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| Harrow Road, London, 1953 Photo: Press Association |
Is a human life worth more than horse meat? Clearly not. What everyone has been saying all week: Peter Oborne asks "How to explain, then, the contrast between the recent, obsessive interest in horse meat and the near omertà surrounding Stafford?" You know...the people, the ones that politicians are elected to serve (pah!): we've been asking "Why the silence, why the omission, why the cover-up"? Horse meat, horse meat...hey, look over there another horse meat story, you'll Findus in the freezer, it's nothing new 'this sordid trade'! Irony of ironies, Staffordshire County Council has been among those shouting first and loudest (plus Labour twats of course).
"What we have here, I believe, is a conspiracy of silence, just as we had a conspiracy of silence over phone hacking and over MPs’ expenses. None of the mainstream parties want to admit the blindingly obvious fact that there is something very wrong with the NHS, as Stafford demonstrates in the most tragic and horrifying way."
One shining light - on the horse meat side at least - is Owen Paterson; as Christopher Booker writes, [hat-tip EU Referendum] "What Mr Paterson recognised from the start, unlike any other politician in Britain, was that the root of the problem lay in what had followed when, a decade ago, the EU took over all “competence” to make food law from national governments." Good, this puts the blame firmly where it belongs: Labour and the EU. Now, what about all those dead? BBC are you going to tell us? As there's going to be no blame, no scapegoats, no prosecutions, no fines, no sackings no press-pillorying over all those NHS deaths surely we can at least get a good tarring and feathering over the horse-meat hoohah? Start with Miliband minor and Ms. aghh Creagh as they seem so out of touch with what has happened and why.
4 comments:
The parliamentary debate on Stafford was shown in full on BBC twice this week - more than six hours of the stuff! Interesting to watch, dipped in and out, without any of the political rancour that arises from the media coverage (or non coverage). Nobody seemingly wants to take responsibility beyond some soundbites.
Hi Paul, yes I know, most big debates are on. The lack of any responsibility is astounding, imagine had 1200 died from Starbucks poisoning! (by the way, in case there's a wee dig at my slagging off the Beeb: the BBC coverage I mean is the website: there is simply no excuse for some nothing stories being up for days (even weeks in some cases) and this disappeared in 24 hours; now as events happen and new meetings and spokes-peoples' excuses come out that will be reported but there are ways of treating a story as big and ways of not treating a story as big and 90% of my contact with the BBC is the website and this simply has NOT been treated a as big story.)
No I wasn't digging at you - you should know I don't do sly! What I found incredible was the attitude of all involved. Not only was the questioning ignored on several occasions but the questions themselves seemed inept. The BBC news site does have a habit of dropping stories that get a little bit too much public reaction if it doesn't agree with the editorial line. There was a debate the other week on the political page that quickly got out of hand and dropped - just like the old 5Live Board days where a thread would suddenly be closed down for going 'off topic'
Hehehe,OK, I believe you :-)
Funnily enough the R5L board thing occurred to me too although it didn't happen that often.
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