Tag: Rupert Murdoch

The Sun Shining Out Of It’s Own Arse

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Are you ready for me to state the obvious, because I’m going to. I’m going to do it now. The Sun newspaper is full of shit. Yes I know everyone knows it but some forget and it allows them get away with things. The danger with them getting away with things is that they are the number one read newspaper in the UK, owner Rupert Murdoch is a scumbag and also unfortunately people both believe him and vote the way he wants them to. The reason I bring this up is because Facebook‘s algorithm decided I might like to read this article on a man at a school who “could be 40”. To confirm the success of the algorithm I clicked on the link because it sounded ridiculous and because sometimes I have dreams that I’m back at school in sixth form and my mind related becoming curious in the process. It turned out not to be the silly article I originally thought it would be.

The headline – “Worried parents demand answers over new pupil who ‘could be 40’ joining school after moving to UK” – was not on the original link but the nature of the story becomes clear with it. The article goes on to pander to a narrative that child refugees or child migrants are not actually children or more precisely under eighteen. It would be worth mentioning that sometimes this does happen. I don’t deny it but it is important to understand that it’s not rife and it should not discredit the claims to refuge that minors, many of them unaccompanied, make. The article brings up the story of some Iranian who wasn’t under-18 who spent six weeks at a school in Stoke in 2018 before tests confirmed he wasn’t a minor. Without any proof it then uses this example as evidence of guilt in regards the second person with a thinly veiled implication that feeds racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Confirmation bias is a very real thing. We pay more attention to information that confirms our pre-existing understanding of the world. It is very hard to avoid confirmation bias because we’re all susceptible to it’s subtly. This unfortunately is simple and blatant propaganda. It reaches millions of people and the end result is things like Brexit and a majority Conservative government. The people voting for such things will not benefit from them but owners of newspapers like The Sun will. The independent media and the people are at war with powerful vested and influential interests, and themselves. You can’t overcome real power without the people, but first we need to overcome ourselves. I don’t just lay the blame on others, we’re all to blame. Just please don’t buy or believe this crap.

The Gibraltar Orca

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With Extinction Rebellion (ER) finally drawing real ire from the Government with their blockade of the propaganda master Rupert Murdoch, another species has seemingly hit the headlines for raising awareness of it’s own plight this week. The Straits of Gibraltar Orcas have been playing with sailing boats. Apparently unsuspecting sailors have found themselves suddenly turning half circle in response to orca whales ramming their vessels. They have been reported too as taking chunks out of the rudders of these same boats, leaving them to float uncontrolled in what is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. What precisely is leading the orca to do this is currently unknown to us.

Naturally there are plenty of hypothesis. Orca have been known to play with boats in the past. They are of the dolphin family and anyone who has sailed as a pod of dolphin join you, will know they are inquisitive and from our human perspective having fun. Having watched a dog lead me through it’s territory in Nepal once I have been curious whether dolphin are simply doing the same but really I have no idea. When playing with boats apparently orca have gently bitten on to the rudders and been pulled along like skateboarders in movies. This is the nice idea, their playing has simply got out of control.

Likely the reasoning is far more sinister. Orca are highly intelligent creatures and have found themselves in the Straits of Gibraltar struggling to survive. Their numbers are depleting with young calves invariably not living to adulthood. There are numerous potential reasons for this but it is a safe bet to suggest the depleted numbers of bluefin tuna, which form the orcas diet, will be having an enormous affect. This is a story we’re seeing repeated world wide with different animals in the sea and on land. With their natural habitat changing, or simply being destroyed, their movements and behaviour are evolving too. In the case of the orca their numbers are decreasing dramatically. In this stretch of water too, as happens across the world in similar situations, the local fishermen who catch the tuna see the orca as competition. While the sailing boats may traditionally be excited to see the whales, the fishermen see a challenge. There are reports of various whales having large cuts on their dorsal fins and across their bodies, it is argued these are the result of clashes.

The large volume of marine traffic in this area has been argued as a factor too. The relative silence in this area during Covid-19 restrictions has now ceased and it coincided with an increase in these ‘attacks’ in the months of July and August. At no point have they been seen as a threat to people but more that they have been after the boats. It is also unclear how much of a new thing this is, if they have been fighting fishing vessels it would likely be unreported and larger ships unknown. Perhaps though like ER they realised they need to make their presence known to those who might actually report and raise awareness of the situation. Not that these sailors can be accused of being the Rupert Murdoch’s of the sea but more they have evidently begun actions which have brought their plight to the worlds attention with an immediacy ER would be proud of. It is just one more example of the damage being done to an earth we’re dangerous incapable of living in with the kind of harmony our dominant position must demand. We seem happy to ignore the destruction we can see on land, it appears that now the orca have had enough of our ignorance of what goes on below too.

