Lynch Mob in Britain
Deeply Disturbing
The lowest common denominator mentality is alive and well in Glorious Britain. “Most people” (according to a man-in-the-street soundbite on the BBC News yesterday, so it must be true) now think benefit scroungers are the ruin of the nation and treated like dogs. Truly – the news article used this man to justify the April 1st cuts.
Also, at the last count, over 58,000 would be quite happy for the couple in this screenshot to be strung up, bashed to death in prison, hung drawn and quartered, dumped in the streets of Derby – you get the idea.
Deeply Disturbing Doubts
But this looks really bad to me.
Q. Oh! How so? You saw the telly last night, didn’t you?
Well actually, that’s part of the point.
- How is it that just a few hours after the three convictions for parents Mick and Mairead Philpott, and their friend Paul Mosley, how is it that three main TV channels are running in-depth full length investigations into the three and the deaths?
- How is it they all have recorded interviews with witnesses and others that knew the threesome?
- How is it that the police, weeks ago, released secretly recorded audio of the threesome while the trial was in progress?
- How is it that the Daily Mail ties the child deaths and lifestyles of the threesome to the benefit scrounging ethos of the recently introduced welfare cuts?
I’ve Seen It All Before
The media hysteria and manipulation of facts we’ve all seen before. How do the 58k Facebook lynch mob so easily forget this?
Daily Mail Changes Headline After Vile Benefits Murder Comments Backlash
Like the cowards that the Daily Mail is, it punches up nasty headlines to get the sales, gets a backlash, then can’t stand by its own words – so changes them. Here’s how:
Initial Headline and URL
DM Initial Welfare Headline
The URL for this page is http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303120/Mick-Philpott-vile-product-Welfare-UK-Derby-man-bred-17-babies-milk-benefits-GUILTY-killing-six.html- but just try clicking it!
You’ll find that you are redirected to a wholly different page, similarly designed but with a different headline. Click Here to try. The original page that you should go to is on the right.
Redirected page with New Headline
DM Redirected Welfare Headline
If you clicked the link you’ll be taken here, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303120/Mick-Philpott-Judge-hears-good-father-awaits-sentencing-killing-SIX-children-house-blaze.html which looks like this image on the left.
But check it through – most images are intact, their comments and much of the text. Key to the change is the removal of the “Vile” headline. However, a Google search on the headline still pulls the original page from the vaults – and this is when the redirect takes effect.
Daily Mail Sales
Still, it must’ve had an effect on sales, else why else would the two journos and their odious editor do it? The Daily Mail is not without “form” in this respect.
JIll Dando and Barry George
DM Barry George Conviction
The conviction and media witch-hunt on the run-in to George’s conviction is artfully recorded here on the Daily Mail website (image on left). Complete with hysterical quotes from the judge over the killing of the nation’s favourite TV gal,
Mr Justice Gage told George, 41, that he was ‘unpredictable and dangerous’ – and said that there was no doubt that the murder was ‘premeditated’. But he added: ‘Why you did it will never be known.’
…the Mail continued in a salubrious investigation into George’s past.
Barry George On DM Website
Now Barry George is a troubled man, having several personality disorders and being of limited intelligence, but, as was proved eight years later, Judge Gage was seriously wrong when he said that there was no doubt that George committed premeditated murder.
In fact, the whole conviction and the media stories around it were completely wrong.
Indeed the Daily Mail has now just reported that Dando’s murder is unlikely to be solved and that George spent 8 years banged up for it. But compare and contrast the imagery of Barry George used in the two articles and the text to tell the tales…. so very different, are they not?
Michelle Keegan Cunt Comment
But let’s thank goodness that Facebook wasn’t around in 2002 so that dishy doll psychos like Michelle Keegan couldn’t spill their vile venom under the disguise of public comment. She now has a more recent one saying “This cunt needs hanging share if you agree”
I Disagree
Obviously. I’m a Buddhist.
Also obviously, the man as presented and as I see him, and the others likewise, are the pits. But this does not deserve a witch hunt with thousands up and down the country baying for their private parts to be burnt in oil. Those doing so should better beware.
Faulty Convictions Abound
Because British justice has a long running habit of throwing curved balls. For the last few decades we’ve seen a continuous stream of high profile murders and atrocities, where;
- culprits are found,
- the media has it hysterical bitch fit,
- hanging is called for and worse,
- and then amazingly,
- everyone was wrong,
- apologies are made
- and lessons must be learned.
