Sunday, April 12, 2009
Damian McBride - Now Wash Your Hands
Guido is to be congratulated. He appears to have disposed of a genuine bad 'un. Shaking hands with McBride should be followed by a quick alcohol rub. So WTF was he doing in Downing Street? And why is this Draper still around? I dimly remember he once tried to have dinner with me. I just laughed. The answer is, of course, that they are both products of the dance of death between politicians and the press that began in the mid-nineties. So-called sleaze (I say 'so-called' because it wasn't really worthy of the title, what we have now is much much worse) brought down John Major and Blair launched a control the press project using Mandelson and Campbell. It worked, the press acquiesced by allowing themselves to be convinced that the proper subject of political coverage was the Westminster soap opera and so, for almost fifteen years, we have had crap politics and crapper political journalism. We arrive at the point where a Brown strategist's idea of strategy is to pump out dirty lies about the opposition, apparently safe in the knowledge that the mere fact that they are lies will not compromise their effectiveness one jot.'There's no smoke without fire,' people would say, but, these days, smoke is very seldom accompanied by fire. About Westminster, it is safe to assume nothing you read, see or hear is true. The Brown regime is decadent and depraved. It does Blair but badly. As a result , the idea of political wisdom or dignity is now laughable. It will take British politics a generation to haul itself out of this quagmire.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Hammer, nail, head.
ReplyDeleteNothing much to add other than it was pretty good box office yesterday watching the news channels and the web updates, I went though quite a bit of popcorn, the real stuff not the crap out of the bags, i have standards.
So what are the legal implications here?
Misconduct in public office looks pretty watertight, and the there is the little known "Improper use of public electronic communications network"
Series to be continued?
Fear and Loathing in No 10. One can sense the unmistakable lunacy of that asylum. And the general promiscuous cupidity to which the Labour Government has stooped over the past ten years or so, has debased this nation as nothing else could. Needless to say, political life has its own rules. And cupidity always sets the cultural tone at the lowest possible level. But these years will remain branded, nevertheless, in the history of the moral, political and social degeneration, rather than decline, of this, once the noblest of island nations...
ReplyDeleteTHE RETURN OF THE JEDI
It worked, the press acquiesced by allowing themselves to be convinced that the proper subject of political coverage was the Westminster soap opera and so, for almost fifteen years, we have had crap politics and crapper political journalism.
ReplyDeleteYes. But He is risen indeed. It's the only way back. Note how the cynicism of Pilate and the priests is such a major part of the story, before. After, they are nowhere, forgotten. The ultimate subversion, from the love that truly understands.
All that needs to be said, you have said Bryan. Truly, decadence and depravity are the current mark of this amoral administration.
ReplyDeleteRichard. Hear, hear to you too, although you may have noticed that one T. Blair has taken it upon himself to lecture the Pope on how the structure, strategy and systems of New Labour might be profitably utilised by the Catholic church to its, supposed advantage. Whatever was Cormac Murphy-O'Connor thinking of when he let him in? Talk about bowing down to Caesar and following the path of Pilate!
I love the way that Mr McBride's apology manages to lament the leaking of the emails without acknowledging the wrongness of writing them . . .
ReplyDeletealso, resigning presumably guarantees his pension and allows for the possibility of return . . .
This administration has the smell of death hanging over it, the corpse that started to rot in 1997 has but a short time left, even the maggots are looking elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteWill we have learned our lesson ? possibly but I wouldn't place a bet.
You are right Bryan, the damage will take ten years to heal.
It is curious to me that this story has been broken by the bloggers, not the press. The lament of late has been that the decline of newspaper journalism means politicians/government are less likely to be held to account -the reality is blogs can provide less of the insider dealing that passes for political reporting.
ReplyDeleteThis is UK blogging's Woodward and Bernstein moment. As the traditional media goes into decline, so do New Labour. It's a satisfying moment.
There is something rotten in the heart of Gordon Brown's Downing Street, and it has infected places like Oxfam's HQ in Oxford, a Labour cess-pool which is filled with Draper's and McBride's henchmen and wannabe special and media advisers in Brown's government: Antonia Bance for instance, who is deputy director of the UK Poverty Programme, and is allegedly using Oxfam for her own party political ambitions, if you go by many of the comments on her blog.
ReplyDeleteI have written to Gordon asking for that job - I can make stuff up with the best of them.
ReplyDeleteWorse for the MSM in the long-term this story. They come out looking very complicit in the spin operations.
ReplyDeleteSound point, Unslicker, and welcome back, I think.
ReplyDeleteVery sound Appleyard. Presumably political journalists have to suck up to people like McPoison so as to have any access to the nonsense of who's up and who's down they confuse with politics? I imagine this gives the delusion of being privileged to things the public couldn't care less about. This means that real issues like noise, litter,potholes, are neglected.
ReplyDelete"dance of death between politicians and the press that began in the mid-nineties"
ReplyDeleteLabour have been doing sleaze for a very long time:
from Jack Staw's Wikipedia page:
During his time as political adviser, Straw was asked by Castle to examine the social security file of Norman Scott, who had claimed that the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe was behind an attempt to murder him. Castle had been asked by Harold Wilson to investigate Scott's file to see if it contained any evidence that he was involved in a security conspiracy against Thorpe. Straw informed Castle that when he went to examine Scott's file, he found it was missing. The journalist Barrie Penrose has alleged that Straw subsequently leaked details from the file to the media. Straw remains silent on that matter. He has denied allegations by Joe Haines, Wilson's press secretary, that Wilson asked for Scott's file to be viewed for party political purposes, in the hopes of gaining information that could be used to damage Thorpe if he attempted to form a coalition government with Edward Heath.