Monthly Archives: July 2023

Press regulator urged to act after continued failings in Jewish Chronicle reports

The press regulator has been – again – asked to launch a standards investigation over continued “serious and systemic” editorial problems causing “egregious” malpractice at the Jewish Chronicle.

IPSO has been contacted by 15 victims of inaccurate reporting by the newspaper – including This Writer – after eight further breaches of the editors’ code of conduct were made by the Jewish Chronicle following the regulator’s decision not to launch a standards investigation over an initial 33 such breaches and four admissions of libel.

In our letter, which is also signed by such famously-wronged individuals as Jo Bird, Audrey White and Marc Wadsworth, we say: “This was in our view a shocking level of non-compliance, equivalent to one breach in every four issues published over the period, yet the IPSO Board considered two training sessions to be sufficient remedy. For context, this would be the equivalent of a daily newspaper breaching the Code 91 times in one year.

“We found the decision of the IPSO board not to order such an investigation in December 2021 disappointing and based on spurious reasoning.

“Your letter of 23 December 2021 explained that your refusal was in part because of a ‘change of ownership’ in 2020, and ‘new editorial leadership’ in 2021. As you are no doubt aware, that change of ownership appears to have been driven by financial losses largely occasioned by libel payouts resulting from poor journalism. The change of editor in fact took place when its editor of 13 years resigned only 72 hours before IPSO’s meeting to discuss this issue on 14 December 2021.

“We read in the recent review of IPSO by Sir Bill Jeffrey that, in February of this year, IPSO declared that ‘sufficient improvements had occurred in both complaints handling and editorial standards to allow the cessation of active monitoring of standards’ at the Jewish Chronicle. This conclusion is surprising to us given that, between December 2021 and the publication of that report, IPSO had upheld three further complaints against the Jewish Chronicle and
the paper had also (to our knowledge) been obliged to take down one further article.

“Only two months after the IPSO board decided to take no further action against the Jewish Chronicle, and three weeks before the publication of Sir Bill Jeffrey’s report, yet another complaint against that publication was upheld, involving three separate breaches of the code of conduct and a finding that it had behaved unacceptably.

“To quote paragraph 19 of that adjudication: ‘The committee expressed significant concerns about the newspaper’s conduct prior to the publication and the absence of a published apology as part of the remedial action which had been taken. The committee considered that the publication’s conduct was unacceptable, and their concerns were drawn to the attention of IPSO’s standards department.’”

We wrote: “We hope that IPSO will now recognise that the mere provision of training failed to resolve the serious and systemic journalistic and editorial problems at the Jewish Chronicle. Sir Bill Jeffrey wrote that an IPSO standards investigation is only likely to happen if malpractice is egregious and comes out of the blue or if ‘IPSO conclude that their engagement is getting nowhere and a stronger response is needed’. It is surely obvious now that IPSO is getting nowhere with the Jewish Chronicle and that a stronger response is needed.

“The Jewish Chronicle shows no signs whatsoever of improvement. Every one of the post-2021 adjudications includes reference to one or more of ‘significant inaccuracy’, ‘significantly misleading’ reporting, and ‘unacceptable’ conduct. If this continuing record of journalistic failure and malpractice does not amount to a ‘serious and systemic’ breach of IPSO’s code of conduct, we would welcome your comments and clear explanation of what exactly would be required to amount to such a breach.

“We urge you to recommend a standards investigation to your board, and to do so urgently – in weeks rather than months – before more bad journalism is published, more falsehoods are disseminated among readers and more harm is done to innocent people.”

My upheld complaint that the Jewish Chronicle had falsely stated that I had made “antisemitic” comments is the first item on the list of that organisation’s breaches.

A series of articles against Audrey White had falsely alleged that she had lied in order to be readmitted to the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn became leader, after having been expelled in the 1980s (all untrue); that she had received multiple warnings about bullying other party members (she had not); that she had falsely claimed to have complained to the police about a Labour councillor and a disabled pensioner (it was not a false claim); and that she had been a member of the Socialist Party (she had not).

The newspaper had to publish an apology to Marc Wadsworth after, in its own words, “We reported that Marc Wadsworth had spoken at the launch event for the ‘Labour in Exile Network’ (LIEN), a group that aimed to discover the addresses of Jewish Labour activists to “take care” of them, and that he was thereby complicit in a conspiracy to intimidate, threaten or harass Jewish activists into silence. We also suggested that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that such activities were criminal.” None of this was true.