A few are listed here, Long-standing miscarriages of justice in the UK
But at least most of these people didn’t die for the alleged crime. Some, appallingly, never really recovered from their time in jail and died early, sad deaths. For not doing something. Take Sean Hodgson for instance. 27 years inside for doing nothing, then dies three years later.
Prior to this, folks really did die for things they didn’t do – Timothy Evans had the ignominy and anguish of knowing that Christie killed his wife & daughter, yet was hanged for their murders. (The story is curious and involved yet it’s plain, especially following the posthumous pardon, that Evans was disturbed and probably simple.)
Philpott et al certainly appear as scum, guilty of the deaths of their children.
But give it time. The spotlight glare into which the case has been placed coupled to the hysterical benefit-loaded media commentary give good grounds for a flawed judicial process.
- At the time of Timothy Evans conviction, a similar media frenzy was in place.
- Similarly for the Birmingham Pub (not) Bombers
- and Judith Ward the M62 (not) bomber
All of these (and more) have had long drawn out media frenzies where the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade appeared, just as now, like a syphilis from the sewers of unclean thoughts. They should be better than that, better than a killer.
Folks should learn from history. Getting hot and bothered now will not resurrect the dead children.
Akismet and Jetpack Issues, Stop Spammers and CloudFlare Save the Day
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My Web Host Penalised Me Yet Helped Speed Up My Site
Introduction
shared web hosting
This site used to be hosted on Site5, in Texas. I had a shared web host account, about the cheapest there is on Site5 though by no means the cheapest around (I’ve had experience of really cheap hosts….). It worked alright, site management was good. Then, I got hit by spammers. Twice. Big time.
Each time, this slowed the site down, made life hell for other shared accounts, especially when I introduced WordPress plugins to counter this.
Naturally, Site5 advised me to stop the hits or they’d pull my account (they’d already temporarily disabled it). They advised me to cut the plugins, using GoDaddy’s plugin testing tool, WordPress Plugin Performance Profiler (P3). So I did this, and after some trial and error, got the running processes down. Of course, I lost a bit of neat functionality.
Testing Times
Apart from internal WordPress testing, it pays to test your site as if you are someone else somewhere else. Pingdom have a set of tools that does just this, testing from various global locations and I can recommend it.
Result!
I used an iterative approach, testing various combinations of plugins and systems to end up as being in the top 8% sites for speed in the world! Not bad for free is all I can say! You’ll see in the screenshot above, that 92% of websites are slower than mine…. So is it really free? Here goes…..
Paid For:
Free:
Pingdom Says
Automattic Issues
WordPress (which this site uses) is built by the Automattic team and naturally have expanded over time. I’ve used their plugins for many years, Akismet from the off, which is a comment spam blocking system. Latterly, they came out with Jetpack, where they say,
P3 Selected Output
This is all well and good, except when I tested it using the P3 plugin profiler, Jetpack was the biggest drag on everything! The worst part of it, was that actually, I was only using a small part of its features and it was still the biggest suck on performance.
So much for the awesome cloud power. On top of this, you’re now supposed to pay for parts of Automattic’s offerings, like Akismet, the comment spam blocker while a major offering of theirs was actually slowing my site right up!
What Did I do?
Change host!
Well not initially, actually, though the heavy-handed Site5 approach got my ire a bit I must admit. I did do loads of tests with a host of caching, anti-spam and page load improvement plugins first…
Vidahost
I now use Vidahost in the UK. The site is faster to manage (along with my others) since the servers are in the UK with me, and it’s cheaper, providing almost the same functionality and tools as Site 5. I took the opportunity to clean out a few dead files in the process, but essentially, all was moved, database and files. The lot. Just twiddled config.php and the .htaccess file a bit.
I did worry that my American visitors, who are actually in the majority, would suffer slower speed and thus I’d get hit in Google rankings, but hey, wait for later…!
I got it all working and as part of the whole “thinking” process since the very first warnings from Site 5, I’d been looking for better things.
Looking at Things Closely
So I like certain plugins or functionality. I try and use the one that works best for me. Too many plugins make a big hit on the server and thus website loading.
