Connect with us
Advertisement
Advertisement

Comment

Comment: Badger and the Resistible Rise of Outrage

Published

on

BADGER sometimes wonders whether people care enough to read researched pieces in favour of getting their kicks at online outrage magnets.

Social media’s use and abuse have poisoned debate. They’ve given impetus to small-minded bigots’ voices on all sides of politics.

Instead of bringing people together, it’s driving them into smaller units. Those cliques are chosen by algorithms which record your personal data and your interactions on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

The algorithms drive you more and more towards traffic they ‘think’ might appeal to you. By showing you advertisements that promote products and services you’ve expressed interest in, algorithms generate income.

Try shopping online for car insurance… see what adverts pop up on Facebook next.

For one notorious example: Britain First – a neo-Nazi front – share posts on the lines of ‘I support our brave veterans, share and show your support’. Share it and eventually, even if you don’t, someone you share it with might buy the merchandise – the badge, the t-shirt – and buy into the underlying creed.

Algorithms comb your data – with your permission. The software identifies where you’ve been online; what you’ve looked at, and whether anything stands out as gelling with the bank of advertisers waiting to pounce on you with ‘offers tailored for you’.

You end up trapped in an echo chamber. You hear views which a computer programme thinks you ought to like. The intensity of the targeting narrows down your world view by degrees.

For example, a few years ago for the purposes of research on the rise of far-right parties – particularly the BNP and their associated exclusive brethren – Badger created a false online ID and browsed the net, Twitter, and Facebook to gather information for a possible article on the methods used to ‘get’ to people online. He did the same with left-wing groups using a different identity.

It was an experience Badger found illuminating and depressing.

For a start, the algorithms’ power back then was nowhere near as powerful as now. Still, Badger was inexorably guided to pages, groups, and forums promoting extreme positions on both the right and the left. For factionalism and racism, the extremes were almost indistinguishable.

The right hated everyone, but especially Muslims and anyone to the left of Genghis Khan; the left hated everyone, but especially Jews and anyone to the right of Leon Trotsky.

The extreme right hated other factions of the extreme right. The radical left hated different sections of the extreme left. Their squabbling showed Badger that, wherever logic is replaced by blind faith, you can find someone prepared to argue over how many of their comrades can dance on the head of a pin.

And not a big pinhead, either.

Let’s look at what happens.

Suppose you share a link to something you disapprove of and tag the person who’s offended you. In that case, you might imagine you are demonstrating your disapproval and showing your opposition to whichever view you find repellent.

You are wrong. You are spreading that person’s message and the algorithms driving social media will register your interest as promoting that post.
As a working example, Badger will illustrate the issue from a Pembrokeshire standpoint. For the purposes of this exercise, Badger’s personal views are immaterial.

Pembroke Dock Central County Councillor Paul Dowson is the centre of some online attention.

Some who find his politics repulsive. Others enthusiastically endorse him.

Those who deride the Councillor do him a massive favour by repeatedly mentioning and tagging him in their posts. Those who think the Councillor is somehow brave for saying what he does do him a favour by often mentioning and tagging him in their Facebook posts. On the other side of the fence, those who support the Councillor do his opponents a massive favour by tagging them in their Facebook posts.

It’s a relationship founded on mutual and reciprocal hatred.

Although the Councillor benefits from the exposure, the ultimate beneficiary is Facebook, which monetises your page views.

If his opponents ignore him, that will leave only his supporters singing his praises to each other. Algorithms place a lower value on those interactions than apparently random bursts of attention from those who neither follow nor support him.

What Councillor Dowson’s views on ANYTHING are utterly immaterial to the process. On the one hand, he could say he wants to deport everyone whose skin colour comes after taupe on the Dulux colour chart. In his next post, he could say he wants a mosque built in every town to welcome Muslim migrants to the UK.

What he SAYS doesn’t matter to your computer or the platforms you use to view them. It doesn’t matter whether you read his thoughts with open-mouthed shock or adoration. The algorithms are both smart and stupid. All they measure is the response from others.

It’s called a web for a reason. It’s a series of connections between different nodes. If you connect at point A, you also connect to points B, C, D and beyond. Algorithms like ‘rich media’ – photographs, video, podcasts; so, join the points (nodes) to create online influence. And once you are recognised as an influencer, you’re on the way to making money.

Interview a Holocaust Denier, and they’ll share it. Their followers will share it. Suddenly, you’re one of the UK’s top ten Flag-shaggers.
Much-loved racist neo-Nazi thug and fraudster ‘Tommy Robinson’ did it with his PayPal patriotism. Others have followed the same primrose path, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Readers: if you want to really make that sort of thing go away, you face two choices: both preclude debate.

