Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

multiple xps to Tom D - I think Corbyn, being old and therefore requiring less sleep, probably does it as early as possible?

calz, your dog is so cute, even if he didn’t manage to soil the home of democracy.

should have attached a THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS sign to the dog imo

Also spotted this which seems great

#deniedmyvote
EU citizens - please do contact me. I am doing story on this today and want to hear your stories. l✧✧✧.ocarr✧✧✧@theguard✧✧✧.c✧✧

— lisa o'carroll (@lisaocarroll) May 23, 2019

lol

Confirmed

The Wab will not be coming to the Commons in the week after recess

— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) May 23, 2019

Dan Hodges voted Change UK despite disagreeing 100% with their stance on Brexit. Julia Hartley-Brewer congratulated him on a principled stance.

xpost to gyac already had a Portuguese acquaintance say they've been denied a vote because they first got an e-mail saying "you're registered, no need to do anything" and then later one he didn't see asking him to sign a document promising he wouldn't try to vote in Portugal too (which he'd have to get on a plane today to do). Dude is admitidely not the most reliable person I know, but still, wtf?

Dan Hodges voted Change UK despite disagreeing 100% with their stance on Brexit. Julia Hartley-Brewer congratulated him on a principled stance.

extraordinary scenes

here it is, the longest two minutes and two seconds of your life

On last night’s @Peston show. I’m not good enough to be PM yet. I’ll be with @BorisJohnson, campaigning together, trying to unite the party and the Nation, and govern from the centre in a modern, compassionate, optimistic manner 🇬🇧👇 pic.twitter.com/R2Ln179GG7

— Johnny Mercer MP (@JohnnyMercerUK) May 23, 2019

I have a Greek friend who's been denied a vote under similar circumstances xps

There was a dog outside our polling station who was telling everyone which way they had to vote. Chief whippet.

^^^ You have been banned from this thread.

And I hope I dont need to tell you all to turn out & #VoteFurBoaby today? pic.twitter.com/WVMdrt7QC7

— Ian Penman (@pawboy2) May 23, 2019

i had no idea tom d was ian penman

ILX EXCLUSIVE!

Not seen much info about projections esp by region so been trying to work out what the battles are with just some crummy yougov regional poll data bc I enjoy the maths

In the North West (8 seats) we look set to get 3 BXP & 3 LAB, with LIB, CON, GRN & BXP fighting for the last two (in that order of likeliness)

Yorks (6) looks like 2 BXP, 1 LAB, 1 LIB, 1 GRN, with BXP, LAB, CON & LIB fighting for the last one

London (8) looks like 2 LIB, 2 BXP, 1 LAB, 1 GRN, with LAB & CON likely to get the last two possibly with GRN in contention

North East (3) looks like 1 BXP, 1 LAB & almost certainly another BXP with LIB closest

South East (10) looks like 3 BXP, 2 LIB, 1 CON, 1 GRN, 1 LAB and with all of them plus CHUK»TIG in contention for the last two

East Mids (5) looks like 2 BXP, 1 LAB, 1 LIB, with CON, BXP & GRN fighting for the last seat

West Mids (7) looks like 2 BXP, 1 LAB, 1 GRN, 1 LIB, with BXP & CON best placed for the last two and LAB, GRN & LIB contending

'Eastern' (7) looks like 2 BXP, 1 LIB, 1 LAB, with BXP, GRN, LIB, LAB & CON in contention for the final 3

South West (6) looks like 2 BXP, 1 LIB, with BXP, LIB, GRN, CON & mb LAB all in contention for the last three

Wales (4) looks like 2 BXP, 1 PLC, with PLC, BXP, LIB, LAB and GRN in contention for the last seat

Scotland (6) looks like 2 SNP, 1 BXP, with GRN, SNP, BXP, CON & LAB fighting for the other 3

(No data for Northern Ireland but they have a diff system & ofc diff parties for their 3 MEPs)