Caching
A way round this is caching. e.g. If a post is created and has related posts clagged on the bottom using YARPP, then the post is cached and YARRP is only running once. How and where the caching is done is the crux of the issue…
Site 5 suggested W3 Total Cache as a better alternative to Wp Super Cache, which I’ve used for years. Naturally, I’ve tested this and my conclusion was that it could be fast, and it was fast for a while, but over time on each of my sites I got issues around lock-ups and the huge and complex caching system around files, databases and sprites. This list is long.
I’ve also tested various database query caching plugins likewise over the years. W3 Total Cache incorporates this method too, but ultimately, it made too much work for not a lot of difference IMHO, since I’m lazy.
However, it did point me to one thing! CloudFlare.
CloudFlare
CloudFlare Admin1
Ah. The power of the cloud is back!
Not only that – it works!
CloudFlare Admin2
You re-direct your DNS at your domain registrar (joker.com in my case) to CloudFlare’s DNS servers, set up the site malware protection level you want – then after a few hours your whole site is cached and protected. Best of all, it’s free for a little site like this!
In fact, using CloudFlare speeded everything up even before I got caching going again…
Further Plugin Work
Now, I went back to Wp Super Cache from Doncha and it all works fine. Site speed good. I then ditched Jetpack after testing it again. It really does interfere with all comment plugins, and I really like this comment one as do people who comment here:
It works great and does everything I want. So Jetpack, it’s bye bye. Take all your fancy commenting system, your stats, your social media and fancy image handling.
But What About Comment Spam?
Stop Spammer Results2
Stop Spammer Results1
I’ve found the best solution is a plugin called Stop Spammer Registrations Plugin. It needed a bit of fine tuning and a re-activation of Akismet to whip out a few wisps of spammer, but it works and seems to trap and report more spammers than ever Akismet did alone. Akismet, by itself, does the commenting bit in tandem with the plugin, rather well.
Registration Spam
SABRE Results
Unfortunately, during testing, a few unwanted visitors managed to register on the website. They can’t do real harm since I use the lowest role level at registration time. So I re-enabled SABRE and since then, no more unwanted visitors. I’ve tested SABRE as a visitor and the settings I’ve chosen are just about right – I’ve had issues with it previously when it blocked registration! But reducing the feature set and re-uploading a clean plugin fixes that.
CloudFlare and the CDN Issue
I toyed around getting a CDN to host images. But they (can) cost and anyway, I’ve gone off Amazon and others because of their anti-Wikileaks actions plus they don’t pay UK tax…
Delayed Image Loading
However, in the course of my reading, I found that images can be loaded just as the page comes into view, which speeds up page loading, and as a consequence the perceived nippiness of a site. The plugin BJ Lazy Load does this for me and works brilliantly. Check this last post about Australia which has a lot of medium sized images to see them pop into view!
Delayed Javascript Loading
I use two plugins that handle this end of the issue around JavaScript.
Statistics
WP SlimStat1
Well, Jetpack is gone. I won’t be using it unless some serious improvements are made, it being the prime reason for the server load that brought me to this position in the first place. As soon as I disabled it (and simultaneously blocked all comments to the site, which isn’t the best thing, this being a blog after all), all server loads went away.
I now use SlimStat and it works very well. I’ve tried many over time, including Google’s analysis tools, my webhost’s stats tools, Wassup and more, but for now, this is it.
Conclusion
My site works pretty fast and is pretty protected from the bad guys. I actually still use more plugins than what is usually recommended – 50 is a huge lot according to web gurus and sages. Currently there are 31 in active operation with 8 inactivated. I love trying new ones, it’s like that, that’s just the way it is.
The delayed image loading is particularly apparent on a post with a lot of images, say this recent one. The post loads fast and you see the first images load, and as you scroll down you’ll see other images appear with a slight delay.
All the other stuff is incremental improvement, with the biggest, by far, being the free CloudFlare service which I cannot recommend highly enough. It’s a no-brainer, go and do it?
My Full List?
These are the plugins currently running that help my site work. Many are for security, which demonstrates the state of play versus the bad internet guys full well.
Related posts:
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Introduction I’m a born twiddler. Even though something works quite happily, I’ll try something else. So it was yesterday. In an effort to improve the ‘user experience’ and promote a bit of feedback on this website, I’ve been twiddling with various plugins. Caching for Speed Some time ago I changed caching methods from Donncha’s WP...