Gordon Brown’s gaffe today was bad enough – a case of foot; aim; shoot and then the apology – having been caught out – was doing the same with the other foot. After all, he was, rightly, mortified at being caught out, not at having hurt someone’s feelings. If he didn’t think Gillian Duffy was a bigot, he wouldn’t have said it.
Still, wading into the fray we have John Prescott like a knight in rusty armour on his trusty steed, determined to make matters even worse; should such a thing be possible.
So I only just discovered in the last hour or so what happened to Gordon. While the media are concentrating on what he said and the apology, the real story is how and why it happened.
Yet again, the dying Murdoch empire is doing all it can to influence a British election. First, Murdoch’s News of the World editor Andy Coulson joined Cameron – to use the same tricks for the Conservatives that his old newspaper employed.
Ah, so it’s Murdoch’s fault. Nothing to do with the prime mentalist forgetting that the microphone was still attached and transmitting. Oh, no, it was all a cunning plot to discredit him. That clears that up, then.
But today, the Murdoch family reached a new low in their desperate attempt to turn the election for the Tories. News International’s Sky News broadcast a private conversation between Gordon and his staff.
Private, eh? The man had a transmitting microphone attached to his person, so hardly private. And, it having been transmitted, I’m afraid it was news. A member of the political class treating the electorate with open contempt is news, no matter what section of the media was doing the reporting – and you will find no liking for Murdoch here; I despise the man utterly and completely.
To blame this on the media – or specifically, one media magnate – is disingenuous in the extreme. There is only one person to blame here and that person is Prescott’s glorious leader. He was the one who opend his gob and planted both feet firmly in.
What Murdoch’s Sky News did today was just as bad as his paper’s phone-hacking. It was a breach of privacy. It was underhand. And it was done in the pursuit of ratings and political influence.
No. It was news and it was rightly publicised. It’s an election campaign, and politicans are fair game. If you can’t hack it, get out.
Pretty desperate, rear guard stuff isn’t it. I’m amazed frankly that this awful man and his awful government still have their apologists. But then I suppose it took three years for the Soviet Union to disown Stalin.
Still, all good fun and couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
.-= My last blog ..Clay pigeon shooting =-.
XX But then I suppose it took three years for the Soviet Union to disown Stalin.
Comment by Blognor Regis XX
Only “officialy”, The spirit of, and the desire for a return of Stalin, is alive and VERY much kicking among Russians, both in Russia, and those here in Berlin.
During the last 10 years I have been in may be 15 Russian houses in Moscow and “Stalingrad”, and probably 8 or so here.
Out of the 23 (ish), TEN of them have Stalin portrates on the wall, and, over a couple of vodkas, EVERY one of them has expressed a desire for his “return”.
These are no different to those arseholes voting “Labour”.
I’ve always found this nostalgia among Russians for Stalin deeply disturbing. I guess it demonstrates that people, worldwide, are either historically ignorant or presume that they won’t be the ones on the receiving end.
“I’ve always found this nostalgia among Russians for Stalin deeply disturbing”
So it is, but remember for most Russians (not necessarily the subject people of Greater Russia) life was less uncertain then than it is now. Also it is as much nostalgia for the USSR as personified by Stalin as for Stalin himself. It seems to me that this nostalgia does not extend to Brezhnev or the rest of the rather colourless apparatchiks who ruled Russia after Stalin’s death.
In the Soviet Union life might have been hard for the mass of the population but life was tolerable (compared to the historical memory of life under the Tsars) and, what’s more, the USSR was “respected” in the world. Also the Russians never experienced under Stalin the utter defeat and devastation brought to Germany by Hitler: hence the lack of nostalgia among Germans (except a few nutters) for the glory days of nazism although there is, apparently, a lingering nostalgia for the GDR in the old GDR territories. Again, life was certain in the GDR although dull and restricted and the spurious “equality” of communist regimes still has an attraction.
I couldn’t help noticing that Broon made much of this being a “mistake”. It was not a mistake in his description though. He said what he said quite deliberately and over some time and in a number of different ways.
The mistake was that he was recorded saying it.
Also, his supporters are bigging up the fact that this “mistake” shows that he is “human”. It is interesting that they need to do this at all, but that they should use an example of him being a nasty piece of work and utterly dimissive of the legitimate concerns of a huge block of voters as a reason for us to like him and thus vote for him is just astonishing.
I guess if you are desperate enough, it’s worth a shot…