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Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
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26 Feb, 6 tweets, 5 min read
The UK Government are using taxpayer money to push fake pro-Brexit propaganda claiming business success.

See this paid piece in the Independent. Except it's not only the Independent, because they've also paid for variants of it to appear in local media.
independent.co.uk/news/brexit-tr…
There are hundreds of the things! They've carpet-bombed the UK with near-identical puff pieces, each disguised as "News".

(Some carry the notation "Sponsored article", others explicitly mention the UK Government, others make the paid nature even less clear.)
To be clear: I don't think the firms mentioned in the article are themselves lying.

But they are monstrously unrepresentative of the average situation facing businesses.

It's like using Usain Bolt as a "random" example to "prove" everyone can run the 100m really, really fast.
Also worth noting just how well this stuff is disguised as news.

Top of the page: label "Bromsgrove editorial".

Very bottom of page, about 10 screens down on mobile (and below a graphic separating it from the article): "This is part of a sponsored post by the UK Government".
My search missed it first time around, because they fiddled with the text they were given a bit, but the Tories also bought propaganda space in the Evening Standard and The Sun.
standard.co.uk/news/uk/uk-bus…

thesun.co.uk/money/14147740…
Mind you, this isn't the first time. Here are a couple more recent examples...

1) Pre-Brexit boosterism in the Evening Standard (25 November 2020)
standard.co.uk/news/uk/uk-bus…

2) Promoting a return to the office in the Independent (15 September 2020)
independent.co.uk/news/uk/benefi…

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More from @uk_domain_names

Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
23 Feb
THREAD
1/ We know that hospital admissions correlate closely with COVID-19 deaths, but it's worth reminding ourselves just how much that's true...

Here's what happens when you plot admissions vs deaths for England, with deaths shifted by 14 days (people don't die immediately).
2/ Even though the two sets of data are plotted on different scales, you can see they track each other almost perfectly, with the exception of a period during the first wave in which deaths outstripped the long-term mortality ratio. (That's almost certainly due to under-testing.)
3/ Using the same data, we can get a crude estimate of the mortality rate, i.e. what percentage of people entering hospital and testing positive for COVID-19 will subsequently die in hospital.

(For comparison, influenza has a mortality rate around 5% for hospitalised cases.)
Read 6 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
22 Feb
"Will Brexit affect touring musicians?"

The BBC published this article THREE DAYS after the referendum. It has been a known issue the entire time.

And yet now the Tory wreckers are professing surprise?
bbc.co.uk/news/entertain…
Or how about this piece in the Guardian from November 2016, warning about EXACTLY the problems musicians are facing now?
theguardian.com/music/musicblo…
Ok, ok, so those examples are from after the referendum.

How about all the people who warned what would happen BEFORE the 2016 vote?
pitchfork.com/thepitch/1186-…
Read 6 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
17 Feb
The Express are hyper-obsessed with Brexit.

So far today, they've published 28 stories on the subject - and it's not even 5pm!

Themes:
- EU as bully
- EU scared
- Other countries want to leave
- Ha ha ha, Brexit is hurting the EU
- EU failing over the vaccine
- Unfair red tape
At today's pace, that would be over 10,000 negative propaganda stories a year. Such single-minded mania explains a lot.

It is not even a tiny bit surprising that their regular readers are left with a blinkered, funhouse mirror world of reality.

How could they not be? Seriously.
But we can get a much more precise estimate of the extent of their propaganda war...

They have published 87,664 stories that mention Brexit.

Of those, 2,860 date back to before the referendum.

So that means they've published 84,804 stories about Brexit in 1,700 days. 50 a day!
Read 6 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
16 Feb
Culture wars would be impossible without the internet and social media...

Take a fringe view, held by a few people per town. Before, it would never have reached critical mass.

But now those people can find likeminded souls all over the world, swelling their numbers to millions.
What happens when lots of like-minded people congregate in one place (even remotely)? A whole ecosystem develops to leech off them.

Thus the rise of far-right news channels in the US (and soon, the UK too), radio shock jocks, etc. etc.
But something more dangerous happens too: mutual reinforcement.

Whatever conspiracy theory or knuckle-dragging societal viewpoint you subscribe to, you will have a never-ending stream of people all too willing to confirm your worldview.

You bolster theirs. They bolster yours.
Read 5 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
16 Feb
"Travellers in quarantine hotels in England face an additional bill of up to £1,200 if they test positive for coronavirus during their stay, the government has revealed."

They have to pay to extend quarantine. Takes them close to £3,000. 😱 theguardian.com/world/2021/feb…
Boris Johnson's dismissive answer (paraphrased): since it's illegal to go on holiday at the moment, they jolly well ought to pay.

But...
A) It hasn't been illegal throughout the pandemic. People may have left the UK before it was illegal
B) People travel for non-holiday reasons
Why not have a system like in Japan, where people are not allowed to use public transport from the airport? (They have to be picked up by family members, or take a "covid secure" special taxi.)

Then they self-isolate at home, with regular checks. (Done properly, no cut corners!)
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
14 Feb
UK Government referendum leaflet, 2016: Brexit could result in 10 years or more of uncertainty.

Dominic Raab, 2021: You have to take a 10-year view of Brexit to see the growth opportunities. (Paraphrased.)

Project Fear? Project Fact! ImageImage
Here's the Raab clip...
Here's more about what Raab said...
theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
Read 4 tweets

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