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Posts Tagged ‘British Media’

In perhaps one of the more underwhelming announcements of recent days, the FA appointed Roy Hodgson as the new England Manager and frankly, whether voiced publicly or not, I suspect that most people would think “So what ?” There had been a lot of buzz around Harry Rednap as being the most likely candidate and he would certainly have been more the “people’s choice” if only because he is far better media and a bigger personality.

However, this is not a case of “Lions led by Donkeys”, it probably wouldn’t matter who the Manager was, the whole focus of both the players and the FA is the Premier League, that is where the money is, that is where their focus is, the England Team is a sideshow to them all and it shows in the consistently poor results at the International level.

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Whichever political party is in power, they always accuse the BBC of reporting and briefing against them which looked at dispassionately, would seem to indicate that they (BBC) must be doing something right. Unfortunately, I don’t think that matters are quite as simple as that and whilst Leveson is about the past, it does give us an opportunity to examine how all media outlets function which includes the BBC.

The Music and Film industries have failed to establish a successful business model to deal with the digital age, Newspapers are no different and if Murdoch is right that that they will have disappeared completely within 20 years, we really should be projecting our thinking forward towards a totally digital age and asking questions about both news delivery and news management within the UK. In this context because the BBC is paid for from taxation, this is where we need to start, both the staff and management need to know that the party is over, change will have to come.

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Many years ago when I was considerably younger, a history teacher in order to illuminate the topic posed a question concerning a specific event we were looking at: “In whose interest was it ?” Over the years when faced with complex and obscure situations, I have often applied that same question myself and do again today with regard to the witch hunt that is being built around the Culture Secretary.

Whether Mr Hunt is guilty of any impropriety or breach of the “Ministerial Code”, I don’t know but the amount of fuss in the Media generally is suspicious. As the Media is entirely an incestuous industry, many of the staff will have worked for various other titles in the past and Leveson is grinding finely with an awful more yet to come. It poses the question in my mind that the “Hunt Witch Hunt” may well be a diversion, a Red Herring built upon trying to obscure the truth…

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One of the key things about the whole issue of the Falklands is the outright bemusement the British people generally, have towards the stance and attitude of the Argentinian Government. For the British, the sovereignty of the islands is non-negotiable until/unless the Falkland Islanders want to look at the possibility. It is for the Argentinians to persuade the Islanders that they would have a better future as part of Argentina, it is not for the UK Government to “tell” the Islanders what they must do, after all, this isn’t Argentina is it ?

Hilariously and after apparently a 3 year gap which I suspect no one noticed over here, we have a new Argentinian Ambassador called Alicia Castro who set out her stall with an article in The Telegraph, it is rather dire to say the least but a good example of how NOT to take up your new post in a foreign capital I suspect. It is also quite amazing how out of touch the Argentinians are to even consider publishing this in the Telegraph, The Guardian or Independent would have been a far better bet ! To know how wrong they were, a quick look at the readers comments will make the point. It couldn’t be a delayed April Fools prank could it ?

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I really don’t know whether it is a change in my own disposition brought on by increasing years but of late and most certainly over the past 12 months, I have become ever more irritated by the greater number of people who write in to the “comments” sections of the Media just to complain. You may think that my objection is all down to my not agreeing with their opinions but to me, that is not important whether I agree or not, it is that their complaints are most often about something they declare they don’t care about anyway.

My reaction to that is if this is true, why bother writing in the first place ? What idiocy makes people imagine that they should have an opinion on everything and then give voice to it, imposing their stupidity on the world at large ? Still, it fits in with a culture that includes Twitter and Facebook, both the refuge of the intellectually barren.

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Although I am sure that something will spark me off again, sooner rather than later, I find our current political scene amazingly flat, totally boring and not worth too much effort to write about. I even feel sorry for the Media struggling to create drama out of very little, Greg’s Pasties and so on, how boring, boring boring.

We have the Local Elections which should see a fairly big swing to Labour. This will not be due to the ‘charms’ of Ed Miliband but rather that the public normally likes to vote against the incumbent party in Government when it comes to the mid term Local Elections. Of course the “buggeration factor” will be what happens to the LibDem vote…

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To my mind, Budgets are the same as New Year’s Eve parties, they come high on expectation and are guaranteed to disappoint in the actual event. I feel a touch of sympathy with any journalist having to write anything on this week’s Budget, to be honest, even felt the same for the hapless Ed Millipede…” Millionaires budget…” was the best he could manage, bless.

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As I have expressed previously, “gay marriages” are not really of much concern to me because it is really a cosmetic name change which socially will have no impact on society at large. My one strong reservation given what happened to Catholic Adoption Agencies is that there must be an unequivocal and legally binding undertaking that IF gay marriage passes into Law, there can be no question of a “Right to Marry in/on Religious Premises”.

The rather smug Lynne Featherstone has declared and emphasised that if civil marriages for gay couples were allowed, it would “not force anyone on religious premises to marry same-sex couples.” She added that she wanted to make that “crystal clear.” Now in France that has been made crystal clear by a ruling of the ECHR and Ms Featherstone is shown as totally wrong in her presumptions.

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John Rentoul wrote a mildly interesting article in the Independent on Sunday concerning Nick Clegg and basically suggesting that he is tarred by being in the Coalition. Whilst certainly that seems to be correct, according to the pollsters, the LibDems have lost a lot of support since joining the Coalition Government, it is likely not the whole story.

I don’t think that it is quite as simple as that…”They sold out over tuition fees…” and such like phrases, it is more to do with the historical nature of their support I suspect. However, whilst I was thinking about Nick Clegg, it led me to ponder the nature of political life “At the Top” and how fleeting it all is…

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It often seems that the basic requirement for a politician is to be totally stupid as is clearly demonstrated by the uttering s of both Lynne Featherstone and Nick Herbert on the question of gay marriage who are displaying the same degree of arrogance over this issue as Gordon Brown did over the Lisbon Treaty. It seems the biggest problem with the average MP once they get a red dispatch box is that they think they can walk on water and become bullies to the rest of us.

I have often fought David Cameron’s corner with the awful denizens of the Telegraph’s comments section because my view was that he was a decent fellow and a “One Nation Tory” but sadly, I am coming to the view that I may be wrong he seems constantly “behind the curve” on so many things, he will need a lot luck to get a second term, is for sure, he is starting to look wobbly.

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