OT Public service memory hole announcement: If you have any recollection of anything the Conservatives may have said before May, 2010, please erase it:
I'd blame incompetence over conspiracy. Robots.txt *can* be hard to manage, especially with poorly structured websites.
I've seen this before when companies move CMS with different defaults, or go about a site reorganisation.
A very poor blog entry by CW standards.
Hard to manage as in "Doh, I seem to have somehow accidentally created a text file blacklisting everything up to May, 2010"? The Bush White House once had a similar management problem affecting anything they'd said about Iraq before the war.
The erasure had the effect of hiding Conservative speeches in a secretive corner of the internet like those that shelter the military, secret services, gangsters and paedophiles.
That's a quite unnecessary phrase. Reflects badly on the author, in my view. It may be true, but it's a limited choice and one that is designed to be negative.
I agree, there should be a political version of Godwin's Law where you automatically lose the argument if you mention pedophiles. But their description of the effect of the robots.txt is correct, and we can confirm their reporting about the content ourselves.
(Check it quick before it changes - I'm not sure if you can put your robots.txt file in your robots.txt file...)
JamesLyons @MirrorJames Cchq; "These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide" #cobblers
They need @JosiasJessop on staff, his line was much better.
You know, I think we are going to have to put up with tim spamming the site for the next few weeks and months with "look at this speech I found" froth, froth, pleb, red faced, posh, toff, froth.
Thank you so much for sorting that out for us EiT.
If they really wanted to foil their enemies they'd take IDS,Cameron,Osborne, Lansley and Hunt out with a mortar, not just erase what they said. This'll just be an amusing story making them look stupid.
A bigger story than badgergate tim?
I wonder if Ed Balls wishes he could erase some of his speeches on the economy?
The fact fewer of your countrymen are unemployed has really got to you today, hasn't it?
While looking to see if Camerons speeches exploiting child victims have been deleted (there's so many they couldn't all go) I found this gem
He manages to milk the Edlington case, link it to a Broken Britain, then plans to solve Broken Britain by giving marriage tax breaks paid for by...wait for it...A rise in green taxes!
The other day, someone quoted Dennis Skinner as having made (or repeated) the old joke about "half of the party opposite are crooks" and, upon being rebuked by Speaker Bercow, changed it to "half of the party opposite aren't crooks". But I can't find it in his recent parliamentary contributions http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cmallfiles/mps/commons_hansard_721_od.html When did he say it? Or was someone just making an old joke and attributing it to him?
Best sh!t excuse so far for not turning up to last night's vote, it was right for MPs not to go to vote because it wastes money on travel that could be used on public services.
A f****** bastard or A f****** idiot or a f****** c*** are just simple terms of abuse
After the word f****** words like 'pleb' or 'moron' probably raise the stakes a little because then it becomes pejorative. Stop thinking junior school.
What we need to cut the deficit is an economic team that gets Britain back to work, getting down both benefits claims and increasing revenues. And building more houses.
All hail the magnificent Osborne and Alexander!
Has Balls said anything of interest recently? Apart from his perceptive views on the NY skyline?
A f****** bastard or A f****** idiot or a f****** c*** are just simple terms of abuse
After the word f****** words like 'pleb' or 'moron' probably raise the stakes a little because then it becomes pejorative. Stop thinking junior school.
Wasn't it something like 'I thought you lot were supposed to f****** help us'? If that's correct, then Mitchell didn't even call the police officers anything abusive, let alone that toxic little word 'plebs'.
A f****** bastard or A f****** idiot or a f****** c*** are just simple terms of abuse
After the word f****** words like 'pleb' or 'moron' probably raise the stakes a little because then it becomes pejorative. Stop thinking junior school.
Facts definitely not your strong point. He said, "I thought you lot were supposed to f***ing help us". He didn't call the police anything.
What we need to cut the deficit is an economic team that gets Britain back to work, getting down both benefits claims and increasing revenues. And building more houses.
All hail the magnificent Osborne and Alexander!
Has Balls said anything of interest recently? Apart from his perceptive views on the NY skyline?
There was some hot air on HS2 but that amounted to nothing. He'll be the Tories' greatest asset come 2015.
So that's Jack Straw, David Blunkett, a large percentage of Asian and black Britons, Eastern European immigrants living in Boston, and their descedents all acknowledging that mass immigration was a bad mistake and that integration is nigh on impossible...
Only the metropolitan luvvies, governments stats addicts, champagne quaffers, Latin speakers and people that refuse to acknowledge when they've lost arguments remain blind to what everybody else can see
New Populus mega poll on the economy explains why the PB Tories do not understand anything.
