Rewind For More Info

In the last episode I mentioned that some propaganda of the unionists was starting to appear in the mainstream media. Notably, the BBC.Since then matters have escalated somewhat and this could be due to the operation of Gove’s Union Unit. This Union Unit has reportedly lost a couple of leaders in the last few weeks and was recently reported on a right wing blog as being closed. Leaks to a right wing blog are a pathetic news source in terms of validity but great for publishing unofficial disinformation.If anything, some reportage on comings and goings are likely leading us into a false sense of security so I’d take all of the reporting about the Union Unit being disbanded, renamed or split with a pinch of salt.  If anything they will carry on working,  operations will continue at pace, to coin a phrase, and the only difference will be fragmented visibility and less accountability. This is important as we need to realise they have not gone away and will be as dangerous to independence as ever, if not more.Recently, and related to this, activity on Twitter has exploded and I just want to talk to you about that for a little while.Bots and Sock Puppets, what are they?Firstly, there are preponderances of bots appearing. Bots is a bit of a misnomer in this case as bots generally refers to fully automated postings, triggered by clumsy responses to particular search terms that can provide amplification of other parties by re-tweeting certain messages or replying to them with scripted responses. These are relatively easy to spot for the casual user.In fact, on that note, Twitter do run detection routines for bots and have access to things like the IP address used which of course, we do not. Often, when you come across a bot, the best thing is to simply report it. Twitter will then start investigating and identifying clusters and take appropriate action.More of an issue are sock puppets or more specifically farms of them. Sock puppet is a term that goes back years but essentially it is used to refer to an account pretending to be someone else.This is not to be confused with someone using a pseudonym as their name. This is actually perfectly acceptable in some circumstances as you may want to protect your identity online. You might have a sensitive role, you might want to protect your reputation, you may even want to protect yourself and your family from physical and mental harm given the amount of nut jobs out there and the propensity for doxxing, which is revealing your real identity and personal; details such as address.So yes, a pseudonym is probably a good idea. My alarm bells start ringing when I hear of that being frowned upon and I want to know why they’d want to persuade normal people to use real identities. No way!Back to sock puppets, these pretend to be someone not by name, but by behaviour. They either want to be in your cohort or against your cohort. Basically these can be a mixture of human operators and automated scripts. They are sometimes collectively referred to as bots but as discussed it’s not strictly accurate.You can have multiple phones or other devices connected via different network providers or VPN’s all operated by one or a few people. There are a few advantages in this, they can appear to be individuals, have separate IP addresses (not that you’d ever know) and in a flash, behave in a coordinated manner. The cleverer ones operate in a more phased way.How you can detect this is quite hard given you’d never get to see their IP address. However, there are clues to look out for:* They might operate at roughly the same time so there’s a bit of timing correlation — pile ons are an example of temporal correlation. The core of those are likely to be sock puppets who then amplify the event by retweeting content and sometimes including hashtags to attract more human i...

