All-purpose news and politics thread

[king mob]

Charlie Brooker points out the utter insanity of Ed Milliband's utterly mental interview he did last week.

By now, there's a good chance you've seen the video of Ed Miliband using almost precisely the same words over and over again in an interview. If you haven't, it's well worth seeking out. The reporter asks him five different questions about the public sector strikes, and every time, Miliband says that he thinks the strikes are wrong while negotiations are still under way, that the government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner, and that it's time for both sides to put aside the rhetoric and get round the negotiating table. He repeats identical phrases ad nauseam. It sounds like an interview with a satnav stuck on a roundabout. Or a novelty talking keyring with its most boring button held down. Or a character in a computer game with only one dialogue option. Or an Ed Miliband-shaped phone with an Ed Miliband-themed ringtone. Or George Osborne.

Yes, George Osborne. Because shortly after posting a link to the Miliband video online, someone drew my attention to a similar clip of Osborne dating from late last year, in which the 14-year-old chancellor answers a series of different questions about the economy by reciting a single soundbite over and over, like a mantra.

This in turn reminded me of a clip I'd stumbled across during research for an episode of Newswipe, in which Alistair Darling spent five minutes repeating an identical phrase about "global recession" over and over. At the time I'd figured it was a one-off. Clearly it's not. It's a standard gambit.

All three clips are terrifying. First you think you're hearing things. Then you wonder whether time itself has developed hiccups. Finally you decide none of these people can possibly be human. Because they look absolutely, unequivocally insane.

And if it looks weird on tape, imagine how it felt actually being there, standing in front of them, asking the questions. Actually, you don't have to imagine it – you can read an insider's description of it. ITN's Damon Green, the reporter who was putting the questions to Miliband, has written an entertaining and very illuminating behind-the-curtain blogpost about the experience.

The first interesting thing is just how twatty the Miliband PR handlers appear to have been, demanding their man be positioned "in front of his bookcase, with his family photos over his left shoulder", and insisting on checking the shot themselves, like a trio of dull Stanley Kubricks. (Interestingly, Green also notes that David Cameron's handlers apparently "never let him be filmed in front of anything expensive, ornate, or strikingly Etonian". Presumably for similar reasons they also forbid him to be photographed in front of heartless chunks of moneyed shit.)

Anyway, after posing several questions only to receive oblivious identikit responses from Miliband, Green says: "I began getting twinges of what I can only describe as existential doubt." By the end he wanted to ask him: "What is the world's fastest fish?", just to throw him off-stride. (Kudos to Green for a) being funny and b) describing how weird the Miliband encounter actually felt. Not usually a political correspondent, it was a new experience for him.)

The reason for the Speak-and-Spell tactic is obvious: in all three cases (Miliband, Osborne, Darling) the PR handler responsible must have figured that since the interview would be whittled down to one 10-second soundbite for that evening's news bulletins, and since they didn't want to risk their man saying anything ill-advised or vaguely interesting, they might as well merely ignore all the questions and impersonate an iPod with just one track on it. What's unusual is that it's taken until now for one of these unedited interviews to go a bit viral. The Darling interview took place at least two years ago. The BBC News site often plays host to what amount to unedited rushes, which are sometimes more instructive than a final packaged report. As far as I can tell, the "Miliband loop", as it shall now be known, first materialised there (despite being conducted by an ITN reporter, it was a "pool" interview for all channels to use). The BBC site is also where the Osborne and Darling clips ended up. In all three cases they were unaccompanied by any comment about the repetitive lunacy contained within. No "WARNING: WATCHING THIS MIGHT MAKE YOU FEEL A BIT MAD." None of that.

What this tells you is that many people working in TV news have grown so accustomed to seeing tapes in which politicians blankly replicate a single phrase as if they're summoning Candyman, it no longer strikes them as unusual.

But it is unusual: bloody unusual. You might say it symbolises everything that's wrong with everything. The modern world suffers from a cavernous reality deficit. You know it, I know it. Even "they" know it. Reciting the same line over and over like a Countryfile presenter practising a piece to camera, Miliband must have felt twice as mad as Green. Two men locked in a shared hallucination while the camera rolled.

It's no surprise that politicians gabble pre-scripted taglines in order to dodge awkward questions and avoid having off-the-cuff comments inflated into a full-blown gaffe. And it's no surprise the media routinely colludes in this surreal pantomime. But it's only when you stand back and watch the rushes that you see how crazy the situation has become. Honestly, it gives you vertigo.

Clearly an intervention is necessary. Next time you pass an MP being interviewed on the street, set off a party popper. Jump in and shriek. Get your bum out. Anything. Just to prompt some kind of authentic human reaction from either side.

Because we can't go on like this. It's just too damn weird.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...op-ed-miliband

[Laurence]

I need to correct myself after reading the transcript. The Mandela comparison was not direct. It went thus:

"[Reagan] joins the ranks of great men and women whose statues adorn our London streets; Nelson, Wellington, Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt, Edith Cavell and Nelson Mandela. Statues bring us to face to face with our heroes long after they are gone. Ronald Reagan is without question a great American hero; one of America’s finest sons, and a giant of 20th Century history. You may be sure that the people of London will take his statue to their hearts."

