• About Me
  • My Dog Sophie

allanasscribbles

~ Writing, Thoughts and other fine stuff

allanasscribbles

Category Archives: General Election

Labour is Missing Out in The Search Engines

09 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics, General Election, Labour Party, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blogging, British Politics, General Election, Labour Party, Politics, Search engines, SEO, Social Media, Social Networking, The Labour Party

UK Labour Needs To Use More Search Engine Optimisation Skills

labour-summer-of-smears-aav

Labour Summer of Smears – Another Angry Voice. See link at end of article

Newspapers are losing sales and TV channels are losing credibility (not fast enough though, it has to be said).
So where do most voters turn to now when they want to find out about a political party?

They go online.

They may go to Facebook and Twitter, maybe Instagram too. But many do not.
They simply put a search term into Google (or occasionally Bing) and look at the results that turn up.

But the Labour Party is missing out in the search engines.

When I search Google for ‘Labour Policies‘, I get the Labour Party ‘Where we stand’, followed by ‘Manifesto’.
That’s good.
But, underneath those and still, on the Google front page, I then find:

  • “Investors fear Labour policies ahead of the election” – Financial times
  • “What Labour and Conservative policies really mean for immigration” – The Times
  • “What Jeremy Corbyn’s tax plan means for you and what you’ll pay” – The Telegraph

And you can imagine the anti-Labour spin in those above three articles alone…

Next I get the Google ‘question box’ with:
“What does the Labour party believe in?”
And a link going to a Wikipedia article by the Australian Labor Party!
Give me strength! 🙄

Google Page 2:

  • “Labour Party latest news, pictures, policies and campaigns …” – The Daily Express…
  • “What is Labour’s Brexit plan?” – BBC News asks its usual question even though it knows the answer full well.

Okay, then there’s an article from the Guardian (?) and one from Labour List.
We also get: “Labour for a Green New Deal—Policy” – but the page hasn’t been updated since conference…

And that’s it for anything really positive about Labour Policy and those links are between other non-positive links. And we are at the end of the 2nd page.

Most people don’t search any further than that…

Now at this point, some may say “well what can you expect – search engines are biased”.

And I would say, Wake up!

Search engines are biased towards making money. That means selling advertising spots.
They are not going to be able to do that if their searches are seen to be skewed. Because if that is the case, people won’t use them and advertisers will go elsewhere.

(I’m not saying that there are no problems with the large search engines – there obviously are. But that would take a whole other article and we need to put that aside and get some positive posts on Labour UK up the top of the search engines now!).

Now, I’m old school SEO (search engine optimisation). I learned SEO in the late 90s and carried on learning and using it in the noughties.

I know how to get a post to the top of the search engines using keywords, links and trusted sites.

But I haven’t the up-to-date knowledge, the time (and certainly not the money) to learn how to counter bot impressions on such a large scale as employed by some political parties.

I also do not have access to making headway on ‘trusted sites’ in the political category – Large print newspapers, well-known magazines, etc.

But I’m sure that there must be a whole load of talented people in the Labour Party who could work on this.

So this is a plea:

PLEASE, to help UK Labour:

If you haven’t got one already, set up a blog (wordpress.com would be a good start, or blogger, or open a free Medium account)

  • Start writing positive articles on UK Labour using great keywords and keep on doing so.
  • Share all your positive posts all over social media.
  • Share links with other UK Labour writers and share their posts too.
  • Comment on any Labour positive post.
  • Share articles from Labour-positive Newspapers and write about them too.

This is not about brilliant writing – SEO isn’t about that (sadly).
It’s just about getting good, hopeful, positive, voteable articles about UK Labour all over the front pages of the search engines.

And here’s another plea:

If you are up-to-date on SEO and have the resources to help.
Please get in touch with Labour or Momentum and offer your services.

This is from me. I’m in no way speaking for UK Labour or Momentum, but I’m pretty sure they’d appreciate the offer.

Labour is Missing Out in the Search Engines. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
So please do what you can to change this quickly!

PS:
The Image used at the beginning of this post is from:
How many of these Labour Party policies did you actually hear about this summer?

Things are even worse now in the run up to the 12th December 2019 General Election.

The article, by Another Angry Voice, is correct and excellent, but I’m sure that the writer would prefer not to have to write a similar one after December this year.

Advertisement

Why Labour Is Right to Listen to Leavers as well as Remainers

27 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by Silvi Veale in Brexit, British Politics, General Election, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Politics, Socialism

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brexit, British Politics, Labour Party, Politics, Socialism

The EU Referendum of 2016 was an event which changed politics in the UK forever.  And one of the changes which took place was that many of the people who voted in the Referendum were not regular voters. In fact, it appears that a significant proportion of referendum voters were voting for the first time.

And many of those ‘not very often’ or first time voters voted Leave.

