Tory Candidate Recommends Paying Mentally Handicapped Less than Ordinary People

There really couldn’t be a clearer statement of the Tories’ contempt for society’s weaker, less privileged and disabled members. Mike put up a piece today reporting that the Tory candidate for Amber Rudd’s old constituency of Hastings & Rye, Sally Ann Hart, managed to outrage people at a local husting with her recommendation on how much people with learning difficulties should be paid. She said that they should earn less than people of normal intelligence, because ‘they don’t understand money’ (!) This lead to shouts of ‘Shameful!’ and one person in the audience shouting that they were autistic, and they wanted to get paid for the work they do. As they should.

Amber Rudd, when she held that constituency, only had a majority of 346 votes over Labour. After this, Mike reckons that the Labour candidate, Peter Chowney, might just take it. And Mike also makes it clear what Hart’s comment means:

I think it means it is Conservative policy to rip off and shortchange people whenever and wherever they think it is possible.

Never mind whether they do a good job or not, if someone has a learning disability, the Tories are saying not only that you can – but that you should – pay them less money.

He goes on to describe what the Tories’ re-election would mean for other disabled people across Britain.

But we can see what kind of nation the Tories would create if they are elected into government again on December 12: one in which the hostile environment they have already built for disabled people would spill over into open contempt, with more pushed into poverty, and possibly even more deaths than we’ve seen in the last nine years of Tory misrule.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/12/08/will-labour-take-hastings-rye-after-conservative-candidates-disablist-remark/

The Tories really do amaze me. Just when you think they couldn’t get lower or scummier, they do. Their morals are so low they’re subterranean. And I also wonder if Hart herself isn’t a bit defective in the old grey matter. Years ago I read a piece in New Scientist about some of the problems suffered by people with injuries or other impairments to specific parts of their brain. One region of the brain apparently regulates morality. According to the neurologist interview by the magazine, those of his patients who’ve suffered damage to that area will do things like start eating the food off other peoples’ plates in restaurants. They do so simply because, with that part of their brain not working correctly, they no longer understand that’s not the right thing to do.

It’s tempting to speculate that Sally Ann Hart may have a similar mental impairment. But sadly, I doubt it. She doesn’t appear to have suffered any damage to her brain. She just has a nasty attitude to the disabled.

As for disabled people not understanding money, while that’s no doubt true of some, it most certainly isn’t true of others. Some autistic people, for example, are superb mathematicians, but find it difficult to cope in social situations. And there are too many people of normal intelligence, who are unable to deal properly with money. I’ve heard stories of people falling on severe financial difficulties because the money they should have used to pay the rent or the mortgage they’ve instead spent on an expensive car or luxury holiday to somewhere exotic. They’ve made a stupid choice, but they aren’t mentally handicapped and shouldn’t be paid less for their work either.

But Hart’s comments about the disabled also reveals much about the wider Tory viewpoint, at least for some members of the party. One writer on American Neoconservativism believed that they had an essentially Hobbesian worldview. That is, they followed the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes in considering people purely as isolated units in society, engaged in a ‘war of each against all’. This also seems to be Hart’s thinking, in which those physically, mentally or socially inferior are to be taken advantage of and exploited. Because they are unable to cope for themselves, and so ultimately it’s for their benefit. Hence the punitive benefit sanctions and the Work Capability Test. These may strike everyone with an ounce of compassion and objectivity as grossly unfair and cruel to the point of murder, but to the Tories it’s all for the good of those at the receiving end of it. They have to be kept in line, even by exploitation, as they cannot cope and function as proper, self-reliant, responsible members of society otherwise.

It’s a disgusting attitude. Stop this Tory exploitation of the disabled and, indeed, anyone else on Thursday. Get them out, and Corbyn in!

