The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
Given that "climate-gate" stuff was itself fake news - nobody was actually found to be guilty of any sort of malpractice - it is probably best forgotten.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
The Rotherham story was clearly not covered by some parts of the MSM because of the identity of the alleged perpetrators. There is absolutely no doubt at all that this was the case with the Guardian, for example. And that is to the newspaper's eternal shame.
However, the problem with relying on dodgy nationalist blogs for stories is that they are dodgy. If Nick Griffin had not spent years spreading demonstrably false stories about Jews, Asians and other minorities, if he had not been an overt racist, then what he was saying about Rotherham may have been taken more seriously and the story may have been exposed earlier than it was.
I seem to recall a previous debate on here before when someone claimed that the Lib Dems had clearly exceeded the expenses limits for a by election because they had distributed loads of leaflets that must have cost a fortune to produce . Leaflets printed by yourself on your own printer by volunteers clearly cost almost nothing beyond the cost of the paper ( which may have been bought and paid for prior to the short campaign . Leaflets bought from a printing company would cost vastly more . /the cost of leaflets printed by say a neighbouring Lib Dem Association which has their own printer may cause more problems in assessing the cost of producing them .
I was lucky enough in my activist days to know both a good typesetter and a printer who were Liberal members and supporters and provided their technical expertise free of charge.
That said, we had to pay for the printing of leaflets but I suspect the "bill" was materials only rather than labour which said printer donated as a volunteer.
In a GE campaign the full commercial price would have to be identified as a "donation", which is perhaps why there have been lots of tame Lib Dem run printing companies !
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
Given that "climate-gate" stuff was itself fake news - nobody was actually found to be guilty of any sort of malpractice - it is probably best forgotten.
You miss my point. Large parts of the MSM just wouldn't talk about it at all for ages, and let a conspiracy grow. It wasn't a fake story that the data was leaked, it was then spun in the vacuum. Rather than address the story.
Just like the wikileaks emails of the DNC. The American MSM were so determined to poo poo absolutely everything about them, that it allowed conspiracies to grow. In reality, there is some damning stuff in there and then there is the conspiracy stuff.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
Take the NYE horrors in Cologne. It was non-MSM media that outed the hundreds of sex attacks and the cover-ups by the German MSM.
When 96% of media donations were to the Hillary campaign in the US - that shows the balance is totally out of kilter. And the same people are now trying to censor the Right using #fakenews as a vehicle - especially so with their liberal fellow travellers who run Facebook and Twitter.
Anyone who can't see what a serious propaganda problem this is...
Speaking of that Cologne cover up... Turns out that's anther piece of fake news.
So one MSM journalist calls it fake news and suddenly it's fake? Pull the other one. That story was blowing up on social media and international media for a week before German media started reporting on it. Whether that's a cover-up or just laziness I'll leave it to your judgement. I'm not going to take the word of one journalist as the truth, though.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
That's not the timeline though. It started with right wing and white supremacist blogs reporting on underground rapes of white children by Muslim men. The prosecutions came a couple of years later after Nick Griffin and then The Times took up the cause.
And that's the point, isn't it? You cannot rely on a white supremacist website. No-one is going to commit resources to chasing a story that originates from a blog written by someone with a racist agenda.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
Take the NYE horrors in Cologne. It was non-MSM media that outed the hundreds of sex attacks and the cover-ups by the German MSM.
When 96% of media donations were to the Hillary campaign in the US - that shows the balance is totally out of kilter. And the same people are now trying to censor the Right using #fakenews as a vehicle - especially so with their liberal fellow travellers who run Facebook and Twitter.
Anyone who can't see what a serious propaganda problem this is...
Speaking of that Cologne cover up... Turns out that's anther piece of fake news.
So one MSM journalist calls it fake news and suddenly it's fake? Pull the other one. That story was blowing up on social media and international media for a week before German media started reporting on it. Whether that's a cover-up or just laziness I'll leave it to your judgement. I'm not going to take the word of one journalist as the truth, though.
He provides links to the German media reports from the next day.
OT, this is why Clive Lewis is the future. The liberal left are getting their arses kicked by nostalgia politics. So suspend disbelief and fight back with nostalgia politics.
"I lived in a council house, as did all of my friends. People had good public services and a secure home. He [Lewis' father] joined a trade union and the workers were treated equally. You didn't have people coming over from Jamaica or India and undercutting British workers, they got the same terms and conditions as everyone else."
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
Take the NYE horrors in Cologne. It was non-MSM media that outed the hundreds of sex attacks and the cover-ups by the German MSM.
When 96% of media donations were to the Hillary campaign in the US - that shows the balance is totally out of kilter. And the same people are now trying to censor the Right using #fakenews as a vehicle - especially so with their liberal fellow travellers who run Facebook and Twitter.
Anyone who can't see what a serious propaganda problem this is...
Speaking of that Cologne cover up... Turns out that's anther piece of fake news.
So one MSM journalist calls it fake news and suddenly it's fake? Pull the other one. That story was blowing up on social media and international media for a week before German media started reporting on it. Whether that's a cover-up or just laziness I'll leave it to your judgement. I'm not going to take the word of one journalist as the truth, though.
Read the story. It is clear that the normal, regular press broke the news.
Like if I was to start claiming with zero evidence someone on here was a oeadophile I'd be banned in short order. But if a random website made up to look like a legitimate news source does it we are supposed to accept it as run of the mill and not only my complain but accept it as legitimate.
I hate to point out the bleeding obvious but a large chunk of the tabloid press would fall foul of such a ban, they routinely repeat allegations of sexual offences with little evidence to back them up. The sports pages of all newspapers are currently full of such stuff. Should they be banned? Probably not, but we only know the truth after police have investigated and prosecutions are brought.
Such censorship would protect some innocent people and the press do go too far at times, but it would also protect people who need to be locked up, and stop other people coming forward.
Jimmy Saville for one example didn't get anything like enough bad press as he deserved when he was alive.
I am not calling for the government to ban anything. I am asking to be allowed to call it what it is which is fucking bollocks and criticise posters who waste my time by posting fucking bollocks.
And if a private corporation wants to prevent people from using their service to promote fucking bollocks then they are perfectly entitled to do so.
Surely what a supplier charges is their business. I’m about to buy membership cards on hehalf of a local non-political organisation. I send a draft to the copy shop, the guy in charge has had a look at it it and made a couple of suggestions. That’s his business. When I was an Agent I went to a printer whom I knew to be sympathetic, took the copy of what we thought was a good idea and he gave us his professional advice. I never had any non-political leaflets printed so I’ve no idea whether his rates were realistic or not.
What a supplier charges is not just his business, if it's effectively a donation. To take an extreme example, if News International offered to print millions of copies of a special newspaper-style leaflet on behalf of a party, and charged the party £10 for the whole lot, then the amount of expediture to be declared would not be £10, but the normal market cost of getting the leaflets printed. It obviously has to be like that, otherwise the limits would be even more meaningless than they currently are.
Fair point. I’m as sure as I can be at this distance, though, that the price we were charged was ‘reasonable’.
