Gordon Brown conveniently forgets Corbyn, backs Cooper

Gordon Brown, World Economic Forum January 2009, by Monika Flueckiger

Former prime minister Gordon Brown will back Yvette Cooper, wife of his political protégé Ed Balls, at a “sold-out” event at the Edinburgh Book Festival this weekend.

In a further dig at Jeremy Corbyn, the hard left candidate now favourite to win, the leader of Labour between 2007 and 2010 will claim he put Cooper as his first choice, with leftish candidate Andy Burnham second and Blairite Liz Kendall third.

Previously Brown laid into Corbyn, albeit without naming him, at a speech on August 16th in which he told Labour not to be “a party of protest”, whilst also scoffing at the notion of a global alliance involving “Hamas, and Hezbollah, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia” – a dig at Corbyn’s foreign policy.

In this same vein Brown released a statement on his website where he still refused to name Corbyn directly:

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is due to speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival this weekend and will say he has voted in Labour’s leadership election for Yvette Cooper as No1, Andy Burnham No2 and Liz Kendall No3.
Mr Brown is to deliver a speech on the future of Scotland and will be interviewed by author Alistair Moffat during the sold-out event in the Baillie Gifford Main Theatre on Sunday, August 30, at 3.15pm.

In this he keeps to his commitment in that earlier speech not to “attack any individual candidate”. Keep it classy, Gordo.

Image Credit – Gordon Brown, World Economic Forum January 2009, by Monika Flueckiger

Podcast Ep. 11: YouTube Advertising, Ashley Madison Hack & Amazon Being Allegedly Shit

Jazza’s back from Summer in the City and obviously had to talk about something YouTube. Are the new advertising rules from Committee of Advertising Practice (Cap) for vloggers on YouTube too strict? What do we think of the people who try to bypass these guidelines?

Jazza & Jimmy have their first on-air falling out. Is there anything wrong with using a dating website like Ashley Madison which encourages people to cheat on their partners? What are the consequences of the hack? Did the users have it coming?

And finally – though we all already knew this – according to the New York Times front page, Amazon has some shitty business practices. Jeff Bezos, the chief executive, disagrees, but how much of the blame is on us as consumers for ignoring the way they treat their blue-collar and white-collar workers?

Make sure you follow us on Twitter @rightdishonour and let us know what you think!

Image – Dan and Phil

Podcast Ep. 10: The Return of Corbyn, Job Rules for Mental Illness, and Cumberbatch’s Complaint

Benedict Cumberbatch playing Sherlock, March 2010 by Fat Les

In this episode Jimmy is joined once again by his friend for another week of questionably informed political chat.

Kicking off we once again muse on whether Jeremy Corbyn will finally be elected as Labour leader, and what it means for the future of the party, the Conservatives and ultimately the House of Commons.

Following on from this piece earlier this week, we tackle new Home Office guidelines around mental health checks that could prove to exacerbate the problem they are intended to solve.

And finally we wonder just why Benedict Cumberbatch caused such a fuss over the use of smartphones to record his Barbican stint playing Hamlet.

Update: Seems the production stopped the play because of technical issues rather than Cumberbatch’s complaint over filming. But as said below, we stand by our view the attitude is a bit precious.

Image Credit – Benedict Cumberbatch playing Sherlock Holmes, March 2010 by Fat Les

Podcast Ep. 9: #GOPdebate, Kids Company and Nagasaki Anniversary

Donald Trump Sr. at Citizens United Freedom Summit in Greenville South Carolina May 2015 by Michael Vadon

Another week, another Right Dishonourable podcast, in which Jimmy and Jazza scrub up on the week’s news and attempt to embarrass themselves as little as possible over the course of an hour.

This time round we have the return of our favourite American politician, outlandish and questionably-coiffed reality TV star and occasional businessman Donald Trump, as he attempted to derail the Republican Party debates on Fox News. Did he succeed? Will his antics ensure Hillary Clinton makes it to the White House? And just what is his attitude to women?

Next up we cover the collapse of Kids Company, a charity dedicated towards vulnerable children that closed its doors last week after running out of money. We discuss the role of chief executive Camila Batmanghelidjh, allegations of mismanagement and what it means for prime minister David Cameron’s “Big Society” vision.

Lastly, on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we discuss the role of nuclear weapons in modern geopolitics. Along the way we cover Japan’s seeming departure from post-World War Two pacifism, as well as tensions in the South and East China Seas.

Header Image – Donald Trump Sr. at Citizens United Freedom Summit, May 2015 by Michael Vadon

The Republicans’ problem is not Donald Trump, but the other 16 candidates

Governor of Florida Jeb Bush at VFW in Hudson, New Hampshire, July 8th, 2015 by Michael Vadon

If anything I was a little disappointed.

American broadcasting, with such stallions of truth-seeking as Fox News and CNN, is supposed to be insane. Interviewers are meant to sit and ask laughably loaded questions, panellists constantly talk over one another, and the sensationalism is dialled up well past 11, with no nuance allowed.

And yet on Thursday night, as the 1st Republican debate went ahead on Fox News, Donald Trump failed to deliver. The sometime businessman and full-time reality TV star didn’t rehearse his old line about Mexicans being rapists, didn’t suggest the president redraft the Enola Gay for a sortie over Iran, nor did he announce plans to build The Wall of Westeros along the country’s southern edge.

It was all a bit, well, mild – at least by Yank standards.

Now it could be the fractures of American politics were lost on this Englishman, but to my mind there is a dispiriting inwardness to US discourse these days. The ability of the country to tie itself up in arguments over benefits (“entitlements” in the Republican lexicon) remains baffling on this side of Atlantic, even as the Tories in Westminster prepare to carve up British welfare.

As my colleague Jazza John has pointed out, there was much more agreement than dissent. President Barack Obama, by common consent, screwed up the Iran deal. He’s not tough enough on migration. Maybe he’s a Muslim and wasn’t even born here, and hates America. Repeat ad infinitum, or until you turn the television set off.

But whilst it’s not exactly a stinging insult to accuse a pack of conservatives of resting on their laurels, it is impossible to escape the impression that America is running away from the Republicans just as Britain appears to have left Labour behind. The Grand Old Party has no answers to inequality, nor the rising Hispanic population, nor much of anything.

What they do like is the US Constitution, former president Ronald Reagan, and their imaginary friends from the Bible. Trump for his part thinks that “the biggest problem this country has is being politically correct”, an insane allegation no matter how absolute your support is for free speech.

That his themes of a declining America whose citizens “lose to everybody” are hitting home is understandable. But to draw another comparison to Labour on this side of the pond, the Republicans’ problem is not so much that Trump exists but that the other contenders (of which there are 16) appear so lacking in ideas.

And unsurprisingly this conundrum has seen the conservatives of America turn to an old foe worldwide: immigrants. Ted Cruz, an unremarkable Texan senator, even went so far as to accuse the “Washington Cartel” of trying to “fundamentally change” the country, another old trope in global politics, used by any half-thinking pol through history.

Other nastiness was on show when a moderator challenged neurosurgeon Ben Carson on “enhanced interrogation techniques” – or “torture” in layman’s. “What we need to do to get the information we need is our business,” he said, taking the time to attack the notion of a “politically correct war”, as if demanding we don’t drown prisoners of war is a kind of radical leftism.

Perhaps from the old country most rightwing American politics looks insane. But even for a naif in US current affairs the Republicans look a long way from the White House right now.

Header Image – Presidential candidate Jeb Bush in New Hampshire, July 8th 2015 by Michael Vadon