The Skwawkbox, or master class in writing fake news

“The TV News is lying to us. I get my information from Facebook, friends and social networks.”

An interesting comment. Many people in the England, the US or other nations might well share the sentiment. In this instance, it came from Spain.

It could also have come from the left as plausibly as the right. The BBC has been upset by the attacks on it from the left, just when its very existence is coming under threat from a right-wing government. We might soon see a great public broadcaster muzzled by the right while the left does nothing to defend it.

In this case, the speaker was from the right. He was a supporter of the far-right Spanish party, Vox. The left-leaning paper El País was interviewing him for a study of where Vox gets its support.

He prefers to get his news from Facebook, his friends and social networks. Which is another way of saying that what he wants isn’t information, it’s confirmation. He will find those groups and posts, or friends, who believe what he believes, and always strengthen rather than challenge his views.

That’s much more comfortable. It’s also how fake news spreads. That’s true whether the fake news is generated by a propaganda mouthpiece of the right, such as Guido Fawkes in the UK or the White House in the US, or the left, such as England’s Skwawkbox.

Purveyors of fake news
A rare photo of publicity-shy Skwawkbox founder Steve Walker (l)
Paul Staines of Guidow Fawkes (c) and the White House ranter

In answering a recent FaceBook comment of mine, a critic pointed me to a link to a Skwawkbox page which had the headline:

EXCL: NCC FORCED TO REJECT UP TO 90% OF ANTISEMITISM EVIDENCE AS UNFIT – MULTIPLE DEATHS FOLLOW EXPULSIONS

The claim, right at the start of the headline, to exclusivity is clearly a source of pride to the writer. To me, it just says, ‘no reputable journalist has picked up this story’. Clearly, the poster of the link was, however, entirely disinclined to wonder about the item’s reliability.

The story itself opens with:

A Manchester woman has died within days of her expulsion from the Labour Party under a new disciplinary system.

The woman, whose identity has been confirmed to the SKWAWKBOX, is understood to have died on Tuesday as a result of a brain haemorrhage that locals are linking to stress brought on by her summary expulsion under a new ‘fast track’ process in which the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) is expelling members against whom antisemitism complaints have been made.

It seems the person who pointed me to this piece had confidence in it. But all it’s saying is that someone, unnamed to us though the Skwawkbox claims to know who she is, is said by some anonymous source and their equally unnamed friends, to have died within days of being expelled from the Labour Party.

Given the headline with its reference of the lack of validity of ‘90% of Antisemitism evidence’, the implication is that the evidence against this woman was weak.

However, we can check none of this. We don’t know the name of the woman. We don’t know the names of the people living locally who commented on her death. We don’t know what evidence was brought against her, let alone whether any proportion of it, or none at all, was deemed invalid.

In fact, we don’t know whether the 90% figure is accurate. Any more than we know whether evidence rejected by the disciplinary bodies of the Labour Party ought in fact to have been admitted.

The piece is written in such a way that it’s impossible to verify any of its allegations. It may be that I’m too cynical, but I believe that anyone who makes claims that can’t be verified, is afraid of any kind of questioning. That’s likely to be because they’re afraid the case will fall apart if it’s examined too closely.

The naivety of certain commentators, such as my critic, lies in the refusal to see this obvious truth.

As a result, I thought the best response was to write a piece of my own, applying exactly the same journalistic standards as the Skwawkbox.

A reliable source leads me to understand that the woman who died in Manchester soon after being expelled from the Labour Party, had faced multiple charges of antisemitism backed by overwhelming evidence.

While a proportion of the evidence submitted was found to be too circumstantial or too weak, more than enough was both conclusive and believable, in many cases confirmed by multiple, independent sources.

Her death soon after the expulsion was a tragic coincidence. 

The same source confirms that the woman had a serious and long-term circulatory condition which was both inoperable and likely to lead to life-threatening trauma if triggered by, say, an external shock. My source confirms that she had such a shock, unrelated to the expulsion, before suffering a massive and tragically fatal aneurysm.

