Have the news media given up on reporting court proceedings properly?
I lost when Rachel Riley applied to strike out my defence against her libel case and everybody thought it meant I had lost the whole case. I haven’t.
Now Jeremy Corbyn has lost a court application to make the Labour Party disclose documents that he said would show that Labour had gone back on an agreement to fully reinstate his suspended membership as a result of “political interference” and some media types are acting as though he has lost his case too. He hasn’t either!
According toThe Independent, Labour has attacked Corbyn for wasting “the court’s time and our members’ money”. Strangely, Riley’s supporters have been trying to stop people from supporting my CrowdJustice site with similar claims.
It is understood that Labour will also seek to recover its court costs from Mr Corbyn personally.
If the increasingly detestable Labour party wishes to try to force Jeremy Corbyn to pay costs, I stand ready and willing to contribute to a crowd-funder. This disgusting party needs to be taught a lesson about the word 'solidarity'.
Judge Lisa Sullivan made it clear that the case could continue without Labour documents being passed to Corbyn: “In terms of Mr Corbyn’s ability to properly plead his case, I do not accept that he would suffer significant prejudice without pre-action disclosure.”
So it’s clear the case will continue.
But look at The Independent‘s headline: Labour attacks Jeremy Corbyn for ‘wasting time and money’ after court defeat over suspension from party. Doesn’t that make it seem that he lost?
So, just on an anecdotal level, it seems clear that certain elements in the press have lost their impartiality altogether when it comes to reporting the courts.
Or perhaps, going back to a theme we’ve discussed recently, they’re just prejudiced when it comes to Corbyn and his supporters.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Jeremy Corbyn: he would be right to look askance at us all. A majority of people believed the lies about him published by the Tory-supporting media and voted a massive Tory majority into Parliament. Now more than 100,000 of us are dead as a result. He would have tackled Covid-19 differently – and some of our relatives might still be alive today.
Here is much of the problem with UK politics, rolled up in a single tweet:
*Jeremy Corbyn wears cardigan
UK Press:
THIS MAN IS A MONSTER!
*Boris Johnson kills 100,162 people
UK Press:
Aww, he sad. He done his best.
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈🏴 (@TheMendozaWoman) January 27, 2021
It’s applicable to any situation but very clear at the moment because Boris Johnson has failed so badly and 100,000 people are dead as a result.
Jeremy Corbyn, who was vilified by the press, would have acted differently. We know exactly how, because he told us. See for yourself:
Here’s what Corbyn would have done. At the time he said this he was slated by the MSM for calling the government complacent. He was told now isn’t the time for political point scoring. He was right & If he were PM many thousands would be alive today. pic.twitter.com/kiVh5ni02h
But the general public had been hoodwinked by the Tory press into thinking he was a menace.
And now?
This is still happening:
Corbyn: Lets nationalise the internet and have free broadband for everyone. Journalists : Stalin. Boris Johnson : I am sorry 100,000 people are dead. Journalists : you tried your best.
I'd like to hear from any of the blue-tick Corbyn-hate brigade if they genuinely and sincerely believe Johnson's grotesque carnage is better than a Corbyn-led government would have been.
Corbyn was right. Corbyn is right. Anyone who says he would have been worse than Johnson is welcome to borrow some of my medication.
— Julie Harrington 💙#FreeOsimeBrown#MMT#BLM (@celtjules66) January 27, 2021
This Writer is willing to wager that a lot of mainstream media hacks should be mainlining Ms Harrington’s medication.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
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?
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Someone brought my attention to the report of Rachel Riley’s application to strike out my defence against her libel action yesterday and I had a good laugh at it.
Considering the fact that my Twitter account appears to have been suspended – presumably over my own fair and accurate account of the hearing – other friends have questioned why this is still up.
It’s a good question.
It was headlined Latest round of Rachel Riley libel challenge heard in court – so far, so good. But the author – “Jewish News Reporter” – went off-beam from the sub-heading onwards:
Lawyers argued about claims of online abuse, harassment and bullying towards the countdown presenter
No, it was claims of online abuse, harassment and bullying by the Countdown presenter. That’s quite a big mistake to start off!
The latest round of a libel challenge by lawyers acting for Countdown presenter Rachel Riley and Vox Political reporter Mark Sivier
Who’s this Mark Sivier, I hear you cry. He’s a cousin of mine who lives in Bristol and has nothing to do with This Site or the case. I do wonder whether he would like to start one of his own against this newspaper, if I bring his attention to it…
reached the courts again on Friday, as lawyers argued about claims of online abuse, harassment and bullying.
