Left Leaning Blog excited to be a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn's brand of politics and cutting through the lies of the right-wing Tory press!
(This blog is being updated)
Last Wednesday in Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) David Cameron let something slip that his mates in the right wing Tory supporting press have conveniently missed.
In response to a question about whether the PM's new Australian election strategist and spin doctor, Lynton Crosby has lobbied him on cigarette packaging and alcohol prices Cameron said:
"Lynton has never lobbied me about anything, except how to destroy the credibility of the party opposite, he just gives advice on destroying the Labour party, he's brilliant at that".
Lynton Crosby owns a tobacco and alcohol lobbying company and shortly after he joined Cameron and the Tories, their widely talked about Tory policy on plain cigarette packaging and alcohol prices was surreptitiously dropped from the Queen's Speech.
During PMQs the Speaker John Bercow for once pulled David Cameron up when he started to talk about Labour's policy rather than talk about the government's, (which is what he supposed to do, but very rarely does). However, the Speaker should also have pulled Cameron up about what he said about spin doctor Lynton Crosby. The prime minister is the House in PMQs to answer MPs questions he is not there to make thinly disguised threats to the opposition and he is definitely not there to operate some kind of party election broadcast on behalf of his own party using taxpayers time and money. Even if it were, surely Cameron's job is to point out flaws in policy not to "destroy credibility"? But at least we now know how low this arrogant man is willing to stoop in order to get himself re elected!
As Cameron himself has said that "lobbying is the next big scandal to hit politics" the question he was asked about Crosby was pertinent and the Speaker should have instructed Cameron to answer the question about Lynton Crosby and he should not have been allowed to fob the question off by making threats to the opposition. It seems odd that the government were going full speed ahead with minimum alcohol pricing and plain packaging for cigarettes, but as soon as Cameron hires Lynton Crosby who owns a tobacco and alcohol lobbying company, this policy is suddenly dropped and does not appear in the Queen's speech! (Something else Cameron's journalist buddies have conveniently on purpose forgotten to mention in their hostile right wing rags)
With the prime minister telling so many lies, how are we supposed to know when he is telling the truth? How do we know that he is not lying through his back teeth about Lynton Crosby influencing policy for his lobbying company, when he has lied about virtually everything else?
The first week of June when the PM finally came back to the House after missing 10 PMQs, he started off with telling a deliberate lie about the NHS which he repeated twice. Two blatant lies made all the worse for the Speaker allowing him to get away with it and not least because he had already been rebuked for telling these lies and misleading the public by Andrew Dilnot of the UK Statistics Authority. Why is Cameron being allowed to make political capital out of telling lies in the House of Commons?
In last week's PMQs (19/6/13) Cameron was allowed to get away with opening PMQs with an unprovoked attack on Labour's policy plan to stop people teaching our children who do not have proper teaching qualifications. Again he was allowed to set the questions and get away with it which is extremely unfair as the opposition has no power of redress and cannot challenge the PM each time he lies.
Here are just a few links to Cameron's deliberately lies in PMQs
Once upon a time those who deliberately lied to parliament and misled it resigned, but Cameron and his Government now treat parliament with contempt as they continue to tell lie after lie after lie. Time and again different people from the ordinary like me, to organisations such as Mencap and the UK Statistics Authority and the ONS have proved repeatedly that David Cameron tells blatant lies.
PMQs is not a platform for the Tory PM to use to get the Conservative message across, it is not a platform for him to use for political point scoring or electioneering, it is time set aside just once a week (when the PM bothers to turn up that is) to be used by the leader of the opposition and MPs of all parties to ask questions of the government of the day. The fact that Cameron thinks he can avoid answering questions and ask the opposition questions which he knows they cannot answer or defend and to use this time to deliberately lie to and mislead the public; and deliberately misquote and misrepresent others when he knows they have no chance of defending themselves and correcting the record, is an abuse of his power and it is about time the Speaker, John Bercow stopped him doing it.
David Cameron and his arrogance and his deception and abuse of power is turning PMQs into a farce and Speaker John Bercow is allowing him to bring the British parliament into disrepute - how long is the Speaker going to allow Cameron to get away with this?
And when are the Tories going to change the "It's all Labour's fault" record?
To hear David Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and assorted partisan by-products of this Tory-led Coalition government still insist on blaming the previous Labour government for "this financial mess" is becoming really tedious and not least because it shows two clear reasons why the current government should not be in charge of running this country.
If they really do believe that this mess was all Labour's fault, then they clearly do not understand what happened to to the global economy, the global banking structure, toxic loans, casino banking, shadow banking etc and this spells serious danger for us all because it means we will never be able to progress out of where we are now with a flat-lining economy under this current Tory led government.
If they do not really believe that Labour were responsible for global recession and banking collapse, then they are guilty of deliberately misleading the public, guilty of lying to the public and guilty of deliberately talking down and undermining the British economy and placing all our livelihoods and wellbeing at grave risk.
Yet the Conservative party and this Coalition government aided and abetted by Clegg, Cable and Alexander and all the Liberal Democrat MPs want us to carry on believing their lies and their deliberate misleading and misrepresentation of the facts because it suits them to do so and gives them the freedom under their manufactured excuses to rid the country of the NHS, the welfare state, state education, and to deliver us a privatised police service and greatly reduced and compromised military.It also allows this disingenuous government to divert attention away from the Tory supporting bankers, shadow bankers, private health care companies and the Tory supporting big businesses and corporations like Vodafone for example, at the same time as placing unfair onus on the people, nurses, lollipop ladies, dinner ladies, public servants, cleaners, refuse collectors, who were NOT responsible for this "mess" to force them to pay for cleaning it up.
It's telling that not one Tory supporting banker has been prosecuted for their part in the economic downfall of this country or for their part in the economic downfall of most of the world's economies. Other people in other countries have been prosecuted but none in the UK. Through their greed and lust for yet more money and more power they have delivered us all a huge a toxic pit of debt and they now expect the ordinary people in each of these countries to pick up the tabs for the mess they have created.
