The next thing is to do something radical about the inequality of voice in Britain’s media. Enact Leveson. Ask companies such as British Airways why they are distributing the Mail mid-Atlantic, for free, as a kind of “unwelcome to Britain” card for visitors. People with resources should set up – or, even better, acquire through hostile takeover – mass-circulation newspapers that champion democratic values, tolerance and restraint.
Whut?
There is already one of those isn’t there? The Guardian? Which loses £75 million a year?
So, err, Paul, know anyone who wants to lose £75 million a year to push your political line? Other than the one you’re already being paid to write for that is?
The Guardian is hardly “mass circulation” of course.
And that’s his problem; the people don’t want to read what he and his chums write, so he needs a way of forcing them to do so, including stopping them getting alternatives.
The reality is few of his constituency actually like democracy. It is dirty, it makes the views of a street cleaner of equal value to that of a university professor and regularly produces outcomes that offend the faux-liberal cosmopolitans.
We do need something that champions tolerance (of opinion more than anything), free speech and democracy. But it is clear many of his fellow travellers only like that so much as it helps then forward their own politics.
Precious few actually have reverence for the idea that, as the late great radical CLR James said ‘every cook can govern’ or that living in a democratic society means dirty divisions and offence.
I’ve found myself with strange bedfellows, being a london living permissive cultural liberal myself, but a huge fan of the Political, the only people talking on the same level about what democracy actually entails are people I share little of the content of their views.
That is the battlefield, Mason and his ilk just preach to the converted, who actually arent liberals, tolerant of other ideas or fans of democracy either.
Paul Mason is on the honoured list of people who have stood in front of the old ABN Amro building in Bishopsgate and said to camera “Behind me is RBS’s headquarters.” Wrong building, fuckwit.
Rob,
> I’ve found myself with strange bedfellows, being a london living permissive cultural liberal myself, but a huge fan of the Political, the only people talking on the same level about what democracy actually entails are people I share little of the content of their views.
Yes, I’ve had similar thoughts myself lately. I have certain cultural values: the kind of food I like and music I listen to and TV I watch and books I read and so on. I don’t like football but do like Boursin. And so I move in certain circles. And what I’ve realised lately — especially since the Referendum — is that the people in those circles simply do not have my back. The people who do — who support my right to vote even if I disagree with them, who support freedom of speech, who I can rely on not to start mouthing off about Jews — have none of that trivial ephemera in common with me. Which is unfortunate, socially.
Mason really has lost his mind recently. He immatures with age.
Since when has the Guardian championed “democratic values, tolerance and restraint “? Its columnists, such as Polly and Marina Hyde, are highly intolerant of anyone who does not share their views and do not know the meaning of restraint. For them, democracy is dictatorship by right – thinking people
Anyone else rather unnerved by the ‘hostile takeover’ phrase?
Given few of these publications are public companies with fragmented shareholder bases, I don’t get the feeling he is talking about *that* sort of hostile takeover.
“Massnewspapers that champion democratic values, tolerance and restraint.”
So not the Grauniad.
Sorry, Diogenes got there first.
“There is already one of those isn’t there? The Guardian?”
Don’t forget the ‘independent’. I mean, I know the readers did, but…
Perhaps he should go back to manufacturing his California Carafes 🙂
“There is already one of those isn’t there? The Guardian?”
And the BBC in the broadcasting.
Funny how Guardianista lefties forget the existence of the Daily Mirror. It’s like they’re ashamed of it for being a newspaper aimed at the working class.
I was thinking about the BBC as well.
Scrapping the Daily Mail on BA flights will leave a gap. But the Guardian doesn’t do bulk sales any more, because they claim it’s not very green and it’s unethical to juice their circulation figures. (Translation: they weren’t making money on it. Or they were, and they’re stupid.)
Yes, I’ve had similar thoughts myself lately. I have certain cultural values: the kind of food I like and music I listen to and TV I watch and books I read and so on. I don’t like football but do like Boursin. And so I move in certain circles. And what I’ve realised lately — especially since the Referendum — is that the people in those circles simply do not have my back. The people who do — who support my right to vote even if I disagree with them, who support freedom of speech, who I can rely on not to start mouthing off about Jews — have none of that trivial ephemera in common with me. Which is unfortunate, socially.
Spot on for me too. I’m the only Brexit voter I know and how casually my friendship group will claim that Brexit voters should lose the right to vote or that the referendum should just be ignored astounds me. They literally cannot see any issue with these statements.
Somehow I think Mason, and Murphy, would like a modern little red book authored by them to be distributed to every household and in schools that dictates how our lives should be lived and what our views should be.
Any breach of the tenets to be reported to some central agency for corrective action to be taken.
‘mass-circulation newspapers that champion democratic values, tolerance and restraint.’
AS Ljh says – that would preclude the Guardian immediately – Mason and his ilk are democratic in the same sense that the ‘German Democratic Republic’ (for whom he worked as an agent of influence) and ‘Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea’ are democratic….