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
I think the reason it has grown is simpler than it offering an alternative to the mainstream news, alternative media is bigger today because it is simply easier to publish now than ever before. 30+ years ago alternative media meant small print run magazines and newspapers, photocopied newsletters, and word of mouth in meetings. The internet changed that, and gave essentially everybody on it the ability to reach a wide audience. That ability is mostly a very good thing, and we should be extremely wary of anyone who proposes to make it harder for people to speak their mind or spread their views.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
The Rotherham story was clearly not covered by some parts of the MSM because of the identity of the alleged perpetrators. There is absolutely no doubt at all that this was the case with the Guardian, for example. And that is to the newspaper's eternal shame.
However, the problem with relying on dodgy nationalist blogs for stories is that they are dodgy. If Nick Griffin had not spent years spreading demonstrably false stories about Jews, Asians and other minorities, if he had not been an overt racist, then what he was saying about Rotherham may have been taken more seriously and the story may have been exposed earlier than it was.
But the problem was that no one else would go near the story. It took people like those who run those blogs and Nick Griffin to bring any attention to it in the first place. I was just pointing out that in the current climate the original reporting by them would have been written off as fake news.
To be clear... I wasnt proposing official approval to publish thoughts. Merely that commercial enterprises should face consequences after the fact of having publishe something...
We already have defamation laws - this would merely be an extension?
I can't think of a way that would operate that wouldn't be open to abuse, and by it merely existing it would stifle the publishing of controversial views.
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
I think the reason it has grown is simpler than it offering an alternative to the mainstream news, alternative media is bigger today because it is simply easier to publish now than ever before. 30+ years ago alternative media meant small print run magazines and newspapers, photocopied newsletters, and word of mouth in meetings. The internet changed that, and gave essentially everybody on it the ability to reach a wide audience. That ability is mostly a very good thing, and we should be extremely wary of anyone who proposes to make it harder for people to speak their mind or spread their views.
Thats certainly true. I mean any old idiot can upload a video to YouTube, but most will get a handful of views (mostly their mates that they tweeted a link at). But some of these sites get significant traffic, so people must be seeing or hearing stuff that they want to learn more about.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
Take the NYE horrors in Cologne. It was non-MSM media that outed the hundreds of sex attacks and the cover-ups by the German MSM.
When 96% of media donations were to the Hillary campaign in the US - that shows the balance is totally out of kilter. And the same people are now trying to censor the Right using #fakenews as a vehicle - especially so with their liberal fellow travellers who run Facebook and Twitter.
Anyone who can't see what a serious propaganda problem this is...
Speaking of that Cologne cover up... Turns out that's anther piece of fake news.
So one MSM journalist calls it fake news and suddenly it's fake? Pull the other one. That story was blowing up on social media and international media for a week before German media started reporting on it. Whether that's a cover-up or just laziness I'll leave it to your judgement. I'm not going to take the word of one journalist as the truth, though.
He provides links to the German media reports from the next day.
And that's the difference between proper reporting and fake news.
I don't get the whole furore over fake news. To take a rather more serious example, terrorism it seemed to only be "important" after a certain date in the calendar... like it hadn't happened before.
Private Eye, the Daily Mash, the Onion, Chris Morris (And countless others) all exist and trade in "fake news" yet suddenly it is presented as a 'new' idea that is ensnaring thickies, and caused Trump to get elected ?
Pull the other one.
Like pollsters, these supposed pundits are missing the mark repeatedly - and trying to make the news, not report it.
And what exactly are the fake news peddlers trying to do?
Make money from advertising on their web sites.
and also sometimes for political reasons:
"Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right."
Classy response by Delingpole. Apparently, because the atmospheric scientist in question is an attractive woman, her arguments and her outrage at being misrepresented can be safely ignored. Makes sense, I guess, for the Breitbart's target audience.
His Latin is appallingly bad too.
Edit: but then so is my English, judging by that tautology.
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
Given that "climate-gate" stuff was itself fake news - nobody was actually found to be guilty of any sort of malpractice - it is probably best forgotten.
The fake news identified in the NPR interview is from a registered democrat trolling the right, which he seems to treat as part of his motivation.
When I quip about the Guardian and fake news I am only joking slightly. The entire meme about soaring rents is largely fake news, based on nonrepresentative stats heavily distorted by using "averages" based on advertised new-to-market rents (different from those paid by existing tenants) and applying figures heavily distorted by a few ultra-high-cost areas in London, or London in the country as a whole.
The one that really concerns me is when fake news feeds into new laws. No shortage of examples of that either.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
That's not the timeline though. It started with right wing and white supremacist blogs reporting on underground rapes of white children by Muslim men. The prosecutions came a couple of years later after Nick Griffin and then The Times took up the cause.
And that's the point, isn't it? You cannot rely on a white supremacist website. No-one is going to commit resources to chasing a story that originates from a blog written by someone with a racist agenda.
And yet The Times did and look at where the investigation led. 1400 children abused, bent coppers, cover-ups by local government, incompetent or malign children's services. How you can support banning "fake news" after seeing the result of a few right wing blogs reporting on Rotherham is something I don't understand.
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
Given that "climate-gate" stuff was itself fake news - nobody was actually found to be guilty of any sort of malpractice - it is probably best forgotten.
The fake news identified in the NPR interview is from a registered democrat trolling the right, which he seems to treat as part of his motivation.
When I quip about the Guardian and fake news I am only joking slightly. The entire meme about soaring rents is largely fake news, based on nonrepresentative stats heavily distorted by using "averages" based on advertised new-to-market rents (different from those paid by existing tenants) and applying figures heavily distorted by a few ultra-high-cost areas in London, or London in the country as a whole.
The one that really concerns me is when fake news feeds into new laws. No shortage of examples of that either.
The Guardian and their fellow travellers shut down the NOTW. Then they retracted 37 articles that were the core of their entire smear campaign.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
The Rotherham story was clearly not covered by some parts of the MSM because of the identity of the alleged perpetrators. There is absolutely no doubt at all that this was the case with the Guardian, for example. And that is to the newspaper's eternal shame.
However, the problem with relying on dodgy nationalist blogs for stories is that they are dodgy. If Nick Griffin had not spent years spreading demonstrably false stories about Jews, Asians and other minorities, if he had not been an overt racist, then what he was saying about Rotherham may have been taken more seriously and the story may have been exposed earlier than it was.
But the problem was that no one else would go near the story. It took people like those who run those blogs and Nick Griffin to bring any attention to it in the first place. I was just pointing out that in the current climate the original reporting by them would have been written off as fake news.
A stopped clock is right twice a day. The problem is that media organisations have finite resources. You cannot check everything out, you have to make a judgement. If a story first appears on a site or from a source with a track record of making things up to fit a political agenda, then you are far less likely to begin investigating. What was disgraceful about the Rotherham coverage was not the original refusal to follow-up on claims made by known racists, but to ignore or to dismiss the story once reputable sources - such as the Times - began to cover it.
In Cologne, it turns out that the local, mainstream press was covering it within hours - having checked sources first (ie, gone to the police etc).
But some of these sites get significant traffic, so people must be seeing or hearing stuff that they want to learn more about.
Yes, but I think that demand was already there, but previously unserved. I don't think that current alternative media success is due to it being more necessary now, in order to counter a mainstream press that is not doing its job; if anything the mainstream press of the past was even more deferential to the powerful and self-censoring than it is now.
I don't get the whole furore over fake news. To take a rather more serious example, terrorism it seemed to only be "important" after a certain date in the calendar... like it hadn't happened before.
