Thursday 9th of May 2024
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a champion of Britain's dispossessed....

murdoch rupe

 

Rupert Murdoch last night cast himself as a champion of Britain's "dispossessed" migrants, prisoners and economic underclass as he criticised standards of education in a speech in honour of Baroness Thatcher.

Giving the inaugural Margaret Thatcher Lecture at a right-wing London think tank, the media mogul said British schools were failing to educate children for the jobs market.

"Business leaders tell me that large numbers of people who apply to their firms lack the fundamental skills necessary to progress in the workplace. We must move from a system that tries to make up for deficiencies to one that really teaches," he said.

Mr Murdoch, who sent his children to elite private schools, compared British education unfavourably to schools in less advanced countries. "If children in the poorest parts of the world can learn how to read and write – as well as do maths and science in schools with dirt floors and tattered textbooks – there is no excuse for the way British children are being failed by well-resourced schools."

Referring to Britain as "our society", the Australian-born US citizen delivered a speech that characteristically championed libertarian values, stressing the need for the Government to offer greater opportunities for economic advancement. "That is where we must aid the dispossessed," he said. "That is where we must raise the horizons of the young man who is living on a housing estate and has left school prematurely. That is where we must provide hope for the young migrant woman in Luton, whose life choices are being limited by misogyny. That is where we must grant a second chance for the prisoner who seeks rehabilitation, and not an endless cycle of incarceration. That is true tolerance."

Baroness Thatcher and her "vision of the free society" had been "a source of inspiration" to him, he said. "The vigorous virtues she championed have been a guide for me in my life and in my business."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/murdoch-criticises-uk-education-in-speech-to-honour-iron-lady-2113428.html

Strong medicine is bitter and difficult to swallow

Rupert Murdoch threw his support behind the coalition government tonight, applauding its tough approach to cutting the budget deficit and praising David Cameron.

Drawing a direct comparison between the government and Margaret Thatcher, Murdoch said: "Like the lady, the coalition must not be for turning."

The News Corp chairman was delivering the inaugural Baroness Thatcher lecture at Lancaster House in London to an audience of 200 invited guests.

Murdoch said: "The new prime minister has come to office inheriting a daunting deficit. I am encouraged by his response." He added that the government should be applauded "for maintaining a tough fiscal line", and urged it to hold its nerve as its pushes through deep public sector cuts.

"Strong medicine is bitter and difficult to swallow," he said. "But unless you stay the political course, you will neither be robust nor popular."

Murdoch's British newspapers, which include the Sun and the Times, supported the Conservatives in the runup to the last election.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/21/rupert-murdoch-coalition-spending-cuts

Gus" that's a lot of crap...

Medicine does not have to taste bad... On top of that, most of the poor and destitute bear the brunt of the cuts. The rich get off easy. And that is the purpose of tightening money policy: keep the value of the buck in whatever currency so the rich stay rich. Of course the poor don't know what's happening to them, otherwise they would revolt... But even the poor are already caught in the spin of debt and that of "individualism" — a notion that have split them from the other poor so that the rich canuse the "divide and conquer" notion... nothing new.

see toon here as well can compared with that at top: the hair is not dyed anymore...

as long as uncle rupe has a job...

Up to twice as many women as men will lose their jobs as a result of public sector spending cuts, in what critics described yesterday as the "biggest attempt to turn back the clock on women's equality for generations".

An analysis for The Independent suggests about 350,000 women will leave the public sector over the next four years, compared with 150,000 men.

And there were warnings last night that cuts to childcare allowances, also announced in George Osborne's Comprehensive Spending Review, will mean that many will not return to the workforce, even as the economy recovers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jobs-for-the-boys-osbornes-cuts-are-worst-attack-on-equality-for-generations-2113421.html

uncle rupe: no star blabfeist, no movie review...

The world's largest media company, News Corporation, is threatening to deny coverage of movies starring artists who routinely refuse to give interviews to its outlets, one of its senior journalists has revealed.

The different arms of News Corp are working together to ''push back'' against the publicists to movie stars who are blocking media access to their charges, said News Ltd's entertainment editor-at-large, Rebekah Devlin.

''They are very quickly becoming the most powerful people in the world,'' Devlin told the Caxtons advertising conference. ''More and more actors have it in their contract that they don't want to do publicity for a film. So how are you going to get access to the likes of Katherine Heigl if she's doing a film but refusing to do interviews.''

She said the News Corp chairman, Rupert Murdoch, or ''Uncle Rupe'' as she called him, was involved in drawing up a strategy of how to deal with what she said was a ''big challenge'' for media organisations. It is not known whether the issue will be on Mr Murdoch's agenda when he arrives in Australia this week for his annual visit.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/murdoch-calls-on-company-troops-to-fight-film-pr-blockade-20101024-16z8y.html

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Gus: the cult of "stars" is a very important tool for media organisation to keep us plebs entertained away from our desire of democratic equality... The "star status" that we see so liberally applied in magazines, in news, in reviews and the likes gives us the strong illusion that disparity of wealth is inevitable and normal. There is a them-the-angels and us-the-crap who pay to see the angels an acceptable situation. And these angels/stars have their "human" problems too that we mere mortals encounter daily. They fight the bulge, the deceit in love, the stress of having to work (for dosh), but their travails is promoted as that of demi-gods like Ulysses fighting hydras till the day someone hits then with an arrow in their Achilles heels... The legendary lives of these demi-gods stars fills our brains with entertaining uselessness, away from better things we could be doing such as throwing rotten tomatoes at a Liberal pollie. For Uncle Rupe (the term might have be coined by John Richardson ages ago on this site) to press the cheeks of the stars is brave but necessary for his business of fodder to remind us we're crap and poor... Thank you Uncle Rupe for protecting our desire to have the valium and prozac pill in one.