Yesterday evening in the Commons, the Government was defeated on a Brexit Bill amendment which guaranteed Parliament a vote on the final deal worked out between Theresa May and her team, and the EU’s negotiators. The sovereignty of Parliament, a concept so beloved of those favouring departure from the EU, had prevailed. The result was achieved after eleven Tories voted against the Government. Others abstained.
Why the f*** shouldn't I f***ing well tell other c***s to do as I f***ing well say and not as I f***ing well do, you c***ing c***?!?!?
This was nothing more than ensuring that the will Parliament was supreme. But for those whose very being is focused on getting Brexit completed at all costs, this was treachery. And there is no-one more focused on bending Parliament to his will, and pursuing the UK’s departure from the EU, than the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail. For him, this was a traitorous act, for which there had to be suitable punishment.
Directing abuse at Tories is very bad ...
And so it came to pass that the Mail’s front page, which only the previous day had gone after the hated “Web Giants”, thundering “BRING THE WEB GIANTS TO HEEL” and claiming that “Facebook and Twitter helped fuel a tide of vile abuse against Tory General Election candidates”, launched, er, a tide of vile abuse at Tory General Election candidates. The denunciation was as long as it was loud.
... OR MAYBE NOT
“Just as the newly confident Tories inch ahead in the polls, 11 self-consumed malcontents pull the rug from under our EU negotiators, betray their leader, party and 17.4m Brexit voters and - most damning of all - increase the possibility of a Marxist in No 10 … PROUD OF YOURSELVES?” All eleven of the Tory rebels were pictured and named, thus guaranteeing a tide of hatred and abuse directed at them and their staff.
It was hateful. It was bullying. It was intolerance personified. There was no attempt to explain or understand the issues - like, once again, Parliament being sovereign. It was exactly as Nick Davies had told in Flat Earth News: “I know of nothing anywhere in the rest of the world’s media which matches the unmitigated spite of an attack from the Daily Mail”. What is worse on this occasion is the sheer hypocrisy of that attack.
As Russ Jackson observed when Tweeting out the Mail’s front page, “A few days ago @DailyMailUK accused @StopFundingHate of ‘bullying’ & being ‘a handful of zealots’ whose values ‘may very well be unpalatable to the values of millions’, adding that ‘behind this pious bluster lies an extraordinary hypocrisy’”. The Mail is not even a handful of zealots, but one embittered individual, filled with boiling rage against the real world.
The reality is that it took real bravery for those eleven rebels to do as they did, knowing that the likes of Dacre would respond as he has: Labour’s David Lammy reacted to that front page with “They certainly should be. Country over party and do not underestimate the bravery this took”, and Gary Lineker, who has found the range with his responses to the Mail and the hatred it directs at him, agreed. “They should be. Takes real patriotism to put the country before their own political party”. Real patriotism. Real courage.
While all that Paul Dacre can muster is real hypocrisy. No change there, then.
If you knew Dacre just a little bit better and weren't so intent on putting in the boot, you would't slavishly follow Private Eye's claim that he swears incessantly. He doesn't. I work for him, though in a less exalted position, and can assure those reading this the Dacre swears no more and no less than every other hack I have worked with.
ReplyDeleteI happen not to agree with him and the Mail's stance on Brexit, but those in the business know full well newspapers survive by telling their readers what they believe their readers want to read, in the case of the Mail that Brexit is the road to Nirvana. And the Guardian, at the other end of the political spectrum does the same. Not to do so would be commercially damaging, and suprise, surprise, newspapers aren't in the business to lose money and go bust.
Your characterisation of Dacre a la the Eye's 'The Vagina Monologues' says far more about you than Dacre, as does your the rather self-regarding subhead to your blog title 'This is a blog of liberal stance and independent mind'. BTW I see comment moderation is enabled: if you really do have a liberal stance and an independent mind, my comment should pass through the censorship (which is what moderation actually is) no bother.
The police are investigating a Daily Mail comment calling for the murder of all 650 MPs.
ReplyDeletehttps://evolvepolitics.com/police-open-investigation-into-sick-daily-mail-reader-who-threatened-to-murder-all-650-mps/
"Self consumed Malcontent" - what a wonderful description of Dacre himself!!
ReplyDelete"...those in the business know full well newspapers survive by telling their readers what they believe their readers want to read"
ReplyDeleteChicken & egg? The Mail is 'foul'.
I'd like newspapers to report news, not try to sway public opinion on behalf of millionaires with profits off shore tax havens. Some of these millionaires are not resident in the UK.
Carry on Tim, as before.
