WatchMojo is a YouTube channel that specialises in lists of the most (insert adjective) of whatever subject they’re covering. This is usually popular culture, like films, TV programmes and comics. But in this video from their British offshoot they delve into the very murky world of British tabloid and red top newspapers to discuss the six worst of them. And so, imagine if you will, this run down of the very worst of British journalism accompanied by the old style Top of the Pops theme as that sadly missed programme went down the music charts.
Coming last at No. 6 is the Daily Star for its coverage of weird paranormal stories like black-eyed ghost children, their libelling of the Liverpool fans at the Hillsborough disaster and getting sued by the McCanns for its malign take on the disappearance of their daughter. They also blamed video games for Raoul Moat’s shooting spree, despite the entire lack of evidence showing that video games are responsible for real world violence, and for making up an interview with Duane ‘the Rock’ Johnson.
Coming in at no. 5, pop-pickers, is the Mirror, showing that it’s also left-wing papers that can have appalling low journalistic standards. This is there because of its owner, Robert Maxwell, raiding his employees’ pension funds, and Piers Morgan publishing fake photographs of alleged atrocities by British troops in Iraq. This part of the video shows some of the other headlines from the paper, such as its ‘Achtung! Surrender’ to the Germans at the 1996 World Cup as other illustrations of its lack of taste and anything resembling decent attitudes.
At No. 4 in this chart of journalistic infamy is the Daily Mail, as illustrated by its article ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’ praising Mosley’s BUF and its owner, Lord Rothermere’s trip to Germany and praise of the Nazi regime. The video also states that it’s been suggested that the paper’s pro-appeasement stance convinced Hitler that Britain would not retaliate if he invaded Poland, thus causing World War II. More recently the paper has also been sued for libel or inaccurate reporting by celebs such as Melania Trump, Alan Sugar and Elton John. The video also shows some of its racist headlines opposing the decolonisation of mathematics and opposition to non-White immigration.
The Daily Express is at No. 3, again because of such low points as being sued by the McCanns, scaremongering stories about the world being wiped out by aliens or killer asteroids, and its weird fixation on conspiracy theories about Princess Diana and her death, often at the expense of more current and important stories. In 2010 its editor said that he was appalled by some of the stories it ran, and was going to reign in its islamophobia.
No. 2, the late, unlamented News of the Screws. This was always controversial, but lasted 150 years, even claiming at one time to be the world’s best newspaper. That was until it was brought down by the phone-tapping scandal, whose victims not only included celebrities, royalty like Princes William and Harry, but also murder victims and dead soldiers. It was forced to fold after all its advertisers deserted it.
But the top slot in this catalogue of filth and sleaze merchants is the Scum. This rag’s viciously low reporting has made it notorious around the world, but what foreign viewers may not know is that it’s particularly hated in Britain for its smearing of the Liverpool fans at Hillsborough, like its fellow tabloid the Depress. Instead of the Liverpool fans being responsible for the carnage, it was found that the police were responsible for the 96 deaths. This anti-Liverpool venom is the reason it’s still banned in the city, despite the paper having made some half-hearted apologies afterwards. It also claimed the Birmingham 6, a group of Irish men wrongly imprisoned for an IRA terrorist atrocity, were guilty. On top of this it was also sued for libel by Wayne Rooney. But what makes it especially hated is its staunch support of Margaret Thatcher, the infamous ‘Gotcha!’ headline for the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War, and its claim that it was responsible for Thatcher’s electoral victories with its headline ‘It was the Scum Wot won it’.
Of course this list leaves out some other instances of tabloid wrongdoing. The Scum has had any number of complaints for racism upheld by the former Press Complaints Commission, including one in which it compared Arabs to pigs. Piers Morgan has also been involved in the phone hacking scandal, though it’s possible the video mentions this and I’ve just forgotten it did. And I’d say the worst British tabloid was the Sport in its various editions for its mixture of sleaze, stories about freaks and daft stories following the Weekly World News style of journalism, like its claim that there was a B52 bomber on the Moon. The Sport was set up by David ‘the Slug’ Sullivan, according to Private Eye, a pornographer with convictions for running girls. But the paper has a low circulation compared to the others here, and so is far less influential.
As for the Scum coming first as Britain’s worst tabloid, I agree entirely, although I doubt this is an accolade the Scum would want to boast about on its front page. But when it comes to malign, biased reporting and racism, it is indeed the Scum wot wins it.
This is another piece from the Mirror which reveals precisely what a prize right-wing scumbag Liz Truss is. According to the article, ‘Liz Truss report demanded vast cuts and £10 fee to see GP – ‘true colours’ in full’ by the paper’s political editor Dan Bloom, the Tory leadership contender was the joint author of a 2009 report published by the think tank, Reform, calling for massive cuts to public spending. This included cutting pensioners’ benefits, doctors’ pay by ten per cent, and imposing a £10 charge for seeing the doctor.
The article begins:
‘Liz Truss is accused of showing her “true colours” in a paper that called for vast spending cuts and a £10 fee to see your GP.
The runaway favourite to be Prime Minister was one of seven people who wrote a 44-page slash-and-burn policy document for the 2009 Budget.
The ‘Back to Black’ paper for the Reform think tank recommended cutting £28bn in a year by introducing “user charges for GPs” and whittling 10% off doctors’ pay.
