Tag Archives: lies

Economic expert tells Rees-Mogg truths about Brexit; Mogg repeats vaccine line

Jacob Rees-Mogg: he’s got his own show now.

This would be amusing if people weren’t so determined to believe Jacob Rees-Mogg’s falsehoods.

The tweet is clear and so is the video clip:

Best line? “By now even Larry the Cat knows he’s lying.”


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Tory mini-budget lies debunked: don’t let them fool you

Gaslighting: Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng (and the rest of their government) are trying to feed you a lot of misleading lines about their policies. Don’t let them.

After crashing the UK economy with their ‘dumb and dumber’ mini-budget/’fiscal event’, Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and their Conservative government chums are trying to gaslight you into thinking the consequences are not their fault.

Don’t believe a word of it.

Let’s have a look at some of their claims:

First among them must be this nonsense that the mini-budget was economically sound. Here’s one very obvious indicator that it wasn’t:

On her round of radio interviews yesterday (September 29), Liz Truss tried to tell us all that she has capped energy bills at £2,500 per year – indicating that she doesn’t understand her own policy:

The Treasury is trying to tell us changes to stamp duty mean a saving of £11,250 for first-time buyers – but the mortgage would cost people who earn £30,000 a total of £38,000 per year:

How about the claim that cutting taxes is fair because it helps everybody?

And what is the government’s response to complaints? Here’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld- er, Andrew Griffith, and Peter Stefanovic’s response to him:

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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Pincher affair lies show Boris Johnson has learned NOTHING from the Partygate scandal

Boris Johnson and Chris Pincher: a poor choice of friends?

Boris Johnson could be ousted from power if new Ministerial Code breaches are alleged over Downing Street’s changing story about the Chris Pincher scandal.

At first, the prime minister’s office claimed that “no official complaints [about Pincher] were ever made”.

But McDonald of Salford, a crossbench peer who was formerly (as Simon McDonald) Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has blown that – and subsequent li(n)es out of the water.

In a letter to Kathryn Stone, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, he stated [boldings mine]: “This is not true. In the summer of 2019, shortly after he was appointed minister of state at the Foreign Office, a group of officials complained to me about Mr Pincher’s behaviour. I discussed the matter with the relevant official at the Cabinet Office. (In substance, the allegations were similar to those made about his behaviour at the Carlton Club.) An investigation upheld the complaint; Mr Pincher apologised and promised not to repeat the inappropriate behaviour. There was no repetition at the FCO before he left seven months later.”

The letter added that a BBC website report stated: “Downing Street has said Boris Johnson was not aware of any specific allegations when he appointed Mr Pincher deputy chief whip in February,” then added: “By 4 July, the BBC website reflected a change in No 10’s line: ‘The prime minister’s official spokesman said Mr Johnson knew of “allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint”, adding that “it was deemed not appropriate to stop an appointment simply because of unsubstantiated allegations”.’

“The original No 10 line is not true and the modification is still not accurate. Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation. There was a ‘formal complaint’. Allegations were ‘resolved’ only in the sense that the investigation was completed; Mr Pincher was not exonerated. To characterise the allegations as ‘unsubstantiated’ is therefore wrong.

“I am aware that [it] is unusual to write to you and simultaneously publicise the letter. I am conscious of the duty owed to the target of an investigation but I act out of my duty towards the victims. Mr Pincher deceived me and others in 2019. He cannot be allowed to use the confidentiality of the process three years ago to pursue his predatory behaviour in other contexts.”

He didn’t say Boris Johnson had been lying in his letter, but in a subsequent interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he might as well have: “I think they need to come clean. I think that the language is ambiguous, the sort of telling the truth and crossing your fingers at the same time and hoping that people are not too forensic in their subsequent questioning and I think that is not working.”

Stone isn’t – technically – the right person to have received Lord McDonald’s letter; she investigates complaints about breaches of the code of conduct for MPs and, although Pincher’s conduct in 2019 probably would have been in breach of that, McDonald was really objecting to what No 10 is saying about the matter now.

It would have been more appropriate to write to the Downing Street ethics adviser – but of course there isn’t one; Lord Geidt resigned last month and hasn’t been replaced.

The peer’s revelations have triggered a slew of new accusations against Boris Johnson and his administration.

Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: “Boris Johnson needs to own up to his web of lies and finally come clean today. Every day this carries on our politics gets dragged further through the mud.”

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “The prime minister knew about the seriousness of these complaints but decided to promote this man to a senior position in government anyway. He refused to act and then lied about what he knew.

“Boris Johnson is dragging British democracy through the muck. His appalling judgement has made Westminster a less safe place to work.”