& if that poll were perfectly representative it wld give you overall figures of

BXP 28 (up 4 on UKIP last time)
LAB 13 (down 7, back to 2009 number)
LIB 10 (up 9, back to 2009 number)
GRN 8 (up 5, wld be an amazing result)
CON 6 (down 13)
SNP 3 (up 1)
PLC 2 (up 1)

which seems uncrazy

just watched an excellent street encounter unfold

elderly couple walking in my direction in front of me (dressed for summer, my guess staying with relatives); young woman waking towards them and me

she: "just back from voting?"
they: "yes -- in scotland"*
she: "excellent! let's hope that the" -- sudden ghastly pause** -- "that THE SENSE PREVAILS"***
they: "…" ****

*the pause and "in scotland" was in my opinion an old-ppl's warning shot
**i was facing her so could sense the gears suddenly spinning behind her panicked expression = "omigod these old fucks probably didn't vote for the" (whoever it was she voted for)
***i mean, ok, nice save i guess -- who wants to be nice ppl screaming in the street? LET SENSE PREVAIL!
****or it might be "imph'm" per dorothy l. sayers' favoured phatic scots mumble of understated non-agreement

they: "****"

Was about to say...

adding 'in scotland' to the end of fortune cookie messages is a fun parlour game to amuse guests of all ages

i voted in the cradle of democracy = hackney's sutton house*

totally empty except for the ppl at th desk checking you off and giving out ballot papers, inc no observers. i like voting totally alone, it makes me feel like ceaucescu or whoever, the one good vote from the one good person. then lots of other ppl came in including some very friendly neighbours saying "hi mark!" and spoiled my the mood.

*build for himself by tv's wolf hall's thomas cromwell's henchman ralph sadler (tho it only gets a mention in the book, and not by name)

ballot paper was like this lol: https://media.tenor.com/images/3bba90d6c768e8e70ccb65a073cebc36/tenor.gif

does anyone know, if parliament voted in favour of may's deal tmw, when UK MEPs wld have to leave the EU parliament?

xp yeah reminded me of Turrican's list of best selling albums that, despite whatever the snobs of ILM may think, are actually well good actually

As Indian Prime Minister @narendramodi wins a second term we congratulate him for his message: “Our alliance represents India's diversity and our agenda is India's progress.” celebrating the country’s diversity.
I look forward to deepening our friendship and trade. pic.twitter.com/NzTqI0lNEo

— Barry Gardiner (@BarryGardiner) May 23, 2019

anything to bolster the green vote :)

:D

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7PyIqIUwAIECJV.jpg

I doubt Gapes knows how to use a laptop, so he can't get the blame.

Chris Leslie maybe?

the UK's eurovision entry place (= last) belatedly being marked down EVEN FURTHER is good, to me

https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2019/05/22/the-remain-strategy-region-by-region-voting-guide

This is a decent tactical voting guide. I'm still toying with the idea of a Green vote but I'm on the fence as to whether 'send Labour a message on Brexit' is more important than 'prevent the Brexit Party from claiming victory'.

Obviously there's also the question of who I actually want representing me in Europe but that may be moot before long.

designed by one of its mps on laptop using microsoft word

Whatever happens to Change UK they will live on in the sales presentations of branding agencies as an example of what will happen if you don't hire them

Interesting piece by Ian Cobain on politically orchestrated PR campaigns in response to terrorist attacks/other unrest. Designed to appear spontaneous and grassroots stuff. I remember the I<3 MCR campaign was ready to be immediately rolled out after the riots and I bet all the bee stuff was organised centrally after the arena bomb

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/mind-control-secret-british-government-blueprints-shaping-post-terror-planning

There's something very performative about the way in which people who know none of the victims respond to terrorist attacks and it doesn't surprise me to learn they're shaped by this. In theory steering people towards grief and away from anger is a good thing but it still feels creepy. Also wouldn't people react that way anyway?

Yeah this definitely feels creepy. But the aftermath of these attacks as played out on social media is pretty weird and creepy anyway, and yeah, very performative in all sorts of ways. I find it hard to think of the net effect of social media as any good, in this or anything else.