It also had to publish a correction after stating that Jo Bird’s Labour membership had been suspended for a third time.

The letter has been sent to Lord Faulks, IPSO’s current chairman, and we await his response.

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Privately-run prison’s officers ignored pregnant teenager in labour – so the baby died

Bronzefield prison: the death of baby Aisha happened after at least four other incidents involving pregnancy there.

WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT

This is what happens when you let your government put people’s lives in the hands of a private corporation that exists only to make a profit: PEOPLE DIE.

That is exactly what happened at privately-run Bronzefield Prison, on the outskirts of Ashford in Surrey, which is run by Sodexo Justice Services.

An inquest has found that teenage mother Rianna Cleary was found in her cell, covered in blood, her dead baby Aisha cradled in her arms, after she had twice called for help after going into Labour during the night – and both calls were ignored by staff. She had to bite through the umbilical cord.

She should have been monitored five times during the day before the birth but the nurse who had been on duty at the time admitted that this had not happened. A nurse had tried to get Ms Cleary moved to the prison’s healthcare facility but no bed was available.

When she went into Labour, Ms Cleary used the cell’s intercom system to tell an officer she needed a nurse or an ambulance – but the officer on duty did not call for any help. About half an hour later, in what was described as “unbearable” pain, she repeated her request – but the call was disconnected in the guard’s control room. This meant the call bell from her cell was disabled from that point onward.

The senior coroner for Surrey, Richard Travers, said systematic failings at both the prison and the hospital that looked after the mother meant Aisha died; she might have survived if Ms Cleary had been discovered in Labour and transferred to hospital.

These events occurred in September 2019 and the inquest has only just happened – taking a month to be heard.

A glance at the prison’s history shows that this outrage is far from unique: at least four times in the two years to 2019, women gave birth in upsetting and potentially dangerous conditions.

A report by The Guardian in November that year states that in addition to Ms Cleary’s case, “On at least four occasions in this period, women held at the privately run Surrey prison have given birth in distressing and potentially unsafe circumstances, including one woman who gave birth in her cell and another who was left in labour at night-time supported only by another pregnant prisoner.

“In December 2017, one woman suffered a stillbirth and another baby was admitted to neonatal intensive care, in both instances after women were transferred from Bronzefield to hospital at a late stage of labour. In the latter case, it is understood that the woman alerted the prison to concerns two days before she was eventually taken to hospital.

“Board meeting minutes from Ashford and St Peter’s NHS trust, from July 2018, refer to the two incidents, stating: “Adverse outcomes were reported in both cases … significant learning and process change were identified for both hospital and prison teams.”

“The minutes state that Bronzefield, Europe’s largest female prison, intended to review its policy concerning the transfer of pregnant women to hospital and its criteria for risk assessment.

“Sodexo Justice Services, which runs the prison, said that following the December 2017 incidents it had worked with Ashford and St Peter’s Hospital and changed arrangements with its midwives.”

So there can be no excuse for what happened.

But: “The Guardian also heard of a woman who alerted prison staff that she was in labour in July 2018. She was not seen by a midwife and was left in labour during the night, supported only by another pregnant prisoner.

“In March 2019 a woman, understood to have been in the prison on remand, gave birth in her cell with no midwife or doctor present. A nurse reportedly delivered the baby.”

The Ministry of Justice, contacted in November 2019, said that Sodexo had not incurred contractual penalties relating to the levels of care to pregnant women in custody in the previous three years – and declined to comment on then-recent incidents at HMP Bronzefield.

Former prisoners, including one from Bronzefield, said midwife appointments and scans were frequently missed as a result of prison staff shortages.

It all adds up to a failure of service caused by privatisation, in This Writer’s opinion. Private corporations, brought in to run a service like a prison, do so in order to make money and cut corners in order to achieve those profits.

Even when they are found to be at fault, those failings continue to go unremedied, meaning more – and worse – tragedies are likely to happen.

And what is done by the government that hired these – call them what they are – incompetents? It turns a blind eye.

One final point: if you think what happened at this privately-run prison is a traumatically-shocking outrage, ask yourself what will happen to the National Health Service when it is given to private firms like Sodexo.

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Starmer party is too ‘timid’ to challenge far-right claims or offer alternatives. Why?

Starmer and Sunak: perhaps the reason there’s little difference between them and their parties is that they are chasing sponsorship from big business for their own personal gain, rather than doing what the public pays them to do – which is find solutions to the problems being created by the firms they are courting.

