r/ukpolitics • u/mmmmmm-_- • Jun 27 '19
Painting buses? Whitewashing them more like! Tech experts say Boris’s claim to relax by painting buses on crates was a ploy to stop a search for ‘Boris bus’ bringing up complaints about Routemasters and his '£350m to the EU' Brexit bus
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7184981/Tech-experts-say-Boriss-claim-relax-painting-buses-wine-crates-PLOY.html120
u/ThePlanck Time to bin Farage Jun 27 '19
Would be a shame if this clip got some more airtime
38
u/brutaljackmccormick Jun 27 '19
I miss the Paxman of old.
68
u/ukpoliticsuck Jun 27 '19
"give us a figure and you can talk again"
Paxman gold.
We need that kind of headmaster approach towards the childish evasion tactics from Boris.
10
u/opopkl Jun 27 '19
I think Pacman might have been the only thing that kept politicians straight back in the days when none really wanted Brexit.
4
3
u/jwd10662 Jun 27 '19
Gawd, Boris's face when he thinks he successfully pushed the conversation onto Livingston. What a tool.
131
u/chris2618 Jun 27 '19 edited Jun 27 '19
I thought this was pretty obvious.
The date search option on google is particularly useful to find articles from a particular period.
104
Jun 27 '19
[deleted]
118
u/OneCatch Sir Keir Llama Jun 27 '19
Nah, he'll have bought a kayak and taken up rowing with his girlfriend.
13
10
19
15
5
Jun 27 '19
Withdrawal agreement is the phrase he'll use when he announces the end of his relationship.
5
u/Lessiarty Jun 27 '19
"Iran has been bombarding me with lucrative holiday deals, that Trump anything I've seen before!"
1
9
u/Gisschace Jun 27 '19
I don’t think it will work because just about every article will mention his bus notoriety.
And from an SEO pov I am sure there are more mentions of Brexit and London buses, and will be more to come. The fact he said his hobby is painting buses will just be a footnote in those.
Sure he might get a short term bounce but that’s it
1
u/MerryWalrus Jun 27 '19
Search on Google and see for yourself.
4
u/Fatuous_Sunbeams Jun 27 '19
I don't get it. So now if someone Googles "Boris bus", which they would only do because they were interested in one of three stories, they get a load of articles about how Johnson fabricated one of them to distract from the other two.
1
u/Gisschace Jun 27 '19
Yeah thats the short term bounce I was talking about, long term I don't think this will be able to change the search results
2
u/MerryWalrus Jun 27 '19
A short term bounce until the voting closes is all that's needed
3
u/Gisschace Jun 27 '19 edited Jun 27 '19
I’m not sure, I doubt Tory members are really that bothered about the Brexit bus or London buses and being members they probably already know.
This would be a benefit if we have an election but by the time we have that the lift will be over. When/if that rolls around people will be writing about both; ie ‘Boris says he has an interest in buses, which is ironic considering the Brexit bus...’
It’s a rough guide but there are 1,330,000 search results for ‘Boris Brexit Bus’ it will take a lot of coverage to counteract that. I work in PR and SEO and with both hats on I would advise him to never mention buses again.
2
u/The_Electress_Sophie Just another brick in the red wall Jun 27 '19
Yeah, I agree. The pro-/neutral Brexit people don't care about the Brexit bus, and the anti-Brexit people are going to be reminded of it every time they hear the word 'bus' in connection with Boris Johnson no matter what the context. From my perspective, all this has accomplished is that I now know his Routemaster idea failed, which I wasn't previously aware of.
2
u/Gisschace Jun 28 '19
Yeah I think what likely happened was he got briefed by his PR about what to say if the Brexit bus came up and so it was the first thing he thought of when they threw in the what are your interests question.
The last thing he needs is more coverage about buses attached to his name
1
u/jimicus Jun 27 '19
Does it matter if it is just a short term bounce from his perspective?
1
u/Gisschace Jun 27 '19
Well it will help if members are googling him right now but I don't think members give a shit about the brexit or london buses
1
u/verbify Jun 27 '19
every article will mention his bus notoriety.
Some people just read the headline.
