A CRICK GLANCE BACK

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Something I only saw out of the corner of my eye (metaphorically-speaking) on Newsnight a week or two ago was looked at full on by a blogger new to me but well worth a read:

Anything you say will be taken down...

Misconstrued, misunderstood, distorted and twisted beyond credibility.. and then used against you.

In this case I am talking about what David Cameron said in the Paxman interview for Panorama today, what Michael Crick said about it, and indeed what the press in the North East and Northern Ireland have said about it.

What David Cameron actually said was that the public sector was too large a part of the economies of several parts of the UK (In Northern Ireland the public sector accounts for 68% of GDP and in the North East 63%) and so the solution is to increase the size of the private sector. Obvious really.

However this has been turned on its head into swinging cuts in both areas. This is not what he said, meant or intended. It is a clear distortion.
Posted by Benedict White
http://aconservatives.blogspot.com/2010/04/anything-you-say-will-be-taken-down.html
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If you pop over to Not a sheep's site you'll see a scoop from Benedict that you might find very interesting...
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/05/gordon-browns-replacement-of-bank-of.html

PHOBIAS

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A Tory candidate (Philip Lardner) has been suspended from his party today for making a 'homophobic' remark on a website. Yesterday a Labour candidate (John Cowan) was suspended from his party for making an 'Islamophobic' remark on a website.
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Someone who didn't report the John Cowan story yesterday was our old friend Michael Crick. He made no mention of it on Newsnight. He did blog about it though. However, I note that he only posted about Mr Cowan at 16.08 today &, of course, he coupled the old news about Mr Cowan with the breaking news about Mr Lardner. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2010/04/latest_candidate_suspensions.html *
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So, Michael Crick didn't think Labour's Mr Cowan worth mentioning yesterday, or this morning, or early this afternoon. Yet within minutes (possibly seconds) of news breaking of a Tory candidate being suspended he rushes panting to his laptop, doubtless sending cats and kids flying in all directions, and his fingers become a blur of activity. Suddenly, he remembers Mr Cowan. Well, he could hardly not mention him if he were about to mention the errant Tory Mr Lardner!
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Another prediction: Michael Crick might mention the 'racist' John Cowan on tonight's Newsnight (a day late), but only because he will almost certainly feel the overwhelming urge to mention - and doubtless dwell on - the 'homophobic' Philip Lardner.
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UPDATE The BBC website covers both stories:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8647206.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england/8644018.stm
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Note how the Labour one features only the comments of people from the Labour Party, and highlights a Labour Party spokesman's 'anger'. The Conservative one, however, features the violently hostile views of a political opponent, Labour's Chris Bryant, and chooses to highlight them too!
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This pattern has been observed before.
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The BBC article on Mr Lardner begins: Tory election candidate Philip Lardner has been suspended for describing gay people on his website as "not normal", the party has confirmed.
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The article goes on to quote the 'offending' words (which don't describe gay people as "not normal", as the BBC alleges, only their behaviour. Can they not see the difference?)
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"As your MP I will support the rights of parents and teachers to refuse to have their children taught that homosexuality is 'normal' behaviour or an equal lifestyle choice to traditional marriage.

"I will always support the rights of homosexuals to be treated within concepts of (common sense) equality and respect, and defend their rights to choose to live the way they want in private, but I will not accept that their behaviour is 'normal' or encourage children to indulge in it.

"Toleration and understanding is one thing, but the state promotion of homosexuality is quite another."

YET ANOTHER WARK ON THE BIASED SIDE

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That "Cadbury's Law" which sounds so tasty to that BBC reporter was the main subject on last night's Newsnight, the basic gist of which can be copied and pasted from the live blog itself:

2248: Newsnight's political editor Michael Crick says Cadbury's Law will be a hard policy for the Conservatives to criticise. It's a patriotic issue - protecting UK firms from predatory foreign companies - and is likely to appeal to many traditional Tory voters, he says.
2242: "Cadbury's Law" is set to be a feature of the Labour manifesto, BBC Newsnight has learned. The policy has been prompted by the Kraft takeover of British chocolate giant Cadbury - American firm Kraft promised to keep the main factory open before the deal was agreed, but then changed its mind afterwards. Under Cadbury's Law, it would be harder for overseas takeovers of UK companies to happen - requiring two thirds of shareholders to agree, not 50% as it is now. Newsnight's economic editor Paul Mason says it's the main concession to the Unite union in the Labour manifesto.

