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.

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:

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:

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:

"If I wanted Britain to fail"

A new video has just started doing the rounds - "If I wanted America to fail". Now if only this video went viral like the "KONY 2012" meme. Unlike the Kony video this one, whilst following the surefire emotional porn philosophy, is packed full of verifiable and tear-jerking observations.

Everything in this video applies double to the UK and I'm sure a UK version is in the offing....

Please share widely.

Laying the ground for an assault on Freedom of Information

Reading the opinions of "civil servants" in the RearGuardian today, I see the ground is clearly being laid for an attack on the current status quo on the Freedom of Information legislation. Moreover, the complaints being made are coming from those with a direct conflict of interest (remember they were said to be "shit scared" at this proposed development previously).

It should be noted that a full on assault on FOI is in progress in Scotland (which has its own FOI commissioner).

Their claims deserve nothing less than a complete fisking:

"The Freedom of Information Act has failed to increase understanding of government"

- Utter crap. The majority of journalists and researchers may have failed to have used it, but the minority who have managed to use it to great effect and have pulled the curtain back on all sorts of issues. I think what the "civil servants" mean here is that it 'failed to increase a general appreciation of *their* understanding of government.'

"may have reduced trust"

- Well yes. Because it has served the essential role of exposing you - exactly as it was intended to do.

" and has done little to improve decision-making in Westminster"

- This at least may be true. Our Parliamentary Muppets certainly act as if they don't fear the outcome of a FOI request - I recently had one returned from the Cabinet Office that confirmed there was no 'draft treaty' for the Boy Cameron to have vetoed. It hasn't stopped the Tories repeating the lie continually. However, this is an issue of exposure as much as anything. They most certainly do fear exposure on Guido's site for example and there's no reason FOI responses could not contribute to some of his exposes.



"Civil servants are also calling for the introduction of higher fees for users of the act. The ministry suggests that the costs do "not adequately reflect the total amount of time spent in practice in compiling the information".

- OK so now you're trying to close this valuable tool down by pricing people out. If you kept better records it wouldn't be so onerous would it. Why do you keep such bad records? Because you know you're unlikely to be held to account for them. Oh.

"Research commissioned by the Ministry of Justice also found civil servants believed freedom of information was not being used to increase accountability, but instead by journalists fishing for a story."

- Fishing for a story? Really? For god's sake. Why is this considered illegitimate? It's not as if the journalists who submit FOI requests are the paparazzi.

"The report found: "It was well recognised by most that journalists have started to use other email accounts in requesting information as a way of masking the origin of the request."

- Diddums. I failed to read the part of the FOIA legislation that stated those making requests were obliged to identify themselves and their interests. You guys have got that Public servant <--> Public relationship the wrong way around again haven't you? Mendacious idiots.

"The chairman of the justice select committee, Alan Beith, said he was a supporter of the act, but added that he was aware some ministers and civil servants wanted to rein in what they regarded as a costly burden on the government."

- It's that relationship confusion again here isn't it? You're already a frighteningly bloated bureaucracy (not to mention increasingly redundant as the EU continues to encroach further). It is frankly offensive that being expected to be transparent and accountable is seen as a "costly burden".



"The report says: "Most officials agreed that the same issues would have been discussed and the same decisions reached had the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] not been in place."

- Indeed. Because you don't actually care what we think. You'll go ahead anyway with your own plans. The way you administer (not to mention completely fail to publicise) "consultations" as pathetic exercises in  confirming what you were going to do anyway, is regular proof of that. At least with the FOIA us Proles get to see some of the inner workings you would rather not were exposed to sunlight.

"The memorandum finds a "very small proportion of the public requests information, whilst media coverage of FOI requests is rarely on policy-decision topics (ie it is far more likely to cover a topic like expenses, crime statistics and so on)".

- Given that you have already admitted you can't always identify journalists amongst the requests, how on earth do you provide this estimate? And yet again you cry like spoiled brats that the media narratives don't necessarily go your way. "Policy-decision topics"? Piss off!

"Overall, the ministry claims, there "is little evidence to suggest the FOIA has increased public participation in government. The number of individuals making requests is insignificant in terms of the UK population. Those who make requests are normally already engaged with government: campaigners, journalists and politicians for instance."

- Again. How in hell do you measure this? It has certainly increased my participation - and the participation of many people I know. And if the number of requests is "insignificant" relative to the population then STFU about how "onerous" it is. And the fact that most requesters are likely to be "already engaged with government" is not only redundant but also no surprise.

"The survey also revealed a frustration at the way in which "serial or vexatious requesters waste time and money by pushing their request through the internal review process and up to the information commissioner". Some believed that such cases should incur a higher fee at a lower threshold of civil service time."

