Why Rupert Murdoch considers it worth his while to pay David Aaronovitch a large six figure sum for such puerile antics as tweeting that I am insane, is a conjecture I find difficult to resolve. Today this exchange occurred on twitter:
David Aaronovitch: This suggestion that if elected Corbyn could be quickly ousted is utter bollocks. Democracy allows Labour to commit Hara Kiri.
Mark Doran: @DAaronovitch I hope everyone is watching how these servants of the micro-elite try to paint “attracting popular support” as “committing suicide.”
Mark Doran: @DAaronovitch Craig finds the elite-serving contortions every bit as funny as I do
David Aaronovitch: @MarkJDoran I tend to find Craig Murray unpersuasive on the grounds of him being unhinged. I can see why you like him, though.
Mark Doran: Says the man who managed to find Bush and Blair credible. I can see why you liked them, though.
It is remarkably ironic that on being referred to an article which argues that views outside a very narrow neoliberal establishment narrative are marginalised and ridiculed by the media, the Murdoch hack’s response is that the author is unhinged. Aaronovitch could not have more neatly proved my point.
But something else struck me about the twitter record. Aaronovitch’ twitter account claims to have 78,000 followers. Yet of the 78,000 people who allegedly received his tweet about my insanity, only 1 retweeted and 2 favourited. That is an astonishingly low proportion – 1 in 26,000 reacted. To give context, Mark Doran has only 582 followers and yet had more retweets and favourites for his riposte. 1 in 146 to be precise, a 200 times greater response rate.
Please keep reading, I promise you this gets a great deal less boring.
Eighteen months ago I wrote an article about Aaronovitch’s confession that he solicits fake reviews of his books to boost their score on Amazon. In response a reader emailed me with an analysis of Aaronovitch’s twitter followers. He argued with the aid of graphs that the way they accrued indicated that they were not arising naturally, but being purchased in blocks. He claimed this was common practice in the Murdoch organisation to promote their hacks through false apparent popularity.
I studied his graphs at some length, and engaged in email correspondence on them. I concluded that the evidence was not absolutely conclusive, and in fairness to Aaronovitch I declined to publish, to the annoyance of my correspondent.
Naturally this came to mind again today when I noted that Aaronovitch’ tweets to his alleged legion of followers in fact tumble into a well of silence. I do not even tweet. The entire limit of my tweeting is that this blog automatically tweets the titles of articles I write. They are not aphorisms so not geared to retweet. Yet even the simple tweet “Going Mainstream” which marked the article Aaronovitch derided, obtained 20 times the reactions of Aaronovitch’s snappy denunciation of my mental health. This despite the fact he has apparently 10 times more followers than me. An initial survey seems to show this is not atypical.
In logic, I can only see two possible explanations. The first is that my correspondent was right and Aaronovitch fakes twitter followers like he does book reviews. The second is that he has a vast army of followers, nearly all of whom find him dull and uninspiring, and who heartily disapproved en masse of his slur on my sanity. I opt for the second explanation, that he is just extremely dull, on the grounds that Mr Aaronovitch’s honesty and probity were never questioned, m’Lud.
Russia is not the only country that could have produced polonium. Israel’s Lethal History with Polonium.
Also quite a favorable column about Corbyn in this weekend’s Financial Times.;
Yes these people should come here. As long as the UK bombs noncombatants in Syria, oh dear we missed, they should damn well have enough guts to deal withthe inevitable consequences.
And so should America, what a pathetic show of utter nothingness. DEAL WITH YOUR RABID IMPACT FFS…..!
Piss on the price of oil, if a fall in the market price is not reflected in our ‘public transport, C’mon, be green,’ options, i.e they are offering lower fares, for once, after years of raising them for reasons of rising oil prices,. then they should be loosing their public franchises and be quartered, tarred and fed to the dogs.
“So the price of oil hasn’t fallen yet, therefore Salmond isn’t a liar, correct?”
Alex Salmond didn’t say the price of oil wouldn’t fall, the price of oil is rising or falling all the time. He said the price of oil would average $113 a barrel and not drop below £100 a barrel.
The price of Brent Crude at the moment is $49.59, that is below $100, less than half.
Fred
Can you show me where Salmond said oil wouldn’t drop below $100/barrel?
