Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VI

[droodzilla]

There were two or three local candidates. None of them were chosen.

The candidate you mention is correct on all three counts. Sadly he capitulated and disowned his old tweets, but a fat lot of good it did him. Some people never learn that trying to appease fanatics only makes them bolder.

And, @paulfromcamden, here's the other candidate I was thinking of:

https://www.facebook.com/cllrmichaelgraham/posts/393558309445007

He's definitely not a Corbynite as he came up via the Labour Party's future candidates programme, launched under Starmer's leadership. (supporters of Corbyn need not apply).

 

[paulfromcamden]

And, @paulfromcamden, here's the other candidate I was thinking of:

https://www.facebook.com/cllrmichaelgraham/posts/393558309445007

He's definitely not a Corbynite as he came up via the Labour Party's future candidates programme, launched under Starmer's leadership. (supporters of Corbyn need not apply).

He's certainly got a sense of humour posting about 'pedalos'...

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

I find this hugely patronising to a lot of people.

You keep attacking Twitter and similar modern peer information platforms, but it is exponentially better than the sources most folk had access to previously such as the tabloid and broadsheet press, even TV news, where pretty much everything you read or watch is preselected, diluted and filtered by a wealthy white English middle-aged largely male conservative public school/Oxbridge elite and/or multi-millionaire offshored press-barons.

Perhaps our previous exchanges caused you to miss details like my use of "many" in what I wrote. Calm down and have a cup of tea.

Yes, I agree that other 'news' avenues are often sublect to what you describe. However if you listen to the BBC WS and other broadcasters you can find a rather more diverse range of info and viewpoints than in the UK tabloids, etc. Hence my (repeated) point about diverity of the 'curations' to explore.

But - twerper or Daily Maul - *many* people simply don't do this. They double down on what they 'like' and have no view of clashing information or opinions. Some do this via the Daily Maul, some via Twerper.

 

[ks.234]

Perhaps our previous exchanges caused you to miss details like my use of "many" in what I wrote. Calm down and have a cup of tea.

Yes, I agree that other 'news' avenues are often sublect to what you describe. However if you listen to the BBC WS and other broadcasters you can find a rather more diverse range of info and viewpoints than in the UK tabloids, etc. Hence my (repeated) point about diverity of the 'curations' to explore.

But - twerper or Daily Maul - *many* people simply don't do this. They double down on what they 'like' and have no view of clashing information or opinions. Some do this via the Daily Maul, some via Twerper.

Yes, and many (most?) people who describe themselves as open minded are just as capable of ‘doubling down’ on certain issues that they unwilling to have challenged

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

To be honest it is only in the past 12 months or so that I’ve really started deep-diving modern social media as it was becoming obvious I was out of touch with several generations of younger people. It is one of the reasons I’m having a gentle dig at Jim as I nearly fell down the same hole. I realised this years ago with new music, so learned how to find what was happening there, I’m just learning to do the same with everything else.

To be honest, if I tried adding anti-social media to the range of things I read/reported I'd get even *less* work done than I do now. My interest isn't only in learning, but in finding out and explaining things that people have forgotten/overlooked/found 'difficult'/etc

e.g. I am now - at last! - writing the 'Advertising Archeology" of the 1950s for Armstrong. (Four year delay since the last part.) Pops up various examples that I think would surprise people. Casts a side-light on the question of when "Hi Fi started" in the UK, and just how it grew out of previous interests.

 

[Joe Hutch]

I don’t suppose many people are actually ‘open-minded’, except on matters that don’t really bother them. Almost everyone places themselves somewhere on a political spectrum, and would not be persuadable that they should be anywhere else on it. The same goes for religious beliefs or lack of same, and for support of a particular sports team.

 

[Tony L]

But - twerper or Daily Maul - *many* people simply don't do this. They double down on what they 'like' and have no view of clashing information or opinions. Some do this via the Daily Maul, some via Twerper.

