After Guido pointed out the inappropriate smearing of Gove and his links to a Jewish antisemitism Charity, carefully timed for Holocaust Memorial Day, the paper has backtracked and apologised. Not with due prominence in their paper, but in a quote to the Jerusalem Post instead:
“The story does not in any way suggest that the funding ofsecurity guards for Jewish schools was inappropriate, only that Mr. Gove should have stood aside from the grant giving process given his relationship with CST. It was scheduled for publication on Thursday but pushed back because of the volume of news that day. We should have spotted the unfortunate timing and regret any offense caused.”
A textbook non-apology, but interesting that they didn’t see fit to say sorry for including a quote from SpinWatch’s David Miller in the same story. The same David Miller who is rather fond of printing neo-Nazi essays and believes in vast “Jewish lobby” conspiracies. Perhaps the Guardian should have had a look through their own archives before giving Miller coverage. Here’s what they published about him in July:
“SpinProfiles and Neocon Europe are projects that, under the guise of academia, are used to carry out campaigns of smear and harassment by creating selectively produced profiles of people and groups with different political outlooks, often ignoring facts that do not support their agenda. This approach characterises both of Miller’s projects, and to treat them as academic endeavours is to do a great disservice to British academia’s long tradition of neutral and unbiased inquiry.”
One of these factors alone can be spun as an oversight. But two…
Channel Four’s FactCheck is rarely disputed with much vigour. Most people seem to take their rulings on the chin and move on, except of course if you are Ken Livingstone. Last week his supporters were frothing that C4 had dared to challenge their voodoo “Fare Deal” figures. Retaliations were pushed to unpopular parts of the blogosphere and the usual level of Twitter vitriol was thrown about. Well it seems that didn’t go unnoticed with the FactCheck team who have given Ken another slap this morning:
“The claim:
“Fares might be soaring, but the service is plummeting! Delays and line closures have become a daily part of Londoners’ lives.”
“Sack Boris” election leaflet, 30 January 2012The verdict:
The figures speak for themselves, and the difference in passenger hours lost – an average of a million a month more under Ken – is particularly striking.
It’s like shooting fish…
Hester wasn’t going to get his hands on his bonus for over a year, it wasn’t even going to come directly from treasury funds and most of it would have ended up in Treasury coffers, yet this morning £320m has been wiped off of the value of the British taxpayers’ forced investment. With mob mentality over-ruling contracts, there are obvious jitters around the banks this morning.
Despite the cost, as well as the glaring hypocrisy of sitting in the cabinet that drew up Hester’s contract, this is a short-term political win for Miliband. At the beginning of the year Guido explained how the Labour leader was planning on adopting a role similar to that taken by George Osborne in opposition. It’s all about timing…
This submarine strategy will see Ed only surface for key fights, such as he has done this weekend. It has paid off today, but is Ed really planning on spending his entire career as Leader of the Opposition waiting for events to try to react to first? Miliband-wagon…
Who would have thought that a threat made at four in the morning would prove impossible to implement in the cold light of day. Before Christmas, while on a relative high from his EU spanner in the works, Fightin’ Dave was all mouth about EU institutions, but the dampening of expectations has begun this morning. A full retreat will be signalled when the Prime Minister arrives in Brussels this afternoon, but Hague has hit the airwaves to say that they were “not intending to take action about that now”. Another reverse move that could easily have been avoided. Many more of these and the words “defining” and “feature” will stick…
Last week’s shrinking GDP figures were spun by George Osborne as due to the crisis in the €urozone. The decline in GDP could hardly be blamed on the US market which is picking up and growing at a respectable 2.8% last quarter, nor on Asian markets where China grew at an annualised 8.9% and India at 7.8%.
Is the decline in UK GDP really, as George Osborne implies, down to economic trade with the crisis ridden continent falling? The answer is no.
UK exports to €urozone states actually rose a healthy 11.3% last year:
It is a myth that the decline in GDP has anything to do with the €uro-crisis leading to a decline in exports to the €urozone. The barriers to growth are a domestic problem…