Private Eye, the Daily Mash, the Onion, Chris Morris (And countless others) all exist and trade in "fake news" yet suddenly it is presented as a 'new' idea that is ensnaring thickies, and caused Trump to get elected ?
Pull the other one.
Like pollsters, these supposed pundits are missing the mark repeatedly - and trying to make the news, not report it.
And what exactly are the fake news peddlers trying to do?
Make money from advertising on their web sites.
and also sometimes for political reasons:
"Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right."
Classy response by Delingpole. Apparently, because the atmospheric scientist in question is an attractive woman, her arguments and her outrage at being misrepresented can be safely ignored. Makes sense, I guess, for the Breitbart's target audience.
His Latin is appallingly bad too.
Edit: but then so is my English, judging by that tautology.
It could have been somewhat bad, but you've helpfully clarified that for us!
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
That's not the timeline though. It started with right wing and white supremacist blogs reporting on underground rapes of white children by Muslim men. The prosecutions came a couple of years later after Nick Griffin and then The Times took up the cause.
And that's the point, isn't it? You cannot rely on a white supremacist website. No-one is going to commit resources to chasing a story that originates from a blog written by someone with a racist agenda.
And yet The Times did and look at where the investigation led. 1400 children abused, bent coppers, cover-ups by local government, incompetent or malign children's services. How you can support banning "fake news" after seeing the result of a few right wing blogs reporting on Rotherham is something I don't understand.
The Times journalist went and got the story himself.
I do not support the banning of fake news. I do not support banning anything. I do support treating fake news sites with huge degrees of circumspection.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
The Rotherham story was clearly not covered by some parts of the MSM because of the identity of the alleged perpetrators. There is absolutely no doubt at all that this was the case with the Guardian, for example. And that is to the newspaper's eternal shame.
However, the problem with relying on dodgy nationalist blogs for stories is that they are dodgy. If Nick Griffin had not spent years spreading demonstrably false stories about Jews, Asians and other minorities, if he had not been an overt racist, then what he was saying about Rotherham may have been taken more seriously and the story may have been exposed earlier than it was.
But the problem was that no one else would go near the story. It took people like those who run those blogs and Nick Griffin to bring any attention to it in the first place. I was just pointing out that in the current climate the original reporting by them would have been written off as fake news.
My understanding is that the only labour mp who did raise this as an issue, Anne cryer is the one Nick Griffin challenged in a general election. Struggling to find any evidence that it was Nick Griffin who drew attention to this.
As I understand police and authorities had the evidence and ignored it.
Yes banning news isn't a good idea. But it is a problem. Perhaps fining repeat offenders will work?
Think about all the stories and rumours about US intelligence agencies that have been published over the years, the US government would rather such stories had never seen the light of day, and routinely denies that they are true (if they comment at all). Thanks to Snowden we now know that most of the "conspiracies" about the NSA at least were almost entirely correct. Do you really want a government to be able to block such stories or levy fines on those who publish them?
And that's just the tip of the iceberg, there are all sort of controversial areas where governments accuse the press of lying or misleading in their reporting; climate change, immigration, education, social services, defence, health care, election campaign spending, illegal drugs, human rights, political lobbying and more or less anything else where there isn't unanimity.
If we ever need official approval to publish our thoughts, whether or not they are correct, then free speech will be dead.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
It's kind of like calling people traitors or enemies of the people when they do not do or think the things you want them to, isn't it? :-)
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
The whole rise of real like troll Milo Yiannopoulos. His whole shtick is saying stuff that isn't PC and wait for the outrage. The fact people keep trying to silence him, rather than just ignoring or better debating against him, just legitimizes him.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
That's not the timeline though. It started with right wing and white supremacist blogs reporting on underground rapes of white children by Muslim men. The prosecutions came a couple of years later after Nick Griffin and then The Times took up the cause.
And that's the point, isn't it? You cannot rely on a white supremacist website. No-one is going to commit resources to chasing a story that originates from a blog written by someone with a racist agenda.
And yet The Times did and look at where the investigation led. 1400 children abused, bent coppers, cover-ups by local government, incompetent or malign children's services. How you can support banning "fake news" after seeing the result of a few right wing blogs reporting on Rotherham is something I don't understand.
The Times journalist went and got the story himself.
I do not support the banning of fake news. I do not support banning anything. I do support treating fake news sites with huge degrees of circumspection.
The Times journalist had to start somewhere and magically he started investigating just weeks after Griffin made the allegation.
I agree with that, and on Cologne, two small-time local papers isn't exactly what I'd call wide coverage. Where was Faz, RTL and others? It took them a week to report on this major story, it felt like they had to be dragged into it while international news organisations were running deep investigations in Germany.
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
Given that "climate-gate" stuff was itself fake news - nobody was actually found to be guilty of any sort of malpractice - it is probably best forgotten.
The fake news identified in the NPR interview is from a registered democrat trolling the right, which he seems to treat as part of his motivation.
When I quip about the Guardian and fake news I am only joking slightly. The entire meme about soaring rents is largely fake news, based on nonrepresentative stats heavily distorted by using "averages" based on advertised new-to-market rents (different from those paid by existing tenants) and applying figures heavily distorted by a few ultra-high-cost areas in London, or London in the country as a whole.
The one that really concerns me is when fake news feeds into new laws. No shortage of examples of that either.
The Guardian and their fellow travellers shut down the NOTW. Then they retracted 37 articles that were the core of their entire smear campaign.
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
Given that "climate-gate" stuff was itself fake news - nobody was actually found to be guilty of any sort of malpractice - it is probably best forgotten.
The fake news identified in the NPR interview is from a registered democrat trolling the right, which he seems to treat as part of his motivation.
When I quip about the Guardian and fake news I am only joking slightly. The entire meme about soaring rents is largely fake news, based on nonrepresentative stats heavily distorted by using "averages" based on advertised new-to-market rents (different from those paid by existing tenants) and applying figures heavily distorted by a few ultra-high-cost areas in London, or London in the country as a whole.
The one that really concerns me is when fake news feeds into new laws. No shortage of examples of that either.
At least initially I don't think Fake News was about slanted reporting; We've always had that, and when you can directly measure clicks you can tune a story to slant the facts in the direction that most appeals to your readers' prejudices. What's new is the discovery that if you're optimizing for clicks, the best thing is just to dispense with the original facts altogether and make the whole thing up. A story designed entirely to get clicks is going to out-perform a story that's aimed at that, but has to compromise by sticking to something that actually happened.
We had things like the Sunday Sport working off those mechanics before, but most readers were able to differentiate between that and normal technically-true-but-deliberately-misleading news. I think there's a genuine problem getting news from social media that we don't yet have a good mechanism for people to tell that they're looking at the online version of the Sunday Sport. Facebook made it worse by promoting the headlines and minimizing the source. Mix in half the population having a political agenda that they want to spread and you have quite an effective participatory system for us to bullshit ourselves.
May continues to sink in my estimation. I think her attitude to civil liberties is entirely wrong-headed, likewise her leftwing workers on boards nonsense (since rowed back on). We'll see how she does with the EU.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
That's not the timeline though. It started with right wing and white supremacist blogs reporting on underground rapes of white children by Muslim men. The prosecutions came a couple of years later after Nick Griffin and then The Times took up the cause.
