Politics Thread!

[zip accident]

This is perfectly ridiculous.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64223974

Boris Johnson erased from Grant Shapps spaceport picture

Business Secretary Grant Shapps has denied doctoring a picture on his Twitter feed to remove former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Mr Shapps posted a picture of a ministerial visit to Spaceport Cornwall, as he hailed the first rocket launch from UK soil.

But social media users spotted that Mr Johnson, who also went on the trip in 2021, had disappeared from the picture.

Right, so this picture:



...is not just this picture, with Boris photoshopped out of it?



I love these denials. Is he really trying to imply - and have us believe - that the picture just photoshopped itself? Like, it requires a person to actively do this. You don't just post a photo on Twitter and, oops, I lent on the "erase Boris" key on my keyboard by accident and he magically disappeared.

In fairness, I guess it might be that it wasn't Grant Shapps who did it and it might have been Conservative head office, and he just asked them for an appropriate pic.

I'll grant him that he might not be personally responsible - but he still should be intellectually honest and say "oh, they gave me a photoshopped image", and not stupidly pretend like it's not photoshopped, when it's so fucking blatantly photoshopped. Though, you know, even that wouldn't ring entirely true, as he was there - in that photo - so he was aware that Boris was with him at the time. Thus, he should be at least suspicious how the guy he knew was there with him is not pictured there with him, as his own memory inside his own brain would be reminding him, from having actually been there.


But, as I say, perfectly ridiculous. Fucking about editing Boris out of history... instead of, you know, fixing the NHS, sorting the cost of living crisis, investing in insulation and renewables to prevent this shit ever happening again, negotiating to end the strikes, not bankrupting all our businesses with crippling energy bills (that benefits only billionaires and tyrants, who're wallowing in great profits from all this) and that sort of thing. Also known as "doing your fucking job".

I'm sure there are still some sado-masochists out there who're still going to vote Tory. But, at this point, what the fuck is mentally wrong with them? Do they not have eyes and a brain?

I am convinced that the Soviet version of that pair is one with the "shopped out" person actually shopped in. Are you positive this isn't the same? It is probably now possible to shop stuff that it wasn't in soviet times, but it's still a lot easier to put a figure into a scene than to put in plausible background where they used to be.

[Dio]

It's Grant Shapps. The man's close to a Boris level bullshitter. He's previously had to step back from politics after a heavily denied sock puppet campaign that was shown to actually be him after all.

[zip accident]

It's Grant Shapps. The man's close to a Boris level bullshitter. He's previously had to step back from politics after a heavily denied sock puppet campaign that was shown to actually be him after all.

Maybe, I don't know him from Groucho or Karl. all I am saying is why is Boris there if the photo is recent, and if the photo is old, why isn't there a more recent one?

[The ghost of raids past]

It's Grant Shapps. The man's close to a Boris level bullshitter. He's previously had to step back from politics after a heavily denied sock puppet campaign that was shown to actually be him after all.

Maybe, I don't know him from Groucho or Karl. all I am saying is why is Boris there if the photo is recent, and if the photo is old, why isn't there a more recent one?

Probably because if they went for a new shot there would be an Angry post about using government resources to take a new photo when the old one was available.

Its a total non issue. A photo of the rocket was available, Borris could easily be removed and so it was used, Quelle Horror

[zip accident]

It's Grant Shapps. The man's close to a Boris level bullshitter. He's previously had to step back from politics after a heavily denied sock puppet campaign that was shown to actually be him after all.

Maybe, I don't know him from Groucho or Karl. all I am saying is why is Boris there if the photo is recent, and if the photo is old, why isn't there a more recent one?

Probably because if they went for a new shot there would be an Angry post about using government resources to take a new photo when the old one was available.

Its a total non issue. A photo of the rocket was available, Borris could easily be removed and so it was used, Quelle Horror

Easily? nope.

Could be done, yes, easily, no, for a human that would be several days work, I dunno how good the AI is so maybe that.

My best guess is Boris didn't go, but had to say he'd been, so got himself photo-shopped in, then the original got reused without enough thought.

Actually, the bottom of the rocket by Boris's left shoulder looks strangely fuzzy, maybe it is a shop, if so the rest of it is scarily good.

On a third look, the top of the rocket tapers there too, I just can't be sure.

