Open mike 29/10/2015

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, October 29th, 2015 - 84 comments
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84 comments on “Open mike 29/10/2015 ”

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  1. Paul 1
    29 October 2015 at 6:21 am

    Seymour Hersh interviewed on Nicky Hager.

    Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersch says there is something ‘dramatically wrong’ with the way the government has behaved toward Nicky Hager.

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201776345/-government's-treatment-of-hager-is-'dramatically-wrong‘

    • tc 1.1
      29 October 2015 at 6:26 am

      Hager has shown the true nature of this current govt and the lengths it will go to against anyone who dares expose their dirty and corrupt ways.

      Has anyone in opposition taken a position on this given keys besties cam and jase weren’t even charged by nationals police.

      • srylands 1.1.1
        29 October 2015 at 6:53 am

        The only unlawful act ever exposed by Hager was his own. I hope he faces prosecution and, if found guilty, which in my view is likely, a long custodial sentence.

        And if that happens, the Opposition will make fake noises and then drop him. Because if they run on the issue, history will repeat – they will lose the 2017 election on the back of Hager just like they did the 2014 one.

        • Morrissey 1.1.1.1
          29 October 2015 at 6:57 am

          The only unlawful act ever exposed by Hager was his own.

          You need to read Hager’s book Dirty Politics.

          Right now, you’re posting from a position of sheer ignorance. Please stop embarrassing yourself and (more importantly) wasting our time.

        • One Anonymous Bloke 1.1.1.2
          29 October 2015 at 7:26 am

          Beyond pathetic. Not only has S Rylands not read Dirty Politics, he hasn’t even read the Dixon judgement.

          …information, even confidential information, is not property…

          I note that S Rylands the Stalinist creep wants to jail his political opponents. I say that sociopaths (especially those who are also policy advisers who’ve spent their entire working lives on the taxpayer teat) need supervision orders.

        • Tracey 1.1.1.3
          29 October 2015 at 8:38 am

          Fortunately on such matters your statement is of little significance. Of course if you laid out in detail the legal basis for your opinion it might become more significant.

        • Smilin 1.1.1.4
          29 October 2015 at 9:04 am

          you trying to wind us up mate, get a brain we live in a Democracy NOT an AUTOCRACY

  2. Manuka AOR 2
    29 October 2015 at 6:38 am

    Kiwibank is being censured for, in effect, insufficient spying on and monitoring of customers! The given concern is for “anti-money laundering”, yet during the same timespan (2013-14) the gov claimed to have no register or clear record of offshore buyers of NZ real estate.
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/73441633/stateowned-kiwibank-censured-over-antimoney-laundering-failings

    • srylands 2.1
      29 October 2015 at 6:48 am

      Funny I thought it was because they breached the Act, or there were good grounds to conclude that.

      • North 2.1.1
        29 October 2015 at 7:16 am

        Not strange that SSLands @ 2.1 should sniffingly miss Manuka’s point……neither that the Ponce-Key Media should purport to make the irrelevant point that Kiwibank is “state owned”.

        Anything vaguely ‘collective’ Bad……all ‘private greed’ Good.

        You never disappoint SSLands !

        • vto 2.1.1.1
          29 October 2015 at 7:37 am

          “Anything vaguely ‘collective’ Bad……all ‘private greed’ Good.”

          The funny thing is that this exposes the poorly thinking that goes on in right wing nutter heads ….. they don’t even know their own arse

          Evidence 1: Farmers embrace everything collective such as cooperatives like Fonterra, Ravensdown.

          Evidence 2: Business people embrace collectivism through shareholdings in limited liability companies.

          Evidence 3: right winger nutters are embracing collective war-mongering action in the middle east

          Right wingers such as srylands have bricks in their heads because they vote one way but act out their lives in another entirely.

          brainless (and there is empirical evidence that right wingers like srylands are measurably thicker than the rest)

      • Tracey 2.1.2
        29 October 2015 at 8:40 am

        Agreed. It will be interesting to see whether Westpac will be have found to have breached the Privacy Act. certainly having an independent set of eyes seeing the basis of their release of a customer’s records will be interesting.

