Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)

Corbyn has lost me on this issue. Why do the media need to branch out into wider social classes? It isn't as if they got Brexit and an election on both sides of the Atlantic massively wrong because they operate in an echo chamber of privately educated wanks who only got where they are because of who their parents were.
 
jeff_goldblum said:
Not sure how anyone can disagree with the statements

1) the demographics of the news media skew upper-middle class, white and male.
2) Your socioeconomic background has an affect on your experience of the world and your politics.
3) Your experience has an impact on your politics, affects what you deem newsworthy, and influences the way in which you analyse events.

It's clear that the media is completely out of touch with the average person on the street and that many commentators have no insight into, or interest in, the lives of ordinary people, much less the lives of marginalised groups. Generally speaking, the media has huge blindspots regarding poverty, inequality, the experience of disadvantaged groups and non-metropolitan Britain in general. The reason the media didn't see Brexit coming is because they had no understanding of why people in post-industrial areas which have been left to rot under various governments over the course of 40 years might not trust politicians telling them how to vote. The reason they didn't see Grenfell coming despite community groups and the left going on about dangerous and poor quality housing for decades is because they'd never lived in or visited a place like it so they couldn't believe they existed and wrote it off as the left getting overexcited over nothing.

A recent example relevant to this thread is when Corbyn raised buses in a PMQs and the media had a go at him for being out of touch with reality and raising such a niche topic. In reality, buses are the most relied-on form of public transport across the country and services are generally more-expensive and less-reliable then ever and it's a huge issue outside of the big cities.
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I love this. How many people complaining about this buy local papers? I’m going to guess, none. That’s where a lot of these local issues used to first get surfaced. The media is dying - is weaker than it has ever been, because people aren’t paying for it. Journalist jobs are being slashed across “the media” because punters won’t pay and advertisers have moved their spend to Facebook and google. You get rubbish local news because it largely has ceased to exist in any meaningful form. That’s why nobody sees this stuff coming - because nobody is being paid to watch and report. And we aren’t at the end of this. So get used to it.

Re: class - one of the best ways 8n to journalism for working class kids was local journalism and the music press. Spot the pattern.
 
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Silva said:
hire the working class people to be
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Frosty said:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-British-Zionists-no-sense-English-irony.html



A few points and questions, leaving aside that this was the Daily Mail.

1) Clearly the right wing press have dozens of these sorts of stories that they are releasing at vulnerable moments for Labour. That's to be expected. But have there been so many of these that people are tuning out?

2) How is this playing amongst the electorate? Not the membership, where it won't really make an impact.

3) Does anyone think a story will be released that is so serious that Corbyn will resign? I am of the opinion that he won't resign under any circumstances.
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Maybe not but (a) it undermines any perception of moral authority he or his supporters might claim to have over other parties, and that can be corrosive (b) it makes him look weak and unable to solve or confront an issue of significance, again that can be corrosive (c) it potentially reminds people of some of his more unsavoury connections which shines a light on his character issues.

It is the drip drip of the above which can cause damage over time.
 
It strikes me how peripheral these issues that he cares to talk about often are and how annoyed he is whenever anyone asks him about Brexit.
 
Are the media really operating in an echo chamber and out of touch more the Caf posters? Maybe I’m wrong, but from memory whenever there have been polls on major political events, such as General Elections, Brexit and US elections, the Caf poster results seem to be massively different to the public at large.
 
redmeister said:
Are the media really operating in an echo chamber and out of touch more the Caf posters? Maybe I’m wrong, but from memory whenever there have been polls on major political events, such as General Elections, Brexit and US elections, the Caf poster results seem to be massively different to the public at large.
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It's the new Corbyn logic that because the media didn't predict a within margin of error victory for leave that means that they didn't understand why people wanted to leave the EU in certain places in the country. The logic only works however if you assume that the entire Brexit vote was working class and driven by social-economic concerns and ignore the evidence of a huge Brexit demographic of rich, white and rural voters.

See also the argument (that I've seen here before as well) that if you care think Brexit is the biggest issue facing the country you're comfortable and therefore don't understand the plight of the country's housing problem (or the NHS or whatever it is this week) as if they're unrelated things that won't get worse thanks to Brexit.
 