It also demanded ministers “remove pensioner gimmicks” to save £3.2bn, force civil servants onto a four-day week with a 20% pay cut, and hike the pension age at the last moment.
And it called for major military projects to be axed – including the Royal Navy’s planned aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.
Despite her being Deputy Director of Reform at the time, Ms Truss’ campaign bizarrely claimed: “Co-authoring a document does not mean that someone supports every proposal put forward.”
Despite saying it shouldn’t be in 2009, a Truss ally insisted the likely Prime Minister does believe in an NHS free at the point of use – and she’ll not cut GPs’ pay or defence spending as PM.
Ahead of tonight’s Tory hustings in Manchester, an ally argued: “The purpose of a think tank is to put forward bold, radical ideas in the hope the government will pick up one or two.”
A campaign spokesman added of the document written 13 years ago: “This is a nearly two decade old document written against the backdrop of Labour bankrupting the economy.”
But Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “Liz Truss’s track record shows her true colours. She is out of touch and out of step with the public.’
Ah, we’re back to the old ‘high spending Labour’ refrain, in which Labour is accused of bankrupting the economy and that savage cuts to public spending, meaning primarily the NHS and the welfare state, are needed. Do I believe that somehow, in the past thirteen years, she’s had some kind of conversion to Nye Bevan’s vision of an NHS that provides everyone with care, free at the point of use?
No. Because she’s a liar in a party of liars.
Remember the last election when an independent fact checking organisation found that while Labour had made no untrue statements, the number of lies the Tories told was off the scale in the thousands?
And the Tories don’t believe in the NHS. Not since Maggie Thatcher wanted to privatise it, but was only prevented by a massive cabinet revolt. Since then they’ve privatised everything they could, starting with the ancillary services and progressing to the medical services, as these have been contracted out to private medical companies and hospitals. And the other year various Tory scumbags were demanding an expansion of the list of services for which fees could be charged.
If she doesn’t believe in these cuts now, it’s only because that they’re a political liability. It looks to me very much that she strongly believed in them when Cameron was in power and Gideon, sorry, George Osborne was chancellor.
As I said a few days ago, the Tories must be desperate. They and their allies in the press have fallen back to the old smears of anti-Semitism against Jeremy Corbyn. A Reform Rabbi, Jonathan Romain, wrote an article in last Friday’s Times warning its readers not to vote for Labour, because he was afraid of the terrible consequences of a Corbyn-led government for Britain’s Jews. And Stephen Pollard, the non-Jewish, goysplaining editor of the Jewish Chronicle, has written an article aimed squarely at gentile Brits, urging us not to vote for Corbyn because ditto.
David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group has written another excellent reply to the latest round of smears. Rosenberg himself has been the subject of smear attacks and protests by ultra-rightwing Zionists. A few days ago Jonathan Hoffman, a former leader of the Zionist Federation, was doing his usual schtick of marching around screaming about anti-Semitism in protest at a talk Mr Rosenberg was given to the East London Humanists. Whom he also accused of anti-Semitism, because they’re militant atheists and are anti-Judaism. Well yes, they are. They are also anti-Christianity, anti-Islam, anti-Hinduism, and anti-religion generally. That does not mean that they stand for the persecution of Jews, or Christians, Muslims, Hindus or anyone else. As for Rosenberg being an anti-Semite himself, his piece, ‘Who’s Afraid of Jeremy Corbyn’, begins with him describing a journey he made as part of a group of sixty people on a four day educational visit to Poland. It was organised by Unite Against Racism and many of the people on it were trade unionists and members of the Labour party. They also ranged from sixth former to older people, including Holocaust survivors, some of whose terrible experiences he briefly describes. Rosenberg was a speaker at the event, but before he did, they were treated to a message by Jeremy Corbyn. It was not electioneering, but a private message, meant for the travelers alone. Rosenberg writes
But just before I spoke, we watched a video message that had been filmed in one of the busiest weeks of Jeremy Corbyn’s year. The election had only just been called but he found time to record a message to wish our group well on our visit. This was not electioneering. This was not a social media post to be broadcast by Labour’s Press Team for sharing far and wide. It was simply a private, personal, heartfelt message to our group, from someone who has spent their life confronting racism and fascism and posing an alternative to hatred.
“Your visit to Auschwitz,” Corbyn told us, “will be a poignant experience. I have been there myself.” He described antisemitism as an “evil cult that has to be destroyed in all forms.” He recalled a visit he made, in summer this year, “to a small Jewish museum in Romania next to a railway line, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were rounded up in 1944 and deported to their deaths.” He closed by calling on us to “unite as people to say we will not tolerate racism in any form in our society, be it antisemitism, be it Islamophobia, be it homophobia or any other kind of discrimination.”
Rosenberg goes on to criticise Romain’s article, which was part of the media’s general evidence-free argument against the Labour party. He also discusses how the Tories have been responsible for deliberately racist policies such as the Hostile Environment policy, and are now led by Boris Johnson and his vile remarks about ‘grinning picaninnies’ and women in hijabs. He also reminds voters thinking of switching from Labour to the Fib Dems because of the smears of racism just how racist the Lib Dems themselves are. They not only supported Tory austerity policies, which disproportionately affect ethnic minorities, they also supported the Hostile Environment. And they did some extremely racist campaigning themselves in Tower Hamlets. He writes
Some of us with longer memories might recall the role of the Liberal Democrats in Tower Hamlets in the early 1990s where Lib Dem leaflets linked the presence of Black and Asian people with the housing shortages, giving further credibility to the overtly racist BNP who were polling well. Other leaflets distributed by the Lib Dems accused Labour of diverting funds towards the area’s Asian communities. In the end the BNP won that seat, and the Lib Dems locally were widely seen as playing a despicable and racist role.
