The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Risso said:

the express intention of putting that statement in is to make the reader think that they really are being very naughty indeed.

No it definitely isn't. It's common practice to use that wording (by all UK media outlets) to avoid being sued. For evidence, pick another UK media outlet and google the phrase - e.g. 

Site: telegraph.co.uk: There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by

And you'll see the legalese appear in hundreds of articles.

 

[tonyh29]

13 minutes ago, blandy said:

No it definitely isn't. It's common practice to use that wording (by all UK media outlets) to avoid being sued. For evidence, pick another UK media outlet and google the phrase - e.g. 

Site: telegraph.co.uk: There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by

And you'll see the legalese appear in hundreds of articles.

 

tbf I think you are both right   ....

[blandy]

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

tbf I think you are both right   ....

The effect may be (sometimes) what Martin implies, but it is absolutely not done with that intent and it absolutely isn't limited to the Guardian. The intent is definitely the legal aspect. Honestly, it is a universal policy for newspapers, TV and radio news reporting brought about by the twin needs of reporting factual information, and compliance with the Organisational policy on avoiding libel or slander.

It can be infuriating for a person to be reported upon in this way and stuff about tax is an obvious area where it's easy for a reader or listener to jump to assumptions, but it's als oan area where it is imperative that the media outlet underlines that there is no evidence of any offence having taken place etc.

[tonyh29]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

The effect may be (sometimes) what Martin implies, but it is absolutely not done with that intent and it absolutely isn't limited to the Guardian. The intent is definitely the legal aspect. Honestly, it is a universal policy for newspapers, TV and radio news reporting brought about by the twin needs of reporting factual information, and compliance with the Organisational policy on avoiding libel or slander.

It can be infuriating for a person to be reported upon in this way and stuff about tax is an obvious area where it's easy for a reader or listener to jump to assumptions, but it's als oan area where it is imperative that the media outlet underlines that there is no evidence of any offence having taken place etc.

I think unless you are the Editor of one of those newspapers you can't really say that ... I saw a Mirror version of the Panama story and with 99%  certainty it was worded to make sure there were no doubts in their readers mind that Dave had been naughty , even though he'd done nothing wrong nudge nudge wink wink  ..

I don't argue the legal reasoning you are putting forward is the main reason  but I think you are suddenly being selective in your defence of the media  , the Mirror aren't interested in anything other than implying to their readers that Dave is dodgy , in the same way that the Sun would want to cast (more) doubt in your mind about Corbyn 

 

[blandy]

37 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

I think you are suddenly being selective in your defence of the media

Yeah I should have worded better -  I'm not trying to defend the media, Tony. I was (I dunno why, as they're a bit up themselves) defending the Guardian in this instance. You're right, the red tops are a disgrace. And they do do exactly what you say, more often with salacious "sex scandal" stuff. My comment applies really to the "proper" news reporting outlets.

Martin specifically highlighed the Guardian and that's the point I started from. They might be smug at times, but they're a proper serious news organisation, and that's why they put the legalese in.

4 hours ago, Risso said:

They put that in anything to do with tax these days, do the Graun.

 

[Xann]

Quote

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, under siege for his shifting account of the Panama Papers, is facing an imminent second front of attacks as a consequence of his decision to bring John Whittingdale into the cabinet last year.

The promotion of the former chair of the House of Commons Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee to Culture Secretary last year means that John Whittingdale’s lengthy relationship with a professional dominatrix and fetish escort – known to leading national newspaper groups who held back from publishing any detail – left him increasingly open to potential blackmail.

Whittingdale, according to one Whitehall source, became "The culture secretary Rupert Murdoch dreamt of"   

Although there is no suggestion that Whittingdale was explicitly coerced by any of Britain’s newspaper bosses, questions inevitably arise as to whether concerns about publication of aspects of his private life influenced his policy decisions inside the Culture department.

As Culture Secretary, with a brief that includes media policy, Whittingdale has a powerful influence over press regulation, the mooted privatisation of Channel 4 and above all the future finances of the BBC.

So far his key policy decisions have included:

* Serial attacks on the BBC’s independence and influence

* Backing for the Treasury’s assault on the public service broadcaster's finances

* Unilaterally blocked legislation recommended by the Leveson Inquiry into the press, passed by all three major political parties in parliament in 2013

* Personal support for the press industry’s new non-Leveson compliant regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, IPSO.