Incompetence, Really?

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There comes a time in a man’s life, a woman’s too I imagine, when they look at incidents of Tory incompetence and realise they happen so frequently they may just not be incompetence at all. The Times newspaper, a Rupert Murdoch mouthpiece which interestingly is becoming less fond of the current Government in power, published an article a few days ago about ministers spaffing £150 million on worthless masks with the wrong kind of straps, as part of a £252 million deal with a little known investment firm Ayanda Capital in April. Ayanda Capital are incidentally registered in Mauritius for tax purposes but perhaps a piece on Tory link tax evading companies will be for another time. It does seem a strange choice, a financial services company with no history of supplying the NHS for this rather important of jobs. Calls of incompetence ring the air. Well they do until you delve a little deeper.

As has already been mentioned, Ayanda Capital have links to the Tory Party through The President of the Board of Trade Liz Truss who was approached by Ayanda Capital through her friend and adviser Andrew Mills. But again there is more because for something to happen once is incompetence, but as the image below suggests, once is not entirely accurate.

At what point does that stop being incompetence. Once or twice at most if we’re being generous. After that well, either they’re severely mismanaging public funds and should be out of office or they’re actively corrupt and not just giving jobs to the boys, but funnelling the money to them directly. Let’s look again at Andrew Mills then shall we. As mentioned he is good mates with Liz Truss, but interestingly enough he’s also an adviser to the Board of Trade and coincidentally you guessed it, sits on the board of trustees for Ayanda Capital.

It is long known about the powers of a sleight of hand, or the importance of using an event or person to distract from other events, think about the idea of what they’re not reporting to be the real and important news. In this case the current government have managed to create the perfect formula; place someone on the throne of government who gives off the impression of being a clown and when accusations of corruption are made, allow them to disappear into the performance of Boris the Buffoon. These are not stupid people. They’re clearly highly intelligent and calculating. Surely there are now far too many examples of incompetence for that to still stand as a genuine accusation. Boris is the sleight, while the hand keeps taking.

Another Political Pervert

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Another day another pervert ousted in politics. Pervert may be a little strong but you shouldn’t try and seduce sixteen year olds when you’re twenty-two let alone when you’re forty-two. Maybe it is because they’re in the public eye so much and that they work in such a sneaky corrupt industry but politicians seem to get caught out in so many sex scandals. I must also commend Boris, or should I say Dominic Cummings, and Rupert Murdoch for such a perfectly executed political assassination. The night before Derek Mackay, the Scottish finance minister, is about to release the budget proposed by the Scottish Government, one already delayed because of shenanigans between the Scottish Parliament and Westminster, the Scottish Sun release their exclusive about him contacting a schoolboy who he thought was “cute” over a six month period. They’ve done him, they’ve taken him out. No matter what moral beliefs you hold on this it is undeniably a work of art. They have sat on this story and waited for the most opportune moment to release it. A future leader of the SNP apparently. Not anymore.

If anything though it does highlight the lack of neutrality in the press and the influence of people like Rupert Murdoch within our political system. This piece though is not going to be about one of my favourite topics; that of a perennially corrupt media. It is more just about being an acknowledgement of what they’ve done and despite the fact I dislike these people immensely it is important to be able to tip your hat to them when you can see how well they’ve played something. Saying that I also don’t have much time for any forty-two year old who harasses school children so morally this one is all over the place.

Politicians are a remarkable people though and it shows the lure of power that despite the obvious dangers to a free and happy life so many get involved in that murky world. These next five years are going to be incredibly interesting for the objective observers, and a mix of great and terrifying for everyone else. For every person who is horrified that Boris is ripping up a centuries old rulebook of tradition there will be another delighted about it. Change needs to happen and with current events in Britain, as well as around the world, this is clearer now more than ever. People are angry and when emotive responses like that are your main driver you are also easy to manipulate. The fear then is that while everything needs a good shake-up, when it’s this mob doing the shaking we perhaps should be a little concerned. And not only that, but while we can tip our hats to their work, never forget that this and worse is exactly what they’re capable of.