Chorley In Bizarre Rigged Poll Rerun? Now THAT'S Not Normal...
Murdoch hack Matt Chorley hasn't had a good week. Readers may recall his tortured tones on Times Radio as he was forced to announce Jeremy Corbyn as the winner of his 'Best Prime Minister We Never Had' Twitter poll last Monday
Young Chorles was so put out of sorts by the unwanted result that he was still bleating about it 24 hours later, and despite claiming the poll had been no more than 'a bit of Bank Holiday fun' went to the effort of making a pitiful spoof video attempting to mock the former Labour leader.
So he's not a good loser, that seems plain. But according to one eagle-eyed Twitter user, it seems as if he may have spent his Saturday taking somewhat deranged steps, involving considerable effort, to try and rewrite the result.
The Twitter account @StefGotBooted posted this, after being informed of a (very) new website that was apparently trying to rerun the poll:
A WHOIS search, we're then told, revealed the registrant of said website - registered this very say, 5th September, as one 'Matthew Horley'. Curiouser and curiouser...
A cursory look at the poll website - impartially titled 'Corbyn Must Lose', offers a choice of five candidates for the title: Charles Kennedy, Ken Clarke, Michael Portillo, bizarrely Jo Swinson - and Jeremy Corbyn. Fair enough, you might think - but when you try to vote, things get strange...
Vote Kennedy, and the screen spins in a dizzying barrel roll. Try and vote Portillo, and this flashes up:
If for whatever reason you tried to vote for Jo Swinson, she fares even worse:
Vote for Ken Clarke though, and you're in clover - alone among the choices, a click on Ken causes the Vote button to glow invitingly green, and if you click it, you're taken to a page titled 'Arise, Sir Ken' where you can view the happy news that the preferred winner has captured almost 120% of the vote...
But try to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, and you're very much on a loser. For a start, the vote button is unclickable, disappears when you hover over it, and reappears, still unclickable, elsewhere on the page. Anyone would think someone didn't want you to vote for him...
A glance through the source code for the site throws up a few more interesting things, not least the inclusion of Matt Chorley's Twitter handle within the first few lines, as well as 'Who should have been PM? Let's do it properly this time'
And apparent concern from whoever was charged with writing the code for the site, where the voting function doesn't even include the ability to vote for Corbyn...
As @StefGotBooted points out, a Google search for 'Matt Chorley Ken Clarke' throws up this 2019 piece for the Times in second place - behind another flattering Chorley-penned article on the subject of good ol' Uncle Kenneth...
That this undeniably odd website exists is not in question, but there is of course no concrete proof that its existence is the work of young Chorley - if it is an elaborate mickey-take of the hapless hack, we applaud its creators. If it IS the work of the Times Radio 'journalist' might we suggest that he has far too much time on his hands of a weekend, and is developing a pattern of behaviour bordering on the dangerously obsessive?
A hobby would help perhaps - we hear an allotment can be very relaxing...