  3. Morrissey 3
    29 October 2015 at 7:08 am

    Amis is a humourless joke, says writer Morrissey Breen
    by SERENA SOPWITH-FOTHERINGTON, Daisycutter Sports Digest, Tuesday 27 October 2015
    http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1446005701.html

    Playboy, snooker hustler, bon vivant and writer Morrissey Breen has described B-grade novelist and hate merchant Martin Amis as “a joke” and said he’s “undeserving of a single reader”.

    In a highly critical article for his own Daisycutter Sports Digest, reprinted in Media Lens, Breen, author of BERNADINE, or “Hell Hath No Fury” [1] said Amis was the “fluky beneficiary of a famous name”, and that his carefully cultivated Oxbridge stammer and air of studied insouciance fails to cover up the “painfully obvious” fact that he “reads little, and knows virtually nothing about anything.”

    Breen’s intervention comes as Amis faces continued reaction from people disgusted with his crude race-baiting, which has proved to be a disturbing re-run of the notorious outbursts against “coons”, “wops”, “darkies” and Jews by his father, the late author Kingsley Amis.

    Breen, who said he has spent “much too much” of his time struggling through really third-rate British fiction, also called Mr Amis “humorless”, “talentless”, and a “pathetic creep”, who had traded on his father’s fame and assiduously “sucked up” to the likes of the late Christopher Hitchens, who always poured scorn on Amis’s academic pretensions and treated his attempts to foot it with him intellectually with amused disdain. Breen noted how the notoriously lazy and ill-read Amis had boasted often about his “Congratulatory” Oxford First in English — “the sort where you are called in for a viva and the examiners tell you how much they enjoyed reading your papers.”

    Mr Amis was a man “without the slightest semblance of character, leave alone discernible talent”, he added, and cited the academic Terry Eagleton’s opinion of some newspaper opinion pieces Amis had written as akin to the “ramblings of a British National Party thug.”

    The Standardista and Media Lens regular commentator also said Mr Amis was “obviously objectionable” and predicted he would “end up like his father: hopelessly retrograde, self-absorbed, self-pitying and self-righteous, quite unembarrassable, necessarily and increasingly hostile to democracy, and in any sane view undeserving of a single reader.”

    [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.sport.rugby.union/Morrissey$20$2B$20Bernadine/rec.sport.rugby.union/Ern1_QrFIw8/xFfPVadVB44J

    http://home.bt.com/news/uk-news/corbyns-a-humourless-joke-says-writer-martin-amis-11364012763325

  4. marty mars 4
    29 October 2015 at 7:55 am

    This article is worth considering – especially with the ‘all black’ stuff on

    Is this all just political correctness gone too far?
    Woodward says it’s not asking much to simply respect other people’s ways of life. “It’s about power. Those marginalised communities have already suffered a huge amount of discrimination in every aspect of life, from education to housing to the justice system — you name it — so this is just another form of discrimination, because it’s saying, ‘I have rights over you and your culture, to take it, represent it how I want and do what I want with it, just for fun’.”

    http://www.viva.co.nz/article/culture/is-your-costume-horribly-offensive/?ref=nzhbox

  5. Rosemary McDonald 5
    29 October 2015 at 9:12 am

    And from the WTFF files…..

    http://i.stuff.co.nz/national/education/73451531/Marlborough-Boys-College-under-fire-for-charging-28-to-attend-prizegiving-ceremonies

    So…if you son achieves at Marlborough Boys, you pay $28 to see him collect his prize.

    Beyond belief.

    • vto 5.1
      29 October 2015 at 9:15 am

      The students should respond by invoicing the school for their attendance at the prize-giving

    • Draco T Bastard 5.2
      29 October 2015 at 11:32 am

      It’s what inevitably happens when the government refuses to fully fund schooling. The schools have to look for funds elsewhere and, as people get used to paying for schooling individually, that opens them up to full privatisation. Which will cost more, make huge profits and provide a reduced service.

  6. ianmac 6
    29 October 2015 at 9:22 am

    At the moment Nine to Noon are discussing the Police requests for information re Nicky Hager, Very interesting,

    • veutoviper 6.1
      29 October 2015 at 10:12 am

      An excellent interview with Hayden Wilson, a privacy lawyer, which clarifies and puts into context the various legal issues with the release of information without a production order, informal information requests from NZ Police, and the possible ramifications of the recent Supreme Court decision on computer info as ‘property’. Well worth listening to.

      http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201776522/westpac-will-ask-for-warrants-in-future

      • Muttonbird 6.1.1
        29 October 2015 at 10:20 am

        The worst bit for the police is that the corner-cutting erodes public confidence in them. A perception of police corruption is creeing into New Zealand.

