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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?

#271

Post by ridewinter »

dajomu wrote: post #214
verbify wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying he's not racist/colonialist. You only have to read his article about 'flag-waving piccaninnies... tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief...' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3571742/If... . Or his argument that Obama hated the UK because he was Kenyan and had an 'ancestral dislike of the British empire'. Or any of the other dozens examples. I…

Isn't it much the same thing as Trump saying something racist that he can kind of get away with? Johnson can say it, incite some anger in people who won't vote for him anyway, get his name on the news again and appeal to his base. Many of his supporters are the kinds of people that want to "Make Britain Great Again". There isn't a vast constituency in Britain who love the poem, but there is a vast constituency who ar…

Yes, Churchill said plenty of stuff that was racist/misogamist even back in those days. Bojo models himself after him. Btw I'm a big Churchill fan in spite of all that. The flawed hero.

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

#272

Post by tolien »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #137
scarygliders wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So what you are telling us is that the leave side knew what they were voting for because they saw through the lies from the leave side which said that everything the remain side was saying was "project fear". Do you honestly think you can claim that is democracy working as intended?

Both replies have (assuming good faith) misinterpreted what you’ve said, so to flesh out: Vote Leave said that the remain campaign’s claims about the consequences of a vote to leave the EU (and, indeed, its implementation) were “Project Fear”: a campaign of at best exaggerations if not outright lies to scare people into voting for remain.

Having won, the leading members of the leave campaign (who now run the UK Government) now say that people knew what they were voting for because the remain campaign said what the consequences would be. That’s having your cake and eating it.

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

#273

Post by concordDance »

HenryBemis wrote: post #107

John Oliver mentioned this in his show, Last Week Tonight a couple of months ago [0]. Boris is a snake with a smart team behind him. He wants to divide and he creates more tension and hatred instead of providing solutions. He follows the steps of the Oompa Loompa across the pond. [0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k Edit: this post will be sooooo bad for the "karma points" but it's 100% accurate on BoJo the…

You deserve the downvotes given nonsense like "Oompa Loompa". Hackernews may have declined, but we haven't fallen far enough to ket that kind of bullshit slide.

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

#274

Post by lonelappde »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #215
afarrell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because empirically, it doesn't work. The front page of google for [Boris Johnson bus] has stories about: - The failure of a busmaker - The brexit bus advert - The suspicion that his 'model bus' answer was this ploy.

I've just realised that another example of this was his momentary diversion on building a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland. This reeks of an attempt to divert attention from his failed garden bridge project as London Major. Googling "boris johnson bridge" is filled with articles about he former for me at least. The thing is, it doesn't have to be completely successful for it to be worth his while doing. I…

This is insane. He's been a politician for many years. What could he possibly say that doesn't have any nouns in common with some other issue? Busses, models, bridges, what else is Johnson now banned from life for mentioning?

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

#275

Post by TomVDB »

kmlx wrote: post #208
TomVDB wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just learned something because of his post. I always thought that the ENA was similar to the Ecole de Petrole (a prestigious engineering school) but for economics or something like that.

is Ecole de Petrole translated as School of Petroleum by any chance? 'cause that would be hilarious in our day and age.

Of course!

But the official name is: Ecole National Superieure du Petrole et des Moteurs.

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

#276

Post by ncmncm »

wastedhours wrote: post #199
ncmncm wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not even getting into Brexit, if you look at the comments made by senior diplomats when he worked at the Foreign Office (along with the very obvious gaffs including getting a British woman an extended sentence in Iran...) which has a reasonably clear remit. His front-bench roles even before becoming PM, and his previous roles, where he was fired from being a journalist for lying, for example, show he's just bad a…

Yes, he does terribly when he doesn't get to define his own job responsibilities. At those, he frequently needed to fall back on his blueblood heritage.

Where he is now, his job (as he or his backers define it) appears to be to distract the voting public from unpleasant facts. He has proven very, very good at changing the public subject.

He has the complicity of the UK news media, much as W had in the US. The long-term takeover of the media by a tiny handful of right-wing extremists is proceeding smoothly worldwide, with concomittent benefits for their chosen spokesmouths.

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

#277

Post by darkarmani »

coldtea wrote: post #228
VBprogrammer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you are telling us is that the leave side knew what they were voting for because they saw through the lies from the leave side which said that everything the remain side was saying was "project fear". Do you honestly think you can claim that is democracy working as intended?

