@FreeTheFalkland and the Art of Sockpuppetry

A while back I blogged about the Twitter account @hms_dauntless (later renamed @notHMSDauntless after a court-martial from Twitter ordered me to make it clearer that this was not the actual account of the Royal Navy ship HMS Dauntless). I created this account to satirise the rows taking place on Twitter over the ongoing Falklands dispute, with a number of heated exchanges between Brits, Argentines and a sprinkling of actual Islanders. Back then I commented.

On Twitter, things got sillier again with the sudden emergence of @freethefalkland, a hilarious, obviously-fake account, supposedly by a Falkland Islander. It proclaims to speak, "The true about the Falkland Island People and their search for the independence from the Britain." Actually, I shouldn't be so cynical about assuming he's a fake. After all, he insists, "I not Argentinian but if I was the Argentinian I would not be ashame. I am citizen of world friend. Take the chilling pill." Either way, he's been a wonderful comic foil for @hms_dauntless, albeit unwittingly. I hope he doesn't get banned.

As it turns out, @freethefalkland was also a parody account. The author subsequently admitted,

Some weeks ago I created the fake twitter account @freethefalkland. I didn't have any expectations, just a 'character' who was clearly 'Spanish speaking' but who insisted in broken English that he was a Falklander. Over the weeks I interacted with people on all sides. Islanders, Brits, Argentinians, Americans, Anglo-Argentinians, Scots nationalists, Irish nationalists.....

Wow, a Brit pretending to be an Argentinian pretending to be a Falkland Islander. A sockpuppet of a sockpuppet? That's...meta.

It wouldn't be my chosen method of parody - I like people to know that what I'm doing is satire. Even so, I have to admit it was a convincing hoax. I recall at the time gleefully leaping aboard with his Twibbon campaign to demand a UN referendum of the Islanders to decide their future, thinking, "Heehee, doesn't he realise that this would actually strengthen the case for the status quo?" As it turns out, he knew exactly that.

In his coming-out speech he makes the point that while he does not believe the Islanders should become Argentine against their will, both camps could do with less rhetoric and more discussion. I'm unashamedly on the pro-British side (or, more accurately, pro-Islander and pro-self-determination, since I'm not given to flagwaving) but I have to concede it's a valid point.

While I've been happy to admit I was fooled and have a chuckle about it, @FreeTheFalkland has been greeted with howls of outrage from some tweeters.

" is your next project to tweet the people of Homs as a President Assad supporter?"

"Over educated dick takes piss out of island yokels, &then posts blog on how he suffered for his art" 

"If #Selfdetermination is the sacred cow you're prodding, don't be surprised to get a swift kick in the a$$" 

"can we now call @freethefalkland a English cunt now?"

Interestingly, and I suspect this isn't a coincidence, every howl of outrage I've seen has been from a British card-carrying Tory. Of the Islanders themselves, I've only come across one - @BennyinBritain - who has commented on the affair and he seems quite sanguine about it.

One might suggest that these Tories have been shouting their nationalist rhetoric at what they've now discovered is a non-existent target, and they're livid about it.

Outrage about outrage. Once again, how very meta.

Humour is a good way to defuse anger and hate, which is why I started @notHMSDauntless. I suspect in his own way @FreeTheFalkland had a similar objective. The actual HMS Dauntless leaves Britain tomorrow for the Falklands, so I suspect @notHMSDauntless may soon be navigating some choppy waters of its own.

In the meantime, I refer those outraged about @FreeTheFalkland's ruse to his earlier advice. They should take the chilling pill.

32. Visit the Newport Transporter Bridge

Since we're talking about Newport, it's obligatory to post this video.



Anyway, the Newport Transporter Bridge. Quick history summary (click on the pic to embiggen):

But I prefer to just say they built it for the lolz.

These days it's wedged between a scabby-looking housing estate and an equally scabby-looking industrial estate. It's fun to visit and be winched across the River Usk at a leisurely pace - £1 a go for car drivers, free for pedestrians and cyclists. A couple of local chav kids were going back and forth on  it on their bikes because....well, because there probably isn't much else to do on a Sunday afternoon in Pillgwenlly. There's also a visitor centre, but it keeps erratic opening hours and was closed when I visited

A few pics of this engineering curiosity in action.

The River Usk is definitely not a pleasant river to be strolling about though. Quite frankly, it pongs.

If you're wondering where else you can find a transporter bridge, there's a helpful sign.

The Festival Season Approacheth

Every year I book myself in to do two or three summer festivals with the Oxfam Stewards. It's a bit of a summer ritual for me. Since I've now made my choices, and a lot of the lineups have now been announced, I thought I'd take some time to browse the options.

