This comment by Marina Hyde in the Guardian resonated very strongly with me:
I'm bored of being told things don't matter because they didn't “cut through”, or that this or that horror show is “priced in” to the public's relationship with Johnson, or that something is irrelevant because “voters don't care about it”.
So what?! Voters don't care about a lot of things that are, nonetheless, properly important. Yet we're awash with pundits and politicians who can tell you the electoral price of everything but the value of nothing.
I could not agree more. And this is not just an issue that impacts the directly political. I am so bored by being told by those who I might call ‘professional NGO managers' that unless something ‘cuts through with the Tories' it does not matter.
The usual argument to match this is that unless something has been ‘focussed grouped' there is no point considering it. Raising funding to have issues focus grouped now seems one of the easiest things to achieve in the NGO world.
Heaven above that anyone should have an original idea that no one in a focus group has heard of, meaning it has no prospect of resonating there. These don't count. It is the apparent job of the NGO to now either promote the mundane, the extreme (which often gives well with focus groups) or the outright Daily Mail view. The rest really is not of concern, apparently.
It will surprise no one that this irritates me. The tax justice movement would most certainly never have got going on this basis. Nor would the Green New Deal. Neither ‘cut through' for some time. The ideas had to be developed, nurtured and carefully promoted. And then they began to work. Neither, very obviously, was deeply Tory.
So what is happening here? Are we seeing the takeover of NGOs by Tory thinking? Or the suppression of original thinking? What I do know is that there are many who do not know the value of anything. But it all suits the Tories very well.
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It’s an attempt at manipulation. “Oh if other people don’t care I guess I shouldn’t either.” Although I think it’s on a more subconscious level than that.
We know there are plenty of people that do care, but we are still repeatedly told that no one cares about each and every instance of Tory incompetence and corruption. It’s just another one of their lies.
Ms. Hyde’s Obsessive Groan this morning illustrates exactly the ‘unless something ‘cuts through with the Tories’ it does not matter.’ BY pushing a meta-narrative that actually is ‘nudging’ it’s credulous readers to that opinion.
Criticism is never quite focused on a bullseye but panders to ‘common sense’ and the moving of the Overton Window to the right. Examples.
In this story , we are supposedly OK with dodgy secret courts in Trade Treaties. Why is Australia invited to the G7 – because it is 5+1 eyes and will fill many many boots for the likes of Greensill, Blackrock , the Murdochs …
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/30/alarm-at-secret-court-scheme-in-uk-australia-trade-deal
In this one we are alerted to more nastiness that US populations are fed on
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/28/home-fertilizer-toxic-pfas-forever-chemicals-sewage-sludge
Which along with the genetically modified Salmon that halves the time for it to grow to full size story yesterday as it goes for sale and consumption where such GM labelling is not lawfully required – these Scottish Salmon Farmers are about to get a big shock.
We also have the dissemination that we as individuals only have days left to present a written notice to our GP’s to stop our medical records becoming databases so that foreign companies can feast upon us for medical insurance and big Pharma targeting. This is something I warned has been happening under NHS digital and App by Hancock’s Foreign state actor minders for years.
But it won’t matter because the Groan whilst wringing its hands for its soft minded progressive readers tells them its futile and get on with it with a story that is frames BrexShit, Bozo and Covid as all successes by ‘real people’.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/30/cummings-is-just-bitter-clactons-residents-dismiss-attacks-on-pm
Why a story from Clacton ? How many Groaniad readers are there? Why not Clapton?
The Kent variation that is devastating the world started in these Doutg Eastern gammonite gatherings – yet it’s the Indian variant that’s getting all the publicity.
This level of gaslighting the Groans soft minded sucker readers and their beliefs gets done subtly and not so subtly – oh look here is a story of the rascal PM getting hitched to his latest baby mama, whilst announcing his plans for a new ‘Brittannia’ – that warms the cockles of all patriots. Which softens criticism that may have been built on.
