DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

The reason the Tories get in so often is because they rely on the people of suburban towns to vote for them. They haven't a hope in a lot of large cities. I live in a suburban town. Most of the people I know are left wing or liberal so it confounds me that we've been a strong Tory area for so long, and I do put it down to apathy at the polling stations on behalf of people who don't feel motivated to vote on polling day.

This just makes me feel fucking hopeless though:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/us-trade-deal-full-frontal-assault-on-democracy

Yes but it's George Monbiot. This is Kenneth Clarke's reply: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/11/eu-us-trade-deal-transatlantic-trade-and-investment-partnership-democracy

Trouble is that "most of the people I know" is usually the minority of whatever community they're part of. Boris got voted in by the suburbs, so did Rob Ford in Toronto. Solution surely to confine city elections to inhabitants of actual cities?

A lot of people, including those who agreed more or less with their values, saw the Occupy movement as a nuisance.

This is Tory/Ukip thinking: "oh, some of my best friends are liberals, I just don't want to live next door to them."

FFS, protest is supposed to be a nuisance, that's how it works. A protest that gets in the way of no one achieves nothing.

a protest that gets in the way of everyone, or all of the wrong people, is more likely to be counter-productive

sorry- ffs, a protest that gets in the way of etc etc

Occupy should be like Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, waving little placards outside the Co-op saying "PRICES DOWN!"

it's a hearts and minds thing - sometimes you want to be disruptive, sometimes you want to broaden the scope of your appeal, i don't think activists are always brilliant at making the best tactical decisions

i don't think it's being a capitalist running dog to suggest that any action needs to be subordinated to the long term aims of yr movement

Not sure a few tents outside St Paul's Cathedral really disrupted anyone tbh but it got a lot more press attention than about 10yrs worth of May Day protests.

fair point- it did disrupt a fair bit of proper news coverage

Could have done without the didgeridoos and bongos though

PHEAR IDS TEH DRAGON SLAYER: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10436998/Ed-Miliband-has-no-answer-to-IDS-the-dragon-slayer.html

Bloody Hell at the first line of that article.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has a slightly oriental appearance, which is appropriate.

It's actually more genetic than appropriate apparently.

Abetted by broken families and day-time television, the welfare state has created a problem that goes well beyond unemployment.

Bruce Anderson is insane of course

IDS more like Jack the Giant Killer who basically made up all his exploits iirc

ah, Brute Anderson, never change

It's actually more genetic than appropriate apparently.

Yes, I think I remember the fact that he had a Japanese grandparent being wheeled out as evidence that the Tories' immigration policy couldn't possibly be racist at some point during his leadership.

mustn't...do...General Tojo joke

during his leadership.

Always worth remembering that this numpty was once leader of the Conservative Party

"Never underestimate the determination of a numpty"

Bruce Anderson? I thought that cunt was discredited years ago.

A devout Christian

When was the last time the UK cabinet has two former party leaders in it? Is it unprecedented?
(I guess there are four current or former party leaders in the cabinet if you include Clegg).

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/apr/08/jobcentres-benefits-sanctions-targets

I know Douglas-Hume was foreign secretary under Heath, but I can't think of many more.

i'd like to make it clear that it would in no way benefit the nation, nor would it change coalition government policy, and it would be immoral, senseless and illegal for somebody to kick the living shit out of Iain Duncan Smith

Do disabled and EFL claimants have some kind of redress under equalities legislation for when Jobcentre advisers refer to them as 'easy meat'?

i think the short answer is "no", suzy, unless they could demonstrate that they had been discriminated against

Shoulda gone 'Incognito'

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2013/11/conservatives-erase-internet-h.html#.UoNkpfI506Y.facebook

One employee claimed the practice had been going on at his office since they joined in July 2009.

(Re: the benefits story) And before that too.

(That story is over two years old btw, so imagine what it's like now)

That Computer Weekly story has gone national now, good work them.

Can't believe the Tories thought this wouldn't backfire on them.

A spokesman said he had referred the matter to a "website guy", who was out of the office.

A+

Conservatives purge old speeches from online archives

I just can't wait to see them try and slime their way through it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/pre-election-pledges-tories-are-trying-wipe-internet
Nail. Coffin. Call a fucking election or stand down.

i 100% despise these guys and i wouldn't be surprised to the learn it was done for nefarious purposes, but this (removing old stuff from your own website and propagating those changes to search engines using robots.txt so search engines are not full of dead links) is also a totally normal and routine thing for any organization to do, i'm sure the other parties do it, and the computer weekly angle on it is totally febrile and beneath them.

i mean it raises the possibility that political parties should be held to different standards of data archival on the web than they currently are, and that's a good question, but

Computer Weekly said the effect of the changes was "as alarming as sending Men in Black to strip history books from a public library and burn them in the car park".

is just straight up insane.

Can't believe the Tories thought this wouldn't backfire on them.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, November 13, 2013 10:06 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

precisely. kind of thing they would have done more cleverly if they really were thinking book burning. it's just how big websites work.

Maybe common practice for corporations but this is a political party who just happen to be in power at the moment.

no political party has a legal obligation to abide by its election promises, much less to keep them archived. caek seems otm here - let me know if the coalition is deleting government documents or parliamentary records etc

is the robots.txt thing common practice?

yes, it's how the web works, but full marks to computer weekly for making it sound evil per se

http://www.bbc.co.uk/robots.txt
http://www.computerweekly.com/robots.txt

etc. etc.

cool, I didn't actually know that most websites use robots.txt, since so many of them are findable via web.archive.org

you use it to control which pages are findable, generally - though you can make the whole thing unfindable (fsvo 'unfindable'. search engine bots do not actually have to obey the commands of your robots.txt). how i remember the noindex nofollows of my youth.

yeah. not only does robots.txt have absolutely no effect on what can be seen by people: it's can be ignored by the crawlers too. book burning!

no political party has a legal obligation to abide by its election promises

true.

but deleting them is like a kid in a room with their hands over their eyes, thinking they're invisible.

Story has been barely reported and pretty much forgotten already it seems