Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Category: Bullshit

Pernicious nonsense and other irritants

  • The writers who want your granny to die

    Peter Geoghegan and Mary Fitzgerald in The Guardian on the “lockdown sceptics“:

    It is no surprise that so many professional contrarians are paid-up lockdown sceptics. They are products of our distorted media ecosystem, which invariably privileges heat over light. For them, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about – even if what you are talking about amounts to social Darwinism.

    But the lockdown opponents are not just media “personalities”… How long before a British parliamentarian goes full “plandemic” and wonders aloud if Covid-19 is all a conspiracy?

  • “I am proud of the progress I intend to reverse”

    Equalities minister Liz Truss has marked international day against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia with a feel-good Twitter message:

    It’s a shame that that progress is threatened by, er, Liz Truss.

  • Cherries, condoms and coronavirus

    During the AIDS epidemic, some people who didn’t want to wear condoms claimed that it wasn’t because they were selfishly putting other people at risk; it was that the virus was so small that it could pass through microscopic gaps in the material condoms were made from, so there was no point in people wearing them.

    During the coronavirus pandemic, some people who don’t want to wear masks are claiming that it’s not because they’re selfishly putting other people at risk; it’s that the virus is so small that it can pass through gaps in even the fabric of medical-grade masks, so there is no point in people wearing them.

    Both groups of people were wrong, because viruses don’t travel by themselves; they need a host. In the case of AIDS it was bodily fluids; with coronavirus it’s droplets. And in both cases, the hosts are much, much bigger than the virus – so condoms prevent the spread of AIDS and masks reduce the spread of coronavirus.

    This is technically known as the fallacy of incomplete evidence, although we know it as cherry picking. It’s when you carefully choose evidence that appears to support your position and ignore or discount anything that contradicts it. You’ll find it in climate change denial and creationism, anti-trans activism and racism and pseudoscience of all kinds, and it’s been with us for millennia.

    Or at least, all the evidence I choose to believe says it has been.

  • Doing the devil’s work

    According to STV and Glasgow Live, there are “mass gatherings” planned for Glasgow this weekend to protest against the lockdown.

    The story is interesting for all the wrong reasons.

    Reason number one is that it isn’t true. A couple of far-right yahoos [update: their group is a front for the racist Britain First] have shared their drawing of a “come to our demo” leaflet – they don’t even have a real leaflet, just a drawing of one – on Facebook. Describing this as “plans” for “mass gatherings” is rather like saying I have “plans” to marry the actor Emma Stone or to be a size 8.

    And reason number two is that this kind of credulous reporting runs the risk of creating something from nothing. The coverage could encourage people who’d otherwise be unaware of the yahoos to wander down to the proposed meeting either to support it or demonstrate against it – thereby turning a couple of yahoos in a park into a much bigger thing.

    This is happening far too often with far too many publications, not just here but in the US too: again and again one or two clowns come up with a social media account, a snappy name and a logo and they’re immediately taken seriously by reporters who don’t do even the most basic checking.

    This is what happens when you chase traffic, not accuracy; when you pay your reporters not because of the quality of their work, but the quantity of content they produce; when your publication encourages churnalism, not journalism. It’s easy to exploit, and there’s no shortage of bad actors happy to exploit it.

  • If you get coronavirus, don’t blame the Tories

    Jon Alexander, on Medium.com:

    The immediate response to the government’s new Covid19 messaging has been a mixture of confusion and outrage. Commentators and academics seem bemused, the only possible explanation being that the government is incompetent.

    But actually, I think it’s very deliberate — and if their ultimate goal is to retain power rather than save lives — very smart.

    …Covid19 will now become an inconvenient hindrance to our lives, but one that each of us needs to take personal responsibility for dealing with, and getting back to normal as best we can. In this story, government steps back and gets out of the way, because people are best left to look out for themselves. We are individuals, there is no such thing as society.

    The dark corollary of course is that if you get the disease, it will be your fault — because you will not have stayed sufficiently alert.

  • Ill communications

    When you’re trying to keep people at home over what’s likely to be a hot and sunny bank holiday weekend, it’s hard to imagine a worse headline than this.

    It’s from today’s Daily Mail (in England; the Scottish edition has Nicola Sturgeon saying the lockdown can’t be lifted yet). The Mail of all papers should be wary about headlines with “Hurrah” in them.

    The Mail is one of several tabloid newspapers who are promising an end to lockdown starting Monday and publishing it on their front pages the day after the UK death toll became the highest in Europe. There are officially more than 30,000 people dead; the real number is believed to exceed 50,000.

    Let’s see what the papers have to hurrah about.

    Has the UK reached its own testing target? Nope: the much-promised 100,000 tests per day hasn’t been achieved at all. The government attempted to pretend otherwise by counting 40,000 tests posted but not received; that worked for one day, but the daily number is back down to 80-something-thousand.

    Do front-line NHS workers have adequate PPE? Nope. The much-lauded order of PPE from Turkey is being sent back today because it doesn’t meet NHS standards.

    Do we have enough testers and trackers in place to know where the virus is and where to target resources? Nope.

    Do we have a trace, track and isolate system in place? Nope.

    The official stats are online. We are currently recording over 6,000 new cases a day.

