Fairy Tales and Spin-Meisters.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
Once upon a time, we relied on the story teller for both news and education; we called him a troubadour. He travelled from market place to market place, alternately educating, advising, and passing on gossip.
Around the beginning of the 19th C, the role of story teller changed from being one of educating the adults, to instilling moral values in children.
He was always an instrument of the power in the land – in those days the royal court.
Hans Christian Anderson, 205 years ‘old’ today, which is what has prompted these thoughts, was paid a pension by the Danish King Frederick VI.
Today, the honoured story teller has undergone another metamorphosis, and is now back to ‘educating’ the adults; the reteller of stories for children struggle to earn a living; the pensions of today are paid not by the Royal court, but by the true power in the land, the major political parties.
We call them spin-meisters, our modern word for fairy story tellers.
There have been many words written on Derek Draper, Damian McBride and Charlie Whelan, and little light has fallen on their opposite numbers in the Conservative Party.
Andy Coulson is popularly bashed in the left wing Blogosphere for his involvement in the ‘bugging scandal’, but I shall leave that aside for the moment, and just concentrate on his past legal employment – that of producing the News of the World.
Given 60 million inhabitants in the United Kingdom, do you not find it strange that the one man, the ‘best man for the job’ of communications director, that David Cameron could find, was not an experienced technical writer with a strong record of combing through impenetrable economic treatise, or a man who had spent a life time studying scientific data and rendering it communicable, but a man who specialised in sugar coating vague gossip and tittle tattle innuendo and turning it into pages of what passes for information in a newspaper?
We are in the middle of a global banking crisis, struggling to understand whether climate change is a looming disaster or a grab for world domination by the oil cartel, and yet the man the Conservative Party have put in charge of communicating their policies to the masses is an expert in valueless ‘distraction news’.
If he really was the ‘right man’ amongst 60 million people that tells me that David Cameron is not interested in whether we vote for the right people and the right policies, he is only interested in entertaining us, keeping us quiet, getting us through the election period with as little introvertive thinking as possible.
Who else has he appointed?
Well, famously, there is Clarence Mitchell. A man who took Kate and Gerry McCann’s explanation for the disappearance of their daughter to the status of ‘fact’ – or what passes for fact in our libel writ fearing newspapers these days – in the face of a mountain of circumstantial evidence that demanded at least an objective critique; and by a combination of liberal use of said libel lawyers, emotive and well placed news conferences, and an obsessive monitoring of social media and blog land, has ensured that only those based abroad dare to effectively question the ‘party line’ of his clients.
If he really was the ‘right man’ amongst 60 million people that tells me that David Cameron is not interested in whether we have an open debate on the serious issues that the country faces, he is only interested in monitoring the blogs and forums to ensure that if anyone steps out of line in questioning his party policy, it will have been effectively monitored, there will be a letter from Carter-Ruck, and a hastily convened and emotive news conference.
These then, are the modern troubadours, the fairy tale spinners, which the political court has appointed to entertain us.
Charlie Whelan, Peter Mandleson, Derek Draper, Damian McBride, Alistair Campbell, Andy Coulson, Clarence Mitchell…..
I don’t trust any one of them.
We should not be voting for any party based on their fairy tales, we should be voting for individuals, based on our local knowledge of them; they will be our representatives in parliament, and the prevailing view of the majority of them will have the controlling interest in shaping our future.
Fairy tales are for children. Grown ups should seek out the independent candidates – and if you are voting in the Cambridge area, you can vote for an independent maverick – Old Holborn – who will be applying an independent mind to each and every question that might face him if he is a successful candidate, not toeing a party line enforced by spin-meisters.
- Best of the Blogs Crazy Elmont
- April 4, 2010 at 11:47
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
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1
April 3, 2010 at 11:22 -
You’ll be telling us there is no Easter Bunny next.
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April 3, 2010 at 11:33 -
The trouble is, there’s only one OH but 646 constituencies.
Please give many voters some credit Anna. Many are immune to the party-political brainwashing that is immediately recognised as ’spin’. Hence the ridicule that rapidly arises in the blogosphere when Spin-Morons (they don’t qualify for the ‘Spin-Meisters’ accolade) issue their briefings.
It was only one or two elections ago, that the big-3 parties needed only to have the MSM on their side. This is the 1st election that the uncontrollable Blogs, not the MSM will decide the outcome.
