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Who, exactly?
So, the increasingly pathetic organ that used to be the Daily Telegraph has decided that it’s against Scottish independence. If this is the best counter-argument it can offer up, Alastair Darling will be begging its editor to shut up. Since the UK has never been a member of OPEC, why should the view of its Secretary General on the future of Scotland have any relevance to the debate? Yet according to the Torygraph, it’s a ‘serious blow’. Not half as serious as that newspaper’s current Scottish sales figures, which are likely to slump even further in the light of its apparent Westminster bias.
The trouble with Harry
Thing is, ‘arry, most people like you, apart from Arsenal fans and Chelsea fans, but your CV didn’t justify your appointment.
‘He would say that, wouldn’t he.’
From the days when journalism was journalism, and news was news, this resumé of one of the greatest stories, and greatest personal tragedies of the 20th century:
We get the media we deserve
We’ve all heard plenty over the last few days about the Daily Mail‘s crass, crude and clumsy attack on Ed Milipede’s father. Anyone who’s been watching telly has seen plenty of it too, as one Mail exec after another has been rolled out to take a kicking on news and current affairs programme . . . apart from Paul Dacre, the editor, himself, that is, although his absence did not spare him from being slaughtered by Alastair Campbell on Newsnight.
But for those who think that the Mail is the only rotten, stinking, vicious, suppurating organ on our newsstands, take a look at this nasty insidious little story.
Is this news? No way in 100 years, but it is grotesquely slanted reporting.
We know all about John Bercow’s background, but nothing at all about that of his accuser. I’d like to know a little more about the background and agenda of someone who picks up her old man off a plane from Texas then pops off in the Range Rover with him and her two sons to Gauchos for lunch. I’d like to know a lot more about the ‘newspaper reporter’ who ‘happened to be passing by’, and saw the alleged incident.
But I don’t need to know any more about the standards of the profession which I joined when I was 19 years old. They weren’t exemplary then, as I discovered, but today they seem to be completely down the crapper.
Jaws
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24372134
The stricter the controls the better. What’s the difference between a payday lender and a loan shark? Not a lot that I can see.
‘Nuff said
Further to ‘Please explain’;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/ny-daily-news-shutdown-house-of-turds_n_4021642.html
Quote for those with a 35 year memory
‘Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.’
Ronald Reagan
Please explain
Here in Great Britain we go on at Great Length about our politicians. Their stock has never been lower, in the wake of decades of sleaze stories capped off by the MPs’ expenses scandal. But there’s one thing they have never done, and that is close the country down because of their political strife.
As I read the story this morning, as of midnight around 700,000 federal employees in the USA are effectively out of a job, and many others may be expected to work without pay. National parks will be closed today and for the foreseeable, as will the Smithsonian and other federal institutions, all because the folks on Capitol Hill are having a pissing contest over health care. If they don’t sort it out by mid-month, America might default on its debts, with untold effect on global financial markets.
My one question this morning, as an outside observer is: having managed to step over the line that lads to melt-down, will the senators and congresspeople, and all their staffers, continue to be paid? If the answer to that is ‘Yes’, perhaps the President could use his executive power to ensure that they share the pain, personally. If the answer is ‘No’, then maybe they too should be told to stay at home.
Quintin Jardine's blog 