politiquote dog speak

Like the Ladybird book of computers is used by politicians to explain technology, they have another secret weapon for talking to the electorate. I discovered it by accident when it fell out of a briefcase at the Westminster Arms pub, where I was quietly drinking a pint of Shepherd Neame.

We've all heard of dog-whistle politics, well this is a very upfront book. "How to speak Dog."

It explains everything.

The non-sequiturs and the reality bending.

The National Geographic has nailed it, and a few others have cottoned on. Simple messaging without scaryness. That's what the politicians apply to the electorate. "Tell them something resembling a fact. Add an AND and then tell them a conclusion that is a desirable outcome."

So the setting is right, we've just done that election thingy. A pretty shambolic turnout for the main parties. Conservatives minus 1,200 and Labour (instead of picking them up) are minus 80. Oops. So what would the politicians say?

I decided to try out dog speak, based upon the local elections. Theresa and Jeremy are in full swing saying the results implied that the electorate wanted (a) Brexit - just get on with it (b) a general election. Their supporters are saying that both the leaders are brave and have been dealing with a difficult situation. A quotation followed by piffle. I decide to adapt a small javascript to emulate the behavior. Here's Theresa - with a javascripted random outcome:

Eagle eyed may remember that I used to have a random phrase generator on this blog. It was the infamous Jquote and I'm lazy enough to leverage this to build the new javascript. Here's Jeremy:

It passes a dog speak test (blah blah blah, bone) although it would be fun to parameterise the degree of loopiness of the conclusion. I guess the random number seed could do that? Anyway. Here's the source code of the javascript, ready for someone to adapt to make the pretty picture outcomes. I'll call it politiquote.js

//Local Election outcome speech generator
//apologies to javascript programmers everywhere
//politicoquote.js

var Quotation=new Array()

Quotation[0] = “The people have spoken ";
Quotation[1] = “This is a meaningful signal to Parliament";
Quotation[2] = “Sanity is a golden apple with no shoelaces";
Quotation[3] = “Honesty blurts where deception sneezes";
Quotation[4] = “Trust in the vote is seldom mis-placed";
Quotation[5] = “The results were as we had expected";
Quotation[6] = “The results were better than we expected";
Quotation[7] = “Wishes are like goldfish with propellers";
Quotation[8] = “The statistical direction points toward a victory”;

var Piffle=new Array()

Piffle[1] = “The people are right again";
Piffle[2] = “the people say get on with it";
Piffle[3] = “the people want a general election";
Piffle[4] = “it is not our fault as politicians, oh, no.";
Piffle[5] = “so long as we get power your hopes will be quashed";
Piffle[6] = “just give us the power to get on with it";
Piffle[7] = “we are no better than the slime eaters of polycringe";
Piffle[8] = “we will say anything to make it sound all right";

// ======================================
var Q = Quotation.length;
var whichQuotation=Math.round(Math.random()*(Q-1));
var whichPiffle=Math.random()*(Q-1));

function showQuotation(){document.write(Quotation[whichQuotation]);
+ “ and ”
+ showQuotation()(document.write(Piffle[whichPiffle])}
// end