When pictures paint a thousand lies ...
Mark Twain once said that a lie can get half-way round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
There was a very good piece in the Speccie on Saturday by Isobel Hardman about pictures which paint a thousand lies, and which you can read at
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/isabel-hardman/2014/11/the-menace-of-memes-how-pictures-can-paint-a-thousand-lies/
Goodness knows that there are many ways in which our MPs are imperfect. But let's restrict our criticisms of them to those which are true.
A number of chain emails and pictures on twitter have been circulating which purport to show an empty House of Commons chamber when MPs are debating some important subject such as welfare reform, and a full one when they are debating some issue which affects MPs like their salary or expenses.
Isobel Hardman checked one of these out. The captions on the pictures which purported to show a full chamber debating MPs expenses and MPs salaries were downright lies - she proved that the dates given were wrong and these were actually taken from Prime Minister's Question Time and from the first session of parliament after a recess a decade ago, respectively. The welfare reform picture was correctly labelled but misleading - it showed the chamber when a debate had been going on for a considerable time, and the number of MPs who attended at least part of the debate had been much larger.
The people who circulate these things may well be innocent dupes acting in good faith, but the people who craft them know damn well that they are lying. Surely there are enough genuine reasons to criticise our MPs without making up this kind of black propaganda?
There was a very good piece in the Speccie on Saturday by Isobel Hardman about pictures which paint a thousand lies, and which you can read at
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/isabel-hardman/2014/11/the-menace-of-memes-how-pictures-can-paint-a-thousand-lies/
Goodness knows that there are many ways in which our MPs are imperfect. But let's restrict our criticisms of them to those which are true.
A number of chain emails and pictures on twitter have been circulating which purport to show an empty House of Commons chamber when MPs are debating some important subject such as welfare reform, and a full one when they are debating some issue which affects MPs like their salary or expenses.
Isobel Hardman checked one of these out. The captions on the pictures which purported to show a full chamber debating MPs expenses and MPs salaries were downright lies - she proved that the dates given were wrong and these were actually taken from Prime Minister's Question Time and from the first session of parliament after a recess a decade ago, respectively. The welfare reform picture was correctly labelled but misleading - it showed the chamber when a debate had been going on for a considerable time, and the number of MPs who attended at least part of the debate had been much larger.
The people who circulate these things may well be innocent dupes acting in good faith, but the people who craft them know damn well that they are lying. Surely there are enough genuine reasons to criticise our MPs without making up this kind of black propaganda?
Comments
also its easy to mis judge a person, I personally have been called a tory, a labour voter, and a lib dem voter, and a UKIP voter all in the same thread on face book. It was quite clever really, only by pointing out the downfalls in each parties policy, people often think you are the other.
For the record, then I hope the Conservative party do win this time, and I hope they win with a Majority. though i expect myself and the host here both have very different reasons for wanting that
Both Nick Robinson and Jeremy Paxman are actually "One Nation" tories but take pride in scrutinising every party's policies and I've read comments from every political persuasion you can think of accusing the two of them of being biased in the opposite direction to the person making the comment.
I recently saw a TV show in which someone asked what the word "assume" does, and the answer was "makes an ass of U and me."
ME- Yes, its all thanks to the "long term economic plan" anyone else notice that is was nothing to do with EU regulation 1315/2013?
Name i wont give - Yeah, I did, I guess you are a Labour voter as well, well said Jim
Me- well, actually no, there are currently about 90 billion good reasons why i wont vote for a Labour government.
NIWG- well they are due to Cameron, so you must be either Lib dem or a green?
me - neither
NIWG- wait, looking back over your comments you look like a typical UKIP supporter, i had you down as better.
*at which point they "unliked" my first comment, and i never did reply. I was too busy trying to modify my Honda Accord to get to Mars
that worked out well didn't it, the deficit is DCs fault (I mean i will call DC on a lot of things, but causing the deficit is not one of them) then he goes on to decide which party i support, rather than understand a single point I made, then decides I am a UKIP supporter so not worth talking to.
No doubt he be telling people to avoid me like the plague as i am a closet racist. That is the working of the minds of some people and that is why "stop the world, I'm getting off" springs to mind with me so much
Among the public as a whole that kind of tribalism is dying, but among some party activists and some people who post comments on the internet it is still regrettably strong.
And it is often so much easier to say "Oh, you look like a typical UKIP/Tory/Leftie/LibLabCon supporter so I will ignore you as an extremist nutter" (delete according to prejudice) than to engage with the argument which has actually been made.