Prime minister just watered down ethics code and ethics watchdog powers because he ran into trouble with it.
Anyway expecting a strong principled freedom stance out of this gov is not paying attention to how these guys roll
Anyway expecting a strong principled freedom stance out of this gov is not paying attention to how these guys roll
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/28/boris-johns...
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_monetary_system#Un...
The Guinea coin is no longer legal tender and it is not a unit of currency
Livestock sales are priced in Guineas as a convention
> Bids are still made in guineas for the sale of racehorses at auction, at which the purchaser will pay the guinea-equivalent amount but the seller will receive only that number of pounds. The difference (5p in each guinea) is traditionally the auctioneer's commission (which thus, effectively, amounts to 5% on top of the sales price free from commission).
Now, it’s not about “stick your head in the sand”, so much as it is realising that on both sides of the aisle you’re reading from the same script - the same paradigm, the same dichotomy of stay or go, the same stage and set dressing. Your protests are expected, appreciated, and necessary, as they further the narrative, and deepen his power - because power flows from narrative, from the ideas which you accept as “just is” within the story, as it doesn’t make sense without them - never mind that it’s all a fantastical fabrication.
This is how kings are made. Johnson has been telling a particular story for a while now, in which he becomes king. It gave him vast popularity in the run up to the mayoral election (apt control of narrative is commonly called charisma), and from there, he’s been punting the same can down the road whilst we all chase it like rabid dogs.
This only ends when a better, stronger narrative comes along - and nobody in any position to challenge him has it.
Labour own a narrative in which they stumble onwards, tripping on their scabbard as they scramble up the dusty ramparts of Fort Johnson, and are stuck in it, as they mistake their narrative for their reality.
For instance, they initially approached the antisemitism debacle by treating it as a valid issue - they played whackamole with the press on it, and it kept the story (“Labour are antisemites”) prime in the public mind. The whole thing has been rather quiet lately, because they changed tactics, are are hiding from that narrative and are hoping it will wither away. It might - but it only takes an ember to rekindle a bonfire.
Rather, they should be getting ahead of the story, and should pick on, oh, I don’t know, the greens, kick off a rumour that they’re a Masonic cabal of drag queen drug lords and make them defend it, and drag the Tories into that mess. The crazier and broader the accusations the better - grapeshot gives a lot of holes to patch, and distracts from the one which hit below the waterline. Play it right and you make everyone remember that it was the Tories that started it, as labour smearing the greens makes no sense. Punching up and doing minor damage makes you look weak and petty, punching down and demolishing an innocent makes you look strong. Children understand this - the world is a schoolyard.
I wrote a little while back about narrative control as being the thing which divides the ruling classes from the consumer classes - I went to a similar school to Johnson, and the main thing you’re taught, albeit largely unwittingly (you have to follow the lessons which aren't spoken), is how to dominate narrative.
So, you want Johnson gone, you need either events to run roughshod over his constructed reality, and that would take something very substantial - or you need a greater master of human reality.
Thing is, as long as the techniques of narrative control remain the domain of the elite, passed on to their children through expensive institutions and family neuroses that spread mimetically through the affected population, the leaders will continue to be from the same caste. Occasionally someone from the outside stumbles over the alchemy of mind control, and they do things with it, often involving gas and guillotines, but it’s the exception, not the rule, and from the perspective of the entrenched ruling classes reinforces the need to gatekeep.
So. Johnson will likely one day go, but the disease that allows Johnson will remain until the next revolution.
I really think this is a media bubble perspective. Most people aren’t engaged with politics - certainly not to the extent that they become obsessed with the prime minister. The media constantly talk about him because that’s just what they do.
And I also think the voting population aren’t the sheeple you’re painting them as. They don’t vote Tory because they love Boris. They vote Tory knowing that the personal failings of the leader have very little bearing on getting the policies that they want passed. “Hold your nose and vote conservative” works both sides of the Atlantic.
Also it comes with a package of other nebulous abstract words and phrases, as you've exemplified "the domain of the elite", "that spread mimetically", "the alchemy of mind control", "entrenched ruling classes reinforces the need to gatekeep".
This is just bad writing. If you have said anything it's embedded in so much verbal dross I can't be bothered to extract it. I suspect it could have been said in a few sentences.
It’s basically the story being told. The way to understand it is that politicians and the media have a millions things they could discuss that are relevant to the voters.
What’s interesting is NOT what they talk about. It’s what’s they don’t talk about. And if you actually follow what they say over time it’s starts to become clear pretty quickly.
And it’s not a conspiracy or some secret - I’ve been in the room of a Fortune 50 PR meeting where they discuss the “narrative”.
It’s usually “we only want to talk about X which makes us look good. We don’t want to talk about Y. Y makes us look bad, so if someone mentions Y, use this response to steer it back to X”.
