by John Ward
A media set batting for The Other Lot is not as impregnable as you might think. The Slog offers a telling example.
Flitting across some examples of what I call ‘mainstream media blind eye’ syndrome over the last few days, I found myself thinking constantly of the One in Eight resistance to creeping technocratic dictatorship. One reads yet another “news story” where the Elephant defaecating noisily in the room is being studiously ignored by the Press title, one shakes the head, and mutters, “For God’s sake, get a grip”.
A classic example this morning is that of the Telegraph’s two pieces about the need to make up the massive shortfall of Treasury income created by the suspiciously ludicrous overreaction to the emergence of Covid19. On the news pages – ‘Tory grandees join backlash against national insurance rises’ – Philip (now Lord) Hammond of Wriggly Snakes, the Chancellor rapidly purged by Theresa May – piles in with this overblown epic: (my emphases)
“I think that if the Government were to go ahead with the proposed increase in National Insurance contributions, breaking a manifesto commitment in order to underwrite the care costs of older people with homes, I think that would provoke a significant backlash….I think it would cause the Government – the Conservative Party – very significant damage.”
Well tally-ho Hamshank old boy, but define (and preferably quantify) the damaging backlash thing. Boris has a majority of 80 MPs: so when that pushback reaches 80, let us know. In the meantime, the perspective taken by the Telegraph is a non-story. Tory backbenchers in general (and the increasingly bloated 1922 Group leader “Sir” Graham Brady) have a consistent record of making noise, fuss and hot air but not a lot else.
Now let’s consider the real story: the NI rises will not only hit corporate profits and have an inflationary effect, they will boost unemployment and generally slow the economy down. However, the potty £230 billion splurge of Covid expenditure waste made drastic action unavoidable….a point made at The Slog (and ignored universally) as long ago as October 2020.
The Torygraph includes a startling tax-take graph that shows exactly how little genuine Conservatism resides where Johnson’s soul should be: basically, UK tax is now back up to the 1950 level that followed five years of Labour’s struggle to pay off war debt and create the Welfare State.
But – as ever – the Elephant’s trumps off-camera go unremarked. We are now being forced to make the first down-payment on the Great Reset; this will see us treading water, borrowing more, facing rampant inflation, and spending more time with the IMF. It’s yet another step towards dependence upon global monopolist greed: every Nation State must fail for the NWO nutjob plan to work.
That is the story here.
The Times is, in turn, full of zero carbon output rationales and electric vehicle target articles – the Green-modelled drivel that will cripple Britain further. The missing economic reality or climate data interrogation is notable on the scale of a roaring Lion* revealing its complete absence of teeth.
*No more animal metaphors. Scout’s honour.
When it comes to those institutions that have turned their backs on We The People, there comes a point in every case of desertion when one has to start targeting its Achilles Heel. In most instances, the State has already long ago taken steps to stop citizens from taking such action: it is a criminal offence in most Western countries these days, for example, to incite people to non-payment of tax. Equally, while in the UK advertising ‘truth’ is very heavily regulated by the ASA, political advertising and televised Party broadcasts are exempt. Imagine that.
But the MSM is more exposed to potential consumer pressure than most. I keep on pushing this One in Eight identity because – in the UK for example – it’s 8.7 million people. That is a lot of power when you consider that today’s mass media are now largely online: one’s not dealing with an Establishment-favouring archaic constituency system here – we are all 2-3 clicks away from withdrawing our subscriptions.
Here’s a somewhat blunt instrument of analysis to make my point: the Telegraph has around 350,000 paper readers and 600,000 digital subcribers. Even ignoring the paper edition entirely, only one in fourteen of the one in eight would be required to unsubscribe….in orer to give the Sark Tendency a serious income and advertiser problem.
In the coming months, leveraging pushback is going to be vital. We could do a lot worse than start demanding a Fourth Estate looking after the Demos Estate as opposed to the Secret Unelected State.