Our Peterloo

This has been a while in the brewer so bear with me while I lay this out.

We are living in times of bizarre through-the-looking-glass twists, where everything means its opposite. Where right is left and left is right, up is down, good is bad.

Where huge financial behemoths are allowed to grab countries and turn them upside down and shake them till their pennies drop.

The political language of left and right has no meaning any more as all of our parties are simply a distraction, while backroom brokers carve up our world and lives, about which we have no say.

Which brings me to The Guardian. It has a long history – set up in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre – a pro democracy, anti poverty rally that the establishment decided to silence with sabre wielding cavalry charges.

And here we are almost 200 years later facing encroachment of our democratic rights and facing indentured slavery while those that should be doing their utmost to protect our freedoms are standing idly by, and while the police are used to shield those that want our freedoms.

So here’s the thing – why is it the most incisive commentaries come not from the Guardian journalists and contributors but from those commenting on the omissions from the articles they write? Why is it politicians are given a soft ride at a time when we should be using any pressure we can to force them to face the issues for us, in a way that will benefit us, and not the self-interest groups that “donate” to them?

At what point does an article stop being an article and start being a commercial presentation?

At what point does a journalist stop being a journalist and simply become an astroturfer for his or her backer?

How many of the contrarians posting inflammatory comments are on the Guardian payroll?

Unfortunately the moderation policy doesn’t allow these issues to be discussed openly in CiF – the punishments varying from deletions through to total bans.

Is this the same Guardian? Perhaps it has just forgotten how far it has fallen.
Feel free to copy one of the graphics above and use it as your CiF avatar – it will cost you nothing, yet it is doing something – it is reminding the journalists to do their job.

How to use these

- right click on the image of your choice and save it to your computer
- got to your CiF profile click Edit Avatar (under your existing one)
- click on the browse button and in the area marked “Upload an avatar”
and navigate to the file you downloaded, select it and click “upload”

and that’s it – it won’t show up immediately but just be patient.
Want to comment but not sure how? click here for tips.

Want to see more articles about this?

Follow c1nf updates from twitter: Follow @c1nf

About these ads

---