A good narrative example was the Hunter Biden laptop. The narrative was "this is suspected Russian disinformation". Absolutely zero proof it was, but that didn't matter, just keep dropping phrases like "this has all the signs of a Russian operation". Instead of the content in the laptop or hell, even the story about the laptop, the news covers the Russian conspiracy side. That entire narrative was spun out of thin air, the laptop was Hunter Biden's.
There are often good example of narratives being broken, and what you see is suddenly a narrative is dropped entirely and another takes it's place. If you're paying attention you'll suddenly notice some news story has completely disappeared from public discussion almost as if it never happened.
The one big benefit of the internet is how easy it is to follow public statements now. It's much harder to say something at a press conference, have it on Twitter, then deny it the next week. Doesn't stop politicians from trying though.
[1] It's a shame that 'one' has dropped out of use in this context, it does sound so absurd and archaic, but 'you' can be mistaken for 'specifically you' so I hope one will forgive me here.
Wouldn't "as long as the techniques of narrative control remain the domain of the elite..." be better expressed as "while the elite use misinformation..." and perhaps ask what it is about the plebs that they'll accept being played? (if they are, which is semi-contentious).
Curious, on which specific interesting points are you referring to.
Maybe your criticism is less about this writer than about the imprecision of written language as a communication tool generally. In which case, bear in mind firstly that the writer is writing a quick post on a forum, not for a scientific journal. Also that imprecise language may seem imprecise to you, but may encapsulate broader meaning for others. Alternatively, a particular piece of writing might just poorly transmit meaning which itself is valuable. For example, I find Slavoj Zizek to be incomprehensible. But when he is well edited or I have read secondary texts, I have found his insights to be revelatory.
> Curious, on which specific interesting points are you referring to.
He introduced me to Baudrillard, around whom my early explorations are proving to be well worthwhile. See this for an intro: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yxg2_6_YLs&feature=youtu.be
So within us is the ability to sculpt narrative, to essentially deceive through attention manipulation or information selection, and also the response to that deception (anger, denial, pushback) - as they’re cultural ying and yang, the immune response and the illness.
It drives war when opposing stories clash, so great is the response that the wrong story, of which the story of stories is absolutely one, can evoke.
Anyway. I expect to be disagreed with. I may well be wrong and suffering under my own illusions - but my lived experience is that a good story is everything human.
The fictitious narrative of free will could be the most potent narrative of all.
> but my lived experience is that a good story is everything human
I’m interested in the mechanisms by which narratives are conjured and mind control (this is too crude an expression for my liking but I don’t yet have anything better) asserted. Use of rhetoric, in combination with written and visual media are very powerful. This is well known. But the most powerful narrative web I believe can be created through the mechanism of introjection, where we don’t question our actions because this is simply what we see everyone else doing.
My underlying interest, I think, is the nature of reality. Peeling back the fictions of our own creation is a necessary ongoing part of that investigation.
>Rather, they should be getting ahead of the story, and should pick on, oh, I don’t know, the greens, kick off a rumour that they’re a Masonic cabal of drag queen drug lords and make them defend it, and drag the Tories into that mess. The crazier and broader the accusations the better - grapeshot gives a lot of holes to patch, and distracts from the one which hit below the waterline. Play it right and you make everyone remember that it was the Tories that started it, as labour smearing the greens makes no sense. Punching up and doing minor damage makes you look weak and petty, punching down and demolishing an innocent makes you look strong. Children understand this - the world is a schoolyard.
Multiple parts of this make no sense, but one thing that stands out is that it doesn't make sense for the Tories to pick on the Greens either.
It isn’t necessarily about what makes sense, in a rational and deterministic fashion, rather what the stochastic outcomes of an action are. When you’re dealing with mass sentiment, the right move is often deeply counterintuitive, and you have to pretty much be a sociopath to execute adroitly. Demagoguery is a case in point of the veracity of this.
I think, however, that you are redirecting because you aren't in fact able to explain how it would help Labour to spread crazy rumors about the Green Party. The Greens have a single MP. To a first approximation, no-one cares about any scandal involving the Greens – even if the scandal is true. If anything, it would make more sense for Labour to attack the Greens than it would for the Tories, as very few voters vacillate between the Tories and the Greens.
Now they can also delete statements that become inconvenient. Or stealthily edit them.
There has been no greater exponent of this mind control than Churchill: from “inside” not “outside” and he killed A LOT of people. Less of course than Stalin and Hitler. But still many. My point is that it doesn’t matter who wields the power, gas and guillotines may follow.
What story has he been telling exactly? Every time I hear him speak or read what he said, he comes across as an incoherent bumbling clown [0] [1].
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-brits-should-r...
[1] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/no-press-here-uk-pm-boris-jo...
Reminds me very much of the Horse in Hospital we had here in the US for a few years (https://decider.com/2018/05/03/john-mulaney-kid-gorgeous-hor...).