After years, in some cases, of feeling that there was no point in voting, because: ‘it didn’t matter; they would be shafted whoever they voted for’, for many people the Referendum, appears to have been a means of expressing their disgust with what they saw as ‘the self-serving political establishment’.

The morning that the result became clear, many Leave voters were jubilant that at last it seemed that their vote had actually achieved something, and that was ‘one in the eye for the establishment’.

And it’s not surprising that they felt this way.

The Effect of Austerity:

After years of suffering the effects of cruel austerity measures and of having their cries for help seemingly ignored, people were then told by the Remain Campaign, without a trace of irony, that they ‘must’ vote Remain ‘for their own sakes’.

This message was pushed by ‘establishment’ figures, including Prime Minister, ex-Etonian Cameron. And was then pressed home by none less than the President of the US, arriving in the UK it seemed, just to tell us all that we must vote Remain ‘for the good of our country’.

Now, this would have been all well and good, if people had been feeling happy and secure in their daily lives and wanting to preserve that situation, but many people were not (and are still not) feeling happy or secure. So, they had every right to ask themselves what did they have to lose?

The ‘Immigration’ debate:

At this point you could argue that people’s fears and unhappiness was stoked up more by Farage, with his racist and thoroughly misleading message on immigration, and tales of the ‘corruption of the EU’. Setting these Farage-defined ‘issues’ side by side as an ‘other’ which ‘the Brits’ needed to repel.

Farage certainly gave many unhappy people a mythical range of scapegoats to blame. And he was definitely aided and abetted by the mass media in getting his divisive message across.

I am certain that the encouragement of Farage and his disgusting message led to the overt racism and violence that now threatens the very core of our society (and that’s even before you count all the dangerous rhetoric spewing from the mouth of our current PM and some who support him).

And back in 2016, as a 7/10 Remainer (sometimes 5.5 out of 10), what made me decide to vote Remain and even be very upset on the day that Leave won, was that at the time it appeared to me that much of the Leave vote was based upon reactions to messages filled with racism and bigotry. I could not be a part of that. I also feared that the result would be seen by the racists and bigots almost as ‘justification’ for their prejudice. And on this latter point I think I was proved correct.

However, with the experience of three years of ever more heated discussion on Brexit, while more and more families sink into poverty, ever more people are homeless, and while our NHS and welfare services are being run down ever more swiftly, I do understand why many ordinary people who are not racist or bigots voted Leave.

I think it was in the hope of political change: and even if that change wasn’t perfect, at least it would send a clear message that people had had enough of politicians not taking their needs seriously.

So, from being someone who calls herself ‘a Remainer’, I have come to the viewpoint that we really do need to take seriously those who voted to Leave the EU. Because:

1:  Not to do so would be dangerous – the longer this Brexit shambles has gone on, the more angry and frustrated people have become. Okay, we should never give in to threats or fears of violence by extremists who want to force their views upon others. But the Referendum campaign and the following years have allowed the rise of a violent minority of extreme right wingers, who like nothing better than to build a mob (in the old days they would have been handing out pitchforks to villagers). They have sensed victory (however fleeting). Revoking Article 50 (as the LibDems and some other Remainers want to happen) would give these thugs perceived ‘justification’ to stir up violent protest. and that would be a protest where anyone who doesn’t fit their warped views on ‘Britishness’  and ‘Patriotism’ would certainly not be safe.

2:  To ignore Leave voters would be the death knell of any hope of involving ordinary people in politics. Our representive democratic system is not perfect by any means. It is skewed towards supporting the priviledged, purely because it operates within a class-riven society. But, if used correctly (rather than being ‘played’ as it is at the moment by Boris Johnson), it is a way for ordinary people to at least get a say in how the country is run. If people who voted only occasionally, but voted in the Referendum, feel that even when they ‘win’ they will be ignored, how can the UK ever again even try to hold itself up as ‘a pillar of democracy’. And with complete distrust in democracy, on the one hand we have people feeling they are considered worthless by the leaders of the society they live in (and that will include distrust of the political left as well as the right); and worst case scenario, we could then drift into situation 1.

On the democracy note: yes, I know that the Leave campaign cheated big time with the message they put across (and possibly the funds they used to do it). But people don’t want you telling them that they ‘fell for cheats’. How patronising and short-sighted is that?

It’s my belief that whatever the cheating, whatever the messages from both sides, many of those who voted Leave didn’t care about any of that. If you believe that the political system is skewed against you anyway, you will not be surprised if there is cheating. You are more likely to shrug your shoulders and move on to think about what matters to you and your family.  For many who voted Leave, their vote was an angry cry for help – or at least to be acknowledged.

And to ignore that cry now would not only be wrong; it would be ‘proving’ that those ordinary people were correct – the political establishment really doesn’t give a sh*t about them.

