Sunday, April 28, 2019

Speaking Truth From Power


Hey, Mail on Sunday: this is not going to go the way you think it will:
Police are examining sickening statements about child abuse made by a highly controversial Ukip candidate.
See, this is the thing: anyone who thinks Mr Plod should be spending his time investigating unregulated joking on Youtube probably isn't going to vote UKIP anyway.

Just a hunch.
Now a senior Ukip source has told The Mail on Sunday that they have passed a dossier to Wiltshire police containing deeply offensive remarks made by Mr Benjamin, an online ‘vlogger’ from Swindon who calls himself ‘Sargon of Akkad’.
A 'senior UKIP source' you guys! I'm assuming this the MoS's usual UKIP source, the famous Russian expat, Sergei Madeitupovitch.
The insider says the dossier was passed to Ukip’s ruling National Executive Council last autumn but no action was taken.
A 'dossier'. For a V-logger on Youtube.

So basically a list of links: that's the 'dossier'.

I don't think jokes should be illegal, but if they are, surely this kind of absurd self-dramatisation should be some kind of felony as well?

One question, Glen Owen of the Mail on Sunday: back when you were an ambitious young journalist, did you dream of the day when you would be breathlessly reporting on lists of Youtube links?
Other material studied by the police include a now-deleted 2015 video showing him repeatedly using the racial slurs ‘n****r’ and ‘sp*c’. He described two people as a ‘fag’ and a ‘retard’, and said it was ‘just f***ing fine’ to call an Asian woman a ‘ch*nk’.
Hey, this 'blogging' thing is going to get a lot easier if we can just randomly snip out words with no context whatsoever. Hey, let's do that right now:
Mail on Sunday journalist Glen Owen has written articles using racial slurs such as ‘n****r’ and ‘ch*nk
Why, oh why, is this racist allowed to write for a national newspaper?

Meanwhile, back in the real world:
[Labour MP Jess] Phillips later responded by suggesting she would take legal action, tweeting: ‘Oh I’ve just watched the clip of Mr Benjamin telling lies on a stage about me, so I think he’ll be hearing from the lawyers. Deary me.’
Y'know, an actual journalist would ask how this lawsuits going. How long does it take to issue a writ anyway?

Call me biased, but I'm thinking allegations that an MP thinks the death of her fellow citizens is a thigh-slapper are a little more serious than some wannabe edgelord making naughty jokes. That goes double if said MP is using bogus threats of lawsuits to try and silence her critics. But reporting on that would involve committing actual journalism, and who needs that? 

See, this is the thing: now the public has a real choice. If you're fine with the idea that alleged journalists should trawl Youtube for edgy jokes by uppity outsiders, while refusing to report on serious allegations about members of their little club, then go right ahead and vote for one of the legacy parties. Meanwhile, the rest of us can vote UKIP.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Moar Facebook Ads! Stat!


Who'd have thunk it? Even the battered wives of British politics have finally had enough.

It's about time!

Hopefully, they're finally working out that the Tory Party is the least conservative organisation in Britain. That's not just a ideological judgement, its whole ethos is profoundly unconservative.  They talk about giving power back to the people and shrinking the government, but the Party itself is run more like a cult than an actual, conservative organisation.

If your organisation truly believes that the people best qualified to run a by-election in Cumbria are a bunch of metropolitan twerps in London, and everyone outside the M25 is a bigot or a bumpkin, yeah.... you're not actually conservative. Whatever their rhetoric in public, it's quite obvious that these people regard their membership as a bunch of chumps and suckers who just need to be bamboozled with a few targeted facebook ads and some gesture politics.

Right about now, the main role of the Tory Party in pushing conservative values is providing a counter-example. Like I said, Tory Central Office is a socialist's wet dream: a single organisation staffed with the alleged best and brightest, and the best software money can buy, micromanaging the whole party. So how's that working out?

Screwed up an election against McDoom

Scraped a win against the Ed Miliband Human Simulation Unit

Bungled an election against Islington Jesus

But at least there weren't any rubes from oop north involved! They might have screwed things up.

Meanwhile, the people who really did screw things up are still out there giving the proles patronising lectures about 'electability' and the like.

Finally, the Tory base has asked the vital question: what are we getting out of all this?


Sunday, April 07, 2019

Remoaners: The Wile E Coyotes Of Politics

Remoaners keep coming up with cunning plans to nail those pesky leavers, but every time they end up dropping the anvil on themselves. Take this latest example.

Yep, a supposed public servant stopping by to warn his employers 'nice leave campaign you got 'ere... be a shame if something were to 'appen to it'. 

Who knows?  Maybe he's reading his constitution upside down and he really does think the public are accountable to the police. Meanwhile, for the rest of us, some jumped up prat goose-stepping round  like the mutant hell child of Mary Whitehouse and Torquemada is pretty much the perfect example of why we need to drain the swamp.