"They are politicians!" – the Politics thread

Topic

Sponsored by General Martok, (Lord Vetinari declined to be involved) here’s the thread for covering political goings on.

Replies

DavidM wrote:

I guess the point is that bigots who are not allowed to ban you based on skin colour can ban you on your hair style due to to a legal loophole? What I’m struggling to understand is why it needs separate legislation and isn’t already covered by existing discrimination laws. Did lawmakers get too specific when they wrote the racial discrimination laws, and subsequent interpreters have been too zealous in enforcing the letter rather than the spirit?

Not necessarily. The essential difference is that “race” and “gender” are protected classes (though with changing social attitudes, that is questionable). However, grooming is considered a choice that the individual makes, so dress codes are not discriminatory since they apply to every employee irrespective of race, religion and gender orientation.

A dress code, for example, that requires a certain “presentable” hairstyle for all employees is not positively discriminatory but may end up making many natural (or “protective” in the case of braids and dreadlocks) African American hairstyles unacceptable. There are studies that demonstrate this inherent bias, but, or course, often they are studies performed by or sponsored by organizations with an interest in proving there is a bias. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to prove any bias with current federal and most state laws. I imagine that in most states, it would still be allowed to enforce dress codes for men vs women despite transgender concerns. I think there is a case in the court now about that and I’d guess with this court it will side with the employer.

Of course, the state laws against this discrimination allow exceptions for safety such as long hair around food preparation or manufacturing lines, but that usually requires some sort of hair covering anyway. Or for uniforms or factory gear where everyone is required to wear pants irrespective of gender or religious beliefs.

Anonymous wrote:

There’s nothing wrong with markets – there’s a problem with financial instruments and the banking sector, but not markets. The two best books I can recommend on the topic are An Inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (A Smith, the OG) and Pikkety’s Capital in the 21st Century.

And a fun read:

Debunking Economics

It doesn’t “debunk” economics, but offers contrarian points to economic education that doesn’t reflect reality.

The primary fault in markets – or at least “free” markets – is that they inevitably crash. Probably the best theory on this is probably Hyram Minsky and the “Minsky moment” theory that was named after him. Essentially, the inherent benefit of markets is also what causes them to crash. Markets that provide a steady return or growth create economic stability. This allows the people in the market to generate more risk built upon the platform of asset value that the market provided. So, economic understanding aligns itself to past success rather than present conditions and this “building upon success” leads to more investment on that platform.

Naturally, at some point of saturation, the asset value will not grow, confidence will be lost and the system collapses under the weight of all the material placed upon it. In many cases, it will be instruments built upon the over-confidence in the asset value that accelerate the collapse such as Credit Default Swaps in 2008 or “On Margin” Loans in 1929.

You can even see an artificial version of this behavior modeled in the Flash Crash of 2010. A single trader created a program that would sell a financial instrument called E-mini S&P 500 futures contracts – an electronic derivative based, of course, on the future performance of a set of actual securities. I honestly don’t think most of these sorts of things should exist in the first place as it is a lot like betting and it always seems like there is no way for either party to actually benefit in the transactions. It just seems to be risky and too close to gambling and a flimsy construction built upon the underlying stability of the market that actually affects the material economy.

However, in this case, the trader was spoofing the market by putting an excessive number of sell orders for these contracts at prices the algorithm determined were just a little higher than the best price available. This means that even though the trader did not sell any of these derivatives he was offering – and would not want to – it would look like there was a big sell off in the market just because the orders were placed. So other traders (or their algorithms) would start selling off, too, in response. This would drive the market price down, so the trader could buy a bunch of the contracts at an artificially deflated lower price. Then he would turn off the algorithm, the market price would go back up and he would sell the contracts he just bought for a profit.

Well, one day, he did such a good job, and the other flash algorithms followed up so successfully that the asset price crashed. Essentially, he put out so many orders that it looked like a complete market sell-off in the numbers with no buying interest and nearly $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000.00) in market value disappeared in minutes.

Spoofing is illegal, and regulators know it happens and knew it was happening, but they didn’t step in until well after the crash. However, there are a lot of things about flash trading that look just like things that would be illegal in regular trading – like frontrunning and insider trading – but because it uses a computer and internet line, people suddenly think it’s a completely different thing. Like the idea that “rideshare” is somehow different from random drivers picking hitchhikers up for money (illegal in most places in the USA unless you have a commercial driver license required for taxis).