The allegations stem from vitriol surrounding antisemitism in the Labour Party, against which Riley has been a vocal critic, and this week’s hearing was centred on a strike-out action.
No, no, no! The allegations stem from Riley’s support for a claim that Owen Jones is anti-Semitic, after he applauded Lord Sugar’s announcement that if Jeremy Corbyn got to be prime minister, he would leave the UK.
The hearing was of a strike-out application. And Riley hasn’t criticised “vitriol surrounding antisemitism in the Labour Party” – which is what Jewish News is saying here; she has caused a large amount of it.
(Consider her call for people to sign a petition saying former party leader Jeremy Corbyn was an anti-Semite (he isn’t); her post that photoshopped a scene from Game of Thrones to include an image of Jeremy Corbyn with a message that someone should “take” him “out” (meaning, have him killed); and the image of her wearing a T-shirt bearing a famous image of Corbyn being arrested for protesting against apartheid South Africa, photoshopped (again) so the board he was wearing stated “Jeremy Corbyn is a racist endeavour”. All of these caused considerable ill-feeling.)
Sivier, who has raised for than £100,000 for legal fees through crowdfunding, called Riley’s latest legal action “a vexatious attack… to have my defence against her libel action struck out… to avoid having the evidence heard at a trial”.
Did I? It looks like selective quoting but in fact the sentiment is more or less accurate. I do consider the strike-out application to have been an attempt to stop a libel trial from taking place – not by proving that I don’t have a case (I do), but by wasting the money I had crowdfunded (yes, more than £100,000 – people really don’t like Riley) to make it impossible for me to fund my defence.
Of course, that was my feeling before the hearing took place. In fact, counsel for both Riley and myself ran through a lot of information about the case in their submissions, meaning if Riley really didn’t want the information about her bullying a teenage girl – and both supporting and encouraging abuse of her by her followers – she failed in that attempt.
The hearing was in open court, meaning the public were entitled to attend – and did – and the material provided in evidence is now public knowledge.
Mrs Justice Collins Rice heard the arguments at the High Court as barristers jostled over Riley’s allegations that Riley engaged in a campaign of online abuse and harassment against her, allegations denied by Sivier.
This will take a bit of unpicking!
Riley did not allege that she had engaged in a campaign of online abuse and harassment, certainly not against herself!
I had made the claim that she had engaged, supported and encouraged such a campaign – against a teenage girl with mental health issues, as described in my article yesterday (December 11).
I haven’t denied making that claim, though. I deny that it is libellous to do so – for the very good reason that she did do those things.
Her application, heard by Mrs Justice Collins Rice yesterday, was that my defence was not substantial enough to justify a trial. But then, it did manage to support a full day’s hearing at the High Court, so I think she should be on a hiding to nothing there.
It is the latest libel case pursued by Riley and fellow Jewish TV personality Tracy Ann-Oberman, supported by Israel-based lawyer Mark Lewis, whose witness statement was considered in court.
Tracy-Ann Oberman is not a party in the case. It is being pursued only by Riley. Oberman does appear in it – as I allege that she also harassed the teenager, with dozens of tweets in a single day, inviting her to a meal in London with another teen.
Oberman herself has since claimed that 16 tweets in succession constitutes harassment so her own more than 50 (some say more than 60) should certainly qualify, in my opinion.
And no fewer than three witness statement by Mark Lewis were considered by the court. None of them added to Riley’s case as they constituted nothing more than his personal opinions – as my counsel pointed out.
Late last year a High Court judge heard pre-trial submissions over the pending libel case between Riley and Sivier, concerning the latter’s 2019 article in which he called Riley a “serial abuser”, including of a 16-year-old girl who received death threats.
This is the essence of the story. And it is being reported in the second-to-last paragraph of this Jewish News piece. Talk about getting a story backwards!
The judge said Sivier’s argument that Riley’s “irresponsibility” had caused supporters to issue death threats was opinion, as was his description of her as a “hypocrite”.
That would be Mr Justice Nicklin, who presided over the hearing in 2019 – not Mrs Justice Collins Rice. It means Riley will find it extremely difficult to prove that those statements were libellous – even if she succeeds in striking out my argument of “truth” – that my claim about her is factually accurate.
The story does not explain that I referred to “irresponsibility” because she had tweeted false information both to and about the teenager; if she had not done so, her Twitter followers would not have even known about the girl’s existence, let alone filled her inbox with abuse over a period of almost exactly one month.
