Monthly Archives: June 2018

Will YOU join the Thunderclap to save the Welsh Independent Living Grant?

Nathan Lee Davies with UK Labour leader – and Nathan’s inspiration – Jeremy Corbyn at the Welsh Labour Conference in April this year. Clwyd South Labour Party Secretary Jackie Owen is also pictured.

PLEASE NOTE: The Thunderclap will take place at 5pm in the UK – it says midday on the Thunderclap website because that site is based in a different time zone.

Support for disabled people in Wales to live independently is due to be withdrawn on March 31, 2019 with the end of the Welsh Independent Living Grant.

The move will leave cash-strapped local authorities solely responsible for the social care of disabled people with high care and support needs.

This is yet another blow against disabled people, following the closure of the UK-wide Independent Living Fund in 2015, by a Tory-led government that clearly hates people with disabilities.

Some disabled people have already been threatened with drastic reductions in their hours of care and support. They say the loss of the WILG will set disabled people’s rights back by 30 years or more.

What is to be done?

Nathan Lee Davies, who supplied the information above, is running a Thunderclap – an organised, simultaneous posting on social media about the threat to the WILG – to get the protest against its loss trending, make more people aware of it and encourage the Welsh Government to rethink its decision.

All you have to do is visit his Thunderclap page – here – and sign up to support the campaign via Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.

The rest is automatic – but hurry; you only have until 5pm today (June 19) to sign up.

If you are disabled, I hope you are already willing to support this. If you are not – and you don’t know whether you want to – just consider how you would feel if you were disabled, and it was your ability to live an independent, fulfilling life that was being taken away.

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The Campaign Against Antisemitism is at it again – this time the victim is Labour’s new lawyer

This is exactly why This Writer is raising money to fund legal action against the Campaign Against Antisemitism and others who use accusations of hatred against Jews to score political points.

Amazing though it seems, the CAA objects to the appointment of an independent barrister to advise the Labour Party on disciplinary matters involving allegations of anti-Semitism. It seems he is not sufficiently biased towards the CAA’s own views.

Or perhaps he’s the “wrong sort of Jew” – which is itself an anti-Semitic slur and the author of the CAA piece should be ashamed for making it.

Gordon Nardell QC is not only a barrister but he is also a Jew, which tends to suggest that he is well-placed to provide solid advice on such claims. But the CAA has trumped up a few silly quibbles and is trying to turn them into major objections – its usual modus operandi.

Let’s look at the methods used to smear Mr Nardell, from the CAA’s recent article about him. First up is a classic – denigrating a person because of the people who support them:

Mr Nardell counts Elleanne Green amongst his supporters. Ms Green, a prolific and obsessive poster of conspiracy theories, wrote in the virulently antisemitic “Palestine Live” Facebook group she founded that Mr Nardell is: “A man I like and trust…also a non Zionist Jew and a very brilliant mind…this should prove interesting…He has already seen my letter to the Labour Party as I copied him in a week or two ago…so, we shall see…”

Saying that he “counts” Elleanne Green among his supporters is to cast him in an active role that is not supported by the evidence. Where has he commented on this person’s support and how did he welcome it? Answer: He hasn’t – otherwise the CAA would be crowing about it. The organisation’s statement about the connection between these two people is meaningless, other than as defamation of character – possibly referring to both these people.

The CAA then moves on to Mr Nardell’s own Facebook posts. It states:

In one response to a Labour member’s defence of Ken Livingstone, Mr Nardell commented: “The problem with characterising Ken’s rather crass and ill-judged remarks as antisemitism is that it debased the coin – we no longer recognise real anti-Jewish racism when we see it, and we undermine the party’s ability to tackle it.”

He also liked a post praising the lifting of Jackie Walker’s original suspension for antisemitism, and another claiming that accusations of antisemitism were being made by a group of Jewish Labour members in an attempt to shut down criticism of Israel.

