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Rats in a sack I see that Tony Blair’s former master of spin is trying to put as much distance between himself and Gordon Brown’s henchmen as possible. Truly glorious stuff.
I have been deliberately avoiding the internet these last couple of days as I have been enjoying a lovely Easter weekend with my relations. We sank a bottle of Rhone wine last night that was particularly enjoyable. Having caught up on the news via Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale, I am decanting another one. Oh yes.
Happy Easter to believers and non-believers alike.
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There is something rotten in the heart of Gordon Brown’s Downing Street, and it has spread to places like Oxfam’s HQ in Oxford, which are filled with Draper’s and McBride’s henchmen: Antonia Bance for instance, who is deputy director of the UK Poverty Programme, and is allegedly using Oxfam for her own party political ambitions, if you go by many of the comments on her blog.
There is something rotten in the heart of Gordon Brown’s Downing Street, and it has spread to places like Oxfam’s HQ in Oxford, which are filled with Draper’s and McBride’s henchmen: Antonia Bance for instance, who is deputy director of the UK Poverty Programme, and is allegedly using Oxfam for her own party political ambitions, if you go by many of the comments on her blog.
Yes, there is a lot coming out into the open at the moment, and as Andrew has commented, this includes this manipulation of charities for party political ends that has been going on for a few years now.
Indeed, Liam Byrne announced only a few days ago an extension of the same transformation of (in this case) smaller charities into political lobbying bodies.
All of it is rotten, and always has been. In the early years, a clever application of a (thin) veneer of apparent respectability made New Labour look decent; but once the veneer chipped and wore away, millions discovered just how much they had been fooled by spin and related methodologies.
Today we see exactly the same thing being exposed and all the current and previous players realising that their own political skins are now on the line. At long last the country is waking up to what has been going on under their noses, and the seeds sown in the past couple of days (and no doubt in the days to come) will germinate.
Labour will not be trusted again for the foreseeable future — and rightly!
There’s a not altogether surprising attempt at damage limitation and blame shifting by the Grauniad’s Michael White, attempting to claim, despite the fact that the Corporatist Left now utterly dominate the Political Class, that they are poor underdogs valiantly fighting the power of the “Right Wing”.
There’s a definite smell of fear from the PC regarding the internets, as they realise their control bottlenecks are being deprived them. This isn’t the end of the Age Of Propaganda, but we’re maybe entering an interesting period when propaganda is becoming a tool available to the masses, instead of just the political class. If so, that can be a significant spanner in the works of the gramscian cultural hegemony based strategies that have moulded the political landscape since WWII.
Rats in a sack?
I have rats in my kitchen just this minute, and I can tell you the rats in my kitchen are in every way preferable to the Labour Party.
They live off my wealth…but they don’t steal as much as the Labour Party.
They have an appalling smell…but are not as disgusting as the Labour Party.
They cause a lot of damage…but are vastly less expensive than the Labour Party..
And, they will be considerably easier to get rid of than the Labour Party.
You don’t have to be any kind of believer to celebrate Easter, the festival predates Christianity and was originally about the passing of the equinox, when the days become longer than the nights. It takes its name from Oestre, a pagan fertility goddess who also lent her name to oesrogen.
Off topic, I finally got around to reading 1984. I think it is pretty absurd to compare our situation with the grim world of Orwell’s imagination, however some of the parallells are frightening, surveilance, lies and wanting to control everyone’s lives for instance.
I know, isn’t this great? This is the self-destruction of a government that hasn’t been seen since the fall of John Major over a decade ago. And the great thing is, it’s libertarians that have sown the seeds of its destruction. This government will fall because of its opposition to freedom! How glorious is that?
From following this from outside the UK I believe Guildo is using one very good tactic.
Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.
From wht I read he managed to hold off ong enough on the story for some of the rats to try and pre-emt his story by making some (now appearing very foolish) lying statements.
Having said that its quite nice to see the truth can still urt a control freak government.
Our arseclown-in-chief here in Australia has announced billions in bribes and spending, and not one of our papers or news organisations has seriously taken him to task over the costs projected.
The media here seem to quite often secure semi-government positions after they quit reporting, no connection Im sure… We could use an Aussie version of him.