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The charade of pretending that Labour's position on this issue isn't to placate the pro-Brexit ideology of the leadership is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
 
Mockney said:
Lol wot?
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Not sure what you mean, at the time most commentators predicted a Remain win and it was a genuine surprise to many in the big cities that Leave won. Cameron only called the referendum because basically every source was calling that he'd win, they did so right up til polling day.

Hell even Farage was saying on polling day that Leave losing wouldn't mean the campaign was over. He was resigned to it.
 
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jeff_goldblum said:
Not sure what you mean, at the time most commentators predicted a Remain win and it was a genuine surprise to many in the big cities that Leave won. Cameron only called the referendum because basically every source was calling that he'd win, they did so right up til polling day.

Hell even Farage was saying on polling day that Leave losing wouldn't mean the campaign was over. He was resigned to it.
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Leave was ahead in the polls though. I think what may have thrown people was the Scottish Referendum and the last minute swing to No even though Yes was ahead in the polls. So maybe the media were guilty of interpreting the polls as being under representative of Remain when in fact they were accurate.
 
Corbyn is driving me fecking crazy. Are the majority of the country giving two fecks about the social status of journalists right now? Is that the kind of big button message that is going to swing voters across to Labour? For christ’s sake, all he needs right now are a few big, well planned policies to improve people’s everyday economic situations, and a strong position on Brexit. Instead we keep getting this ideological wank that allows the media to slap him around for a few more weeks before the next one comes along.

The media have treated him despicably, but they’re not suddenly going to stop now. He has to start messaging better and he has to do it now, otherwise the silly cnut will never see the inside of Downing Street and we’ll be stuck with these incompetent Tory twats for years.
 
Kentonio said:
Corbyn is driving me fecking crazy. Are the majority of the country giving two fecks about the social status of journalists right now? Is that the kind of big button message that is going to swing voters across to Labour? For christ’s sake, all he needs right now are a few big, well planned policies to improve people’s everyday economic situations, and a strong position on Brexit. Instead we keep getting this ideological wank that allows the media to slap him around for a few more weeks before the next one comes along.

The media have treated him despicably, but they’re not suddenly going to stop now. He has to start messaging better and he has to do it now, otherwise the silly cnut will never see the inside of Downing Street and we’ll be stuck with these incompetent Tory twats for years.
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The membership is lapping this stuff up though. Do not forget that part of the project is gaining control of the Party (It could be said that this is the most important part). Corbyn and Formby et al need to appeal to the membership to get the new measures to do with leadership elections and deselecting MPs through Conference.
 
jeff_goldblum said:
Not sure what you mean, at the time most commentators predicted a Remain win and it was a genuine surprise to many in the big cities that Leave won. Cameron only called the referendum because basically every source was calling that he'd win, they did so right up til polling day.

Hell even Farage was saying on polling day that Leave losing wouldn't mean the campaign was over. He was resigned to it.
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I agree Cameron thought when he called the referendum he would win, most of us did, but not the rest. As time wore on it was pretty clear from the polls and debates that it would be a close run thing.
 
I don't get this idea that somehow he's been treated badly by the media. I've mentioned before his predecessor in his role had his dead father attacked and smeared in the national press and his predecessor was ridiculed and belittled and accused of being unfit for office because of his disability. This pretence that the coverage of Corbyn has touched upon that due to reporting of the things he's said, the places he's been and the people he's associated with being deemed unhelpful to his cause is something I've little time for.

He's the leader of the opposition struggling against the worst govt any of us can remember, who doesn't engage with the media and only ever seems to have something to say when he's saying something utterly irrelevant at a time of pending national emergency. How do we expect him to be portrayed in the press? Far more competent people have been treated far worse very recently.
 
Kentonio said:
Corbyn is driving me fecking crazy. Are the majority of the country giving two fecks about the social status of journalists right now? Is that the kind of big button message that is going to swing voters across to Labour? For christ’s sake, all he needs right now are a few big, well planned policies to improve people’s everyday economic situations, and a strong position on Brexit. Instead we keep getting this ideological wank that allows the media to slap him around for a few more weeks before the next one comes along.

