Next week we in the UK will have a new Prime Minister, Alexander Boris Pfeffel Johnson, who has built his whole career in journalism and the pursuit of political power on bullshit. If bullshit was an Olympic event Johnson would win silver, we all know who would win gold, after a photo finish. If you want to know more about Johnson go to this link in today's Observer newspaper. The 10 ages of Boris Johnston
Why am I concerned about bullshit? If you read my previous post you see that those who do not want action on climate change have made strategic use of bullshit to refute the claims of climate scientists with great success over the last 30 years and now we are about to be confronted by a shitstorm of bullshit once Johnston is in office and I want to be able to refute it.Oligarchs, think tanks and global warming
If I am honest I only tell you what I believe to be true. If I tell you an outright lie I am aware of the truth but have chosen to ignore it. The Bullshitter however isn't at all concerned about the truth or facts, he doesn't care because he only wants to persuade you to accept his point of view. And sometimes to entertain you because comedians are thought to be harmless. He's a snake oil salesman.
When I Googled bullshit I discovered a really useful bullshit refutation toolkit. Calling Bullshit.
It discusses the principles and philosophy of bullshit, how to spot it in the misuse of correlation, the making of unfair comparisons, deliberate misuse of statistics, dodgy graphs and fake news stories.
That's it folks..... it's up to you now to look at the, "Calling Bullshit" website by following the link above and equip yourself to identify and deal with bullshit in all of it's many forms.
PS
Its now Friday 26th July 2019, Johnson has been elected Prime Minister by a caucus of 90,000 Conservative Party members. We have 46.8 million people registered to vote in the UK. So he was chosen by 0.0019 % of the electorate. If this happened in Africa we would be described as a "failed state".
2 comments:
I was right, on Wednesday we had a right wing coup in the UK with Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson elected by 90,000 people. We are now officially a "banana monarchy".
Gee, this post sounds like it could have been written by an American regarding 45 .... just replace some of the 'English' words :) And the Trumpeteers that elected him, albeit illegally or should I say with a little help from Russian friends....
I know nothing about Boris except the little I've heard on the news here in the states. But do know that Trump has stated that they're alot alike (barf).
I started following this blog because interested in bees and Scotland, and am a fan of the Outlander books & series.
Al
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