Of course the British Tories do not want people to know the real truth of what lays behind the global crash because they know that it is the very thing that they believe in, it's the very tenet that their party is built upon. "Conservative capitalism". The Tories know fully well that it is global conservative capitalism that has produced the mess in each country. They know it is bankers, stock brokers etc playing about and gambling with telephone number figures on spread sheets on the world's money markets that has really got us into this mess.
The Tories do not want us to know this so they do what the British Conservative party always does, they find a scapegoat and blame it all on them! In order to divert attention away from where the blame should really lay, they have made the Labour party, the poor, the vulnerable, the unemployed, the low waged, and the disabled their scapegoats, and now they are shamelessly using us all, not only to blame for the mess they have made of our economy but are also taking the opportunity to take away our public services like the NHS, welfare, state education, further education, university places which the Conservatives have never wanted. In order to get these policies through David Cameron blatantly lied about being the new "compassionate Conservatives" and as soon as they got power they began their mission to strip us all simply because they resent paying tax for it.
In the past few years many of these people have moved their huge cash reserves to off-shore banks where the British Treasury cannot touch them and among these people are those who actually donate large sums of money to the Tories to try and help keep them in power - why do they want to keep the Tories in power? because it suits them to do so and while the Tories are in power, none of the people who are truly responsible for the state of our economy will face prosecution. Even members of the current Conservative cabinet have off shore accounts and have been transferring their wealth into the names of their spouses to avoid paying tax! Even David Cameron's late father used off-shore umbrella companies to make the family fortune the same fortune that Cameron inherited. They do all of this and yet it is made light of in the Tory supporting press, yet the same Tory supporting press wastes no time in attacking those who they see as "benefit cheats, shirkers and scroungers" etc they use one sensationalist story and blow it right our of context to make it look like everyone who claims welfare is some how a cheat, while virtually ignoring all the Tory supporting bankers, shadow bankers and corporate tax avoiding cheats!
But if you are self employed or run a small company, don't expect any help from George, he only helps his mates in the banking industry, big business and multi-national corporations, if you g have a problem with your tax, you will be pursued to within an inch of your life and threatened with bankruptcy, bailiffs and ruination, as "good old George" has instructed HMRC to squeeze you until your proverbial pips squeak!
For the last ten years Vodafone have been fighting tooth and nail to avoid paying the UK [Labour] government around £6bn in tax. Court case followed court case, and eventually HM Revenue and Customs won a decisive victory. Vodafone were on the ropes and all that was needed was a couple more government knocks to finally make the communication giant pay up. But instead of forcing through the deal, the exchequer, run by George Osborne, let Vodafone off. It was one of the most shameless, blatant and costly examples of corporate-government cronyism in years. But at a time when the government are insisting upon massive cuts in public spending, the deal is particularly hard to swallow.
Vodafone are relatively open about their motivations. “The maximisation of shareholder value,” their website declares, “will generally involve the minimisation of taxation.” In India too, Vodafone have sought to avoid a further £1.6bn tax bill. However, the Indian authorities, unlike the British, have successfully pursued Vodafone for the money, forcing them to pay up.Read More:UK Uncut
Osborne has been very generous to top earners and all of his mates in the cabinet too, he has given them a tax cut saving them around £100,000 per year in tax while forcing poor people to lose benefits, child tax credits and forced unfair unworkable taxes like the bedroom tax and benefit cuts on the poor in order to pay for it all. Vodafone's unpaid tax bill is over £6 billion and Osborne's cuts to our welfare budget is over £7 billion! George Osborne actually lobbying and threatening the Indian government on behalf of Vodafone over its tax matters.
While if you are made unemployed you will be forced to work full-time for your job seekers allowance (approx £71.70 pw) at one of George Osborne's mates large companies like Poundland, or Argos, or Tescos etc. You get all the pain and his mates get all the gain (which is your labour for absolutely nothing), as the taxpayer picks up the bill for your JSA, which is giving Osborne's mates another nice little earner compliments of the Treasury and us mugs, the taxpayers!
From 2012 offshore financing structures such as Voadafone's, for instance were supposed to be taxed at no more than 5% (this is actually in the statute books), yet now we learn that even this paltry amount of tax didn't happen as George Osborne instructed that Vodafone be allowed to avoid paying tax for yet another year, despite making a revenue of over £40 billion this last tax year! George Osborne and the British Government is actually subsidising the largest companies to send billions of pounds into the world's tax havens and meanwhile we are supposed to believe all his and Cameron's guff, bluff and bluster about getting strict with tax avoidance?
Remember David Cameron in Davos said that businesses are "setting up ever more complex tax arrangements abroad to squeeze their tax bills right down....Well they need to wake up and smell the coffee", well obviously George Osborne thinks that Vodafone and other multinationals need not heed Dave's words and nothing has changed, it is all talk tough then and it is still talk tough now at the G8, but that's all it is, talk and with the Conservative government that is all it ever will be ....talk!
We have this ridiculous British government talking up trade with China and totally ignoring the massive bubble that is about to burst there, China is on an unsustainable path, their credit bubble is swelling and the Chinese government are building huge shopping malls and apartments that no one a can afford they have become known as "China's Ghost Towns and Malls", (see video below) it's inevitable that this will not be able to go on for much longer. China has now surpassed the US as the world's biggest manufacturer, we do considerable trade with China in raw materials etc, they are also probably single handed keeping our motor industry going. It used to be said that when America sneezed the rest of the world caught a cold, I dread to think what the rest of the world is going to catch when China sneezes! Yet David Cameron and gormless George appear totally oblivious to this impending danger and rapidly swelling credit bubble.
