Heat Street Google Search Fail

[Update at end of post]

That Murdoch-bankrolled website Heat Street is not only less credible than the Drudge Report, Guido Fawkes and even Breitbart, it is also, in its projection of (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch’s prejudices, terminally inept when it comes to doing something so basic as interpreting a Google search (Ms Mensch was famously ridiculed after misunderstanding Google search auto-complete). We know this thanks to an article titled “Race Riot School Claims scrubbed from Google”.

Market Hall, Crewe. And no race riots

Heat Street earlier this month reported on a playground fight at a school in north west England - that had happened back in February! Why the delay? Once again, this is down to the obsession of Ms Mensch: the school concerned, the Sir William Stanier Community School, is in Crewe - the same Crewe where Zelo Street is based.

Here was a chance for Ms Mensch to tell the world that the home of Zelo Street was a lawless place, a hotbed of racial tension and unrest at all those scary foreigners. It was, to no surprise, bullshit, and not even well-crafted bullshit. Six students were excluded from school, and the rest was the stuff of ignorance and rumour. We know this as the Police attended after the fight, and their record matches that of the school.

All mainstream local politicians, including MP Edward Timpson - from the same party that Ms Mensch once represented - have worked with the Police, the school, and the communities involved to tackle any concerns. As befits a good Heat Street story, the only one shooting his mouth off is Brian Silvester, who jumped from the Tory Party before they kicked him out after he was convicted over his fire trap bedsits. Silvester is now in UKIP, who clearly aren’t fussed about their representatives’ criminal records.

So there was no story, but for Heat Street, if you don’t succeed, well, wait a week and then suck some more seed. Now, readers are told “A school which was the scene of an alleged race riot is having its Google search results manipulated, apparently to banish unflattering accounts of the incident … Further investigation into the aftermath of the brawl has shown that the EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’ laws to manipulate its search results”.

That doesn’t make sense, which is not good for a website headed by someone who read English Language and Literature at Oxford. Moreover, telling readers “searching its name within the EU brings up a warning that results have been changed under the ruling” shows a staggering level of ignorance. Many EU based Google searches carry that warning.

When it is discovered that “Comparing search results from the UK, an EU member, with those from the US shows there is indeed a difference”, that does not mean any results have been “scrubbed”. It just means the sets of results are different. But how about one last try for credibility? “Nonetheless, the school, which has already proved itself willing to go to extreme lengths to guard its reputation, has much to gain from changing how it appears to the outside world”. Yeah, right.

They hired a solicitor and a PR to deal with the press and any legal hassle. Hello Heat Street droids! That is not exceptional. And Crewe is still not a lawless hotbed of racial tension. As if a resident of New York City has room to call anyone else out on that.

[UPDATE 1630 hours: just to show the level of ineptitude in operation here, a Tweet advertising the Heat Street article from Louise Mensch herself is included.

In it, she claims "Race Riot School Claims Scrubbed from Google, including 'Slovenians forced English kids to submit'".

There were no claims including the term "Slovenians". There are, as far as is known, few if any Slovenian citizens in Crewe. The word Ms Mensch may have been searching for is "Slovakians".

The defence rests. No further questions, m'Lud]