UK politics

Flying Buttmonkeys Rn’t Us

Blogs, Corruption, Election Skullduggery, Gordon Brown, Internet, Manufacturing consent, UK elections, UK politics, Wingnuts
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buttmnky

Why does Ray Collins, General Secretary of the Labour Party, own, on behalf of the Labour Party, the domain names

davidcameronseconomicpolicy.com

and

davidcameronseconomicpolicy.co.uk?

For negative campaigning, duh. As I’ve said before, New Labour’s studied Karl Rove’s methods very closely. But not quite closely enough.

Like pushpolling and fake leaflets a classic Rovian ploy is to buy up all your opponents’ potential domain names and park them, with page of misleading information – or just plain lies, it doesn’t matter, by the time they get it taken down the campaign’ll be over – about your opponent put up as a placeholder. A lie’s halfway around the world before the truth’s got its boots on, has always been the Rovian motto.

He may have studied Rove’s methods and he may be equally porcine, but Charlie Whelan‘s no Rove and he missed something vital that Rove never did.

Deniability.

Rove knew to hide GOP dirty domain-name tricks behind interlocking puzzles of holding companies and consultants – his hands were never actually seento be dirty. Unlike Labour, which registered smear domains in plain sight for any idiot blogger to do a lookup on, and put its name and address at the bottom of the pages too.

No doubt No 10 spins such stupidity as ‘transparency’.

The Republicans also had an army of flying butt monkeys, insane wingnut commenters, who spammed and trolled opposition blogs and launched DOS attacks against anyone posing a threat online. Again deniability; all were independent commenters, see, no connection to any party, no sir. What email lists and talking points?

Labour doesn’t have anything approaching an army of even pedestrian buttmonkeys; at most it has a few spotty, ambitious youths with Blackberries and a handful of loyal, ageing party apparatchiks with lots of time on their hands trolling the Guardian’s comment section. Labour MPs do look as though they eat plenty of Cheetos though, and most do appear to live in Mom’s basement or at least claim a second home allowance for it.

They failed at blogs and Labour’s efforts at online dirty tricks are an epic fail too. If you want to see quite how epic take a look at their spin doctor scripted, Cameron/Osborne ‘livechat’. They’re just incompetent at everything, even at being evil.

What Did I Tell You?

Civil liberties, creative direct action, Life under Capitalism, Manufacturing consent, Policing, UK politics, War on Terror
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This is just one of the reasons why I’ll never live in England again if I can help it.

london-police

Remember those student activists in Plymouth I posted about a week or so ago? The teenage graffiti artists arrested under terror legislation ahead of the G20?

Guess what, they’ve been released without charges:

All five were detained for a number of days under the Terrorism Act as police carried out a number of searches. At the time it was suggested those arrested were planning to travel to London to protest along with thousands of others at the G20 summit.

All five have now been released without charges under the Terrorism Act. One of the women must answer police bail pending inquiries regarding a drugs offence. The other woman was also on police bail pending what police have called “other criminal matters.”

The schoolboy was on bail until May “in connection with a separate criminal investigation” while the 19-year-old was released with no further action to be taken against him.

As I said at the time it hardly matters to police that no charges resulted. They’ve got what they wanted – potential dissidents intimidated and plenty of ‘intelligence’ against anyone else who might be so foolish as to protest:

“Computers have also been seized for examination.” say Plymouth police. ).

Yes, multiple computers with multiple users, not to mention multiple mobile phones, in 2 shared student houses. Since when have students been guilty of what their housemates read online or text to their mates?

But how very handy for the police to be able to hoover up who knows how many innocent yet politically inconvenient email or facebook friends or bloggers or LJ readers for Jacqui Smith’s handy little database of dissidents (if her husband hasn’t left the USB stick at Spearmint Rhino already

Late edit Sunday am:

I’ve been a bit absent lately and only just realised I’d put the blockquote in the above para in the wrong place. Changed it. Mind you, it’s not as though anyone noticed .

Still Sure It Can’t Happen To You – Or Your Kids?