At the same time as explaining how history can be rewritten by doing so in front of our eyes!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/30/nero-right-side-of-history-hope-for-boris-johnnson
‘Nero, would meanwhile be on the virtuous, progressive side, one featuring Jesse Jackson, Tony Blair, Yvette Cooper, Bill Clinton, Jeremy Corbyn, ..’
Yeah I think JC would have something to say about being included in that list.
I am not even going to vote their heavyweight commentators who today seem to be wailing about how the traditional ‘Color revolutions’ are failing to make progress and destroy nations by divide and rule like they did in Ukraine, the ME and yes the U.K. with BrexShit. Nudging is towards more direct actions.
Let us in short forget that we are as has been pointed out many times under control of fascists who control the message by owning the media and all who work within it daily to sucker punch us until we can’t tell which day it is and who is actually a true democratic socialists and who are the chavs with their loddsamoney, pound shop churchillians and Etonites born and trained to rule, supping on their meat pie and veg ‘English’ fake history of greatness, ‘won the war’, great soldiers & sailors , etc.
Such is the world of the ‘liberal progressive’ Obsessive Groaniad and its denizens. I’m not sorry, I stopped buying their lies and their paper 4 years ago, at the same time as cancelling my TV licence, when I realised they were just another Janus faced manipulator and were actually anti-progressive, not for free speech and comment and definitely not interested in actual real facts.
I think you over malign
You have no chance of changing the world unless you take Guardian readers with you
Mail readers I don’t care about, but if you are a democrat you have no chance of winning without the Graun
So. my question is, do you want to win?
Prof, I apologise for the venom , I have been getting daily more apoplectic, as a whole load of bad news is being pushed through under all the bombardment.
I am a guardian reader and have been committedly so since I was 17. I read it for free now until they raise their wall. I bought it daily for nearly 40 years. I am disgusted by my close friends who still buy into its opinion forming.
I have also held the traditional guardianista opinion of Mail readers. Not necessarily all the Mail journalism and certainly not its production staff, who are probably the most well paid professionals still in that industry. It is popular and profitable whilst having avoided the crass pornography of Murdoch and Desmond. Except for its online sidebars of filth. I don’t read or buy it. I don’t agree with its editorial line. Except when it was my job to read it. As it was to read every daily paper for 20 years. That’s another story.
I can understand these tabloid readers being unready to see the casual daily manipulation of their opinions; I think these millions of voters need to be considered as much as hundreds of thousands(?) of the Guardian readers.
I apologise for my anger and appreciate your allowing it to be published. I will try to restrain myself having got it off my chest for now. Happy bank holiday and hope it’s sunny.
No problem
Richard,
Forgive me intruding here, but I think you are being a little harsh to a commenter who is clearly in some anguish about the condition of his country, and sees no way out. Allow me briefly to provide some perspective. Scotland is not close to leaving the Union because of some minor disagreements that may be readily resolved. Scotland was removed from the EU against its clearly expressed wishes with Brexit; after it had been expressly promised – by Conservatives and Unionists – that voting against independence in 2014 was the ONLY way to guarantee membership of the EU.
Scotland does not propose to reassert its old independence because it rejects Unions in principle – Scotland is the living proof that Unions are possible, and remain so. It is the British State, after 300 years (actually 400 years), that cannot accept that there are no limits at all to its inalienable right to entrench its power, or even enforce its own priorities over the beliefs or aspirations of its closest and most supportive neighbour (through thick and thin for centuries), no matter what.
Scotland rejects only a Unios that has become increasingly, and intrinsically abusive. The Union with Europe offers a looser, more negotiable Union that recognises that there are definable limits to any Union; limits that can be respected. The rules of European Union can be understood, articulated and relied on; they are not constantly re-written by a Kafkaesque British constituion under the direction of a Parliament that has become an elective dictatotship (dictated by a Conservative Government with an 80-seat majority built on support of only 30% of the total electorate; the Conservatives are not supported by 70% of the electorate, that is just a fundamental fact).