Firstly, you can ignore it and hope it all goes away. Badger calls this the Blair-Cameron approach. It won’t work; or Secondly, the 57 varieties of outraged get smart, focus locally, address what others are concerned about, and stop whining.

It’s what political parties used to do before the world disintegrated into single-issue groups arguing over pronouns, history, and the meaning of abstract concepts like ‘sovereignty’.

Politics for grown-ups using modern technology… it could be worth a punt. Don’t form a committee to discuss it. Just do it.

It’s hardly the most outrageous suggestion you’re likely to read this week.

Comment

Y Gymraeg mewn ysgolion Cymraeg yn darllen ymlaen yn English

Published

on

I make no apologies for being unable to speak Welsh, writes John Elliot.

Google translate did the title for me. I apologise to Welsh readers should the Welsh be dreadful.

My Dad was a labourer in a factory. We are talking 1960’s here. Mum and Dad were ignorant of education, they hadn’t a clue what ‘O’ levels were. And my older sister was learning French! This was like, well, there is a man on the moon after all. One day my dad said, talking about learning French, ‘I think your school, Rosie, should have a day a week where only French is spoken. You’d learn a lot better.’

Like my sister, I ‘learned’ French in school. She went onto to study it in college. I really couldn’t be bothered. Maybe though it was the way I was taught. A lesson or two a week by rote, repetition and irrelevant. When was I going to need French? Like since 1995 when I moved to France.

Because of a language project I’m working on with a university in Hungary I’ve become very interested in the purpose of the Welsh language. Also, very importantly, my granddaughters were born in Wales and attend Welsh medium schools.

For the purpose of the project with the university I contacted the Welsh Education Secretary in relation to how Welsh is taught in Schools. My interest was school and teaching within the state section. The bill is itself 55 pages long. I have taken 11 points from it, so a minority of the text relevant to my interest in the

Welsh language in Wales and the current government’s attitude to it. This is a current bill and has yet to be passed by the Senned. The following points I am confident that they represent the words of the bill, but of course they are subject to my interpretation and editing. I think they will be of particular interest to parents, and of course those interested in language.

The bill, with reference to Wales, is making the following points:

  • Every pupil should be allowed, deserves, to be a confident Welsh speaker.
  • There is a commitment to all pupils receiving a portion of their education through the medium of Welsh beyond Welsh as a subject.
  • In the ideal world 50% of pupils should receive Welsh education.
  • At present there are half a million Welsh speakers, it is hoped that figure will be 1 million by 2050.
  • The desire is for an education system to embrace Welsh as a language that belongs to all pupils in Wales. All pupils leaving statutory education at 16 can speak Welsh with confidence.
  • It is hoped that the number of Welsh-medium schools (that is those schools whose education is mainly in Welsh) will be increased. It is hoped that there will be an increase in the teaching of Welsh in schools. To achieve this there needs to be an increase in the number of people able to teach Welsh and through the medium of Welsh.
  • It is intended that there will be dual language schools as well as Welsh-medium schools. There are already some.
  • With the proposal set out in this bill it is stated:
  • We expect local authorities to pay attention to promoting and raising awareness of Welsh-medium education.
  • An organisation for playgroups within Wales is Mudiad Meithrin. These are Welsh-medium playgroups for pre-school children. The language spoken is Welsh. Mudiad Meithrin states that 76% of their intake is from non-Welsh speaking families.
  • In 2015 The National Centre for learning Welsh was set specifically for adults wishing to learn Welsh.
  • It is worth noting that, to use contrasting examples in Gwynedd there are 80 Welsh medium schools and zero English schools. In Cardiff there are 18 Welsh medium schools and 96 English schools.

As I’ve already mentioned my granddaughters, pictured here are bi-lingual, English and Welsh. They speak both languages as if it were the norm, this is what we do. I live in France. The girls have already picked up some French. My grandson was born in Belgium. His birth language is English. His school language is French. He is also bi-lingual. Flemish is also spoken in Belgium, he confident in Flemish.

John Elliot works as an editor of poetry anthologies with different universities throughout Europe. He is currently producing an anthology of Welsh poets translated into English, Hungarian and German

Continue Reading

Comment

The Chancellor’s fancy footwork solves nothing

Published

on

THE CONDITIONAL phrase is a friend to politicians of all parties in all governments.
At its simplest, the proposition is: “If this happens, then we might be able to do this”.
The Chancellor’s Budget on Wednesday (Mar 6) was an example of the conditional phrase on steroids.

