Best Of

The UK Press in the last week has been utterly pathetic. the reporting of Davos might as well have been done by Blue Peter. It is embarrassing how poor British journalism has become. The ignorance, even of basic general knowledge, is simply laughable.

The week before that they were *spectacular* though. All over the detail. Probing questions. Deep investigative coverage. Diving into policy details and outcomes. Not just tittle-tattle of who said what on Twitter. Then I remember walking into a room with flashy lights and some odd noises. Then... yes! I'm sure that's what the media were like the week before!

I was listening to the BBC 'NewsCast' podcast the other week with Chris Mason on. Political Editor for the BBC. Talking about having to do some work in Wales (it was cold, apparently). But then - praise be! - Jenrick (or Zahawi) defected! "So obviously we had to head back to Westminster". So I'm assuming that was a BBC film crew (Chris, camera, sound, several producers) who had travelled to Wales all fled back to cover a story that 18 thousand other journalists (including many others from the BBC) were already covering.

F**k you, provincials. We've got a minor bit of news that involves Reform! Suckers!

Excellent interview with Starmer on Ch4 News.

Starmer is definitely improving.

Roger, he has to go because the media and the PB massiv hate him.

Take all the criticism of Starmer today about not yet banning under 16s from social media. The media are fully behind Badenoch's promotion of the idea.

Imagine if a Labour Government had promoted a nanny state banning of social media for children and the Conservatives were against it. The Government would be hung out to dry.

So damned if they do, damned if they don't.

FWIW I have no particular view on ban or no ban. However I'm probably more inclined to the Tory nanny state narrative rather than Labour's wait and see.

Ah yes, the Labour Party voters and members have deserted the brilliant Starmer, in droves. Just because the Daily Heil said so. He’s completely brilliant though.

Have I said that? I have been particularly critical of Starmer. I think he has been a very poor Prime Minister and his comms are even worse. I also think Burnham is an awful opportunist. And this morning I commented the Blair is a disgusting quisling for his Trump adjacency. No withering partisanship from me mate.

I also believe what I have suggested about the media interpretation has some validity.

A lot of chippy Tories on here tonight. I note Roger has taken a good old kicking.

The UK Press in the last week has been utterly pathetic. the reporting of Davos might as well have been done by Blue Peter. It is embarrassing how poor British journalism has become. The ignorance, even of basic general knowledge, is simply laughable.

Well who would want to become a journalist these days if you are super smart and have lots of options? The really interesting and exciting long term investigative stuff is very rare, so much so when somebody actually does it people are now quite surprised e.g. the BBC on the network of dodgy shops.

That sort of stuff used to be on our tv / newspaper every week in the 90s e.g. Cook Report, Panorama was an hour show often having taken months to produce, the Times had a big Insight team working for months sometimes years on a story.

Now a lot of "journalism" is FOI request and rewriting press releases. Many outlets now its volume, 100s of new and updated articles every day.

It will be great to see Kemi slaughtering Labour if they do insist on an all BAME (I thought it was Global Majority now?) shortlist

I was doing some interviews for a management post last week. One of the candidates described herself as BAME spontaneously in the interview.

It's not a great descriptor, but it is a damn sight better than 'Global majority' which is just plain dumb.

Yes: there isn't a global majority, unless the argument is that all non-whites have something in common.
Genetically, arguably the global majority is everyone not negroid.

BAME irritates me for two reasons: first, why did 'minority ethnic' suddenly become more correct than 'ethnic minority'? That's not hiw we construct English. And second, redundancy: "black" is an ethnic minority - so is covered already by the ME bit. It's almost exactly like Cheshire West amd Chester. Just "West Cheshire" would do.