[Oldmanmatt]

I realised today, there is an almost total lack of banners, posters, stickers  or flags, for any party; on display around Torquay.

Even my ‘Kipper neighbours, whose cottage usually turns purple around any sort of election (and I was expecting It to turn a light blue) remains drab and unadorned.
(Ironically, that Septu(or possibly Octo)genarian couple, consist of a well spoken fellow and his frail French wife. No British passport)...

There’s no enthusiasm for this election.

[TobyD]

I had a bit of a crisis about this election this morning. I think the best case scenario is a hung parliament, most likely a small improved Tory majority and the worst case a thumping majority. Either way I find the whole thing profoundly depressing;

Up to this point I completely agree with you. Before 2016 did all these people really wake up every morning and think "I can't believe we're still in the EU, I'm really annoyed"? I despair that people place that as higher than economic prosperity

[TobyD]

I realised today, there is an almost total lack of banners, posters, stickers  or flags, for any party; on display around Torquay.

Even my ‘Kipper neighbours, whose cottage usually turns purple around any sort of election (and I was expecting It to turn a light blue) remains drab and unadorned.
(Ironically, that Septu(or possibly Octo)genarian couple, consist of a well spoken fellow and his frail French wife. No British passport)...

There’s no enthusiasm for this election.

I don't know, all the activists are probably busy sharing memes and fake fact checking sites instead

[Offwidth]

What they can’t predict is who will be motivated to get out and vote. We could also go into who owns the main polling companies that are published and quoted by MSM too and question their impartiality.  In short don’t trust the polls too much.

So what exactly are the incentives involved for the polling companies to produce inaccurate results? Do they get more clients from being wrong? And what exactly are the mechanisms - do they employ good statisticians and then pay them to fiddle the figures? Where does the cheat occur and why has no one blown the whistle yet?

Or I could wield Occam's Razor and conclude that the average Corbyn Labour activist is paranoid and enjoys denying reality.

I certainly don't think the main polsters have dishonest aims. The media, on interpreting what the polls indicate, sure do at times though, and Labour always bear the brunt of that.

An old 2017 BBC article blames polsters overcompensating for the errors of the previous election.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40265714

I think the current polls are likely inaccurate in overstating the tory lead due to the complexity of key local marginal seats and due to the decision of the Brexit party: as they didn't stand against tories most safe tory seats will now gain bigger majorities.... but the tories need to win in around 40 Labour marginals with Brexit standing. Other good news for Labour is young votor registration seems to be higher again this time (and polls always have larger error bars for the youth vote as its harder to get ordinary non aligned young people to respond).

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/31/surge-young-people-registering-to-vote-general-election

[Offwidth]

Pro Boris BBC editing?!

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/bbc-caught-up-in-another-editing-scandal/24/11/

[teestub]

Can we can it with the BBC bashing? As other have noted both Labour and Conservative supporters think it’s biased in the other direction which suggests relative impartiality.

[TobyD]

Can we can it with the BBC bashing? As other have noted both Labour and Conservative supporters think it’s biased in the other direction which suggests relative impartiality.

I totally agree. It's also fundamentally highly unlikely to have any grain of truth. News is repeated, re edited and re reported any numbers to times a day. Stuff like this is always just going to be someone in an editing room trying to do their job and making a minor slip up. If anyone really thinks there is a vast corporate conspiracy, which strongarms every editing meeting in the BBC in London, Salford and across their global news network, they might want to consider how that might be accomplished, how all those staff are indoctrinated, and then how likely that is really.

[Offwidth]

 

Can we can it with the BBC bashing? As other have noted both Labour and Conservative supporters think it’s biased in the other direction which suggests relative impartiality.

I totally agree. It's also fundamentally highly unlikely to have any grain of truth. News is repeated, re edited and re reported any numbers to times a day. Stuff like this is always just going to be someone in an editing room trying to do their job and making a minor slip up. If anyone really thinks there is a vast corporate conspiracy, which strongarms every editing meeting in the BBC in London, Salford and across their global news network, they might want to consider how that might be accomplished, how all those staff are indoctrinated, and then how likely that is really.

