The engrossing London mayoral elections failed to help the London Evening Standard, which saw its circulation drop again last month. We’re shocked to hear the newspaper’s ‘fair and balanced’ coverage wasn’t appreciated more.

There has been a great deal of suspicion in the blogosphere regarding the political integrity of Total Politics, the new venture run by several former 18 Doughty Street operatives, and Politics Home, the hideous spawn of Stephan Shakespeare (the original financial progenitor of 18DS - yes, it’s all a bit incestuous). Both titles have taken measures to buttress themselves against these predictable criticisms, by creating cross-party advisory boards as a check against bias. It’s easy to understand why a nascent political publication or website would be concerned about appearing to favour one political party and take steps to provide evidence of its fairness. But what about an existing publication, especially one that hasn’t historically been particularly political?

The worries I have are in regard to Condé Nast’s GQ, which is edited by one Dylan Jones. In 2006 GQ featured David Cameron on its front cover, a rather surprising departure from the disrobed Hollywood sirens who usually adorn it. There is nothing necessarily wrong in the leader of the Conservatives starring on a magazine cover, I guess, but as a subscriber to GQ (a valentine’s day present), I have noticed the distinguishable stench of political bias throughout the magazine of late. Continue reading…

I guess should have mentioned and emphasised this little-known-fact earlier. But for a little while I had some respect for Andrew Gilligan’s journalism. Once he went way over the top and sold his soul to the Evening Standard’s vendetta against Ken Livingstone, that evaporated.

First, a bit of background.
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When the BNP’s Richard Barnbrook stooped forward to give his victory speech this weekend, both the main candidates and the news channels left the stage. Which was a shame. Because a better demonstration of the real man’s character and party could not have been found.

Now I have always thought that the ‘no-platform’ approach is wrong. To deny the far-right a voice is to give them a status that they do not deserve.
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The post-mortems - the mot juste, I think - on New Labour have missed a point.

The party is paying the price for the fact that the New Labour project was based upon profound, and now crippling, intellectual insecurity.

Put yourself in the shoes of New Labour’s founders in the 80s and early 90s. You see that traditional social democratic arguments for redistribution don’t work. You see Labour’s traditional support base, the manual working class, declining in numbers (pdf). And you see a managerial class winning what you want - wealth and power.

What do you do? You abandon traditional Labourism, in favour of an appeal to Mondeo man and Worcester woman.
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So, it’s the weekend after the week before, and an alliance of gameshow fans, 4×4 drivers, suburban curtain-twitchers, BNP second-preferences, Labourphobes and the thoroughly fed-up, mostly from places that don’t even count as London, have foisted a Thatcherite mayor on our generally left-leaning city. Continue reading…

Like Sunny, I’m annoyed with the BBC too.

A woman named Suzanne Holdsworth has been released from prison, after her conviction for killing a child she was baby-sitting was deemed unsafe. Apparently, it is likely that toddler Kyle Fisher had a pre-existing disorder that could have caused his death.

All this was reported in a matter-of-fact tone on the news last night, but the editing told a different story. The shot of Mrs Holdsworth we saw as she left court was of her taking a weaselly drag on a king-sized cigarette. And the interview with her partner (who made a very salient point about how, although he was delighted, no-one should forget the dead child) was spliced with a cut-away shot of his tattoos - a bulldog, with ‘England’ emblazoned below. The grammar of the shot renders the segment a dog-whistle to the middle-classes: “Chav Scum”.

Since Mrs Holdsworth is now facing a retrial, that’s unfair on her. But it also reinforces prejudices within our society. The BBC needs to get beyond these cliches.

I’m with Nathaniel - frankly I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm to care for how many seats Labour lost or the Tories won or whether the Libdems had a great night. But what the hell was the BBC coverage about?

I realise that people are increasingly becoming apathetic to politics. But that’s most likely because our politicians are not very interesting and our democratic institutions aren’t all that democratic.

Surely its NOT because we’re dumb idiots who have trouble paying attention or understanding how percentages move up or down. Jesus, I felt deeply patronised last night, especially by the idiot who dreamed up those pathetic graphics that Jeremy Vine had to refer to every five minutes.
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So David Cameron admits that he hasn’t exactly kept to his promise of “ending Punch and Judy politics”. Well there’s a surprise. The king of sarcasm, Justin McKeating, nails it:

David Cameron has admitted he has not managed to keep his pledge to “end Punch and Judy politics” - blaming the fact that calling the Prime Minister a cycloptic psychopath has proved a better strategy.

“I will absolutely hold up my hand…this is a promise I couldn’t be bothered to deliver,” the Tory leader said.

“Look, what would you do? You can spend all day formulating policy and listening to the petty concerns of voters. But when your spin doctors tell you that portraying the Prime Minister as a hapless, lonely weirdo is an easier way to win the general election, you jolly well need to sit up and listen.”

He said prime minister’s question time was “an adversarial system” adding: “Of course we don’t have a policy worth a candle. When standing up and making thinly veiled innuendoes about the Prime Minister’s sanity has proved a sure-fire way to get ahead in the the opinions polls, who needs them?

“I do accept that I take a rubbish approach. It is rubbish. I don’t make any apology for that.”

