A month ago after Guido remarked on the similarities between Anjem Choudary and Tommy Robinson, his knuckle-dragging fans promised Guido a boycott and that they would unfollow Guido. So it is a great disappointment that only 34 unfollowed – is that it? In the past month @GuidoFawkes has gained nearly two thousand followers…
Caitlin Moran has once again, unwisely, gone on a foul-mouthed Twitter rant this morning with: “voting for Labour = not being a c**t”.
Unfortunately for Moran, this makes 80% of her Times readers c**ts, as only 20% of Times readers voted for Labour in 2015. This figure pales in comparison to the 55% who voted for the Conservatives in that election.
Even worse for Moran, The Times today officially endorsed the Conservatives this morning.
Can’t wait for her defeat column on Saturday…
UPDATE: Moran has now deleted the Tweet, possibly after a stern word from the boss.
Sent at pub closing time to 700 followers. One of them, Greg Mulholland, the LibDem MP for Leeds North West responded:
Married with three kids Mulholland says “It definitely wasn’t me, honest!” and protests he would never use an Americanism like “wanna”. Guido believes him though not the official explanation that the account was “compromised”. “Compromised” as in someone drunkenly confused their Twitter and Tinder apps….
US gossip site Deadspin has been needling Ted Cruz about basketball ever since he called a hoop a “basketball ring“ at a campaign rally when he was running against Trump in the Republican primaries. They were incredulous as to the authenticity of his affection for basketball. So when Politico reported that he’d started a regular weekly basketball session with Republican senators like Marco Rubio they demanded photographic* proof:
Send us proof of Ted Cruz playing basketball https://t.co/MgGLnsscPf pic.twitter.com/mpxI5EBQkK
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) January 23, 2017
@Deadspin what do I win? pic.twitter.com/9XuRmmIkJS
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 25, 2017
@Deadspin pic.twitter.com/TMiDBco2TB
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 25, 2017
Good comeback to cheap abuse and good use of a popular internet meme. Even better if you fully understand the joke. A slam dunk for the senator…
Nick Sutton has announced that he will no longer be tweeting out the nightly newspaper front pages with the hashtag #tomorrowspaperstoday. He has handed over the responsibility to @hendopolis, @AllieHBNews and @MsHelicat. He is busy enough running the BBC News website…
It is fair to say that his tweets influence front pages in terms of layout and timing. When tabloids have a scoop they have to weigh up the publicity versus the risk of giving away the one fact story for free. Some of us wonder about Sutton’s definition of a newspaper; the Independent’s digital “front page” only exists in virtual reality to be tweeted and the union-printed Morning Star has fewer readers than Guido, yet is still worthy of BBC promotion. These are quibbles, the initiative sets off nightly social media conversations and is a valuable public service for the chattering classes…
A former Labour adviser who denied supporting Theresa May was behind the pro-Theresa May campaign Twibbon. Jonny Chambers, who previously worked for Stella Creasy, lashed out on Twitter this morning after being barred from the Labour party after he “demonstrated support for the Conservative party on social media.” In a Facebook post, Chambers claimed that the allegations of “support” for May were a “wonderful demonstration of Labour’s values”, before denying any support had been given:
“Labour claim that evidence shows I have demonstrated support for the Conservatives – something I have never done. I posted an article about why Labour people should have a stake and an interest in a race that was choosing our next Prime Minister – and I quite clearly said that whilst Theresa should be the next Prime Minister, I wanted a Labour leader than can beat her and the Conservatives.”
In truth Chambers did a little more than a few tweets and an unread blogpost. His own Twibbon page shows he created the “TheresaMayForPM” imagery, complete with tagline “A country that works for everyone” – one of May’s campaign slogans. The cause was far more popular than any of his others, winning over 500 supporters. Chambers clearly idolises the PM, praising previous statements and even down playing Red Ed’s chances in a minority government:
Chambers even tweeted one of Cameron’s harshest put-downs to Corbyn, followed by clapping hands signalling applause:
To cap it all off, he was an Owen Smith supporter. To be fair, the Corbynista’s have been calling them “red tories”…
Twitter has not been a happy forum for John Cleese, whose foray onto social media has transformed him from national treasure to eccentric old weirdo. The Hacked Off divorce enthusiast this morning tweeted that he hoped Paul Dacre’s next heart attack “is his last”. Dacre has a heart condition. Last year Guido caught Cleese comparing journalists to murderers – he first denied he’d said it then fessed up and claimed he was joking. Step away from the keyboard…
The first real social media campaign for a Tory election has had a lacklustre start, with just three accounts spawned across Twitter and Facebook so far. Theresa May leads the pack with a Nation-builder website Theresa2016.co.uk capturing email addresses for the all important final membership round. Facebook and Twitter pages complete the digital assets. May already boasts 649 Facebook likes and a whopping 4286 Twitter followers. The other candidates can’t afford to be left behind during the membership rounds…
Pro-Corbyn supporters are jumping on Cameron’s call for Corbyn to “go“. Dave looked like he was being sincere but has he made it harder for Labour to get rid?
