Martin Salter's Westminster Diary, October 8, 2009

Martin Salter MP • Published 8 Oct 2009 10:00 2 Comments

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The week in Westminster

WHILE there is much to be said for being in the 'twilight' of one's political career, I do have to confess to experiencing feelings of nostalgia. None more so than in Brighton last week, the venue for my last Labour party conference as an MP and the scene of part of my mis-spent youth.

As usual I only went into the main conference hall for the leader's speech as all my commitments were on the conference fringe which is always where the most interesting events are to be found.

As well as meetings on water and environment policy with the RSPB, Natural England, World Wildlife Fund and Thames Water, I was also scheduled to host a pub quiz on behalf of the Social Market Foundation (a think tank) and the British Beer and Pub Association (not a think tank!). I was told that I have a promising career ahead of me as quiz master which was very kind but not exactly what I had in mind.

Gordon Brown delivered a fighting speech on Tuesday afternoon recognising that after 12 years in government and with all the problems of dealing with the fall-out from the global recession, Labour are the underdogs at the moment as we head into the general election campaign.

In an act of pure spite, clearly orchestrated with the Tories, Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper chose the evening of the Prime Minister's conference speech to announce its conversion to the Conservative camp, ensuring Gordon Brown's coverage would be eclipsed by national journalists pursuing their favourite pastime which is writing about themselves.

We now live in a world where the political opinions of a newspaper proprietor infect the nature of how the news is reported. Balanced national journalism is now mainly to be found in broadcasting which, along with the better of our local newspapers, is the last remaining bastion of fairness and objectivity.

However, I suspect that even this laudable aspect of our public life may not last much longer as I have little doubt that the Australian press baron has extracted a huge price from David Cameron in return for his early endorsement. I predict that the Tories will bring forward plans to break up the BBC and diminish public sector broadcasting.

They will end the requirement for objectivity and balance in broadcast news and usher in an era of American-style propagandizing on privately-owned TV and radio news channels.

Take a look at what Murdoch's Fox News channel is doing to attack President Obama's democratic mandate to introduce a National Health Service in the USA. I would like to be proved wrong but I fear we are witnessing a nasty glimpse of a future where the power of global media moguls determine the actions of elected governments.

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John
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Oct 12, 12:45
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Obviously Martin Salter is bitter, had he have read Alistair Campbell's book he would have found out what a coup it was for The Sun to back Tony Blair.

Of course if he lived in the real world, he'd realise that The Sun just follows it's readers, whoever seems to be on for victory they back.

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Outside Looking In
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Oct 14, 09:12
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Salter conveniently forgets of course the switch of allegiance to Labour by Murdoch and his crew, that helped them impose Bliar et all on us for so long. What goes around, comes around........

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