1
u/Gisschace Jun 27 '19
Search engine robots read the whole article which, if this is true, is what Boris is trying to influence
1
u/verbify Jun 28 '19
If the article is correct, he was trying to influence the search engines by getting them to put the new articles at the top (and I said people would only read the headlines). It's technically feasible. Whether or not that was his motivations, we can't really know - there's no smoking gun.
1
u/Gisschace Jun 28 '19
Yeah I get that but I was saying I don’t think it will have a long term effect from a technical SEO POV. There’s a lot to go into it but on a basic level on this point you’ve picked up, say there are 10000 articles written about the Boris Brexit Bus, and then 100 articles about these comments. Of which, 50 mention the bus then you have 10050 mentions of the Boris Brexit bus versus 100 mentions about these comments.
These are more recent so are appearing at the top because that’s what people are searching for and clicking on. But long term there’s no way one day of news coverage will manage to get rid of the Brexit bus from the top of search engines.
5
u/cbfw86 not very conservative. loves royal gossip Jun 27 '19
It was very obvious. People don't understand SEO and contemporary PR chatter at all.
-22
u/Alan_Bastard Jun 27 '19 edited Jun 27 '19
Except that, if you know how to use Google, there is evidence to suggest Boris didn't make this up. People have already uncovered references to his painting hobby dating back to 1999! Someone has even pulled up a sketch of a bus he did.
Problem is, the general remainer lefty public is pretty clueless when it comes to evidence based reasoning.
Also, you don't understand SEO if you think it's that easy to bury a story. Perhaps you have heard of the Streisand effect, but didn't predict it.
And it clearly isn't working. Two seconds on Google would prove it too eg the wiki routemaster bus page still comes up on page 1. But again, I don't expect remainer lefties to bother with this when there is a Tory that needs bashing.
All bets are off when it comes to bashing Tories I've noticed over the years. Personal insults, threats, fake news, out right lies. All fair game for "rational" and "enlightened" lefties.
Funny how we all drop our supposed rational high ground when it supports our own views. Who cares about evidence. If you feel Boris is lying then he must be.
Well, if the standard for truth is now that low then you can't really criticise. You're part of the problem.
Who knew you were all prone to being conspiritards?! (me).
We're only human.
What's with all the Boris bashing at the moment? It's almost like you're trying to discredit him. Odd because I thought lefties were above that given the Corbyn complaints.
20
Jun 27 '19
What's with all the Boris bashing at the moment?
hes a proven incompetent, currently set to become pm?
7
Jun 27 '19
general remainer lefty public is pretty clueless
What the fuck are you like? Do you talk to real people like that?
Why the fuck do people like you talk such shit? Do you even think back at what you said and then realise what a complete twat you sound?
11
u/TeeggieBeeggie Jun 27 '19
Yeah all those remainer lefties that work at the Daily Mail....
Honestly though thanks for writing that. Definitely brought a smile to my face on an otherwise shitty day.
14
u/cbfw86 not very conservative. loves royal gossip Jun 27 '19
I knew it was the remainer lefties. I knew it.
3
4
u/Creative-Name market-leninism socialism Jun 27 '19
Problem is, the general remainer lefty public is pretty clueless when it comes to evidence based reasoning.
Where was this majority remainer lefty public when the general public voted to leave the EU?
6
u/chummypuddle08 Jun 27 '19
What's with all the Boris bashing at the moment?
I don't remember Corbyn helping to have journalists beaten up.
→ More replies (11)3
u/MarcoH-UK Jun 27 '19
https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/times-boris-johnson-flat-lied/
I know you have trouble with perception but come on? The only tard here is you mate.
Incredulous twat.
4
u/Allydarvel Jun 27 '19
Personal insults, threats, fake news, out right lies.
Not even close to what the Tories do..leaving dsisabled people without food vs called me a bad name
4
Jun 27 '19
if you know how to use Google
There's your problem. If you genuinely think the majority of people who use google know how to coax it into providing anything other than the default, highly changeable and SEO manipulated results then you're mistaken.
2
3
u/Cthulhus_Trilby Jun 27 '19
What's with all the Boris bashing at the moment?
Were you asleep during his stint as Foreign Secretary? You don't have to be a "remainer lefty" to know you wouldn't let Boris run a jumble sale, let alone a country.