It's still offensive, as far as I'm concerned, but there you are.

He's been around for longer than that. I will warn you, looking at this will make you ill...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...cs/6967366.stm

Thankfully Hague's antics in 1976 did give Harry Enfield the material for his Tory Boy pisstake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWSr1Aw0EBA

You've left me no choice but to post this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg-4A...eature=related

[Charles RB]

Can someone explain to me why there is a statue of Ronald Reagan being unveiled in Grosvenor Square before my very eyes?

Cos it's going to be the cenetary of his birth, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation (who I never knew existed until just now) have been dumping statues across Europe as part of a series of celebrations. And by "Europe" I mean "Eastern Europe", which doesn't really make sense unless they think the Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs believe Reagan defeated the Soviets for them.

The statue will have Thatcher's quote "Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot" on the plinth, so a heroic BBC man has written:

Actually, there were plenty of shots fired during the Reagan presidency. It's just they were fired by proxies out of earshot of Washington and London and so are easy to forget.

The epitaph glosses over the pair's good fortune in arriving in power just as the rot inherent in the Soviet system had fatally weakened the whole structure of the society. It also helped that the USSR was bogged down in an unwinnable war (with US proxies) in Afghanistan.

And it altogether fails to acknowledge the courage of ordinary men and women in the Eastern Bloc who created mass movements out of thin air that ultimately led to the revolutions of 1989.

Hague is being asked by a BBC interviewer to back up his Middle East comment, and he's just vaguely referred to the "fact" that if Reagan was alive, he'd be on the side of the rebels.

That's not unreasonable. Reagan would've been on the side of the rebels in a lot of countries - particularly Libya - because they'd be undermining or overthrowing governments he didn't like. (That probably isn't what Hague meant though...)

[Charles RB]

"[Reagan] joins the ranks of great men and women whose statues adorn our London streets; Nelson, Wellington, Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt, Edith Cavell and Nelson Mandela."

And Karl Marx.

[Laurence]

Yeah, the Budapest one must have sprung up overnight, because I was at that very spot recently and I can't imagine myself missing a chance for a bit of redecoration.

[Laurence]

And Karl Marx.

It's inconsistent to leave him, a long-dead ideological adversary, out, but put Mandela, a contemporary political adversary, in, except in the PR sense that everyone seems to manage to successfully sponge off Mandela's perpetually good image these days.

[Charles RB]

It's inconsistent to leave him, a long-dead ideological adversary, out, but put Mandela, a contemporary political adversary, in, except in the PR sense that everyone seems to manage to successfully sponge off Mandela's perpetually good image these days.

It'd be great if the Mandela and Reagan statues were on opposite sides of the road so it looked like they were scowling at each other.

[Laurence]

I think he's opposite Eisenhower, which is a bit of a missed opportunity. Maybe they can go head to head on the military-industrial complex.

By the by, presumably Washington D.C. has reciprocal statues of Clement Attlee and other great British Prime Ministers?

[Charles RB]

By the by, presumably Washington D.C. has reciprocal statues of Clement Attlee and other great British Prime Ministers?

Heck, do we have any statues of Atlee in central London? There's one in Limehouse and I think one around a university somewhere, but there should be one in Whitehall somewhere.

[Laurence]

I was informed by an American "anarchist" yesterday that Attlee enslaved the medical health professionals, and that I was as bad for supporting it (also that the low-levels of post-war unemployment were thanks to corporations who bravely gave the British people work). I blinked a bit and mentioned the immense internal support for the NHS and resistence to reforms, to which he responded that British people just liked being slaves. I conceded the argument because I could not think of what to say.

There's a bit of an Anglo-American anecdote for you all on the 4th of July.

[the4thpip]

Defiant Mladic ejected from war crimes court

Mladic was removed from the UN war crimes court at The Hague on Monday after refusing to enter a plea and repeatedly talking while the judge attempted to read the list of charges.

The presiding judge, Alphons Orie, briefly adjourned the hearing to have Mladic removed, and formally entered not guilty pleas on the former general's behalf, in line with court rules for suspects who refuse to plead.

[Charles RB]

Or "Mladic denied his rights by dhimmi judge", if you're Pam Gellar.

I was informed by an American "anarchist" yesterday that Attlee enslaved the medical health professionals, and that I was as bad for supporting it (also that the low-levels of post-war unemployment were thanks to corporations who bravely gave the British people work).

Is he sure he's an anarchist?

[bringthenoise]

Yeah, sounds more like a Randroid to me. (Or "fucking twat" in the parlance).

[Laurence]

It's all very confusing for me.

[Winslow]

I was informed by an American "anarchist" yesterday that Attlee enslaved the medical health professionals, and that I was as bad for supporting it (also that the low-levels of post-war unemployment were thanks to corporations who bravely gave the British people work). I blinked a bit and mentioned the immense internal support for the NHS and resistence to reforms, to which he responded that British people just liked being slaves. I conceded the argument because I could not think of what to say.

There's a bit of an Anglo-American anecdote for you all on the 4th of July.

We would rather be enslaved by corporations and insurance companies.

We're "enlightened" that way.