I just recently listened to James Dellingpole’s podcast interview with Gary Bell QC, a working class son of a miner done good, and subsequently downloaded his autobiography. Fantastic read of someone in the ‘elite’ who absolutely can’t stand the left wing hypocrites. I’d recommend it if you haven’t heard his story already. Great to hear what someone in his position and from his background has to say.
Squander Two: Wrong building, fuckwit.
Surely the wrong street in the wrong town as well?
Perhaps the one saving grace of only reading Paul Mason’s scribblings is that one no longer has to listen to him delivering them on the TV in that appalling adenoidal whine.
> Surely the wrong street in the wrong town as well?
They do actually have an HQ in London. Not one journalist has ever stood outside it and pointed at it. Because it’s not photogenic enough, and media people can’t tell the difference between photogenic and important.
inequality of voice in Britain’s media
Any difference of opinion to Mason at all = inequality of voice, which must be STAMPED OUT.
Any opposition to them at all is an imbalance which must be eradicated. They really do tolerate no opposition at all.
I’ve yet to find a single person arguing that press concentration needs to be smashed who can answer one simple question
“In pretty much any newsagent or supermarket, people can freely choose to buy The Mirror, The Guardian, The Independent or even The Morning Star. But they don’t. Why should they be forced to buy something that reflects your choice not theirs?”
This the same Guardian that once ran a piece suggesting that all broadband connections should be taxed to pay for newspapers…
Why should they be forced to buy something that reflects your choice not theirs?
Because they would be forced to buy something which reflected someone else’s choice and not theirs.
So how does one go about a hostile takeover of the BBC?
No need to bother with the Guardian, it’s working its way through Scott trust funds at a good rate.
People with resources should…….
It’s always someone else’s money, isn’t it?
“The next thing is to do something radical about the inequality of voice in Britain’s media… People with resources should set up – or, even better, acquire through hostile takeover – mass-circulation newspapers that champion democratic values, tolerance and restraint.”
Solve inequality by having rich people own the news. Interesting lefty logic.
“Ask companies such as British Airways why they are distributing the Mail mid-Atlantic, for free, as a kind of “unwelcome to Britain” card for visitors. ”
I’m assuming they do this because the visitors, who are quite welcome to refuse the offer, keep accepting. It also isn’t an “unwelcome to Britain” card; that’s just childish.
“No need to bother with the Guardian, it’s working its way through Scott trust funds at a good rate.”
Which, perhaps, explains why Comrade Mason is advocating commandeering another paper…
There seems to be a rather fanciful argument here that if you took over the Telegraph or the Times or the Mail and turned it into a clone of the Guardian or Indy, it would keep its readership figures essentially intact and enlighten those who – despite their product completely changing – persevered buying it.
Regardless of whether you think newspaper readers are gullible brainwashed idiots, presumably there is some reason stronger than mere habituation these people weren’t buying the Guardian or Independent in the first place. Even from Mason’s perspective, surely the inevitable result would be people hopping over to a rival newspaper, with the serious possibility of a new one being launched to fill the gap if there were a sudden string of left-wing takeovers.
(There’s a goodly number of people who buy a paper merely to look at the TV guide, the sport and a bit of sleb gossip, though I’m sure these numbers are declining. They might not even notice the result of the takeover, and presumably would keep buying as before, but chances are they won’t be enlightened by the change of editorial tone either.)
This is apparently what Mr Mason’s employer wants to publish: http://order-order.com/2016/11/08/woman-sucks-donkey-cck-guardian-front-page/
Squander Two,
Did you have a stand up row with him too ? Must have missed that one…
The Telegraph has been taken over already, I think.
Love that ‘hostile takeover’ bit… what a cretin. Reminds me of these clueless morons: http://bit.ly/2fPYi5J
I am curious if Mr Mason asked for a copy of a paper he agrees with while on his BA flight?
@BiW
It being an advert, that piece says more about the recent peccadillos of Guido and his staff than about the Gruniad.
Clarissa, it quite explicitly says in the Guido piece that he was sent the image, so if anything it’s to do with the browsing history of the person who sent it. But the mere fact that the Graun’s web ad algorithm could produce that as a match is hilarious.
Mason is indulging in the usual Violet Elizabeth Bott tactics of the left, in which to fail to give A a soapbox at B‘s expense is evidence of oppression.
S2,
“Yes, I’ve had similar thoughts myself lately. I have certain cultural values: the kind of food I like and music I listen to and TV I watch and books I read and so on. I don’t like football but do like Boursin. And so I move in certain circles. And what I’ve realised lately — especially since the Referendum — is that the people in those circles simply do not have my back. The people who do — who support my right to vote even if I disagree with them, who support freedom of speech, who I can rely on not to start mouthing off about Jews — have none of that trivial ephemera in common with me. Which is unfortunate, socially.”
My neighbour was shocked I was a Brexiter. Really genuinely shocked. Because I’m that sort of an wine/European cinema type. And the reason is that it’s all about tribes. People use this stuff to signal tribal membership. They’re generally, in reality, rather ignorant people who don’t care about culture and just get their knowledge from some other snobby twat.