Confuse and Confound.When it comes to politics, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of facts, figures, and spin. But you don’t have to take everything politicians tell you at face value, in fact it’s probably better if you don’t. How do you know whether or not a piece of information is really true?  You challenge and fact find.First up, a clip with Michael Gove MP on BBC Radio Scotland from today (3rd February 2021, 18 hours or so AFTER Nicola Sturgeon updated the Scottish Parliament on how well the Covid-19 vaccination roll-out was going.Note that the misleading line here is that the UK Government have “offered” jabs to all care home residents. Not “given”.📻 Tory Minister Michael Gove went on the radio to criticise @Scotgov’s decision to vaccinate the most vulnerable first.✅ 98% of older care home residents have been vaccinated in Scotland.👇 Listen to Gove refuse to even answer how many have been vaccinated in England. pic.twitter.com/7Bkr1NmvyA— The SNP (@theSNP) February 3, 2021Then we have Ruth Davidson criticising the very same roll-out while seemingly not appreciating the priorities the Scottish Government were following..@RuthDavidsonMSP says Scotland’s vaccine roll-out is “slow, stuttering and lagging way behind the rest of the UK”. @NicolaSturgeon defends the programme, highlighting a “deliberate focus on maximising uptake in the most clinically vulnerable groups”.https://t.co/Ib0oFrLh8x pic.twitter.com/GPYLHIyEeY— BBC Scotland News (@BBCScotlandNews) February 2, 2021Obviously, the above two tweets make the news and more importantly, they make an impression on peoples minds. It really doesn’t matter to the two people involved or who they represent whether they are right or not. The purpose is to lodge doubt in the minds of the electorate about The SNP as a governing party and to embed a sense of reliance on England in the Scottish voters.Sandwiched between the two items of propaganda, we have the verified vaccination figures in Scotland presented by the First minister. An extraordinary job done by all concerned however the mission from the opposition is complete anyway.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 We've prioritised protecting the most vulnerable, and we're making good progress in vaccinating Scotland.✅ 98% of care home residents✅ 88% of care home staff✅ Close to 90% of over-80s✅ All over-70s & vulnerable adults on track to be vaccinated by mid February pic.twitter.com/QZWo0qoHEc— The SNP (@theSNP) February 2, 2021Stay firm, it is likely this is the last chance for independence for Scotland. You’ll see biased platforming across the media. Stay firm and hold your nose if you need to. Vote SNP in May 2020… or the right wingers connected to Gove will be in power over Scotland forever.What the Right Wingers are thinking of doing. To you.They’ve already started to consider ending the Barnett Formula.Right-winger’s latest plan to save the union. Starve Scotland by withholding ‘English money’ [the money Scotland sends to treasury and what UK borrows on Scotland’s behalf] #BetterTogether pic.

The Stanley Johnson Conspiracy TheoryJessica Simor QC posted a tweet which made me both curious and uncomfortable as I felt I was in danger of falling down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole… what do YOU think?Rarely am I flabbergasted nowadays but this...this...has to be listened to to be believed. If this is the stuff @BorisJohnson was fed around the dinner table, it is no surprise that he is who he is. Incoherent, absurd, ignorant, insulting and scary from Stanley all in 2 minutes. https://t.co/AFZ8RWozg1— Jessica Simor QC (@JMPSimor) January 22, 2021And a link to a related article on Conservative Home:Stanley Johnson: Why Britain needs a population policyOh, and we know Boris thinks along similar lines:Boris on population control    The Piers Morgan and Therese Coffey spatA little bit of he said, she said but since when did it become acceptable, if not expected, for Cabinet Ministers to cut short interviews? They should be accountable to the people. Also, note the “blame the people” narrative..Here’s the moment @theresecoffey disconnected her camera from the interview after calling @piersmorgan 'insulting'.Watch the full interview here👉https://t.co/fzcHkA6S4k pic.twitter.com/0VBQ50RhCr— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) January 25, 2021That’s a first. Our interview with Work and Pensions Secretary Thérèse Coffey was over running . So she politely explained she had other interviews to do, and cut off the call.— Anne Alexander (@Annemariealex) January 25, 2021Do check out this site, is my MP a prick. It’s a hoot!And finally,The SNP versus the combined dark forces of the Scot Tories & Labour.Another battle in the increasingly bloody war for Scottish Independence. Again just for completeness I want on to say that it was the UK Government that refused to pause on #Brexit whereas @ScotGov suspended all work on independence last March and now will only publish a draft bill by May because majority of civil servants still working on pandemic. https://t.co/Zat5vcEAv1— Michael Russell (@Feorlean) January 25, 2021

Update from Compass Food GroupIn the last episode I mention that we sent an email to Compass Food Group, the email is shown here. We have received a response which seems to be extremely positive.Email sent to Compass Food GroupI refer to this story in the Yorkshire evening Post, dated 12th January:https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/education/leeds-education-chief-shares-photo-council-food-hamper-mp-blasts-outsourcing-giants-3093951Here is the link to the Leeds Councillors Twitter account in question: It appears to show a publicly procured hamper of food and one from yourselves, privately procured. It appears to show a significant difference between the two methods. Would you care to comment?I would also be interested in a comment from you relating to the apparent difference between food supplied from Chartwell’s for home schooling during the pandemic to that provided by Chartwell’s Independent, the popular opinion being that you favour the well-heeled. What would you say to this? And this is the reply today 15th January 2021:Thank you for taking the time to contact us.  We take our responsibility to provide children with access to nutritious food very seriously. However, in our efforts to shift from providing meals in schools to food parcels when schools were closed at short notice, we are very sorry the quality and quantity fell short.We want to do all that we can to support vulnerable families and where our food parcels have not met our usual high standards we will be refunding the costs. We are contacting every school we work with to understand where any shortages may have occurred and we are apologising to everyone affected. From Monday 18th January we will ensure our food hampers reflect the additional £3.50 funding allocation communicated by the government and that every penny goes into the provision of the food. To try and prevent this issue arising again, we have put in place extra quality assurance checks at supplier level and within each individual school and allocated additional Chartwells employees to support. A free helpline for concerned schools and parents will go live on Monday 18th January.Getting nutritious food to children at home during lockdown is critical – and we know we need to put things right. So we are taking immediate action to ensure everything we do meets the exacting standards which rightly apply to children’s food. We have created a supply chain specifically to serve children with these parcels and moved to a one week cycle in order to include more fresh produce. We have increased the quantity and variety of products and will provide a detailed recipe guide to help families prepare nutritious lunches. We will take no profit on the provision of food parcels.In light of this week’s events, and the very challenging circumstances many families find themselves in, we feel that it’s right we go further so we will provide free breakfasts to all children currently receiving a Chartwells lunch parcel from the 25th January for the duration of school closures. In addition, for those same children, we will offer schools the option of lunch parcels through the February half term at no cost.As a member of the Marcus Rashford Child Poverty Taskforce, we are very focused on the review of the free school meals system. We have also engaged closely with policymakers, and together with the industry we have developed a series of protocols to try and ensure this doesn’t happen again.I hope this reassures you of our commitments and that we are moving quickly to fix the problem and provide additional support where it’s needed the most.Main points:* Where our food parcels have not met our usua...

Food parcel qualityIn this episode I explore the most recent free school meals scandal. I take a look at the current evidence of shockingly poor quality and quantities of food provisioned by Chartwell (Compass Food Group)  and  compare it to Labour led council provisions. This was initially spotlighted by Roadside Mum on Twitter.#FreeSchoolMeals bag for 10 days:2 days jacket potato with beans8 single cheese sandwiches2 days carrots3 days apples2 days soreen3 days frubesSpare pasta & tomato. Will need mayo for pasta salad.Issued instead of £30 vouchers. I could do more with £30 to be honest. pic.twitter.com/87LGUTHXEu— Roadside Mum 🐯 (@RoadsideMum) January 11, 2021I ask why this might have occurred, was it due to the prevailing atmosphere created by Ben Bradley, or is it a peculiarly Conservative stance? More importantly though, wouldn’t it be better if we simply treated parents with some dignity? And even better, why not bring all of this back into state ownership?Email sent to Compass Food GroupI refer to this story in the Yorkshire evening Post, dated 12th January:https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/education/leeds-education-chief-shares-photo-council-food-hamper-mp-blasts-outsourcing-giants-3093951 Here is the link to the Leeds Councillors Twitter account in question: A comparison between one example of a private provider for Free School Meals, & Leeds City Council’s in-house @catering_leeds box for next week. For this box we get £11.70 for 5 days to replace school lunches. Privatising doesn’t work. pic.twitter.com/CoLDO2Gx5V— Jonathan Pryor (@Jonathan_Pryor) January 12, 2021It appears to show a publicly procured hamper of food and one from yourselves, privately procured. It appears to show a significant difference between the two methods. Would you care to comment?I would also be interested in a comment from you relating to the apparent difference between food supplied from Chartwell’s for home schooling during the pandemic to that provided by Chartwell’s Independent, the popular opinion being that you favour the well-heeled. What would you say to this? Interesting to see how Chartwells, of pathetic free school meal ‘hamper’ fame, appear to have different standards for the food they supply to private schools pic.twitter.com/Vr1Jne2XK8— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) January 12, 2021Bibliography‘Ben Bradley Urged to Apologise over Free School Meals Tweets’. The Guardian, 24 Oct. 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/oct/24/ben-bradley-under-pressure-to-apologise-over-free-school-meals-tweets.Bunn et al. – Kathryn Browne Senior Buyer.Pdf. https://assets.nhs.uk/prod/documents/SFVS-factfile-2017.pdf. Accessed 13 Jan. 2021.Bunn, Tracey-Anne, et al. Kathryn Browne Senior Buyer. p. 16.Channel 4 News. ‘“It’s Only Their Lunch. It’s Not All Meals Every Day. It’s Enough for Lunches for a Child for a Week… Usually.