John Mann Joins Tories – Real Labour Members and Supporters Celebrate

It’s finally happened then. John Mann has finally done what he should have done long ago and crossed the floor to join the Conservatives. One of the leaders of so-called ‘moderates’ – in reality Thatcherite entryists – who flung false accusations of anti-Semitism at socialists and genuine anti-racists in the party, has gone off to be BoJob’s ‘anti-Semitism Tsar’. One of Mann’s stunts was to turn up with a camera crew to accuse Ken Livingstone of anti-Semitism. Red Ken had committed the horrible crime of actually knowing some Zionist history. It was the kind the fanatics of the Zionist right really hate, and so they misquoted Leninspart and fabricated an utterly fake accusation of anti-Semitism.

The Trotskyite newt-fancier and bane of Tony Blair had said that Hitler initially supported Zionism. He did. The Nazis and the German Zionists had reached an arrangement – the Haavara agreement by which they would work together to smuggle Jews into Palestine, then under the British mandate. It was an utterly cynical arrangement. The Nazis merely wanted to get Jews out of Germany, while the Zionists wanted to get colonists for the embryonic Jewish state. It didn’t last long either. The Agreement was short-lived as the Nazis moved from the simply forcing Jews to emigration to the horror of the infamous ‘Final Solution’. Unable to countenance genuine history, Mann and his fellow bullies claimed instead that Leninspart had said that Hitler was a Zionist. He was therefore brought before one of the witch-hunters’ kangaroo courts and expelled. And the accusation that he was an anti-Semite was parroted by the British media, who can’t stand historical truth either.

The title of ‘anti-Semitism tsar’ is an infelicitous one, putting it mildly. The tsars viciously persecuted the Jews. They were forbidden to live anywhere else in the Russian Empire except in the area of the Jewish Pale. Legislation was passed limiting the jobs they could do, and they were the victims of pogroms and forced conscription into the Russian army. This was a form of forced conversion, as it was believed that the bullying and victimisation in the Russian military would encourage them to convert. Additionally, the last tsar, Nicholas II, was a full-on believer in the notorious Jewish Blood Libel. That is the murderous myth that Jews kill Christians to use their blood in the matzo bread eaten at Passover. Nicholas was so convinced of this, that he was determined to prosecute an innocent man, Beilis, against all the evidence to the contrary. This was one of the many acts that discredited the regime, and was an embarrassment even to the tsar’s anti-Semitic supporters.

As for Mann himself, while he himself is keen to fling accusations of anti-Semitism around, he has found it difficult to substantiate them. Tim Fenton has put up on his article about this the court judgement from the case when he and MacShane accused a university and college lecturers’ union of anti-Semitism, because it supported the BDS campaign. The judgement noted that while Mann eagerly denounced the campaign as anti-Semitic, he couldn’t say why. Of course he can’t. Because it isn’t. The BDS campaign is not against Jews or Jewish businesses per se, nor even against Israel. It is again Israeli goods produced in the Occupied Territories. It is an attack on apartheid and colonialism, just as the sanctions campaign against apartheid South Africa was. The only difference is that Israeli is a Jewish state, though that is not the reason for the sanctions.

Mann also is in absolutely no position to accuse anyone whatsoever of racism. He was behind a pamphlet published in 2016 which had a passage on Travellers, informing its readers that the police had the power to remove them and any vehicles or property in cases of trespass. Ben Bennett, a Gypsy, referred this to the police complaining that it was racist in that it singled out Travellers specifically. And the Rozzers concurred. They wrote back to Bennett stating that they had advised Mann that if the booklet was reprinted, that section would have to be revised and called it ‘a hate incident’.

Mann was also a mate of Phil Woolas, another Labour ‘moderate’, who stoked up racism during his local election campaign. Woolas had produced a pamphlet claiming that the Lib Dems were ‘soft on immigration’ and smearing Muslims as supporters of terrorism. He was also disappointed in the timing of his defection. He had arranged it so that it would coincide with the 10 O’clock news. Unfortunately for him, Amber Rudd chose to walk out of BoJob’s cabinet, and this overshadowed his attempt to grab a bit of publicity. It also says much about him – and nothing complimentary – that just when every decent Tory was walking out on Johnson, Mann was running towards him.