He also attacks the Torygraph article which quotes Conservative chairman James Cleverly that British Jews are preparing to flee Britain if Corbyn gets in. He notes that three years into Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party, fewer Jews than ever are actually leaving for Israel. But he also notes the anti-Semitic undertones of the Torygraph and Jewish Chronicle’s article. Both stereotype Jews as rich capitalists. He writes
But the more serious point contained in this suggestion is the not-so-subtle antisemtism of both the Telegraph and Cleverly.
In essence they argue that a Corbyn government will launch a vengeful attack on wealth. Those most committed to private enterprise fear being squeezed by a radical Labour government, and the suggestion seems to be that the Jewish community, often stereotyped as an overwhelmingly rich, business-orientated community, will especially feel that pinch. It is an argument that has been rehearsed by the very right wing Jewish Chronicle editor, Stephen Pollard, who gave space in December 2018 for an appalling article in his paper by Alex Brummer with a headline you might have expected to see in a fascist journal: “The thought of Jeremy Corbyn as PM has Jewish investors running for the hills”.
Three months earlier, Pollard himself, had attacked a tweet by Jeremy Corbyn in which Corbyn said that the people who caused the financial crash of 2008 “call me a threat. They’re right. Labour is a threat to a damaging and failed system rigged for the few.” Pollard tweeted: “This is ‘nudge, nudge, you know who I’m talking about don’t you? And yes I do. It’s appalling” In response I tweeted: “Stephen Pollard and Jeremy Corbyn. One of them seems to think all bankers are Jews. Clue: it is not Jeremy Corbyn.”
But when I read this drivel, stereotyping the Jewish community as capitalists, I think of the many Jews I know well who work in the health service and caring professions who will be boosted by the prospect of a Labour government that is committed to funding their sectors rather than selling them off. I think of the struggling Jewish single parents and pensioners I know, and unemployed Jews, who have every reason to welcome a Corbyn-led government that would boost welfare payments rather than cut them, and would undertake other serious anti-poverty measures. I think of Jews I know who are users of mental health services, whose provision has been cut to the bone by the Tories. I think of elderly Jewish acquaintances living in the East End for whom repairs to their council housing and a well resourced health service are very high on their agendas. These people need a Labour government to be returned on December 12th as much as as their non-Jewish counterparts.
Absolutely. I’ve met Jews, who’ve despised the Tories for what they’ve done to the Health Service because they’ve, or their parents, have worked in it.
He also gives more news that you won’t find in the lamestream media. Apparently here are two new initiatives by British Jewish young people to tackle the Tories. One is Vashti Media, which states that it is a ‘microphone for the Jewish Left’, and another is ‘Jews Against Boris’.
He also discusses a talk the group were given by a Polish socialist and anti-fascist, who talked about the current political situation in his country and the mobilisation of anti-Fascists to combat the recent nationalist marches through Warsaw. His article concludes by commenting on the way the Fascist and Nationalist right in Poland and eastern Europe are being supported by right-wing forces across the continent, including Britain’s Tories.
As we sat in a cab driving to the airport on Monday, we passed a wall graffitied with a crossed out Star of David in a circle. The populist right and far right in Poland, and other countries central and eastern Europe, have been drawing support from right wingers in Western Europe including Britain’s Tory Party. Those elements in Britain that are leading the false charge against Jeremy Corbyn, as if he were some sort of threat to Jews in Britain, need to stop playing dangerous factional political games and face up to where the threats are really coming from.
As Rosenberg and other, genuine anti-Fascist activists both Jewish and gentile have made clear, Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite. Since he’s been leader of the Labour party, the level of anti-Semitism has been at the lowest its ever been for years. Anti-Semitism, like racism generally, is always strongest on the right. And that means the very same Tories, who are trying to smear Corbyn as a Jew-hater.
I found this grimly fascinating snippet in today’s I for 22nd February 2019 on page 2, entitled ‘British pensioners on Hitler handouts’. It runs
Dozens of British pensioners are still receiving secret payments from Germany for collaborating with the Nazis, a group of Belgian MPs claim. They say the former collaborators, along with ex-SS guards, could be receiving up to £1,100 tax-free cash per month, thanks to a decree made by Hitler that was not revoked.
I can very well believe it. And how these Nazis and collaborators got here is a real scandal that the British secret state most definitely does not want the public to know about. They were recruited by the British intelligence agencies after the War, because they were believed to be useful in tackling the threat of Soviet espionage during the Cold War. I’ve got a feeling the West German secret service also recruited them for the same reason. This is probably also the reason why Hitler’s decree giving these horrors pensions was never revoked. And their presence in the West German intelligence agencies didn’t do them any good whatsoever. Markus Wolf, the head of the East German secret service still turned the West German spy agency into Swiss cheese.