And yet, while 38% leant towards agreeing that there is a national economic recovery underway, just 29% of those (11% of the population) agreed they feel part of that recovery. Further, nearly two-fifths (38%) thought there are no signs of an economic recovery and a quarter (24%) weren’t sure either way.
It's hardly surprising that people don't feel better off. You must just be hoping that wage rises don't start feeding into the economy in the next 6-12 months. Given Labour have been proven comprehensively wrong on every other major economic trend I wouldn't bet on those figures remaining static till 2015.
Remember at some point people will be in the ballot box asking if their job and future is secure with Ed Balls in charge. Should focus a few minds.
So that's Jack Straw, David Blunkett, a large percentage of Asian and black Britons, Eastern European immigrants living in Boston, and their descedents all acknowledging that mass immigration was a bad mistake and that integration is nigh on impossible...
Only the metropolitan luvvies, governments stats addicts, champagne quaffers, Latin speakers and people that refuse to acknowledge when they've lost arguments remain blind to what everybody else can see
Lots of twittering going on about that robots.txt story, presumably Labour's web people are now frantically scouring their old robots.txt versions on the Internet Archive trying to figure out if they've ever done the same thing...
presumably Labour's web people are now frantically scouring their old robots.txt versions on the Internet Archive trying to figure out if they've ever done the same thing...
tim will be comparing them to the Soviet Union if they did.
50% of those expressing an opinion thought there was a recovery underway, 50% didn't.
Public sector workers much more likely to argue there was no recovery - well, there isn't for them, because their lives and incomes are linked to the deficit.
The only way their lot can improve is if the government start spending - and that means taxing everyone else.
Miliband needs to spell out how that will be done - no doubt bankers bonuses are meant to pay the £700bn a year bill for the state. :-)
50% of those expressing an opinion thought there was a recovery underway, 50% didn't.
The people working in the restaurants, bars and hotels are likely to think there's a recovery underway if the restaurants, bars and hotels are all full of people who are better off. The question is the proportions.
Looks like the PB Kinnock's have got a topic to avoid talking about today's economy.
Quite happy to talk about the economy, and your predictions that it was feeding through to the polls. Hows the falling living standards/Omnishambles Osborne thing working out for you with that political equation?
So you don't want to talk about the economy.
How about the latest Dan Hodges blog ?
I think the working title is "Chicken Ed the liar"
Looks like the PB Kinnock's have got a topic to avoid talking about today's economy.
Quite happy to talk about the economy, and your predictions that it was feeding through to the polls. Hows the falling living standards/Omnishambles Osborne thing working out for you with that political equation?
So you don't want to talk about the economy.
How about the latest Dan Hodges blog ?
I think the working title is "Chicken Ed the liar"
Yesterday was The rise in Ed Milibands ratings are bad for Ed Miliband, is todays Ed miliband connived with Unite in Falkirk by dobbing them in to the cops?
tim - we all know you don't care about Ed's economy with the truth - that's fine - no better shill than someone without scruples or principles.
@tim - As I told you yesterday - 'it's the hope that kills you"
Now go and take the rest of the day off. You're having a truly terrrrible day. As ever, thrashing about endlessly and aimlessly. Others might call you a silly plonker, being compassionate, I would aver, some room for improvement.
!8 months to go. Loads more good economic news to come....and time for those living standards to rise.
" Back in July he had said: “I am here to talk about a different politics, a politics that is open. Transparent. And trusted. Exactly the opposite of the politics we’ve recently seen in Falkirk. A politics that was closed. A politics of the machine. A politics that is rightly hated. What we saw in Falkirk is part of the death throes of the old politics.”
But all the time his office had been supporting a deal with Len McCluskey to enable him to rig the selection. And the price of that deal was a couple of hundred direct debits.
Ed Miliband did not tackle the machine politics of Falkirk thoroughly. Or swiftly. Instead, he connived in it. Those of us who have been perplexed at his actions over the past fortnight now have our answer."
"But this morning the Times has published an e-mail which finally gets to the bottom of the mystery, and provides the explanation of why Ed Miliband has been running scared. It’s a simple one. Instead of acting swiftly and thoroughly, as Miliband has been claiming for months, when presented with evidence of Unite’s attempt to rig the selection in Falkirk he attempted to strike a deal with McCluskey instead."
There is another reason why banning polls isn't a good idea.
It is up to the public to decide what influences its votes, and knowing the answer from polls often does. Far better therefore to let the public have access to accurate information, open to public scrutiny, than to have the public rely on whispers and rumours.