Economist Richard Murphy has published a column highlighting concerns that Keir Starmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Party – formerly Labour) is too “timid” to challenge right-wing claims about immigration, climate change or anything else, or to articulate an alternative vision.

He suggests three reasons for this:

Is it that they spent too much time watching Top Gear over the years and now live in fear of that culture?

Could it be that they have a deep-seated insecurity when it comes to standing up to the interests of big business when the latter so clearly want what the country does not?

Or is that they simply do not do ideology-based politics and so go where the money is, with money filling the vacuum where their convictions should be?

It comes down to the same thing. Starmer has decided to do what the Tories always do: chase the cash that comes from big corporate sponsorship for his own personal gain.

The national interest can go hang, as far as he is concerned.

I’m willing to bet we’ll find evidence of this if we have a look around. Or have you found some already?

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Failed health sec and cheating husband Matt Hancock loses IPSO complaint

Matt Hancock: this may have been the look on his face when he received the adjudication.

A failed health sec and cheating husband who broke lockdown rules he wrote and helped enrich his mates via a VIP PPE lane has lost in a bid to have that description ruled inaccurate.

Matt Hancock complained to press regulator IPSO over several articles published by the Daily Mirror.

They’re very festive, so This Writer will just repeat them here in full (because I can):

Hancock complained over the following pieces:

  • “No stranger to ridicule or reinvention” (2 November 2022)
  • “Shameful record of blunders” (2 November 2022)
  • “He’s no jungle hero… lying Hancock threw us all to the wolves” (11 November 2022)
  • “SOLIDARITY IS EMOTIONAL” (3 December 2022)

The articles included allegations that Hancock:

  • “presided over PPE contracts being handed out to acquaintances of ministers and officials, including his ex-pub landlord” during the Covid-19 pandemic
  • “broke ministerial code by failing to declare he held shares in a family firm that won an NHS contract”
  • was “a failed health secretary and cheating husband who broke the lockdown rules he wrote, doubled down on the lies he told, helped enrich his mates via the infamous VIP PPE lane, and couldn’t resist monetising the infamy he acquired as a result of his ineptitude at managing the pandemic”.

The complaints under Clause 1 of the Editors’ Code (accuracy) were all rejected.

The decision means we’re all free to use the same language about Hancock, and some have beaten This Writer to it:

All right, then!

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ULEZ expansion is lawful – confounding both Rishi Sunak AND Keir Starmer

Cleaning up London’s air: the ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) will affect fewer than one in 10 cars but may deliver a remarkable improvement in air quality.

The High Court has delivered a timely message of support for measures to defeat global warming – by supporting London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s bid to extend the ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) to all of the capital’s boroughs.

Five Conservative-led borough councils had launched a legal battle to stop the extension but in what’s being described as a “landmark” ruling, Lord Justice Swift said he was “satisified” that the proposals were in the London Mayor’s “powers”.

The measure currently covers only areas within the North and South Circular Roads, but the ruling opens it up for extension to all of London’s boroughs from August 29.

It isn’t spectacularly extreme; to avoid the charge, diesel cars must generally have been first registered after September 2015, while most petrol cars registered after 2005 are also exempt.

Drivers of vehicles passing through the ULEZ area that do not comply with emissions standards are charged a daily rate of £12.50.

The decision is a blow against Rishi Sunak’s Tories, after their winning candidate in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election last week, Steve Tuckwell, said the vote had been called a “referendum on ULEZ”.

Opposition party leader Keir Starmer also clashed with Mr Khan over the policy.

Here’s what Mr Khan had to say about the ruling on TV:

He also published a statement:

Here’s a pertinent comment:

That’s the important take-away from this storm-under-a-petrol-cap: fewer than one-tenth of vehicle owners will be affected by the ULEZ expansion.

That means both Labour and the Tories have been flinging blame about nothing.

It also means that Keir Starmer needs to find another excuse for his loss in London, if he still wants to deflect attention away from his own failings as an Opposition party leader.

Why is Keir ‘I hate tree-huggers’ Starmer gaining points over global warming?

Crete wildfires: unless action is taken, these fires will spread. Crops will fail and the UK will be unable to afford to buy supplies in from countries that will also be struggling. Your leaders know this and are doing nothing. You need different leaders.

UK opinion pollsters are recording an unlikely boost for Keir Starmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Part – formerly Labour) over climate change.

