大象传媒

This is an absolute disgrace, as usual. The conservative party does not believe in real democracy and they are happy to pervert the system in any way they can(Labour is not much better by the way).

Deliberate interference in the election system to ensure a particular outcome is disgusting and anti-democratic. They have had the bonfire of the quangos yet are unwilling to set fire to the biggest quango of the lot the House of Lords, indeed they have added a considerable number to this undemocratic institution, while saying it is a democratic necessity to reduce the elected House of Commons.

On top of this the reduction in the amount of MP's will give even greater power to the executive which already has far too much power, reducing the sovereignty of Parliament and being able to hold the government to account.

When will we wake up???

This is why it is an affront to democracy to wrap up this gerrymandering with other changes in the same bill. The torylition claims of new politics is dead in the water and although I oppose an unelected upper chamber, I'll put that oppos on hold if they can do anything with this political cheating.

Why do we give oxygen to this pitiful fraud?

As if a bunch of seedy lying entertainers and con men (like our political parties) really run anything anyway?

What are we down to in Britain with membership of our political parties as a proportion of the electorate? One per cent? Less?

Without Michael Crick and Brillo desperately trying to revive "our" politics would it exist any more?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

PERVERSITY IS THE PRIZE - A RACE TO THE BOTTOM

Is anyone getting the 'gameshow feel' about Westminster governance?

The 拢1 million prize is now commonplace. Even with the added perk of gross humiliation, before multi-million viewers, the numbers prepared to turn up for a paltry million are falling.

Hence the new game: THE UNLIMITED PERVERSITY DROP.

You sell your soul to a party, your integrity to a lie, and your constituents down the river - to become an MP. You can then enter for the 'Unlimited Perversity Drop' gameshow (Westminster Productions Inc). Tune in daily, and watch those who profess to want to serve their country, seek to destroy one another, and all that is good in human terms, IN FULL PUBLIC VIEW! God only knows the obscenities they indulge in, in private.

BUT THE WINNERS WILL BE AMPLY REWARDED IN THIS PERVERSE WORLD.

If Cameron and Osborne are not too careful over HS2 they will lose most of their constituencies in Buckingamshire. I have been amazed at the hostility to the project.

BLAIR BELIEVED HE WAS THE ULTIMATE SALESMAN - 'Mr PERSUASION' (#6)

Dave has the same cock-sure air but what does it stem from? Is it just sheer omnipotence? He is clearly of the view that HE - his very being - is 'the key'. It was why he went for 'cult of the individual' hoarding posters (with the odd quirk that he felt the need to look like someone else). But what goes on behind the Cameron Facade?

One thing is certain, he has more gall than a French General, and could well come an archetypal cropper in consequence. Perhaps: 'There is no other way'?

Michael says: " I'm told a new unit has been set up inside Conservative HQ to manage the process in an orderly fashion, and to fulfil a promise recently made by David Cameron to the 1922 that no Conservative MP would lose out from the reduction in the total number of MPs from 650 down to 600"

If that is true then why is this not a huge story? Any claim that Cameron can make that the reduced number of MPs is to make things "fairer" is clearly a sham in the light of the above.

Sorry if I appear like a naive little lost political lamb...

Forgive me but I haven't heard anyone making the point I am about to make yet concerning the poor PRELIMINARY figures for the performance of our economy in the last three months of last year. According to the reports analysts have been unable to understand why the people of this country have appeared to have become overcautious in our (secondary tax consumer role) spending such that the recession we are still in will last longer (or, the preferred version 'we risk going into the dreaded double dip recession' the TUC party aka Labour keep on about).

So here goes. Imagine the high fives and the cries of 'Yes!' while punching the air that greeted the bad news concerning the British economy earlier in the week that took place at the TUC party's headquarters. It meant that their tactic for returning to power at any cost was bearing fruit. Every single news bulletin on the 大象传媒 and other news outlets collaborating in disseminating Labour's relentless message of total negativity and pessimism spiced with alarmism on an unprecedented scale in my recollection of politics here or anywhere else in the world was appearing to have the desired effect.

For those not too catatonic with labour induced suicidal ideation can I offer this antidote; They are no longer in power! There is still hope!

PS The non story above is irrelevant beyond the confines of the conservative party. If the existing pro-Labour electoral bias in the current constituency boundaries had been addressed earlier our involvement in the invasion of Iraq might well have been avoided.