However, I disagree with you for two reasons. Firstly, opinion polls aren't accurate, objective portrayers of truth. They're well-educated guesswork, which uses intelligent statistical sorting to try and get sample sizes and implement filters to minimise the chances (and degree) of inaccurate polling scores. A rogue poll can happen due to entirely random chance rather than bad polling practice, and even small mistakes by the pollster can also lead to a poll that doesn't reflect reality.
That's without getting into leading questions, questions that conflate two or more ideas and so on.
Secondly, people like backing winners. If a single poll shows a strong lead for one party, or a collapse for one party, and is subsequently given wide media coverage that will affect how people vote. But the poll could be a rogue, which means that flawed data would be used to materially affect how people vote.
I agree, there should be a political version of Godwin's Law where you automatically lose the argument if you mention pedophiles. But their description of the effect of the robots.txt is correct, and we can confirm their reporting about the content ourselves.
(Check it quick before it changes - I'm not sure if you can put your robots.txt file in your robots.txt file...)
JamesLyons @MirrorJames Cchq; "These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide" #cobblers
They need @JosiasJessop on staff, his line was much better.
You mean my comment about the Streisand Effect? ;-)
I've been doing a little more digging, and it looks (slightly) more suspicious than I first thought, although I was rather put off by the language in the blog post, which does the story no favours.
However, it could still just be incompetence / lack of knowledge about robots.txt and its interaction with the WM, especially after a change in the site's organisation. Such things happen.
It's interesting to look at all the party's websites every so often, as they all have various usability issues. A few months ago, the Conservative's was the best for disabled access, but has always felt a little too corporate for my liking.
Labour's current website has lots of information, but poorly presented IMHO, and does not have a search function that I can find. Which makes it hard to find (say) Labour's position on HS2 today. The information may be in there, but they don't want me to find it.
This makes it a question of what the purposes of their websites are. Are they just informational , or are they for marketing / publicity, or for members' services?
(In fact, it would be interesting to see how far back the Labour and Lib Dem websites keep equivalent speeches and other information).
I agree, there should be a political version of Godwin's Law where you automatically lose the argument if you mention pedophiles. But their description of the effect of the robots.txt is correct, and we can confirm their reporting about the content ourselves.
(Check it quick before it changes - I'm not sure if you can put your robots.txt file in your robots.txt file...)
JamesLyons @MirrorJames Cchq; "These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide" #cobblers
They need @JosiasJessop on staff, his line was much better.
I was rather put off by the language in the blog post, which does the story no favours.
Indeed:
The bots grab web pages for the benefit of plebs like those Cameron and Osborne claimed to be speaking for in those years before they were elected.
A rogue poll can happen due to entirely random chance rather than bad polling practice, and even small mistakes by the pollster can also lead to a poll that doesn't reflect reality.
That's without getting into leading questions, questions that conflate two or more ideas and so on.
I agree with the potential flaws in polls that you highlight (and am very aware of them from personal experience - in a previous job I helped conduct and analyse the polling for one of our parties).
The conclusion however I draw is the opposite. The answer to rogue polls is to have more polls. The answer to possible bias in questions and structure is to have transparency.
Banning polls actually makes both those problems worse. Is that last poll before the ban an accurate one or a rogue? And during the ban are the rumours that circulate about private information, private polls and polls conducted from overseas accurate, let alone about polls with well constructed questions? And so on.
Secrecy and fewer polls makes the potential problems with polls worse.
Comments
Thank you so much for sorting that out for us EiT.
I wonder if Ed Balls wishes he could erase some of his speeches on the economy?
The fact fewer of your countrymen are unemployed has really got to you today, hasn't it?
The future Labour govt will benefit greatly from George and Danny's economic legacy, but they won't appreciate it.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cmallfiles/mps/commons_hansard_721_od.html
When did he say it?
Or was someone just making an old joke and attributing it to him?
Are they on holiday again?
.......someone underwhelmed with London Labour "an unwinnable vote".....
"And you still cannot tell the difference between a resignation and sacking ..."
'A resignation' is something ambitious cabinet ministers don't do. It is also the polite term for a sacking.
@JJ
"I don't think even the police stooped that low"
A f****** bastard or A f****** idiot or a f****** c*** are just simple terms of abuse
After the word f****** words like 'pleb' or 'moron' probably raise the stakes a little because then it becomes pejorative. Stop thinking junior school.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Tui6FQgZs
All hail the magnificent Osborne and Alexander!
Has Balls said anything of interest recently? Apart from his perceptive views on the NY skyline?
Only the metropolitan luvvies, governments stats addicts, champagne quaffers, Latin speakers and people that refuse to acknowledge when they've lost arguments remain blind to what everybody else can see
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/13/jack-straw-labour-mistake-poles
Remember at some point people will be in the ballot box asking if their job and future is secure with Ed Balls in charge. Should focus a few minds.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/11/why-cant-labour-talk-sensibly-about-immigration/
Public sector workers much more likely to argue there was no recovery - well, there isn't for them, because their lives and incomes are linked to the deficit.
