Fourth Estate
George Eaton's take on the latest comment from left and right
What was easyJet thinking?
Posted by George Eaton - 20 November 2009 16:08
A case of remarkable wickedness or remarkable stupidity
In what must be one of the outstanding journalistic blunders of the year, easyJet has been forced to withdraw all copies of its in-flight magazine after complaints over a tasteless fashion shoot at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
What were they thinking? The airline has employed the classic defence of ignorance, insisting it was "not aware of the images until they appeared in ...
Tories would create 'Berlusconi's Britain'
Posted by George Eaton - 20 November 2009 15:17
"Big Bang" media revolution would be dangerous warns NUJ head
Berlusconi: a model for the Tories? Credit: Getty Images
The shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt promised a 'big bang' media revolution on the same scale as the 1986 deregulation of the City earlier this week as the Tories fleshed out their media policy.
Now the party's proposed bonfire of local media regulations has come under assault from the National Union of Journalists' president, James Doherty, who warned the changes would lead ...
Harman on the ropes
Posted by George Eaton - 20 November 2009 10:35
Will she be forced to resign?
Can she survive? Credit: Getty Images
The electorate may be increasingly used to its representatives facing criminal charges but it's still acutely embarrassing for Harriet Harman, a QC and a former law officer, to face prosecution over her involvement in a car crash in her constituency.
Senior politicians who have faced criminal charges in the past, such as Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken, have always stood down in ...
Eurosceptics won't like this...
Posted by George Eaton - 19 November 2009 13:06
EU seeks "special status" at the United Nations
EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barosso (R) and EU Parliament president Jerzy Buzek. Credit: Getty Images
The EU is pushing to be recognised by the United Nations as a quasi-state, like the Vatican and Palestine, reports the Times.
Such a move is likely to dismay Eurosceptics who view the award of observer status at the UN as another step on the road to statehood.
The proposal could also throw into doubt Britain and France's permanent seats on the UN ...
Clinton's crush on Miliband
Posted by George Eaton - 19 November 2009 09:28
Clinton tells Vogue: "he is so vibrant, vital, attractive, smart."
Clinton and Miliband: is it love? Credit: Getty Images
Remember the famously 'warm' relationship between Jack Straw and Condoleezza Rice? It's one that Hillary Clinton is hoping to emulate with David Miliband judging by her interview with Vogue.
Clinton tells the interviewer: "Well, if you saw him it would be a big crush. I mean, he is so vibrant, vital, attractive, smart. He's really a good guy. And he's so young!"
Miliband's typically ...
Is Archie Norman's appointment bad news for the Tories?
Posted by George Eaton - 18 November 2009 15:15
Could the new ITV chairman clash with his old party?
Former Tory MP Archie Norman (left) Credit: Getty Images
Over at Comment Central, Daniel Finkelstein suggests that the appointment of former Conservative MP Archie Norman as the new chairman of ITV is bad news for the Tories.
Here's why:
Because the party will need change managers to help transform public services. And there is no better change manager in Britain - as ITV will discover - than Archie Norman.
The Tory party ...
Twitter and libertarianism
Posted by George Eaton - 18 November 2009 10:14
Prospect poll on Twitter users highlights the growth of libertarianism
Twitter users are disproportionately liberal and metropolitan. Credit: Getty Images
Libertarianism is the ideology of the future judging by the new Prospect/YouGov poll on the "twitterati". The survey found that Twitter users are more concerned with civil liberties than the public at large but also that they are more likely to defend multimillion pound salaries and large bonuses.
The belief that greater police powers to tackle terrorism are more important than protecting ...
The PCC is not fit to regulate blogs
Posted by George Eaton - 17 November 2009 16:33
This discredited body would not act as an impartial regulator
Forced regulation would damage blogs. Credit: Getty Images
On Monday the alarming news emerged that Baroness Buscombe, the new chair of the Press Complaints Commission, is considering extending the PCC's remit to cover the blogosphere.
"Some of the bloggers are now creating their own ecosystems which are quite sophisticated," she told the Independent's media editor Ian Burrell. "Is the reader of those blogs assuming that it's news, and is [the ...
Cameron hasn't "closed the deal"
Posted by George Eaton - 17 November 2009 12:02
Guardian front page ignores signs of Labour comeback
The latest ICM poll offers some good news for Labour. The party has cut the Conservatives' lead by four points, rising to its highest level in an ICM poll since April.
But you wouldn't know it looking at the Guardian's front page this morning. The paper proclaims that ...
Who rules Twitter?
Posted by George Eaton - 16 November 2009 17:50
Wired explores the clashes between Twitter users and staff
There's a fascinating piece on Twitter in the latest issue of Wired highlighting the creative tension between the site's users and managers. The user-driven evolution of Twitter (responsible for innovations such as retweets and hash tags) has left the site's adherents acutely sensitive to any formal changes.