Ken Livingstone discusses the scandal of the recruitment of former Nazis and their collaborators in his 1987 book, Livingstone’s Labour. He describes how some of them were giving jobs in the mining industry, and the disgust of the other miners at seeing them and their Nazi tattoos in the showers. Livingstone’s book, with its strong condemnation of any kind of racism, amply demonstrates that whatever Red Ken was, he definitely wasn’t an anti-Semite. Indeed one Jewish blogger, who belonged to the Jewish Socialist Group, posted up a piece stating that the man Private Eye dubs ‘Leninspart’ drew the ire of the Board of Deputies on one occasion because he gave the Jewish Socialists a small grant. This angered the Board, which is in any case very Conservative establishment, because the Jewish Socialist Group were not affiliated to them and so were outside their control. They were, to quote another anti-Semitic trope ‘the wrong kind of Jews’. You know, not nice, cosy, right-wing Jews that are part of the British right-wing establishment. The other kind of Jews, all those awkward fellows from eastern Europe, who were into anarchism, socialism and Marxism. The kind of people in the Jewish Bund in Poland and the former Russian Empire, who wanted to live in their ancestral homelands in peace, friendship and equality with their gentile compatriots. The type of Jews the British Zionist establishment is trying to smear as ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘self-hating’.
Livingstone called out these Nazis thirty years ago, which is probably one of the reasons the British establishment cordially hates him. And the Blairites and Israel lobby in the Labour party despise him because he dared to tell the truth about Israel: that the Zionists did collaborate with Hitler for a while to send Jewish colonists to Israel. And the Board despises anyone who does not automatically and uncritically support Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, just as they really despise genuinely socialist Jews.
It’s almost certainly true that British Nazis are receiving pensions from the Third Reich. And it’s a glaring scandal that they were ever recruited in the first place. Those pensions should be stopped, the British secret state’s recruitment of them should be made very public. And Livingstone and all the others, who have been unjustly smeared as anti-Semites should be readmitted into the party and duly given apologies.
Another Tory, who lies about food banks also surfaced two months. Edwina Curry responded to comment by Buddy Hell of Guy Debord’s Cat on Twitter with the statement that she was a 70 year old pensioner, who occasionally works for the BBC and is on low pay and benefits.
The Cat had remarked that it was all right for her to sneer, as she didn’t have to rely on benefits to top up poor wages from work. And that was her response.
The Cat comments further on her reply that
She’s on low pay and she receives benefits? I doubt that. As the poster below remarks, she receives a generous final salary pension to which all former MPs are entitled. Although she may not be, in her words “filthy rich”, she has the kind of income that many pensioners can only dream of. Her appearance on I’m A Celebrity netted her a cool £100,000. As for her appearances on the BBC, let’s put it this way: she won’t be earning peanuts. Currie and her second husband also own two (possibly more) properties.
He also speculates that perhaps she thought he’d forgotten her comments about salmonella in eggs and her four year affair with John Major.
he concludes
If Currie thinks her pension isn’t enough for her to live on, maybe she could get a job at her local supermarket? Just a thought.
No, Edwina Currie is very definitely not a poor pensioner. In fact, from what I’ve seen of her performances on television, she has absolute contempt for them, just like she and her party has for anyone else who’s poor. About a decade ago she turned up on the Clive Anderson show. Anderson asked her about the furore she caused when she was in Major’s government. The government had decided to cut pensioners’ winter fuel allowance. This understandably upset very many people. Curry’s response was to tell them to ‘wrap up warmly’. She repeated her comments, and added a snide remark about how it would ‘teach them’.
This offhand sneer at poor senior citizens went down as well as you would expect: the audience started booing.
This provoked an amazed response from Curry – she started peering around with the kind of fixed smile people put on when they know something’s not quite right, but don’t understand what. She really, really couldn’t understand how anyone could find her comment offensive.
She’s another one who’d fail the Turing test. In fact, there are probably ZX81s still out there, with 1 byte of memory, that stand a better chance of passing for human.
She also comes across as incredibly thick. She’s an Oxford graduate, and presumably had a very expensive education, but you do wonder how she got in. Way back in the 1990s, when Have I Got News For You was still more than halfway funny, she tried locking horns with Ian Hislop. Answering a question about some legal tussle she’d been involved in, she looked across to the editor of Private Eye and remarked ‘Aren’t you glad I didn’t sue you?’
To which Hislop frostily replied ‘Aren’t you glad, my dear!’
I think she’s now an MP for Derby. She turned up a few years ago on a documentary about starvation in Britain and the rising use of food banks. She was interviewed to give the Tory line. So standing in the middle of a bank’s stores, she repeated the lie that people weren’t using them because they were starving, but because it was cheap food.
Wrong. You can only use a food bank if you’ve got a chit referring you from the Jobcentre.
This was pointed out to her by the presenter. But, like a good little follower of Goebbels on the art of political lying, she repeated the lie.
She also made another appearance on a chat show a few years ago, in which she made much of her Liverpool roots. She put up on the accent, and tried to pass herself off as a real ‘Dicky Sam’.
Liverpool’s a great city. It has given the world the Beatles, Hornby Railways and Meccano. It has a brilliant museum and art gallery, and was one of the first museums in Britain to open a display on its role in the slave trade. In the 19th century, it’s literary and philosophical society was a major centre of scientific research in England. It has also produced the great writer and playwright, Alan Bleasdale. Unfortunately, Edwina Curry has also appeared to lower the tone.
