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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?

#261

Post by DrScientist »

IMTDb wrote: post #17
azangru wrote: post #15

While fascinating, if this is a deliberate strategy, I wonder what its intended effect is supposed to be. Are people curious enough to google for stories about Johnson's alleged affair with the American woman going to be satisfied with the "model of restraint" quote? Are they going to forget what they have just been searching for, get immediately distracted and go read what this model of restraint business is all abo…

No, but it makes the alleged affair look a lot less important. If a news story is not even on the first page of google results, is it even that big of a deal ?

Actually the alleged affair, is not the important bit. The important bit is him appearing to mis-use public funds for a friend ( whether that friend was with benefits or not ).

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

#263

Post by pysxul »

jnty wrote: post #168
sacado2 wrote: post #127

At first I read it backwards, I thought he had had sex with a model just to hide a scandal about a "model of restraint" and thought " wow, that guy is really doing all he can to hide the scandal". And then I remembered it was not France and having an affair could be a scandal, and I'm a little disappointed because I preferred my version.

To be fair, the affair is only the scandal because it may have caused a conflict of interest. Boris has had plenty of them in the past, to the point where nobody knows for certain how many children he has.

French here, I second this. - Jacques Chirac had an affair - Francois Holland also had one (quite funny he would sneak out on a motorbike to visit his mistress) - There is growing rumours on Emmanuel Macron being secretly Gay and being married to Brigitte is a cover

On a side note, someone personal life choices has no impact on their work as politicians so that kind of "scandal" are not that big of a deal in France. It only increase the sales of gossip magazines.

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

#265

Post by repolfx »

meowface wrote: post #229
thaumasiotes wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is in this case, Boris has been caught red-handed doing very similar sorts of "cunning disguised as idiocy" ploys before. For example, feigning forgetting speeches. Seems hard to blame him for this. Compare https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnaccustomedAsIA... .

I don't blame him, really. I find it quite clever. But I think it's silly to deny it and act like all apparent instances of it are baseless conspiracy theories.

But you have no evidence for any of this. It's literally a theory about some hidden deeper motive of a government or leader, like all conspiracy theories. There isn't one shred of evidence Boris makes up non existent hobbies to (unsuccessfully) manipulate search results.

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

#267

Post by rainforest »

kitd wrote: post #163

See also "Boris Johnson & Kippers" [1] ("kipper" is a nickname for a member of UKIP, a right-wing pro-Brexit political party) He was talking about buses on the radio again this morning, as was Sajid Javid, the chancellor, yesterday. [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-kippers...

The "spineless chicken" Corbyn attack could also have been to muddy the "chlorinated chicken" association too.

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

#269

Post by jdietrich »

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…

"You can't rule out the possibility that beneath the elaborately-constructed veneer of a blithering idiot there lurks a blithering idiot" - Boris Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoifaIEvC0Q

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

#270

Post by all2 »

noir_lord wrote: post #149
verbify wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've borrowed it from someone else (who was actually educated in Oxford, but not Eton), wish it were my own though.

For centuries a posh accent and certainty was enough for the class that ruled the UK. One thing Brexit has successfully done is illustrate to all sides just how mediocre our leadership actually is. Mediocre leaders are fine when the ship is sailing in calm waters to a known destination. At the moment it feels like half of them want to steer into the iceberg and the other half want to abandon ship, with a few lone voi…

It'll take an existential threat (war?) to sort the wheat from the chaff. Typically the best and brightest of a country trickle to the top when duty finally calls.

Though, there are opportunists. Like Mao. Or Hitler.

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