So his opinion on these matters is different to that of the article’s author. So what? Ken Livingstone was not accused of anti-Semitism by the Labour Party because the allegations would not have withstood examination in a court of law. This is one reason I want to drag the CAA – and those who have supported its false claims – into court, and why I need your help to do it.

Mr Nardell’s further comment – that the furore accusing Mr Livingstone of anti-Semitism would make it harder to recognise real anti-Semitism – is justified, of course.

As discussed on This Site in the past, the lifting of Jackie Walker’s original suspension was the right decision – hackers had broken into her private Facebook messages, grabbed the first thing they could find that they could claim as anti-Semitism, and broadcast it to the press. It later transpired that the claim was unfounded – defamatory – and the accusation was dropped.

As for the claim about “a group of Jewish Labour members” attempting “to shut down criticism of Israel”: Context is everything. We are meant to disapprove of Mr Nardell on this basis – but what was actually said and why was it said? The CAA omits the important information in order to present a false impression.

We see this tactic in operation again, along with the classic quotemining technique of using only individual words rather than full sentences – suggesting that Mr Nardell’s words did not have the meaning attributed to them – here:

Mr Nardell has also turned his sights on Campaign Against Antisemitism, stating that our work to combat hatred directed at Jews by Labour members is “revolting” and results in antisemitism being “abused and belittled”.

Context is everything. What did he really say, and why did he say it? The CAA doesn’t want you to know.

That’s why these liars – and they are lies; they change the meaning of actions (or inactions, in the first case above) and comments in order to present a false argument – must be tackled.

That’s why I am raising cash to fund legal action against this organisation for the libels it has committed against me, using more extreme examples of the same behaviour.

It is clear that the people running this organisation will not heed any appeal to reason; we must therefore turn to the law.

Please visit my JustGiving page and donate, so that we can all put an end to the petty, vindictive, and harmful accusations coming from the CAA and its allies.

Source: CAA calls for independent disciplinary process at the Labour Party as Jeremy Corbyn’s new antisemitism czar lashes out at CAA – Campaign Against Antisemitism

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If David Dimbleby is leaving the BBC’s Question Time, what horror will replace him?

Even-handed? David Dimbleby, probably addressing a socialist in the Question Time audience.

Some may think it is a relief to see former Bullingdon boy and sadly biased QT chairman David Dimbleby relinquish the role.

But who will replace Dimbles after his quarter-of-a-century-long stint?

I have a terrible theory about that.

Perhaps science has discovered the secret of human cloning and the BBC has at long last found the perfect person to put forward its pro-Tory propaganda:

Joseph Goebbels.

David Dimbleby is to leave Question Time after 25 years on the BBC’s flagship political programme.

The presenter, who will leave the show at the end of the year, said it was “the right moment to leave”.

Source: David Dimbleby to leave Question Time – BBC News

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Theresa May’s 70th birthday present for the NHS: A big, fat funding LIE

Unconvincing: Theresa May couldn’t make her announcement seem realistic, even under the friendly interrogation of Andrew Marr.

UK prime minister Theresa May has said the National Health Service in England is to receive a funding boost of £20 billion a year by 2023, with money from a so-called ‘Brexit dividend’ and a rise in taxes.

She said: “There will be that Brexit dividend. We will have that sum of money that is available from the European Union.”

There’s only one problem: Like most things she says, her promise is a big, fat lie.

For a start, there is no Brexit dividend.

If you’re a Tory, or a Leave supporter, this may be hard to accept at face value. Let’s have an educated opinion on it – from Paul Johnson, director of the financial think tank, the Institute of Fiscal Studies:

Here he is on the BBC’s Daily Politics, explaining the facts to a reluctant Sarah Smith:

There is no Brexit dividend; Theresa May lied. Are you happy with that?

The Patients’ Association isn’t. It responded, “A giant sticking-plaster is still a sticking-plaster.”

