http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F07%2F23%2Fwgen223.xml is a link to his account.

OK, so it was underhand to 'infiltrate' and lie about his identity, but the actual article was fairly benign and not hysterical bullshit as in the rest of the corporate media. In fact, there was an element of sympathy for the Wombles. So don't be too hard on the guy.

Yeah the telegraph is an alright newspaper.
It's quite conservative (or to be more accurate it's somewhere between quite and very) but you've got to accept (and this is going to sound very patronising to conservatives with small or big Cs) that there are a lot of people who, due to their up-bringings and the people they interact with on a daily basis and various other reasons, do hold conservative views. Some of that is pure and simple old-fashionedness, some of it is a genuine belief in right of centre ideology. Just as we should be tolerent of people's religious beliefs so we should be tolerent of their political beliefs. Personally I think that conservative ideology is wrong. But I also think the bible is wrong (although it's NOT ALL WRONG because it does contain a certain amount of wisdom). But whilst I disagree with conservative ideology, if someone does belief in it then I wouldn't hold it against them any more than I would hold someone's religion against them if they were religious.

The telegraph is a respectful newspaper. The DAILY MAIL on the one hand, tells lies and is often very reactionary and negative. And it's an anti intellectual newspaper. But the people who read and write the TELEGRAPH tend to be - despite their conservative leanings - civilised honest tolerant people and so we should not be surprised to hear that they were reasonably kind to the wombles in their article. The Telegraph may be a right of centre newspaper but it's not a tabloid. It doesn't go in for sensationalist hype and it doesn't jump to conclusions and denounce things like the Mail does.

You can imagine that the people at the Telegraph didn't know the first thing about the Wombles, as they surely inhabit a completely different world from these people. And you can imagine them being curious and wanting to find out. They want to know what the Wombles are really about and so what better, from the point of view of a newspaper, a way of finding out than doing a bit of undercover journalism?

On the other hand, I can totally understand the point of view of the person from the wombles who wrote in. NO ONE likes being spied on.


By the way, this comment is all a complete bluff because I've never actually read either the Mail or the Telegraph.
I'm basing my assumptions purely on personal prejudice. I've got a hunch that I'm right though.

What in fucks name are you saying? The telegraph
is okay?!!! We should respect peoples political
beliefs??!!! How about if those political beliefs
are pro-capitalist, racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist,
authoritarian?!! Should we still respect people with
these 'beliefs'!!

@

Mate, if you're going to despise everyone in the world who's not a Marxist then you ain't gonna have a lot of friends left

x

It wasn't supposed to do that, I kept resending it because it wouldn't print it and now it's done it 3 times. the x thing was a test.

My gran was a conservative voter and telegraph reader when she was alive. Am I supposed to disrespect her just because of that? She didn't support the government's foreign policies in Indonesia - she didn't know anything about them. As for racism, she was kind of a bit sceptical about the idea of Asians running all our corner shops but she didn't want to kill them all or anything. She was a perfectly nice and reasonable old lady. I'm just saying that most telegraph readers are perfectly civilised people. If they're procapitalist then that's because they don't understand the damage that it causes. It's not like they do understand but just don't care. I'm sure that's the case for some of them like Maggie Thatcher but most people who are pro capitalist genuinely believe that it is the best way of running the economy. OK Business leaders know what they're doing to the people they exploit but they've been corupted by greed. That's something that can happen to all of us. Anyone with an ounce of wisdom knows that.

I could rant on for ages but basically people who have wrong ideas are just people who have been subjected to propaganda. You shouldn't hate them for that - hate the propaganda, hate the system but don't hate the people themselves and don't refuse to respect them. If you've been brought up as a conservative then you can hardly be blamed for continuing to believe in it. OK You could if you were clever enough come to realise that it's all bollocks but unless you were brought up as a conservative and realised that it was all bollocks then don't judge people without having walked a mile in their shoes.

I just found out that my cousins are big fans of Anne Widdecombe. That kind of pissed me off but I'm not going to disown them for it. The people we interact with on a daily basis have all sorts of ideas and most of them are complete and utter crap. But if we're actually going to live in this world, and get on with people, then we have to accept that. People don't have wrong ideas because they're wankers. That's way too simplistic a view to take. People have wrong ideas because those are the ideas they've been exposed to and they haven't realised that they were bollocks.

So yeah we should respect people who have ugly beliefs. We shouldn't agree with those beliefs but we should respect them as people. We don't like reactionaries so lets not be reactionary against the telegraph. Your attack on the telegraph was hateful to say the least and I really don't think we should be hating people who sympathise with the telegraphs politics when that embodies such a large proportion of the population. Think how many people voted Tory at the election. Not much but millions none the less. Are we to just dismiss all those people?

And another thing that pisses me off: working class Marxists who despise anyone who is middle class. To all of those people I would say: if you were born into a middle class family (say for example if your parents had died at birth and you'd been adopted by a middle class couple) then you would be middle class too. And the vast majority of you who were fortunate enough to be a member of what you call 'the ruling class' would jump at the chance if you could and live a cushy lifestyle. How many people really have what it takes to stick by their principles? How many of you for example could successfully martyr yourselves in a hunger strike? (pretty pointless thing to do anyway).
My point is that people are the products of their environments and that's what makes us all the way we are. Of course, we have consciousness and we have the ability to realise that we've done wrong and the capacity to change ourselves but most people don't and most of you if you were conservatives would be quite happy to carry on being conservatives.

So let's not hate the telegraph. By all means argue with it, engage with it, try to convert it..

(nb it has successfully been converted on certain issues. It was persuaded, for example, to support the disinvestment of the church of England from the arms trade, which has now happened).

Even if we never manage to convince everyone who believes in conservative ideologies, that they should adopt liberal left wing views, it's still unreasonable for us to dismiss them all as not worthy of respect.

A lot of very good people (or maybe we should call them 'otherwise' very good people) are conservatives either with big or little C's. People can be really good in some ways and really bad in others. That's both confusing *AND* infuriating. But it's life. THERE IS NO DR EVIL. Good and evil sits side by side in all of us. We all have the capacity to give in to temptations. We all have the capacity for greed and selfishness. We all have the capacity to absorb wrong ideologies. We're all fools. We're all only humans. That's a fact of life, ignore it at your peril. Anakin Skywalker never dreamed that he could possibly be converted to the dark side but it happens. A slightly less fictional example: Robin Cook used to passionately attack the arms trade and in particular the arming of Indonesia with Hawkes when it was doing what it was doing in East Timor. But the naive motherfucker didn't realise that as soon as he got into power he'd become horribly corrupted. He genuinely thought he was going to preside over an 'ethical foreign policy'. I challenge anyone to become a politician and not kill people. It's easier said than done. can't be arsed to write anymore.