You will no doubt have heard the expression, “lies, damned lies and Statistics” – Statistics here being portrayed as the worst form of lying. Statistics depend, of course, on a number of factors: the assumptions; the questions; the size of sample; the type of demographic tested in the sample etc.
Well, it’s the same with ‘progressive’ media. They start with philosophical assumptions and perspectives; they select what information does – and does not – get put before the public. In fact I would characterise much western media as propagandic – the idea of objective truth went out of the window years ago. They no longer seem to bother. They just press buttons and hype in order to please their audience and promote their philosophy. Any attempt to portray reality representatively and proportionately only conflicts with the ‘reality’ of their true, moral view.
Now, I am not going to make the naive and foolish comment that conservative leaning media are exempt from criticism. They are not. But I do maintain that progressive, liberal, Left wing media regard themselves as morally justified in censoring the record to accord with their view of the world – and it is a view, even though they firmly believe that their view is objective reality. After all they have moral rectitude on their side and they only want the best for people. Unlike the wicked right who just want to exploit everyone.
This progressive mentality goes back to the Enlightenment when clever people discovered that God is a lie perpetrated by the privileged to control the exploited masses. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man betrays the mentality which we recognise all too readily in today’s progressive mindset. It’s all there: the ad hominem attacks, first and foremost; the exclusion of contradictory evidence; removal of the discussion from its full and proper context; even the blatant denial of the truth [anecdote: the French far left with approaching 100 seats in the National Assembly is keen to tell the world that the French police go round killing people; simultaneously they term “fascist” anyone who tells the truth about the serious, organised crime French police face daily: e.g. gangland killings over drug territory are endemic in France.
Everything about everything must be viewed through the optic of their ideology. No exceptions.
Truth is perception, not objective reality. It can be what we want it to be. So that is what it is …
The Big lie being stirred up in the UK this week is that Brexit is to blame for the terrible queues of traffic waiting to pass from Kent in south east England into France. Especially vocal is The Guardian – of all moral rectitude and truth. The first big get away to the continent since Brexit on January 1st 2021 was marked by roads clogged for miles as holiday motorists wait for hours and hours.
French officialdom is actually to blame: lack of sufficient resources, and failure to deploy those resources on time. Those factors are in the Guardian report but their prejudice and presentation refuse to make them the decisive factor. No, it must be Brexit because Remain warned of all these terrible consequences if Britain left EUtopia. What they do not mention is the context – the fact of French Government hostility to the UK over Channel fishing rights and over the Customs barriers connected with Northern Ireland. To think that the French are being vindictive is unthinkable: that would be xenophobic, if not downright racist.
In reality, however, the French Interior Minister remains one Gerald Darmanin. Mr Darmanin falsely accused law abiding Liverpool fans of being the cause of trouble at the Stade de France a few weeks ago on the evening of the European Championship soccer final. Everyone in France knows full well – and there is smartphone evidence recording events on the night – that the trouble was caused by the hooligans of a certain social demographic which is beyond all criticism in woke world. These hooligans literally dominate the Parisian commune of Saint Denis where the Stade de France is situated. They are well known for causing problems at the Stade de France, problems like pickpocketing and climbing the barriers to get in without paying …
But Gerald Darmanin went on the record to blame the far right for suggesting that the truth about the Stade de France was True. Just far right propaganda “exploiting” the situation. The context here – as always – is vital. The Euro championship final took place just two weeks before France’s national parliamentary elections …
In those elections, Mr Macron’s 5 years of utter failure to deal with the grave law and order problem, inter alia, was punished by the French electorate.
Marine le Pen’s Rassemblement National won an unprecedented 89 seats – up from just 8 before – to become the largest opposition party in the National Assembly of 577 deputes. Macron’s Renaissance [the renamed, remarketed former La Republique en Marche] got 172 – down from their 308 outright majority ! Macron is allied with new party Horizons [30 seats] and MoDem [47 seats]. The French equivalent of the British Conservative party or the US Republicans, Les Republicains, came 4th with 62 seats – down from 112. The Marxist La France Insoumise won 75 seats- up from just 17 in 2017.
