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NHS dentists: Is Rishi Sunak trying to usurp Boris Johnson’s reputation for lying?

Rishi Sunak: rebuilding public DIStrust of the Conservative government.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has been caught out telling a falsehood to his fellow MPs.

Didn’t he claim he was going to rebuild public trust in the government, when he became PM last year?

This isn’t going to achieve that aim.

During Prime Minister’s Questions on January 11 – the first PMQs of the year, he claimed:

  • There are more NHS dentists across the UK.
  • There is more funding for NHS dentists.
  • This means people are getting the treatment they need.

It seems none of these claims are true.

Cat Smith, Labour MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, who highlighted concerns that people are unable to get an NHS dental appointment, has written to Sunak, calling on him to correct the record:

She wrote: “The British Dental Association (BDA) has said that not one of these claims are accurate, and described this as a ‘wholesale misrepresentation’ of the crisis facing NHS dentistry.”

She continued: “The Chair of the BDA, Eddie Crouch, has said ‘The Prime Minister has offered a grotesque misrepresentation of a crisis facing millions. Our patients are living with the reality. The facts are there are no new dentists, no new contract and no new money. All we’ve seen are tweaks at the margins. We need honesty, ambition and investment to save a service on its last legs.”

And she urged him to correct the record.

At the time of writing, he has yet to do so.

ADDITIONAL: The British Dental Association has also urged Sunak to correct the record after Labour/Co-operative MP Simon Lightwood raised the same issue:

And Peter Stefanovic has made this short clip to show Sunak how to do it:

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#BorisJohnson announces #Covid19 #PlanB – but does he really think anyone is listening?

Breaking: the look on Johnson’s face shows how desperately he’s hoping that this will distract us all from the fact that he’s a serial liar who inflicts stupid rules on us and ignores them himself. No such luck, bullsh*t boy!

Nobody in England is even slightly interested in what Boris Johnson had to say in his Covid-19 press conference at 6pm today.

Commons Speaker Lyndsay Hoyle would have been, if the prime minister – for now – had held the event without bringing the proposals to Parliament – but the information was provided by Health Secretary Sajid Javid, as the broadcast went ahead.

As for everybody else – well, people are being urged to work from home wherever possible, starting on Monday, so that’ll be vetoed by bosses.

Face masks will be required in public settings like theatres and cinemas – except when eating, drinking, exercising or singing – from Friday. People will just walk away and do their own thing. I understand a lot of farmyard barns may be empty this winter, due to Brexit, so perhaps people will party it up there instead of anywhere someone will be checking up on them.

And Covid passports will be required for entry into large entertainment venues. Again, people are more likely to stay away and do their own thing.

Alternatively, the operators may simply refuse to enforce Johnson’s new rules.

Why?

Because nobody has any reason to pay attention to Boris Johnson any more.

As the prime minister’s former colleague, former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, says: trust in Johnson has eroded beyond redemption:

This means the biggest danger to public health in the UK at the moment is Boris Johnson, not Covid-19 or any of its variants including Omicron.

The measures he has announced today may be sensible, for all anybody knows, but that doesn’t matter.

People will ignore them because he is the one who says they’re necessary, and he’s a liar who just says whatever comes into his head to get him out of trouble like the Downing Street party scandal.

Why else do you think he’s announcing them now?

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#Starmer’s #reshuffle #DISASTER

Not communicating: Angela Rayner (left) and Keir Starmer (right… far right) aren’t looking at each other in the image, and it seems there’s not much communication going on elsewhere either.

Keir Starmer has shot himself in the foot – yet again – with a surprise reshuffle timed to upset his deputy, and that gave his critics a chance to pillory him in public.

Angela Rayner was giving a speech at the Institute for Government think tank on lobbying, following up on the Owen Paterson second jobs scandal, when it became clear that Starmer had started reshuffling his top team.

She had known a reshuffle was coming but had not been given any details, meaning she had no details when asked about it.