The Sunset Times, a newspaper with a proud future behind it, claimed that Mann’s defection had sparked civil war in Labour. Er, no. Not a bit. Instead of hand-wringing and recrimination, the general mood was wild celebration. See Mike’s piece about all this, which reproduces various tweets from people up and down the country rejoicing that Mann, a racist, bigot, and islamophobe, had finally gone and joined the Tories. At last the people of his constituency could look forward to getting a real socialist to represent them.

On a serious note, one of the tweeters posted this, which included this monument to Sinti and Roma – the European Travellers – murdered by the Nazis in the Porajmos, the term for the Nazi extermination of their people.

Mann claimed that he was leaving Labour because racism always started with the persecution of the Jews. This is massively hypocritical, considering his own history of racism. The Nazi extermination of the Roma – the Gypsies – was a development of the anti-Traveller racism of people like him. And the methods the Nazis used for the extermination of the Jews – killing them with cyanide gas – was first used against the disabled. Just as the Tories have murdered tens of thousands of disabled people through starvation and deprivation after throwing them off benefits through the fitness to work tests.

Mann is a racist hypocrite, a Thatcherite, who gone off to join a racist, hypocritical Thatcherite party. Labour is better off without him. 

For further info, see

Celebrations in Labour as Mann quits to become Tory anti-Semitism ‘tsar’

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/09/john-mann-anti-semitism-non-expert.html

Torygraph Predicts Labour Set to Win General Election

Ho ho! An article in yesterday’s I for Monday, 15th April 2019, might explain why the Sunset Times was so keen to try another anti-Semitism smear against the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn the day before. The article, entitled ‘Labour on course to win general election’ by Cahal Milmo reported the findings of a poll by the Sunday Torygraph that in a general election, Labour would defeat the Tories, taking 59 seats from them. The article ran

The Conservative Party faces being swept from power by Jeremy Corbyn with the loss of nearly 60 seats in the event of a general election, according to new polling.

Labour would become the largest party in the House of Commons with prominent Tories, including the Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd and arch Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith at “high risk” of losing their seats.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that the steep fall in support was being fueled by anger among Conservative voters at the party’s failure to deliver Brexit on 29th March, despite repeated promises by Theresa May that the date would not be changed.

Professor Sir John Curtice, president of the British Polling Council, told the paper that it appeared Leave voters were being drawn back to Ukip or Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

The “poll of polls” by Electoral Calculus, based on surveys of 8,561 people between 2 and 11 April, found that in the event of an immediate general election Labour would become the largest party with 296 seats against 259 for the Tories – a net loss of 59 MPs for Mrs May’s party.

But despite such a victory, Mr Corbyn would not automatically become prime minister – he could only form a government if he secured support from other parties such as the SNP.

“The Conservatives’ failure so far to secure Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union is at risk of costing them dearly,” said Sir John. (p. 6).

While it’s refreshing to read a story that predicts Labour winning a general election, obviously it’s still incredibly biased. It comes from the Torygraph, and follows that rag’s pro-Brexit line. But while I don’t doubt that the Tories’ continued incompetence, factionalism and May’s stubborn determination to hang on to power and force through the same tired, discredited and utterly unwanted deal, there are other powerful factors that might bring about a Labour victory.

Firstly, as Mike has also pointed out this week, Remainer Tories are also being drawn towards the Tinge Group, Change UK, thus disproving their claims to be ‘centrist’ Labour. And secondly, Labour’s policies are massively popular. People want the health service renationalized and restored, electricity, water and the railways taken back into state ownership, the trade unions strengthened, workers given better employment rights and places in the boardroom, as well as the creation of a proper welfare state. All the policies that the Tories and the rest of the neoliberal establishment hate with a passion, and revile as just a return to the policies of the 1970s.