Stripped of their outright majority from 2017, the government is now caught between a rock and a hard place – Brit bashing and warmongering in Ukraine are the resort of a Macroleon now trapped by the consequences of all his false promise to be the Saviour of France in 2017. It was obvious in 2016 that Macron was just a marketing product, confirmed by a 2021 official inquiry into the American PR consultancy, McKinsey – the French Senate report re which played for about 48 hours before being discarded by French MSM in the weeks before this year’s Presidential election.
But to return to the current Big Lie about Brexit, a government minister actually spoke the truth in an interview with British Sky News on monday 25th July 2022. James Cleverly stated that there had always been checks at the border with France because Britain was never part of the Schengen Agreement on free movement.
THIS IS TRUE. I know from experience. My wife and I have often travelled back and forth between UK and France during the last 20 years … our passports are always routinely checked – both when entering UK from France and entering France from UK. Of course, if you are illegal, you don’t need a passport or to put up with such tiresome formalities.
The canny illegal immigrant, however, does not accept the British main stream media picture of a Britain in constant Brexit crisis, suffering the consequent economic ravages and collapse of the UK National Health Service. These poor refugees don’t understand that the French and German health services are so much better than the British – as Polly Toynbee suggests in the Guardian.
Well, I have some unwelcome truth for Polly Toynbee. French news constantly report the problems of staffing in the French health service. In fact, the problem has been officially recognised for at least 15 years. Just this last week, I have listened to reports of serious shortages of nursing staff. Indeed, one estimate is that 20% of ALL hospital beds in France are not available because of staff shortages. Even so, the Government here has repeated officially in the last 2 or 3 days that it will not reinstate those hundreds of nurses who refused the Covid 19 vaccination [the worst of Covid is over folks; the scam has been revealed: vaccinated being reinfected; 4+ jabs now required and Covid isn’t even 3 years old …wake up, please !]
And it is not just shortages of hospital staff that are common to both EU France and Brexit Britain. Name any scare story you like being reported in Britain, and I guarantee the same problem exists in EU France. I know because I follow both sets of media – indeed the problems in the USA are similar too, judging by the content of American media.
Staff shortages in several sectors of the economy: restaurants; lorry drivers; construction industry; food production. Much of it systemic, and partly unavoidable because of demographics – though abortion and reduced family sizes must be major factors. A major factor is intrusive Government policies imposing needless intervention over Covid 19; another, the stupid, suicidal intervention in the Russia/Ukraine conflict: energy and economic fallout likely worse than 1974 oil crisis.
Add to all this the classic failure of government administration to carry out even the most basic task it is there to perform. An example, please ?
Well, unlike the USA, European health is a public, governmental provision. Which is why, however much money you throw at the system, it is never – and never will be – enough. It is socialism and suffers the shortcomings of Socialism.
Let me explain. The progressives, the Left constantly harp on about the failings of the public health service. They accuse the government of not doing and spending enough. Spending on health is one of the top priority budgets in France and in UK. Spending is at record levels. The problem is that the more money you give to socialist/left voting civil servants, the bigger the empire they create, the more regulations they introduce, and the more staff they need just to administer the system itself – never mind the actual purpose !
Let me point to just one problem in one area. It is common to France and the the United Kingdom: staffing levels in the publicly funded and publicly provided health services. For decades, there have been problems about not having enough doctors and nurses – decades. Always the current crop of politicians are to blame. But they are not ultimately to blame.
The people ultimately to blame are the professional managers and administrators in the vast Health Departments of government administration. They are charged with managing and administering the system. They are paid salaries out of the public purse to do a job. So, where is the plan on the most basic issue, namely to ensure sufficient staff are recruited in the decades to come ? After all, the purpose concerns the health care needs of the entire population…
Why have these people not done their job ? Why are these manifestly overpaid bureaucrats not held accountable ?
With unprecedented Billions of taxpayers money devoted to health etc, why do we have to endure such basic incompetence ?
Answer: the ethical rectitude of the Enlightened Progressive …
Graham R. Catlin
Conservatism Institute 