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Comment by junto | Hacker News Reader

The UK media is owned by people who have a vested interest in keeping the UK on the European fringes. The US-UK relationship will remain 'special'. Only a large amount of negative public opinion could change that and the UK media controls public opinion. QED...

Freedom to protest and demonstrate has been steadily eroded in the UK. The police have long term spies within pressure groups such as Occupy, green issues and animal well-fare.

Remember that an estimated 1 million UK citizens marched in the Stop the War anti-war protest [1]. Worldwide on Feb 15th 2003, millions more.

These protests had no effect.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_prot...

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"These protests had no effect."

It's easy to counter mass protests. Either under-report them or co-opt them. If the power structure ignores voters and protests, the only other recourses are apathy or violence, both which don't have good consequences either.

The third way à la Gandhi, civil disobedience; stand in the way between MPs and their local bar. If enough people refuse to work then there is only one solution left, change.

Civil disobedience in the US is either caged in "free speech areas", co-opted by undercover police, or totally ignored/denigrated by the media. The power wielders learned their lessons in the '60s and have worked on eliminated this issue since the '70s.

Well, GP's talking about the UK, not the US - but I suspect that if America really notices something happening, those Free Speech Zones will be relegated to the dustbin of history where they belong.

I'm genuinely curious, who and how do those people have a "vested interest in keeping the UK on the European fringes"?

I'm not so clear on the why, but the who is pretty easy:

http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/editor-blog/162/just-why-...

The why:

  In a separate article for this website Professor Antony
  Glees wrote: "Sky News itself is having a field day with
  the eurozone crisis. Of course, Murdoch never liked the
  euro or the EU for that matter." Murdoch's anti-EU stance
  could quite possibly stem from the desire to avoid
  regulation of his media empire, from Brussels. We know for
  sure that he had plans for even greater penetration and
  influence in the UK media market. I mean, whether you are
  a Europhile or a Eurosceptic, do we really believe that
  Murdoch is interested only in defending British institutions
  like the pound rather than expanding News Corporation's
  portfolio in mainland Europe and beyond?

The UK media is a Murdoch monopoly, that legally doesn't appear to be a monopoly according to the powers that be and apparently only lefties believe that to be the case [5].

I personally feel that his media interests are a cancer in British society. The Leveson inquiry demonstrated just how poisonous his corporate interests are [1].

As I see it, potential prime ministers go visit Murdoch on his private yacht [3]. They apparently don't discuss anything that interesting, but the Murdoch media do seem to then back that horse in the next general election. Murdoch wanted the BSkyB deal done. Whether that was the deal, nobody will ever know publicly.

The BSkyB deal got canned after the phone hacking scandal and the 'powers behind the throne' took the gloves off on the Murdoch empire. The current Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to give up on his society friend, the former NoW editor Rebekah Brooks and also his former press secretary, Andy Coulson [2], who are both currently facing serious charges (and trying desperately to weasel their way out of it [4]).

They tried to 'influence' the old 'establishment' (i.e. old money and power). They did so for years. Maybe even through the use of information obtained illegally [2]. In the end, they played the game, lost and the establishment is now going to keep kicking them while they are down, until they don't get up again.

David Cameron has to watch it, knowing damn well that he had to feed them to the wolves or join them. It doesn't appear to be bothering him that much.

- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveson_Inquiry - [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_hacking_scandal - [3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/24/david-cameron... - [4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/28/rebekah-brooks-andy... - [5] http://www.thecommentator.com/article/310/rupert_murdoch_doe...

I want to be right, but I may be deluding myself. Hopefully the need to choose will not arise, and I won't have to be wrong.

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