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)
Once gain the leader of the Labour opposition has come in for a barrage of negative articles in the Tory supporting press, in papers like the Daily Mail and Sunday Mail, the Sun, Telegraph, the Times, Express, Star etc.
It's no coincidence that all these business people suddenly felt they had to share 'concerns' about Ed Miliband with the right wing Tory supporting press! This was people who were obviously contacted by the Conservative party and asked to smear and personally attack Ed Miliband in public through the Tory press and the biased broadcast media.
If the Conservatives and their mates in the Tory press expected Ed Miliband to buckle falter they were always going to be disappointed, Ed Miliband doesn't wobble and he doesn't fall down. he's made of stronger stuff than that. Much strong than the pathological, narcissistic lying incompetent David Cameron. Under the instructions of Lynton Crosby they threw everything at him last week, and he turned their fire back on them and managed to raise Labour in polls by 2 points, they are starting this week in the same way and Ed Miliband is growing into it, he's ignoring their negative smearing mud slinging and just calmly telling the British people what Labour will do if elected.
The more the Tories and the Tory press lie about Ed Miliband, or try to malign him, or just plain bully him, the stronger he is becoming.
Keep going Ed, we are liking it and the more they do it, the more resolute I become and so do many others I know and:
Today several of the Tory supporting Sunday press have obviously been in collusion with each other and each paper has produced Ed Miliband bashing articles.
The Mail on Sunday has a bizarre spread over 5 pages, basically all about how Ed Miliband is 'useless' etc and how Labour are not going to win the general election. They even had a series of Ed Miliband morphing into Neil Kinnock. Trying to raise the spectre of the 1992 general election. Whatever impression it was attempting to portray all they have succeeded in doing is preaching to their own rabid right wing supporting Mail readers, the rest of the population will most likely look on with total bemusement (if they bother to read the reams of boring overkill at all). The Mail on Sunday looks like a Tory paper in flat panic mode.
You know when the Tories and their mates in the Tory supporting press are in trouble, they come up with nonsense like this.
If these papers and Tory extreme right wingers are so sure that Ed Miliband is so useless, so weak and 'indecisive' etc etc, then why are they all going in for the bullying overkill trying to assassinate the man's character? Surely they should quietly leave him alone to get on with it and seal his own fate, giving them the room to campaign sensibly for the Conservative government they so obviously desire? Why are they trying to make out that a perfectly nice man, a kind honest truthful and very clever man is the 'anti-Christ'? It's totally absurd and not just a little bizarre.
Note to the Mail, Ed Miliband is just a Labour politician, he has not committed any crime, he is just standing for PM in what is after all supposedly a rational democratic country. If you want some corruption and political scandals, best you don't look at Ed Miliband, I fear you'll be disappointed, look a little closer to home, with Cameron and his 'friend', not to mention George Osborne turning up in Prime Minister's Questions week after week looking totally off his face, actually, why no mention of this? I wonder how many pages you would devote to this if Ed Miliband and Ed Balls were to be behaving somewhat dubiously?
Why hasn't the Mail investigated why Circle Health were awarded £1.5 billion in lucrative NHS contracts so soon after its share holders donated over a million pounds to the Conservative party? or do they think that Mr Miliband eating a bacon sandwich awkwardly to be more newsworthy?
The Mail on Sunday also covered a really absurd story about Boots Alliance CEO, Stefano Passina an Italian businessman who is a tax exile from Italy, living in Monaco and who pays zero tax in the UK. The Story was first covered in the Telegraph. Apparently all Pessina had to do to get a huge story in the Mail today was to say that in his opinion the UK should not elect Ed Miliband. Quite what the UK general election has got to do with him is an enigma, apart from the fact that Boots pays low wages which the taxpayers of the UK are then forced to bring up to a living wage, so in short, the British taxpayers are subsidising Boots payroll, while this billionaire who pays little tax anywhere in the world, sits on his arse in Monaco trying to dictate the outcome of the UK general election.