And I called Riley a hypocrite because my article was a response to a Guardian piece in which she claimed that Channel 4 had been forced to employ a bodyguard for her after she had received threats – without any acknowledgement that her own behaviour on Twitter had led to the teenage girl also receiving threats – and she doesn’t have the funds for a bodyguard.
These points are all pertinent to the case as a whole, and to the hearing yesterday yet, strangely, the Jewish News failed to include them – or got the story points completely wrong.
Can you imagine why that could have happened?
To me, it is indicative of the way the mainstream press has been happy to ignore and distort the facts of the case so they can boost their poster girl and disregard me.
The knock-on intention is to ensure that people turn away from me and I fail.
You know how to prevent that:
Consider making a donation yourself, if you can afford it, via the CrowdJustice page.
Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.
Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.
On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.
I’m never going to get support from the mass media. Even if I win this case, they’ll try to misrepresent it or bury it altogether. They don’t care about the facts.
But you do – or you wouldn’t be reading this. Let’s make sure the facts are known.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Betrayer: it seems an online campaign against left-wing news sites was launched by people close to current Labour leader Keir Starmer. Is he trying to be more Tory even than the Tories?
An organisation claiming to campaign against fake news – but actually targeting left-wing political websites – was set up by Labour Party employees, research has revealed.
It seems the ownership of the Campaign for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) were well-hidden but detective work by John McEvoy at The Canary (one of the organisation’s victims) has teased out the facts.
This is a clear attack on the freedom of press: The neoliberal right-wing of the Labour Party created a bogus campaign called "Stop Funding Fake News" to try to censor and shut down independent left-wing media outlets like @TheCanaryUK
And it seems the facts show that the CCDH was launched by none other than Labour leader Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, one Morgan McSweeney.
CCDH is a not-for-profit NGO which was initially registered on Companies House as Brixton Endeavours Limited. At the time of incorporation, 19 October 2018, the organisation’s only director was Morgan McSweeney – Labour leader Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. McSweeney was also the campaign manager for Liz Kendall’s leadership bid.
Brixton Endeavours Limited was officially renamed the Center for Countering Digital Hate on 30 August 2019, and McSweeney did not resign his directorship until 6 April 2020. The resignation was listed on Companies House on 4 May 2020, the day CCDH and SFFN’s relationship was formally acknowledged.
Although CCDH was first named on Companies House in August 2019, it has been in unofficial operation since December 2017.
SFFN was originally set up separately from CCDH, but it seems the founding chief executive of both was the same man – Imran Ahmed, who has also worked closely with Labour figures previously involved in the campaign to remove Jeremy Corbyn as party leader.
According to his Twitter profile, Ahmed is the “founding CEO of CCDH & SFFN” – suggesting he has been involved in SFFN since it was first launched in early 2019.
Ahmed has worked as special advisor to Hilary Benn, reported to have encouraged a vote of “no confidence” against Corbyn in 2016, and as head of communications for Angela Eagle, who launched a leadership challenge the same year. Both Benn and Eagle “consistentlyvoted” for the Iraq War.
He now also sits on the steering committee of the UK government’s Commission for Countering Extremism, where he advises on “conspiracist “news” sites”.
SFFN and CCDH’s websites were also registered on the same server, on 28 January 2019 and 24 April 2019, respectively.
CCDH also shares its address with “Blue Labour” campaign group Labour Together, formerly directed by McSweeney, and now co-directed by Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy.
So we see that CCDH and SFFN are closely connected to Labour Together, to right-wing MPs Hilary Benn and Angela Eagle, and to the Labour leader Keir Starmer.
And what has it done?
Firstly it should be made clear that not everything done by these organisations has been bad. They have successfully campaigned for the removal of some genuinely poisonous individuals from the social media and raised the alarm over online misinformation about Covid-19.
But its most vicious campaigning has concentrated on the Left, it seems:
While posing as a neutral body concerned with “the rapid rise in Fake News”, operated by people who are supposedly “pro-truth, pro-balance and pro-responsible news”, SFFN in fact appears to be a highly politicised pressure group, and part of the wider onslaught against the British left.
A statistical analysis of SFFN’s lobbying efforts supports this assessment. Between its founding and the 2019 general election, SFFN targeted The Canary – which the campaign acknowledged was its largest target – more than any other website, with 176 individual posts on Twitter. The operation has been scaled down since the election, with 42 individual posts targeting The Canary in a greater amount of time.
Canary editor-in-chief Kerry-Anne Mendoza is currently suffering her second Twitter ban within a week in what seems clearly a co-ordinated campaign of harassment against her.
