Or Starmer …..
The Spectator
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Or Starmer …..
Starmmer was too quick to u turn and ended up losing credibility. Burnam is going to be much more subtle.
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It is well worth reading the whole of the foreword of the report, written by a former political editor of the magazine,
He begins
Founded in July 1828 The Spectator is the oldest surviving magazine, not just in Britain but the world. During the course of its magnificent history many British prime ministers have written for it: Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, Harold Macmillan.
Another PM, Boris Johnson, edited it. Great writers from Rudyard Kipling and Evelyn Waugh to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, from TS Eliot and Philip Larkin to Ted Hughes, have been published in its pages. Literary editors have included Graham Greene and Peter Ackroyd. It has given space to public intellectuals, including Bertrand Russell and Noel Malcolm, Ferdinand Mount and William Dalrymple.
The magazine has generally been on the right side of history. Under its founding editor Robert Rintoul, it helped drive through the Great Reform Act of 1832. It supported Robert Peel over the Corn Laws. It was clear-sighted and moral over the First Opium War, one of the most squalid episodes in British imperial history for which Britain is paying a price today. After some dithering, The Spectator backed Abraham Lincoln in the American Civil War when most British papers supported the slave-owning confederate states.
David Butterfield, the magazine’s historian, records the heavy cost: “subscribers fell below a thousand for the first time since the paper’s very early years and the title almost collapsed.” Butterfield also records that The Spectator stood out from much of the British press by seeing straight through Oswald Mosley and calling for a ban on the Blackshirt or any political uniform: “Blackshirts, like the Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made.”
Though a Conservative title, The Spectator opposed the Suez invasion, and backed the Wolfenden report, condemning Britain’s “utterly irrational and illogical” laws on homosexuality. The Spectator was one of the leaders of the campaign to end capital punishment.
In the 1960s, under the editorship of Iain Macleod (a future Chancellor of the Exchequer), The Spectator exploded the anti-democratic rules and secret procedures that governed Tory leadership battles. Under the editorship of Nigel Lawson (another future Chancellor) The Spectator opposed the Vietnam War. It immediately condemned the “dangerous nonsense” of Enoch Powell’s 1968 “rivers of blood” speech, saying that it played into the “politics of hatred”.
Out of this history, a coherent picture emerges. For the bulk of the last 200 years The Spectator, a profoundly important voice in British politics, articulated decent and civilised values. In recent years something has changed, as this thorough and scrupulous report from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) demonstrates. Today’s Spectator obsessively mocks Britain’s minority Muslim population. The attacks come week after week, sometimes several in the same edition. The magazine detects the malign influence of Muslims in the most unexpected places. Almost anything, however random or innocent, can trigger The Spectator.
Describing their fixation on Islam as “unhinged” (although to be fair they have also gone in for Holocaust denial and Blood Libel) he then cites a number of examples, and concludes:
For almost two hundred years The Spectator stood for a tradition of good writing and civilised and often bravely heretical discourse. It used its voice to articulate, and sometimes to lead, our national struggle for tolerance. Today, as it approaches the 200th anniversary of its foundation by Robert Rintoul, The Spectator has become one of the most influential British media apologists for bigotry, hatred and racism: an upmarket version of GB News. For those of us who loved, revered and were guided by the old Spectator this is a national tragedy. British Muslims have every reason to feel threatened and intimidated by such rancid, repetitive, irrational and apparently uncontrollable hostility from a hugely respected magazine at the heart of the British establishment.
He begins
Founded in July 1828 The Spectator is the oldest surviving magazine, not just in Britain but the world. During the course of its magnificent history many British prime ministers have written for it: Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, Harold Macmillan.
Another PM, Boris Johnson, edited it. Great writers from Rudyard Kipling and Evelyn Waugh to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, from TS Eliot and Philip Larkin to Ted Hughes, have been published in its pages. Literary editors have included Graham Greene and Peter Ackroyd. It has given space to public intellectuals, including Bertrand Russell and Noel Malcolm, Ferdinand Mount and William Dalrymple.
The magazine has generally been on the right side of history. Under its founding editor Robert Rintoul, it helped drive through the Great Reform Act of 1832. It supported Robert Peel over the Corn Laws. It was clear-sighted and moral over the First Opium War, one of the most squalid episodes in British imperial history for which Britain is paying a price today. After some dithering, The Spectator backed Abraham Lincoln in the American Civil War when most British papers supported the slave-owning confederate states.
David Butterfield, the magazine’s historian, records the heavy cost: “subscribers fell below a thousand for the first time since the paper’s very early years and the title almost collapsed.” Butterfield also records that The Spectator stood out from much of the British press by seeing straight through Oswald Mosley and calling for a ban on the Blackshirt or any political uniform: “Blackshirts, like the Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made.”