The fact you find any equivalence between Twitter with the Daily Mail only proves beyond all doubt you don’t understand what it is at a conceptual level, let alone in reality as one of the world’s most important communication infrastructures. Twitter is as far from the rigidly edited, selected and curated white public-school conservative elite-defined partisan propaganda of the Daily Mail as it is possible to imagine. Here you are your own editor and curator and it is a peer to peer democracy so you can speak truth directly to power should you wish.

Just think of it as a vastly more advanced, popular, and more accessible version Usenet. Conceptually it is actually very similar in that it is a peer (in the social sense) network and the content overlaps a lot with what I remember when I used Usenet back in the Win 3.1 dial-up modem days. It is just vastly more personal and democratic as it is on an individual user or organisation account level. You exist at the same level as everyone else. You can not be silenced by privilege or power (you can be bullied, shouted down, but that is a different thing).

If you want news that hasn’t just been handed to you by yet another wealthy white straight middle-aged man with an Oxford PPE degree identical to those on the Conservative Party front benches I’m afraid you really have to look to social media these days. That’s not to say I don’t use this type of media too, I obviously do, I just recognise exactly what it is and I seek many other counterpoints for balance. Voices far more similar to my own. That is where Twitter etc come in.

 

[droodzilla]

File under: right-wing Labour MP ****wittery.

More like this on his Twitter feed, if you have the stomach for it.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

The fact you find any equivalence between Twitter with the Daily Mail only proves beyond all doubt you don’t understand what it is at a conceptual level, ...

...and your response "proves" (as you use the term) that you don't understand my point. You keep arguing about something else.

Yes, Twerper works on a different basis. But both Twerper and the DM enable many to get themselves into a bubble as a result of feeding their 'like' emotional responses and then causing them not to seek other info that might challenge them.

That *some* people approach *either* more critically and sensibly, and look for diversity that would give them pause for thought doesn't change the above problem which then influences the growth in nut-jobbery.

 

[Seanm]

...and your response "proves" (as you use the term) that you don't understand my point. You keep arguing about something else.

Yes, Twerper works on a different basis. But both Twerper and the DM enable many to get themselves into a bubble as a result of feeding their 'like' emotional responses and then causing them not to seek other info that might challenge them.

That *some* people approach *either* more critically and sensibly, and look for diversity that would give them pause for thought doesn't change the above problem which then influences the growth in nut-jobbery.

Jim I don't know if this addresses your main concerns but "filter bubbles" are really a journalistic/pop-sociology concept (and journalism doesn't come at this from a disinterested perspective): most media scholarship on the topic tends towards the deflationary. There are serious issues with social media, mostly around their effect on the broader media ecology, transparency, oversight etc. but filter bubbles aren't really seen as a big problem.

 

[Nick_G]

Jim I don't know if this addresses your main concerns but "filter bubbles" are really a journalistic/pop-sociology concept (and journalism doesn't come at this from a disinterested perspective): most media scholarship on the topic tends towards the deflationary. There are serious issues with social media, mostly around their effect on the broader media ecology, transparency, oversight etc. but filter bubbles aren't really seen as a big problem.

I'm not so sure about that

 

[Seanm]

I'm not so sure about that

Paywalled so you’ll have to fill us in*.On the face of it it looks like the usual credulous hype.

*Unless Putin’s involved. Please don’t bother if that’s the case.

 

[Nick_G]

Paywalled so you’ll have to fill us in*.On the face of it it looks like the usual credulous hype.

*Unless Putin’s involved. Please don’t bother if that’s the case.

No not Putin. Basically it says that Facebook knew about the planned 6th January 2021 insurrections but didn't do anything about it until it was too late. Also highlighted the fact that prominent figures such as politicians seemed to have a lot more leeway, despite their power and influence. It has archived screenshots of internal discussions between Facebook staff. Many were unhappy that management were so slow to act after potentially illegal posts were flagged.

Edit: you seem to be rather dismissive about social media's influence on the spread of authoritarianism and fascism in the West. How are you supposed to fight it if you don't know your enemy?

 

[Tony L]

Yes, Twerper works on a different basis. But both Twerper and the DM enable many to get themselves into a bubble as a result of feeding their 'like' emotional responses and then causing them not to seek other info that might challenge them.