I've mentioned on here before, the Conservative party is not a proper political party, it is merely the political wing of the banks, the shadow banks, big business and multinationals. The ruination of our public services will be entirely the fault of big business and the their political wing the British Conservative party. The privatisation of our NHS, state education and welfare will be sacrificed so these establishments can pay little or no tax. While we pay more for less and will be powerless to do anything about it as we are having our workers rights removed, our human rights and our rights as citizens and we are losing our public services. We will not even be able to challenge the establishment in the courts because the Tories have removed and cut most legal aid, rendering the legal process beyond scope of us ordinary folk. If you think this is bad, wait until you or you family needs medical treatment and you have no medical insurance, you'll be lucky if you are treated in some poor hospital somewhere "St Elsewhere". Wait until your children cannot afford a home and there is no social housing, because our idiot chancellor is not building nay but is borrowing more to subsidise his mates payroll bills in the big corporations etc. To say nothing of the credit bubble he is creating with his help to buy scheme, the scheme that allows foreigners and his rich mates to borrow cheap money from us the taxpayers to buy second homes.
This is the truth and it is this truth that the British Conservative party do not want us to understand.
In today's PMQs Conservative MP Steve Brine asked Cameron on the Law Tennis Association's scheme to find the next British Wimbledon winner "we need more British tennis winners for British Tennis Competitions". After Cameron predictably toadied up to Andy Murray, he said: "More tennis is being played at his children's school and commends the LTA's efforts".
Oh well that's OK then as long as more tennis is being played in Cameron's kids school and the rest of our children can have more unqualified head teachers deciding to spend taxpayers money on already privileged middle class kids and on so-called Tory "Free Schools. I'm talking about those free schools being set up in areas that do not need extra schools to be attended by the children of over privileged well heeled parents - while other children in other areas and poor children in deprived areas are being denied the funding to build more schools, or extend existing schools to adequately serve the numbers of children needing to attend them!
This is all thanks to Gove and Cameron abolishing the previous Labour government's Building Schools for the Future programme and cancelling the plans and funding that had already been approved and granted to build these new schools. Previously independent fee paying schools are now being reclassified as "free schools"and parents were previously paying for their children's private education and are now being saved £1000's per term because the taxpayers are now picking up the bill for their for them, under this "free-school scam guise! I wonder how much tennis is played at these Tory created so-called "free" schools, hockey, rugby and cricket too for that matter, while ordinary children and poorer children are missing out because of funding cuts to their sports programmes?
Gove and Cameron have obviously forgotten about what they did to school sport when they first came to assumed unelected power 3 years ago, so let me jog their memory. For the majority of ordinary children attending ordinary schools because of cuts in funding and this government abolishing SSPs, games and PE in schools is being scaled back and we are also losing the sporting legacy of London 2012.
[In January 2013] "Exactly six months on from the start of the Games, an Opinium/Observer poll shows that only 10% of people believe the government has played its part in increasing support for sport in schools and communities in the runup to – and since – last summer's Olympics.By contrast, 55% say support has either stayed the same or been cut back since the coalition came to power.
Among parents of youngsters under 18, the figures are even more stark. Only 17% of parents say government support has increased since 2010, while 65% say it has either stayed the same or been cut". The Guardian
Education Secretary Michael Gove withdrew £168 million for the SSPs as one of his first acts of government. Under Labour's successful SSPs, certain secondary schools were chosen as sports "hubs", which then co-ordinated expert teaching across all primary schools in their areas and organised after-school clubs. Gove abolished the target of at least two hours of PE per pupil per week. Under Labour, the proportion of children reaching this target had risen to over 90%.
Still I suppose cuts had to be made, the funding for Gove elitist parents "free schools" had to come from somewhere and who the hell cares about the kids from the local council estates?
Just as long as Cameron's kids get their free tennis lessons at school!
There is not much chance of Esther McVey publishing this on her website so I thought I would publish it here. For those who do not know who this woman is, she is the Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Department of Work and Pensions. A grand title for the general dogsbody and the junior minister that Iain Duncan-Smith and the DWP will wheel out to take the flak for their appalling, inept and wholly incompetent unfair, unworkable decisions. (a bit like the Chloe Smith and Jeremy Paxman slaughter)
[Ms McVey], I watched and listened to your appalling deceit last week as you blatantly lied about how PIP is going to help the disabled get more of the money they are entitled to.
There is much I could write and much proof I could provide that would clearly and unambiguously prove that what you are saying is false, but why bother? You would deny it, because you are so partisan and so deeply tribal, so profoundly scared that to remain objective will damage yours and your party’s re-election prospects at the next general election.
You know you cannot pull the wool over the eyes of the disabled, they have your number, so you are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the general public, using the groundswell of hatred that you and your party have been building up against disabled people ever since you came to unelected power in May 2010. A word of warning “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”, you will be discovered for the low-lives you are and make no mistake, you will be judged on the cold hard viciousness you have been encouraging.
You know what I am saying is true, you like Miller before you are an affront to feminism, but you Ms McVey are also an affront to your Northern roots. You will lose your seat in the next election, Karma can bite very hard when she wants to.
Esther McVey spends much of her time sucking up to her bosses the prime minister, 'Deckchair Dave' (on the off-chance that he's actually in the country), and the much hated and vile IDS, in the vain hope that she will be noticed and promoted to something more senior in Government. I hope she isn't holding her breath, after all she "talks funny" and the Tories already have one token Northerner in the very large form of Eric Pickles. However, there may be a small chance of an opening for a female 'Northern brown nosing creep' I suppose, and Esther McVey, certainly fills that brief! Every time I see this woman on the TV what she is actually saying gets drowned out by her very loud metaphorical shouting and overt body language screaming; "hey notice me, I'm blonde, I'm female and I'm Northern, pick me, pick me, please pick me Dave, please, pretty please." It's like car crash TV and almost as embarrassing as watching the previous very public pleading for a Government position by the ex Tory MP for Corby, Louise Mensch, you remember her? She's the MP that flounced off when it became obvious that Cameron and his inner circle of strictly male, old Etonians (who recently jettisoned their only black adviser) were never going to fill top jobs with black people or women, much less a gobby gobshite like Mensch; still every cloud has a silver lining, the by-election she forced when she vacated her seat in Corby was then won by Labour and now Corby have what they deserve, a hard working Labour MP who puts their needs first and who actually spends time in the constituency.