Ed Miliband has now called for Corbyn to go – no Shadow Cabinet job for him then. Momentum have curiously cancelled their “Keep Corbyn” event tonight “due to overwhelming demand”, which is odd. The manoeuvring John McDonnell meanwhile has a “major” speech lined up for Friday morning. Team Corbyn are under no illusions what that means…
Actor Ewan McGregor has hit out at the 172 “turncoats” who voted against Jeremy:
McGregor was made a global star by his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in the lacklustre Star Wars prequels. If they strike him down, he will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine…
Catherine Gee, a culture writer for the Telegraph, compares Farage to Adolf Hitler, founder of the Third Reich, responsible for the deaths of 85,000,000 people in World War II and initiator of the previous German attempt at a European superstate. Slightly historically inaccurate comparison, given Farage campaigned against the EU supra-state. Even in the post-Jo Cox world lefties still feel they can tweet about killing politicians, so long as they are from the other side…
Spamming fake Twitter DM (direct message) notifications into Labour members inboxes isn’t going to help the little shyster gain authenticity. It will just irritate people. They do say if you can fake authenticity, you have it made. Not sure it is working in Sadiq’s case…
Guido has heard it said many times that Louise Mensch needs analysis and today we have analysed her Twitter account. Currently she is tweeting pretty incessantly about Tim Hunt, the professor hounded out of public life for making a few humorous remarks about women in science. The twitterati’s feminazi wing took exception and the Nobel prize winning scientist was ruined. Louise has documented the case for the defence in detail on her own website…
Anyone who follows Louise will know that she is tweeting about it a lot. By “a lot” Guido means continuously. Incessantly. Relentlessly. Non-stop. Around the clock. On average currently Louise is tweeting 280 times a day, about once every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day…
In comparison Guido tweeted 33 times a day on average in June, well when we say “Guido” we mean one of the 4 Guido staff writers and of course about a third of those tweets are automated. Here is the analysis of @LouiseMensch for last month:
Let’s hope Professor Hunt is grateful for her campaign on his behalf. Louise – consider this an intervention – put the iPhone down…
The England football social media account has tried to tweet something nice, if a little clumsily worded, about the women’s national team…
… And Twitter have reached for their pitchforks:
Log on to Comment is Free in about ten minutes for your first 16 hot takes…
So, About Last Night…
Rob Lowe, undoubtedly the finest actor of this or indeed any other generation, met Youngblood Owen Jones:
In a marked admission of defeat, Owned Jones tried to shade it back with a lame “haha”.
Looks like he got burned by St. Elmo’s Fire…
The government is poised to waste taxpayers money following the Cabinet Office’s approval of an “automated sentiment analysis” service that promises to help government departments find out what people are talking about online. Precise Media Monitoring claims to use “advanced text analytics” to quickly get “an idea of sentiment towards a subject“.
As Guido has pointed out before, current sentiment analysis software simply isn’t up to the job and anyone claiming they can provide it is a social media BS artist. Any department who pays Precise Media Monitoring instead of using Tweetdeck (free) should prepare themselves for some rather negative sentiment…
This retweet from the taxpayer-funded spin arm of the BBC won’t help them:
Swiftly deleted…
There were few undecideds on Twitter. It is an echo-chamber…
Times columnist Caitlin Moran is both a #Milifan and a Russell Brand fan. She tweeted gleefully earlier about The Sun:
Caitlin hastily revised her opinion…
… and blamed it all on her daytime drinking…
On the Twitter today Labour supporters think they are hitting back at the Sun’s front page featuring Ed Miliband unsuccessfully eating a bacon sandwich. In an act of solidarity Ed supporters are tweeting out selfies of themselves awkwardly swallowing food. Labour are proud that they are winning on Twitter, have they really thought this one through?[…] Read the rest
Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner:
“We have no plans to write off existing student debt.”
