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I'm not exactly a fan of Nick Clegg...

53 replies

miffybun73 · 03/10/2013 10:52

...but love the fact that he has said this, "if anyone excels in... vilifying a lot about modern Britain, it's the Daily Mail."

Full article here:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24379322

OP posts:
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ttosca · 03/10/2013 13:44

Tweet the Daily Mail advertisers over Miliband family smears

The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday think it's OK to:

Smear a dead war veteran in order to attack his son.
Gatecrash a family memorial event to spy on mourners.

Tell major brands to stop advertising with with the Mail group until editor-in-chief Paul Dacre apologises.

politicalscrapbook.net/virals/daily-mail-boycott/

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ivykaty44 · 03/10/2013 13:49

the daily mail were nazi sympathisers in the 1930 - hardly showing a love of britian was it Hmm

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flatpackhamster · 03/10/2013 16:18

Presumably you're referring to their support for Mosley's Blackshirts (who were Fascists, not NAZIs). You'll also be condemning the Mirror for their identical support for the Blackshirts, I'm sure.

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ivykaty44 · 03/10/2013 16:20

no

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flatpackhamster · 03/10/2013 16:22

How predictable.

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sillyoldfool · 03/10/2013 16:24

It's not so much condemning them for what they did in the 30s as pointing out their hypocrisy at using something a teenager wrote in the 30s to attack their son.

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ivykaty44 · 03/10/2013 16:25

I was referring to the praise for the hitler youth from the daily mail during the 1930's

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exexpat · 03/10/2013 16:30

The Mail still supports far-right parties: "Marine le Pen is the only responsible vote"

And the Mail has no idea about most of modern Britain. Do you remember the comment on the Olympic opening ceremony, which had to be hastily deleted, about how the mixed-race couple with children living in a nice-looking new-build house was obviously over-the-top political correctness, presumably because everyone in Daily Mail land knows that mixed race couples never stay married and only live in grotty inner-city council flats.

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exexpat · 03/10/2013 16:33

(I wonder what the Mail would make of one mixed-race couple I know - both highly-paid hospital consultants, living in a large Victorian house in a very posh area and sending their children to private school - obviously some kind of hallucination from my fevered politically-correct imagination.)

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flatpackhamster · 03/10/2013 16:35

sillyoldfool

It's not so much condemning them for what they did in the 30s as pointing out their hypocrisy at using something a teenager wrote in the 30s to attack their son.

If their son hadn't repeatedly referenced his father as an inspiration, and if his father had ever shed his vile beliefs, I think that there'd be a case to be made.

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ivykaty44 · 03/10/2013 17:14

Rothermere being friends with hitler and mussolini was just a blip then was it? Praising the Nazi regime's accomplishments in the 30's in the newspaper was showing they were a good British newspaper

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sillyoldfool · 03/10/2013 18:25

I don't have an intimate knowledge of miliband seniors views, but the telegraph reprinted their obituary for him -
Professor Ralph Miliband, who has died aged 70, was an inspiring teacher of politics and an internationally renowned figure of the British Left.

Though committed to socialism, he never hesitated to criticise its distortion by Stalin and other dictators. He also inveighed against the timidity and limited horizons of West European social democracy. The ideal he sought was a democratic and open Marxism.

Miliband's scholarly writings, at once passionate and lucid, had great influence not only on students and dons but also beyond academic circles.

His Parliamentary Socialism (1961), in which he attacked the Labour Party for its lack of radicalism, became a classic text, as did The State in Capitalist Society, which analysed Western power structures.

Ralph Miliband was born in Belgium on Jan 7 1924, and fled to Britain in 1940 to escape the Nazis. He studied at the London School of Economics, where he was deeply influenced by Harold Laski, who became a friend and then a colleague.

Miliband's studies were interrupted by three years in the Royal Navy. He returned to the LSE to finish his degree, worked on a PhD (under Laski's supervision), and later, after a stint teaching at Roosevelt College in Chicago, became a lecturer in the LSE's department of government.

In 1972 Miliband took up the Chair of Politics at Leeds University, where Lord Boyle of Handsworth, the former Conservative minister Sir Edward Boyle, was Vice-Chancellor. Despite their different political perspectives, Miliband and Boyle developed a considerable mutual respect.

In his inaugural lecture at Leeds Miliband warned against treating Left-wing orthodoxy as a substitute for hard critical thought. Five years later he accepted a Chair at Brandeis University in America, and he subsequently taught at York University, Toronto, and the City University of New York. London, though, always remained his base.

Miliband was never a cloistered academic. From 1964 he edited the annual Socialist Register. An entertaining and witty speaker, Miliband was able to stimulate debate as well as to clarify complex ideas. He was in demand throughout the world, especially in North America.

A man of great warmth and generosity, Miliband was endowed with an infectious sense of humour.

He married, in 1961, Marion Kozak; they had two sons.

And that's the telegraph, not the socialist worker!

Doesn't sound to me like a terrible man.

