FactCheck: The "No More Lies" Boris Attack Video (light fisking)

Oh dear, an allegedly "non-aligned" group have released an attack video against Boris Johnson according to Liberal Conspiracy.

Now I love a good bit of negative campaigning but this one is pretty shoddy I have to say. True it's get the tone and music ambience right when portraying its theme of "lies" by Johnson, but it does have a few glaring flaws.

• All its data used to contradict the quotes are unattributed. They should have had some tiny point font to at least show where the figures were coming from.
• The first charge is on Police numbers. Boris says "under this mayoralty there will be no cuts in the Police. The video says he is lying and there are 2,132 fewer Police since March 2010. Note the choice of the date? What we have here, ironically enough, is the maxim that there are "lies, damned lies and statistics". You see, as pointed out by Full Fact,

The MPA figures show that, when Mr. Johnson entered office in May 2008, police officer numbers stood at 31,398 (for the 2007-08 financial year). In 2008-09 this number rose by 1,145. In 2009-10 numbers further rose by 717, although in 2010-11 they fell by 801.

Along with projections from a 'Policing London Business Plan' published in March, the numbers are graphed as follows:
The approximate number of officers expected for the 2011-12 financial year is put at 32,510, which will also be at the end of Mr. Johnson's term in office. Compared to his inheritance of 31,398, this would mean police officer numbers will have increased by 1,112 under Mr. Johnson's premiership.

• Next up we have "crime". Boris says "crime is down in London". The video says he's lying and says "knife crime is up". This is bit like a farmer saying "the yield of apples from the orchard is down" and a farm hand saying "you liar, the number of apples on this one tree has gone up". You know what? Crime overall in London might be up, Boris may indeed be lying. However if you're going to accuse him of doing so at least use the right data to make your point!
• On to the congestion charge. Boris says he would not allow it to go up. They say he increased it by 25%. This is the one true thing so far. He increased it by £2, from £8 to £10. My guess is that this is why the producers claim to be "unaligned", you see, it would look a bit silly from a green point of view if they aligned themselves and were then arguing against a rise of something that is in line with general environmental policies.
• Affordable homes is next. Boris says there will be "50,000 affordable homes by May next year". He doesn't say what year. The video says there have only been "56 affordable home started building between April and September". They don't say what April and September. Let's take a quick look at a random council though. According to the Royal Borough of Greewnich's affordable housing and regeneration web pages, "some 1,198 new homes were built last year". Where exactly did this random "56" number come from then?
• Finally we have transport fares. Boris, being interviewed specifcally about bendy-buses and their replacement, he is asked if he can financially make that change. He says "I think we can... and I think we can do it without increasing fares for London". The video then points out that fares have gone up a whopping 47% - that's about 50p for most bus journey's incidentally, but saying it in percentage terms sounds much worse but I digress. You see, the video makers have buggered up again here. Instead of finding a generic clip of Boris saying that he will not increase fares period, they've found one where he says he doesn't think he needs to increase fares for a specific project to be possible. That doesn't mean he can't increase fares for other things, much as the previous Mayor increased fares multiple times for multiple things.

So there we have it. An attack video about "lies" that amusingly enough is mostly full of errr... lies. Five specific claims, and only one that can in anyway be described as accurate.

Actually, I'm being unfair, they're not so much lies as statements that, more often than not, are juxtaposed against other statements that are about different things.

I think the more appropriate word might be disingenuous, and that is why the BBC, LBC and the Evening Standard, who Sunny laments, have not pushed such things, because if they did, they'd be hauled over the coals for it.

Verdict: Must try harder

Was the "boiler tax" dreamt up during a crack-party?

I know, I know, it's rare to even see me post more than a few characters on Twitter these days, but occasionally 140 individual letters/number just doesn't cut it for what I want to say.

You see, I've just read an article (admittedly in the Daily Mail) that is claiming that the Coalition plans to introduce what appears to be mandatory planning permission for getting a new boiler. The ideas goes like this.

If you want a new boiler you will have to ask the Council to let you get one and then if the Council decides your home is not energy efficient enough they'll tell you you can't unless you fork out hundreds of pounds on other energy saving efficiencies first, such as loft insulation, cavity wall insulation etc.

There are so many absurdities with this I can only conclude that Coalition ministers and their civil servants were having some sort of crack-smoking party when they came up with it.

For a start, what happens if the boiler breaks in a family home during the Christmas period. Are they to be expected to freeze their bollocks off whilst they wait for Council officials to sober up and answer the planning request?

What's more, if someone is spending their own money on a new boiler (which will invariably be more energy efficient than the old one anyway), why should the Government force them to further spend their own money or take out Government backed loans to put themselves in debt?

The plan is so obviously going to fail even if they did try to implement it. Firstly, it is a gift to their political opponents who will point out that they're attacking poor pensioners and families with extra cost, and you know it will only be a matter of time before someone dies of hypothermia because their boiler broke and they couldn't afford to get the extra work done.

Secondly, people will just start paying plumbers and the like cash-in-hand for work and boilers that go under the radar of the official snooping Council workers.