But Labour are very definitely ahead in the polls, but rather than admit that this is because the Party is genuinely popular and neoliberalism and Thatcherism are dead, zombie economics, the Torygraph is trying to spin this to discredit the ‘Remain’ camp within the Tory party. But hopefully it won’t be too long before there is a Labour election victory, and the entire Tory party is swept from power and kept out for decades.

Hypocrite Amber Rudd Demands Chris Williamson’s Constituency Labour Party Be Investigated for Anti-Semitism

More staggering hypocrisy from Amber Rudd. She’s in today’s I newspaper for the fourth of March, 2019, demanding that Jeremy Corbyn investigate Chris Williamson’s constituency Labour party for anti-Semitism. She claimed that in it, Jews had been abused and taunted. What a pack of lies! Jewish members of the party up and down the country have come forward, like Haim Bresheeth and the members of Jewish Voice for Labour, to say that they’ve been members of the Labour party and have never suffered anti-Semitism. The article does, however, betray the real reason for her accusing them of hating Jews: some of them have had the temerity to demand that he be reinstated. I’m not a member of the Labour party, but I have joined them in signing a petition on Change.org calling for Williamson’s reinstatement.

It seems here that Rudd is simply following the tactics of Luciana Berger, who wanted Liverpool Wavertree CLP suspended or expelled in toto as anti-Semites, because they wanted to deselect her. They weren’t anti-Semitic. They were just sick of her not representing them, but instead following the Blairite line of supporting the rich and demanding Tory policies. And Berger’s and Rudd’s attitude is very much like the way Brecht described the East German government when the sent the tanks in against their people when they protested against the Stalinist tyranny. He quipped that they saw the people as in the wrong, and demanded their dissolution. It’s become one of the classic quotes against Stalinism and authoritarian Communism. But it exactly fits the Tories and Blairites.

It’s also massively hypocritical coming from Rudd and the Tories because of the massive racism in their party. I’ve put up a couple of pieces discussing the revelations by other bloggers of the colossal racism in the Tory ranks, particularly on the internet groups supporting Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. These have demanded the deportation of British people of colour, vilified Blacks and other ethnic minorities, demanded that Muslims be barred from politics, promoted stupid, racist and false conspiracy theories about Jews plotting to destroy White Europe, wanted Muslims banned from political activism or holding posts in government, local and nation; and ranted about demolishing mosques, shooting and bombing Muslims and other immigrants, and urged their members to prepare for civil war. The percentage of real anti-Semites in the Labour party is 3.6. The percentage of anti-Semites in the Tories is 3.9. But the amount of racism against other ethnic minorities is much higher.

Which is obvious when you consider Tweezer’s ‘hostile environment’ policy against immigration, the shameful Windrush deportations and the vans and posters May put up calling for illegal immigrants to hand themselves in and others to report them.

The real, vicious, dangerous, murderous racism is in the Tories. And Rudd herself and her mistress May clearly support it by doing nothing to weed it out, all the while baying hypocritically about anti-Semitism in Labour.

 

Corbyn Attacks May on Brexit after her ‘No Confidence’ Victory

This is another little video from RT of just under three minutes in length reporting May’s victory at the ‘No confidence’ vote. They report that she won by two thirds, 200 for her versus 117 against, and can’t be challenged for the next year. But they also note that her party remains divided between the Hard Brexiteers and the Remainers, and that she’s had an extremely difficult time getting them to back the deal. Their reporter, Anastasia Churkina, also states that no-one believes that the coming period is going to be easy for her.

The anchorman then discusses a Tweet attacking her and her wretched deal from Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn said

Tonight’s vote changes nothing. Theresa May has lost her majority in parliament, her government is in chaos and she’s unable to deliver a Brexit deal that works for the country and puts jobs and the economy first. She must now bring her botched deal back to parliament next week.

Which means that she has to end her postponement of the Brexit deal. As Mike has commented on his blog, it’s a good question whether she’ll do this, or whether she’ll keep on putting it off forever so that we crash out of the EU with a ‘No Deal’ Brexit.