She’s another Tory liar with a contempt for the poor, who tries to hide it behind further lies.
Mike yesterday put up a piece reporting a statement by a deputy head of the British Medical Association, Dr. Kailash Chand, that many senior doctors were considering leaving the NHS thanks to being made scapegoats by the Tories for the current NHS crisis in England.
Mike makes the point that it is indeed the Conservative government that is responsible for the crisis. They aren’t responsible for the NHS in Ulster, Scotland or Wales, and so those nations haven’t suffered a similar crisis in their health services. May and Hunt have further tried to blame everyone but themselves for the crisis, including pensioners, who they were claiming were filling up needed seats and beds.
Mike states that this time it has gone far enough, and we should be demanding their resignation. His article concludes
Theresa May seems keen to blame anybody but herself – she tried to pin the crisis on the elderly before claiming that A&E departments are buckling because she thinks GPs are lazy.
Enough is enough.
Whenever Mrs May, Mr Hunt or any other Tory (with the exception of Dr Sarah Wollaston, who has spoken up for the NHS, thereby proving she is in the wrong political party altogether) tries to run down the NHS, its doctors, nurses, specialists, workers or users, let’s just tell them:
“No. You are to blame. Resign.”
It’s a simple message, and easy to repeat.
Put it out there a few times and even our Tory-loving mass media might get the hang of it.
Mike also asks why high profile medical leaders and politicians are not demanding May’s and Hunt’s heads. Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis have a whole chapter on the failure of the medical profession to challenge the government over their piecemeal dismantlement of the NHS in their book, NHS-SOS. This topic may well deserve a blog post to itself to examine and explain it.
But for now, I completely agree with Mike. May, Hunt, Andrew Lansley and every other Tory, who has worked to undermine and destroy the Health Service from within, should resign. Now.
And why not also politicos from New Labour and the Lib Dems, who were also so keen to destroy the NHS in the interests of their corporate paymasters? They should go too.
And the same pressure should be kept on their replacements until the political class gets the message:
More tasteless inanity from the real Far Right. Hope Not Hate today has published an article reporting that the English Democrats are fielding their own candidate for the forthcoming Batley and Spen bye-election under what many people would consider to be a false name. This is the constituency of the murdered MP, Jo Cox. The other two major parties, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, have stated that they will not contest this seat out of respect for her. Unfortunately, the British Far and Fascist Right have shown their complete lack of anything like class, taste or decency in rejecting this strategy and putting forward their own candidates. Because they believe that in the absence of any competition from the Lib Dems or Tories, they might stand a chance. The English Democrats’ candidate is one Neil Humphrey, who is standing as ‘Anti-Corbyn’. He’s told the Electoral Commission that this is what other people habitually call him, but as the Hope Not Hate article makes clear, it’s far more likely he’s taken the name simply to present himself as some kind of alternative Labour candidate.
The organisation also revealed yesterday that the NF, BNP and Liberty GB’s Jack Buckby are also standing. Liberty GB is an anti-Islamic party. It’s basically the political wing of the English Defence League. Buckby himself apparently is sleeping on a friend’s floor somewhere in New York, where he’s also one of the organisers behind a massive party in support of Donald Trump. Hope Not Hate also have the poster for that too, along with the news that Buckby is also worried that New York’s own anti-Fascists will turn up to spoil the fun. So we have bigots of two continents meeting in unity. As Benjamin J. Grimm, your ever-lovin’ Thing would probably say, ‘What a revoltin’ development!’ The Hope Not Hate article also reports on some of the antics at the NF’s latest, minuscule demo in Birmingham, and that one of their number has been sentenced to 13 years for assaulting a pensioner. This crim also had an accomplice, who was also a member of the Far Right.
I think I can confidently predict that none of these Far Right parties actually stand a chance of winning a seat in parliament. In fact, I’ll be surprised if they even get back their deposit. But the fact that they’re prepared to use the opportunity presented by Jo Cox’s murder, which has been linked to another Fascist party, and that one of these idiots is doing so under an assumed name, just shows how squalid and amoral they are. It’s just one more reason why decent people won’t vote for them. Quite apart from the many, many others.
Mike’s put up a number of excellent articles today commenting on some of the truly horrendous policies now coming out of the Tories. These include Jeremy Hunt’s continuing campaign to destroy the NHS, the Beeb’s report that they and the thinktank, The Institute of Fiscal Studies, now want to stab the pensioners in the back over benefits, and May’s continuing problems with the EU over Brexit. Not to mention it’s eighty years since the Battle of Cable Street, when Jews and Communists beat the living daylights out of Oswald Mosley and his stormtroopers when he and the rest of his Fascist thugs goose-stepped into London’s east end once too many.
But one of the main stories today has been the decision of Momentum’s steering committee to sack Jackie Walker as vice-chair due to the latest anti-Semitism smears against her. The committee voted seven to three to remove her, commenting that her remarks on the Holocaust Memorial training day were ‘ill-judged and offensive’. They also remark that they also consider her irresponsible, due to her inability to understand the concern her remarks have made. They state that she should have done more herself to explain her comments and to mitigate the upset they have caused. However, they recognise that taken individually, what she has said is not anti-Semitic, and applaud her record as an anti-racist.
