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Sunday 4 January 2015

Don’t Menshn Fact Checks

Once again, Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Sunday edition of the Super Soaraway Currant Bun have shown they are not bothering to fact check the offerings of their dubiously talented pundits. The Sun is behind a paywall, but a Zelo Street regular has done some snapshots (see how that works, Rupe?) so that the full horror of another torrent of stupidity from (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch can be analysed.
(c) Doc Hackenbush 2014

The whoppers start more or less from the word go, with Ms Mensch deciding that Sun readers need her valuable insights into what will happen in May’s General Election, an event most of them will already be heartily sick of. And her targets include Alex Salmond, who “has damaged the SNP by saying he’d only deal with Ed Mili … if Salmond wants real concessions, he can’t rule out a deal with the Tories”.
And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. One, Alex Salmond is no longer the leader of the SNP, a responsibility now borne by Nicola Sturgeon. And two, as he is no longer SNP leader, he can rule out a deal with anyone and everyone. But Ms Mensch is sure of one thing: Young Dave will still be PM after the contest. “Cam looks like getting another term in No 10, with a reduced overall majority”.

Hello Louise! Cameron doesn’t have an overall majority in the first place, or did you forget being on the Government benches and seeing all those Lib Dems around you? The Tories were 20 seats short of an overall majority in 2010, and have lost some of their 306 since, including the one that you vacated, Corby and East Northants. But she’s already gone off on a ramble about crime and policing.
This, too, should not have passed the Subs’ attention, as witness “The anonymous @InspGadgetBlogs breaks the law daily when, as a Police officer, he shills for the Labour party … Police officers aren’t meant to give the appearance of bias. He says he wants a ‘Labour landslide’ and canvasses fellow officers to vote for them. This is the political policing that saw girls raped in Rotherham as local Police sucked up to the Labour council’s party machine”. How far off the stupidity scale is that?

Let’s try not to collapse into Smash advert mode here. Police officers are entitled to their opinions. Those opinions do not politicise policing. The council in Rotherham did not run the local Police force, which, in case Ms Mensch had not bothered to find out, is called South Yorkshire Police. But there is yet worse stupidity to come.
And that’s on ISIS … and Ebola: “Two of the biggest plagues of 2014 have come together in the happiest way as IS fighters show up in Mosul with Ebola”. Yeah, right. And where did she get the idea that Ebola, rampant in West Africa, had showed up in Iraq? It’s no more than wild rumour, fuelled partly by western media being unable to get to the area concerned to find out if the claims are true. Which they probably are not.

This person was allowed to become an MP. Be afraid of elected politicians. Very afraid.

3 comments:

rob said...

So Lulu Mensch, did you write a book?
Just a few days writing from a shady nook?
Then got the call from a man named Rupe
Writes for The Sun, just like she was a chick lit writer
A chic lite writer

It's the filthy story of a flirty girl
Wanted more than just to be an MP
So she left the UK for a place in New York
It's a dirty job, she just has to be a tabloid hack writer
A tabloid hack writer

Wan'be hack writer, tabloid hack writer,
Nasty type writer, tabloid hack writer.

Crap tabloid hack writer, yeah!

James1878 said...

I really shouldn't be surprised anymore, but the stupidity of Ms Mensch in a) thinking ebola in Mosul might be a good thing, and b) suggesting, in the (highly unlikely) event the rumours prove true, that treatment should be denied, is absolutely staggering. The current outbreak in West Africa is orders of magnitude larger than any previously recorded for a number of reasons, including:
- No history of ebola outbreaks in the region, so governments and NGOs were unprepared, and the initial response was disorganised;
- Recent conflicts/strife had degraded health care resources (facilities, personnel, etc) so they were even less able to deal with the outbreak than they otherwise would have been;
- Larger population centres and greater population mobility than previous ebola regions (the latter exacerbated in the aftermath of the recent conflicts).

I'm no expert, but I doubt the ISIS controlled regions are any better on these counts. An outbreak in Mosul would therefore not be good news for those civilians currently at risk of slaughter, women at risk of gang rape and children at risk of being trafficked into brothels that Ms Mensch claims to be concerned for. Plus, such an outbreak would be more dangerous to Western nations for another reason - those traveling into and out of the region (and we know some are Westerners) are significantly less inclined to present themselves for medical screening upon crossing borders, or to mention where they've been should they need to seek medical assistance. Thus any infected person who travels is more likely to escape detection and more likely to infect more people at their destination.

SteveB said...

A variant on the old theme, much supported by the Thatcherites, of shouting "free the poor, oppressed people of Eastern Europe from the Soviet Yoke" whilst pointing nuclear missiles at them.