A trio of Boris Johnson’s adherents have launched a new party-within-the-Conservative-Party, apparently to oust Rishi Sunak and put their idol back on top.
The Conservative Democratic Organisation (I fear the “democratic” in the title may be ornamental – like “socialist” in the title of the former National Socialist German Workers’ Party) claims to be seeking to restore influence to members’ views:
Today we have launched CDO – the Conservative Democratic Organisation. We are not a new party but want a true party – a truly democratic Conservative Party that reflects its members’s views and treats them with more respect. Please see more on: https://t.co/kMeDZYVgIp
It has been launched by David Campbell Bannerman, Lord Peter Cruddas and Priti Patel – all firm supporters of Boris Johnson, for reasons that may be revealed in the video linked below.
Sky’s Sam Coates has published an article about it which he made available on Twitter – and check out the comment here:
Blimey. Another "party within a party". Will they be competing with the ERG ? What fun ! https://t.co/KjpxscQzjx
Well, we presume it means a leadership challenge for Rishi Sunak – either after next May’s local elections if the Tories perform poorly, or in October when his year’s ‘grace’ period after he was crowned Tory leader is over.
And we may speculate on whether it will split the Tories; their party has already been described as a coagulation of five or more different groups, and this new element may drive a wedge between them.
Or it may be a damp squib.
Here’s Phil Moorhouse of A Different Bias with his take on it, which I don’t think I could better:
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Jo Bird: her complaint against the Jewish Chronicle over inaccuracies in its report about her was upheld; now she, I, and seven other victims of its falsehoods are demanding an investigation into whether the paper’s editorial standards have fallen to an unacceptable level. And guess what? We’re not the only ones.
Remember the letter to newspaper regulator IPSO that This Writer co-signed, requesting a Standards Investigation into the Jewish Chronicle after it notched up 28 recorded breaches of the Editors’ Code and four libel defeats in just three years?
It seems IPSO would rather forget about it.
Tasked with providing a respond by August 12, the organisation’s first reaction was to send a ‘holding’ letter, to which one of my co-signatories, Jo Bird, replied with a list of seven questions.
She then received another holding letter from IPSO’s head of standards, saying she was going on holiday but would get on the case when she got back, and that Lord Faulks, the IPSO chair, would respond on his own account ‘in due course’.
Ms Bird chased this – only to receive yet another ‘holding’ letter saying the head of standards was now sick, and she has written again to say that the questions she asked (When will Faulks write? How many JC breaches has IPSO counted? And others) don’t need the head of standards to answer them.
Some of us want to know what’s going on at the so-called press regulator. It should not take more than a month to work out whether there are grounds to investigate the standard of reporting at a newspaper that, over the last three years, has broken the rules – and the law – an average of once a month.
IPSO is itself owned and run by newspaper bosses and owners. Are they concerned that an investigation may create a precedent, setting a bar for investigations that their own newspapers could pass? Are they opposed to an investigation because they like what the JC has been doing? And are they embarrassed by the fact that the JC has put them in an impossible predicament?
Well, their problem is about to get worse.
Hacked Off – the campaign for a national press that is accountable and free of political and commercial influence – is launching a campaign demanding an IPSO standards investigation into the JC, and pointing out at the same time that there are very strong grounds for IPSO to investigate The Times over Islamophobia, The Telegraph on bad science and The Mail on a whole range of subjects – today, September 20, 2021.
Suppose IPSO has been gearing itself up to reject an investigation – or to run a token inquiry and whitewash the JC.
It seems to This Writer that such a course of action is about to become much, much more difficult to justify.
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BFAWU president Ian Hodson: the union is threatening to disaffiliate from Labour – the party it helped create – after Starmer’s rabble threatened to expel him over a connection with a proscribed organisation.
This will be a stunning humiliation for Keir Starmer – if it happens. The decision on timing is a masterstroke.
One of the unions that helped set up the Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century has threatened to sever its connection with Keir Starmer’s right-wing perversion of that organisation.
The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union is recalling its national conference to take the vote after learning that Labour is considering expelling its national president, Ian Hodson, over connections with one of the organisations that Starmer’s Labour recently proscribed for no very good reason.
The union also condemned Starmer’s apparent decision to repair its relationship with bosses while widening divisions with representatives of labour – the trade unions.
In a statement, the union’s representatives said: “The recent decision to proscribe organisations is seen as a divisive and a purely factional attack which will do nothing to unite the party or provide any real opportunity for the party to be able to unite to fight and defeat our real enemy The Tory Party.
“Our National President has only ever conducted himself in line with the policies and the decisions taken by this trade union.
“The executive expressed dismay and anger at the idea the Labour Party should consider expelling the office of our nominated political lead in our organisation, and agreed that a firm response was required should the party take such actions.
“The BFAWU executive unanimously agreed a timeline that would coincide with the leaders address to national Labour conference in September should such a situation arise.
“An attack on one of ours is an attack on all of us.
“We will not accept bullying from any bosses or a party that seems to be choosing to prefer to be on the bosses side.”
