Futures Forum: Brexit: and dark money
In part due to Exeter's MP pushing for investigations:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and Exeter's MP asking for 'a full police inquiry'
Futures Forum: Brexit: and Exeter's MP's voicing of "widespread concern over interference"
Last month, further information was coming to light:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and spending yet more dark money
And with the possibility of a second referendum, things are getting even darker:
Talk of a second Brexit referendum has created a surge in sketchy Facebook ads
There might be a second referendum, but the dark arts of dark ads haven't changed much since the last one
By GIAN VOLPICELLI
Wednesday 27 February 2019
And with the possibility of a second referendum, things are getting even darker:
Talk of a second Brexit referendum has created a surge in sketchy Facebook ads
There might be a second referendum, but the dark arts of dark ads haven't changed much since the last one
By GIAN VOLPICELLI
Wednesday 27 February 2019
...
In October 2018, a shady Facebook page called Mainstream Network was exposed for publishing £257,000’s worth of pro-Brexit ads – including some targeting the chair of the disinformation enquiry, Damian Collins – without providing any information about its financial backers. That hastened Facebook’s roll-out of its new rules on ads, requiring pages pushing political content to reveal who was paying for it. In addition, all political ads started being collected in a searchable online archive.
It could have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. Earlier this month, Open Democracy raised the alarm about a cluster of Facebook pages that were publishing ads supportive of no-deal Brexit, while providing very little information on who was behind the organisations nominally paying for the posts.
One could again lay the blame on Facebook’s doorstep: publishing political ads on the platform only requires a British or EU identity document and a UK bank account. But the problem runs deeper. It has to do, for instance, with the British Electoral Commission’s utter toothlessness when it comes to supervising digital campaigning, let alone forcing an organisation to reveal its backers.
Putting pressure on Facebook might – only might – help us get rid of dark-ads, one day; solving dark-money will not be that simple.
In October 2018, a shady Facebook page called Mainstream Network was exposed for publishing £257,000’s worth of pro-Brexit ads – including some targeting the chair of the disinformation enquiry, Damian Collins – without providing any information about its financial backers. That hastened Facebook’s roll-out of its new rules on ads, requiring pages pushing political content to reveal who was paying for it. In addition, all political ads started being collected in a searchable online archive.
It could have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. Earlier this month, Open Democracy raised the alarm about a cluster of Facebook pages that were publishing ads supportive of no-deal Brexit, while providing very little information on who was behind the organisations nominally paying for the posts.
One could again lay the blame on Facebook’s doorstep: publishing political ads on the platform only requires a British or EU identity document and a UK bank account. But the problem runs deeper. It has to do, for instance, with the British Electoral Commission’s utter toothlessness when it comes to supervising digital campaigning, let alone forcing an organisation to reveal its backers.
Putting pressure on Facebook might – only might – help us get rid of dark-ads, one day; solving dark-money will not be that simple.
The Open Democracy group have suggested ways to 'prevent a rerun of abuses':
A second Brexit referendum is getting more likely. Here’s 3 things that must happen first. | openDemocracy
And has pointed to one source of 'dark money':
MP accuses former Tory official of being a ‘fraudster’ and ‘cowboy’ who exploited legal loophole to hide source of ‘dark money’ | openDemocracy
Here is Al Jazeera reporting:
Brexit, the NHS and the threat of dark money
Exploring the secretive money working to influence the UK's exit from the European Union.
02 Mar 2019
A second Brexit referendum is getting more likely. Here’s 3 things that must happen first. | openDemocracy
And has pointed to one source of 'dark money':
MP accuses former Tory official of being a ‘fraudster’ and ‘cowboy’ who exploited legal loophole to hide source of ‘dark money’ | openDemocracy
Here is Al Jazeera reporting:
Brexit, the NHS and the threat of dark money
Exploring the secretive money working to influence the UK's exit from the European Union.
02 Mar 2019
There are fewer than a thousand hours until the UK leaves the European Union, but people living there are still uncertain about what's going to happen. A "no deal", a long delay, a short delay, a hard Brexit or no Brexit at all, are still possible outcomes.
