.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/authors/2ea08042-64ea-3d4c-86e6-a16c36bed95d

srsly what is it with LM people and genocide-denial?

Something about encouraging victimhood I imagine.

If you keep talking about these millions of dead people as if they are helpless victims then you are patronizing dead people, dead people are perfectly capable of fighting their own battles.

On a related side note:

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury/news/school-offers-classes-in-mein-kampf-135617/

Joanna Williams, the education editor of Spiked, is on the school’s board iirc and I think Furedi is mixed up in there somewhere as well.

I mean, the BMJ is just a v standard journal. Would have thought it was generally the go-to for "standard" accepted scientific knowledge. Its peer review process will have been focussed on very standardised measures of model-fit and statistical significance and I can't imagine that any of the reviewers will have been motivated to rock the boat on government policy, probably quite the reverse. Feel very in the dark in general as I don't know anything about the LM network or fiona fox...

Milo Yiannopoulos had previously been invited to speak at the same school:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-38051488

xp

Yep - and is a former pupil, which should come as little surprise.

21/11/2017 10:30:27
EdS wrote:
...

Ironically Ms Kundy and Ms Kissock have probably highlighted exactly the reason these debates should exist; they have clearly not understood the premise of the course. They seem like prime candidates to attend, Prof - make sure they sign up, unless they are too busy whinging to The Guardian, of course.
+11 1 Reply

this program is not really interested in people's stories unless they're a hapless and ridiculous looking mp.

there's this appealing idea that once someone has obviously lost control and been wrong-footed that you are witnessing something Real and True, and a related appealing idea that peeling back the veneer to see the incompetence of politicians is the definition of good journalism, but it's still all part of the view of politics as westminster plotting & bumbling light entertainment (offset with the occasional solemn & pompous speech about british values before we vote to bomb someone or w/e - tho these are imo more defensible). there will always be hapless MPs and keeping the focus on them allows people to dream about, forget, or otherwise not look hard at either the consequences of political decisions, or the institutions & structural forces dictating them. any number of individuals can be sacrificed without anything really changing & the hollow lols and schadenfreude at politicians' expense seem like a coping mechanism, redirected energy thats root cause has not been addressed, bigger & deeper than its target, like the anger over duck houses. it's not Wrong, but it is easily incorporated into the unhealthy status quo

It's the fucking BMJ, just run the story and offer the government right of reply.

The gov will no doubt just tell the BMJ what they told the Red Cross back in January - not to be so irresponsible and overblown.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/labour-documentary-general-election-jeremy-corbyn-stephen-kinnock-a8067606.html

This is pretty brutal but very entertaining.