Ah, a little Old Labour protectionism to warm the cockles of a Beeboid's heart, fire-proofed against Tory attack - according to Michael Crick! On the programme itself he called it "a very tricky issue for the Conservatives". (Guess what though? The Lib Dems support Labour on this!)
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What though of the other measure discussed in the programme - "Tory marriage plans"? Kirsty Wark turned to Crick and asked "More ideology that actual effect, or what?" In response, Crick emphasized the "symbolism" of the move, especially in trying to show "the Conservative commitment under David Cameron to civil partnerships, to gay marriage - and that's particularly important after the trouble they had only a few days ago, after Chris Graying's comments about bed and breakfasts being allowed to refuse gay couples staying." Ah, back to that again! What a surprise!
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Kirsty then turned to Paul Mason (who had earlier downplayed the importance of Unite to Labour's anti-Kraftwerk wheeze), and again asked a question from a stance hostile to the Tories' plans (this time from a feminist angle): "Is this an encouragement for one of the marriage (sic), probably the woman, to stay at home?"
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Interviewing Ed Davey of the Lib Dems, Kirsty, Newsnight's most biased interviewer, turned to the subject of the Tory marriage proposals and asked Mr Davey this testing question: "And how are we on the tax break in the Liberal Democrats then?" Mr Davey, being a Lib Dem, laid into the Tory plan with a vengeance. "Let's see how ludicrous this proposal is," he ended. "If you've been widowed, you're there in bereavement, you're going to have this take break taken away from you at that point? That surely can't be right." Any half-decent interviewer, acting at all times as devil's advocate, would then surely have felt it their obvious duty to ask the next question from a stance supportive of the Conservative position. This is Kirsty Wark though, so instead she merely echoed Ed Davey's point, and asked "And presumably the same will happen if couples split up and the the woman is left behind, she loses out as well." Well might Mr Davey have begun his reply "Absolutely!"
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Kirsty is both incompetent and deeply biased. Mere guidelines on impartiality during a general election mean nothing to her.

CRICK LIES LOW

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The most recent post on Michael Crick's blog remains his little quip about Stephen Byers not having a driving licence.
http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2010/03/crick-cuts-to-heart-of-story.html
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Newsnight's pro-Labour political editor found time to write serious, full-length posts about Lord Ashcroft recently, yet the cat seems to have got his tongue over this story.
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I wonder why.
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I see that he also took to the hills yesterday, handing over his Newsnight responsibilities to David Grossman again - after doing his little spin-job on Monday. I've noted his Macavity tendencies before, when there's trouble for Labour.
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Don't worry Michael, it's Budget Day today. You can come out of purdah and spin for the government again to your heart's content. This scandal will go away. Your colleagues are working very hard on that already. The story has already disappeared from the homepage of the BBC News website. Relax!

