Tag Archives: Dowden

The news in tweets: Thursday, July 13, 2023

Martin Lewis: he’s really not happy with Oliver Dowden.

This one’s for all of you who want some real news alongside your daily revelations about “BBC presenter” – or who simply didn’t care about that ‘dead cat’ story.

Martin Lewis corrects the record after Oliver Dowden falsely claimed he supported the Tories

Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis does not take kindly to suggestions that he supports any political party over the others.

So it was only to be expected that, after Oliver Dowden claimed he supported the government on a point in the government’s Mortgage Charter, he would be… miffed.

Here’s what he had to say:

For those of you who can’t (or can’t be bothered to) click on “Show more”, he continued: ‘…benches.”

‘I am party independent. I’ve had constructive conversations with both the Chancellor and the Shadow Chancellor about mortgage support.

‘I do not appreciate being used in party-political spats. It is correct that I support those specific measures in the mortgage charter, mainly as they were my suggestions (so in a way ‘they’re’ supporting what ‘I’ said) and both major parties proposed similar – but that should not be taken as a read-across to favouring any party, even just within the mortgage agenda.’

This Writer wondered, after PMQs, how many falsehoods Dowden would be caught out on in deputy Prime Minister’s Questions this week. I named two at the time.

This is another. How many more were there?

Join the demonstration to save ticket offices

This is happening today (Thursday, July 12, 2023). Information courtesy of the Peace and Justice Project founded by Jeremy Corbyn:

The government’s plans to close 1,000 ticket offices in England – this latest attack on railway workers – puts thousands of jobs at risk and, if these proposed changes go ahead, there will be serious implications on millions of elderly, disabled and vulnerable commuters who rely on the personal touch of a ticket office to arrange and support their travel.

We must resist these closures.

Tomorrow, the RMT is hosting a national day of action, leafleting and speaking to commuters outside train stations up and down the country. And in London there will be a demo outside Kings Cross with speakers including Jeremy Corbyn. Together, we must demand that ticket offices remain open – click here to find your nearest action.

The opposition to these ticket office closures has been immense, with commuters writing in to local papers, posting on social media and making it known that they oppose these closures. The government have also opened a consultation on these closures which closes in just two weeks. If you haven’t already, please fill in the consultation – click here, select your local train station and make your views known.

Write to your MP

You can also write to your MP and ask them to raise this issue in Parliament and support the campaign to save our ticket offices. You can use this letter-writing tool, created by our comrades at the RMT, which only takes a few minutes to fill out. As the consultation period is brief, it is absolutely vital that we ensure this issue is at the very top of the parliamentary agenda in the weeks to come.  Click on the link and demand your MP stands up for railway workers and the millions of commuters who rely on them to support their journeys.

Sign the petition to make sure the Tories stick to the law – and don’t send any refugees to Rwanda

Are we seriously being asked to believe nobody in Boris Johnson’s office or the government knows how to switch on a phone?

Look at this, which I believe is from the Covid Inquiry. Simon Case is the Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service:

“I thought it was handed over” is legal-speak to avoid actually saying anything.

In fact, we all know the phone wasn’t handed over. Apparently Boris Johnson has a ‘team’, alongside people from – oh dear – the Cabinet Office, trying to switch on ‘Phone 1’, but none of them know how to do it.

They say they fear security breaches, because the phone’s number was public knowledge for 15 years before Johnson twigged that this might be a bad idea and switched it off in April 2021 (if you believe in that sort of thing).

In fact, if anyone interested in breaching the UK’s security wanted to hack that phone, they would have done it long before Johnson got near the “off” switch. Also, any compromising information in it should have been changed long ago. There really is no reason not to simply switch it back on.

Alternatively, since WhatsApp messages aren’t actually stored on the phone anyway, why don’t they all just access the cloud storage that actually does hold that information, as people (including This Writer) have been telling them to do for many months?

While the government was defending itself for painting over mural at one child refugee centre, it was painting over other murals at other centres

This is cruelty for its own sake:

Lords defeat Tory government again over Illegal Migration Bill

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Oliver Dowden made multiple false claims at PMQs last week. And now?

Oliver Dowden: if he had done this, he might have suffered less reputational damage than he undoubtedly will after today’s Deputy PMQs fiasco.