The media have treated him despicably, but they’re not suddenly going to stop now. He has to start messaging better and he has to do it now, otherwise the silly cnut will never see the inside of Downing Street and we’ll be stuck with these incompetent Tory twats for years.
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He is incapable of it and right now appears utterly incompetent. The sooner Labour get rid the better imo
 
Labour led by someone who wants to leave the EU "not ruling out" a second referendum is hardly a huge step in the right direction. There's more than enough ammunition for an opposition party to be campaigning tirelessly for a second referendum, necessarily lending its weight behind a movement that seems to have gained ascendancy in the field of public opinion entirely without any real mainstream political support. Other than the SNP and Lib Dems who are an irrelevance to most of and all of the country retrospectively, that is. Imagine if one of the two major political parties had been arguing for a second referendum for the last 12 months or so, what public opinion would be then on the issue.
 
Frosty said:
This from Stephen Bush in the New Stateman is a long, insightful, and throroughly depressing read:



https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/08/labour-party-split-inevitable-corbyn-MPs
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Thanks for sharing that, great read. Bush is such a good thinker.

I think this is a case of having to wait for Corbynism to fail, which will be one, two or three elections away. Most likely two or three, depending on how close the next election is. I understand the moral dilemmas for the MPs discussed in the article, but FPTP just means that there’s no option bar ‘waiting it out’ in Labour or defecting to the Lib Dem’s. And the latter isn’t even really an option if you’re in a LabCon constituency.
 
Frosty said:
Leave was ahead in the polls though. I think what may have thrown people was the Scottish Referendum and the last minute swing to No even though Yes was ahead in the polls. So maybe the media were guilty of interpreting the polls as being under representative of Remain when in fact they were accurate.
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711 said:
I agree Cameron thought when he called the referendum he would win, most of us did, but not the rest. As time wore on it was pretty clear from the polls and debates that it would be a close run thing.
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Actually, Remain was narrowly ahead in the polls, the poll of polls in the FT had it as 48% Remain to 46% Leave on the eve of the vote. The YouGov poll conducted on the day of the vote predicted 52 - 48 in favour of Remain. Of the 10 polls that were taken between the suspension of campaigning after Jo Cox's murder on the 19th and the vote, 3 predicted a Leave win, and none of those 3 predicted Leave to poll above 45%. And, as Frosty said, the expectation was that Remain would get a higher vote than polled as voters tended towards the status quo last minute.

I think it's pretty cut and dry that the national media misread the mood, my contention is that the fact that the metropolitan middle classes are overrepresented in both print and broadcast media was a major factor in that.
 
nickm said:
I love this. How many people complaining about this buy local papers? I’m going to guess, none. That’s where a lot of these local issues used to first get surfaced. The media is dying - is weaker than it has ever been, because people aren’t paying for it. Journalist jobs are being slashed across “the media” because punters won’t pay and advertisers have moved their spend to Facebook and google. You get rubbish local news because it largely has ceased to exist in any meaningful form. That’s why nobody sees this stuff coming - because nobody is being paid to watch and report. And we aren’t at the end of this. So get used to it.

Re: class - one of the best ways 8n to journalism for working class kids was local journalism and the music press. Spot the pattern.
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I can't tell whether you're disagreeing with what I said but I agree with most of that.
 
jeff_goldblum said:
Actually, Remain was narrowly ahead in the polls, the poll of polls in the FT had it as 48% Remain to 46% Leave on the eve of the vote. The YouGov poll conducted on the day of the vote predicted 52 - 48 in favour of Remain. Of the 10 polls that were taken between the suspension of campaigning after Jo Cox's murder on the 19th and the vote, 3 predicted a Leave win, and none of those 3 predicted Leave to poll above 45%. And, as Frosty said, the expectation was that Remain would get a higher vote than polled as voters tended towards the status quo last minute.

I think it's pretty cut and dry that the national media misread the mood, my contention is that the fact that the metropolitan middle classes are overrepresented in both print and broadcast media was a major factor in that.
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So as far as both the polls and the result go it was indeed a close run thing.