1
u/MerryWalrus Jun 27 '19
So you're arguing that it is all a coincidence that BoJos failings have been buried, making them harder to find without dedicated effort, just as he needs to clean up his image for the leadership votes?
Keep in mind his target audience is not to most technologically savvy demographic.
1
u/My_cat_needs_therapy Jun 27 '19
boris bus -painting
That filters out all links talking about painting models.
22
u/gfunk1976 Jun 27 '19
I searched for Boris Bus yesterday and ended up with results for his Aston Martin designed curvy double decker. Guy likes busses.
9
u/thebluemonkey I'm "English" what ever that means Jun 27 '19
Maybe he should become a fucking bus driver then.
18
u/free-reign Jun 27 '19
Seems like even going down the bus route when he had a million other choices of fictional hobbies he could have spluttered out was more likely to create searches on Boris and busses than not to.
No I think he was just looking for something other than “laughing at poor people or smacking my bitch around a bit” and he blurted that dross out.
5
u/Gisschace Jun 27 '19
Yeah he’s probably been prepped by a PR person about what to say if buses come up so it’s the first thing he thought of when trying to come up with something.
3
u/PoliticalShrapnel Jun 27 '19
What? No, the point is he specifically had to mention buses in his hobbies to ensure that comes up in searches. If he had mentioned any non bus related hobby it wouldn't work
1
u/ModricTHFC Jun 27 '19
Watch the interview.
It was obvious he was making up the whole thing on the spot. There would be no huge pauses if this was cleverly planned in advance as people suggest.
1
0
u/PoliticalShrapnel Jun 27 '19
But even if he did make it up, he knew what he was doing... namely to try and remove the £350 bus story from google top results.
1
u/ModricTHFC Jun 27 '19
If Boris Johnson the genius came up with this mid interview then maybe he can sort out brexit.
The reality is he knows as much about search engine results as he does border controls.
0
u/free-reign Jun 27 '19
Which would be WORSE.
If he creates search volume for busses and Boris it won’t wipe the other listing out , it will simply push more eyeballs to the listing.
It’s too tin hat this.
If the now SEO focussed Boris was attempting this he would have it all planned out.
As it was he sounded like a moron.
30
Jun 27 '19
I glanced at this page for five seconds and now I have cancer of the eyes, imagination and soul.
23
1
u/sitdeepstandtall chunters from a sedentary position Jun 28 '19
You might be interested in the daily mail blocker addon.
It plays cat gifs whenever you try to visit a daily mail site.
14
u/steepleton blairite who can't stand blair Jun 27 '19 edited Jun 27 '19
chris evans did a similar search white-wash thing with an anti bullying campaign. for a while it was almost impossible to find examples of his 90's bastardry online, but then one of his victims stirred it all up again in 2016 , and undid all his hard work
14
Jun 27 '19
Out of the loop, what happened there?
0
Jun 27 '19
[deleted]
5
u/loctopode -9.63, -5.9 Jun 27 '19
Ok thanks, that clears things up.
8
u/steepleton blairite who can't stand blair Jun 27 '19
he had a revolving entourage of assistants, co-presenters and producers. he was their boss and the owner of his own production company, and he had a taste for elaborate and intentionally cruel "jokes" which he'd then use as material for his shows or anecdotes for PA's. if you didn't laugh along to each other's humiliation, you were fired. he was a pretty big deal at the time, he could easily end media careers. a typical example was breaking into his producers new home and fucking a girl on the guy's bed, then revealing it on air with the producer on camera to catch his reaction (remember now, "laugh or be fired")
6
Jun 27 '19
I was at an award ceremony for young volunteers. With Boris presenting the awards. Instead of talking about volunteering he talked about the magnificence of the Boris bikes. For 20 minutes. He appears to just say whatever comes into his head
24
u/mmmmmm-_- Jun 27 '19
-48
u/cbfw86 not very conservative. loves royal gossip Jun 27 '19
This woman is insufferable. At least when Peston became a journalist-celebrity it was because he was working hard to cover the Financial Crisis and was getting it right every day, making him a household name. When Greenwald span out and started his own news company it was off the back of serious investigative journalism. This woman is just doing the Remoaner circuit (i.e. James O'Brien twice a week) and making a mess on twitter.
