Saturday, December 01, 2007

Matthew Parris On Form

As several readers have pointed out, Matthew Parris's Times column today is a corker. Read it HERE. And even better than that, he put Brown's arch apologist Sir Michael White in his place on the Today Programme this morning. Listen HERE by scrolling down to 08:55.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dame Michael has an unbearably high opinion of himself.

Mouth in top gear, brain in neutral, hotline to Party HQ and opinions on everything.

Next thing you know, he'll be doling out unwanted advice to the Green party and to the Sunday lobby.

Oh.

Daily Referendum said...

Michael White is so far up Gordon Brown's backside, he's touching the director of the beebs shoes.

Anonymous said...

Daily Referendum - v good!

Johnny Hubris: Matthew Parris differs from you in that he is intelligent, literate, a forceful writer and thinks for himself.

He isn't a party lackey like the Johnny Hubrises and all the other brand new pseudonyms infesting this and other blogs since Labour was found to be committing criminal acts and found to be breaking anti-corruption laws. Save your limited mental energy. You are so easy to spot it's not even good sport to nail you. Although in your case, your post was just deadly dull and stupid enough to have been written by Gordon Brown.

Anonymous said...

What is Michael White on?

There is now way i'll support any party that supports state funding for political parties.

Sceptical Steve said...

Any "statesmanlike" suggestions from Gordon Brown need to take into account the need for the opposition to counter the incumbent government's vast publicity machine.

While the Governemt is able to spend billions on advertising, any sort of restrictions on the funding of the oppositions parties will simply make the playing field even less level.

BTW, White's claim that Thatcher was a figure of ridicule for 15 years just confirms the impression that he spent the 1980's in the company of of Labour's Notting Hill set. If anything, Thatcher got a ridiculously easy ride for all those years because White and the Guardianista spent all their time defending the indefensible and supporting the likes of Foot and Kinnock who were both genuinely ridiculous.

BTW(2) When Labour's in trouble, their usual tactic is to try to get their friends at the BBC to give maximum air-time to Heseltine, Clarke, Portillo etc. Is it just me or have the rentaquote Tory old guard finally got the message to keep their mouths shut?

Andrew Allison said...

Matthew Parris is the best political writer in Britain. His analysis is first rate and proves the pen is mightier than the sword.

Anonymous said...

Verity,

Anyone who has read your ranting posts will know them as a an unwittingly hilarious cocktail of bile and bullshit.

It would help if you didn't read the posts you respond to at all, then you would have an excuse for completely failing to understand the point.

AnyoneButBrown said...

Matthew Parris is by a country mile the best political commentator in the UK and by all accounts a throughly nice and decent guy.
Michael White is a member of NuLabs media cheerleaders and is poor political commentator as he is Browns sockpuppet and is not a thoroughly nice and decent guy.
A sinking rat has to choose whether to sink or jump ship...Michael?

Anonymous said...

Michael White: "I talk to politician's and you don't."

What a small man with petty argument.

Anonymous said...

Johnny Hubris - Sweetie, get some new arrows for your quiver.

You renta-quoters all use the same words. I certainly don't expect Labourites to have an original way of putting words together, or indeed, having any actual thoughts other than bile, but could you change the order?

You socialists are washed up. Your party, such as it is, will never recover from this season of malfeasance. Very entertaining.

Anonymous said...

Make hay while the sun shines Mr. White. There's a hell of a black cloud on the horizon.

Anonymous said...

White clearly lives in the deluded bubble that nulab do.

To me its pretty simple

Nulab actually introduced some pretty good laws in relation to funding

What they failed to realise that with their own laws, aside from union cash, they had pretty much outlawed their traditional methods of funding. Hence Lord Cashpoint, Abrahams (and no doubt more)

On top of that they are now extremely unpopular, so nobody aside from their luvvies and cronies will even consider donating

On the tory side, they have lots of wealthy and not so wealthy donors who want to give and are not worried about the limelight

So in summary, nulab are nearly bankrupt, and have corrupted their own laws to try to get themselves out of the sh1t

So now they want us tax payers to get them out of the hole

Do they think that tax payers are really that stupid?