Mike asks in the very title of his piece commenting on Mrs Walker’s sacking who was upset. He makes the point that her trust was betrayed by the event’s organisers, the Jewish Labour Movement. She questioned the definition of anti-Semitism the organisers declared they were working from. Her remarks were secretly recorded, and then leaked to the press. This was in a ‘safe space’, in which people were supposed to be able to speak freely on the issues for discussion. He also notes she also questioned why Holocaust Memorial Day was not open to all peoples, who have suffered similar genocides, and questioned the need for such high security for Jewish organisations, such as her daughter’s school. Mike states that in his opinion, the last question has not been satisfactorily answered.
Unfortunately, this incident has had a chilling effect. Two members of the Labour party Mike has been speaking to on Facebook told him that they would not attend any more training days as they could not trust the claim that they were ‘safe spaces’. And Mike himself makes the point that Mrs Walker did not cause the upset she is alleged, as she did not intend her comments to be made public.
Mike goes on to say
In any case, who has said they were upset? Were they genuinely upset or did they have an ulterior motive? This whole situation seems to be a deliberate attack on Ms Walker, to me.
He also asks
Why aren’t we asking the JLM what its intention was in allowing that recording to get out? Why aren’t we accusing that organisation of irresponsibility?
Mike applauds Momentum’s recognition that she hasn’t said anything anti-Semitic, and should not be expelled from the party. But he concludes that they have been talking to the wrong people.
I have to say that I agree with Mike. This whole affairs looks very much like a set-up to trap and discredit Mrs Walker. It’s been done through the connivance of the Blairite’s friends in the Israel Lobby. The event’s organisers, the Jewish Labour Movement, were using a definition of anti-Semitism that deliberately conflates the Jewish people with Zionism. As I have attempted to show over the past few days, that definition is wrong. Many Jews are Zionists, but many others aren’t, and it is not anti-Semitic to oppose either Zionism or simply Israel’s long oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
I can see why Momentum have sacked Jackie Walker. This is the second time the Likudniks of the Israel lobby have attacked her as an anti-Semite, despite the fact that she is Jewish herself. They probably thought she was too great a liability, and that her continued position as Vice-Chair of Momentum would lead to further attacks on her and the organisation. I think they’re probably right on that as well. But sacking her won’t stop the attacks either on Momentum, or Jewish members of the party opposed to Israel or its racist policies. Rather I think the attacks will now be stepped up. Netanyahu’s baying thugs have a scalp, and have tasted success. This will just encourage them to attack others, including, obviously, those in much weaker positions without power, influence, or the ability to answer back.
I am very disappointed that Momentum have caved to the pressure placed on them by such vile people, and call on them to adopt a more robust attitude to responding to the lies and bullying of the Israel lobby against decent, anti-racist women and men, like Mrs Walker. This is a disgrace, and shows how squalid and shabby an organisation the Jewish Labour Movement is, as well as the grotty opportunism of the right-wing media.
Okay, it appears from the latest developments in the Tory leadership contest that their next leader will not only be a woman, but probably Theresa May. May’s currently, I think, the Home Office Minister. Another Tory authoritarian, she’d like the spooks to have access to all our telecoms information to stop us joining ISIS and abusing children. Or at least, that’s what she says. Either way, she represents the continuing expansion of the secret state and its determination to pry into every aspect of our lives. Just in case we’re doing something illegal. In the polls Thursday night or so she won something like 144 votes compared to Andrea Leadsom’s 86 and Michael Gove’s 43. There was a shot of her at one of the party rallies, which showed Ian Duncan Smith, the former Minister in Charge of the Murder of the Disabled looking up at her with the same kind of rapture you see in pictures of Rudolf Hess at Nuremberg as he introduces Adolf Hitler.
May as the Modern Thatcher
The papers on Friday were full of the news of her probable victory. The Torygraph ran the headline, ‘If you want something said, go to a man. If you want something done, go to a woman’. Presumably this was a quote from May herself, trying to position herself as a go-getting woman of action, ready to sort out the mess the men have left. It’s also intended to get her support from Britain’s women. Look, she and her PR gurus are saying, I represent all the women in Britain, and their drives and frustrations in trying to get the top job. And I’ve done it, and, so vicariously, have Britain’s women through me. Vote for me, and we’ll sort Britain out again. The Mirror summed up her probable victory with the headline ‘Another Thatcher’.
