Bite the Ballot: The Nathan Barley of Political Engagement

In 2005 a sitcom was launched, co-written by Chris Morris of Brass Eye and The Day Today fame.  It focuses on a character, Nathan Barley, who is an incredibly overrated fashion conscious manchild. He only gets attention because he self-promotes through digital channels and is perceived to have the necessary ‘street cool’. The show, it seems, was well before its time as we now have a living, breathing case of life imitating art in the form of ‘Bite the Ballot’.

‘Bite the Ballot’ describes itself as “a not for profit organisation that empowers young people to speak up and act, to make their votes and opinions count.” Further down in its blurb we find something I’m sure was actually lifted from a Nathan Barley script – “Our core values when engaging those furthest away from politics are to be unconventional, inclusive and bold.”

They present themselves as studiously neutral. Which sounds nice given their current big hitting scheme is “Leaders Live”. The idea behind this is that they deliver questions to the main political leaders in the UK ostensibly provided from the general public via social media. In practice, most of the questioning occurs through an audience panel that is supposedly representative of the UK’s “youth”.

And it is the panel where this farce becomes completely unstuck. 

The second episode of “Leaders Live” featured Nigel Farage. The “representative” audience panel picked by supposedly “neutral” Bite the Ballot engaged in a solid hour of abuse, belittling, heckling and verging on violent interrogation of Farage. The role of the chair, Rick Edwards, during this episode appeared to be to primarily emulate Helen Keller as best as he could. 

The apparently in built anti-UKIP panel hostility was obvious to many who were commenting live at the time as well as the majority of the commenters on the archived Youtube video. The belligerence and bias was worse even than the most partisan BBC selected audience for Quisling Time I ever recall seeing. It was more embarrassingly (albeit unintentionally) self-parodying than Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s send up of the latter too.  

One only needs to watch the previous episode, with the Green Party’s Natalie Bennett to see the shocking divergence in the panel’s behaviour towards the two leaders. She was given a relatively easy time on the questions front, only really corned twice (e.g. on the performance of Brighton council) and even then she was treated with good manners and respect throughout. The panel seemed to like what she had to say, but then that’s easy with the Greens because they can promise spending on all and sundry without having to account for it. And of course this particularly appeals to the young and inexperienced who are more likely to opt for idealism and less likely to ask how one earth the Green’s apparently bottomless spending bonanza can be financed. 

A parody of panels

Who was on the panel for the Nigel Farage episode? That’s the million dollar question. It’s also one that ‘Bite the Ballot’ singularly fails to answer. Nowhere on their site or on the youtube channel is a list of the participants, never mind any biographies. This information is just a teensy weensy bit important.

As a result I had to piece together (occasionally making mistakes) who was actually present and their backgrounds. It is, frankly insane, that I had to do this. It is part and parcel of modern broadcasting that viewers are informed as to who is being questioned and who is doing the questioning. Not in this case though. 

So, who took part? Amongst those participating and including almost everyone who actually spoke on the panel I’ve been able to determine the following:

Piers Telemacque (@Pierschickenboy)
A vice-president of the NUS and active anti-UKIP activist.  You can see him here using crayon (how appropriate) to express his hatred of the party. He continues the proud tradition of NUS representatives in being thick and obnoxious. In between his slews of abuse towards Farage he claimed that Farage had worked for “Wall Street”. No, really. I’m sure there’s a bright future ahead for Piers in the greasy poleclimbers club that is the NUS and just like his predecessors will be willing to sell anyone out to get what he wants when he’s sick of being a bag carrier and useful idiot. 

Kenny Imafidon (@KennyImafidon)
Charming chap this one. Even more belligerent than Piers. He’s currently “Special Advisor on Youth Policy”. How did he achieve this august position? That makes for uncomfortable reading. Turns out he used to be a thug in a London gang. Ended up in the dock for murder. He was  however acquitted. Oh, that’s OK then?

Maybe not. It turns out the imprisoned murderer and accessory were actually his friends and part of the same gang. As he himself said, it “could have easily been me”. Oh dear. It is following this that events become truly bizarre. It appears that our establishment inexplicably decided that he needed special treatment,tea and biscuits. This gang-banging thug was elevated by our establishment, with money, education and status poured on him to become effectively an establishment selected “Community Leader / Representative” type. I’ve genuinely never seen anything like it.

Myles Dyer (@MylesDyer)
An employee of the Guardian.

Nothing else really needs to be said.

Mawaan Rizwan (@MawaanR)

A BBC employee. He’s a “comedian” apparently.

Another embarrassing belligerent on the show, this chap being the one who apparently really hates rich people with large houses.

Again, what more need be said. 

Russ Haynes (@monkeywithagunn)
Another “comedian”. This fellow was possibly the most belligerent of the lot and I genuinely thought he was going to get out of his seat to get at Farage at some point. He went heavy on the race card.

Rebecca Brown(?) (@beckie0)
Current/recent university (under)graduate. Massive youtube following – the largest of the lot as far as I can tell. I found a ‘Google hangout’ with some of these people discussing participating in ‘Bite the Ballot’ from 2013 where she made it clear she had not had any interest in politics until recruited by this organisation. She appears to be a relatively harmless youtube narcissist and was one of the politer panel members. 

John (surname?) (@JazzaJohn)
Another youtuber and LGBT campaigner as far as I can tell. Came across perfectly reasonably on the show. 