Many journalists have pretty open about how bias comes into media. As a centrist I care very much that Boris gets an easy ride on the BBC time and time again. If someone lies, as Boris does all the time,  good  journalists should always call it out. If someone has sane evidence based opinion, they don't need a tin hat nutter to speak for the other side ' in balance' as the BBC have been guilty of in the past on Climate change and other discussions. I think the BBC is the best state broadcaster in the world but it doesn't stay that way by dismissing real evidence of problems as just tit for tat in political campaigning.

[tomtom]

I think the BBC is fair game here Tim. Pretty much what Offwidth said. It’s what the BBC don’t do that other national news channels do... read how sky vs bbc called out the Tory twitter title scam - and today the phoney 50k nurses story.

[teestub]

I’m sure there are counter examples of where they have given Corbyn and allies an easy time etc. that I’m not going to try and dig out. The point I was trying to make is that they are there or thereabouts in terms of neutrality on political stories (as far as I can tell) and when Labour activists complain about their coverage it just feels like they are lining the BBC up for the blame when Labour don’t win.

They got climate science balance wrong and have since changed their stance on this, giving Nigel Lawson a lot more spare time!

Maybe you could have a journalism bias thread for these sort of reports?

[Duma]

I’m sure there are counter examples of where they have given Corbyn and allies an easy time etc. that I’m not going to try and dig out.

What an unmitigated crock of shit

[Nigel]

I’m sure there are counter examples of where they have given Corbyn and allies an easy time etc. that I’m not going to try and dig out.

What an unmitigated crock of shit

Agreed. Citation needed! Good luck

[teestub]

Those sort of articles would lurk in the bits of the internet I’d rather not visit! 

So you don’t think conversations similar to these but in mirror image are happening on majority brexit supporting, right leaning parts of the internet? Or are they just wrong about perceived BBC bias in favour of Labour, whereas ‘we’ (as a site) are correct regarding bias in favour of Tories?

I’m genuinely interested as I don’t watch the news.

[Will Hunt]

It's not hard to find. Just type "BBC left wing bias" into Google. Links from the first page of results are below. Plenty more to go at in the other 2m results, I'm sure.
I'm not saying that these articles are right or written by people that I like, but the right have been complaining about BBC bias against them for decades.

Thatcher later said: "I have fought three elections against the BBC and don't want to fight another against it."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/john-humphrys-radio-4-retires-bbc-bias-left-wing-liberal-today-programme-a9114711.html

In the early afternoon of Sunday 12 May 2019, Nigel Farage, still feeling agitated, went on Twitter. “We are not just fighting the political class, but the BBC too,” he told his more than 1.3 million followers. Earlier, he had called the BBC the “enemy”.

https://biasedbbc.org/quotes-of-shame/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8772961/bbc-spreading-fake-news/

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/08/02/the-bbc-is-failing-in-its-obligation-to-be-fair/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7716685/BBC-faces-bias-row-Boris-Johnson-confronted-hostile-audience-Question-Time.html

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1144039/jeremy-hunt-bbc-bias-tory-hustings-birmingham-boris-johnson

[abarro81]

Is part of the issue that we lump the whole BBC together? So Today might be quite neutral, QT producers may have a penchant for left-wing heavy audiences and the editor of the 1pm news clearly is a hardcore Tory or a dumbass..?

[Nigel]

Check out the guardian headline story right now. For historical purposes, this is it:

BBC admits 'mistake' in editing out laughter at Johnson in TV debate

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/25/bbc-admits-mistake-in-editing-out-laughter-at-johnson-in-tv-debate?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

[Offwidth]

A thoughtful article on Labour grassroots campaigning...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/26/on-the-doorstep-labour-faces-the-question-who-do-you-speak-for

[Oldmanmatt]

I’ve been off the media wagon for a day or so.

Chief Rabbi’s done Corbyn a solid, hasn’t he?

That is to say, he’s shoved a large, solid (and quite spiky) dildo, up Labour’s rectum.

