A few links about nothing in particular

Sorry about the lack of blog posts of late, but isn’t Alienated Left coming along?  Go have a good look around.  I hope to be back blogging soon.  In the meantime, I have a a few links that I'd like to share.

The Billion-Pound-O-Gram helps but billion pound figures into perspective.

Northern Heckler takes the Conservative's inheritance tax policy and a misleading article to task. The Mirror also had an interesting angle on inheritance tax (it might not be the best writing, but the point is valid). Via Phil BC via northbriton45.

Tabloid Watch notes what that few have reported.

How Belle de Jour's secret ally Googlewhacked the press Via bloggerheads via McGuireDavid

Michael Moore had this to say about healthcare reform (I might blog on this in the future, he's quite right in my opinion).

Bensix looks at The Government’s Uneasy Relationship With Evidence

A look at Italian Law.

I'm linking to several Angry Mob pages for no other reason than search engine optimisation. Angry Mob is on the first page of google for various searches, and this is my contribution to keeping the site where it belongs:
Amanda Platell: Racist and Clueless, James Slack: Please Kill Yourself, Liz Jones is Considerably Richer than You, Daily Mail and Rape, Jan Moir: I'm thinking she's a piece of shit, and, Paul Dacre Must Die.

Via Jamie Sport - "There's literally no way our awesome cross-platform twitter news ad campaign will go wrong. Yeah!"

And that's about it link-wise for now (well, I wouldn't want you getting link-fatigue).

A few links to things that have happened in my absence.

The U.S. offer unconvincing assurances regarding its continued use of rendition.

Birth deformities in Fallujah continue - the cause remains unknown.

Obama's actions belie his rhetoric once more as he extends the Cuban trade embargo.

Trafigura, a company whose corporate social responsibility policy makes the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant look like Oxfam, is responsible for the several deaths and the injury of thousands due the to the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast. The story serves as a measure of news agencies' priorities. Not one of the tabloids mentions the story at all. Meanwhile, David Leigh and Rob Evans, expose links to Conservative lords including the leader of the Conservative party in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde. And, that the victims are to receive little compensation.

The Other Taxpayers' Alliance continue their efforts to expose the Taxpayers' Alliance as a murky millionaires' club.

I found myself agreeing with pretty much everything David Mitchell writes about David Cameron and MPs expenses.

This Richard Littlejohn cock-up is exquisitely ridiculous. Whist this Daily Mail attempt to whip up a false moral outrage is tedious.

Update

*Pink link added retrospectively.

The power of Public Relations

Consider the case of Gary McKinnon. Bell Yard are litigation PR specialists who represent Gary McKinnon, and do so pro bono. They are terrifyingly formidable, as their track record and McKinnon’s growing media presence demonstrate. Bell Yard previously represented the Natwest 3. Using the example of the Natwest 3, Nick Davies explains how PR companies manage the media (see video below).

I raise the point not to discuss the specifics of the cases but to highlight the role of the PR industry. Even morally ambiguous examples of media management are often insidious. For every example of media management like the case of Gary McKinnon, there are countless examples of the PR industry effecting the news agenda for deplorable motives.

Much of the rightwing press often acts as little more than publishers of press releases by xenophobic and neoliberal lobby groups. Credit is due to those that doggedly expose Migration Watch and The Taxpayers' Alliance for corrupting the news agenda and denounce the media for its willingness to be corrupted.

The influence of the PR industry over news agendas is frightening. The extent of their influence is something that far too few are aware.

Update

Credit is also due to The Other Taxpayers' Alliance.

A few links about immigration

Stumbling and Mumbling - Immigration and the left – why the left should not support extra immigration controls.

Stumbling and Mumbling - Taking “our” Jobs?

Immigration and tabloids

Tabloid Watch - When truth means lies

Tabloid Watch - Omission of fact

Enemies of Reason - BNP opportunism supported by racist media

No Sleep ‘Till Brooklands - International fugitives come from other countries, Mail finds

Enemies of Reason - A quiz - Melanie Phillips or Geert Wilders?

A few links & an explanation

Sorry about the lack of posts of late, unfortunately I have quite a bit of work to do away from this blog – and it will be the case for a couple of weeks.  In the meantime, I shall continue to post links.  Enjoy.

Enemies of Reason looks at the press' reaction to the ruling that British soldiers must be protected by European human rights laws.  'The Human Rights Act is here to save the day!'

 

Mongoose Chronicles reviews Sky1’s new hour-long series called UK Border Force, which observes the operations of the Border Agency. 

[T]hese shows are in danger of encouraging that perspective, (one might argue that the police shows are in similar danger, but that's another post), especially with continuous references to agents being "on the front lines", as if by merely presenting my passport with my brown, foreign hand I represent a potential threat to citizens of the UK.

(Notice too the words to which they've chosen to give prominence on the website graphic: enforcement, asylum seeker, counterfeit, illegal worker, work permit, student visa. Is this the only business of the Border Agency? And what is the association of work permits and student visas with 'counterfeit', 'illegal worker' or even 'asylum seeker', which in these parts might as well be called 'baby eater'? They all fall neatly under the same column, as if we're meant to think, without qualification, that foreign workers and students are threats to security.