 

Why does Trump make it so easy?

Trump claims Americans have to flush the toilet ’10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once’

What the hell are you guys crapping out?

The country is going down the toilet!

njerry wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This seems reckless.

Really? The man currently in the office of POTUS insults his political enemies, spreads unfounded conspiracy theories, and lies on a routine basis, and you think a photo of Trump Tower is reckless?

We’re talking about different things: It implies no more recklessness for his platform then any other Democrat, it’s not implying a reckless policy. But for someone who wants to run against Trump, it’s reckless insofar that if Bloomberg wins the nom, their would be people in Trump’s campaign who could spin the context to make Bloomberg look like he only supports it because it will hurt Ex-President Trump, which fits into Trump’s narrative way too well.

You mean like Trump chanting lock her up during his campaign? Besides Bloomberg is never going to be the nominee so you have nothing to worry about.

I’m not worried, as I already know I’m voting for Trump no matter what

I don’t think there are many weddings in malls or airports but even if there were I think a trained security operative could tell the bride and groom were not fighting over the knife but about to cut a cake with it.

 

Mind you if it were an Irish wedding it could be a tougher call. 

Donald Trump actually said this:

 

“Right now in a number of states the laws allow a baby to be born from his or her mother’s womb in the 9th month. It is wrong. It has to change.”

 

He’s a fucking moron.

Boyle always makes me chuckle.

Frankie Boyle’s election countdown: ‘You’ll be praying they prorogue the next parliament’

 

Boris Johnson, who looks like something you’d keep your pyjamas in, and who no reasonable person would choose to lead them into a chorus, has a strangely hunched demeanour; perhaps from all the time he spends crammed inside married women’s wardrobes, like a randy jack-in-the-box. This confused sex yeti has been booed by nurses: people who can remove a dressing, examine a festering wound, and still look up at you with a smile. Has any party ever elected a new leader so tired and dated? With a delivery best approximated as a living checklist of stroke warnings, his bumbling posho shtick almost resembles buffering, a kind of 3G Wodehouse.

The whole thing is gold. I loved this.

Labour’s idea to run an election campaign on policy in the middle of all this is a little bit like reciting your poetry at an orgy. Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps weighing up whether he could have more influence by simply dying and haunting his successor, has benefitted from becoming slightly calmer over the course of the campaign. Aggression isn’t a good look for him, shifting Corbyn from Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh towards the territory where you’d expect his face to be captioned with “police suspect the real figure may be much higher”.

And this.

The Tories calling Corbyn a communist and a threat to national security after handing nuclear power plants to the Chinese is a bit like getting a bollocking off Charles Manson for putting down slug pellets.

A guide to tactical voting in the UK;

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/08/tactical-voting-guide-2019-keep-tories-out-remain-voter-general-election

Anonymous wrote:

I’m not worried, as I already know I’m voting for Trump no matter what

That’s some pretty rigid thinking bro! I can’t imagine supporting any candidate “no matter what” at this stage. Sometimes you have to step outside your preconceived notions and actually absorb information to make an individual choice. Tossing a vote to Mr White Nationalist hugger just because he pretends to be a Republican seems short sighted.

Andy wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m not worried, as I already know I’m voting for Trump no matter what

That’s some pretty rigid thinking bro! I can’t imagine supporting any candidate “no matter what” at this stage. Sometimes you have to step outside your preconceived notions and actually absorb information to make an individual choice. Tossing a vote to Mr White Nationalist hugger just because he pretends to be a Republican seems short sighted.

It’s a choice to be part of the problem and not the solution.

Especially considering how often Kalman pretends to be concerned about the things Trump does.

It’s not pretend, you can vote for somebody and be critical of them.

sure it is.

The country is so polarized that most people either loathe Trump or love him. I break that mold, I like him, but I can still see his flaws. And, you know what, that’s how it’s supposed to be

And yet you’re still going to blindly vote for him so you’re no different than those who love him. That’s not how it is supposed to be.

No, I don’t blindly praise everything he does. I can critisizr him. Take Obama. I reached a point in his second term, where I said if he could theoretically run for a third time I’d never vote for him, but I could still praise him if he did something good. It’s the opposite with Trump. Besides, for sure does mean I have a list of things that if he did would make me not vote for anyone for President, but most of them would be dealbreakers for all but his most blindly dedicated followers

I didn’t say blindly praise.

