U.K. Parties Prepare for 2015 by Erasing Web Histories - Polidicks

[quote=Bloomberg][b]Britain’s political parties are preparing for the 2015 election by clearing out evidence of past policy commitments -- some from as recently as last year.[/b] Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party confirmed a magazine report on Nov. 13 that it had removed from its website speeches that predated the party taking power in 2010, as well as placing markers on its site asking search engines to remove these from their archives. The opposition Labour Party has eliminated all news items from before Ed Miliband was elected its leader in September 2010 from its website. [b]Both these are outdone by the U.K. Independence Party, which has no record of any speeches made before March this year.[/b] The earliest news item is leader Nigel Farage’s New Year 2013 message. In one of the few references to 2012 remaining on the site, Farage heralded a “remarkable year” for his party. [b]Only the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the governing coalition, admit the existence of a time before 2010 on their website.[/b] There, speeches date back to 2008, and the party’s 2010 election platform is still available.[/quote] [url=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-15/u-k-parties-prepare-for-2015-by-erasing-web-histories.html]Source[/url]

And they wonder why people don't like them very much.

Hey look, it's not just the tories, was I right now? [QUOTE]Well to be fair, you don't want people confusing your past policies with your current ones. So it makes sense to discard your old ones. [/QUOTE]

Frankly, these speeches should be public record. There should be transcripts in all public libraries, along with audio recordings and ideally videos imho. A good record should be kept on all political parties. For all of the parties to delete their speeches, and in the case of some to tell search providers to delete the records is just wrong, and should not be allowed. Political parties should be mandated by law to keep records of them, and to make them publicly accessible. Transparency is key, and deleting old records is not transparent, it's trying to hide the past.

nothing wrong with changing your agenda but idk why you would want to hide older obsolete ones

My favourite part is where they deleted David Cameron's speech praising freedom of information on the internet

[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;42882756]My favourite part is where they deleted David Cameron's speech praising freedom of information on the internet[/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure he meant freedom to take everyones information, you know how cameron is, his words are different to what he means.

[QUOTE=Terminutter;42882728]Frankly, these speeches should be public record. There should be transcripts in all public libraries, along with audio recordings and ideally videos imho. A good record should be kept on all political parties. For all of the parties to delete their speeches, and in the case of some to tell search providers to delete the records is just wrong, and should not be allowed. Political parties should be mandated by law to keep records of them, and to make them publicly accessible. Transparency is key, and deleting old records is not transparent, it's trying to hide the past.[/QUOTE] here in france, we have a show which is kinda like the daily show, and almost every other evening they compare what politicians say to their previous speeches. it's amazing. i've always wondered how big their archive of footage must be, and how they search stuff through it. it always seems like they've got everything

[QUOTE=The mouse;42882710]Hey look, it's not just the tories, was I right now?[/QUOTE] Yeah, wouldn't want these guys to be held accountable to what they said they'd do in the past. Or compare what they said they'd do out of office and what they're now doing. That would be dreadful, I'd feel terribly confused.

I can't wait for someone to reupload all this information somewhere.

This is like [I]1984[/I]-level censorship.

Can't wait for archive.org to start digging up the info again.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;42882937]here in france, we have a show which is kinda like the daily show, and almost every other evening they compare what politicians say to their previous speeches. it's amazing. i've always wondered how big their archive of footage must be, and how they search stuff through it. it always seems like they've got everything[/QUOTE] Some of our comedy shows do similar things. I can't remember exactly, but I think Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You? do similar things. I'm not sure if they're channel 4 or ITV, but if they're BBC, I imagine they have access to the BBCs archive, which must be pretty massive.

I don't really see the problem with removing old stuff from your website as part of a redesign. The Conservatives' use of robots.txt to take content off the Internet Archive is bad though I reckon the only reason the Lib Dems' website still has speeches back to 2008 is that that's the last time they redesigned it. That's how it looks from the Internet Archive anyway, but when they do redesign they might make a point of not wiping speeches etc after this.

[QUOTE=Kondor;42882736]nothing wrong with changing your agenda but idk why you would want to hide older obsolete ones[/QUOTE] In case they contradict your latter agenda. Wouldn't want people thinking the government is full of flip-flop, wish-wash!

[QUOTE=Alxnotorious;42883033]This is like [I]1984[/I]-level censorship.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure why you're being rated disagree for this, it is very similar to what the main character's department does in 1984, albeit adapted for reality and the internet.

[QUOTE=Alxnotorious;42883033]This is like [I]1984[/I]-level censorship.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Craigewan;42883760]I'm not sure why you're being rated disagree for this, it is very similar to what the main character's department does in 1984, albeit adapted for reality and the internet.[/QUOTE] It's not. In 1984 they erased the facts of a message and replaced it with current 'approved' history. It was a complete wipe of public record of whatever event happened, This is pure PR and not censorship. They can't remove all public record of everything they've said - they're just 'refreshing' all their own front page content. It's still bad, hypercritical and laughable, but it's hardly 1984.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;42882937]here in france, we have a show which is kinda like the daily show, and almost every other evening they compare what politicians say to their previous speeches. it's amazing. i've always wondered how big their archive of footage must be, and how they search stuff through it. it always seems like they've got everything[/QUOTE] I'm sure they have text transcripts so it's merely a matter of searching on (name of public figure) and key words. Otherwise media archives would be write-only, it'd be impossible to find old footage unless you specifically remembered it happening and where and when.

Country is a fucking joke, bring on the revolution.

Its like they don't want to look like Hipocrites!

[QUOTE=Medevila;42885912]Burn everything to the ground and start over[/QUOTE] I'd rather not be burnt down, thank you.

The last few years have been an absolute fucking disgrace. I believe it'll be a permanent point of reference in the future for examples of absolute disgusting governing of the country.