They used to say on the Guardian website that comment is free.
But now it’s more a case of Comment is banned.
Why?
In the Guardian opinion section, of the 20 main articles, only 3 have a comment section.
This Martin Kettle Brexit piece is from the day before yesterday and yet it is the most high-profile article in the comment section. Why does it not allow comments?
Tom Kibasi’s article was written 2 hours before the Martin Kettle article and has received more than 1000 more shares. However it has been given a lower profile than the Kettle piece.
Of course it’s been allowed no comments. Does the Guardian not trust the public on Brexit?
Three out of twenty articles have comments enabled. Two on Covid and one on the way a city treats its invisibles.
The Brexit deal is simply not up for discussion.
Last night an article was published saying there will be resignations from the Shadow Cabinet – but it was not given due prominence and no opportunity to comment:
For me this is in line with the idea that the government is working with the Guardian to reduce any public involvement in the discussion of Brexit.
Matt Kennard identified the Guardian Government rapprochement following the Snowden Affair
Guardian's deputy editor @paul__johnson joined state censorship D-Notice committee (run by MOD) after Snowden revelations in sop to British spooks. In board minutes, they thank him for being "instrumental in re-establishing links" between UK mil/intel and Guardian. Explains a lot pic.twitter.com/kN27T0QoMm
Heather Stewart of the Guardian has great content in her piece but the headline is tame.
Great picture on front page of the Guardian – very as a matter of fact tone – but the horror is there for all to see.
Also on the front page. The Govt line is to create a false dilemma between public health and recession. Thus getting Guardian readers in touch with their inner Tory.
And finally the main headline – that the Government could have done more to protect care homes. Whilst this is true, justice will never arrive for those who have unnecessarily died.
‘New emails have been found by the FBI, which the agency is reviewing.
Clinton’s aides are demanding more details of the discovery’.
Superhedging.
Where’s the story?
Takes a special skill to say something without really saying anything.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Hillary could be more evil than your average former first lady.
But even by UK standards, this is a storm in a teacup.
Show me the dirt already!
The headline says ‘Clinton rocked as FBI renews email inquiry’.
But nothing substantial in the story. Really. Nothing .
Could this lose Hillary the race?
The election’s 11 days away.
I haven’t checked the other papers but it looks like this is a global push to introduce new doubt into Clinton’s candidacy.
John Podesta’s name’s mentioned.
He’s Hillary’s campaign chairman.
I saw his name earlier this week.
Capitalist Democrat ‘Greens’
A pro-fossil fuel activist sent me a story about how the green movement bullies anyone who disagrees with them.
Podesta is that kind of Green.
Forcing everyone to go green so that he can get paid.
Much as Wall Street and the City of London see mis-selling as the business model.
I must say I’ve come across some nutters in the green movement.
I’m sure they’d say the same about me — many were intolerant of debate.
It’s no surprise these types of greens are heading up Hillary’s campaign.
Al Gore is their most prominent member.
Even ten years ago, he was reputed to be making so much money he simply couldn’t afford to run for President.
The capitalist Greens’ sense of entitlement is rivalled only by that of their rivals, the sceptics / deniers like Lord Matt Ridley, who writes for the Times.
Ridley got quite angry this week when I told him that I heard he regularly spikes stories and has headlines changed at the Times to push his ‘hard pollution’ agenda.
After asking me where I’d heard all this (the public domain), and setting his climate-sceptic twitter attack dogs on me, he sent me a link about John Podesta.
Every word of this is untrue. I am no denier, I’ve never done any of these things and i have “no hard pollution agenda”. You’ve been lied to https://t.co/oOYFwmx07t
But he doesn’t think this warming is particularly significant.
One of his buddies sent me a video in which Ridley, an Eton-educated hereditary peer, claims burning fossil fuel produces the CO2 which we desperately need to save the planet.
I am not joking.
This happened just a few hours after hearing him deny being a denier.
I was even told that the term climate denier has now been outlawed by Associated Press.
That’s right, according to Ridley, just as in John Stauber’s classic 1994 book on PR, “Toxic Sludge is Good For You!!!”, we should be burning more fossil fuels if we are serious about surviving as a species.
When views like these are circulated by Times columnists and Lords, it is no wonder we are heading straight to armageddon.
(Clarification: Ridley was not ‘awarded’ his title – he is a hereditary peer.)
Another Tory Peer and Times columnist, Lord Finkelstein, usually manages to sound quite sensible on most things but even he told me that Ridley is not a denier:
@financialeyes Thank you. It’s just that a columnist doesn’t write or determine splash stories. Also Matt isn’t a denier. It’s very hard for
It’s true that the Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch who has backed Brexit and UKIP in his Sun Newspaper, and done more than any other press baron to bring about the rise of the American Tea Party which has led to Donald Trump.
Should it be a surprise that we are on the road to Armageddon?
Given his animosity toward Podesta and climate ‘alarmists’, it’s obvious that Ridley, like Murdoch, is a Donald Trump and Brexit man.
Knowing that people like this are running opinion forming publications and shaping key legislation, even a child would spot the undemocratic factors that bring megalomaniacs like Trump to power.
We are being run by a suicidal death cult who are quite prepared to take the entire planet under.
In the Mahabharatha the new King Yudhithistra was persuaded to bet the entire kingdom on a rigged game of dice.
The likes of Trump, Murdoch and Ridley have decided that they too will take us under.
Who knows why?
An unresolved sense of inadequacy?
Uber ‘workers’
Next to the Hillary article is a piece on how ‘self employed’ Uber drivers are now ‘workers’ under UK employment law.
Are the Guardian right behind the Uber drivers in their fight for regulation in a deregulated precarious industry?
Or campaigning against the entire Uber business model which pits Black Cab drivers, in London, who have spent 3-4 years studying ‘the Knowledge’ to know their way around London’s streets, against increasingly underemployed deregulated Uber drivers.
The climate angle of having more drivers on the road remains unexplored.
As do the employment implications of driverless cars.
Instead this Guardian story focuses exclusively on employment law.
Greenpeace
The bottom of the page contains a Greenpeace fundraising advert.
‘Be coldhearted.’
Encouraging Guardian readers to leave Greenpeace money in their wills.
Cutting family out of wills in favour of NGOs and polar bears sounds like a radical left wing increased wealth tax.
As a trust themselves, the Guardian owe their existence to private wealth.
The back cover of the paper features an advert for a Peugeot SUV.
The SUV is aptly driving through a rather large puddle.
‘CONTROL BUILT IN’ reads the slogan.
As the SUV leaves the back page puddle behind, it is about to smash into the ‘Be cold hearted.’ Greenpeace slogan over on the front page.
(When fully spread out and at ease, just as in politics and banking, the back and front become the left and right, and sit quite comfortably next to each other, agreeing on far more than on what they disagree.)
And then it will career into the Polar Bear itself.
Red gas guzzling French SUV sponsored by Total, another oil company, murders cuddly innocent furry white polar bear.
Shocking stuff.
Like the way Trump has successfully attacked Hillary from the left.
CONTROL BUILT IN vs Be coldhearted.
‘Be controlled by the viagra-popping driverless racist rapist Trump / Clinton machine!’
Greenpeace on the front and Total on the back.
Says it all.
You can’t escape the logic of the game – however creative your imagination.
The Guardian continues to walk the line between climate denial and warmongering ‘green’ colonialism.
www.newstatesman.com 
Politics.co.uk 
The Christian Science Monitor 
the Guardian 
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