Jeremy Corbyn won’t win the Labour leadership: he supports Palestinian human rights, even if in a way that accepts the Zionazi state’s right to exist.
His position could be characterised as favouring the creation of two big bantustans, and although he supports the 1967 borders, i.e. the 1949 rampage line, I don’t imagine he talks much about East Jerusalem. OK, he’s not the brightest button on the tunic, nor the most courageous either, but he’s a member of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, and even if he’s a Zionist agent of influence, which I doubt, he’s still a member of the PSC …do I need to spell it out? He…will…not…win.
I encountered his influence 30 years ago, when he was one of the arseholes in leading Labour circles in Islington who did their utmost to take the steam out of local struggles, preferring that people should do things like petitioning the authorities (Corbyn and co collecting the names and handing them over) and should generally bow down to boot-lick ambitious Labour politicians who were readying themselves to relieve the Tories on a national level at the 1987 election. Oh wait a minute, that didn’t happen, and sorry about your struggles we crapped on, folks, at a time when the miners were on strike and there were real possibilities of winning victories if people seized the moment. Got it, Jeremy? Some of us remember your “don’t struggle; do everything to help Labour win the election” line. Wrong then, wrong now.
His brother, the amateur and extremely confident weather predictor, far better than the ‘experts’, has long struck me as a far more interesting and likeable guy.
Oops, typo! I meant to call his brother, Piers Corbyn, “extremely competent”, not “extremely confident”!
Jeremy Corbyn “fully supports” a British arms embargo against Israel. Credit where it’s due, but he obviously won’t win. He hasn’t got the glimmer of a chance.
I’m sure that confidence is a very valuable thing when it comes to predictive activities.
MJ,
For the record, I am not making an economic argument here. The price of oil is not dependent on market forces. It’s been manipulated for political purposes ever since the US oil companies bought up and closed down the railways to force a dependence on private transport. Over here, we did it the British way – we had our minister of transport close down the railways to achieve the same end.
I’ve only brought the subject up to watch Fred squirm. I’ve had a hard day’s work and this is my recreation, maneuvering him further and further out on a limb, knowing he’s incapable of climbing down. So far, our self-proclaimed rational blogger has declared that oil price trends can be recognised instantly whereas oil production trends take years before they can be confirmed, and then, in order to defend his claim that Salmond is a liar, he’s lying about what Salmond actually said.
It’s about making stuff work. It is not about making stuff fail.
If you haven’t got that yet???
Well you were never a part of the teams I worked in…
(we have got to make it work yes our backs are to the wall. but we have to make it work..Our Lives and Future Depend on It…and just look at ourselves..when they said..completely impossible – you guys are all going to lose your jobs and the company will go bust.)
Still Here.
Quality Mate.
BRITISH
Tony
Landowners in Scotland. Includes a list of 30 names. Not all are Scottish!
Aristocrats, tycoons and billionaires … the people who really own Scotland
2 August 2015 1.00pm.
http://www.sundaypost.com/news-views/scotland/aristocrats-tycoons-and-billionaires-the-people-who-really-own-scotland-1.892857
All positive.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership bid gathers pace as supporters flock to rally
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/03/jeremy-corbyn-bid-labour-leadership-momentum-supporters-flock-london-rally
3 August 2015
and
Jeremy Corbyn: Osborne’s northern powerhouse plan is ‘cruel deception’
Labour leadership candidate will say chancellor’s devolution proposals give local authorities no power to prevent cuts, as he sets out vision for the north
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/04/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-osborne-northern-powerhouse-cruel-deception
4 August 2015
If Boris Johnson thinks Piers Corbyn is competent, then he must be competent http://leftfootforward.org/2013/09/boris-climate-sceptic/
Thank you Mr Goss for further demonstrating the point – the only thing I have craven loyalty to is my wife and kids all of whom have Russian nationality – but I daresay they are fifth columnists using your fascist terminology.