Of course what has got up his nose, is that if Ed Miliband is elected, he is going to reform the British banking system and apply something like the Tobin tax, or transaction tax, which will make tax dodging companies and individuals like Pessina and Alliance Boots, Amazon, Vodafone etc pay UK tax and he doesn't like it. The tax will not affect those companies that already pay their fair share of tax, only those who do not and it is past time this happened. If nothing is done about our defunct capitalist system soon, then we will (not if - will) have another 2008 type crash.
What the Telegraph, Mail and Passina also doesn't want us to know is that Tory peer Lord Blyth when at Alliance Boots wanted to buy NHS Walk in Centres from the Tory government at knock down prices. Lord Blyth has also donated over £20,000 to the Conservative party.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition have been selling off NHS walk in centres to the private sector, like Virgin, Medicare etc and some have actually started charging £25 for a consultation. under the NHS, these vital walk in centres were free to use.
The closures and sell offs of NHS walk in centres has been attributed to helping cause the crisis in the NHS and NHS Accident and Emergency Departments.
Why is the Telegraph, Mail and Sky News giving such prominence to a foreign businessman who is a tax exile living in Monaco and is CEO of a company that pays poor wages which the British taxpayers are then forced to subsidise? What is more, why doesn't Sky News include this in their bulletins? Why are they trying to deliberately mislead the British public?
Scratch the surface of any Tory attack on Labour and the corruption, bungs and donations just comes oozing out.
To what extent was Lynton Crosby the Tories election strategist and lobbyist with fingers in every conceivable corrupt pie involved in the talks to get all the leading Tory press to attack Labour and Ed Miliband on the same day? What kind of dirty political game is David Cameron playing and bearing this in mind, just how much can he actually be trusted?
All this and the attack on Ed Miliband just contained hearsay, foreign businessmen who don't pay UK tax trying to influence the outcome of the British election, a lot of nonsense about Miliband being 'haunted' and of course the Mail could not resist rehashing the absurdity of Ed Miliband's bacon sandwich, it's totally and utterly ridiculous and it's about time Ofcom did their job, stepped in and stopped this behaviour, once again this just demonstrates that the press cannot regulate themselves and need to be regulated.
The truth is that the Tories are slowly privatising our NHS and are using bankers, private health companies and businessmen CEO of companies like Boots Alliance to do it. Stefano Pessina has a vested interest in the Tories Health and Social Care Act not being repealed by a future Labour government led by Ed Miliband as prime minister, no wonder he doesn't want Mr Miliband to become PM, it would be a disaster, not for the British public, but for him and Boots Alliance who would have their lucrative NHS contracts rescinded.
David Cameron Running Chicken Scared From TV Debates
The general election is drawing ever closer and the prime minister David Cameron still has not agreed to a format for the live TV debates that proved so popular in 2010. For almost 2 years Mr Cameron has been prevaricating over these debates and has used every trick in the book to avoid appearing. First he tried to say that the TV debates were too much of a tie, then he said they should be moved to months before the election (what would be the point of that?) He has also tried ignoring the issue entirely hoping they would die a natural death. Now under pressure from the broadcasters and Ed Miliband to finalise a format the prime minister suddenly came over all 'concerned' for the Green party! Mr Cameron said if the Greens were not included, then he was not going to take part. Undeterred, the TV companies got together and announced they would oblige the PM and include the Greens, however, at the same time they preempted Mr Cameron's next objection and also announced that the SNP and Plaid Cymru would also be invited to take part and also added a caveat that if any leader of any party failed to sign up then they would simply erect an empty lectern in their place. All the leaders of the other parties have a agreed, but Cameron is still prevaricating, his latest excuse on learning that the Greens and Plaid Cymru would be included, is that he now wants the Democratic Unionist Party to take part too. He knows its patently ridiculous if broadcasters were to ask the DUP they would have to ask all the other Northern Ireland parties too, if this happened the introductions would take up most of the programme. Cameron also knows that NI voters have completely different choices. It's just the latest in Cameron's prevarication to avoid the debates altogether. Next thing we will learn is that David Cameron will want to invite one of Nadhim Zahawi's horses, it's absurd.