As the clock ticks down, there's concern that Brexit, in all its forms, will put Britain's health services under strain, and hospitals in the UK are preparing for shortages.
Adam Ramsay, investigative journalist from Open Democracy, worries that Brexit could lead to the dismantling of the National Health Service (NHS).
"The big concern about the NHS with Brexit ... is the way that a key think-tank, which has been influencing government policy very heavily around Brexit and which is pushing a very hard Brexit, is funded by an American trust called the Templeton Foundation in order to promote privatisation of the NHS. And obviously, that's an attempt by American healthcare companies to buy up whole sways of British healthcare."
"So, it's not just about the fears that the government talks about, I am worried about the dismantling of the NHS through the process of Brexit."
Asked about the dark money influencing politics, Ramsay explains: "Dark money is any money that's used to influence politics and comes from a source that's hidden ... Many millions of pounds have been spent during the Brexit referendum, promoting a 'Leave' vote. And when we trace where that money comes from, it very quickly goes back to Britain's network of tax havens and secrecy areas and then it disappears ... so, we don't know who's pumping this money into our politics."
"But it also funds a lot of the main think-tanks ... and the groups trying to influence the Brexit process," Ramsay says. "Politics is shaped by money. We all know that and if we don't know who's paying for what, then there's a massive threat to our debate. Huge chunks of political debate are shaped by people who pretend to be there as sort of innocent intellectuals or think-tanks, but in reality, they're being paid for by some secret source or some business lobby groups."
"There are huge amounts of the money that paid for the Brexit referendum, turns out to have come from powerful business lobby groups ... who seem to be very keen to take Britain away from the regulation of the EU and drag it towards the kind of unregulated space of America, so they can do things like privatise the NHS, so they can slash regulations, so they can keep Britain as the world's money laundry."
Brexit, the NHS and the threat of dark money | UK | Al Jazeera
🇬🇧 Brexit, the NHS and the threat of dark money | Counting the Cost - YouTube
.
.
.
As the clock ticks down, there's concern that Brexit, in all its forms, will put Britain's health services under strain, and hospitals in the UK are preparing for shortages.
Adam Ramsay, investigative journalist from Open Democracy, worries that Brexit could lead to the dismantling of the National Health Service (NHS).
"The big concern about the NHS with Brexit ... is the way that a key think-tank, which has been influencing government policy very heavily around Brexit and which is pushing a very hard Brexit, is funded by an American trust called the Templeton Foundation in order to promote privatisation of the NHS. And obviously, that's an attempt by American healthcare companies to buy up whole sways of British healthcare."
"So, it's not just about the fears that the government talks about, I am worried about the dismantling of the NHS through the process of Brexit."
Asked about the dark money influencing politics, Ramsay explains: "Dark money is any money that's used to influence politics and comes from a source that's hidden ... Many millions of pounds have been spent during the Brexit referendum, promoting a 'Leave' vote. And when we trace where that money comes from, it very quickly goes back to Britain's network of tax havens and secrecy areas and then it disappears ... so, we don't know who's pumping this money into our politics."
"But it also funds a lot of the main think-tanks ... and the groups trying to influence the Brexit process," Ramsay says. "Politics is shaped by money. We all know that and if we don't know who's paying for what, then there's a massive threat to our debate. Huge chunks of political debate are shaped by people who pretend to be there as sort of innocent intellectuals or think-tanks, but in reality, they're being paid for by some secret source or some business lobby groups."
"There are huge amounts of the money that paid for the Brexit referendum, turns out to have come from powerful business lobby groups ... who seem to be very keen to take Britain away from the regulation of the EU and drag it towards the kind of unregulated space of America, so they can do things like privatise the NHS, so they can slash regulations, so they can keep Britain as the world's money laundry."
Brexit, the NHS and the threat of dark money | UK | Al Jazeera
🇬🇧 Brexit, the NHS and the threat of dark money | Counting the Cost - YouTube
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment