Posts Tagged "Internet"

Bath Tories go out of business!

Any political person with a bit of talent will tell you that you have to keep an eye on your enemy. Whether it’s reading Le Figaro or scanning through pages of pompous euro-sceptic drivel.

Intending to do the latter, I headed over to my old pals, the Tory Society at the University of Bath.

They’ve always had a clumsy redirect from the old, and much neater named, http://bathcf.co.uk to http://bath-conservative-future.co.uk, but imagine by surprise and delight horror to discover this black and white message:

This website has been disabled. Unfortunately the host, Fractix, have now ceased trading. Fractix previously rented webspace through Heart Internet via a Reseller Account. The account has now been disabled.

That’s market forces for you, lads. Lucky I’ve got your backs!

(Three posts in one day? He must be up to something!)

Jacob Rees-Mogg caught out faking the truth in ANOTHER newsletter

A bit of a Christmas Cracker now, from our very own living bad joke.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory PPC for North-East Somerset, really is the comedy Tory gift who keeps on giving. (Giving tax benefits to the super-rich that is, ho ho!)

His latest gaffe, since November, sees him once again faking he truth.

Private Eye picked this one up, and in the Christmas edition explained how he shipped a London-based member of his London-based investment firm staff on a 260 mile (about 420km) round trip to Midsomer Norton to take part in a photo opportunity to illustrate his website.

Here’s a scan of the article:

However, what Private Eye doesn’t tell you is that the very same picture, also appears on the front page of Rees-Mogg’s latest hard copy newsletter which has been circulated across N E Somerset, under the title of “Honesty on the Economy”. Take a look:

If you head over to this page on Rees-Mogg’s London based hedge-fund management company and scroll down to the bottom, in last place you have Fiona Tyrrell. Then, if you head to his political website you’ll see the same picture Private Eye was talking about.

If you still in any doubt, right-click the image and choose “save as” and you’ll find that Rees-Muggins has even named the picture “Fiona”.

In fairness, the caption “Honesty on the Economy. Jacob talking to a lady in Midsomer Norton” is technically true. That is Jacob. Fiona is a lady. The pair of them are in Somerset. Her mouth is presumably moving.

Actually, Jacob isn’t allowed to talk any more. Conservative Central Headquarters issued a gagging order after he told The Scotsman in October 2001:

I gradually realised that whatever I happened to be speaking about, the number of voters in my favour dropped as soon as I opened my mouth.

Looks like there is a theme emerging here from Honesty Mogg. Time to add this one to the list, having been in trouble for plagiarising Trevor Kavanagh from The Sun he now has to fabricate ‘in the constituency with constituents’ pictures to give an impression he’s connected to the community.

I’ll leave you with this thought for Christmas; the Rees-Muggins newsletter was delivered by the Royal Mail. I suppose his crumbling campaign means he has no local volunteers to deliver for him!

Click here to see other classic Ress-Mogg gaffes.

Jan 6th Update: Venue Magazine has also featured the story as their main news article, to supplement other pieces in The Telegraph, in The Daily Mail and a little bit in The Independent. Nothing from The Times, not that that would have anything to do with Rees-Mogg’s father as former editor and columnist, of course.

Finally, can anybody tell me why I published this on December 23rd, yet the Nationals waited until December 28th/29th? Guys, come on, a little credit here.

Back to the Facebook

Well, I’m back on Facebook, after a week-and-a-bit.

I was originally hoping to extend my Facebook holiday to the entire month of May, were it not for a few people asking me to do things that required the site. Nevertheless, my essays are done and I did learn a thing or two from my experience:

- People are bitter. On Saturday I responded to a comment on this website which required the use of Facebook; since I was under no contractual or religious obligation to stay away, I decided to honour the request. I doubt I was particularly “missed” but the result was a few snide comments like “I thought you were giving up Facebook?”

It was as if they were hoping I would “fail” my little experiment. I’d apparently disrupted the social consensus that everybody has to love Facebook and be on it for an hour a day, it seemed that this deviation was unnerving to them. The response was hardly “Yes we can.”

- The next thing is that people still don’t get Twitter. I have a simple function that when I post something to Twitter, Facebook automatically picks it up and uses it for a Status Update. I find it convenient as I don’t tweet too often to make it spammy. It was assumed that I was logging in to update my status; they decided not to see the “via Twitter” small print.

- However, I have discovered a new relationship with FB. For me, it’s like a huge Yellow Pages. If you ignore all the chitchat and groups and distractions, it’s a pretty useful tool.

Conclusion: I doubt I’ll be “checking” Facebook very often, but I will be using it as a sort of Big Brother database if I need to check up on you, as we’ve discussed before. It’s not going back on my blackberry. (If you need something, email. If you don’t have my email, find it on Facebook!

Though I will make a special mention of my bit of Facebook: If 1,000,000 People Join This Group, Nothing Will Change. It’s A Group

Blogging and Twitter

Leaving aside the confusion that I am going to twitter about blogging about twitter, it’s worth looking at my previous post explaining Twitter.

On my birthday (coincidentally), Tom Harris MP wrote a post asking whether “Twitter is more leftie than the blogosphere”. /

I ask this because when I check my Twitter feed, it tends to contain slightly less criticism of the government — in fact, less politics in general.

