Lynne Featherstone and Page 3, just ask

Apparently according to the Daily Mail, Lynne Featherstone Equalities minister has received a warning from senior civil servants after posting controversial rants on her blog.

I tweeted this to @El_Cuervo 'Oh no @lfeatherstone has a mind of her own, quickly lets write about it tell people how wrong that is'

Do we really want our MP's to simply say nothing accept when asked by the media. The same media that is running a campaign against her because they believe she is going to get rid of page 3. One of those stories built on quotes, but not researched.

The Sun have been running a number of stories on Lynne Featherstone because at a public meeting she was asked about page 3 and Lynne responded "love to take on Page 3". Reporters should really should do more research, if they had only asked Lynne about this comment directly they would of found out that Lynne didn't mean she would ban Page 3. Perhaps they prefer to not find out the truth because they wouldn't have a story.

I asked Lynne Featherstone MP myself about this at the recent special conference. Lynne said to me that she would not ban page 3 because she is a Liberal and does not believe in banning things. Lynne also said that she wants the Sun to consider the use of page 3 because there is a concern about young children seeing it. I asked why she had not said this on her blog and Lynne replied that quite frankly has got other things to worry about but would at some point Blog a response to The Sun.

Of course the Sun have been doing a fair bit of there own air brushing when reporting on this story see this Page 3 Story

Todays Link is to CharlotteGore Guns Guns Guns Blog

Picture above is me and Lynne Featherston MP at the Special Conference

News of the World wrong on PS3 in prisons and Sun Cable quotes misleading

My readers will know that I don't believe what I read in the press. I find some papers are too biased and full of half truths. Heres two examples

Todays News of the World 2nd page has a Story headline 'Luxury Lags get PS3 Perk' on page two

Now have a look at the photo. Thats not a PS3 controller the so called jailbird has. Its a PS1 controller. These are worth almost nothing now (selling for 99pence on ebay). If you are going to claim that half are allowed Playstations PS3 at least show the prisoner with the right controller when mentioning the PS3 several times in the article. Prisoners are not being given PS3 at tax payers expense. They maybe given a console by friends or family or perhaps donated one. But they are not siting there playing PS3 all day.

The other Story was in the Sun on bank holiday Monday called 'Unstable Cable' Catchy it maybe but the example in the headline is taken out of context.

Where in October 2008 Vince Cable said 'It is entirely wrong for the government to stimulate the economy by yet more public spending' he was referring to the spending by the government should be on capital projects not on normal public expenditure. Where Vince Cable said in February 2009 'We believe the government stimulus is right and necessary' Vince Cable was talking about the quantitative easing program not public spending, too totally unrelated types of stimulus'. Yes Cable is not perfect but if you are going to attack him atleast use the right quotes otherwise you may as well make the story up.

Vince Cable did not disagree with quantitative easing he simply warned about not over doing it he said 'Monetary easing may prove to be necessary but will have to be managed with great skill and care'. The situation in the economy was developing and Vince Cable did change some of his views based on the changing economic situation. I don't really see what wrong with that, surely its because politicians are not allowed to be fexlible that their hands become tied for fear of being seen to 'Unstable' and therefore can't respond as required by the situation.

Todays link is to The Norfolk Blogger who has done this little video on the 'Contradiction of the Tory Marriage Tax proposal'

Betting on Clegg a non story‏

The sun has an exclusive story 'And it’s Kauto Star, Denman..and Nick Clegg’s fading ' But this is such a non story. The article states that 'Nick Clegg was left long-faced yesterday as bookies revealed a QUARTER of voters have never even heard of the Lib Dem leader.' But when you read on you discover that this was not a survey of the voting public but a Ladbrokes poll of 1,000 of their own punters. Not a surprised then that more know which horse is favourite to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Personally I have never heard of Kauto Star but then again I'm not a follower of horse racing.

So lets get this clear, this 'exclusive' story is not voters after all but Ladbrokes own punters who may vote. It's another example of a non story, which is spun and printed in one of Britain's biased newspapers.

Plenty of people don't know who many politicians are in general. Would every member of the public know who George Osborne is? I would be willing to bet that a significant percentage don't. A higher percentage of people didn't vote in the last general election 35.9% (of the people eligible to vote only 61.4% did). This was before the expenses scandal, so I would bet that many people who didn't vote have absolutely no interest in politics and therefore would not know or care who the Lib Dem leader is. How many of this 25% are the same people who didn't vote? I bet a high percentage. Do we really believe that everyone in the run up to the 2005 general election knew who Michael Howard was?

I expect this will be more and more the case at every general election unless we can get people switched on to politics. This seems unlikely because if you look at the democracies that don't have compulsory voting then we can see that interest (based on voting) has decreased. This is even the case when people were queuing to elect Barack Obama were the vote was less than even ours in the UK.

Is It Democratic‏ for Newspapers to Take Sides?

How unfair it is to have a newspaper lend so much support behind a political party. The Sun as we all know can get very nasty turning people into turnips etc. Now I know the Sun is popular, with over 3million papers sold daily, I like the paper much more than say the Daily Mail, the Mirror or the Daily Express. But I have never liked the total all out go and get them attitude they have to politics when it takes sides.

Sky which is owned by one of Rupert Murdoch's companies seems much fairer in its reporting, so why should a newspaper be so different. Sky, ITV, Channel 4 all appear give a fairer view when compared to the papers and US TV news. So what happens if the Tories from now on do make some news worthy gaff on a policy which the Sun readers would of wanted to know about? Do the party focused press report it? Do they stick a turnip on Cameron's head, I bet they don't. It's just not cricket is it.

Now I know what you the reader may be thinking. Yeah well this guys a Lib Dem and they have no support in the press, so of course he doesn't like it? Well ok yes there is no Lib Dem support or infact support for any other party apart from the big two and yes I don't like it. But I also genuinely think that taking such strong sides in an election is not democratic and does skew the result.

What do you think about our newspapers taking such strong sides in the political arena?