It is hard to imagine today, but once upon a time, the BBC entrusted the editorship of its flagship Radio 4 Today programme to Rod Liddle. Whoever so entrusted him came to realise the appointment was a serious mistake: Liddle in turn employed the services of Andrew “transcription error” Gilligan, whose inability to stand up his own claims cost the Beeb a Director General and a serious knock in its credibility.
I've only had one before writing, honesht
Since then it has been, Liddle by Liddle, downhill for The Great Man, and this week he has reached rock bottom by penning a column for the Murdoch Sun based on saying things that are not true, or as most ordinary people call it, lying. Liddle is now singing for his supper at the behest of the Murdoch mafiosi, and when they demand he smears Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, he does as he is bloody well told.
So it is that Sun readers have been fed the exceptionally thin gruel headlined “Jeremy Corbyn’s broken pledge over student debt is a tough lesson for his young supporters … The Labour leader's mask has slipped and now the young people he took for mugs can plainly see he's just as prepared to lie as any other politician”. Yes, he’s calling “Liar” on Jezza, an excellent way to distract from his, er, lies.
His target is all those young voters who marked their cross for The Red Team. How does he get their attention? Simples. He insults them: “ON June 8 this year hundreds of thousands of students managed to drag themselves out of bed and stagger to the polling stations. Blinking in the morning sunshine”. And did any of them go to Glastonbury?
Because if they did, he’s going to insult them again: “thousands of deluded, middle-class muppets at Glastonbury singing, ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn!’ to a tune from The White Stripes”. They don’t come much more middle class than Liddle, but hey ho. Still, on to the porkies.
“Corbyn has now decided that his party WON’T write off the student debts. Just a month and a half after having promised to do so”. He made no such promise, and we now know he didn’t. But do go on. “Back to the old politics then - a promise broken almost before the ink had dried on the page. And broken because it was a stupid bloody promise”.
And then Liddle comes over all Ron Hopeful. “With Labour leading in the polls and the possibility of another ghastly election, they know they have to get a bit more real … And so the ludicrous promises are being dropped … more back-tracking will follow. And every time it does, so a few more hundred thousand votes will slough off Labour’s support. People, even students, do not like being taken for mugs. And that is exactly what happened on June 8. The Corbyn bubble is about to burst”.
This is, sadly for all those in the right-leaning press, total bullshit. There was no promise, and as YouGov discovered in a recent poll, the claim that there was has not even convinced all those young people who voted Tory last month - let along eat into the much larger number who voted Labour.
Worse, over half of the Sun’s readership didn’t even bother to vote. So Rod Liddle ends up pissing down his leg - it feels real hot to him, but nobody else notices.
All that effort made to spin another pack of lies, all to no avail. Sad, really.
Here is Channel 4 @FactCheck debunking that student debt & Corbyn crap.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/no-corbyn-did-not-pledge-to-abolish-student-debt
But The Sun, not known for lying is it? Oh hang on....
Liddle isn't pissing down his leg.
ReplyDeleteHe's pissing up a rope, like all bribed media monkeys.
Get back to me when he's sober. If ever.
Anyone who thinks his sojourn at the Beeb was a right wing aberration by Aunty needs only look at Neil, Davis, Marr, Pienaar, Smith, Kuentssberg and co to see that it is in fact the norm.
You can confirm it further by checking the BBC board of trustees too.
By comparison, Liddle is a a standard model of unemployable talentless London hack with the morals of a pimp.
"hundreds of thousands of students managed to drag themselves out of bed and stagger to the polling stations."
ReplyDelete"People, even students, do not like being taken for mugs"
Poor Liddle must have lost his copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. He can't help himself from insulting students even as he tries to say they were taken for mugs.
Another clear example of how the right wing media is dangling in the wind and still shell shocked that their Corbyn / Labour hate machine has ground to a halt and shown to be just an old broken down charabanc.
The vast majority of students who voted would most definitely have looked at what policies were on offer (many from Labour-nil from Tories except more of the same pain)
Liddle on one hand really does take students for mugs while trying to make a feeble attempt to infer Labour will have lost these voters.
It will be fascinating to see over the 2 to 5 years how the gutter tabloids fare. Their influence is not just on the wane it's unraveling at a fast speed.
There are 2 factors in play here- the plunging media influence and ghastly Lynton Crosby who right wing parties in Australia & the UK have relied upon has now done his dash as people are now aware of his dog whistling tactics that have taken the place of intelligent conservative policies.
The people took their baseball bats out in June and they still have them ready for the next poll.