It became apparent that Downing Street had not even provided the government’s spokesperson-of-the-day with the facts, when Dominic Raab tried, on the Today programme, to push the line that Boris Johnson had not been briefed about disciplinary action against Pincher.

Himself a former foreign secretary, Raab said he had spoken with Johnson over the last 24 hours and had been assured that the prime minister had not been briefed.

Then Lord McDonald appeared on the same programme and categorically stated that Johnson had been told everything at the time.

So Raab’s story changed by the time he got to LBC radio: “There was a review, an investigation if you like … to decide whether a formal disciplinary action or an investigation and process was warranted.

“The review, conducted under the auspices of Sir Simon – now Lord – McDonald was that disciplinary action was not warranted. That doesn’t mean that inappropriate behaviour didn’t take place. We were clear that what happened was inappropriate, but we resolved it without going for a formal disciplinary process.”

Raab said he told Pincher “in no uncertain terms” that his conduct had been unacceptable.

So Raab was saying that the complaint against Pincher had been upheld, but that did not mean he was guilty – even though Raab himself had told the MP that his conduct had been unacceptable.

Does that make any sense to you?

It didn’t make sense to Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain, who grilled Raab over his misuse of language:

It seems this cack-handed handling of a serious matter has been the last straw for many backbench Tory MPs, who are now saying Johnson would lose a vote of no confidence if it took place today.

They say he has “learned nothing” from Partygate and “the same mistakes are again being made“.

And they are acting to change the rules of the 1922 Committee to allow another confidence vote to take place.

Tory Johnson critic Sir Roger Gale said: “Mr Johnson has for three days now been sending ministers – in one case a cabinet minister – out to defend the indefensible, effectively to lie on his behalf. That cannot be allowed to continue.

“This prime minister has trashed the reputation of a proud and honourable party for honesty and decency and that is not acceptable.

“It is so blatant a lie it has to be acted upon as swiftly as possible by my party.”

John Penrose, the former “anti-corruption tsar” who quit over Sue Gray’s Partygate report, has expanded on why Lord McDonald’s letter is so explosive:

“This is dynamite. Honesty is one of 7 Nolan Principles of integrity in public life & at the core of the Ministerial Code so a) #10 not telling the truth is another serious breach & b) the PM’s promised reset has no credibility because their behaviour hasn’t changed at all.”

This may explain why Tory backbenchers are after another “no confidence” vote.

Meanwhile, the business of government takes a back seat once more as Boris Johnson again scrabbles to save his own wretched skin.

Some Parliamentary reporters are already suggesting that this is the end of the road for Johnson – but he’s a slippery character. I’ll report more developments as they appear.

Source: (1) Boris Johnson urged to ‘own up to his web of lies’ after No 10 accused of not telling truth about Pincher – live

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Waiting for Sue Gray: here’s what we already know about Boris Johnson’s corruption

Boris Bull****: it seems the prime minister will try to fool us that he has “learned” his “lesson” after receiving a small fine for being at a single Downing Street party, being let off the hook for all the other events he attended, and lying brazenly to Parliament about what was going on. He is simply the most corrupt crook to have infested the highest office in the UK – and that’s saying a lot!

If Boris Johnson hoped the end of the Met Police investigation into parties at Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdowns would take the heat off him, he was mistaken. It has been turned up.

For a start, doubt has been cast on the police inquiry after images emerged of the prime minister taking part in events for which he was not fined. Were the police protecting Johnson because he is the prime minister, or giving him privileges not afforded to low-level civil servants because he could afford expensive lawyers? If so, then they were defying the basic principle of UK law that everybody should be treated equally. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has demanded a detailed explanation.

And former Met Police deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick has weighed in, stating that the public will want to know what more evidence the police needed to give the prime minister a fixed penalty notice, when the photos appear to show beyond reasonable doubt that he should have been issued with one.

People who attended the parties (and were presumably fined for doing so) have told the BBC and others about the party culture at Downing Street during the Covid lockdowns – a culture endorsed by Boris Johnson, they said, suggesting he “wanted to be liked” and for staff to be able to “let their hair down”, and that they felt they had the prime minister’s permission to socialise even it meant breaking the rules because “he was there.”

It’s not surprising that civil servants are starting to speak out: as is now normal in Boris Johnson’s regime, it is the staff and special advisors who have taken the blame for Partygate rather than the politicians who permitted and participated in the parties. A large majority of the 83 people fined by the police were officials, and Johnson’s backroom team has also suffered a “brutal purge” over the last six months.

Cabinet Secretary Simon Case – a close Johnson ally – is safe, though, despite speculation on his future. It seems that after Johnson’s ministers withdrew permission for him to give evidence on Partygate to a committee of MPs, his job is not in danger.