May be Cameron and IDS thought that Esther McVey's past experience in her family's business of demolition and site clearance would be asset to the DWP? After all they are the government who are viciously bulldozing the lives of disabled people and exiting leaving a trail of death, suicide and destruction behind them. What next for McVey? Kicking away blind people's white canes? Repossessing electric wheelchairs from people who can barely walk and also have minimal use in their upper limbs? Taking away disabled people's cars rendering them prisoners in their own homes and forcing many to give up the jobs they have struggled to hold? Too late, if she wants to get on in this hideous government she'll have to find new ways to assault the disabled as IDS is already doing all of the above!
Perhaps McVey will be the next Tory female MP to flounce off when she realises her aspirations for being "something" in a Tory government are never going to be realised? After all, there is only one top job that this government will allow to be filled by a female and Theresa May has already got that (and all the flak that goes with it!) I suppose the "token Tory Northerner in a tutu" can always go back to her TV career of making kids programmes, at least the kids know how to behave towards women and disabled people.
However, whatever she chooses to do, she should stop lying to defend this government's cruel attack on disabled people in order to try and realise her own political dreams. She said:
I’d been invited to give a talk, as local MP and Minister for Disabled People about the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) which is replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA). There is a lot of misinformation on social media which only serves to frighten people, so I was delighted to be able to talk with the group to put the record straight and their minds at ease. Esther McVey
Where is the "misinformation Ms McVey? Care to inform us as to when the truth became "misinformation"? It appears that Ms McVey never tires of attempting to defend the indefensible and ignores that it's her own government who are making the lives of disabled people hell filling them with fear and distress by railroading through changes that are designed solely to kick as many people off of disability benefits as they possibly can! To deny this in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, renders her stupid, gullible and just plain deceitful. She know it is happening, IDS knows it is happening, Deckchair Dave knows it is happening, this entire mongrel Tory Coalition 'pretendy' government knows it is happening. McVey must see it in her in-tray and electronic inbox each and every day, she just chooses to ignore it all, hoping it will go away.
What does Esther McVey the 'pretendy' minister for the disabled say to this comment written a by a distressed disabled person? Is she going to tell her she is scaremongering too?
These are not just one off comments here and there, the internet is littered with them, is McVey asking the public to believe that these people are all wrong and she is right? What kind of experience does she have that qualifies her to working with disabled people and their rights, problems hopes and dreams? How can a person that doesn't even mention the disabled and their rights in her entry in the Directory of MPs on the Parliament UK website and instead lists:
“Law and order and sentencing, transport, education and city regeneration.”
as their main interests be given such a sensitive post?
McVey said she was looking forward to working alongside Mark Hoban the Tory Minister for red silk cushions, luxury curtains and expensive loo brushes.
Don't they make a "lovely couple"? McVey only there to try and boost her political career, and Hoban only there because he is pretty much useless anywhere else! Hoban freely admits that he doesn't even understand his own brief and all the changes his government are introducing, complaining that he "can't navigate his way around the benefits system" and admits if his constituents come to him asking for help with benefits he packs them "straight off" to Citizens Advice for help.
"We have a complex benefits systems," he said. Quite! Hoban admitted that in 2011 the government decided it would signpost people from jobcentres to food banks. Now that 500,000 families are turning up at the food banks – many as a result of welfare benefit problems – no wonder the minister admitted he was "keen to do some more work on how food banks operate".
At full stretch, he will find. Shambles upon shambles. Yikes. Your life in their hands: The Guardian.
Still at least Mark Hoban will not be homeless and be left cold, hungry and disabled, or suffering with a psychiatric illness, without any means to get to the nearest food bank after his government performed a collective miracle akin to Biblical times and "cured" thousands of disabled people at a stroke of an Atos pen! Removing peoples benefits, electric scooters, wheelchairs and cars, leaving them trapped inside their own homes, as well as inside their own bodies. I mean God forbid that should ever happen to any minister of this hideous government and that they should learn first hand, just what it is like to live and manage life with a physical or mental disability.
This Conservative led Coalition government and this prime minister, David Cameron and his minions, IDS, McVey, Hoban, Hunt, Freud, Shapps etc have done more to divide this country than any other government in our history and in so doing they have put back a century all the progress which has been made in disabled rights in recent years. This government have caused bitterness, resentment and utter nastiness. They and they alone have created an environment where people now think it is OK to abuse disabled people because they see Cameron and his cronies doing it all the time. They see it on billboards on the Tory supporting press, they read it screaming out from banner headlines how so many disabled people have dropped out of the system, what they do not see or read, is the fact that David Cameron and Iain Duncan-Smith have been rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority for deliberately misleading (lying) the public over statistics concerning disabled people and their benefits.
And Esther McVey still wants us to believe this government are not deliberately targeting disabled people? She is just another liar who will say and do anything to further her career and tread on anyone (disabled or others wise) to get what she wants.
This country is being destroyed not by liberalism, conservatism (small c) or leftism, it is being destroyed by a bunch of over privileged Conservative (large C) buffoons, who have neither the compassion, the decency, the honesty or the intellect to govern this country and who are allowing corruption to profligate right at the heart of this current government in an absolute staggering short space of time!