- They just don't let up do they? Poor them, eh? The review process was in place to serve people who want the information, not those who have to provide it. And of course they generally only become vexatious if you stonewall them in the first place.

"The memorandum also suggests the cost of censoring documents for public consumption is so costly that more documents should simply be deemed to be too expensive to publish."

- What? You folks do have the use of computers, right? And aside from personal contact details, perhaps you should just censor *less* in the first place. It's not as if you have anything to hide. Is it?

"The report also cites evidence that some charities and non-profit service providers are holding back from using FOI requests out of fear that it will antagonise the public authorities they rely on for funding."

- Oh really? Is it ANY surprise at all given all the whining already cited above? I've actually wondered the same thing myself when submitting more than one FOI request to the same entity, despite the fact that I am fully within my rights to do so regardless of all other factors.


"Civil servants also claimed their internal discussions were being hampered by the act, saying "some people were recording less information and … internal communications had become less detailed and informative" than before freedom of information."

- Uh huh. And WHY would you want to avoid taking note of certain details?

"Ministry of Justice statistics show that central government departments currently receive a total of about 2,000-2,500 FOI requests a year,"

- W-what? 2-2.5 thousand? That's it?

"Nearly 700,000 requests had been made to local authorities between 2005 and 2010, with the number now reaching 200,000 a year."

- Ah. That's more like it. Quelle surprise - requesters are more interested in their local government. I suspect part of the reason is that Council Tax provides one of the government's few weakspots for collecting revenue (which is why their powers to claim it are so draconian). People might - just might - think they have legitimate reasons for with-holding payment given the multiple spending clusterfucks that Local government is famous for. This is something Richard North has been heroically chronicling for some time. They also - probably rightly - perceive that their local representatives are potentially more accountable and accessible unlike those in the Westminster bubble (and let's not mention the even more distant Brussells bubble, eh?)

After that torrent of Bilge, the top rated comment by davidabsalom at the RearGuardian does at least summarise it best:

"Well they would say that, wouldn't they."

A CALL TO ARMS: London Atheist & Secularist student societies under attack

I know on occasions in the past I've asked you, dear readers and fellow bloggers to share something widely that needed wider exposure. Well this situation desperately requires that wider exposure and all the help we can provide, especially as the mass media are notably silent on the issue - very likely because of a self-censoring trend itself inspired by fear of what has befallen others.

As far as I'm concerned, a Rubicon has been passed here in British civil society. Our rule of law and civility has been tested on the litmus of Islamists getting their way through threats and censorship backed by threats and has been found wanting. And it has been found wanting where one of our supposedly safe and hallowed institutions is concerned - the free-thinking (or so we are told) university campuses of Higher Education. This has to be nipped in the bud, now.

You could be forgiven entirely for not having a clue what I'm talking about. So far the most prominent coverage has been in two Sunday comment pieces here and here.

Three separate University Atheist / Secularist student societies have come under attack from islamists. The two milder cases are those at UCL and the LSE.

Alex Gabriel summarises events well so far:

"What’s happened since the Jesus and Mo business started? Well: I’ve been told I’ll be beheaded. Rhys Morgan’s been told in more detail that he’ll be killed. Atheists at UCL have worried their parents will be attacked. Atheists at Queen Mary were told they’d be hunted down if they insulted Mohammad, including their president Jen Hardy who’s feared for her life in the last few days. Maryam Namazie made it sound like this wasn’t unusual in her line of work. All this, and LSESU have the cojones to say it’s Muslims they’re concerned about? If anybody currently requires a safe space, it’s us."

That's right. The worst event so far as been at Queen Mary two weeks ago - students had organised a talk on 'Sharia Law and Human Rights'. An Islamist thug turned up (with help apparently), filmed members of the audience and threatened violence against them if he heard of any "insult to the prophet".

Having now spent some time with the Queen Mary students to find out first hand what happened I can tell you that these kids are feeling not only scared, but also very isolated. Not only do the various students unions involved in these debacles appear to be uncritcially taking the Islamist side against all reason, demanding that the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist societies censor themselves or - in the case of LSE - face expulsion from the Union, but I've heard a number of them asking 'where is the left'?

