Friday 19 October 2012

Political Crapbook

I had an email today from a reader querying the link in my blogroll to the lying blogger Political Scrapbook.

A fair point given my previous criticism - so I would like to confirm that my blogroll isn't necessarily a sign of endorsement - I link to a number of sites I don't agree with partly out of interest (know your enemy) and partly because PS (laughably) is an award nominated blog - thus it's one to keep an eye on. On reflection however I'm inclined to separate out my blogroll accordingly between blogs I like and those that are of 'interest'.

My reader's concerns regarding PS are fully justified and ones I agree with: I've highlighted its deception before, it has a habit of quoting private emails out of context and according to the Spectator today it's at it again (my emphasis):
Political Scrapbook ran a post yesterday headlined ‘EX-CHAIRMAN OF POLICY EXCHANGE SAYS SAVILE SHOULD KEEP HIS KNIGHTHOOD’, though the headline now seems to have changed....
[Charles Moore's quote] is not a mis-quote. Strictly, it is accurate. But it does seem to be almost deliberately missing the point that Charles was trying to make...
I hope you’ll agree having read the whole item that the idea Charles is defending Savile is absurd. Instead, he is making an important argument about how everyone crawled to this DJ when he was perceived to have power and how stripping him of his knighthood would be a way for the establishment to absolve itself of having being so uncurious about the rumours about him. This might seem like a small thing to get upset about. But it is this gotcha attitude that is doing so much to dumb down public debate in this country.

PS is a blogger that one needs to keep taking screen prints of, so often does it silently change its posts and headlines. Yet despite its very liberal use of the facts - modelling itself as a left-wing version of Guido Fawkes - it is a blogger that is 'approved' by the establishment. So we end up with a faux disagreement between 'left and right' but the outcome for the rest of us is precisely the same.

I despair at tribal politics I really do, that it causes the likes of PS to distort facts as they see fit because the ends justify the means- like Left Foot Forward (so-called evidence based blogging) which said this:
The House of Commons Library states that only 9.1 per cent of UK laws stem from the EU.
The report referred to statutory instruments only, not primary legislation nor EU regulations which are directly applicable nor other factors - another, quite frankly, lie.

In light of such disdain for facts in comfort of tribalism one wonders why one bothers with blogging, but I suppose keep trying we must...

2 comments:

  1. I have some links to the opposition for much the same reasons. Unity for example is a good read and is always thought provoking even if I don't always agree.

    I have separated them on the blog roll though.

    PS - the Google catchpa id bloody impossible. This is the third attempt to make sense of them.

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  2. Yeah agree about a separate blog roll it's a pain though...will mean I have to do some housekeeping.

    Sorry about the catchpa bit, they've appeared to have recently changed it and on other blogger sites I've had the same problem. It's a bit of a balancing act...removing it means lots of spam but keeping it means making it more difficult to post comments.

    I'll give it another go at removing it and see how I get on...

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