This is not even subterfuge, this government openly really do think they are born to rule us and that we the workers should have no working rights, no right to a tribunal. no right to legal redress etc and to make sure of this they have taken away legal aid to make it even harder for us to gain access to our rights under the law from housing benefit, domestic violence, to bullying, to intimidation, to harassment and unfair dismissal at work and they are now forcing us to be grateful for any scraps of help they feel like throwing us, we are in fact becoming the undeserving poor who must be grateful for anything remotely humane showed to us! This government's arrogance is yet another 'attribute' that is contributing to the rapid social decay of this country, they think they are untouchable and for the moment at least - they think right! They are making hay while the Tory sun shines and are merrily ripping up the very fabric of our societies and communities across this country of *ours* and us like complete dullards are allowing them to do it under our very noses and some are even still voting Tory and thus for their own demise - priceless! How this government must spend most of its time behind closed doors whooping, banging table tops and laughing up their collective sleeves, not only at their passing of the bill that will destroy and privatise our NHS, but at us, and at the sheer stupidity that can grip the working class mindset. "I own my own house, so therefore I must be a Tory and I'd better vote Conservative". Never mind that they are grinding us into the ground and kicking the luxury Ibiza sand outside the luxury Ibiza villa in our collective faces as they soak up their luxury break in the Spanish sun and all the rest of it, people, ordinary working people, nice people, still vote Tory because they have managed to get a mortgage on their own house! The fact that the way things are going their off-spring may not be able to afford to do that and may have trouble even renting a place to live, has still yet to sink in. The fact that the banks have been given billions in quantitative easing (QE) by this government and the Bank of England to ease the the problem, loan money out and then pocket the real money we pay the banks in interest on money which doesn't really exist and therefore helps the Tory bankers out (once again) has yet to sink in too! The fact that Margaret Thatcher created "housing bubble No.1" which caused the current crisis and now to get themselves out of a political hole they dug for themselves, George Osborne is merrily creating "housing bubble No.2" and when it bursts we will see property prices fall by as much as 50% creating the mother of all negative equity situations, has yet to sink in too. Not to mention the foreign investors now queuing up to take advantage of the British taxpayer by buying houses under Osborne's "help to buy scheme" and others who are taking advantage of Osborne's generosity with our money who are currently buying second homes and helping to store up huge problems for future governments to sort out, has yet to sink in too.
This present unelected government and this present unelected prime minister have caused more distress and heartache and carried out a deliberate strategy to deliberately divide this country than any other government before it and that includes the appalling Conservative Thatcher and Major years 1979 - 1997. When Lady Thatcher died, our unelected PM described her as a "true Conservative". Does Cameron even know what that is? Do we know what it is? For many the mere word "Conservative" (large C) conjures up such negative thoughts like; intolerant little "Englanders" union flag waving blue rinsed oldies at Tory conferences singing Land of Hope and Glory; hatred of gays; hatred of working classes, hatred of workers equality; hatred of welfare, hatred of state education, hatred of the NHS, hatred of anyone with a social conscience; hatred of immigrants etc in fact it just carries on until we arrive at a situation where the word 'Conservative' could almost be used as a synonym for the words 'hatred and intolerance'!
What I cannot understand are the so-called Liberal Democrats, who are aiding abetting and assisting this hideous government to destroy state education, destroy the NHS, destroy workers rights and mislead the country over the true state of the economy and unemployment. How did that party manage to get so sucked into this present government's vortex of greed and corruption? It's a truly staggering political volte-face, one I've never witnessed before and one which will probably in the end kill the the Liberal party stone dead!
Until we stand up, rise up and get this monolithically incompetent Tory government out, and until us the people start demanding more from our politicians *ALL our politicians* nothing will ever change, we'll just continue moaning and taking it all sitting down. Some of us will look on what is happening in Turkey and wish that we were still a nation with a bit of oomph, like we used to be. What happened to our fight? We would never have taken this before, did the onset of the 1960's peace and love knock all the fight out of us? Did it make us so laid back that we simply lost track of what was and is still the most important cherished things about our own country? Did we parents in the 60's and 70's, breed a nation of politically correct namby pambies that not only cannot stand up for themselves, have no idea how to stand up for themselves? Did we breed a bunch of politically neutral wets who are afraid to win in case we upset others but who can moan their heads off for England, but that's just about all? Example: Look at our football team, crammed full of the top premier league players but cannot play as a team and if they do win are almost apologetic for doing so - what the hell have we 60's and 70's parents done to our offspring, what have we given them to pass on to their children?
We never used to be like this, we are currently letting our ancestors down, the Tolpuddle Martyrs in the 1830's, the Jarrow crusade, the first poll tax demonstrations and the 2nd modern Thatcher poll tax demonstrations etc. Look at the modern Jarrow march for jobs in 2011, some unemployed people finally threw off their shackles, got together and marched for jobs, did anyone come out and join them on their way? No of course not, most people are so politically naive (or ignorant of current affairs) did not even know what was happening, and even some of those who did just sat back and scoffed at these youngsters trying to get publicity for a very real cause of joblessness that is so affecting the younger generation and we allowed the hostile Tory supporting press to mock them and their brave gruelling efforts; we allowed the press to ridicule them and do their level best to undermine them and their cause! Same with Occupy London, instead of concentrating on the message, we concentrated on what the Tory supporting press wanted us to concentrate on, the few protesters who left to go to their jobs in the day, or to return home at night. It is exactly the same way we are allowing this government and the right wing Tory press to stigmatise welfare claimants and the disabled, we are allowing our poor and most vulnerable to be insulted and referred to as "cheats, shirkers and skivers" when we should be standing up for our fellow human beings in a world that actually disables the disabled more and more! Why are we allowing the Conservative (large C) supporting press to undermine the working classes and anyone else who tries to stand up against this elitist Tory establishment?