And that's the point, isn't it? You cannot rely on a white supremacist website. No-one is going to commit resources to chasing a story that originates from a blog written by someone with a racist agenda.
And yet The Times did and look at where the investigation led. 1400 children abused, bent coppers, cover-ups by local government, incompetent or malign children's services. How you can support banning "fake news" after seeing the result of a few right wing blogs reporting on Rotherham is something I don't understand.
The Times journalist went and got the story himself.
I do not support the banning of fake news. I do not support banning anything. I do support treating fake news sites with huge degrees of circumspection.
The Times journalist had to start somewhere and magically he started investigating just weeks after Griffin made the allegation.
I agree with that, and on Cologne, two small-time local papers isn't exactly what I'd call wide coverage. Where was Faz, RTL and others? It took them a week to report on this major story, it felt like they had to be dragged into it while international news organisations were running deep investigations in Germany.
There was some disgraceful, Rotherham-esque, responses to boot.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
That's not the timeline though. It started with right wing and white supremacist blogs reporting on underground rapes of white children by Muslim men. The prosecutions came a couple of years later after Nick Griffin and then The Times took up the cause.
And that's the point, isn't it? You cannot rely on a white supremacist website. No-one is going to commit resources to chasing a story that originates from a blog written by someone with a racist agenda.
And yet The Times did and look at where the investigation led. 1400 children abused, bent coppers, cover-ups by local government, incompetent or malign children's services. How you can support banning "fake news" after seeing the result of a few right wing blogs reporting on Rotherham is something I don't understand.
The Times journalist went and got the story himself.
I do not support the banning of fake news. I do not support banning anything. I do support treating fake news sites with huge degrees of circumspection.
The Times journalist had to start somewhere and magically he started investigating just weeks after Griffin made the allegation.
And a year and a bit after the prosecution of a Rotherham gang for rape and trafficking in 2010.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
That's not the timeline though. It started with right wing and white supremacist blogs reporting on underground rapes of white children by Muslim men. The prosecutions came a couple of years later after Nick Griffin and then The Times took up the cause.
And that's the point, isn't it? You cannot rely on a white supremacist website. No-one is going to commit resources to chasing a story that originates from a blog written by someone with a racist agenda.
And yet The Times did and look at where the investigation led. 1400 children abused, bent coppers, cover-ups by local government, incompetent or malign children's services. How you can support banning "fake news" after seeing the result of a few right wing blogs reporting on Rotherham is something I don't understand.
The Times journalist went and got the story himself.
I do not support the banning of fake news. I do not support banning anything. I do support treating fake news sites with huge degrees of circumspection.
The Times journalist had to start somewhere and magically he started investigating just weeks after Griffin made the allegation.
I agree with that, and on Cologne, two small-time local papers isn't exactly what I'd call wide coverage. Where was Faz, RTL and others? It took them a week to report on this major story, it felt like they had to be dragged into it while international news organisations were running deep investigations in Germany.
"It felt like" is the key phrase here.
AS for Griffin, I am sure he heard some stuff; just as the bloke from the Times did. The difference is that the reporter from the Times investigated and got a story that stood up.
Which is a good example of why the idea of an objective censor of what is true monitoring our news is a non-starter. Governments routinely lie about intelligence and security matters, in public, in Parliament and in Congress in the US, and even in court. Nor is this new, this has been the norm for a long time now.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
For non-liberals, Peterson is a very lonely academic voice and getting awful abuse for it. I've seen several intvs and they're beyond WTF in Canada.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
So the story that a gang of sexual abusers were caught by the police and prosecuted in court was totally super secret?
That's not the timeline though. It started with right wing and white supremacist blogs reporting on underground rapes of white children by Muslim men. The prosecutions came a couple of years later after Nick Griffin and then The Times took up the cause.
And that's the point, isn't it? You cannot rely on a white supremacist website. No-one is going to commit resources to chasing a story that originates from a blog written by someone with a racist agenda.
And yet The Times did and look at where the investigation led. 1400 children abused, bent coppers, cover-ups by local government, incompetent or malign children's services. How you can support banning "fake news" after seeing the result of a few right wing blogs reporting on Rotherham is something I don't understand.
The Times journalist went and got the story himself.
I do not support the banning of fake news. I do not support banning anything. I do support treating fake news sites with huge degrees of circumspection.
The Times journalist had to start somewhere and magically he started investigating just weeks after Griffin made the allegation.
I agree with that, and on Cologne, two small-time local papers isn't exactly what I'd call wide coverage. Where was Faz, RTL and others? It took them a week to report on this major story, it felt like they had to be dragged into it while international news organisations were running deep investigations in Germany.
"It felt like" is the key phrase here.
Agreed, but it did. In a world of 24h news and huge international and social media interest German national news was nowhere for days. As I said, whether that's by incompetence or a cover-up I'll leave to you.
May continues to sink in my estimation. I think her attitude to civil liberties is entirely wrong-headed, likewise her leftwing workers on boards nonsense (since rowed back on). We'll see how she does with the EU.
Workers on boards is not left-wing nonsense, although it might well be Euro-nonsense as it is apparently common in Germany. Since German industry is doing quite well, it might not even be nonsense. But anyway, it is not left-wing.
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
Given that "climate-gate" stuff was itself fake news - nobody was actually found to be guilty of any sort of malpractice - it is probably best forgotten.
The fake news identified in the NPR interview is from a registered democrat trolling the right, which he seems to treat as part of his motivation.
When I quip about the Guardian and fake news I am only joking slightly. The entire meme about soaring rents is largely fake news, based on nonrepresentative stats heavily distorted by using "averages" based on advertised new-to-market rents (different from those paid by existing tenants) and applying figures heavily distorted by a few ultra-high-cost areas in London, or London in the country as a whole.
The one that really concerns me is when fake news feeds into new laws. No shortage of examples of that either.
The Guardian and their fellow travellers shut down the NOTW. Then they retracted 37 articles that were the core of their entire smear campaign.
The key thing of course is that they didn't retract 37 stories. They amended 37 stories. The NOTW still actually hacked the voice mail of a murder victim.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
The whole rise of real like troll Milo Yiannopoulos. His whole shtick is saying stuff that isn't PC and wait for the outrage. The fact people keep trying to silence him, rather than just ignoring or better debating against him, just legitimizes him.
I didn't like Milo before he was banned from Twitter for being rude about Ghostbusters 2, because he called it out as the regressive misandrist and pathetic black stereotypist character it was.
I read and watched his stuff - and frankly I agree with his core views. He's a very sophisticated chap and a mischief maker. He's Greek, gay, chooses black lovers, nominally Catholic and a conservative voter. He annoys the liberals so much and does a superb job of it - they can't claim he's a White Supremacist, a homophobe blah blah.
It's great - I applaud his efforts and the space he's handed to conservative students on campus to use their free speech voice to say what they believe - and not be shutdown re safe spaces.
- time can be given freely, provided it is not something you charge others for (I.e. not your normal business) - commercial firms are allowed to give a favourable price to a party but only within an agreed limt (5 or 10% rings a bell but I would have to check). Otherwise things must be at cost price for the reasons earlier posters have identified - you can't evade the limit by buying stuff in advance; anything used during the campaign must be charged against the limit at cost price. Technically using things that can be re-used should be declared with a notional rental charge (use of computer, hire of rosettes etc.) - paying canvassers is illegal, period
In the old days, your campaign (and hence your spending) started as soon as you declared yourself a candidate (or when the writ is moved, if later), which used to lead to some fun and games when a naïve candidate did so by accident. Incidentally this explains the origin of the term "prospective candidate". Not that long ago this was replaced by the more sensible rule of when you are nominated.
