One of the saddest aspects of our increasingly tribal politics is the idea that someone’s testimony can be dismissed if their political affiliation is inconvenient. The sadness changes to downright dangerous as the expert value of the testimony increases, and here we arrive at the Coronavirus pandemic, where one borderline Fake News outfit has made it its life’s work to demonise expert testimony on the basis of party preference.
Look what the cat dragged in ...
To no surprise at all, that outfit is the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, whose apparent premise is that we do not need experts if they back a party that is not the Tories. And especially not Labour. So it was that,
following their going after Prof John Ashton, The Great Guido went after an A&E staff nurse yesterday, on the same grounds: his testimony had to be suspect because he was a Labour supporter.
... and whose bidding he is effectively doing
This was bunk on two counts:
One, the shortage of Personal Protective Equipment he described was for his corner of the NHS a fact, not a party political point. And
Two, as has now been admitted by the Government, there is indeed a shortage of PPE, especially in protective gowns, with NHS staff now being told to reuse single-use equipment, and even to wear aprons instead of gowns. That’s when the Fawkes hit jobs turn dangerous.
After this, there was significant adverse comment passed on the Fawkes massive, with Rick O’Shea musing “
According to Guido Fawkes, you can't have legitimate problems if you are a supporter of a political party because that affiliation invalidates your point automatically. Meanwhile, another 847 people died in the uk”. There was more.
Josie Long noted “
Nice to log on and see Guido bullying a nurse. The people who work for that gross little website get jobs in more legitimate news sites and all is forgiven for them. It’s a great system!” And Jim Cognito concluded “
Right wing government propagandists & scummy piss poor excuses for journalists behind the Guido sewer brand have decided a nurse worried about PPE must be lying because he’s left wing. Would anyone honestly care if [Media Guido] went out of business never to be heard from again?”
But someone out there approved of the attack: step forward Kate Hoey, now fortunately removed from the Labour Party for which she provided so many years’ disservice. So it should have surprised no-one that The Great Guido then went and did it again, Under the headline “
BBC News GP Is Standing As Labour Candidate”, the Fawkes rabble tell “
This afternoon BBC news has yet again provided no political context to their audience about the background of the activist/expert they are interviewing”.
He was talking from a clinic where he was working. Exactly what part of “
front line NHS worker” do Staines and his fellow creeps not understand? The bloke was being interviewed as a GP. Does his medical expertise not count unless he’s a Tory?
Once again, Kate Sodding Phooey was in like a shot. “
Did [BBC News] know this and just not tell viewers or was their research inadequate?” Along with all the animal welfare, season ticket holders, and “
love Europe hate EU” brigade that is her congregation.
And remember, the Fawkes blog is fully invested in The Adoration Of The Boris. The attacks may not be authorised by the Tory leadership,
but they aren’t objecting.
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Guido's shit weasels would be shrieking if the BBC interviewed someone about, say, model train sets and mentioned that the interviewee is a Labour Party candidate.
ReplyDeleteShrieking about free publicity for their campaign rather than their views on Hornby.
They're failing to move on from partisan politics. Been doing it for so long, they don't know any other way.
ReplyDeleteSee that on twitter guido staines is pushing the social darwinist 'herd immunity' claptrap today...a catastrophic approach that would have resulted in half a million dead in the uk, and which even the likes of dominic cummings drew back from https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1251439501869830144?s=20
ReplyDeleteThe roots of this run much deeper than a symptomatic small group of far right nutjobs.
ReplyDeleteThe socialist/social democratic Postwar Settlement inevitably provoked a reaction. Such was McCarthyism, the crackpot Cold War, and eventually 1979.
This time, the structural faults of capitalism are once again too obvious to ignore, so now we see embryo mild dissidence (example, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell) opposed by the same kind of mentalities that birthed Joe McCarthys on both sides of the Atlantic. This time without a convenient obvious large demon in the Soviet Union. But capitalist states Russia and China will do at a pinch. So will ANYONE who opposes tory lies and thievery - hence this latest disgusting propaganda.
I forecast over a year ago that things would get much worse. It wasn't especially prescient because all the main indicators were there. It was inevitable, coronavirus or no coronavirus. This is the fourth socioeconomic Depression since 1979. Once the pandemic has faded there will be a fifth, but preceded by a short deceptive boom similar to the inflationary Jazz Age.
There was a brief opportunity to at least mitigate the worst effects. But that evaporated for the time being with the arrival of Bozo and Starmer. However, history will take its inevitable course. What you see now is a repeat of a tragically predictable cycle of needless mass deprivation and death. Unchecked, this version could be the worst of them all.
If that's what people want they're about to get it. In spades.
In fairness, you've been forecasting things getting much worse at least twice a day on here for the last 8 years.
DeleteEvery day, the tiresome Trot repeats his boring mantra that the world will end soon, "mark [his] words".
ReplyDeleteMmmm... still here, after many years. You'd have thought he'd have got bored of shouting impotently at his keyboard by now.
Everything's been going swimmingly for the past 10 years, hasn't it 17.26?
ReplyDelete