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| What is Alternative Media |
In the recent UK poll
YouGov looked at how people say they would vote in the General Election and compared the results with those collected in the previous week. YouGov's analysis also suggest that the Conservative Party remain way ahead in the opinion polls, but what’s significant is how much the gap between
Labour and the Conservatives has shrunk from 23 percentage points to just 13 Sunday
to Sunday.
In the run-up to
June 8th General Election we should all keep an eye on the headlines for stuff like:
Theresa May is toughest on crime.
Theresa May is toughest on crime.
Despite the Conservative Government having
cut the money the Police need to fight crime by 20%.
The bulk of the mainstream press will also try to terrify us by pretending that it is only the Conservatives Party that is strong enough of on defense to keep us safe.
The bulk of the mainstream press will also try to terrify us by pretending that it is only the Conservatives Party that is strong enough of on defense to keep us safe.
Remember though, that it was them that
scrapped our only proper Aircraft Carrier before a new one was built and, at
the same time, plans to buy an off-the-shelf nuclear weapon from a foreign
country rather that building the UK's own independent nuclear deterrent.
When there's a clear alternative to full-blown capitalism the media-knows-best attitude kicks in and it usually works. It didn't happen so much under Tony Blair's leadership because then the Labour Party was Tory Light and the Murdoch press, as long as it didn't affect his empire too much, appeared to quite like Tony's sanitised version of capitalism. Under Jeremy Corbyn, however, the Labour Party is a very different animal, and represents a genuine and more up-front socialist alternative to the kind of hard-nosed capitalism we have at the moment and, as a consequence, the Labour Party has few powerful friends controlling the media.
When there's a clear alternative to full-blown capitalism the media-knows-best attitude kicks in and it usually works. It didn't happen so much under Tony Blair's leadership because then the Labour Party was Tory Light and the Murdoch press, as long as it didn't affect his empire too much, appeared to quite like Tony's sanitised version of capitalism. Under Jeremy Corbyn, however, the Labour Party is a very different animal, and represents a genuine and more up-front socialist alternative to the kind of hard-nosed capitalism we have at the moment and, as a consequence, the Labour Party has few powerful friends controlling the media.
It's not the Labour
and Lib-Dem crime and defense policies that terrify me, it's the failure of the
press to provide a balanced view of what is really going on in our society and
the world for that matter. There are
alternative views out there, but they haven't the reach of a mainstream media who
are predominantly owned by self-serving billionaires with a vested interest in
maintaining a Conservative Government and it’s dog-eat-dog version of capitalism. Put simply, the media have to prevent Labour, Lib-Democrats, SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party from winning power and, above all else, keep a more just and equal society just out of reach of the people.
