The telegraph

[wendigo100]

Why is style or 'packaging' over substance given so much emphasis these days?

A stoopid electorate,or a manifestation of a deeper malaise in society

It works.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Why is style or 'packaging' over substance given so much emphasis these days?

A stoopid electorate,or a manifestation of a deeper malaise in society

Good question.

My view is that the UK tends to lag the US by about 10 years in social trends, hence the increasing superficiality in UK politics,style over content which has been the case for some time in US politics.

Longer term as UK political partys become irrelevant, we might be voting for Banks instead of the trad partys

In other words rather than voting for Tory Labour or LibDem etc we would be voting for Barclays,Midlands, Royal Bank Of Scotland etc whose manifestos would all be the same but have shades of difference in macroeconomics ie the proposed rate of interest rates etc

Perhaps thats a silly thought , I mean Banks dont have an interest in politics , do they ?

[Troll]

Why is style or 'packaging' over substance given so much emphasis these days?

A stoopid electorate,or a manifestation of a deeper malaise in society

[AlfredJPruffock]

Aye Sun

I thought this snippet really sums up Blair ..

Parris has a visceral loathing for New Labour and Tony Blair in particular.

"Blair has never got the idea of argument. He thinks there are luminous and self-evident truths, which reasonable men and women will concur upon if they think about them for long enough.

It's sort of an Athenian idea of democracy. It's been fun writing about him, for me particularly, because I feel I saw through him right from the start.

I knew he was basically delusional, a confidence-trickster.

Most people fell for the magic at first, so I've liked going against the grain. I now, of course, find writing about Blair more boring because everyone thinks the same way about him."


And here is Parris comments on Cameron ...

As you would expect, Parris cuts "Dave" Cameron rather more slack.


"Cameron has a flair for packaging, which matters, especially if you've got something worthwhile to package. I'm not yet at the stage of knocking him for paying attention to all that because the Conservative party has been really bad at it."


But he feels very differently about the party's neo-con foreign policy instincts. Parris was a vehement critic of the military interventions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and, above all, the Iraq war. In a Times in May, he rounded on the "Pentagon-loving" elements among Cameron's Tories.

"My own hunch is that David Cameron himself isn't really that interested in foreign policy. But [shadow Chancellor] George Osborne is a neo-con, and [Times columnist and MP] Michael Gove, who is quite close to them, is a serious neo-con. I like Michael very much and he's one of the cleverest writers of his generation, but he's absolutely and quite crazily wrong on a range of key foreign policy questions.

He is blessed with wonderful gifts of communication and there is a real danger for the Conservative party if Cameron listens only to the neo-cons.

"

[sunnysan]

A pretty good article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m...ixopinion.html


The best response though from a reader .....

Politicians are innately loathsome, and as vile as
Blair may be, there is nobody who thinks we'd be
better off with 'good old Ken Clarke, or that dear
Ming'. We just want rid of Tony because the
hubris and sense of piety have made him even
more repugnant than is the norm for a species
that makes a tapeworm seem desirable.


You go boy .... good stuff