[Offwidth]

Nothing new there:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/04/03/chief-rabbi-has-grave-concerns-jeremy-corbyns-handling-anti/

As a regular critic of the way Labour have handled antisemitism I see this latest intervention as several steps too far. The tories are much dirtier in their history of racism (including the odd anti-semite) and in recent times have been even worse than Labour in the extent of racism and in the failure to tackle it.  Church leaders should call out all racism and he should have at least criticised the tories as well.

[tommytwotone]

Are we back to "our racists aren't as bad as the other lot's racists" again?

Not really a good look is it?

[Will Hunt]

It is pertinent that the Tories are almost certainly more institutionally racist than Labour. Baroness Warsi was slating her own party on this issue a matter of weeks ago. Stories about Tory racism don't seem to gain the same traction as stories of Labour racism - simply because they are less interesting.
"The Conservative party is institutionally racist? Well, yeah, duh! Labour? Aren't they supposed to be avowedly anti-racist?"

[mrjonathanr]

As a regular critic of the way Labour have handled antisemitism I see this latest intervention as several steps too far.

How confident are you in telling the Chief Rabbi whether his anxieties are acceptable Offwidth? Are you sure you’ve called that right?High-handedness in knowing better is the key characteristic of the attitudes expressed by Chris Williamson, Corbyn and the broader leadership.

Church leaders should call out all racism and he should have at least criticised the tories as well.

I don’t disagree with the seriousness of the problem in the Tory Party, but the Chief Rabbi represents the Jewish community and Welby is expressing his agreement- all perfectly correct.


Guardian and BBC write-ups below:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50552068

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/26/justin-welby-chief-rabbi-labour-antisemitism

[Oldmanmatt]

I said this earlier, but again...

The Tory philosophy incorporates the racist and xenophobic extremes, we all know that, they know that, they just don’t acknowledge it or at most pay lip service to fixing “the problem”. They know full well that this will only put off a few on the left of the party and people that wouldn’t vote Tory anyway.

Labour cannot be the same. By positioning itself as the antithesis of the Tory ideal, it must gather into it’s fold all the minorities alienated by the right. Therefore, fairly or not, it will be held to a higher standard by progressives and subject to charges of hypocrisy from the right.

The right is the right. Nice is not really in their lexicon. It’s not meant to be, individual responsibility is the expected standard and “Freezzzzpppeeeachh” the mask to allow bigotry (after all, they’re just going to say that it was all just “playing devil’s advocate” if they get called out).

[TobyD]

As a regular critic of the way Labour have handled antisemitism I see this latest intervention as several steps too far.

How confident are you in telling the Chief Rabbi whether his anxieties are acceptable Offwidth? Are you sure you’ve called that right?High-handedness in knowing better is the key characteristic of the attitudes expressed by Chris Williamson, Corbyn and the broader leadership.

Church leaders should call out all racism and he should have at least criticised the tories as well.

I don’t disagree with the seriousness of the problem in the Tory Party, but the Chief Rabbi represents the Jewish community and Welby is expressing his agreement- all perfectly correct.


Guardian and BBC write-ups below:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50552068

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/26/justin-welby-chief-rabbi-labour-antisemitism

I don't think he's gone too far. He hasn't actually urged people not to vote Labour explicitly.
It is a fact, that if Labour really had wanted to deal with this, they could have done. The example of kicking Mandleson straight out for saying he'd vote LD, but procrastinating endlessly about alleged anti-Semitism, the lack of transparency in their processes, the endless 'slip ups' or 'mistakes' of which a few would have been, but it has to be said that after a point you have to wonder.

[TobyD]

It's also been widely reported that Heseltine has said that people should vote LD or Independent MP, it's remarkable that several former PMs have explicitly said that the party they used to lead is unfit to govern: Major, Brown, Blair.... May will never say anything now, but I'm pretty sure she's not too happy about Johnson's character. A senior judge was interviewed on five live today by Emma Barnett saying that he had grave concern about Johnson's personal integrity and propensity for risk taking.

None of which fills you with hope does it? Rachel Sylvester, normally quite supportive of the conservatives writes today that a minority Labour administration would be a good outcome as none of the bonkers policies would get through as they'd be moderated by other parties, whereas a Conservative majority basically means hard Brexit or no deal.