New Day, Same Old Story

Yesterday, we were greeted with the second morning in a row of that nauseating LibDum father and son double act (the Cable and Clegg show) on the BBC. Full coverage of two very dull press conferences. Today, it was the turn of the Marx (as in Karl) brothers: Mandy, Balls & Burnham. The BBC provided them with as much live airtime as they wanted to spread what I can only call, having read (bits of) the Conservative manifesto (it was free!), outright, barefaced, scurrilous, amoral, wickedly misleading lies. From start to finish, you had the three of these strangers to reality, let alone the truth, dishing out scaremongering propaganda that simply wasn't true. None of it. Nada. Not a thing. Labour's dirty tricks are big news for the BBC.

I didn't have time to wait for the Q/A section. Was there one? Or has the BBC finally given up even the pretence of impartiality now and decided to allow any attacks on the Tories, however perfidious and, in this case, outrageously smearing, in some cases personally, to go unchallenged altogether? It's a fair question and the answer to it, if the past two mornings of its coverage are any evidence, is disturbing.

Don't get me started on the Today programme. Suffice to say, its editors appear to be attempting to maintain some kind of 'balance' - by at least allowing a few, you know, Conservatives actually to answer the critics wheeled on, conveyor belt-style to trash policies, especially good ones. But the agenda is crystal clear. Treat the Tories like they've been in power for thirteen years - and treat Labour like the official opposition. Clever. But a nightmare to listen to and watch, a sign of how corrupt and contaminated the BBC really is, and bad news for the Conservative party.

Even I'm beginning to think that the political bias of the BBC, ever-more flagrant, and the hard-nosed commercial agenda of Sky/Murdoch (hung parliaments sell papers and boost viewing figures) is beginning to influence the direction of this general election campaign. If these factors influence the outcome, then the outcome will be meaningless and the country will have been betrayed. That much is at stake so wouldn't it be nice to hear a little more complaining from the big boy bloggers from now on, too? Or don't they care?

If you think I'm exaggerating, just ask yourself this question: where is the BBC's coverage of a Tory press conference? If there isn't any coverage in the next few days, maybe then people will begin to realise what is happening; it's not just tinfoilhattery on my part.

I'm assuming the Tories have planned a few press conferences. They have, haven't they? Well, if they haven't, they damn well should!

Poll Paranoia

Polls during this general election campaign, and before it, for a variety of reasons have been more frequent and less helpful than at any time before. The idea that simply doing more and more polls and then 'weighting' them with a series of arcane, largely untestable methodological tricks, usually hidden from the public (though Mike Smithson, among others, has helped to correct that state of affairs) is one that I think is simply an extremely expensive waste of time carried out by self-styled professional psephological gurus happy to take the cash. The YouGov "daily tracker" is probably the worst offender being, as it is, about as reliable as a Met Office long term weather forecast (see the Daily Telegraph from a few days ago). But it is by no means the only one.

The media loves it, of course, especially if these dodgy measurements of voting intentions suggest a close call - and a hung parliament. Big News! Sells papers and sucks in viewers. So they drive that narrative, using these non-statistics as evidence. The hung parliament trope has become the most popular recently, much to the delight of the MSM, but not, it seems to me, to the Labour party, who have been largely silent on the subject. Why? Certainly not because they are confident of winning. The more-likely reason is that they have about as much faith in these exercises in statistical soothsaying as I do.

Not so the media, however, with a new ICM poll out about key marginals, commissioned by Murdoch rag the News of the Screws and faithfully advertised by Spectator editor Fraser Nelson. Taken at face value, Nelson's argument that the 'extensive research' that took place to produce this poll might seem to make sense; that the Tories are going to need a hell of a lot more than the 5% swing they think they need because, so the poll allegedly shows, they aren't performing as well as they thought, with the LibDums nicking votes from them left, right and centre.

Aside from the fact that Nelson also works for the Screws, and therefore Murdoch, and the fact that it's the parasitic Murdoch media machine, particularly Sky News, that is pushing the hung parliament story at every opportunity (complete with a misleading poll ticker appearing 24 hours a day on their rolling news channel), scratch beneath the surface and you see that this earth shattering poll in nothing of the sort. It's hardly more reliable than a complete guess. Just look at the size of the sample, as mentioned in the small print:

Here's the small print: ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1001 adults aged 18+ by telephone on 7-8th April 2010. Interviews were conducted across the 96 (new boundary) constituencies which are held by Labour where the Conservatives require a swing of between 4 percent and 10 percent to win the seat.

As commenters on the blog have quickly pointed out, 1001 people over 96 constituencies?! You have to be kidding. That's about ten people per constituency. As I said, they might as well have saved themselves the thousands it cost to do that and just thrown a dart at a bunch of numbers pinned to the wall for all the use a poll like that is. But Nelson still banged on about it as though it was remotely meaningful, proving once more, at least to me, either that he is compromised by his connections to the News of the World, or that he's just not as smart as I thought he was, or that he just as much a fully paid up luvvie member the fourth estate as every other hack and hackette infesting this country, 'blogging' or no 'blogging'.