'NEWSNIGHT' TAKES THE FIGHT TO THE TORIES

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Thirty minutes into last night's Newsnight the programme turned to the issues raised by Dispatches (why don't the BBC have such a programme? Panorama is not in the same league these days). After telling us that Byers, Hewitt and Hoon have been suspended from the Labour Party in the wake of tonight's fresh revelations (which would doubtless have given Gordon Brown a great deal of pleasure!), Jeremy Paxman read this from his autocue: "The BBC's home affairs editor has also disclosed tonight that dozens of MPs from all major parties have broken rules requiring them to register and declare trips abroad at the expense of foreign governments". Ah yes, it's the 'they're all as bad as each other' point made whenever Labour gets itself in the mire, though strangely not made when the Conservatives are under fire. Fancy Mark Easton having something up his sleeve to pull out just as damaging news flies hard at the Labour Party (despite John Butterfill, for whom Dispatches raised a Baroness Morgan), something that hits all major parties! What a surprise!
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Cue Crick. "Amid revelations that some MPs (and a Labour peer Michael! You forgot Baroness Morgan) are open for hire like taxis, dramatic news tonight as three former members of the Labour cabinet are suspended from the party. Rarely has any party taken such strong action against three such senior figures." Yes, it's 'Labour to the rescue!' time again.
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Mr Byer's 'taxi for hire' claim gave Crick all the excuse he needed to bring up Neil Hamilton. ('They're all as bad as each other', you see).
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Byers's retraction today of those claims which could be damaging to Labour Lords Adonis and Mandelson was reported by Michael Crick as if it was to be taken at face value - 'Byers has owned up. He exaggerated. Adonis and Mandelson are in the clear, and that's that. Move along now please.' I doubt Michael Crick's tone would have been the same had a Conservative miscreant recanted!
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Crick then briefly reviewed Geoff 'Hoon Work' Hoon, Patricia Hewitt and (you could see this coming)
"the senior Tory John Butterfill". (I'd never heard of him before). What happened to Labour's Baroness Morgan though? Why did Crick not mention her starring role in Dispatches?
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Then Crick turned to Mark Easton's conveniently timed revelations about MPs and their foreign hospitalities. Labour MP Andrew Dismore and Conservative David Amess were singled out. 'They're all as bad as each other', you see. Well almost because, this being Crick, David Amess was spotlighted (rather than Mr Dismore) with an embarrassing clip and lots more criticism. Also Mr Dismore's denials of wrongdoing were quoted. As further proof of bias, here (if more proof be needed) Crick spent 16 seconds on Mr Dismore but spent 46 seconds on Mr Amess! That's Michael Crick for you!
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Jeremy Paxman then asked Peter Mandelson about the Tesco claims (briefly) and Ken Clarke about Mark Easton's Labour-saving investigation, mentioning Theresa Villiers.
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What is Newsnight? Is it merely a branch of Downing Street's Rebuttals Unit?

CRICK CUTS TO THE HEART OF THE STORY

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I don't know about you but I'm all agog to hear what Michael Crick has to say on tonight's Newsnight about Labour and the 'cash for access' scandal.
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Here's what he's written on his blog today about the story (in its entirety):

Stephen Byers notoriously spoke of himself as being like a "cab-for-hire" at £5,000 a time.

I'm not sure I'd be interested in hiring that particular cab given that during his time as transport secretary Byers caused quite a stir when it was revealed that he couldn't drive and had no driving licence.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2010/03/no_licence_to_drive.html
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THE NAPOLEAN OF BIAS

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Brown's performance at the Chilcot Inquiry was given a clean bill of health by Robin Lustig on last night's The World Tonight.
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And what did Newsnight's political editor Michael Crick make of this major story - the story of a sitting prime minister being questioned at a major public inquiry about his own role in the most controversial war for decades? We'll never know because Crick went missing in action. Like Macavity Brown during the Iraq War, Crick vanishes from any crime scene that might implicate Labour, yet he was all over Newsnight earlier in the week when the Tories were in the firing line. He doesn't mind occasionally (very occasionally) reporting gossip and trivia about Labour but anything serious, or potentially seriously damaging to Labour, and he's off!
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Instead of the Hidden Paw, we got his understudy David Grossman.
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The usual cast of characters followed, with Sir Ming Campbell being given the 'independent expert' treatment by Emily Maitlis.

GUESS WHO ABOUT GUESS WHAT?

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Michael Crick was in danger of wetting himself last night as he brought more 'fascinating' news (zzzzzz) on the Lord Ashcroft story. The 'fascinating' news was based on the Lustig interview with William Hague. "It raises all sort of questions", said Labour-supporter Crick, before raising some of them himself.
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He'll doubtless be back with more on Lord Ashcroft tonight, then tomorrow night, then next Monday night, then Tuesday night...(etc)... probably right up to polling day.