        A real shame.

        • ianmac 6.1.1.1
          29 October 2015 at 11:09 am

          Very interesting that the Police pursuit of Hager involving a hell of a lot of staff and so many man hours and so many dollars must have been authorised and insisted upon by someone high up in the chain.
          We could discount any Government MP of course. The Key hands are very clean. (Chokes.)

          • Tracey 6.1.1.1.1
            29 October 2015 at 11:15 am

            35 or 35 police at one stage according to hagers lawyer… and all when the PM was almost sure he knew who Rawshark was. Haver should call Key as a witness 😆

        • Rosemary McDonald 6.1.1.2
          29 October 2015 at 11:12 am

          “The worst bit for the police is that the corner-cutting erodes public confidence in them. A perception of police corruption is creeing into New Zealand.”

          One of the most shocking aspects of my family’s dealings with the police, when we were left with the question…”are they incompetent or corrupt?”….was that most people we shared our tail of woe with were NOT surprised.

          There is no “perception” about it Muttonbird.

          • Draco T Bastard 6.1.1.2.1
            29 October 2015 at 11:46 am

            IMO, many in NZ realised that the police were corrupt a long time ago. It’s now a question of how much longer we’re going to put up with it.

            Of course, we just voted in National for the third time in a row despite all the lies that they’ve been telling over the years.

            • Rosemary McDonald 6.1.1.2.1.1
              29 October 2015 at 12:29 pm

              “IMO, many in NZ realised that the police were corrupt a long time ago. ”

              Yeah, okay. Some of us were living under illusions. ALL sorted now!

              BTW…not just our immediate family…but the extended family and my ex and his family, and friends….all the folk who can look at the official paperwork…not just our angry rantings.

              We will NEVER trust any police officer ever again.

              (unless of course their bots are picking up on this talk and the cops want to have a proper look? No? didn’t think so.) 🙂

          • Treetop 6.1.1.2.2
            29 October 2015 at 2:00 pm

            Not a perception of police corruption, a perception of a police state.

      • Treetop 6.1.2
        29 October 2015 at 1:57 pm

        “informal information requests from NZ Police,”

        A fishing expedition, and who, why and what is the fishing expedition really for?

        I’d love to get hold of some police files. For sure bullshit castle has many hidden secrets.

      • Tracey 6.1.3
        29 October 2015 at 4:19 pm

        Thanks veutovier – I just listened in the car

    • Draco T Bastard 9.1
      29 October 2015 at 11:57 am

      The USA seems to be spoiling for a major war. I suspect this has something to do with their declining influence around the world. They’re starting to panic as the resources of the world start to go elsewhere and they’re powerless to stop it.

      • Tracey 9.1.1
        29 October 2015 at 1:44 pm

        i note journalists are now reporting on the ground in syria much more than before russia officially joined in….

        • The Chairman 9.1.1.1
          29 October 2015 at 1:52 pm

          Perhaps it’s because Russia is making so much progress there is more to report on?

          • Tracey 9.1.1.1.1
            29 October 2015 at 4:20 pm

            I was just comparing it to NO journos reporting from alongside the rebels, or anywhere near the US bombing of Medecines sans frontieres?

      • The Chairman 9.1.2
        29 October 2015 at 1:45 pm

        Alternatively, China are flexing their muscle, talking tough while further ratcheting up tensions in the region turning sandbars (in waters that have multiple territorial claims) into islands. Developing and expanding its military presence in the strategic and disputed region.

    • McFlock 9.2
      29 October 2015 at 3:51 pm

      actually not much in the way of a lowered flashpoint, IMO. Both sides would have thoroughly gamed their strategies and contingencies, so this latest round will probably be pretty well managed with mutually-acceptable posturing and an eventual “shrug, I’m not bovvered” by one side or the other.

      The real danger will come from an unexpected destabilisation/crisis, rather than the planned chessgame. An unmanaged economic collapse that affects the governement’s liquidity and internal stability in one of the superpowers, for example.

      • vaughan little 9.2.1
        29 October 2015 at 11:47 pm

        i doubt these guys have gamed much out. the chinese are autistic as hell – they can’t read any of their neighbours. the US really doesn’t get China, so they have not much analytical to draw on at all. but the US has pretty much everyone in the region behind them, so eventually a light may go on in the senior leadership’s collective thinking. maybe.

