Comments on Obsolete: The desperate hours.

Great post. I agree, regarding the Philippa Stro...

2010-05-05T17:36:08.577+01:00

Great post.
I agree, regarding the Philippa Stroud non-story. The associated Tweetfrenzy seemed to miss the absence of fact, or at least contemporary fact, in the report. There was a lot more in the way of insinuation...
Another Grauniad writer just decided my vote:
'Voting is always a balance between the moral and the strategic. What do I want, what can I get and what do I feel comfortable endorsing to get it.'
The realisation was that the answer (for me) is that there is no comfort in endorsing a least-worst option.

It may well have been factual, but it's still ...

2010-05-05T12:56:03.115+01:00

It may well have been factual, but it's still completely irrelevant to her standing as an MP when there's no evidence she still holds those views, and there's no apparent hypocrisy on her part. The reason why it's not being reported elsewhere isn't some grand conspiracy as others are suggesting, but because it isn't a story.

"It would be wrong to pretend however that [n...

2010-05-05T08:04:16.353+01:00

"It would be wrong to pretend however that [negative and hysterical media coverage is] just a tabloid disease: check the Observer's attack on Philippa Stroud, which is even more ancient in origin than the Daily Mail's was on Clegg."

A false equivalence; the Observer's article had a factual basis, while the Mail's didn't.

What was telling was the respective parties' responses to the stories: the Tories did all they can to defend Stroud and she "apologised" for something no-one actually accused her of, while the Clegg story was dismissed by the Lib Dems and ridiculed straight away by everyone else.