Daily Mirror launches class war on David Cameron with Bullingdon photo (On the UK's election day)

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Today's Daily Mirror front-page picture of David Cameron in his Bullingdon Club days was designed to cause maximum embarrassment to the Tory leader on the day the nation went to the polls.

Cameron http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/04/david-cameron-bullingdon-club">has said he is "deeply embarrassed" by the picture which shows him posing in tails along with other members of what is invariably described as the "blue-blooded, hard-drinking" Bullingdon Club, including Boris Johnson.

=snip=

"This is the picture that David Cameron really, really doesn't want you to see," wrote Tony Parsons in the Mirror's front-page story. "It shows old salmon-chops back in the day when he was in the Bullingdon Binge Drinking Club for Boys at Oxford with his chum Boris Johnson and all the other yahoos of the tuck shop. The case against David Cameron is not that he is a posh boy, or a bad man, or someone who did naughty things when he was young.

The real case against Cameron is dead simple, and it is not tainted with class envy, and it is as uncomplicated as an empty bottle of Bollinger smacking against a peasant's forelock. David Cameron does not get us. David Cameron does not understand us. And he can never understand us."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/06/daily-mirror-david-cameron-bullingdon-club

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Details of how the Bullingdon Club has terrorised Oxford for 200 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club

http://www.mirror.co.uk/topics/david-cameron/">The Mirror's David Cameron page with links to their articles on him



Today's Daily Mirror front page.
The Bullingdon photo has been
blurred by The Guardian



Above,

(1) the Hon. Edward Sebastian Grigg, the heir to Baron Altrincham of Tormarton and current chairman of Credit Suisse (UK)

(2) David Cameron

(3) Ralph Perry Robinson, a former child actor, designer, furniture-maker

(4) Ewen Fergusson, son of the British ambassador to France, Sir Ewen Fergusson and now at City law firm Herbert Smith

(5) Matthew Benson, the heir to the Earldom of Wemyss and March

(6) Sebastian James, the son of Lord Northbourne, a major landowner in Kent

(7) Jonathan Ford, the-then president of the club, a banker with Morgan Grenfell

(8) Boris Johnson, the-then president of the Oxford Union, now Lord Mayor of London

(9) Harry Eastwood, the investment fund consultant



(1) George Osborne, now the Shadow Chancellor;

(Details on who the others are http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/david-cameron/">here)

This is the picture of him The Guardian used today in http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/05/general-election-2010-david-cameron">their article about him.


Lock up your children!

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. The Conservative party represents the rich and the privileged

always has.

[rurallib]

4. gosh, they sound just like the republicans

will the tories run the UK into the ground like they did under Thatcher?
Why didn't the UK learn their lesson then?
Why don't we?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. the pendulum swings to the left right left right etc

one day it might end up in the middle with the Lib Dems holding the balance?

I hope that the Tories will NOT win. They are horrors. Thatcher wanted to privatize EVERYTHING!

[rurallib]

7. Also amazing how time (and media) dull memories.

[FunkyLeprechaun]

15. I've been looking at the other parties

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is part of Russian royalty and went to private schools and Gordon Brown is a minister's son. I voted today btw. (I remember pictures of Blair from his Oxford days as well)

The Tories are not the same as the Republicans in policy though. It annoys me to no end that they seemingly endorse Republican candidates when they would actually disagree with many of the R party ideas.

[T_i_B]

2. The Mirror's been as naff as the RW tabloids

Although you'd have to go some way to find election coverage more fawning then the Mirror in 1997 when Tony Blair was actually popular.

[Odin2005]

3. OUCH!!!

[harmonicon]

6. I couldn't agree more

I think this is an important point for politics in any country. Why do we keep voting for people who have no idea how we live or what is important to us? Unfortunately, this isn't a problem only for conservatives, though it seems more common amongst them.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. Why do the parties only put forward people who have no idea how we live or what is important to us?