A NEVER-ENDING STORY

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Michael Crick was back at the end of last night's Newsnight discussing...guess what?...Lord Ashcroft. He wasn't reporting any fresh investigations of his own mind you, merely reporting the lead story in today's Guardian. There are more questions that need answering, apparently (though none of them seem to concern Labours non-dom donors). The Guardian is not giving up, Michael Crick is not giving up.
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THE THIRTY-NINE CRICKS

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Last night's Newsnight ended with another report from Michael Crick, who has been unusually busy this week. Crick launched a serious investigation into the Labour Party's problems with non-doms (thrusting a microphone into the face of Labour donor Lord Paul), adopting a sarcastic tone with Lord Mandelson and featuring Eric Pickles as his main 'talking head'.
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As if!!!!!
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No, Crick (of course!) did no such thing. He went Tory-chasing instead, this time pursuing them (like a German spy after Richard Hannay) through the heather and bracken to their annual Scottish conference.
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I won't dwell on this report (because it doesn't deserve the attention) beyond saying that, whether it's on his blog or on Newsnight proper, ol' Crick has been Tory-hunting - and only Tory-hunting - all week long. He's always Tory-hunting of course, but there's an election soon and he's clearly stepping up a gear.
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He'll fight, fight and fight again for the party he loves.
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CHASING CRICK BACK TO MONDAY

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Back to Monday...

Monday's Newsnight began by discussing David Cameron's attack on Gordon Brown over Brown's lamentable record on the issue of parliamentary expenses. It featured the first of the week's Tory-focused reports from our old friend Michael Crick. "'We can't go on like this' David Cameron's famous poster declared at the start of last month and indeed the Tories didn't go on as buoyantly as they did last year. January was a poor month for Mr Cameron's party, especially on the economy (was it that good for Labour either, with that worrying 0.1% growth figure which so deflated their much-built-up-to crowing campaign?) , so today he moved to what seemed much firmer ground after recent events with a very personal attack on Gordon Brown (as if Brown and his cronies haven't been continually making very personal attacks on 'superficial salesman' Cameron for years) for his handling of MPs' expenses and parliamentary reform."
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Crick then noted than Speaker Bercow had warned MPs not to discuss the cases of the three Labour MPs being prosecuted for fraud. A I'm no fan of BBC reporter Norman Smith but even he put this in context on that evening's PM: "Well initially a lot of us thought he was rapping David Cameron over the knuckles because Mr Cameron has made a lot of the running today with very personal and inflamed language..." (and I bet anti-Tory Smith was all over News 24 saying as much for some hours afterwards!), but Smith went on to report that the Speaker's office had subsequently made it plain that it was potentially prejudicial comments from Alan Johnson not David Cameron that provoked Bercow's intervention. The ever-biased Crick did not provide any such context, even though he is a senior political editor at the BBC and must surely have known it. It wouldn't do to embarrass Alan Johnson though. Much better to leave Bercow's statement hanging, context-free, in the air for Newsnight viewers to draw the false conclusion that Cameron was getting his knuckles rapped by the Squeaker. That's Crick's 'honest' reporting all over!
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At least Crick allowed a Conservative, former MP Michael Brown of The Independent, to say some supportive things about the hated Cameron, though Mr Brown also voiced some strong criticisms too - or he wouldn't have been on!! -, though he also featured an attack from Nick Clegg (who attacked Lord Ashcroft, which would have pleased Crick). Crick also very briefly mentioned that the Labour Party had dropped the lawyer who is representing the three fraud-accused Labour MPs.
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The next exhibit in this post's case against Michael Crick is this characteristic sentence: "Tomorrow MPs vote on the government's plans for a referendum to change our voting system to the Alternative Vote, which some people say would be fairer." Who says that exactly? Who are these 'some people'? Labour Party strategists? That is a biased way of putting it, glossing it in a favourable way for the government. Crick could just have easilly have said, "Tomorrow MPs vote on the government's plans for a referendum to change our voting system to the Alternative Vote, which some people say would favour the Labour Party electorally and could help Labour cling to power with Lib Dem support in the event of a hung parliament."
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Professor Robert Hazell of UCL was the academic of the day. This left-leaning prof (see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/staff/hazell.htm and http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2007/06/gordonsgo/) criticized the Conservatives on the basis of newspaper reports that they were 'wobbling' over the Wright reforms. His contribution amounted to nothing more than that.

