New Leader New Conservatives?

I’ve been rather busy with other commitments recently and have unfortunately been unable to update my website. This was because I was working on my Undergraduate Dissertation and towards my degree at the University of Bath.

The title of the dissertation is ‘New Leader, New Conservatives?’ The document was submitted for review on the 1st May 2009 and I will receive word of the grade in the middle of June. The abstract for the dissertation is as follows:

Since the election of David Cameron as Leader of the Conservative party, very little scrutiny by academics and the media has been afforded to the nature of its policies and the political agenda of the party leadership. This study argues that David Cameron has fundamentally re-aligned his political party, and attempts to rectify the notion that the Conservative party still pursues conservatism in any meaningful way. In doing so, this study shall highlight how the Conservative party in Britain has surrendered itself to the neo-liberal Leftist political consensus.

At roughly ten thousand words, it might take a little longer to read than most of my usual blog postings. I hope, however, that you will feel it is worth the time and effort. The content of the document has not been added to since it was submitted and therefore represents the dissertation in its original form.

Download a copy of the dissertation (.pdf – 487kb)

I would imagine that a number of people may not necessarily like my conclusions. However, I am hardly alone in taking this point of view. If you disagree with any point that I’ve made or have any remarks then please leave them in the comments area.

Media In Focus

Following on from my previous post about how, in a time of great financial crisis, many in the media have got their focus and priorities entirely wrong, another fantastic example of such wings its way to us via the ever-relevant BBC website.

The BBC are reporting that porn protesters have hit Westminster to complain about new laws that will ban the possession of extreme images showing ‘a threat to life or serious injury to a person’s genitals’. Wonderful stuff as you can imagine.

Now, the protest consisted of a mere twenty people and it would seem that as a consequence the BBC felt the issue of violent pornography and yesterday’s march warranted an entire news article on their website with an accompanying video.

However, compare this with the level of coverage two other past protests held outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster gained that concerned calls for the Government to honour its manifesto commitment to give a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

The first was back in October of 2007 and the second in February of this year, both of which I was in attendance. Now, the Referendum rallies were not mass protests on the scale of the million strong Countryside Alliance or Stop The Iraq War coalition marches – but they were still pretty sizeable with a couple of thousand people in total, and very many more than the twenty individuals at yesterday’s ‘porn protest’. Yet did the BBC (or any other news agency for that matter) cover the Referendum protests? The answer is of course, no – they did not. Not once.

Calling for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty did not just concern a few sick and depraved individuals wanting to photograph one another performing bizarre sexual acts, but the freedom, liberties and democratic rights of an entire nation of millions of people.

Yet, it is apparent that the BBC and most other news corporations hold the discussion of the laws on violent pornography more important than whether we wish to be a sovereign nation. Even the professional photographer and ringleader of the porn protesters, Ben Westwood (son of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood) acknowledged that:

There are more important issues to be debated than this.

In that Mr Westwood is entirely correct, but it would seem that large swathes of the media would disagree. Sadly, some things it would seem never change.

Media Priorities

Sam Tarran makes the point (first noted here) that while our banking system undergoes massive regulatory failure, the media busy themselves with the massively important issue of whether George Osborne has been receiving donations.

To put things into perspective, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King recently admitted that:

Not since the beginning of the first world war has our banking system been so close to collapse.

Compare such an alarming statement on the state of our banking system and economy with the BBC’s Political Editor, Nick Robinson and his account of George Osborne’s trip to Corfu. Someone’s journalistic priorities in the wrong place, wouldn’t you say?

Top Ten Blogs

I have been relatively busy recently so here is a post which doesn’t really require too much thinking (by me anyway).

It is also a rare occasion when I will not in some way directly involve mention of the European Union (oh no, I did it again!) or what I would deem similarly serious political matters or events.

So, as it happens, I noticed that a few of the self obsessed egos who involved themselves in 18 Vanity Street (which amusingly collapsed last year) but chose not to move sideways onto Stephan Shakespeare’s PoliticsHome project have reappeared in the team behind a new magazine called TotalPolitics.

Rather unsurprisingly the TotalPolitics magazine (much like its staff) will really only be interested in the soap opera of the Westminster Village rather than anything that could be even considered vaguely serious. I am not the only one of this opinion.

Yet, despite the magazine being funded in part by Lord Ashcroft and released to much fan fare on some few blogs, I think it may now well be a good time to place your bets on how long it will be before it goes the way of Doughty Street down the pan.

Click here to continue reading the article…