God bless you all. I’m trying to avoid aerosols. I am a monstrous imposition. Obvioulsy nothing on here is the opinion of my employer.
Joined June 2009
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Lots of people support the ideas in the Ten Commandments, but most prime time TV is devoted to people breaking them….
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X is so wonderful that I can find out what the world’s richest man thinks of a film I’m never going to watch
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Left behind in the community centre. An important tool in this democracy
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RT @premnsikka: Just met a Reform UK voting couple who didn't know it opposed:
Rise in minimum wage
End of two-child benefit cap
Expansion…
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stop the spread, wear a mask and wash your hands retweeted
May 8
CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA INSIDER TOLD PARLIAMENT THE BREXIT DATA SCANDAL WAS BIGGER THAN ANYONE ADMITTED
Cambridge Analytica's own Director of Business Development, Brittany Kaiser @OwnYourDataNow, walked into Parliament in 2018 and blew the whole thing open. She told MPs the number of people whose Facebook data had been harvested was almost certainly far higher than the 87 million Facebook had admitted. Far higher. She said privacy had become a myth and that citizens' data was being scraped, resold and modelled as standard practice.
Then on New Year's Day 2020, while most people were sleeping off a hangover, Kaiser released a second tranche of internal documents. These ones covered Cambridge Analytica's operations across Brazil, Kenya and Malaysia.
They confirmed what many suspected about Brexit, that Leave EU @LeaveEUOfficial, bankrolled by Arron Banks @Arron_banks, had been pitched the same psychographic voter-targeting machine used in the Trump campaign. Work was done. An invoice existed. The money moved through UKIP rather than Cambridge Analytica directly, which was a neat trick given Arron Banks had publicly insisted there was never a paid contract.
Steve Bannon, who was vice president of Cambridge Analytica at the time, introduced Banks to the firm's CEO Alexander Nix in late 2015. The introduction led to meetings that Banks later described to Parliament as just "two or three" in number. The emails told a different story.
The Electoral Commission fined Leave EU for multiple offences including an incomplete spending return. The Information Commissioner's Office @ICOnews fined Leave EU and Eldon Insurance, Banks's company, £120,000 for misusing people's data for political campaigning. The National Crime Agency investigated Banks over the source of £8 million in Brexit funding and then dropped it without charges in 2019.
Netflix made a documentary about it. Parliament held inquiries. Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla at The Guardian @guardian kept the pressure on for years. Kaiser wrote a book.
Nobody went to prison. Banks stood as a Reform UK candidate in 2025. The institutions held their inquiries, wrote their reports, issued their fines, and then got on with their lives.
Your data built the targeting machine. Your vote was the product. The people who built it are fine.
Sources: @guardian / @BBCNews / @Channel4News / Parliament DCMS Committee / Netflix The Great Hack / openDemocracy
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Glasshouses and bricks come to mind
May 9
🩻Did Nigel Farage break the House of Commons Code of Conduct by accepting an undeclared donation from Christopher Harborne?
Yes, he very much did.
I read the code of conduct and pulled out the relevant sections [see the graphic below].
One of the excuses being trotted out is that it was for security and so it doesn't need to be declared. That's wrong, though.
It's a misinterpretation of the rule below, stating that security proved by public funds does not have to be declared.
The other fundamental flaw is the argument that it was a personal gift, not a donation. The Electoral Commission is very clear on what counts as a donation.
“A donation is money, goods, property or services which are given:
without charge or on non-commercial terms”
This type of egregious breach of the code is dealt with by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, but nothing has been documented on their website so far.
Will he get away with another breach? To add to the 17 missed declarations earlier in the year. Probably.
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An eight year old girl told me she had the IQ of a 23 year old. I asked her if she would give it back?
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We are just men. Normal men. Innocent men!
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I voted for the sitting local councillor as he has been really good - I suspect he might not be the councillor next week though
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The international turmoil is great cover to do unspeakable things that everyday folk would speak up against if it were done in isolation. I remember the fuss certain people made about a Covid “reset” and yet those people have had started a Ukraine/Gaza/iran reset so easily
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It’s all rather hard to find the good actors right now….
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Hold on, the owner of X has an AI cluster called Colossus, like Colossus in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project?
The super computer that killed the human race?
Well, I guess I should have expected that.
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Oddly the U.K. government may be having success, but everyone seems disappointed. I’m guessing the war for people’s attention really is the way to power, Lord help us all.
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