Of course not. Case in point: 1) One side of a political decision is considered "lies". 2) The people vote, but don't get what they voted for. 3) Only one side's arguments count as "min-information". 4) The people who voted a certain way are sneered at. 5) The situation is presented as remaining is a There Is No Alternative situation. Apparently the modern elites, and the 10%-20% richer substrates at the population a…

> Apparently the modern elites, and the 10%-20% richer substrates at the population are allergic to democracy and those "deplorable" 80% of their fellow citizens, and don't want anything to disrupt business as usual. And if things go well for the 10%-20%, obviously the rest have absolutely no basis to complain, they are just ignorant/vote against their interests (because the 10-20% know better than them)/etc..

Only 10-20% of voters wanted to Remain? A direct vote on a complicated open-ended question is a horrible way to sample the intentions of the populace.

No one makes decisions like this in their personal life. No one decides that they want to buy a car and then finding out that the only cars available are a millions of dollars decides that they have to pay that price. We make decisions that are bound by a bunch of implicit constraints and tradeoffs.

It would have been much better to vote to have a study for how to exit. And then a follow-up vote on which OPTION to take for an exit.

I'm sure the vote would have been different if it was for "Hard exit even if it means the break up of the UK" instead of a negotiated exit to protect our sovereignty. There are implications in the question.

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

#278

Post by pasabagi »

verbify wrote: post #102
drcongo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If he understood the context of the poem (a lack of sensitivity to the three wars the British fought to suppress Burmese independence) then he would've never recited the poem. That's exactly why he did it. He's a nasty, vindictive, racist colonialist.

I'm not saying he's not racist/colonialist. You only have to read his article about 'flag-waving piccaninnies... tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief...' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3571742/If... . Or his argument that Obama hated the UK because he was Kenyan and had an 'ancestral dislike of the British empire'. Or any of the other dozens examples. I…

I have a weird sort of in on this, in that my grandparents are exactly the kind of people who love The Road to Mandalay. I think the clever thing about reciting a poem like that is it appeals to a broad spectrum of conservative voters: the low-end, who will enjoy the thumb in the eye of 'political correctness', the mid-level, who feel like the british empire was good, then the 'intellectuals' (like my grandparents), who are very fond of poetry and Kipling, and like to think of themselves as more intelligent and refined than their proletariat opposition.

The nice thing about it, is it's a spectrum. If you're in the conservative-intellectual bracket, you still probably enjoy the provocation of the politically correct, and the imperial nostalgia stuff. If you're in the conservative-middle-brow bracket, you still feel good about the fact that your racism is being associated with Great British poetry.

I don't think he's a genius, or that he's playing fifth-dimensional chess, or something. I think it's just an advantage of this whole bumbling persona - that he can go to events like this and basically do what he wants. So when he thinks up some kind of stunt - like reciting a colonialist poem, or getting stuck on a rope, or whatever - he can go ahead with it, because it fits with his image. That gives him a whole range of communicative strategies most politicians don't have. What he actually communicates (the blend of dogwhistle racism and attention-seeking) is actually pretty normal.

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

#279

Post by HenryBemis »

concordDance wrote: post #273
HenryBemis wrote: post #107

John Oliver mentioned this in his show, Last Week Tonight a couple of months ago [0]. Boris is a snake with a smart team behind him. He wants to divide and he creates more tension and hatred instead of providing solutions. He follows the steps of the Oompa Loompa across the pond. [0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k Edit: this post will be sooooo bad for the "karma points" but it's 100% accurate on BoJo the…

You deserve the downvotes given nonsense like "Oompa Loompa". Hackernews may have declined, but we haven't fallen far enough to ket that kind of bullshit slide.

If you see any other comment I make (and I don't expect anyone to spend 1 second on seeing my other opinions) I am always positive an open minded. Right now this snake is threatening my well being, my income, my life balance. I don't take that lightly. This snake is also being reckless with a neighboring country, Ireland, and with his dangerous and careless actions he is risking to throw them to another decade of Troubles (look it up). My negativity hurt your eyes. His actions may cause deaths. You're right. I'm to blame.

Edit: I actually upvoted your comment, you are right on calling out my comment :)

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

#280

Post by compuguy »

HenryBemis wrote: post #279
concordDance wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You deserve the downvotes given nonsense like "Oompa Loompa". Hackernews may have declined, but we haven't fallen far enough to ket that kind of bullshit slide.

If you see any other comment I make (and I don't expect anyone to spend 1 second on seeing my other opinions) I am always positive an open minded. Right now this snake is threatening my well being, my income, my life balance. I don't take that lightly. This snake is also being reckless with a neighboring country, Ireland, and with his dangerous and careless actions he is risking to throw them to another decade of Tro…

I saw that Last Week Tonight segment. I agree with your original post.
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