My centrist mates

[Lang Spoon]

The Jonathan Pie ref jolted me. He's a Spiked wank and those fuckers are irredeemable. Especially the wank I went to school with (who seemed to stop being a spokesperson on media/social media (not sexy enuf for sky newspaper review slots??) for the genocide denying fake trots in 2009, though he's still an Institute of Ideas contrarian wank).

[Amor de Cosmos]

I think Pie's OK, especially his recent extended bits, possibly because Spike means nothing at all to me.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I hated the first bit of Pie I saw, and have avoided him ever since, even before finding out how disgusting his politics really are.

[Lucy Waterman]

Had to do a thing with the Jonathan Pie guy once. Comfortably one of the worst cunts I have ever encountered. Rude to runners and a revolting misogynist too.

[Lucy Waterman]

I didn't really understand his politics - he was quite pro UKIP - but I don't think he does either, it's all been fed to him by the Titania McGrath guy.

[Lang Spoon]

Christ, that walloper.

[Lucy Waterman]

I think that Medium piece has some interesting points - another issue he doesn't mention is that topical shows have a balance requirement. So if the Government does something appalling that week and you want to talk about it, you get told to slate the opposition elsewhere in the programme, regardless of whether they've done anything interesting in the last seven days.

[Nefertiti2]

I think that Medium piece has some interesting points - another issue he doesn't mention is that topical shows have a balance requirement. So if the Government does something appalling that week and you want to talk about it, you get told to slate the opposition elsewhere in the programme, regardless of whether they've done anything interesting in the last seven days.

Shame the same rules don't apply to news reporting

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

I think Pie's OK, especially his recent extended bits, possibly because Spike means nothing at all to me.

Sp!ked is the remaining vestige of Trotskyist group the Revolutionary Communist Party. They were notable for taking bizarre positions in opposition to the rest of the left - for example they took an AIDS denialist stance, opposed sanctions on apartheid and called for a national ballot of miners during the strikes. They also frequently undermined antifascist campaigns to deny fascists platforms.

They became Living Marxism in the 90s and rapidly lurched towards right-libertarianism, defending on libertarian grounds, among other things, the possession and distribution of images of child sexual abuse. It then got sued out of existence for claiming ITN fabricated evidence of genocide in the Balkans (they were Milosevic fans).

They reformed as Sp!ked, an online magazine funded by the Koch Foundation - a hard-right libertarian contrarian magazine which combines with support for fascist street movements, nominally feminist transphobic groups, and opposition to literally any anti-racist initiative, the EU (ex-RCP Claire Fox became a Brexit Party MEP), the environmental movement, and any corporate regulation at all.

Jonathan Pie's writer is a guy called Andrew Doyle - whose other "comic" creation is Titiana McGrath - a parody of """woke"""" activist culture that manages to miss a fairly rich seam of material to mine for humour in favour of constantly being misogynist, transphobic and racist.

The only genuinely funny joke in Doyle's output is the meta one, that the same person is making money off Pie (who gears his appeal to exasperated remainers) and McGrath (which is geared to st george's cross emoji, brexit and trump twitter).

[Flynnie]

I used to date a fairly close family member to Moore, and it was pretty illuminating as to how highly paid columnists get their takes.

[Lucy Waterman]

The funniest thing about Doyle is that he used to be in a double act with Bridget Christie.

[MsD]

I think that Medium piece has some interesting points - another issue he doesn't mention is that topical shows have a balance requirement. So if the Government does something appalling that week and you want to talk about it, you get told to slate the opposition elsewhere in the programme, regardless of whether they've done anything interesting in the last seven days.

Yes, and that would kind of be OK if they weren't so soft on the absolute bastards. Of course I'm biased, but closing hospitals and deporting lifelong Brits is not of the same haha value as, say, Jeremy Corbyn walking through a door marked EXIT. Anyone can make jokes about Trump's hair. A satirist needs to sting.

[That Night In Barcelona]

I used to date a fairly close family member to Moore, and it was pretty illuminating as to how highly paid columnists get their takes.

Would you be able to expand on this? My guess is most columnists get their takes from their Twitter feed these days.

[Nefertiti2]

Yes, and that would kind of be OK if they weren't so soft on the absolute bastards. Of course I'm biased, but closing hospitals and deporting lifelong Brits is not of the same haha value as, say, Jeremy Corbyn walking through a door marked EXIT. Anyone can make jokes about Trump's hair. A satirist needs to sting.

A satirist needs to get work. This is a world in which Chris Morris doesn't appear on TV and Ian Hislop does

[Lucy Waterman]

I assume Morris would rather make movies.

[Nefertiti2]

He’s directing Veep occasionally. He makes one movie every 5 years.

[Lucy Waterman]

Making films does take time, especially the fundraising. If he's having authored TV projects turned down by UK broadcasters, it's news to me. Though it may be a situation where he might do one if someone was bothered to ask, I guess.

[Flynnie]

Would you be able to expand on this? My guess is most columnists get their takes from their Twitter feed these days.

She pretty much sits in her bed reading newspapers all day that are brought to her by her help. It's not a situation that screams "Finger on the pulse of the nation".

[E10 Rifle]

The thing is – writing from if not quite the belly of the beat, its fingernails – is that in, say, my game, the people who write opinion-ey columns about stuff are also people whose jobs involving reporting, observing, talking to people. You may or may not like Barney Ronay or Miguel Delaney or Matthew Syed or Jonathan Liew or David Conn, but their opinion pieces are based on what they do in their day jobs - covering actual events. Yer professional columnist - yer Moores or Nick Cohens or Liddles or Hartley-Brewers - simply fart out whatever prejudice they feel like airing that day, and have license to do since their corner of the trade requires nowhere near the disciplines required in other parts of it. They're all massively past their sell-by date too.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Do the centrist mates have owt to say about Trevor Philips?

[E10 Rifle]

I guess not, though they're very much at it again now on Wingco's poor belaboured Facebook page

[MsD]

I have most of them blocked. I’ve found many of them to be misogynist as well as generally horrible. I’m sure they’d deny that to themselves as well as everyone else but they added an extra layer of sneer for me even when I’ve been very polite, as I try to be on friends’ pages.

Still no remorse, nor recognition of the part they played in our election loss, and in the long-term damage to the Party.

[E10 Rifle]

Oh yes, see also their attitude to young outspoken leftwing women such as Ash Sarkar, Grace Blakely et al. Sooner or later one of them will actually say they should "get back in their box".

[San Bernardhinault]

I was going to dredge this thread up because somehow I've got subscribed to a newsletter called "The Sensible Centrist" which arrived by email a couple of days ago with articles like "Ending the Civil War on Race and Culture" and "Ending the War between Progressives and Conservatives" and "Black Lives Matter Protest was Irresponsible and Unfair".

From the titles I genuinely thought it was a satire created by someone on here. Then I noticed it was all Australia themed, which makes that unlikely. Which means it must be serious. Which altogether more terrifying.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Jesus, some of those people on wingco's FB.