That’s true, and it looks very much like the Tory party is trying to hark back to Margaret Thatcher’s victory way back in 1979, and the thirteen years of flag-waving, prole-bashing that unleashed. Thatcher was Britain’s first, and so far, only female Prime Minister. Her election was instrumental in getting the Tories female support, and presenting their agenda of poverty, welfare cuts, joblessness and general immiseration as somehow empowering and progressive. It presented a faux-feminist veneer to what was an acutely traditionalist party. Thatcher did not see herself as a feminist, but nevertheless, her lackeys in the press ran features on her deliberately aimed at women and gaining their support. When she was ousted, Germaine Greer, who had been bitterly critical of her time in No. 10, wrote a piece in the Groan ‘A Sad Day for Every Woman’. And this propaganda line continued with other female Tories afterwards. I can remember a piece in the Mail on Sunday discussing what politics would be like in a female dominated House of Commons about the time Virginia Bottomley joined Major’s cabinet. It imagined Britain as an anarcho-capitalist utopia, where everything was privatised, and instead of the police neighbourhoods hired private security guards. And it ran the notorious factoid that’s been repeated and debunked ever since: that managing the country’s economy was like running a household. Women, so the article claimed, automatically had a better understanding of how the economy should be run through their role controlling the household budget. It’s actually rubbish, as the Angry Yorkshireman, Mike over at Vox Political and a number of left-wing economists and bloggers have repeatedly pointed out. For example, when budgeting for a household, you try to avoid debt, or pay it off as quickly as possible. But no-one has wanted to pay off the national debt since at least the late 18th century, and governments contract debts all the time with the deliberate intention of stimulating growth, as well as having the ability to manipulate circumstances in ways that the average householder can’t. They can, for example, affect the economy by setting the value of their currencies in order to promote exports, for example. The Japanese have deliberately kept the Yen weak in order to make their exports less expensive and so more competitive on foreign markets. They can also alter, or affect exchange rates to control public expenditure outside of immediate state spending. Ordinary people can’t do any of this. But nevertheless, the lie is repeated, and as we’ve seen, believed. A little while ago a man in the audience at Question Time challenged one of the politicos there with not running the country properly. He claimed it should have been obvious to anyone who’s had to run a household. Or possibly their own business.
Women Suffering the Most from Tory Misrule
In power, Thatcher – and the Tories’ policies in general – have hit women the hardest. Women tend to work in the poorest paid jobs, those least unionised, and so with the fewest protections. They are also more likely than men to be active as carers, with the immense responsibilities and pressures that entails. The Tories’ austerity policies have seen more women laid off, and more suffering cuts to hours and pay, with worsening conditions. These have been inflicted on male workers and carers as well, of course. I personally know blokes as well as women, who’ve been put on zero hours contracts, of have had to fight battles with the DWP to get disability benefits for their partners. Women haven’t been solely hit by any means, but they have been especially hit.
Tory Feminism only for the Rich
But I’ve no doubt that the Tories will try to hide all that, and positively divert attention away from it, by pointing to the success of May in finally getting to No. 10. It’ll be presented as another crack in glass ceiling preventing women from getting the top jobs. I’ve also no doubt that there will be some noises about making sure that business, industry and parliament becomes more representative of the country. There will be loud announcements about getting more women into parliament, on the boards of business, and in male-dominated areas such as science and engineering.
But this will all be done to give power and jobs to women from May’s background: well-heeled, well-educated middle class public school gels from Roedean and the like. Rich, corporate types like Hillary Clinton in the US. It isn’t going to be for women from council estates and comprehensive schools, ordinary women working back-breaking jobs in factories, as care home staff, nurses, cleaners, shop assistants, office workers and the like, all of whom are increasingly under pressure from the government’s austerity programme. They, and the men alongside whom they work, doing the same jobs, aren’t going to be helped by the Tories one little bit.
The Thin Veneer of Tory Liberalism
May’s faux-feminism is part of a general thin façade of progressivism, which the Tory party occasionally adopts to promote itself. Cameron came to power pretending to be more left-wing than Tony Blair. When he took over the Tory party, he made much about shedding the party’s image of racism and homophobia. He cut links with the Monday Club, went around promoting Black Tory candidates. Gay MPs were encouraged to come forward and be open about their sexuality. In power, he ostentatiously supported gay marriage, presenting it as Tory victory, even though it had practically already been introduced by Tony Blair in the guise of civil partnerships. Cameron and IDS wanted to be seen as liberal modernisers. But all their reforms are extremely shallow, designed to disguise the rigidly authoritarian and hierarchical party underneath. A party determined to make the poor as poor as possible for the corporate rich.
Generational Differences in Voting
Looking through the stats with friends on Friday, it seems that there’s a marked divergence in political attitudes between young women, and those over 55. The majority of women over 55 tend to vote Conservative, according to the stats. I know plenty who don’t, and so this can be challenged. My guess is that, if this is accurate, it’s probably due to the fact that women generally haven’t worked in the kind of manual trades occupied by men, which require considerable solidarity and so have produced strong union bonds, like mining, metal work and so on. It’s also possibly partly due to the prevailing social ideology when they were born. There was a marked lull in feminist activity between women finally gaining the vote in 1928 or so and the rise of the modern women’s movement in the 1960s. During those forty years, the dominant social attitude was that women should concentrate on their roles of wife and mother. Many firms in this period would not hire married women, a practice which caused immense hardship to women, and families generally that needed two incomes to make ends meet. Also, generally speaking, support for the Tories is higher amongst pensioners.
Younger women are more likely to be left-wing and socialist. If correct, this generally follows the trend of the younger generation being more idealistic and progressive than their elders.
I hope that despite all the pseudo-feminist verbiage and lies the Tories will spout from now onwards, trying to make themselves more presentable to the nation’s female voters, women will recognise them for what they are, and vote them out. As soon as possible.
Someone just as bad if not worse will probably be around shortly.
