Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Newspapers Splash On Failure, Fudge And Spin

A day of scoops on the Street of Shame sees newspapers doing their own thing, making a splash today with an unusually mixed bag, which refuses to kowtow to the stale spun narratives of a well-oiled Downing Steet machine.



The Tories new best friend, the Sun, makes a splash on the running story, calling for a ban on the legal drug mephedrone, after the deaths of two teenagers.

Banning legal highs? Whatever next. Johnson sacked the much-maligned "Nutty Professor" for daring to do his job and speak his mind at the drugs advisory council. Is he going to pussyfoot around on Meow Meow? But the Telegraph too tries it on to give Tories a chance to pile on the pressure.

Blood splattered walls and filthy ambulances are splattered across the Guardian with an exclusive on research suggesting a quarter of NHS trusts failed the hygiene test. But there's room for the Guardian to put the boot in to Broon's paymasters, with Downing Street forced to step in to stop Unite parachuting pals into 'safe' Labour seats.

The Times rounds on Mandy in a circular way. After delivering his early Christmas present 'cuts' to universities, competition for places is now fiercer than ever. Blowing out of the water New Labour's crafty plan to bring in backdoor cutbacks while pretending everything's hunky dory.

City fat cats have been handed a sweetener from Banking Brown, shelving new EU regulations for hedge fund and private equity bosses until after the election, according to the Financial Times.

But the Orange Party gives today's star prize to The Independent, with a scoop accusing ministers of blocking embarrassing youth crime figures until after the election because they've something to hide. Even fiddled crime figures are becoming too hot to handle.


The weird world when political reality gives way to political correctness is attacked over at the Mail highlighting the shocking case of the fatal blunder when foreign doctors are used to cover NHS staff shortages.

An inquest into the death of a pensioner after a hip operation was described by an expert as "the worst negligence case he had seen". Pseudo-liberals living in La-La Land gets kinda galling when people are killed as a result.

Only the sad, tired old Mirror delivers a cop out, keeping out of political harm's way. With no drum to bang for New Labour, it's a Winslet "blazing row" with hubby Mendes. Too lazy to get even a "titanic row" in the headline. Bless.



It's beginning to feel like the old days when Tories could sit back and watch New Labour's decade of deceit, lies, failure and disaster come back to haunt them and explode in their face.

Only now there's fire in the belly of the Tories, an election to be fought and won and attack lines to deliver, with the Telegraph finally warming to Honest Osborne, reporting the "election supremo" is firing up the Party.

Meanwhile the once well-oiled, war-hardened Downing Street spin machine is left reeling and lurching from one disaster and failure to another. How cool is that.

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