Despite the fact that he says he hates “tree-huggers” and wants the London ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) scrapped after he blamed it and not his own poor leadership on his party’s failure to win the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, the i‘s Editor’s Choice newsletter tells me his party is enjoying a “bounce” of support over the issue:

Our poll results … show a Labour bounce after days of Conservative backtracking over net zero pledges. Sir Keir Starmer is now on 44% support, compared to the Tories’ 27%. If replicated at a general election would hand Sir Keir Starmer a ­landslide majority on a scale not seen since 1997.

Note that, like This Writer, the i can apparently no longer bring itself to refer to Starmer’s party as Labour!

But it isn’t all roses for the party that colours itself red. While

only 15 per cent trust Rishi Sunak to deal with this crucial issue. Sir Keir Starmer fares slightly better (21 per cent) but nearly half of those polled placed no trust in either of them – a stat that is hugely worrying.

As if the “era of global warming” wasn’t a serious enough threat, this week, the UN secretary-general declared that we had entered “the era of global boiling” after scientists confirmed that July was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record.

Our exclusive poll shows that three out of four people want action taken now – a figure that understandably ramps up among those aged 24 and under. It is their planet to take on, after all.

We all have our part to play in the climate fight but there is only so much we can do without governments around the world stepping up to the challenge. And that needs to start at home. Now.

And it’s not happening.

Instead – and for example – the Starmer party’s shadow Climate Change secretary, Ed Miliband, appeared on TV to push a false claim about its current policy:

Reeves recently withdrew her promise to spend £28 billion a year on tackling the climate crisis.

Her – and Miliband’s – party’s current policy on climate change is to do nothing. There’s a vague offer to spend some money on it after being in office for an unspecified number of years.

Let’s remember (again) that Starmer himself – their party’s leader – used the ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) in London as the reason his party couldn’t win Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the recent by-election there and has tried to pressurise London Mayor Sadiq Khan to scrap it (in fact it seems that discontent with his own leadership had more to do with the failure to win that seat).

It is his stance that has encouraged Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak to water down his own policies on climate change. So perhaps it is poetic justice that Sunak’s own poll ratings have plummeted as a result.

But none of this does anything to stop the “global boiling” that is happening as I type these words. Our home is burning to a cinder and the men and women in suits are squabbling about money as though it matters.

They seem to have forgotten that money is made by using the natural resources produced by our planet and its eco-system. Destroy that system and those resources – in the way that these people have been doing (and yes, I mean Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves, Rishi Sunak and all the shadowy businesspeople who employ them) – and not only will there not be any more money, but whatever they have will not be worth anything.

While they argue over whether cleaning the planet is cost-effective – like the imbeciles they are – some of us have been pointing out the obvious flaw in their thinking:

If Sunak, Starmer and the other stuffed suits can’t get their policies in line with that, then we need to fill Parliament with people who can.

I mean, it’s only a matter of survival. Ask your non-political friends how their non-voting – or even tactical voting – philosophy measures up to that.

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Rishi Sunak is STILL lying to you about inflation. Your wages aren’t responsible for it

Rishi Sunak: corporate whore?

After British Gas posted huge profits, made possible by price-gouging – charging you far too much for the service it provides – Rishi Sunak has appeared on TV to tell you that he’s tackling all the inflation that has been caused by your pay rises.

… Except, of course, that tackling that kind of inflation doesn’t involve any work at all because your pay rises haven’t caused any of the inflation that has been inflicted on us by boneheadedly stupid, economically-illiterate, back-of-a-cigarette-packet policies dreamed up by Sunak and his equally stupid forerunners.

Sunak’s broadcast was an attempt to distract your attention away from the real cause of inflation – the high prices charged by corporate bandits for no reason at all – and to dupe you into thinking that your pay demands are responsible.

You are not responsible for any inflation at all. Sunak and the corporations to whom he whores himself are.

Here’s Peter Stefanovic to explain further:

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Is the Bank of England trying to force the UK into austerity? Why?

The Bank of England: don’t believe its claims about inflation.

If the Bank is trying to force the government into austerity by selling government debt at a loss, isn’t that political interference?

And isn’t anyone – of any political organisation – going to ask the obvious questions about it?

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The Tory government is helping energy firms rip us off – and you’re STILL not interested in politics?

Bills, bills, bills: British Gas has made nearly £1bn in profits in the last six months because it is price-gouging its customers – charging them much more than they should be paying. Many of those customers are so stupid, they can’t be bothered to do anything about it.

The most eye-watering part of the energy firms’ announcement of eye-watering profits is the fact that so many people in the UK are so keen to say they are powerless to do anything about it.