Anonymous wrote:

No, I don’t blindly praise everything he does. I can critisizr him. Take Obama. I reached a point in his second term, where I said if he could theoretically run for a third time I’d never vote for him, but I could still praise him if he did something good. It’s the opposite with Trump. Besides, for sure does mean I have a list of things that if he did would make me not vote for anyone for President, but most of them would be dealbreakers for all but his most blindly dedicated followers

And open concentration camps, from which children have been going missing isn’t on that list?

Anonymous wrote:

I like him, but I can still see his flaws

Why?

Can you give me a list of bullet points of his policies which are making the country better, hence your vote?

Debating about Trump is a futile exercise. I will defend the idea that one can see shades of gray in him, and that it’s a spectrum.

Ok, well forgive me for taking the view that you haven’t made yourself full with political knowledge then.  I would also suggest it’s irresponsible of you to vote given you can’t articulate why.

Anonymous wrote:

Debating about Trump is a futile exercise. I will defend the idea that one can see shades of gray in him, and that it’s a spectrum.

So… no, then?

With Trump  one of the big problems is that he’s just not presidential. That means it is easy to make people hate him. Just look at him! He is orange and he talks different from Obama. That is bad.

 

Overall I think he hasn’t been worse than most recent presidents. He hasn’t started a new war yet so that is at least one thing in his favor.

 

I’d agree at the present moment most of the arguing is useless, the best thing is to make up your own mind and treat the criticism like water off a duck’s back.

No, he just escalated conflicts in theatres of war America was already engaged in.

The MOAB was first used in 2017.  Developed in 2003. That’s 3 terms that presidents from both sides of the aisle decided not to use it.

That’s Trump’s foreign policy in a nutshell.  It’s a sledgehammer.  Thank fuck he hasn’t gotten the US into any wars because who knows how crazy it would get.

Anyway, I don’t want to get sidetracked from the point which is to challenge Kalman on his thinking about his chosen President’s actual policy choices (which are …?)

Dovetailing now…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/

Anonymous wrote:

No, he just escalated conflicts in theatres of war America was already engaged in.

The MOAB was first used in 2017.  Developed in 2003. That’s 3 terms that presidents from both sides of the aisle decided not to use it.

That’s Trump’s foreign policy in a nutshell.  It’s a sledgehammer.  Thank fuck he hasn’t gotten the US into any wars because who knows how crazy it would get.

Anyway, I don’t want to get sidetracked from the point which is to challenge Kalman on his thinking about his chosen President’s actual policy choices (which are …?)

I am not really defending Trump, he is not a good person, but his war record doesn’t compare unfavorably with that of the Obama era. I hate what he did with Iran though and he doesn’t seem to know what to do in Syria. But he inherited the Syria mess from Obama.

 

I doubt they have a big influence though. Obama probably didn’t want to do with Libya and Syria what he did, but he was pushed by the people around him. Something similar I suspect is true with Trump.

Nah man, advisers advise, politicians decide – that’s how it works.

Politicians love to spin the idea of the all powerful adviser figure, as it let’s them off the hook.

I dunno, but I think the power is where the money is. When it comes to things like geopolitics, presidents are dummies and dependent on the experts, like the think tanks, the secret service and the military. The experts can spin the options, making certain things seem attractive and others as problematic so that the president sees no choice but to do their bidding. If they want they can keep the president in the dark.

 

Trump is probably completely lost by now. He is stumbling around, hardly knowing what he’s doing. Unlike Obama or Bush he hardly has any allies to support and advice him.

You’re forgetting that the staff around Trump are appointed by him.  Even as dysfunctional a set-up as what Trump has, power still rests with the elected leader.

Advisers may well pitch persuasive policy arguments, that’s the whole point of advocacy but they don’t get to escape responsibility by playing the ‘but I was merely advising’ card.  And if they did have the kind of sway you claim US foreign policy wouldn’t be the dumpster fire it currently is.

The Supreme Court for the foreseeable future:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/supreme-court-upholds-kentucky-abortion-law-mandating-ultrasounds-n1098181?cid=sm_npd_ms_fb_ma&fbclid=IwAR1k-69FVNxDIhHgMZjCq-3f6CSxZu8OZ2LnrIj-JP0SFluUV5gthCfnbJ4

Some of Bozza’s finest work:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-book-jews-control-media-general-election-a9239346.html

The Conservative leader was branded “unfit to be prime minister” over passages from Seventy Two Virgins, which also includes numerous other questionable portrayals of ethnic minorities.