Apparently CCDH and SFFN have only one patron:
CCDH lists Countdown figure Rachel Riley as its only patron, adding that it receives additional funds from “philanthropic trusts and members of the public”.
It is not known whether Riley has also funded SFFN since 2019, at which time she celebratedThe Canary being “on its last legs” due to SFFN lobbying. Riley did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Hmm. I won’t comment too heavily onthis as This Writer is currently being sued for libel (on very tenuous grounds) by Riley. Suffice it to say that she has been fighting her own crusade against Jeremy Corbyn and left-wing politics for several years now.
There is strong evidence to show that CCDH and SFFN are fronts for an anti-left-wing propaganda campaign run by people within the very organisation that should be supporting lefty news endeavours.
Perhaps it is time these people were put on the spot and, rather than accepting their accusations without question, we put their own credentials to the test.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
I couldn’t read the story in Broadcast (paywall) but found it in the Express, of all places:
Ofcom conducted an annual survey covering the period April 2019 to March 2020 in which the broadcasting regulator asked audiences if they believed news programmes they watched on each of the main television channels were free of bias.
But in the latest blow for the BBC, the Corporation ranked bottom with a score of just 58 percent. Sky News led the way with 69 percent, followed by Channel 4 (66 per cent), ITV (63 per cent) and Channel 5 (61 per cent).
Ofcom said: “There is a risk that future relationships between the BBC and its audiences could be jeopardised if audience concerns around impartiality continue to grow.”
Bizarrely, the report has come to light at the same time as Andrew Marr said viewers would choose “BBC impartiality” over “Fox News-style rivals”.
But then, Marr’s mission is not ours: he’s saying the BBC cannot be accused of left-wing bias – and I’m sure we could all agree with that.
“When Hugh Carleton Greene was Director-General (from 1960), he was pushing a much more anti-conservative, anti-hierarchical agenda than anyone is today.”
Carleton Greene was accused of causing the nation’s “moral collapse” by “decency” campaigner Mary Whitehouse, not least for refusing to censor the word “knickers” from a broadcast.
So he clearly equates Conservatism with impartiality. That’s interesting. Then again…
Does Marr welcome the challenge from the Discovery-backed GB News and Rupert Murdoch’s new “opinionated” TV news venture, both set to launch next year?
“You bet,” he asserts. “All competition is good. I hope we’ll demonstrate quite quickly that whilst partisan TV is great fun for a short period, after a while you turn back with great relief to something that is at least trying to be impartial.”
Anything backed by Murdoch is going to be deeply right-wing, so it seems Marr recognises the far-right as partisan, as well as the left. So it’s an Overton Window problem; he simply doesn’t understand where the genuine political centre lies.
Perhaps that’s the BBC’s problem in a nutshell. Run by upper-middle-class elitist twits, its political compass is tuned to their point of view and they don’t recognise and are too dim to understand that it is out of touch with reality.
I was able to work this out by checking the BBC’s output against what people are actually discussing. Anybody with an ounce of intelligence and curiosity could have done the same.
I dare say it hasn’t even occurred to the BBC’s news bosses.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Therese Coffey: this fat (let’s be honest about it) Tory showed that she couldn’t care less about a human being who starved to death because of the decisions of her Tory colleagues.
Therese Coffey is a shining example of Tory inhumanity when faced with the suffering of others, isn’t she?
You’ll be aware of the tragedy of Mercy Baguma, the refugee mother who died after the Home Office removed her right to remain in the UK, depriving her of the means to support herself.
Coffey – your secretary of state for Work and Pensions, remember, and therefore the minister who should be most associated with compassion, failed no less than three times to show any human feeling for the lady her government starved to death.
The Liverpool Echo provides the details:
Dr Coffey said: “I think I know the situation and its a lady with immigration status that may have changed. This really is a matter for the Home Office to decide. I’m concious that people can also apply for changes to their status with the Home Office, if they are struggling with aspects of that.”
Asked again to show some compassion for a woman who starved to death next to her baby, Dr Coffey again refused, stating: “I don’t know the ins and outs, I know it happened in Glasgow fairly recently – but really the Home Office is the place that decides on this.”
Given yet another chance to show some humanity, [Kay] Burley asked ‘what sort of society are we when a woman can starve to death next to her child?’
“What I’m trying to say Kay is that when people are in very difficult situations and are looking to the government for help, there are ways they can access that help.”
After a final attempt to draw some compassion from the Minister, the Sky host eventually gave up.
Viewers were shocked at the cold-hearted responses to such a tragic story.