Writing in the Daily Mail, Peter Oborne, perhaps the only reason to read that paper, said this last week:

There is always a herd instinct in British politics and David Cameron has confidently placed himself at the head of an ugly, baying mob. Like all mobs, Cameron’s brutish band of brothers has little interest in decency or decorum.
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Just like the Tory leader today, Tony Blair very rarely attacked his opponents on matters of policy. Instead, like Cameron, he concentrated on personal issues. Blair portrayed John Major as weak, dithering and the victim of events. Cameron does exactly the same to Gordon Brown today.

Admittedly, I’m not a fan of this silly politics either and anyone who’s surprised Cameron went back on his promise should really go back to the comments section of Guido Fawkes and stay there.

But are attack ads so bad? The Libdems unveiled two attack ads this week, with Boris and Ken in their sights, and both have been universally panned by commenters on Libdemvoice. Ok, they’re not funny but I don’t see a problem with attack ads.

Aren’t they the future, given that there are no broadcasting rules on YouTube and the Libdems can release as many as they want without worrying about Ofcom? Who wouldn’t be seduced?

Will the British public really be repelled by it all? Or is it more that we wish the public would not be seduced but as soon as its proven they work (like in the USA), then everyone will jump on the bandwagon?

I’ve never seen so many videos against a candidate for a British election. If there’s one thing the Mayor elections has shown, its that there are plenty of creative Boris-stoppers out there.

Of course I couldn’t limit this list only to ten. If there’s any important ones you think I’ve missed out, let us know in the comments. This list also includes the Kate Nash ‘dickhead remix’ that was taken off YouTube!
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Unity from LC and Brendan O’Neill from Spiked debate whether it was right that Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom be stripped of his honorary post at UCL after bloggers uncovered his views.

Ah, those Hitchens boys and their messianic resolve. This time, it’s the runt of the family:

I sometimes wonder why I bother being a prophet. All my predictions of horrible things come true, and nobody does anything about any of them.

The BBC have discovered that there are now quite a lot of grannies in this country in their 30s. They interviewed Tara Bailee, 36, who goes clubbing twice a month, has (of course) split up with the father of her daughter Rickeita, who got pregnant at 15 and has (of course) split up with the father of her daughter, Lexie.

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An empirical study examining every story about Iraq on ABC and CBS News between 1st Aug 02 and 19th Mar ‘03 - 908 stories in all - showed the networks were biased towards invasion. More: The Monkey Cage.

Boris Johnson brushed clouds of doubt aside yesterday as The Sun newspaper endorsed him for Mayor of London. In a double page spread, Britain’s highest-selling paper told their readers to kick out “Caracas” Ken and vote in “Mayor Race Favourite” Boris.

The London edition of the paper also devoted their entire Sun Says column to the race, urging their readers to pick “a new and fresh Champion for London”. And just in case their readers still didn’t know how to vote the paper included a handy how you can vote section.

Of course The Sun’s endorsement of Boris Johnson should come as little surprise. Boris is in many ways the ideal Sun candidate. Here is a public school toff posing as a friend of the working class. A man who speaks almost entirely in mockney puns without actually saying anything even mildly offensive to Murdoch and his chums.
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Twitter is the thing we’re all supposed to be waffling about right now, ever since some Downing Street fixer hit on to letting everyone know the intimate manoeuvres of the PM in the US, plus the writer’s own progress through the complex world of comparative hot beverages and muffins.

It works like this. The PM’s meeja minders come up with a ‘new media’ communication wheeze which isn’t really that new at all. Then old media journos wake up in time simultaneously to pronounce it a desperate piece of wannabe PR (because the spinners are doing it) and the latest thing in cool (because, hey, we’ve finally caught up!).
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Back in the day, when I were a lad in a grimy northern town, &c. &c. we used to give stuff up for Lent. Or, any road, we talked about it. I don’t recall actually giving much up personally, apart from Ferraris. Continue reading…

Back in the meatspace I’m now a journalism student, and I learnt something very interesting at hack school today:

You do not mess with the police.

No, really.
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You can tell just how much the Grauniad’s report yesterday on how migrants have not brought a crime wave with them and how, unsurprisingly, they’re not committing more offences than anyone else overall has wound up the Daily Mail and Express by the vehemence of their response today.

Along with the recent immigration report by the Lords committee that, despite tabloid coverage, concluded migrants had on the whole not significantly benefited or been detrimental to the country, the crime angle is the one sure fire hit which they can rely upon to really fire minds against the current immigration policy, with their impact on public services and negligible use of benefits following closely behind. For it to blown apart just as they appeared to be getting the upper hand could not possibly be tolerated.

Hence why both have come out all guns blazing.
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Another report on immigration is out today - 5 years on from the signing of the treaty of accession in Athens - ACPO are claiming that stories of a migrant ‘crime wave’ are a myth. In fact, they say, crime in areas with lots of new EU immigrants seems to only have risen in proportion to the general rise in population.

The Telegraph covers it like this:

The report for the Association of Chief Police Officers appears to contradict claims made by several senior officers that forces require extra money to cope with an immigrant crimewave.

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The Independent’s new editor, who said today: “I wouldn’t have regarded myself as the most leftwing person,” vows it will no longer be leftwing newspaper. Great.