Open Democracy

Well, we know now don't we? Can't blackmail him any more

[Jon]

'Democracy' in action

[blandy]

The thing with that Wittingdale thing is that he's basically a Murdoch stooge. It's maybe nothing to do with the hooker and all that. Long before any of that happened he was a very pro Murdoch, anti-BBC type of chap.

So when the tories got in, he got put in charge of media and culture and started getting to work on pleasing his master....(and his dominatrix, apparently). I'd be asking why the heck he got put in charge of media by Hammy.... Well, I would if it wasn't obvious. 

[tonyh29]

20 hours ago, Xann said:

Although there is no suggestion that Whittingdale was explicitly coerced by any of Britain’s newspaper bosses

@blandy this is an interesting phrase in view of our discussion yesterday  

[blandy]

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

@blandy this is an interesting phrase in view of our discussion yesterday  

Exactly. Legalese "No, lawyers, we're not accusing any Newspaper bosses, Murdoch & Co. of coercion, so put your litigation pens away and move along." .

 

On 12/04/2016 at 12:33, blandy said:

It's common practice to use that wording (by all UK media outlets) to avoid being sued

 

[tonyh29]

46 minutes ago, blandy said:

Exactly. Legalese "No, lawyers, we're not accusing any Newspaper bosses, Murdoch & Co. of coercion, so put your litigation pens away and move along." .

whilst also firmly planting the idea of  " yes we are suggesting " which is exactly why we mentioned it in the first place

 

[blandy]

@tonyh29 I genuinely don't think so.

It's why coverage of this and the politicians various comments on it are what they are. Any sniff of evidence and the story would be different.

By that I mean there's some facts - like Whittingdale is in charge of media law stuff. Whittingdale was affectionate with a hooker. Some Newspapers knew about the hooker thing.

I think the Newspapers were 3 tabloids and the Indy. The Indy doesn't do "sex scandal" headlines and stuff, and never has. The Indy also isn't signed up to the IPSO press regulator thing. So no one would expect them to publish the "story", or to have any motive to coerce Whittingham or anyone else..

The other 3 papers mail, Sun etc. they've previously been the type of rag that would publish sex scandal stuff. But they didn't this time. It's a long leap to say they didn't because they wanted to be able to coerce Whittingham. And it's an even longer leap to say they did coerce him. But either way the website has no evidence of any wrongdoing, and basically legally is compelled to make that clear, otherwise lawyers. IPSO and Levenson means they have no justification for publishing the story about the tory and the hooker and incentive not to (to avoid fines / punishment from the IPSO regulator)

[HanoiVillan]

David Mitchell off-of-the-telly had what seemed to me like quite a good column about rail privatisation the other week:

'A small good thing happened last week, but in a context of such stupidity and unfairness that it only brought home to me more strongly all that stupidity and unfairness, so I’d almost rather it hadn’t happened at all. The good thing was that the train operator “Great Western Railway”, which is owned by FirstGroup plc, was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority from putting up any more posters implying it’s publicly owned. Specifically, posters that read: “The railway belongs to the region it serves”.

[. . .]

The root cause of my anger is that the posters’ slogan is factually correct. The railway, on which FirstGroup currently operates services under the name “Great Western Railway”, does indeed belong to the region it serves, if you take “the region” to mean Britain. All of our national railways – the tracks, bridges, cuttings and tunnels – are owned by Network Rail, which is owned by the government.

In modern times, private investment hasn’t really taken off in the track-maintaining part of the railway business. Investors prefer to limit their liabilities to the trains, ticket machines and refreshment carts – the bits for which passengers pay money – and leave the bits that cost money to be paid for by the state. It’s an incredibly astute move on the investors’ part and is doubtless further proof to the likes of George Osborne of the genius of the private sector when compared with the doltish bridge-and-tunnel-maintaining public one, which just burns money on boring infrastructure (in the case of tunnels), but lacks the wit even to extort £3 per extremely unpleasant croissant from the thousands regularly held temporarily but hungrily captive thanks to the failure of its own signals.

Companies like FirstGroup never take direct responsibility for anything as headachy as maintaining hundreds of miles of undulating track. They’re just tenants – they rent use of the lines from the government, from us. So we’re not just FirstGroup’s customers – it’s also ours. And it’s been quite demanding over the years.

