Opacity of ogling onomatomania...

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[Edited:'dead' image/video removed]
Something I've been thinking for quite a long while now, due to increased difficulty finding certain things by 'Googling'. I put part of the difficulty down to the sheer amount of crap out there but sometimes I was thinking Google are intentionally misunderstanding my searches! 'Don't be evil'... However: "Published on 9 Jun 2016
While researching for a wrap-up on the June 7 Presidential Primaries, we discovered evidence that Google may be manipulating autocomplete recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton. If true, this would mean that Google Searches aren’t objectively reflecting what the majority of Internet searches are actually". Hat-tip: Weasel Zippers, and yes, amazing work by Source Fed.  And related to yesterday's post.



Update 11th June: Google responds, hat-tip Zero Hedge: "the autocomplete algorithm is designed to avoid completing a search for a person’s name with terms that are offensive or disparaging"...is that for all 'sides'? At least from now on it will be anyway...maybe.

Opacity of ogling onomatomania...

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[Edited:'dead' image/video removed] Something I've been thinking for quite a long while now, due to increased difficulty finding certain things by 'Googling'. I put part of the difficulty down to the sheer amount of crap out there but sometimes I was thinking Google are intentionally misunderstanding my searches! 'Don't be evil'... However: "Published on 9 Jun 2016 While researching for a wrap-up on the June 7 Presidential Primaries, we discovered evidence that Google may be manipulating autocomplete recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton. If true, this would mean that Google Searches aren’t objectively reflecting what the majority of Internet searches are actually". Hat-tip: Weasel Zippers, and yes, amazing work by Source Fed.  And related to yesterday's post.

Update 11th June: Google responds, hat-tip Zero Hedge: "the autocomplete algorithm is designed to avoid completing a search for a person’s name with terms that are offensive or disparaging"...is that for all 'sides'? At least from now on it will be anyway...maybe.

Obviously owing...

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Well well well. What a surprise...NOT! Labour are hypocrites. The UK's main political parties all filed financial reports this week; "Labour’s total income for 2013 was £33.3m, far ahead of the Tories on £25.4m and the Lib Dems on £7.3m." From the Financial Times [Link ££].

On those vast incomes what tax was paid? Well last year The Conservatives paid 187 thousand quid, guess what Labour paid? £14,000. The Conservatives paid twelve times more tax on income of 25% less! Apparently the Lib Dems paid only £14 tax (yep, fourteen pounds).



Now nobody would begrudge trying to minimise what you pay in tax, as David Blackburn at The Spectator says, we should 'commend Labour for their careful tax planning', HOWEVER, when they do one thing but say another there's only one word for it: HYPOCRITES! There are so many other Labour tax-rise policies, and death won't save you. 

Obviously owing...

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Well well well. What a surprise...NOT! Labour are hypocrites. The UK's main political parties all filed financial reports this week; "Labour’s total income for 2013 was £33.3m, far ahead of the Tories on £25.4m and the Lib Dems on £7.3m." From the Financial Times [Link ££]. On those vast incomes what tax was paid? Well last year The Conservatives paid 187 thousand quid, guess what Labour paid? £14,000. The Conservatives paid twelve times more tax on income of 25% less! Apparently the Lib Dems paid only £14 tax (yep, fourteen pounds).

Now nobody would begrudge trying to minimise what you pay in tax, as David Blackburn at The Spectator says, we should 'commend Labour for their careful tax planning', HOWEVER, when they do one thing but say another there's only one word for it: HYPOCRITES! There are so many other Labour tax-rise policies, and death won't save you. 

Objuragtion of once...

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Snouts in the trough: the pigs in the image are happily eating their daily ration, heads down, no interest in what is around them; you can't think ill of the pigs for that, it's all they get. Those in parliament also have their heads in the trough with no interest in what is around them, but they want more, much more. The 'once' in the title is really "on-ce", eleven, an 11% pay-rise for UK Members of Parliament. "A Whitehall source said the 'across the board' reform would not cost taxpayers more. Funding for the salary increase would come from cuts to MPs' pension schemes that go far deeper than published proposals" [Link] PAH! That's OK then is it? I doubt many will see it that way and it is also a FUCKING LIE. There are too any MPs and they are mostly liars, thieves, corrupt, useless self-serving fuck-wits (no, really). Don't get me wrong, any good MP deserves a salary of 74K (£6167/month), more, make it higher... but they also claim 36K on personal expenses (£3000/month) and I doubt very much whether they penny-pinch about how and what they spend it on. We're not finished: PLUS they also get over 114K for staff expenses (£9525/month); you guessed it, 24% (155 out of 650) of them employ direct family members; how many of the rest employ friends and acquaintances probably not suited or best for these jobs? Who checks who is getting paid what? Those figures are for the year 2012/13 ending April this year; they are 7% HIGHER than the year before. Those nice members are really holding back, aren't they? Of COURSE it is costing taxpayers more.



Update: just to be clear: those personal and staff expenses are of course average figures; there are saints and sinners.

Objuragtion of once...

