BNP’s website the most visited during the 2010 UK general election

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

Surprisingly considering the British National Party’s implosion, but the BNP’s website was the most visited website of any British political party during the run-up to the 2010 UK general election according to figures published in the Journal of Europe-Asia Studies (p. 1467, Vol 64, Number 8, October 2012).

The BNP website in the three months to 16 March 2010, had more visitors than the websites of the Conservative party, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats combined. Yet, ironically it also had the lowest audience share of British visitors with only 65.3% of visitors to the site emanating from the UK with 12.6% of visitors from the US. This compares with 85.9% of visits to the Labour party website coming from the UK.

While the BNP still managed the largest audience share of all the three main political parties, in the run-up to the election its audience share actually fell 10% during this period, while it rose 13%, 25% and 29% for the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Conservatives respectively.

Why LOLs may soon swing elections

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

For some time political parties have been working to harness social media to help them win elections. The Obama campaign famously outspent the Romney campaign online by a factor of 10 to 1 ($47 million vs $4.7 million). Even its use of traditional media was tailored using the huge amount of digital information the campaign hoovered up from online sources.

As the New York Times (“Data You Can Believe In“) found:

“the campaign literally knew every single wavering voter in the country that it needed to persuade to vote for Obama, by name, address, race, sex and income. What’s more, he hinted, the campaign had figured out how to get its television advertisements in front of them with a previously inconceivable level of knowledge and accuracy.”

Yet, with the notable exception of the Obama campaign, contemporary political parties have been uniformly bad at building their online presence. Online startup 38Degrees has more campaigning “members” than any British political party including their Facebook likes.

To the fill the gap left by the professional, but ineffectual, online presence of the major political parties, third parties including trade unions and individuals have stepped in. Working often with minute budgets and turning out material that can cause embarrassment to the established parties, these third party actors are beginning to make an impact.

Dontbeafuckingidiot.com is created “BY A HUMAN BEING WHO DOESN’T BELONG TO ANY POLITICAL PARTY BUT DOES GIVE A SHIT”. Sweary, blunt, highly simplified and pro-Labor the site went viral near instantly with over 1 million unique visitors in just 24 hours (with possibly up to 4% of total registered Australian voters viewing the site). Jesse Richardson, the site’s creator, had to issue a media statement re-iterating it was a personal project and nothing to do with his employers or the Australian Labor Party.

Meanwhile, in Germany, trade union IG Metall’s video implores voters not to believe the re-election of Angela Merkel’s conservative coalition is a done deal – through the medium of LOLs. A bolt-together of amusing Youtube clips spliced with a light political message, it’s amusing and effective. It works because on the face of it, the film is a spontaneous response to the direction of the election. The video opens with an unflattering image of Peer Steinbrueck of the Social Democrats (SPD) looking miserable, presumably after losing the election. No permission was sought from the SPD.

These LOL campaigns are often more effective than the efforts of the mainstream political parties. Only one SPD Youtube clip has just over 100,000 views on their channel, while the IG Metall clip has been viewed over 750,000 times – more than all the SPD’s official videos combined.

While Britain’s three main political parties limber up to the next election, it’s likely that the online political moment to go viral will be created by none of the above.

Kim Kardashian: Enemy of Human Rights

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog, Free expression

Last Saturday night in Almaty, the capital of post-Soviet dictatorship Kazakhstan, Kim Kardashian joined her partner Kanye West at the wedding of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbaev’s grandson. According to Radio Liberty, Kardashian joined wedding guests to pose for photos. It is unclear how much the couple were paid to perform for the dictator’s grandson, but unconfirmed reports say West was paid as much as $3 million for the gig.

This isn’t the only time Kardashian has enjoyed a cosy trip to a dictatorship that violates human rights. In December 2012, Kardashian ignored appeals from human rights organisations not to visit the country during the government’s clampdown on the opposition. Instead she helped to promote business inside the country in particular “Millions of Milkshakes”. Before arriving in Bahrain, Kardashian tweeted to her 17 million followers: “Inshallah next week I head to Kuwait & Bahrain with my friend @sheerazhasan Time to set the record straight!”

