0850 [0845] [0825] Hrs GMT
London
Saturday
01 April 2010
Editor © Muhammad Haque
Khoodeelaar! Contextually, constitutionally, ethically, temporally and evidentially asserting that like the dummified zombified 'mps' who were cobbled together and whipped into the hocus pocus bogus select committees to serve the agenda of big business over the 'crossrail bill' [uk house of commons, February 2005 - to July 2008] the sky-high hyped ‘TV debates’ have been grotesquely faked. They have been faked so grotesquely that the parties to the Parties are now admitting to hiring make-up and prevention elements from the alleged obama campaign in the USA. That shows just how false the whole TV thing or things have been. Nobody should pay any attention whatever to anything that was said in that game. A sickly contemptuous-of-the-public and dishonest game. The vote’ is too important to be given up in favour of the corrupting lure, the soulless fantasy and the complete lie that have been conjured up in the zombifying oppression hammered and bamboozled and hoodwinked over the past three weeks via ‘TV’. Time to get back to the facts. There are too many things wrong with this form of democracy. But the pits of decadent exhibition and sub-pornography that have been indulged in, pandered to and exposed in the three ‘debates’ leave no reason to call these debates. They must have been debases! Time to get back to some semblance of dignity about politics and about political principles. What then are the facts at the centre of the so-called change? Change from what to what? Change from whom to whom? Change from whom to who? Or is it transformation? From “Churchill to Nazi”? Or from Mr Beans to Stalin [as Vince Cable would prefer to be called himself]? Or from bigot to idiot? There is no evidence that any of the ott-hyped performers has any more claim to the ‘trust’ that is the vote than the so-called lacklustre dimwit one or ones. Look then at their records in point and judge only on their records. For a start, those records are not staged. And they could not have been staged. [To be continued]
from WALES Online
The power of TV, not the internet, has defined this election
May 1 2010 by Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail
The election campaign took a decisive twist this week – and it was all live on TV, as Political Editor Tomos Livingstone reports
IT WAS supposed to be the internet election, but the past seven days have proved conclusively that television still has the muscle to decisively affect the course of the campaign.
There will be those in the Labour party cursing the decision to go ahead with the televised leaders’ debate; they won’t be cursing as hard as Gordon Brown was when he realised he was still wearing a broadcaster’s mike after his encounter with voter Gillian Duffy.
Mr Brown used to work in TV before embarking on his long career in politics, so it’s something of an irony his unsuitability for the medium has made it all but impossible for him to recover lost political ground.
It may well have irritated him all the more to see an old rival re-appear last night who knows a thing or two about looking good on the small screen.
The week began with Labour and the Conservatives starting to put the squeeze on Nick Clegg, and it ended with a series of polls whose consistency suggests an electorate that has made up its mind.
Mrs Duffy, meanwhile, appears to have a signed a newspaper deal to tell her side of the extraordinary story of her encounter with the Prime Minister, while Tony Blair – for it was he – turned on the charm in some marginal seats.
“Once you get into the final days, I think people will really focus their minds on who has the best answers for the future, who has got the energy, the drive, to take the country forward, who has got the answers to the questions the future is posing,” said Mr Blair.
That’s exactly what Mr Brown has been trying to say. And after a combative TV leaders’ debate on Thursday, pollsters revealed that voters were indeed making up their minds – putting the Prime Minister in third place behind David Cameron and Nick Clegg.
No-one mentioned Mrs Duffy during the debate, although Mr Brown briefly referred to “not always getting it right” in his opening remarks. But she had already been written into political history by that point.
The widow from Rochdale had only left her home to buy a loaf of bread, and was surprised to see a large number of police officers milling around nearby.
It wasn’t, as she suspected, a car accident, but there can’t be a much better metaphor for what happened next.
Having been introduced, Mrs Duffy spoke to Mr Brown about a range of issues – most of the conversation was about tax and the national debt, not immigration – and the two parted on good terms.
Mrs Duffy even told reporters she was more likely to vote Labour, as the Prime Minister hurried away to his car.
Not realising the microphone he had asked to be fixed to his lapel – the better to pick up chatter with ordinary voters – was still live, he described the encounter to an aide as “a disaster”.
Asked why, the fateful words “bigoted woman” fell from his lips.
There followed a pantomime made for 24-hour news, with Mr Brown soon back at Mrs Duffy’s home, apologising repeatedly while cameras crews salivated outside. Mr Cameron wisely said nothing, unable to believe his good fortune.
It was a good week to be Mr Cameron. The polls were already showing progress in clawing back ground lost to the Liberal Democrats, and the TV debate was another successful outing.
In his closing statement Mr Cameron said, “I think we can do even better in the years ahead”, while in his own remarks Mr Brown appeared to concede his rival could be about to take power.
It spoke volumes. Mr Clegg had, by his extraordinary recent standards, an average sort of week. But he’s already done enough to shake up the campaign and, who knows, break the political mould.
He wasn’t as fluent on Thursday – even he, it turns out, is a mere political mortal.
There was more to this week, of course. Greece teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, a warning to countries with high levels of public debt of what can happen without remedial action.
The Governor of the Bank of England suggested what many were thinking – that spending cuts after the election will have to be so harsh that whoever implements them can forget about winning another election for a good few years.
And yet Thursday night saw a pretty comprehensive rehearsal of the parties’ positions, with Labour and the Conservatives clashing over whether National Insurance should go up, and the Liberal Democrats advocating a big rise in the threshold at which income tax should be paid. There was even a brief mention of cuts, too.
Professor Luke Georghiou, of Manchester University’s business school, was a little more sceptical. He said: “There were lots of repetitive comments on personal taxation and the iniquities of bankers but much less engagement with how we could restore a reasonable rate of economic growth.
“The result of this is that we were unable to hear an integrated discussion about the complex issues involved in economic recovery. Many of the measures proposed interact with each other – the cuts will inevitably increase unemployment and the cost of benefits unless these are drastically slashed. The size of the deficit depends upon future growth but this was vague territory.”
The polls suggest Mr Cameron will be Prime Minister in a few days’ time, although it remains far from certain whether he will have to rely on Mr Clegg to achieve this.
Voters around the UK were given a useful reminder too that the Liberal Democrats are not the only game in town – the idea of an agreement between the Tories and Plaid Cymru and the SNP finally got some coverage in the London press.
Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones, at a press conference in Westminster, described the Lib Dems as “unreliable partners” in any coalition talks.
If only, Mr Jones must have been feeling, he could have got onto the TV debates to make that very point.