People of our generation really do need to grasp we aren’t even in the loop anymore in most respects. People under say 35 who have grown up with internet technology just exist elsewhere communication-wise. A whole world is happening out there that you appear to have absolutely no connection to, no knowledge about, or even interest in as you are stuck so firmly within the old white conservative media bubble and constructs of your generation.

We all need to look around and connect with younger folk in their spaces rather than attempt to theorise and entrench ourselves further in an isolation largely of our own creation. That is all I am attempting to do here and I am very much still at the learning-curve stage as I ended up so out of touch. Since (thankfully) realising this I have added a lot more new information sources from different communities, cultures and groups all around the world to those I already used, and as such I can at least see, and hopefully even start to understand a larger picture of what is happening around me. I strongly encourage you to do the same.

 

[Seanm]

No not Putin. Basically it says that Facebook knew about the planned 6th January 2021 insurrections but didn't do anything about it until it was too late. Also highlighted the fact that prominent figures such as politicians seemed to have a lot more leeway, despite their power and influence. It has archived screenshots of internal discussions between Facebook staff. Many were unhappy that management were so slow to act after potentially illegal posts were flagged.

Edit: you seem to be rather dismissive about social media's influence on the spread of authoritarianism and fascism in the West. How are you supposed to fight it if you don't know your enemy?

I got hold of it in the end (through Twitter, ironically). There’s some interesting stuff about the internal structure of the company and the competing logics that drive it. There’s also a lot of hype and innuendo, and general horror at the general idea of people sharing information and organising politically. But one thing it doesn’t do is build a convincing case for the existence and effect of “filter bubbles.”

I’m not dismissive of the influence of social media but I am impatient with the moral panic and conspiracy thinking that dominate liberal debate on the issue, and which point towards solutions that I think would be counterproductive (basically, make the internet more like traditional news media). The main problems with social media, as far as I’m concerned, are lack of transparency and democratic oversight, concentration of communicative and economic power, and wasted potential. Filter bubbles are more or less a non-issue.

 

[Tony L]

“Just do one.” Angela Rayner to Sunak (Twitter). I’m liking her more and more.

 

[droodzilla]

“Just do one.” Angela Rayner to Sunak (Twitter). I’m liking her more and more.

Funnily enough, Len McCluskey still rates Rayner. Maybe he knows something we don't.

Meanwhile the Wes bandwagon (the Wes-wagon?) gathers pace:

Phil Collins, author of the above, wrote Starmer's conference speech just a few months ago, which doesn't bode well for Sir Keir.

Or maybe Wes will go the way of all the other "rising stars" hyped by liberal pundits:

https://twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1527697601306546177

Clegg
David Miliband
Umunna
[Liz] Kendall
[Yvette] Cooper
[Owen] Smith
Swinson
[Jess] Phillips
Starmer

Seriously, I wish I could get paid a tidy sum for being so consistently wrong.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

If Wes does get the leadership gig, do you think they could rename themselves as the Street’ Party?

 

[Tony L]

Funnily enough, Len McCluskey still rates Rayner. Maybe he knows something we don't.

FWIW I rate Rayner and don’t rate McCluskey!

PS I wasn’t having a go by quoting her, I think calling Tories, hypocrites, crooks etc exactly what they are is the right approach. Labour’s core problem is applying far too much blandness and fence-sitting to every issue to the extent no one knows what they think about anything at all. With the likes of Rayner, Lammy, Butler etc I know where they stand even if I may not agree with all of it. That’s a start.

 

[droodzilla]

If Wes does get the leadership gig, do you think they could rename themselves as the Street’ Party?

That might fly in the current climate!

To be honest, I'm not sure how Wes gets the gig. The party membership has drifted to the right under Starmer (loads of lefties have, errrm left) but I don't think it's shifted that far to the right.

Since candidates must ultimately face an OMOV ballot of members, I don't see how he wins. He could try lying like Starmer did but surely that won't work this time.

Unless there is a major change to the leadership election rules - which I would not put past Starmer and co.