Skip to main content

The Daily Cretin (Express) insults our intelligence once more

There is no doubt that we are all in the middle of a serious economic crisis. However, in Britain this crisis is overlaid with a stupidity crisis too. The Daily Express is not noted as the intellectual paper in the UK, but their latest European scare story is more or less total fiction. "Senior Eurocrats" are apparently "plotting to destroy Britain"- even though there is not a shred of evidence for the conspiracy the Express is determined to unmask.


It is total crap. It is a paranoid pack of lies either by fools who know no better or by crooks who are deliberately lying. Either way it is a total disgrace that this garbage can be published in any newspaper that professes to have any concern for the truth.


And that is the problem, the crisis in Britain is as much a crisis of the MEDIA as of the politicians that are taking the blame. When such utter tripe can be presented as a serious contribution to the national debate, and no one condemns the bastards who publish it, then the standard of political debate in the UK reaches a new low.  Even supposed "quality" newspapers as the Telegraph and the Times are subject to proprietorial influence - or corruption- and routinely publish errors of fact as well as of judgement. 


These are the so-called opinion-formers!


The kindest thing is to believe that it is the blind leading the blind. The reality is it is a scandalous disgrace.  The "journalists" who put their name to this crap deserve nothing but utter contempt.


The good news is that "the media" is losing its power to set the national agenda. 
The bad news is that it is not happening fast enough. 


PS, I see the American Newsweek has noted the story as an example of typical tabloid hysteria. When even the American media views the British media with contempt, it is not a good day.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don’t our distingui...

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...

Lib Dem v. Tory (Round 2)

The Liberal Democrats stand for a distinct political ideology. It is an ideology built around both socially and economically liberal precepts. In as far as our ruling Labour government can be said to have an ideology at all, it coincides with Liberalism only incidentally. Labour stands for pragmatism, and where it does not there is still a core of values that are collectivist and not individual. Sometimes people are prepared to claim the moral high ground for policies of social solidarity and redistribution of wealth. Liberals may argue in favour of equality of opportunity, we can not argue in favour- as Socialists do- of "and equal society". The reason is simple: Socialism does not work. If one places equality above freedom, then eventually we get tyranny. This is why, while we may argue in favour of a more equal society as being a stronger society, the tools that we may use to gain -in our view- socially desirable outcomes must rest upon freedom above all else. As PJ O'...