[News] Nigel Farage and Reform

The Clamp said:

Will Nigel Farage behave in Commons after record as a ‘ranting’ MEP?

Reform leader made reputation in 2010 speech calling former Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy a ‘damp rag’

www.theguardian.com

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The Clamp said:

Will Nigel Farage behave in Commons after record as a ‘ranting’ MEP?

Reform leader made reputation in 2010 speech calling former Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy a ‘damp rag’

www.theguardian.com

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nevergoagain said:

Reform UK fake candidate conspiracy theories debunked

How an airbrushed photo led to claims Nigel Farage's party was fielding fictional election candidates.

www.bbc.co.uk

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nevergoagain said:

Of course not, that's perfectly normal and happened at my school but the teachers facilitated, not participated.

Yes I fully expect teachers to discuss racism and discrimination but without their own political slants applied.

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Zeberdi said:

Is speaking out against groups that engender racism and discrimination a “political slant”?

I thought it was just being a human being, respectful of other people’s differences and culture.

Making lists against teachers doing this, stinks of the sort of blacklisting we saw in the McCarthy era and the anti-evolution, anti-vaxxer movements against schools in America by far right groups.

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WATFORD zero said:

Certainly appears to just be an Internet rumour started by a mix of desperately getting friends, relations and office workers of Reform that were not associated with the constituency in any way to stand as paper candidates at the last minute. That, together with an AI image of a candidate and marketing literature using photos claiming that dead people were voting for Reform.

Somehow, it just grew from there

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Billy the Fish said:

So the fake candidates theory has pretty much been debunked, which is weird because those ethical reporters at byline times wouldn't print things before they had proof would they?

But anyway, lets brush it under the carpet and never mention it again.

Lets address the lists and the nazis. The obvious answer is that some parents (probably Reform voters) have made a complaint to R Lowe that teachers are trying to influence their children in a way they're not supposed to. This may or may not be correct, who knows, but he's well within his rights to make an official complaint. If he's been given more than one name he probably had to keep them in a LIST (arrrrrrrrrgggghhhh) in order to remember them and forward the correct name to the relevant authority. That's it. Most likely nothing will come of it.

The stupid thing is there's actually real story here - paper candidates (which I'd not heard of until now) and our electoral system allowing any old person to stand for election seems a bit unethical to me and it's certainly worthy of a debate.

But byline times and their band of twitter followers are ignoring this angle because they can't help themselves and have to go for the biggest scandal, and when that failed they double down and come up with some mad comparisons with Nazis based on a throwaway comment.

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Billy the Fish said:

So the fake candidates theory has pretty much been debunked, which is weird because those ethical reporters at byline times wouldn't print things before they had proof would they?

But anyway, lets brush it under the carpet and never mention it again.

Lets address the lists and the nazis. The obvious answer is that some parents (probably Reform voters) have made a complaint to R Lowe that teachers are trying to influence their children in a way they're not supposed to. This may or may not be correct, who knows, but he's well within his rights to make an official complaint. If he's been given more than one name he probably had to keep them in a LIST (arrrrrrrrrgggghhhh) in order to remember them and forward the correct name to the relevant authority. That's it. Most likely nothing will come of it.

The stupid thing is there's actually real story here - paper candidates (which I'd not heard of until now) and our electoral system allowing any old person to stand for election seems a bit unethical to me and it's certainly worthy of a debate.

But byline times and their band of twitter followers are ignoring this angle because they can't help themselves and have to go for the biggest scandal, and when that failed they double down and come up with some mad comparisons with Nazis based on a throwaway comment.

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Eric the meek said:

Thanks for clearing it all up. A few of us have questioned Reform tactics, but it looks like we were all wrong. You've nailed it.

'The obvious answer is etc'.
'Probably'
'He probably had to keep them in a list'
'That's it'.

Do you have the capacity to see that you made up an entire scenario about what happened, and write it immediately after you criticise the Byline Times for doing the exact same thing?

#selfawareness

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Billy the Fish said:

It's a theory, I'm not presenting it as anything else. To me it's the most likely scenario. I did the same thing with the fake candidates story.

How are you making a serious comparison between me (nameless poster on football message board) and the byline times?

@Eric the meek - on balance of probability, what do you think is more likely. My scenario or Reform UK are compiling a dossier on people who disagree with them, presumably for nefarious activities in the future?

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Billy the Fish said:

Lets address the lists and the nazis. The obvious answer is that some parents (probably Reform voters) have made a complaint to R Lowe that teachers are trying to influence their children in a way they're not supposed to. This may or may not be correct, who knows, but he's well within his rights to make an official complaint. If he's been given more than one name he probably had to keep them in a LIST (arrrrrrrrrgggghhhh) in order to remember them and forward the correct name to the relevant authority. That's it. Most likely nothing will come of it.

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Billy the Fish said:

Lets address the lists and the ’nazis’. The possible answer is that some children (probably those with parents who are Reform voters) have gone home and told their parents that teachers said Reform blames much of what is wrong with the Country on immigrants and the leaders of that political group are rooted in a hard right ideology that is unapologetically racist as Farage’s birthism remarks about Sunak’s early exit from the Dday celebration showed. This may or may not be correct, who knows, but Reformer parents are well within their rights to make an official complaint if they feel their children have been misled about Reform’s true xenophobic and racist nature . That's it. Most likely nothing will come of it. Btw, the complainant suffers from amnesia apparently so this may undermine his complaint.

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Billy the Fish said:

Good try, but that makes absolutely no sense.

I'll accept a change of "obvious" to either "possible" or "more likely".

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Eric the meek said:

Thanks for clearing it all up. A few of us have questioned Reform tactics, but it looks like we were all wrong. You've nailed it.

'The obvious answer is etc'.
'Probably'
'He probably had to keep them in a list'
'That's it'.

Do you have the capacity to see that you made up an entire scenario about what happened, and write it immediately after you criticise the Byline Times for doing the exact same thing?

#selfawareness

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Eric the meek said:

I'm not making a comparison. I'm expressing my incredulity.

I pointed out that you had criticised The Byline Times for their reporters printing something before they had proof. You even used an emoji to emphasise your point. You then made exactly the same mistake that you had criticised them for.

You then reply by asking me if I'm making a serious comparison.

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nevergoagain said:

Another pile on by usual suspects. Interesting the topic of "paper candidates" as others have mentioned, I'd not heard of the practice either but does seem like the smaller parties do use them so not a new thing. Greens seem to do the same. Money yes but also I read that if you stand in more than a 6th of seats then you are granted a party political broadcast so that makes a little more sense for the smaller groups to get greater exposure.

On the money side, unless you actually win the seat which gets you a lot of cash then it's something like £44 per 200 votes received but that's offset against the £500 deposit to stand. Roughly 2200 votes to break even then.

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Harry Wilson's tackle said:

Excellent post.

It is weird how people try to prove a hypothesis is wrong (which is good - the scientific method) by raising four other hypotheses (which is whataboutery).

It is true that some hypotheses are not worth testing. For example, Kier Starmer is a space alien. And just because they hypothesis isn't disproven (because nobody gives it credence) does not make it likely it is correct.

On the other hand, some hypotheses that are under test are important and plausible and the way to test them is, er, to test them. For example, the "Reform mode of operation is dodgy". Raising other hypotheses won't make it more likely that this one is wrong.

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