The IFS itself said the NHS needed an increase of more than four per cent per year to modernise; any less would be treading water. It is getting 3.4 per cent.

Here’s another thing: Theresa May has said there must be “efficiencies” alongside the new money. Why? The NHS has already been pared to the bone and there is no more efficiency to be squeezed out of it. In fact, the reason extra funding is required is that her government’s ruthless cuts and introduction of profit-grubbing into the UK’s healthcare system has made it more inefficient.

And she has refused to say which taxes will rise to pay for her mythical spending splurge – possibly because this is the only part of the announcement that might actually come true; the promise of more and better service hides the threat to take more money from a population that has already been squeezed hard over the last eight years.

Mrs May said only, “We will be contributing more as a country.” As a resident of Wales, I find this extremely disturbing as the funding increase is said to be for the NHS in England only.

I see no reason why the other parts of the UK – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (what will the DUP think of this?) should pay for funding increases that will not benefit them.

So why make this rash, and completely false, claim?

Simple: Theresa May needs to talk up the benefits of Brexit.

Her EU Withdrawal Bill is returning to the House of Lords for further consideration over the next few days, after Mrs May lied to her colleagues in the Parliamentary Conservative Party in order to prevent a rebellion that would have harmed her as a credible prime minister.

Without any factual benefits to talk up, she has latched onto the biggest lie told during the EU referendum campaign – that, after leaving the European Union, the UK would be able to spend £350 million more, every week, on the NHS.

Her current offer is even more – £394 million a week – but that doesn’t really matter because she is lying.

She has invented a fake boost to the National Health Service in just one part of the UK in the long term, to generate a short-term lift for her government and to hide an increase in taxes – most likely for the poor majority of the population, rather than the obscenely rich minority in whose interest she governs.

It is not a birthday present for the NHS – it is the foretelling of a further theft from us.

This announcement, like Mrs May herself, is nothing but a mealy-mouthed con.

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The future of the Tory class war? Job applicants to be questioned on their background

There used to be a saying about what happened to you if your face didn’t fit, didn’t there?

Now the Tories are extending it to your background.

They don’t want anybody from even relatively humble beginnings to have a chance at a position of influence.

All those jobs are to be earmarked for buffoons with Bullingdon and Eton backgrounds, like Boris Johnson, it seems.

It’s all part of the arse-backward Tory plan to ruin the UK as a viable economy.

The stupids are running the show – and trying to ingrain that stupidity into working culture.

Employers are to be encouraged to ask potential employees about where they fit in UK society and whether they see themselves as economically disadvantaged, under new plans that are likely to reignite concerns of a Tory class war.

Job applicants would face four multiple-choice questions under plans due to be rolled out in the civil service later this year, with questions including what school a worker or job applicant attended and whether they were in receipt of free school meals.

The Government claim the collected data will help to make workplaces for diverse and socially inclusive, but critics may argue the plans have ulterior motives and could see workers asked to divulge potentially sensitive information about their background.

Source: Tory plans will see job applicants asked about their social class

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Tory twit Cleverly’s ridiculous propaganda exposes the methods used to hoodwink us

James Cleverly.

Cleverly tries to use a method that isn’t lying – but is misleading. His problem is that he is extraordinarily bad at it. Observe:

The ridiculous James Cleverly appears to be the Tories’ go-to eejit when they need someone to tweet absolute nonsense or to defend the indefensible.

So few were surprised … when Cleverly tweeted a completely misleading image of [the] ‘LabourLive’ event to try to portray the event as a poorly-attended failure.

Mr Cleverly had tweeted an image of the field before it had filled – but clearly he still doesn’t ‘get’ how social media works and it hadn’t occurred to him that he was setting himself up to look – well, to look an utter arse as hundreds of people pointed out that LabourLive was instead a massively-attended success.

He’s not wrong about the state of the field at the time his photo was taken – but others were able to point out that thousands upon thousands of people then occupied it, and they had the photographic evidence to prove it.