Instead, she said: “I do know that what we have to do is show that we are a government in waiting and that we have to be the next government because we can’t carry on like this,” she said.  We need some consistency in how we’re approaching things as an opposition.”

That could be interpreted as criticism of Starmer’s behaviour.

Of course, as Deputy Leader, elected by the party membership, Rayner is the only senior Labour representative Starmer can’t sack. He should be ensuring that she is always fully-informed but instead he appears to be playing silly games.

At the other end of the spectrum, Starmer did have the power to sack Cat Smith – but she didn’t give him the chance. Instead, she turned down his request for her to remain Shadow Minister for Young People and Democracy, in protest at his mistreatment of Jeremy Corbyn.

“It’s been an honour to serve on the Labour front bench since 2015 but I’m looking forward to spending even more time at home here in Lancashire and standing up for my constituents,” she wrote. “Even more time at home”? Was this a veiled claim to have been excluded?

On Mr Corbyn, she said Starmer’s position was “utterly unsustainable” and told him: “It is important that you truly understand how much damage this is causing in Constituency Labour Parties and amongst ordinary members, a number of whom are no longer campaigning.”

Mr Corbyn isn’t the only reason people are deserting Starmer. A recent appearance on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show was featured on Channel 4’s Gogglebox – and you can see support for the Labour leader draining away as the segment progressed:

His reshuffle decisions won’t win back any doubters either. Headline appointment was Yvette Cooper, replacing Nick Thomas-Symonds as Shadow Home Secretary.

David Lammy replaced Lisa Nandy as Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Wes Streeting replaced Jonathan Ashworth as Shadow Health Secretary.

Is that about right?

Still, what could we expect from the Labour leader who, we were reminded over the weekend, has put homophobia up with anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism in general and sexism as his most clearly-supported policies?

Flailing, Starmer tried to regain some credibility by swearing on Tory supporter Nick Robinson’s show, Political Thinking.

Trouble is, he was talking about honesty – and we all know that he is thoroughly dishonest. Below please find just one (mild) example of Starmer’s fibbing.

What a mess.

Starmer can’t even properly shaft political opponents in his own party. He’ll never get the better of the Tories.

What a missed opportunity that he didn’t reshuffle himself out of the Shadow Cabinet.

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Tory politics of division: ‘look at Scotland! Covid is much worse there than in England!’

Conservatives really are pathetic, aren’t they?

Faced with criticism over the rise of the Delta variant of Covid-19, they resort to whataboutery. So we see this, in the Tory-supporting Telegraph:

Scotland is by far the UK’s worst Covid hotspot with rates more than double England’s, according to figures published by Nicola Sturgeon’s government yesterday that increased pressure on her

Do you see what they did there?

“Scotland’s Covid rate is much worse than England’s so Boris Johnson is actually doing really well!”

Except he isn’t, of course. And the information provided by the Torygraph is doubtless void of important facts that affect the outcome: vaccine supply, geographical factors and so on.

People won’t see the faults in the story. They’ll see the headline and pour scorn on the Scots, and on Nicola Sturgeon in particular.

And that’s how Boris Johnson’s Tories manufacture support for themselves.

Source:  Scotland’s Covid rate is more than double England’s, new figures reveal

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Skripal pets died because police sealed house – after vet took them away? What’s going on?

Yulia Skripal with Nash van Drake, in floral surroundings: Remember the suggestion that the family were poisoned by weedkiller?

What madness is this?

Here‘s The Guardian, dated April 6:

Two guinea pigs belonging to Sergei Skripal died and his cat was put down after the Salisbury nerve agent attack, the government has revealed.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the dead guinea pigs and a “distressed” cat were discovered when a vet was able to enter Skripal’s home, which had been sealed off during the police investigation. Defra said it believed the guinea pigs had died of thirst.

Poor pets, right?

But – hang on – look at this:

A poisoned Russian double agent’s cat and two guinea pigs were taken from his home to be tested, according to a source.

‘Nobody has seen the poor pets since the poisoning,’ a source close to the family told the Sun.

