Keeping an eye on the MSM …

 

 

What a happy country the UK is! We have no problems at all. The Uniparty, one part of which is ‘in government’, the other aiming to replace them, is incredibly competent and has got all those ‘crises’ fully under control.

You don’t believe me? Then look at what the Uniparty Propaganda Arm wants us to talk about today (link): the PM has been fined, King Charles should change his coronation clothes, the EU won’t check fingerprints of travellers so the summer holidays are saved, parents should keep their kids at home when teachers strike – yes, really! – and Labour has a ‘woman problem’ …

Well, it’s the weekend and we peasants need ‘easy reading’ to entertain us. Difficult subjects like inflation are sort-of banned and only some vituperative gloating about Germany not giving their battle tanks to brave little Ukraine is permitted. 

Worth a closer look is a nice puff piece about Ms Kemi Badenoch in The Times, but only because the headline in the print edition suggests that this is a piece about transgender ‘issues’. Well, this ought to be handed to the Office of Fair Trading because the print headline doesn’t keep what it promises, as the online piece shows. There are only two paragraphs about yon issue. I’ll quote them because they’re a typical mix of weaselly, paternalistic arguments (my emphasis):

“Badenoch believes that self-identification — the ability to change gender without medical diagnosis — puts women and girls at risk from predators. “We have no problem with that in the sense that we want people who are trans to be able to live their lives freely and as they wish,” she says. “The problem is that self-identification also makes life a lot easier for other people we don’t want to have those sorts of freedoms. Predators would be able to exploit any system that says you can just say you are what you are. It’s also quite bad for trans people. They then get conflated and associated with the predators and people who are looking to do bad things.” (link, paywalled)

So ‘some people’ shouldn’t have ‘those sorts of freedom’? Who decides who those people are? Whitehall? Anti-social media? But it’s about ‘protecting trans people’, so that’s alright, innit. Next:

“That’s why having a stricter regime rather than a loose regime is quite important. The problem is around the rhetoric. Rather than having a disagreement on whether you think self-identification is OK or not OK, people who have a different view are then abused, insulted, called transphobic. That’s what has really toxified the debate, and made a lot of people scared to say what they think.” (link, paywalled)

What an earth-shaking discovery: ‘a lot of people’ being too scared to say what they think! It’s not as if this issue hasn’t been in the news for some time now, it’s not as if we plebs haven’t noticed that, thanks to anti-social media, a lot of issues, not just ‘transgender issues’, cannot be talked about because such ‘debates’ have become ‘toxified’.

Interestingly, The Times has asked Ms Badenoch about her attendance at yon WEF Shindig. Her ‘explanation’ was that this allowed her to meet many other trade ministers and thus ease her work load: less travelling, see. Interestingly, over at the DT there’s an opinion piece on Davos, by Ms Juliet Samuel. The headline shows where this is going to go: a reassurance for us all that the WEF is a toothless tiger:

“The elites of Davos don’t run the world. They barely understand it any more – Conspiracy theorists have it wrong: the World Economic Forum is becoming a laughable hangover of an age that is rapidly passing” (paywalled link)

See – there’s nothing to fear here! They’re all nice people even if they’re now old and doddering …! They still can get it up though, as the DM reports (link). At the end of her cute piece Ms Samuel is praising a book by a gent called Paul Tucker: “Global Discord”. I checked it out on amazon – it’s effing expensive! – and found this in the blurb (my emphasis):

“Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system. […] Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least.” 

So – yet another system then, by a former banker. How reassuring! Why Ms Samuel believes that Tucker’s ‘priciples’ show the WEF to be outdated is her secret. Doesn’t she know that the WEF “elites” are nowadays mostly led by mandarins? See this:

“The over-specialisation of the administrative classes, however, is making it impossible for our leaders to understand how threats are interconnected and instead allowing mandarins and corporates to dig in against so-called “populist” attacks and defend their turf. Nowhere is that phenomenon quite so visible as at Davos, which is precisely why serious thinkers need to cut it loose. The forum is under the spell of its own bureaucratic inertia, dressed up as solicitude and brilliance. The huge corporations who fund it and the regulars for whom it is the highlight of the social calendar have too much of their credibility and capital sunk into the world as it was. They are unable to see what is coming next and cannot offer useful advice. As for the rest, well, if they want to chug slugs and make ladybird curd, who am I to stop them? Only, they don’t, of course. They just want all of us to do it.” (paywalled link)

Yes, well, I’ve got news for you, Ms Samuel: not only do they want us to ‘do it’, they are setting the conditions to make us ‘do it’. IThey have that power, mandarins or not. I’m sure even Ms Samuel has heard of ‘Net Zero’. After all, our PM-in-Waiting, Starmer, has heard of it. Andrew Neil has a piece on his strutting on yon WEF stage which you might like to read. 

Finally, I urge you to read this essay by ‘Big Serge’. It came out yesterday evening and is an outstanding analysis  about the current situation in the Ukraine. Let me draw your attention especially to the ‘Coda’, at the bottom of the essay. 

That’s all I have for today. Do read that essay by ‘Big Serge’ – it’s more productive than perusing the offerings by our MSM. If you want an excuse to celebrate: it’s the Chinese New Year tomorrow. Meanwhile, keep warm, avoid the NHS and have a lovely weekend



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