The point? The point is that my hunch - that the Tories are actually miles ahead, but that people simply aren't ready to admit that yet, or that these polls are so flawed, they would never reflect the reality - is worth just as much, if not more, than the polls themselves. And so is yours, dear reader. So the Tories do not need to develop poll paranoia. They certainly don't need to "panic", as Nelson helpfully suggests in the picture accompanying his dishonest/incompetent article.

The only danger is that all this hung parliament speculation, regardless of the flakey, fake stats that's driving it, will become a self-fulfilling prophesy, thus handing Labour an unexpected lifeline - and selling the country down the river. No wonder the Tories kept Murdoch's empire at arm's length when it turned coat again and came out for them. With friends like these. In addition, it's plausible that poll paranoia will catch hold in the Tory party itself, again making the whole thing self-fulfilling.

Nevertheless, despite the media's attempts to drive the outcome of this election, I firmly believe that the damage that's been done to Brown Labour, and that it's done to itself (not least by allowing Brown to become leader unopposed in the first place) is so grave, not even corrupt media organisations and shockingly crap pollsters can save them now.

Have I gone too far? I'll tell you on May 7th. Or someone will tell me, no doubt. What I suspect, though, is that on May 7th, Britain will have a Tory government with a comfortable, if not large, majority - and an awful lot of pollsters and tame journos, once the noise from the celebrations have died down, are going to have an awful lot of egg on their collective mugs.

Guardian Declares War On Journalism

The Guardian's chief political correspondent, Nicholas Watts, has launched a ludicrous attack on Rupert Murdoch on behalf of Peter Mandelson (who else?) that'll appear in tomorrow's edition. There are some extraordinary claims that suggest a distinct and burgeoning paranoia on the part of the Labour Party - (you remember them, the ones that sucked-up to, erm, Rupert Murdoch for 12 years); a familiar, hypocritical stench surrounding Mandelson; and typically ovine support for any old nonsense from his pet newspaper, the good ol' Graun.

However ridiculous the story, though, it's might (ought to) cause one hell of a row, not least with the Tories.

Here are a couple of the more extraordinary claims (supported by zero evidence in the article itself, as far as I can see):

Lord Mandelson declared war on the Murdoch empire today when he accused News Corporation of maintaining an "iron grip" on pay television and warned that the company wants to import rightwing Fox News-style journalism to Britain.

Um, what? I know News International's just announced that it no longer wants people like me nicking their stories (big deal - and fair enough, they don't belong to me, and they're usually naff anyway) but that hardly amounts to an 'iron grip'. As for wanting to 'import rightwing [sic] Fox News-style to Britain', well, no complaints here. It might at least break the monopoly of the biased BBC - and be interesting, to boot. Again, though, Watts doesn't feel the need to substantiate the claim.

In a sign that Murdoch also faces a fight in Britain, Mandelson turned his fire on a joint Tory-News Corp campaign to dismantle the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom.

Again, no substantiation or evidence, just a repetition of an increasingly shrill Mandelson slur about a joint Tory-News Corp 'campaign'. This is the Guardian at its very, very worst in terms of journalistic standards. Have they seen any documents that support Mandelson's bizarre, shrill charges? Of course not. Do they care? Well, if Watts was a genuine journalist he would. But he doesn't so he's not. He's just a mouthpiece for mad Mandy.

But wait, what's this - further into the article? Evidence?

Cameron pledged to dismantle Ofcom during a speech in July devoted to "cutting back the quango state". The Tory leader said: "With a Conservative government, Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist."

James Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp in Europe and Asia, accused Ofcom in August of imposing an "astonishing" burden of regulation on Sky.

Sorry folks, 'fraid not. For one thing, Cameron made his speech (about quangos) a month before Murdoch Jnr's machinegun assault on anything not Sky (which is sort of his job, after all - to make daddy proud). But still no 'evidence' there. Just more half-baked accusations and the flimsiest of flimsy circumstantial claptrap bordering on a waking dream. And anyway, James Murdoch was right, too! The burden of regulation on broadcasting generally in Britain is outrageous. Oh, unless you're the Beeb of course. Then you can do whatever they like, editorially and financially, despite being funded by a legally enforced tax.

In the end, of course, this is all about Mandelson who, ably served by his tame Guardian journalist, is pushing his ultra-partisan 'Digital Britain' bill, which is actually designed to do just one thing, and its not to secure Britain's digital future (there's no 'we' in Labour). It's to secure the left's control of the BBC from now until doomsday. Well, Pete, doomsday for you could be coming sooner than you think, with or without Murdoch's (junior or senior) help.

As for the Guardian, well, we've long known that its standards of journalism are basically the lowest in the entire legacy press, at least in terms of giving two hoots about even the pretence of impartiality, but this joke article represents an outright declaration of war on the profession itself. No evidence, just mindlessly parroted Mandelsonian smears; no attempt to qualify those claims, just dutifully reinforced prejudices.

I mean, how can it hope to be taken seriously if it keeps on behaving like the BBC? Obviously, we can expect more of this kind of crap as the general election nears, and it should be criticised for precisely what it is: activism and cynicism, not journalism.

The Graun had better remember that the Tories will probably win that election...and that they have long memories.