Apologies for my tone.I’m a little emotional in this episode, I do apologise for any language that slips though. Even though we did not have a NO DEAL, we have such a thin deal we may as well have had a no deal. Add the pandemic to the mix and well, things aren’t great. The good times are definitely coming to an end.Remote Learning at riskAccording to the BBC, BT say Gavin Williamson has refused BT’s free broadband vouchers for deprived kids saying it was because he was unable to distribute them and the Government refutes this saying the service was unreliable. Can’t they compromise and get at least some vouchers out?Two months ago: Laptop allocation for England’s schools was slashed by 80% as reported by the Guardian. There’s a £100 million deal to deliver laptops to Computacenter – where the firms co-founder has ties to the Tories.How many laptops will make it to the schools?Computacenter is an IT company with experience in this field, posting annual revenues of roughly £5 billion, but the people behind the company are also not exactly indifferent to party politics.Sir Philip Hulme, the firm’s co-founder – who remains a non-executive director and shareholder – has ties to the Conservative Party. Prior to the 2019 General Election, his wife Janet donated £100,000 to the party’s war chest. As reported by Byline Times.Worker and Environmental Protections at riskAs reported by New European, Daniel Hannan (Tory) is calling for a bonfire of regulations after Brexit. Daniel Hannan has said safeguards on the use of data, workers rights, GM foods, and environmental standards should be scrapped. “Change is coming. To succeed outside the EU, we need to be fitter, leaner and more globally engaged,” the former MEP said. This comes after Johnson promised to start breaking free from EU rules, adding that Britons “have nothing to fear”.Bees at riskThe thin end of the wedge in my opinion. As reported by The Guardian.Following lobbying from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and British Sugar, a product containing the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam was sanctioned for emergency use on sugar beet seeds this year because of the threat posed by a virus.Get help during the NO DEAL supply problems.Check out this blog entry for some food security advice.COMBAT THE PROPAGANDATake the FREE Critical Thinking Course and train yourself to spot propaganda easily. If you’re still unsure, just join the community and dip your toes in to say hi with NO OBLIGATION. Or just say hi from a distance on social media. Just be safe.