 Hannah Witton (@hannahwitton)
Another social media narcissist.
Current/recent university (under)graduate

Jamal Edwards (@jamaledwards)
Millionaire rapper. So, yeah, “representative”. Spoke during the Natalie Bennett interview previously but as far as I can recall did not ask a question of Nigel Farage. Which is probably just as well as the remainder of the panel appeared to be going on for a full on ‘soak the rich’ attack and things could have got awkward quite quickly especially if Nigel knew who he was otherwise….
I originally mixed him up with Kenny Imafidon – primarily because information was so thin on the ground about the panel I was resorting to comparing still images after confirming Jamal was on the show. 

Ben Hanlin (@benhanlin)
Magician. Employee of ITV (noteworthy especially in this case as this whole enterprise was arranged with ITV as a partner). 

Tom Harwood (@tomhfh)
Probably the single most neutral representative panel member I’ve been able to identify so far.  Follows the usual Youtube narcissism pattern but has a following comparable to many people I know myself on social media who have just been around for a while. 

Lucy Moon (@meowitslucy)
Another youtuber. Her twitter timeline makes it clear she’s another serial UKIP hater. She’s also noticeably more narcissistic than the others going by the evidence there and she’s only 19 (the majority of others seem to be in their 20s upwards). Not good. She was the most ill-tempered of the female panel members.

There are a handful of others I’ve not had the time to track down yet (so far its 11/15 – though only 14 of those appeared on the episode in question). However, as far as I can tell I have managed to include everyone who asked questions from the panel on the Farage episode.


Where was everyone else?

Where they weren’t diehard lefties and UKIP haters (that covers the people who spent most time heckling, interrupting and abusing) the panel members were major social media narcissists and/or media luvvies. Are these really the people who are most appropriate to be representing the UK’s “youth voice”? If there could even be said to be such a thing? Where were the political right wingers, the young people working in trades, armed forces, front line services? Why do only graduates, youtube personalities and “comedians” get to speak? You know – where’s the missing 50% of British youths who did not go to university and also did not become youtube superstars plucked from obscurity?

How desperately unfunny must the “comedians” on the panel be if all they can do in this situation is effectively act as simple hostile hecklers? Speaking as a fan and regular attendee of the London comedy circuit I can’t imagine any of the performers I’ve seen behaving like this. Even if they were out to undermine Farage they would have prepared some funny zingers rather than behaved like two year olds on the verge of tantrums, violence or both. 

A full third were committed UKIP haters and there are question marks over several of the others. It was a shockingly biased panel and the aggression towards Farage was left completely unchecked. It’s worth noting that all of the ethnic minority panel members who spoke up were persistently interrupting and belligerent. If your goal was to portray the young left-leaning members of the UK’s BME communities as know-nothing, belligerent gobshites then this episode was a major success. GREAT JOB guys!

It would appear to most of those commenting on ‘Bite the Ballot’ youtube videos that, as commenter ‘Venimus Vidimus’ put it, the panel

“were chosen because they're simple minded, desperate to be liked, malleable, sycophantic, photogenic, glib and left-wing (the latter trait being a direct result of the former traits).”

The boss weighs in 

As if it wasn’t already enough of a Nathan Barley episode with the student left drama queens and social media narcissists on the panel, the “Big Boss” of ‘Bite the Ballot’, Michael Sani, has since written about the panel make up. He has in turn delivered the very quintessence of exactly the kind of purified, distilled, thoughtless idiocy that seems the characterise these kind of enterprises and was mercilessly mocked in Nathan Barley. 

It is at this point that the mutual masturbation circle now turns into a full on circular firing squad.

In case they have a sudden injection of sense and delete the piece, I’ll quote you the section I consider most apposite:

“On the first: yep, I agree. At times, even I was calling for Rick to step in to keep control of people’s emotions – but to be fair, it was arguably the hottest debate we’ve ever seen with Nigel. It was refreshing to see people’s emotions on show, especially from this age group. One thing’s for sure – it’s becoming harder and harder to say ‘Young people don’t care’: because last night they proved they do. And now we build upon it, collectively.

Before I go into how, let’s address the idea of our unrepresentative audience. The audience was selected because of the networks they represent – many of whom have thousands of fans, followers and subscribers. You name it – they have them. These debates are pilots. We are trying to find a format where the few can represent the masses, and we are consistently perfecting the model because – like with everything BTB – we are not afraid to try, reflect, then try again. Yes, one member of the audience, Myles, has a day-job with a certain left-leaning print media house, but he didn’t mention that during the event, and more importantly, he brought in the views of his YouTube, Twitter and Facebook subscribers. That has always been the aim.

As for the chap from NUS, yes, it’s disappointing that he’s posted rude, anti-UKIP pictures on his social profile. He was supposed to be in a position of representing a mass of students. The thing is, we all have to work and support one another here. NUS need to be clear on what is – and is not – acceptable for their officers; and from BTB’s side, we need to think about how we brief audiences ahead of these debates so they don’t lose their electricity (and protect us from being picked apart).”

Holy non-sequiturs and complete-lack-of-self-awareness Batman! Would you like a dirty dripping contempt salad and a side order of sneer with your order, sir?

“It was refreshing to see people’s emotions on show”

- Yes, wonderful. Portray the representatives of “the youth” as ignorant brutes determined to get their way through shouting others down, along with a distinct implied violence. And even the boss was calling for the chair, Helen Keller (sorry – Rick Edwards), to notice something was up and step in. But he did nothing of the sort. Why?

“let’s address the idea of our unrepresentative audience”

- The “idea” of an unrepresentative audience. Got that? It’s just an “idea”!

