Archive for the ‘Communications’ Category
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:50 am
People don't vote for geeks... or do they? No, no they don't.
Far, far, far from from the fantasy of libertarians as gun totting survivalists, brazen cads in the form of Alan B’Stard or the pristine and prodigious builders of railroads, engines and buildings lies the reality: Libertarians are mostly rebellious geeks.
How do I know that? Well, the clue is in the incredibly skewed gender balance in favour of men (many of whom seem to be IT professionals) and the copious amount of reading that seems to be required. There’s libertarian support groups, libertarian political parties, and of course libertarian blogs – but the hierarchy is remarkable – the more outspoken and naughty you are the more accolades, plaudits and readers you get.
The only conclusion to draw is that the time of the evil dork may well be here. They run the frickin’ internet and they’re going to use their advantage on the internet to affect change in the real world. Well, that’s the plan.
Look, it’s not a criticism. I’m a nerd myself – I stayed behind at work a few days ago so I could build a robot out of the office Lego Mindstorms kit, so I ain’t throwing stones here.
But here’s the problem: If libertarianism is going to escape the political blogosphere (which is itself one mighty orgasm of geeky self-pleasure) it needs to be something that non-geeks can relate to.
So Chris Mounsey’s election to leader of the Libertarian Party is fantastic news for fellow “evil nerds”, but can Chris reach out to a more broad audience? Chris runs the infamous and fantastically sweary Devil’s Kitchen blog, and because he’s one of the naughtiest geeks (second only to the incredibly, incredibly naughty Guido Fawkes) he’s right at the top of the evil dork hierarchy.
Perhaps it’s too early for the Libertarian Party to be worried about reaching a more mainstream audience, but it’s got to be one of the biggest and most pressing matters on that party’s to-do list. Winning elections demands it, and winning power demands winning elections..
But see, all joking aside, the Evil Dorks are still onto something. You have to be outside of the mainstream to be able to see what other people don’t, and sometimes you need to go beyond what is classed as a ‘normal life’ to discover where the boundaries and barriers really are. If you never look up from the X-Factor you’re not going to notice anything wrong at all.
Sadly political change doesn’t come from a small hardcore niche of political obsessives though – at least, it doesn’t end there. It starts there (and you can argue that the internet has made that easier) – but movements either go mainstream or they remain in the shadows like mental state socialist and communist groups of old.
So the challenge for Chris – and all libertarians – is to find a way to communicate a libertarian message to non-geeks, to ‘normal’ people. I know I’m stumped on this, and have been for some time – but still doesn’t change the fact it needs doing.
December 1st, 2009 at 11:49 pm
There now follows a passive aggressive rant.
I’m not deliberately avoiding the subjects of the Mansion Tax or the quiet dropping of the commitment to the EU Referendum. I’m not trying to hide our Lib Dem Policies ’404′ shame. I just think… I think I’m about to crack. I may have reached the point of ‘had enough’.
Perhaps it’s the weather – it’s dark at 4:30 now, and it’s freezing outside. Tends to drag one down a little. Or maybe its the cumulative effects of things like this, taken from the ‘Pocket Guide to Lib Dem Policies’:
We are the only party who will put money into people’s pockets with fair tax cuts, the only party to offer universal chidcare [sic] and smaller classes in our primary schools, the only party who would use Gordon Brown’s wasted billions to create thousands of jobs today by investing in homes, hospitals, schools and public transport to build the green economy of tomorrow, the only party that will rebuild the jobs, homes and hopes this recession has destroyed.
All I see when I read something like that is an ambitious platform of economic planning, which I utterly deplore, attempting to nurture the economy back to growth through ‘good’ public spending (as opposed to Labour’s ‘bad’ public spending, obviously).
