Monday, July 29, 2013

Crosby & Cameron's "Cig Society"

It's hard to tell between Prime Minister David Cameron, and lobbyist election strategist, Lynton Crosby who is the dog and who is the tail, and who is wagging who!

The arrogance of both men is pretty evident, they act as if the Labour party who is  Her Majesty's opposition, has no right to oppose and ask what is going on at the heart of British government regarding lobbyist and Australian Lynton Crosby. They behave as if Labour and us "plebs" should just shut up and accept what Cameron says, because the PM has said it and anyway it doesn't matter because this is the "only answer we are getting"! Well the prime minister for "Benson & Hedge Funds" had better realise that his arrogance and aversion to the truth is being duly noted and as the general election approaches he will be quizzed persistently on plain packaging, minimum alcohol pricing, fracking and H5 (Private Hospital Alliance) and goodness knows what else.

Questions also need to be asked why Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood decided to help David Cameron and deny Ed Miliband's request for an inquiry on the basis of a document said to have been drawn up over recent days.This undated and unsigned document is just a distraction and designed to once again mislead the public, it is absolutely no defence, and Heywood should not be allowing himself to become embroiled in politics of the gutter, he should have distanced himself from this intention to deceive the public not actively take part in it!

This is not the first time that Heywood has saved the neck of Cameron and Hunt, he stepped into the breach previously over the Andy Coulson phone hacking/BSkyB scandal, when he (Heywood) decided that there should be no inquiry into why the the former Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt (now the Health Secretary) misled and lied to parliament over his dealings with Rupert and James Murdoch. At that time Hunt was just a couple of hours away from signing over permission for Murdoch to purchase all of BSkyB shares which would have given Murdoch the monopoly over the press and broadcast media in this country, which of course would have given him the power over what news was published! It really is a frightening prospect that one man, (not even a national of this country) was almost handed control of  our news agenda and came to being a hairsbreadth away from being waved through by Jeremy Hunt, with the full knowledge of David Cameron and also the chancellor George Osborne!

The public has the right to demand that the utmost integrity in public life is maintained, but David Cameron is abusing his power and bringing politics and public life into disrepute at a time when the public already have an extremely low opinion of our politicians.

For example not only has David Cameron brought a lobbyist who has clients who are responsible for the deaths of millions of people right into the heart of British government, his party and his government apparently underneath the direction of their lobbyist election strategist Lynton Crosby are also responsible for the leaking of disinformation about the Sir Bruce Keogh report, in which Keogh had been reviewing possible avoidable deaths in some NHS hospitals. It would appear that someone from inside the government deliberately leaked incorrect information in an attempt to smear the Labour party, and the  former Health Secretary Andy Burnham, purposefully undermining the NHS  by using it as a "blunt weapon" with which to "get Burnham"! It's obvious that the Conservative party and Lynton Crosby had initiated the "get Burnham" smear campaign in the week before the Keogh review was leaked to deliberately tie it in with the intentionally erroneous information said to have been seen in leaked Keogh review.
 If true this exposes that David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt could be guilty of breaching the ministerial code of conduct and have failed to uphold strict standards in public life!

It has been reported that one of the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's Sapds leaked this information, but it is unclear and is probably untrue, but it's not for the first time that the health secretary has a problem with his SPADS, it seems to be a bit of a habit, Hunt has previously sacrificed one of his spads in order to save his own neck over the Murdoch BSkyB affair! However, the situation is so serious that questions must be asked and answered;

  1. Who deliberately leaked erroneous information regarding the Keogh review? 
  2. Was it Jeremy Hunt or was it one of his Spads, or did it come from higher up? 
  3. Who sanctioned this leak, was it lobbyist election strategist, Lynton Crosby? 

Whoever it was the source of this leak must be tracked down, we cannot tolerate a government deliberately leaking incorrect information to smear and discredit their opponents using the NHS and their office to do so. In acting this way this government deliberately placed at risk public health, safety and trust in our NHS. There is a name for when governments deliberate release erroneous information it is called "disinformation"!

Disinformation: Is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately which is intended to mislead, esp. propaganda issued by a government to the media

This is exactly what has happened concerning the Keogh review.

