Conservative Party 'Cash Gordon' campaign was designed by US anti-healthcare lobbyists

So let me see the VW bug was designed for Adolf Hitler so everyone who drove or drives a bug is an Adolf Hilter supporter, mass-murderer and jew hater. Got the logic, what a real scoop.

STOP THE PRESS

‘LEFT-WING BRITISH POLITICAL BLOG’ WAS DESIGNED BY BNP LOBBYISTS’ http://bit.ly/9t6BXQ

Seems to be the time for left-wing blogs to do silly process stories – first Will Straw trying to make a story out of video Chris Grayling supporting Conservative party policy, now you’re getting wound up because the Conservative party uses an off the shelf platform.

We can’t all be powered by Tangent Labs (thank god).

I’m still missing the story here – we’ve invested in an award-winning Facebook Connect app, nothing else. Where have we endorsed others who have used it?

Essentially, the left-wing Twittersphere was stone silent all weekend because we launched a truly innovative online campaign – and now to their delight they’ve found a way to spuriously link it to evil American lobbyists. It’s pretty pathetic.

OMG the centre-right politicians in Britain have connections with people on the centre-right in America! They might even have differing opinions about important political issues!!! It’s a shocking scandal!!!!!!!!!!

Evil attracts evil and the end of the day.

It reveals a deeo seated hatred by Tories for the NHS and any other bodies that may be set up for the betterment of ordinary people (including Unions).

Nothing new, same old scummy Tories.

Some of the dodgy front groups they have in the states make the Tax Payers Alliance or Migration Watch look like the boy scouts – This guy is far from alone: http://www.bermanexposed.org/

The language around this stuff is the scariest – trying to mobilise concerned people and sucker them into supporting vested interests against themselves, be they tobacco, oil, drink, insurance, unionbusters or whatever. A serious lack of respect for the people they recruit to follow them.

It’s certainly true you can use a system, or even hire a consultant, from nasty campaigns without meaning you’re nasty yourself, but you think the Tories would rather not have even the slightest association to some of these groups if they could avoid it.

If these are the kind of go-to people the new Tories are happy to use for campaigning, I’d be worried that some of the other less savoury part of US lobbying/web campaigning are coming our way too.

I really don’t see what the big deal is. If I wanted to make an astroturfing online campaign that pretends to defend ordinary people while actually sucking up to big business and doing everything possible to weaken the position of the man on the street, I’d go to people with a track record of doing that too.

Saying that David All Group is the same as WordPress and Facebook is ridiculous. There is a huge difference between a platform which can be used by everyone and a platform which is designed by political partisans and is used by political partisans from the same side of the trenches.

Sam, this idea that a flood of negative #cashgordon comments on the site is good is an interesting point. I guess there’s no such thing as bad publicity….

Excellent story PS, this really does matter. The Tories’ defence that “it’s the same as using WordPress” is ridiculous – WordPress isn’t an inherently political organisation.

Although they’re right about the free promotion. I, for one, would never have looked at the site had PS not mentioned it.

Doing a bit of lunchtime surfing on the three unwise MP’s and their attempts to make more cash, and I found this complete and utter non-story. Whether you think cash gordon is wrong or right, you have to think whether it got/is getting decent press coverage.

Given how long til the election, that is all that matters. Left wingers slagging off right wingers a week later in a blog means nothing. Given what is rumoured to be announced (with a nice new anti-Gordon/Unit/Whelan website) and launched this Thursday you will be more than busy blogging for the next few weeks.

From Twitter: @psbook: Perhaps someone should teach @dizzy_thinks the difference between shared hosting and a dedicated server?

Hmm let’s see, dedicated hosting, a dedicated single webserver, most likely Apache, serving pages for only one single website under one single domain. Shared hosting, a single webserver configured using the VirtualHost element to serve pages for multiple websites under multiple domains. Cash Gordon website? That’ll be a VirtualHost on a shared webserver.

If you’d like to read a manual on it I suggest looking here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/vhosts/

Word of advice mate, don’t try to tell me how my chosen profession as a Sysadmin managing multiple domains across multiple webservers in multiple countries is done. I’ll make you look like a complete tit.

What Tom said.

TomFD’s remarks rather give the game away – these people are not “the centre right”, they are far right extremist wingnuts. Most people who have a look at the “work” of this organisation find it repellent and disgusting, the Tories find it fascinating, useful and worth investing in.

They might be extreme from the UK’s point of view but actually on the centre-right of the US political spectrum. Obamacare is the issue the Republicans are fighting their campaigns on because it is clearly something a large section of the US population is deeply concerned about – even the bill’s supporters readily concede it is deeply flawed. The Conservatives in the UK are fighting campaigns on distinct issues of their own that relate to this country’s political climate – such as Labour being in the pocket of the same union attempting to ground air traffic to a halt this weekend, for example.

Is it accurate to call someone “extreme” because they want the law to stay the same as it has been for years and years?

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Misuse_Act_1990 – “unauthorised modification of computer material” is an offence. By injecting code maliciously it is likely you are in breech of this Act.

Furthermore, I also imagine it will be against the Twitter terms and conditions. According to http://twitter.com/tos you should not

“use the Services to send altered, deceptive or false source-identifying information; or (v) interfere with, or disrupt, (or attempt to do so), the access of any user, host or network, including, without limitation, sending a virus, overloading, flooding, spamming, mail-bombing the Services, or by scripting the creation of Content in such a manner as to interfere with or create an undue burden on the Services.”

As the Twitter embed on the Cash-Gordon website was a legitimate use of the Twitter service, those doing code injection can be considered to be in breech of these terms.

So well done everyone who’s responsible for this recent Javascript injection. Hope you’re proud of yourselves.

OOH! Lets cause a non stink, anything to keep eyes off what;s really happening in Labour – Byers, Hewitt, Hoon also Whelan and his Unite pals – and do we really want a gov’t that is more than 50% funded by Unions? – that does not feel much like a true Democracy to me.
Poor little boy red – get another real story…
Josephine

Where are all the Toryscum now? Cash Gordon? More like David Spameron.

So Weak ! (ask Ed Balls)