Tabloid Watch looks at a biased poll reported in awful newspapers produced on behalf of a right-wing pressure group in think tank’s clothing.  'Deeply flawed poll from Migrationwatch is not questioned by the papers' *

Stephanie Flanders look at the expenses scandal from an economist's point of view. 

[I]f you give someone £100 to buy a chair, you can't say for sure that he bought a chair with your money - even if he shows you the chair, and a receipt. All you can say for sure is that you made him £100 better off, and he has bought a new chair. [...]

If, like so many MPs, your MP has claimed the full amount - around £24,000 in the most recent year, then the point to note is that he or she has had £24,000 a year more to spend. Full stop. [...]

For example, some have said it was unfair that MPs such as David Cameron have escaped criticism for claiming the maximum allowance each year, because their claims were almost entirely made up of mortgage interest and utility bills. Whereas other MPs, possibly with similar necessary expenses, have made much smaller claims, yet faced criticism for the details.

David Cameron could be spending his allowance on underground swimming pools and platinum cycle helmets. All we know is that he has utility bills and mortgage interest to pay of more than £20,000 a year.

I'm sure nobody viewing this site needs reminding but ...

UPDATE

*The comments on the Tabloid Watch are worth a read too. After some further analysis of the figures, which proves them to be even more misleading, Five Chinese Crackers suggests that "they should rename themselves ForeignerWatch, since that's what they're really interested in."

Iain Dale’s Diary linked The Polemical Report today

If this is your first time here and are not sure where to start, you could do worse than looking at the feature posts. This blog is just over three weeks old, so I appreciate the traffic (thank you for the link Mr Dale). I would also like to thank Angry Mob and Tabloid Watch for the links too. Please have a good browse and comment freely.

A few links about death, war, lies, homophobia, and the Media

Robert Fisk reflects on the time that he met Baha Mousa’s father as British operations in Iraq come to an end. ‘Robert Fisk: A historic day for Iraq – but not in the way the British want to believe’.  For Fisk’s first article about meeting Baha Mousa’s father - ‘Robert Fisk: A cry for justice from a good man who expected us to protect his son’.

A good post from Tabloid Watch on racism in the press and crime reporting - ‘How the tabloids cover crime’

Another good post from Tabloid Watch on homophobia in the Sun. ‘Sun's shower of homophobia’

3 good blogs on the evidence presented to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.

• Five Chinese Crackers – ‘Paul Dacre's evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’
  

• Rhetorically speaking…  - ‘paul dacre: the daily mail was never against the MMR vaccine’
  

• Roy Greenslade on Peter Hill’s 'mistakes' as he gave evident to the committee on behalf of the Daily Express - ‘Express editor's catalogue of 'mistakes' in evidence to MPs’ 
  

A few links about The Daily Mail

Two from Tabloid Watch:
One classic Daily Mail storm in a teacup non-story – ‘Sharia law is coming. Oh, no, it isn't’. Another example bitter obsession with Jonathan Ross – ‘Mail - still can't stand Jonathan Ross’.

& one from a month ago by Five Chinese Crackers which deals with Islamophobia and media semantics. ‘You seen what they're doing now?’

**For some reason, people searching for Russia Today are being directed here. For blog posts relating to Russia Today click here. For stories relating to Russia, click here.

Budget talk and press management

Impressive political manoeuvring from Labour – they have managed to ask a questions of the Conservatives that they will find difficult to answer. In Nick Robinson’s view:

[A] new 50% top tax rate for those earning over £150,000 is designed to put the Tories on the spot - do they back it or pledge to reverse it? Since it will be introduced before the next election, they will have to say.

If they attempt to swerve this political trap they will face criticism from some in their own party and in the Tory press who will demand that they protect "our people".

He continued …

Stealth tax rises are out. Overt tax hikes on the rich are in.

Why?
• In the name of fairness.
• To cheer Labour's supporters.
• To wrong-foot their opponents.
• To distract the media.
• Oh, and to raise money (although the Institute of Fiscal Studies has questioned whether increasing the top tax rate will raise much).

Their hope is that tomorrow's headlines will be dominated by questions about Labour's breach of their manifesto pledge and that the Tories will be asked for months to come whether they will reverse that tax rise or not.

What they know is that opinion polls show that higher taxes on the rich are now popular in the way they once were not.

What they also know is that David Cameron and George Osborne will come under pressure from the Tory press and Tory bloggers to promise to reverse this measure.

What they also know is that that is a more comfortable place to be politically than answering questions about why the chancellor's just confirmed the deepest recession, the fastest rise in unemployment and the biggest rise in borrowing since the war.
[…]

stealth spending cuts have replaced stealth tax rises as the principal tool of the Treasury. […]

stats suggests that that headline grabbing rise in the top rate of tax will actually raise less than increased fuel duty (up 2p a litre in September) and the squeeze on public spending.

And something that will not be too high on the news agenda - the terror plot that probably wasn't.

For more on the 2009 budget see

• 'Andrew Neil on the 50% income tax rate for higher earners'
  
• 'Labour & press relations'
• 'The Guardian columnists' view of the budget'

Tabloid Watch - Lies, Express lies and statistics

Tabloid Watch focus on The Daily Express misrepresenting marriage statistics for the purpose of political point scoring. Exemplary of greater ills in British Journalism - ill-judged, reactionary, biased, alarmist, populist nonsense. Well, it it's not as though anything interesting or significant is happening at the moment - might as well try to deceive people.