We must keep alive the memory of the protests like the Peasants Revolt and the Jarrow crusade of 1936 and the Jarrow march for jobs 2011, this is when ordinary people took a stand instead of lying down to be trampled on, they took a stand against rising unemployment and grinding poverty and now as poverty and unemployment is rising once again, and we are seeing food banks springing up in every town and village across this country as a direct result of another elitist Conservative (large C) government, we need to do it again now, because our state education, and our NHS, and our wages and our standard of living which our working ancestors fought tooth and nail for, and in some cases gave their lives for, is being deliberately driven down and deliberately eroded in order to enrich the Tory doning banks. Are we really going to sit back and take this while recessions delights the Tory hedge fund shadow bankers who make billions out of our misery, and Tory doning corporations abuse workers and their rights and think they can pay them zero pay and our ordinary working rights are being stolen from us by a bunch of elitist millionaires, who call themselves a government?
This is not a real government it is a bunch of corporate lackey chancers doing corporate bidding and they are using us as modern day Serfs!
This Conservative party is not a proper government, it is the political wing of the bankers, shadow bankers and multi national corporations and if workers do not wake-up and realise this and fight against it, then we will be to blame for the catastrophe in an intolerant, uncaring cold, vicious society that we hand down to our future generations.
If this is what Will Hutton despairs of as he 'watches the erosion of the liberal views he holds dear' then I join him in that despair, because if we do nothing then we will indeed end up not caring about our friends and neighbours and we will move from being a "nation of shop keepers" to being a nation of people that walk by on the other side, with not so much as a backward glance! And this will be the real legacy of this most appalling, hideous Conservative (large C) government and "anything will go"!
David Cameron calling for calm and putting on his best "top lip curling - most sincere face" pleading for us not to be divided since Lee Rigby's tragic death in Woolwich, is political subterfuge and political opportunism of the most despicable order all rolled into one and that he is prepared to use such tragic circumstances to his own political ends is totally abhorrent. I find Cameron's pleas for unity to be absolutely gut wrenching and nauseating, especially because Cameron and his government (and that includes Nick Clegg and all of the turncoat Liberal Democrat MPs) have done more to divide this nation than any other person and any other government, and furthermore, they have been doing this from day one of this mongrel Tory-Liberal Democrat Coalition. It has been so obvious and so well coordinated that it could well be an unseen, unwritten agreement between the two Coalition partners, discussed by the all male delegates from both political parties in the wake of the hung parliament after the general election in 2010.
Lately we have seen the BNP and EDL trying to "terrorise" the streets and take control of them apparently from Muslims and in so doing they attack the British police (such bright sparks). Many BNP and EDL members have found a home behind the thinly veneered face of Ukip, and while I do think this is an unintended consequence, David Cameron has to take much of the blame for this happening as he and his tawdry, lying deceitful, corrupt government and the Tory supporting press have actively encouraged this kind of behaviour with their incessant attacks on immigrants and welfare recipients, so much so, that now some impressionable people think that it is OK to attack ethnicity and that it is OK to attack the poor, the disabled and vulnerable etc, because they see Cameron, Osborne and Clegg and Tory supporting press all doing it on a regular basis. Also what does it say about the Tories that many former Conservatives have joined Ukip and even some Conservative MPs currently want to form a pact with Ukip? Ukip the party that has been exposed as having 'unvetted' BNP and EDL members in their midst who show images ofUS president Barack Obama and his wife mocked up to look like chimpanzees and whose fb page contained racist jokes about destroying mosques, burning Muslims and knocking over a Pakistani with a bus? It is not racist to discuss immigration and welfare etc, but it is socially reprehensible to discuss it in such a way that it causes offence and misunderstandings to gain a political advantage out of it!
I am sick of seeing the press pussy footing around this subject and never actually reporting the truth, so let's just say it as it is, David Cameron may not be a racist, but he is not averse to using the tools of racism and the tools of social bullying to get him what he wants - votes! Why else would he employ tobacco and drinks lobbyist Lynton Crosby as his election strategist? Lynton Crosby the man alleged to not being averse to making a few racist comments about Muslims himself?
I liken this hideous government to a political pincer movement, attack immigration on one side, while attacking welfare on the other, trapping the poor, disabled, vulnerable, low waged and unemployed in the middle and squeezing the life out of them, blaming them for all society's ills and offering them no hope of escape, just a long protracted death and the longer the better, because the longer it goes on, the more political mileage the Tories and Liberal Democrats can gain out of it for themselves. And all the while it goes on, the greedy Tory bankers, the Tory hedge funders and the leaching multi national corporations, (the faceless people who actually did much to help cause the global financial recession) are allowed to escape without one single prosecution, and yet Stephanie Bottrill, a grandmother who was forced to pay money she simply did not have in the hated Tory bedroom tax, and a man in Bedfordshire that owed Central Beds Council £1,300 in council tax arrears have committed suicide and hardly anything is said about this and yet these two desperately sad cases are the tip of the iceberg of how this government's policies are actually killing our citizens. If these cases and many like them do get a mention and are reported in the hostile Tory supporting press, the journalists spin the stories to blame the victims and their families and steer blame away from where it really lies - right at the heart of the British government! See Calum's List for the truth, I promise it will open your eyes!
Today, as if to prove everything I have written, the Tory supporting, (ordinary person hating), right wing newspaper, The Telegraph, have run a report on where your tax goes to pay for welfare in what appears to me to be a disingenuous and deliberately misleading way. It looks like yet another ignorant product of sloppy journalism in a thinly veiled divisive and stigmatising attack on the recipients welfare. The Telegraph make a list of where tax goes and what it pays for, yet they use the statistics spun in a underhand way devised to deliberately occlude the biggest welfare expense of all - pensions. Pensions are by a long way the biggest spend and the biggest problem facing this country, yet the Telegraph want to gloss over this and try focus people's minds towards yet another underhand scathing attack on immigrants and the poor and vulnerable, blaming them for the problems in this country they simply did not cause.
