The astroturfing continues
Over on Dave Hill’s blog, Tom from Blairwatch has exposed a couple more ‘astroturfers’ working for the Conservative party, trying to spread pro-Boris sentiment around the blogosphere by pretending to be ordinary members of the public talking him up in comments. Their mistake there was to post pretty much the same ‘on-message’ material to more than one blog, and elsewhere to have rather different positions on things in different contexts.
We had our own plague of these dishonest idiots ourselves a while back, of whom the Tory Troll chronicled our exposure.
April 27th, 2008 at 08.53
Thanks for that. They did seem a trifle out of place - no ordinary member of the public (and I post regularly on our local ChiswickW4 message board, which naturally contains a lot of Tory voters) quotes stuff from Boris’ manifesto, as no ordinary member of the public reads manifestos, only nerds like me (and I don’t quote chunks of them at people even when trying to persuade them to stop Boris, as I know they’ll see through it instantly).
Hence when two people start using the word ‘fresh’, as in ‘a fresh start on congestion’, one gets suspicious, as the word ‘fresh’ appears a lot from Boris supporters, as you can throw it around without any actual idea what ‘fresh’ ideas are required, knowing that the suburban car driving voter Boris is depending on will hear it as ‘no more anti-car political correctness’. Classic dog whistle.
On the other hand, Joe Public, supporting Boris, either picks stubbornly on one or two aspects of the Standard’s smear campaign; ‘Bendy buses aren’t designed for London streets’ or ‘Everyone rides free on bendy buses’ or ‘Livingstone is a drunken communist’ or ‘Livingstone hates cars’ or just plain comes out and says they don’t like Livingstone’s personality and it’s time for a change. They don’t quote chunks of Back Boris at you. I know, I’ve argued with ‘em.
There’s also Phil Taylor, who’s actually an Ealing councillor, who posted on Dave’s blog a few weeks back and managed to give the wrong price for an Oyster bus ticket to support one of his ‘arguments’. Inspires confidence, I tell you.