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Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

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Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#171

Post by JshWright »

ganzuul wrote: post #166
duxut_staglatz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only a reply to: "ENA (one if not the most prestigeous uni in France)", and not to the ENA->ISF name change.

That is not the point. The topic of the article is clear.

There is no rule that says you can only reply to the primary point of a comment. Personally I found the clarification interesting, and learned something from it. Why do you think that detracts from the point about the potential motivation behind the rebranding? It's possible to learn more than one thing...

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#172

Post by IshKebab »

dalbasal wrote: post #145

I'm skeptical. (a)When I search "Boris Johnson model," I still get the Jennifer Arcuri results and (b) even if working perfectly, this kind of SEO spamming would be pretty marginal. People are exposed to the "model" story via so many avenues: TV, radio, news sites, FB feed, other search terms... It just doesn't seem worth it. At best it takes like 10% of the heat off him for a day. Null hypothesis is that Boris just…

Yeah me too. I've read a fair bit about the story and I didn't even know she was a model. She's mostly mentioned by name, and called an entrepreneur or businesswoman - not a model.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#174

Post by ncmncm »

wastedhours wrote: post #42
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The "lovable bumbling fool" image he puts across is a very conscious choice on his part. Despite what you think about his politics (and I'm personally not a fan) you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think.

> you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think. In playing the political game at least, definitely so. Lots of reports from coworkers (especially from the Foreign Office) that he is genuinely as clueless as he comes across when it comes to other elements of his job.

Perhaps you and he disagree about the nature of his job.

He seems to be doing well at his version. He is just not doing what you (and many others, but not enough) wish he were doing.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#175

Post by pjc50 »

verbify wrote: post #56
wastedhours wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think. In playing the political game at least, definitely so. Lots of reports from coworkers (especially from the Foreign Office) that he is genuinely as clueless as he comes across when it comes to other elements of his job.

The news story that really made me believe that the bumbling fool shtick is real and not just an act was when he went to a buddhist temple in Myanmar and started reciting a colonial-era Kipling poem about a British soldier reminiscing about a Burmese girl that he kissed - until the ambassador intervened and told him it wasn't appropriate. If he understood the context of the poem (a lack of sensitivity to the three wa…

But offending the locals doesn't matter to him. He's playing to the British right-wing audience, who then get to complain about "political correctness".

> British equivalent of a Texan politician who wears a cowboy hat and talks about their guns all the time.

Exactly. Pander to the prejudices of your voters.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#176

Post by pjc50 »

scarygliders wrote: post #90
m-i-l wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The public voted for something specific and 3 years down the road it has not happened or been scheduled properly. That should be the bigger democratic scandal" The public did not vote for something specific - they voted for something very vague and ill defined, the little information they were provided was incorrect (e.g. "an extra £350m a week for the NHS"), nobody had anything even approaching a plan, the whole th…

> they voted for something very vague and ill defined Utter tosh. The consequences of a Leave vote were hammered out by Remain-supporting politicians for weeks and weeks before the referendum. The government spent 9 million GBP to publish a leaflet in support of Remain which went to every household in the UK, before the referendum. Claiming that no one knew what a Leave vote meant, is gaslighting in the extreme.

There were multiple Leave campaigns. You can find plenty of leave campaigners saying they were going to keep the UK in the Single Market, for example.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#177

Post by ganzuul »

JshWright wrote: post #171
ganzuul wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the point. The topic of the article is clear.

There is no rule that says you can only reply to the primary point of a comment. Personally I found the clarification interesting, and learned something from it. Why do you think that detracts from the point about the potential motivation behind the rebranding? It's possible to learn more than one thing...

"Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#178

Post by vonmoltke »

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #45
ewidar wrote: post #14

> I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? Well there was a story on french president Macron who was apparently thinking of renaming the ENA (one if not the most prestigeous uni in France) to "Institut Superieur des Fonctionaires", ISF in short ( http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/l-ena-remplacee-par... sorry it's in French). But ISF is also the short name of the tax on the richest, which he has gotten r…

Describing the ENA as a university is misleading [0]: its does no research and does grant degrees [1]. All "students" are civil servant in training that have been hired through the civil service examinations and will go on to their jobs. They spend more than half of their "studies" working already to learn on the job. It's like saying Parris Island is a university. [0] In my opinion, this characterization as universi…

> it's like wondering why so many US Army officers come form West Point - well, that's because West Point is there to produce US Army officers

US service academies and War Colleges are actually degree-granting institutions, though.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#179

Post by air7 »

This has never crossed my mind as a possibility. It's ingenious. I wonder if/when this has ever been done before.

On second thought in a broader way this idea, of masking truth by hiding it behind something similar, is quite old. For example the idea that Pagan holidays were turned into Christian ones in an effort to erase them.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#180

Post by journalctl »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #33
AznHisoka wrote: post #29

My respect level for Boris actually went up a few notches after reading about this :)

Indeed. The "lovable bumbling fool" image he puts across is a very conscious choice on his part. Despite what you think about his politics (and I'm personally not a fan) you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think.

Perhaps not, but I don’t think that’s going to help people who, say, live along the Irish border or who will be impacted by drug shortages. This isn’t just some kind of game.
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