It’s the exact opposite of what I believe – in fact, in tone at least, I find it hard to believe there’s any social democratic or democratic socialist party in Europe that wouldn’t happily subscribe to that manifesto or something very similar. The inescapable reality is that the liberal movement to which I am truly loyal exists in name only (or, sadly, in the bars and pubs surrounding Lib Dem party conferences.)
The adventurous, insatiable hungering drive for liberty, for free trade and free minds, to allow society to become whatever the individuals within make of it? As far as mainstream politics goes that idea is dead. Reds, Red Tories or Red Liberal – take your pick.
It’s not just the Lib Dems that need sorting out. It’s the whole political system and, sadly, the emphasis on voting systems and financial propriety don’t impress me much at all when on the other hand Lib Dems seem to seek the power to dictate the destiny of the British economy for our own good.
So can I keep doing what I’ve been doing, trying to change the party from the inside? The short answer is no. I can’t keep on like this. See, the ‘Lib Dem’ badge I carry on this blog is more than just a label. It’s a community to which I belong – a community that I’m actually rather fond of – actual friends and things. People I respect, admire and like. And the problem with that is the closer you get, the more you build these friendships, the harder and harder it becomes to remain objective and honest. I’ve fallen into the same trap politicians everywhere seem to fall into.
I have, very quietly and almost without realising, been smothered with love. It’s caused me to hold my tongue and pull my punches and I’m starting to feel like a fraud, like I’ve lost the thing that made this blog worth writing – not being a tribal loyalist.
It’s choking my blogging – the ratio of ‘drafts’ to ‘published’ is getting worse as I abandon post after post. I’ve started worrying about what people think which, for me, is the most unforgivable crime in blogging of them all. What is blogging for if it’s not honest?
So the sad, miserable truth is that my time as a Lib Dem blogger is coming to an end. I don’t know if this means leaving the party or just pulling out of libdemblogs.co.uk and changing the graphics but I’ll figure it out.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:00 pm
How to destroy everyone else's life.
Well, blogging’s dead. Didn’t you know? The real action is taking place on Twitter. So you’ve signed up to Twitter and you want to make the biggest impression possible. What do you do?
That’s right, it’s time for another slightly evil guide to Tweeting.
#10: Get involved with every trending topic.
Some subjects ‘trend’ – that means lots of people are talking about one particular subject. It’s important that you get involved with them all as enthusiastically as possible, because there’s nothing people love more than seeing 100 tweets about something they don’t understand. It makes their day interesting!
“Fingle fingle whopper is AWESOME TREND! loloolol #finglewhopper”
#9: Tweet Everything
We’ve all heard the joke that people join Twitter so that they’ve got an audience for when they fit a ceramic bus with some new brown cables. It’s not a joke. This is what people want. Every single thought that passes through your head must be tweeted, and every single thing you do must go on the record.
Your admiring followers will worship you for it.
“I really should get round to counting the number of paces between my desk and the coffee machine.”
#8: Tweet Constantly
Don’t be fooled – blogging is for the lazy. You can write a blog post like this and set the timer to publish it at a specific time, say, 3pm, and then forget about it. Twitter, on the other hand, requires constant nurturing and feeding. If you’re already ‘tweeting everything’ then this shouldn’t be a problem, but sometimes there’s gaps – so tweet about tweeting if you have to.
“RT: Damn! Forgot to indicate on that bend! lollololl!!”
#7: Reply and Retweet everything.
Another strategy for generating sufficient content for your Twitter feed is to reply to absolutely everyone who tweets at you – but be sure to add a full stop before the ‘@sucker’ bit so that everyone who follows you can see what you’re saying. Be sure to retweet everything anyone says to you, too. Wouldn’t want anyone to miss out a single moment of your life, would you? It sometimes helps if you have a Bot to do this for you. I’m happy to program one for you, for a measly £10k, but think – what’s money compared with being the most awesome Twitterer in the world?
“RT @angry_man: OH FFS YOU MORON STFU!!! <— LULZZZ!! 