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3
April 3, 2010 at 12:28 -
I suppose one could argue that members of the public choose their favoured ’story tellers’ and it would be a reckless politician who ignored their choice. I don’t like that argument but I can certainly see its strength.
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April 3, 2010 at 13:55 -
@Joe Public
It was only one or two elections ago, that the big-3 parties needed only to have the MSM on their side. This is the 1st election that the uncontrollable Blogs, not the MSM will decide the outcome.
Joe,
I would like to think this is the case but, sadly, I doubt it.
I will give you a real life situation where the Dark Arts are working overtime to lie and obfuscate out of what is the biggest local government scandal since Poulsen (actually reaching all the way up the Labour Food Chain), that of Glasgow District Council.
I know you have been on blogs commenting on this, including Anna’s, so I will not detail the shocking state of affairs with respect to the West of Scotland Labour Mob beyond saying that today’s revelation is that they, the GCC controlled by Labour with the aid of the LibDems (!!!!) voted not to allow independent oversight into their goings on and crony relationship with local “businessmen” and noted “hard cases.”
They set up a dozen or so “arms length” companies out of local authority services and stuffed these organisations with placemen whose salaries beat the UK PM and whose committee oversight members, predominantly of their own kind (Labour) who then voted themselves a raft of expenses and perks that they could not get if they were on the original committees for the Council services they just semi privatised. Needless to say these Arm’s Length Organisations dished out the tax payers monies for various projects and reportedly did not accept the lowest tender or indeed maybe did not not even invite tenders, they just placed the contracts with some people, allegedly, who just happened to donate money to Labour’s local coffers. Do you see the symetry with UNITE and the revolving door of taxpayer money going to Trade Unions and very similar sums coming back as funding to Labour?
The good bit is that the blogosphere started the ball rolling to uncover the stinking situation. The bad bit is that real incisive local journalism has been lacking.
The BBC Scotland (Labour Party Branch) has all but ignored the situation or have been working a line that smacks of complete Labour spin control andc parroting of their Press Releases.
The two big newspapers in the West, The Daily Record (sister to the Mirror) and the Glasgow Herald, owned by Newsquest and then on to Gannet in the USA (the same group that owns USA Today) have been equally reticent in coming forward, perhaps owing to the fact that they are being menaced by legal action from a legal practice, who just happens to be the same legal adviser for the two newspapers!
The other half of the legal and media team spinning the episode used to be the Editor of the Scottish Sun, which has just done the most pro Purcell
(self confessed cocaine user, former head of Labour on GCC and architect of the Arm’s Length web) piece worthy of Tiger Woods team.I say all this because Joe Public in Scotland does not have a clue about the profundity and significance of all this festering stench of cronyism and manipulation.
The people and voters of Glasgow NE who re-elected Speaker Martin’s Labour Party nominee do not blog and the media spin doesn’t allow them to know. The MSM is sewn up and in Labour’s back pocket in Scotland.
Even the Herald, a so called quality broadsheet is reputedly stuffed with a Labour 5th column all beavering away to orders.
If you look at the Herald’s website
http://www.heraldscotland.com/
and to the rhs of the opening page you will see the most read stories online. 4 of the 5 are to do with football. On what is one of two of Scotland’s quality newspapers the people to have access to the web and are seeking news only want to see football.
Bread and circuses springs to mind.
It is even possible that the Clown Brown will get re-elected.
The Blogosphere is dong a good job that would not have been done if it were not there but, what real impact has it on the great unwashed??
As someone once said about voting
“If it really could change things they wouldn’t allow it”
As to the web, as soon as it really does make a difference on the political classes, if they cannot manipulate to influence it they will manipulate to control it. Mandelson already has the legislation in his back pocket, just in case.
I despair, sometimes I really do.
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April 3, 2010 at 14:25 -
I agree with you in what you are saying in this blog, What we mostly get nowadays is spin and soundbites.
With most MPs towing the party line and not listening to the public, I feel, for the first time in 20 years, like I cannot vote for any one of them.
None of them deserve my vote.
I would vote for someone like Old Holdborn in a minute, if I lived in Cambridge, he has a mind of his own, unlike the MPs, and I agree with him on what he has to say.
He like yourself Anna, and others in the blogosphere, have really opened my eyes to what is going on in the country.
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April 3, 2010 at 15:55 -
Anna, I don’t wish to rain on your parade, but I think you’ll find troubadours were singers and poets in mainland Europe, not simple story tellers.
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7
April 3, 2010 at 16:00
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