IT ALL DEPENDS

“If this happens, then that happens, and provided these things also happen, we might be in a position to consider doing this”.
As a strategy for spending on public services, it’s nonsense.
The UK Government is not in control of events that might affect its capacity to achieve even stage one of the processes that, on some far-away date, might mean it gets close to delivering public services more efficiently.
Let’s get that out of the way, for starters.
That is quite bad enough, but the Chancellor – not alone in this fiscal fraud – goes one step further.
Mr Hunt says the UK must cut its national debt, the amount it has borrowed to pay for Covid, Liz Truss, and other disasters. That objective is noble but meaningless. The debt the UK owes will rise over the next three years. It will only fall in the fifth year of the spending cycle and then only against the previous year’s debt.
That means the amount of debt the UK is in will rise over the next half-decade.
In turn, future repayments of that debt’s capital must be met out of future government revenues. The limited number of ways that can happen include refinancing the debt (putting off the payment to the future), raising taxes, and cutting public spending: probably a mix of all three.
The disingenuous lunatics on the Conservative right-wing bang on about how it’s all the Office of Budget Responsibility’s fault. The rules on debt and fiscal policy are not the OBR’s rules. They are the Chancellor’s. The OBR applies them to the Chancellor’s spending and taxation plans.
It is rather like Harold Shipman complaining he only murdered his victims because the pharmacist supplied him with poison. The intent is all on the Chancellor’s part.
Keir Starmer claimed the Government had “maxed-out” the nation’s credit card.
He is right, but only to an extent.
The central flaw in fiscal policy is that the Treasury—and therefore the Office of Budget Responsibility—fails to distinguish between borrowing and spending for investment and borrowing and spending to deliver day-to-day services and to make up for revenue shortfalls.
As Labour has chained itself to the wheel of the current spending approach, we will have to get used to paying more for less for years to come.
Any UK Government could borrow for future investment, putting the National Debt above 100% of GDP. However, that will likely increase the cost of borrowing and devalue the assets securing the current debt, such as UK Government bonds.
The markets wouldn’t wear that when Liz Truss tried it. They won’t wear it now. Borrowing more money while cutting taxes is like taking out a £500,000 loan, leaving a well-paid job that could service it, and deciding to work three shifts a week on a filling station forecourt.
Sooner or later, the bailiffs come knocking.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The political back-and-forth is interesting only to those with little stake in the Budget’s outcome, at least as it affects average families on average incomes.
A billion here, a hundred million there. Those are empty numbers.
The bottom line matters.
The Chancellor announced a cut in National Insurance from 10% to 8%. Last year, he reduced it by 12% to 10%. Forgetting, of course, that his predecessor (Sunak, R.) increased National Insurance in the first place.
However, Mr Hunt did not increase the wage level at which National Insurance starts being paid. That means the amount by which most workers on modest or average wages benefit from an NI cut will be eaten up by any pay increases they’ve received over the last two years of high inflation.
The income tax thresholds also remain stationary, pulling more people into paying the basic rate thanks to pay increases and the increased National Minimum Wage.
It’s sleight of hand. An apparent tax cut will leave people superficially better off but no richer.
In other titbits, the Chancellor announced the continuation of the 5p levy reduction on fuel for motor vehicles and a freeze on the duty on booze.
Mr Hunt also unveiled a new tax on vaping products from October 2026, linked to the levels of nicotine they deliver. At the same time, tobacco duty will rise by £2.00 per 100 cigarettes to ensure vaping remains cheaper.
From this April, the threshold at which small businesses must register to pay VAT goes up from £85,000 to £90,000. It’s something, but not much of something, as the threshold’s been frozen for the last seven years.
Mr Hunt also scrapped tax reliefs for the owners of furnished holiday lets. Holidays let owners claim capital gains tax reliefs and plant and machinery capital allowances for items such as furniture and other fixtures. At the same time, their profits can count as earnings for pension purposes.
Abolishing that tax break will save the UK government around £250 million annually starting from April 2025.
Holiday let investors could lose an average of £2,835 a year in tax, based on a property purchase price of £350,000, an annual mortgage rate of 4.5%, and £20,000 in rental income.

PUBLIC SERVICES IN LIMBO

The constant drive for “greater efficiency” in the public sector boldly and unfoundedly assumes that public service “productivity” is the same as the private sector’s. It isn’t.
Making a pin more efficiently through the division of labour is not the same as treating a patient for cancer or collecting bins.
In all efficiency drives, the point always arrives when there are no more lightbulbs or photocopiers to turn off at night, meaning savings must be found in frontline service budgets. Mr Hunt announced plans to “digitally transform” the NHS. Fat chance. The atomisation of the NHS into trusts and boards that must compete for money by offering the most at the least cost dooms the project to expensive failure.
The same applies to local government funding and extends to Wales.
Councils competing against each other for a finite pot of resources only available to spend on what the central Government insists it is spent on negates local democracy. It favours those local authorities closest to the Central Government or with the best grants application team.
Competition for funding is no way to deliver public services and leads to vanity projects.
It is better to deliver funding fairly and through a method that ensures funding follows the need for core services.
The question is acute in Pembrokeshire.
Our Council received millions of pounds in funding for projects Pembrokeshire does not necessarily need. The money would have been better allocated to the cost of adult social care delivery. However, the UK and Welsh Governments did not make tens of millions of pounds available to meet that need. Instead, we can have money for “Instagrammable bridges” and “transport hubs” because we won a prize in a competition with other broke local authorities to build things we don’t need.
It’s nonsense. And, at heart, every county councillor knows it is.
Any elected representative (whether councillor, MP, or MS) who doesn’t is unfit for public office.