Was no deal always the plan? Perhaps. Understand why and everything makes sense.The season finale of 2020Have a peek at James’s tweet, I was going to do a fluff piece on this and reflect on the year. Then No Deal was announced! 2020 is heading for one hell of a season finale pic.twitter.com/TOlV5lv9V7— James Felton (@JimMFelton) December 7, 2020That was how bad the year end was before the NO DEAL BREXIT revelations this week, or should we say confirmation? Reflecting on the referendum, Cameron did not include  the standard safeguards you would expect in a referendum i.e a threshold to initiate change (1st Vote) I.E. make sure there’s a decent margin to declare a winner and then a confirmatory ballot (2nd Vote) once the final deal (or no deal) position was known. These omissions are why we are where we are!Brexit No DealWas this always the plan?It seems there are substantial backers involved here. You don’t spend or speculate without a chance of reward.https://bylinetimes.com/2019/09/11/brexit-disaster-capitalism-8-billion-bet-on-no-deal-crash-out-by-boris-johnsons-leave-backers/And here’s an interesting survey gauging whether the EU was an issue with the people of Britain. Note when it became an issue:https://qz.com/1725402/only-5-percent-of-brits-cared-about-the-eu-before-brexit/But why does the lay person think that Brexit is good for them?* Have they been convinced that the EU is responsible for their relative poverty?* Do they conflate sovereignty with regulation?A result of NO DEAL is deregulationThis has always aligned with the conservative ideology however moreso with neoliberal ideologies – less regulation means a less secure working population which in turn means lower wages can be offered and lower conditions.Say goodbye to having a couple of days off per week or paid annual leave, all of these things were not won by our membership of the EU, they were won by blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people working together and being part of unions. Since Thatcher started decimating those, those same rights were secured by the institutions that form the EU.Brexiters have a good chance of being worse off.Get help during the NO DEAL supply problems.Check out this blog entry for some food security advice.COMBAT THE PROPAGANDATake the FREE Critical Thinking Course and train yourself to spot propaganda easily. If you’re still unsure, just join the community and dip your toes in to say hi with NO OBLIGATION. Or just say hi from a distance on social media. Just be safe.

THE LABOUR PARTYI can’t quite believe what has happened to the Labour Party recently. I’m just a guy, I’m not a political expert, all I want is to be a member of a party that represents my view on life and the way I live it. I thought I had that with the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn and I still believe that was the best time for Labour.Around April 2020, earlier this year we had the Labour Leaks episode, that internal investigation document can be found here:Leaked ReportA simple Google search brought that up, there’s also the Wikipedia article here that concludes “its main assertion is that rampant factionalism within the party had ultimately led to antisemitism and racism allegations not being dealt with properly”: Wikipedia Labour Internal report overview29th October 2020 We then had the EHRC report published, this looked into the allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party:EHRC ReportThe report clearly states that antisemitism exists, that processes to deal with it were poor and that while improvements had been made under Jeremy and Jennie, more needs to be done.Both reports look at factionalism within the party as attributing to the issue and dealing with factionalism seems to me what is needed to deal with it. It looks to me though, with the recent purging and decisions taken by Starmer, that a major decision has been made.Instead of uniting the party, which was the ticket he was elected on, he’s getting rid of what you would arguably called “The Trots” as described in the reports. John McDonnell said in his recent interview with Owen Jones that the fighting must stop but in the few days since, the situation has escalated into a civil war with the left undergoing some sort of purge, forcing the left to take an understandably determined position. I’m with them. Part of me wants a new party to form that isn’t undergoing the factional strife that Labour does and another part wants the left to take over Labour because that’s it’s roots.

Where do I start?Since my last episode in February, there have been many developments. The main one being the emergence of Coronavirus as a pandemic.Corona Virus has exposed the ineptitude of the Government, revealing that bumbling Boris is not just a term of endearment, but a guideline to which the Conservative Government operate. This, and the Conservative ideology itself, is affecting the NHS response and heightening risk.We’re now in a situation where UK deaths are set to become the worst in Europe.Even though these figures are widely available, there are still those that are in absolute denial of facts, and this is what is most upsetting. In this episode, I look at a recent example where I had a dialogue with a denier I’ll just call Heather.In this example, I just look at the years the Conservative government have been aware of failings, the lack of response and then I look at the 111 service. (more…)

News from w/c 17th February 2020 with dark notes of the 1930’s!* Definition of racism* Is it in Government?* Flooding and the epic of Vic Haddock* BBC Bias – their own policies* Jurisdiction of UK Google Customer data protection shifted to USA from EU* Protect yourself online* Quick Covid-19 update (more…)