“The audience was selected because of the networks they represent”

- The “networks” many of them represented were followers of a social media narcissist. In case you’re unfamiliar, Michael, with what narcissism entails, the narcissist does not “represent” their following.  They expect to bask in their reflected glory from sycophants. 

“We are trying to find a format where the few can represent the masses, and we are consistently perfecting the model because”

- This is just pure delusional talk. There is no model or format at work here beyond pulling in a social media circle jerk. The folks you picked represent some quite specific cliques and you’re excluding, at a minimum, 50% of the UK’s “youth”.  I fear that by “perfecting it” you mean pull in people who have more followers and shares on social media. I don’t think you understand the meaning of “representation” here, Michael.

“Yes, one member of the audience, Myles, has a day-job with a certain left-leaning print media house, but he didn’t mention that during the event”

- Ooh. A “certain left-leaning print media house”. There’s not even a hint of contrition here is there? I can almost feel “Boss Man” Michael’s sneer in his words. And you also appear to be frighteningly oblivious to the fact, Michael, that it is definitively your responsibility to inform your viewers of such details.

- I think the Guardian’s Myles Dyer has realised there’s trouble ahead as he is currently busy clowndancing in the youtube comments making out that he’s actually a really neutral, reasonable guy. One glance at his twitter timeline during and just after the event though and anyone can see the real picture: One of Myles revelling in so much backslapping over his perceived success in ‘operation get Farage’ that it’s amazing he hasn’t taken time off to see a chiropractor. 

“and more importantly, he brought in the views of his YouTube, Twitter and Facebook subscribers. That has always been the aim.”

- And there you have it. It’s all about the hits…sod accuracy, representation, bias…Never mind the fact that the bulk of followers are likely to subscribe to a similar viewpoint thereby exacerbating the bias even further.

“As for the chap from NUS, yes, it’s disappointing that he’s posted rude, anti-UKIP pictures on his social profile. He was supposed to be in a position of representing a mass of students.”

 - Right. Because you had no idea that this is what he was all about. And the very idea of NUS reps actually representing the mass of students rather than the speech-code obsessed authoritarian harpies? Hoho – pass the smelling salts, please dear!

“NUS need to be clear on what is – and is not – acceptable for their officers;”
 
- Pretty much anything acceptable to the far-left goes at the nutty NUS. Including opposing motions against ISIS initiated by (Muslim) Kurds because of  - er - “Islamophobia”. 

“and from BTB’s side, we need to think about how we brief audiences ahead of these debates so they don’t lose their electricity (and protect us from being picked apart).”

- Translation: we need to ensure our biased selectees know how to obscure their biases from easy discovery!

This all simply beggars belief. “Boss man” had the opportunity to pull back from the precipice. Instead he hits the accelerator pedal and flies straight over the cliff, smashes into the rocks below and bursts into flames.

No acknowledgement of an issue, no contrition and no prospect of rectification at all. The ostensible goal of this “neutral” organisation is to teach and inspire young citizens about politics and voting. If the mission here was to teach young people the lesson that, in UK politics, you can expect to be unashamedly and outrageously deceived right from the very start, then this has been an absolutely stellar success.

The cat is out of the bag now, Michael.

You had a duty of care to inform the audience. You failed spectacularly.  

The most important currency in politics is trust. Once it is gone it can take a generation to win it back. ‘Bite the Ballot’ have demonstrated that they are wilfully biased. Worse, they have clearly expressed that they simply do not care that they have been outed and intend to carry on as before. Notice also the lexical register that Michael Sani uses. It is very childlike, blasé and pompous. It reminds me very much of how Russell Brand happily masturbates his own ignorance and anti-intellectualism in his own inscrutable writing. And this man is the “Big Boss”. God help us.

Tories should be wary

There’s no love lost between myself and the Tories. However in spite of my general dislike of the party and my specific issues with Cameron himself, I do not think he or they deserve to be put through this idiotic farce. Dave is so far the only party leader to have not confirmed a date with ‘Bite the Ballot’. In all seriousness I think, now the outright bias of the show is on full view, that he would be wise to withdraw. 

It is arguable that Cameron could be in for even worse treatment than Farage. Why? Because the visceral hatred of UKIP and Farage from this lot is what I would refer to as “fashionable hate”. It has become a popular past time, to impress your mates and be seen to make the correct noises for herd approval to claim to hate UKIP even if you know little about them and even less about the issues they raise. Yet there is something that is somewhat fleeting here.

The tories on the other hand face what I would call “institutional hate”. Despite not even having been born when Thatcher was still in power, many of this lot seem to uncannily pop out of the womb with a built in hatred of her and need to blame the country’s current ills on a prime minister who has been out of power for decades. You know how it goes. Everything is Fatcher’s fault, innit bruv? You instinctively support manual frackers (miners) but inexplicably hate and fear hydraulic fracturing. The tories were so evil they even caught the Teletubbies going for a poo. They had the Brighton bombing coming. The Falklands was worse than Iraq. And yes, the Belgrano was a fucking cruise liner.

Don’t do it to yourselves. Yes there will be mass hysteria by the self-righteous New Left, but their teeth grinding and childishness will only prove the point.

The children of Orwell and Huxley

One final issue that really bugged me. Because this attempt at imitating Nathan Barley was struggling to be so in touch with the supposed social media zeitgeist, all the panel participants were glued to their spyphones and tablets. The occasional full frontal shot of the panel was actually quite unnerving. When they weren’t send spittle flecked tirades Farage’s way, they were looking down with crooked necks at the miniature portals in their laps.

