And so a new year, and arguably a new decade, are upon us. For some, a chance to start anew; for others, another opportunity to carry on as before. In the case of our free and fearless press, no-one should be in any doubt that they are in the latter category. They alone have escaped effective regulation; they are therefore doing The Right Thing.
Bozo wants to be the new Churchill ...
That thing has been, in the most part, to shill shamelessly for alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. This got him noticed, secured his election as very occasional Mayor of London, got him into 10 Downing Street, and sealed a General Election victory that his character and behaviour did not merit. But, as the saying goes, he may have been an SOB, but he was their SOB.
So with their SOB in power, it should surprise no-one that today’s papers resort to crude propagandising in order to talk up a politician who is one of their own, even though his career in journalism has been marked by the kind of serial dishonesty that caused him to be sacked from his first press job. The Murdoch Times has led the way.
“Britain sees in new year on a wave of optimism … Johnson promises decade of prosperity” proclaimed its front page headline. The Daily Brexit, still officially called the Express, was on the same page with “PM hails new chapter for a prosperous Britain … BORIS: OUR DECADE OF HOPE AND GLORY”. Sick of it yet? It gets worse.
The Murdoch Sun, as befits a paper that believes that It Won It For Bozo, goes full projectile vomit inducing with an editorial declaring “Let this be our golden decade” and going on to assert “WE on The Sun cannot recall feeling as hopeful for Britain’s future as we do on this first day of a new decade”. Homelessness, hatred, poverty, crime, a declining NHS, climate crisis inactivity, social care ignored, yes, real hopeful stuff.
But the Murdoch goons continue with the propaganda. “That means finally achieving Brexit 30 days from now and then, we hope, rapidly striking trade deals with Brussels and the world’s greatest economies [no. Just no] … It means a dramatic, imaginative Budget to turbo-charge both those ‘left-behind’ regions which voted Tory for the first time and the wider economy”. Never before did “turbo-charge” mean “do sweet stuff all”.
Because all that the press is giving us is Bozo propaganda. What is being plastered all over front pages today is not news. It is no longer about news. The right-wing press is now embarked on a mission not to trouble its readers with reality, but to advertise their chosen product. And their chosen product is Bozo The Clown.
... we should be careful what he wishes for
Boris Johnson likes to portray himself as a successor to Churchill. The latter’s most significant non-wartime political intervention was the disastrous returning of Sterling to the gold standard in 1925. The New York Times, in an echo of today’s headlines, told that he had carried “Parliament and nation to height of enthusiasm”. J K Galbraith later called it “the most dramatically disastrous error by a Government in modern economic history”.
Brexit has the potential to be worse. But We The People will not be told that. Whether it was Lord Northcliffe or Orwell who said it is immaterial: the old adage “News is what people do not want you to print. All the rest is advertising” was never as true as today. Welcome to the decade of No News but Plenty of Advertising.
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Presstitutes and their broadcast equivalents will keep their media brothels busy, their souls long ago sold to an ugly, alien creed incapable of truth and decency. They have hollowed out British culture to a facade of mendacity not seen since the nineteenth century. And matters will get worse as urfascism infests even that. Britain, like the USA, reeks of dry rot.
ReplyDeleteThe true extent of it was seen within hours of the election result when various New Labour poltergeists stank out the media gaff. Among them...Dodgy Dossier Campbell in a toe curling "interview" with far right Murdochite thug Neil at the British Broadcasting Corruption, Mass Murderer Blair blurting his usual self-pitying second hand failed bullshit, Jerkoff Johnson spitting hate at the behest of anyone who asked him to - even the Undead Windbag2 Kinnock doing a bad imitation of Unelected EU Commissioner Windbag1. They and their ilk will show up every now and then to try to prop up the rotting facade. There will be tedious repetition of the rank cowardly propaganda of "pragmatism" and similar lying muck that helped bring on this cultural disaster in the first place.
But the difference this time is a young generation in a population up to its neck in structured debt and with the experience of rigged "austerity" and another Depression looming. Last time it took two World Wars to attempt to stem the tide and even that eventually failed. What that forebodes for the planet - never mind Britain - scarcely bears thinking about. Even the deliberately inflicted mass horror in the East would be a pinprick in comparison.
The real enemy is and always will be capitalism and its ugly assault on the human spirit. Nothing will change until that basest of instincts has evolved out of Homo sapiens.
So......far right lies, corruption, hypocrisy and organised criminality will continue until people have no alternative to saying Enough Is Enough. And then to take the necessary action. If that doesn't happen the conclusion is obvious.
You lost, whiney. Get over it, and get a job whilst you're at it. The rest of us are looking forward to a bright future.
DeleteI suspect what you really mean is 'white' future.
DeleteAnd the Guardian suggested that an alleged* increase in the minimum wage would be personally delivered by the PM.
ReplyDeleteIt still won't be as high as promised by Gideon.
Unfortunately for the Tory cheerleading rags, the new decade doesn't begin today, it begins on 1st Jan 2021. There was no Year Zero, we went from 1 BC to AD 1. Any given decade begins with "1" and finishes with"0".
ReplyDeleteIt's up to us to put as many spanners possible into the Tinpot Dictator's works.
Meanwhile "The Dirty War On The NHS" is still available here for the time being: https://youtu.be/JlJGL8Z52YE
Minimum wage 6.2% wage increase: 6.2% of bugger all is stil bugger all.
ReplyDelete'Unfortunately for the Tory cheerleading rags, the new decade doesn't begin today, it begins on 1st Jan 2021. There was no Year Zero, we went from 1 BC to AD 1. Any given decade begins with "1" and finishes with "0"'
ReplyDeleteEh, not really. The year system is clearly retroactive unless some people in 2,000 BC were making a really good guess. It's been pulled, poked and tweaked so much that you can call things whatever you want. If you want to say that 1990 is actually part of the 1980s then go ahead, but everyone is still going to look at you weird.
(Besides, it's also the sort of argument that someone who's just turned 40 would use to argue that technically, they're still in their 30s and are still cool, honest.)
@ 12:55.
ReplyDeleteWhatever.....But unfortunately for your right wing agenda The Dirty War On The NHS is still available: http://johnpilger.com/photo/470x357-C7g.jpg
Which will piss off you and your tory cheer leading rags.
Oh yes, literally every one who disagrees with you is a horrible right wing cheerleader.
DeleteHe didn't mention the Tories once, Anonymous. He wasn't defending any Tories, he was merely breaking through your pointless (and to the vast majority, incorrect) pedantry, thankfully. You really need to control these outbursts - if someone disagrees on the better types of cake do you recommend they stop listening to the May/Johnson anti-chocolate bias? Either that or you've mistaken disagreeing with the rest of the general public about the date with being a leftie.
To be fair, I could have probably been less "um, actually" about it. And ironically, I was one of those people who spend the whole of 2000 insisting that the 21st century didn't actually start until 2001. Ah, the pedantry of youth.
ReplyDelete(Mainly though I was thinking that of all the things to complain about the worst parts of our press doing, "the new decade doesn't start until next year" is just noise. We need to focus, people.)