[Dio]

They left a bit of his elbow behind, chap. A metal bar on the rocket's stand also disappears where Boris was, along with the entire half of the stand he was obscuring. It couldn't be a more obvious photoshop if they'd put cat ears on Shapps.

[rowan]

They also messed up the perspective [and green colour] of that circular logo behind Boris' head.

But are you sure that's Shapps & not Robert Webb? Has anyone seen those 2 together?

[zip accident]

They left a bit of his elbow behind, chap. A metal bar on the rocket's stand also disappears where Boris was, along with the entire half of the stand he was obscuring. It couldn't be a more obvious photoshop if they'd put cat ears on Shapps.

You are right about those, but the general shading on the rocket is very good, as is the ground beneath the rocket. I took the elbow for one of several crates in the background, I completely overlooked the support struts being missing.

What prompted it was the photo of Yezhov on a boat with Stalin, that used to be on Wikipedia; I can't find that pair of images on Wikipedia any more. The water when Yezhov was removed looked too good to me to be faked without software, which didn't exist in the 1940s, and there seemed to be a line around Yezhov as if he'd literally been pasted on after being cut from another image. Backgrounds are hard, even with software, and without it almost impossible. The first the world heard of the editing out of these images was shortly after Stalin's demise, from Beria, who was possibly his murderer. I remember hearing of the claim that the NKDV went around editing old newspapers to take the people out of the images. I suggest it's unlikely that people were taken out of images after the images were published, and it's a lot more likely that they were edited in.

[Whiteball]

Boris was removed from that image. There are many tell-tale signs.
As for removing people from images - these days it is really trivial to get exceptional results. I would go as far to say the one they have done there is actually of poor quality.

And before anyone asks, yes I have done it on many a photo and it really is amazing what you can do with modern software quite easily these days.

[Dio]

Static images, even pre-computer, are not too hard to fake. They only need to be the target quality, and newsprint in particular was very forgiving. Many film mattes often still look respectable today, certainly on equipment of the quality of the time. Hell, even Blake's Seven managed some reasonable ones, it can't have been hard.

[KlaxonCow]

Boris was definitely there.


Here's a different picture of him at the spaceport that day:



Note the guy with the lanyard is the same guy we see in the doctored photo.


And, frankly, even if it were a government minister editing a person into history, rather than editing them out, and then pretending that the obvious photoshop is not an obvious photoshop... it's still the same pathetic, and slightly ridiculous, dishonesty either way. That's the complaint here, not whether it is or isn't a good bit of editing.


p.s. though, that said, the guy standing behind them in the background, looking ominously straight down the barrel of the camera. I could believe he was photoshopped in, or he's some kind of ghost, like that one in "Three Men and a Baby".

[Harlequin]

I remember hearing of the claim that the NKDV went around editing old newspapers to take the people out of the images. I suggest it's unlikely that people were taken out of images after the images were published, and it's a lot more likely that they were edited in.

A photo was taken of me, my Mum and Dad, Police Commander Ken Drury and his wife and son at the Talk of the Town (now the London Hippodrome) for what I think was my ninth birthday. The picture was leaked to the News of the World and the young Drury and myself were removed from the foreground to give the impression of a meal shared just by the four adults. I have no copy of the original photo but I have found online a slightly damaged copy that appears to be partially altered, with Dad's reconstructed chin seemingly showing through my head:


On the top of the front page of the broadsheet NotW the following weekend, I saw my birthday picture with no me in it:


I am unfortunately unable to find a clearer newspaper image but, aside from Dad having a different tie in an uncomfortable position and Mrs Drury's arm being quite longer than it should be, it was quite effective for the pre-digital early nineteen-seventies.

[venusian]

Its a total non issue. A photo of the rocket was available, Borris could easily be removed and so it was used, Quelle Horror

Not for the first time a simple mis-step which could have been nothing was turned into a proof-of-character by doubling down on denial and lying. It's an issue because it highlights, once again, that the government is populated by serial liars.

[Dio]

Someone called out recently the difference between 'lying' and 'bullshitting' and I do think it's worth noting. Liars are hiding something specific. Bullshitters just say whatever comes into their head and genuinely don't care what its relation with the truth is.

Since May, the government has been populated with few liars - not none, but a few - but many bullshitters.

Neither is suitable to be a politician of course.

[gilesgoat]

*SNIP*

.. and you'd think "certain things happen only in Russia" ...