    • vaughan little 9.3
      29 October 2015 at 11:13 pm

      so the headline was pulled from a piece in a newspaper called the global times. it gets quoted a lot and while there are ‘links’ between it and the communist party, it’s by no means an official mouthpiece of the party. it’s just some idiot editor whose business model is heavily reliant on getting references in western media. and you do that by saying outrageous things. within china itself the rag has a pretty small voice.

      • The Chairman 9.3.1
        30 October 2015 at 7:51 am

        Nevertheless, it was accompanied by staunch comment from China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Lu Kang.

  10. Herodotus 10
    29 October 2015 at 10:44 am

    How data could be manipulated.
    According to Stats NZ, 2014 was the 1st year that more than 30,000 people died in NZ.
    http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/births/BirthsAndDeaths_HOTPYeDec14.aspx

    • ianmac 10.1
      29 October 2015 at 11:13 am

      You would expect that the births would be balanced by deaths. According to that graph, the birth rate has been for years double the death rate. Really?

      • alwyn 10.1.1
        29 October 2015 at 12:22 pm

        Why on earth would you expect the number of births and deaths to be the same in any given year?
        Look at the total population of the world. You don’t have to worry about migration then since, as far as I know, there isn’t any net immigration or emigration. Believers in flying saucers may care to differ.
        Hence the only way to get here is to be born and the only way to leave is to die.
        The population was about 1 billion in 1800. If the number of births and deaths in each year since then was the same the population would still be 1 billion.
        It is actually about 7.5 billion isn’t it?

    • McFlock 10.2
      29 October 2015 at 3:56 pm

      why “manipulated”?
      I’m not sure what your point is.

  11. savenz 11
    29 October 2015 at 10:47 am

    Joseph Stiglitz: Under TPP, Polluters Could Sue U.S. for Setting Carbon Emissions Limits

    http://www.democracynow.org/2015/10/27/joseph_stiglitz_under_tpp_polluters_could

  12. savenz 12
    29 October 2015 at 11:10 am

    Why Norway is rich…. they are not a free market obsessed low commodity driven economy like NZ and manage their resources as efficiency as possible.

    Because the government is highly invested, (oil profits are taxed at 78 per cent, and in 2011 tax revenues were $36-billion), it is as interested as oil companies, which want to maximize their profits, in extracting the maximum amount of hydrocarbons from the reservoirs. This has inspired technological advances such as parallel drilling, Mr. Lindseth says.

    “The extraction rate in Norway is around 50 per cent, which is extremely high in the world average,” he adds.

    Norway has also managed to largely avoid so-called Dutch disease (a decline in other exports due to a strong currency) for two reasons, Mr. Lindseth says. The GPFG wealth fund is largely invested outside Norway by legislation, and the annual maximum withdrawal is 4 per cent. Through these two measures, Norway has avoided hyper-inflation, and has been able to sustain its traditional industries.

    In Norway, there’s no industry more traditional than fishing.

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/what-norway-did-with-its-oil-and-we-didnt/article11959362/

    “As far back as the 12th century they were already exporting stock fish to places in Europe,” explains Rashid Sumaila, director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre.

    Prof. Sumaila spent seven years studying economics in Norway and uses game theory to study fish stocks and ecosystems. Fish don’t heed international borders and his research shows how co-operative behaviour is economically beneficial.

    “Ninety per cent of the fish stocks that Norway depends on are shared with other countries. It’s a country that has more co-operation and collaboration with other countries than any other country I know,” Prof. Sumaila says.

    “That’s [partly] why they still have their cod and we’ve lost ours,” he adds, pointing out that not only are quotas and illegal fishing heavily monitored, policy in Norway is based on scientific evidence and consideration for the sustainability of the ecosystem as a whole.

    Prof. Sumaila cites the recent changes to Canada’s Fisheries Act, as a counter-example: “To protect the habitat, you have to show a direct link between the habitat, the fish and the economy,” he says, adding, “That’s the kind of weakening that the Norwegians don’t do.”

    • ianmac 12.1
      29 October 2015 at 11:17 am

      ““To protect the habitat, you have to show a direct link between the habitat, the fish and the economy,” he says, adding, “That’s the kind of weakening that the Norwegians don’t do.””
      Does that mean that like our system the economy trumps environment. For example dairy farming can and does trump rivers because we need the money, or so they say.