While telling the story of a fictional terror attack on Westminster Mr Johnson deploys descriptions of Kosovan Muslims as having “hook noses” and describes a mixed-race character as “half-caste”.

 

The now prime minister also repeatedly uses racial slurs in authorial voice, introducing a group of characters as “pikeys”, an ethnic slur for travellers, and another as a “Chinaman”.

The context of the passage regarding Jews is a part of the story in which all the countries of the world are made to vote country-by-country on whether the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay should be released.

Describing the situation, Mr Johnson wrote: “And the news from the voting was still bad for America, though not as bad as it had seemed at first. Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia were reporting almost 100 per cent insistence that the prisoners be sent home. But there were odd pockets of support for the President. He might have thought that Russia, after her humiliation in the Cold War, would take the chance to put her boot on the neck of the old adversary. But no, the Russians had their problems with Islamic terror. Maybe there was some kind of fiddling of the figures by the oligarchs who ran the TV stations (and who were mainly, as some lost no time in pointing out, of Jewish origin), but it seemed that Russia, one of the most populous countries in the world, was voting heavily for America.”

Very interesting. They all have the same friend and write exactly the same sentences about her.

 

Very interesting. They all have the same friend and write exactly the same sentences about her.

House Democrats Unveil 2 Articles Of Impeachment Against Trump

Ben wrote:

You’re forgetting that the staff around Trump are appointed by him.

Is being appointed by him guarantee they’re not going to undermine him?

 

Nikki Haley claimed that’s exactly what Tillerson and Kelly did:

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/10/politics/nikki-haley-tillerson-kelly-save-the-country-recruit-white-house/

And they’re both gone. Because trump didn’t listen to them.

Thinking that the sun does not shine out of Trump’s arse is enough to be guilty of “undermining”.

If it had happened with Obama they’d be accused of treason.

It did and no, James Jones, Robert Gibbs etc all resigned without such fanfare.

Honestly Arjan, on what basis would you make this comment?

Full-on The Thick Of It stuff in the UK today.

Boris Johnson ‘hides in fridge’ to avoid Piers Morgan interview

When Swain presses the prime minister, stating he was live on the show, Johnson replied “I’ll be with you in a second” and walked off, before Piers exclaims “he’s gone into the fridge”. Johnson walks inside a fridge stacked with milk bottles with his aides. One person can be heard saying: “It’s a bunker.”

Conservative sources subsequently insisted that Johnson was “categorically not hiding” in the fridge, from which Johnson emerged carrying a crate of milk bottles – but instead his aides were taking a moment to prep the PM for a separate, pre-agreed interview.

Someone accused Irvine Welsh of being a ‘champagne socialist’ which is a common insult aimed at anyone with money who supports progressive politics.

He said he wasn’t but even if he were he’d rather be that than  a ‘Buckfast Tory’. That’s probably only going to resonate in Scotland but I like the idea of an equivalent slur for a working class person voting against their best interests. Maybe a ‘Carlsberg Conservative’ would work better across the UK.

A Blue Nun.

garjones wrote:

Someone accused Irvine Welsh of being a ‘champagne socialist’ which is a common insult aimed at anyone with money who supports progressive politics.

He said he wasn’t but even if he were he’d rather be that than  a ‘Buckfast Tory’. That’s probably only going to resonate in Scotland but I like the idea of an equivalent slur for a working class person voting against their best interests. Maybe a ‘Carlsberg Conservative’ would work better across the UK.

I quite like the retort of “of course I am, champagne is great, everyone who wants it should have it”

That’s a bit too close to, “Let them eat cake!” 

And yes, I know she never said it, but people thought she did.

SteveUK wrote:

That’s a bit too close to, “Let them eat cake!” 

And yes, I know she never said it, but people thought she did.

Not in the slightest.  “Let them eat cake” was allegedly in response to people telling Marie Antionette that the poor had no bread.  “Everyone who wants champagne should be able to have it” might leave “once we fulfil all basic material needs, of course” unsaid, but that’s the whole point.  Because right now, on this planet we make enough food to feed everyone, and we also make champagne.  And enough food to continue feed everyone if the population increased by a billion.