As Oliver Dowden commenced on his second Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions in as many Wednesdays, This Writer filed the following opinion:

He has form.

Last week, the website Left Foot Forward devoted an entire article to falsehoods told by Dowden. It stated:

Full Fact, the campaigns team of independent fact checkers, issued two corrections… Firstly, was a claim by Dowden that the NHS waiting lists are ‘coming down’. Whilst some waiting lists, such as patients waiting over 18 months for a treatment, have fallen, the overall number of cases of waiting in England are at a record high.

He repeated this lie today (July 12) – and yes, it is a lie. Last week he could have got away with saying he didn’t know the information was wrong, but now he can’t.

Secondly the fact checkers pulled up on another claim made by Dowden that the government had been ‘cutting taxes’ for national living wage earners by doubling the personal allowance.

Citing a similar claim made by the deputy prime minster last month, where he said minimum wage earners had seen a £1,000 reduction in their tax, the campaign organisation highlighted that on both occasions this was potentially misleading as Dowden failed to make it clear that this was based on a counterfactual estimate.

Whilst minimum wage earners are paying less tax this year than they would have since 2010 if tax thresholds had gone up in line with inflation, that doesn’t mean the amount they pay has actually decreased compared to 2010.

So it’s a load of jargon, and it seems the deputy PM doesn’t understand it. What can we expect? He’s a person of very little brain.

Labour MP Lisa Nandy also took to Twitter to fact check the deputy MP on two points. First was his claim that his government had built more council houses, which she referenced to an article which cites official government data showing how 161,577 social rent homes had been completed since 2010. Compared to 362,912 between 1997 and 2010.

That’s a straightforward falsehood, then.

Next the deputy PM said that, under his government, record numbers of housing had been being built.

Nandy referred to figures this year that showed planning application in England had actually fallen to their lowest level in at least 16 years.

Furthermore, the Home Builders Federation has predicted England’s housebuilding levels will soon fall to their lowest since the second world war.

That’s a straightforward falsehood, then!

To round it off, the Deputy PM was called out during points of order refereeing to a claim he make on the 7th June, when he said the Labour Party’s plan to invest £28 billion in green energy would add £1,000 more to people’s mortgages. Dowden apparently made the claim a day after the Daily Mail reported this figure, but he said it came from treasury analysis.

However, the treasury has admitted that the figure did not come from their analysis and was forced to make the admission that this was not true. The statistics authority was unable to find any official source for the figure after investigation.

So that’s five falsehoods from last week and two (so far) – including one outright lie – from today (July 12, 2023).

How many more will the fact checkers find?

Source: Tory Deputy Leader slammed over multiple false claims during PMQs – Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK’s progressive debate

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The Tories are lying about Universal Basic Income

Oliver Dowden: he doesn’t want people to have a guaranteed minimum income; he wants us to live in fear of poverty.

As England prepares to run two pilot studies on Universal Basic Income, the Tories have been talking it down just as much as they can.

But is it that bad? A recent study in Finland would suggest that it’s actually very good for people, no matter what Politics Live panellist Lee Rowley might say.

What do you think? Would you like a guaranteed minimum income? Would you feel more secure with it? Would it encourage you to try things you otherwise would not?

Send in a comment!

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With Raab gone, who has replaced him? No, really… who?

Oliver Dowden: he’s the ventriloquist’s dummy of the Conservative government. Tell him to say something and he will, without ever having an original thought about it. And he’s the new Deputy Prime Minister.

Rishi Sunak has replaced Dominic Raab with an unknown and an idiot.

Fellow Winchester School-boy Alex Chalk is the new Justice Secretary. Nobody knows much about him apart from that he’s probably to blame for the decline of Legal Aid.

And the new Deputy Prime Minister is Oliver Dowden. As I write this, I’m listening to Damo having a rant about him – accurately.

See for yourself:

He’s another part-time MP, with not only a second but also a third job:

Sunak had an opportunity to bring some talent into his failing government at long last – and hasn’t.

We should therefore conclude that there is no talent or intelligence left in the Conservative Party. That’s handy knowledge with an election coming up next month!