At any one moment the majority of the audience was simply not paying attention. In human communication terms this is a significant step backwards and not a practice that should be actively encouraged. ‘The Youth’ have become inheritors of the worst of both Orwell’s and Huxley’s fears. Continually policed Newspeak (and, increasingly, prudery too) combined with hypnotising, addictive yet numbing behaviours of performance and approval carried out via devices that are used to spy on us. 

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a social media network’s glow from a backlit display occupying a dulled, distracted, inattentive human face, forever.

"Whataboutery"

Brendan O'Neill has an interesting piece up today about the double standards that the pro-Gaza activists appear to have with regard to Western links to violence in other lands.

The long story short is O'Neill points out that the pro-Gaza activists can claim that they largely ignore other, and much worse, violence such as that perpetrated by ISIS on the grounds that the West isn't backing it, unlike Israel. He then presents events in Ukraine as a prima facie case of Western involvement and responsibility for instigating conflict and tremendous loss of human life, not to mention displacement, then asking activists why they ignore that case.

I can't say I'm that convinced by O'Neill's argument even if I recognise it has substantial force. And in any case, its the first part that bothers me more. There's plenty of relevant 'whataboutery' to be had where these burning hypocrites are concerned.

As I commented over there,  I've got an even better bit of 'whatabouttery' - what about George Galloway?

The speech code anal retentives went into mass bladder-bursting conniptions over the possibility that Jeremy Clarkson might have muttered a bad word under his breath on an unaired clip somewhere (an audio sample by the way, we must remember, that required expert help to clarify).

Yet Galloway says something in public, on a podium to a substantial audience and on camera that is utterly hateful about an entire people and what happened?

Tumbleweed.

Again.

Speaking of "bladder bursting conniptions" the latest outrage is apparently Garnier sending free products to female IDF soldiers. The outrage has been so substantial and quick that Garnier have been forced to apologise. No, really

The campaign, of course, is headed up by none other than George "No dogs or Jews round here" Galloway.

Sometimes its hard to believe that we're not all here for the benefit of some cosmic surreal yet brutal planet sized sit-com.

Unite Around Fascism vs UKIP

So, regarding Unite Around Fascism's supreme arseclownery at the UKIP London rally last night -

Everyone going in to the venue was given abuse, told that they were racist bigots blah blah blah. Socialist Worker were actually trying to give leaflets out to attendees telling them they were racist. A black fella stood in the queue next to me started quietly singing 'get some soap, get some soap, get some soap'. I counted three brown faces amongst the UAF mob. There were dozens of ethnic minority attendees in the UKIP contingent. 

Inside, UAF had a string of people inside who attempted heckling (there's an art to this chaps, you really could have made a better effort).

The UAF hecklers were, frankly, amazing though in their own way.

Every single one of them was white.

Almost all of the heckles were aimed at ethnic minority speakers (including calling them "racist").
Extra points go to the very first hecklers who actually looked like skinheads, chanting at mixed race Steven Woolfe that he was a "fake" (wtf?).

Methinks UAF and pals need to immediately go back to the marketing department for a new plan....

I'm pretty sure at one point they tried storming the venue and must have been aggressively moved on by the police. We couldn't hear them at all once inside the venue, except briefly for a moment when all of the security staff rushed for the exit and we heard the clown crew roaring getting louder. By the time we left the venue there was not a single sign they had been there - not one straggler, not even a stupid sign left on the ground and even the barriers had been put away on a truck.

However, if you read the UAF facebook page, they claim to have won some incredible victory and "fought off" numerous "EDL thugs". I'm getting a bit worried about their mental health now. There wasn't a single sign of any such people at the rally, inside or out. Everyone in the queue maintained a dignified calm. The desperate blow hards are now having to make any old shit up.

I'm also still pondering what the white middle class student craptivists were actually trying to communicate in calling ethnic minority UKIP speakers "racist", or "fake". Suffice to say I haven't been coming to any flattering conclusions.

I'll be rolling this story out for years now to anyone who talks to me about UAF and endorses their concentrated fuckwittery.  Remind me again who the real "fascists" are?

What has the EU ever done for us?

I feel this video perfectly encapsulates how the EU has helped me - and so many millions of others - on many occasions throughout my life.

The Climate Alarmism Dictionary

This really made me chuckle. Probably one of the funniest summaries of the current state of play in the climate debate that I've seen.

Repeated verbatim from Ron McCarley's post at WUWT:

"A Climate Alarmism Dictionary:

* Accelerated Sea Level Rise – places sinking into the ocean faster than the water’s rising.

* Accurate Temperature Measurement – what the thermometer showed after being placed beside the BBQ grill.

* Climate Alarmist – insists others don’t know what they’re talking about, but knows even less.

* Environmentalist – Leads a carbon intensive lifestyle, well beyond the means of the average public. Visits pristine areas often but doesn’t want anyone else to go there.

* Global Warming – not the run-of-the-mill average warming, but disastrous, nasty warming like wearing thermal underwear in Death Valley. Eskimos will be wearing Speedo’s if we don’t do something by the next election cycle.

* Movie Star – arrives at a movie premiere in a Prius, after flying there in their private jet from one of their huge mansions. Loves to preach sacrifice to others who live from paycheck to paycheck.
Advocates all kinds of burdensome carbon taxes because the government can’t tax their fortune more than once.

