Prentis PR stunt backfires
Tory DEFRA minister Victoria Prentis couldn’t resist a PR stunt to draw attention to the Tories’ fisheries bill – fishing rights being one of their favourite pavlovian dogwhistles when they want to whip up hatred of foreigners and divert attention from their disasters – by posting a picture that she claimed showed her ‘catching mackerel off the Pembrokeshire coast’.
But she was roasted on Twitter for claiming to have been angling when there was very clearly no line on the reel:
Prentis’s tweet was thoroughly ‘ratioed’ – considered a sign of a disastrous post – with around three times more comments than retweets. The comments made it plain what readers thought of her insult to their intelligence:
In all, there were more than one and a half thousand responses along similar lines.
The Tories: never missing an opportunity to appeal to the public’s lowest instincts while treating them like fools.
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It reminds me of another Tory lie, when Penny Mordaunt said the UK couldn’t veto Turkey joining the EU.
I was a fisherman in the English channel in the 1970s when most of the mackerel were wiped out by foreign factory ships ably assisted by Scottish and north of England trawlers and purse seiners fleeing from their defeat in the cod war around Iceland. These days she’d be just as likely to catch a mackerel without a line as with one.
labrebisgalloise
What’s the solution this time around
The Tories have a Fishing Bill! I thought they were just going to do their usual — mouth off at the EU, then turn and run when things get hot!!
She’s holding the rod upside down. Which doesn’t matter, as she doesn’t have a line, which has been pointed out already.
I’ve seen people fishing with the rod that way up. Looks all wrong to me too but I’ve seen it too many times for it not to be at least as valid as the other way up. My guess is it puts less strain on the rod eye bindings.
There’s still no line on that reel though – the fisherman who told her to hold it that way clearly would have known that, and therefore that he was making her look stupid allowing her to be photographed ‘fishing’ with no line.
I suspect he might be on our team.
The rod is often used that way up in sea fishing.
You could take a toerag to a pig farm and tell them to pick up a shovel using the pigshit and they’d be dumb enough to think that’s how it’s done.
Anything that requires a degree of manual labour and the toerags are jiggered. ..As well as anything that requires a smattering of intellectual capacity.
It’s the Tory way, all photo opportunities, and no substance. The problem is people stupidly swallow it because they want to believe the propaganda.