Dominic Raab: look at those eyes, those hands, the set of his face. Could you believe a man like that could be a bully?
This is odd: Dominic Raab appeared on a TV show where he was asked about the bullying allegations against him – but ducked the questions by saying it was improper to discuss them while an inquiry was going on.
Even when talking more broadly about the issue, he was unconvincing.
Here’s Maximilien Robespierre’s appraisal of it:
The points are good; he never even said bullying is unacceptable.
Perhaps, having been appointed on the basis of loyalty to the leader rather than merit, he simply didn’t think he owed it to anybody working for him to have a respectful relationship with them?
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Martin Forde KC, the author of a major report on allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, has said there are serious issues of racism but, since it was published in July, nobody in the organisation has contacted him to discuss what should happen next.
he has “anxiety” and “genuine underlying concerns” about “racial issues within the party”.
Referring to Sir Keir’s speech last month, in which the Labour leader said the party will “never again be brought to its knees by racism or bigotry”, Mr Forde said: “It is not a sufficient response to say ‘that was then this is now’.”
He added: “These are serious debates that need to be heard in a respectful context. And I just feel this there’s work to be done.”
His words come after he was interviewed by Middle Eastern broadcaster Al-Jazeera for an episode of its Labour Files documentary series, in which he claimed that the BBC Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic had been “objectively entirely misleading”, and that he had been contacted by BBC representatives who wanted him to “amend” his comments on the show.
Here’s how the Al-Jazeera documentary describes what happened:
This man was hand picked by Starmer’s Labour to investigate the Labour leaks.
What Martin Forde KC found when he looked under the car bonnet was not what Sir Keir Starmer KC wanted to hear.
The documentary also suggests that Labour leader Keir Starmer has reneged on a promise to party members from ethnic minorities, that he would take the findings of the Forde Report seriously:
Another commitment Starmer broke
This was a one he made to BAME staff in the party about how the Forde report won't be a whitewashed. pic.twitter.com/urDwjEKNjw
Someone was having a laugh – but it was well-targeted.
At the top of March 15’s BBC Newsnight programme, somebody mixed Jeremy Hunt’s Budget speech with the song ‘Sorted for E’s and Wizz’ by Pulp.
The relevance was Hunt’s motif of four ‘pillars’ of the economy – each represented by the letter ‘E’.
But the clip ended with the immortal line, “In the middle of the night it feels all right but then tomorrow morning… ooh, then you come down” – which is almost certainly how we all felt after subjecting Hunt’s speech to a bit of analysis.
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John Glen, Tory Chief Secretary to the Treasury, got badly mauled when he tried to dissemble about the Budget in an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on the BBC’s Newsnight.
He couldn’t explain why it was a “Budget for growth” when medium-term growth forecasts have been downgraded.
And on the effects of Brexit, challenged to admit that it has made the UK poorer, he could not provide an alternative explanation for what has happened since the country left the European Union.
He crumbled under scrutiny.
Watch this car crash interview and understand why Tory leadership has taken the UK nowhere.
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Did their Tory bosses order the BBC to keep coverage of the strikes off its website yesterday?
Apparently the only way to see the size and scale of the march that took place in London was via German television.
See for yourself:
I’ve scrolled through several of your webpages @BBCNews but can’t seem to find a video or much at all about U.K. #strikes Do we now need to rely on foreign news to find out what’s happening in our own country? 🤷🏻♀️ https://t.co/lvuqkq8m7P
But the BBC belongs on the ‘naughty step’ – again.
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Boris Johnson: his evidence to the Partygate inquiry might be quite short – after all, his inquisitors really have only to show him this image of himself at a party he said he never attended and ask him if he was there.
This is one to put in your diary:
Boris Johnson will give public evidence about whether he misled MPs over Partygate on [Wednesday] March 22, the Privileges Committee has confirmed.
The former prime minister will be questioned by the cross-party committee from 14:00 GMT in a televised session.
But Mr Johnson has rejected this and said he believes the process will “vindicate” him.
I’m looking forward to this one, very much!
In fact, I might have a ‘Partygate party’ and invite friends to watch it with me. Wanna come along?
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Braying beardie: this is still the only image I have of Jonathan Gullis (the maskless one shouting over Boris Johnson’s shoulder).
The ‘House of Commons Hooligan’ has struck again – but this time he may have made a fatal mistake.
This is because Jonathan Gullis has has accused BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker of calling so-called Red Wall voters Nazis and bigots – alongside a slew of other unsupported accusations…
"Boris has a star quality that no other politician… could even get close to."
