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the long-awaited 'why the telegraph is going downhill' thread

Self-styled intelligence and security expert Louise Mensch offers her professional view of the David Miranda case.

But with the distressing realisation that Snowden looks like a little spy, one who was happy to suck up to the homophobic regime in Russia where he has taken asylum, I kept looking at Glenn Greenwald’s feed –@Ggreenwald on Twitter – hoping to see some condemnation of what many in the US believe is the plain and obvious treason committed by his source. Yet there was none.
I put this down to journalistic "Stockholm Syndrome", that Greenwald was so in love with his story and his source that he had just gone blind and could see no wrong. When Greenwald frenziedly attacked a Wall Street Journal reporter who suggested he, Greenwald, might have aided and abetted Snowden, I supported Greenwald. I honestly did not believe that Greenwald would stoop so low, knowing as he did by then that Snowden was happy to leak US intel operations against repressive regimes.
The Guardian came out with a “story” that GCHQ had spied on Russia at the G8 and it was rightly met with total derision on Twitter, even amongst lefties. #GuardianBond was the hashtag. (They were shocked, shocked that our spies spy! And on Russia, too!)
Well, the sell-out traitor Snowden took asylum with the homophobe Putin, issuing a fawning statement of thanks, and I assumed the story was dead for a while.
Until the “scandal” of David Miranda’s nine-hour detention broke on Twitter. Boy, did it seem pretty bad – the husband of a journalist, nothing to do with this story himself, detained for no good reason for nine solid hours, denied a lawyer, held under the Terrorism Act, purely to intimidate his husband. Wow. I had no idea our security forces at Heathrow were such utter b*******, abusing their power in violation of all professional standards and ethics.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/l...rdian-has-smeared-britains-security-services/
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Quartz said:
A quick Google shows he's right about wind farms killing birds.

http://www.birdwatch.co.uk/channel/newsitem.asp?cate=__14606

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...rs-see-rare-swift-killed-by-wind-turbine.html

These losses are probably not statistically significant but they do occur.
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"Slaughter" is a rather dramatic word. No? The word implies that thousands of birds are being killed in this way per year rather than one or two. You realise the Torygraph is vehemently opposed to wind farms too, don't you?
 
nino_savatte said:
Today, Hannan gushes over the memory of Milton Friedman, of whom he says "Today would have been Milton Friedman’s hundred-and-first birthday". Ugh, put it away Dan, you dirty beast.
The chief purpose his blog is to reiterate his attachment to vouchers for schools.



This is the man who, like most of his colleagues, attended a top public school. Like them, he projects these values onto the education system generally.

Somewhere in this country there's a lamp post with Dan Hannan's name inscribed upon it.
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It's weird how all these Friedman-lovers never mention the fact that Friedman supported the idea of an unconditional basic income. Doesn't fit in with the narrative of good guys versus bad guys though, or the need to have an ideological figurehead to rationalise their politics. It also demonstrates how far to the right we have moved, when an idol of libertarianism looks almost left-wing when you compare his legacy to some of his actual beliefs. Beliefs conveniently ignored.
 
Quartz said:
Of course it is. He's trying to make a point.



Umm... per the LSE, thousands of birds per year are killed by wind farms.
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He's being histrionic for effect.

What's also odd about his blog is the way he suddenly turns all green/environmental to make his point about fracking. He's a hypocrite. The Telegraph has been anti-windfarm for ages. Don't believe me? You can start by having a look at Delingpole's blogs. ;)
 
cynicaleconomy said:
It's weird how all these Friedman-lovers never mention the fact that Friedman supported the idea of an unconditional basic income. Doesn't fit in with the narrative of good guys versus bad guys though, or the need to have an ideological figurehead to rationalise their politics. It also demonstrates how far to the right we have moved, when an idol of libertarianism looks almost left-wing when you compare his legacy to some of his actual beliefs. Beliefs conveniently ignored.
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Exactly, the Tories have filleted Friedman and Hayek but feel they're entitled to their legacies even though they've never read any of their books cover-to-cover.
 
Today 2 Torygraph columnists complain that the TV License fee is a "Poll Tax".
This from Graeme Archer

Such was the argument against one poll tax in living memory – the community charge. A poll tax is a flat-rate tax which is charged regardlesss of ability to pay – it's not progressive, in liberal language – minus the odd concessions (there were plenty of reductions for Mrs Thatcher's community charge).
The BBC licence fee is a poll tax. The figures in the passage above are real, but apply to non-payment of the licence fee, as the paper reported today.
So if, according to the logic of the liberal Left, it is (1) by definition wrong to impose regressive taxes and (2) important to uncover the deep-rooted pathology which lies behind – which explains away – the criminal act: surely it follows that we must abolish the licence fee?
Abolish the BBC poll tax: at a stroke, we would cut crime by a significant amount. And we'd have finally won the war on the cause of that crime, too. Surely the Left would be enraptured?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/g...crime-we-must-abolish-the-hated-bbc-poll-tax/
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This is from Douglas Carswell

Lefties keep on telling us how popular the BBC is. The Corporation's output is, they say, second to none. In which case, the BBC would have no difficulty in persuading us to pay for its services. The BBC should generate revenue by persuading willing customers to pay for its output, just like any other media outlet.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/d...consigned-to-the-history-books/#disqus_thread
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Jesus wept. :facepalm:

