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.
Ghastly woman she (Toynbee) may be, Mary, but she has one solid and certain characteristic. She’s always wrong.
I hope calling it Time News and linking to Life News was an unintentional slip, John. Time/Life are natural associates, but don’t live in Russia. Life News does.
News Media, the holding company that runs a number of media assets for Putin’s close friend Yury Kovalchuk, decided to cut between 15 and 30 percent of its staff, including 15 to 17 percent of the employees of Lifenews, the TV channel that has carried some of the most powerful domestically-targeted propaganda on the Ukraine crisis.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-23/putin-s-propaganda-industry-tightens-its-belt
(one good propaganda outlet deserves another. And another…
http://themoscownews.com/news/20110718/188852518.html )
CIA death squads are heading for , no. . . not Armenia, that was last month, butNorth Islington , obviously. . .
. . .according to “red Ken” here
пропаганда links are respectively Reuters/US.CNBC & a UK pro-London-business rag
Pour M. Goss….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gncW1zqMFgs
Veux-tu un mec comme Poutine?
“CIA death squads” looks very much like a typical Livingstone jest to me. Nice of London Loves Business to take it seriously, and highly predictable. LLB appears to consist of two girl journalists, btw, one with a first in journalism, which pretty well rules out any investigative or critical reporting. God alone knows how it works, and any backing it may have is not readily traceable. But there might be a clue in the title….
Fred
3 Aug, 2015 – 9:11 pm
“A number of concerns raised in this article regarding Police Scotland, including illegal surveillance on journalists.”
…………………………
This opinion piece Fred is mere hyperbole from the anti-SNP “journalist” Kevin McKenna.
He wrote a similar piece about the state of the NHS in Scotland again blaming the SNP.
He’s a bit like you Fred: If something goes wrong in Scotland; blame the SNP. If something goes right don’t mention it.
By the way, all the issues he raises about Police Scotland are the same issues throughout the UK police forces, including spying on journalists.
Mary at 9.33, “The shares stood at £6.88 in 2007. Now £3.30”. A few years ago private shareholders were given 1 new share for every 10 of the old shares that they held, therefore the comparative price is now only 33 pence. Any shares purchased at £2 will need the new shares to make £20 to break even, I don’t think there is any chance of that any time soon.
I know because I still have some shares in RBS from the old days. As a shareholder, I am shocked that I was not asked if I wanted to buy any, they were quick to ask us to support a Rights Issue in 2008 when they were getting desperate. There has been court proceedings running for a long time to recover this money and RBS are trying to make the costs prohibitive for their ex-shareholders, but it seems that the shareholders are determined to take them all the way.
Increasingly I get the impression that our politicians are what they are because they’re epic failures at business. Buy low, sell high is a pretty basic principle, but the alleged party of business regularly inverts this. The latest spin is that a low price on this tranche will encourage higher bidding on the next. Bullshit, IMO. And, btw, the retail arm’s going to be Coutts’ Bank in the foreseeable future…
Apologies, not Coutts’. That was the last spiffing wheeze, which fell through. Williams and Glyn’s. To which RBS will be selling its branches.
New post please Craig.
Osborne is a page boy to his dads banker friends and financial institutions, not a chancellor in charge of the exchequer. To sell these shares when business is slow, many are on holiday, the stock market depressed means its the best opportune time for these scoundrels to defraud us for the second time round.
beginning to think that austerity = robbing us, to pay bankers.
Entirely coincidentally to John Goss’s intervention:
http://полезнознать.рф/ekonomika-eng/russia-blocked-a-un-security-council-resolution-on-the-tribunal-by-boeing/
Nothing to hide, then.
New post please Craig.
When he damn well pleases. Suck it up.
From the Torygraph: Man accuses Ted Heath of raping him as a boy:
“The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is looking into whether Wiltshire Police followed up a claim against Sir Edward, which was made in the 1990s.”
The IPPC is the ruling old boy network’s Cover-Up Unit.
They’re the unit that interviewed a witness to the murder of Jean-Charles de Menezes and told her to stop saying what she saw and that actually she saw something completely different.
They’re as corrupt as a masonic lodge full of surveyors or customs officers.
A major part of their remit is to help with cover-ups.
“A woman who was in charge of a brothel had been due to stand trial but said she would expose the top politician, according to reports.”
That means Carole Kasir, the madam at Elm Guest House.
“The boy, who claimed to have been abused throughout his childhood by his father and his paedophile friends, said Sir Edward picked him up along the A2 road in north Kent as he hitched a lift.”
Jeremy Thorpe also used to pick up male hitchhikers and on a number of occasions they realised who he was and ended up dead.
That Heath also held the view that he could abuse whatever children and youngsters he wanted, being untouchable, doesn’t surprise me one bit.
“Superintendent Sean Memory of Wiltshire Police said: ‘The allegation is that a trial was due to take place in the 1990s and information was received in that trial that Sir Ted Heath was involved in the abuse of children and the allegation is from the result of that information that the trial never took place.’
The superintendent clearly believes the rest of us shouldn’t know who did what to allow the person to get off.
In English translation: senior figures told the CPS to drop the case in order to protect the image of the Tory leadership.
“Sir Edward, who was prime minister for four years in the 1970s, is the highest-profile figure to be embroiled in historic abuse allegations against prominent figures.”
That means they’re still trying to protect the royal family, and in particular, Prince Charles and Prince Andrew.