For instance, a Suggested Users List, a collection of around 200 celebrities, companies and thinkers ...
Reductio ad Stalinum
Posted by George Eaton - 16 November 2009 10:50
Boris compares the 50p tax with Stalin's campaign against the Kulaks
Boris Johnson writes today: "[T]he 50p tax is not far, in its political motive, from Stalin's assault on the kulaks."
I'm used to right-wingers trotting out the cliché that Labour wants to "tax the rich until the pips squeak" (never actually said by Denis Healey) but I hadn't anticipated a comparison with the man who pledged to "liquidate the kulaks as a ...
Boris's expenses jibe at Cameron
Posted by George Eaton - 13 November 2009 15:24
London Mayor mocks Cameron's claim for wisteria trimming
Channel 4 has just launched a smart new website on political cliques, Who Knows Who, to tie in with its screening of When Boris Met Dave on Saturday.
The site offers perhaps the fullest guide yet to the former members of the Bullingdon club, whose idea of a fun night out was memorably described by Evelyn Waugh as beating foxes with champagne ...
A good week for Gordon Brown
Posted by George Eaton - 13 November 2009 11:38
Three pieces of good news for Brown
So, despite the vehement campaign against him by Britain's biggest selling daily paper this has turned into a good week for Gordon Brown. It may have been unthinkable for Labour not to win in Glasgow North East last night, a seat they have held for 74 years, but few expected the party to win by the margin it did.
The by-election ...
Dimbleby knocked out by a bullock
Posted by George Eaton - 12 November 2009 14:43
Presenter to miss Question Time for first time in 15 years after bullock incident
The most startling headline this year? He may have been able to handle Nick Griffin but David Dimbleby has fallen foul of a bullock. For the first time since he began presenting Question Time in 1994, the avuncular Dimbleby will miss tonight's show after being knocked out by a bull on his farm in Sussex. The rather curmudgeonly John Humphrys will ...
How powerful is Gordon Brown?
Posted by George Eaton - 12 November 2009 12:17
Forbes ranks Brown at No 29 in its power list
Gordon Brown has made it to No 29 in Forbes's annual global power list. I won't quarrel with that -- Brown also appeared at 29 in our recent list of the 50 people who matter today.
It's certainly an improvement over GQ's risible list of the "100 most influential men in Britain" which put David Cameron at number one (editor Dylan ...
Mandelson bites back at the Sun
Posted by George Eaton - 11 November 2009 13:22
A virtuoso performance but Labour should end its neurotic focus on the tabloid
Lord Mandelson gave a bravura performance on the Today programme this morning, railing against the "crude politicking" of the Sun. Is he right to claim there's a "contract" between the paper and the Conservatives? Essentially, yes. As I've noted before, David Cameron's plan to freeze the television licence fee and, even more, his pledge to abolish Ofcom is remarkably convenient ...
The Sun's vulgar campaign against Brown
Posted by George Eaton - 10 November 2009 14:21
Murdoch should call off this shameful and tawdry campaign
The Sun has never handled politicians with kid gloves. During the exchange rate mechanism crisis in 1992, the then editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, famously told John Major: "I've got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I'm going to pour it all over your head." But the paper's personal campaign against Gordon Brown marks a new level ...
Murdoch: I'll sue the BBC
Posted by George Eaton - 09 November 2009 18:46
Media mogul threatens to sue the BBC for "stealing" his papers' stories
Rupert Murdoch may have indicated that News Corporation could miss its target of charging for all its news websites by next summer but in his latest interview he steps up his war on the "content kleptomaniacs" of the internet.
As well as raising the possibility that he could block Google from including his newspapers' stories in their search index, the media mogul ...
Is Labour heading for election meltdown?
Posted by George Eaton - 09 November 2009 11:36
Private polling suggests the party could be reduced to 120 MPs
Jackie Ashley's column in today's Guardian includes this remarkable detail:
Some Labour people may think I'm sounding too gloomy, but those who have been privy to recent private polling are a lot more than gloomy. This suggests that Labour could return to the Commons with just 120 MPs or thereabouts, taking the party back to 1930s territory. As ministers look for jobs ...
Autism should never be used as a political insult
Posted by George Eaton - 05 November 2009 12:41
We condemned George Osborne; we should condemn France's Europe minister, too
When George Osborne suggested that Gordon Brown could be "faintly autistic" there was justified outrage. The shadow chancellor was rebuked by Labour and Lib Dem politicians and other public figures, including Nick Hornby, who memorably remarked: "George Osborne doesn't seem to have noticed that most people over the age of eight no longer use serious and distressing disabilities as a way ...