Capitalism, Civil liberties, Climate change, creative direct action, Life under Capitalism, Manufacturing consent, New Labour, Parenting, Policing, Uh? WTF?, UK politics, War on Terror
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policestateuk

Anyone actively political in a way that’s embarassing or inconvenient to the Labour government is now, officially, a terrorist.

Happening in my home town now: some students in a shared house smoked dope, had some replica weapons, started getting interested in anticapitalism and antiracism/fascism, and engaged in a little light graffiti. They got raided for the dope and they’re now all in prison under the Terrorist Act.

Why are nonviolent potential student protestors and a 16 year-old schoolboy, who’ve yet (other than the graffiti artist) to even protest, let alone commit a known offence, being held as terrorists?

Apparently Devon and Cornwall police found “literature relating to political ideology” in the house. Oh, and knives.

If this is terrorism, we’re all fucked. I certainly would be if having “literature relating to political ideology” is what the police now characterise as terrorism.

Do I have to tell my children, quick, burn your copies of Naomi Klein and Malcolm X for fear of a knock by the plod? Were I in the UK and not on dialysis I would undoubtedly have been on my way to the G20 today to protest by any means necessary. It certainly could’ve been me or many people I know (none of whom are terrorists by any stretch of the imagination) arrested, our homes raided and lives deliberately ruined by politically motivated police, if that’s what makes you a terrorist.

These are trumped-up arrests on trumped-up evidence meant to politically intimidate legitimate protestors who do not agree with the government and to permanently label them (and anyone they know or associate with) as terrorists. It doesn’t matter that the students will probably be quietly released with no charges after the G20. Just the fact you’ve been arrested under the Act is enough to label you forever. You’re in the database now.

“Computers have also been seized for examination.” say Plymouth police. Yes, multiple computers with multiple users, not to mention multiple mobile phones, in 2 shared student houses. Since when have students been guilty of what their housemates read online or text to their mates?

But how very handy for the police to be able to hoover up who knows how many innocent yet politically inconvenient email or facebook friends or bloggers or LJ readers for Jacqui Smith’s handy little database of dissidents (if her husband hasn’t left the USB stick at Spearmint Rhino already).

I don’t know as yet whether any activists I know personally have been swept into the Terrorist Act’s net as a result of this blatant act of deliberate political intimidation – because the arrestees have yet to be charged, let alone named – but that’s hardly the point.

This is happening now, today, to mere schoolboys and student activists, and no-one who speaks out against the current form of government is safe from unjustified, politically motivated intimidation and imprisonment.

Is Smith Doing A Tessa Jowell?

New Labour, Parenting, UK politics, Women
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Comment of The Day, on New Labour’s champion snout-trougher, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith:

nothappy

31 Mar 09, 12:22am (about 8 hours ago)

There is a theory that this is Jaqui’s exit strategy. And a sly one it is.

Possibly and most likely, if there is any justice or common sense left in the UK, the inquiries into her ‘second home’ scam aren’t going too well for her and the lawyers have informed her that she may well be open to criminal fraud charges being brought against her at the end of them…

. Either

So Labour wonks have cooked up this ’embarrassment’ (not her fault, you understand — her husband’s) so she does the decent thing and resigns asap… £116,000 + salary, perks and pension better off, with her reputation as the poor little wronged woman a la Tessa Jowell more or less intact. Far better for all concerned than the first criminal trial of a Home Secretary for the misuse of public funds scenario.

Either way, it’s not going to die down or go away, so get it over with and go, girlfriend.

It’s an ingenious theory, it fits the facts, and it’s certainly neatly Mandelsonian, but if so I don’t think he’s reckoned with Smith’s sense of entitlement to office.

On previous form Our Lady of The Embonpoint is beyond embarassment; she seems convinced that, having reached her level of incompetence, her mere holding of the office somehow then dignifies all she does, no matter how sleazy or dishonest. According to Polly Toynbee she’s even a victim of a new wave of puritanism. Oh, please.

No, I really doubt that the Home Secretary’d go even if her kids were to be dragged in – not that they’re not already. Imagine the crap those poor kids’re taking at school; everyone knows their Dad’s a wanker, even though most Dads are, if truth be told. But most Dads’ little pecadilloes aren’t front-page fodder.

