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They talked about this on John Olliver. They had a bizarre interview where he brought up a story about a bus and people think it is to salt the keywords of Google search to not show a campaign bus that highlighted something like free health care or something like that.

Edit: user "sincerely" has a better description and links





Thing that got me was the bus thing was "spiritually" true.

The UK does send a fortune to the EU, and the EU will not spend it on the NHS.

At best they may use it to resurface a road in the UK in some town no one has ever heard of along with a "eu project" propoganda badge.

But the spirit of the message held water, even if it wasnt technically true during tuesday of the second easter of a red moon.


It is also "spiritually" true that you send a fortune to food producers.

Put that way, you focus on the price but not the benefits.


EU Structural and Investment Fund allocated £8.4bn for UK for 2014-2020, £1000pp in Cornwall & West Wales alone. Similar funds for 2007-2013 are estimated to have created 70k jobs in the north of England, and 80k in Scotland & Wales. [1]

I wish I had your casual nonchalance about how these regions will be affected post-Brexit.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/01/mapped-where-in-...


Two issues with your statement

1) The claim was rubbish, that amount doesn't leave the treasury

2) The EU does fund NHS projects

However it was a powerful message that kept on being repeated by the incredulous remain side, doing the propaganda work for Leave, it's an interesting "hack" in many ways. 90% of people pay no attention to politics, when all they see is a single policy "vote X and get more money for NHS", that's all they'll remember.

It doesn't matter that it's a lie, repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. When your enemy is repeating your lie for you, you win.


This is not a Brexit discussion. It just happens to feature Boris Johnson.


350m was the total amount, before rebates. The real figure is a lot lower.


It isn't "spiritually" true. It is factually true to the extent that the High Court ruled 350m was approximately the correct gross figure. Indeed some say that figure is conservative because it was based on projections from an official figure dated from 2014 that put the gross at closer to 450m. I'm guessing 2014 was high because of financial bailouts still being paid into the EU coffers.

From the ruling statement:

“The alleged offence set out in the Application for Summons is that the Claimant “repeatedly made and endorsed false and misleading statements concerning the cost of the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union”. It appears that if the Claimant had said/endorsed a figure of £350m per week gross, or £250m per week net, there would have been no complaint.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019ewhc... (search in doc for "350" to find the juicy bits)


I could say that as a consumer I used my skill and cunning to buy something for 20% discount compared to everyone else, if I quote the price before VAT, but the fact is that I would have paid the same price as everyone else once VAT was applied. The whole idea of saying "we send £350m to the EU" was based on the same mental gymnastics.


Isn't it strange that any and all seemingly pro-Brexit posts here are being downvoted.

What you posted is factually correct. From observation, HN has turned into just another Slashdot, unfortunately. I came here to escape from Slashdot's obvious liberal-biased bubble, but the infestation has happened here too. No doubt this post will be downvoted into oblivion as well, including the other replie(s) I've made on this topic. :(


No - it isn’t strange. This is Hacker News. We are here to talk about the technical aspects of the alleged search manipulation, not your political beliefs. It’s well known that political opinion isn’t on the table for discussion here. If you want that kind of discourse, check out the politics subreddit, where you will find oodles of children spouting their uninformed political opinions.


It's not nearly that simple.

There have been plenty of non-flagged stories on both UK and US politics where they deviate from the regular, with discussions that haven't descended into flame war and a sea of greyed posts. Not specifically relating to tech, but are exceptional in some way. e.g. Brexit and the various constitutional shenanigans, some surprise USSC or agency ruling etc.

Reasonable discourse has resulted with good points on both sides - along with a minority of both sides playing it like reddit - black/white voting, and absurd easily disproved comments.

The "day-to-day" and regular politics can stay in the reddit cesspit.


As you go down the age scale, and up the education scale, you get higher support for Remain. Freedom of movement is probably much more important to entrepreneurs too -- if you support Brexit you're probably in a small minority on HN. Would make an interesting poll.


I've had some reasonable conversations on the topic here but I do feel it in downvotes (which I'm not interested in anyway)


What is pro-Brexit about my post though? :~)




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