The reason "Fake News" or more relevant "Alternative News" e.g. Breitbart, Alex Jones, etc has grown is because the MSM have been unwilling / uninterested to address stories surrounding issues of certain subjects will the wider public feel are important...then this opens the floor for others to put their spin on certain stories, be it the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Wikileaks emails, lets not forget the Climate-gate stuff, or more day to day concerns over things like immigration.
Given that "climate-gate" stuff was itself fake news - nobody was actually found to be guilty of any sort of malpractice - it is probably best forgotten.
The fake news identified in the NPR interview is from a registered democrat trolling the right, which he seems to treat as part of his motivation.
When I quip about the Guardian and fake news I am only joking slightly. The entire meme about soaring rents is largely fake news, based on nonrepresentative stats heavily distorted by using "averages" based on advertised new-to-market rents (different from those paid by existing tenants) and applying figures heavily distorted by a few ultra-high-cost areas in London, or London in the country as a whole.
The one that really concerns me is when fake news feeds into new laws. No shortage of examples of that either.
The Guardian and their fellow travellers shut down the NOTW. Then they retracted 37 articles that were the core of their entire smear campaign.
The Guardian reported that NotW reporters hacked Milly Dowler's phone, deleted some messages, including messages that misled her family that Milly was still alive. After further investigation, the police changed their minds about the last part, but confirmed NotW had hacked the phone and had deleted *some* messages but not the specific ones that gave false hope to Milly's family.
That's not fake news, that is new evidence coming to light.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
So you don't like being called a Little Englander but are happy to refer to French people as Frogs*. Now we know.
*Having never been to France, nor London, nor anywhere you are likely to encounter many French people.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
It's kind of like calling people traitors or enemies of the people when they do not do or think the things you want them to, isn't it? :-)
The loud, open fascism and rank hypocrisy of the Alt Right. Writ large on here by the morning shift.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
It's kind of like calling people traitors or enemies of the people when they do not do or think the things you want them to, isn't it? :-)
The loud, open fascism and rank hypocrisy of the Alt Right. Writ large on here by the morning shift.
Is your use of the word fascism hyperbole, satirical, or defamatory?
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
That's just ridiculous. What is going to happen, the ECJ will reverse our withdrawal from the EU?
I think this refers to actions that happened during our time as members, so a uk company infringing on single market rules in 2017, coming before the ecj in 2020.
That's just ridiculous. What is going to happen, the ECJ will reverse our withdrawal from the EU?
Won't happen, I mean how many divisions does the CJEU have?
I do feel smug, as I cited something like this back in February, and occasionally since June 24th
The source pointed to the hypothetical example of a dispute over a contract between a British and an EU party, signed during a period in which European law and the European Court is supreme.
Brexit negotiators may have to decide which kinds of legal disputes can be solely settled in British courts and whether some may still be subject to the involvement of the European Court.
Alternatively, they may agree to set up a new commission, the source said, with the involvement of both European officials as well as British ones.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
For non-liberals, Peterson is a very lonely academic voice and getting awful abuse for it. I've seen several intvs and they're beyond WTF in Canada.
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
The whole rise of real like troll Milo Yiannopoulos. His whole shtick is saying stuff that isn't PC and wait for the outrage. The fact people keep trying to silence him, rather than just ignoring or better debating against him, just legitimizes him.
I didn't like Milo before he was banned from Twitter for being rude about Ghostbusters 2, because he called it out as the regressive misandrist and pathetic black stereotypist character it was.
I read and watched his stuff - and frankly I agree with his core views. He's a very sophisticated chap and a mischief maker. He's Greek, gay, chooses black lovers, nominally Catholic and a conservative voter. He annoys the liberals so much and does a superb job of it - they can't claim he's a White Supremacist, a homophobe blah blah.
It's great - I applaud his efforts and the space he's handed to conservative students on campus to use their free speech voice to say what they believe - and not be shutdown re safe spaces.
On the other hand, people like him, Katie Hopkins, Anne Coulter, and to some extent our Nige, are quite complicit in a system whereby they make money from saying outrageous and sometimes detestable things that people are shocked by, allowing the respectable commentariat to caricature the groups they represent, and further alienating the right and everybody else. It plays into an agenda of coralling the right into a hated and feared 'basket of deplorables', so we end up with only one right way - the internationalist, statist, corporatist, elite way. How Trump's actual victory can and will upset that applecart remains to be seen.
I don't think this exchange reflects poorly on the Prime Minister actually, she's not known to be a person person and the claim that only 37% of people "really voted for Brexit" is opinion certainly not a fact. I think its good that she still does surgeries for her constituentents. The lady just didn't like what she was hearing.
The problem with banning "fake news" is that scandals like Rotherham which were reported on by dodgy nationalist blogs would never have seen the light of day. On man's fake news is another scandal waiting to happen. Those blogs would all be labeled racist fake news sites in the current climate.
Take the NYE horrors in Cologne. It was non-MSM media that outed the hundreds of sex attacks and the cover-ups by the German MSM.
When 96% of media donations were to the Hillary campaign in the US - that shows the balance is totally out of kilter. And the same people are now trying to censor the Right using #fakenews as a vehicle - especially so with their liberal fellow travellers who run Facebook and Twitter.
Anyone who can't see what a serious propaganda problem this is...
Speaking of that Cologne cover up... Turns out that's anther piece of fake news.
So one MSM journalist calls it fake news and suddenly it's fake? Pull the other one. That story was blowing up on social media and international media for a week before German media started reporting on it. Whether that's a cover-up or just laziness I'll leave it to your judgement. I'm not going to take the word of one journalist as the truth, though.
I'll take the word of one reputable journalist over 1000 idiots retweeting on Twitter any day.
@bbclaurak: No 10 says Boris Johnson's comments on Saudi Arabia are 'not the government's position' - ouch
I image the PM wasn't too amused with those comments from Boris, sitting as she was at the GCC summit in Bahrain, agreeing to assist the Gulf states with security issues and unrest in Yemen and Iran.
Went to vote after taking kids to school this morning. A few people wondering in to the village polling station. Maybe 50 or so had already voted by 10 am.
Mr. Bob, why do you think I have anything against the frogs?
If you read my excellent new book Kingdom Asunder you'd realise there's a French flavour to the deliciously cunning mercenary Charlotte de Vere, captain of Les Sanguinaires, one of the protagonists.
Or, in my earlier book Journey to Altmortis, you'd admire the elegant wit and savoir faire of the knife-wielding Pretty Pierre.
Just because people don't speak from a politically correct lexicon doesn't mean they have a burning hatred of everyone else. I called my dog the Beast of a Thousand Evils this morning but, shockingly, I don't actually think she's an incarnation of Satan.
As for which terms are ok: I dislike 'Little England(er)'. But I'm not arguing it should be verboten.
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
You might also find that some of us "Red BNP Knuckledraggers" aren't too bad either!
It would be utterly pointless as the ECJ would have no authority over the British courts after we left. All their authority derives from the treaties we are about to withdraw from.