It wouldn't be a Crick report without at least some attempt to spotlight Tory 'splits'. Here's today's example: "Activists grumble Cameron has already centralised his party in dozens of ways. Candidates complain party HQ now insists on vetting and redrafting everything they write".(what everything??).
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Crick needs to go now.
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CRICK GOES POP!

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There's a reason why Not a sheep is my favourite blogger. Following on from my previous post (prompted by a mean-spirited piece on the plight of Tory PPC Joanne Cash, gratuitously pictured left), he absolutely nails Michael Crick's latest blog-attack on the Tories in two brilliant posts today. Please have a read of them:
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/02/michael-crick-demonstrating-his.html
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/02/michael-crick-demonstrating-his_11.html
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Not a sheep proves at best incompetence on Crick's part (which is not unlikely), at worst naked bias (which is very likely). He ends with a call I wholly support:

So I hereby call for Michael Crick to either resign from his position as Newsnight's political editor or be sacked by the BBC whether for incompetence or bias.

CRICK GOES CUTIE HUNTING

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It's one of the recurrent complaints of this blog that Newsnight's Labour-supporting political editor Michael Crick uses his influential position to further his endless vendetta against the Tories, picking up on any story that might embarrass them and running with it furiously. (If you click on the label CRICK and follow things from the beginning - if you have a spare hour or two! - you'll see sackloads of evidence to back this up).The most familiar sight we see of him on Newsnight is him chasing Tories around various constituencies and sticking oversized microphones right up their noses. And he's allowed to get away with it!! If there are splits, or rows, or whiffs of scandal, or policy u-turns, anything really, you can pretty much guarantee that David Grossman will be elbowed out of the way and Crick himself will present the report on the story. He does not do any of this sort of thing with the Labour Party. That's bias.

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Last night he was in Westminster North, reporting on the 'bust-up' over 'Cameron cutie' Joanne Cash (naturally pictured above!) thrusting a microphone towards a Tory party official, pointing up 'ironies' for David Cameron, generally enjoying himself.

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When there so much to say about this tatty Labour government, why does a BBC political editor spend so much of his time and energy gunning for the main opposition? He could have investigated the government's role in the collusion in abuse of terror suspects, Brown's 'reign of terror' at Downing Street according to Labour's Lance Price, Labour's row with its own councillors over social care for the elderly,

or the secret document released because of an FOI request from Migration Watch that suggests that Labour was far from passive in allowing the megawave of immigration to hit our shores after 1997. So much to choose from. He chose instead to chase Tories.

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He's been at it for years of course, even when the Conservatives were no real threat to his beloved Labour Party. Everyone, including the Conservatives, seems to accept this without complaint, as if 'Michael will be Michael'. Why?

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CRICK JUST CAN'T HELP HIMSELF

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The prosecution of 3 Labour MPs and a Conservative peer was reported on by Michael Crick on last night's Newsnight.
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Crick is incapable of not trying to spin a story against the Conservatives (as all my long series of sometimes very long posts about him have, I believe, conclusively shown. Please click on the label Crick for much, much, much more).
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Though most of his report could hardly fail to concentrate on the charging of the Labour MPs, nor acknowledge that this would look especially bad for Labour, Michael Crick just couldn't help himself. After listing the three Labour MPs - Messers Morley, Chaytor and Devine - he turned to the Tory, Lord Hanningfield and, after outlining the allegations against him just as he had outlined the allegations against them, spun this additional sentence: "He's the most senior politician of the four, serving until today as leader of the Tories' flagship Essex Council and as a Tory frontbench spokesman in the Lords". (He just loves that word 'Tory', and can't repeat it often enough - especially when he talking scandal!)
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Technically, of course, he's correct but - as I'm sure he's very well aware - putting it like that makes it sound as if the Tory case is the most serious. Elliott Morley is far more high-profile and was a Labour minister from 1997 to 2006.
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Crick has committed far worse infringements of the laws of impartiality than this particular minor example, but even master criminals drop litter from time to time.
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MICHAEL CRICK MAKES ME SICK

