5 ms·

I can’t fathom how in a year of a pandemic, worldwide economic instability and now a war that this continues to be a headline news saga.

tonyedgecombe 4y ago
Because the prime minister was telling everyone to make huge sacrifices whilst he was doing the opposite. People don’t like hypocrites.
- pasabagi 4y ago
  There's also an unusually personal dimension. I expect a majority of people in the UK have either lost relatives or friends during the pandemic, and have had to follow rules regarding hospital visits and funerals that were pretty hard.
  - pydry 4y ago
    "The people" dont decide what front page news is though and the media played this one up for sure. They (Barclay brothers/Murdoch/Rothermere) either decided Boris's days were numbered or that he needed knocking down a few pegs. This is in contrast to two years ago when he was golden and they couldnt sing his praises hard enough. At the time the government was deliberately sending infected elderly patients back to care homes where they caused thousands of dead bodies to pile up - a story that got a disproportionately low level of coverage despite mattering orders of magnitude more.
    - pasabagi 4y ago
      Well, the point about the party story is that it's incontrovertible. With the handling of the pandemic itself, the media could spin, smoosh and soft-pedal the facts to make Boris look 'Churchillian'. Since they're completely spineless, that's what they did. Going to a party while a sizeable chunk of people have traumatic memories of doing hospital visits through zoom will make those people hate you, and it's not very easy to smoosh, spin, or soft-pedal. It's just infuriating, and because the trauma of the pandemic was fairly evenly distributed, it has infuriated a very broad scatter of people. Presumably, some of them work in the news. Some of them are in the conservative party, even. I can sort of feel the fire in my belly over this one because I didn't get to visit my grandad before he died, nor a close family friend. My grandad had no funeral, and I missed the family friend's because of a positive covid test. I'm not a fan of Boris's politics, but the party thing definitely cuts in a different place. I expect there are a lot of people out there who will remember some genuinely hard moments, remember what Boris was doing at the same time, and feel deeply angry.
      - pydry 4y ago
        >and it's not very easy to smoosh, spin, or soft-pedal. It's easy enough. Call it a work meeting. If the media believes it the people will too. It almost worked. If 50,000 grandmas dying needlessly can be successfully downplayed and spun as a minor whoops then cheese and wine in no. 10 ought to be a doddle.
        pasabagi 4y ago
        Well, if you want to downplay it, you can point to a country like Belgium, which has a good GDP, so it's obviously a functional nation (right?), and point out their higher death numbers, then you can say that obviously the response wasn't perfect, but it was 'middle of the EU pack'. Then the opposition has to say why it's not fair to compare death rates with poor eastern european countries, and explain that Belgium is spectacularly dysfunctional, etc, etc, and by that time, the conversation has moved on. It's all a bit wonky and complicated. If the media were doing their jobs, if the opposition was doing their jobs, they would have baked this sort of machinery into the narrative - they are supposed to make stuff like this accessible for normal people. The thing about the parties is it's a bit like if No 10 had their lights on full blast so they could have parties during the blitz blackouts. It's breaking a rule they set in a way that endangers the people around them. There's no way to equivocate or whatever: they broke an important rule, at a very hard time, that they set, for utterly trivial reasons.
        pydry 4y ago
        Theres plenty of ways to equivocate. The story could also just have been buried like the tens of thousands of care home covid deaths triggered by gross negligence. It didnt have to be given airtime. Were the media placidly cheerleading as it was two years ago it would likely never even have been investigated. It was a deliberate choice for the tabloids to blanket us with partygate coverage and to trash Boris's reputation. It's neither wonky nor complicated. The media are doing their job. Their** job IS to manipulate public opinion on behalf of their owners. ** Except for the BBC and the guardian who are more reactive and generally follow the pack.
- nly 4y ago
  Hypocrites like the Chancellor of the Exchequer putting up income taxes while his wife has non-domicile tax status on her 8 figure annual income rumored to be structured through the Cayman Islands, I guess? I'm unsure whether we don't like hypocrites, or we like to promote them to office.
  - tonyedgecombe 4y ago
    Well his popularity has plummeted according to the polls.
- yanbianhobo 4y ago
  I do get that, I simply don’t get how it was/is the most important thing happening in the country. I remember having to scroll past all this on the bbc app to get at the Omicron news.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    In a purely functional way, that makes sense. You already knew you're coming for omicron news and that you'll find them there - so you can scroll past the actual novel articles. More surprising or urgent things will be higher.
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dTal 4y ago
Tory party infighting. No other reason. If it were actually a question of scandal, there are much larger ones that could be receiving media attention, like the enormous quantities of money embezzled from the government (read: taxpayer) under cover of the pandemic, or the deep connections between Tory party / Brexit campaign funding and very dirty Russian money. But those would reflect badly on the entire party in power, not just Boris. So we don't hear about those. This is a nice, neat, Boris-only scandal. Perfect fodder for the periodic ritual cleansing of sins.