* Ocean Acidification – Hell will freeze over before carbon dioxide turns the oceans acidic, but it’s the best scare tactic that we’ve got.

* Overpopulation – Anyone else daring to have children.

* Sacrifice for Your Children and Grandchilden – we don’t even care about the people alive today, but it’s a great sales technique to persuade the public to choke down policies that will hurt everybody.

* Statesman – worries about the effects of DDT and golden rice on a wealthy nation, but ignores the countless deaths and child blindness of others in poor countries who could be saved by their use.

* TV Climate Special – scary pictures at a 3rd grade level, suitable for chimpanzees.

* Unprecedented Warming – actually occurred many times before, but lying to the public might work."

GWPF report on climate catastrophist "education" in schools is a MUST READ

Press release HERE.
Direct link to report HERE. [PDF]

When I first started reading this I was just going to put it up as a recommendation. Having finished it earlier and thought on it I'm now going to argue that it is a must read. A spokesman for Michael Gove has apparently already responded to it. If you have kids, or teach kids (or even young adults) you really should read this.

We're on the verge of a lost generation here, where education has not only become a completely and utterly politicised tool but it is actively impairing these kids' prospects through a saturation of fear (“I worry about [global warming] because I don’t want to die.” one child is reported as saying) and destroying any hope of critical reasoning as propaganda and science become indistinguishable.

No subject, not even Religious Education, is free from the influence. In many cases, it seems, the kids are being taught complete activist bollocks that doesn't even fit in with what is said by the IPCC. Never mind "children won't know what snow is" (courtesy of Dr. David Viner, still gainfully employed as a climate scientologist), they won't know what science is. And they'll be leaving the education system with no hope for their future.

A couple of apropos citations from the report:

"In a survey of 500 American pre-teens, it was found that one in three children aged between 6 and 11 feared that the Earth would not exist when they reached adulthood because of global warming and other environmental threats."

And

"It is easy to engage the sympathies of children with stories of damage to the natural world and images of suffering animals they will identify with. But children have very little power. Of all the sections of society who might make an impact on climate change, they have the least in-fluence. There is a real risk of raising levels of anxiety amongst children that will not only cause distress in the immediate term but will in the long term lead to those children turning against the environmental causes we hoped they might espouse."

Read it. Read it now. Read the whole damn thing.

If you want the short version, basically this is what our friends in the climate catastrophism community are attempting to do every day:

"The IPCC is 95% certain that...."

All direct quotes from the 'Summary for Policymakers' - [PDF]

My reaction to the new IPCC Summary for Policymakers report

I had started planning a detailed response to the SPM, pointing out that it is actually pretty supportive of the sceptical case and incredibly uncertain in many areas.

Then I saw some of the irrational, hysterical reactions across the usual suspects in the alarmist press, many of whom have made claims that DO NOT APPEAR AT ALL in the IPCC document. Many are also unbelievably willful distortions. I recommend to everyone reading it for yourselves - its just 36 pages and then compare with what others are saying it says. 

There are so many crazy reactions, I'm sure you've already seen many of them. Here is one of the funniest.

Given that so many of the irresponsible, hysterical responses are shamefully from people who should know better (including university "professors"), I thought I'd post my response to them instead. It's better than they deserve:

Through a PRISM darkly: the worthlessness of political "science"

“Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.”
- Spinoza

The ongoing scandal surrounding the extent of our "intelligence" "services" domestic spying  proclivities continues to rumble on and yet going by the general news coverage and discussion on social media, including amongst the libertarian blogosphere one could be forgiven for thinking this issue had barely registered and no one really gives a shit.

The fact is that this is the biggest scandal of our age and with each day new revelations come to light and more claims by our worthless political class and senior civil "service" are revealed to be outright lies. Yet barely a whimper.  It seems Huxley was closer to the truth than Orwell. We really are numbed with distractions.

The extent of this spying capability combined with the promise of Big Data means our dear spooks have an unprecedented insight into our souls and concerns. They have probably already realised the D notice was redundant - not because of technology and media plurality making it redundant - but because even a modest analysis of social media interactions will demonstrate that they can rely on lethargy and apathy to do the job for them.  Hague has been running notably silent given that most of what he said at the beginning of the month and in particular on June 10th has been shown to be a pack of lies. 

This not only affects all of us, it is not only cross partisan and it not only shows up the British establishment to be the enemies of the people. No. It also highlights the pointlessness of many of our political and philosophical differences. There is no real debate to be had when there is a secret state at work beneath the surface of the puppet show that we all like to talk about. Degrees in "political science" (and I say this as the unproud owner of one) are worthless when faced with the spook joker in the pack, especially an game changing (and ending) oversized card like ours that clearly eclipses all other institutions. Control of accurate information is like the control of the Spice in Dune. All of the supposed "insights" gained by "intelligence studies" scholars such as Richard Aldrich are little more than crumbs from the table delivered by a handmaiden, not a critic, of our unaccountable secret state. He and his peers have no choice to be anything other than handmaidens - they are after all funded by our Dear Leaders.

Dark times indeed. 

 

 

D NOTICE ISSUED REGARDING PRISM PLEASE RESHARE

Via Guido

Private and Confidential: Not for publication, broadcast or use on social media.
Defence Advisory Notice
There have been a number of articles recently in connection with some of the ways in which the UK Intelligence Services obtain information from foreign sources.
Although none of these recent articles has contravened any of the guidelines contained within the Defence Advisory Notice System, the intelligence services are concerned that further developments of this same theme may begin to jeopardize both national security and possibly UK personnel…

Semi official confirmation of the secret surveillance state

It doesn't matter whether you identify as "left", or "right" or whatever political-philosophical conjugation suits you, we should all be outraged and concerned by this.