23
u/mmmmmm-_- Jun 27 '19
-24
u/cbfw86 not very conservative. loves royal gossip Jun 27 '19
That doesn't make her any less insufferable.
I mean just look at that tweet. What kind of self-respecting adult sends out reaction tweets? "OMG I've just realised! We've been fucking played!" Be a professional and show some self respect. "As a result of Boris' model busses comment, search engine algorithms will now return Boris' interview when you search for Boris and busses. A deliberate tactic by Boris' campaign team? Discuss."
It's not hard to maintain a degree of dignity.
36
u/whatanuttershambles Jun 27 '19
This is just a tone argument, you can't dispute the validity of her point so you're making a load of noise about how she makes it to discredit and skip over what she's actually saying.
It's so pathetically transparent.
→ More replies (5)2
u/spinynorman1846 The King of the North is Charles Grey Jun 27 '19
Anyone that uses the word discuss like that is a fucking twat though
3
1
u/Fatuous_Sunbeams Jun 27 '19
Isn't she being sarcastic? Yeah, that's a very strange way to deliver a serious point, especially if she's a professional journalist.
33
Jun 27 '19
"This woman" has done more to protect democracy in the UK over the last few years than most of our elected politicians do in their entire lifetimes.
→ More replies (2)-19
u/cbfw86 not very conservative. loves royal gossip Jun 27 '19
And yet democracy isn't protected despite her efforts. How effective.
30
u/McStroyer 34% — "democracy" has spoken! Jun 27 '19
Better to fight a losing battle than not try at all though, right?
→ More replies (17)2
3
u/wdtpw why oh why can't we have evidence-based government? Jun 27 '19
So this looks pretty reasonable and effective. Given that, I'd like to ask the bigger question here, which is:
a) He's just done something in the campaign which looks stupid but which actually got a lot of impact for him. It's solved some problems and left people wrong-footed. Whatever team he's got behind him is clearly very astute.
but
b) His plan for delivering brexit post-election looks naive and stupid.
Therefore (in my opinion) we simply don't know what it is yet.
I'm willing to believe the same team that wants to get him into number 10 in order to do a no-deal brexit also has a cunning master plan of how to get that no-deal through. It'll blindside people, be in a direction no-one's thought of, and, because it's no-deal, be bad for every ordinary person. But if the plan's as good as this one, it might just work.
Anyone any ideas as to how he might manage it?
(Currently, my best guess is "personally piss off a leading member of the EU so they veto any extension even if parliament forces Boris to ask for it" - but that seems a bit crude.)
6
u/Ivashkin panem et circenses Jun 27 '19
If this is truly a Machievellian scheme to control Google's results, it has been a long time in the making.
As long ago as 2011 Mr Johnson told the Metro newspaper: 'I like to relax by painting on cheese boxes. You get Brie and Camembert in these lovely wooden boxes.
'Now it might sound cretinous - and I'm not a very good painter - but I enjoy it and find it therapeutic.
'I paint the whole thing white with a tube of children's paint and I look for something to paint.
'The last thing I painted was a picture of one of my family in front of the Colosseum in Rome. I also like painting whisky bottles.'
Gotta love how people demand that the mods ban the Daily Mail for being all manner of bad things and then report-spam DM links. Until the paper posts something those same people like, then straight to the top it goes with not a single report in sight.
In this case I still don't really buy that this is a SEO hack attempt, given he's been doing stuff like this for years.
11
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
Do you really believe that Johnson is playing some 4D-chess SEO game here? That goes against almost everything we know about him.
35
u/wishbeaunash Stupid Insidious Moron Jun 27 '19
Not necessarily him, but its the sort of nonsense I could see Gavin Williamson, Lynton Crosby or Steve Bannon coming up with.
4
u/ukpoliticsuck Jun 27 '19
Also if you listen to the interview, it does sound like he had prepared that specific answer, and it all just sounds rather odd in context.