Most parents, however hatefully self-righteous and grasping, would naturally want such an ordeal over as soon as possible – or at least you’d think so; yet Smith still refuses to resign, although it would seem the quickest way out of what must be excruciating for her children.

How is it humanly possible for a woman to be so placidly, stupidly bovine and yet so selfishly hard-faced and brazen at the same time?

I doubt she’d go even if it were to turn out it was one or both of the Smith-Timney offspring who actually watched the movies, and that Timney Sr.’d been taking the rap for one or both; something that might even seem a little noble, until you remember he’s her admin assistant and paid 40,000 pounds a year out of the public purse, in addition to her own annual 300,000 in salary and allowances – and he was responsible for processing the expenses claim. Duh.

What would be mildly amusing is if the diary evidence that Smith’s reportedly convinced will clear her of dishonestly fiddling the second home allowance to pay off her sister’s mortgage were to show she was actually at at home, for certain values of ‘home’, at the time the pron was rented, or even if the avowed antiporn campaigner turns out to have watched it herself.

But no, even then, even if the tabloids were to go totally paparazzi on the past sexual behaviour (there’s a lot happens at party conferences) of a woman who wants to police everyone else’s, and that of her family too, I still doubt she’d go.

She has no shame. If this is Mandelson’s exit strategy I think he’s got it wrong.

Comment Of The Day

Blogs, Comment of the Day, Corruption, Internet, Media, UK politics, Writing
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Didn’t I say a couple of years back that a depression’s only official when the middle classes start complaining about benefit rates? Job Seekers Allowance is currently just over a measly sixty quid a week and even Guardian journos are struggling.

A commenter wryly commiserated:

dementedlands

23 Mar 09, 11:45am (about 19 hours ago)

I am unemployed. It is impossible to live on £60 a week. Luckily I discovered that I was able to claim £14,000 a year for the house my parents live in. I use it for job seeking and have made over £60,000 .

Neighbours call me a benefits cheat and point out that a couple were recently given a 6 month jail sentence for a £40,000 fraud. I call them a bunch of jealous peasants.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/23/tony-mcnulty-allowances.

Heh.

The brass-necked, greedy dishonesty and sheer hard-faced gall of Employment Minister Tony McNulty, who’s been highly visible in the Guardian’s pages and elsewhere demonising non-existent cheats and scroungers with his hateful ‘no ifs or buts’ anti benefit fraud campaign, beggars belief. Talk about rubbing the faces of the 2 million unemployed in it.

Understandably it’s been front-page news all over the UK and a hot topic on blogs of all political flavours; corruption’s corruption after all, however inured we’ve become to it since the advent of New Labour.

But not at the Guardian, though being a supposedly leftwing paper you’d think they’d find the irony delicious. But while the tabloids and broadsheets scream condemnation the Guardian’s appeared oddly muted on McNulty and strangely quiet on the corruption and greed of the Labour establishment in general. I’m amazed that comment got through CiF’s notoriously harsh moderation.

Another irony the Guardian seems to have missed in light of the up to 150 journalists and others the Guardian Media Group (Editor Alan Rusbridger, salary £355,000 pa including 17,000 benefits) is itself about to make redundant on sixty pounds a week (£3,120 pa)is that it should then publish a comment decrying the low benefit rates that it is itself condemning its own employees to. Talk about rubbing the faces of the unemployed in it.

Comment is Free‘s a very popular Guardian section that appears to rely mostly on insecure freelancers, cheap recent graduates and user generated comments for content and must already be – compared to a fully staffed print newspaper – cheap to run.

It would be interesting to know, therefore, exactly how many Guardian journalists and CiF columnists already rely on the benefits system to feed their families and underpin their struggling and insecure writing careers – and conversely (how like so many other British companies) how many and which newspapers offering low-paid parttime or freelance employment rely on state benefits to underpin their business models. Without Tax Credit support for freelancers how many newspapers would fail entirely, I wonder?

I see now why the Guardian, wants unemployment benefit rates to rise. It’s potentially vital to it’s new shiny 24/7 online business model.

Tell me again, who’re the welfare scroungers exactly? No wonder the Guardian has such a discreet empathy with McNulty.