The police have apparently told them that the worst that will happen is that the individual in question (never mind his mates waiting outside, or those who opened the fire doors in the hall so their pals could get in, or the two who were shouting, demanding to know "who drew the cartoons") is that he'll get an £80 fine. Apparently they can't take it any more seriously because the threat was prefaced with an "if" - i.e. 'if I hear the prophet has been insulted'. What complete and utter arseclownery from our Police Farce. No wonder things are continuing to race downhill at rapid speed in Tower Hamlets. I mean - why on earth would the students be scared, it's not as if there are recent precedents eh? (And with regard to Tower Hamlets itself - let's not forget this litany of shit)

Worse, one of the students discovered a forum where the "brothers" were discussing this intimidation. Whilst there are some calls for restraint, there are plenty of posts on there to send a chill up your spine - "who gave these kuffar the right to speak?" - anyone? To preserve people's anonymity and to also preserve this fuckwittery for posterity and hopefully future police investigation with a police force worth the name not compromised by politically correct Fabianism I have created a resource page with archived pages so there is no need to visit the forum itself (please avoid clicking on the links within the archived pages themselves as you'll end up at the Muppets' forum).

Well - it will come as absolutely no surprise to many readers of this blog  - it seems "the left" is either taking its default position of head in the sand, or worse - in several cases, siding with the Islamists against the students. One of the few noble exceptions to this is Harry's Place - who have kept a careful and critical eye on the ever worsening Islamist problem in the UK and in London (Tower Hamlets) in particular. What's more they attack this issue from the left and represent to me all the good things I thought the left were supposed to represent when I first took an interest in politics at the tender age of 18 many years ago - the same age a lot of these students are who are on the receiving end of this bullshit.

So - I want to appeal to my fellow bloggers - please spread the word on these incidents as these kids are being let down by ALL of the institutions that are supposed to protect them and help them - the police, the media, even their own student unions. And also, PLEASE help to publicise the rally next week in support of these students and anyone else who wants to maintain the right to free expression and NOT be violently threatened as a result.

Churnalism: DEFRA churn - the Guardian is in the lead!

(UPDATE: 27/11/11 - raw churnalism data available HERE - JSON format, zipped, 448kb)

After the churn analysis of the Environment Agency press releases (please read that article for more details and important caveats if you haven't read one of my churn posts before), I followed up with DEFRA.I will be making the raw data publicly available tomorrow for both the Environment Agency and DEFRA churn analyses.

This time I was able to construct the spiders and process the data faster - I also avoided (most of) the unicode problems that plagued me with the EA data, so this analysis can be considered slightly more accurate and slightly less forgiving of the media organisations (though it still strictly follows the rules I set down previously, such as no editing of the press release to remove extraneous information). Along with inevitable issues with some difficult characters slipping through and no editing of the press releases, it still means the data will naturally favour the media organisations. As I said on previous posts, when I make the raw data publicly available, churn analysis by other people will very likely improve upon my methods and yield results more detrimental for the media.

In any case - onto the results. The summary is presented below (click for full size image):

"Quality" press churn results

Summary of results:

- A total of 386 press releases were analysed, from 13th May 2010 to 24th November 2011. These generated 1959 detectable cases of churn. Again, there is probably a lot of interesting data within the "detectable" category that deserves analysis at a later date. For now it is discarded.

- Out of those, 173 were classified as "significant" and 18 as "major".

- The Guardian was the leader in both categories by a long way - accounting for 19.65% of significant churn and 27.78% of major churn.

- The BBC followed close behind in terms of significant churn with 16.18%, though for major churn was beaten into third place by both the Independent and the Daily Mail with a joint 16.67%.

- The Independent came third in the signifcant churn classification.

- A common factor in the most highly churned articles both in this analysis and the previous two appears to be lack of a named author in most cases (though see one of the exceptions detailed below). This suggests the media organisations are aware that what they are doing is not kosher.

- Continuing a theme from the last two churn analyses, the tabloids consistently embarrass the so called "quality press". This time I pulled out the statistics for the UK's major tabloids for comparison (click for full size image):

Tabloid press churn results

When I first started these analyses I fully expected to see a much higher showing of churn by the tabloids. It is interesting to see the contrast. Also out of the churn analyses done so far, it is consistently the Mirror out of the tabloids that has the highest percentage of churn.

As usual I select a few of the more egregarious cases of churn for your entertainment (and importantly - provide a manual submission to the churnalism database so they can be seen visually):

'Gloucestershire Old Spots pork protected by Europe'
An absolutely cracking BBC 79% cut and paste job on - er - crackling.

'Bonfire of the Quangos'
Remember that list of Quangos that were to go? Completely cut and pasted from a press release. This one is particularly fascinating because in the two worst cases the cut and paste was the list provided in the press release. It actually included several paragraphs laying out a context that was not cut and pasted across. If it had just been the list in the original both would have scored close to 100% pastes.....
The pastes are so large in any case that the churnalism engine falls over when the 'view' button is clicked to see the visualised version. Be warned if you click it, your browser may hang.