The fake news identified in the NPR interview is from a registered democrat trolling the right, which he seems to treat as part of his motivation.
When I quip about the Guardian and fake news I am only joking slightly. The entire meme about soaring rents is largely fake news, based on nonrepresentative stats heavily distorted by using "averages" based on advertised new-to-market rents (different from those paid by existing tenants) and applying figures heavily distorted by a few ultra-high-cost areas in London, or London in the country as a whole.
The one that really concerns me is when fake news feeds into new laws. No shortage of examples of that either.
At least initially I don't think Fake News was about slanted reporting; We've always had that, and when you can directly measure clicks you can tune a story to slant the facts in the direction that most appeals to your readers' prejudices. What's new is the discovery that if you're optimizing for clicks, the best thing is just to dispense with the original facts altogether and make the whole thing up. A story designed entirely to get clicks is going to out-perform a story that's aimed at that, but has to compromise by sticking to something that actually happened.
We had things like the Sunday Sport working off those mechanics before, but most readers were able to differentiate between that and normal technically-true-but-deliberately-misleading news. I think there's a genuine problem getting news from social media that we don't yet have a good mechanism for people to tell that they're looking at the online version of the Sunday Sport. Facebook made it worse by promoting the headlines and minimizing the source. Mix in half the population having a political agenda that they want to spread and you have quite an effective participatory system for us to bullshit ourselves.
You have something of a point there, but there is a whole thing about a mainstream media that is not worthy of the name.
Consider that the editorial system at the Independent allowed Johann Hari to publish simple lies for a decade, aside from the abuse and the bullying that were his normal practice. Then the editor Chris Blackhurst only acknowledging a tiny faction of the problem.
If you go now and looks at Hari's final video speech you will find him claiming that Gay Pride started a decade earlier than was the case, for one trivial example.
There is a whole side to this about an incompetent, poor quality mainstream media that cannot be trusted without line by line factchecks done by the individual reader. And fingerpointing fake news while being too incompetent to detect it is an exercise in diversion of responsibility.
For me perhaps the most pernicious element is fake/misleading evidence from sources that should be authoritative, whether thinktanks or academics.
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
You might also find that some of us "Red BNP Knuckledraggers" aren't too bad either!
I'm not the one pontificating. How is that £350 million a week for the NHS going down with the natives?
@bbclaurak: No 10 says Boris Johnson's comments on Saudi Arabia are 'not the government's position' - ouch
They bloody well should be the government's position. Well done BoJo for telling it like it is.
That was exactly my thought. If we hadn't spent decades turning a blind eye to Saudi crimes the Middle East might well be in a far better position than it is now.
@bbclaurak: No 10 says Boris Johnson's comments on Saudi Arabia are 'not the government's position' - ouch
I image the PM wasn't too amused with those comments from Boris, sitting as she was at the GCC summit in Bahrain, agreeing to assist the Gulf states with security issues and unrest in Yemen and Iran.
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
You might also find that some of us "Red BNP Knuckledraggers" aren't too bad either!
I'm not the one pontificating. How is that £350 million a week for the NHS going down with the natives?
Not that I find it very likely, but if the Tories go in with a "£350m per week extra for the NHS" pledge in 2020, will your head explode?
McDonald’s Corp. says it will create a new holding company based in the U.K., where it will pay tax for most of the royalties it receives on fast food sales outside the U.S., Bloomberg News reports
The move comes after the EU launched a probe into the company's tax arrangements in Luxembourg in December 2015.
In an e-mailed statement, the company said it would create a new corporate structure in the new year, which will create a new U.K. unit “with responsibility for the majority of the royalties received from licensing the company’s global intellectual property rights outside the United States.”
The profits of this new holding company will pay U.K. corporation tax.
Luxembourg-based McD Franchising Europe, which employs 14 people, reported turnover of $1bn and profits of $540.6m last year from royalty payments generated around the region.
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
You might also find that some of us "Red BNP Knuckledraggers" aren't too bad either!
I'm not the one pontificating. How is that £350 million a week for the NHS going down with the natives?
Who knows? Ask again in a couple of years after we have actually left the EU.
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
You might also find that some of us "Red BNP Knuckledraggers" aren't too bad either!
I'm not the one pontificating. How is that £350 million a week for the NHS going down with the natives?
I'll let you know after we leave the EU. Providing the Conservative chancellor decides to provide the funding, that is.
@bbclaurak: No 10 says Boris Johnson's comments on Saudi Arabia are 'not the government's position' - ouch
They bloody well should be the government's position. Well done BoJo for telling it like it is.
So Boris is broadly correct, but the government's position is to pretend that what he said is not correct and that the Saudi's at least are not involved in any proxy wars that might inhibit us from selling them arms.
Now which bit of this news would be considered true and which bit false in the eyes of a hypothetical government or other official censor?
In regard to the fake news discussion I was reminded earlier of the headline of the year put on the BBC website when a suicide bomber blew up a bar in Ansbach Germany reporting it as ....
'Syrian injured in German blast"
....and his name wasn't Dave with psychological issues either which was the standard line / mickey take that came later of course.
It sounds to me like she wanted to troll May for the purposes of writing that article.
Yes, coming armed with a ballot paper to ask where it says the number of EU citizens should be reduced was a bit silly. Similarly the 37% pie chart. Who cares what the people who didn't vote think - they had their chance to vote, and didn't use it.
McDonald’s Corp. says it will create a new holding company based in the U.K., where it will pay tax for most of the royalties it receives on fast food sales outside the U.S., Bloomberg News reports
The move comes after the EU launched a probe into the company's tax arrangements in Luxembourg in December 2015.
In an e-mailed statement, the company said it would create a new corporate structure in the new year, which will create a new U.K. unit “with responsibility for the majority of the royalties received from licensing the company’s global intellectual property rights outside the United States.”
The profits of this new holding company will pay U.K. corporation tax.
Luxembourg-based McD Franchising Europe, which employs 14 people, reported turnover of $1bn and profits of $540.6m last year from royalty payments generated around the region.
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
You might also find that some of us "Red BNP Knuckledraggers" aren't too bad either!
I'm not the one pontificating. How is that £350 million a week for the NHS going down with the natives?
Not that I find it very likely, but if the Tories go in with a "£350m per week extra for the NHS" pledge in 2020, will your head explode?
That would be funny. Personally I think the claim was utterly dishonest but just imagine a situation in 2020 where the Chancellor stands up at the budget to announce a specific increase in NHS funding of £350m a week even if it hadn't come directly from the money saved by Brexit.
McDonald’s Corp. says it will create a new holding company based in the U.K., where it will pay tax for most of the royalties it receives on fast food sales outside the U.S., Bloomberg News reports
The move comes after the EU launched a probe into the company's tax arrangements in Luxembourg in December 2015.
In an e-mailed statement, the company said it would create a new corporate structure in the new year, which will create a new U.K. unit “with responsibility for the majority of the royalties received from licensing the company’s global intellectual property rights outside the United States.”
The profits of this new holding company will pay U.K. corporation tax.
Luxembourg-based McD Franchising Europe, which employs 14 people, reported turnover of $1bn and profits of $540.6m last year from royalty payments generated around the region.