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Oliver Dowden says tax cut for wealthy rewards hard work. Whose?

Oliver Dowden: he doesn’t know anything about hard work.

Cabinet Office Secretary Oliver Dowden has defended a decision to cut taxes for the wealthiest in society while offering nothing to poverty-stricken public sector workers, saying they reward hard work.

What an insult!

The policy is intended to keep high-earners like top doctors from leaving the workforce once their pension pot hits £1 million (the previous ceiling for contributions).

He said: “We’ll have more senior public sector workers working in the public sector, helping deliver on our core priorities, whether that’s cutting the waiting list, because we’ll have more consultants, whether that’s getting crime under control.”

But these are usually specialists who are called on only in specific situations; it is the rank-and-file workers who will bring down waiting lists or tackle the bulk of criminal behaviour.

He added: “I think it’s a basic, decent principle that if people work hard, they should be able to save money and invest for their retirement.”

How does he know these rich people work hard? It is more likely that a junior doctor works a much longer, much harder week than a top-level surgeon or consultant; why shouldn’t that person be rewarded for what they do?

But of course junior doctors have had their pay cut by 26 per cent – more than a quarter – since Dowden’s party took office in 2010.

They don’t have extra money to invest in pension schemes, do they?

And attacking them weakens the National Health Service that Dowden’s gang are busy selling off to private companies anyway.

So this policy is not rewarding “hard work”; it is part of a co-ordinated attack on healthcare in the UK.

Source: Oliver Dowden says tax cut for wealthy rewards hard work – Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK’s progressive debate

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Hapless Conservative chairman donates ‘Partygate souvenir’ to charity

Perhaps it’s right that the Conservative Party should have a hapless fool like Oliver Dowden as its chairman – he reflects the state of the organisation he runs.

Dowden’s latest blunder is his donation of a bottle of champagne signed by Boris Johnson to a Hertfordshire charity, for inclusion in a fundraising auction.

That organisation cannily listed the item as follows [boldings mine]: “A bottle of champagne signed by Boris. Hugely valuable as a souvenir of partygate and the examplary behaviour and morality of our dear leader!”

See for yourself:

A spokesperson for Dowden said, “this item was donated in good faith several months ago” and “this is obviously not his view” after the auction leaflet was shared on Twitter.

Of course it doesn’t matter if the bottle was donated several months ago – the Covid-19 lockdown-busting Downing Street parties had been taking place under the prime minister’s nose since April or May 2020.

Whether Dowden knew about it at the time he passed on the bottle is more debatable. But we have video evidence of Allegra Stratton laughing and joking about a party that took place on December 18, 2020 (and for which 50 people have just been fined), that was taken four days later.

If Dowden didn’t know about this, then he’s clearly unfit to do his job, and nor was his immediate forerunner, Amanda Milling, if she did not have that information to pass on to him.

Then there’s the question of Dowden’s reaction to the way the lot was accepted by the charity:

Probably more damning still is this observation:

So we have a Tory chairman who should have known about the Partygate allegations at the time, donating a bottle of champagne signed by Boris Johnson that he should have known – or should have been advised – could cause embarrassment to his party and government, to a charity that greeted the donation with hilarity (indicating that this happened after the scandal became public knowledge); he apparently did nothing to counter that response at the time.

And now he’s complaining about the way it has been marketed in a fundraising auction.

This man is too stupid for words.

If the Tory leadership – Johnson – had any teeth, Dowden would be heading for the backbenches with his tail between his legs, there to stay for the rest of what we should expect to be a mercifully short career.

But it is a sign of the weakness of Johnson’s team that this embarrassment to the name of Conservatism will probably go unpunished in any way.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Stable-heater Zahawi rushes to deny #OperationRedMeat to save #BorisJohnson’s bacon

Duper’s delight: Boris Johnson (wherever he is) may well be wearing this smile today, as his lieutenants rush to defend him and sway public opinion back in his favour with a dripfeed of drivel. Are you going to let him get away with it?

Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, wants us to know that he is refusing to recognise suggestions of an “Operation Red Meat” strategy to save Boris Johnson’s bacon.