Why does the Telegraph do this? 1) Because a lot of their readership is probably of pensionable age. 2) They seem to have picked up a lot of crazed Ukip supporters which they seem to be too scared to upset. 3) If the Telegraph did truthfully focus peoples minds on pension payments alerting them to being the biggest expense in the welfare bill, people would quite rightly stop scapegoating the poor, disabled, vulnerable and immigrants, but if they did this, then this probably would not fit in with their Tory bias agenda and that is their one dimensional tunnel visioned mission to have people believe that everyone on welfare is either a "shirker, skiver" or "benefit cheat"! When nothing could be furthest from the truth, as the vast majority of people in this country are decent honest and given the chance extremely hard working, they are not welfare cheats or skivers at all but this is not the impression the Tories or their Tory supporting editor mates want to propagate, it doesn't fit their agenda! In fact many of the people now on welfare are there as a direct consequence of this government's insane policies! Cameron making emotive statements like this:
"The fraudsters who cost hard-working taxpayers £5billion a year were a “luxury we can no longer afford” is not only completely untrue as benefit fraud is approximately £3bn, the words are carefully chosen to stoke up resentment between ordinary people and it is this resentment that we are now seeing spilling onto our streets and it is a highly dangerous game that Cameron and his mates in the press are playing!
Of the welfare spend approximately 50% is spent on pensions. It is not only morally indefensible for the Telegraph to give the impression that Britain's welfare bill is out of control because of a *minority* of idle work "refusniks" and those who cheat the system, but it is simply mathematically incorrect! If we are to come down heavily on those who do cheat the system, then perhaps we should also come down just as heavily on newspapers and those in public life who deliberately falsely misrepresent figures and statistics? Take bows David Cameron, George Osborne, Iain Duncan-Smith, Jeremy Hunt, Grant Shapps etc, all Tory cabinet ministers who have recently been rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority for deliberately presenting figures in a way which has deliberately misled the British public.
In the same vein perhaps the Telegraph should be reported to the Press Complaints Commission for publishing a report they knew did not contain the whole facts and for deliberately trying to stoke up division and unrest between the people of this country, by deliberately publishing misleading figures?
I cannot say for sure what kind of game the Conservative party and their mates in the Tory supporting right
wing press are playing, but I know it is an extremely dangerous and divisive one. It's not only a game that will eventually bring fear, chaos and rioting onto our streets, it is a game that will see an end to state funded education, it's a game that is overseeing the full-scale privatisation of our NHS and our police, fire and ambulance services and it is a game that will see thousands of homeless people wandering our streets, it is a game that will see lengthening queues at soup kitchens and families forced to go to an ever increasing number of food banks to try and feed their families and it is a tragic game where children will end up being taken into the care of social services because their family has become homeless through this government's insane policies and or can no longer feed them. clothe them, keep them warm or house them - it's a game that is a horrendous recipe for social catastrophic disaster in our country, and it is a game of division and fear and scapegoating of the innocent most vulnerable which is willingly played by David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg and their mates in the Tory supporting press, just so they can stand a chance of getting re-elected.
It may be unpalatable and something real people are loathe to do but it is a game that all those with a social conscience must take part in because we have no choice and we can use social media to win, because losing is just not an option. We can slay these risible politicians and we can show them, they work for us, not the other way around.
Some people have pointed out that this blog is biased towards the Labour party - no really? Er, it's a Labour supporting blog, I am a life long Labour supporter, I am active in trying to get Labour re-elected, why wouldn't it be biased? In any case, why shouldn't it be biased towards the Labour party, when the vast majority of the press is bordering between right wing and ultra right wing and the broadcast media (take a bow BBC) is quickly catching them up? Someone has to try and put Labour's side and I make no apologies that I do this.
HOWEVER, this doesn't mean that I condone the greed of certain Labour peers who Ed Miliband suspended from the party today because of their dodgy actions and lobbying connections because I certainly do not.
These people make my blood boil, there are the vast majority of Labour MPs, MEPs, Peers, activists and supporters who bust a gut trying to help real people, with very real problems, (like the vile and hated Tory bedroom tax which has already claimed one life to suicide), they go the extra mile and they are badly let down by the greed of just a couple of people.
I'm not interested in their pathetic excuses, they are an embarrassment and Ed Miliband has my full support in suspending them and I hope, if they are found to have a case to answer then they are slung out of the party for good. Labour doesn't need them and more importantly, neither does the people that Labour are trying to help need them.
Labour had come such a long way since that miserable May of 2010, it has been a rough and rocky road for Ed Miliband, he has been insulted, attacked (sometimes by his own party) he is too right wing, he is too left wing, he's red Ed, no he's not red enough, he's too centrist, no he's not centrist enough. He has been bombarded with unwanted and unwelcome advice from people that should know better and that have had their time, and yet still have not learned how to shut up (take a bow Blair and your apologist Dan [wannabe] Hodges can take one too). Pity Blair cannot show Ed Miliband the same loyalty he was shown when he was first leader (in much easier times)
Through all the political harassment, bullying, innuendos and just plain lies somehow Ed Miliband's strength of character and his inherent decency, honesty and intellect has got Labour through and managed to get them ahead in the polls, it is has been so very hard fought and even harder won and yet these people and their greed just pop up and are in danger of wrecking everything Labour and so many others have worked so hard to achieve and it is just not fair.
It's time "Deckchair Dave" kept one of his promises and sorted out this business of lobbying, he promised to do it, yet he has done absolutely nothing. Yesterday one of his back bench MPs Patrick Mercer resigned (resigned not suspended by Cameron - note the difference). Mercer's alleged actions are infinitely more serious than what the two Labour peers are alleged to have done, yet the furore of the right wing press have completely forgotten about Mercer and just centering on attacking Labour and this is the bias in clear and unequivocal action that I have talked about on this blog so many many times.
I have written reams and reams about the subject of lobbying on this blog and I have done extensive research and what keeps turning up all the time, is that while there are former Labour MPs involved in the coming lobbying scandal, for the majority they are squeaky clean, so why should they have their names sullied for the few? it really isn't fair. Why doesn't Deckchair Dave do something about it. or is the Prime Minister scared to lift the lid on lobbying because he doesn't want the public to see just what he, his cabinet and so many of his Tory MPs and Lords get up to?