Private Eye is one of the more reliable sources of news in the UK. To whine about a recurring joke that appear in it is to deliberately miss the point. "Rubbisher" anyone? 'Twas they who came up with the term "Grauniad"
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that if comment moderation were to be turned off, and if someone were to, for example, make a death threat, then poor old Tim could be held responsible. That's how it works in this country. And I've no doubt that many would try to pile in on him in the process. To start wingeing about censorship when he is not preventing anyone from saying anything is to also deliberately miss the point. It's not censorship, it's editorial control. It is his right to not accept abuse on his own blog which, I believe, is why he does it. Use your own blog if you want to engage in a bit of abuse.
The suppression of dissenting views isn't the only reason for moderating comments.
ReplyDeletepfg powell
ReplyDelete1. The swearing-Dacre thing is called a 'joke'. Google it.
2. Complaining about the swearing-Dacre thing is a red-herring, a look-over-there, irrelevant.
3. The rest of your post stands or falls on its attempt to equate the attitudes of the Mail towards integrity, news values, respect for the truth, basic decency, objectivity, morality, editorial control, respect for independence of thought and opinion, etc with those of the Guardian.
Haven't got a leg to stand on, really, have you?
Moderation is fine, but probably pointless.
ReplyDeleteAny nasties out there will have given up posting at the 15th attempt to spot a road sign and prove themselves human.. It stops me commenting 99% of the time. Frustratingly.
To pfg powell: You'll like this.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion - arrived at after years of tolerating Dacre's far right lunatic ranting - Dacre is nothing but a racist, hypocritical, reactionary, xenophobic, sociopathic, warmongering, toadying, London barrow boy spiv in serious need of psychiatric counselling.
In short, well in the tradition of the anti-semitic Nazi supporting Daily Heil.
If you willingly work for such an appalling excuse for a human being it says more about YOU than it does about, for instance, Tim Fenton.
But I don't expect you to understand that.
@ pfg powell. Physician z heal thyself
ReplyDelete@1. I, for one, admire your courage for calling by and openly admitting you work for Dacre. Any chance you could give The Great Man a few tips on bravery? Like all bullies - and he's the vicious, sneering type - Dacre is at heart a coward. He picks his victims with care, ensuring first that they don't have the financial wherewithal to fight back. Only when he calculates badly, coming up against someone with a small army of lawyers on retainer (think George Clooney) will he fold and offer a grovelling apology.
ReplyDeleteHe's quite a guy, down there in the sewers where Rothermere, the weirdo Barclay twins, Murdoch and other c***s lurk.
Careful you don't fall in.
Anonymous @ 14:31.
ReplyDeleteToo late......pfg powell has already "fallen in".
How else to explain his employment by Dacre after years of Dacre's "work"?
Which makes his post even more mealy-mouthed than it first reads. I can't admire the "courage" of somebody so prepared to use weasel words to defend the indefensible. It isn't courage at all.
The time has long gone for thinking such posts constitute anything more than an abandonment of decency in the face of a media coward and thug. Dacre isn't alone in his far right propaganda, but he is unquestionably one of the ugliest media assaults on the human spirit. To low lives like him the Enlightenment was a passing fancy and an aberration.
He will soon be left with no other choice than to urge political assassinations of anybody who disagrees with him. At which point he would have crossed over into the realms of psychopaths.
To pfg powell - What a pity you can't find a real job instead of working for a peddler of hypocrisy, hatred, bullying and downright lies. Sooner or later you'll find yourself believing them if you don't already.
ReplyDeleteThe man is an abject coward. You only have to look at his performance at Leveson where he clearly bristled with rage that anyone had the temerity to question him. Even Murdoch seemed contrite to a degree.
ReplyDeleteLike all bullies, he can dish it out, but can't take it. For someone who demands that people should be proud of their country, there is no other publication that delights in putting the UK down. Witness their sneering response to the huge global success of London 2012, for example.
I hate to drift into hyperbole, but I do consider Dacre to be one of the biggest threats to the well being and cohesiveness of this country. If he wants to try and find treacherous intent, he should look in the mirror.
If we take the poster at his/her word, then we see Stockholm syndrome personified.
ReplyDeleteCould we please compare Mr Dacre’s salary and benefits with those of the Prime Minister? Could we also start asking questions about whether it is appropriate for press barons to subsidise the lifestyles of publicly paid politicians, such as Johnson and Gove and Gove’s wife? When can we expect Mr Dacre to repay the subsidies he has creamed off from the EU over the years? They make me sick. If we are going to have populism, let’s direct it against these boys, rather than against the Mail’s usual target of the poor and the weak.
ReplyDeleteWhat the tax dodger who complains in his paper about companies that tax dodge? The billionaire elite who complains about the elite? Lovely guy - tells idiots who to be angry at with the propaganda pamphlet called the Daily Mail.
ReplyDelete