Zahawi, who himself is no angel after trying to get the public to pay for his stables to be heated by claiming it on his MP expenses, wants us to think Johnson is in no danger of dismissal, despite votes of “no confidence” from 35 sitting Tory MPs and one suspended Tory (Anne Marie Morris), and revelation upon revelation every day.

“He’s human and he makes mistakes,” said Zahawi. Yes indeed, we all are and do. But most of us don’t make the same mistake continually over a period lasting at least 11 months, possibly much longer. That is a pattern of behaviour.

Zahawi has also denied some of the details of “Operation Red Meat”, saying sending the military to deal with refugee boats trying to cross the channel was something the government had been “seeking to address for a long time”  – and got into hot water on Sky News for doing so:

It’s true: You don’t crack down on people traffickers by sending the military to attack a flimsy boat full of vulnerable refugees from a country the UK abandoned.

Zahawi wasn’t the only one coming out with nonsense to the media.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, challenged by (Islamophobe) Trevor Phillips on Sky News yesterday (January 16), said Johnson would address the culture that allowed the Downing Street parties to happen:

There’s just one problem with that: Johnson won’t do anything about any such culture because he is the one who created it and fuels it.

All Dowden’s other comments – the vast majority of his speech, in fact – were tangential; Johnson’s decisions on Covid-19 have little bearing on the parties that were hosted at his house. And in any case, those decisions were either wrong or late, meaning the UK’s Covid-19 death toll has been far higher than it should have been.

The only way Tory Covid policy could be linked with the parties is if it is pointed out that Boris Johnson made a decision to enjoy drinkies with his party buddies while the rest of us were losing loved ones because of his decision not to fight Covid-19 in the proper way and at the proper time.

We need to keep that in mind, no matter what drivel the Tories and their mouthpieces in the media throw at us.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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#Tories are ignoring the message of the #NorthShropshire by-election – but YOU can bring it home to them


It must take years – maybe decades – of practice to be this ignorant.

After Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan humiliated the Conservatives in one of their heartlands – North Shropshire, defeating their candidate with the seventh-biggest vote swing in by-election victory, Tory chairman Oliver Dowden appeared on the morning media round, telling us all that his party had heard voters’ message “loud and clear”.

He then demonstrated, loud and clear, that his party was ignoring the message of the by-election and would carry on as though nothing had happened.

According to the Mirror,

he claimed the circumstances were “unique” and Boris Johnson “has the vision to get us through this period. He added: “Voters are clearly fed up and they want us to get on with the job and focus on the job.”

Oh, really?

On BBC Breakfast, Dowden said, “Voters … were fed up with a byelection that was called because of sleaze allegations; they were fed up with all the sort of stories that are going on at the moment.”

Elsewhere, 78-year-old Tory veteran Sir Roger Gale told the BBC’s Today programme that Boris Johnson had taken “two strikes” this week, with his own party’s rebellion against him over new Covid-battling measures and the by-election: “One more strike and he’s out.”

He said: “The Conservative Party has a reputation for not taking prisoners. If the Prime Minister fails the Prime Minister goes.

“We got rid of a good Prime Minister to install Mr Johnson.” [If he really thinks that, then perhaps he should go, too. Theresa May was considered the worst British prime minister since Lord North.]

“Mr Johnson has to prove he’s capable of being a good Prime Minister, and at the moment it’s quite clear the public don’t think that’s the case.”

Clearly, even though he was taking a harder line, this MP was showing that he hasn’t got the message either.

Voters don’t want Boris Johnson to have another chance because they know he’ll only mess it up and create worse problems for us. We want him to go now.

On the social media, members of the public are sending messages to their Tory MPs, saying Johnson has done enough harm to the UK – after the by-election result was announced, they were being called “unforced errors”.

Certainly the scandals over his alleged Christmas parties, over his redecoration of the Downing Street flat he occupies, and over corruption (that led to the resignation of Owen Paterson and the calling of the North Shropshire election) were all such “unforced errors”.

And while Dowden was happy to trot out the sad old 2019 election line that Johnson managed to “get Brexit done”, we now know that his Brexit is a huge attack on our living standards that will reduce the UK economy by four per cent – double the effect of the Covid pandemic that caused whole industries to collapse overnight.

