The legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre told one journalist
on the eve of the 1997 General Election, as “Shagger” Major and his hapless crew were about to go down to the
heaviest electoral defeat of modern times, that he could not go against the
will of the voters. That will was to eject Major in favour of Tone. Dacre then
about-turned and told his readers to vote Tory, which many of them did not.
Not a mention of Iraq and airstrikes ...
The instinct of the Mail
is deeply conservative, in many ways far more so than the Tory Party. But,
unless it joins the Express in
backing UKIP, the most conservative option open to it is Young Dave and his
jolly good chaps. Today the paper has shown that it will indeed back Cameron,
and therefore Dacre has confirmed what was being discussed at that Downing
Street lunch the other week.
So how has the Mail
declared its support for the Tories? Ah well. Every other paper has put the decision,
following a debate in the Commons, to join the coalition executing airstrikes
on ISIS (or whatever they’re calling themselves today) in Iraq, on its front
page. Not
the Mail: its headline, “20%
Off Your First Home”, along with “Tories
offer first-time buyers under 40 special discount” is blatant propaganda.
... unlike the Telegraph ...
Why no mention of the Iraq airstrikes? Simples. These have also been backed by Mil The Younger and
Corporal Clegg, and in the world of Paul Dacre no credit can be allowed to
accrue to their accounts. Instead, the Mail
has taken one of its key obsessions – home ownership – and used it in a crude
and dishonest way in order to persuade younger voters to back the Tories.
Dishonest? Yes, and one would expect nothing less from the Mail: the whole scheme depends on
developers being effectively gifted cheaper land, then agreeing to sell what
they build at that all-important 20% discount, and only to those younger buyers
(another untried and therefore theoretical wheeze, then). Market
distortion is the way in which the party of free markets engineers extra
votes – with the Mail’s help.
... and even the Express
That this is propaganda is given away by such gems as “Housebuilding under Labour fell to levels
not seen since the 1920s. The number of first-time buyers also collapsed,
falling 60 per cent from 501,500 in 1997 to just 185,000 in 2009” before
letting slip that housing starts are far lower under the Coalition. And there
is an admission that the policy is a deliberate attempt to shore up support.
“As well as helping
struggling young people wanting to buy a home, Tory strategists believe the
policy will appeal to parents and grandparents worried about their families’
prospects” declares the article. Yes, forget about spraying billions up the
wall on another Middle East adventure, and vote for that nice Mr Cameron. In
this way Paul Dacre will demonstrate that he is still strong.
It will be a terrible pity if his readers fail to play
along. Like they didn’t back in 1997.
2 comments:
Slight porkie in all the spin as well.
It seems the housebuilders will not suffer the inconvenience of meeting modern eco standards - so the houses will be more expensive to run because of it.
Not a 20% discount but 20% value missing and guess what happens when you want to sell.....
Sometimes car manufacturers heavily discount new cars. Let's say you bought a nice Range Rover PENi5 Extender for £40,000. Next week the showrooms offer a 20% discount, this effectively reduces the second hand value of you motor. So, by extension, let's say you bought a new executive 3-bed detached for, say, £300,000 with ample room for the rapidly depreciating Range Rover. Next thing you know down the road they're building exactly the same house but selling them for £240,000. In a few years time you want to move and you're in competition with the houses down the road. Will they have appreciated in value plus some to match yours or will your property have to be marked down to match their's? If it's the former then the Tory plan of building affordable homes has not worked.
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