In 2011 it announced it was pulling out of its 10-year contract three years early – a presciently negotiated “break-clause” allowed this. Unfortunately for us, of the £1.13bn of rent it was contracted to pay over the decade, £826m was due over the last three years, the three years the company adroitly opted out of.

This left the landlord, which is us, which is the government, in an awkward position. Does it look for a new tenant who might pay the £826m, or something approaching it, instead? That’s what it ought to do. Otherwise, what force does any future government franchise contract have? How can a landlord expect to receive rent if the sanction for refusing to pay it isn’t eviction?

Unfortunately, the government’s most recent attempt to negotiate a major new rail franchise is universally known as the “west coast mainline fiasco”. The Department for Transport, shaken by cuts and new rules, totally screwed it up, and its decision was effectively reversed after a legal challenge by the incumbent franchisee.

So, rather than get into all that again, the government basically told FirstGroup it could stay put. After all, its stuff was everywhere – an eviction would have been an admin nightmare. Or maybe the minister had just seen an upsetting news report about homelessness. Instead of the £826m under the original contract, the company agreed to pay£32.5m for a 23-month extension, a sum which economists have described as “massively less”.

I’ve been miserably aware for years that this sort of crap went on. The contrast between extortionate and unreliable trains and the jaunty corporate slogans with which private operators daub their dirty carriages and demoralised staff has always made me resentful. The discovery that what the private sector lacks in willingness to maintain a rail network it makes up for in the ferocity of its bargaining with exhausted and under-resourced civil servants is not a very surprising one.

But the rebranding of FirstGroup’s rail services (last autumn, after it had just been granted a further four-year franchise extension) as “Great Western Railway” added insult to ongoing and repetitive injury. For me, that really was the shit the burglars did in your bed. The adoption of the name of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s famous company, which actually built the railway, by one which merely profits from it is an act of breathtaking cheek. It’s up there with Mussolini appropriating the trappings of the Roman Empire.

The Advertising Standards Authority has said nothing about that, merely that the firm mustn’t imply public ownership. The company has escaped official censure for another advert, which described Brunel as “our illustrious founder”. He is no such thing. The company Brunel founded was bought in 1948 by the British state, a purchaser that continues to own and maintain the railway he designed.

Meanwhile the owner of this reproduction GWR grew out of the merger of some post-privatisation bus companies in the late 80s. FirstGroup plc doesn’t build things – that’s risky and expensive, as Brunel discovered on many occasions. Its mode of business is to profit from state enterprises thrust into private hands by Tories for ideological reasons.

Were it not for the availability of public assets at a bargain price, and state subsidies when returns disappoint – and if it actually had to build a railway in order to operate one – FirstGroup might find it tricky to give shareholder value. But, like a sewer rat, it’s perfectly evolved for the conditions in which it exists. Which is fine, I suppose. Right up until the rat tries to claim he designed the sewer himself, because his main aim in life has always been cleanliness.'

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/03/firstgroup-great-western-railway-advertising-standards-poster

[meregreen]

The unacceptable face of Capitalism.

[mockingbird_franklin]

52 minutes ago, meregreen said:

The unacceptable face of Capitalism.

it isn't capitalism. nothing that is founded in neo-liberalism is capitalism or free market or any such bullshit it's proponents spout it to be, it's cronyism, it's fixed markets, rigged contracts, it's capitalism without real capital, without enterprise but with gauranteed risk free returns.

[meregreen]

1 hour ago, mockingbird_franklin said:

it isn't capitalism. nothing that is founded in neo-liberalism is capitalism or free market or any such bullshit it's proponents spout it to be, it's cronyism, it's fixed markets, rigged contracts, it's capitalism without real capital, without enterprise but with gauranteed risk free returns.

I've no time for Neo Liberalism. But it is Capitalism, just a very rancid form of it.

[snowychap]

Nice work if you can get it

Quote

John Whittingdale accepted free hospitality at a London lap dancing club while he was chairing a Commons culture, media and sport select committee that was investigating the impact of new laws intended to curb the spread of such venues.

The visit to a strip club took place in 2008 when he and two other MPs on the committee accepted an invitation from the Lap Dancing Association, where they dined with the club owner and two lap dancers and spent some time on the dancefloor.

