From the BBC:
Speccy four eyed Education Secretary Michael Gove has defended the "right to offend" and said nobody needs to apologise to him if they imply that his adoptive parents clearly brought him up wrong.
The Daily Mail has said using a photo of Ralph Miliband's grave had been an "error of judgement" but stood by its story claiming he had "hated Britain", which is a fine example of muddle headed propaganda whereby you conflate a whole country with the rent seekers at the top.
It can't be disputed that Miliband senior, as an armchair Communist "hated" large parts of The Establishment - the landowners, capitalists, Royal Family, bankers - but then so do a lot of otherwise patriotic British people.
Weedy Mr Gove, whose wife receives money for signing off whatever the Mail shove under her nose, said politicians should not "tell editors how to do their job".
Free speech was "raucous", he said, but he would not confirm or deny that a childhood of being bullied at school was the root cause of his now devoting all his waking hours of thinking up ways of bullying school teachers as a form of vicarious revenge. Gove then left to wash his hair in a toilet bowl, a habit he picked up from bigger boys at school.
It was suggested that Gove's deep-seated bitterness might have been influenced by the fact that he was given up for adoption at birth. Former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine said this was a bit "demeaning" before swinging off through the jungle.
Wednesday, 2 October 2013
Scots Git defends defends "right to offend" in Miliband row
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12 comments:
Ironically, it's overshadowed the Conservative Party conference and made Ed Miliband all the more sympathetic - those normal looking family photos, dad who fought in the war.
If only Labour could sort out the difference between productive wealth and land wealth...
"It can't be disputed that Miliband senior, as an armchair Communist "hated" large parts of The Establishment - the landowners, capitalists, Royal Family, bankers"
Come on now, that IS Britain, I mean who else there in Britain that matters in the slightest?
TS, it has. You wonder whether the Mail did it deliberately as some sort of fifth column agent provocateur style thing to undermine the Tories..?
B, I'd hotly dispute that. What about drinking warm beer, a sense of fair play, the village cricket team and winning medals at the Olympics for things you can do while seated? Deep fried Mars bars? Welsh choirs?
@Bayard "It can't be disputed that Miliband senior, as an armchair Communist "hated" large parts of The Establishment - the landowners, capitalists, Royal Family, bankers"
Yep and never mind that half the 'Establishment' back then were rooting for Hitler, including the Daily Fail.
PC, firstly, I said that not Bayard, secondly, let's not slag off the Mail for what the paper might or might not have said eighty years ago, that's taking collective guilt to silly levels and thirdly, by and large, the British "Establishment" ended up favouring Stalin over Hitler.
Mosely ended up (briefly) in prison, not Harry Pollitt.
Thus making a bit of a mockery of the Mail's accusation that everybody with any sympathy for Stalin (the worst Communist ever) "hated Britain".
They ended up favouring Stalin because their first choice had bolted. The 'establishment' were largely proto fascist/fascist in the run up to the war and mostly remained so during and immediately after it. Even whilst fighting alongside the Soviets many were preparing to bury their comrades after the war was won.
Mark, I think we might need a /sarcasm tag.
@Bayard
"It can't be disputed that Miliband senior, as an armchair Communist "hated" large parts of The Establishment - the landowners, capitalists, Royal Family, bankers"
That was sarcastic. I recognised that. Tbh the last comment by MW didn't appear so, at least not the bit to which I responded.
"thirdly, by and large, the British "Establishment" ended up favouring Stalin over Hitler."
Still if that's 'sarcasm' too, then I stand corrected.
B, no we don't, it's far more fun pretending to take a sarcastic comment seriously.
PC, B quoted the third paragraph of my original post! I did not intend it sarcastically.
And we did, in the end, in practical, industrial and military terms, back Stalin over Hitler.
The fact that a lot of aristo's might have been closet Nazis does not change that.
@MW "It can't be disputed that Miliband senior, as an armchair Communist "hated" large parts of The Establishment - the landowners, capitalists, Royal Family, bankers"
That wasn't sarcastic?!
OK sorry, but my response to that was intended as ironic.
That R.Miliband was being ousted by the Daily Fail for his antipathy toward the 'Establishment'. The same Establishment that was to all intents and purposes actively seeking a conciliatory policy toward Hitler throughout the 30's and even as late as 1940. Point blank refusing any approaches from Stalin for any alliance against Hitler until after Hitler attacked both the UK and the Soviets.
PC, good golly gosh, I do not wish to speculate on what a teenage Miliband Sr. might or might have not said when we were at war, extenuating cicrumstances, he was probably right anyway etc.
I mean after the war, as a well-paid armchair Commie, it was beholden on him to despise "The Establishment" (apart from the bits paying his salary).
That's a different story. Daily Fail were making a claim largely on the basis of Miliband's diary entries as a 17 year old in 1940.
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