Buy

Books
Click images for more details

Twitter
Support

 

Recent comments
Recent posts
Currently discussing
Links

A few sites I've stumbled across recently....

Powered by Squarespace

Unthreaded

@Mark @TomoRe Nov 6, 2019 at 8:31 AM
Wow actually at first glance that BBC Tr(uth B)ending story does seem to be way above their normal standard
... which normally consists of finding some white person and shouting "far right" at them
And BBC Trending usually only take the lefty line, yet this article is unusually balanced like it debunks a conspiracy video about JRM and Boris.
It is very long and does does actually seem to shine a light for once

But when I read it I find major errors
Bottomline the actual context is that EU does annually pass money to the world HQ of an org closely connected to the Swinson family. But the org is not mostly funded by the EU (I can't spot the exact magnitude, but for one office it's a third)

===============
Let's look at the BBC's takeaways
'#1 Mad righty bloggers got carried away and exaggerated
.. Yes they did minor grants don't mean the NGO is a EU puppet
.. Yes I had spotted that some people were exaggerating saying by calling TI "Jo Swinson's husband's company"
.. and they said €4m/year which doesn't seem true

#2 It was all about a one off €4m ONE OFF was an EU grant to the BERLIN office in 2018.
...'oh it's only a German regional branch '
AND this is BBC Trending's main error.... actually Berlin is is TI's world MAIN HQ with 2 depts
a)TI Secretariat ...b) Transparency International EU
Their about us says "Since 2008, Transparency International EU has functioned as a regional liaison office for the global movement"

Secondly ..it was NOT a one off
The EU is committed to long term annual funding of Transparency International EU
€257m "for our work on Anti-Corruption Advocacy for Sustainable Development in 2016-2020"
+ €250m "for the Clean Contracts project in 2016-2019)"
"2018 budget is around 1.4 mln euros."
So the EU provides 36% of the Transparency International EU annual budget

What about TI Secretariat ? their budget is €24m of which two thirds come from governments
Another €4.5m come from "Multilateral" whatever that means. Maybe some comes from the EU

====================

Notes from the BBC story

The blogger said "as he says on his LinkedIn page - receives €4 million from the EU each year. Oh dear...."
(That could mean that Berlin press release appeared on his Linkedin page)

"the UK branch - again, the one that Mr Hames works for - is separate. It did receive smaller EU grants: £21,000 in 2016/17 and £2,000 in 2017/18."
I don't think that is worth adding to Jo Swinson's interests cos half of businesses probably got some of OUR money via the EU grants sometime.

Nov 6, 2019 at 1:15 PM | Unregistered Commenterstewgreen

Isn't the BBC sailing a bit close to the wind over promoting the Greens now Parliament is prorogued for the election? They are into their period of supposed impartiality. OTOH the more the left vote is split the less likely Corbyn is to win even a share of power.

Nov 6, 2019 at 12:36 PM | Unregistered CommenterIt doesn't add up...

TinyCO2

a time search should simply reflect when the results were spidered by the search engine - no more no less. I'm not always clear what terms have precedence and what the order of application is these days - although I daresay that there's plenty of SEO stuff that's related....

- all I know is that I haven't modified my tactics much but the results are different.....

Nov 6, 2019 at 11:51 AM | Registered Commentertomo

tomo, I find that time searches on news stories are screwed up by papers having a section on every page with the latest news. So a search in 1980 about a fire will bring up something totally different but with a story about Grenfell in the latest news section. Pinterest is messing up picture searches because a collection of pictures might be under a certain heading but the owner of that pinterest page might slip in pictures of something else.

Nov 6, 2019 at 11:13 AM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

"Rhoda,
The only real question is...how does one get on the bandwagon of all that lovely EU cash???
Nov 6, 2019 at 9:06 AM Mailman"

It isn't what you know, or need to know, but who you know.

The ex Public School/ Oxbridge old school tie brigade, so frequently criticised by the Progressive Centre Liberal/Left, has been replaced by the Progressive Centre Liberal/Left. Not all of the consequences have been beneficial

Nov 6, 2019 at 10:54 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

TinyCO2

yeah, well..... due to the individual scoring that's purportedly in use - everybody's experience is going to be a bit different.

I had a fondness for time ranges on searches - that doesn't seem to work like it used to. I don' t know if it's inept feature creep or something more unpleasant.

Content management is in there - and screwups are more acceptable than overt manipulation so it makes sense if you are smart to make it look a bit broken.....

I noticed that tech searches with fairly unique queries still work well but that things that are politically touchy are occasionally quite wonky .....

Nov 6, 2019 at 10:46 AM | Registered Commentertomo

Strangethat the Chris Packham thing in Lincoln didn't make such a big splash
Even BBC local radio tweeted nothing
and local newspapers are not reporting the story.

Nov 6, 2019 at 10:41 AM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Nov 5, 2019 at 10:02 PM | Mark Hodgson

The question, for me, is whether the MSM have kept away from it because it's rubbish, or whether they have done so because they just don't want to go near any stories that might damage the LibDems.
Or an alternative theory:

No-one wants to fire their big guns before the enemy is engaged.

This isn't a scandal. It's just guilt by association. And that guilt of her husband is more an impression of impropriety than any actual proof that he has been swayed by financial inducements. So if the issue flared up in the media it would soon blow over.

Why would anyone raise the issue now? It would be far more interesting to find the issue behind one of the first few doors of your Advent Calendar.
There's an election coming.

Nov 6, 2019 at 10:35 AM | Registered CommenterM Courtney

#QuestionAsAHeadline
Is a BBC technique for expressing its wishful thinking
"General election 2019: Could climate change become a top priority?
By David Shukman Science editor"

Breaking : XR just won in court ... their London protests are legal apparently

Nov 6, 2019 at 10:31 AM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Mark. Wales does have an environment. Seriously! Worth reporting upon. Probably

Nov 6, 2019 at 9:49 AM | Unregistered CommenterAK

PostCreate a New Post

Enter your information below to create a new post.
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>