The smart operators use material – or manufacture it – that cannot be contradicted as easily. Then, if they are challenged on it, they can involve their challenger in a long energy-sapping debate, asking “what exactly do you think is inaccurate” – and, eventually, losing the interest of the public. Then their narrative prevails.

Look out for these operators. They will make mistakes and we need to be prepared to call them out on it.

Cleverly, on the other hand, is an idiot.

Source: Cleverly makes an *rse of himself with #LabourLive tweet. Don’t worry, we fixed it for him | The SKWAWKBOX

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Don’t believe the naysayers – Labour Live was a huge success

Jealousy is a terrible thing. It can cause terrible misjudgements.

I’m terribly jealous of all those who were able to attend and participate in the huge Labour Live festival this weekend.

I live right out in the wilds of Mid Wales and have to make up for this remoteness by helping run a cultural festival here: The Radnor Fringe Festival at the Rock Park, Llandrindod Wells from 6pm on Friday (June 22) until around 10pm on Sunday (June 24). It’s a very friendly event so if you can make it and you like to sample music from bands you haven’t heard before, new theatre, debate and discussion, community events and comedy, come on down.

But I know the Fringe won’t be anything like Labour Live, which attracted thousands to a mix of music and debate that had real appeal for young people – unlike the Tory attempt at such an event last year, which attracted very few attendees. Can anyone even remember what it was called?

Here are a few reactions from people who were there:

There were the inevitable naysayers, though. Apparently some of our friends in the mainstream media tried to pretend it wasn’t popular by suggesting the crowd was small at the start. Here’s Richard Burgon with the fact of the matter (which, as a festival organiser myself, I can confirm):

Inevitably, some commenters wanted to use the event to raise criticisms of Labour’s current policies – like Brexit:

It seems the Daily Mail even tried a bit of reverse psychology, praising Jeremy Corbyn as a hero of Brexit in order to try to turn his supporters against him:

But Mr Corbyn didn’t save Theresa May from a “calamitous defeat” – he just kept her on the straight and narrow road to a disaster for the Conservative Party when her attempt to impose a selfish Tory Brexit collapses, as we know it will.

And the critics can’t deny the obvious:

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The Conservatives are now the Party of Upskirting

Selfie-centred: This has never happened (thank goodness) but it is exactly the kind of thing Sir Christopher Chope was supporting.

The practice of taking photographs of female celebrities’ private parts by pointing a camera up their skirts or dresses has won a ringing endorsement from Conservative backbencher Sir Christopher Chope and his ever-willing henchman Phillip Davies.

Mr Chope filibustered a private members’ bill calling for upskirting to be criminalised. Along with his supporters, he spoke for a total of four hours in order to prevent the legislation from progressing through Parliament.

He has defended this indefensible behaviour by saying he hates private members’ bills – shurely shome mishtake as he has tabled dozens of them himself:

Mr Davies is on the record as a supporter of men’s rights, which he believes are being eroded by feminists. Does he believe men have a right to examine the quality of a lady’s underwear if she doesn’t agree to it?

Prime minister Theresa May has expressed her own dissatisfaction with the outcome:

But she was lying again, I expect. If Mrs May was all that upset about it, she would have punished her errant MPs, perhaps by withdrawing the Tory whip from them.

But that would mean losing her majority in Parliament.

So her hands are tied.

And for all her fine words, her actions show tacit support for what her MPs did.

The official Conservative Party twitter feed also tried to de-legitimise the backbenchers’ point of view as an expression of Tory taste…

… and failed:

On Twitter, some of the usual suspects have been having a fine time satirising the sexists on the Tory benches:

One has to ask, though – why defend this intrusive and demeaning behaviour?

Other than perversion for its own sake, what exactly is the point of upskirting?

What do the paps who profane themselves with this practice possibly hope to find?

A long-lost masterpiece by Van Gogh?