The Telegraph reports that the Guardian and Washington Times have obtained a secret slide show detailing nine companies who are willing participants in a programme called PRISM - which is, literally, the ever feared 'back door' into the databases of these companies. They are: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.

It's only semi-official confirmation of what many of us have suspected, however it is nevertheless galling to see it in black and white.

Such swathes of data really can provide roadmaps - and predictive ones at that - to our lives and inner workings; the capabilities of Big Data in this respect has already been well proven in the last few years. The nature of privacy has also fundamentally changed in a way that neither the law or popular conceptions (and hence, popular narratives) have caught up with.

These applications will not be particularly useful for "fighting terrorism". It is abundantly clear that our "intelligence" services already know who the terrorists are. And the terrorists certainly aren't shy about hiding it. Some of them even get invited for regular tea and biscuits on Newsnight. No, these applications are on the contrary extremely useful for monitoring, corralling, anticipating and controlling the general population. The only major ray of hope in this regard is that our respective governments are so fucking stupid and incompetent that they will continually fuck this up and there will always be ways to run rings around them with enough determination. There's still capacity for great harm however if you fall into one of the currently designated 'social-other' groups (smokers, climate sceptics, EDL, "offensive" tweeters etc etc) - and anyone congratulating themselves on not being on that illustrative list of examples, go bang your head off the wall until you remember that it could - and probably will -  be you next.

Several of the named companies are claiming ignorance, for example:

"Google said in a statement: "From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.”

I don't buy it. The problem is that no one's official statements can be trusted in this area, least of all with anything touched by the rancid dogcock finger of the "intelligence" agencies, metastasizing great brown clouds of bullshit wherever they go. And of course our respective governments can compel such companies to remain entirely silent or otherwise coerce them into making misleading statements such as the above, especially given the official rationale of the U.S. invasion of privacy is because "most electronic data passing through the US at some point and therefore accessible to PRISM's net.".
Meanwhile, in reaction to the other recent revelation that the NSA is routinely collecting phone data en masse, it appears to have rattled someone in the "intelligence" community enough to break cover. -
'it could cause "long-lasting and irreversible harm" to counter-terrorism efforts.' Oh do, just fuck off already. It's just the usual weasel worded bollocks.

A moment of merriment in the deep darkness

For those not already aware, the Guardian has set up its own coffee shop. Given the initial descriptions encountered over at Guido's I had a hard time believing it wasn't a complete spoof. I couldn't have dreamed up a better parody of everything that's wrong with the Guardian and its dedicated (though now mostly virtual) readership if I'd tried.

But no, apparently it is real.

In these deeply dark times, there is so much chuckleworthy about this development, from the choice of name - a twitter hashtag - '#guardiancoffee' through to the fact that even though it has billed itself as a 'data driven' venue, right in the middle of London's tech city, it doesn't have wifi....

Whilst there are plenty of laughs to be had following the hashtag (incidentally how can such promoters of social media perpetually get it so wrong, apparently forgetting that no one 'owns' a hashtag....), the reviews are where the absolute gold is. Be sure to check out the Vice review. The GQ one is worth a look too though not nearly as cutting as the former.

For Lee

Don't you dare say you didn't see this coming

Andrew Gilligan has been documenting this for a long time:

"Victims say that officers in the borough of Tower Hamlets have ignored or downplayed outbreaks of hate crime, and suppressed evidence implicating Muslims in them, because they fear being accused of racism."

Do read the whole thing, from 2011, it's a litany of failure on the part of the executive arms of the establishment tasked with protecting us from this kind of violence and intimidation and taking radicalisation seriously. Failure mostly as a result of the kind of fear generated by useful idiots like UAF of being accused of racism via disingenuously fuzzing criticism of islam or muslims with racism.

Gilligan has been documenting this for some time now.

UAF types were already at it on twitter yesterday just a couple of hours after the incident already labelling anyone speculating on an islamist connection of being racist. This in spite of the very first reported eyewitness accounts detailing that a white man had just been hacked to death by two black men.

I wanted to call the irony police, but I didn't want to wait 20 minutes.

IPCC AR5 draft report LEAKED: Strong evidence for solar forcing of climate

"The admission of strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing changes everything. The climate alarmists can’t continue to claim that warming was almost entirely due to human activity over a period when solar warming effects, now acknowledged to be important, were at a maximum. The final draft of AR5 WG1 is not scheduled to be released for another year but the public needs to know now how the main premises and conclusions of the IPCC story line have been undercut by the IPCC itself." - IPCC reviewer Alex Rawls

PLEASE RESHARE THIS - and download your copy while you can. The IPCC or someone acting on their behalf will likely issue a cease and desist. The server is taking a hammering at the moment so downloads are slow. Once I have the whole lot I will rehost somewhere if they remove the original. [Original site HERE]

The entire chapter in question may be yet removed in the final , and just as with the previous IPCC reports, there are already clearly lots of political shenanigans at work. That cat however, is out of the bag. They have admitted that there is very likely strong solar forcing at work in the detected temperature trends. Do go and read the full article at WUWT. As Alec says, it's a game changing admission.