Look at it this way: Prince Philip was kept out of the Profumo scandal in the 1960. Do dykes hold forever?
The Wiltshire cops are saying:
“We would like to hear from anyone who has any relevant information that may assist us in our inquiries or anyone who believes they may have been a victim.”
I bet they would.
My advice to any victims who may be reading this is not to trust the police or any other authorities: if you want to tell people what you have experienced, go public on the internet.
“Increasingly I get the impression that our politicians are what they are because they’re epic failures at business.”
We are not in this mess because politicians are stupid but because clever bankers made politicians enact policies which benefited bankers.
The entire RBS saga is a scam from start to finish:
• All banks make huge profits by lending prodigiously.
• Concentrate bad debts in a few banks.
• Instill ‘too big to fail’ meme.
• Order politicians to ‘nationalise’ compromised banks at huge cost to tax-payers.
• Continue injecting billions until ‘nationalised’ banks have paid off the lion’s share of bad debt.
• Sell bank back to bankers at knock-down price.
beginning to think that austerity = robbing us, to pay bankers.
Too right. Note the bastards didn’t buy voting shares in RBS: the taxpaying sucker didn’t even have the opportunity to reform the bank. Lovely little restructure: the retail arm goes to another retail bank for a knockdown price (W&G may not have been too wise buying it even then), while the crooked division ends up divvied up between hedge funds. And lives to cheat another day.
Yes, Node. Fully understood already, and agree. My comment was intended to hint at the falsity of the bought politicians’ advertising themselves as doing business in the interest of the people who elected them. No conflict.
CAPTION CONTEST 1
=================
Please provide witty captions for this photograph:
<a href="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03128/thorpeleaders_3128355c.jpg
I’ll start:
Edward Heath:
“Jeremy, you’ve got my cock-cheese behind your ear”
Jeremy Thorpe:
“Ooooh you perfect bitch! Shut up! Harold won’t notice! He’s pining for Marcia!“
CAPTION CONTEST 2
=================
Please provide witty captions for the photograph:
Edward Heath and Jimmy Savile.
CAPTION CONTEST 2
=================
“Gross and Grocer”
“New post please Craig.”
You don’t actually think he reads this crap, sshurely ?
Don’t call him Shirley.
I’ll get me coat.
” I’ll get me coat.”
… and the next dance, please.
A very good piece by Duncan Campbell. Remember Zircon?
Referring to the Europeans.
NSA“Don’t wrestle in the mud with the pigs. They like it, and you both get dirty.”
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/03/life-unmasking-british-eavesdroppers/
” Dont underestimate the Russians, there is no way they could have allowed the Novorossiya to hand over the black boxes if they were culpable.”
Well apart from admitting that Russia is calling the shots in rebel held Ukraine, something that’s previously been denied, the Russians knew they had nothing to fear from the recordings. Whatever happened there wasn’t going to be any “smoking gun”, preliminary reports say the recordings just stop. Investigators say there were no signs of the memory modules having been tampered with so chances of the Russians having a copy are slim. If they did how would they prove it was a copy and not a forgery?
Still waiting for Mr Goss to reconcile his conviction that MH17 was shot down by those pesky Ukraine ultra-fascists with new claims that it was destroyed by a bomb planted by those even more pesky Israelis.
“By the way, all the issues he raises about Police Scotland are the same issues throughout the UK police forces, including spying on journalists.”
So what? I’ve never been a big fan of the police south of the border or the government at Westminster and I’ve criticised both frequently.
What is worrying is that any criticism of the government north of the border seems to be ruled out by the Nationalists.
Not Edward Heath
2:06pm
Edward Heath is apparently being investigated by four police forces including that of Jersey. Jersey, of course, is the island on which the childrens’ care home Haut de la Garenne was situated. That is from where Michael Shrimpton alleges that children were taken to Heath’s yacht, abused and killed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33770021
Remarkable coincidences.
Kind regards,
Not Edward Heath
2:06pm
By the way, my understanding is that Carole Kasir died in 1990. If so, then she cannot be the same “madam” who threatened to expose Edward Heath during the 1990’s and therefore forced her prosecution to be dropped, if the facts have been accurately reported.
Kind regards,
John
Craigs old department,changing its mantra on the death penalty in countries around the world seen as human rights abusers.
The Foreign Office has been accused of abandoning its international campaign for the abolition of the death penalty.
Under the Conservative Government, the FCO’s official global aims have been changed to remove the UK’s opposition to capital punishment.
Under the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition the Foreign Office had “six global thematic priorities”: women’s rights; torture prevention; abolition of the death penalty; freedom of expression on the internet; business and human rights; and freedom of religion or belief.
These have all now been replaced with three “broader” categories: human rights, democratic values and the rule of law.
It’s not surprising the FCO has ditched its international campaign against the death penalty, as Human Rights aren’t high up on the Tory agenda.
http://www.thenational.scot/news/human-rights-groups-accuse-the-foreign-office-of-abandoning-campaign-to-abolish-the-death-penalty.5947
John Spencer-Davis, I haven’t looked at the BBC News web site for a while. It doesn’t seem to have changed much, and is still an alternate reality: at the time of posting the top news story on the BBC site is muslim bogeyman stuff. There’s not one mention of the Corbyn rally in Camden yesterday evening, which drew massive crowds. There’s been nothing like it in recent British political history (when it comes to an opposition party leadership contest).