Now, I’m a member of the Labour Party. Like most things in life, it’s not perfect. But I truly believe that most Labour members and politicians do care about ordinary people (however much that message gets lost now and again with infighting among different party factions). They want to help those who are struggling and they want to achieve a fairer society for the many, not the rich and greedy few. And that society will listen to everyone – not just those who were educated at Eton.

So by that philosophy, Labour has to be the party that listens to Leavers and Remainers. It cannot ignore what still seems like half of the population.

I’ve come a long way in my views since June 2016. I’m still a Remainer (Remain and reform though, at the very least), but I do believe it is correct for Jeremy Corbyn to argue that if Labour wins the next General Election, he and his Brexit team will do their best to negotiate a good deal with the EU, and then that deal will be put to the people alongside the Remain option.

Like several points I’ve mentioned here, Labour’s Brexit strategy is not a perfect solution, but it’s one which, having acknowledged the god-awful mess that the Tories have got us into with their incompetent Brexit negotiations, is the only sensible option left. And it’s the only hope of bringing this fractured country together and fending off the rise and further influence of right-wing extremists.

And when all put together like that, Labour’s Brexit policy seems pretty damn reasonable!

When Strong and Stable is Not Enough

28 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics, General Election, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Politics, Tories

mays-titanic-moment

Will June 8th be May’s Titanic Moment?

The Titanic was described as incredibly STRONG, with gigantic steel plates and a hull made of wrought iron and over 1k tons of rivets.

The Titanic was designed to be STABLE so that passengers would feel they were sailing in ‘the most sumptuous palace afloat’.

But…
When the Titanic hit an iceberg, the wrought iron’s inability to stretch caused the hull to shatter into pieces.
And the rivets were not up to standard for the steel plates and gave way.

As for stability, the Titanic had a tendency to heel to port and allowance had not been made for the excessive roll caused by flooding of watertight areas on impact and thus rapid flooding of the starboard side.

The Titanic sunk for several reasons, but the designers’ assertion that its strength and stability made it unsinkable may well have led to less than adequate planning for an impact.

The result was chaos and catastrophe…

The passengers on the Titanic required more than promises that it was STRONG and STABLE.
Just like UK citizens require more than shallow words and empty promises.

Don’t vote for empty rhetoric and policies which will only shatter and leave the country and its people sunk in the dregs.

Don’t vote for the Tories!

References:
http://www.thomas-hardye.dorset.sch.uk/documents/students_work/titanic_essay_rebecca.pdf
http://marconigraph.com/titanic/fire/fire2.html

 

 

Recent Posts

  • Types of Face Masks – Re-Useable Masks You Can Purchase
  • Types of Face Masks – Safety Masks Designed for Front Line Medical Work
  • Types of Face Mask – Surgical Masks
  • Wearing a Face Mask During a Pandemic – Introduction
  • In 2017 Boris Johnson launched group proposing NHS sell-off to US firms after Brexit
  • Labour is Missing Out in The Search Engines
  • The only party for the many not the few
  • Why Labour Is Right to Listen to Leavers as well as Remainers
  • When Strong and Stable is Not Enough
  • NHS Crisis We Saw It Coming And Now Labour Must Stop It.
  • Keep Corbyn
  • Labour and ‘the snoopers charter’
  • Time for Labour Party Members to Speak Out
  • Sorry Nicky, I’m out.
  • Why We Must Support Junior Doctors And Student Nurses In Their Struggle

Categories

  • Book Promotion
  • Brexit
  • British Politics
  • Covid-19
  • Dreams
  • Face Masks
  • Films
  • Football
  • General Election
  • Humour
  • Jeremy Corbyn
  • Labour Party
  • NHS
  • Politics
  • Socialism
  • Uncategorized
  • Writers
  • Writing
  • Writing Short Stories
  • Writing Styles
  • Writing Tools

Blogging Brexit British Politics Coronavirus Cycling Masks Dust Masks Euro 2012 Face Masks Future Apocalypse General Election Handwriting Recognition Apps Horror Writing Humour in Writing Jeremy Corbyn Junior Doctors Labour Party Linwood Barclay Marketing Your Book Medical Respirators NHS NHS Crisis Non-Fiction Notes Nurses Bursaries Organising My Writing Politics Procrastination Readers Letters Reading Science Fiction Search engines SEO Short Stories Snoopers Charter Socialism Social Media Social Networking Spain Surgical Masks Tales Of the Future The Labour Party Thriller Writers Thriller Writing Tories Writing About Dreams Writing Dilemmas

Archives

  • June 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • April 2017
  • January 2017
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • October 2013
  • July 2012
  • June 2012

My Personal Writing Links

  • Writing Prompts – My Tumblr Blog Writing Prompts in pictures and text to help me and other writers

Writing Help

  • Absolute Write Absolute Write Writing Help And Discussion Forums

Allana At Goodreads

my read shelf:
Allana's book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Goodreads

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • allanasscribbles
    • Join 50 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • allanasscribbles
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...