And Corbyn’s exactly right when he comments that she has lost her majority in parliament. Despite her calls for unity, the party is still bitterly divided over the issue, and her rivals, Boris, Rees-Mogg and Rudd, are still out there, waiting for their chance.

May Living on Borrowed Time after Winning ‘No’ Confidence Vote

Okay, here’s a few of my thoughts on May winning the ‘No confidence’ vote yesterday. I would very much have liked Tweezer to lose it, if only to wipe that smug, sickly grin off her arrogant face. But she won instead. However, as Mike and the peeps he cites on his blog have pointed out, this is hardly a resounding victory. She won by 83 votes, 200 in support of her as opposed to 113 against. This is lower than the number of votes Thatcher had way back in 1989, when the Iron Lady did us all a favour, realized she’d lost, and resigned. It’s lower than the figure John Major got when he also faced a vote of ‘No confidence’. She is, however, living on borrowed time. She has said that she will not lead the Tories into an election in 2022. That’s an extraordinary promise that no other leader has been forced to make. It means that the parliamentary party still heartily dislikes her, but have decided to put up with her.

And the newspapers today have been full of the various rivals for power circling her. Rivals like Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Amber Rudd. She’s fought them off for now, but there’s still out there, awaiting their chance. And it looks like her government is still in trouble, as Mike has described over at Vox Political.

And in a way, I’m sort of relieved she won. I’d rather have a weak leader like May in power, than one of her vile colleagues like Bojo or Jacob Rees-Mogg. I think they would probably be far more unpopular than she is, but even if they were only in power for a short period they could still do immense harm. And there is always the possibility that they could prove to be more popular. After Thatcher was ousted in 1989, she was replaced with John Major and we had to endure another seven years of Tory rule until he was thrown out by Blair.

So while it’s the not the ideal result I would have liked, there’s still hope. Here’s to May losing the next challenge!

Mike Scoops Private Eye on McVey’s Departure from Government

Last fortnight’s issue of Private Eye, for the 30th November – 13th December, carried a story suggesting that Esther McVey’s resignation from the cabinet may have been for reasons other than a concern over Brexit. Instead, the satirical magazine suggested, Iain Duncan Smith’s collaborator in the murder and starvation of the old, homeless, unemployed and disabled was due to her wishing to avoid having to answer questions about whether her department has tried to cover up the stats on the deaths on disabled people. The piece, in the ‘HP Sauce’ column on page 10 ran:

<strong>Esther McVey’s sudden cabinet resignation over Brexit does have a silver lining for the former work and pensions secretary. It means she avoids having to answer tricky questions about whether her erstwhile department tried to cover up links between its controversial “fitness for work” tests and the deaths of benefit claimants.

Marsha de Cordova, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, and Stephen Lloyd, the Lib Dem’s work and pensions spokesman, wants to establish whether inquest rulings linking the so-called work capability assessment to the deaths of at least two mentally ill claimants were passed to the independent expert tasked with annual reviews of the test. They also want to know whether the results of internal investigations into the deaths of other claimants were passed on.

If they were, they certainly did not feature in Dr Paul Litchfield’s reviews in 2013 and 2014 – and he himself is keeping schtum. A recent Freedom of Information request from Disability News Service also failed to elicit an answer, with the Department for Work and Pensions simply saying it did not hold the information – and it clearly wasn’t prepared to find out.

Let’s see if the two crusading MPs fare any better with McVey’s successor at the DWP, the returning Remainer Amber Rudd, who in her early defence of universal credit looks every bit as evasive as McVey.

This is very much in Mike’s particular sphere of interest over at Vox Political. As a carer, Mike is very concerned about the Tories’ attacks on the disabled and the lethal consequences of their sanctions regime and the Fitness for Work tests. Followers of his blog will recall the struggle Mike had to get the DWP under IDS to release the stats on the number of people, who’d died under their reforms of the benefits system.

