• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

UK politics general discussion

Plastic Person said:
Matt, you've repeatedly expressed a dislike and disinterest in the idea of drinking alcohol. Do your parents feel the same way? Just wondering why anyone would equate a series of vast, exclusive Downing Street parties with Starmer having a pint with his lunch one day.

I think millions of people have bent the rules over the past few years, but the sheer audacity and lack of accountability of the Number 10 events is on another scale entirely. Absolutely brazen.
Click to expand...
I don’t have any objection to others drinking alcohol, I just choose not to myself, and my parents certainly don’t share my desire not to drink; my disinterest in drinking certainly wasn’t down to my upbringing. I don’t think it was the drinking they had an issue with.

For clarity, they’re not Conservative supporters either; they despise both Johnson and Starmer in equal measure.

I think they felt that Starmer meeting indoors with colleagues and eating lunch was no less unreasonable than Johnson meeting with colleagues for “cheese and wine” at his work event in his garden. In fact, they felt Starmer’s was more unreasonable due to it being indoors, where the virus is known to more readily transmit, even though Starmer’s meeting was part of the work day in preparation for the local elections.

Although Johnson’s is also claimed to have been part of work, so I don’t really know.
 
I think the timing is important, 2020 was very different to 2021. Yes in April meeting indoors was not allowed but from 17 May 2021 restrictions were eased. Whereas in 2020 we were in lockdown through to July.

I think people like your parents who are clutching at them being similar aren't looking at the bigger picture and the amount of socialising that seems to have been alleged at Downing Street. It seems to have happened multiple times during both 2020 and 2021 lockdowns.
 
It says a lot about the media in this country that when we have a PM that's covered in sleeze, with multiple breaches of Covid regulations under his watch and a PM that tries to lie his way out of it, that the right wing media regurgitate a story about Starmer that they first published in May last year.
 
Also we don't know the full context of the picture with Starmer. it's not likely to be a photo and also wasn't during the height of toughest lockdown restrictions. It also didn't happen the night of the funeral of Prince Philip which just goes in the face of the queen. The PM has done a lot worse than Starmer having literally one drink with his staff rather than several huge parties. Like @Alsty said it really does demonstrate the quality of the media when they went searching through the archives to find something to call Kier Starmer a hypocrite. The media really seem to have it out for Starmer and I'm afraid to say it's probably working.
 
Interestingly, it would appear that the recent happenings in Downing Street have played into Keir Starmer’s hands very nicely if Electoral Calculus’ most recent poll is anything to go by: https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html

Their most recent opinion poll (a poll done every month) predicts that if a GE was held tomorrow, Labour would win 308 seats, while the Conservatives would win 247 seats. They also say that the chances of a Conservative majority are currently only 7%, with “Labour majority” and “Labour minority” cited as the most likely options, with Labour majority having a 44% chance and a Labour minority having a 43% chance.
 
I think the difference is Kier appears to be having a beer in an office, so within a work context. You can argue whether alcohol at work is reasonable and I suspect that’s a broader debate but in Downing Street people were invited to an event.

If there had been a beer or two in the evening in the Downing Street office during work I suspect it wouldn’t have got traction. It’s the fact these were invite events where no work was clearly taking place. The major issue however is the lies to protect it, Kier just explained the situation factually and the media struggled to make much more hay, Johnson lied about it all. I don’t like the PM but if he had said “sorry, this did happen and it’s an error of judgement” it would have been over and done with in a day. Instead he lied about his involvement and lying to parliament breaks the ministerial code.
 
While it's clear Starmer and mostly likely a number of MPs have broken or at least bent the rules, comparing it to the numerous breaches and lies the PM has told, particularly in the last week, is like comparing apples and oranges.

Amid the circus at PMQs today, it was announced all restrictions will be lifted next week and from March 24 (possibly earlier) it will no longer be a legal requirement to isolate. It is beginning to feel like we're close to the end of this nightmare. Let's hope travel restrictions continue to ease and we can all have a well earned holiday soon, I bloody need it!
 
Danza91 said:
While it's clear Starmer and mostly likely a number of MPs have broken or at least bent the rules, comparing it to the numerous breaches and lies the PM has told, particularly in the last week, is like comparing apples and oranges.

Amid the circus at PMQs today, it was announced all restrictions will be lifted next week and from March 24 (possibly earlier) it will no longer be a legal requirement to isolate. It is beginning to feel like we're close to the end of this nightmare. Let's hope travel restrictions continue to ease and we can all have a well earned holiday soon, I bloody need it!
Click to expand...

