Jump to content

Fill Yer Boots, Folks!


Mclean07

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Mclean07 said:

The exact same grilling is happening in England. 

I must have been on the other channel at the time.

BoJo the clown hides in refrigerators and nobody says anything. It is so bad you wonder if BoJo is actually I'll. Or us it just another of his many cunning dodges to avoid scrutiny. Actually I'm sure his no well but he has a load of firm on this.

Edited by gdevoy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Mclean07 said:

As I said at the start, very poor political judgement by Sturgeon trying to defend the indefensible. Made political mostly by SNP supporters on social media, with their Prince Charles and English whataboutary. People like Andrew Wilson saying her apology should be enough. I actually feel sorry that someone who has clearly had a great career and made a great contribution should be defined by this, but to twice defy her own advice is just baffling. Suggests a misplaced sense of entitlement. 

Thought you liked quoting Wilson, or is it just when it suits? 

The CMO is appointed on medical knowledge not political affiliation, but loyalists and unionist parties could not wait to put the boot into the government and this "failed Holyrood experiment" for a personal failing on the CMO's part.

"Some people just can’t put grievance and bitterness aside, even at this time of national crisis." 9_9

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Scooter said:

Thought you liked quoting Wilson, or is it just when it suits? 

The CMO is appointed on medical knowledge not political affiliation, but loyalists and unionist parties could not wait to put the boot into the government and this "failed Holyrood experiment" for a personal failing on the CMO's part.

"Some people just can’t put grievance and bitterness aside, even at this time of national crisis." 9_9

It shouldn't be political. How long did it actually take from the emergence of the story till the resignation ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

She iwassacked or resigned, whatever it is she had to go. But back to the BBC & the MSM. Where was the grilling of Johnson when he allowed 250K people to attend the Cheltenham festival when the racing & gambling industry petitioned him to allow it to go ahead. Allowed thousands of Athletico Madrid supporters to take over the bars & city centre in Liverpool when Madrid was one of the most infected cities in Europe. Where was the grilling when the f**king idiot thought it was a good idea to let the virus infect the herd in the UK & just shortly after visited a hospital & with great delight stated that he shook everybody's hand & would carry on doing so. They let people fly back from China & Italy with not one check at the airports & as was proved later many of those passengers passed the virus on. His UK government have probably caused the needless deaths of thousands more people than their needed to be but where is the criticism of the UK government. I must be watching the wrong channels because I just don't see it.

As stated before the Scottish CMO deserved to go but the way the MSM has highlighted this & not the UK government is deplorable. & extremely biased 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, harley said:

She iwassacked or resigned, whatever it is she had to go. But back to the BBC & the MSM. Where was the grilling of Johnson when he allowed 250K people to attend the Cheltenham festival when the racing & gambling industry petitioned him to allow it to go ahead. Allowed thousands of Athletico Madrid supporters to take over the bars & city centre in Liverpool when Madrid was one of the most infected cities in Europe. Where was the grilling when the f**king idiot thought it was a good idea to let the virus infect the herd in the UK & just shortly after visited a hospital & with great delight stated that he shook everybody's hand & would carry on doing so. They let people fly back from China & Italy with not one check at the airports & as was proved later many of those passengers passed the virus on. His UK government have probably caused the needless deaths of thousands more people than their needed to be but where is the criticism of the UK government. I must be watching the wrong channels because I just don't see it.

As stated before the Scottish CMO deserved to go but the way the MSM has highlighted this & not the UK government is deplorable. & extremely biased 

Ssshhh SNP baaad, get with the program.  Accept Scotland would be a wasteland overrun by haggis without the wonderful union.  Accept Scots would be breathing nitrogen if it wasnt for the heady oxygen of unionism.

The yoons on here have more faces then dice.

This isnt political, Sturgeon took the harder of the two options, for me it was the correct option, but any mistake by anyone connected remotely to Scotland is pounced on and made out to be the next Watergate scandal.

So let me ask this one question to all unionists on here...

Who would you rather have in charge  Sturgeon or Johnson in this moment of crisis.  The Scot gov or the UK gov?

Caveat (you have to ignore the retained powers)

Cmon give me an honest answer as it will say a hell of a pot about you

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, harley said:

As stated before the Scottish CMO deserved to go but the way the MSM has highlighted this & not the UK government is deplorable. & extremely biased 

This! Bojo and his flying comedy club can do no wrong in the eyes of the BBC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Beaker71 said:

Ssshhh SNP baaad, get with the program.  

I think their criticisms of the SNP have a deal if substance in many cases although according to MacLean they never criticise the Scottish government.

My point is the are a bunch if total ares lickers  when it comes to the Tories. And they refuse to say anything bad about a Tory government.

Edited by gdevoy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

I think their criticisms of the SNP have a deal if substance in many cases although according to MacLean they never criticise the Scottish government.

My point is the are a bunch if total ares lickers  when it comes to the Tories. And they refuse to say anything bad about a Tory government.

Here they come, moving fast and breaking things. The roaring boys led by Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove are free to rip up Whitehall, any arm or offshoot of government, and any British institution, with their revolutionary zeal. They have the power: with a majority of 80, who is to stop them?