Meanwhile, not a single politician has lost their job. Rishi Sunak simply decided he didn’t feel like stepping down after being fined, and Johnson seems determined to corruptly give himself the all-clear for lying to Parliament, if he is a accused of breaking the Ministerial Code. You see, as prime minister, he is in charge of deciding whether anybody has broken it, including himself.

Tory MPs seem split, though. Environment Secretary George “Useless” Eustice has said he expects “nothing new” to come from the report and that he hopes its publication will allow the government to put the scandal behind it, despite all the loose ends that are still dangling about the lies told by Johnson, the possibility of a Met Police cover-up, and the fact that the Tory government tacitly, if not openly, endorsed the party culture.

But critics are said to be relaunching their bid to oust Johnson by triggering a leadership contest with letters of “no confidence” in him.

And Johnson himself?

According to BBC political editor Chris Mason, he actually has the bare-faced cheek to trot out the tired old lie that “We have learned our lesson”.

What utter Boris Bull****.

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#Johnsonlies – UK prime minister breaks #MinisterialCode by failing to correct the record

Remember This Site’s article a couple of days ago, showing how Boris Johnson had said fears over inflation were “unfounded”, then lied to MPs that he hadn’t?

Here’s the video clip with all the information you need:

I should have added that Johnson was subsequently challenged to correct the record – but didn’t:

The Ministerial Code is clear: he should have corrected the record immediately – but he didn’t.

And Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle told him to sit down – effectively preventing him, it seems, from doing so!

It seems clear that both Johnson and Hoyle have some explaining to do.

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#BorisJohnson’s lies: he says your income has rocketed, so why can’t you afford to live?

This was perhaps the most offensive lie Boris Johnson told in Prime Minister’s Questions on January 5, 2022.

He said income inequality in the UK has fallen.

In a country where poverty is “steadily increasing”, according to the Office for National Statistics, while billionaires have boosted their own income massively, this is an insult to the millions of us who are struggling to make ends meet.

When one adds in the fact that he lied about child poverty – it is increasing, not decreasing – the insult is overwhelming.

Here’s the video evidence:

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This lie shows that both #BorisJohnson AND #KeirStarmer are toxic to the public

Among the litany of lies that Boris Johnson paraded before MPs – and the general public – at Prime Minister’s Questions on January 5 was that Labour would re-nationalise the privatised energy firms if it could.

When Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, this would have been an accurate claim – and as a result the public would have been much better-off if he had become prime minister.

The existence of the energy firms as private organisations means not only that the public must shoulder the burden of skyrocketing prices, caused by Johnson’s incompetence as a national leader, but also that we must contributed to their shareholders’ annual increase in profits, no matter what other costs face us.

It’s a form of daylight robbery, you see. We all need energy – I’m using it to write this article on my computer and you’re using it to read the piece, for just one example. That’s why it should rightly be run by the state as a national asset, rather than by profit-grubbers as a get-rich-quick scheme.

The Tories – and the energy bosses, and their shareholders – know we have to have what they’re selling, so they know that we have to pay the hugely-inflated prices they demand. We simply have no choice.

And that’s ironic, considering the way a previous Tory government forced privatisation on us by saying it would give us more choice.

The fact that Johnson’s PMQs claim is a lie therefore reflects just as poorly on Labour – now – as it does on him, because current Labour leader Keir Starmer has u-turned on the re-nationalisation policy and announced at the party conference last autumn that a Labour government would not, now, return the energy firms to public ownership.

Here’s the video clip:

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Covid-19: it isn’t over, the news media are lying to you, and you are MORE likely to die

Lying: Boris Johnson has fed us a lot of diseased tripe about Covid-19 since February 2020 and the news media have been happy to help him. They’re still doing it now.

Feeling good about yourself because you’re double-vaccinated and the Tories have ended social distancing rules? How do you feel about this, then?

I know what some of you will say: it’s still better than everywhere else because Boris Johnson and his crooks have done such a good job with the vaccine. Right?

Wrong:

In a nutshell…

Here’s the reason:

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s someone who’s just back from abroad:

The death toll since Johnson’s so-called Freedom Day (July 19) is appalling – and families of the deceased are being urged to take action:

And nearly as many more people are expected to die before Christmas – who would live if Johnson only saw sense and re-imposed life-saving restrictions. Ah, but he’s on his holibobs, isn’t he?

Among the dead are NHS nurses like this one, meaning the number of people qualified to help fight Covid-19 is decreasing.

