Meltdown

"Controversial 'right winger' Jeremy Clarkson caused outrage across the nation", screams the Daily Mail. "His comments about shooting strikers sparked a massive national debate" it continues, "we know this because he trended on twitter causing it to go into 'meltdown'."

"Celebrities, MPs and Stephen Fry queued up to express their outrage...on twitter" cries the Telegraph, "John Prescott (former deputy PM) tweeted; 'pleeease won't someone think of the teachers...', Tony Parsons tweets; 'Clarkson should be shot for saying strikers should be shot' and a former trade unionist tweets; 'Thatcher dying of cancer jokes are hilarious, but Clarkson's comments are nasty and cross the line'."

Or...

Another way of looking at it.

It's only a couple of weeks until Christmas, a BBC presenter has a new book and DVD out and appears on a BBC programme (Biased BBC could fill its blog on just the One Show alone).

Said BBC presenter then makes some mildly amusing yet knowingly controversial comments (where he was clearly joking), thus generating lots of useful and very helpful publicity.

If there's one post I would recommend today above all others it's this one from Richard North on the state of our media.

Labour's In The Red

They're about to go bankrupt, according to Prescott in today's Guardian:

The Labour party stands on the verge of bankruptcy. We are more than £20m in debt, facing a long-term decline in membership and a crisis in funding.

We are only kept alive by the Herculean work of party staff and volunteers, trade union contributions, high value donations and the goodwill of the Co-op bank.

Going bankrupt? Good. More proof that Labour couldn't identify a healthy balance sheet even if it whacked them over their heads repeatedly.

The article is clearly a pitch by Prescott to be the party's treasurer, but the ultimate outcome of these financial difficulties must be that the Labour party will remain in the union's iron grip more and more. In policy terms it'll be like New Labour never happened. Amusingly Prescott partly blames Brown for the party's financial mess it finds itself in:

We need to strengthen the role of treasurer – not only to hold the leadership to account in unnecessarily spending money we don't have, but also to make sure we have the campaign capacity to deliver.

For example, the so-called "election that never was", in 2007, cost the party £1.5m in preparation costs which could have been spent on funding the disastrous 2009 European and local elections, for which Labour ran no real campaign.

This would be the same man who attempted to defend Brown with this in 2008:

To ACLB who talked about the "Tory sea", "rearranging deckchairs" and "getting a new captain", I always find it interesting when people use maritime analogies when they talk about leadership.

But it wasn't the captain that sank the Titanic - a ship they claimed was unsinkable - it was the iceberg. The best way to avoid disaster is to manage your way around the problem.

And speaking as someone who's served on a ship and in a leadership, the best person to steer us through is a captain with the experience to navigate through these stormy financial global seas.

For me, it's all about setting the right course. That's why I've always favoured policy over personality and why I believe Gordon's the right captain.

And who voted for him to be PM despite having worked with him for years.

Prescott

Anyone who has read Prescott's biography knows that out of every page pours a hatred of Tory toffs, a disdain for authority as well as a massive chip on one's shoulder. But hey don't let that stop you joining the very establishment you rail against:



hattip: OldHolborn