Where first? The BBC, of course. Boris Johnson made an angry threat to abolish the licence fee, blaming the BBC for reporting the story of the sick child on a hospital floor. Nothing new: the BBC is always in the firing line of the Tory right. The very nature of its being affronts free marketers. Together with the NHS, its fellow national treasure and source of global admiration, it is offensive to ideologues as a collectivist, universal good outside the market. David Cameron chipped away at it, forcing it to accept a £750m cut or take responsibility for stopping free licences for over-75s. 

Advertisement

But the assault looks more deadly. Johnson’s ministers are boycotting the Today programme and Treasury minister Rishi Sunak warns that the prime minster has ordered a review into “decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee”, which would cost the BBC at least £200m. Only three years ago the government commissioned a QC to report on exactly that: he strongly recommended against.

Yesterday’s Tory-backing newspapers were packed with anti-BBC fist-shaking: the Times article went under the headline “Boycott threat to punish ‘biased’ BBC”. Its owner, Rupert Murdoch, has lobbied for years to turn the licence fee into a voluntary donation, reducing the BBC to the tiny size of America’s Public Broadcasting Service. The Mail on Sunday devoted page after page to “the absurd distorting mirror of the BBC … now increasingly the megaphone of the liberal elite”.

The revolving door between the BBC and the Tory party suggests otherwise: Guto Harri left to work for Johnson when he was London mayor. Robbie Gibb, who went to the BBC after helping to run Michael Portillo’s leadership bid, rose to become head of Westminster political programmes before leaving to head communications at No 10 for Theresa May. The Today programme is edited by Sarah Sands, former Sunday Telegraph editor. Craig Oliver left as controller of global news to become Cameron’s director of communications in 2011. Andrew Neil, the rottweiler himself, was editor of Murdoch’s Sunday Times and chairs the Spectator. For all their cries of victimhood, the crossover between the BBC and Conservatives is considerably cosier than with Labour. The Tories were especially enraged by Neil’s to-camera attack on Johnson for ducking out of a grilling. But Labour had real reason for outrage at putting Corbyn under that torture without guaranteeing Johnson would get the same treatment.

All that ammunition might justify the left’s incandescent Twitter-raging against the BBC. Andy McDonald on Today said the BBC “played a part” in Labour’s defeat and Jeremy Corbyn’s vilification: its political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, suffers unrelenting vitriol from the left on social media. The BBC made blunders, and the worst was her reporting Tory spin of a fake “attack” on one of its political advisers. Yet errors are inevitable in 24/7 live coverage, and an apology was instant. I regard her as remarkable for fair judgment, distilling events and arguments with subtlety at speed.

But the bigger question is far harder to answer: is the BBC institutionally biased towards the status quo, against the left? Having worked for seven years in its newsroom as social affairs editor, including during an election, I know that all sides exert ferocious pressure – but by far the strongest muscle comes from the government of the day. And that’s usually Tory. The news agenda struggles not to be dragged behind the front pages owned by maverick far-right barons, many not even UK taxpayers. It’s hard to keep your bearings on basic news values in that cacophony of mendacity. Besides, the right are better bullies.

Play Video
1:25
 Johnson says he is 'looking at' scrapping BBC licence fee – video

The BBC tries its damnedest: it self-critiques, analyses and agonises. But of course it can be badly wrong. It was too cowardly during the 2016 referendum, intimidated by Brexit thugs into splitting the difference between their outright lies and the truth: genuine public service required bolder judgments. For far too long it gave climate deniers airtime. Yes-and-no vox pops are excruciatingly meaningless: talk to people, but give time to probe their views.

The BBC can never be good enough, and people will forever shout at the screen. To be the only national arbiter of everything is an impossible burden. But recently it has become infinitely harder. Ofcom’s October report showed that post-Brexit polarisation of a small number of highly politicised individuals, often older, plays a key role in eroding trust in the BBC’s news, by repeatedly highlighting perceived bias on Twitter and Facebook. “People with strong political views generally saw the BBC as too left- or rightwing.” However, five times more people say they trust BBC news than its nearest rival, ITV. It’s where people turn – even the young. The country needs the BBC’s invaluable factcheck in the era of fake news.

Attacks from both sides don’t mean the BBC gets it right. But they do mean the BBC has too few defenders now it is under serious threat from government. Labour is weak and leaderless, but its MPs should imagine life without the BBC. Many on the right are calling for the law to change to allow Fox-style opinionising, calling broadcasting neutrality “old-fashioned”. Look at broadcasting everywhere else to treasure the BBC and its influence.

Consider what phenomenal riches everyone gets for a fee so much cheaper than Sky. Consider that in the cold world outside the European Union, the UK creative industry is one of the few that thrives, because the BBC is its hub for training and production. Netflix is global: most people want to watch British programmes most of the time. As a global ambassador in a friendless world, nothing does more than the BBC.

Challenge it, criticise it, argue with it, but don’t let the marketising right destroy it. Rapid diminution beckons if it is cut and cut again as the licence fee comes up for renegotiation in 2022, or decriminalising non-payment turns it into a voluntary contribution.

