In 1998 alone, there are 5 digs at Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Three in 2000 at Bush, and several more over the course of the presidency (to be fair, Bush kinda was an easy target for this sort of stuff)--and they endorsed him. Vladimir Putin has also been a sore point for them (Vlad the Impaler all the way back in 2003? I'd forgotten Putin's been around that long...). The 2008 Super Tuesday issue had Mike Huckabee shaking hands with a pig in a field of mud.
That's not counting the number of world leaders or potential world leaders they hate... which tends to round to about all of them. The Economist doesn't try to represent facts neutrally, but rather finds something to criticize about everything (even things they like, usually because it's not as far as could be gone) to exhort people to do what they think people should be doing.
Sure, Berlusconi has had it a lot, but that's because he's the rare example of a (to them) incompetent leader actually gaining power and keeping it for a long time. If someone like Trump or Le Pen or Farage were to be elected, you'd see equally, possibly more, relentless negative coverage of them. Hell, they're still appalled that Trump actually won the nomination.
I think this is more of a general British attitude than The Economist in particular. You see a lot of the same kind of stuff from the BBC. Arrogant, anglo-centric, looking down the nose at anyone foreign.
In reality, in an attempt at balance, the Beeb generall gives too much time to fringe views, often lending the appearance of legitimacy to them. (cf. Their climate change coverage up until fairly recently)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpkpUaJF8Og
With this...
Contrast this with the softball questions that Cameron was getting. Worth remembering there's plenty of controversial decisions that the Conservatives made in the recent past that they could've discussed, that 'no journalist can ignore', I can go into details if you like.
Additionally, I could point out plenty of other examples of media spin from the BBC against Corbyn. Would be willing to share more.
You could probably point to some poll or other that claimed he was unelectable, but as I said before, the media has been attacking him from day one, and many people are swayed by what they read in the media. There's also the issue of the rise of the SNP in Scotland, but that's got very little to do with Corbyn.
Labour needs to stop blaming the media for their woes and get on with making themselves acceptable to the general electorate.
With that you're implying that Corbyn's views are out of sync with the general public. Which views in particular do you believe are the most extreme in this regard?
> "Labour needs to stop blaming the media for their woes and get on with making themselves acceptable to the general electorate."
Like it or not, the media plays a massive role in shaping public opinion. Whilst the current civil war in the Labour party is damaging the respectability of the Labour party, a large portion of the public will accept whatever they're told in the media as gospel. You only have to look at what happened as a result of the Brexit media campaigns to see how easily people on both sides were swayed by demagoguery, but if you want more specific examples it'd be easy enough to provide some.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ultKvnw2h3Q
It covers, amongst other things, how public services are mismanaged on purpose to make privatisation seem like progress. One of the sources of information it touches on is a book by the Conservative MP Oliver Letwin that lays out the approach taken for privitising public services, so it's not some form of conspiracy theory, the book is publicly available.
1. You say Corbyn can't get elected.
2. I ask you why.
3. You imply that his views do not line up with what people want.
4. I ask you which of his views are out of touch with public opinion.
5. You suggest the main problem you have with his views is that he believes in re-nationalising, and you remember how badly public industries were run.
6. I provide evidence that public services were badly run on purpose in order to pave the way for privatisation.
7. You reply that it's interesting but it's immaterial because Corbyn can't get elected.
If I've misunderstood something of this conversation in your opinion, please clarify what that is.
I personally don't see the problem with re-nationalising the railways in the UK (to give one example of a Corbyn policy), especially if the incentive to run them poorly on purpose is taken away (i.e. not having a government that's interested in privatising it). The rail service in the UK has become vastly overpriced (compared with other developed nations) since the railways were privatised. Delays and cancellations are still commonplace too. I don't see what great benefits the privatisation of the the UK rail system has brought us.
Having lived most of the past 15 years in Italy, I think a lot of the criticism is justified.
TL;DR: If you have cash in Italian banks, GTFOASAP. If you're a "good guy", buy hard Italian assets (perhaps property), so the money (perhaps) stays in the country, otherwise, get an offshore account (even if declared, and thus perfectly legal, it's much less likely that the Italian government will be successful in grabbing the money, especially if you pick a non-EU jurisdiction, but IANAL).
That makes no sense at all. Just don't keep cash and invest everything except for a small contingency fund.
If you invest instead, you own (a piece of) something physical - a business or a property, typically. A house can burn down and the business can go bankrupt, in which case you lose your investment (unless you're insured). Banks in Italy are incredibly unhealthy at the moment, so to protect your money, you would want to put it in something more healthy, which might simply be a bank account in a not-Italian bank, or as proposed, assets of healthy businesses.
Reneging on an insurance guarantee or forcefully converting deposits to a different currency is a substantially different legal beast than confiscating property (which your shares would be). Perhaps, given that they serve roughly the same end, that shouldn't be the case, but it is.
that's a serious thing: the whole cda gets thrown out and replaced by cronies from the central bank. now it's surfacing that these cronies, who should have done nothing but supervise, have no idea of how deep the bank they're directly supervising rabbit hole is. (the central bank supervises all others indirectly at least)
but this is kept under wrap for now from the general public. it's very easy to keep these thing from people minds as everyone just want to look elsewhere when faced with a problem larger than their close group of friend.
and that's making matter worse. a new kind of financial crisis is brewing here.
They've done that to a lot of British & American politicians.
They've been harder on Trump than they were on Berlusconi. And face it, both Berlusconi and Grillo were professional "pagliacci".
Here is one of them. https://geopoliticalfutures.com/italy-and-systemic-failure/
More surprising was that Germany decided not to accept these EU regulations for pension funds, which makes some wonder why the Dutch did accept.
Most surprising of all was that all parties in the government promised during last elections that Dutch pension funds would stay under Dutch control. And almost all opposition parties shared the same view. I.e. almost all broke their election promises, which makes no sense at all, unless EU priorities are regarded as more important than Dutch priorities.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/10/deutsche-ba...
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-367...