Scotland is free to measure the value of the European Union, whether to join, or not; and to explore different alternative methods of establishing a viable relationship with the EU if rejoining proves too demanding: it is not, ‘all or nothing at all’. The Union with Britain offers no limits to the extent of absolute power to which the British State claims entitlement by right (read Dicey); or its power to abuse, or the level of misinformation, misrepresentation and political and economoc exploitation that comes unheralded with the British Union; or even to change the rules of political engagmenet in an instant, on absolutely everything. Scotland is proposing to leave the Union fundamentally because it cannot be saved.
I get all that
I get the need for change
But I also get that maligning Guardian readers will hinder that process of change
I loathe where we are
I also know that unless revolution is planned (and I see no way it would work, even if I thought it desirable, which I do not) we have to move as what might be called a broad left
I am appealing for some understanding within the left, that’s all
Which would include some understanding that Scotland has a right to decide
Richard,
You have just written in considerable frustration about this fair comment: “Voters don’t care about a lot of things that are, nonetheless, properly important. Yet we’re awash with pundits and politicians who can tell you the electoral price of everything but the value of nothing”.
When we are informed that, whatever catastrophic political blunders are committed in Britain, however many cynical political decisions are taken, at whatever appalling human cost, or however many bad contracts are signed, or trade deals made; none of it “cuts through” to the electorate, so sit back and accept it, becasue that is all that matters; what are you actually being told? I submit you are being told that we live in an electoral dictatorship; he, or she who controls the House of Commons controls everything. Nothing else counts; get over it.
I get all that. There is no way out. Nothing else matters. I understand all that. Indeed I do not believe there is any way out, if the British people really think as they appear to believe in the present government (from the standard evidence). In which case, there is no way out for Britain. The British people have presumably decided to dissolve their interest in ‘values’ altogether, for something else. I possess no answer to that. I am simply pointing out that Scotland does have a way out, and after 300 years service to a fast supurating, visibly decaying British political culture that has finally laid waste to itself (you can almost smell the rot); in Scotland more and more of us have worked out, it is simply time to go. We can do that. Scotland didn’t disappear, it is there for us. Candidly I have no solution for those in England who obviously care about what has happened to Britian. Scotland can achieve a great deal, but it cannot fix England. I am sure you are all wlecome in Scotland, if you care to move. I hesitate to comment further on the Brtish predicament, but frankly I would not soon be looking to the ‘Guardian’ as a place to start a monumental change of heart, if I was looking for such an answer.
I have written about a way out this morning
Oh dear………………..so, advocates of the ‘cutting through’ argument are those who in my opinion lack the courage that you so often (and rightly say) is needed to change things. ‘Cutting through’ is another abuse of language because it is actually ‘cutting off’ new ideas.
Great.
Another symptom then of Tim Snyder’s ‘inevitability politics’. Is it any wonder why we are where we are?
🙂
I read the Marina article. What is missing (and I point the finger at Labour) is a narrative/story that is put consistently to the public and the media. Expressed in ways that resonate – with examples that mean something to people. Data/facts on their own won’t “cut through”. Indeed, the example of Brexit – negative I admit – shows how stories – even false ones – can have resonance.
There are no obvious story tellers in Labour – hence its drift. Sure Starmer often cuts Mendacious Fat to pieces at PQMs, but so did a range of toryscum leaders in the B.Liar years. Made no difference to B.Liar and it makes no difference to Mendacious Fat. By contrast Cam-moron with his 2010 line about “britain is not working” plus the nonesense about “busted credit cards” were stories that the populace could understand & had some resonance (admittedly with a media happy to propogate them). Stories & narratives – that is what is needed.
& an explanation to sensitive readers regarding my use of “toryscum”: 2010 – 2015 120,000 dead due to unnecessary austerity, 2016 – 2020 the Brexit saga, Now: Covid 140,000 dead and “I promise that old people discharged into care homes will be tested” 10,000++ dead. Nurses given a negative “pay-rise”. & people want me to be polite?
Only within the boundaries required for publication …..