In recent years there's been a bit of an explosion in summer festivals, and I remember a few summers back there were people pondering whether there were "too many" festivals, as though choice and variety are somehow a bad thing. It's not as if anyone's being dragged to go to them all, exhausted, muttering, "Can't take it...Liver about to explode....Can't cope...with...another...Keane...encore..."

For several years I was a regular at the Reading Festival - first as a punter, then as an Oxfam steward.

Reading 2006

This is a bit of an achievement in itself, since so many people quickly find themselves feeling old at Reading/Leeds. To be fair, I've had a lot of good times at Reading, but as years progress you eventually get tired of the corporate lineup, the twatted twatty 17 year old twats, and of course those relaxing Sunday night riots...

True story from Brown Camp, Reading 2005. It's Sunday night and people are chucking baked bean cans onto campfires to make them explode. It's a bit like trying to sit and have a beer in an artillery barrage. 

 A guy comes up to my group and asks, "Are you people exploding bean cans on your campfire?" 

 Me, "No, that wasn't us. It's the people over there who are doing it."

"Do you know how long it takes to explode? Mine won't go off."

Ultimately, you will look back at Reading/Leeds in the same way as a clumsy adolescent grope in the Sixth Form library. You enjoyed it at the time, but it's very much part of your past, and there's a distinct lack of bragging rights about it.

Of course one can't talk about festivals without mentioning Glastonbury. Yeah, yeah, this post has now gone too commercial. To be fair though, Glasto is always about far more than what's headlining the Pyramid Stage, so if big-name bands aren't your thing, there's always plenty of smaller venues to explore.

Glastonbury 2011 - yes, that is ankle-deep brown slime I'm standing in

Seriously, I don't get people who whine about the Pyramid lineup. Do they really wander past the Green Fields, Arcadia, the Park, the Cabaret Tent, the Circus, the Cinema Tent, the Other Stage, the Dance Village, the Glade and the John Peel Stage muttering, "God, I just don't like what's on the Pyramid Stage. What am I going to do with my time? If only I brought a book." Personally I barely saw a thing at the Pyramid last year and still had plenty to see and do.

Speaking of whining, Glasto years can be divided into three categories.

- Years when people whine about the heat.

- Years when people whine about the rain and mud.

- Years when people whine about it not being on.

This year it's in the third category, because it's 2012 and therefore the London Olympics or the End of the World or summat. Hence people are going to have to pick alternatives.

One that I will be going to this year is Bestival on the Isle of Wight. It started out as a little boutique festival. Nowadays it's a bit like a smaller Reading, only more eclectic and quirky, and less corporate and twatty. It has its traditional Saturday fancy dress themes.

Using the force at Bestival 2009

This year the theme is wildlife, which I think is a bit of a cop-out. A lot of people tend to go for furry animal costumes as a default anyway. Partly because it's cheap and easy, but also because Bestival is right at the end of the festival season and it's getting a bit chilly for that "slutty Jar Jar Binks" costume.

Personally I think there's a lot to be said for going to small, out-of-the way festivals. One that I did last year and will be returning to in 2012 is Shambala. It has about 8000 punters, which pretty much equates to a corner of Glasto. It also has a secret lineup, so you don't know what you're going to see until you get there (hint: it's not likely to be Beyonce and U2). That way it's not about the lineup, it's about the experience. You just get to bimble until you find something interesting. You usually don't have to wander long.

Making new friends at Shambala 2011

On the subject of small 'uns, one I'll be going to for the first time this year is Beautiful Days. It's curated by The Levellers, and I've only ever heard good things about it. It's got a reputation for being fun and friendly.

There's some that I've contemplated but never got around to going to, such as the Secret Garden Party and Latitude. If I were to go to the latter, I suspect I'd spend far more exploring the poetry, literature and comedy venues than the (frankly rather sludgey-looking) music lineup.

But then that's something I've noticed about myself in terms of what I've come to look for in a festival.   When I was younger it was all about the lineup of my annual pilgrimages to Reading - I'd be dashing from stage to stage to see this or that band. Now I'm more keen on exploring the full package to get an all-round experience. Maybe it's the wisdom of age. Or maybe I've just learned not to be excited about whatever the media are touting as the Next Big Thing Future Saviours of Rock'n'Roll. There'll be another one along in a minute.

Snow-Capped Peaks on the Brecon Beacons

I went out onto the Brecon Beacons with the South Wales Adventure Team today. Here, have a few pictures that were too good not to share. Click on the images to embiggen.

Also, we came across what looked like a burrow hole, but I've no clue what animal would be big enough to burrow such a big hole. I wasn't about to stick my head in it to find out. Might not get it back.

P-P-Pick up a Penguin

My parody Twitter account hms_dauntless has been let out of the brig, though hastily renamed @nothmsdauntless in order to escape a keelhauling from the Twitter mods.