Those who signed the letter to President Hussain of Pakistan to spare the life of Shafqat Hussain will be saddened to know he was hanged today. RIP.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/931905/shafqat-hussain-hanged-in-karachi/
“the only thing I have craven loyalty to is my wife and kids all of whom have Russian nationality”
Well stop making false accusations about other people having “craven loyalty”! I have never read anything from you that does not support the George Soros ideas of “open democracy”. Almost everything you write is anti-Putin but there is never anything substantial behind the accusations, no facts, just false accusations like Putin poisoned Kara-Murza. Your hatred is demonstrated by an embittered tirade against Putin. It is the same mindset as oligarchs Khodorkovsky and George Soros for whom the Putin government has issued an Interpol arrest warrant for funding war and regime-change in Kiev. Correct me if I am under the misunderstanding that you don’t support Poroshenko and Yatsenyul’s coup government in Ukraine.
Yatsenyul = Yatsenyuk
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/07/air-disaster/comment-page-1/#comment-467655
Mark Golding, you called it. Some of us will be able to hold our heads high by not blaming Putin if the truth is ever allowed to surface. It is encouraging that the Dutch authorities have asked Russia Today to lead them to where the remaining debris and personal belongings from MH17 (they seem most interested in the roof to the cockpit) which they should have tried to locate initially. The good people of Eastern Ukraine have been most helpful and dignified (despite attempts by western media to claim otherwise) towards the investigation. As regards the Dutch investigation too little, too late springs to mind.
Harriet Baldwin, Treasury minister, defends Gideon’s flogging off RBS shares at any price.
‘RBS Shares Sold At £1bn Loss To Taxpayers
The Government argues it is best for the economy to get the bank back into the private sector, even at a loss to taxpayers.
‘City minister Harriet Baldwin defended the share sale, telling Sky News the bailout of RBS was “never an investment in the traditional sense”.
“In terms of moving forward, clearly the governor of the Bank of England has advised that for the wider British economy it is really important that we start returning the bank to the private sector,” she said.
“This is the start of a long process. As with the shareholding we have been selling in Lloyds over the course of the last few years this is the beginning of a process that will take some time.”‘
http://news.sky.com/story/1529990/rbs-shares-sold-at-1bn-loss-to-taxpayers
Note that the shares have not been offered to the people who bailed out RBS, that is us, the taxpayers but to the Tories’ city friends.
Gideon wants shot of the RBS millstone before his transition to PM.
Baldwin’s previous – ‘She joined the investment bank JP Morgan Chase in 1986, becoming managing director and Head of Currency Management at their London office in 1998. She left the bank in 2008, after more than two decades with the bank.’ Wikipedia
Q Where are Fred Goodwin, McKillop, and co, the architects of the RBS collapse?
The shares stood at £6.88 in 2007. Now £3.30
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rbs+share+price&gws_rd=cr&ei=dnfAVYmmFsXsUom0vLAF
If this was a professional hit ordered by Putin it’s entirely likely that it was executed in a professional manner, not a Keystone Cops manner. Which is to say that if Lugovoi and Kovtun were spreading the stuff around liberally wherever they went it was most likely intentional.
I doubt that Luguvoi and Kovtun intentionally contaminated themselves, which was the case. And they were certainly professionals. You are ignoring the possibility of a cockup. You are asserting that a KGB-style execution would necessarily be well planned and foolproof. This is to ignore the facts. My guess, and it is as good as any of yours, is that Putin would only have to hint that someone was in his way, a sycophant would receive the message, book some of his old mates and arrange the details on KGB lines. The cutout in Hamburg is interesting. Although the Russians didn’t permit access to the Aeroflot Ilyushin which had brought Kovtun to Hamburg from Moscow, and the Germanwings Airbus which carried Kovtun on to London was clean, there was polonium at locations visited by Kovtun in Hamburg. Maybe I read too much Le Carre, but it looks like Kovtun brought the stuff from Moscow, and either had a damn good professional decontamination before going on to London without it, or booked, but didn’t use the flight, and took another route, which seems more likely. That would clearly suggest that someone, well aware of the extrovert nature of polonium particles, didn’t want the material connected with Moscow. And if Kovtun had known that the second the container was opened, his life would be in danger, I doubt he’d have been interested in the job. As far as the hoods were concerned, it was just poison. Intentional or not, it wouldn’t have been spotted unless polonium was the suspected material. Initially it was thought thet Litvinenko had been poisoned by thallium.