Tell them that they’re being ripped off because of political decisions by their government and these absolute morons say that, well, they’re not interested in politics because it has nothing to do with them.

They’ve literally just been told that politics is what’s leeching away their ability to feed, clothe and house themselves and their response is that it’s nothing to do with them!

Perhaps it’s time to admit that people like the Tories and the energy firm bosses, who make the decisions to take all the cash away from us, are not the problem.

The problem is the people who prop them up – either by voting for the Tories like mindless drones or by refusing to vote for anyone who will make a difference.

That includes all the “tactical” idiots who would rather replace the Conservatives with a party that has identical policies because “we’ve got to get the Tories out” than even consider supporting anybody with a plan that will actually, you know, help.

It also includes everybody who insists that we should support Keir Starmer’s party, which has surely become the most untrustworthy organisation in the UK. It is currently promising to levy a windfall tax on energy firms’ profits, but the evidence of the recent past tells us that this will not happen if that party – which used to represent Labour – takes office again under its current leadership.

So we get this:

Here’s that increase in money terms:

Sadly, we won’t get what we need under the party that Richard Burgon represents – the Substitute Tory Party that used to be called Labour.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has the same idea – because it is the right one:

But of course he has been kicked out of the Parliamentary Labour Party for having ideas that are far too sensible to ever be considered by Starmer and his Blue Labour layabouts.

The only answer that will break the deadlock is to support alternative parties and independent candidates who actually have policies that will bring wealth back to the majority of the people, rather than siphon it off into the hands of people who already have too much.

Ah, but then we run into all those idiots who think Starmer’s identikit Tory policies are an alternative, the morons who reckon tactical voting in favour of whichever party came second last time will get the Tories out next time, and the lunatics who will still believe none of this affects them while their house is being repossessed.

These are the reason the UK is in such a hopeless position. What are you doing about it?

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Is the NatWest/Nigel Farage row another enormous scam to profit the super-rich?

Nigel Farage: why is the loss of his bank account a scandal and not the removal of many accounts belonging to Muslims? Is it because super-rich people can profit from it – including his GB News boss?

Why have we seen such a media outpouring of sympathy for Nigel Farage over the closure of his Coutts & Co bank account when the same thing has been happening to Muslims since the turn of the century and they’ve had no coverage?

Is it because Sir Paul Marshall, owner of Farage’s employer GB News, runs a hedge fund that took out a “short” position on Coutts’ owner NatWest’s stock – bet that the bank’s market price would fall? Stock has now fallen by £850 million and Marshall’s hedge fund – Marshall Wace – has made a fortune.

And is the Tory government also preparing to sell its 40 per cent shareholding in NatWest and an incident that artificially lowers the price would mean any of their friends and donors who bought those shares would be able to make a very fast profit when they rise after the scandal is over?

That would be very corrupt, wouldn’t it?

Here’s what has been happening over at GB News:

In its report, The London Economic adds that “it’s only a snip of the billions under management at the firm and is likely to have been computer driven” – but how do we know that?

It seems clear that Sir Paul Marshall has been in a position both to know in advance about the situation with Farage’s bank account, to use it to give the bank bad publicity and engineer a share price collapse, and to profit from that collapse via his hedge fund.

That would be insider trading, which is illegal. Anyone convicted of it faces unlimited fines and/or up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

It depends on when Farage’s account was closed, when news reports of the closure appeared, and whether GB News was among the first to report it (it doesn’t even have to be the first). Did Farage mention it to his boss?

Next:

This makes sense as the Tory government has ‘form’ in this regard; it sold shares in Lloyds Bank at a loss in 2017.

Finally, and possibly damningly: perhaps the biggest reason this whole affair smells worse than a pile of Haddock that have been dead for four weeks is that the media have known about people having their bank accounts closed for no reason since some time around the turn of the century.

That well-respected (and then right-wing) reporter Peter Oborne spent years trying to get UK news outlets to report on the plight of innocent Muslims whose accounts were closed in this way, to no avail.

I’ll let him explain:

So we have a situation that has been ongoing for two decades or more, of which reporters, editors and bosses in the mass media are well aware; it becomes a public scandal only when a high-profile political figure who is now a presenter on a news channel is disadvantaged by it – allowing the owner of that channel to make millions of pounds from it; and it lowers the share price of a commercial organisation in which the UK government has shares, leading to speculation that those shares will be sold to make a profit for people who are already very rich.

Are you prepared to shrug and say it all seems perfectly innocent to you? Or would you like an investigation of what may be considered fraud under UK insider trading laws?

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