Tory MP Jonathan Gullis discusses the state of 'red wall' Conservative constituencies with Paul McNamara, as our exclusive poll finds that they would lose all 45 seats. pic.twitter.com/Urgj6bDgg5
This Writer can only urge Gary Lineker to initiate court action at once. It won’t go all the way because the offence seems very clear-cut, and the experience of having to apologise and make reparation might even reform the Tory party’s loudest-mouthed thug.
For anyone who doesn’t think the above is bad enough behaviour, let’s have a few reminders:
In January 2022 we all saw him screaming his support for Boris Johnson after the Tory soon-to-be-ex-prime minister made a fat-shaming joke at the expense of then-SNP Parliamentary leader Ian Blackford, in response to an accusation about the alleged birthday party at Downing Street: “I do not know who has been eating more cake.”
Here’s a video clip:
Ian Blackford makes a point about millions of people being dipped into poverty & this is how the Tories respond when Johnson makes a fat joke. If this doesn’t sicken you, there is something deeply wrong with you. https://t.co/djUXwrlvKU
— Simon Gosden. Esq. #fbpe 3.5% 🇪🇺🐟🇬🇧🏴☠️🦠💙 (@g_gosden) January 20, 2022
"Gullis said that he would not address a "baying mob" in response to an alleged planned protest during his visit to a church foodbank"https://t.co/U72KoZWh2v
Is anyone surprised to learn that the bearded braying MP for Stoke-on-Trent Jonathan Gullis says Black Lives Matter is a Marxist plot to smash the nuclear family & defund the police and has called for teachers who criticise the Tory Party to be sacked. pic.twitter.com/vlFErBATJ6
After a mercifully-brief period as an education minister in Liz Truss’s less-than-two-month ministry, in December 2022, he made another of his famously misguided attacks – this time at bishops in the House of Lords.
His outburst came after all the Anglican bishops in the Upper House said the Tory government’s Rwanda deportation policy, which was endorsed as “lawful” by the High Court earlier this week, should “shame us as a nation”.
They signed a letter saying, “The shame is our own, because our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum-seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries.”
In fairness, even the Home Office seems to have accepted that many of those who arrive in the UK by illegal routes still have a claim for asylum; the majority of them are accepted as genuine refugees and are permitted to remain in the UK.
The problem lies in the fact that they have to take illegal routes – making them prey for the Tory government’s deportation policy – because there are no legal routes; the Tories have closed them all off in order to be able to pursue this inhumane mistreatment of people who are already victims.
Gullis’s response may be found here:
So: first he flung some whataboutery into the ether, claiming that the Church should be dealing with abuse claims against its own clergy. How does he know that it isn’t? And isn’t that more a problem for the Catholic clergy?
Then he said: “Too many people are using the pulpit to preach from.” Does he not know that preaching is exactly what the pulpit is for?
This man used to be a teacher but gave up when he was elected into Parliament. He said pupils at the school where he had been working were “probably happy to see me go” – perhaps because they were already better-educated than he was?
He also said the bishops were unelected. Correct – but everybody has an understanding of what constitutes fairness and justice, and nobody needs to be elected to put forward their opinion of what that is.
Furthermore, these are people who sit as experts on law and political matters in the Upper House of Parliament, and their words have weight whether Gullis likes it or not.
And in January this year, Gullis apparently shouted, “Well, they shouldn’t have come here illegally!” in response to a Prime Minister’s Question by labour MP Tulip Siddiq, drawing attention to the fact that, despite the UK being considered a safe haven for vulnerable children, there are 200 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children missing from UK hotels.
That’s Compassionate Conservatism for you: let children go missing – kidnapped? Made into slaves for criminal gangs, for purposes that one flinches from considering? – because they should have stayed at home, possibly to be exploited in similar ways by their own countryfolk?
<strong>One can only agree with Peter Kyle: The Conservatives have found a new low.</strong>
Here’s the video clip:
And here’s Mr Kyle’s tweet:
Tulip Sadiq asks the prime minister about the welfare of 200 unaccompanied migrant children who’ve gone missing.
Tory MP Jonathan Gullis heckles ‘well they shouldn’t have come here illegally’.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all, the Tory Party find a new low #PMQs
Are these not great reasons for someone who has the ability to punish Gullis, actually to do so?
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Fiona Bruce: would she have been better-off staying with Refuge and quitting the BBC?
