Posts Tagged ‘Andrew Marr’
It Sticks In My Throat But Theresa Is Magnificent.
Ms May’s performance on the Andrew Marr Show today was a triumph.
She delivered common sense, wit, an inclusive vision and very broad appeal. In a “country that works for everyone” she is undermining the incoherent left. She is showing true leadership in excellent style.
Now all we have to do is get her properly informed about cannabis and drugs policy. I cannot believe that someone who is so rational and considered can fail to understand. I think the truth is that prejudice and years of propaganda is so entrenched, even in sophisticated, intelligent people, that some politicians, including Theresa, have not had the evidence properly presented to them.
We must do better to get our message across and somehow we have to get Theresa May properly to consider our arguments.
Farage On Marr. A Towering Performance.
This was Nigel Farage at his very best: the man of the people, relaxed but determined, fair minded but firm, tolerant but strong, patriotic but generous. Really it couldn’t have gone any better.
All the vile abuse hurled at him by the small men and women of the media and the political establishment, the disgraceful BBC bias, the blatant hypocrisy of Tory and Labour that ferment conflict within our country every day. Nigel dealt with them all with a smile and good grace.
He is stronger than ever. The UKIP policies that he hinted at seem sensible and popular. Protest votes will be hardening into solid support. Britain now despises the identikit Cameron, Miliband, Duncan Smith, Balls and the rest. The chattering idiots at the Guardian and the BBC and the Bullingdon Club associate members at the Telegraph and the Times. They’re all as out of touch as each other. The Fleet Street Mafia is as disgraced as the members of the cabinet and shadow cabinet. We want none of you anymore!
Simon Heffer’s Disgusting Prohibitionist Rant
Journalists in the old media and politicans are panicking. They are trying to crack down hard on us and our rights to opinions and self-expression. In the age of WikiLeaks and the internet, their self-serving oligarchy is undermined by real freedom.
Cameron’s and Miliband’s arrogant and dismissive rejection of Bob Ainsworth’s proposals for an end to prohibition, shows they have no proper response to his arguments. Today, another member of the ruling elite penned a truly ignorant and repressive opinion in The Daily Telegraph. See here for the full article.
As well as trying it on with the discredited idea that cannabis causes psychosis, Heffer says, with astounding spitefulness and stupidity:
“We have a serious problem with drugs in this country because we do not punish drugs crime severely enough. Legalisation is not the answer, but getting nasty might just be.”
It is an utterly disgraceful article. Heffer should be ashamed of himself for spreading lies and misinformation, I suspect deliberately.
The facts are that the harms caused by prohibition are well documented and proven.
The facts are that the allegation cannabis causes psychosis is just the latest scare story. In the 1930s the prohibitionists used to say that cannabis makes white women promiscuous with black men. This is just the latest smear of equivalent value.
Public opinion is hugely in favour of an end to prohibition. You only have to look at the polls and the huge volume of comment and opinion on the web.
The oligarchy of politicians and the media is on the point of collapse. Those who value truth and freedom can console themselves that the darkest hour is just before dawn. Journalists like Heffer and Andrew Marr, for example, are desperate to hang on to their corrupt position where they control the news agenda and contrive media coverage in cahoots with their friends in parliament.
A peaceful revolution is coming where fat cat journalists with no more talent than the lowliest blogger will be turfed out of their comfortable sinecures as the irrelevant dinosaurs that they are.
Heffer and his chums on both sides of the House have had their nasty little stitch-up going on for too long. Dawn is approaching and his sort has no future
Who Rattled Andrew Marr’s Cage? I Think He’s Worried.
Andrew Marr’s rant against bloggers rather surprised me. His Sunday morning show is a fixture for me. I think his intemperate and short tempered polemic betrays an old-fashioned journalist’s insecurity and fear of the new media
Someone in his privileged position has only to sneeze and he will be published in front of millions. I admire his work but there are thousands, equally capable and with equally valid opinions who are now able to express themselves widely on the internet. The real question is when will the “dead mens shoes”, “who you know not what you know” culture be overturned? Let’s not be shy here, I know my writing is generally better than most that’s published in the national press, yet I only enjoy that audience occasionally. Those, like Andrew Marr, who already have their foot in the door, shut it firmly in the face of their challengers and competitiors. It’s a closed shop, much worse than any trade union restrictive practice.
