ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by greenbaggyskin

By leaving the working man his shit TV, cheap beer, car, football and diet of titillation, they know he will not bother to interfere in the workings of the state.

That sounds like the UK!

Anyway, back to the wider issues of Groupthink and leaders (not just politicians) only listening to their yes men...

Originally Posted by brighton hippy

A bit more random selection of people in politics might help somebody might claim that public schoolboys that do politics at Oxford are the brightest and the best and should be handed the top jobs.
Unfortunatly Evidence suggests the results are far from brilliant if your going to claim to be "elite" you have to deliver.
they dont

The trouble is that none of them has ever experienced the real world, or is capable is listening to anyone who has...

Originally Posted by greenbaggyskin

There is one massive difference between Germany and the UK. In the UK every move any administration makes is open to the finest scrutiny of the press, and by extension the public, which brings forth an army of naysayers for every possible contingency. In Germany, the political parties, the press, the judiciary (including the police and lawyers) and the civil service run the country the way they see fit and don't bother with the inconvenience of transparency. By leaving the working man his shit TV, cheap beer, car, football and diet of titillation, they know he will not bother to interfere in the workings of the state. However it seems to work well, most of the time.

There was an interesting debate a while back on Zocalo, Zurich vs. LA: Which Is the Most Democratic City?, you can find it in iTunes.

As political systems the US and Switzerland actually have quite a lot in common, localized state/cantonal power, liberalism, lots of direct democracy but the difference is the Swiss in general actually trust their politicians to get on with things where as Californians have them tied up in a mass of daffy ever more complex constitutional rules and the minutiae of every decision is subject to paranoid scrutiny.

The conclusions was, there was a lot to be said for sober, competent grey men running the place from smoke filled rooms in the Swiss manner once you look at the reality of transparent but often entirely bonkers Californian democracy.

Not so much groupthink, as mediathink.
Back in the day when the BBC was a State poodle, and the newspapers would obey a D Notice, the average MP could ignore the Press, and the Ministers could concentrate on important business up until the point when their mistress went to the Daily Mirror.

What you now have is a class of politicians who (if they haven't actually cut their teeth in media/PR land), have been brutally trained to be hair-trigger sensitive to the needs of the media. News International may have had a hand in this, but the technology of the media has now advanced to a point where there is 'real time' comms between the MP and the public, and near 'real time' feedback on how it has gone down with the electorate.

Ironically, the media leadership is of exactly the same social class as the Cabinet, as that foaming revolutionary Michael Gove pointed out:
"Indeed it’s in the media that the public school stranglehold is strongest. The Chairman of the BBC and its Director-General are public school boys … My old paper The Times is edited by an old boy of St Pauls and its sister paper the Sunday Times by an old Bedfordian. The new editor of the Mail on Sunday is an old Etonian, the editor of the Financial Times is an old Alleynian and the editor of the Guardian is an Old Cranleighan. Indeed the Guardian has been edited by privately educated men for the last sixty years…"

but not necessarily of the same political complexion.

CMD will listen to his Notting Hill circle not because they are from Notting Hill, but because they represent the ear and mouth of the media, and it is the media that shapes the presentation of policy, and the mind of the electorate (as far as they have one.)

Let's face it- The man in the street may be the salt of the earth, etc, etc, but he is frequently an ill informed, uneducated, thick, parochial bigot. The Voice of the Yoof may be young and vibrant, but since no one can understand a word they say, or read their 'textspeak' letters, until they learn to establish comms with us, their views aren't going to be heard either.

Originally Posted by HectortheInspector

...

Let's face it- The man in the street may be the salt of the earth, etc, etc, but he is frequently an ill informed, uneducated, thick, parochial bigot. The Voice of the Yoof may be young and vibrant, but since no one can understand a word they say, or read their 'textspeak' letters, until they learn to establish comms with us, their views aren't going to be heard either.

The Perfect Consumer in fact.

Originally Posted by BoomShackerLacker

The Perfect Consumer in fact.

And the ideal voter.

Originally Posted by Grubby Bum III

DC is under attack from the extreme right of the Tories and Nadine Dorries is a major player in that area: see The Right-wing agitators out to get David Cameron - Telegraph.

I wish some of these self-promoting w*nkers would try to understand what team spirit is and support what ostensibly is common sense, rather than their own agendas. The Coalition is not ideal but if Dorries and her ilk keep pulling in their own favour, it'll all fall apart and Labour will be back in power again. Do we really want that? If it happened, I for one would be over the Channel like a shot.

fuck off then, you cant run with the hare and the hounds

Thought this might of been a finish the phrase thread: David Cameron's problem is that he only takes...alas not the naafi.