Hard-working families - 4 comments

The Times brings us the news that "Thousands of buy-to-let families face tax shock".

The article's feeble and shamelessly partisan rhetoric has already been cut to pieces, but what is tragic is to see the same "boo" and "warm" words traded by all mainstream political parties. How demeaning it is to contemporary politics that people out for themselves can still be held up for pity in front of a less well-off electorate, and the stupid and greedy protected on the grounds that they have a home, a spouse, and perhaps dependants.

It continues to stink.

Student Respect - 3 comments

Via NewerLabour (also here), here's what purports to be (though it could so easily be a spoof) an NUS election broadcast from the student wing of the "RESPECT Coalition" - probably (though I'll accept alternative nominations) the most brain-addling of the many fascist-apologising political organisations found on these isles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jEA92uJwKk

I may embed a video in here some day, but I'm certainly not going to start here. Please swallow whatever you're eating or drinking before viewing.

Update: some more Respect-oriented idiocy (not deserving of a post in its own right): Lena de Casparis' silly article at CiF on the injustice of Ugly Rumours' "War" track (complete with George Galloway cameo) not doing better in the charts. I listened to it so you don't have to, and even in today's "hit parade" this doesn't deserve to be higher than #21.

Tory hypocrisy - no comments

Stephen Pollard covers shadow Tory defence minister, Gerald Howarth's comments on reports that the RAF 'will take advice from Stonewall on how to make itself more attractive to homosexual and bisexual men and women, and is aiming to spend tens of thousands of pounds on advertising in the "pink" media':

[...] the shadow Tory defence minister with responsibility for the RAF, said that he thought that "taxpayers would be aghast" that public money was being used to support a pressure group. "This is an extraordinary exercise in political correctness," he said. "The idea that the homosexual community is not already aware of the opportunities in the Armed Forces is ridiculous, and to go out and specifically recruit on the grounds of a person's sexuality seems to defeat the whole purpose of anti-discrimination legislation."

True, the words themselves aren't necessarily bigoted, but the tactic is classic Tory dog-whistle politics: the coded signal has been sent out to 'nasty' voters that 'nice' politics a la Cameron is just for the networks and the newspapers that the 'nice' voters consult, and that the illiberal obsessions of the Tory right will not be left unmet.

Tom Freeman has more hypocrisy here:

Cameron also accuses Labour of "incompetence" and "untrustworthiness" and generating "disgust". He warns that in 2007, "Labour’s dark side" will come to the fore, in the shape of Gordon Brown.

He adds, speaking through a mouthful of unmelting butter: "we need to prepare ourselves for an onslaught of negative campaigning".

That Cameron has the gall to utter "we must show that unlike Labour we will be a party that is for working people, not rich and powerful vested interests", suggests this media monster believes he really can say just about anything and get away with it. Hopefully the electorate has had enough of media-driven politics, one-man revolutions, and Boy Kings, to inflict five years of that upon itself.