THAT'S ODD - OR IS IT (#9)

I can't find the voting numbers for the crucial debate on the Iraq war.

From memory: The LibDems abstained. 120odd Labour voted against? AND ALL BUT A HANDFUL TORIES VOTED FOR. To my knowledge this has never been scrutinised, and Chilcot has not called IDS, who was leader at the time.

I can鈥檛 help wondering about some form of 鈥榩ersuasion鈥�. It was certainly IDS who took us into that war. WHY?

TMR...the Labour Party that gives you nightmares disappeared long ago.
Didn`t you notice that New Labour was doing many of the things Margaret Thatcher did....like flogging off everything we owned and exporting British jobs while importing half the third world.
It`s called Neoliberalism...look it up!

New Labour as such without the pop star egos at the top is not what gives me nightmares. What gives me nightmares is the spectre of people so desperate to get back into power that they, as they are doing now, are prepared to pursue a policy of highly damaging alarmism and negativity in order to undermine the efforts of the government to bring about our economic recovery. I listen to an unhealthy amount of news broadcasting every day and the conclusion I have reached as outlined above are as plain to me as the proverbial pikestaff. However I concede there has been an improvement in the effort to broadcast impartially by the 大象传媒 News and I for one appreciate it.

10.
All the Conservatives want is to make every electoral constituency more or less the same size in terms of the number of voters. In this they will gain an advantage but only because the present arrangements have been skewed in favour of the TUC party for some time.

The hope is that a sense of balance will result whereby all parties will not be upset enough following the democratic vote of the people to incite young gullible students and pop-star's kids to go on the rampage.

If we decided the austerity measures the government has decided on were wrong and we launched protests sufficient to have them rescinded by an incoming TUC aka Labour government then the interest rate we would have to pay on our projected 480 billion borrowings in 2014 would be 2% higher than the 3% we are currently paying.

With every piece of bile emanating from the mouths of the TUC party the interest rate we pay on our borrowing goes up. Do the math.

As for the US their debts, thanks to the populist politician induced over-expectation inducing nature of their politics can no longer be compared to any other economy on Earth. Their national debt is astronomical but unlike the UK they did make it to the Moon. Unbelievably they are still following the path advocated by our former PM Gordon Brown. The problem is that the Chinese government owns 1.5 trillion dollars+ in US bonds, which in practice means they can bring down the US economy any time they like.

Please Labour/TUC stop stabbing the British economy in the back just because, even though you have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs to foreign workers and you allowed the country to become fatally addicted to easy credit, could you put the future of this country in front of your own self interest enough to give us even a tiny chance of recovering from all the damage you've done?

No. Of course you can't.

TMR...your analytical powers are fine but you are completely blinded by a partisan affection/ hatred for political parties that no longer exist in anything like the form you imagine them to have.

Neither real Tories nor real socialists (with any regard for the people of Britain) would have behaved in the way our American controlled governments have done for decades now.

As for the TUC...be serious....if there`s an opposition still in existence the nearest we get to it is the 大象传媒!

TMR @ 13

If all the Tories want to dois make constituencies the same size then why not just get the law in place and leave it to the Boundary Commission (or did they get rid of that quango!?). Whats with the special team to make sure no Tory MP loses out? Can you see through your blue-tinted spectacles and just acknowledge that this is wrong.

On your point on the economy - it was Osborne and Cameron and Clegg who talked it down when it started growing again, in this hell-bent ideological view to justify their spending cuts policies. Hardly surprising that the latest economic confidence measures showed a nosedive - the Torylition needs to be careful what it wishes for. Labour/TUC are now pointing out that perhaps there is an alternative approach - sensible opposition.

15

Had I not seen what Labour and the unions did to this country back in the days before Lady Thatcher became Prime Minister I might be persuaded to take the occasional word coming from a Labour or TUC mouth seriously.

I disagree fundamentally with the whole idea of everything Labour and the unions stand for both in terms of my acute and painful experience of how flawed their beliefs are in practice, but also because I cannot bring myself to trust anyone who purports to believe in the the tired, failed and childishly naive views they hold.

The fact that they're deliberately talking down the British economy in order to force an early election speaks volumes to me about the kind of self-serving people they are.