Of course, silly me, of course, they think us voters are stupid

They really are stuck inside some wierd drug filled bubble

Anonymous said...

Veirty! I thought we agreed that New Labour is not a party for 'socialists'. There is nothing remotely socialist about New Labour. They are neo-cons.
War mongers.

:)

Anonymous said...

Canvas - No. They're Soviet-style communists. The nomenklatura to whom no rules or laws apply. Neocons don't run nationalised medical care outfits. They don't have their trotters in the public trough. They don't do thought fascism. They don't break their own laws.

And their organisations are not full of fat women. [Harriet Harmperson, for God's sake, put. down. that. fork!]

Anonymous said...

Matthew Parris played a blinder puncturing the insufferable White's pomposity with aplomb, he's been spookily on the money about Brown for a long time, almost clairvoyant!

cassandra said...

One has to wonder how this will affect the debate and vote on our forthcoming EU enslavement/servitude/serfdom? Any authority that these ZANULAB commisars had is draining away fast and if there are any honourable Labour MPs left they are going to be very hard to whip into line!
If Parliament is retarded enough to ratify the CONstitution, then our goose will be well and truly cooked!

Unknown said...

Heres Matthew OFF form

The double standards of Matthew Parris
by Scoop Shachtman, 1 December 2007
This week on Radio 4, Any Questions included Matthew Parris. His responses to two particular questions revealed a common double-standard in liberal thinking (with a small l, Parris being an ex-Conservative MP). The first:

Is it ever wrong to name a teddy bear Mohammed?

Well it’s wrong to do anything that offends people, so it was wrong to call the teddy bear Mohammed.

The second, following his approval of the appearance of Nick Griffin and David Irving Oxford Union on the basis that they would be unable to answer difficult questions, and that preventing them speaking works in their favour, was a follow-up question by the moderator of the discussion.

Is there anything which you think is outside those terms of reference, any so ghastly it can’t be spoken in public?

I don’t think so. I wrote a column for the Times the other day talking about the Muslim Woman Malik. Miss Malik’s poem for which she’s about to be sentenced in a few days time under the prevention of terrorism act. She wrote poems glorifying Muslim bombers, murderers, and freedom fighters. They were stupid poems, but I don’t think he was acting to assist terrorism. I believe in the freedom of speech and if we think our way of life is worth pursuing against intolerant people and against fundamentalists then I think we should be able to practice what we preach.

Parris believes in the freedom of speech, including holocaust denial, but draws a line at offending certain groups of people he is willing to infantilise. His comments about Malik are also ignorant of the facts, her conviction did not concern her poetry, but the possession of material likely to help terrorists.

Unsworth said...

White practically incoherent. You can almost hear the foam emanating from his mouth. I'd guess he now realises that he's backed a wrong'un - but why he doesn't cut his losses God only knows.

I used to think that, despite his odd political affectation, he was relatively intelligent. Now I'm not so sure. But it seems incredible that he's maintained this state of denial in the face of such overwhelming evidence.

Anonymous said...

Tim, the point is, even if something is wrong, you should still be allowed to do it.

There isn't a contradiction, just the old adage of 'I don't agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'

Anonymous said...

I see the M**l on Sunday has found another Watergate for Labour, with an Iranian who is not entitled to vote in Britain having given the Labour Party £830,000 over the last eight months.

This is almost a quarter of a million up on Mr Abramson. So now we're up to £1.4m impermisslbe donations over the last few months.

Do I hear an advance on £830,000?

Anonymous said...

Michael White, you are Blakey from "On the Buses" and I claim my £5.
"Get that bus out Butler!".

Anonymous said...

“We're not talking the Old Bailey here; not even Crown Court. We're talking Woking Magistrates' Court on a wet winter Tuesday; a shuffling line of dysfunctional miscreants in soiled shell-suits, struggling to read the oath, let alone to understand the charges against them.”

I have represented people in Woking Magistrates Court and this comment is grossly unfair to the average Woking M.C. defendant, although it is very funny.

Luckily, most people that I have represented have not been “grassed up” by their bosses admitting illegality, before the matter even gets to court.

Otherwise, Matthew is “spot on”. New Labour’s spin dryer has malfunctioned and cannot be rebuilt.