02-03-2004, 10:00 AM | #21 | |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: In me taters
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Re: Re: The Hutton Report
Quote:
Governments now employ legions of (often publicly-funded) communications staff whose sole purpose is to manipulate the public perception of what the politicians are up to. T'was ever thus, you might say. But wouldn't you accept that in recent years, this dark art has reached ever greater heights of sophistication? Or would you regard Alastair Campbell as a civil servant whose prime motive was to tell the truth to the people of Britain, rather than to make the Prime Minister and the Government seem pure as the driven snow? In this light, being fair means being manipulated; to be free, the media have to be hostile. |
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02-03-2004, 12:16 PM | #22 | |
Elven Warrior
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Tolkien's England where the tale grew in the telling...
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Re: Re: Re: The Hutton Report
Quote:
However, that doesn't abrogate responsibility from good journalists to get their facts right and to put those facts together in an unbiased manner. It's one thing for us as individuals to quote selective facts to back up our own ideas (or should I say prejudices ) - we don't have the duty to inform and empower the people. When so-called journalists do nothing but fit selective facts together to fit with the story they were always going to write, you've lost a free and fair press, and editorial independence to boot! Last edited by LutraMage : 02-03-2004 at 12:18 PM. |
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02-03-2004, 12:42 PM | #23 |
Elf Lord
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Point taken, and agreed with (up to a point).
The issue would be to what extent did Gilligan actually do this? He issued a pretty hasty clarification that he did not mean to say that Bliar actually lied on the WMD issue. Hutton himself stated that, if you took "sexed-up" to mean "changing the form of words" then the dossier may well have been sexed up. (The choice phrase was that Scarlett may have been "subconsciously influenced" by Campbell. What a hoot! Can you imagine Alistair Campbell subconsciously influencing anybody??) Clearly, Gilligan was deeply suspicious of the Iraq dossier, and with good reason. Never before had intelligence information been used as a justification for war; never before had it even been published in this form. Usually, we have to wait 30 years before we even get to read the goddam MI6 canteen menu, for crying out loud. Admittedly, he made some mistakes along the way. It's interesting that you mention Jo Moore. I seem to recall that her bosses (Stephen Byers and, ultimately, Tony Bliar) did not deem it worthy of their resignation that she made probably the most stupid comment a government official could make. Yet Greg Dyke and Gavin Davies were expected to take responsibility for Gilligan's error. Mate, it stinks. Last edited by The Gaffer : 02-03-2004 at 12:43 PM. |
02-03-2004, 03:54 PM | #24 | |
Lady of Letters
Join Date: Jan 2002
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Quote:
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And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand As they have done for centuries, as they will For centuries to come, when not a soul Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks, When England is not England, when mankind Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea, Consolingly disastrous, will return While the strange starfish, hugely magnified, Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool. |
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02-03-2004, 04:21 PM | #25 | |
Elven Warrior
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Tolkien's England where the tale grew in the telling...
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Quote:
Concepts like 'honour' and 'decency' are not New Labour terms, my friend. They are not 'cool Britannia'. They go with 'tradition', 'Ministerial Responsibility', 'a stiff upper lip'. In short, they are concepts in need of 'modernisation' and 'refocussing' to bring them 'up-to-date' in Blair's New Britain. And that's the rotten core at the heart of this Blair government. The reason that even the BBC is only the latest in a long line of traditional Labour supporting groups which has lost faith with this 'socialist' government is not that it's not really socialist (it never was), it's not even that it's not 'Social Democratic'. It's simply that it's not anything at all. Middle-of-the-road, lowest-common-denominator, all-things-to-all-men, stick-at-naught, principleless government by mediocre politicians whose only common thread (think Ken Livingston, Stephen Biars, Robin Cook, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair) is a desire to stay in power at any cost! It really does make me mad that the British People voted them into Office (twice)! So now they (the Public) shouldn't bleat when a bungled attempt by the BBC to discredit New Labour has gone horribly wrong. Blair is 'Teflon Tony' precisely because there is nowhere for mud to stick. Marching with CND one day, waging WMD War with George the next. No principles, no way to discredit! Very sad, but true! |
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02-05-2004, 06:59 AM | #26 |
Elf Lord
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Well, I don't completely agree with you there. They have greatly increased public services expenditure, introduced the minimum wage, begun to implement some of the Social Chapter provisions which Major opted out of, etc. etc.
(Mind you, I'm guessing that these aren't necessarily things you'd regard as positives ) The funny thing is that they seem to want to keep these things secret in case the public catches on to these vestigial socialist impulses. I would agree that Bliar has nothing to do with any of these, and it's mostly down to Gordon Brown (who I would back for Prime Minister: I think he is a principled politician) However, staying on this "sleaze society" topic, I don't think the answer is to go back to a system of (even more) patronage and elitism. The "jolly good chaps" who presided over the Bloody Sunday inquiries (Hutton was barrister for the MoD at that one, by the way), Birmingham Six appeals, Guildford Four, etc etc, didn't exactly excel themselves. And this Butler bloke was the one who wrote a reference for Jonathan Aitken on the basis that Aitken told him "I didn't do it". Trial by media accusation is very far from perfect, but at least it's a step forward from trial by jolly nice lunch in the Garrick. |
02-05-2004, 10:47 AM | #27 |
AngAdan
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Boerne, Texas
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Giligans biggest fault/lie, and the one that contributed to the suicide, was his falsely attributing some of his opinions and guesses as information supplied by his government scource. False attribution is a mortal sin in journalism.
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Gaius Mucius Scaevola Older, richer, and wiser than you "Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor, but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, ... And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me," |
02-25-2004, 04:18 PM | #28 |
The Blobbit
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Kent, England (Not Oxford! ... yet...)
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Wow i remember the Hutton Report... that was like ages ago. Right before the Butler Report which was also a white-wash. Of course that was before we took out Syria... and France.
(*Brought to you by Janny's pre-emptive auto posts*) |
02-25-2004, 08:50 PM | #29 |
Elf Lord
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