Of course the Conservatives are little better and are as deeply divided now as they were in the last days of Major's leadership. The illusion of unity is created by the kind of intra-party horse trading and back scratching that Michael's post describes. However I still believe that what they are trying to do is right and in the long term interests of all of us and the future generations.

When the TUC puppet-masters get their million people to march through London just remember the millions who would gladly march in support of the government that is trying to save them from the consequences of the failed policies of Labour, were it not for the fact that the worst affected of them haven't even been born yet!

This sounds distinctly murky, hardly surprising though. You're in power, you decide on boudary changes and while the opposition are grandstanding you get a head start in organising youselves. Doesn't fit well with taking the moral high ground though does it?
Regards, etc.

But TMR (16), Labour and the unions aren't talking the economy down, thats the point. They are concerned about govt policy given the latest official statistics and presenting an alternative. As I said, the only people who have talked the economy down over the last 2 years are the Tories to begin with and then Clegg/Laws/Alexander once they got their sniff of power. They thought this was needed to explain their cuts agenda, forgetting that if they scare the living daylights out of people then confidence is a fragile thing.

Your view of Labour is no doubt shared by many - the same exists for a large amount of people concerning the 80s Tories and the damage they did to large swathes of the UK.

Thats then and this is now - proper debate is needed on economic policy and therefore we absolutely need our opposition to be challenging our government.

Back on topic - surely you can concede that the boundary changes stuff is wrong? It should be left to an independent adjudicator.

WESTMINSTER POLITICS (various posts above)

Surely you are laying bare the 'bankruptcy' of 'party games', as played out in the Westminster Citadel? The players are not (pre)chosen for integrity and competence - let alone experience in management of human affairs. Hence they 'do politics' (the art of self deception, wrapped the craft of deceiving others for their own good). The best at politics, we see daily on our screens, blithely lying, obfuscating, dissembling - you know the list. THAT IS POLITICS.

Britain has been brought low by politics. We need competent state and people managers, who put integrity first and self last; precisely the opposite of what we have.

SPOILPARTYGAMES

Or have I missed something?

CANCEL FIRST WORLD DEBT AND DEMOCRATISE THE MARKETS NOW!

Now if we include new World debt too then that would be a very interesting way to celebrate the Chinese New Year Jim.

Year of the Monkey (off our back)....or
Year of the Elephant (in the room)

Who would care about boundary changes then.

THE NEW CHINESE CENTURY? (#21)

Be careful what you wish for Glasshopper.

ANYONE WONDERING WHY IDS GIFTED TONY HIS IRAQ WAR?



Picture Blair, Mandelson and Campbell having a 'little chat' with IDS.

Does Chilcot know?

DEMOS CRATOS=DEMOCRACY, OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE. ERM, LETS GET BACK TO BASICS.

23 Barrie...everyone at Westminster (bar a few diehards) is effectively in the same political party...a sort of neoliberal americoentric poodle regime run from Washington and Wall Street.

I call it the Liblabconfidencetrick Party! (trips off the tongue.....eh?)
Just check out how they betray our interests over and over again....completely unintentionally of course.

See how they wasted months on foxhunting then nodded through things like the Nice Treaty....and with the conivance of certain broadcasters too!

BACK TO BASICS (#24)

Do you mean the 'Ape Basics' of Prime Ministers such as John Major? e.g. Self aggrandisement, feudal power, female access.

Or do you mean the basics of humanity: self-awareness and integrity?

'14. At 08:07am on 30 Jan 2011, worcesterjim wrote:
...if there`s an opposition still in existence the nearest we get to it is the 大象传媒!'

As no one seems to have taken issue with this, if true and accepted, might one ask if this is its remit?

It's just that I don't recall ever having a vote on this every few years, and funding a political viewpoint entity whose narrative I may not share seems... a bit too 'unique' for comfort.

THE VOTE THING (#27)

When the UK voter-rump goes to the polls, what is in their mind - party/policy/rosette or person/rosette stand? Put another way: how many of today's MPs, stripped of rosette at next election, would be re-elected?

SO: if individual 'X' is returned SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY CARRY A ROSETTE, what is the legitimacy of X to wield any other authority than to vote, as directed (whipped) inside Parliament? I suggest they have no PERSONAL standing whatsoever. If this is a manifestation of honour, then small wonder the UK is bereft.