And so they should be.
The simple fact is that Ms Coffey does not think there is anything wrong with somebody she considers to be a lower form of life starving to death.
I don’t mean a person of a different race, or from a different country, either.
I refer to a person in a different income bracket.
Bear in mind that, unless your are exceptionally rich, you are also a lower form of life, as far as Therese Coffey is concerned.
She couldn’t care less if you live or die – even if she happened to be responsible for it.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Contempt: every time Boris Johnson lies on the TV news, he is signalling the scorn in which he holds every ordinary citizen of the United Kingdom.
How does Boris know ‘huge numbers’ of people are returning to their workplaces and offices? He doesn’t.
But that’s what he said at a cabinet meeting yesterday (Tuesday) – and the only reason This Writer can find for it is that he wanted to get some optimistic words on the TV news so badly that he made them up.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Keir Starmer: he seems to be conducting a war against This Site and others like it. Let’s put a stop to it.
One would imagine that, faced with a legal battle that it is unlikely to win, any organisation would back away from further antagonising the opposing side.
Not so with Labour!
Despite facing court proceedings for breach of contract over the way the party accused This Writer of anti-Semitism and expelled me from the party – a case it is almost certain to lose – it seems Labour is waging a hate campaign against me and This Site.
Yes, it says “alleged” – but the article is clearly intended to give the impression that the pieces she shared on Facebook are anti-Semitic.
It continues: “Labour’s inquiry will also focus on a second post from August 2018 on a website run by Mike Sivier, who was expelled from Labour in the same year after he allegedly refused to undertake antisemitism training.
“The headline of that post said: “Jewish Israeli journalist claims pro-Israel propagandists have ‘taken out contract’ to stop Jeremy Corbyn being elected.””
Apparently the party’s compliance unit received the complaint the previous week.
For clarity, anyone reading my article will see that it consists mostly of quotes from a piece by a highly-respected, award-winning Jewish Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, supporting Jeremy Corbyn as a potential future prime minister of the UK (it was published in 2018). There isn’t a scrap of anti-Semitism in it.
The Guardian piece, of course, fails to include a link to my article, thus depriving readers of the opportunity to judge for themselves.
Here’s a link to it. If you use it, you will see that Mr Levy was arguing that it is Israel’s aggression against Palestinians that is enflaming anti-Jewish sentiment across the world, and that Corbyn was right to speak up against it. The attempt to use the article as an example of anti-Semitism is an example of exactly the kind of behaviour it highlights: “the gagging, in the form of labeling any criticism as anti-Semitism, is outrageous”.
It is outrageous.
I have written to The Guardian, at first simply asking why I had not been offered the right of reply to the allegation made against me. The response has been unsatisfactory so I have now demanded a full retraction and apology. Otherwise I will consider my options.
And those options are likely to have serious repercussions for the newspaper. Remember that court case? I’m taking Labour to court at Bristol Civil Justice Centre on October 2, starting at 10am – for breach of contract. The party broke its own rules by mishandling accusations of anti-Semitism against me, in order to have an excuse to expel me. The evidence is very clear and I do not expect to lose.
If I win, then any news organisation publishing the lie that I am anti-Semitic in any way will be in a highly actionable position.
That includes the Brighton and Hove News, from which the Guardian piece seems to have been copied verbatim, on the very same day. Odd, that.
So I would like to appeal for anybody who has been accused of sharing anti-Semitic articles because they have shared pieces from This Site to contact me with information about these accusations. Let’s put this in front of a judge as soon as we can.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
We’re supposed to be shocked by new revelations in the Sunday Times – but the facts have been public knowledge for weeks and months.
How strange to see the Sunday Times publishing an ‘investigation’ into the Tory government’s failure to get to grips with the coronavirus crisis, when This Writer published the same information, weeks ago, on my personal blog site!
The ST piece is behind a paywall so I can’t be sure, but from what I can tell (thank you Owen Jones on Twitter), I covered all the major points.
But there seems to be a huge amount of background detail missing.
Why is nothing said about the fact that the government let all of its strategies to counter a pandemic like the coronavirus fall out-of-date, nearly a decade ago?
Where are the facts about Exercise Cygnus – the test to estimate the impact of a hypothetical influenza pandemic on the United Kingdom that concluded that such a pandemic would cause the country’s health system to collapse, due to a lack of resources. The Tory government of the day refused to buy the recommended equipment on the grounds that it would cost too much.
It seems there’s no new information in it that makes any difference at all.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. This includes scrolling or continued navigation. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