On arrival she added: “I just got to Bahrain! OMG can I move here please? Prettiest place on earth!” A tweet deleted promptly after tear gas was fired on nearby protesters. Sheeraz Hasan, the person mentioned in her tweet with his business partner Paresh Shah founded the “Millions of Milkshakes” chain. The two were given a mandate by the government to “source unique investment opportunities” for Bahrain after a visit to Bahrain only weeks after the controversial Grand Prix in April 2012 (while human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja was on hunger strike). The pair enjoyed the delivery of a pair of Rolex watches from the royal family – direct to their private plane. It comes as no surprise that the trip they organised for Kardashian had her actively tweet praise for the regime while ignoring invitations to meet persecuted human rights activists such as the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.

Maybe we shouldn’t care that the international celebrity class has no qualms treating with dictators. The amounts of money on offer for single day visits trump actually releasing an album, or the effort of a TV series. It is more depressing to note the adulation these celebrities are held in when they are such morally bankrupt creatures.

A list of style guides

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

Writing well requires rules. Luckily, we have style guides to follow. Here are a few of the best:

The Economist Style Guide is an absolute must read. I still don’t think I’ve mastered the art of writing in the active, rather than the passive. The guide is based loosely on a George Orwell essay, “Politics and the English language” (1946). A masterpiece on how to write. It is worth reading first hand.

Beyond style guides, there are the debates. For instance, I love commas. Most people don’t, and argue that you should never use a comma where it can be supplanted with a full stop. You certainly shouldn’t use a comma before an “and”. These people are wrong. Mary Norris of the New Yorker explains why they are wrong, “In defense of ‘Nutty’ commas”. New York leads the way, not just with commas, but semicolons too.

Finally we come to the much-maligned hyphen. As Ben Yagoda points out in the New York Times, the hyphen is not – as commonly believed – a modern phenomenon, in fact:

The Nobel Laureate of this form of punctuation in poetry was Emily Dickinson. Not only was she inordinately fond of the dash, she wrought impressive variations on it. As one commentator has noted, “Dashes [in her work] are either long or short; sometimes vertical, as if to indicate musical phrasing, and often elongated periods, as if to indicate a slightly different kind of pause.… Dickinson uses dashes musically, but also to create a sense of the indefinite, a different kind of pause, an interruption of thought, to set off a list, as a semi-colon, as parentheses, or to link two thoughts together…”

The longest list of style guides can, of course, be found on Wikipedia.

Protest near “November 7 Square”, Tunis

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

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Protest near “November 7 Square”, Tunis. While liberal Tunisians remain concerned over the government’s often heavy-handed behaviour, huge improvements have been made. Public protest is tolerated, in stark constrast to the Ben Ali regime. NGOs are not only allowed registration but increasingly active in civil society. And the internet is more free, although concerns remain over online surveillance and the impact of old unreformed laws.

Charities accept Bitcoins

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

NGOs and charities often find themselves pursuing activities in direct contradiction to the rules of sovereign states. Whether NGOs that seek to foster political change in authoritarian states, to charities closer to home that seek legal changes or legal redress where fundamental rights have been challenged.

So it’s odd that so few charities accept Bitcoins (a currency devised precisely to go beyond the parameters of sovereign states) even after its general acceptance elsewhere.

The one exception is the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has accepted donations worth $102,000 in Bitcoins in recent weeks.

The EFF say:

Recently, EFF announced that we will resume Bitcoin donations on our website, using an intermediary service called BitPay. Gavin Andresen then returned all of these remaining bitcoins to us, stating:

I’m satisfied to see these bitcoins will be used as they were intended – as a donation to support the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Bitcoin Faucet was happy to receive the funds, but we are particularly glad to see them used as they were originally intended.

It’s very possible other NGOs in challenging environments will increasingly use Bitcoins as a method to circumvent restrictive financial laws devised to stop their work.

