Politics Archives - NevilleHobson.com

It should be adiós and not hasta la vista baby

Today, Boris Johnson formally stood down as UK Prime Minister and has been replaced by Liz Truss who accepted an invitation from the Queen to form a new government. Thus culminates a fraught summer in which Truss and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak battled it out in a leadership contest that started in July with eight candidates vying for the top job after Johnson resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. And so we have a new Party…

Stop the show, I want to get off

If you’ve read any of the mainstream media in recent days, or glanced through the news feeds in your social networks, it wouldn’t take much to feel that the end of the world as we know it is imminent. It really is hard to talk about the sorry state of affairs in which we find ourselves in the UK – economically, politically, socially – without sounding like the most awful doomster and sensationalist. Yet, you cannot ignore the reality we…

The Uber Files data leak and the chasm between ethics and lobbying

On July 11, the Guardian newspaper dropped a bombshell across the media and political landscapes with the first revelations about Uber and its law-breaking activities around the world, on an industrial scale, in the pursuit of profits. News about the Uber Files published by the Guardian and a global array of media partners was the visible first step in making use of a treasure trove of data leaked by a whistleblower to shine a bright spotlight on a company that…

Unpicking the vicious cycle of anger, hostility, and outrage on social networks

If you’ve been wondering why footballers get racially abused online all the time, why some people make disgusting death threats on social networks, or why presumably otherwise sensible celebrities say offensive things in their tweets about other people, a new book may well provide the light bulb of clarity you’ve been seeking. It’s certainly something I’ve wondered about: why, in the past few years, has there been such a significant and notable increase in vile behaviours online where people say…

FIR 208: A timely PR stunt at the G7

Shel and I had such a rich selection of topics to discuss in the June episode of The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast, aka FIR 208 – recorded during the weekend of the G7 meeting – that it was quite a job to assemble the order of discussion! As always each of us provides three topics, making six in total for discussion in each episode. Here’s the final list for June: Half of U.S. adults consider who publishes it as…