After the key chapter (ch7) the chapter following (chapter 8) appears to complete ignore the evidence and claims made in chapter 7, asserting that the premised solar effects are based just on TSI (Total Solar Irradience) when the evidence presented shows that this claim is now irrelevant. Whilst it is nir surprise the left hand and the right hand of an IPCC report doesn't know what the other is doing, this is also the usual alarmist refrain for dismissing solar influences.

The summary for policymakers will of course attempt to emphasise complete certainty and hysterical alarmism as it has done before. It's also the only part of the report alarmists seem to read. Similarly, press releases will (as they have in the past) give a completely different picture to what the report actually says. As they did with the press release for the SREX IPCC report - the Guardian, Independent etc repeated bogus assertions of coming "extreme weather" catastrophe implicating human causes when the report itself actually showed that no anthropogenic link could be found. See Pielke's treatment of this HERE.

Anyone however with a shred of integrity will have to admit that this is a big problem for the alarmist cause. The solar effects could be responsible for anything up to half of the recorded warming (and that's before we get to the issue of how many temperature data sets have been fraudulent adjusted to introduce additional warming trends). That's enough to kill the catastrophic versions of AGW dead, dead, dead.

In the meantime:

Minimum pricing: the most lethal mistake yet...

....by the Coagulation government.

Of all of the idiotic policies (including and especially the government's newfound authoritarianism showing that it is just continuity Labour and not even giving us two years before pulling the curtain back...), given all the other factors involved I'd struggle to think of a more lethally stupid policy for this government. And one that it is set on forcing upon the rest of us. Yes - force - there is no mandate for this policy (there is however yet another meaningless "consultation" (i.e. give us a fig leaf of validation for what we were going to do anyway) - and one, I note that has not been reported by the media despite the press interest in this story. But then the media never do let us know about these "consultations", do they?).

And ah - yes - "policy based evidence making" as a Very British Dude put it. With computer models.

Ah - good old computer models.

I must have fallen asleep during the period when the scientific method was inverted and hollowed out to the point that computer models became acceptable as primary evidence instead of just useful tools for modelling and refining hypotheses. They're supposed to test your assumptions, not provide evidence for them. Though I'm not surprised that the government, or even a Russell Group institution like the University of Sheffield, has deemed it acceptable. It is after all good enough for climastrology catastrophism, and it seems part of the fashion is to exaggerate as much as possible in order to support policy goals (c.f. for example the absolutely appalling activist "research" detailed here).

In any case, the UoS "research" is taken fully to task here. Continuing this postnormal kind of madness is the fact that a frightening number of people seem to just fall over like surprised goats at the sight of an argument from authority. I'm sure doctors know a great deal about alcohol. How does that authority extend to being able to define policies that are based on economics? Answers on a postcard please...

....Anyway back to the title of the post. This is a policy not only without a mandate, it is without credible evidence of its efficacy and even lacks support within the cabinet itself. Worse, in a time of deep and seemingly endless recession where the cuts all keep coming (including many in the blatantly wrong places - under 25s housing benefit rather than international aid or the EU for example), the one primary tonic of the nation - affordable alcohol - is under attack. And by a deeply unpopular government that only survived the election in coalition. Not to mention the fact that only a year ago it had a severe criminal wave to deal with across the nation. And then there's the fact that it is likely to be ruled illegal under EU law (and despite this, the Prone Minister has promised to "fight" the EU on such a ruling!) In spite of all this the Boy Cameron is going to force extra costs on people, on something that is one of the few pleasures most of our countrymen and women can afford to indulge in. Costs that are completely unnecessary and driven by an authoritarian nannying agenda; restricting one of the few things that keeps many of us from suddenly rampaging through parliament (and its subsidised bars...). What could possibly go wrong?

So I do hope you join Anonymong, myself and others for Drinkuary (facebook event HERE) to stick two fingers up at the neo-puritans and their authoritarian handmaidens in government. Please do join in and spread the word. Also if you have any spare change, 1000 beermats linking to the Drinkuary site have already been ordered - we'd like to order more to spread the word at pubs across the land. There's a huge amount of anger riding on this one and its an issue that's good to get people talking about politics and their relationship with the horror that is our state again. Remember the great and the good don't like us gathering together in relaxed environments to talk serendipitously with one another. We might get ideas....

 ADDENDUM: Simply the best rant I've seen yet on this topic at 'The Thing Is'. Do read the whole thing. It's worth it.

It's that time of year again....

I posted this up last time for the election in the UK. It is just as apropos for tonight's shenanigans for the competition over who will be the next debt-racking, civil liberties killing, warmongering corporatist in the Oval Office. All the bloviating and posturing aside, it really does just come down to something like this....

Dear Maj

Dear Maj,

So it has been sixty years. It is time for us to have a chat. I usually steer clear of collectivist language but today it seems appropriate. For today it is clear that any beneficent collective identity has been ripped away from us under your stewardship and what I have come to claim as positive and peculiarly ‘British’ in the demeanour I yet share with so many of my countrymen and women is now looked upon as an evil anachronism, whilst you somehow are not.

Seven times they were asked to sign. And seven times they signed. Each time the Sovereign looked on whilst the sovereignty of which she was supposed to be protector unto death was packaged up and sold off to a foreign and unaccountable power.

And yet you did nothing.

Even as you looked on, your son the Clown Prince Chuckles, stood in the Traitor’s Parliament and wittered on about how wonderful it was and that more power should be transferred as was humanly possible. He who hateth his subjects so: The Son of the Sovereign boasted how he would like to siphon off the thimble full of sovereignty still remaining to the mendacious mandarins of the continent and all their satanic little helpers in our own parliament of whores.