Do I want the millionaire or the multi-millionaire? :freak:

[harmonicon]

10. yeah, that is why it's a vicious cycle of course

I'd like to say that getting the money out of politics could fix it (it would help), but the same problem persists in the UK where election spending is comparatively tiny. It's just a closed boys' club (even when they let women in). As much as I like and admire people like Al Gore, I don't for a second think they know what it's like to live like the poor do and the changes that most people really need in government. While Obama isn't as much from that class, he's certainly far above where anyone in my family has ever been socially and economically. I think that was a lot of the appeal of Bill Clinton - while he was one of the wealthy elite, he lived much of his life outside of it.

I really do hope that the LibDems have a strong showing in this election, if only for their calls of radically reforming the electoral system. However, with proportional representation, these problems would still persist - the MPs would be chosen from the parties which are made up of the elite.

I think instant runoff voting would bring us closest to getting candidates who can really represent most people. I would like to see it employed across all levels of elections, and I wish Howard Dean was still the head of the party so that we might move in that direction. Sure, it would take a constitutional amendment to institute it in federal elections, but for state and local elections, and especially for primaries, it would be easier to employ. Once people saw the (granted, assumed) benefits, I think there would be a push to expand it.

[Nye Bevan]

9. That's the best the Mirror can do on Election Day?

An embarrassing college photo from 20 years ago?

[mwooldri]

16. Sadly yes.

The Sun has generally been more imaginative in the past when it comes to their election day message... I still remember their message with Neil Kinnock in a light bulb and the caption "would the last person to leave britain please turn off the lights?" Bloody Tories won of course... but that was a very imaginative front page IMO - even though it was extremely partisan (as are most UK national newspapers).

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Not as good as the 'class war' the Daily Mail tried on Nick Clegg

In this bizarre piece, they tried to paint him as rolling in money, but ended up making his houses sound more like what the average Mail reader would like to have without having to be 'rich':

He claims his constituency house is a modest, pebble-dashed semi that is far from 'palatial'.

But last night it emerged that Nick Clegg's Sheffield home is a four-bedroom property in one of the city's smartest streets.

The Lib Dem leader's neighbours include doctors, lawyers and dentists and houses on the street have sold for nearly £500,000.
...
Mr Clegg, who admits his family is lucky to have two incomes, has described his London home as his 'suburban heaven'.

Visitors there tell of expensively-covered modern chairs and a Shaker-style kitchen.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1267445/General-Election-2010-Clegg-says-Im-man-change.html

The 'palatial' (according to the Mail) London home:

[Turborama]

12. OMG The hypocrisy is sooo strong with that rag!

Your reply got me looking up what sort of place the Cameron's own and, ironically enough, the Mail had this 2 years ago....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-556290/MPs-expenses-list-reveals-David-Cameron-used-claim-21-000-year-pay-mortgage.html">MPs' expenses list reveals David Cameron 'used the system' to claim £21,000 in a year to pay his mortgage

Last updated at 00:54 05 April 2008


Mr Cameron, who has led calls for sweeping changes to MPs'expenses, has made no secret of the fact that he uses the housing allowance to pay the mortgage on his £750,000 house in his Oxfordshire constituency.

The Tory leader has no mortgage on his house in London, which is said to be worth £2million.

He comes from a well-off family and his wife Samantha is the daughter of a land-owning baronet.



Splendid isolation: David Cameron's £750,000 constituency home


Mr Cameron has a home in Notting Hill, West London and a second in Dean, Oxfordshire




Full article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-556290/MPs-expenses-list-reveals-David-Cameron-used-claim-21-000-year-pay-mortgage.html

[T_i_B]

14. I grew up in Sheffield Hallam

There's WAY posher then that in Hallam. The Mail is plain lying when it says that is "One of the city's smartest streets". For that look to places like Ranmoor, Wirlow, Dore, Totley and Fulwood. All of those areas have much bigger, smarter houses then that.

[greiner3]

13. But why would the Mirror want to attack;

The director of Avatar? I really liked that movie.