This is the real difference between the Labour party and the Conservative party, Labour members found to be doing wrong are suspended almost immediately, Tories found doing wrong are clung onto by the PM and don't take my word for it, look at the evidence! Warsi; Liam Fox; Adam Werritty; Mitchell; Lord Young etc and most of the current cabinet stand to gain from this government's privatisation of the our NHS. Half the cabinet have their fingers stuck in the lobbying pies, especially those concerning the privatisation of our NHS!
The PM has even hired a lobbyist for the drink and tobacco industry, Lynton Crosby to be his election strategist, who has his own lobbying company. This man's huge salary is being paid out of taxpayers pounds and since Deckchair Dave has hired Crosby, he has dumped government promises to put a curb on the sale and advertising of booze and tobacco and the PM has totally refused to publish a client list of Lynton Crosby's, even though it is in the public interest to do so.
What is it with this prime minister? Is it his total lack of judgement or his arrogance and sense of entitlement or all three? I mean what idiot knows he has a problem with lobbying, promises the public he'll do something about it, totally break that promise and then hire a tobacco and drinks lobbyist as his election strategist?
So "Deckchair Dave" the ball is firmly in your court, tell us what you are going to do about it! (If you can be bothered to come back to parliament any time soon and preferably before parliament is due to rise again for the summer recess)
Currently not one of the Tory press or the broadcast media has mentioned the fact that "Deckchair Dave" has missed eight out of nine of the last PMQs, and George Osborne has not answered questions in the House for over three months! Notably the Tory press habitually reports anything negative they can find about Ed Miliband and hardly anything about Labour policies, they continually run with the lie that Labour does not have policies when actually they do see here: Labour Policies.
They crow that Labour has dropped slightly in the polls, but is it really anything to crow about? How is Labour supposed to maintain a momentum in the polls when it's been almost three months since the opposition has been able to hold this government to account properly in parliament? The prime minister has been deliberately shirking his duties and has in effect been sticking his metaphorical middle finger up at us all (including the right wing press). He has deliberately arranged all of his visits to fall like this because he is a coward and did not want to answer to or face Ed Miliband across the dispatch box. Is it right that the Tory supporting press have become so bias and so politically dogmatic that they are allowing "Deckchair Dave" Cameron to hold our parliament and our democratic process, and the public, in such utter contempt? Cameron is making a mockery out of our whole parliamentary process, he even used parliament to hold a 7 hour long party political broadcast on behalf of the Tories when Margaret Thatcher died and was allowed to get away with it. One is forced to wonder, if this had been a Labour government behaving in such a fashion, would they, or we, have ever been allowed to forget it?
With it being three months since Labour have been able to hold the government to account properly, that they still managed to do extremely well in the local elections, gaining seats places like Harlow and Norfolk etc where they have to gain in in order to win the next general election shows that their vote is solid at around between 7 and 10 points. Something the Tory supporting press have largely ignored in favour of publishing negative comments about Ed Miliband and promoting Ukip. If this lead was repeated at a general election Labour would win it with a clear working majority.
The right wing press have continued to fawn over Ukip even though they do not have control of one single council and do not have one Westminster MP, when in fact the Green party did much better than Ukip and won more seats in the recent local elections! Something else the right wing press are ignoring is Ukip seems to have become the acceptable political face for the extreme right wing EDL and BNP supporters to lurk behind, as the press ignore the "one size fits all" Nigel Farage. The man who is on the vitally important EU fisheries committee and has not attended one single meeting in years, leaving our fishing industry unrepresented. The man that hates the EU and wants us to pull out, yet wants to gain many UKIP MEPs, which when they fail to attend the European Parliament will leave the UK largely unrepresented but will still draw their salaries and expenses! Why aren't the right wing press pointing all of this out to the public? More to the point, why do so may Conservatives MPs want to join forces with Ukip and behave like this and the right wing press not hold them to account?
Despite lack of fair coverage and unbiased reporting in the right wing press for Labour, they still won their by-election comfortably in South Shields, where both the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives dropped large percentages of their votes. Ukip gained votes but came nowhere near winning the seat. In fact it has been Labour that has held off the Ukip "charge" and prevented them from winning seats and taking control of councils in the county council elections. The Liberal Democrats actually lost about 13% of their vote in South Shields by-election, they lost 14% of their share of the vote in the Eastleigh by-election, this is in line with national polls, if repeated as uniformly as this across the country then the Liberal Democrats are at serious risk of becoming a political non-entity. Why aren't the press reporting this instead of giving a completely skewed picture?
Us on the left of the political spectrum understand only too well that the right wing press have been notoriously reluctant to publish anything detrimental towards the Conservative party, but taking into consideration the "little local difficulty" Deckchair Dave has concerning the Leveson press regulations and the right wing press's hostile reaction to any change at all, as well as the impending lobbying scandal, I wonder, could all this now be about to change?
So far the press have given Cameron, Hunt and Osborne a fairly easy time over their dodgy involvement in Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB take over bid and the hacking affair and the various serious scandals, u-turns and lies that have engulfed and dogged this government in just three years! But even the Tory press will have to report what is exposed when Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson (and others) stand trial this coming September on a range of very serious charges, not least perverting the course of justice. It could be a very uncomfortable Autumn for Cameron and the Tories and that is without the infighting over Europe, gay marriage and Ukip splitting the party and the Government, into not just two factions but several!
Meanwhile the results of another poll show that the public believe Ed Miliband is a very honest politician. What a rarity, and as the public see more and more of him in the run up to the general election in 2015 (if this parliament lasts that long) there could be a major upset.
After all who do you think the public will want for a prime minister - Dodgy Deckchair Dave or Honest Ed?