In celebration, and to honour my new Twitter chums in the Falkland Islands, here's some photos of penguins that I took while in Edinburgh Zoo last week.

Cute little blighters, and they didn't seem to have any fear of humans at all. Go up to them and they just stand there like, "Yeah, I'm a penguin! How awesome is that?" They stink of fish, mind.

@notHMSDauntless also seems to have picked up some Argentine followers. So, in their honour, here's a Patagonian sealion.

Visit the Pandas at Edinburgh Zoo

I was in Edinburgh this week, and decided to take the opportunity to go see the pandas. Though I nearly didn't get to as I only realised the day before that you have to pre-book a panda viewing on the Edinburgh Zoo website. Fortunately I managed to get my booking done in time.

Only Tian Tian (the female panda) was available for viewing as Yang Guang (the male) was having a rest from a busy half-term week of.....erm, being a panda? Before going in we got strict warnings to turn off the flashes on our cameras because that would stress Tian Tian, and also not to run around making noise as that would stress her too.

Christ, pandas sounds like wussy creatures. No wonder they're endangered.

As it turned out though, Tian Tian wasn't paralysed by stage fright, and in fact came out for a good old wander by the glass, so I was able to take some excellent photos.

Cute. Seriously cute. :)

My Tour of Duty as a Pretend Warship

This blog is usually for the purposes of logging various silly tasks that I set myself. Here's an off-topic post about a small (but equally silly saga) on Twitter.

A couple of weeks ago I set up a parody Twitter account, @hms_dauntless, intended to gently mock the current political and media storm over the sovereignty of the Falklands Islands. Within a short period it acquired 410 followers, including quite a few people from the Falklands, not to mention three members of the Military Wives Choir, randomly enough. Then it promptly got suspended by Twitter for "impersonation".

I'm a bit surprised that it got suspended. After all, the account profile clearly labelled it as fictional. Also, I suspect the actual Royal Navy ship HMS Dauntless doesn't actually release tweets like "Anyone else aroused by me? I've got a great big gun and honking great cannonballs" or refer to the Humboldt Squid as "mini-Cthulhus".

I've filled in a suspension appeal form to Twitter, in the hope that they'll let HMS Dauntless out of the brig. In the meantime, here's a few thoughts from me about what I've learned over the past couple of weeks.

The initial inspiration for launching @hms_dauntless was the Twitterstorm after the website of the Penguin News (the Falklands newspaper) turned out to have an image of Argentina's President Kirchner labelled "bitch".

Well, I sniggered. I've labelled files some funny things in my time. But various people in Argentina weren't amused and started sending the paper's editor, Lisa Watson, abusive tweets.

Lisa Watson seems to be made of fairly sturdy stuff. During the 1982 occupation by Argentina, and when she was a 12 year old child, she famously refused to get off a sofa when ordered to do so by Major Patricio Dowling, the notorious security chief on the islands. She certainly doesn't seem the type to be intimidated by a few obnoxious tweets. Indeed, she's replied to and engaged with people on Twitter to give her reasons why she wants to remain British, and doesn't want her home to be handed over to a foreign power. She's been pretty effective at putting across her point of view. I've noticed that some people started tweeting at her in an abusive way, and then went on to have a civilised conversation with her.

I decided to have a laugh and launch the good ship @hms_dauntless into this Twitterstorm. A gentle parody of the actual ship that's about to be deployed to the Falklands, @hms_dauntless was sent to patrol the Twittersphere, with its inaccurate missiles that wreak death and destruction to any passing sea life. As I was setting up the account, "Argentina loves One Direction" was trending on Twitter. Hence the profile described the ship as "Not as popular in Argentina as One Direction".

It was probably a good time to start a silly parody about the Falklands, since over the past two weeks the debate has got sillier and sillier. First Sean Penn - a genuinely talented but undeniably narcissistic star - decided to wade into the argument (he's since published a more nuanced, but also rather garbled, view on the subject). Then Ben Fogle waded in by threatening to feed Sean Penn to a crocodile. @hms_dauntless tweeted, "Renewed tensions between Sean Penn and Ben Fogle, Crocodiles report, "our voice is not being heard. We should determine our own dinner". Followed later by, "Breaking news. Will I Am refuses to take sides on crocodile dispute: encourages Sean Penn and Ben Fogle to negotiate".

On Twitter, things got sillier again with the sudden emergence of @freethefalkland, a hilarious, obviously-fake account, supposedly by a Falkland Islander. It proclaims to speak, "The true about the Falkland Island People and their search for the independence from the Britain." Actually, I shouldn't be so cynical about assuming he's a fake. After all, he insists, "I not Argentinian but if I was the Argentinian I would not be ashame. I am citizen of world friend. Take the chilling pill." Either way, he's been a wonderful comic foil for @hms_dauntless, albeit unwittingly. I hope he doesn't get banned.

