Excellent Freeland piece on Blair and Murdoch from today's Guardian ...

[non sociopath skin]

"Blair's remark to Murdoch shows he does not understand that simple point. He is still playing a game Downing Street should have given up after Hutton: seeking to intimidate the BBC into changing its editorial line.

The fact that BBC bias was on Blair's mind at all is the second striking aspect of Murdoch's indiscretion. What does it say about Blair that his prime reaction to seeing the images of despair and suffering from New Orleans was not to wonder about the state of modern America but to rage against the BBC? How refreshing it would have been if Blair had shared with Murdoch, privately of course, his concern that a society so rich had done so little for its poor. Or his shock that a technological and military superpower could be so slow to save its own. Or his disappointment that Hurricane Katrina's victims seemed to have been colour-coded, that those who managed to get away were white, while those left waving from rooftops or floating, lifeless, in the floodwater were black.
But no. This was not what made Blair shake his head in fury in his Delhi hotel room. What he saw on the BBC appalled him all right, but his ire was stirred by the messenger, not the message."

Rest at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1574785,00.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Just thinking of this:

"Next week at the party conference he will get a standing ovation, as out of reach as an American second-term president - there is no realistic way of getting rid of him."

Wouldn't it be great if some Labour people did boo him? We know that some of them can't wait to be rid of him - maybe not many MPs will stick their neck out, but surely some of the delegates could do it without ruingin their careers?

[WearyOne]

2. great piece by Freeland !

[Briar]

3. More...

"So we know that Blair is solicitous to Murdoch, to the point of subservience. That is all of a piece with a choice of friends that includes Silvio Berlusconi, the ousted the Spanish conservative José Maria Aznar and, lest we forget, George Bush. How dearly Blair wanted to add Angela Merkel to that list, his aides briefing anyone who would listen that Gerhard Schröder was history and that Merkel would carry the Blairite torch in Berlin.

"Therefore we owe Murdoch a great debt. He has given us a single sentence that says so much. It reveals a Labour prime minister whose every instinct is at odds with the movement he leads. The BBC or Fox News? He chooses Fox. The victims of Katrina or the Bush White House? His sympathies go to the White House. German Social Democrat or the Prussian Thatcher? He chooses Thatcher."

And in yesterday's Guardian there was a story reporting that he is urging Labour not to move to the left in order to compete with the LibDems. What can you say about a party of the left which knows it has moved to the right, and isn't about to do anything about it?

(Meanwhile the LIbDems are rushing like Gaddarene Swine to the right as well. Why is it that the moment a party begins to pick up votes, it is infested by suit-wearing economists and businessmen who are fanatical supporters of the free market and more solicitous of corporate interests than of those of ordinary working people?)

[RogueTrooper]

4. I would replace movement with country

"Therefore we owe Murdoch a great debt. He has given us a single sentence that says so much. It reveals a Labour prime minister whose every instinct is at odds with the movement country he leads. The BBC or Fox News? He chooses Fox. The victims of Katrina or the Bush White House? His sympathies go to the White House. German Social Democrat or the Prussian Thatcher? He chooses Thatcher."

Some of the most virulently anti-american people I know are Tories.

[non sociopath skin]

5. apologies to Mr. FreeDland for my typo!

The Skin

[Briar]

6. You sure that wasn't

a Freudian slip?

[fedsron2us]

7. The fact Murdoch hates the BBC

is one of the main reasons why I am so happy to pay the license fee. The problem for the Dirty Digger is that the sands of time are running down on him just like the rest of us. He does not have a natural successor and his media empire will probably be broken up or taken over once he has gone. I expect the BBC to outlast him. As for the picture of Blair, this story only confirms what most people already know. The fact that the Labour party are prepared to tolerate him as their leader says a lot about its decrepit state. My own view is that Blair is already starting to evaporate before our eyes. Soon he will be gone leaving only the memory of his asinine Cheshire cat smirk and a host of unsolved problems for his successor.