My heartfelt sympathy goes to the woman’s loved ones in this terrible moment for them. However, it has to be stressed that her death, while tragic, was not associated with the disciplinary action Labour had taken against her. Her expulsion was inevitable, given the incontrovertible evidence that she made antisemitic statements, repeatedly, over a long period.

There is no place for anti-Semites in the Labour Party.

Now here’s your challenge: prove that any of what I’ve said is untrue.

The Boris coup: day 3

Boris has announced that he’s now going flat out to get a deal with the EU.

Why now particularly?

Because now he’s doing away with the interference of those pesky members of parliament. Of whom he happens to be one. And by no means the least pesky (ask Theresa May).

If anyone was in any doubt of the plans of the Downing Street junta, a source from inside the bunker cleared them up on Thursday, as Heather Stewart tells us in the Guardian:

We’ve been very clear before that we will deliver Brexit by any means necessary and that remains the case.

Any means that they deem necessary. If that means trampling mere constitutional niceties, say by removing the only means of democratic oversight of government that Britain has, well, you can’t make brain soup without breaking heads.

Citizens out in the streets to resist the coup
And where was the Leader of the Opposition? Nowhere to be seen

Boris Johnson, we have come to learn down the years, may not always be entirely truthful in his public pronouncements. Few can have been naïve enough to believe him when he announced he was proroguing parliament to give himself time to refine his domestic agenda. If they were that innocent, there was a lovely hot-mike moment, also on Thursday, when, as Heather Stewart also points out, the defence secretary Ben Wallace was caught saying:

”Parliament has been very good at saying what it doesn’t want. It has been awful at saying what it wants. That’s the reality. So eventually any leader has to, you know, try.”

He continued: “Our system is a winner-takes-all system. If you win a parliamentary majority, you control everything, you control the timetable. There’s no written separation, so … you pretty much are in command of the whole thing. And we’ve suddenly found ourselves with no majority and a coalition and that’s not easy for our system.”

Ah, yes. He belongs to the lazy right that believes things should be easy. 

In a democracy, when parliament can’t decide what it wants, you wait until at last a majority emerges for one solution or another. A system where one man decides he can do without a majority, and does away with parliament to impose the decision himself, is called an autocracy.

But Boris can dress up what he’s doing as democratic because there is widespread voter support for him. And that shouldn’t surprise anyone either: whenever an autocrat takes power, he does so with a large minority, or even a majority, backing him among the people. Right now, the Tories enjoy a lead over Labour in the low double figures, small but enough to encourage him down the road he’s taken. Indeed, add in the Brexit Party vote, which he would get if Farage’s party chose not to stand candidates against Tories, and he’d be sitting on 45%, a dream level of support for an autocrat.

Also enough to win him a sizeable majority in parliament if he decided to go back to ruling through it. Which, as Ben Wallace indicated, he would probably do if he had the majority that gave him the control he wants.

His strong position isn’t only down to Boris. It equally depends on the sad weakness of the official opposition to him. It’s interesting watching all these developments from abroad, in Spain. One of the better Spanish papers, El País, had this to say about developments in Britain:

A triple offensive, with appeals to the courts to overturn the prorogation, calls to citizens to block the streets and a final attempt in Parliament to prohibit by law a disorderly exit from the EU, are laying the groundwork for a decisive week in the history of the country.

Well, the appeals to the courts have started badly, with a Scottish judge refusing an interim order reversing the prorogation. Still, the efforts proceed, under the leadership among others of the doughty, impressive Gina Miller.

Citizens have been taking to the streets to try to block BoJo’s coup. Now here’s where one might expect a radical left-winger to prove his credentials. A man from that political tendency would, one might imagine, be a strong proponent of direct extra-parliamentary action by the population, to reinforce any action in parliament.

In other words, the protest action called ‘stop the coup’ gave Jeremy Corbyn, the official Leader of the Opposition, the opportunity to prove his worth. Sadly, it has proved exactly that. His is a business-as-usual approach, and instead of joining the protestors, he preferred to go campaigning in a Scottish constituency.

Most of us already knew this about him, but his failure to pick up the baton offered him by ‘stop the coup’ proves it: he’s a Leader of the Opposition who can’t lead, and who doesn’t even oppose much.

