It gets very interesting from here. In the same hour as Gordon Brown, upset, called Murdoch a liar for saying he gave permission to put on the Sun front page the medical details of his dying baby son, Rupert’s principal writer here Dennis Shanahan said Labor’s vote, and Gillard’s vote, and Gillard’s position, had not changed.
The Newspoll he was writing of, last night’s, showed Labor with a hundred and twenty thousand more votes, two party preferred, than a month ago, and Gillard half a million votes ahead of Abbott and not, as she was a month ago, half a million votes behind.
Online at midnight though he said Labor’s position ‘had not improved’. In the paper this morning he changed this to ‘Julia Gillard is holding on with her fingernails, furiously trying to change Labor’s vote’ and her approval ‘had not changed’ though it was up by a quarter of million votes from a fortnight ago, three quarters of a million from a month ago.
Lies upon lies upon lies, as Gordon Brown averred, near tears. From the man who brought you the Hitler Diaries, the true facts, the real true numerical facts, of how Australia is voting. No mention, of course (of course), was made of the effect of a holiday weekend on the Labor vote, or what the 6 percent ‘uncommitted’ might forebode. So although my figures in the article below were wrong the intended political effect, not of the figures printed, but of the interpretation, the Shanahan interpretation, is the same.
Gillard is ‘hanging on by her fingernails’, though half a million more people want her as Prime Minister than want Tony Abbott, Shanahan says. ‘Forlorn hope of a turnaround’, Shanahan says, though the margin of error puts Labor, possibly, on 49.
It is actually wrong to lie like this in newspaper stories. In England it is thought wrong for a newspaper to misinterpret things and so strive to change the nation’s politics and the nation’s future and Murdoch has been found by the Mother of Parliaments to be an ‘unfit person’ for doing this. Here, down here, down here in Australia, it happens every day.
Now, it seems, the wrong hooker put her hand up against Craig there is no search for another, and the whole brouhaha has fallen silent; if it’s helping Craig not hurting him, and not bringing down the government, or threatening to, this exciting, absorbing, sexy detective story — who was the mystery woman — is wound up; silenced; on hold; in turnaround. No more.
And these figures …
Well, they show, really, Labor on 48, because the Labor-leaning vote was on holidays and no mobiles were rung. And the poll is being used to bring Labor down. Though on any reading it shows Labor doing better and better, three quarters of a million votes better than on Anzac Day — another holiday weekend — but not, in Shanahan’s view, improving. Stuck. Enmired. Holding on by its fingernails.
‘Lies, damned lies, and statistics’ was Harry Truman’s formula.
And once again we see Murdoch’s big lies, and statistics.
Name:
Once again, Bob, you are the only person in the country to have reached this conclusion about the poll, which has been read and analysed by hundreds of political commentators and advisors.
Does that make you feel proud?
Or, does it make you wonder whether you just might be wrong?
What figures did I get wrong?
Say which ones.
Pretty well all of them, it seems to me.
The Newspoll has never been very different to the others, which have no connection to Murdoch, so I reckon we should accept it as being close to the truth.
Anyway, why are Labor voters more likely to be away and more likely no to have landlines?
Please, talk to someone who understands all this stuff.
You are beclowning yourself.
Or is that what you intend?
Say which figures are wrong.
Reader2, you really ought to get out more.
Bob is right.
Instead of bursting into print and parroting the the Murdoch line check the data for yourself.
A shill like performance from Shanahan.
Talking of Brown (Gordon, not Bob) in his evidence yesterday he said that he never plotted or briefed against Blair.
No one in the UK, with the possible, though not certain exception of Mrs Brown, believes this.
So you know everyone in the UK?
Funny, just at this moment I’m reading the Torygraph, no friend of Gordon Brown, and they don’t say anything of the kind.
Perhaps they don’t have your contacts.
“Perhaps they don’t have your contacts”
Chris, I say to you and anyone else who is interested, the Leveson inquiry has an invaluable web site with all the transcripts placed online soon after the evidence is given.
It is a wonderful (and permanent) archive and only shows you what might have been in Australia if the Finkelstein sham was done properly.
http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/
Yes, read it thanks.
I agree about the Finkelstein debacle.
“that he never plotted or briefed against Blair..”
The other Leveson evidence shows that Brown is ….er….mistaken/has memory failure/ (that’s it, maybe) .
I forgot to add, and was aided and abetted by the man who The Sun called a ‘tub of lard’ – alluding to his complete using up of a 5,000 pound food allowance in one year – one Tom Watson MP, leader of the “Curry House Plot” against Blair.
What does that have to do with the story of his dying baby son?
Is there a politician in history who did not deny he was plotting against his leader when he was?
What are you saying? That he gave Murdoch permission to devastate his wife, still breast-feeding the doomed little boy, by publishing those details?
Are you saying that?
Please answer this.
No, I said nothing about Brown’s son.
If by your second paragraph you mean “Is there a politician in history who was not a liar?”, I hope you are wrong but you know more politicians than I do.
That story was a sympathetic one Bob, given to them by another sufferer and at all times was meant to highlight the illness as a public service. Bob, you have to see Gordon Brown as a bitter as well as disappointed man (rightly or wrongly looking for enemies to blame) and when the Guardian put it about (in another error on their part – 41 and counting) that Brown’s phone was hacked to get that information, his bitterness about what happened in his time as PM once he got rid of Blair has spilled over and he is as obsessed by it today as he ever was. His colleagues of the time say so, the facts say so.
