I put this poll up on Twitter this morning because I was curious to see what the answer might be:
People cannot see the results before they vote.
I am aware that my Twitter audience is self-selecting, but also quite large.
My concern was that some Tory with a serious personal issue who is deeply abusive as a result was grabbing all the headlines this morning when there are actually bigger issues on the political agenda today, important as ending that abuse is.
Note that questions can only be 25 characters long. But even within that constraint what is clear is that people are much angrier about the cover-up of Matt Hancock and Public Health England having chosen to kill people than they are about porn in the Commons, and the failure of Labour to uphold democracy in the Lords last night is an even bigger story. Despite this, the healthcare story has been promoted using Hancock's spin that he has been exonerated when that is emphatically not true, and the assault on democracy has been almost completely ignored.
Why is that, is the obvious question?
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While perfectly capable of meddling in government to secure exemptions to environmental, and other tax or transparency measures, it’s lamentable that the much-heralded-by-her-worshippers-as-defender-of-our-democracy sits idly by while her so-called government purposely sets a wrecking ball to every last aspect of our nation, society and democracy (see the laws voted through parliament today). Though, it’s less than surprising. If only more of the many, Tory-voting, Union Jack waving, royalty-worshipping fools could comprehend how thoroughly privilege hates the very concept of equality. Sadly, if they ever do, it will already be too late. As for the monarch, she or one of her sire will no doubt still be “performing their duties” (emphasis on performance) in a not so distant future even if their-soon-to-be-totalitarian government were sending death squads into our cities and committing any number of other horrors in theirs’s and the nation’s name. The monarch as a dignified servant of the nation – what a sick joke!
Because the issue is not understood?
Is it general citizens’ apathy towards anything to do with the Government in particular and politics in general? Is it people are preoccupied with getting on with their lives after Covid and focused on ‘getting back to normal’, getting out for retail and holiday therapy? Is it more fundamental that as Tomas Bjorkman suggests we as citizens in the UK lack ‘bildung’, an appreciation for the big things in society? I really don’t know, Richard, and that depresses me too. The trouble is that when the historians, philosophers, sociologists and social psychologists, eventually get round to undertaking and writing up their analyses, it’ll be very late to do anything about it.
I like ‘bildung’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung
Thanks both Andy Lippok and Richard for ‘bildung’ and the Wikipedia entry on it. How sad that the English view of ‘education’ is so generally impoverished in comparison with the German one.
No coverage whatsoever on any of the major news websites. It’s as if a D notice went out!
I’ve been banging on about this for months trying to get people to pay attention with little success.
In 1930s Germany the population were shaped and massaged into mass delusion. 12 years of Tory ‘reign’ and wealth-controlled media has caused modern-day equivalent, combined with despondency.
We are being ruled, not governed.
These bills combined, an Enabling Act.
It’s beyond most people’s understanding. More indication I hope of why I keep saying many people shouldn’t have the vote; they can’t understand the issues. Thus the significance of what we’re seeing sails straight past them. They only think they understand anything about running a country, if at all, because the media flatters them into it, the goal being to keep them coming back for more flattery and hopefully buy from the advertisers and lately too to influence opinion for political gain. Thus we see the media being mostly silent on this crucial issue.
Porn use is more widespread in society than we might think and almost virtually legitimate in my view – porn culture pervades mainstream culture in many subtle ways.
Porn these days is produced at an industrial scale with rapacious marketing on the internet pushing it out – have you ever gone on the internet without a Firewall? Phew! watch out!
There has always been an element of interest in erotica in human society since Adam was a lad.
However, the porn industry is another matter where abuse by men does take place but where also women fight for their rights and to be treated well in the profession and are trying to make it a safe environment for those who want to work in it. It’s a very complicated field of human behaviour but a huge mega bucks industry at the same time with an equally complicated morality. A lot of people who watch it are very quick to judge those involved in it for example but they are human beings too and why should their choice of work be any less safe than anyone else’s? And why should being a performer negate you as a human being?
So I’m not surprised about the porn element but amazed that the person concerned thinks he can watch porn whilst at his place of work. Who the hell is monitoring this stuff at the House of Commons? There is a time and place but its so easily available. On holiday in Trieste in 2013 I watched amazed as a bunch of male teenagers watched porn on a mobile phone on a busy morning bus going into town. No one batted an eyelid in that very Roman Catholic country.
But then again – porn is only about sex, which shouldn’t really hurt anyone. Maybe that’s the issue?
As for the other issues I am heartened about a keener interest in the quality of our democracy and the ineptitude of how we managed Covid.
These Tory efforts to close down democracy and ignore lethal pandemics manifestly do and have hurt people. And will. It sort of restores ones faith that despite a stupid media, people might be able to see the truth for themselves when it is put to them plainly like you have which is why I come here BTW because that is what you do – fill a huge gap in the discourse on these matters.
Maybe ‘Media’ is short for ‘mediocre’. All they do is react.
Most porn is about power differentials, not sex. Were it only otherwise.
Power differentials are part of it yes – and there are efforts to address those in the porn industry particularly by women and few enlightened men. But those power differentials are across the board aren’t they for most employment in our Western capitalist system?
Zero hour contracts; the banning of Unions and worker representation; blacklisting workers who stick up for their rights; the abuse of contracts by employers; employer pressure to do things one does not want to do – all of these are really negative aspects of modern work and are experienced by all people whether they are porn performers, architects, retail assistants or public sector workers.
Everyone should have the right to do their job safely and be paid reasonably for it whatever they choose to do. That’s what makes these discussions about economics and fairness so interesting and so human. They affect everything.
Because if they don’t report it then it didn’t happen (it’s the mushroom treatment – kept in the dark and fed BS) and everyone complaining about it are the ‘elite’ who are the cause of the problems of all ‘genuinely decent people’.
I wonder whether there will be a tipping point and we start to see mass protest (regardless of the law preventing it) and public disobedience.
Even if people are generally open to the diversion of porn and ‘crossing legs’ stories there would be plenty of interest in the destruction of democracy and killing in care homes but BBC is clearly being controlled or at least is self censuing.
Anothe chilling example – an in depth radio 4 analysis of the problems in the Shanghi lockdown – yet a complete ban on mentioning the 2000 covid deaths a week here.
We are already post-democracy.
You missed out splitting up the NHS so it’s no longer national.
https://crm.keepournhspublic.com/civicrm/mailing/url?u=920&qid=401451
Agreed
And the right to take away nationality from anyone who qualifies for another passport
“and the failure of Labour to uphold democracy in the Lords last night is an even bigger story”………& that Liebore, when they get into power, will use the tools that the tory-s are forging. Why oppose something that will help you stay in power?
Like the tory-s, Liebore are only interested in power – they have no policies no ideas, nothing.
We aren’t being informed of the ‘real’ news by the mainstream press, tv and radio because:
a) they’re all lazy and reporting scandal is dirt cheap
b) it serves the ‘narrative’ that owners/controllers have created
c) they know it sells like crazy.
Once upon a time, the balance was kept, at least by the broadsheets, with real reporting and some in depth investigation. Now everything’s become the s*n without boobs. Even the s*n! And the bbc is the government’s own pravda.
50% of all television news now seems to be murders
It bores me stiff (no pun intended)
Why can’t we have news?