'New service for householders to stop unwanted advertising mail'
Absolute carnage on the churning front here with the majority of the main media outlets represented. The Guardian appeared to like this story so much they cut and pasted it twice - and this time each article has a named author. Where the hell was the editor?

It's mob rule at the Guardian....

(This blogpost should perhaps also be titled - 'What I did/didn't/did say at the Guardian today....')

There's nothing quite like rank hypocrisy to boil my piss. However, to ensure it is fully evaporated in anger, combine rank hypocrisy with crass stupidity, naked opportunism, complete resistance to facts or reason and censorship.

For that was the bread and butter of Leo "bless 'im" Hickman's disgraceful piece of yellow bellied journalism at the Guardian today.

Hickman decided it was time to form a posse comitatus to try tracking down the source of the climategate emails, laughably using the README textfile included in the latest tranche of releases as the primary source of evidence.

This was one of those pieces - especially as it was in the comment is free if you agree section - that really reveals the Guardian's true colours. Numerous commentators including me (prior to the first round of censorship - sorry - 'comment adjustment') attempted to point out the Guardian's and Hickman's rank hypocrisy on this issue. The most striking and obvious example having been the paper's massive support for Wikileaks, however there were many other examples, including the anonymous Enron whistleblower, as another commenter pointed out. As was repeated again and again, it appeared that all leakers were equal but some were more equal than others in the Guardian's eyes.

This was of course brushed off by Hickman and his part-time principle party of followers in the comments section.

Next I pointed out (prior to 'comment adjustment') that claiming it was the work of a hacker was still just an assumption. Hickman replied to me directly on that and similarly brushed it off. He claimed it was irrelevant. The poor dear didn't seem to realise that if he assumed it was the work of a hacker and in fact it was a leaker then his "investigation" would lead him down to all sorts of blind alleys, not least because the MO and levels of access would be completely different (not to mention the trail of evidence left behind).

There were a plethora of delightfully dense comments in support of Hickman et al and stunning leaps of reasoning. These people were also apparently immune to criticism because they "knew" what they were claiming was true, especially regarding the "hacker" claim. Many pronounced completely ill-informed statements about this showing that i) they knew nothing about IT security and ii) that they couldn't even be bothered to use google to check details. After all, The difference between an internal security breach and a carefully coordinated external breach is vast. Pointman gave an excellent overview after the first climategate - here. Moreover they absolutely did not care about their ignorance. What a familiar pattern, eh? No wonder they were immediately supportive of the "scientists" at the heart of the climategate storm - they're just like them!

There were some absolute crackers amongst the received wisdom of this bunch of easily led zealots and I highly recommend you read through the comments - well those that are left - as it is a laugh a minute.

Komment Macht Frei

Speaking of the comments - when the piece first appeared this morning, it was absolute devastation from the moderator. ALL of my comments bar the first one were censored, as were numerous other comments by others. I had no clue why they'd been removed beyond the fact that we all seemed to disagree intensely with Hickman.

Now I should point out something important here for Guardian watchers - they have two types of post moderation. There is the one we're all familiar with - where the boilerplate 'this comment was moderated because it breached our community (puke) standards' but there's also a much more insidious type and I only noticed it because I've been paying a lot of attention to their censorship pattern over the last couple of years - its what I call "nuking". In this case they remove all evidence that the comment was ever there. It's particularly chilling for freedom of speech because aside from the fact that by looking at the comments one can't actually assess the general level of censorship, if it's *your* comment that disappears in this way it's only your word that it was ever there in the first place....

Now bizaarely, after the comments spilled over onto two pages I happened to click back to the first page to see what else had been censored and was surprised to see that most of my previously "moderated" comments had reappeared (except for the "nuked" ones). I don't know if this is a bug in their software or a disagreement between moderators but it adds even more to the general sense of confusion and latent fear of arbitrary censorship that completely fucks any meaningful contribution over there.

Another important point to be aware of is this: One way to guarantee being censored on the Guardian is if you make a reference to your, or someone else's having been censored you will immediately be censored and they often use the "nuke" option too.

The Guardian is  - as a media institution - utterly reprehensible. Most other media outlets are of course too, across the political spectrum. But none outside the BBC attempt to present themselves so often as the default "good guys", nor do their followers similarly regard it as received wisdom...

The climategate 'gait' or the 'out of context paradox'

There's a regular pattern that occurs in any discussion of climategate (1 or 2). It is inconsistent but also entirely consistent with the unthinking nature of many of those who promulgate it:
i) They assert that the emails were "taken out of context"
ii) Responder says that they are not.
iii) A request is then made for evidence.
iv) Responder invites them to read the emails - there are numerous complete email chains, supporting claims against the "scientists" that ONLY MAKE SENSE IN CONTEXT. But the trick is you have to actually read the emails....