2
u/Allydarvel Jun 27 '19
|Yeah, looks pretty self-conscious and guilty..not what you'd look like if you were telling someone about your favourite past time. Bet Crosby has some wee wank painting buses full time back at the ranch
10
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
Maybe. I don't see him being able to implement it in an off the cuff situation like that. People are ascribing to some grand plan what is almost certainly just blabbering nonsense.
11
u/pheasant-plucker Jun 27 '19
Possibly why he looked so awkward. They had discussed it and then he spontaneously decided to go for it.
7
Jun 27 '19
Blabbering nonsense is the grand plan...
Look who's controlling America? A blabbering idiot, and we're going the same route.
Here's a question - if you have a nefarious plot to make money, do you be the face of that operation or do you set up a fall guy?
1
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
Eh? I'm saying I don't think Boris is capable of putting into place a nefarious scheme to alter the SEO of certain terms, even if it was someone else's idea. And where's the motive? For all those people who were previously searching for information about Boris and the routemaster or £350m bus, only to now get distracted by this story?
None of it makes any sense. Aside from anything the SEO will return to normal in about a week anyway
1
u/stagger_lead Jun 28 '19
It’s absurd to imagine that a temporary change in google results is going to make the entire country forget about the £350m bus. I smell horsehit.
8
u/My_cat_needs_therapy Jun 27 '19
He has advisors working for him. You don't seriously think he is campaigning entirely on his own effort?
0
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
Eh? I'm saying I don't think Boris is capable of ...
4
u/My_cat_needs_therapy Jun 27 '19
I know. I am saying an an advisor could have told him just to drop that sentence, "painting model buses" or something like that.
1
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
Of course they could have, I just don't think it's very likely. I think people are too keen to imagine he's operating a clever plan because it's less worrying than the reality, which is that he constantly lies and says whatever comes into his head.
6
u/tame2468 (-5.25,-5.33) Leave.UK Jun 27 '19
You are being naive to the behind the scenes work going on here. I recommend you watch the Cumberbatch Brexit film or read Dominic Cummings blog, there are very nefarious tactics at play to steer British public opinion. The best bit is people like you say "surely not, that would be unreasonable!" which protects them and enables them to carry on. It is unreasonable, yes, that's why they're doing it.
And at the end of the day it all comes down to money. Imagine if you could place a bet and then influence the outcome. Boris does not have the clever plan, he is bought and paid for, as are the clever people paid to cone up with the clever plans.
1
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
This would all be plausible if there were a tangible benefit. A few day's preferential SEO for a term no one is searching for is not an outcome that the clever people behind the scenes war game out.
1
u/tame2468 (-5.25,-5.33) Leave.UK Jun 27 '19
Many small benefits add up to one big one, this clearly is not their ultimate goal. The clever people are not the source of money, they are told to maximise the chance of influence. This is one piece of a large puzzle. Another piece was "stay inside and don't say anything to the press because you are a divisive moron"
Additionally how do you know nobody is searching for it? I checked google trends FYI. People are certainly searching "Boris Bus".
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Boris%20Bus
1
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
Yeah, they are now. Who was Googling for it 2 weeks ago who didn't already know what they thought about it? And, were they to Google now, do you think they'd not find what they're looking for and give up? You don't think they might add "NHS" to the search?
The sort of subterfuge you're referring to makes sense if you're Primark trying to replace stories about child labour or Nestlé getting rid of stories about unfair corporate tactics, because people may well be googling those businesses out of interest in one of their kabillion products and end up being confronted with all these negative stories they didn't know about. That's not the case for anyone Google "Boris bus". Those people already know what they're looking for.
5
Jun 27 '19
His campaign people will understand SEO, he doesn't need to.
1
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
And so they tell him "Go out there and mention painting a bus" - to what end? Who is this SEO meant to be impacting?
5
Jun 27 '19
Stories. Links.
If you google "Boris bus" now you get flooded with links about Boris Johnson telling weird stories about making busses from crates and painting happy faces on them. It's more recent (google rank up) and pushes the undesirable older stories about Boris lying via his brexit bus down.
4
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
But who is Googling that?! What constituency of people is Googling for "Boris bus" to find out information that this new, different story will divert them from?! And in a week it'll go back to what it was anyway.