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Oh Michael Crick really is a biased piece of work!
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Last night's Newsnight begins and Kirsty Wark says "As talks continue in Northern Ireland our political editor reveals the Conservatives' efforts to do their own deal in the province are becoming unstuck." Cue Crick: "Have David Cameron's plans to transform the politics of Northern Ireland been scuppered by a secret meeting held here in the headquarters of the Orange Order?"
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You rarely see Crick on Newsnight these days, but whenever he's got an investigative report to bring, why is it again and again and again about the Conservatives (or 'Torrrries', as he calls them)? Why is it always critical in tone? Why does it always highlight problems for them, or secret talks, or splits? Why is Labour, the governing party, so rarely (if ever) on the receiving end of such treatment from Michael Crick? (In the last couple of months all he's ever mentioned in this regard is electoral reform, as he did again last night - for more on which please see Not a sheep http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/02/labour-facing-defeat-so-move-goalposts.html). Why is he allowed to get away with it time after time?
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It's a sick joke that this man is political editor of Newsnight. He's a Labour Party partisan, nothing more.
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TALK OF TORY TOFFS? HERE'S CRICK!

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On the same edition of Newsnight my old friend Michael Crick was back, talking about Labour's class-war strategy in the wake of Harriet Harman's latest drivel.
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This gave him a chance to bring up the 'privileged backgrounds' of David Cameron and his colleagues, while talking to Harriet Harman, the niece of the Countess of Longford, and not mentioning hers.
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His experts were openly-Labour-supporting pollster Sir Bob Worcester and a self-confessed man of the Left, the excellent professor Peter Hennessy.
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Crick, who is as undisguised a Labour-supporter as Sir Bob, had previously made no bones about which side of the Labour argument he comes down on, as you can read here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2009/12/making_mileage_out_of_tory_tof.html

Crick himself has made a career out of the sort of anti-Tory-toff attacks favoured (for whatever cynical reasons) by Ms Harman. If Labour doesn't continue making them, he can guarantee that he will.

AN 'OUTSIDER' AT A LABOUR MEETING

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Last night's Newsnight featured a characteristically supportive report for Gordon Brown from Michael Crick, then an interview between Jeremy Paxman and former Labour deputy leader John Prescott (not pictured). This, in turn, was followed by an interview with former Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley (who shares Prescott's views) and a man Paxo introduced as "Richard Reeves, director of the independent think-tank Demos." This is a classic instance of bias by labeling:

One type of media bias has been called 'Bias by Labeling'. Part of this involves labeling a person the reporter or commentator disapproves of as, say, 'right-wing' but, conversely, not labeling someone the commentator approves of as 'left-wing' but instead, say, describing them as 'independent' or an 'expert'.
http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2009/07/bias-by-labelling-case-of-injostice.html

Demos is not part of the Labour Party but it is a centre-left think tank close to Labour. (You could say much the same about the BBC!!)
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"You're an outsider in all this," Jeremy said to Mr Reeves (a phrase Baron Hattersley took up). Well, up to a point Jeremy, up to a point.

A CHRISTMAS CRICK

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Go to the front page of the Newsnight website & you'll find Crick's Christmas Quiz. This being a Michael Crick production, of the twelve festive questions five are wholly and specifically about the Conservatives (Crick's 'Tories') - inevitably including "Which member of the shadow cabinet said Richard Dannatt was joining the Labour government as a "gimmick"?" and, just as inevitably, 'Liz Truss and the Turnip Taleban' -, one is about the Speakership (with another Tory as the embarrassing answer), one inevitably about Eton where all Tories are educated (sorry to give the answer away if you're doing the quiz!), two about the Liberals (yes, the Liberals - not the Liberal Democrats) - though one of these was prefaced by this bit of praise for a Labour big beast ("Labour's former director of communications Peter Mandelson has been a big help to Gordon Brown."), one embarrassing to the DUP (on expenses), and one (one!) about Labour (who are the government!), though this was a characteristic bit of Crickian fluff ("David Miliband's special adviser Sarah Schaefer announced she was leaving his office. Where is she going?"). Crick doesn't embarrass Labour if he can ever help it. Lastly came a Newsnight-related question: "In November, which former Newsnight political reporter became "Europe's Bill Clinton"? The answer (sorry again!) is Peter Kellner. "He is married to Baroness Ashton who is the new EU foreign affairs chief, while Bill Clinton is of course married to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton." (I hope Crick isn't implying anything else about Mr Kellner marriage with this comparison!!) The quiz reflects the extraordinary biases of this reporter.
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If you score betwee 10-12, a caption comes up saying "Well done. Perhaps it is time Crick was replaced." I couldn't agree more!