As for the national media, most of the print media pretty much campaigned for Leave so I don't see how you can say they misread the mood. They did a lot to create the mood of course, but that's a separate thing. If some but by no means all of the 'metropolitan middle classes' didn't know what was going on maybe those ones should be asking themselves why?
 
jeff_goldblum said:
I can't tell whether you're disagreeing with what I said but I agree with most of that.
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What I'm saying is there's no point in blaming the media. Its decline - due to changing consumer behaviour - means there is a widening gap in in our civic politics. It is not clear what the answer is to that, but hiring more journalists or blaming them for being too metropolitan or middle class isn't it. The vast bulk of the print media will be dead in a few years.
 
711 said:
So as far as both the polls and the result go it was indeed a close run thing.

As for the national media, most of the print media pretty much campaigned for Leave so I don't see how you can say they misread the mood. They did a lot to create the mood of course, but that's a separate thing. If some but by no means all of the 'metropolitan middle classes' didn't know what was going on maybe those ones should be asking themselves why?
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Indeed... Studdy below shows 45% of articles pro leave... 27%remain and the rest mixed / undecided
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-05-23-uk-newspapers-positions-brexit#
 
Sassy Colin said:
What a load of bollocks, any tax of any sort all goes into the same pot. Ends up paying for the NHS, in general.
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It's no better than those that say 'I don't mind paying tax so long as I get to choose what it's spent on', except a major party leader should have some basic idea of how democracy works and how governments function.
 
Kentonio said:
Corbyn is driving me fecking crazy. Are the majority of the country giving two fecks about the social status of journalists right now? Is that the kind of big button message that is going to swing voters across to Labour? For christ’s sake, all he needs right now are a few big, well planned policies to improve people’s everyday economic situations, and a strong position on Brexit. Instead we keep getting this ideological wank that allows the media to slap him around for a few more weeks before the next one comes along.

The media have treated him despicably, but they’re not suddenly going to stop now. He has to start messaging better and he has to do it now, otherwise the silly cnut will never see the inside of Downing Street and we’ll be stuck with these incompetent Tory twats for years.
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As opposed to incompetent Labour twats?

You honestly think they have the faintest idea how to run the country? We'll be bankrupt before the end of their first term. Although, tbf, with this Brexit shit, we'll be bankrupt before too long anyway.
 
Sassy Colin said:
As opposed to incompetent Labour twats?

You honestly think they have the faintest idea how to run the country? We'll be bankrupt before the end of their first term. Although, tbf, with this Brexit shit, we'll be bankrupt before too long anyway.
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The alternative being rewarding the stupid cnuts who are leading us into a disasterous economic crash with more terms in office?
 
Kentonio said:
The alternative being rewarding the stupid cnuts who are leading us into a disasterous economic crash with more terms in office?
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Labour’s plan is to take us into a likely economic crash through Brexit and then go into unprecedented public spending whilst making Britain more unappealing to foreign investment.

Hardly a plan to be excited about.
 
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The right-wing Brexit plan is at least logical. Leave the EU, hope to negate the economic hit with massive deregulation of industry and slash taxes out of necessity to attract foreign investment and impose significant and drastic cuts on public services leading to a smaller state and the probably privatisation of the NHS. That's what the likes of Rees-Mogg and the hardline right-wing Tories have always wanted. For them leaving the EU is a logical way of probably achieving those aims.

Labour's Brexit plan seems to be to leave, take the hit on inward investment, take the economic hit and yet somehow magically have more money to invest in public services. Or at least that's what I think Corbyn's enablers have told themselves. The reality is he has always been pro-leave for ideological reasons and is actually fairly delighted that soon we will be leaving regardless of how disastrous. But they can't accept the possibility that Saint Jez has been dishonest so they pretend the illogical nonsense set out in the first sentence of this paragraph is the "plan"
 
Just looking at is Twitter feed for this month so far some of the issues he's chosen to raise:


Hiroshima bomb victims
A video of him walking down some steps, clapping
Pakistan’s independence day
A Level results
Aretha Franklin tribute
199th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre
Community vegetable growing
National Allotment Week
Saving Holloway Crown Post Office
GCSE Results
Unaccountable media barons.



Oddly hasn’t had anything to Tweet on Brexit. But everyone will surely agree he has the big issues covered there.
 
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