On Friday, 23rd November 2018, Mike ran this story speculating that the Minister for the Genocide of the Disabled had resigned because she wanted to avoid being questioned about the number of deaths Tory policies have caused:

Remember when Esther McVey quit the government last week, claiming it was because of Brexit, and I suggested she was running to avoid having to answer the criticisms of the Department for Work and Pensions raised by UN inspector Philip Alston?

It turned out that she had already exchanged words with the special rapporteur on poverty – but now it seems I was not wrong after all, as Ms McVey’s departure allowed her to avoid answering questions on a possible link between the hated Work Capability Assessment carried out by private contractors on behalf of the DWP and the deaths of benefit claimants.

This issue is whether the government showed key documents linking the deaths of claimants with the work capability assessment (WCA) to Dr Paul Litchfield, the independent expert hired to review the test in 2013 and 2014.

Dr Litchfield carried out the fourth and fifth reviews of the WCA but has refused to say if he was shown two letters written by coroners and a number of secret DWP “peer reviews”.

In the light of recent revelations, it seems reasonable to ask whether this is because he was asked to sign a ‘gagging order’ – a non-disclosure agreement requiring him not to say anything embarrassing or critical about the Conservative government or its minister.

Dr Litchfield published his two reviews in December 2013 and November 2014, but neither mentioned the documents, which all link the WCA with the deaths of claimants.

Disability News Service raised the issue in July, prompting Opposition spokespeople to send official letters demanding an explanation. Labour shadow minister for disabled people Marsha de Cordova’s was written on July 25, and Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Stephen Lloyd’s followed on August 2.

Neither had received a response by the time Ms McVey walked out, as DNS reported.

I think we can safely conclude that the four-month delay – so far – indicates Ms McVey intended never to respond. The disagreement over Brexit provided a handy excuse to do a runner.

Will Amber Rudd be more forthcoming?

The evidence of her time at the Home Office suggests the opposite.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/11/23/did-mcvey-quit-the-government-to-avoid-questions-on-disability-deaths-cover-up/

Mike’s report of the affair covered the same points as that in the Eye, but adds details about Dr Litchfield’s reports and speculates that he may not have given details of the numbers of deaths because he had been forced to sign a gagging order, as very many of the charities and other organisations working with Tweezer’s gang of cutthroats have been forced to do.

One of the problems facing modern print journalism is that by the time they’ve put a story into the paper, everyone’s already read about it on the Net. This is the reason why newspapers have increasingly become similar to magazines with celebrities interviews, media stories and articles on subjects that are of interest, but not necessarily particularly topical.

I went back to reading Private Eye after a hiatus, when I was sick and tired of the magazine’s constant attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. This seems to have calmed down recently, but I’ve no doubt that it’s still bubbling away somewhere underneath. It does carry much excellent information on the shabby deals going on behind the scenes, in politics, local government, business and the press, which isn’t reported in the rest of the media. It’s that which still makes the magazine worth reading.

However, the mainstream media has shown to a rapidly increasing number of people that it is deeply biased and untrustworthy. And it has plenty of competitors from the various left-wing news organisations on the web. Like the Disability News Service, the Canary, the Skwawkbox and very many others. Left-wing bloggers and vloggers are also increasingly turning to them, rather than rely on the viciously biased, mendacious British press. Gordon Dimmack announced on one of his videos a few weeks ago that he wasn’t going to rely on the mainstream media for his stories any longer. This was on a video in which he took apart the lies in a story in the Groaniad about Julian Assange.

The British media, including the Beeb, is feeling threatened. Very threatened. A week or so ago the Radio Times published an article lamenting the polarization in political opinion due to people no longer trusting mainstream news sources, and turning instead to others which conformed to their own views. Thus the political consensus was breaking down. They also ran another article celebrating Question Time and its presenter, Dimbleby. Well, the consensus opinion pushed by the media is largely right-wing, pro-Tory and anti-Corbyn, with the Corporation’s news as massively bias as the Tory papers, from whom some of their journos have come. And Question Time has also angered many people, because of this pro-Tory bias and the way it has packed both panels and audience with Tories and Tory supporters.

