Going, going...

Chester's Day 3 - and hoping for a more "grounded" raceday

I’m not for a moment suggesting that Sadiq Khan is the most dangerous politician in the UK, because there are others, but in influential terms, he is one who needs to be very carefully watched. Soon, he will be going across the water to the Other Place and his vision of His Truth, where I predict he will do more harm to the nation.

My eyes are once again taken by Khan’s familiar political Trompe l’Oeil, a campaign for the public good, based on specially commissioned research to support his latest “Pro Bono” policy, in this case demanding wide-reaching internet censorship. At a speech in Cambridge last month, he demanded the creation of “a new central body” to fight online disinformation. In support of this demand was research claiming there has been a 350% rise in migration-related narratives and a 150–200% increase in “London in decline” content on X. The only trouble is that we have no idea which communication and mapping tools were used, nor which Boolean keyword searches were used to generate the unprovable statistics. We have no idea how the report decided which social media accounts were labelled as part of a “coordinated” or “inauthentic” politically motivated activity. What criteria did they use?

The report claims that “London in decline” narratives rose by 150–200%, while overall London-related X postings rose only 7%. But from what base? If I tip one winner in 600 selections (I am allegedly marginally better), and then tip 3 winners in the next 400, my success rate has gone up 350%! The fact that the numbers are statistical noise doesn’t alter the facts. Similarly, the report says