The Titanic sailing back into harbour at long last?

Extraterrestrial life?

No.

The best they can hope to see, no matter how many such photos they take…

… is what Christopher Chope sees every time he looks in a mirror.

Huge response to Vox Political’s crowdfunding appeal to fund legal action against anti-Semitism liars

A crowdfunding appeal to help clear me of false and libellous anti-Semitism allegations has raised more than £1,000 – on its first day alone.

I started the appeal on the JustGiving website after it became clear that the organisations and individuals, who have lied to the public with false claims about my character, will not willingly withdraw their accusations. Vox Political doesn’t make anything like enough money to fund an expensive court case so I had to take this step.

The response so far has been overwhelming. More than £1,000 was pledged in the first 24 hours alone.

Some of the comments provided along with the donations have been inspiring.

“I loath the way certain people use anti-semitism as a weapon. You are innocent!” wrote Jane. “I hope justice is done, you get the right decision, and your enemies have to pay a BIG fine. Good luck to you Mike.”

Sandra Harvey contributed: “Really admire your battle/s with the DWP and your sheer dogged determination. Best wishes for your court action. You are no anti-semite.”

Anthony O’Malley offered the following, in addition to his financial help: “Over the past few years you have educated and inspired me about the importance of finding the truth of politics within an inherently corrupt society. You now need help, and I give what I can!”

And Steve Hall made this very important point: “Trying to destroy people’s careers with false allegations of something as serious as anti-Semitism is extremely low-grade behaviour. All cases should be prosecuted. Good luck with this one.”

I am grateful to everybody who has contributed so far.

But £1,000 is on a fraction of the £25,000 I need to fund effective legal action against my persecutors.

I will not repeat their lies in this article, but if you want to see how my accusers twisted my words to make them say things I never intended, you can find information here.

The JustGiving page is here. Please share the link to it and ask everybody of good conscience to help.

Why should the liars get away with this? They should not.

I can stop them – but I need your help.

Please help.

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Desperate Tories are calling on banks and finance companies to interfere in politics

John Glen: A small man in a big government department.

Many years ago, when This Writer first arrived in Mid Wales, I was told of an old political blackmail that – allegedly – is still used here.

Tory landlords would rent out properties to poor people, often their employees, only on the condition that they voted Conservative at general and local elections.

With that in mind, I must ask: Just what is the Conservative Party’s Economic Secretary to the Treasury suggesting to City business executives?

John Glen (that’s his name, but don’t be too hard on yourself if you never heard of him before) told them the Labour Party was a bigger threat to the economy than Brexit (a lie), saying Labour “would unravel decades of economic progress”.

Economic progress? Average wages are a fraction of what they were 10 years ago and productivity has fallen massively. That is not progress!

Mr Glen said Labour was “a party led by maverick figures” like Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell: “I don’t believe that this is a man ready to occupy 11 Downing Street.”

Others may disagree, considering the lamentable job done by the last two tenants of that particular piece of social housing.

“We must redouble our efforts in office to ensure we are building an inclusive and responsible brand of capitalism,” Mr Glen told financial service bosses, demanding that they do their utmost to stop the Shadow Chancellor from gaining ground in the Square Mile.

Who’s “we” in this scenario? And what will “we” be doing, exactly?

Is this man trying to induce City bosses to interfere in politics by persuading their clients against supporting Labour? If so, what kind of tactics are they likely to employ?

It seems clear the Tories are terrified of Labour’s current charm tactics in the City.

Mr McDonnell and members of his team, including Mr Glen’s opposite number Jonathan Reynolds, have been meeting with banks and businesses, allaying fears created by the Tories’ scaremongering.

But we all know that, when they can’t produce a decent argument, Tories get vicious.

Mr McDonnell has made his opinion of this behaviour clear on Twitter:

What incentives are they offering to get City executives to pit their clients against Labour?

Source: City minister blasts ‘maverick’ Labour party