      • savenz 12.1.1
        29 October 2015 at 11:47 am

        NZ and the ‘free market neoliberal way’ seems to be to kill the golden goose. Go after as much short term profit as possible and kill or injure the underlying business such as environment, innovation, employees, etc (which by starving them off) eventually kills or undermines the initial business.

        That why we have so much debt. Our businesses are not healthy profitable ones, we are borrowing and selling off our assets but still not getting ahead.

        Eventually they fold like Pike River, solid energy, Kaipara council, Mainzeal and so forth when the business is completely non functional. Fonterra is on it’s way, inflated executive salaries, staff lay offs, refusing to change to more sustainable, lobbying to pollute (or being handed it on a plate by government and council), buying in too much supplementary feed (palm oil one of the world’s most destructive practises) etc The executives are actively pursuing a low commodity agenda that is risky and damaging to it’s farmers.

      • savenz 12.1.2
        29 October 2015 at 11:50 am

        Like our government wet dream RMA reforms. The economy is considered as a legal factor. We can pollute i.e. rivers if someone can make a dollar from it and both needs are to weighted equally legally. Very scary stuff. The opposite of what they should be doing as we know the planet is in trouble.

  14. Whispering Kate 14
    29 October 2015 at 11:35 am

    Changing the topic. Back on to Ministers and their snouts in the trough with travel and hotels etc under the guise of conferences etc to include in with their main events – rugby finals for example, my partner has just come back from Canberra where he did two days of looking around the old and new parliament buildings – along with other holiday things. He did a “proper” tour as well as just looking around. He found out that all politicians, cabinet included – everybody that is, has to pay their own way when they go overseas and on all expenses – and then on their arrival back home they submit their expenses/chits and get reimbursed by supposedly a type of expenses committee.

    Presumably this is to curb sundry expenses which go on the card and helps to remind the ministers where their money is going and what might not be accepted as genuine expenses once they get home. I know a lot of large private companies do this to keep their expenses down and to stop wilful wastage. It seems the Australian government is doing this as well. Good on them – can’t see it happening under Key’s government or any government who is in power over here.

    • tc 14.1
      29 October 2015 at 12:28 pm

      Oz still has independant and public media still (watch that space) whereas here with the owned MSM assisting shonky they get away with all kinds of troughing.

      Recent example of Bronwyn Bishop across in OZ being made an example of and embarrassing Tony towards the end even further by the media.

  15. Draco T Bastard 15
    29 October 2015 at 11:40 am

    ‘The worst calories’: Sugar even more harmful than it seems, study finds

    Sugar intake was reduced from about 28 percent of total calories to about 10 percent. Fructose – a form of sugar believed to be particularly bad for health – was reduced from 12 percent to four percent of total calories.

    Sugary foods were then replaced with starchier alternatives, such as hot dogs, potato chips, and pizza.

    “This ‘child-friendly’ study diet included various no- or low-sugar added processed foods including turkey hot dogs, pizza, bean burritos, baked potato chips, and popcorn that were purchased at local supermarkets,” the study authors wrote.

    Each child’s caloric intake closely resembled the amount they ate before the study began. However, the children reported feeling less hungry with the new diet.

    “They told us it felt like so much more food, even though they were consuming the same number of calories as before, just with significantly less sugar. Some said we were overwhelming them with food,” Schwarz said.

    And the result of this change in diet?

    After weighing themselves daily as part of the study’s requirements, one-third of the children said they could not eat enough food to stop losing weight. The children lost an average of nearly two pounds in just nine days.

    “I have never seen results as striking or significant in our human studies; after only nine days of fructose restriction, the results are dramatic and consistent from subject to subject,” Schwarz added.

    Blood pressure went down by an average of five points. The triglyceride measurement of cholesterol fell by 33 points, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL, also known as “bad” cholesterol) fell by 10 points. Blood sugar and insulin levels also fell. Glucose tolerance and the amount of excess insulin circulating in the blood improved.

    So, when are our politicians really going to do something about reducing the amount of sugar added to foods?

    Forget taxing sugar – regulate how much can be added. Many foods should be at zero added sugar.

    I may have to give up coffee.

  16. savenz 16
    29 October 2015 at 12:58 pm

    Auckland Council has today voted to support oil exploration off the city’s west coast.