For the sake of fact, a Scottish Hospital formally apologised for one of their staff leaking the story to the Murdoch, not another sufferer.
Other facts, but while narrative is complicated, these two are not inconsistent, of course. nAnd no hacking apparently.
http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16029360
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics-news/2012/06/11/nhs-fife-employee-leaked-story-about-gordon-brown-s-son-having-cystic-fibrosis-health-chief-admits-86908-23894525/
Brown is a good man. Look at him in the Leveson footage and tell me otherwise.
Yes, I think Brown is a good man. Just out of his depth, ‘Peter Principle’-wise.. Many times a good or even solid deputy can’t handle the top job, haven’t got the temperament or whatever. So it was with Brown. Even his huge rage about the Afghanistan attacks for the troops to get better equipment and so on (and not only News Ltd papers did that). If you think about such campaigns in Australia, no government is immune from them no matter what the personal feelings are by all politicians for “our troops”. Brown’s colleagues knew this (as the Mandelson evidence to Leveson shows also), but Brown was personally affected by it more than he should have been – temperament again – and took it to heart. Flaws in ‘Great Men’ have been written about forever and this applies to the not-so-great too, ‘good’ men or otherwise.
Brown saved the world from the economic meltdown. ‘Out of his depth’, you say?
Please justify.
How did he do this?
He part-nationalised the guilty recalcitrant banks and so bought Europe out of immediate trouble. He was the first, the leader, as Strauss-Kahn would have been had he not been, for twelve crucial days, in gaol. He saved Europe from debacle, and is no leader?
Interesting to note that the Australian is a bit selective this morning on what has disappeared behind the firewall since earlier.
Abbott’s story ‘he’s unpopular because he brings bad tidings’ in full for all the gullible’s to swallow.
It reaches the point where I can reliably report that if you want to know exactly what I DON’T think then The OZ will have several thousand words editorialising that very matter on a daily basis.
The point where we could have regarded it in as any way seriously representing the views of most Australians has long since past. Reasons why I’d want to be witness to a rearguard defence of bigots and reactionaries elude me!
Not to quibble, but I believe the quote belongs to Disraeli.
Bob EllisJune 12, 2012 at 4:12 pm
“Brown saved the world from the economic meltdown. ‘Out of his depth’, you say?
Please justify”.
I will reply here as it will be getting a bit thin underneath your post. Incomplete story Bob.
This is the start of Brown’s real story.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/8569399/Labour-spending-how-Gordon-Brown-cast-aside-warning-on-public-spending-levels.html
There is a ‘Sir Humphrey Leak Inquiry’ so that info is correct. Joint responsibility perhaps, but Gordon Brown WAS the Chancellor, you know.
I was fortunate/unfortunate to be in London as this thing broke hard (29 September 2008 after two weeks in Russia and an English language media blackout) and watched the frantic responses, hour by hour.
US got blamed of course, particularly (and openly) by Brown. The European crisis has shot that down in flames by showing that excessive spending was going on everywhere, but hey, we don’t blame a mere ‘politician’ for shifting blame, do we? And I don’t even blame Brown for being confused, they all were.
On my reading of it, the US idea was to throw money at financial institutions to purchase their tainted assets and thus allowing them to lend again without that debt burden (TARP – . Troubled Asset Relief Program ). Brown was having none of it, he wanted to flood them with money so they could lend that and when the US Treasury Secretary (and yet another Goldman Sachs Old Boy) and others seemed to go along with that in their statements he boasted about ‘leading’ the world. The US continued with TARP of course and all the later money to banks etc resulted in – be frank – no lending and there is STILL little lending. Certainly no cheap lending.
So, with the mess that Britain is in, along with all the rest, has a lot to do with Brown and the so-called solution, not much. Being in Britain at the time, I saw how billions of pounds had been lent to Iceland banks even though there had been a warning in April 2008 that Iceland couldn’t pay, that it was overstretched. October, 2008 also brought the news that Brown (UK government/treasury) had not even reached an arrangement with Iceland for it to accept governmental responsibility for those UK loans (and even the FA had all its money lent there plus most of the UK Borough Councils – they used to show lists on TV, with, I remember, Nottingham being the highest with 42 million pounds invested.
Because of that mistake (and Iceland unable to guarantee those loans) Brown ordered their assets bin Britain seized, a fraction of what was owed. Luckily the people of Iceland, to their credit, later refused to bail out the greedy speculators who lent the money. Under Brown we had them printing money (pound dropped like a stone for a while, billions of pounds left Britain and they couldn’t even finance their bond issues (gilts). Shades of the stinking, bankrupt, industrial slum of the 70’s it seemed.
The good part? For all that, Britain – probably led on by fellow Europeans – were STILL in advance of Australia. I was nearly home a month later before Australia had given the guarantees Britain offered to investors’ savings!
Brown did his best, Bob, but it was no triumph for Britain, let alone the world. No sabotage but no leader either.
So he saved Britain, and Europe, or not?
No
I should add this. He went along at last and took some advice, but it was a near thing.
Cleaning up your own mess when ordered to by betters is okay.
So he only saved Britain then.
And he’s not a leader.
He’s feeling a bit sorry for himself, going by this New Statesman article (not a right wing organ by any means):-
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/political-sketch-return-great-sulk.
Maybe Private Eye wss right in its ‘broon’ series of cartoons.
A snippet:-
“The trouble about feeling sorry for Gordon Brown is that he got in there first and has no intention of giving up the position to anyone else”.