blogs which are, generally speaking, hostile and... basically see their job as every day exposing how venal, stupid, mendacious politicians are.
To which the obvious response is: as so many of our politicians spend their time doing venal, stupid and mendacious things, wouldn't bloggers be liars if they didn't expose this?
Taylor implicates the media as well, which is apparently a "conspiracy to maintain the population in a perpetual state of self-righteous rage." [I always thought that was the role that the British transport system was designed to play, but I guess it's good to have the media as backup in case the trains do run on time.]
But the real enemy is the bloggers, who are apparently encouraging citizens to participate in "a shrill discourse of demands" and adding to the "growing, incommensurate nature of the demands being made on government." Apparently the public doesn't understand the "trade-offs" that have to be made by politicians.
Whose fault is that, Mr Taylor? Bloggers didn't write the 2005 Labour Manifesto; you did. I didn't find a whole lot of information about the difficult trade-offs facing the public in there. Just an avalanche of promises to be all things to all people; and a set of policies which, when they existed, were virtually interchangeable with what was on offer from the Tories and the Lib Dems. Peter Oborne exposed this brilliantly during the election campaign with his documentary Why Politicians Can't Tell the Truth.
If politicians and their advisers treat the public like laboratory rats, a good proportion of the public will comply with the experiment through deference, ignorance or apathy. If blogs, or even some sections of the media, are reducing the proportion of lab rats among the public , then that is surely damn good news. If we are not extremely demanding of our politicians, they are likely to run the system for their benefit, not ours. Matthew Taylor appears to have contempt for the public, thinly disguised as a swipe at the commentators.
The quote that made me laugh most was that the "net-head" culture was rooted in libertarianism and anti-establishment attitudes. Newsflash for Mr Taylor: not all critics of the regime are libertarians!! Not by a f***ing long stretch. And when the establishment starts doing something right, I'll gladly support it. Which may be about to begin now you have left the building and moved to the Royal Society of Arts...
Fawkes came through with another interesting post today on the bizarre new Tory "Sort It" campaign on debt. "The product of a coke-crazed ad exec's inspired idea thought up after lunch in Soho" - great line. I was beginning to really like the blog. Then I read the comments on his post about the Women2Win reception at Millbank tonight and reality reasserted itself... is there just one sad misogynist wanker pretending to be all these Tories making comment posts, or are there really about 20 of them?
3 comments:
Is the essence of Taylor's complaint that there's a section of the media that doesn't, actually, need to concern itself with the risk of damaging relationships with politicians, isn't dependent on access to Tony's private briefings, and as such can't be controlled?
I think that's a good way of putting it, yes.
After a communications blackout caused by relocation, This post brings me back into the Arena.
Quite agree with almost all of what is said here. My only slight criticism is that you don't hit the guy even harder. One 'essential trade-off' is no doubt the retention of inflation linked final-salary pension schemes for the non-productive public sector whilst presiding over their virtual destruction in the private. Unquestionably another 'essential trade-off' is the recruitment of 4 to 5 million from the EC accession states to plug skill gaps caused by 5 decades of left-wing control of the education system. I guess we're blessed to have people like this devising strategies for the government of the nation!
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