Behind the silliness though, there is a real issue. The Falklands are a place I've never visited and most likely never will (though I'd love to - from their tourist website it looks like an amazing place), but the brief voyage of @hms_dauntless has put me in touch with tweeters on the Islands. As well as Lisa Watson I can recommend @joinfalklands, @siannybonny and @boundungagged. Behind all the rhetoric over territory and sovereignty, these are real people who clearly just want to get on with their way of life without being hounded by a foreign power. We should support that.

If Twitter is anything to go by, most of their support from back in Britain seems to be coming from the political right. This disappoints me, because I'm from the left and I think there are strong left-wing reasons to support the self-determination of a people from the unwanted encroachment of another nation. Sadly, too many of my compatriots on the left don't see that. Maybe it's because of Britain's history of being the unwanted encroacher on too many occasions. Or maybe they've swallowed the Argentine rhetoric about British "colonialism" (So? Argentina is also founded on colonialism. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is not a Native Patagonian name.) Either way, George Galloway's appearance on 10 O'Clock Live was toe-curlingly embarrassing - not that Galloway is any kind of good ambassador for the left in general anyway. (Don't mock, righties. You've got Robert Kilroy-Silk).

I hope that @hms_dauntless successfully appeals her court martial and sails the Twitter oceans once more. In the meantime, I plan to take the chilling pill.

I polished off a couple of tasks for this blog while in Edinburgh this week. The zoo had lots of penguins. It made me think of my Islander chums on Twitter.

Do Some Astronomy

When I added this task, I anticipated it would involve stumbling around a field in the middle of the night, staring through a telescope with some bearded men in duffel coats. Which sounds cold and unfashionable. As it turns out, I've since discovered, thanks to Alice Sheppard, the delights of Zooniverse, in which web users are asked to help sort through astronomical data from the comfort of their computer. No running around at night. No beards. No duffel coats. At the moment I've been playing around on the Galaxy Zoo pages, in which you're shown images of galaxies from the Hubble space telescope. You're then asked whether the galaxy is rounded or is a disk, if there's any spirals, if there's anything else in the photo, and so on. I'm finding it strangely addictive. For more data-crunching for the benefit of astronomy, there's Planet Hunters, looking for "transit features" that might suggest a planet around a star. Or you can help map craters with Moon Zoo. This is science, my friends! Science!

Write to my MP #spartacusreport

This blog has gone a bit quiet due to me having a lazy Christmas. Time for me to crack on with the to-do list.


I did think about using this task for something incredibly silly - maybe write something in green crayon demanding that everybody in Britain be given a free tricycle, or to suggest that Angry Birds is a CIA conspiracy. Then it occured to me that there is such a thing as Poe's Law.

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

This is just a guess on my part, but I can't help but feel that no matter what ridiculous letter I come up with, there'll be some constituent somewhere writing something even madder.

Besides, there is something I wanted to write to my MP about which is actually worthwhile. Those of you on Twitter might have noticed the hashtag #spartacusreport flying about. This is a report (actually entitled Responsible Reform) which has been put together by disabled people to show how the government has been misleading Parliament about the true scale of cuts to disability benefits. I know quite a few disabled people who are, quite frankly, terrified about what's likely to happen to them, and are worried about how they're going to survive.


To quote the authors of the report.

Our report shows that :
-The Government broke its own code of consultation over the DLA reform-The Government has entirely misrepresented the views submitted as part of the consultation, giving a partial and biased view.-The Government claim that DLA must be reformed as claims has risen 30% in 8 years - we find that these statistics are entirely misleading and give a "distorted view"-There is overwhelming opposition to the new benefit, Personal Independence Payments-Some elements of PIP appear to already be going ahead, despite a rejection of the plans and before legislation has passed.-The Government are repeatedly warned that proposals for PIP may break International and UK equality and Human Rights legislation

I've used Write to Them to send a letter to my MP (Jenny Willot, Lib Dem, Cardiff Central) 

Dear Jennifer Willott,
I would like you read the Responsible Reform report, also referred to
on the Internet as the Spartacus Report.
The report can be found online here:
https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx/Responsible%20Reform%20for%20screen%20readers.doc?cid=cba86408918caa9e
This report into Disability Allowance Reform has been written,
researched and funded by disabled people. As one of your constituents,
I am very concerned by its findings and the misrepresentation of
disabled people that it exposes.
Please will you read the report and support sick and disabled people in
calling for a pause to Personal Independence Payments in light of this
new research.
I look forward to your response,

As well as writing to your MP, you can also support and publicise this report by using the #spartacusreport hashtag on Twitter, add the Spartacus Report twibbon to your Twitter profile, and sign this e-petition calling for a stop and review of the disability benefit cuts.