With Parliament in recess, those of us who comment on politics may scrape around for stories, a bit.
Happily, people like Nadine Dorries are gifts that keep on giving!
Here’s a run-down of some of her greatest (for us) moments, courtesy of Politics Joe:
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Nadine Dorries and her finest hour [Image: The Prole Star.]
Don’t all cheer at once!
Here’s the story from Sky News:
I look forward to writing a retrospective on her career, taking in her appearance on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, her “window lickin’ Twitter trolls” tweet, and her attempt to privatise Channel 4.
Who’ll be next to go?
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This is a great story – not only does it run Nadine Dorries into the ground but it also provides a valuable tip on how to beat the algorithms and increase our followings on the social media:
So, basically, if you want to boost the number of followers you have, simply troll a high-profile politician with an obvious truth.
Ironically, this video was suggested to me by YouTube – so there’s one algorithm that’s working properly.
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Conservative Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan has confirmed that the government will not go ahead with a controversial plan to privatise Channel 4.
And quite right too!
Former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries had been determined to sell off the company in order to make a fast buck for Boris Johnson’s spendthrift government, last year.
She ignored a public consultation that resulted in 24/25 of respondents saying privatisation should not happen, claiming that Channel 4’s current ownership model, as a publicly-owned, advertising-funded broadcaster, is too restrictive. That model was, of course, dictated by the government.
Giving evidence to the Commons Culture Committee last May, she said Channel 4 is dependent on just one stream of revenue – advertising – but income is falling as advertisers have more choice. She claimed Netflix would be a better option.
And the government could not allow Channel 4 to borrow to invest, because the taxpayer would be liable for those debts, she said. This actually did make sense of one of the restrictions on the channel’s funding.
But later in the session, the SNP’s John Nicolson pointed out that Channel 4 is currently making record profits – belying what Dorries has been saying about advertising revenue.
Her response?
“That means it would be a good time to sell.”
Dorries said after the channel was privatised it would be better-able to make its own programmes, because the government would then lift restrictions on borrowing money or raising private sector capital by issuing shares.
But while remaining in public ownership would preclude the issuing of shares, it would be perfectly possible for the government to vary Channel 4’s current ownership model to provide it with other forms of revenue generation in order to make, and then sell, programmes.
And now that is what the government seems keen to do.
According to the BBC,
Michelle Donelan has now said the broadcaster “should not be sold”, instead proposing other reforms because “change is necessary”.
Her alternative reforms include allowing the broadcaster to make and own the rights to some of its own programmes – many of which are currently made by independent production companies – and moving more jobs outside London.
“This announcement will bring huge opportunities across the UK with Channel 4’s commitment to double their skills investment to £10m and double the number of jobs outside of London,” Ms Donelan said.
“The package will also safeguard the future of our world leading independent production sector. We will work closely with them to add new protections such as increasing the amount of content C4C [Channel 4 Corporation] must commission from independent producers.”
Channel 4 welcomed the news, saying the decision “allows us to be even more of a power in the digital world”.
The announcement came a day after a letter, in which Donelan recommended the move to the prime minister, was leaked – sparking an angry response from Dorries, who said the privatisation was one of a number of “progressive” policies that were being “washed down the drain”.
Here’s a video clip responding to that:
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So Nadine Dorries reckons the same people who wanted to get rid of Boris Johnson now want rid of Liz Truss.
She’s right: those people are the British people – the UK electorate!
They are the same people who want to be rid of Nadine Dorries, as it just so happens.
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Michelle Donelan: this is the only image of her that This Writer could find, in which she didn’t have an enormous, daft grin all over her face.
New Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan is reviewing plans by her forerunner Nadine Dorries to privatise Channel 4 and scrap the BBC licence fee, and also the proposed Online Harms Bill.
Doesn’t this suggest that those plans were not widely supported by the Tory Party and that Dorries was put at the top of that department by Boris Johnson to do nothing more than distract attention away from him?
Also being revisited are provisions around “legal but harmful” speech in the Online Harms legislation.
The review of Channel 4 comes amid criticisms that privatising the channel would harm the future of many TV production companies at a time when new prime minister Liz Truss wants to create growth. The two policies would therefore appear to contradict each other.
With the BBC, Ms Donelan has admitted being sceptical about the viability of the licence fee. But she has said that coverage of the Queen’s funeral was excellent – and the kind of thing that streaming services could not provide.
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The bank holiday weekend may be over, but this article is being produced in the period before everybody goes back to work – so I’m still putting up material that has interested me – and I hope it interests you. Make of it what you will:
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Offensive: Police have been told not to investigate Twitter posts as hate crimes just because they offend people – but is it because the person in charge of policing the internet is a principle offender? This image has offended people – and was posted by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: Nadine Dorries.
