Farage, Cameron, Oborne and the Paywall

“The Devil Carrying the Lucchese Magistrate to the Boiling Pitch Pool of Corrupt Officials”

I’ve finally done it.

Taken the plunge that is, and coughed up £20 of my hard earned to breach the Daily Telegraph’s paywall. The wallet nearly had a seizure. It’s not just the neighbouring Yorkshire folk who have to count their pennies in these hard times. We Lancastrians are struggling to pay for, amongst everything else,  the unsightly, useless windmills on our fells and moors that Ed and David are erecting in vast numbers to enrich their families and friends.

And it’s not that I don’t like the Mail or the Express. Actually, thinking about that for a moment, it is. By and large, like diamonds, the gems in both have to be extracted by wading through pagefuls’ of mind numbing spoil about Kate Middleton, the various illnesses and forms of hypochondria that modern medicine can cure and more seriously, an increasing amount of obnoxious, reflex leftist journalism.

So overall, whilst they have exceptional polemicists like Peter Hitchens, Simon Heffer and Melanie Phillips, Ive been missing access to the likes of Christopher Booker and James Delingpole, unfashionable but pungent truth tellers. And to the financial reporting and commentary.

Centre ground to left biased it may now be, but unlike the Guardian it doesn’t leave me feeling that I need to wash my mind out after I’ve read it.

The trigger for dispensing my largess was an article today on Nigel Farage and UKIP by Peter Oborne, that most mystifying of writers. Trenchant critic of the EU one minute, (remember his magnificent performance on Newsnight castigating the “Guilty Men” who took us into the EU?). Cameron toady the next. One never knows what side he’s on,  though it’s not likely to be the unbuttered one.

Rightly and fairly attributing much, though in my view by no means all, of UKIP’s rise in electoral popularity to Nigel Farage’s appeal, charisma and workrate.  he refers to the likely result:-

“…Most experts estimate that the Conservatives could lose between 200 and 500 seats next week. I would not be surprised if, thanks to UKIP, they lost up to 850 – half the number of seats secured last time. Nor is that all. Eyes will then quickly turn to the European elections in June 2014, which UKIP is likely to win outright, relegating the Conservative Party to third or, conceivably, fourth place…”

But Oborne is a centre ground man at heart and fails to mention that, if Farage didn’t have sensible policies he almost certainly wouldn’t be the leader of today’s new political force in British politics.

As to being a toady, what else should we make of this gem?

“…I think Mr Cameron’s best bet is to stay where he is, and to fight on his record as a brave, competent and radical prime minister. Adopting such an attitude will take nerves of steel, and could lead to his premature exit if the parliamentary Tory party – that increasingly tremulous body – panics…”

Panics? Rather that it may finally, years late, start to exercise some judgment and consign the most ineffectual and self-serving example of incompetence since Heath to the ninth circle of Hell, where he belongs. But that’s just my view.

And what should we make of Oborne’s view that Cameron shouldn’t change? By implication then he should continue to remain the Prime Minister of a bankrupt nation in near terminal decline; without sovereignty, shackled to the EU corpse, tinkering with rather than transforming the bloated state apparatus, its operatives and dependents, permitting uncontrolled immigrant influxes by stealth and conviction, NHS lethality and inter-generational social isolation and despair. Paying for it by taxing the fast diminishing private sector to extinction and printing shinplasters whilst it can still afford the paper and ink?

So, was the subscription worth it?It’s probably too early to say. The internet provides access to excellent and free news services like Reuters. Equally there’s excellent commentators and commentary available. We wouldn’t be uninformed if we don’t subscribe to media service providers like the Telegraph.

I’d consider that, with access restored my £20 its starting to return the investment, but like a With Profits Endowment mortgage it’s not without its pitfalls and has its own deficits. The test will be whether I cancel my direct debit next year. And that may depend on how objectively, in my opinion of course, the Telegraph is reporting on UKIP, Nigel Farage and the ‘courage’ of Cameron.