It’s entirely right that people are turning away from the lamestream media with its bias and lies to the left-wing blogs, vlogs and other news outlets on the web. They aren’t Tory propaganda outlets, and are increasingly getting the stories before the mainstream papers and broadcasters.

And as this article from Private Eye shows, one of those blogs, which is getting the news to people first, before the mainstream press, is Vox Political.

May Runs Away from Debating Corbyn as ITV Withdraws Offer to Host It

Once again it appears that Tweezer has run away from a debate with Jeremy Corbyn. At the 2017 election last year, she challenged the Labour leader to a debate, then sent Amber Rudd instead when Corbyn took her up on it. Now it appears that she’s legged it away from debating Corbyn once again after ITV withdrew their offer to host the debate between the two.

May wanted the debate to be hosted by the Beeb, which wanted to include a panel of people with different opinions on Brexit and have an opening and closing statement. Labour saw too much opportunity for the Beeb to bias this against Corbyn, and refused to agree to it. Quite right. It seems that the Tories had been negotiation with the Beeb for a couple of weeks before Tweezer issued her challenge. The Maybot’s spin doctor, Robbie, is an ex-Beeb journo, as have been so many of the staff of the Tories’ PR department. The Beeb’s own reporting has always been heavily biased against Corbyn, which again is no surprise considering the number of Tories amongst the Beeb’s newsroom staff. Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson were former chairs of the Confederation of Conservative Students and the Young Tories. Neil edited The Economist and the Sunday Times, both right-wing rags. Sarah Sands, another Beeb journo, used to edit the Torygraph.

Labour preferred ITV’s format, which was simply for a plain, head-to-head debate between the two party leaders. Two days ago, the Beeb withdrew its offer to host the debate, leaving only ITV. Which yesterday also withdrew its offer, saying it was up to the two party leaders to comes to an agreement about the debate. A Labour spokesman then issued a comment stating that the commercial channel had withdrawn their offer because Tweezer was running scared. He explained why Corbyn and Labour had preferred the ITV format, and concluded

The Prime Minister has refused to join Jeremy in a head-to-head debate. Her team tried to confuse people with a convoluted format. But the British public will see this for what it is – Theresa May unable to face real scrutiny over her crumbling deal.

Absolutely. May can’t deal with any kind of debate or real interaction with a genuinely skeptical or inquiring British public. When she went to meet supposedly ordinary people during the election campaign last year, her audiences were always very carefully selected, and were composed of Tory activists and others the Tories considered reliable. Everything was minutely stage-managed. And it’s clear that May and her handlers clearly believe that she has absolutely no chance in an unbiased, straightforward forum.

And so, once again, she’s put her tail between her legs and run as far and as fast as she could!

So much for ‘strong and stable’.

Mike put up a piece about it yesterday, including comments from the Twitterati, who were quick to call May out on this. Devutopia in their tweet said ‘We have a scared coward running the country. She needs to be kicked out of No.10.’ While Chunky Mark, the Artist Taxi Driver, said in his, ‘The Prime Minister couldn’t even negotiate a TV debate let alone Brexit!!! Put that in your fckn headline’. So Mike did in his article about it.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/12/07/coward-theresa-may-couldnt-even-negotiate-a-tv-debate-how-can-we-believe-she-could-negotiate-brexit/

And May hasn’t been able to negotiate a good Brexit deal for Britain. Despite her hyping herself as a ‘bloody awkward woman’ who would get one for Britain, the opposite was true. According to EU officials, she was reduced to running around pleading with them to give her something, and refused to accept that they didn’t have to give her anything.

May can’t debate Corbyn, and she couldn’t debate Brexit. But it’s the British people that are suffering.

