UK background politics thread

I'm using FOM to brexit the brexit thread and set up a little space for some chat about the fabled 'real' politics so that it doesn't just get ignored and drowned in the relentless torrent of rolling westminster/brexit/omnishambles content. with no politics board I can only implore the fine & tolerant ppl of de subjectivisten to look kindly on this rude import, and perhaps offer a unique lowlands perspective on our concerns.

please pull up a seat to the fireside and ponder the shires and the deep state

first up: you always suspected but here are some details - infamous 77th brigade of the british army engaging in psyops/propaganda on twitter https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/twitter-executive-also-part-time-officer-uk-army-psychological-warfare-unit

Cobain’s other piece on a Muslim-youth-lifestyle site actually being part of a covert counterterrorism exercise is also worth a look:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/revealed-woke-media-outfit-thats-actually-uk-counterterror-programme

The potential for this under-the-radar stuff being used to attack domestic political opponents is also pretty clear. The Integrity Initiative story from December 2018 seems to have ground to a halt with the government line that ‘yes we gave them £2m and they used their social media to attack Labour but we didn’t give the £2m for social media’ but it seems inevitable it will be an ongoing issue.

proof schools have strong incentives to get good results: 10% of the 2017 cohort were removed from school rolls at some point without explanation by the time they get to GCSEs

https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/unexplained-pupil-exits-data-multi-academy-trust-local-authority/

so apparently the unemployment rate is about 13% but they've just massaged the figures, and there's not been a lot of talk about it. I've seen a bit about how they run the censuses they use to concoct numbers for homelessness, so it's not a tremendous surprise

http://ajrae.staff.shef.ac.uk/img/imd_by_percentiles_nuffield_colours_28_oct_with_text_25%25.png

http://ajrae.staff.shef.ac.uk/img/imd_by_percentiles_nuffield_colours_28_oct_with_text_25%25.png

Mark Curtis continues to do interesting things via the Zimbabwean press;

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-10-28-the-uks-secret-military-unit-that-answers-to-saudi-arabian-commanders/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEnCjJxAo6c

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/11/best-for-britain-and-the-spyware-scandal

Shades of Bobby Maxwell and PROMIS about some of this. Stephen and Jana Peel, purveyors of spyware to repressive governments around the world, are tied up in Best For Britain.

Another example of a government-funded ‘anti-extremism’ site targeting Labour.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/faith-matters-jeremy-corbyn-twitter-home-office

Faith Matters also stated that it had been equally strident in attacking the Conservatives over their approach to problems of Islamophobia within the party, including past comments by Boris Johnson.

It is the case that Faith Matters and Mughal spoke out against Johnson’s comments in a newspaper column in August 2018 in which he compared Muslim women who wear the veil to “letter boxes” and “bank robbers”, and it has backed calls for an investigation into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.

But an analysis of Faith Matters’ tweets since it was listed by the Home Office as a recipient of BSBT support in February 2018 demonstrated that it has tweeted about Labour and Corbyn more than 200 times, while tweeting less than 40 times about the Conservatives, Johnson and Theresa May, his predecessor as party leader and prime minister.

Either way, Faith Matters has not explained how its concerns about Labour and alleged antisemitism can possibly justify unrelated, purely political attacks on Corbyn with no conceivable relevance to the antisemitism issue, such as tweets describing a “Stalinist cult of Corbyn”.

There is so much money being given to useless ‘community’ scammers under the BSBT / Prevent funding. Once again, it’s only Cobain and colleagues who seem interested.

I don't think this necessarily needs to be interpreted as a government conspiracy, as such. It's probably the inevitable result of the attempt to AstroTurf a new generation of 'digital community leaders' through a glut of anti-terror funding when you had people like May, Rudd and Pickles' hands on the wheel. The objective has never been simply to turn people away from extremism, it has been to position British Values as sacrosanct and sensible centrism, patriotism and a suspicion of radical politics in all its forms as core British Values. Mughal was a former advisor to Clegg, after all. It's not unique to explicitly government-funded organisations, either. There's an economy built around securing funding from corporations and charitable trusts that would be threatened by properly interrogating how structural racism and religious bigotry functions.

It's notable how little any of this resonates in the spaces it's meant to, though. Faith Matters and British Future (who have been at this game for a decade) have about 20k Twitter followers combined. Even Hope Not Hate, with the significant international boost it has received out of the National Action stuff, has 20% of the followers Andi Peters does.

yeah structural bias and conspiracy often look and function similarly. could frame it as a problem of centralisation, paternalism, chauvinism, and, to an extent, class. Radicalise Andi Peters now!

In a development that I’m sure will shock everyone, Mughal was revealed yesterday to have been using official the Tell Mama Twitter account to slide into the DMs of various teenage girls.

Mark Curtis has a new thing for looking at the intersection of politics, the intelligence services and military:

https://mobile.twitter.com/declassifiedUK

Is that site at all legit? Is Mark Curtis not fairly dodge in some of his views?

https://www.gmgoodemploymentcharter.co.uk/

Greater Manchester Combined Authority getting some big employers to sign up to a good employment charter which includes the living wage and more scrutiny on flexible working and effectively banning zero hour contracts in their invidious form. I'll be interested to see how this pans out as it seems a good test of how effective Labour can work regionally. I have to say Burnham has been good so far.

privatization in action

The privatisation of children’s services is gathering pace, and it is attracting the worst kind of investor (thread) 1/

— Martin Barrow (@MartinBarrow) February 18, 2020

impressively ugly site: https://www.wealthclub.co.uk/eis-investments/dimensions-care-eis/

https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/news/pretty-vacant-new-report-on-londons-housing-april-2020

some good proposals for beginning to get a handle on housing

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/04/dalian-atkinson-murdered-in-street-by-police-officer-jury-hears

Possibly might result in the first conviction of a police office related to a death in custody since 1971. Most cases don’t get this far.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/april/1782-deaths-but-no-convictions

If the jury doesn’t convict, it’ll increase the perception that they never will where serving police are concerned.