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Snouts in the trough: the pigs in the image are happily eating their daily ration, heads down, no interest in what is around them; you can't think ill of the pigs for that, it's all they get. Those in parliament also have their heads in the trough with no interest in what is around them, but they want more, much more. The 'once' in the title is really "on-ce", eleven, an 11% pay-rise for UK Members of Parliament. "A Whitehall source said the 'across the board' reform would not cost taxpayers more. Funding for the salary increase would come from cuts to MPs' pension schemes that go far deeper than published proposals" [Link] PAH! That's OK then is it? I doubt many will see it that way and it is also a FUCKING LIE. There are too any MPs and they are mostly liars, thieves, corrupt, useless self-serving fuck-wits (no, really). Don't get me wrong, any good MP deserves a salary of 74K (£6167/month), more, make it higher... but they also claim 36K on personal expenses (£3000/month) and I doubt very much whether they penny-pinch about how and what they spend it on. We're not finished: PLUS they also get over 114K for staff expenses (£9525/month); you guessed it, 24% (155 out of 650) of them employ direct family members; how many of the rest employ friends and acquaintances probably not suited or best for these jobs? Who checks who is getting paid what? Those figures are for the year 2012/13 ending April this year; they are 7% HIGHER than the year before. Those nice members are really holding back, aren't they? Of COURSE it is costing taxpayers more.

Update: just to be clear: those personal and staff expenses are of course average figures; there are saints and sinners.

Olid obloquy III...

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Evil smelling disgrace...first, the caveat, "there are many wholly honest Labour MPs – and quite a number of Conservatives MPs are repulsive" [and some are crooks and liars I'd add] but, writes Peter Oborne in the DT, "It’s no coincidence the MPs found guilty of fiddling are all Labour".

"There is an overwhelming likelihood that it is indeed statistically significant that only Labour MPs have been found guilty as a result of the expenses investigation. Labour members of the House of Commons need to face up to the uncomfortable truth. The outcome of the Telegraph investigation strongly suggests they are much more likely to lie, cheat and steal than members of other parties. Now that the expenses scandal has drawn to a close, they urgently need to ask themselves why that should be."

Go on, read that again but you didn't misread it. It is perhaps the new sense of entitlement (perhaps the same one that infests the BBC, as Martin Bell said earlier this month "...no more scandals please. No more palaces. No more crazy payouts"), the new position of power and sudden access to the sweet-shop with a pocket full of change; we know power corrupts but so does wealth. The Raw Story has part of the answer, quoting Paul K. Piff's (Department of Psychology at the University of California) new study (confirming what we know) that wealth [and power and privilege, I'd add] tends to increase a person's sense of entitlement, which in turn can lead to narcissistic behaviors:

"Narcissism is a multi-faceted and complex construct, but that wealth is specifically associated with it suggests that as a person’s level of privilege rises, that person becomes increasingly self-focused – in a sense, becoming the center of their own world and worldview..."

Looking at Piff's previous work (Upper class more likely to...) we see he clearly thinks it's a class/wealth issue but I don't think it's that (dare I say that I think that's piffle?) and certainly not in Labour's case: we have a Parliament full of lying, cheating, stealing fuck-wits, the fact that statistically more of them are Labour seems logical to me, it's just the way they are. :-)

Olid obloquy III...

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Evil smelling disgrace...first, the caveat, "there are many wholly honest Labour MPs – and quite a number of Conservatives MPs are repulsive" [and some are crooks and liars I'd add] but, writes Peter Oborne in the DT, "It’s no coincidence the MPs found guilty of fiddling are all Labour".

"There is an overwhelming likelihood that it is indeed statistically significant that only Labour MPs have been found guilty as a result of the expenses investigation. Labour members of the House of Commons need to face up to the uncomfortable truth. The outcome of the Telegraph investigation strongly suggests they are much more likely to lie, cheat and steal than members of other parties. Now that the expenses scandal has drawn to a close, they urgently need to ask themselves why that should be."

Go on, read that again but you didn't misread it. It is perhaps the new sense of entitlement (perhaps the same one that infests the BBC, as Martin Bell said earlier this month "...no more scandals please. No more palaces. No more crazy payouts"), the new position of power and sudden access to the sweet-shop with a pocket full of change; we know power corrupts but so does wealth. The Raw Story has part of the answer, quoting Paul K. Piff's (Department of Psychology at the University of California) new study (confirming what we know) that wealth [and power and privilege, I'd add] tends to increase a person's sense of entitlement, which in turn can lead to narcissistic behaviors:

"Narcissism is a multi-faceted and complex construct, but that wealth is specifically associated with it suggests that as a person’s level of privilege rises, that person becomes increasingly self-focused – in a sense, becoming the center of their own world and worldview..."

Looking at Piff's previous work (Upper class more likely to...) we see he clearly thinks it's a class/wealth issue but I don't think it's that (dare I say that I think that's piffle?) and certainly not in Labour's case: we have a Parliament full of lying, cheating, stealing fuck-wits, the fact that statistically more of them are Labour seems logical to me, it's just the way they are. :-)