Meanwhile the media are feeding is misinformation. Consider the BBC’s claims that the vaccination programme is good reason to excuse the government for the tens of thousands of deaths it caused at the start of the pandemic crisis:

It is reckoned that 20,000 people died because of mistakes made in the first few weeks of the crisis. That’s as many as are expected to have died between July 19 and December 25, after Johnson’s Freedom Day stunt.

Oh, and then there’s this:

And this:

And still the Tory apologists leap forward to excuse them. Jolyon Rubinstein is (almost) right on the button with his comment below (one Tory has stepped forward to apologise – although he’s nobody important):

Along came Ryan (below) to let the Tories off the hook with a lot of twaddle.

If the blame game gets us nowhere, why is Health Secretary Sajid Javid preparing to blame GPs for failing to hold enough face-to-face appointments with patients, after creating a funding scheme that doesn’t help?

Not only that, but we know that the government didn’t pay attention to expert advice and take action accordingly.

Covid-19 is indeed (partially) a natural disaster, but it is one that has been made much worse by Boris Johnson and his cronies.

The situation is crystallised by the hypocrisy of the “He’s doing his best” narrative about Boris Johnson:

Yes, he’s “doing his best” by pretending to be Picasso in some paradise villa. Meanwhile:

Of course we know why Johnson took his holiday this week. It was to avoid having to answer the damning report on the government’s response to Covid-19 that became public this week.

He left that to his ministers, including a Health Secretary who hasn’t even bothered to read it…

… and a former Health Secretary who lied to us that one of the countries that has performed best in handling the pandemic is now doing worse than the UK. It isn’tNew Zealand is much, much healthier than we are:

Now get ready for the really bad news:

The situation in the UK is about to get much, much worse. And that will happen because your Tory government couldn’t be bothered to prevent it, and because its complacent, client news media couldn’t be bothered to warn you.

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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WHY YOU NEED ME: Johnson’s government is out of control and the mass media are his cheerleaders

It’s not just Vox Political that you need – any social media commentary site that actually criticises the government rather than acting as its stenographer will do.

Professor Simon Wren-Lewis has put the situation in a nutshell with his own latest blogpost on Mainly Macro.

He states that Boris Johnson’s dictatorship is beyond Parliamentary control, and he has the mainstream media in his pocket.

He uses the decision to cut aid funding to foreign countries from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5 per cent as an example:

A large number of Conservative MPs were unhappy with this, and wanted to use parliament to reverse this cut. The parliament’s speaker ruled their attempt invalid, but requested the government to allow a vote on the issue. The government refused.

The executive increasingly views parliament with contempt.

We knew this government thought little of parliamentary sovereignty when it closed it down, illegally, before the last election. The courts forced it to retract that measure, so now the government is intending to pass laws that would prevent the courts doing so again.

Of course, Parliament could pass a motion of “no confidence” in this dictatorship – but Prof Wren-Lewis rightly points out that “that is never going to happen while Johnson looks like winning the next election. As a result, parliament has no effective control over what this government does.”

Yes, it’s corrupt. But it’s the system we have.

Prof Wren-Lewis goes on to mention a series of scandals involving Johnson’s ministers: Michael Gove, Matt Hancock, Gavin Williamson, Priti Patel, and Robert Jenrick.

Did he sack any of those ministers for corruption and dishonesty? Of course not – and Prof Wren-Lewis puts his finger on the reason: “They are his people, and nothing bad is going to come from keeping the ministers he chose in the job… The key is that this government is totally unaccountable, and does just what it likes.”

And the reason it can do what it likes – more than any other – is the fact that Johnson controls the UK’s mass media. And that means he can control what you think about him:

For a large part of the press, Johnson is their Prime Minister. They became propaganda outlets to persuade people to vote for Brexit, and they have remained propaganda outlets supporting the government ever since.

The extent to which the right wing press has become the propaganda arm of the right in the Tory party has steadily increased over the last few decades.

Prof Wren-Lewis rightly narrows his focus down to the BBC. The corporation has a huge, 70 per cent, share of the current affairs information that gets into your home and into your head:

The big change, begun by Thatcher and Cameron and completed by Johnson, is to tame the BBC. This is hardly surprising, when party donors are appointed to key positions and the government keeps attacking the BBC’s outputs, income and even its existence.

The BBC does not push propaganda, but they do not take it on either, giving the press a largely open field for their propaganda to work.

They avoid the truth if it embarrasses the government, and when its reporters do tell things straight, they are put down by the BBC’s leadership.

Because of the way the BBC fails in its reporting, even things that do have a large impact on voters, like tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, will never be described in those terms.