Neither Fiona Bruce nor the domestic abuse charity Refuge wanted this; it seems to have been prompted by the sense of betrayal felt by domestic abuse victims – over words the BBC obliged her to speak.
Ms Bruce has quit as an ambassador for Refuge after saying on the BBC’s Question Time last week that it’s understood an incident in which former PM Boris Johnson’s father broke his wife’s nose was “a one-off”.
The charity has said survivors of domestic abuse have been in touch over the weekend to described how “devastating” Ms Bruce’s words had been to them.
Refuge’s position has always been that “domestic abuse is never a ‘one-off’; it is a pattern of behaviour that can manifest in a number of ways, including but not limited to physical abuse. Domestic abuse is never acceptable.”
Ms Bruce should have known that – but it seems that she was caught between a rock and a hard place, because she was “legally obliged” by her contract with the BBC to say the words that were given to her during the recording of the programme on March 9.
The BBC explained this in a statement on March 10: “When serious allegations are made on air against people or organisations, it is the job of BBC presenters to ensure that the context of those allegations – and any right of reply from the person or organisation – is given to the audience, and this is what Fiona Bruce was doing … She was not expressing any personal opinion about the situation.”
So it seems the BBC was at fault for telling Ms Bruce to speak words that were at odds with accepted facts about domestic abuse.
That certainly seems to be Refuge’s take on what happened: “While we know the words were not Fiona’s own and were words she was legally obliged to read out, this does not lessen their impact and we cannot lose sight of that.”
Contrast this with the Corporation’s attitude to Gary Lineker, who has been reinstated as host of Match of the Day after (rightly) refusing to retract his comparison of Suella Braverman’s words about Channel migrants with the rhetoric of Germany in the 1930s.
In both situations, the presenters knew (or should have known) what was right, but their bosses wrongly thought they knew better.
The BBC still hasn’t learned its lesson; Lineker is back in his job while an “independent” review of its social media policy takes place. This Writer can guess right now that it will demand stricter restrictions on presenters’ rights of free speech on other platforms.
And Suella Braverman is still othering and demonising Channel migrants.
In her latest Parliamentary appearance, she blamed vulnerable refugees for the supply of illegal drugs in the UK:
Suella Braverman says police chiefs have told her "that drug supply… is now connected to people who came here on small boats illegally" pic.twitter.com/62XtYBhb70
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After days in which Labour politicians have lambasted BBC Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker for publishing entirely reasonable comments about the Tory Illegal Migration Bill on Twitter, party leader Keir Starmer has changed course radically.
Mr Lineker said the rhetoric used by Home Secretary Suella Braverman was similar to that of Germany in the 1930s.
He has since been shown to be right.
There is no stipulation in his BBC contract to suggest that he, as a sports presenter, should not be allowed to discuss politics on his own personal Twitter feed.
But Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had this to say about it when she was interviewed on LBC, after the row initially broke out…
Contrast her words with Keir Starmer’s comment, after the BBC suspended Mr Lineker from presenting Match of the Day, prompting a huge walkout by his fellow sports presenters that critically hampered the Corporation’s sports coverage and brought its decision-making into question.
This was just bandwagon-jumping by Starmer.
He saw an opportunity to hammer the BBC for pandering to Conservatives and he took it – never mind the fact that he was speaking in opposition to his own shadow ministers.
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Here’s another great analysis of what’s coming to be known as GaryGate, or LinekerGate:
The big take-out from this one is the passage from Gary Lineker’s BBC contract – on personal opinions.
It states, “The Conflicts of Interest Guidelines on Public Expressions of Opinion set out the position for all BBC staff:
“Public expressions of opinion have the potential to compromise the BBC’s impartiality and to damage its reputation. This includes the use of social media and writing letters to the press. Opinions expressed on social media are put into the public domain, can be shared and are searchable.
“The risk is greater where the public expressions of opinion overlap with the area of the individual’s work. The risk is lower where an individual is expressing views publicly on an unrelated area, for example, a sports or science presenter expressing views on politics or the arts.”
So Gary Lineker was well within his rights to express an opinion on politics, from his position as a sports presenter, it seems.
The revelation of these guidelines also highlights a glaring double-standard at the BBC, where hard right-winger Andrew Neil – for many years the Corporation’s most high-profile political presenter – was allowed to tweet his highly-partisan opinions willy-nilly for years without ever being called into question under these guidelines.
It seems the BBC cannot be trusted to apply its own guidelines.
Perhaps an independent body should be assigned to oversee it?
Ah, but that would require bureaucracy and red tape – and Tories are against that.
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