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"John Prescott takes seat in House of Lords. The new peer, previously opposed to the Lords 'flunkery', justifies his move because 'there's a lot to hold the government to account for' "
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One of the obvious pluses of social media is the alternative version of an event being given air, something the MSM would only show with a big prompt to show they are still on top of a current story.
Many cases of redacting, for that is what it is, are carried out with orders from above. For example, the Gilets Jaunes movement would be all but invisible were it not for social media. The scale of a near eighteen-month old protest has never been given any coverage except on social media, as Europe-wide a 'D notice' was issued preventing anyone else from getting ideas above their station. This was not the fault of the media as they had no say in what was a covert instruction.
Yet despite small cracks opening in the media over this movement they still treat it as a minor irritant ‘last weekend in Paris’ as if the other eighteen months of protest had never happened.
There's nothing new in any of this other than the world wide web reveals another side to many stories that is in direct conflict with the mainstream news, something that pre-web we would have remained in blissful ignorance about and just accepted what was put before us.
The grooming and rape of young girls in many English towns by mainly Pakistani muslim men was a classic case that was kept under wraps for reasons that only those doing so could really believe was for the ‘good’. Chiselling out the truth took bravery and a lot of work by an individual newspaper, The Times, and a few individuals that were pilloried for telling the truth. Politicians still want it to go away for reasons various, the hypocrisy in their statements on the matter is something to behold.
It could be said that social media creates a situation where those found wanting in the truth stakes are revealed and they then revert to outright lying rather than give cogent reasons for their past inactions. It now seems this behaviour is endemic within the bubble of public servants, and yet despite the evidence that they are lying or at fault over cases in many fields, they still refuse to do the decent thing and resign or even show contrition. The web has revealed these people but failed to remove them or even stop their continuing malfeasance going forward; the bubble protects them against all.
Students have always had a rebellious side which was backed up by action of some sort or another, and if they were not rebelling they were seeing how many of them could be fitted into a Mini or a telephone box - the latter is now sadly so much last year - and they engage in some of the most ridiculous acts without any sense of shame at all. This is wonderful, the reverse ferret afterwards from so-called educated students beggars belief .
Two students at St John’s College wrote to Andrew Parker, the principal bursar, this week requesting a meeting to discuss the protesters’ demands, which are that the college “declares a climate emergency and immediately divests from fossil fuels”. They said that the college, the richest in Oxford, has £8 million of its £551 million endowment fund invested in BP and Shell.
Professor Parker responded with a provocative offer: “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice,” he wrote. “But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.”
One of the students wrote back and said he would present the proposal but he didn’t think Parker was being appropriately serious. Professor Parker responded to that note saying, “You are right that I am being provocative but I am provoking some clear thinking, I hope. It is all too easy to request others to do things that carry no personal cost to yourself. The question is whether you and others are prepared to make personal sacrifices to achieve the goals of environmental improvement (which I support as a goal).” The best part of the story is the response from the organizer of the protest:
Fergus Green, the organiser of the wider protest, who is studying for a master’s degree in physics and philosophy at Balliol College, said: “This is an inappropriate and flippant response by the bursar to what we were hoping would be a mature discussion. It’s January and it would be borderline dangerous to switch off the central heating.”
The late Tom Wolfe was brilliant in his writings exposing hypocrisy in the political classes…
As before, politicians say one thing and do another on such a daily basis it has become nigh impossible to believe anything they say. The latest cause célèbre for politicos is climate change: in the short time since the election and the beginning (?) of Brexit there has been a big hole to fill in the news agenda and climate change is the chosen hobby horse. Boris has already done a volte-face on several items - hardly surprising to us - but his sudden affection for all things green is all-consuming: probably he is keeping his green girlfriend happy while impoverishing the rest of us if it all comes to pass. I particularly liked this passage as an example of how hypocrites block out the obvious to suit their agendas…..
“We are told that to be healthy we must sacrifice, discipline ourselves, that we must effectively be athletes in training (or, in Greek, ascetics): no saturated fat, no high fructose corn syrup, stay away from carbohydrates and gluten, no GMOs or pesticide-laden crops—instead, eat large quantities of kale and sustainably-harvested saltwater fish, and you will live forever. In fact, they say, we ought to tax or outright ban certain foods that are less than healthy, and suddenly the price of your large soda goes up 12 percent. But any suggestion that other appetites might need to be curbed or controlled—that, say, the sexual appetite, which affects not only the health and well-being of the parties involved but also has the awesome potential to bring new human beings into the mix—is met with howls of “Keep the government out of my bedroom!” When asked why the government should be allowed into your kitchen but not into your bedroom, they will only scoff."
Should we be surprised? Hardly; it is meat and veg to these people; or should I have said just veg and 'got down with' the 'woke'? The recent Davos meeting was a wonderful example of a gathering of those who would have us do as they say yet not conform themselves. The speeches themselves were an example of the art of the hypocrite at its zenith: all arrived by private plane and when called on it, all said they had no other way to get there in their busy schedules. Many of course retreated to the phrase of ‘ it will be offset by buying carbon credits’ - so that is all right, then; we of course without the wealth to buy carbon credits will have to stay at home, wear hessian shirts and rub sticks together, and power will be generated by us all having personal hamster wheels. Not that anyone actually knows what carbon credits are but they sound good and the wealthy can buy them.
This is Elizabeth Warren aka Pocahontas after making a speech on climate change and urging us all to climb aboard the green bus: ‘it is real,’ she said.
You really couldn’t make it all up, or could you !
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