4 February 2021

Diary of a Corbynista

Bad Moon Rising

by Don Urquhart

28 January

The headline predicted by Corbynista:

EU Bureaucrats take Brexit Revenge by stealing our vaccine.

Today’s Daily Mail front page came close.

No, EU can’t have our jabs!

29 January

The day after the UK’s Covid deaths topped 100,000 all of the papers had Johnson filling the front page saying how sorry he was.  Almost as if he was just a victim in all this. Like Owen Jones a few days earlier, Novara Media takes us through the alternative view that Downing Street is trying to suppress. This should be taught in our schools.

30 January

While cabinet ministers will queue up to condemn vaccine nationalism, they have been feeding it for weeks by gloating about how far we are ahead of the EU.  However when it comes to our record in protecting people from Covid-19 they tell us that you can’t compare different countries’ records.

31 January

In response to Corbynista in Shawsheet 264, here’s the Message Board.

Sunlounger:

I see the bad moon arising

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightnin’

I see bad times today

Etc.

Flyboy:

Fantastic to highlight how Covid has had such an impact on the less well off who predominantly earn their wages from low skilled manual work that puts them at risk.

Walsall:

I get the LBC right wing slant when you consider Ferrari and Farage, but this is balanced, somewhat, by Fogarty and O’Brien, who has a staunchly anti-right wing bias.

Also, re Owen Jones, I suggest you have a 5 minute gander at this, where he is talking to, or rather letting talk, Stewart Lee, one of my personal favourites.

As an aside, I am quite taken by how much of our political commentary is now provided by comedians rather than journalists, and I do include Geoff Northcott in that, lest I be accused of trendy lefty bias, though I do wear that sash as well.

Well, maybe not trendy

That may be down to my own bubble, of course, though I do try to get a balanced view, though that is difficult when the sources are Telegraph, Mail and Express.

Greek Chic:

I was amazed when Boris admitted this week that had they done things differently that some of the100K deaths could have been avoided. He regretted it… he said.

Why was his head not offered up on a stick?

Instead…the right wing press said…’ oh it is so hard, poor Boris’

We have the worst per capita death rate from Covid in the world.

On Keir Starmer…. should we have any faith in a future with KS at the helm?

Dad’s army quote… We are doomed!

If I decide to run off to Greece again I have to give a credible answer for Priti Patel.  I need to leave to save my mental health.

Shelly:

It’s fascinating to me how many of us from that hotbed of capitalism, late nineties Investment Banking, seem to have seen the light.

I follow the Corbyn / Starmer debate with extreme interest, but I am majorly concerned that the left will split again and let this Tory monstrosity continue – the polling numbers surely ought to have anyone leading Johnson by 100 country miles, and yet…  Shouldn’t we all accept that Starmer would be better than Johnson, even if not as good as one might like (although I continue to think that Corbyn was an appalling leader and would have been an appalling PM because of leadership inability not policies).

Stay safe y’all

1 February

At the Downing Street Press Briefing Hancock bathed in the euphoria of vaccination success, then moved on to explain that 80,000 people would be home tested in 8 postal districts in an attempt to eliminate the South African variant.  Had he gone on to say that poor people would be supported to self-isolate he would have had me voting Conservative in the local elections.  Didn’t happen.

2 February

Johnson is poised to appoint Paul Dacre as Head of Ofcom.  Under his editorship the Daily Mail slavishly pursued extreme right wing policies.

According to Statista:

The United Kingdom has the most distrusted press of any European country.

Can’t see that improving any time soon.