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Why it won’t be ‘The Sun wot won it’ in 2024 – politicalbetting.com
Why it won’t be ‘The Sun wot won it’ in 2024 – politicalbetting.com
The Sun famously claimed it had won the election for John Major’s Tories in 1992. Rupert Murdoch later denied that claim, telling the Leveson Inquiry that the ‘Won It’ headline had been “tasteless and wrong”, adding: “we don’t have that sort of power” (although the Mandy Rice-Davies principle applies here of course).
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I worked from home pretty much every day for two years (forcibly during Covid and then a bit after) and it destroyed my mental health. I was never able to escape work, I used to work ridiculous hours. Even though I was - and am - a very sociable chap I just couldn't get my mind off work. This exhausted me and I spiralled into depression.
I then started a new job where I was in every day except Fridays. This initially improved my mental health but over time I felt completely exhausted having to commute in every day, I was constantly ill and I was actually incredibly unproductive because I was constantly being disturbed/distracted by others. My mental health dived again.
So I settled on going in a couple of times a week and then working at home the other three. This gave me a great balance because on the days I went in I got my meetings done in person and for a lot of these I strongly feel the in-person element is important. But on the other days I got my work done in a productive way, I got to do my workouts when I wanted to, I got to run when I wanted to and I organised my day around work instead of the other way around. The result is that my mental health has maintained its strength as the best it has ever been, for well over a year.
I am now looking for something new but I intend to maintain this arrangement for any job I do, assuming I am able to.
I know not everyone has the luxury that I have but I feel very fortunate that I am able to work in a way that works for me.
The FT will also back Labour, I do think.
Speaking from experience as a flint knapper that works with journos I can say that the Daily Mail has massive sway, because it is - as a website - so huge across the English speaking world. This may change - they are soon to introduce a form of paywall, so we shall see - but right now it is still as powerful as ever, but the nature of the power has altered
The Telegraph is doing good. The Times less so. The Sun is surprisingly successful. The Guardian is also highly successful online but it is hampered by two things - it is entirely free so gets no online subs, and it is in direct competition - in ethos, outlook, even demeanour - with the mighty New York Times, which has the money to take every decent writer from the Guardian and triple their salary. And it has done that, in sport (via the Athletic)
The BBC is the biggest and best UK media brand of all, but it is uniquely funded and crippled, as we all know
If you’d asked me which titles were the most viewed online I would have the BBC at the top but much further ahead, then the Mail online, then a long way down the Guardian, then the others bringing up the rear.
Covid fucked with everyone’s brains, I know some that loved lockdown, I was more like you - damaged by it. I’ve realised I’m a kind of loner wandering extrovert - I need plenty of time on my own, to think, but I also love socialising and I basically NEED new experiences- mainly travel, or sex, or whatever - to keep me sane and not suicidal from boredom, Covid prevented: socialising, travel, sex, everything
No wonder I was close to topping myself
The scale of the psychic damage we have wrought with lockdowns on the populations of the world, especially kids, is only now becoming apparent. The introvert geeks who crunch data might have loved it, most hated it
I was literally just now having this exact conversation with a Cambodian restaurant manager. He spoke of Covid like it was a second reign of the Khmer Rouge - he and his business and his sanity barely survived. What the fuck did we do to ourselves?
I am not at all surprised by the Sun numbers, I recently did an Egypt group tour with the one of the main guys that basically runs the Sun online presence. He talked me through it, what they’ve done. They’ve weaponised YouTube, and other social media, really cleverly, they get massive clicks from the weirdest parts of the world
The British journalist is a resourceful beast. They are not easy to wipe out
It’s utter rubbish. This is one of the biggest brands in world journalism, THE TIMES of LONDON. Almost as big as the BBC. And there it is down below Manc Evening News
This would be excusable if their journalism was sensational and their iPad version a slick piece of genius, but hidden behind an impermeable paywall. This is not the case. The paywall exists but the journalism is mediocre and the design of the app and website look like they were last revamped in 2009
Shockingly bad. One can only presume someone at Murdoch Towers simply doesn’t care. Then why don’t they sell it?
You score runs for each arm or leg contained in the pub name - so two runs for The Speckled Hen, four for the White Lion, eight for The Spider's Web, and so on. (No I've never seen a pub called The Centipede, but yes it would be a hundred runs.) Pub names without an arm or a leg are a wicket - so The Plough, The Castle etc are wickets.
You can vary this a bit if you like, so that The Horse and Cart is four runs and a wicket but that's not how we used to do it.
You should find you wind up with some fairly plausible scores - seventy or so runs will probably win the match.