Lots of dead cats in Parliament today.
 
@Matt N - can I suggest you watch the clip from BBC Sunday Morning, where Sophie Raworth challenged KS on said image. The Daily Mail, the most hard right paper in the country, were the only one to go with this non-story on the front cover (hardly surprising) - and KS explains it clearly. Indeed, at points you can tell he's literally trying hard not to laugh - the accusations are so ridiculous.

Watch from 52:30
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0013mkw/sunday-morning-16012022
 
Last edited:
AstroDan said:
@Matt N - can I suggest you watch the clip from BBC Sunday Morning, where Sophie Raworth challenged KS on said image. The Daily Mail, the most hard right paper in the country, were the only one to go with this non-story on the front cover (hardly surprising) - and KS explains it clearly. Indeed, at points you can tell he's literally trying hard not to laugh - the accusations are so ridiculous.

Watch from 52:30
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0013mkw/sunday-morning-16012022
Click to expand...
That was actually where my parents saw KS’ supposed rule-breaking, and I did see him do the explanation. They thought Raworth was right to challenge him, and that KS was equally guilty as Johnson if not more so.

I personally thought KS’ defence was very reasonable, and I certainly trust him, but I asked as I did think my parents might have a point, to an extent.

You’ve all made this make sense to me, though; I now understand why people are far more angry with Johnson than with Starmer.
 
AstroDan said:
You need to keep in mind it is the Daily Mail that have posted these images. The Daily Mail are the most hard right, anti-Labour, pro-Tory paper in the country.
Click to expand...
Did no other news outlet post them?

Also, I never knew papers had biases… I thought they were all meant to be fairly unbiased? The BBC is unbiased, anyway.
 
Matt N said:
Did no other news outlet post them?

Also, I never knew papers had biases… I thought they were all meant to be fairly unbiased? The BBC is unbiased, anyway.
Click to expand...

Good lord ,Matt. Papers are anything but unbiased! There are hard right, soft right, soft left and left leaning papers. The Mail is probably the most extreme of the bunch, though. The whole reason we have things like Brexit is because the likes of the Mail promoted it to the hilt! They hate anybody who isn't "normal".

Other news outlets may have posted them, certainly commented on them, but the Mail went for it front-and-centre, whilst other papers were focused on the Boris Johnson stuff.
 
AstroDan said:
Good lord ,Matt. Papers are anything but unbiased! There are hard right, soft right, soft left and left leaning papers. The Mail is probably the most extreme of the bunch, though. The whole reason we have things like Brexit is because the likes of the Mail promoted it to the hilt! They hate anybody who isn't "normal".
Click to expand...
Come to think of it, I do remember reading Brexit articles on The Express once, and I noticed that any win for the EU in the negotiations had a very negative headline, whereas any win for Boris/the UK had a very positive headline... I'm guessing The Express is either right-leaning or supports the Conservatives?
 
tayspru said:
Oh Matt you sweet Summer child

The BBC hasn’t been impartial for a very long time
Click to expand...
All broadcast media news *must* be impartial: Section five: Due impartiality and due accuracy - Ofcom

The same is not true of other news outlets, including newspapers.

Note that unbiased and impartial are not direct synonyms - hence GB News being a thing.

As a rule of thumb one should assume that any media they consume is subject to some form of bias and do as good a job as they can to decipher fact from opinion or conjecture. The Daily Mail will not help you on that mission.
 
Sorry to go off on a slight tangent here, but what actually is GB News, and has anyone here watched it?

All I really know about it is that numerous former BBC anchors, like Andrew Neil and Simon McCoy, moved over there, but other than that I don't know much... what differentiates it from the other news channels?
 
Matt N said:
Sorry to go off on a slight tangent here, but what actually is GB News, and has anyone here watched it?

All I really know about it is that numerous former BBC anchors, like Andrew Neil and Simon McCoy, moved over there, but other than that I don't know much... what differentiates it from the other news channels?
Click to expand...
It's not much like a news channel at all, it's more like talk radio but in vision.
 
WillPS said:
It's not much like a news channel at all, it's more like talk radio but in vision.
Click to expand...
So it's effectively more like a talk show about current affairs, kind of like Have I Got News For You and the like (but less satirical than HIGNFY)?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top