The only way their lot can improve is if the government start spending - and that means taxing everyone else.
Miliband needs to spell out how that will be done - no doubt bankers bonuses are meant to pay the £700bn a year bill for the state. :-)
How about the latest Dan Hodges blog ?
I think the working title is "Chicken Ed the liar"
tim - we all know you don't care about Ed's economy with the truth - that's fine - no better shill than someone without scruples or principles.
Now go and take the rest of the day off. You're having a truly terrrrible day. As ever, thrashing about endlessly and aimlessly. Others might call you a silly plonker, being compassionate, I would aver, some room for improvement.
!8 months to go. Loads more good economic news to come....and time for those living standards to rise.
18 months. Did you get that?
" Back in July he had said: “I am here to talk about a different politics, a politics that is open. Transparent. And trusted. Exactly the opposite of the politics we’ve recently seen in Falkirk. A politics that was closed. A politics of the machine. A politics that is rightly hated. What we saw in Falkirk is part of the death throes of the old politics.”
But all the time his office had been supporting a deal with Len McCluskey to enable him to rig the selection. And the price of that deal was a couple of hundred direct debits.
Ed Miliband did not tackle the machine politics of Falkirk thoroughly. Or swiftly. Instead, he connived in it. Those of us who have been perplexed at his actions over the past fortnight now have our answer."
Wage growth 0.7%, inflation 2.2%
Tory election slogan: "you've never had it so good"
http://order-order.com/2013/11/13/labours-iain-mcnicol-condemns-himself/
what a hypocrite.
Also
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100245764/so-now-we-know-ed-miliband-struck-a-deal-that-allowed-unite-to-rig-the-falkirk-selection/
"But this morning the Times has published an e-mail which finally gets to the bottom of the mystery, and provides the explanation of why Ed Miliband has been running scared. It’s a simple one. Instead of acting swiftly and thoroughly, as Miliband has been claiming for months, when presented with evidence of Unite’s attempt to rig the selection in Falkirk he attempted to strike a deal with McCluskey instead."
It is up to the public to decide what influences its votes, and knowing the answer from polls often does. Far better therefore to let the public have access to accurate information, open to public scrutiny, than to have the public rely on whispers and rumours.
I've expanded on this at http://www.markpack.org.uk/46499/banning-polls-before-elections-is-a-bad-idea-even-if-it-worked/
However, I disagree with you for two reasons. Firstly, opinion polls aren't accurate, objective portrayers of truth. They're well-educated guesswork, which uses intelligent statistical sorting to try and get sample sizes and implement filters to minimise the chances (and degree) of inaccurate polling scores. A rogue poll can happen due to entirely random chance rather than bad polling practice, and even small mistakes by the pollster can also lead to a poll that doesn't reflect reality.
That's without getting into leading questions, questions that conflate two or more ideas and so on.
Secondly, people like backing winners. If a single poll shows a strong lead for one party, or a collapse for one party, and is subsequently given wide media coverage that will affect how people vote. But the poll could be a rogue, which means that flawed data would be used to materially affect how people vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
I've been doing a little more digging, and it looks (slightly) more suspicious than I first thought, although I was rather put off by the language in the blog post, which does the story no favours.
However, it could still just be incompetence / lack of knowledge about robots.txt and its interaction with the WM, especially after a change in the site's organisation. Such things happen.
It's interesting to look at all the party's websites every so often, as they all have various usability issues. A few months ago, the Conservative's was the best for disabled access, but has always felt a little too corporate for my liking.
Labour's current website has lots of information, but poorly presented IMHO, and does not have a search function that I can find. Which makes it hard to find (say) Labour's position on HS2 today. The information may be in there, but they don't want me to find it.
This makes it a question of what the purposes of their websites are. Are they just informational , or are they for marketing / publicity, or for members' services?
(In fact, it would be interesting to see how far back the Labour and Lib Dem websites keep equivalent speeches and other information).
The bots grab web pages for the benefit of plebs like those Cameron and Osborne claimed to be speaking for in those years before they were elected.
Someone's petticoat is showing......
The conclusion however I draw is the opposite. The answer to rogue polls is to have more polls. The answer to possible bias in questions and structure is to have transparency.
Banning polls actually makes both those problems worse. Is that last poll before the ban an accurate one or a rogue? And during the ban are the rumours that circulate about private information, private polls and polls conducted from overseas accurate, let alone about polls with well constructed questions? And so on.
Secrecy and fewer polls makes the potential problems with polls worse.