Revolution not on TV

Being a keen 'news surfer' I tend to move around the different TV news channels to find out what's happening globally. When you do this, going from BBC News to SKY news, then on to RT and AlJazeera, you begin to notice patterns in the way different broadcasters operate. For example, it's become apparent lately that BBC news programmes seem to be fixated with sex abuse cases. Months ago they gave vast amounts of TV and radio coverage to the Jimmy Savile scandal, leading over and over with this as the 'main story'. The thing is, when this kind of saturation reporting occurs it excludes other news events from the media. Or, some important stories might only get a brief mention before the sex story (whatever it is) is being discussed at length again. Some stories, such as big protest demonstrations in the UK against austerity, never get mentioned at all. The implication is that they aren't important, although they undoubtedly are more important than the Savile issue which is once again on the go. The RT channel (85) and AlJazeera (83) cover a far broader range of stories than the BBC and SKY. Almost of equal importance, they are much better in the way they go about it. The BBC's idea of the perfect format is two banal beanos chatting on a sofa during breakfast time, but to be honest this bores the pants off me. Kevin Owen on RT, on the other hand, is an excellent news presenter and interviewer. And Abbi Martin's Breaking the Set is not to be missed. Terrific reporting. And I mustn't leave out Max Keiser (Keiser Report) for his expert and entertaining take on what's REALLY going on in the global economy. Check it out.

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is basically Tory at heart. Many who voted for UKIP recently will have been Tories, and will have done so because they are disillusioned with the way their ideologically rightwing party is performing. The trouble as they see it is, Cameron's lot aren't being prejudiced enough. So what better way to show your displeasure than to vote for another party which champions anti-foreigner isolationism more than the Tories. These UKIP-voting Tories don't want watered down half measures. They want immigration stopped and they want nothing to do with being part of Europe. Thus we witness the mid-term haemorhaging to UKIP. This sends a stinging message to Cameron (who's behaving like a chameleon in trying to be all shades) that he needs to get his finger out. Norman Tebbit, that elderly political reptile from the Thatcher era, has said as much. He wants his old party to 'adopt' some of UKIP's ideas. I think he means pinch. Meanwhile, Tory MP Priti Patel's dad stood as a UKIP candidate in this month's local elections. That couldn't have helped his daughter's credibility: "What? You're a Tory but your dad prefers UKIP!" Nor does the fact that she left the Tories in the 90s to work as press officer for billionaire James Goldsmith's Referendum Party. Which referendum did that involve then?

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Today the environment minister, Owen Paterson, will be casting his vote in Europe on the future of our bees; but he seems determined to do the bidding of the pesticide companies.
We need bees more than we need MPs like Paterson - remember that!

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Prepare yourselves for the worst, ordinary people. The jack-booted Thatcherite legions are on the march, and it's your living standards they intend to put back many years. Think of cutbacks going on and on, swimming baths closing, libraries closing, Citizen's Advice offices gone...and jobs with only rock-bottom pay. And it's all in the name of 'being in this together'.
Former Tory minister Liam Fox is calling for a return to the Thatcher doctrine of the 80s, to finish the job she started then but which sensible politicians halted in the nick of time. By 'sensible' I mean those members of her own party who stabbed her in the back because she was going loopy. Now we have a fresh brood of ardent admirers poking their heads up and spreading out. I can't help thinking of that scene in Alien 2, when the horrific, inhuman creatures were coming out of the walls. And get this, some of these Maggie creatures are pushing for a new set of political awards to be brought in, in memory of their dead fuhrer.
These would be called 'The Maggies' (like the BAFTAS, etc). Politicians judged to have done the most to build on her 'achievements' would win one of these awards, which means the Thatcherites will all be trying to win a Maggie by outdoing each other in imposing austerity. It's class war, pure and simple. Charlie Brooker of the Guardian wrote of Thatcher recently:
"I found her almost too frightening to watch on TV. She seemed to display such cold disregard for those crushed by the wheels of her personal brand of progress. It was hard to believe she fully understood what human beings are, let alone cared about them."