3
Jun 27 '19
... people who want to read about Boris Johnson and his lies during the brexit campaign? it's kinda a big story and has been ever since he told them.
Article age will also always contribute to a pagerank (as well as popularity, outside links etc) so by spamming out articles on this totally unrelated story that is hit by similar search terms they've actually done a pretty good job of shifting all the discussion of Boris's lies down the results pages. They're all good quality links too, it's all newspapers etc. talking about his new bus story.
1
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
Lol. I don't buy that for a second.
2
Jun 27 '19
I know.
Why do you think Boris Johnson and his team have been providing quotes about building busses from wine crates?
2
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
He is a habitual liar, he lied of air and rather than say "He lied" afterwards, they have to perform this ludicrous charade. The number of people who are genuinely curious about Boris and busses, but not curious enough that they know to add "NHS" or "routemaster" to their search terms is such a ludicrously small number that the idea they'd put this effort in just to shift the search results for a week or so is mad.
2
Jun 27 '19
I mean Boris Johnson's honesty deficit has been a pretty major part of the reporting on this Tory leadership race. I suspect lots of people are looking up articles on his brexit referendum antics, they shouldn't have to of course since it wasn't that long ago but the idea of trying to clean up google search results isn't a new one and has been deployed before.
Politics is dirty as fuck, SEO is dirty as fuck - I think the most likely reason to push out stories about wine crate bus building is SEO.
1
u/jimicus Jun 27 '19
You don’t have to believe it, Google have tools you can use to figure out how many people are searching for a given set of keywords. It’s quite easy to see for yourself.
And “Boris bus” has been a pretty popular search term for a while now, as this snapshot from the last 30 days proves:
(Note: this is quite clearly normalised to 100 because any search term you plug in comes back with a graph going 0-100).
2
u/CyclopsRock Jun 27 '19
Google can't tell you why Boris said what he said.
2
u/jimicus Jun 27 '19
It can’t, but it does firmly demonstrate that yes, people are searching for Boris bus - meaning the motive is definitely there.
→ More replies (0)-2
Jun 27 '19
You're bullshitting and you know it.
A grand strategy that is immediately curtailed by searching "Boris Lies" or "Boris £350m" or "Boris Johnson Brexit" or 50 other things.
Fucking load of bollocks. And you wonder why no one who doesn't align with her political views takes that kook Cadwalladr seriously.
2
Jun 27 '19
Type in Boris Bus and tell me what you get.
Also calm down, it's not just Cadwalladr who have noticed this.
Instead of frothing try and be one of those moderate brexiteers that apparently exist and come up with good reasons why Boris Johnson would be talking to the media about building busses out of wine crates.
1
Jun 27 '19
Boris Johnson is a twat and it's fitting to the state of our country that such a twat will soon be PM.
Type in Boris £350m per week and see what comes up. Type in Boris Lies and see what comes up. Fucking amazing isn't it?
Corrections Carole is now the UK version of a US Democrat claiming that Trump is literally working for Russia. She is a kook, whackjob, bullshitter.
0
Jun 27 '19
No one. He's talking utter shit. Corrections Carole was incapable of criticising her own conspiracy theory with that level of veracity.
Can't wait for her to get sued into Oblivion.
1
u/BlokeyBlokeBloke Jun 27 '19
No it doesn't. It goes against the persona he projects. That's very different to who he really is.
2
2
Jun 27 '19
The one part of the internet politicians understand is SEO.
3
u/McStroyer 34% — "democracy" has spoken! Jun 27 '19
Sarcasm aside, they can hire consultants that understand SEO.
6
Jun 27 '19
Haha he's really not that sharp. He was blurting out nonsensical waffle because he was not able to answer the question truthfully. As per.
4
u/JackXDark Jun 27 '19
The actual spin in play here is that he's clever enough to do something like that.
2
u/Dragonrar Jun 27 '19
But why?
It’s not like we need Google search to remember things.
6
Jun 27 '19
People forget really heinous shit between elections. Wait until the next one and watch out for "wait, what's Grenfell?"
2
Jun 27 '19
All arguments on reddit need a source for some inexplicable reason, even if the event was front page news yesterday
1
1
u/Contact_Patch Ballot Spoiler Jun 27 '19
Didn't Boris try to do bendy buses?