1. to clamp down on big donations, so as to reduce overall income, and also to reduce reliance on any one source so as to minimise the risks of politics being bought;
2. abolish the distinction between constituency and national spend and either - a. abolish constituency spending limits altogether, or - b. limit it to physical expenditure - leaflets, posters etc - within the designated constituency
3. cap overall expenditure within the short and long campaigns, to N x P, where N is the number of seats contested, and P is the per seat allowance for the given period.
Thank you for the considered response, David. To respond:
1) I suppose the argument goes if someone wants to give a Party £1 million that's their business - it's more of a question as to whether the Party could or should choose to accept it. I think it's a laudable aim - I'm not sure how practical.
2) Broadly speaking, I'd support it so all parties would have a single expenditure limit - £x million - and it would be up to them if they spent all of that nationally or all of it in some constituencies and nothing elsewhere.
3) I do think the short and long campaigns muddy the waters and it's an area which needs more thought and clarity. Arguably, having a fixed election date should help. Should we be looking to place a total limit on expenditure in a constituency during the life of a Parliament ? I don't think that would be right. How parties use their resources between elections is their business.
One overall observation - it's national elections where there are problems. I don't detect the same problems for local election campaigns.
I seem to recall a previous debate on here before when someone claimed that the Lib Dems had clearly exceeded the expenses limits for a by election because they had distributed loads of leaflets that must have cost a fortune to produce . Leaflets printed by yourself on your own printer by volunteers clearly cost almost nothing beyond the cost of the paper ( which may have been bought and paid for prior to the short campaign . Leaflets bought from a printing company would cost vastly more . /the cost of leaflets printed by say a neighbouring Lib Dem Association which has their own printer may cause more problems in assessing the cost of producing them .
This of course was the basis of the Richmond judgement. After the Liberals won the GLC seat in Richmond they were taken to court by the Conservatives. The issue was whether the Liberals had recorded the true cost of their literature. It had been produced 'in house' by a printing society. As far as I remember the judgement was that a 'market price' should have been recorded rather than the actual price. As a result the winning Liberal was deemed not elected.
That would be funny. Personally I think the claim was utterly dishonest but just imagine a situation in 2020 where the Chancellor stands up at the budget to announce a specific increase in NHS funding of £350m a week even if it hadn't come directly from the money saved by Brexit.
Given the long term trajectory of health spending it won't be that long until a future government can say that is has risen by £350 million a week since 2016, and I think it will be quite likely that it is claimed to be a Brexit dividend if only to put the issue to bed.
Miss Plato, there's also another split. It's the non-politically correct being attacked by the politically correct. Winning an argument not by force of persuasion but by silencing dissenting voices isn't a good look.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
For non-liberals, Peterson is a very lonely academic voice and getting awful abuse for it. I've seen several intvs and they're beyond WTF in Canada.
There's so much more interesting stuff on teh interwebs compared to the trivial 5m gotcha filler on the MSM.
Rubin has some superb stuff too - a free speech liberal gay bloke who's a big YouTube player now with 312k+ subs. His long form interviews put most media stuff to shame. He's head and shoulders above the pack.
@bbclaurak: No 10 says Boris Johnson's comments on Saudi Arabia are 'not the government's position' - ouch
They bloody well should be the government's position. Well done BoJo for telling it like it is.
That was exactly my thought. If we hadn't spent decades turning a blind eye to Saudi crimes the Middle East might well be in a far better position than it is now.
Yes. well said.
Ironic that this may get Boris in trouble... (Although I suspect he has carefully calculated that no oe much likes the Saudis... So he can maintain a popular yet maverick personal)
It sounds to me like she wanted to troll May for the purposes of writing that article.
Yes, coming armed with a ballot paper to ask where it says the number of EU citizens should be reduced was a bit silly. Similarly the 37% pie chart. Who cares what the people who didn't vote think - they had their chance to vote, and didn't use it.
Perhaps she thought it would be cathartic for her, to help her through her grief.
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
You might also find that some of us "Red BNP Knuckledraggers" aren't too bad either!
I'm not the one pontificating. How is that £350 million a week for the NHS going down with the natives?
Not that I find it very likely, but if the Tories go in with a "£350m per week extra for the NHS" pledge in 2020, will your head explode?
That would be funny. Personally I think the claim was utterly dishonest but just imagine a situation in 2020 where the Chancellor stands up at the budget to announce a specific increase in NHS funding of £350m a week even if it hadn't come directly from the money saved by Brexit.
I think there will be a lot of mileage in proposing an annual £70m per week increase for five years, thereby satisfying the £350m claim, but letting inflation eat into around half the figure anyway.
This will be the line IMO.
"The Tory party will spend an additional £70m per week on the NHS every year so by the end of Parliament once we have fully left the EU we will be spending an additional £350m per week on the NHS".
Mr. Jobab, I'm happy for the French to call us rosbifs. Or Aussies to call us poms.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
You pick and choose which derogatory terms are 'okay' to suit your argument. It really is that simple.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
You might also find that some of us "Red BNP Knuckledraggers" aren't too bad either!
I'm not the one pontificating. How is that £350 million a week for the NHS going down with the natives?
Not that I find it very likely, but if the Tories go in with a "£350m per week extra for the NHS" pledge in 2020, will your head explode?
That would be funny. Personally I think the claim was utterly dishonest but just imagine a situation in 2020 where the Chancellor stands up at the budget to announce a specific increase in NHS funding of £350m a week even if it hadn't come directly from the money saved by Brexit.
I think there will be a lot of mileage in proposing an annual £70m per week increase for five years, thereby satisfying the £350m claim, but letting inflation eat into around half the figure anyway.
I can just imagine it now - we'd all be arguing whether or not the bus meant £350mn in real terms or not.
Comments
However, the problem with relying on dodgy nationalist blogs for stories is that they are dodgy. If Nick Griffin had not spent years spreading demonstrably false stories about Jews, Asians and other minorities, if he had not been an overt racist, then what he was saying about Rotherham may have been taken more seriously and the story may have been exposed earlier than it was.
Just like the wikileaks emails of the DNC. The American MSM were so determined to poo poo absolutely everything about them, that it allowed conspiracies to grow. In reality, there is some damning stuff in there and then there is the conspiracy stuff.
And if a private corporation wants to prevent people from using their service to promote fucking bollocks then they are perfectly entitled to do so.
Edit: but then so is my English, judging by that tautology.
When I quip about the Guardian and fake news I am only joking slightly. The entire meme about soaring rents is largely fake news, based on nonrepresentative stats heavily distorted by using "averages" based on advertised new-to-market rents (different from those paid by existing tenants) and applying figures heavily distorted by a few ultra-high-cost areas in London, or London in the country as a whole.
The one that really concerns me is when fake news feeds into new laws. No shortage of examples of that either.
And then pays out 6 figure settlements to the people he defames.
Who wants that media mob rule? I don't.
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/dec/20/corrections-and-clarifications
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/dec/12/corrections-and-clarifications
http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/13/guardian-retraction-news-of-the-world-did-not-delete-murder-victims-voicemails/
In Cologne, it turns out that the local, mainstream press was covering it within hours - having checked sources first (ie, gone to the police etc).
I do not support the banning of fake news. I do not support banning anything. I do support treating fake news sites with huge degrees of circumspection.
It creates a head of steam, and then the right-on types get surprised when it turns out most people disagree with them and pointing whilst shrieking "Racist" or "Little Englander" doesn't work.