God I hope Laura Kuenssberg fucks off soon. The other day she blithely tweeted about “sources” telling her Labour bussed in a large protest group to Leeds hospital, one of whom punched a spad, which turned out to be handful of people with signs and a spad accidentally walking into a guy’s out-stretched hand to today. She deleted her tweet with the equivalent of the shrugging emoticon as though her regurgitating information without fact-checking is just part and parcel of her job, instead of real journalism.

Today she seems to have broken electoral law by once again repeating information from unnamed “sources”, this time about the content of postal votes in early openings (where the letters are opened up but the ballots not counted). Which you’re not allowed to do, especially on live TV.

On the basis of this episode…#LauraKuenssberg #postalvotespic.twitter.com/BQgpvUNbgu

— Slough for Europe 🇪🇺🎪 #VoteTactically (@SloughForEU) December 11, 2019

It prompted the Electoral Commission to not so subtly tweet this.

It may be an offence to communicate any information obtained at postal vote opening sessions, including about votes cast, before a poll has closed. Anyone with information to suggest this has happened should report it immediately to the police.

— Electoral Commission (@ElectoralCommUK) December 11, 2019

 

 

Martin Smith wrote:

God I hope Laura Kuenssberg fucks off soon.

She’s been a disaster for the BBC. Incredibly unprofessional and ill-considered at times. I hope she faces some consequences.

I think so. I know many have conspiracy ideas of deliberate bias but I think mostly she’s just quite incompetent. She’s effectively blurting stuff out without giving it much thought with the excitement of being ‘first’. At the very least she’s falling easily for the various spin doctor distraction techniques which is not good enough.

I agree, that’s exactly it. I think she goes for the immediate sensational aspect with little care as to whether there’s any truth in it.

I don’t agree with all the claims of BBC bias (although I do think there is merit in some of it), but she is pretty terrible.

Yes and the annoying thing is the BBC doesn’t need to be in that business. They aren’t bound by circulation figures or ratings like other outlets, very recently they were considered the gold standard for reliable source of information you’d be happy to share without checking because they’d have done the due diligence.

Now that’s out the window and my faith in sharing their stories has diminished a lot.

I wonder if she will be ‘moved on’ from her position after the election. Who knows, there may be a communications job in CCHQ for her.

https://twitter.com/johnb78/status/1205072727540785152?s=20

(Not sure why the image shows up twice.)

Yeah, but did you see the way he ate a bacon sandwich?

garjones wrote:

At the very least she’s falling easily for the various spin doctor distraction techniques which is not good enough.

Definitely. Repeating information from sources without fact-checking is not being a journalist, it’s being a press officer.

Dave wrote:

Yeah, but did you see the way he ate a bacon sandwich?

And of course, two-odd weeks later, Cameron ate a hot dog with a knife and fork.

I’ve been saying this for years “All news is fake news”. To quote Michael Jackson:

Skin head, dead head<br style=”color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;” />Everybody gone bad<br style=”color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;” />Situation, aggravation<br style=”color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;” />Everybody allegation….

…., on the news

Everybody dog food…

…All I want to say is that

They don’t really care about us

 

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Dave wrote:

Yeah, but did you see the way he ate a bacon sandwich?

And of course, two-odd weeks later, Cameron ate a hot dog with a knife and fork.

It’s not the worst thing he’s ever done to a pork product.

Anonymous wrote:

I’ve been saying this for years

I’m pretty sure that’s fake news.

Dave wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Dave wrote:

Yeah, but did you see the way he ate a bacon sandwich?

And of course, two-odd weeks later, Cameron ate a hot dog with a knife and fork.

It’s not the worst thing he’s ever done to a pork product.

I mean, we could debate that

No.  Don’t do it!

Ben wrote:

No.  Don’t do it!

If only someone had been there to say that to David beforehand.

There is some bad stuff going on with Greece and Turkey that also involves Libya. It seems some deal Turkey made with the contested GNA government in Libya gives Turkey some rights over disputed coastal waters.

 

https://www.euractiv.com/section/enlargement/news/eu-commission-chief-vows-tough-stance-on-turkey-amid-escalating-row-with-greece/

Well, it’s been a pretty grey and rainy election day in the UK. I wonder if we’ll see a particularly depressed turnout. The polling station was empty when I went in earlier.