No wonder BoJo is opening up a commanding lead in the polls.

That leaves Corbyn with only the legislative route open. To push a bill – or help push someone else’s bill, since there are real leaders in the House of Commons – through Parliament, in the brief time it’s allowed to meet before it’s prorogued.

Then hope for the best against the odds, since BoJo has already shown his readiness to ignore Parliament.

Oh, well. As El País says, it’s a historic moment for Britain. And, given the quality of the leadership on display, a pretty dire one.

Brexit: what a brothel

It’s amusing how often you get quizzed about Brexit, as a Brit abroad. In fact, I’ve so often been asked “Brexit? What on earth’s that about?”, that I now deliver my stock response with the pat monotony of long repetition.

“No idea,” I say, “but if you ever find out, do please let me know.”

Brexiters always told me that the whole point of leaving the EU was to take back control over our own affairs. In a highly interdependent world, where no country, not even the most powerful, has full control of its future, let alone a middle-ranking power like Britain, that always struck me as a questionable notion. But today, with both main parties having lost control of themselves and the government having lost control of the country, my inclination would be to paraphrase Gandhi: asked for his opinion of Western Civilisation, he replied that he thought it would be a good idea. Well, in that same spirit, I think some measure of control would be suit Britain admirably. But that’s an aspiration, not a reality, and it looks a long way from being reached while the Brexit chaos continues.

Look at the current situation. May has negotiated a deal of some sort. The EU has made it clear no other deal is on offer. Parliament has rejected that deal. It has also voted against leaving with no deal. It has voted not to have a second referendum. It hasn’t, however, come up with any alternative deal.

It seems Britain has shown great skill in saying ‘stop’ but has yet to develop the ability to find a path along which it might say ‘go’.

It strikes me that we’re in the situation of three friends who have gone on holiday together, say to Southern Spain. When they get there, they find it’s not quite as they’d hoped: the accommodation isn’t that comfortable, the sea’s a long way away, restaurants and bars serve food with a distinctly foreign flavour to them.

So one friend suggests heading home. Another suggests they stay a while but cut the holiday short. A third wants to go somewhere else. But no one can agree with either of the others.

Mightn’t the most sensible thing be to decide to make the most of where they are? To try to enjoy what the place they chose might have to offer despite its failings? To learn, in other words, to like what they’re doing, if they can’t work out what they’d like to do?

It seems Britain still hasn’t come around to reaching that rational conclusion.

I’m told that it’s wrong to refer to voters, even Brexit voters, as stupid. Of course, my first reaction is to think “if voters don’t want to be thought of as stupid, they shouldn’t vote stupidly”. But, OK, I can see how it might be counterproductive to say so out loud. So I will not refer to Brexiters as stupid. However stupid their behaviour. Instead, I’d simply ask, “how smart can it be to wish for Brexit if no one can agree on what Brexit they want?”

Foreigners have little difficulty answering that kind of question.

The Spanish daily El País points out that, given the “wicker” she has to work with, it’s absolutely no surprise that Theresa May’s Brexit basket is empty. She has nothing to offer. But more than that, the paper is adamant that the Brexit mess is entirely of Britain’s making. The country, it claims, is incapable of agreeing with itself. It feels the EU has already been far too generous in its concessions. Certainly, El País is clear that the EU should concede nothing more.

El País illustration for a leader article headlined ‘Moribund Brexit’

That, however, is a well-constructed, carefully argued case. A much more succinct view was offered to me in Italy.

“Brexit? Che casino.”

That literally means “Brexit? What a brothel.” Though these days ‘che casino’ has just become a familiar way of saying “what a mess”.

Personally, I think a brothel, with its implications of questionable behaviour, outright deception and the meretricious pursuit of financial benefit through behaviour dubious to the point of corruption, sums up Brexit perfectly.

Even better, though, is the smile or chuckle that tends to accompany such comments. It should be a matter of pride that Britain amuses the world these days. However, generally we want people to be laughing with us, rather than at us. Unfortunately, Brexit has reduced our once-proud nation to a laughing stock. Even if the laughter is sometimes accompanied by tears.

Oh, dear. Brexit. What a brothel indeed.

