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Corb Blimey!

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    Yes, but Labour did well in those. Eg won Hammersmith and Fulham back.

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      Getting eazycouncil outsourcing fanatics Barnet would be the pick of the gains I think. Nearly went last time.

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        Very good long post on twitter which i'm posting here.

        You might think the Labour spy nonsense this week has nothing to do with you, but it does. If nothing else, it’s a solid demonstration of why the country you live in is the way it is.

        You might think it’s just a ludicrous fight over nothing and maybe it is, on one level. It still tells us that a couple of weird, Howard Hughes billionaire cranks can force any old nonsense, however lacking in merit, into morning radio, the six o’clock news and all of the leading political debate shows.

        The key question here is - how many of the people involved in this story *actually believed it was true*?

        I can guarantee you the hacks who reported on it didn’t believe it, mainly because they were the ones who interviewed the source. They were the ones who smelt his retired-spy hangover breath and saw his trembling hands, and listened intently while he told them that he did espionage with the Labour Party leader, inspired Live Aid and invented the question mark. There’s no way these people believed any of this.

        Did their editors believe it? Nope - if you’d interviewed an alcoholic ex-spook who swore blind he’d flipper-wrestled the Loch Ness Monster and won, would you go to your editor and say: Hey boss, we’ve got a rock-solid, stone cold monster slaying source here, and I’m absolutely certain he’s telling the truth about a politician doing treason? No, you would not.

        Did the numerous hacks and pundits who picked the story up and ran with it think it was real? Well, anything’s possible but all things being equal, I’d guess “Maybe Dan Hodges, and that’s it”.

        Did the government ministers who chimed in think it was real? Did the Prime Minister? Of course not. If they had, they’d have done better than saying This Raises Questions, and they wouldn’t have damn near snapped their wrists deleting tweets at the first sign of pushback.

        What about the nation’s left wing pundits, who finally roused themselves after a long week of silence or quiet LOLs to pronounce that it made *everyone involved* look very silly indeed? Did they believe it? Of course not, although none of them said so at anything louder than a whisper, in case it shattered their fragile spines.

        So nobody believed it, except maybe Dan Hodges. And yet it led the front pages all week; it’s been all over TV and radio, and it’s ended with all the same people concluding that it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, because it’s *kind of* true, in the broader, metaphysical sense.

        And none of them are bothered or embarrassed about this, because this is what they’re paid to do - they’ve all done their jobs precisely as expected and there will be no negative consequences, or at least none that they’ll notice.

        So you probably don’t think this matters to you, but it really does, because this is the process.

        This is the same process that explains to you and your neighbours why your hospitals are understaffed; it’s the same system that debates why teachers have gone on strike; it follows the same trajectory as every major public discussion on immigration, war, austerity and the European Union. It’s the perfect microcosm for why things are the way they are.

        So it matters that the best response we’ll get to the Labour Spy story is “LOL they’re all very silly”. It matters because these are the same people who will solemnly tell you tomorrow that we need to close schools and invade Syria, and crack down on whoever they’ve decided cracking down on today... and they’ll employ exactly the same level of care, conscience and expertise when they do it.

        That should alarm everyone.

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          It's not a very good post though, is it? It is, however, long. I'll give you that.

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            Perhaps you could point out what you think's wrong with it.

            In particular do you disagree with the proposition that those journalists and politicians who have been repeating the slurs about Corbyn don't believe in them?

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              No. Nor do you. Nor do a lot of people. So, it's not original, it's telling us something we already know. Then with a grinding clunk of a gear change, says that this is the same process by which we are told that hospitals are understaffed. What, the process of the media lying? So hospitals aren't really understaffed, it's all a media lie? And telling us stuff that undermines our belief in their honesty is a cunning plan to, er, make us believe them about Syria and schools?

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                So you think the fact that a point that nobody believes has any substance has been able to dominate the news agenda for over a week is not worth mentioning. I think it is.

                The segue into the wider point might perhaps have been better constructed. but your attempt a reductio ad absurdum is no better,

                the writer points out that the information you get on all these other issues comes from the same media working in the same way. Their aim is not to illuminate but to confuse and to convey a narrative often without regard for the facts or the quality of the evidence " they’ll employ exactly the same level of care, conscience and expertise when they do it.

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                  Isn't the truth worse, Nef? That what they did was "Get Corbyn". They don't apply those same methods of dishonesty to everything they report.

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                    But that's the damaging thing – that the hysterical pursuit of Corbyn on this is likely to have the effect of making more people doubt those news sources when they do report truthfully, which they do. The Telegraph isn't lying about the county cricket scores.

                    So the most depressing thing about all this, for me, is its impact on mainstream journalism. And this matters. The Telegraph has always had awful politics but it used to be a proper paper.

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                      Well put.

                      I suppose on the plus side it does look hysterical v Corbyn to most people. Same as the Tory general election campaign did.

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                        as Steve Bannon said to Michael Lewis:"The Democrats don't matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."

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                          No-one has ever suggested invading Syria, have they?

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                            Apology and substantial damages by Ben Bradley to Corbyn for "seriously defamatory" tweet.

                            https://twitter.com/Kevin_Maguire/status/967393168080633859

                            Corbyn has asked for the funds to be paid to a homeless charity & foodbank in Bradleys' constituency.

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                              Great news.

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                                Reported sighting of JC in the hood this morning- possibly targetting key marginal Wollaston & Stourbridge Town Center (2016: Tory 37.7%, Labour 37.6, UKIP 15.6, Green 5.4, Lib Dem 3.6)

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                                  Stourbridge constituency would be nice too.

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                                    Originally posted by Duncan Gardner View Post
                                    Reported sighting of JC in the hood this morning- possibly targetting key marginal Wollaston & Stourbridge Town Center (2016: Tory 37.7%, Labour 37.6, UKIP 15.6, Green 5.4, Lib Dem 3.6)
                                    Sighting confirmed. I love that he's going strong on a 'law and order' ticket. Who'da thunk it?

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                                      Why did Bradley cave so quickly?

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                                        Presumably because his defence was DOA, not being able to invoke press or parliamentary privileges for a false statement that was defamatory per se

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                                          He chose the wrong platform, believing Twitter was a privileged space? Seems a very dumb rookie mistake for someone of his status.

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                                            Dunno, but he doesn’t strike me as a stable genius.

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                                              He's got some previous for what might be called amateur sociology.

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                                                Is anyone campaigning to cut the police? I'm looking for someone to vote for.

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                                                  The tories

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                                                    Ha ha.

                                                    Hopefully the Ukrap/Green vote in Dour Stour will implode, though I suspect most of the bigots' votes will go Tory, not really helping Labour at all.
                                                    Assuming the year is wrong, still staggering 15% would vote for a party whose whole 'Usp' has disappeared...

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