Sunday 30 October 2016

More of the same



As we wrote here the other week:


This week's The World This Weekend was much the same with a strong anti-Brexit angle (the risks posed to peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic) opening the programme and then, after the news, a string of anti-Brexit/pro-EU voices (three nationalist voters, a Republican writer, Senator George Mitchell, a harbour chief executive, a businessman and the Irish foreign minister Charlie Flanagan) piling up a damning case against Brexit and, finally, a pro-Brexit interviewee (DUP leader Arlene Foster) appearing to answer all the charges (with Mark interrupting) - though this time the pro-Brexit interviewee was led into (briefly) by a selection of pro-Brexit DUP members.

So we had 16 minutes of Brexit gloom-mongering followed by a 7 minute pro-Brexit response

The programme began with:
Welcome to a special edition of The World This Weekend live from Belfast. This is Mark Mardell. Northern Ireland will leave the European Union; The Republic of Ireland will stay. What will that mean for the economy, identity and the border?
The news bulletin began with:
The government has revealed more about the deal that persuaded the Japanese car maker Nissan to invest in building two new models at its site in Sunderland despite the vote for Brexit.  
The main section began with:
I'm in Belfast and here in Northern Ireland a majority - 52% - voted to remain in the European Union. The Irish government says Brexit means confusion and uncertainty for the island of Ireland, and it's called a meeting of parties and interest groups from north and south later this week to discuss its impact. [Actually Northern Ireland voted by 56% to Remain, so Mark Mardell was factually incorrect there].
The programme ended with:
Bringing us to our closing headlines. In the last half hour the US secretary of state John Kerry has said Brexit must not put the peace process at risk. Mr Kerry was speaking to Ireland to received the Tipperary International Peace Award.
All rather relentless really. All very BBC Radio 4.

4 comments:

  1. Baroness Tonge? Mrs foul tongue more like. Just because some cretin gave her a title doesn't mean that we have to acknowledge it. Same for all but a handful of the 850 or so parasites in the HoL.

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  2. OFF TOPIC: I think the Americans are having their own Brexit moment.

    One thing that strikes me about the UK media (all of them but BBC especially) is that they have misrepresented and underestimated Trump.

    Trump is supposed to be a "joke" candidate as the normally sensible Julia Hartley-Brewer said on Sky Press Preview tonight.

    But I took the time to listen to his speech tonight on Fox. He is far from being a joke. He has lots of policy proposals that he sets out in his speech coherently and logically. Whether you like them or not, they are not joke proposals.

    The pollsters have been lying - just as happened with the EU Referendum campaign when we saw scores of 11% or more in favour of Remain (though the true result was 4% for Leave). Now the ABC poll has gone from 12% to 1% in under a week!

    Because our mainstream media can no longer be trusted on basics we have no idea what the real state of affairs is, but it looks like Clinton's campaign is now disintegrating.

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  3. The much-discussed border issue with the Republic of Ireland would be solved if it also opted to leave the EU. I recall the Irish people voted against the Lisbon Treaty, and perhaps would vote to leave the EU if given the chance to vote in a (fair) referendum. If the UK is shown to prosper in an EEA/Efta arrangement (the only sensible), then an Irish exit might be possible.

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    Replies
    1. Agreed ideally the Irish would leave the EU too. As Ireland is not a party to the Schengen agreement it has the same interest as the UK in operating mutually beneficial border controls also a UK free of the EU would be able to restrict benefits to the peoples of these islands which, hopefully, would remove the desire of EU 'undocumented migrants' to attempt entry.

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