The big news this morning is that Ian Duncan Smith has finally walked. Several of the commenters on this blog posted pieces about his resignation late last night, with due expressions of not the slightest bit of grief. In fact, quite the opposite. Much joy was felt by them and indeed by very many other people up and down the country. And who can blame them! Ian Duncan Smith is, after all, the wretched mass-murderer, who has used the benefits sanctions regime he inherited from Bliar’s New Labour to immiserate hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Under him, 590 people have died of starvation, poverty and neglect. Some by their own hand. A quarter of a million more have been pushed into anxiety, depression and mental illness. And for all that he’s resigned as head of the DWP, IDS is still head of a party which has forced 4.7 million people into ‘food poverty’. That, to you and me, is being literally on the breadline and not having enough to eat, or wondering where your next meal is coming from.
I’m surprised that he’s resigned, but the signs were all there. Over a week ago he was whining about how unfair it was for people to blame him from the hardship and misery his cuts were causing, when it was Labour that started them. Well, Blair and Brown did. But he and Cameron got in by pretending that they were going to be more left-wing, more caring than New Labour. That was the central promise of Philip Blonde’s book, Red Tory. And I distinctly remember George Osborne telling everyone that he was going to end the disastrous Private Finance Initiative, that’s saddling the country with mountains of debt for the profit of private companies running public services. But that’s another election promise the Tories conveniently forgot once they were in power.
Mike over at Vox Political has written several pieces commenting on Smith’s departure.
In his first piece about it, Mike urged a note of caution before we accepted that there was anything altruistic about Smith’s motives.
Yes, it’s great that he has gone. But I don’t think it’s over a matter of principle, no matter what he might say. Iain Duncan Smith has lied far too often for me to take anything he says at face value.
No, he’s either trying to be clever about the EU referendum, lining himself up to be in Boris’s good books if the vote goes against Cameron and Osborne, or he’s putting distance between himself and the Department for Work and Pensions after a judge ruled that potentially damning documents about Universal Credit must be published.
It seems the documents may show that Duncan Smith (I can’t be bothered with the nicknames – feel free to substitute ‘RTU’ or ‘the Gentleman Ranker’ if you like) misled Parliament and the public, time and again, about the floundering new benefit system.
Sick and disabled people will remain the targets of brutal benefit cuts. The unemployed are still enmeshed in a Kafka-esque nightmare of conditions they have to satisfy in order to draw their benefit. Social housing tenants are still persecuted by the Bedroom Tax.
Duncan Smith happily presided over more than £28 billion worth of cuts in payments to the most vulnerable people in the United Kingdom. That’s why This Writer doesn’t believe he has had a crisis of conscience now.
In the statement from IDS reported on the TV news, Smith has apparently claimed that the reasons he resigned is because the cuts demanded by George Osborne were falling entirely on people of working age. This bears out what Mike reported in another of his pieces written about Smith’s resignation today: that he resigned from frustration at being blocked from killing pensioners. Mike writes:
Okay, it might not have been framed in quite the way expressed in the headline above, but that’s what the latest claims about Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation seem to be saying.
The allegation is that he was unhappy that the Conservative Government was continually targeting its cuts on working-age benefits, and wanted pensioners to take some of the pain as well, contrary to a directive from prime minister David Cameron that senior citizens’ benefits are not to be touched.
He would have taken away universal pensioner benefits like free bus passes, together with the winter fuel allowance and cold weather payments.
The effect of these cuts would have been a large increase in pensioner deaths – as predicted by the Taxpayers’ Alliance when that organisation suggested such cuts, only a few months ago.
The Taxpayers Alliance, you understand, is the astroturf organisation the Beeb turns to whenever there’s a debate about government expenditure. This is the pressure group that campaigns for further reductions in taxation. It claims to be politically independent, but its leadership is composed to a man of paid-up members of the Tory party. It’s at best a satellite of Tory fellow-travellers, if not actually a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Tory Party Plc (People lying continually). A few months ago they were urging the Conservatives to cut pensions, arguing that it wouldn’t have any effect on the party’s electoral fortunes, as by the time the election came around, all their victims would have died anyway. This is what passes for humour at Taxpayer Alliance Towers as they’re waiting for sentencing for tax fraud.
Mike’s report has more than just the ring of truth. I can remember Mike himself posting a piece a few years ago reporting that there was some friction between the Unctuous Spawn of the Baronet of Ballymoney, George ‘Lionel’ Osbo, and the Gentleman Ranker. Osborne wanted cuts that could only come from inflicting them on pensioners, according to IDS. As this is one of the demographic groups where Tory support is the strongest, Osbo rejected making them share the burden of the cuts as being ‘very courageous’, in the sense deployed by Sir Humphrey Appleby. Now it seems this report is essentially correct, and IDS has resigned rather than face the continued frustration of having to concentrate on killing and impoverishing those of working age, rather than killing and immiserating the elderly.
There is a bright side to this though! The street wags and practical jokers have been up and out with the jolly japes. Mike has a picture up of the fake ‘missing person’ ads which have been placed on a lamp-post asking where the great man is.
Answers on a postcard, please.
busiest weeks of Jeremy Corbyn’s year. The election had only just been called but he found time to record a message to wish our group well on our visit. This was not electioneering. This was not a social media post to be broadcast by Labour’s Press Team for sharing far and wide. It was simply a private, personal, heartfelt message to our group, from someone who has spent their life confronting racism and fascism and posing an alternative to hatred.
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