As well as curing boredom, it encourages observation. Attention to the pub signs is vital in some cases.
There will of course be the occasional argument, but mostly it is good free fun.
And if you ever go past The Deuragon (pub in Hackney, probably closed now) I can give you the answer as to whether it is runs or a wicket.
I blame lockdown for my moving from outer London to the countryside. During the pandemic I was indoors with the family all the time, it was quite nice, we had a newborn baby and it felt like it didn’t matter where we lived. Now everything is open, I miss my local area and easy access to friends and family. I was considering moving even further out, to smaller villages. I think it sent me a bit crackers
I thought it was one of the best things he has written in many years, indeed it is one of the best commentaries on our Covid reaction - by anyone
In his sometimes-annoyingly calm, lucid way, he forensically analysed how and why we all went mad, and what a disaster it was, ultimately. We have sacrificed the sanity and prosperity of many to save the lives of relatively few
Newspaper journalism is dying out.
Throughout it all, I had my half mad brother in Peru telling me: what the fuck are you guys doing, this is insane, even if this bug kills 2% of people and crashes health systems, the result of long lockdowns will be much much worse, more expensive and more damaging by orders of magnitude, to all humanity
I kinda dismissed him. After all, he is half schizophrenic (but very very clever). Now I see he was surely right. It is tragic
No. So what is your point?
That is not the case for most of Homo Sapiens
Another issue I have heard, for kids, is what all the masking did. It has retarded language acquisition and interpreting of facial expression. Kids haven’t learned to speak proper like they normally do
These things are going to be massive, in a bad way
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-one-question-the-covid-inquiry-must-ask/
There's a proportion of those in government (not just politicians) who enjoy having power over others.
There's a proportion of the population who can be scared into accepting what the other two groups want.
I think there are some fairly major distortions of the numbers - for example the Independent does a lot of Google-spam and has a big section of blogs from aiui random members of the public.
Plus which ones have put in paywalls recently?
https://unherd.com/2023/03/why-doesnt-britain-regret-lockdown/
I mean almost as many Brits think lockdown was right as want to rejoin the EU!
Although, to be fair, he was talking about TV or radio work.
Personally I think I am in the opposite category; I didn’t hate it but thought it was wrong
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/most-popular-websites-news-uk-monthly-2/
Header has added another one on the end.
They are UK stats.
The main point is it’s done. No doubt in 1947 there was a solipsistic bunch of folk moaning about the huge cost of gas masks and the vile restrictions of the black out but most were getting on with the present.
More importantly, kids would have largely carried on going to school, learning language, not becoming Special Needs
The government should have given us the choice. It should have kept society open, in the main, but allowed the vulnerable and the scared and the SNP to hide away
Eventually I had a nervous breakdown, from which I'm still recovering, and as a result of which I still deal with mental health, depression and anger issues every day, and find full-time work hard, if not impossible. I went from a healthy BMI to seriously overweight, occasional social drinker to problem drinker (which I've only just been mentally well-balanced enough to start working on in the last few months or so).
So yeah. F**k lockdowns, and everyone who still supports them. I appreciate for everyone YMMV on this point, and can already hear some of you raising spectres of hundreds of thousands dead, piling up in NHS morgues, etc. But I can only speak from my own experience, and that has been permanent, debilitating mental illness, directly brought on by isolation and overwork.
I was healthy before lockdowns. I am unhealthy now - mind and body. I have never, to the best of my knowledge, caught covid, nor would I have been in any kind of risk category even if I had.
I have, by the way, heard this from MULTIPLE sources, from reading the blogs of teachers to newspaper articles to hearing of friends’ kids and grandkids to a couple of mates who actually teach these kids and see this daily
I do not doubt it. This is a real problem, and it has not been seen before
At the end of 2021, Arizonan kids (particularly the young ones) were well ahead of New York and Californian ones. But by the middle of 2023, the gap had essentially been eliminated.
Now there may be longer lived impacts on soclialization (and possibly autism rates too), but it looks like concerns that kids educational levels are going to be impacted are unwarranted.
'“HMS Chiddingfold’s motor was wired incorrectly and full ahead gave full astern,” a navy insider said. The vessel had been recently inspected by officers at the maritime capability, trials and assessment team, they added.'
PS: Not clear whether it was the boat's own ERAs, or some dockyard mateys, who did the rewire. So Mr Shapps might be right in that it wasn't our jolly jack tars' incompetence.
It looks a lot worse in the UK - from what I can see
I mean, I hope you’re right, please God. But I worry you are not
Ahem. From 2016:
"Significantly more children are starting school without being toilet trained, according to a joint survey by teachers and a continence education charity.
