Government by X
Thanks for the help Mr Musk but we’re the professionals so go away.
Elon Musk’s attack on the government’s handling of grooming gangs is “misjudged and certainly misinformed”, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said.
Tech multi-billionaire Musk has posted a series of messages on his social media site X, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute gangs that systematically groomed and raped young girls, and calling for safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to be jailed.
Lots of people say lots of things, but Musk has a very large amount of money so what he says must be important. Whether it’s accurate or not is another question.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into what she called the UK’s “rape gangs scandal”. But the party has also criticised Musk for “sharing things that are factually inaccurate” and distanced itself from his call for Phillips to be jailed.
Yes but he’s a billionaire, so he doesn’t have to be accurate.
“When you’re rich, they think you really know.”
Thanks for your help Elon, and please do keep it up!
Ok, some of Elon’s Tweets are only partially informed or are exaggerated or not fully thought through, but still we’re far better off with them than without them.
Britain has wandered into a situation where this year a man was jailed for eight weeks for 3 Facebook posts that showed images of immigrant people along with the caption “coming to a town near you”.
That’s it, that’s all it was. There was no request for violence. And the “coming to a town near you” is a factually accurate statement of what is happening, given recent levels of immigration at levels of a million a year. Yet this was deemed sufficiently “offensive” as to be criminal, and sufficiently criminal as to be worthy of eight weeks in jail!
Meanwhile, not so long ago in 2021 (so before Oct 7), there was a convoy of vehicles through London parading Palestinian flags along with a man repeatedly shouting through a megaphone “Fuck the Jews. Rape their daughters”. (link). Based on the above, can you guess what action the authorities deemed appropriate? Well, all charges were dropped. No more than a “please tone it down guys”.
In the mainstream UK media there are occasional mutterings about the loss of free speech and about the arbitrary, capricious and biased way in which the authorities act, based on whether the “perpetrator” has a favoured identity or not. But occasional mutterings is all. The mainstream media are cowed into meekly going along with it.
So I’m just thankful that someone is now openly criticising these things, and I’m especially thankful that it’s a someone with a rather big megaphone of his own. Thank you Elon! You’re great! Seriously, this is sufficiently good in the round that minor imperfections in your posting style can be over-looked. (Though I wouldn’t exactly complain if you also took a few seconds more on occasion to check accuracy.) And yes, you do have both Labour and the Tories running scared, which is why they are reacting.
Really Coel? I’m amazed that someone who has the intelligence that you obviously do, gets sucked in by this phony, self important poser. Are we better off hearing this idiot’s opinions? How so? I have said before that I think you have much more intelliegence than your hero Musk. You disagreed. Why? Because he’s wealthy? Does wealth = intelligence? Not that I have seen. Quite the opposite in fact. Accuracy be damned. He bought twitter so he could control the narrative. One of the two reasons, the other being profit, obviously. Of course he has the right to say whatever he wants, true or not, but we don’t have to be credulous morons and think that that fkn guy has some special insight that no one else has. He doesn’t. You can think for yourself. Try it sometime. Don’t buy into the fantasies that Musk offers, because those fantasies are complete bullshit, spewed from a self important fkn know it all. Honestly buddy, you would do better to be more critical of this idiot.
Perhaps Musk should pay some attention to what happens closer to home:
“Tesla CEO Elon Musk is in the eye of a storm, following the publication of a bombshell report in a leading US daily, accusing the billionaire businessman of serious misconduct, including sexual harassment. The report, published by The Wall Street Journal, based on extensive interviews and document reviews, paints a troubling picture of boundary-blurring behaviour on Mr Musk’s part.” (NDTV World)
One wonders why he doesn’t. Or why his fanboy only gets exercised about something when it suits the prejudiced tales he likes to spin. “Bugger ethical consistency or looking hypocritical – it’s my hero Elon on his piebald charger!”
Or is it ‘Adrian Dittmann’ on that piebald charger? One gets rather confused about Elon’s identity nowadays. Perhaps he’s taken some lessons from trans activists.
@twiliter:
Yes, much better off! He says things that a lot of people think, but the mainstream discourse is too cowed to say them.
His achievements are 10,000 times anything I’ve done.
You talk as though someone just wandered past, handed Musk a whole wodge of cash, and that’s why he’s now notable. His wealth is incidental, it is a consequence of his other attributes.
He went to America as a young student, started with a few thousand dollars from investors, and went on to create and/or have a major leadership role from early stages in about eight different companies now worth multiple billions. That includes the world’s most valuable car maker (from a standing start, surpassing all the established big players) and SpaceX which, again from a standing start, surpassed all the big established players to the point where it is now 20 years or so ahead of Boeing etc, and so has a de facto monopoly, and lots of other things with other companies. Literally, no-one else has ever done what Musk has done with multiple different companies.
Or, more to the point, so he could stop others controlling the narrative.
No, that’s just obviously wrong. The Twitter purchase made no sense as a get-rich-quick scheme. The way he’s running it makes no sense as a get-rich-quick scheme. If that were the idea he’d make it as advertiser friendly as he could. I’d take these criticisms of Musk more seriously if they made more sense or made some attempt to understand him.
Agreed, he doesn’t! The point of Musk’s Twitter posting is not that it shows special insight and wisdom that no-one else has, it’s that it’s being said by someone who gets noticed and who they can’t shut up. (One could say similar about JKR.)
Americans, being protected by the First Amendment, may not realise that the UK and Europe is drifting into very real problems over the denial of free speech, and all the noises are that it will get worse. So I’ll take who I can get. Musk might not be the ideal paragon, but in the absence of that ideal paragon I’ll be grateful for Musk.
Oh, dear! And not a peep about how Elon, or is it Adrian?, has been fiddling with the algorithms to disfavour posts he considers too left for his tender sensibility, or too ‘woke’, and to favour nicely rabid right-wing tweets – except, that is, when they criticise him, when he bans them. Poor Lara Loomer! But perhaps she’s retarded, or working-class and with a low IQ, so it doesn’t matter.
Well Coel, I suppose he’s not as illiterate as Trump, but thankfully he’ll never be taking his position either. I don’t think twitter was ever Musk’s get rich quick scheme, he’s already rich. 600ish million users are bound to turn a profit at some point, and meanwhile he has control of the narrative in his red cosplay outfit. Also, I don’t think achievement maps onto intelligence well, but Musk *self identifies* as a genius, and insinuates that he’s a savant. I have seen no evidence at all to support those claims, and enough evidence to contradict them, the most prominent being his Mars colonizing ideas.
You won’t entertain the idea that circumstance, good fortune, ambition, and disregard for other people can combine to make one a rich, loudmouthed asshole? It doesn’t take any real intelligence at all.
So does Trump. The fact that a lot of people think them doesn’t make them right. You might try Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds for some evidence. If you think that is too out-of-date and that what lots of people think is more sensible today, there are lots of other sources.
Frankly, saying what a lot of people think is more likely to lead to disinformation that not. Since his own AI bots have identified him as the biggest disseminator of misinformation on the platform, you might pause at believing what he says until you’ve verified from multiple other sources.
Behold! The closest Coel will ever come to admitting his idol is a font of egregious idiocy and overweening self-regard second only to Trump.