When Britain turns crappy

Our street’s a bit crappy at the moment.

I don’t mean that’s it’s not particularly aesthetically pleasing, even though it’s not really much to write home about. But then, I’m not sure why I’d write home about it. After all, it is home, so there’d be little point in writing.

The sewage flowing past our doorstep

In any case, in this instance my judgement is meant much more literally. The street’s crappy because it has sewage running down it. Not a torrent or anything, not a flood, but a fairly constant trickle, filling the gutter and spreading a vile, malodorous miasma around.

You’ve got admit that ‘malodorous miasma’ is good, isn’t it? I hope it means what I want because I’m not changing it. I’m pretty certain you know what I mean, anyway.

We’ve spoken to the people in the house from which the sewage is flowing. They’re tenants. They tell me they’ve spoken to the landlord but nothing’s happened yet.

Luton Borough Council kindly provides an out-of-hours number to report such emergencies. After all, it’s a serious public health problem. Think of all the cholera epidemics in cities before proper sanitation was introduced.

Sadly, no one actually answers the number. Nor does it provide a voicemail function so we can leave a message.

I don’t blame the council. They’d do something if they could. But eight years of austerity have pared staffing levels down to the minimum, and then pared more.

Nor is Luton council the only service to have suffered this way. Most recently, such problems have been much discussed in the media in connection with the railways. Trains have been repeatedly cancelled, so there are fears that students won’t be able to get to school in time to take their end-of-school examinations.

The school buildings themselves are increasingly dilapidated, teacher numbers are down, and people are leaving the profession in increasing numbers, leading to a vicious cycle: they leave because understaffing is making the stress unbearable, and by leaving they increase the understaffing.

We have another personal example of this kind of thing just recently. My 93-year-old mother has been admitted to hospital. The care she is receiving is excellent – we were there when she was examined and advised by a consultant (a senior physician) who was admirable in his gentleness, reassuring good humour and kindness. But what struck us most about the place was the tiredness of most of the staff: the faces are drawn as they struggle to cope with a huge workload, never able to devote more than a few minutes to any one patients.

Many of the voices we heard were distinctly foreign. It’s well-known that the National Health Service depends heavily on foreign staff to keep operating. There’s nothing wrong about that. What’s wrong is that since the Brexit vote, there is a feeling that foreigners aren’t welcome in this country. Like the teachers leaving the profession, immigrants essential to the health service, to catering, to hotels, to agriculture and to many other sectors are leaving the country.

That hostility to foreigners is grounded in a sense that Britain is somehow superior to other nations. That pride seems misplaced in a country with failing railways, schools or hospitals. Or, indeed, on sewage running in the streets.

Curiously, our street here contrasts starkly with the street where we’ve recently taken a flat, in Valencia.

In my youth, Spain was a nation made painfully inward-looking, closed to the outside world and, frankly, poor – rather as Brexit is likely to make Britain – by its stultifying dictatorship under the last of the declared fascists, Francisco Franco.

But he died and Spain returned enthusiastically to democracy. It became one of the first European countries to allow same-sex marriage. It has been leading the way in moving towards gender equality – indeed the new government has, for the first time, a majority of women. And now El País, the leading Spanish-language newspaper in the world, is just about to appoint its first woman editor.

When we were last there, I was struck by the level of public service. I got chatting to the woman who cleans the streets around the flat we recently acquired in Valencia. She cleans them – ‘the same streets’, as she assured me, ‘every day’ – since they always need cleaning. That’s principally because a significant proportion of dog owners are highly irresponsible.

Now, I’d like it if dog owners always picked up after their dogs. But failing that, it’s wonderful to know that there is someone who’ll be along within the next twenty-four hours to clear up anyway. That seems particularly desirable when you live in a street made crappy by sewage flowing down it.

What’s more, Spain seems a lot less unfriendly towards immigrants than Britain does right now. That’s not to say that racism is unknown there – it isn’t – but at least xenophobia is less rampant than here. Which is just as well, since we plan on moving there just as soon as we can. Emigrating from a nation hostile to immigrants to become immigrants in a nation that is less unwelcoming to them.

Besides. The weather’s a lot better.