The weasel – the suitable heraldic animal for MSM editors

 

 

Nothing could show better the disdain in which the Westminster MSM hold us, their – ever fewer – readers than today’s front pages. “Teh Nation” is given no news worthy of reports,  except the case of the poor woman who vanished. Today’s front pages serve up the statement by the husband, that ‘somebody must know something’ – and that’s our lot, according to the ‘staff’ compiler. Never mind that the FT (‘foreign student loans’), iNews (‘sewage in rivers’) and, bless them, the Daily Star (‘the sun is falling to bits’) have detected other newsworthy stuff: their pages have been relegated to the bottom of the compilation (link).

There is however one blatant piece of manipulation which has even made it into the headline of today’s Beeb collection. The print edition of the grauniad leads with “Tories plot childcare giveaway in budget”. Blimey – how dastardly by the Tories, to ‘plot’ giving away our money!

So I looked at the guardians online edition and found nothing about horrid Tories plotting but instead found this headline, squeezed lower down in the current offering of guardian news online:

“Treasury considering huge expansion of free childcare in England – Exclusive: plan for one- and two-year-olds would cost billions and is among options being looked at” (link)

I’ve got to admire the editorial magic which can turn ‘treasury considering’ into ‘Tories plotting’, but then, I’m no Westminster-based ‘grauniad ‘journalist. 

But aren’t there any other news, you might well ask. Not really. There is an interesting piece in the DM which, at first glance, looks like a puff piece for the Royal Navy, garnished with a bit of anti-China sabre rattling:

“’We beat them to the draw’: Tense moment sailors on Royal Navy’s flagship Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier realise Chinese attack submarine is hunting them in the South China Sea – before they turn the tables and send the sub packing – HMS Queen Elizabeth was operating in the South China Sea in summer 2021 – Footage shows how the Russian-built Chinese sub tired to follow the carrier “ (link)

Having become a bit suspicious after seeing the report of ‘our RAF’ training in the USA, in case there’s a war against China, I did read the thing, wondering how come there’s ‘footage’, and how come the DM knew about this. Well, the answer is in the very last sentence of this ‘report’: “The Warship: Tour of Duty airs on BBC Two and iPlayer on Sunday at 9pm” (link).

Aha! so this isn’t about the ‘latest’ Chinese aggression, this is a ‘report’ advertising a BBC production! This must have been recorded at some unspecified earlier date, thus there’s no immediate threat.

It’s a useful piece of ‘mood music’ though, to turn our minds from Russia to China as Ukrainian ‘war news’ are being relegated to the bottom of the online editions now. However, there’s a deplorable article in The Times, under the approving headline:

“War in Ukraine: On the front line of a country’s cultural de-Russification – Tchaikovsky on mute, Tolstoy pulped and Catherine the Great boxed up in basement — Putin’s invasion has triggered an unsparing excision of all things Russian” (link, paywalled)

Clearly, we’re meant to regard this as ‘a good thing.’ Not one word about the years of Ukrainian policies trying to eradicate the use of Russian in the Russian-speaking Donbass regions … Odd how Lefties, ever so keen on screeching about the crimes of colonialism, are extremely relaxed when the native language of a people is being eradicated.

We read that Kiev’s ballet ‘doesn’t need Tchaikovsky’ for their ballets, e.g. ‘Swan Lake’.  Hm. Further down there are a few paragraphs about books. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief: books by Russian authors are being collected (this and following emphases are mine):

[…] from customers, schools and libraries and sends them to the recycling plant in return for payment that is channelled to civilian and military charities for the war effort. Some 72 tonnes of Russian-language books have raised more than 250,000 hryvnia (£5,630) on their journey to be remade into egg cartons and toilet paper. […] Nadia Kibenko, 32, from Syayvo, rejects the idea that book pulping is akin to the kind of book burning reminiscent of the Third Reich. “We do not destroy them, we just make them into something else,” she says. “It’s a different emotional context.” (link, paywalled)

Words fail me utterly! Are ‘customers’ private citizens, ordered to hand over their books? Still, this is exemplarily ‘green’: no book burning therefore no extra CO2, and recycling is so ‘sensitive’. I wonder if Ukrainians are even permitted to read the works by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Ukrainian translations or if they ‘can do without’. Forgive me for feeling sick.

I wasn’t going to mention the Raab thingie, but The Times is utterly relentless with their campaign.  Not only is there a report in their online edition today,  on their YouGov poll saying that “Most voters say Dominic Raab should be suspended” (link, paywalled).

This supplanted the article they had yesterday afternoon, in which they tried to refute the statements of Whitehall mandarins supporting Raab. The innuendo, the weaselling, the hearsay is outstanding and simply too precious::

The permanent secretaries at the Department for Exiting the European Union, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice are said to have raised informal concerns with Raab about his behaviour. The warnings are said to have made little difference, witha source saying “he could not be made to see the impact of his behaviour”. (link, paywalled)

Gossip, hearsay, anonymous sources: clearly this is proper ‘evidence’, therefore: off with this bully’s head! Why can’t they wait for the GE – he’ll be gone then anyway! It gets worse:

“Allies of Raab dispute that permanent secretaries raised claims or questions about his behaviour, arguing that he would have asked for those to be investigated and saying that there was no record of any cautions. The warnings are all thought to have been verbal and it is not known how insistent the civil servants were towards Raab. Some involved in the case believe that part of the suggestions were “rather meek” because permanent secretaries “knew no one had their back” at No 10.” (link, paywalled)

Say what? Are we to believe that mandarins, the eminences, the Sir Humphreys which actually run this country, are ‘meek’ because big bad No 10 ‘didn’t have their backs’ – against what or whom? Really? Should we now assume that No 10 and the government ministers are riding rough-shod over their ‘meek’ departmental mandarins? They’re havin’ a larf!

That’s all I have for today. Not much surprises me anymore when I record the ‘guidance’ our Westminster denizens are trying to give us through their MSM mouthpieces. Today though was stellar, especially the image of ‘meek mandarins’! Cherish your books by Russian authors and have a good weekend.