This Writer would certainly encourage anybody who’s had enough of Johnson to write to their MP – if that person is a Tory – and ask them to hand a letter of ‘no confidence’ in to the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, who will call a vote on it if 54 such notes are received.

You can contact your MP via WriteToThem.com.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Dowden’s Minack mess-up: was he incompetent or was he lying?

Boris Johnson’s Tory government can’t seem to get anything right, can it?

While the G7 summit was taking place, partners of the G7 leaders were invited to visit the famous Minack Theatre, a clifftop amphitheatre on the coast, facing the Atlantic Ocean.

Afterwards, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden turned the event into a pantomime by tweeting: “This unique venue was one of more than 650 theatres helped through Covid with support from the £2bn culture recovery fund, ensuring that it can entertain visitors for years to come.”

All together now: Oh no it wasn’t!

Theatre bosses responded: “Sorry @OliverDowden but this is not true. We did not benefit from any CRF money as we were not eligible to apply. It turned out having a good level of cash reserves meant we had to fend for ourselves and utilise our own reserves.”

Zoe Curnow, the Minack’s executive director, said on Sunday she was surprised to see Dowden’s tweet. “To try to score a political point is unfortunate, to be completely honest. Obviously the DCMS [Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport] didn’t think to check we were on the list.

“We weren’t on the list because we didn’t qualify, and we didn’t qualify because we run ourselves in such a way that we had enough reserves to see us through.”

That’s not to say that the Minack hasn’t been hit by Covid lockdown restrictions, though!

It lost £300,000 last year and was forced to lay off 15 staff members – something Ms Curnow described as “soul destroying”.

She went on to make the political point that open-air theatres like the Minack should be allowed to go back to full operation sooner than their indoor counterparts because conditions are far less conducive to the spread of Covid-19.

But – again – Dowden and his colleagues are unlikely even to have thought of this.

If they can’t be bothered to check whether a theatre is receiving grant money, they’re never going to be interested in fiddling details like whether meeting conditions to reopen mean it should, even if that makes the difference between prosperity and job losses.

Dowden’s only interest was in winning PR plaudits. Instead he was not only panned but proved that his own career should close – due to bad reviews.

Source: G7 partners’ trip to theatre backfires after minister’s gaffe | Politics | The Guardian

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Ollie Robinson/Shamima Begum: why are the LEFT being attacked over racist tweets?

Tory hypocrite: Oliver Dowden. His only previous contribution to public debate is a claim that it was safe to go into a swimming pool with loads of other people who had never had a Covid-19 test in their life. That was right before the second wave (of the virus).

This is a weird one.

It seems cricketer Ollie Robinson has been found to have published racist and sexist tweets 10 years ago, when he was 18 or 19 years old.

The messages were unearthed by somebody who, one can only conclude, wanted to harm Robinson and timed their release to take place at a moment when he was on the field, making his debut representing England.

I would suggest that there is a certain amount of malice involved in that.

Robinson apologised immediately on being told about the revelation, but has been suspended from the England team for its next match, pending an investigation.

He has been criticised for failing to delete the tweets. It seems likely, to me, that he had simply forgotten about them. Such things happen. I’m not trying to defend him; I don’t have to. He has apologised.

But when Tory Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden stepped in saying much the same, the responses were extremely revealing. Here’s his tweet:

Here’s a response:

Far-right headbangers leapt to the conclusion that “The Left” in its entirety must be saying that Shamima Begum should be allowed to return to the UK, despite her support for IS and her former status as an IS bride.

That’s not what was being said. And it isn’t the Left being hypocritical here.

Dowden is a member of the government that barred Begum from returning to the UK, because of her attitude when she was 15. He also wants Robinson to be forgiven for his attitude when he was 18.

That is hypocritical. It is also a false comparison.

Robinson has apologised. Begum has not. In interviews with her, she made it clear that she still held the views that took her to the Middle East; still supported the ideology of IS that beheaded its opponents. She had seen decapitated heads and thought nothing of it.

So the right-wing attack dogs who are attacking the left are not only supporting a Tory hypocrite; they are themselves taking a hypocritical attitude.

And then they complain about “cancel culture”!

Source: Ollie Robinson: ECB ‘has gone too far’ in reaction to tweets, says Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden – BBC Sport

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