Though a Conservative title, The Spectator opposed the Suez invasion, and backed the Wolfenden report, condemning Britain’s “utterly irrational and illogical” laws on homosexuality. The Spectator was one of the leaders of the campaign to end capital punishment.
In the 1960s, under the editorship of Iain Macleod (a future Chancellor of the Exchequer), The Spectator exploded the anti-democratic rules and secret procedures that governed Tory leadership battles. Under the editorship of Nigel Lawson (another future Chancellor) The Spectator opposed the Vietnam War. It immediately condemned the “dangerous nonsense” of Enoch Powell’s 1968 “rivers of blood” speech, saying that it played into the “politics of hatred”.
Out of this history, a coherent picture emerges. For the bulk of the last 200 years The Spectator, a profoundly important voice in British politics, articulated decent and civilised values. In recent years something has changed, as this thorough and scrupulous report from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) demonstrates. Today’s Spectator obsessively mocks Britain’s minority Muslim population. The attacks come week after week, sometimes several in the same edition. The magazine detects the malign influence of Muslims in the most unexpected places. Almost anything, however random or innocent, can trigger The Spectator.
Describing their fixation on Islam as “unhinged” (although to be fair they have also gone in for Holocaust denial and Blood Libel) he then cites a number of examples, and concludes:
For almost two hundred years The Spectator stood for a tradition of good writing and civilised and often bravely heretical discourse. It used its voice to articulate, and sometimes to lead, our national struggle for tolerance. Today, as it approaches the 200th anniversary of its foundation by Robert Rintoul, The Spectator has become one of the most influential British media apologists for bigotry, hatred and racism: an upmarket version of GB News. For those of us who loved, revered and were guided by the old Spectator this is a national tragedy. British Muslims have every reason to feel threatened and intimidated by such rancid, repetitive, irrational and apparently uncontrollable hostility from a hugely respected magazine at the heart of the British establishment.
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Yes, I particularly noted the part that suggested the use of the term 'grooming gangs' was discriminatory.
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Christ on a bike, no wonder they are so ill informed, bitter and twisted.
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Are you prepared to quote what the report actually says, with full context?
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I've started. I have not commented on anything I've not yet read.
I've looked at some of the mentions of "grooming" in it.
Hence
Spoons have kicked out early I see.
Well read more or read it more thoroughly, then come back and argue about it.
Since the report has over 100 pages i'm sure F.boy hasn't read it either.
Last year a CFMM study found that GB News mentioned Muslims or Islam 17,000 times, accounting for almost 50% of all mentions on UK news channels (by contrast BBC and Sky accounted for 32% and 21% respectively.) According to CFMM, GB News presented Muslims and Islamic beliefs as part of a conspiracy to undermine the British way of life. As with The Spectator, GB News regularly ridiculed (and denied) the concept of Islamophobia. Recently the third leg of Paul Marshall’s media empire, the Unherd website, dedicated thousands of words to an article headlined “The Plot for a British Caliphate.”
It's interesting to note Paul Marshall began as a Lib-Dem, supporting them financially and actively campaigning on their behalf, belieiving them best placed to promote policies that would bring Britain back to a center ground where the Thatcher and Blair years would provide a platform for his Free Market ideals to flourish.
Then Brexit.
His disillusion with the Lib-Dems time in office in coalition with Cameron's Tories led to a more fervent swerve towards an extreme right wing viewpoint; aligning himself with Boris Johnson who also believed staying in the EU was a better idea than leaving - until it became politically expedient to think otherwise.
His idea of free speech is a noble stance to take in owning The Spectator as he believes the right to an opinion should be heard, regardless of content but he makes the mistake in allowing the kind of far right rhetoric to worm its way into mainstream politics, giving it a veneer of respectable opinion when broadcast in such an established magazine. ironically, the kind of Establishment mouthpiece politicians like Farage advocate against.
It's interesting to note Paul Marshall began as a Lib-Dem, supporting them financially and actively campaigning on their behalf, belieiving them best placed to promote policies that would bring Britain back to a center ground where the Thatcher and Blair years would provide a platform for his Free Market ideals to flourish.
Then Brexit.
His disillusion with the Lib-Dems time in office in coalition with Cameron's Tories led to a more fervent swerve towards an extreme right wing viewpoint; aligning himself with Boris Johnson who also believed staying in the EU was a better idea than leaving - until it became politically expedient to think otherwise.
His idea of free speech is a noble stance to take in owning The Spectator as he believes the right to an opinion should be heard, regardless of content but he makes the mistake in allowing the kind of far right rhetoric to worm its way into mainstream politics, giving it a veneer of respectable opinion when broadcast in such an established magazine. ironically, the kind of Establishment mouthpiece politicians like Farage advocate against.
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