c-m-l.net

When Twitter destroys a political career

chris — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:55:46 +0000

After the Queen followed Gordon Brown’s request at the 6th of April and dissolved the House of Commons it is certain that the next general election in Britain will happen together with the regional elections at the 6th of May. At the same time also the election campaigns have started in their main phases and, similar to the last German parliament elections, the internet plays a (more) important role. There is not much mercy in the campaigns, on- as well as offline.

Especially the Tories excel at negative campaigning. For example with a poster campaign in which the smiling prime minister is shown next to slogans such as “I doubled the national debt, vote for me”. While the Labour Party presented a poster which shows the conservative top candidate David Cameron sitting on the engine bonnet of a Audi Quattro together with the statement “Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980s”. However, this poster did not lead to the intended reactions and was instead used by the Tories as a model for an own poster.

Wahlplakat der Labour Party

Election poster of the Labour Party

MyDavidCameron.com, a self-declared independent website, on the other hand, calls up for a creative reshaping of the Tory’s election posters, analogue the Schäuble poster-remix contest at Netzpolitik (a German blog about net politics) during the last Bundestags elections.

That you can go too far, even despite the general rough style, and that especially the internet holds some traps had to notice the Scottish Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan. According to media reports, he posted on his Twitter account various insults against David Cameron (“t***”), the LibDem top candidate Nick Clegg (“a b******”) as well as against several public figures.

Postings which probably would have remained without consequences if said on a traditional party meeting, because they would have never come to the knowledge of a greater public, led – publicized on a website which invites to informal comments due to its character – to a small scandal which at least cost the Scot his candidature (and perhaps his further political career).

By the way, in the meantime both MacLennan’s Twitter account (Google Cache, the last tweet was posted on the 13th of April) and his website have been deleted.

Everday Anecdotes (III): The Big Freeze and the Media

chris — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:36:17 +0000

Snow – the unknown and dangerous thing. That’s at least the impression one could get when one spend the winter in the United Kingdom, especially between Christmas and New Year’s Day. During that time it snowed more than one day – apparently a very rare and totally terrifying event. This impression was at least suggested by the media reports about The Big Freeze. Airports closed down and even the Eurostar was blocked by condensed watter – once again the continent was isolated. At the same time road salt reserves ran short. In short media hallucinated the soon doom of the United Kingdom, because suddenly it snowed as much as it does every winter in Sweden or even Scotland. Thankfully there is Charlie Brooker and its TV programme Newswipe which shows the absurdity of this whole media panic:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Everday Anecdotes (II): Fun in the Winter

chris — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:12:29 +0000

Even if the news coverage suggests that England only scarcely survived in the face of one week snow and temperatues below zero degree, it seems that at least the police in Oxfordshire had their fun as the following video shows:

Click here to view the embedded video.

After the video appeared online, the policemen were rebuked by their chief with the following words:

I have spoken to the officers concerned and reminded them in no uncertain terms that tobogganing on duty, on police equipment and at taxpayers’ expense, is a very bad idea should they wish to progress under my command.

Which one of the both is more absurd – tobogganing policemen or the following rebuke – remains in the eyes of the reader. However, I just want to add: “What ever happens – keep smiling!”

BibTeX: Harvard Citation Style with urldate

chris — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:23:09 +0000

Bei der Arbeit mit LaTeX und BibTeX bevorzuge ich als Zitationsstil AGSM aus dem Harvard-Paket, leider wird bei diesem Stil aber nicht das letzte Zugriffsdatum auf eine URL angezeigt. Glücklicherweise gibt es eine Lösung für dieses Problem von Michael Tyson. Er hat die Stildefinition so angepasst, dass nun auch der Inhalt von urldate in der Bibliographie ausgegeben wird.

Alles was man dazu tun muss, ist die geänderte agsm.bst runterladen und die eigene damit überschreiben, alternativ kann man auf Linuxsystemen den hier angehängten Patch verwenden um die Datei zu ändern. Beides ist allerdings nicht upgradesicher.

Wenn alles geklappt hat, sollte die Bibliographie dann künftige so ähnlich aussehen:

Downloads

AGSM Patch - Patch to get urldate used in the Harvard Bibtex style. (522 bytes)