Open debate and discourse, and freedom to say things people don't want to hear is vital. But the constant push, from the politically correct, from Government and from religious types (most obviously Islam) is towards censorship.
As I understand police and authorities had the evidence and ignored it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/06/parallel_construction_lies_in_english_courts/
I agree with that, and on Cologne, two small-time local papers isn't exactly what I'd call wide coverage. Where was Faz, RTL and others? It took them a week to report on this major story, it felt like they had to be dragged into it while international news organisations were running deep investigations in Germany.
We had things like the Sunday Sport working off those mechanics before, but most readers were able to differentiate between that and normal technically-true-but-deliberately-misleading news. I think there's a genuine problem getting news from social media that we don't yet have a good mechanism for people to tell that they're looking at the online version of the Sunday Sport. Facebook made it worse by promoting the headlines and minimizing the source. Mix in half the population having a political agenda that they want to spread and you have quite an effective participatory system for us to bullshit ourselves.
May continues to sink in my estimation. I think her attitude to civil liberties is entirely wrong-headed, likewise her leftwing workers on boards nonsense (since rowed back on). We'll see how she does with the EU.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMcCusker67/status/806774346190422020
AS for Griffin, I am sure he heard some stuff; just as the bloke from the Times did. The difference is that the reporter from the Times investigated and got a story that stood up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04wyGK6k6HE
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38251936
I read and watched his stuff - and frankly I agree with his core views. He's a very sophisticated chap and a mischief maker. He's Greek, gay, chooses black lovers, nominally Catholic and a conservative voter. He annoys the liberals so much and does a superb job of it - they can't claim he's a White Supremacist, a homophobe blah blah.
It's great - I applaud his efforts and the space he's handed to conservative students on campus to use their free speech voice to say what they believe - and not be shutdown re safe spaces.
- time can be given freely, provided it is not something you charge others for (I.e. not your normal business)
- commercial firms are allowed to give a favourable price to a party but only within an agreed limt (5 or 10% rings a bell but I would have to check). Otherwise things must be at cost price for the reasons earlier posters have identified
- you can't evade the limit by buying stuff in advance; anything used during the campaign must be charged against the limit at cost price. Technically using things that can be re-used should be declared with a notional rental charge (use of computer, hire of rosettes etc.)
- paying canvassers is illegal, period
In the old days, your campaign (and hence your spending) started as soon as you declared yourself a candidate (or when the writ is moved, if later), which used to lead to some fun and games when a naïve candidate did so by accident. Incidentally this explains the origin of the term "prospective candidate". Not that long ago this was replaced by the more sensible rule of when you are nominated.
The Guardian reported that NotW reporters hacked Milly Dowler's phone, deleted some messages, including messages that misled her family that Milly was still alive. After further investigation, the police changed their minds about the last part, but confirmed NotW had hacked the phone and had deleted *some* messages but not the specific ones that gave false hope to Milly's family.
That's not fake news, that is new evidence coming to light.
Miss Plato, bit enormous, so I'll have to watch it in bits, later on.
*Having never been to France, nor London, nor anywhere you are likely to encounter many French people.
Now you know what, exactly? I'm relaxed about international piss-taking, or that I'm irked when my own nation's leader speaks contemptuously of the majority of his own electorate?
The idea that travelling to London or Paris imbues someone with a magical perspective and intellectual insight is sillier than a mongoose wearing a fez.
Exclusive: Ministers believe legal disputes may have to be settled by European judges even after Brexit
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-judges-could-still-decide-uk-legal-cases-despite-theresa-may-pledge-a7461231.html
@bbclaurak: No 10 says Boris Johnson's comments on Saudi Arabia are 'not the government's position' - ouch
I do feel smug, as I cited something like this back in February, and occasionally since June 24th
The source pointed to the hypothetical example of a dispute over a contract between a British and an EU party, signed during a period in which European law and the European Court is supreme.
Brexit negotiators may have to decide which kinds of legal disputes can be solely settled in British courts and whether some may still be subject to the involvement of the European Court.
Alternatively, they may agree to set up a new commission, the source said, with the involvement of both European officials as well as British ones.
And yes, do get out more – you might find you like the 'Frogs' after all (if you actually bothered to meet them).
I think its good that she still does surgeries for her constituentents. The lady just didn't like what she was hearing.
http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/gcc-and-britain-announce-new-strategic-partnership
Mild with scattered heavy rain showers.
If you read my excellent new book Kingdom Asunder you'd realise there's a French flavour to the deliciously cunning mercenary Charlotte de Vere, captain of Les Sanguinaires, one of the protagonists.
Or, in my earlier book Journey to Altmortis, you'd admire the elegant wit and savoir faire of the knife-wielding Pretty Pierre.
Just because people don't speak from a politically correct lexicon doesn't mean they have a burning hatred of everyone else. I called my dog the Beast of a Thousand Evils this morning but, shockingly, I don't actually think she's an incarnation of Satan.
As for which terms are ok: I dislike 'Little England(er)'. But I'm not arguing it should be verboten.
Consider that the editorial system at the Independent allowed Johann Hari to publish simple lies for a decade, aside from the abuse and the bullying that were his normal practice. Then the editor Chris Blackhurst only acknowledging a tiny faction of the problem.
If you go now and looks at Hari's final video speech you will find him claiming that Gay Pride started a decade earlier than was the case, for one trivial example.
There is a whole side to this about an incompetent, poor quality mainstream media that cannot be trusted without line by line factchecks done by the individual reader. And fingerpointing fake news while being too incompetent to detect it is an exercise in diversion of responsibility.
For me perhaps the most pernicious element is fake/misleading evidence from sources that should be authoritative, whether thinktanks or academics.
The move comes after the EU launched a probe into the company's tax arrangements in Luxembourg in December 2015.
In an e-mailed statement, the company said it would create a new corporate structure in the new year, which will create a new U.K. unit “with responsibility for the majority of the royalties received from licensing the company’s global intellectual property rights outside the United States.”
The profits of this new holding company will pay U.K. corporation tax.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-08/mcdonald-s-says-tax-base-will-move-to-u-k-from-luxembourg-iwgc5sbe
Luxembourg-based McD Franchising Europe, which employs 14 people, reported turnover of $1bn and profits of $540.6m last year from royalty payments generated around the region.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/10/29/mcdonalds-uk-pays-123m-in-royalties-to-luxembourg/
Now which bit of this news would be considered true and which bit false in the eyes of a hypothetical government or other official censor?
'Syrian injured in German blast"
....and his name wasn't Dave with psychological issues either which was the standard line / mickey take that came later of course.
Rubin has some superb stuff too - a free speech liberal gay bloke who's a big YouTube player now with 312k+ subs. His long form interviews put most media stuff to shame. He's head and shoulders above the pack.
https://www.youtube.com/user/RubinReport
Ironic that this may get Boris in trouble... (Although I suspect he has carefully calculated that no oe much likes the Saudis... So he can maintain a popular yet maverick personal)
Modern politics demands a certain amount of troll proofing.
This will be the line IMO.
"The Tory party will spend an additional £70m per week on the NHS every year so by the end of Parliament once we have fully left the EU we will be spending an additional £350m per week on the NHS".
Or something along those lines.
Certainly judging by her Twitter history from before the referendum I find it hard to believe she was a Tory.
Sounds like fake news to me.