CRICK STICKS IT TO UKIP - AND THE TORIES

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Here's another gem from Michael Crick's left-wing Newsnight blog:
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'A change of leadership, and image, for UKIP'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2009/11/a_change_of_leadership_and_ima.html *
If you want superficial, chippy, class-war-based political comment you needn't bother asking John Prescott or Damian McBride. Just get Crick:

"The election of Lord Pearson of Rannoch as the new leader of UKIP may radically change public perceptions of the party. Lord Pearson's predecessor Nigel Farage has the appearance of the salesman ready to offer you a couple of cut-price bargains from inside his cashmere overcoat (i.e. a spiv?) , the cheeky chappie who relished getting up the noses of the political establishment. Lord Pearson, in contrast, must be the most upper crust figure elected to the leadership of a political party since Lord Home in 1963, much more upper class in appearance and style than David Cameron. (Who cares?) Lord Pearson, like Mr Cameron, went to Eton. (Boo!) And just like Mr Cameron at the time of his election to his party's leadership, Lord Pearson is a member of the White's, the old-fashioned gentlemen's club which still excludes women from its premises (Mr Cameron has since resigned from White's, no doubt because its stuffy image badly conflicted with his efforts to modernise the Conservative Party). (Crick's on form here, attacking both UKIP and the Tories. That's what's called a 'double whammy'). In voice and appearance Lord Pearson takes us back to a Britain of the mid-20th Century when politicians were expected to be articulate performers on TV. (Doesn't he mean 'weren't'?) And remarkably Lord Pearson is 22 years older than Mr Farage. When was the last time a party elected a leader who was that much older than his predecessor? (Has Newsnight's useless political editor forgotten Sir Ming Campbell, who replaced the much younger Charles Kennedy? He certainly has.) It will be interesting to see how Lord Pearson goes down with existing UKIP voters, and whether he encourages more defections from more traditional Conservatives of the older generation."
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Inverted snobbery, anti-UKIP and anti-Tory reporting, and on top of all that an inept grasp of recent political history - that's Michael Crick all over. Why is this idiot still in place?
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SAME OLD SAME OLD

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Attacks on the Tories and nuclear energy were to the fore on last night's Newsnight. beginning with
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Phillip Blond, 'the Red Tory', was the subject of the latest Conservative-focused report from Michael Crick. Being yet again about the Conservatives (or Tories, as they are known), it had all Crick's usual tricksy mannerisms and that contemptuous tone of voice he affects when talking about the Tories. (Does he talk in his sleep about them too? 'David Cameron...zzz...a disgrace...zzz....all Tories should be strung up...zzz...George Osborne...zzz...Gordon, you're great...zzz...Lord Ashcroft...zzz'). Crick's report featured Mr Blond himself, as well as Iain Dale. Also appearing were Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society and Neal Lawson of the left-wing think-tank Compass. This is fair enough, especially as they were further balanced by the post-Crick discussion between Jeremy Paxman, Danny Finkelstein and John Redwood. Still, Crick was up to his old trick of stirring things up: "But could Cameron soon find Blond a dangerous loose-cannon, Blond's hostility to gay marriage and adoption won't sit easily with David Cameron's support for gay rights." Michael Crick would prosper in Putin's Russia, as his attention and criticism is mostly directed at the opposition rather than the government of the day.
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Meanwhile, the programme's absurd and smug 'ethical man' Justin Rowlatt was in Finland (presumably having cycled there to keep his carbon footprint low), highlighting the cost and danger of nuclear power.
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Same old same old.
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