In fact, it’s almost certain that there is “less politics” due to the fact that on Twitter, the chatter is a lot more inane, “so-and-so is making a cup of tea” or “watching the Apprentice” as opposed to “such-and-such dislikes the third reading of the South West transport bill!”

Blogs are, in contrast, a more personal space. The chances are that like searches for like. Harris concludes that blogs are like dinner parties, while Twitter is like the pub. I’m certainly inclined to agree, based on my previous post.

Though, this should provide an opportunity, as blogs define themselves in the search for an identity. By having a space for “intellectual” (longer) thoughts, and a space for “who cares-ities” (“X is going to the shops!”) the two become more distinct.

The overlap would be the Livejournal; the internet diary. Many people use blogges to talk about their morning toast or their yoga lessons in more depth than the average tweet would allow.

We might even be rid of the “Hi. How are you?” “Hi. Didn’t you read my Twitter from 3 minutes ago?”

A tweet in the hand is worth two on the net

I’m on the blogosphere, I’m on the Facebook, I’m on the Blackberry and now I’m on the Twitter. The Twitter website was established all the way back in 2006, but in recent weeks the Twitterers have come home to roost, along with all the associated awful puns and weak metaphors.

The “deal” with Twitter, for any middle-aged readers who might wish to engage with one of the “young people” we hear so much about, is that it provides a forum in which you can post your least important thoughts, 140 characters at a time. Sceptics will say that Twitter is basically identical to Facebook, but with all the features removed except for the status updates. Instead of online friends whom you’ve never met, you now get ‘followers’.

The concept of followers is interesting; they are not stalkers, but it certainly makes any would-be stalker’s life a lot easier. Find your celebrity of choice, hopefully one that really wants to “engage with the youth” (politicians are probably best for this), follow them on Twitter, and then follow them in real life. If the terrorists get hold of Twitter, the west is doomed.

The reverse is also true, for all the furore over Britain becoming a Big Brother state, people seem to be more than willing to give up their personal information on Facebook. The police no longer need to invest millions in security cameras and CCTV; they just need to get a Twitter account. Fortunately for the libertarians, the only people anywhere near the British government who come close to understanding Twitter are Alastair Campbell and John Prescott, who like to advertise their own blogs rather than tell us when they’re making a cup of tea. Twitter seems perfectly suited for ‘proper news’ items, like when it snowed in Bath earlier this year and the University told us that lectures we cancelled. However, the meaning of news is notoriously flexible.

During President Obama’s State of the Union Address, it was revealed that Members of Congress were tweeting or twittering throughout with important information like “the best seats are reserved for the Senators”. A small number of MPs have tweeted in the middle of Prime Minister’s Questions. Surely, if someone is busy typing on their Smartphone while they are supposed to be listening to something, it means they are not paying attention, and advertising that very fact.

So Twitter has become very popular in media and political circles grasping for any sort of relevance. The problem is not that their ideas and thoughts are too complex, but that they jump on any sort of gimmick that lessens the credibility of institutions in desperate need of authority. Through descending to shorter and more inane chatter, they have confused new with good.   

I’ve often said that the process of blogging is like talking to an empty room. By comparison, Twitter can only be described as talking to a very crowded room, with everyone else talking at the same time, frantic to make their own voices heard.

Democratising Information

Occasionally, when I watch interviews on The Colbert Report, I see a book that makes me think “I really want to read that.” Of course, I never do, because I having little more than a passing interest about how, for example, a clever use of language has turned the French into cheese-eating surrender monkeys or the political label of ‘liberal’ into tofu-munching lefty hippies. One such exception though was a book by Andrew Keen, entitled The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today’s User-Generated Media Are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values.

The book deals with Web 2.0, a term used to describe uploading rather than downloading (not an upgrade to your browser). The internet used to be much like a library in that a person could take whatever information they needed, now however, it is possible to create your own information. Inevitably, when too many amateur authors are cramming their rubbish into the shelves, good information becomes harder to find. Keen notes that “the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” I plead guilty in some cases, I do not pretend to be an expert on that which I write, nor do I claim to be particularly original, but I would hope to think there is a difference between this blog and a YouTube video of Chris Croker crying over Britney Spears. Well, I know there is a difference; his video is much more popular.

I like democracy in almost every case, I am grateful that I am able to comment on anything I choose, and perhaps a few people will read it. I will not change history here, nor will I uncover any scandals, at best I aim for somebody out there to think “Oh yeah, maybe.” One of the few places where I am an elitist though, is information. Knowledge is power, and not everybody can handle it. Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) writes very eloquently on the subject of cognitive dissonance, and if there is one thing to which the majority acts badly, it is being told that it is wrong.

The result of this is Wikipedia.org, a user based encyclopaedia and the only place where facts are decided by popular vote. (there is no actual voting, but if more people believe a fact to be true, the pages get edited more often in that direction). If this were a school project between five students, it would be a good idea, since one “user” can fill gaps in another’s knowledge. On a larger scale, errors are magnified, in principle; artists write about art, linguists write about language and statisticians work on statistics pages. Instead, we have miners writing about airplanes, equestrians writing about reptiles and accountants writing about flamenco dancing. The gap between theory and practice is larger in theory than it is in practice.