From Wikipedia

There have been several famous (and infamous) cases of head taxes in history, notably in parts of the United States with the intent of disenfranchising poor people, including African Americans, Native Americans, and white people of foreign descent. The tax was marginal and never collected in practice, but payment of the tax would be a prerequisite for minority voting. In the United Kingdom, poll taxes were levied by the governments of John of Gaunt in the 14th century, Charles II in the 17th and Margaret Thatcher in the 20th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_per_head
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The Free Dictionary tells us:
poll tax
n.
A tax levied on people rather than on property, often as a requirement for voting.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poll+tax
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The TV license is not a Poll Tax and any attempt to link it to forms of taxation that are designed to disenfranchise marginalised groups is not only misleading but hysterical and quite frankly dumb.
 
As terrible as this incident is, it happened near Brondesbury tube station ffs - doesn't stop the piece still being conflated with NHC :rolleyes:

Still, they must be slacking as there is no comment/blog piece yet about how it's all terribly dangerous followed by a deluge of racist opinionating.
 
nino_savatte said:
He's being histrionic for effect.

What's also odd about his blog is the way he suddenly turns all green/environmental to make his point about fracking. He's a hypocrite. The Telegraph has been anti-windfarm for ages. Don't believe me? You can start by having a look at Delingpole's blogs. ;)
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Does anyone remember that great clip (from Despatches I think) where they interviewed Delingpole about his beliefs about global warming? I can't find it at the moment as I'm using my phone, but will post it when I can. The interviewer totally floored him with an analogy - very amusing to see him squirm. :)

When I've got time I might have a shufty at Hansard to check out Louise Mench's credentials re national security issues to see what involvement or interest she had while an MP.
 
farmerbarleymow said:
Does anyone remember that great clip (from Despatches I think) where they interviewed Delingpole about his beliefs about global warming? I can't find it at the moment as I'm using my phone, but will post it when I can. The interviewer totally floored him with an analogy - very amusing to see him squirm. :)

When I've got time I might have a shufty at Hansard to check out Louise Mench's credentials re national security issues to see what involvement or interest she had while an MP.
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I think this is the one. Man's a fool!
 
This cunt's always leaving comments on Torygraph blogs. He uses the same "anti-racism = anti-white" spiel and he tends to couch his language in pseudo-scientific terminology. He talks about "native Europeans" and tends to use phrases like "indigenous Europeans/British". Here he defends Breivik in not so many words.
 
50 years after Martin Luther King's speech, the Telegraph's Damian 'Blood-crazed Ferret' Thompson's blog post is designed to appeal to MLK's right-wing detractors. Sensibly (or not) Thompson has closed the comments thread.

It's the last paragraph that gets me.

As I say, Martin Luther King was a hero. We shouldn't remember him for cheating on his doctorate and his wife. But it's worth noting: if he'd been a famous white Republican, his reputation would have been comprehensively trashed by historians and the media.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/d...r-martin-luther-king-would-be-in-big-trouble/
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Talk about victimhood. :facepalm:
 
nino_savatte said:
50 years after Martin Luther King's speech, the Telegraph's Damian 'Blood-crazed Ferret' Thompson's blog post is designed to appeal to MLK's right-wing detractors. Sensibly (or not) Thompson has closed the comments thread.

It's the last paragraph that gets me.



Talk about victimhood. :facepalm:
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How would a 'famous white republican' have come to be at the head of a civil rights movement?

What right wingers seem to desire more than anything these days is victimhood. I say let's give it to them!
 
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/s...a-of-irish-poetry-just-wasnt-that-good-sorry/

It seems to be a thing with the telegraph now where as soon as a respected public figure dies, they unleash a blogger or two to trash them by any means necessary. Even by the low standars of telegraph bloggers this is a pisspoor effort though. I guess he makes the comparison with Larkin because he's one poet there's a chance the telegraph readership have heard of. The straw man is that Heaney was only rated because he was left wing - which, given that I know some of Heaney's poetry but nothing of his politics strikes me as both deeply paranoid and frankly wrong. Oh, his evidence?:
"Literally irreproachable. I once wrote a mildly negative Amazon.com critique of Heaney’s turgid yet prize-winning translation of Beowulf (this was when Amazon paid folding money for proper reviews). The critique was censored; Amazon never ran it". Yup. Cowardly amazon couldn't take the truth-bombs he was firing. In the pocket of the left - wing establishment or something.
This was the line that got my back up most of all though: "Many people admired him as a sensitive Lefty. But Left-wing opinion seldom makes for great poetry; the medium is better suited to the rhapsodic pessimism of the Right."

Rhapsodic pessimism? That's one word for it. Oh, and Burns and Garcia Lorca beg to differ...
 
nino_savatte said:
50 years after Martin Luther King's speech, the Telegraph's Damian 'Blood-crazed Ferret' Thompson's blog post is designed to appeal to MLK's right-wing detractors. Sensibly (or not) Thompson has closed the comments thread.

It's the last paragraph that gets me.



Talk about victimhood. :facepalm:
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Have some sympathy for the man Nino. Narrowly surviving chernobyl can't be easy for anyone.

damian-take3.jpg


You could land hovercraft on that chrome dome.
 
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