UK Politics Mega-thread - Page 223

On September 01 2016 01:35 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Well, I think that media has a gigantic role in a democracy and that it's one of the main problem of british democracy. It's no contempt for voters, simply that I think democracy is a very fragile thing. I don't think Corbyn is a wonderful leader, but the treatment he has received from the press is a problem in itself. You simply have 0 chance if you get a carpet bombing coverage of hysterically negative articles.

The UK manufacturing industry has swung to a 10-month high and beat expectations as it rebounded from its slump after the Brexit vote.

The closely watched Markit/CIPS UK Manufacturing purchasing managers' index hit 53.3 in August, up from 48.2 in July and above economists' expectations of 49.

A reading above 50 indicates growth.

The manufacturing sector was in the doldrums following Britain's vote to leave the European Union, with Brexit uncertainty putting the brakes on growth and forcing the industry to a 41-month low in July.

But it rallied in August, matching the highest month-on-month increase since the survey began nearly 25 years ago.

On September 01 2016 02:01 bardtown wrote:


As I've said before in this thread, any study that talks about negative press of Corbyn without comparing him to another similarly placed public figure is meaningless. Also, people tend to hugely overestimate the power of the press, which for the most part echos the views of the people in order to sell copies, as opposed to disseminating propaganda that changes their views. Press declaring sides in the EU referendum, for example, had no meaningful correlation with changes in voter intention. The Sun is always on the right side of public votes, not because they decide the outcome, but because they are in touch with such a large proportion of the voters.

There is only one relevant piece of information in the article: "Among those who joined before May 2015, support for Smith is at 68 percent compared with 32 per cent for Corbyn". In other words, the actual Labour party does not want Corbyn, but the huge numbers of leftist entryists do. They are radicals who do not represent any significant portion of the public. The only reason Labour still polls at 27% is because there are so many people too stubborn to change their allegiance.

Edit: By the way, in terms of seats, the current 41% Conservative/27% Labour split equates to about 400 seats to 100, IIRC.

On September 02 2016 09:53 Dapper_Cad wrote:


The approximation for Newspaper income has traditionally been the 80/20 split. Money from sales of newspapers traditionally makes up 20% and advertising making up 80%. There has been a lot of talk about the internet changing this relationship but very little evidence. Given this it's reasonably obvious that the newspapers "customers" are corporations not people who purchase newspapers.

The effects of this can be gross (As Peter Oborne's open letter indicated when he quit as the Telegraph's chief political commentator over it's alleged suppression of reporting of the HSBC swiss arm's tax evasion.) but they are more often subtle. If you are a journalist that holds the sort of views that major advertisers don't like then you don't get promoted. Those that get promoted hire journalists who mirror their views etc. etc.

I guess you could pretend that newspaper bias doesn't have an effect, but then you have to explain how newspaper reporting has next to no effect but advertising does. It's either that or you're calling the half trillion dollar yearly spend on advertising money wasted. And that's not even touching on the billions spent on political campaigning. How does that have an effect while newspaper reporting doesn't?

Also... have I missed something or have you accidentally included an entirely different yougov poll on an entirely different subject in your comment on an study on media bias against Jeremy Corbyn?

The number of regular soldiers in the Army has shrunk below 80,000 as it struggles to recruit, the latest manning figures show.

Troop numbers have slid well below the downsized 82,000 target imposed after austerity defence cuts, despite millions of pounds having been spent on recruiting campaigns.

Cuts had already left the Army at its smallest since the Napoleonic Wars and low unemployment, a lack of operations and stubbornly low morale after years of cutbacks are all harming recruitment, sources said.

Recruiting is currently only 90 per cent of what is needed, one officer told The Telegraph.

The shortfall means the Army would struggle to respond to a major crisis, former officers warn.

The latest personnel figures released by the Ministry of Defence show that the Army had 79,590 trained regular soldiers in July and the figure is expected to fall further.

The RAF and Royal Navy are each also hundreds short.

One Army source said: “It’s a competitive market out there. In a recession we find it easier to recruit and when things are on the upturn, we find it more difficult.

“When we are on operations, it’s a little bit easier strangely enough. Soldiers want to get out there and get rounds down.”

Charles Heyman, editor of Armed Forces of the United Kingdom and a former infantry officer, said: “It’s significant because it is part of a trend and the Army is going to find it difficult to catch up quickly.

“There’s no doubt that not having Afghanistan does have an impact on recruiting. There’s a lot of opportunities in civilian life and there’s not really any fresh thinking about how to get people to serve in the Army.”

He said an outsourced recruiting contract with the services firm Capita was overly bureaucratic and did not have the appeal of in-house recruiting using serving soldiers.

He said: “I went to a recruiting office in North London and a be-medalled sergeant said, ‘You are just the kind of lad we want’ and he talked me into it. Capita is not doing well at recruiting. It’s difficult to get an application through the system."

He said: “If a major operation comes up then of course all the strains and stresses will show up immediately. It will be difficult to make it work.”

Col Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said defence cuts had left Britain “dangerously exposed at a time of growing risk”.

He said: “Cutting to such levels clearly demonstrates a lack of will to defend ourselves, shows weakness and is an invitation to enemies and potential enemies to attack us.

On September 03 2016 21:27 jello_biafra wrote:

Didn't know they were using capita to recruit, used to work there briefly, I'm not surprised they're very inefective.

The UK’s armed forces would not be able to protect the country from a full-scale attack by Russia or another major military power, the recently retired commander of joint forces command has said.

Gen Sir Richard Barrons, who stepped down in April, delivered a scathing assessment of the UK military in a 10-page private memorandum to the defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon.

It comes despite the government’s decision to increase defence spending by nearly £5bn by 2020/21 and to meet Nato’s target of 2% of GDP for the rest of the decade.

In his memo, Barrons said: “Capability that is foundational to all major armed forces has been withered by design.

“There is a sense that modern conflict is ordained to be only as small and as short term as we want to afford, and that is absurd.

“The failure to come to terms with this will not matter at all if we are lucky in the way the world happens to turn out, but it could matter a very great deal if even a few of the risks now at large conspire against the UK.”

The document, seen by the Financial Times, gives a withering judgment of Britain’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale military attack and singles out Russia, a country seen as more dangerous and unpredictable since its annexation of the Crimea and incursion in Ukraine.

Barrons said: “Counter-terrorism is the limit of up-to-date plans and preparations to secure our airspace, waters and territory ... there is no top-to-bottom command and control mechanism, preparation or training in place for the UK armed forces [to defend home territory] ... let alone to do so with Nato.”

On Britain’s ability to defend itself from aerial attack, he said: “UK air defence now consists of the [working] Type 45 [destroyers], enough ground-based air defence to protect roughly Whitehall only, and RAF fast jets.

“Neither the UK homeland nor a deployed force – let alone both concurrently – could be protected from a concerted Russian air effort.”

Barrons said the army’s recent experience did not include conducting full-scale wars, which could also be a disadvantage.

Sir Richard warned that the UK’s entire strategic thinking was underpinned by the assumption it could fight wars on a discretionary basis — a supposition he says has been completely upended by the increase in global instability over the past two years.

On September 18 2016 22:21 Gorsameth wrote:
Its a scare piece made by miss representing reality in an attempt in an attempt to scare people into doing something.

Military defense is not about winning the war. Its about making it so expensive for the enemy to win that it is not worth fighting.
Nukes are a big part of this. But even without MAD the UK could do massive damage in response to an invasion. Enough so that it is simply not worth starting the fight.
And then you add in international alliances and it becomes an even worse point.