Diane Abbott and stupid people......

Well Happy New Year to you all, it's been a while hasn't it? I've been busy though you see, and will be busy this week too as I sod off to the proverbial Land of the Free for a week for work. However, I just thought I would pop up and pass comment on the multitude of comment around Diane Abbott and her rather unfortunate choice of generalisations.

For started, and to deal with those who will scream about "fake outrage", I wasn't offended by Abbott's generalisation one bit. To be offended by the ignorance and stupidity of ignorant and stupid people take for too much effort. It's much better to simply point and laugh at their ignorance and stupidity.

There is however a wider intellectual point at play though, and it's one that I've blogged about on many occasions over the past few years, and that is the inherent contradiction and inevitbaly consequence of politics based on identity.

You see, if you're modus operandi is, as Abbott's has been for years, to promote difference and diversity over discrimination and prejudice, through the use of positive affirmation and ideological positioning that views history in some sort of Hegelian master/slave, be it in race, or as it used to be class.

It's not difficult to see that positive discrimination is a paradox that will produce the sort topsyturvey idiocy we've seen this week, where vehement anti-racists make comments that they themselves would leap on has pure evil if directed in the reverse, and, consequentially we witness people who are proudly non-racist attempting to justify comments that ordinarily they wouldn't want too.

This has led to some rather amusing, if not completely retarded comment from some, such this joyous and argument from Stephen Baxter at the New Statesman who says anyonne complaining qabout Abbot is faking offense (see above) and most hilariously this,

"If it had been the other way around," is the general thrust of these arguments. Well if it had been the other way around, it would have been the other way around. If it had been the other way around, everything would have had to have been the other way around. We would have to be living in a country where black people dominated and white people didn't; where black people had all the jobs but spectacularly untalented black columnists would be writing about how unfair it was, somehow.

Baxter has got some great priase for this little argument which is essentially using historical contextualisation to justify making generalisations about white people. One tiny problem with this though is, as pointed out to Baxter is the logical conclusion it implies.

You see, if the world was reversed as he is arguing, then he's also arguing that if someone from a particular ethnicity livers in a society where they are not the dominant ethnicity then they would be justified in making negative comments about the dominant race and it would be OK.

Come to think of it, that is yet another perfect example of why the politics of identity is so contradictory. For here we have someone who is anti-racist arguing that racism is OK depending on the historical contextualisation of the person making the comment or acting in a particular way.

In fact, and this is where it gets even more silly. If you're one of the historically downtrodden you are entitled use the history of your ancestors experience to justify your opinions towards the dominant group in the present who are, by association alone, barred from complaining because their ancestors were not nice to someone else's ancestors.

That's the sort of retarded lunacy that causes wars to start isn't it?

Stop saying "flaming" is "trolling"

Recently, a piece was posted on the New Statesman website about the abuse bloggers face in their comments. Specifically though this was about the abuse female bloggers face in their comments. You see, being told that you deserve to die or be raped is, apparently, an area that is reserved solely for females.

Now, having been online since the 1992 I personally take issue with that assertion. Death threats, rape threats, vicious violent threats are not, in my experience, reserved for any one particular gender at all. I've been threatened with all manner of nasty ends from being anally raped to within an inch of my life, to being burned at the stake (amusingly enough when that happened I was trolling myself and posting provocative neo-Marxist arguments on a a message board full of rednecks).

Anyways, mentioning burning here is rather apt, as responding like that is called "flaming" when it happens, yet it seems now that the Observer has taken up the cause have decided that it's actually trolling, they note

The frequency of the violent online invective – or "trolling" – levelled at female commentators and columnists is now causing some of the best known names in journalism to hesitate before publishing their opinions.

Now, I must apologise here for being pedantic, but telling someone online that you hope they "DIE, DIE, DIE. I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL!" or "I HOPE YOU GET RAPED......... TWICE!" is not trolling. OK?

It's an easy mistake to make if you think the word "troll" refers to ugly creatures that live under bridges. However, what it actually refers to is a form of fishing where where you cast a line into the water baited with lure, a spinner perhaps, and you drag it along hoping to catch a fish stupid enough to bite.

It is a subtle art where you post to a forum, a message board, a newsgroup, a blog, with the distinct purpose of making that community bite back at you. Your target is not the writer alone but in fact everyone that reads your words.

A good troll is one where the community bite and have no idea they've been had (see "oh how I envy American students" for details, a troll that kept getting responses for a year); a bad troll is when it's blatantly obvious the words are designed to cause trouble (posting a derogatory comment about Mohammad to an Islamic forum for example) and that is called flaming. See here for the legendary Ultimate Flame.

If you're born in August you're screwed... allegedly

There's a great little piece in today's Daily Mail about a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that has found "August born children" are disadvantaged at school by being the youngest in the Academic year. Apparently,

August-born boys are 12 per cent less likely than September-born boys to get good GCSEs and girls are nine per cent less likely.

In addition, August-born youngsters are 20 per cent more likely to ditch academic study and learn a trade from the age of 16. They are 20 per cent less likely to go to an elite university.

