Tuesday, April 29, 2008

A 'Daily Nuclear Strike'

Polly Toynbee, with her usual sense of proportion, writes:
Associated Newspapers, the owner of the Daily Mail, has used the London Evening Standard as a daily nuclear strike in the city's mayoral campaign. Its billboards across London every day claim spurious "scandal" after "scandal" involving Ken Livingstone. Few read the paper, but all London sees the newsstands.
Thankfully the Guardian shows how a proper newspaper should cover the London mayoral race:

Today:
Yesterday:
  • Richard Reeves on the dangers of 'progressives' splitting the vote.
  • Martin Jacques declares that Livingstone is a demigod and asks of Boris Johnson "Does anyone really think that Johnson has any serious commitment to public transport or knows what it means? Does anyone believe that he can represent the 40% of Londoners who are non-white when his own racial prejudices have been made so apparent?". Perhaps Ian Wright could represent them.
  • Dave Hill (again), "Livingstone has acquired the expertise that comes with experience whereas Johnson cannot tell us who his transport specialists are going to be. Which of the two would you prefer in charge?"
  • John Carvel on Ken, "He is the same witty, articulate, self-deprecating, stubborn, leftwing pragmatist that he was then."
I may expand this article into last week's Grauniad and beyond, later today. I'm sure I could find well over a hundred articles scaremongering about a Boris Johnson victory.

3 comments:

JuliaM said...

There's a pretty good one on there this morning:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_rogers/2008/04/rogersmayor.html

He introduces the concept of yet another 'Human Right' - the right to 'access to good quality public space', no less.

Ross said...

Seeing as Lord Rogers designed the colossal waste of space that is the Millennium Dome does this make him a human rights abuser?

JuliaM said...

Heh.

Well, to be fair, the problem with the Dome (apart from the budles of taxpayers cash wasted on it) was the utter load of new-age, PC crap housed within it.

The building itself is now doing sterling work, due to being put in the hands of people who fill it with things that the public actually want to see...