I'll say what I'm on about here straight away: our so-called 'news'. Most recently, Thatcher's funeral. Just about every newsworthy topic was discarded from UK news channels yesterday to cater for a blatant, in-your-face propaganda binge pumped out hour after hour. Just who plans this kind of coverage? It took 2 terrorist bombs in Boston, USA to grab the airwaves from UK media cult worship of the Maggi. If the bombs had been in Iraq or Afghanistan, or even Syria, they'd barely have got a mention on Wednesday. Otherwise we were told time and time again how Maggie 'saved our country', mostly from the trade unions who were apparently out to wreck it during her time in power. Or so Thatcherites would have us believe. And herein lies the REAL news agenda. Cameron was allowed to eulogise on air about Thatcher's 'greatness', repeating that we must maintain Margaret's legacy and continue her 'reforms'. The whole thing is a party political broadcast on a huge scale, and it is ongoing. The BBC (tv and radio) and Sky News in particular cannot get enough coverage into their schedules it seems, while the British press almost make me want to throw up. Selected people are constantly brought forward to say things like "We should respect the dead, and honour her great achievements". Occasionally a few (usually and intentionally more minor) conflicting views get aired, but these are then undercut because 'the vast majority of the public support what she did'. Who says? Well, one was that chief Tory spokesman Francis Maude, who was given lots of opportunities to say it on the BBC. Meanwhile Osborne shed a tear in public for her (aaah...), while he and Cameron and the rest of Maggie's disciples continue to rip the country apart.

So Justin Bieber wrote something pretty innocuous in the Anne Frank visitors' book. So what! You'd think he'd condemned all Jews to hell and a bit more besides. For goodness sake, get a grip people and stop being so anally retentive at the slightest pretext. Anyway, Anne Frank was only one of many people who suffered under the nasty nazis during the occupation in Europe. In our present time (that's NOW) we have the Israeli army (Jewish) occupying the country of another race and behaving towards them almost as bad as the nazis. I say almost, because there are sure to be narrow-minded bumpkins out there who can't see past all this propaganda stuff in defence of the illegitimate Israeli state.  

There were complaints from rightwingers that CNN showed this photo more than once on its
news the other day. Now our rightwing media, along with many Maggie supporters, are trying
to block the BBC from playing the spoof song 'Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead' on BBC Radio.
If it had been Sadaam Hussein with Savile, or Osama Bin Laden, then they would have been
happy for a photo or song to hit the media channels. Selectivity like this is censorship pure and simple guys. We can expect controversial arrests on the day of Maggie's funeral too, when people will be carrying anti-Thatcher placards. Will the police use pretexts to arrest them under new anti-terrorism laws? Censorship, censorship, censorship...

So she's finally gone. But I don't expect it'll be to Heaven. Not after the evils she perpetrated on thousands of ordinary souls in our UK society. That's the society, by the way, which she said didn't exist ("There is no such thing as society"). Maybe her ghost can tell that to her spawn, Dave, who I believe still pursues a Big Society while he continues to take our existing society apart.
Moving on, Dave and Ozzy were told at the weekend they are in danger of losing credibility (HA!) if they don't introduce greater tax transparency relating to offshore territories. In a speech in January, Cameron promised to make tax transparency his number one goal for his G8 chairmanship this year. He's not had much luck with the goal so far. Is he really trying, I wonder? Meanwhile we'll have the media smokescreening for ages now with stories of how wonderful Thatcher was. I hope to God they put a stake through the old hag's heart.

HBOS bank failed in 2008, and had to be bailed out by the then Labour government. As a consequence, strike £20 Billion of taxpayers' money from the government treasury. Now the parliamentary commission on banking standards, led by Andrew Tyrie, has concluded that the HBOS hierarchy indulged in 'reckless lending', and that its behaviour represents a 'colossal failure' of management. The commission also reports that HBOS would have gone bust with or without the backdrop of a global financial crisis because of its bad management. Three top executives have been named as the main culprits.
However, although they are no longer with the bank these people still hold well-paid positions in the UK financial sector. Not so for thousands of HBOS' ordinary employees, who lost their jobs because of the mismanagement. Will these thousands of former workers now be claiming state benefits, given the unlikelihood of suitable jobs being available to them at other banks? Or perhaps they have found jobs as cleaners? If I was a Labour MP I would put these questions (and others like them) to chancellor Osborne, friend of top bankers and scourge of benefits claimants throughout the land. He's an expert on mismanagement himself.