It must be obvious to all by now, (even die hard Tory voters) that David Cameron is running scared of appearing in these debates and that's fine, he doesn't have to, but the broadcasters should now say enough is enough and issue him with a final timetable informing him that he either agrees to the format or an empty lectern is erected in his place before Cameron does with the TV debates what he has done with weekly Prime Minister's Questions, and turn them into a complete farce.
Everyone knows that David Cameron did not really want Green leader Natalie Bennett to take part, what he hoped to do was to raise the profile of the Greens to take votes from Labour and at the same time hope the broadcasters would drop the idea of the debates in the process. In short he tried to manipulate the situation to his own political advantage. However, it has all backfired and he has made himself look absurd and a like snivelling coward.
Another unintentional consequence of what Cameron has done is shoot himself in both feet with Green leader, Natalie Bennett now taking part. Cameron had wanted her and the Greens to damage the Labour vote, but after her car crash interview with Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics show Green policies will never stand up to scrutiny and are likely to lose the Greens more votes than they gain.
The Greens main policy is something called the 'Citizens Income', which conservative estimates will cost the Treasury £280 billion per year, when Ms Bennett was asked where the funding was going to come from she could not say, she rattled off a few 'savings' which did not even amount to a billion, on the BBC Marr show the week previous she said that scrapping Trident would pay for the policy. However, if Trident was scrapped (an not factoring in civilian and armed forces job losses) it would only save us £100 billion and that is over thirty years! (And that is a generous estimate). So she had a week to come up with a detailed reply to her funding policy, but failed, which means of course that huge policy commitment cannot be funded and a whole plethora of other cuts would have to take place to pay for it, which would leave people worse off, not better off and that is being generous and not factoring in the tax receipts losses that such a policy would cause. All Ms Bennett did under scrutiny was to say they were working on the funding and would invite people to view Green party website. Ms Bennett also said that belonging to a terrorist group like IS and Al Qaeda should not be illegal in this country!
It's hard to see that when placed under the same scrutiny as the other party leaders in these TV debates that with policies like that, that they could attract much support from Labour. Up until now Ms Bennett and the Greens had escaped national scrutiny, but now of course with Cameron raising their profile for them and their appearance in the TV debates, they will be unable to escape scrutiny and will be questioned as hard as any of the other parties and they are going to spectacularly fail, not at all what Cameron wanted, in fact it could actually result in Labour winning back lost support.
It looks like David Cameron and his election strategist Lynton Crosby could have made a big mistake about Greens stealing Labour support. Lynton Crosby is also the director of nine companies including Crosby Textor and its subsidiaries, as well as having connections to Tory polling company YouGov! Crosby is an Australian the same as Natalie Bennett and really should have known her debating skills were dubious to say the least, and that Green policies could be described as flaky at best. So even if Cameron appears or doesn't appear, Labour look set to benefit from Bennett appearing - the opposite of what Cameron and Crosby thought would happen. The best thing that Cameron could have done would have been to put his own fear and ego to one side and appear without all the delaying tactics, but yet again he has failed to do so and in the TV debates without the Tory press and biased TV presenters to shield him Cameron will be as exposed as Natalie Bennett. The nation will be interested to learn where his £7 billion in tax cuts will be coming from as yet unfunded and unexplained, will they be funded by yet more cuts to the benefits of disabled people? Especially when it has just been revealed that George Osborne's welfare cuts are to be twice as bad as he has revealed! ......