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ivykaty44 · 03/10/2013 21:47

Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere is worth an estimated £1.02 billion and doesn't pay tax in the UK - interesting way to treat the country of your birth when you have such vast wealth hardly honourable way to conduct your affairs.

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edam · 03/10/2013 22:49

It wasn't just the blackshirts the Mail supported in the 30s. The owner, the then Lord Rothermere, was an admirer of Hitler. A public admirer of Hitler.

You'd think the Mail would avoid dragging up stuff from WW2, given it's their Achilles heel...

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perfectstorm · 04/10/2013 22:56

If their son hadn't repeatedly referenced his father as an inspiration, and if his father had ever shed his vile beliefs, I think that there'd be a case to be made.

What vile beliefs? He was a radical socialist - but a democratic and parliamentarian one. That's not a "vile belief". It's just one you disagree with. I disagree equally vehemently with Thatcherism and what the Tories are doing right now, but I also acknowledge that in a democracy such views are their right. I wouldn't sniff that those are "vile beliefs" even though I think anyone supporting cuts that have led to reliance on food banks at the same time as cutting taxes for the richest might want to question their position.

He fought for this country as a very young man when under no obligation to do so at all. He was an alien at that point and couldn't have been conscripted. He stayed here his whole life afterwards. How is that someone who "hates this country"? Please explain?

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perfectstorm · 04/10/2013 23:12

You'll also be condemning the Mirror for their identical support for the Blackshirts, I'm sure.

The Mirror was originally a stablemate of the Mail and both were inherited by Lord Rothermere, who slowly offloaded Mirror shares in favour of the Mail as it was more profitable. The person writing the Nazi supporting editorials in the Mirror, who still had huge influence despite not owning the paper anymore, was Lord Rothermere. Whose descendant still owns the Mail today. I'm sure people are very happy to condemn his work at the Mirror and the Mail in the 1930s.

I do not think your point proves what you think it does. In fact rather the reverse.

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flatpackhamster · 07/10/2013 07:30

perfectstorm

What vile beliefs? He was a radical socialist - but a democratic and parliamentarian one.

Democracy and radical socialism are inherently contradictory. You can't be a democrat and someone who wants to destroy the system and replace it with socialism.

That's not a "vile belief". It's just one you disagree with.

Socialism is vile. It treats people as things, and socialists are always astonished to discover that without the checks and balances of democracy it always descends in to dictatorship. It is anathema to Liberty and anathema to humanity.

I disagree equally vehemently with Thatcherism and what the Tories are doing right now, but I also acknowledge that in a democracy such views are their right. I wouldn't sniff that those are "vile beliefs" even though I think anyone supporting cuts that have led to reliance on food banks at the same time as cutting taxes for the richest might want to question their position.

Yes, woe unto the nation now that the state is being rolled back to its size in 2005. Truly a wailing and gnashing of teeth.

He fought for this country as a very young man when under no obligation to do so at all. He was an alien at that point and couldn't have been conscripted. He stayed here his whole life afterwards. How is that someone who "hates this country"? Please explain?

He loved it so much he spent his life trying to turn it in to something else.

The Mirror was originally a stablemate of the Mail and both were inherited by Lord Rothermere, who slowly offloaded Mirror shares in favour of the Mail as it was more profitable. The person writing the Nazi supporting editorials in the Mirror, who still had huge influence despite not owning the paper anymore, was Lord Rothermere. Whose descendant still owns the Mail today. I'm sure people are very happy to condemn his work at the Mirror and the Mail in the 1930s.

I do not think your point proves what you think it does. In fact rather the reverse.

Editorials set the direction for the paper but they aren't produced in a vacuum and unless they share the ethos of the average reader. And people aren't just as happy to condemn the Mirror, because for many of them this is a DM witch-hunt. They went after Murdoch on Leveson and now it's the DM.

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claig · 07/10/2013 09:00

' They went after Murdoch on Leveson and now it's the DM.'

And that was their fatal mistake!

Murdoch was an easy target, but the Mail is a different kettle of fish.
I think the philosopher Eric Cantona summed it up best when he said

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea"

Just like the Vietnamese forces in the IndoChina War had millions of people behind them, so too does the Daily Mail. They began the battle with the Mail and it will be their battle of Dhien Bien Phu.

Let them try to take on the Mail - the result will be an epic fail.

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perfectstorm · 07/10/2013 11:07

He loved it so much he spent his life trying to turn it in to something else.

Utter codswallop. That's the very foundation of liberty - the ability to work towards a society you regard as a better one, as long as you do it in a non-violent and democratic way. Change is an inevitability - without it women and most men would still be voteless, women would still be subject wholly to their husbands and fathers and unable to own property, and domestic violence would be "reasonable chastisement". There would be no assistance for the poor, the elderly or the sick, and nor would there be free and compulsory universal education. Change is not necessarily bad! And engaging in a country's public discourse in order to support and implement changes you sincerely believe are to the better is one of the most patriotic things you can do. That is so no matter what end of the political spectrum someone hails from.