27 Junkie....I think you need to ask yourself whether ANY of the information you get is bias free before you can come to a sensible conclusion about that. There are days when I want to strangle the terminally smug people on Radio 4...but what is the practical alternative....Oldie Radio? Private Eye TV?

25. worcesterjim etc.
23 Barrie..."everyone at Westminster (bar a few diehards) is effectively in the same political party..."

I came across these quotes from an autobiography written in 1969 (yes, over 4 decades ago), by a then recently elected MP, who to this day remains the youngest ever to hold that title.
Not much appears to have changed, except for the improved representation of females and ethnic minorities and a more generic dress code:


鈥淲hen you look at the Labour benches and think, 鈥楽ome of them must have got there honestly,鈥� you wonder what happened to them, and your constant watch is that it doesn鈥檛 happen to you. Some of them warn you against becoming part of the system: the poor idiots that call themselves the Left warn you against the Right; but they are all tarred with the one brush - Parliament is what matters.鈥�

鈥淚 find it impossible, outside the Chamber, to tell from what they say who is in the Labour Party and who is in the Tory Party. Sometimes there鈥檚 an indication in the style of dress. There are about three styles of dress: the Tory in the smart tailored suit, running about the stuffy, dusty, dark, dank Houses of Parliament with a little buttonhole; the bourgeois Labour Party man who鈥檚 got a good, well-cut, off-the-peg suit, and who is the real professional politician; and the big, ordinary workers鈥� MP, with the coat hanging off him who鈥檚 against Harold Wilson on principle. Everybody 铆s for and against things on the basis of who else is for or against them. The division bell rings, and people run in, scuttle out of every hole, even out of taxis: gangway! the MP鈥檚 coming! and in they all go, through the right door. How do they know the right door? How can they in conscience, having heard nothing of the debate, go and vote according to their party?鈥�

鈥淣o matter what you believe in, you have to weigh it against the prospect of losing votes when the next election comes up; and better that you sacrifice your principles than you let a Tory in, for, as everybody knows, an unprincipled Labour man is better than a principled Tory. Half the time one feels that the Tories are more honest: at least they are open about their views on the place of the working class; but the Labour Party, whose attitude is exactly the same, cover it up with the claim, 鈥榃e are the party of the workers.鈥橝nd none of them really has a clue what he鈥檚 doing.鈥�

鈥淣othing really matters! Parliament is just a friendly club. One man said to me, 鈥榃e鈥檙e all friends here - no politics outside the Chamber.鈥� This actually happened! And for me it summed up Westminster.鈥�

鈥淵ou get more sense from the policeman at the door than from the Members of Parliament.鈥�


The Labour Party is now unashamedly centrist, the Tories have given up on any principles, no matter how warped or misguided, and they all wear the same suits*. Which is an appropriate metaphor.

*The Member for Bolsover excluded

David Cameron is the Mubarak of the UK....when do we march?

30..Sounds a wee bit like Les Huckfield...but more importantly...why is it so accurate to this day?

Well...sometimes the obvious fails to register with us....and it wasn`t obvious to me until I realised that we were bankrupted by WW2 and have been a satellite of theirs ever since.

Westminster became little more than a cosmetic to cover US control shortly after we kicked out Wall Street`s buddy Churchill at the end of the war.

Since then MP`s should have had Equity cards to qualify them to stand for Parliament.

Sorry folks I was referring to the USA in the second paragraph of 32

32. jim

30..Sounds a wee bit like Les Huckfield...


Bernadette Devlin (now McAliskey), Independent, Mid Ulster, elected MP at the age of 21.

34 Yes of course....and she had to be an independent because non sectarian socialist politics is still banned in prehistoric Ulster!

So Blair and Brown and aler the boundaries to suit Labour. If Labour had got the same percentage vote as the Tories they woud have had a majorty for government, no coalition needed. How is that fair?

Now it means all votescount, every so many thousand equals one seat - is that not what a democracy is about, every vote counts equal?

We currently have too many seats in the north and in Scotland which favour 1 party.

Now we shall see votes counting and the party that wins the biggest share of a vote getting power instead of a current system that is far too flawed.

31 "David Cameron is the Mubarak of the UK....when do we march?"