Those of us who have lost a friend or relative to terrorists are well placed to offer solidarity to those in mourning - and to stand up to racists in the aftermath. That’s the way I personally express myself whenever there’s an event.

anything involving performative crowd behaviour/mass manipulation is creepy as fuck. Even if current intentions behind it are apparently quite benign, if people get good at it then hologram Goebbels will be saying you're doing it all wrong, fools. Or what if when far right groups start using the same techniques, and their spontaneous memes beat off the Gov ones. I feel I'm almost arguing for Xi's great fire-wall here!

I often wonder the extent to which countries are trialling all this stuff. A friend of mine is a professor of international politics, specifically japan/china, and I met him after some conference he attended on modern digital government in london, and he said it's generally accepted that every country is using bots on social media as part of their 'nudge' type work. maybe i was naive to believe otherwise, i hadn't really thought about it. i guess it's a short step from nudging to creating fake accounts etc.

if councils are able to game the discourse the mind boggles at what institutions with funding might be up to

i think it's a big jump from "they're doing this all over the place" (which i think is likely true and has been for some time) to "they'r doing this to -- for their purposes -- well controlled and well understood effect" (which requires quite a lot of unproveable assumptions, not least abt the accurate information-gathering abilities of a "they" that's a lot more unified than it really actually is)

yeah i mean i know how digitally incompetent government are, and how poorly conceived their goals are. the idea that they can or ever (a) have clear outcomes and (b) a plan for digital actions to deliver them is giving them a lot of credit, but even the fact they might be making fake social media accounts seems a sort of watershed, if true.

precision is def unlikely and mb not even desirable; the chaos and deniability that come w/ having things more dispersed can be useful in itself

from what i gather reading the twitter threads of ppl who cover internal chinese affairs professionally, it's been the case there ever since a chinese internet was established -- though the lines between private and state official are of course very differently drawn in that context (where everyone e.g. assumes the mods are state employees), and a sincerely patriotic citizen might be p much indistinguishable from a nark.

i haven't yet read yasha levine's "surveillance valley" -- but his argument is also very much that the wilder tech-piratical zones of the freedom-of-information freedom-from-interference infosphere, viz the EFF and Tor and so on, is and always has been stiff with government agency and government presence. you find and establish and run an unlicensed zone in order to place yourselves among the people who are likely to want to use such a thing blah blah blah.

and even here on our own dear ilx there's *insert unlikely username to hilarious surprise effect*

"yeah i mean i know how digitally incompetent government are, and how poorly conceived their goals are.."

is this coming from GCHQ rather than a gov dept though? They might be shit hot at this type of thing, they used to be i think.*

*apart from the 30's/50's decades of giving the keys to all their top secret files to various posh tankies, who used to often openly say things like "I'm a communist tbh" and start singing drunken renditions of the internationale at embassy parties without rousing suspicion.

yeah that's true actually, at least technically i suppose. i dunno if they are any better at actually functioning and setting goals, or understanding the public, but who knows really.

when I considered that [a certain poster] might be a chaos agent sent here to derail discussion and demotivate ilxors as directed by some oppressive state the veil was truly lifted

you have your answer, calz, they were always v bad at it -- what knowledge there is about the large-scale effects of information massaging is largely based on public assumptions that are already widely known and shared but by no means actually correct

the bad part of access to private data isn't "oh no they can now hoodwink all the dullards with machine-precision", it's that quite bad people have quite good access to all kinds of private information, which they can deploy in quite old-fashioned (= non-mass-media) ways

"widely known … but by no means actually correct" isn't very good usage, i mean "assumed to be known"

next Adam Curtis series already has this sorted.

when I considered that [a certain poster] might be a chaos agent sent here to derail discussion and demotivate ilxors as directed by some oppressive state the veil was truly lifted

― ogmor, Thursday, 23 May 2019 14:39 (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fred b, lj or me

I thought he meant turrican