I do agree with him completely about anonymity. It is a matter of pride to me that, wherever I can, I use my own name when writing, commenting, abusing, complimenting, agreeing or yes, occasionally, even ranting. I also agree, in this one instance only, with that obnoxious little billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, when he said “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”. I think he’s absolutely right on this and I hope more people will follow his and my example.
Overall though Mr Marr, I think your rant about bloggers says more about you than anything else – and you’re right to be worried. I hope you stick around but there’s plenty of dead wood in journalism and broadcasting that needs chopping out. Editors are the lazy ones, the real culprits. It’s easy for them just to sign off the same old names time after time. They have become far too powerful and need taking down a peg or two. They should be scouting round the blogosphere for new talent instead of sitting on their backsides getting fat and lazy.
Tony Hayward, BP And The Oil Spill
I am really very impressed with BP’s Chief Executive. He is doing the best possible job for his company – and probably for all concerned. His appearance on the Andrew Marr show this morning was an object lesson in how to handle such a crisis. He is suitably contrite. He is direct, honest, loyal, everything that any board of directors or committee of shareholders could ask for. Crucially, in the TV age, he looks right. His appearance is an exact match for his message.
Here is a man who is worth every penny of a salary I would expect to run to hundreds of thousands of pounds.
I’m no fan or friend of big oil companies. There’s little doubt in my mind that BP and Esso/Exxon, the world’s biggest, operate an effective cartel on fuel prices. They’re so big that no government can do anything about it.
I don’t think you can blame BP for the disaster although obviously it is responsible. Clearly, you have to ensure that all possible safety standards and procedures are complied with but, given that, it could have happened to any oil company, anywhere. There’s no more greed in BP than anywhere else. It’s just a business trying to make a profit like any other.
I deplore the oil spill just as I approve of motherhood and apple pie. I understand that Obama has to give BP an appropriate amount of flak but the important point is how it is dealing with the disaster and all its consequences. From what I see I think we should all be grateful that Tony Hayward is the man in charge.
Now Is The Time For Recrimination – Before They Get Away!
I am delighted to see that The Times and now, this morning, Andrew Marr, are joining me in calling for bankers to be brought to account. The “Thunderer” even said that “heads must roll”. Roll they must, many of them, until the baskets are full and the streets of the City are running with blood. The executions should take place in public so that the greedy thieves and scoundrels who have pillaged our economy can be subject to public humiliation and villification as they meet their doom.
I will carry the metaphor no further but the dread and fear that should now be ruining the weekends of the chief executives and chairmen of the banks should be little different from that of the French aristocrats awaiting the guillotine.
We must insist that those individuals who have taken multi million pound bonuses from banks, funds and all forms of financial institutions that are now insolvent must be able to justify the payments in the same way that a director of a small business that had gone bust might have to explain his drawings to a liquidator. In many instances money will have to be recovered.
Whether guilty of personal wrongdoing or not, the chairmen, chief executives and non-executive directors who have presided over this catastrophe must take responsibility and go! The same sanction must fall on the heads of the regulators.
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman, and Jon Pain, Managing Director Retail Markets, who both accepted poisoned chalices at the FSA only last month may have some excuse but the rest of the board should be summarily dismissed, not even allowed to resign.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been extraordinarily unequivocal in many of their statements this week. We want to know much, much more detail about the “mechanisms” that will put in place to restrain the banks in future. If the taxpayer has saved your business then in future you will not be gambling on ludicrously complex financial products that only you understand and for which you set the rules. We prefer that you lend £100,000 to a small business rather than £10 million to a virtual roulette wheel.
“There a million stories in the Naked City”. Now is the time for “le dénouement”.