Press for Conspiracy

If I was of a paranoid turn of mind and believed in conspiracies, then recent developments in the current general election would have me getting mighty suspicious.  I mean, just as we reach the point when the Tory campaign went off the rails last time - the launch of their manifesto - and Labour seem to be gaining some traction in the polls, out of right field (it certainly wasn't from the left), we have the Chief Rabbi trying to re-ignite the whole Corbyn anti-Semitism business.  Convenient, or what?  It gave the media a new anti-Labour tack with which to fill their headlines for days after.  But I don't necessarily believe in such conspiracies.  That said, there is certainly a huge amount of anti-Labour bias in the media.  Whether this includes the BBC, I don't really know.  The thing to remember about the BBC is that it is - and always has been - the voice of the 'establishment'.  And right now, Labour aren't the establishment in the way they were in the Blair years.  But there is no doubt that Boris Johnson, as ever, is being given a remarkably easy ride during this campaign.  Despite the fact that he is a proven liar, given to unconstitutional acts, a philanderer of low morals, not to forget his racist and homophobic newspaper utterances, the media, especially the BBC, seem to treat him with kid gloves - in stark contrast to their treatment of Corbyn.  The only times that Johnson has been put under scrutiny and confronted by his own shortcomings and misdemeanours is when he has encountered the public, either on the campaign trail or during TV events like the recent Leaders Question Time.

I know I've been drifting back into politics here of late, something I've been trying to avoid because all the ranting isn't good for my blood pressure, but Hell, there's an election on.  Every day I watch the news with fascination, waiting to see how Labour's policies are going to be misrepresented next.  I know that the Tory manifesto, published on Sunday, contains little of substance (apart from 'Get Brexit Done!' repeated ad nauseum), it is remarkable how it has attracted so little media scrutiny compared to Labour's.  The media have certainly interpreted Labour's policies very liberally in order to generate scare stories of how anyone earning more than £80,000 will be paying 99% taxes or how their spending plans will bankrupt the country.  I'm eagerly awaiting to hear how they are going to make drug use and homosexuality compulsory and force every middle class family in the UK with a pare room let it to a family of immigrants.  'Free Love' on the NHS, perhaps, with doctors allowed ro prescribe prostitutes and rent boys for sex addiction, or even depression.  Public schools forced to take working class delinquents, the middle classes forced to wife swap with the working classes in order to ensure an equal distribution of 'crumpet' (be it male or female).  Who knows what they'll come up with next.  As others have commented before, it is amazing that Labour governments ever get elected in the face of such press hostility.