    Mayor Len Brown said the council was “handcuffed”, as it did not have the final say on whether drilling went ahead.

    (OH so we will agree it anyway??)

    Len Brown said it was better to present a submission with recommendations on how drilling should be managed, rather than throwing out the plan altogether.

    (OH what a NatLite approach, umm can’t be bothered to make a decision so support a yes position while pretending you don’t really!)

    Councillor Wayne Walker called the decision “gutless”.

    Shirin Brown from the Waiheke Local Board addressed counsellors in a last ditch attempt to sway their vote. She says New Zealand exudes a “clean green” image and if there was a disaster such as the Rena in Bay of Plenty, the main port of call for tourism in New Zealand would be tarnished.

    Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Steve Abel called on the council to have the “political courage” to vote no on the issue.

    “We need oil like a heroin addict needs heroin – we don’t need it, we are dependent,” he said.

    Throughout the meeting similarities were drawn between the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which saw 4.2 million barrels of oil spill over 87 days, and a potential disaster on Auckland’s West Coast.

    Christchurch and Kaikoura councils have already strongly opposed the move.

  17. Morrissey 17
    29 October 2015 at 9:09 pm

    Fear of Corbyn palpable in hysterical right wing and “liberal” media coverage.
    Media Activism In A Time Of Hope – An Appeal For Support
    by Medialens editors DE and DC | 17.09.2015 11:23 | Other Press | Sheffield
    https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2015/09/521556.html

    It is normally impossible for us to regard the leader of a major British or American political party without cringing at their compromised, corporatised, plastic personalities.

    We like the fact that Jeremy Corbyn wears uncool shorts and sandals, that he doesn’t look ‘prime ministerial’ or ‘presidential’. We have always reviled Blair’s self-assured, Clintonian head-waggle; Obama’s all-knowing, fatherly smile. We never understood how anyone could be deceived by Thatcher’s sonorous, strident ‘sincerity’.

    We might disagree with Corbyn on any number of issues, but he is at least recognisably human. He seems more like the people we know, less like the people with serious suits and unserious souls who view themselves as ‘The Masters of Mankind’.

    In three earlier media alerts, we described how media futurologists have been tirelessly informing their long–suffering readers that Corbyn will be ‘catastrophic’ for the Labour party, the country, the world. Every last one of the claims has been rooted in the assumption that they truly know what is good for UK democracy, what is the limit of possible political change. But the fact is they don’t know – nobody does. Consider a couple of simple thoughts:

    1) Let’s assume that, before Corbyn’s victory on September 12, the press was correct in arguing that deep political change was impossible in the UK. After all, journalists were writing at a time when voters had been without hope for decades, when they believed the political system was 100% sewn up and locked down by the 1%. But even if the press was right then, it does not mean that radical political change is impossible now when hope has clearly been restored, when people can see that that an honest and compassionate leader can be voted into a position of genuine influence. Nobody can know what might happen now because the hopelessness of several decades really has been overthrown. The cat is out of the bag, democracy has broken free from its establishment box of choice-as-no-choice. People were given a fleeting chance to vote for someone real and they jumped at it.

    2) Even if a hopelessly unelectable, flawed and uncool individual was elected leader of the opposition, he or she might nevertheless bring huge benefits to democracy. Why?

    One of the default assumptions of the corporate media is that it is their democratic responsibility to cover the full range of ‘mainstream’ political opinions. Specifically, it is their job to report what the party of government and the major opposition parties are saying and doing.

    Since Tony Blair’s New Labour/’Red Tory’ coup of the 1990s, this default position has required that the press report the views of two establishment parties saying much the same thing. This has been disastrous for the range of honest and compassionate opinion. ‘Presentational’ politics has meant ‘presentational’ journalism pitifully denuded of anything challenging powerful interests at a time when those challenges have been desperately needed.

    One of the potentially far-reaching consequences of Corbyn’s success is that it obliges the corporate press to pay attention to views that have previously been marginalised or ignored. ….

    Read more….
    https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2015/09/521556.html

  18. Ron 18
    29 October 2015 at 10:52 pm

    I saw the movie 99 Homes tonight. Quite a gripping movie and well worth going to see it if you can. It did not explain the mess that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did to the US Financial systems and just how US banks could do the things they did, but do go see it.
    Four stars

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