The Judge RANTS!

Date: 22/09/16

You Can't Know What You Aren't Told

Yesterday, in our bendy, pretendy parliament (which we're not actually allowed to call a 'parliament', in case it gives us ideas), the Plaid Cymru group tabled a motion (NDM6096, if you want to look it up) calling upon the Notional Assembly (© Royston Jones) to, "[note] the importance of full membership of the European single market to the Welsh economy".

As one would expect, even though the motion itself could hardly be called controversial - or even remotely challenging - it was opposed by the froth-mouthed golf-club Phalangists of UKIP and by the Tories, who put forward an amendment calling for the Assembly to, "[note] the importance of access to the EU single market for the Welsh economy" (my bold).

What happened when it came to the actual vote is instructive in what it says, not so much about the KIPpers - because KIPpers do as KIPpers are - or about the Tories (for much the same reasons), but about the complete ideological and ethical breakdown of the Labour Party in Wales. Here's how the vote went on the original motion:

For: 7
Against: 40
Motion defeated.

In addition to the Tories and the KIPpers, the motion was opposed by 23 Labour AMs (plus the one remaining LibDem who has allowed her support to be bought by being given an important ministerial position).

The weaselling Tory amendment was then voted on:

For: 41
Against: 6
Amendment passed

(That discrepancy was caused by His Appalling Lordship Dafydd Elis Elis-Thomas of Nant Conwy in the County of Gwynedd who, having voted for the motion, then voted for the amendment and then voted against the motion as amended, putting that division back to 40-7).

So, rather than either voting to support what must surely be of greater advantage to our nation's economy, Labour sided not only with the Tories but with the extreme right of Brit-unionism/colonialism. It wouldn't have been quite so emetic if they had merely followed the recent custom of their masters in the Palace of Varieties in Westminster and mounted a courageous abstention.

Why would Labour in Wales behave in such a fashion? Well, besides the fact that Labour in Wales has always placed its Unionism above all other considerations, they - be it nationally or locally - will always avail themselves of the opportunity to 'dish the Nashies', irrespective of the harm it might do to the interests of their constituents by doing so.

The reason they are still able to get away with this infantile tactic without suffering the fate of their Scottish colleagues - for whom a similar strategy has resulted in their reduction to absurdity (and third place) - is that, unlike our friends and near-neighbours to the north, we do not have a strong, vigorous and above all avowedly nationalist party; the self-styled 'Party of Wales' has - ever since the dark days of Milord Dafydd Elis Elis-Thomas of Nant Conwy in the County of Gwynedd's turn at the helm thirty years ago - tried to be a pseudo-nationalist party to the schoolteachers and rural lawyers of Gwynedd whilst trying to convince the benighted denizens of those Fabled Valleys of the South that they are dyed-in-the-wool socialists. That this has led the party's electoral support to flatline for the last decade and a half doesn't seem to have got through to them yet.

Anyway, the amended motion (as passed) provides the first instance of a constituent assembly of the Untied Condom of Great Hysteria voting for what is euphemistically called 'hard Brexit'. So you would think that such an event would be widely reported for that significance.

Well, the Western Mail (affectionately - not! - known as the Wasting Mule or Llais Y Sais (*)) spotted it:

(I'll leave aside the question of who there might be left who is sufficiently naïve to be 'shocked').

And surely our Great British National Broadcaster would recognise the importance of the story? Well, let's look at the BBC Wales news page some twenty four hours afterwards, shall we?

Nothing there, then: just the usual 'NHS in crisis' story and some celebrity gossip. What about further down?

Nope, nothing here either beyond parish pump stuff and the almost obligatory World War 2 story. Onwards and downwards, then...

No again; just pieces by the Corpse's overpaid 'experts' and the sports news. Ah, but wait! What's that in the top left-hand corner? A link called 'Wales politics'! That should do it! <click>:

Still nowt. I wonder why?

Well, the mesh of connections between the BBC's colonial outpost in Cardiff and the Labour Establishment has always been there. Let it be remembered that Owen Smith, that walking vacuum who has recently allowed himself to be the patsy for the party's right-wing and its attempts to destroy any possibility of it going back to somewhere near its founding principles, used to work for the BBC (before he went on to assist other underperforming pricks as a shill for the manufacturers of Viagra™) and almost certainly got the job because his dadda Dai Smith (one of those 'socialist' historians who believes that the Welsh nation didn't exist until Nye Bevan invented it) was a panjandrum with the corporation at the time.

Just as in Scotland, the BBC's cosy relationship with the comrades has served both parties well - giving the former easy access to the powerful and giving the latter similarly convenient leverage in the field of news management. So it might be that the Castration has had a favour or two called in and decided not to publish anything at all on the story to help out their old chums in The Bay.

(I'm told that Radio Glamorgan - sorry, I mean 'Radio Wales' - did mention the story on its flagship news programme this morning, but somehow managed to state that Plaid had 'claimed' that Labour voted with the Tories and KIPpers yesterday; it could hardly be a 'claim' when the evidence is there right before their eyes).

I read a number of websites on the subject of the liberation of Scotland, and the constant complaints of corporate media bias there are familiar from our own experience down here; but our situation is orders of magnitude worse in that we have no mass media at all which are not totally owned or controlled from outside, be they newspaper corporations or the broadcasting organs of the Westminster-Whitehall-City axis. So it is unsurprising that we are so mis-, mal- and under-informed that tens of thousands of people will vote for extreme right-wing English parties and for cutting themselves off from the main source of what little economic and social support we get.

And - with regard to the BBC at least - the making manifest of what has to some degree of success long been kept hidden has been helped by the statement made the other day in the Imperial Parliament by Karen Bradley, the latest nonentity to become Secretary of State at the DCMS (that's the Department for Courting Murdoch's Support, of course; her first act was to appoint the former political editor of Rupe-O's disgraced News Of The World as a 'Special Advisor'), In it, she said the following:

And:

That these strictures are now to be part of the BBC's Charter will at least relieve those of its remaining defenders in the colonies of the necessity of trying to justify the overwhelming pro-London, pro-England, pro-Union and pro-Establishment biases which the people of Scotland have now seen through. Perhaps it will start to wake the populace of this dozing corner of Empire of the same. If they ever find out about it, of course.

Update (four hours later): The Corpsoration has now deigned to mention the story three paragraphs down this piece.

* 'Voice of the English'

File under: Media & Culture, Politics