Still, it’s all too easy to criticise someone else’s hypothesis. Mine is that Putin or Kadyrov indicated it would be a good idea to remove a vocal critic who had connections to Chechen rebels, and Lugovoi and Kovtun – ex- Soviet security, but deniable as current agents – did the deed. The extremely unpleasant lingering death was to send a message to others: the nature of the poison was not revealed to the poisoners for security reasons. Thallium’s been done to death, har, har, so polonium was used.
Now what the fuck’s your hypothesis? All you’ve got so far is queries about mine. I’d like to do some sniping at yours now.
MJ
“I’m sure that confidence is a very valuable thing when it comes to predictive activities.”
And intellectual timidness when it comes to cocky half-arsed sarcasm?
Just kidding.
Or am I?
Haven’t you spotted that the bullshit prediction of scenarios, without any communicated understanding of the underlying reality, is an absolute staple for the politico wing of the chattering classes? (Think back to the run-up to this year’s general election for a classic case.) What do you have to say about that?
Didn’t you notice the implied syllogism in my post? I wasn’t trying to hide it with irony.
You know the minor premise: Corbyn is standing for the Labour leadership. You know the conclusion: he won’t win.
I’ll help you with the major premise: politicians who have long been active in Palestinian solidarity aren’t allowed to lead major British political parties.
Now tell me it’s not a matter of being allowed, and blah blah, you read something in the newspapers this week, and Jeremy Corbyn’s uncle’s auntie, blah blah, and what if Andy Burnham gets between 35% and 37% in the first round, and Harriet Harman says blah blah, and all that crap that’s plungered into the heads of politico media junkies.
I see Guido Fawkes is into obsessive mode on Corbyn. Talking of plungering crap into politico media junkies’ heads. Still, it’s heartwarming to see how frightened the media/political/business axis is by Corbyn. However, highlighting his pro-Palestinian opinions doesn’t address the infinite capacity of NuLabour ™ for mendacity and fixing, without any help from its BICOM chums. They’ll rig the ballot if they have to, and they may have to.
This is the original Russian article which appeared in Time News concerning the alleged transcripts between Ukrainian air traffic control and an SU-27 fighter pilot tracking the plane. Still nothing in our media. I published the Sott.net translation 3 days ago.
http://lifenews.ru/news/158220
John S Warren
I hope your cogitations on my deficient methodology won’t distract you from answering the two questions I out to you yesterday.
In case you’ve already forgotten what they are, here they are again:
“But leave aside the photos and let’s get to the point. Are you, like Daniel, in favour of letting anyone who is determined to get to the UK do so? Or do you believe that the UK authorities and Eurotunnel security should uphold the law on entry to the UK?”
Thanks, and I’m holding my breath ‘cos I know you’re a seriuos commenter…. 🙂
N_: I think you’re reading too much into my comment. It was just an off the cuff, not-so-smart alec response to your correction. It had no bearing on the rest of your post.
Corbyn may not win but that does not necessarily mean the contest will be fixed. It would be much more difficult to do that under the new OMOV voting system. It would have been easier under the old system where unions and MPs accounted for 2/3 of the final vote.
AWE (privatised) is shedding 500 jobs.
Atomic Weapons Establishment meets Prospect over 500 job cuts
3 August 2015
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-33757634
‘AWE makes Britain’s Trident nuclear warheads and also stores nuclear waste from Royal Navy submarines.
The company said the job losses were part of plans focused “on improving and streamlining ways of working”.
As well as two sites in Burghfield and Aldermaston in Berkshire, AWE has facilities in Blacknest, Hampshire, and Coulport in Scotland.’
Look at the size of the site in the photo.
‘AWE plc is responsible for the day-to-day operations of AWE. AWE plc is owned by a consortium of Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin UK, and Serco through AWE Management Ltd who hold a 25‑year contract (until March 2025) to operate AWE. All AWE sites remain owned by the UK government who also hold a golden share in AWE plc.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Weapons_Establishment
Ghastly woman.
Polly Toynbee on Corbyn again.
‘Leave aside his alarming prevarications on the EU referendum and his “friends” in Hamas and Hezbollah…’
‘At hustings he shines by offering virtue, while the rest wrestle with the wretched realities of British politics.’
Free to dream, I’d be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can’t gamble the future on him
Many of us share the Labour leadership frontrunner’s core beliefs, but tactically the best chance lies with Yvette Cooper
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/04/jeremy-corbyn-gamble-labour-future-yvette-cooper-best-chance