BNP to march on Lewisham

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

Racist political party, the BNP, are organising a march on Lewisham Islamic Centre this Saturday starting in Woolwich at 1pm.

The BNP’s support has collapsed in South-East London in recent years. In the whole of Lewisham (in 2009) they had just 20 members – out of 280,000 people. This march is a clear attempt to capitalise on the appalling murder of Lee Rigby to stoke up community tensions and give the BNP local profile.

I’ll be speaking to Labour party members tonight about what our response should be. Lewisham and Greenwich Councils are also working with the police to ascertain the likelihood of the march going ahead.

We don’t want to give the BNP the oxygen of publicity – nor do we want to leave the Mosque feeling unsupported and isolated. Counter-protests are likely. It’s essential that counter-protesters behave peacefully unlike the thuggish BNP.

People in Lewisham have a long tradition of standing up to racism and I’m sure we will do so again.

Let’s make their racism history.

Update: Lewisham NUT has put out a leaflet supporting a counter-protest.

The Burger Company, Norton Canes Service Station, M6 Toll

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

Just when you think it’s safe to eat food in a motorway service station again after a high-profile intervention from Heston Blumenthal, the God of Mammon intervenes and reminds you that greed is bad. In particular, the greed that is The Burger Company is especially bad.

Here’s what I got for £8.39:

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A double-score of grissle sandwiched between two flat baps with a drizzle of red sauce, plastic cheese and “I can’t believe it’s not” plastic bacon. Oh and a huge bucket of ice.

Yes, it’s expensive renting space in a motorway service station but Byron burger, the Gourmet Burger Kitchen and Uncle Tom Cobley rent space in Covent Garden, some of the most expensive real estate on earth. As the excellent burger review site Burgaffair will point out, you can eat an amazing burger in central London for £9 so why not off a slip road on a toll road?

Natwest double their overdraft charges

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

I have a barely-used current account with state-owned bank Natwest. They wrote to me today announcing they are introducing a monthly fee of £6 a month, just for having an overdraft, on top of an interest rate of 19.89% (that’s 40 times what the Bank of England charge Natwest).

The announcement means Natwest are:

Doubling their charges (fees + interest) on an £360 overdraft from £71.61 to £143.60

Increasing the equivalent interest rate on a £500 overdraft from 19.89% to 34.3%.

Note: Natwest took £20 billion of our money in 2008.

If you’re struggling with debts, a debt management plan may help you. One company that provides Debt management is 4debtmanagement.co.uk

The Daily Express, local elections and MigrationWatch

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog

On the day of the local elections, the Daily Express front page leads with an “explosive academic study” that the UK will be the West’s most ethnically diverse country after 2050.

Now, I wouldn’t want to accuse the Daily Express of wanting to influence the outcome of today’s elections in favour of, say, a party such as UKIP that has been wolf-whistling on immigration in recent months. However, there are a few points to note about this report:

1. The figures include foreign born migrants, many of whom are white, so when the Express says “ethnically diverse” it is including white people.

2. Err, this explosive academic study was covered by the Daily Telegraph in 2010. That’s right, the Daily Express is reprinting a 3 year old study on the day of the local elections.

3. There are only three quotes in the piece. One by the Prime Minister, one by Professor David Coleman the author of the study, and another by Andrew Green from MigrationWatch. It is not pointed out to Express readers that both Andrew Green and Professor David Coleman are co-founders of MigrationWatch. So one organisation essentially gets two quotes. Hardly balance!

Finally, the eminent Oxford Professor David Coleman’s views on eugenics aren’t pointed out either. Coleman has for a long-time been a member of the Eugenics Society and its successor the Galton Institute.

According to The Guardian:

But Coleman has not yet, for example, responded to David Aaronovitch’s invitation to him to disown the Galton Institute, nor has Coleman told us whether he subscribes to Sir Francis Galton’s definition of eugenics as the “science of improving stock – not only by judicious mating, but whatever tends to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had”, or to Galton’s argument that democracies “must in self-defence withstand the free introduction of degenerate stock”.