Older people in the Midlands and north who gave the Tories their victory watch most BBC. At the weekend, the Strictly Come Dancing final was watched by 11.3 million viewers, His Dark Materials by 9.7 million, Sports Personality of the Year by 8.6 million. What price Fleabag? Whatever people voted for, it wasn’t to destroy one of Britain’s glories. This would be just the first of many things done that they didn’t vote for. Will Labour MPs stand up for the BBC? And here’s an early test for the new Tory benches: with moderates purged, will any of their MPs have the nerve to defend the BBC against the prime minister?

 Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Advertisement

 This article was amended on 17 December 2019. Craig Oliver was director of communications for David Cameron, not Theresa May. Robbie Gibb was head of communications for May, not for Cameron

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe if their funding was independent of government influence they would feel a bit more free to hold BoJo and his bunch of Eton incompetents to account.

As it is no critical light gas been cast on the useless wasters.

Edited by gdevoy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

Maybe if their funding was independent of government influence they would feel a bit more free to hold BoJo and his bunch of Eton incompetents to account.

As it is no critical light gas been cast on the useless wasters.

When will you admit, the BBC is complicit it is the state broadcaster.   Never more evident than its constant SNP baaaad, union good editorial diatribe fed to the masses daily on the news, good morning Scotland and other programmes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

I thought that's what I had been saying.

Nope you're saying they are arse licking, I am saying they are in it with them, and are coordinating propaganda and lies to suit the ends of the british state and the elite.

It's what they do in every emergency and in every single time of war.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sturgeon dodging the question on how much she actually knew in advance. Seems to be a recurring them i.e Mackay and Salmond. Thought she sounded weak today trying to defend her defence of the indefensible. Was as clear as day yesterday that this would be the outcome. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Mclean07 said:

Sturgeon dodging the question on how much she actually knew in advance. Seems to be a recurring them i.e Mackay and Salmond. Thought she sounded weak today trying to defend her defence of the indefensible. Was as clear as day yesterday that this would be the outcome. 

I thought the justification of her action yesterday was very clear. For the early part of yesterday the need to keep the continuity of the CMO’s expertise and advice in combatting the virus took precedence over political considerations. 
That balance shifted after the painful press briefing when it became obvious that the CMO’s position was going to undermine the govt message and her position was therefore untenable.  She was removed from post within hours. 
 

I thought the trade off in competing considerations and judgements was explained coherently. 

Both the CMO and Mackay were sacked within 24 hours of both stories breaking. For me that makes the timetable of what the FM knew and when irrelevant. The correct decisions were taken and quickly 

 

Edited by Cheviotstag
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, harley said:

She iwassacked or resigned, whatever it is she had to go. But back to the BBC & the MSM. Where was the grilling of Johnson when he allowed 250K people to attend the Cheltenham festival when the racing & gambling industry petitioned him to allow it to go ahead. Allowed thousands of Athletico Madrid supporters to take over the bars & city centre in Liverpool when Madrid was one of the most infected cities in Europe. Where was the grilling when the f**king idiot thought it was a good idea to let the virus infect the herd in the UK & just shortly after visited a hospital & with great delight stated that he shook everybody's hand & would carry on doing so. They let people fly back from China & Italy with not one check at the airports & as was proved later many of those passengers passed the virus on. His UK government have probably caused the needless deaths of thousands more people than their needed to be but where is the criticism of the UK government. I must be watching the wrong channels because I just don't see it.

As stated before the Scottish CMO deserved to go but the way the MSM has highlighted this & not the UK government is deplorable. & extremely biased 

And why is this idiots rating going up in this crisis what is the matter with people a guy who is incompetent no leadership skills absolute charlatan of a man and people think hes doing a good job?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, gdevoy said:

Maybe if their funding was independent of government influence they would feel a bit more free to hold BoJo and his bunch of Eton incompetents to account.

As it is no critical light gas been cast on the useless wasters.

Thats why Ch 4 is on the ball with their reports and these tory wasters dont like it hence the threat to their licence

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Cheviotstag said:

I thought the justification of her action yesterday was very clear. For the early part of yesterday the need to keep the continuity of the CMO’s expertise and advice in combatting the virus took precedence over political considerations. 
That balance shifted after the painful press briefing when it became obvious that the CMO’s position was going to undermine the govt message and her position was therefore untenable.  She was removed from post within hours. 
 

I thought the trade off in competing considerations and judgements was explained coherently. 

Both the CMO and Mackay were sacked within 24 hours of both stories breaking. For me that makes the timetable of what the FM knew and when irrelevant. The correct decisions were taken and quickly 

 

They were taken when they were forced on her. She was actually undermining the Government’s main message keeping her on. Claiming she made a mistake, as well. No, it was a catastrophic misjudgement based on entitlement. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Mclean07 said:

They were taken when they were forced on her. She was actually undermining the Government’s main message keeping her on. Claiming she made a mistake, as well. No, it was a catastrophic misjudgement based on entitlement. 

What you are saying and what I have said are not as mutually-exclusive as you suggest. The timeline in the change of these two positions was ca 6 hours.  “Forced on her” and “it became obvious” is semantics.

The correct decision has been made and time to move on

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...