'The most striking thing about GB News is not how original it is, but how familiar it feels. For a supposedly “fresh approach", the only novelty lies in the fact that it’s on TV - it's a mix of tabloid sensationalism & ill-tempered phone-in radio.'
Like Fox News, GB News is a grievance-culture amplification system: from Brexit-based resentment against the EU to "anti-wokeness” & everything in-between: hostility to immigration, racial equality movements, “cancel culture” & lockdowns. an inexhaustible source of cheap content.
"GB News is a natural extension of the increasing popularity of a sort of conservative grievance politics, more concerned about what pictures students have on their walls than how the economy works or the outcomes of public policy."
Wootton claims it's a “broadcasting revolution in the UK, where presenters like me are honest about what we believe”. One of his first acts in that revolution was to quote the Sun, which asked if there's "a link between lockdown & the Govt’s drastic zero-emissions green agenda”.
GB News is planted in a soil already tilled by the rightwing press. In power is a govt that is only too happy to comment on & nourish culture-war confections... the audience will be slowly radicalised, helping to push Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit England even further to the right.
"We won’t be like Fox (News) in that they come from a hard right disinformation fake news conspiracy agenda." - Andrew Neil. 🤥
Epidemiologists are "DOOMSDAY SCIENTISTS ADDICTED TO POWER! WE MUST FIGHT BACK AGAINST THIS MADNESS!" - Dan Wootton. 🤪
Andrew Neil is GB "News" Chair, & Tom Harwood its Political Correspondent. There isn't a serious, credible news channel *on earth* that would allow its tea-maker to tweet dangerously inflammatory shit like this about a female journalist - never mind its "Political Correspondent."
Without a decent, credible news media, democracies cease to function. Disaster capitalists, libertarians & free market fundamentalists invest heavily in news media, & this process is well under way in Britain, America, Brazil, Hungary & other countries.
There was outrage when in 2020, the Tory Govt conceded a new bill to amend the UK's Brexit deal would "break international law" in a "specific & limited way".
But what is international law? What is the ICC?
And what were Margaret Thatcher's views on international law?
First, what is 'international law'?
Broadly (it's complicated!) it refers to the body of legal rules, norms, and standards that apply between sovereign states and other entities that are legally recognized as international actors.
The term was coined by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). According to Bentham’s classic definition, international law is a collection of rules governing relations between states. This original definition omits individuals and international organizations.
"Improving the quality of life for people of this country is perhaps the most important duty of Government."
John Prescott has died.
In September 2000, John - then Deputy Prime Minister - gave a speech at the @UKLabour Party Conference, introducing Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela died in December 2013. Writing a tribute in the Daily Mirror, John reflected on his death, writing: “In my office at home I have a picture that is my most treasured possession. It’s of me shaking Nelson Mandela’s hand on stage at the @UKLabour conference in 2000."
At the Rivonia Trial, between 1963 & 1964, Mandela gave a dramatic speech from the dock.
John wrote in 2013 “When I read that, I knew that I wanted to enter politics. He was my inspiration. So when he walked free in 1990, we felt as if one of our own comrades had been freed.”
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Allison Pearson posted then deleted disinformation, falsely accused three people of being "Jew haters", lied about where the photo was taken & what they were doing, then lied about what the Police said to her - and then moaned about being a victim! FFS
The Telegraph's divisive shit-stirrer Pearson falsely claimed she was told by the police who came to her home it was over a “non-crime hate incident”. Her lie was then dutifully amplified by every Reform UK MP & billionaire-owned right-wing "news" media, painting her as a victim.
Essex Police said “At no stage... was she informed that the report being investigated was being treated as a non-crime hate incident. To suggest otherwise is wholly inaccurate and misleading.”
Pearson, Farage, Musk, Young, Habib, & many other shit-stirrers who shamelessly try to normalize hateful, divisive, provocative & inflammatory rhetoric, often refer to George Orwell's 1984, but Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is much closer to the dystopia we inhabit...
Harassment, malicious communications, incitement, & threatening violence are all crimes in the UK, & have been for a long time.
Print & broadcast media, & online social media are simply platforms on which we behave or misbehave: it's not about the medium, it's about the offence.
The UK is signed up to Article 10 of the #ECHR: everyone has the right to free speech, which may only be qualified in limited circumstances, including: national security; public safety; the protection of morals & of the reputation or rights of others.
"Enoch Powell was a hero of the young Nigel, but at this point he could do without any association with the politician who made the notorious Rivers of Blood speech... the accusation of racism follows Farage & his party around like a bad smell." - Allison Pearson
"Farage has tried for years to shrug off the charge that his parties are more than “the BNP in blazers”... although I don’t think Farage is a racist, it’s a problem that racists attach themselves to Reform." - Allison Pearson
“We’re investigating a report which was passed to us by another force. The report relates to a social media post which was subsequently removed. An investigation is now being carried out under section 17 of the Public Order Act.” - Essex police spokesman
Not a lot of people know that Oxbridge alumni Fiona Bruce, presenter of 'Fake or (paid a) Fortune?', and since January 2019, the @BBC's interrupting Chair of #bbcqt, was born in Singapore.
One of her first episodes as Chair was the one that made Laurence Fox a household name.
In my widely read & reported February 2023 Open Letter to the @BBC about @bbcquestiontime, one of my concerns was about Bruce’s chairing of #bbcqt which I said was "at best, unacceptably poor."