May’s Brexit deal looks like comprehensively wrecking our economy, as well as contributing to the further fragmentation of the United Kingdom. All because Cameron believed he could win the referendum against the ‘Leave’ faction in the Tories.

Get Tweezer out now, and put a proper Labour government in power, one that will look after Britain and its people, and get a proper Brexit deal.

Corbyn Attacks Tories for Calling Disabled People Scroungers

Another short video of less than a minute from RT, again showing Corbyn tearing into May for callousness towards the disabled.

It begins with May calling on the House to

Remember, Remember the Rt. Hon. member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, under Labour there is no money left.

Corbyn stands up and replies

Mr Speaker, when I hear a Prime Minister talking about difficult decisions, what always happens afterwards, in these contexts, is the poorest lose out in our society. 4.3 million disabled people are now in poverty, 50,000 were hit by appalling cuts in Employment Support Allowance Benefit alone last year, this government labeled disabled people scroungers, it called those unable to work skivers.

Corbyn continues, but the video cuts him off, showing instead Amber Rudd looking furious.

She may well rage, because once again, Corbyn’s right. I’ve noticed that every government, whenever they make benefit cuts, they always preface it with some spiel about it being a difficult decision. But it is always used as part justification for cuts that will hit the poor. It’s been like that since Thatcher, and I dare say it was part of political repertoire, and almost certainly Tory repertoire, long before then.

And it doesn’t matter how furiously Rudd and her gang of thugs and over-privileged bullies deny it, the Tories do regard the poor, the unemployed and the disabled as scroungers. As did New Labour. It’s built into the work capability test and its assumption that the mass of the disabled and long-term sick are malingerers. It’s in the lies the Tory media spouts about benefit cheats, which have led the public to believe that 25 per cent or so of all benefit claims are fraudulent, whilst the reality is less than 1 per cent.

I don’t know what May was talking about at the beginning of the video, but I guess it must have been about how funding for benefits was severely cut under Labour. Well, it may have been. Cameron and IDS organized their election strategy on campaigning against New Labour’s closures of hospitals and cuts to the NHS. But it was all hypocrisy. When they got into power, this policy was dropped as the act it was. They carried on closing hospitals, and broke their promise not to cut NHS funding. They lied, as they have always lied, because the Tories are a party of liars. And after they’ve made their cuts, they twist the statistics to claim that in real terms, they’re putting more money into the NHS or the welfare state than ever before. But that’s always just another set of lies.

May and the Tories have put disabled people in desperate poverty. They do regard them as scroungers and skivers, and now disabled people have to live with the abuse of an angry, misled public as well as the misery the Tories have directly inflicted. It’s long past time May, IDS, Rudd and the whole wretched lot were thrown out of power for good.

Marci Phonix: Get Rid of All the Tory Party for the Deportations

This is another very short clip, that’s well worth watching, from RT. It’s about a minute long, and shows the Grime Artist Marci Phonix talking to Afshin Rattansi about the Windrush deportations.

Phonix states that Amber Rudd wasn’t the only person responsible. The Tories hoped to put all of it on her, and when she was gone, the problem would be over. This was just a bit of deflection. But the Windrush deportations were an outrage which has turned the whole country upside down. And those higher up in the party should take responsibility.

Rattansi asks him if he thinks Theresa May should do so, and resign. Phonix responds by stating that May could have stopped the deporations at any time, but she didn’t. And it’s not just May. It’s the entire party. As far as he’s concerned, they all should go.

Phonix is absolutely right. The responsibility goes back all the way to May, when she was Cameron’s Home Secretary. It was May, who set up the ‘hostile environment’ policy and removed the legislation that specifically exempted Windrush migrants and their children from deportation. She bears direct responsibility. But she did while working for Cameron, and so the whole party is also responsible. Especially as Mike and the left-wing bloggers he follows have shown that racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are endemic and far more prevalent in the Tories than they or their friends in the media want to admit.

The Tories should go. Now.