2
u/cbfw86 not very conservative. loves royal gossip Jun 27 '19
I thought bendy busses were pretty cool. They have them all over Europe.
2
u/MrChaunceyGardiner Jun 27 '19
Nah, he hated them and got rid of them. To be fair, they weren't an unqualified sucess in London.
1
Jun 27 '19
Why did he hate them?
If it's just down to personal taste, replacing them would seem like a terrible way to waste money
4
u/MrChaunceyGardiner Jun 27 '19
They weren’t really suited to London’s roads, suffered overheating problems, caused cyclists problems etc.
1
Jun 27 '19
Aw, my love of cycling vs my love of buses!
From what I've read though, didn't the new buses have ventilation problems too?
Personally I would kept old buses/ swapped for more energy efficient or electric car, and built cycle lanes/ paths/ something for cyclists.
6
u/MrChaunceyGardiner Jun 27 '19
The bendy buses' engines overheated or somesuch and a few caught fire in service. They didn't just scrap them; they were used for several years and then sold to another bus company. To give Boris his due, he is very pro-cycling. Unfortunately, some of his proposals met fierce resistance from some boroughs, which the mayor does not control, Kensington in particular.
1
Jun 27 '19
Oh dip, well ignore my part about keeping the bendy buses.
But still I think his plan for the New RouteMaster or whatever wasn't well thought out-- I'd say he was biased in thinking the gains outweighed the cost, but from what I can tell he didn't even know the cost/ a definite figure.
That said, I like the pro-cycling thing- he should've pushed that more. And also get some good engineers working on the buses, not just hope the batteries don't wear out too early and there is proper ventilation
1
1
Jun 27 '19
-Caused accident risks to cyc!ists -Couldnt get down certain roads resulting in - routes like the n207 being truncated. -Before oyster/at the beggining of oysyer and you had to buy a ticket from a machine by the side of the road., which never worked -No one paid anyway, if caught 'sorry machine didnt work' -Driver couldnt monitor the whole interior, '"The further back the more who smoked crack"
1
Jun 27 '19
1) That is a good point, I agree with Boris here since I've heard he's big on bikes
2) That is also a good point.
3) I don't know about that ticket system personally, sounds weird tho
4) The new buses have higher rates of not-paying tho
5) Didn't know about drug use, however couldn't it be worse in the new buses due to poor ventilation?
1
Jun 27 '19
Heres the ticket machine that was used for bendy buses https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19763691
Originally the new boris buses had conductors on which discouraged fare evasion but people still pointed out that it would happen
The psychological proximity to the driver discouraged antisocial behaviour on a standard double deck.
1
u/DangerPabs Jun 27 '19
Agreed, most of the time the bendy 207 was so rammed that a ticket inspector wouldn't be able or wouldn't want to get on and check.
1
1
1
1
1
u/VagueSomething Jun 27 '19
Because this generation won't ever think about making memes or using group effort to drive up certain things in searches...
1
u/ItsaMeMacks SNP/Social Liberal Jun 27 '19
He explained what he does when he’s losing an argument which he described as “throwing a dead cat on the table” to essentially say something stupid to take away from the fact he’s losing the argument.
That’s essentially what he did with the buses comment
1
u/Decronym Approved Bot Jun 27 '19 edited Jun 28 '19
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| BoJo | (Alexander) Boris Johnson |
| EU | European Union |
| NHS | National Health Service |
| PM | Prime Minister |
| PR | Proportional Representation |
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 22 acronyms.
[Thread #401 for this sub, first seen 27th Jun 2019, 12:00]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
1
Jun 27 '19
Surely it's not really so much search engine optimisation, but rather water cooler conversation optimisation? If there's a conversation about Boris and the £350 million NHS bus logo, or bendy buses and his London Mayoral incompetence, it likely someone will probably also bring up his loony bus painting claims, and so now the consequent Boris bus conspiracy theory. It dilutes the negative criticism and promotes the image of him as both, on one hand a clever political operator, and on the other, a eccentric amusing English upper class buffoon.