That lack of media accountability allows Johnson to ignore his scientists, and put personal ‘freedom’ above saving lives and the economy. This is what happens when the government becomes unaccountable. It is allowed to make mistakes costing lives, and pays no price for these mistakes.

What does this mean for you – the news viewer/reader and voter?

See for yourself:

The only accountability that has any influence on this government is the electorate. But because of its natural advantage in the media, and unfortunately an opposition that seems pretty ineffective beyond PMQs, that influence on the government is partial and weak.

Issues most voters will not notice, because their only sight of them is a news item towards the end of a bulletin (like the government breaking the law on contracts), can be safely ignored by the government.

That means your attention is diverted away from criticism of the Johnson government’s many failings.

You are told that everything is running swimmingly by the government’s front man, whose upbeat turn of phrase and mop of deliberately-messy blond hair hides his “duper’s delight” smile that says he is lying to you.

You believe him when he tells you the vaccination programme is keeping you safe, even though cases of Delta Variant Covid-19 infections are skyrocketing.

You don’t believe he has screwed up the economy with his duff Brexit trade deals, or that he has jeopardised the peace in Northern Ireland, or any number of other idiocies for which he is responsible – because you simply don’t know about them.

That’s where I come in.

Vox Political has provided consistent criticism of the UK’s politicians for very nearly 10 years.

That means when Daniel Kawczynski apologised for bullying, I was able to put it in context and point out it is not a minor incident.

It means when Priti Patel supports football fans who boo protests against racism, I can point out all the incidents in her career that show she is a racist too.

It means I can highlight Tory corruption whenever it surfaces.

And that means the UK’s electorate should be reading Vox Political – right?

But only a tiny fraction of the politically-oriented public does – because the mass media ignore the work done here (for obvious reasons – they support the Tories and don’t want to publicise anybody who doesn’t) and the social media platforms push sites like this one down your newsfeeds so you don’t realise we’re here.

The ultimate aim is to starve us out of business so there’s nobody left to object when they spoonfeed you their Tory-approved falsehoods, anaesthetising you into supporting Johnson’s crowd while they strip you of all the hard-won freedoms your ancestors gained over the last hundred years and more.

As I say, Vox Political isn’t the only critical social media site available. But times have been hard over the year (and more) of Covid-19. Readerships have fallen and some of us are in danger.

So, please do yourself – and everybody you know – a favour.

Give us a boost, every chance you get.

Promote us to your friends and family members when we highlight the facts that contrast so strongly with the fairy stories you see on the BBC News.

The only way to change people’s minds is one at a time – but that can’t happen if everybody is ignoring the facts and turning down the chance to explain them.

Source: mainly macro: A government out of control

Now he’s crowing about his Brexit deal, will Boris Johnson be allowed to forget THIS?

Think before speaking (or publishing): Boris Johnson should account for a Tory constituency association’s apparent demand for activists to tell LIES in order to  sideline honest politicians from other parties.

Why have Tory Party members been sent an email urging them to use “dubious claims” to “crowd out genuine news” and sideline “honest” politicians?

The demands, in a Conservative Party email, indicate clear support for dishonest politicians and for fake news. Don’t they?

It seems Labour leader Keir Starmer has been mining a newsletter published to Tories on Peter Bone’s Wellingborough constituency. Bone now has some hard questions to answer!

Sadly, Starmer was unable to use the information in the newsletter to his best advantage during the last Prime Minister’s Questions of 2020 – because of his own poor track record.

After he asked whether the newsletter contained advice that Boris Johnson had taken – or had been written by Johnson, our failure of a prime minister was able to turn the tables simply by pointing out that the people of the UK would like to see any sign of an opinion at all from Starmer.

He said,

I think what the people of this country would love to hear from the right hon. and learned Gentleman in this season of good will is any kind of point of view at all on some of the key issues.

In the words of the song, “All I want for Christmas is” a view, and it would be wonderful if he could produce one.

It is a perfectly valid viewpoint about Starmer. But it does not excuse Wellingborough’s Conservatives or the contents of their newsletter.

Why did they write in praise of

Donald Trump’s use of “dubious claims”, “weaponising fake news” and using falsehoods to “crowd out” the truth.

Why did they say,

Fake news often makes headlines and crowds out genuine news. Honest politicians therefore find themselves pushed off the front pages

and then go on to urge Tories to

say the first thing that comes into your head. It’ll probably be nonsense but it knocks your opponent out of his stride and takes away his headline

in a clear exhortation for Tories to dishonestly create “fake news” stories?

And will Johnson ever be bothered to answer these questions?

Source: Boris Johnson quizzed over Tory newsletter urging activists to ‘weaponise fake news’ – Mirror Online

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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