Socialism is vile. It treats people as things, and socialists are always astonished to discover that without the checks and balances of democracy it always descends in to dictatorship. It is anathema to Liberty and anathema to humanity.

Most of that is meaningless adjective soup. Do you always talk in such vague and nebulous terms when trying to defend your position? Don't you have access to any facts? But there is one point that is plainly ridiculous: the entire point of capitalist economies is to treat people, in the form of labour, as a commodity. As much of a commodity as the raw materials, power bills and housing costs necessary to produce the end product. As such, they are treated as things - as objects, as a resource. It's ridiculous to argue that a system that produces such horrors as the Bangladeshi factory collapses or the Texan factory explosion is somehow an exemplar of "Liberty". It's just a figleaf soundbite, not merely meaningless but actually mendacious. Unrestricted capitalism exploits the economically weak majority in order to assist the tiny group with power and money. That's the default setting. How is that "Liberty" for the overwhelming majority of people, and how does it treat them as human individuals rather than a resource? It's stupid to argue otherwise. Socialism attempts to ensure that working people benefit from their work and that they live lives in which nobody suffers extremes of poverty or want. Yet to you, that is "treating people as things". Quite bizarre. Accepting the human dignity of each and every individual is the least dehumanising and objectifying system of belief possible. It seems impossibly idealistic to me, as I don't think human nature is as altruistic as socialism in its extreme form requires, but I have to say, I find the underlying aims laudable. How are the underlying aims of capitalism - that the few exploit the many - laudable, in a world where your birth defines so much about your life chances? It harnesses the least admirable traits of humanity well, drives the economy forward as a result, and for that reason I think it very much has a role to play, but pretending capitalism is the guardian of "Liberty" is just laughable. Left in its purest form it simply ensures an oligarchy. Which is the antithesis of liberty for the vast majority of people.

And why on earth are you sneering that socialists are always astonished to discover that without the checks and balances of democracy it always descends in to dictatorship? I appreciate it's a handy straw man argument if you happen to be someone more comfortable tilting at windmills than actually dealing with the realities of a diverse political landscape, but Miliband actually wrote a book on democratic socialism. He didn't feel the Labour party went far enough, true, but that's hardly an unusual or even very extreme position, is it? In case it's escaped your attention, without the checks and balances of democracy extreme right wing governments also descend into dictatorship and terror. It has nothing to do with the views and everything to do with the kind of enraged venom aimed at opponents your own posts display. You hate people with views that differ to your own and feel it acceptable to call them "vile" and opine that they have no right to hold or express them, because to do so is an assault on "Liberty"? Seriously? And you don't see that as an attack on democracy on your part? I can't think of many things less likely to foster a healthy democracy than hysterical rage when people hold views you dislike, and an insistence that those views have no place in the country and those who hold them clearly hate the place. Demonising diversity is profoundly, fundamentally anti-democratic.

Yes, woe unto the nation now that the state is being rolled back to its size in 2005.

And with that you expose your own wholesale ignorance of what is happening in this country at the moment. Perhaps if you read papers other than the Mail - or even better some books - then you might learn something? Policy on the NHS, education, welfare reform, for example. (You might even understand the difference between anarchism and parliamentary socialism, which at present you do not.)

Editorials set the direction for the paper but they aren't produced in a vacuum and unless they share the ethos of the average reader.

Indeed, which is presumably why the Mirror's circulation fell, and as the paper was no longer owned by the Rothermere clan (unlike the Mail, then and to this day) it was free to alter its political tack from that the family had set. Which it did. Might I suggest you actually start reading up on these things yourself instead of blindly parroting the Mail's line, and then clinging to it stubbornly when presented with the actual facts? You might post a little more effectively.

And Claig, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of those who read the Mail do so to learn what sort of knickers Kim Kardashian wears and whether Simon Cowell is having an affair with Cheryl Cole. Touching as your faith in the Mail's political influence is, I fear it's a fantasy.

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claig · 07/10/2013 11:13

'Touching as your faith in the Mail's political influence is, I fear it's a fantasy.'

Yes, you may be right, but I sincerely hope not. Because without the Mail, we as a nation are sunk.

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exexpat · 07/10/2013 11:23

PMSL at Claig's last line "without the Mail, we as a nation are sunk".

That's the last straw - I think claig must be a parody account, no one could say that with a straight face, could they?

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claig · 07/10/2013 11:25

I do like to make a bit light of it Grin

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claig · 07/10/2013 11:45

Hence the reference to to the profundity of Eric Cantona's "When seagulls follow the trawler" gem.

When it comes to politics, you have to laugh or else you'd cry.

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claig · 07/10/2013 15:43

perfectstorm , I don't think that flatpack is a Mail reader based on some past posts.

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perfectstorm · 07/10/2013 19:45

Claig, I honestly thought you were bonkers. Grin You just made this grumpy, flu-laden pregnant woman's evening!

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