I actually share some of Labour supporters frustration as to why Labour seem reticent to go a little further left, but what I would urge them to think of is the bigger picture. Ed Miliband is centre left, he and Labour do have some really great policy proposals and Labour in government do have a really good track record of keeping their promises. What Labour supporters flirting with Green should bear in mind is that Miliband has to try and reassure all voters that he and Labour are able to govern, that means convincing people in Tory - Labour marginal seats to vote Labour, if they don't, then Labour will not win the election. It really is as simple as that. The irony is that Ed Miliband is known to favour scrapping the First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system that ignores the votes and concerns of millions of people in British elections, and replacing it with some form of proportional representation (PR), which will help all votes of all voters voting for smaller parties like the Greens to count and voting Green in May will be a vote to deny yourself future representation in parliament and rightly or wrongly, the way things stand, voting for the Green Party on May 7th, is a vote for David Cameron and a vote for giving him another five years in power, to carry on doing things like this: Homeless 14 month old baby forced to sleep in a suitcase in a hostile and this: "DWP to urgently review decision to axe benefits to family of a 7 year old leukemia sufferer, forced to rely on foodbanks" (don't read if you do not want to shake with anger and frustration at this hideous Tory government!)
I make no bones that I support the Labour party and Ed Miliband for government and prime minister, I honestly believe that a prime minister Miliband and a Miliband government will bring the radical changes and reform that our bank system, our capital system and our voting system actually needs. I also believe that the Conservatives, David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg and the Tory supporting right wing press know it too, which is why they at every given opportunity try to trash Miliband, they lie about him misrepresent him. The Sunday press of 01/02/2015 proves it. The Tory press have united to fight one person, Ed Miliband, with a stream of spurious reports, innuendo and complete fallacies.
They switch between trying to tell us that Mr Miliband is 'weird' (because he can't eat a bacon sarnie) to he is weak (because he can't eat a bacon sarnie) and he can't possibly lead the country because yes you guessed it, he can't eat a bacon sarnie.
Not a real word to expose the Tory corruption and the astonishing ill judgement of Tory PM David Cameron, or the lies and total incompetence. Nothing about how Cameron stood in front of NHS workers just weeks before the 2010 general election and blatantly lied to their faces when he said "there will be no more top down reorganisation of the NHS", when at this point he KNEW he was going to order the biggest reorganisation in the NHS entire history, he knew because he and the former health Secretary Andrew Lansley had been working on the reforms for SEVEN years at that point - liars the pair of them, blatant liars, the kind that gives politics a bad name and there are many such examples of appalling Tory lies and deliberate misleading, but the Tory press do and say absolutely nothing, because apparently Ed Miliband being caught on camera eating a bacon sarnie the wrong way trumps Tory corruption and incompetence!
In truth the absence in the Tory supporting press of real issues to attack the leader of the opposition with show their abject fear of having Ed Miliband, a real man, a decent and caring man and also a clever man lead this country absolutely terrifies them and it does for one simple reason, far from being 'weak', Miliband is strong and he has stood up to the likes of Dacre at the Daily Mail and stood up to the Sun and Sun owning Australian living in the US, dictating to us what UK government policy should be Rupert Murdoch and won. Miliband forced Cameron to hold the Leveson inquiry, which exposed the sheer sewer mentality that runs through Murdoch's veins and runs through the veins of every gutter journalist and every editor there has ever been at the Sun from Kelvin MacKenzie (Hillsborough) to Murdoch's little friend and playmate Rebekah Brooks (hacking a murdered schoolgirl's phone). The Tory press know that Miliband will implement the recommendations of Judge Leveson and the Tory press will lose some of their ability to publish lies and get away with it, this is the truth, this is what the Tory press really fear. Far from being weak Miliband is strong and has showed the press he is not scared of them and that he's principled and he's honest and he cannot be bought by them and the Tories and their mates in the biased Tory press know this which is why they attack him constantly, and yet can find nothing better than a bacon sandwich to do it with!
Meanwhile the Tory Press allow Cameron to get away with running 'fowl' from the live TV debates, I wonder why?