And yet you did nothing.

The country was made morally bankrupt in the world’s eyes as it pursued two horrific invasions and occupations, slaughtering thousands, maiming tens of thousands, forever destroying the lives of millions and leaving our descendants with foreign policy consequences for generations to come. All based on the lies and ambitions of a few men whom I can scarcely believe are human never mind that such worms are permitted to prosper. Even those who claimed realpolitik advantage with our once great daughter civilisation in the Americas were shown to be fools as even now when our own citizens are genuinely in need in the Falklands, even supposed allies turn against us. All that blood and treasure expended – for what?

And yet you did nothing.

In complete inversion of the self-sufficient British spirit for which our countrypeople became renowned we became dependants and weaklings. This phlegmatic race who would always fight to a finish has transformed into a debased shadow with its hand out constantly. The politics of division and sectarianism have become rooted in the nation which is now in terminal decline. This island of whom Napoleon said was made of a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ is now a set of divided ambulance chasing collectives. The paradox of democracy reached its nadir when the lazy and stupid outnumbered the rest of us and were able to vote themselves largesse from the state. Dispensation that they still demand even though reality will not be forthcoming as they have been taught otherwise by the ghostly whores that pass as statesmen and stateswomen in the parliament that is now little more than a regional office of the greater EUSSR.

And yet you did nothing.

When the one eyed son of the manse, the kirkcaldy clown, our very own modern day Caligula bullied his way to the position of Prime Monster and dealt the country its final death blow, you looked on still. In contravention to all sense, to appease the helpless class he and his fellow shitstains had so lovingly created here as a perpetual lobbying population for sloth and mediocrity, he took the nation to the very edge of bankruptcy. Globalisation has done its work and began rebalancing the economies and the equality of all humans across the Globe. For some reason the British post baby-boomers did not seem to think they needed to lift a finger to maintain their advantage. They were British you see and appear to have been led to believe that this meant simply expecting the world to fall at one’s feet, not – instead – as I understand it, to fight for it. And to have to fight for it with every generation. No Maj. They saw you and your ghastly family still riding high regardless of all other circumstances and so thought that they would be carried on one’s opulent coattails. They were not, as you well knew. This you have seen.

And yet you did nothing.

Postnormalism has now taken root within our educational institutions, our media, our science, our politics. No civilisation can survive such. The lies that increasingly became part of the ship of state are now, like woodworm, infested into the very foundations of the ship of society. Yet you knew. You knew. Now those blessed few of us who bother to look know, after it had been kept secret for three decades, that the Heath government knew what the endgame plan was for the EC. Millions voted in good conscience believing that their Dear Leaders would not lead them astray thinking that we were being bound to something as beneficial as a free market with our continental cousins. It was all a lie and known from the very beginning. My heart is gripped in a vice of pain and fear anticipating how many more revelations from the secret state, to which you were of course always party, will come to light in the coming decades. If I even make it to old age, I suspect I will die a sad weeping old man upon discovery of the poisons you have injected into the veins of this country. You will be long dead by then of course but your legacy will have lived on and the consciously managed decline of this realm will be complete even as you rot.

And yet you did nothing.

Those cultural gas chambers that we laughingly call institutes of learning are now producing en masse generations who cannot read, write or even use computers whilst being pumped full of a sense of entitlement that few of them deserve, to go out into a world where potential investors in their future are being taught to flee as fast as they can as the country becomes a becon and world leader in the most mind numbing levels of interference, taxation and petty expectation. Were it the case that these policies had produced a majority in upcoming generations of critical and incisive thinkers, but no. Under this factory system we now have surfeit of useless, talentless, wasters.

And yet you did nothing.

A single man was primarily responsible for preventing our joining the madness that is the Euro: Jimmy Goldsmith, who used his own personal fortune (in contrast to you) to defend the interests of the realm. Somehow you have outlived him. And none of the shit-sucking convention of genetic defectives of which you are part in the ruling class stood alongside him. It is clear the people are your enemy for you have not defended or protected them, you have instead been the nursemaid to many evil men, and now increasingly women too, who would sap the goodness of this nation for their own engorgement. And the marrow of the British is all but spent and about to crumble.

And you did nothing.

The nation’s legacy will be to have its landscape dotted with rusting Eco-crucifixes and hollow ivory towers of entitlement that future tourists will come to visit and laugh at whilst historians will look back in astonishment at this decades long act of collective suicide, all under your stewardship. We all fought eachother in our blocs and our bunkers – bunkers more like ruts that are just graves with the ends knocked out – that we failed to see the root, never mind strike it.

And for those of us who dared to say ‘no’, or to ask ‘why’ whether categorised in the ‘left’ or ‘right’ sheep pens (all the better to ensure we continue fighting eachother rather than you fifth columnists at the very heart of our institutions), we are directed to expend our energy arguing over the clowns and muppets in the parliament of whores over who has the differentest same policies whilst you and the rest of the shit eating ruling class untwine the last threads of the rug from beneath us with so few – so very few – noticing what you are doing. And those of us in the latter group to us you left the ultimate betrayal, for to us you turned our friends, family and loved ones into abscesses and whores and made them cry out that we had hurt them most.

I am not your subject. I owe you no allegiance or loyalty. No queen or monarch are you to me. No god, no master, but maybe a monster who has piled up secrets, lies and hypocrisy so high they will soon touch heaven.

 To you I bequeath this wreath and this curse.

Yours,
Katabasis