All-purpose news and politics thread

[Michael P]

I meant private members voting. Unions are a member's club.

Maybe, but the membership guidelines are really loose. The Boy Scouts are harder to get into than a Union.

[king mob]

Miliband's really done an own goal by taking an anti-strike stance - there goes the union support! Extra damage when some Labour MPs - like Hywel Francis, MP for Aberavon - refused to cross the picket lines at Westminster.

Milliband's fucked up big time here. There's no way anyone's going to believe him that Labour's nothing more than just the Tories in a different suit and Milliband is yet another London based policitian who doesn't get what the rest of the country is thinking.

[king mob]

The thing is, I kind of think Industrial action is out of date. It's for the Industrial age. People are used to putting up with disruptive shit and carrying on because they have to, and labour can be farmed out one way or another. Digital action in some form is the way forward. Proliferation of information.

Not in this case as we saw yesterday and that action was designed to cause minimal disruption.This is why Cameron and Gove especially have slightly altered their rhetoric as they know should there be a mass walkout in October then that's designed for maximum disruption.

This is all because Danny Alexander is a fucking cock.

[king mob]

This has to be read to be believed....

Two decades ago Rupert Murdoch was sitting at his desk in Wapping as a financial firestorm engulfed his company. The banks were baying at the door. A lethal mix of over-ambition and heavy investment in the nascent BSkyB had laid News Corporation low. Rupert said to me: "Not sure how this is going to end … just in case, I've paid up my mortgages."

I nodded sagely. But as I wandered down the executive corridor back to my beloved Sun, I literally came out in a cold sweat; if Rupert was going bust, who was going to pay my mortgage?

It will come as a strange concept to the many teachers and social workers who think it too risky even to bring in a bottle of milk that Rupert, 20 years later, is on the verge of the biggest deal of his life, benefiting from the greatest of all capitalist drivers: risk and reward.

There is no question that News Corp's takeover of BSkyB increases Murdoch's power, but the world is already changing. I have just started an online sports channel, and I expect traditional closed media networks to be viewed as quaintly old-fashioned within a couple of decades. Next year Google TV arrives in this country, giving direct access to the online world in your front room. In the US, cable subscriptions are down as 18-30s believe they can access all they need through their iPad or laptop.

Cynical eyebrows were raised when Murdoch gave assurances over the independent future of Sky News. Why? In the two decades he has owned the channel, not one editor or journalist has suggested that he has interfered or even made suggestions about news coverage. How incredible. If you had owned a media outlet for so long wouldn't you have picked up the phone to demand a slot for your favourite project or politician? Be truthful. Had it been me I would have been on the phone every other hour.

Sky is not Fox News and I have my doubts that in leftwing, socialist, clapped-out Britain, the latter would work commercially or audiencewise.

Thank God for the Rupert Murdochs of this world. I wish there were hundreds more in our country. Unemployment would be wiped out at a stroke. At a conference in London recently he used a quote I really love about the lack of business adventure in Britain. He said: "We've got to get rid of the fear of failure in this country. In America, people start things, fail and shake themselves down and start things again. The animal spirit of capitalism is stronger there."

As a tabloid tosspot of some note, I had difficulty understanding the concept of Sky as Rupert slowly explained it. You send a TV signal 92m miles into space to a satellite you have rented. Right. You then fire it back to Earth to a dish the customer has had to buy. Right. Then you charge the customer a load of money to receive the extra television. Right.

I thought Rupert had gone mad and couldn't understand why he was throwing Sun profits at such a barmy venture. I even remember suggesting that to save money he might shut Sky News, as it seemed a waste of space. There was a long silence. The silence was always more worrying than the explosion.

Today Sky is the giant of television. Sure it has the football but it has so much more. Even a cultural philistine like me finds myself drawn to Sky Arts, National Geographic and the History Channel. All have unexpected gems that you cannot find anywhere else.

Why has Rupert a monopoly? Simple: nobody else had the guts, the nerve or the stunning management skill to take on the establishment. When he was losing literally hundreds of millions on Sky, his competitors were delighted. Now he has made the greatest television success in all our lifetimes, they scream foul.

My late father-in-law had an expression that I think appropriate. The winners can smile and losers can please themselves. Rupert must be smiling very broadly today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...poly-news-corp

What a fucking cunt.

[Iangould]

Thank God for the Rupert Murdochs of this world. I wish there were hundreds more in our country. Unemployment would be wiped out at a stroke.

As would most of the currently unemployed.

[Spike-X]

In the two decades he has owned the channel, not one editor or journalist has suggested that he has interfered or even made suggestions about news coverage. How incredible.

Isn't it though? He does, however, seem to have an incredible knack for hiring editors who all, to a man, agree with his views about every single political matter imaginable. For instance, when Rupert was in favour of the US invading Iraq? By an amazing coincidence, all 159 (or however many there are) of his newspaper editors were also in favour of said invasion.

Yes, it certainly is incredible. In the most literal sense of the word.

[the4thpip]

Germany's Green Party is worried about the health risks of sex toys. Dildos and vibrators contain dangerously high levels of phthalates and other plasticizers, which can cause infertility and hormone imbalances, they claim. Now the party wants the government to take action to protect the 20 percent of Germans who use sex toys.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...771863,00.html

[Puppetmaker Grae]

This has to be read to be believed....



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...poly-news-corp

What a fucking cunt.

It's Kelvin Mackenzie, what else did you expect?

[Charles RB]

My point is - General disruption doesn't win, we've seen it for 30 years at least.

Several times it has - see poll taxes, and we forget that the miner strike Thatcher busted came after previous miner strikes had won. The fuel worker strikes back in 2000 or thereabouts? They won too.

Milliband's fucked up big time here. There's no way anyone's going to believe him that Labour's nothing more than just the Tories in a different suit and Milliband is yet another London based policitian who doesn't get what the rest of the country is thinking.

It's embarrassing.

[Charles RB]

Chavez had a cancerous tumour.

Venezuelans are still wondering if the president will return to the country in time for bicentennial celebrations scheduled for Tuesday. But in the longer term, his ill health calls into question his chances of being re-elected for another six-year term in 2012.

His time spent recuperating out of the public eye has highlighted how much government is centred on him and how he lacks an obvious successor.

[Iangould]

John "Snowy" Shaw a leading member of the "English Defense League" praises "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" for revealing the secret Jewish masters behind the Muslim threat.

No word yet on what Pam Gellar thinks about that.

"How I wish I could be there to stand with the English Defense League. "

[Spike-X]

John "Snowy" Shaw a leading member of the "English Defense League" praises "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" for revealing the secret Jewish masters behind the Muslim threat.

Wasn't that thing debunked, like, a hundred years ago?

[Matt Algren]

I'll just leave this here...

[Iangould]

Wasn't that thing debunked, like, a hundred years ago?

The Protocols?

Yeah, it was written for the Russian secret service to discredit Jewish protesters against Russian autocracy.

Large parts of it are plagirized from a a polemic novel - only there the secret cabal were Freemasons.

[Spike-X]

I'll just leave this here...

"Tell me more about how the rich are unfairly persecuted and vilified in America, Daddy!"