DDD”
#6: Always get the last word
If you’re replying to everything you’ve already got this covered, but it’s an important enough principle that it needs restating – whatever happens, make sure you get the last word. Superficially easy, simply reply to everything, including the replies. This makes you The Boss Of Twitter if you do it consistently.
“. @angelboobs14532 Really? Britney Spears porn? Yay! Thank you!”
#5: Change your Avatar and Name every few hours
Keep things fresh and funky! By changing your Avatar and name every few hours, your followers (you do still have some followers, right?) will think, Hey! Who’s that interesting person? And they’ll be forced to check it out and realise it’s their old friend, YOU! Their hearts will be filled with a warm glow, because, for a minute there, they thought they’d lost you.
“I have a new name ROFL! I am now @MAXIMOR_INDESTRUCTABLE lololol!!”
#4: Tweet the results of Quizzes religiously
The Twitterverse offers lots of quizzes that you can take so long as you give them permission to send Tweets from your account. This gives you an invaluable opportunity to give your followers this crucial and informative knowledge – how Gay are you? How clever are you? What Scooby Doo character are you? People need to know this information, and they need to know where they can find out these important facts about themselves.
This is your public service. Your duty. Your destiny.
“lol I am 34% Furry! (Take the How Furry are you test at http://los.er/101)”
#3: Be Clear: You’re Awesome.
Your followers aren’t interested in the adventures of a normal person. You must become a God, walking amongst their people – benign and magnificent. You are the perfect weight, height, tremendously good looking, people fall at your feet to admire you. When you’re telling your followers you’re doing a number two, this is what you should write:
“lol! Another gold plated poo! And HUGE too! Biggest ever!”
#2: Rick-roll your followers several times a day.
Nothing your followers love more than finding themselves redirected to a Youtube video of Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give you Up”.
“Research shows that you can drink yourself sober after all: http://bit.ly/rickr (NOT Rick-roll this time!)”
“Sorry, here’s the real link. http://bit.ly/rickr. Real thing this time, definitely not Rick-roll.”
“Ha ha! Got you again! Okay, well, here’s the real link, fo real: http://bit.ly/rickr.”
#1: Follow Everyone who Follows Iain Dale.
So you now have all the knowledge you need to create a truly winning and successful Twitter feed. But where do you get your audience from? Where do you get your followers? It’s simple! Follow everyone who follows Iain Dale. Most will automatically follow you back, and these are all profoundly important and influential people who’ll spread the word about this hottest new talent! Don’t forget to Retweet what they say about you!
“Anyone else been added by @MAXIMOR_INDESTRUCTABLE? Stupid Spammer alert! <– LOLOLOL!!!!”
Yes, Twitter. It’s amazing. Now, who wants to follow me?
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Sure, laugh at the Labourites who think they've got a chance of winning. It makes you look really big and clever.
Tory Bear pointed his twitter followers in the direction of this propaganda piece in the New Statesman that claims, without verification or corroboration that private polling inside Number 10 shows Labour will overtake the Conservatives in the polls by the end of the year. Cue much hilarity and mocking.
“Neil Kinnock wrote the first version of Windows and sold it to Microsoft to raise the money for their 1992 General Election campaign!”
But, let’s put the ‘outrageous whoppers’ meme aside. The New Statesman piece is more appropriate material for Valentines day than a hung-over Monday. It features a photograph of Gordon showing a bit of teeth, and features the decidedly on-message, head-office approved language of fighting. The author seems practically giddy with excitement. Labour! 4th Term! Win! Yes!
It all adds up: The fight-back has begun! Of course, cynics might point out that this is the same fight-back they’ve been trying to start since “Barnacle Brown” decided not to hold a General Election, and that the changes in the polling might have more to do with the the Tories being annoyingly certain about their impending victory in the media.
However – big however – as delusional as the New Statesman piece might be the simple fact remains that Labour can win the next general election. It’s possible.