A modern day climate "scientist"

Now given how unambiguous some of the exchanges are (in particular those that involve purposefully frustrating FOI inquiries and deleting emails....) one is then prompted to ask exactly what standard of evidence is required. For the evidence before us, if for example we stick with complete email chains rather than individual comments, is a magnitude higher than the typical standard accepted in the vast majority of journalism that we ever read or see. It means that - to be consistent - if one were to completely reject these email chains as sufficient evidence, one would have to throw out almost every received opinion on any quoted person in the press one has ever encountered. Will the zealots do that...no of course they won't. But of course consistency is in the same disused box in their basement as a regard for truth....

One final delicious irony of this of course is that 'The Team' will surely be scratching their heads now, trying to remember what on earth what was said to who. But because they very likely deleted these emails after they had been copied from the mailserver then they have only one place to go to check.....

People ask me why I don't trust the media...[Warning: Potty Mouth Post....]

HERE is why.

Be prepared for truly colossal weapons-grade fuckwittery.

"Here’s an upload of a video from a recent ITV documentary into Colonel Gaddhafi’s support of the IRA. It contains shocking footage of a helicopter being shot down using weapons allegedly supplied by that baddie.

Except. Umm. It’s actually ArmA 2." [A COMPUTER GAME]

Do go and read the whole thing. Your blood pressure will shoot up right about the point where the likely provenance of the video is pointed out.

ITV - if brains were dynamite, you wouldn't have enough to blow your fucking hat off. Unfortunately your Stupid is only the apex of the current media-class general cockpuppetfuckwittery.

I used to find the film 'Idiocracy' funny. I don't anymore.

One Ring to rule them all...

Today a debate took place in parliament regarding an absolutely crucial issue for the future of the UK and the financial well-being of its citizens: Mark Reckless MP proposed an anti-bailout motion that would have been the first strong anti-Euro (and with it - anti EU) sentiment expressed by the house in decades.

Many a strong word was spoken in the chamber earlier against the EU by many of the handful (circa 50) present - and by MPs from both sides of the aisle. For once I actually felt proud of the MPs participating, and I recommend you watch the debate on iplayer, or read the proceedings in Hansard tomorrow. It was such a sharp contrast to the puppet show that passes for the Prime Minister's Question time and I had to fancy what Parliament would be like if these individuals occupied the front benches instead of the back.

Yet how many of those words will be carried by our ever useless peon media to the the ears and eyes of the masses? Instead the media will be perhaps focused on some prat who sought injunctions against revealing a relationship with a woman trying to extort him (and try finding *that* latter fact reported in the media....they would have known had they actually read the linked document....).

However this pleasant fantasy of a functioning representative democracy was soon blown to pieces as I remembered how Daniel Hannan had detailed the "wrecking amendment" put forward.

It didn't matter what the attendees actually said. The whips ensured another 250 MPs turned up to guarantee it was the amended version that went through and not the original motion, turning what was a strongly worded motion into a wet-through general statement of discontent that the government can safely ignore.

I sometimes find it difficult containing my anger over such shenanigans in parliament - regarding how easily results can be 'fixed' in this fashion. I don't remember sleeping in and missing the vote for which whips I wanted. Do you? And I find it intolerable that the people who both proposed the wrecking amendment and voted are not obliged to participate in the debate.

The People's Pledge valiantly attempted to encourage people to write to their MPs beforehand to ask them to vote against the amendment. Would that doing so have had any effect in any case where the majority of MPs are concerned. Aside from the whipped MPs I note, with utter disgust, that ALL of the MPs from Sheffield (which has been my home for far too long now...) failed to even turn up to either the debate or the vote. So much for the salt-of-the-earth Labour MPs standing up for the working man and woman, eh? My current MP, Mr. Paul "I ran Sheffield University Student's Union" Blomfeld, ignored my letter on the topic - as indeed he has done with the last few letters sent to him.

(UPDATE: One of my friends has just informed me that however that "Blomfield did manage to find the time to attend a drinks reception for Sheffield Union officers")

The final vote was 267 to 46. Had it been just those present for the debate voting I am confident the original motion, not the amended version, would have been carried. Such is our utterly dysfunctional democracy and its attendant handmaiden Fourth Estate that not only did this happen, but it won't even be reported.

It doesn't matter what we think. It doesn't matter what we want. It doesn't even matter what most of our MPs do either.

The One Ring has called and the Nazgul are answering their master's call.