Falsehoods Unchallenged Only Fester and Grow
https://thefogbow.com/forum/
The Guardian's take(s) on it -- they've had multiple hard news, analysis, and editorial pieces all saying the same thing --was my lunchtime reading today. Interesting, indeed.
Kwasi Kwarteng sacked with Jeremy Hunt to be named chancellor as Liz Truss expected to U-turn over mini-budget – live
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... itics-live
You'd think that at some point, telling people that they should starve and freeze whilst they see the 1% frolicking off to Ibiza would start to sound very much like bread and circuses.RTH10260 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 8:43 am
within the last hour, developing story
Kwasi Kwarteng sacked with Jeremy Hunt to be named chancellor as Liz Truss expected to U-turn over mini-budget – live
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... itics-live
Indeed, it does appear that being (comparatively) honest about Conservative ideology does not play out very well.
Hey, it was more than two Scaramuccis, right?RTH10260 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 8:43 am
within the last hour, developing story
Kwasi Kwarteng sacked with Jeremy Hunt to be named chancellor as Liz Truss expected to U-turn over mini-budget – live
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... itics-live
New U.K. Finance Minister Drops Almost All of Tax-Cut Plan
Jeremy Hunt also put a time limit on energy subsidies, seeking to reassure markets and reduce pressure on Prime Minister Liz Truss.
By Mark Landler and Stephen Castle
Oct. 17, 2022 Updated 10:04 a.m. ET
LONDON — Britain’s new chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said on Monday that he would reverse virtually all the government’s planned tax cuts, sweeping away Prime Minister Liz Truss’s free-market economic plan in a desperate bid to steady the financial markets and stabilize her government.
Mr. Hunt also announced that the government would end its massive state intervention to cap energy prices next April, replacing it with a still-undefined program that he said would promote energy efficiency, but that could increase uncertainty for households facing rising gas and electricity bills.
Ms. Truss’s Conservative government had planned to announce the tax and spending details of its fiscal plan on Oct. 31, but with the markets still gyrating, Mr. Hunt rushed forward the schedule. His announcement constituted one of the most dramatic reversals in modern British political history.
“A central duty for any government is to do what’s necessary for economic stability,” Mr. Hunt said in a televised statement. “No government can control markets but every government can give certainty about the sustainability of public finances.”
Among the new details, Mr. Hunt said the government would shelve a reduction in the basic income tax rate, the centerpiece of a tax-cutting plan that Ms. Truss had promised would reignite Britain’s economic growth. She had earlier scrapped a tax cut for high-income people and announced she would go ahead with a planned increase in corporate taxes.
The pound and British government bonds rallied in the run-up to the announcement, suggesting that the news could buy Ms. Truss a few days of breathing space, though her political survival, after only six weeks in office, remained in deep doubt.
Mr. Hunt’s hastily scheduled announcement came three days after Ms. Truss ousted his predecessor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and reversed another major tax cut, shredding her agenda and staining her credibility. As Mr. Hunt moved to take control of the economic levers of government, Conservative Party lawmakers were meeting to plot ways to force Ms. Truss out of power.
The mechanics of removing Ms. Truss remained murky, with the lawmakers grasping for ways to find a consensus replacement for her that would avoid another full-scale and divisive leadership contest. But many political analysts said her position seemed untenable, given the turmoil of the last three weeks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/17/worl ... udget.html
The floundering of GB News and Talk TV reveals a dark truth about the mainstream media
The only reason fringe channels are failing to flourish in Britain’s rightwing media swamp is because it is already full
Nesrine Malik
Sun 16 Oct 2022 13.00 BST
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer channel. GB News, it appears, has lost half its value since it launched last year. Shareholder Discovery sold its stake in the channel in August, with accounts lodged after the sale showing that its 25% share of the company, bought initially for £20m, was offloaded for just £8m. One of the buyers, Vote Leave backer Sir Paul Marshall, said of his participation in the new funding round: “As investors we’re proud of what GB News is doing for media plurality in the UK, bringing fresh perspectives to the national conversation.” One of the channel’s “fresh perspectives” on the coronavirus vaccine is currently being investigated by media regulator Ofcom.
If ploughing more cash into a channel where the average daily view is less than a minute sounds like a waste of money, then spare a thought for those paying for Piers Morgan’s reported £50m deal with Talk TV. Ratings have been comically low. “Morgan has gone from Good Morning Britain to good evening no one,” said Slate. Other big names have not fared better. Earlier this year, Tom Newton Dunn did not register a single viewer for half of his evening broadcast. Having positioned themselves as challengers to mainstream “woke” channels catering to a limited viewership, both channels have now pivoted to telling us that they are in fact not in the business of “linear TV” at all, conjuring a new world of “content TV” in which no one actually watches the telly any more and instead scrolls through clips of it on social media. Except those who don’t watch television channels any more don’t want to follow them on social media either. Talk TV has 83,000 followers on TikTok, less than your average “this is what I ate in a day” account.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... a-channels
There are some arguing that Boris' supporters clearly pushed Liz past the post knowing that unlike Sunak or Mordaunt, Truss would screw up so badly that she'd be ousted. And give Boris his resurrection chance. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's sure looking good for him right now, which saddens me.Kriselda Gray wrote: ↑Tue Oct 18, 2022 1:53 pmDidn't they just get rid of Boris? So they're having some buyer's remorse on Truss, I take it?
Probably at least as many times as the people in the United States of America take to figure out that electing Republicans is not in the best interest of most of those voting for the Republicans.