‘I understand the cat and the guinea pigs were removed from the house and taken away to be assessed.’

Mr Skripal is very fond of his £1,500 black Persian cat called Nash van Drake and apparently spent thousands of pounds bringing the feline and gunea pigs to the UK from Russia. His vet Howard Taylor said he offered to help after he found out Mr Skripal had been poisoned.

It seems Nash van Drake was not the Skripals’, but Schrödinger’s Cat – both alive and dead at the same time.

Perhaps. Logic suggests it is more likely that the article quoted second – from Metro on March 17, which was quoting The Sun – was mistaken. But The Sun is also the source of information that Nash van Drake was euthanised after being tested at Porton Down.

So The Sun is Schrödinger’s newspaper – both wrong and right at the same time. Right? Wrong? Really? It’s so confusing.

In all seriousness, going by the most likely explanation, logically we have to ask why the animals were sealed inside the Skripals’ house for weeks at a time with no food or water – especially as questions were asked about them nearly three weeks ago!

Logically, again, we cannot expect the animals to have been missed by investigators, because the house must have been examined for evidence before it was sealed. Otherwise the government’s investigation would have been hopelessly compromised from the start.

These animals should have been taken out and tested for nerve agent contamination a month ago, after the Skripals were found on that Salisbury park bench.

The lack of any such investigation casts even more doubt on the truth of the UK government’s claims.

Not that any more doubt needs to be laid at 10 Downing Street’s door. And what does the RSPCA have to say?

Afterword: A commenter on Facebook has pointed out that this story seemed like a ‘dead cat’ strategy all along. I’m in two minds about whether the statement is in very bad taste, or entirely to-the-point.

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Labour’s plan to protect animals

150221labouranimals1

Here’s another terrific Labour Party policy announcement that seems to have been overlooked by the news media: Animal protection.

The policy was announced by Maria Eagle and runs as follows:

1)         Labour will protect the Hunting Act
 Ten years ago the Labour Party ended the cruel practice of hunting with dogs, because we believe that causing defenceless animals to suffer in the name of sport has no place in a civilised society. But just as we celebrate the Hunting Act, the Tories plan to repeal it. Only Labour can protect the Hunting Act because Labour is the only major party committed to defending it.

2)         Labour will ban wild animals in circuses
Travelling circuses are no place for wild animals. Being moved from place to place in cramped and substandard enclosures, forced training and performance, loud noises and crowds of people are the unavoidable distressing realities for animals in circuses. Despite promising to ban the use of wild animals in travelling circuses, the Tory-led Government has failed to do so. The next Labour government will ban this cruel practice.

3)         Labour will end the ineffective and inhumane badger culls
Badger culls are supposed to reduce Bovine TB but experts say the Tories’ culls will make the problem worse. Following repeated failures to meet deadlines and targets, the Tories are effectively pursing an unscientific mass cull with no rigorous monitoring or evaluation. Labour will end this and develop a better plan to eradicate Bovine TB.

4)         Labour will improve the protection of dogs and cats
At present we have ineffective regulation, a lack of information for pet owners and a failure to deal with irresponsible and cruel breeding practices. Labour will review the inadequate regulations on the sale and breeding of dogs and cats and develop a new strategy to improve their welfare.

5)         Labour will tackle wildlife crime and reduce animal cruelty on shooting estates
More needs to be done to protect animal welfare on shooting estates. The next Labour government will undertake an independent review into the most effective way to end the illegal persecution of birds of prey, such as the hen harrier; prevent non-target animals getting trapped in snares; and ensure the humane treatment of game birds.

6)         Labour will lead the fight against global animal cruelty
The humane treatment of animals should be a benchmark for any civilised society. National governments have a duty to work together to prevent cruelty around the world. Labour will push to end all commercial whaling and prevent the poaching and near extinction of endangered species such as elephants, rhinos and tigers.

These are great strides forward for animals.

What are the Tories doing?

Oh yes: Subsidising grouse-shooting.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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