Of the 700 survey respondents, 70% said more children aged three to seven – the foundation stage and key stage 1 – were now starting school without being toilet trained than five years ago."
https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/public-health/rise-in-children-starting-school-not-toilet-trained-28-09-2016/
Or 2019:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6932241/Potty-training-expert-insists-not-acceptable-send-five-year-olds-school-nappies.html
I have a four year old and was worried he would be a social misfit having barely seen anyone bar myself and my partner for a large part of his early life, but he seems to be a happy & popular like his mum & an argumentative, smart arse like me, so no damage done. If anything, lockdown gave us more time to teach him stuff.
There seem to be plenty of ideologues on both sides of lockdowns.
I had family at home with me, enough space to live and work - and a job to match. *Before* the first lockdown, they said - “You can send your whole desk, computer, monitors, chair etc home. Free delivery.”
For many, many people there was no space, loneliness and no work. Let alone free delivery of Aeron office chairs.
The stories coming out of New York and Milan were incredibly scary, with mortuaries overloaded and people dying in the corridors of hospitals due to lack of medical care. At that time, we didn't know if the mortality rate was 0.5%, 5% or 25%.
Where there were big mistakes, in my view, were (a) in the severity of the lockdown. It's very clear that - for example - California achieved very similar levels of R reduction as the UK, but with massively less severe restrictions. And (b) in the length of time the restrictions were in place for.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Was amateur epidemiologist Parrish stating that 92% were at no real risk in 2020?
How many Brits were poisoned by gas in WWII?
That’s like saying “Oh we had problems with Germany right through the 1930s, what was special about the 40s?” in the 1950s
You may be right, But I have vivid personal first hand accounts, from people teaching Covid kids (and Covid teens) that there are massive new issues
They made Hitler think gas attacks would be pointless, so he never tried them.
My more radical explanation for the long-term decline of kids arriving at school not toilet trained, or with underdeveloped verbal skills, is that it correlates with many parents spending far too much time playing with their mobile phones or other devices rather than communicating with and training their sprogs. No, I can't prove it. But it drives me a bit mad to see phone addicts ignoring their little kids. Including in my own family.
It *may* have got worse during Covid, but you provide zero evidence, and it disproves what you wrote: "... and it has never been seen before."
Perhaps, just perhaps, there are deeper societal reasons behind the problem than Covid?
The BEF in WWII was the first completely mechanised army - no animals.
Look at Cummings's whiteboard pic, the choice was lockdowns or fucking the NHS with an unmanageable amount of dying oldies.
*There was more than one wave during the Spanish flu so...
There is also much less patience with those in authority who can't grasp that.
For what it's worth, these results shouldn't be a surprise. German schools don't even start teaching reading until kids are 7, and yet their kids end up at the same place as British ones by the time you get to the teens,
https://www.mediastorehouse.co.uk/mary-evans-prints-online/ww2-vintage-morris-commercial-army-truck-14193802.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyland_Hippo_Mk_II#/media/File:Leyland_Hippo_Mk_II,_1944.jpg
Mind, it also worked with horses, only they died. No need for special paint.
Agree with your second point all the way.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12060643/Tennessee-high-school-student-pepper-sprays-teacher-confiscated-phone.html
“Covid had a devastating impact on our children's social skills – we will see the effects for years
Children are still playing catch-up when it comes to developing their social skills and emotional wellbeing, say experts”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/christmas/2023/11/21/attachment-issues-anxiety-covid-generation-still-suffering
‘They said our children would bounce back from lockdown’
As a study finds the pandemic shutdown damaged the emotional development of children, Maria Lally talks to parents, a teacher and a therapist still seeing its effects
Times (£££)
You can find more cheerful opinions - but there is plenty of gloom to back up my pessimism
They'd be wise to get her out during the election on the campaign trail as much as possible.
If they want to depress their vote to a hung parliament.
Aside from snark - I also think the first lockdown was probably the right call in the circumstances. They had no idea what was happening, or how to find out, or what was going to happen. Outside of the 'holy sh*t' coming out of Italy, Spain etc. (The reasons for them having no idea and no ability to find out are another matter of course).
If the Alpha wave had come on us six months later than it did it's possible things would have then played out very differently.
And there wasn't the Stasi stopping you from breaking the rules and visiting folks as long as you didn’t shout it from the rooftops (or post about it on social media). We relied on community cohesion to do the right thing.
We were shielding for 3 months - some may remember my posts describing my trips to the front gate to put the bin out. That's as far as I got.
So to those who say that they were locked down while enjoying a daily stroll in the park or a bike ride through the countryside I say not really.