Priti Patel

[MintChocAddict]

Anyone else think that was possibly the smuggest walk into Downing Street ever?

Was I alone in praying she would trip up?

I’m a centre left swing voter and it will be a cold day in hell before I ever vote Tory. Regardless of their politics, they have shown themselves to be utterly, utterly incompetent in government. I don’t think I will ever forgive them for taking a wrecking ball to the country for their own petty internal squabbles.

I’m pretty fed up with labour as well but they are not responsible for the current shitstorm, just completely incapable of putting up an opposition

Your friend is wrong Merry. TM was a stickler for detail and could point out a mistake in several pages of figures at 3am after a long day.

TM had a definite grasp of the department including the budget! Many people disagree with her politics but no one I know that worked with her disputed her competence.

I've said a few daft things in my time, but none of them have been in the same league as unilaterally suggesting the UK was going to change stance on a disputed territory without telling anyone else about it . Or suggesting that our neighbours, one of the most food secure societies in the world, might be starved into submission.

I think he's just got very limited options clearblueskye. Same reason May never tried kicking her out of the parliamentary party.

Dominic Raab is Foreign Sec Flying. It's Sajid Javid that is now Chancellor.

That's not quite correct Iggly. Council tax does go to the local authority that collects it. It's business rates which is redistributed by central government, although the authority keeps 50% of the growth.

Laughing at the poster who said Patel is intelligent.
She can't be that intelligent if she gets caught lying several times and has to resign for it.

Dominic Raab is Foreign Sec Flying. It's Sajid Javid that is now Chancellor.

Oops yes.

Dominic Cummings. If you think you made up your own mind about Brexit vote Leave and reached your oddly familiar opinions, that you share with so many others, by diligent individual research, do have a look at The Great Hack on Netflix. Have a look at Pavlov' dogs too. Mr Cummings has been employed by Bozza and friends to do the same for BJ. I hope you enjoy it.

long I voted remain, but I don’t see how those who voted leave are any more likely to have been influenced than you or I by election campaigning?

@Lumene, it's too involved to explain here. This is not election campaigning in its recognisable shape. It is, in fact, the stuff of dystopian fiction and here it is, alive and thriving, fronted up by Boris in Number 10 and the American toddler. Watch it and be both frightened and appalled. They've done the thinking so we don't have to. Which sums up everything.

I haven't seen the film yet, but Carole Cadwalladr's TED talk about Facebook is only 15 mins and quite illuminating.

Cadwalladr went back to her home area, the south Wales valleys, which had the one of the highest Leave votes in the country. She details the emotionally charged, factually false Facebook advertising which was sent only to certain voters and left no publicly available trace of who had paid for it, or even that it had happened.

www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_in_brexit_and_the_threat_to_democracy?language=en

Mark Turnbull of Cambridge Analytica caught on film describing the techniques the company uses for manipulating the population – for a price, of course.

www.cbsnews.com/news/cambridge-analytica-ceo-alexander-nix-data-firm-describes-shadow-election-tactics-2018-03-19/

"The two fundamental human driver when it comes to taking information on board effectively are hopes and fears, and many of those are unspoken and the even unconscious -- you didn't know that was a fear until you saw something that just evoked that reaction from you," Turnbull explained in a meeting with a reporter posing as "Ranjan," a prospective client from Sri Lanka.

He continued, "And our job is to get, is to drop the bucket further down the well than anybody else to understand what are those really deep-seated underlying fears, concerns. There is no good fighting an election campaign on the facts because actually it's all about emotion."
[...]
"We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again like a remote control," he said. "It has to happen without anyone thinking, 'that's propaganda', because the moment you think, 'That's propaganda', the next question is, 'Who's put that out?' So we have to be subtle."

Here's a link to the Channel 4 original investigation, where you can watch all the pieces. I think it was the first three short films, aired on consecutive days, which broke the story.

Data, Democracy and Dirty Tricks
www.channel4.com/news/data-democracy-and-dirty-tricks-cambridge-analytica-uncovered-investigation-expose

The secrecy of the ads, targetting only certain people and not being available to the general public, means the lies can never be challenged and the fears never discussed.

It also means that who or what is paying for the ads can't be traced without co-operation from Facebook. Could be anyone, from any country, paying for them.

As Cadwalladr says, liberal democracy is broken by this.

But to answer Lumene's question.

It's not that people who always intended to vote Leave were more susceptible to these sort of ads.

It's that people campaigning for Leave were more likely to be running these sort of ads, to persuade the persuadable.

In future elections, of course, it will be other groups running these ads. Brave New World.

I think the answer is to call it out.
On Facebook I’m going to start commenting on some of this nonsense (I usually block it) and challenge it each and every time.

It’s interesting that apparently Tory propaganda is currently doing the rounds on Facebook. I haven’t seen a hint of it, the algorithms must show me to be beyond hope!

Blimey,what has happened to MN?

At first, all the posts calling her a bitch and cunt were deleted -too gendered? Are we not allowed to call men dicks or wankers either? Can we call people arseholes still?

And now my post right at the top of this thread has been deleted. I'd not called her any sweary words, I'd just said how she was when I worked with her.

Can we only now talk about rainbows and kittens and prams?

Corbyn meets Jerry Adams in the houses of parliament cue hysteria because he's a danger to us all

Priti Patel meets a foreign power, suggests she might be able to funnel foreign aid money into helping the apartheid against palastine and does all this while being on 'holiday' and thats fine?

Think your bias might be showing

In relation to people who've previously been kicked out of government for stupidity and dishonesty, apparently. The word cunt is liberally strewn across this site, but different rules appear to be in place on this thread.

I’ve just been looking for pro Leave pages on Facebook and the nonsense is palpable. People are sucking up the propaganda - it’s scary.

I've not had any Tory propaganda either on Facebook! I'm oddly chuffed.

Me too @The80sweregreat, being a lost cause is a badge of honour!

Have to say I missed it too, I don't have Fbook, Insta, Snap etc, dont have an online profile, don't belong to a political party so I'm not a target. I noticed an adult family member voicing some alarming right wing tropes prior to Brexit vote and told him he was falling for some obnoxious lies, worse still, my 16 year old nephew picked up some vile US opinions via international gaming. I know this because I questioned them as to how they could possibly have developed such erroneous and unfounded opinions. Horrible, just had their brains invaded without their noticing. If you're not aware of what fascism is you can't identify it until too late. I think we're all stuffed, so to speak.