I suspect it may be up and down. I don’t think we’ll get uniform results at all this year, different regions with different takes, in turnout and voting intention. Some London constituencies are reporting unprecedented queues to vote.

I sense we may get some surprise gains and losses for both main parties, depending on the demographics.

 

Does the party leading in the polls do worse when the weather is bad? More of their supports think, “Ah, we’ll win anyway, I’ll stay in and have a cup of tea”?

Or is that just wishful thinking?

 

I believe it usually reduces the turnout for those on lower incomes but also among the elderly, with the demographic schism on age at the moment those two could cancel each other out with regard to voting Labour or Tory.

Postal voting might mollify weather-based impact on the grey vote though. They’ll have known the weather was likely to be bad and registered ahead for them.

I’m not overly optimistic about how things will turn out tonight.

Martin Smith wrote:

I’m not overly optimistic about how things will turn out tonight.

Me too, unfortunately. I’m really hoping for a pleasant surprise from the exit poll, like last time, but I’m not really sure it’s going to happen.

The Labour candidate in Uxbridge (the Prime Minister’s constituency) has backing from an unexpected source:

In search of his miracle, Milani can also now call on intergalactic help, he says. Lord Buckethead, also a candidate, has urged his supporters put Monster Raving Loony loyalties aside and vote tactically, because “some things are more important than electing an intergalactic space lord to parliament”.

Apparently the Lib Dems have been handing put leaflets today claiming that Labour candidates have pulled out.  Proving yet again why they’re utter shit.

And yet some Lib Dems candidates have explicitly said don’t vote for me, vote for my Labour opponent.

Proving yet again that generalisations are dangerous things.

DavidM wrote:

Proving yet again that generalisations are dangerous things.

Usually, but not always.

I’ve just seen tonight’s exit poll.

Tories on 368, Labour on 191.

I feel a bit sick.

FUCK.

I just can’t quite believe it. It’s worse than I could have predicted.

And more worryingly I think it sets the tone for how UK politicians will behave for years to come. All of Johnson’s lying, his unwillingness to be scrutinised, his illegal acts… that’s how you win.

Hey you, yeah you, you want to succeed? Want to get ahead? Follow this perfect plan:

• Lie
• Lie
• Shag anything in sight
• Lie
• Lie
• Get a journalist beaten up
• Lie
• Lie
• More shagging
• Lie
• Lie
• Lie
• Some casual racism and misogyny
• Lie
• Lie
• Shagging, lots of shagging
• Lie
• Lie

Success! You’re Prime Minster!

And his manifesto is a roadmap for unaccountability: making parliament beyond the power of the courts, voter disenfranchisement, electoral reform.

Everything the Tories have done in the last couple of years… the last decade even. And this is how they’re rewarded.

I honestly thought they were heading towards becoming unelectable for a generation. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

DavidM wrote:

And yet some Lib Dems candidates have explicitly said don’t vote for me, vote for my Labour opponent.

Proving yet again that generalisations are dangerous things.

It’s the difference between the Lib Dems as a party and individual members.  The party decided to stand in marginal constituencies.

This might be a bigger part of the story than expected:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/12/uk-news-push-alerts-negative-labour-positive-tories

“A Guardian analysis of push alerts for nine of the biggest UK news apps shows that, on balance, notifications about the Conservative party tend to be positive, while notifications about Labour are overwhelmingly negative.
While most of the providers showed a tendency to view the Conservatives more positively, the outcome was skewed by the Telegraph, which sent strongly pro-Tory and anti-Labour alerts.
For the millions of British voters who have news apps installed on their smartphones, push notifications are an important source of information about politics. While some recipients will tap on the pings and buzzes to read full stories, the majority of push alerts are never acted upon. That means the one-line summaries of the day’s breaking news events are frequently all readers get, giving them an enormous amount of power to shape perceptions.
The Guardian downloaded every UK-specific news app in the top 40 on the iOS App Store, and enabled the default notifications for each, from 6 November until 11 December, the day before the election.
Following a methodology applied by Loughborough University to analyse print news, the Guardian tracked every push notification in that period, and evaluated whether they were positive or negative for each of the three largest parties.”