This is interesting:
Police should stop “wasting time” investigating when people are offended, a senior police chief has said.
Stephen Watson, chief constable of Greater Manchester, admitted police had been overzealous in recording trivial online spats and legitimate debate as hate incidents at the expense of tackling mainstream crimes.
Mr Watson welcomed revised guidance by the College of Policing, the national standards body, as a “move in the right direction”. It has decreed that police officers should no longer investigate legitimate debate or treat trivial online spats as hate incidents.
The guidance, hailed as a victory for free speech, said people contributing to political and social debate must not be “stigmatised simply because someone is offended”.
But is this the reason?
I’ve expressed longstanding concerns about the behaviour of #NadineDorries online. Wildly intemperate & frequently abusive it’s absurd she’s the Cabinet minister responsible for online safety – and disturbing the #OnlineSafetyBill grants her more powers. https://t.co/B0SVE4w3VH
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This should make you quail over your coffee: Nadine Dorries could be the Conservative Party’s choice as its next leader after Boris Johnson is finally shifted out of Number 10 (possibly by using a large amount of Domestos).
Tory rebels trying to push Johnson out with a ‘no confidence’ vote earlier this week were hamstrung by the lack of alternative leadership candidates; Johnson has surrounded himself with fools and nonentities.
The problem was summed up by Hugo Gye of the I, who stated how one MP was scathing about every alternative leader, saying: “Rishi’s a blown flush as we all know. Liz Truss is monotone – you know she’s not planning a leadership challenge because she hasn’t done her hair this week. Tugendhat’s going around saying he should be prime minister but nobody else thinks so!”
The “monotone” issue will be the one that harms the Tories the most. They know Johnson can’t stay – like it or not, the confidence vote means he’s now nothing more than a caretaker PM until another may be found – but they also know they’ll sink if they can’t unite behind another “character”.
They think they need somebody with a big personality who can get the kind of strong reaction from everyone that Johnson won.
And here’s Nadine Dorries.
She certainly has a colourful history. A quick scan through her Wikipedia entry shows a controversy over whether she slept with another MP, a long-running issue over her expenses claims culminating in her vowing to campaign to change the system, and another controversy over the use of the House of Commons ‘Portcullis’ symbol on her blog – making it seem to have Parliamentary endorsement or authority when she herself admitted it was “70% fiction and 30% fact” (although she later withdrew that statement).
The Conservative Party suspended Dorries from the party whip in November 2012 after she announced that she would be appearing on TV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! as a contestant. It seems she had not informed anybody that she intended to be absent from Parliament.
She regained the whip early the following year, after it was suggested that she would join UKIP otherwise – and shortly afterwards suggested that joint Conservative-UKIP candidates could stand in the next general election (an idea that Tory HQ swiftly dismissed).
In 2019, Boris Johnson appointed her to be a minister for mental health, despite the fact that she had published a disability hate tweet two years previously, describing Twitter trolls as “window lickin'”.
The phrase “window lickers” originated as a term of abuse for people with Down’s syndrome or cerebral palsy and now tends to be used as a term to attack disabled people in general.
In 2020, Dorries made an abortive attempt to discredit Labour leader Keir Starmer by sharing a misleading video created by far-right activists, claiming to show Starmer explaining “why he didn’t prosecute grooming gangs”, when in fact he was explaining why he implemented reforms as the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The account that originally posted the material had previously posted racist content, and commentators like This Writer questioned why Dorries (and other Tory MPs who shared this material) had anything to do with it in the first place.
As culture secretary, Dorries was desperate to appoint foul-mouthed far-right former Mail editor Paul Dacre as chairman of communications regulator Ofcom, even though the interview panel deemed him “not appointable”. Her response was an abortive attempt to change the conditions under which the appointment could be made.
Defending Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal, Dorries tried to deflect attention by claiming that “we have won the war on Covid in this country”. Then she tried to defend Johnson’s indefensible repetition of the falsehood that Labour leader Keir Starmer refused to prosecute Jimmy Savile for child abuse (he didn’t have anything to do with the decision). A spoof video of the interview presented her as a Catherine Tate character, spouting the line “Am I bothered?” repeatedly.
In another TV interview, BBC news anchor Charlie Stayt was repeatedly confused by Dorries’s apparent inability to answer a single question about Johnson.
To the Tories, she must now seem a logical choice. She’s as controversial as Johnson. She’s certainly as crazed as he is. She shows not the slightest inclination to listen to anybody else and every sign that she’ll do whatever she pleases until such time as someone forces her attention toward any rules that constrict her.
She’s another lunatic for the public to get behind.
The only losers will be everybody in the UK who’ll have to live through yet another Conservative-driven disaster.
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