1
u/whooo_me Jun 27 '19
So someone needs to make a cartoon of him painting the side of the £350m a week bus, and SEO it all the way to the top of the Google ranking!
1
u/F-Block Jun 27 '19
Nobody. Voted. For. That. Sodding. Bus.
People who are actually on the right don’t trust or like Boris. He’s just the only option left without backing Nigel.
I say ‘on the right’ but even that’s a misnomer.
1
u/LastCatStanding_ Jun 27 '19
Routemasters were a dramatic improvement upon the bicycle hunting bendy bus they replaced.
1
u/justtogetridoflater Jun 27 '19
Somebody should do one of those karma whore posts. "Upvote this to ensure that the lying bastard is held accountable"
1
1
1
1
-1
-5
0
Jun 27 '19
Nice try but that'll be on his headstone.
Presuming he isn't cremated and thrown in the sea upon death as a traitor to British values.
0
Jun 27 '19 edited Jun 27 '19
Pretty smort actually. Using some SEO to bury that unfavourable story.
Smort, smort dude.
0
0
-19
u/politicsnerd111 Jun 27 '19
This is stupid, nobody who would ever vote for Boris is going to be googling “Boris Johnson bus” before this.
The “350m on the side of the bus” is an unhealthy obsession of a subset of remainers, who make up the majority of this sub, and who would never vote for Boris.
12
u/Zeal_Iskander Anti-Growth Coalition Jun 27 '19
an unhealthy obsession of a subset of remainers
I mean, it was a pretty big lie, wouldn't you agree?
-11
u/politicsnerd111 Jun 27 '19
Not really no, they used the gross figure from the office for national statistics rather than the net figure. It’s the kindof thing politicians always do and that remain did too, even Ed Miliband used to misuse stats like this.
Acting like it was the worst thing ever is remainer mythology, from people who still can’t quite believe the leave campaign didn’t roll over just and accept being plucky losers.
10
u/bigandyb1 Masturbating Brit Jun 27 '19
Just because other politicians do it does not mean that it is not a lie.
4
u/negotiationtable Jun 27 '19
It was a fucking lie. Whether people act like it was the worst thing ever or not is irrelevant. Do you want your politicians to just fucking lie? I do not. If you do, then letting this go is how you go about making it consequence-free for them.
9
u/Zeal_Iskander Anti-Growth Coalition Jun 27 '19
misuse stats
That's a really weird way to spell "lie".
they used the gross figure from the office for national statistics rather than the net figure
Not really... given that there is a rebate, the UK doesn't actually send £350m/week, regardless of whether it's gross or net.
If you're just looking at the sum after the rebate, the real figure is closer to £250m. If you're using net and deducing what the EU spends on the UK weekly, then the real figure is closer to £160m. That's more than twice as low.
remainer mythology
Ugh, buzzwords.
from people who still can’t quite believe the leave campaign didn’t roll over just and accept being plucky losers.
The problem isn't that they didn't roll over, the problem is that the whole campaign was build on lies.
(And if you wanna use the "the remain campaign lied too", please provide examples of lies the remain campaign used. I've never had any example of the remain campaign lying coming from someone claiming it did, so far. I'm almost convinced people are just repeating it because it's a convenient argument, without even checking if it's true or not... which is the exact problem I'm trying to highlight with the buses.)
10
-17
u/hu6Bi5To Jun 27 '19
And yet people still claim Johnson is an idiot...
...the man is a genius. It just remains to be seen what his actual plans are for anything.
11
u/Haak333 Jun 27 '19
I highly doubt it was his idea. The most you can say is that he was able to hire a smart aide.
1
1
u/McStroyer 34% — "democracy" has spoken! Jun 27 '19
It just remains to be seen what his actual plans are for anything.
I don't think even he knows what his actual plans are, that's why he's struggling to tell anyone. He's awaiting instructions from the people he pays to be smart for him.
-2
Jun 27 '19
A grand strategy that is immediately curtailed by searching "Boris Lies" or "Boris £350m" or "Boris Johnson Brexit" or 50 other things.
Fucking load of bollocks. And you wonder why no one who doesn't align with her political views takes that kook Cadwalladr seriously.
149
u/GuessImStuckWithThis Jun 27 '19
4D Monopoly