Yep Mubarak concentrating and wielding power for decades in Egypt and Cameron having beaten everyone else in a general election eight months ago are the same! If you're not careful making statements like that will have the TUC and their party drowning in their own saliva!

But yeah, let's change course and abandon deficit reduction and see what happens. You never know we could go down in history as the first banana republic in history where the bananas had to be imported. The completion of the cycle that I have lived through once before where, following the complete loss of international credibility of the British economy in the eyes of the IMF and the creditor nations the incoming Conservative government was obliged to introduce curbs on trade union power and cuts in public spending in order for us to survive, let alone prosper.

How quickly we who should remember forget, while the young especially, who need to be told the truth, appear to be being kept oblivious to the fact that we have been here before. Just as then, there is only one way forward if we are to survive. Any other policy is wishful thinking by those who are detached from the reality, like it or not, of how the real world works.

If Guy Fawkes had succeeded we would all be under the thumb of Rome and even further embroiled in the New Holy Roman Empire....or EU!

In which case perhaps we wouldn`t have gone to war with Germany twice?

Stop worrying about the Bolshevik menace TMR...your grandchildren will be far more concerned about scratching any sort of living by the time George Soros and his kind have completed the destruction of our horrid leftist social democracy!

'28. At 10:21am on 31 Jan 2011, barriesingleton wrote:
THE VOTE THING (#27)

29. At 12:33pm on 31 Jan 2011, worcesterjim wrote:
27 Junkie....I think you need to ask yourself whether ANY of the information you get is bias free before you can come to a sensible conclusion about that

Personally, I believe the notion of absence of bias, even within an individual, much less a collection of like minded ones, is a deluded ideal. Which is why spirited declaiming around this can prove perhaps even more disconcerting:

/blogs/theeditors/2010/09/impartiality_is_in_our_genes.html

Hence my own rather naive, eroded, faith in a less than perfect, failing system as better than alternatives. Where if what you pay for is unfit for purpose, you have the right to withdraw custom.

At the very least, there is some semblance of hope that, every few years, one can at least have one's vote noticed and effect a modicum of change. However, having just seen my MP and wasted 30 minutes either because he doesn't care or is impotent once arriving at Paddington from his constituency, I do see some of Barrie's points.

That said, as I am not yet willing to subscribe to anarchy I will play the game a while longer. Just... not so keen to see playground and ball 'ownership' decided much longer by those who control the direction of money I am required to co-fund. Especially a small minority near unaccountable realistically, yet in hugely influential positions. 拢4B and 24/7 intrusion into every home offers a lot of ad/pr advocacy.

As we speak, the current fall-out from a less than high-integrity series of 'documentaries' around the (A)GW debate are further dragging down my faith in 大象传媒 objectivity and competence. The phrases 'interpreting events' and 'enhancing the narrative', seen in some quarters as 'good things', have never seemed so sinister and damning for a broadcaster in theory representing me and my country.

On (too) much, this is not the case.

I HAVE TO GET OUT OF THE GAME - I REALISE I DON'T KNOW THE RULES(#39)

Oh blimey Junkk. I though I was after Mayfair and Park Lane and you saw me as buying up utilities!

I am obviously doing it all wrong.

I'm not an anarchist - honest! My plan is to restrain corruption, instil greater philosophical awareness in the young, and replace eager politicians with reluctant managers. Look - I've stopped!

Barrie... keep calm and carry on:)

I know a national treasure when I cross one.

All we need is a new breed of 'leader'.



Certain irony in the career path evolved, both for actor and commissioning TV broadcaster.

FWIW, an opportunity for a media coup is presented.

Those that are not in hotels in Davos seem to be in Cairo telling Egyptians how they feel and should react hourly (like they do here with students, single mothers, etc, only without the twitter trail), so the moment is upon us!

Or... I make the boys a hot chocolate after a nippy walk back from school.

Decisions, decisions.

I would settle for a parliamentary democracy based on a truthful account of just what can be done and what is not possible due to pressure to go along with US foreign policy and crazy neoliberalism.

By all means have local MP`s (forget about parties they ceased to exist in anything other than a fraudulent form long ago)which represent the people....but just render unto Uncle Samuel what is his and have some real politics with what is left?

Alternatively we could follow Ireland in becoming a sort of colony of the USA...and maybe vote in US elections?