Continue Reading

Comment

Free digital drop-in events to help you get connected

Published

on

DO you or a friend or family member need support with digital technology?
Would you like to know how to use a smartphone, tablet, an Alexa, or another digital device?
If so, a series of free, drop-in sessions across the County will help you get connected (see below).
You can bring your own digital device, tablet or mobile phone or use one of the free access computers. Please ask questions and get support.
Matthew Wall from the Digital Community Support team said: “We’re here to help anyone who wants to get to grips with digital technology, and is unsure about where to start.”
Drop in to find out how to help you:

  • Get online.
  • Keep in touch with your family, friends and local community.
  • Make life easier at home with technology.
  • Identify how technology can help you look after somebody.
  • Make the most of your device for entertainment and information.
  • Set up a borrowbox account (to access E-Book service)
  • Find out what digital equipment you can borrow.
  • Find out about training.
  • No broadband at home? No problem. Just drop in for more details.

Laura Evans from Pembrokeshire Libraries team said: “The aim of the digital drop-in sessions are to help and support the local community with their devices and accessing the internet.
“Libraries play a key role in providing access to technology, which can help combat isolation and loneliness. Having drop in sessions helps people to connect in a way that they would not be able to do on their own.”
Digital devices can support in so many ways. For example, if you look after someone or are cared for, find out how technology can help you from scheduling appointments, medication reminders or simply feeling safe in your home.
Digital Drop In sessions are FREE to access and open to everyone. There is no need to book, just turn up between the allocated times throughout the day.
The Digital Community Support Team are offering sessions at the following Pembrokeshire Libraries.
All sessions are 10am-12pm and 1pm-4pm.
Glan-Yr-Afon, Haverfordwest Library (01437 775244), Thursday November 16th.
Pembroke Dock Library (01437 775825), Wednesday November 22nd.
Tenby Library (01437 775151), Thursday November 23rd.
Fishguard Library (01437 776638), Friday November 24th.
Milford Haven Library (01437 771888), Thursday December 7th.
The digital community support team is funded by Welsh Government.
If you have any questions or would like support, please phone 01437 764551 and ask for Digital Community Support or email [email protected]

Continue Reading

News7 hours ago

Police ask motorists to avoid A44 trunk road due to heavy snowfall

DYFED-POWYS POLICE have issued an appeal to motorists to avoid a 25 mile section of the A44 trunk road between...

Crime22 hours ago

Woman will quit the booze after seeing shocking drunken video in court

A HAVERFORDWEST woman this week vowed to undertake ‘a complete alcohol abstinence’ after being shown court video footage of her...

News2 days ago

Family heartbroken by loss of ‘larger than life character’ in M4 crash

THE FAMILY of the man who died in a collision on the M4 motorway say ‘he will be greatly missed...

Business2 days ago

Victory for WASPI women but the fight goes on

A LANDMARK ruling by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman could benefit around 5,000 women in Ceredigion born in the...

Entertainment4 days ago

A night to remember: Symphonica Tywi’s ‘Film Fantastics’ was a triumph

ON SATURDAY (Mar 23), Haverfordwest High School was ablaze with the soaring melodies and dramatic scores of some of cinema’s...

News4 days ago

Memorial for all those affected by Covid-19 unveiled at County Hall

A LASTING tribute for Pembrokeshire loved ones lost during the Covid-19 pandemic and those working on the frontline has been...

Top News5 days ago

Princess of Wales announces cancer diagnosis and treatment

CATHERINE, the Princess of Wales, has shared her recent health struggles with the public, revealing a diagnosis that has sent...

Charity6 days ago

RNLI lifeguards back on patrol in Pembrokeshire for the Easter Holidays

RNLI lifeguards will be on patrol once again in Pembrokeshire ahead of the Easter holidays. This Saturday, 23 March 2024,...

Community6 days ago

Neglected Pembrokeshire poodles find their forever homes 

THIRTY poodle type dogs were in total rescued after they were found in an unsuitable environment where their owner also...

Crime7 days ago

Pembrokeshire’s sniffer dogs locate illegal vapes and counterfeit tobacco

IN A MAJOR bust led by Swansea Council’s Trading Standards Officers, a series of raids uncovered a substantial quantity of...

Popular This Week