The Parliamentary Committee for Standards in Public Life must look into this serious breach of government conduct.  I know this has been reported to them and they must act. Sir Jeremy Heywood cannot and must not make or take any party in this decision  because he has placed himself far too close to the controversy, as soon as he decided to guild the lily and publish documents purporting to back up Cameron's position which were subsequently found to be worthless, unsigned and undated and written weeks after the hiring of Crosby, he totally compromised himself and his office.

Like the plain cigarette packaging scandal, this has Lynton Crosby's  fingerprints all over it.
  • Who's decision was it to leak the Keogh report?
  • Who deliberately fabricated the fictitious figure of  "13,000 unnecessary deaths"?
  •  Who then passed it on to the BBC, Sky News, the Telegraph and the Mail in order to deliberately denigrate and smear the NHS and NHS staff purely for political reasons?
  • Who gave the OK for an "attack dog" style assault on Andy Burnham and the Labour party to make it appear that they were to blame for something that did not happen using deliberately false information?
Whoever did give the go ahead for this leak, whether it was David Cameron, Lynton Crosby or Jeremy Hunt, they are guilty of deliberately undermining the NHS and placing at grave risk the health, safety, welfare and trust of the public.

I simply do not believe it was Jeremy Hunt's Spad, because it is doubtful a Spad would have been able to access the Keogh review at that time or be privy to this class of information, so this points the finger to the leak being firmly up the chain of command.

It's time that David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt and the Liberal Democrat party took responsibility for their own actions. The NHS is failing because of the pressures this government are placing on it. The NHS is failing because of this government's unnecessary health reforms which the Liberal Democrats also voted through parliament. This  is not Labour's fault, it was actually Labour who saved the NHS from certain destruction the last time the Conservatives were in power and had control over it. In fact over the last decade (as actually reported by Sir Bruce Keogh) mortality rates have reduced by 30% over all. But then this government knows this and it doesn't sit well with their intention to fully-privatise the NHS, which is why they want to destroy NHS credibility and blame the former Labour government (now the opposition) for the furore that will follow. This is why our NHS has been under full-frontal attack for weeks, it is all part of the Conservative campaign to soften people up for NHS privatisation. It really is true, "the NHS is *NOT* safe in Tory hands"!

Sir Bruce Keogh was so angry about the erroneous information leaked from his review that he was overheard apologising to Andy Burnham. Yet to date I have not seen on retraction or apology in one single newspaper or one of the news outlets that ran with this erroneous story for three whole days! If this was the Labour party that had deliberately undermined the NHS and put at risk the health and safety of the public, if this was the Labour party that had purposefully sought to malign their political opponents using blatant lies and smear campaigns in the press and broadcast media, we would never have heard the last of it!

As well as deliberately trying to smear Andy Burnham, David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt also tried to smear baroness Young a Labour peer, which prompted her to write a furious letter of rebuttal to David Cameron, which was totally ignored when Jeremy Hunt repeated the mantra when he spoke to parliament about the Keogh review. They just keep on repeating their lies under the protective cloak of parliament, in the end Hunt was prevented from continuing by the Speaker, but only after several requests to stop were totally ignored!

If necessary a police investigation needs to take place to assess if this government, David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt and Lynton Crosby and the Conservative party has committed misconduct in a public office by giving false and misleading information to the press and broadcast media, with the intention to undermine the NHS and political opponents.

Now it has been reported that Lynton Crosby whose company CTF Partners and lists Philip Morris International, (the world’s largest tobacco firm whose brands include Marlboro), as one of its clients has created a database tracking every British MP’s opinion on plain cigarette packaging as part of its successful lobbying campaign to block the proposed policy change.  Conservative Party election strategist Lynton Crosby  has been employed by Philip Morris since November 2012 to advise on its campaign to have the plain cigarette packaging policy halted. 'Mysteriously' since Crosby was hired by Cameron and the Conservatives, the promised policy to have plain cigarette packaging was immediately dropped from the queen's speech, as was minimum alcohol pricing policy, which Crosby's company also lobbies the government on, on behalf of its clients.

It's inconceivable that Lynton Crosby and David Cameron did not know this and despite what Sir Jeremy Heywood has said, there needs to be an urgent investigation or an inquiry held to clearly assess if the prime minister, David Cameron and his lobbyist election strategist Lynton Crosby have again committed misconduct in a public office by discussing and changing government policy to advantage Lynton Crosby's clients.

This cannot and must not be allowed to go uninvestigated.

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