    All of these things together mean that the lockdown shouldn’t and won’t be lifted on Monday in England; we may see some very minor changes, such as stopping the cops from shouting at sunbathers, but it isn’t safe to change things yet.

    That’s not what the papers are suggesting, though, and as a result we’re going to have a weekend of people flouting the lockdown because hey, it’s going to be lifted on Monday anyway.

    Apparently the government are deeply concerned about this; what I thought was a deliberate leak to distract tabloids from the death toll is reportedly an unsanctioned leak that’s been blown out of all proportion to produce front pages like this:

    If it’s true that this isn’t what the government wanted, it’s clearly a case of reaping what you’ve been sowing: this is what happens when you don’t communicate clearly with a country, when you share policy and plans not with Parliament but with your pet newspapers, when your government cares more about PR than PPE.

  • Give me liberty and give me death

    Media Matters:

    Right-wing groups are using the same playbook against COVID-19 measures they’ve used to fight LGBTQ rights.

    …Influential right-wing and anti-LGBTQ groups have responded to stay-at-home orders put in place to protect Americans from the coronavirus by pushing for exemptions for churches and pastors, including by filing lawsuits, pressuring local and state governments, and working with the Trump-Pence administration.

    The names are awfully familiar: the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Church Council, the Heritage Foundation and the Christian Broadcasting Network, among others. It’s been clear for many years that they don’t care about the lives of LGBT+ people; this suggests that they don’t care about the lives of any people.

  • News isn’t about making you feel better

    Ruby Lott-Lavigna in Vice:

    Journalism is not supposed to be a fluffy PR machine for the government (unless you’re working in North Korea, or, I don’t know, the Sunday Telegraph news desk), ready to boost your mood on a less than jolly day with an uplifting story of a dog who saved a duck from traffic, or a picture of a waving seal. It is a tool to interrogate power structures and inequality, serve the public interest and, occasionally, provide readers with something funny to read. Unfortunately, spiralling death tolls, falling stock markets and government failures – as depressing as it might be – are news, and need to be reported on.

    …the media has never existed to provide a soothing mood-booster or cheerlead the government. Now is exactly the time we need challenging, difficult questions asked, even if they’re hard to hear. The waving seals can wait.

  • Glasgow is going to lose another historic building

    To paraphrase The Onion: I can’t believe this is happening in the only city where this regularly happens.

    Glasgow is set to lose another iconic building, the ABC in Sauchiehall Street. The music venue – one of my very favourite places – was badly damaged by the second Art School fire and has effectively been left to rot since despite promises of its rebirth; it is now in danger of collapsing. That means the previous block on demolition is almost certain to be lifted.

    That’s rather convenient for the developer, because the ABC was a major obstacle to plans to build yet more student flats.

    The entire block in which the ABC sits is owned by a single developer, and the developer’s plans for a seven-story block of flats on this prime bit of real estate were rejected in 2017; the developer appealed to the Scottish Government and was turned down again. The flats would be “detrimental to the historic environment”, which included the Art School’s Macintosh building and the ABC.

    That “historic environment” went on fire (for the second time) in June 2018. As the A Thousand Flowers blog reports, the developer promised to rebuild the ABC as “a world class music venue” but submitted no plans other than an application to completely demolish it.

    The all too frequently toothless Historic Environment Scotland chipped in to say that, “It is our view that the applicant has not made an adequate effort to retain and preserve this C-listed building (or any part of it), and has therefore not met the tests for demolition”. Garnethill Community Council have said it would “devastating and totally unacceptable” to lose the building. Omnipresent heritage fan and MP Paul Sweeney pointed out in his objection that the building hosted Glasgow’s first ever public film showing, in 1896.

    Glasgow School of Art have also objected to the demolition, pointing out that there are currently no plans for the site’s redevelopment and that the ABC building, with temporary props, is under no imminent danger of collapse. Conveniently, their letter also reiterates that student flat plans for the neighbouring building have been rejected several times and that the ABC’s facade is an effective and important part of the streetscape. We can, perhaps, read between the lines here.

    One pretty sure-fire way to destroy a damaged building is to leave it open to the elements. That appears to be what’s happened to the ABC.

    ATF:

    If the owners are granted permission to flatten the ABC, how long will it be before the student flat proposals for the neighbouring block emerge out of the ashes?

  • LGB Alliance fundraisers closed after campaign of abuse against gay MP

    PinkNews:

    The anti-trans lobby group LGB Alliance has had not one but two fundraising pages taken down, following an abusive campaign against gay MP John Nicolson and “violent and abusive” language from its supporters.

    Fundraising platforms JustGiving and GoFundMe have both permanently removed pages set up by the pressure group.

    This follows weeks of targeted harassment and abuse from its supporters against gay SNP politician John Nicolson, who attracted the attention of the fringe group when he began publicly voicing support for the trans community.

    …The funds from its supporters – which include neo-Nazis who the LGB Alliance has refused to denounce – have paid for newspaper adverts opposing trans rights and calling trans women “predators”, as well as a much-derided logo redesign, a pop song and a February conference in Scotland to which it invited a confirmed homophobe to speak about how LGBT+ clubs in schools are dangerous to girls.