The antisemitism story became huge because it was seized upon by Corbyn's enemies who realised that it was an effective weapon against him. You cannot understand this story if you think in terms of the party as a unified force.
In my view he was a good and integral man, somewhat guileless, and therefore utterly, utterly unsuited for politics - and he got eaten alive resultantly.
Could you post a link? Can't find it and am just watching the Queens 70th Jubilee service which I think is pertinent ! thanks
Why don't you cite the specific example then and we can discuss it.
> Honestly would if really surprise anyone at this point?
The intellectual dishonesty to use this as an argument is staggering.
However, as someone in the UK, the corruption that went on here with regards to PPE and many other government contracts is widely known and just a google search away.
Sorry - but your faux outrage concerning intellectual dishonesty reads as exactly that ...
That people speculate cynically over the actions of the current government is directly a result of the mistrust they have grown in the electorate. Reap it.
Oh, the irony!
Top result for [1]
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=a+Tory+member's+family+was+r...
You are asking for evidence for something which hasn't happened yet. Obviously nobody can provide that evidence. How could they? The comment you are responding to was obviously worded as a speculation about a future event.
Latter on the thread you are asking for something else. Evidence for some other example.
> Why don't you cite the specific example then and we can discuss it.
Your wish is my command. Let me catch you up on the specifics:
https://www.transparency.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf/publ...
Page 20: "In total, we count at least 73 contracts relating to the COVID-19 response between February and November 2020, worth over £3.7 billion, whose awards merit further investigation. Mapping all of these contracts against data from TED, we notice that by volume and value, most of the questionable contracts were awarded during the same heightened period of activity between March and June 2020 as mentioned above (see Graph 5). The majority of these by volume (65) and by value (£2.9 billion) were contracts for PPE equipment; 24 of which worth £1.6 billion went to those with known political connections to the party of government in Westminster. A further three contracts worth £536 million also went to politically connected companies for testing related services. We note there are additional contracts awarded to politically connected companies relating to communications and research services, although these were published after our last data extraction from TED on 30 November 2020."
To avoid confusion, and because it seems you are naïve to the UK political situation I would like to mention that when the report says "political connections to the party of government in Westminster" that refers to the Tory party. Just mentioning because clearly you are not up to date on the recent events.
No it wasn't, it was a statemet of specific fact. It was not phrased as speculation.
The government gave a contract to pretty much anyone who said they could supply PPE. A false emergency narrative was crafted to chuck procurement procedures out the window. Clapped on by catastrophists.
Complaining about people like Randox who were one of the only companies in the country with facilities to build covid tests getting a contract to manufacture covid tests is beyond inane.
[2] TV stations are dead. Sell them all.
The danger is they're not dead, they're alive and well with a large part of a voting population.
Terrible idea.
As is [1]. Let's spend money for no reason, and also it makes it harder to integrate with the outside world, where the money London needs to launder is
(Free depends whether you view the license fee as a tax, and whether the free license for pensioners is costed).
The main reason to sell it is simply a question of "is it fulfilling a societal good unavailable via a private enterprise". If not, the Government has no place owning it imo.
I can twist my logic to argue charging for the channel with requirement for Public Service Content costs money etc, but would be dishonest xD
They use a public resource (the radio spectrum) to broadcast television, in exchange for access to this spectrum the government sets requirements on what they can broadcast and so they are not simply ordinary for-profit companies.
If you think back to the last time you heard about the Eurovision Song Contest, the reason Eurovision exists is PSBs. The right to broadcast TV in European countries is held by a large number of distinct PSBs. The reason the ESC has weird breaks in it, if you watch it as a pristine video rather than from a source which makes that obvious, is that it's intended to be broken up with lots of commercials in most countries where - just like a US network, the PSBs are actually for-profit entities just under constraint of law because they use this scarce public resource.
Most of the Eurovision members have requirements on proportion of local content (no trouble in the US, but a for-profit Greek company may find English language sitcoms bought from North America, Britain or Australia are cheaper than making their own), news or current affairs coverage (the actual news isn't profitable since you can get that anywhere, so a profit seeking entity would rather not have a nightly hour-long news show), and children's programming (not very profitable in most European countries since advertising to children is very heavily constrained as kids are easy to manipulate).
"As of 2022, it breaks even in much the same way as most privately run commercial stations through the sale of on-air advertising, programme sponsorship, and the sale of any programme content and merchandising rights it owns, such as overseas broadcasting rights and domestic video sales. For example, as of 2012 its total revenues were £925 million with 91 per cent derived from sale of advertising."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_4
They get no money from the license fee, from taxes, nor from the government. Except when the government chooses to spend tax money buying and spaces on TV, which would be no different to private companies selling ads to government.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/amber-rudd-necessary-...