Mole:
The problem you face in Australia is that it normally takes socialists a good few years to destroy a decent economy, and sadly, you are just at the start of the process.
Edward King
I wish it was true that this government is imploding because of its opposition to freedom, and that a libertarian did them in, but the sad truth is that these are the mere circumstances of its collapse. The real reason for their implosion is that they have screwed the country over, and the country now won’t be told different. Hence the resort to stupid smears. The alternative would be just to say: um, er … Which would be just as damaging.
It’s a bit like how England soccer managers get the chop. The excuse for binning the guy is often very bizarre. Remember how Glenn Hoddle’s religion was the excuse they used? Maybe you don’t. But the reason Hoddle got the boot is that the results were reckoned to be not good enough. There was a widespread feeling that someone else could be doing better. So, out he went.
Not that Guido’s role in this is insignificant, and even if a libertarian is only the circumstance rather than the biggest cause, that is indeed still a big score for our side.
Brian
It doesn’t really matter if the government will fall because of its authoritarian stance, and because a libertarian destroyed them. What matters is that the perception is that the forces of liberty did for New Labour. And that’s the meme that’s currently running through the mainstream media, and the political class. Perhaps we can ride this current to victory, perhaps not. But it’s worth a shot, don’t you think? We’ll might never have a better.
Broon’s now trying to shift the blame onto the civil service, despite the man being his personal enforcer and toady. The idea that Brown knows nothing about what his own lieutenants are doing on his behalf is ludicrous. He must be hunted down on this.
Bag o’ rats!
Tuppence a bag!
Tuppence
Tuppence
Tuppence a bag!
Quick, someone do a Julie Andrews mashup
Following on from Andrew and John’s comments about Labour’s manipulation of charities. It is disappointing that Oxfam has appointed Councillor Antonia Bance, the Labour spokesperson for poverty in Oxford, member of the Oxford City ‘cabinet’ and a Labour party ideologue to run its campaign on UK poverty. Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against Bance, but I don’t think it is right that a charity, such as Oxfam, should be enlisting the support of 1 party only, to lobby for its cause, especially when that party is the party in government, and it results in a lot of scepticism about the charity’s campaign. I was under the impression that if a charity has an employee directly engaged in a campaign’s charity activity, and also has personal involvement with one political party, the charity has an obligation to consider the potential conflict of interest and risk to its reputation. Why is Bance (and Oxfam) hiding the fact that she is Head of Policy and Campaigns in Oxfam’s UK Poverty Programme (UKPP), and why has she assumed the title of ‘deputy director’? For the simple reason that the conflict of interest between Bance’s Labour party role and Oxfam role are far more apparent if she and Oxfam publicly admit to Bance being Head of UKPP Policy and Campaigns.
Oxfam’s UKPP tells you very little about what it ACTUALLY does on the ground in this country to help poor people in the UK. It appears to give grants to a number of frontline organisations in the UK, yet there is no information on who these organisations and what the projects are, and what proportion of the programme’s budget goes into funding organisations that are genuinely supporting poor people. I phoned Oxfam the other day to ask what work Oxfam did with new migrants, and the press officer was unable to give me specific examples of what Oxfam was doing to improve their lives, besides telling me that Oxfam was part of a coalition fighting for a living wage for cleaners in London and had done an umpteen amount of research on something called ‘gender issues’. Apparently Oxfam has over 30 people working in its UK Poverty Programme, with offices in Oxford, Cardiff, Manchester, and Glasgow- I got this out of the press officer. About 90 per cent of Oxfam’s annual budget (£1.3 million) for its UK Poverty Programme goes into staff salaries and office costs, which I think is a shocking amount of money on nothing- she admitted to this too, but later tried to backtrack. I had caught her on a bad day! Does it need 30 people in Oxfam’s poverty programme to do an analysis on poverty in this country and then to write a press release to publicise the report. I think not!
If the likely replacement, Camoron, were an inspiration, then Britain would have hope. However, he doesn’t seem to be more than an average Politician. If you could only spring-clean all those pollies from the Houses, then the summer would be glorious!
I saw an episode of Top Gear recently, and they were goodmouthing the island of Man. No speed limits, and lots of them carry guns! Could someone do an update on this semi-mystical abode of the blessed? Is it really as good as all that?