Also:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2…ditors-quietly-influence-uks-election-reading
“On Monday night, millions of iPhones in Britain buzzed with a push notification encouraging their users to watch three video clips that were said to “sum up a difficult start to election week for the Tories”.
Anyone who clicked through would have been offered an “awkward exchange” as the prime minister grabbed an ITV reporter’s phone, Labour activists heckling the health secretary, Matt Hancock, at a hospital in Leeds, and Boris Johnson trying to rebut claims that Priti Patel had made up crime figures.
What many might not have known is why they received the push alert. They may have been surprised to learn that the clips were chosen not by an algorithm but by Apple News’s five-strong team of UK editors.
The service has around 11 million users a month in the UK, according to Comscore data, and the number of people receiving its notifications is even larger, offering a level of direct access that even the BBC struggles to compete with.
While newspapers and TV channels have to fight to reach audiences, Apple News comes pre-installed on iPhones. And while traditional news outlets come under enormous scrutiny for their coverage, there has been little scrutiny of how journalists employed directly by Apple can influence which news is seen by around a sixth of the UK population.
Rasmus Nielsen, of the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for Journalism, believes the power of the service – and equivalents such as Samsung’s Upday – is under-appreciated. “Our data suggests that more than a quarter of online news users in the UK rely on one or more aggregators for online news, and Apple News and Google News have higher reach among people aged 18-24 than established brands like ITV and Sky or the Sun and the Mirror,” Nielsen said. “Their editorial processes, however, remains opaque, whether reliant on human editors, algorithms, or some combination.”

DavidM wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’ve been saying this for years

I’m pretty sure that’s fake news.

Fake Newsception? That’s the first time I’ve heard of that!

I don’t think we can pin a huge kicking like this (if the poll is correct) on technology aspects or social media or even media bias.

I think a big aspect of it is Corbyn himself not being likeable to voters and not finding a way to connect with them, and another big aspect is not cutting through the noise on Brexit and capturing imaginations with the Labour policy in that area.

I’m sure there will be lots of dissections of all this in the days and weeks to come.

Corbyn’s been a fucking idiot for the last two years.  The only minor positive is he’s toast.

But as to what’s next – lots of pain for lots of people, who’ll blame anything and everything but themselves.

Yes. I am quite worried about what the next couple of years will bring, and not just on the Brexit front. It’s just about the worst outcome I could have expected.

It sounds awful, but I think it’s the only solution – there is going to have to be a total fucking disaster that inflicts a lot of damage on a lot of people and the Tories have no way to get out of being blamed for it.

Amber Rudd talking absolute bollocks on C4, saying this majority will free up Johnson to be more liberal and less beholden to the ERG, like he didn’t just successfully purge all the moderates from his party. Delusional appeasement.

Martin Smith wrote:

like he didn’t just successfully purge all the moderates from his party

This is my main worry. This is not the same Conservative party of the last few years.

Martin Smith wrote:

Amber Rudd talking absolute bollocks on C4, saying this majority will free up Johnson to be more liberal and less beholden to the ERG, like he didn’t just successfully purge all the moderates from his party. Delusional appeasement.

All together now:

BBBBBBUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTT!

Dave wrote:

I don’t think we can pin a huge kicking like this (if the poll is correct) on technology aspects or social media or even media bias.

I think a big aspect of it is Corbyn himself not being likeable to voters and not finding a way to connect with them, and another big aspect is not cutting through the noise on Brexit and capturing imaginations with the Labour policy in that area.

I’m sure there will be lots of dissections of all this in the days and weeks to come.

See, I don’t buy that.  Every tine he made a public appearance he was treated like a rock star by the people.  There’s a huge disconnect between what he says and does, and how he’s portrayed in the media.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

See, I don’t buy that.  Every tine he made a public appearance he was treated like a rock star by the people.

I think he is liked by his own crowd, but I think that crowd has shrunk quite a bit since the last election. I think the antisemitism stuff has hurt him and so has the perceived equivocation on Brexit.

BBC coverage seems to be obsessed by which constituency will declare first and how fast it will be. I don’t give a fuck. I’d rather they take their time and do it properly.

Dave wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

See, I don’t buy that.  Every tine he made a public appearance he was treated like a rock star by the people.

I think he is liked by his own crowd, but I think that crowd has shrunk quite a bit since the last election. I think the antisemitism stuff has hurt him and so has the perceived equivocation on Brexit.

But that’s the thing – the crowds are massively different- rock concerts, football matches, rallies.  It’s a huge disparity in the places where people were chanting his name.

The media smearing of Labour and Corbyn has been constant for years now.  It didn’t start with this election.