And it is not just their education that suffers as they are more likely to be bullied at primary school and have lower confidence in their academic ability.

As a result as teenagers, they are also more inclined to smoke, binge drink and take cannabis and fewer are in control of their lives.

Oh dear, am I alone in feeling that perhaps this an effect desperately seeking out a cause?

Lord knows how this sort of thing works for those kids who, by virtue of things like "rising fives" find themselves in the year above the year they should be in in school. They're probably on the scrapheap right? Well, except for say a certain lady I know who is a research scientist at Cancer Research and has appeared on the Today programme, but was always the "youngest in the year".

Right wing former minister in links to other right wingers SHOCKER!

There's a real gem in this morning's sunday tabloid the Observer. In an effort to stretch out the story about Liam Fox resigning - he should've gone over a week ago really - they've done an investigative piece that has discovered that the Pope is Catholic and bears do indeed shit in the woods.

David Cameron has been accused of allowing a secret rightwing agenda to flourish at the heart of the Conservative party, as fallout from the resignation of Liam Fox exposed its close links with a US network of lobbyists, climate change deniers and defence hawks.

Noooo really? Liam Fox, the dfence secretary knew defence? Never! I don't believe it! You jest surely? You'll be telling me next that the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley knows doctors!

In a sign that Fox's decision to fall on his sword will not mark the end of the furore engulfing the Tories, both Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians stepped up their demands for the prime minister to explain why several senior members of his cabinet were involved in an Anglo-American organisation apparently at odds with his party's environmental commitments and pledge to defend free healthcare.

Hang on a minute, are you saying that some people in the Tory Party disagree with David Cameron and have been chatting with others who disagree with him? OMFG! Really? Seriously? God I wish the Labour or the Lib Dems were the sole party of power, they've never ever had a disagreement on policy ever. Shining examplesof unity are they!

An Observer investigation reveals that many of those who sat on the Anglo-American charity's board and its executive council, or were employed on its staff, were lobbyists or lawyers with connections to the defence industry and energy interests. Others included powerful businessmen with defence investments and representatives of the gambling industry.

Oh yes, the new puritanism has arrived, filthy fornicating gamblers in Atlantic City. Can someone, anyone, pleases explain to me (a) why its wrong that people on a board of a voluntary organisation have errr jobs? and (b) where the Observer investigation was about the links between Gordon Brown's Smith Institute and Fidel Castro? What you didn't know there was a link? Trust me, with the degrees of separation rules at play in the Observer's piece I bet I could find one.

Don't get me wrong here, Liam Fox was right to resign, but seriously, the Observer "investigation" is so pants it's not even worthy of the Sunday Mirror. They've exposed the square root of 1/5 of nothing and simply screamed that Liam Fox knew some people they don't like and therefore by association there is some sort of dark shadowy Illuminati at play here, illustrated brilliantly by Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshot who said "Dr Fox is a spider at the centre of a tangled neocon web."

Pass the tinfoil.

How I laughed.....

Total Eclipse of the Heart - Literal Video Version by BalloDaSballo

Committed genocide? Come to Britain and get away with it

Quality extract in the Mail on Sunday from Phil Woolas's diary when he was Labour Immigration Minister

June 28
Back to Rwanda. We have four people wanted for genocide in Rwanda (there are 100 but the four are the test case). The magistrates had agreed to extradite them but the High Court had disagreed on the grounds that they would not get a fair trial in Rwanda.

I am advised that I should grant six months leave to remain in the UK ‘in the hope that the legal system in Rwanda improves’.

I had asked why we couldn’t try them in The Hague and was told as they were not British, I couldn’t send them there!

So a person accused of committing genocide in an ‘unsafe country’ (which country that has genocide is safe!) simply has to get into an ECHR country and they will get away with it. The ECHR is providing cover for people who commit genocide. Madness.

The mind boggles at that one.

Riots: Quote of the Day

From the Telegraph and Daily Mail

Looters formed an orderly queue outside JD Sports.

Only in Britain huh?

Amy Winehouse - posts from the past

I think Amy Winehouse's record sales are about to go through the roof given her untimely death due to overdose. Anyhow, here's some posts from the past.

Before Heroin - 9th April 2007

Sticking with the music theme of the last post, I;ve just seen Channel 4 News run a piece about Amy Winehouse and whether she should be up for the Mercury Music Prize or not because she's a smackhead.

It's worth noting how bloody good the critically acclaimed 2003 album Frank actually was and who she was before she became a household name because she likes to chase the dragon. This is "Fuck me Pumps", and I'm sure we all know the type of girls she's singing about, not to mention the mild irony given what's happened to her.

YouTube is still being slow, give it a chance.

Anyway, I'm not sure whether "Back to Black" will win the Mercury Prize tonight, but comparing this girl to Coldplay (as Nich Starling did last week) is way of the mark musically and lyrically. Shame about the smack.

Quick Saturday Observation - 25th August 2007 (horribly prescient)

The UK's own Janis Joplin in waiting?

N.B. Personally I think her first album is infinitely better than Rehab.

Today probably marks the birth of music legend. Whether she deserves to be one or not will be a matter of personal taste.