tonyedgecombe 4y ago

Because the prime minister was telling everyone to make huge sacrifices whilst he was doing the opposite. People don’t like hypocrites.

pasabagi 4y ago
There's also an unusually personal dimension. I expect a majority of people in the UK have either lost relatives or friends during the pandemic, and have had to follow rules regarding hospital visits and funerals that were pretty hard.
- pydry 4y ago
  "The people" dont decide what front page news is though and the media played this one up for sure. They (Barclay brothers/Murdoch/Rothermere) either decided Boris's days were numbered or that he needed knocking down a few pegs. This is in contrast to two years ago when he was golden and they couldnt sing his praises hard enough. At the time the government was deliberately sending infected elderly patients back to care homes where they caused thousands of dead bodies to pile up - a story that got a disproportionately low level of coverage despite mattering orders of magnitude more.
  - pasabagi 4y ago
    Well, the point about the party story is that it's incontrovertible. With the handling of the pandemic itself, the media could spin, smoosh and soft-pedal the facts to make Boris look 'Churchillian'. Since they're completely spineless, that's what they did. Going to a party while a sizeable chunk of people have traumatic memories of doing hospital visits through zoom will make those people hate you, and it's not very easy to smoosh, spin, or soft-pedal. It's just infuriating, and because the trauma of the pandemic was fairly evenly distributed, it has infuriated a very broad scatter of people. Presumably, some of them work in the news. Some of them are in the conservative party, even. I can sort of feel the fire in my belly over this one because I didn't get to visit my grandad before he died, nor a close family friend. My grandad had no funeral, and I missed the family friend's because of a positive covid test. I'm not a fan of Boris's politics, but the party thing definitely cuts in a different place. I expect there are a lot of people out there who will remember some genuinely hard moments, remember what Boris was doing at the same time, and feel deeply angry.
    - pydry 4y ago
      >and it's not very easy to smoosh, spin, or soft-pedal. It's easy enough. Call it a work meeting. If the media believes it the people will too. It almost worked. If 50,000 grandmas dying needlessly can be successfully downplayed and spun as a minor whoops then cheese and wine in no. 10 ought to be a doddle.
      - pasabagi 4y ago
        Well, if you want to downplay it, you can point to a country like Belgium, which has a good GDP, so it's obviously a functional nation (right?), and point out their higher death numbers, then you can say that obviously the response wasn't perfect, but it was 'middle of the EU pack'. Then the opposition has to say why it's not fair to compare death rates with poor eastern european countries, and explain that Belgium is spectacularly dysfunctional, etc, etc, and by that time, the conversation has moved on. It's all a bit wonky and complicated. If the media were doing their jobs, if the opposition was doing their jobs, they would have baked this sort of machinery into the narrative - they are supposed to make stuff like this accessible for normal people. The thing about the parties is it's a bit like if No 10 had their lights on full blast so they could have parties during the blitz blackouts. It's breaking a rule they set in a way that endangers the people around them. There's no way to equivocate or whatever: they broke an important rule, at a very hard time, that they set, for utterly trivial reasons.
        pydry 4y ago
        Theres plenty of ways to equivocate. The story could also just have been buried like the tens of thousands of care home covid deaths triggered by gross negligence. It didnt have to be given airtime. Were the media placidly cheerleading as it was two years ago it would likely never even have been investigated. It was a deliberate choice for the tabloids to blanket us with partygate coverage and to trash Boris's reputation. It's neither wonky nor complicated. The media are doing their job. Their** job IS to manipulate public opinion on behalf of their owners. ** Except for the BBC and the guardian who are more reactive and generally follow the pack.
nly 4y ago
Hypocrites like the Chancellor of the Exchequer putting up income taxes while his wife has non-domicile tax status on her 8 figure annual income rumored to be structured through the Cayman Islands, I guess? I'm unsure whether we don't like hypocrites, or we like to promote them to office.
- tonyedgecombe 4y ago
  Well his popularity has plummeted according to the polls.
yanbianhobo 4y ago
I do get that, I simply don’t get how it was/is the most important thing happening in the country. I remember having to scroll past all this on the bbc app to get at the Omicron news.
- viraptor 4y ago
  In a purely functional way, that makes sense. You already knew you're coming for omicron news and that you'll find them there - so you can scroll past the actual novel articles. More surprising or urgent things will be higher.

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dTal 4y ago

Tory party infighting. No other reason. If it were actually a question of scandal, there are much larger ones that could be receiving media attention, like the enormous quantities of money embezzled from the government (read: taxpayer) under cover of the pandemic, or the deep connections between Tory party / Brexit campaign funding and very dirty Russian money. But those would reflect badly on the entire party in power, not just Boris. So we don't hear about those. This is a nice, neat, Boris-only scandal. Perfect fodder for the periodic ritual cleansing of sins.