The visit doesn’t appear to have been documented in the records of the committee’s inquiry, but Whittingdale’s office said on Tuesday it was a fact-finding mission to “see the security arrangements, rules and impact on the local community”. His spokeswoman added that because there were three members and the committee clerk in attendance the committee was quorate and the visit “formed part of the inquiry”.

...

The visit to the strip club was also attended by Conservative MP Philip Davies and Labour’s Janet Anderson, as well as the clerk, Tracey Jessup.

“Members had dinner with the managers of the club and the association, and two girls employed there,” Whittingdale’s spokeswoman said. “The girls were keen to refute the claim made by [women’s rights group] Object that they were being exploited and to emphasise the strict controls in place in the club. John did not meet any girls except those at the dinner who talked to him about Object.”

“The visit was at my instigation,” Anderson told the Guardian. “We were doing an inquiry which involved lap dancing clubs and I said I have never been into one and have no idea of what goes on inside. I asked if we could go and have a look.

“It wasn’t really strippers,” she added. “There was a woman dancing around a pole who was scantily clad, but she didn’t strip.”

Adrian Sanders, former Lib Dem MP who was on the committee at the time, told the Guardian he didn’t know about the visit.

“The committee had a discussion and somebody suggested we should go to a lap dancing club,” he said. “One or two of us thought that was totally inappropriate. I can’t remember a decision to go being made in committee. It wasn’t necessary.

...

Davies said the committee was investigating whether strip clubs should be reclassified as places where sexual encounters took place under the licensing laws.

“I would have thought that the story was the DCMS select committee actually finds out about what they are reporting on,” said Davies. “It was a very dull visit in many respects. It certainly wasn’t a night of debauchery.”

 

[HanoiVillan]

'They visited a strip club in 2008 when he and two other MPs on the committee . . . spent some time on the dancefloor'

 

[HanoiVillan]

It should be noted I'm not saying that Zac Goldsmith blows goats. You can imagine it, can't you? Him on his knees, taking the testes and phallus of a goat into his mouth. It's easy to picture! But I'm not saying that's what he does. Perish the thought. There's no evidence that he personally blows goats, but what I'm saying is you have to question his judgement. I mean I would question the judgement of anybody who allowed their name to appear in the same sentence as the words 'blows goats' in my mind. And I think we have a right - neigh, a duty - to question why it is that he keeps sharing a platform with farmyard animals:

There's no actual evidence that Goldsmith pleasures these animals personally, I'm just asking questions, just saying you can imagine it, can't you? Eh? Eh? Eh? Nudge? Wink? Nudge? Eh?

No, just asking questions. 

[Xann]

 

Quote

 

How could there be an entire local authority in England where no pupil can take an A-level?

That's the prospect facing parents in Knowsley on Merseyside.

If that was happening in green-wellied Oxfordshire or the sharp-elbowed London boroughs there would have been a storming of the barricades. Howls of anguish would be rattling the windows of the Department for Education.

There would be outrage about university places. Parents would want to know why their children had to fight for places in other authorities.

There would be warnings about social mobility going into reverse and a great leap backwards.

But in Knowsley the last school in the borough offering A-levels is planning to shut down its sixth form.

The governing body of Halewood Academy voted last month to close the sixth form, pending a consultation that finished at the weekend.

The academy says that its current sixth form is financially unviable.

 

BBC
 

Quote

 

The Department for Education has been severely reprimanded by the National Audit Office for failing to properly account for spending by academies.

The DfE has just published its accounts for 2014-15, nine months after every other government department.

The NAO says there is a level of "misstatement and uncertainty" that means the truth and fairness of the accounts cannot be verified.

The DfE says academies are subject to a "rigorous system of accountability".

While there is no suggestion that academies have misspent money, the NAO report warns that the rapid expansion of the academies programme in England has made it difficult to keep track of spending and land.

It also says the situation is likely to get worse given the government's drive to turn all schools in England into academies by 2020, or for them to have a plan to do so by 2022.

The report says: "The department's policy of autonomy for academies brings with it significant risks if the financial capability of the department and academies are not strengthened.

"And the financial statements do not present a true and fair view and meet the accountability requirements of Parliament.

 

BBC