As Tory Bear’s chums pile into the comments thread, they don’t realise that they’re actually helping Labour. The more attention they draw to it, the worse it’ll get. Assuming that Labour winning is impossible, that victory for the Tories is a dead certainty? That, above all else, is Labour’s one real chance of winning.
The biggest problem facing opponents of Labour remains 1001 things to criticise them for and a general inability to stick to one specific area and hammer it to death, and a general reluctance for anyone to spell out specifically what the alternatives might be. Too much public spending? Well the solution is mutter mutter mutter. Too much CCTV and control freakery? The solution is obviously mumble thingy wotsit, isn’t it? Taxes are too high? Well, obviously we need to mutter, mumble mumble waffle and blah.
Wait, what were those solutions again? Not one of the naughty, forbidden solutions that don’t involve more public spending, more regulation, more centralisation, more crimes, more punishments, more interference in people’s private lives and choices?
The response usually comes, “Well, let’s be clear about what we’re saying here: Mumble mumble mumble.”
If the campaign is going to be about pure personality and style over real policy, and if real policy debate is reduced to ‘we’re going to introduce the same policy but on a slightly different timescale with slightly different amounts of money with slightly different numbers of public sector workers” then you’d better have one seriously charming personality and be very stylish indeed.
So this General Election, rather than being a foregone conclusion, could well be building up into what counts as the mother of all fuck-ups for the Conservatives. Will they be able to reign in the triumphalism in time? Is it even possible to rein in the triumphalism of the Tory blogosphere?
So sorry, Tory Bear. I’m going to do you a favour and not join in the ‘lynch the New Statesman for being thick’ gang. I mean, they are thick and their post is pathetic, but that doesn’t mean Labour can’t beat you.
November 18th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
If you conceal the down side of a policy, you're biased in favour of the policy's authors.
The BBC is supposed to remain politically neutral and balanced. Many people think they aren’t.
I think the BBC does a good job of being ‘politically neutral and balanced’ in terms of sticking to their own internal rules about what that actually means, but I think the questions about what is ‘politically neutral’ needs re-examining in light of increasingly sophisticated political spin machines adept at squeezing through messages with hidden biases.
This isn’t the same as Victoria Derbyshire literally laughing out loud at a Tory spokesman but letting similar howlers from Labour pass without so much as a snicker on Radio 5 today . That sort of bias is obvious enough that people are capable of making up their own minds on it – although I can understand why this sort of thing is infuriating.
But here I’m talking about a much more subtle form of bias that comes from failing to recognise political frames and subconscious bias.
Take, for example, a new policy announced in the Queen’s Speech which the BBC describes, unqualified, as:
There will also be free social care for the neediest pensioners in England.
Is that bias free? Is that politically neutral? Sadly not. The very same policy could just as easily be described as:
Taxpayers to be compelled to pay for the personal care of the neediest pensioners in England.
Why would the second version be considered politically biased, while the original is not? They are both loaded with meaning that frames the way the reader understands the policy. The first conceals the downside of the policy, while the second stresses it. Both are biased.
If the reporting of a policy excludes the downside then it is biased in favour of the policy’s authors.
So perhaps a politically neutral and unbiased way of reporting this policy would be:
The Government wants taxpayers to pay for needs-tested personal care of pensioners in England.
That is as near as possible an unloaded and neutral reporting of the facts as possible.
So why do we have a Public Service Broadcaster that doesn’t consistently apply proper balancing across the board, across every outlet, in every medium?
As the General Election approaches, I’m beginning to be worried that the BBC News website is becoming their weak link, that in order to keep things simple, accessible and as up to date as possible they’re letting things through that they shouldn’t.
UPDATE:
Thinking about it, the response is likely to be that the BBC will let Conservatives or Liberal Democrats do the job of explaining the downside of a particular policy – which doesn’t work, because obviously the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are biased and less likely to be trusted than the BBC.