The threat puts Starmer in an impossible position. If he refuses to give in, he’ll suffer a huge public relations defeat and personal humiliation. If he doesn’t, then others will demand to know why Hodson is getting special treatment – and his proscription of left-wing groups will become meaningless.
In making this decision to stand with its president, the Bakers’ union has shown the way for everybody – including individual party members.
What’s to stop individual Labour branches and constituency parties from choosing to disaffiliate, if one of their members is threatened with expulsion unfairly? Nothing.
It seems likely that such solidarity is the only response that Starmer will understand.
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Lawyers for victims of the Grenfell Tower fire have told the inquiry into the disaster that residents were “bullied” and “stigmatised” for raising safety concerns.
Michael Mansfield QC, representing a group of survivors and the bereaved, said Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council regarded the 24-storey block in North Kensington as an “eyesore which required cosmetic surgery to make it more palatable to its elegant and wealthy neighbours”.
So it provided a refurbishment between 2012 and 2016 that was only a “superficial facelift while neglecting underlying deficiencies”.
The council, along with the body that ran Grenfell Tower and oversaw the refurbishment, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), ran a complaints system for residents that was “outdated, cumbersome, not simple and was used to shut them off, lock them out essentially”, said Mr Mansfield.
He said the council and TMO had a “culture of indifference”.
Edward Daffarn, a member of the Grenfell Action Group, wrote a series of blog posts about safety issues in the building and raised concerns with the council – such as a fire door with a broken closing mechanism.
This was pointed out in 2015 and the door still wasn’t working on the night of the fire in 2017, allowing smoke into a central area on one floor where two people died.
The inquiry heard the council described Mr Daffarn’s blog posts as “scaremongering”.
Another lawyer, Stephanie Barwise QC, read an email from council worker Laura Johnson, sent during the building’s refurbishment, saying that a councillor would not want to attend a public meeting of people “moaning about minor issues”.
In fact residents had correctly identified issues such as gas pipes in hallways, problems with fire doors, power surges, a failed ventilation system and access for fire engines.
London Fire Brigade warned in the months before the fire that cladding could be dangerous. The inquiry heard the council simply forwarded the letter from the fire brigade to the TMO, saying: “FYI.”
James Ageros, lawyer for the TMO, said: “The TMO does not accept that it ever adopted a dismissive attitude toward residents or indeed toward their complaints and concerns.”
He said the inquiry should consider whether the TMO could have been expected to see through the “deceptions” of cladding manufacturers about the safety of their products.
Hundreds of other building owners and management organisations had not been able to “untangle this subterfuge”, he said.
In its submissions, the council apologised for its failings in monitoring the TMO and said “the council could have, and should have, done more to stop it happening”.
It’s a big buck-passing exercise, isn’t it?
The council apologises and says it should have monitored the TMO; the TMO doesn’t apologise and says it could not have been expected to see through “deceptions” by the manufacturers of the cladding.
My opinion? Residents are right to blame them all. The council, at least, has admitted a failing. The TMO should have recognised any false claims by the cladding manufacturers; that’s part of its reason for existing and the council should have realised this wasn’t happening.
And residents were ignored – until they died.
And now, residents at other blocks with similar cladding are being penalised for living in places where the landlord made the wrong decision because the Tory government is ignoring their concerns.
History repeats itself. The UK is run by people who want to take your money and do nothing in return – especially people in government.
We can vote them out – for example at the local elections in May.
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Tory joke candidate Liam Fox has been knocked out of the race to become director-general of the World Trade Organisation.
According to the Torygraph, the former international trade secretary was eliminated before the last of three rounds to replace Roberto Azevedo, who stepped down a year earlier than expected at the end of August, so
Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and South Korea’s Yoo Myung-hee will go head-to-head to become the trade body’s first female director-general
The reaction has been what you might expect, considering the person involved.
Fox was forced out of an early David Cameron cabinet for letting a friend of his, Adam Werrity, into confidential defence meetings and taking him on foreign junkets.
He has since crept back into Tory cabinets and was Theresa May’s International Trade secretary.
But he is widely held to be another inept Tory fool.
So the reaction to his WTO failure was clear:
I bring you good news.
The disgraced former Cabinet Minister, Liam Fox, didn’t get that top job at the World Trade Organisation.
This is one less chance the Tories will get to humiliate us on the global stage.
Excellent news. The idea Liam Fox, an abject failure when Secretary of State for International Trade, was intellectually fit to head the WTO was too preposterous for words. It was a notion borne out of a delusional belief in British exceptionalism.https://t.co/azkZG2uXDA
Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, former no. 2 at World Bank, economist from Harvard and MIT. You Myung-Hee South Korean minister of trade, a senior trade official for 28 years much involved with the WTO. By putting up a no-hope candidate like Liam Fox, the UK further became a laughing stock.
Despite his abject ineptitude, Fox seems to be one of the survivors of the modern Tory Party, having managed to hang on in Parliament and in government circles for the last 10 years and more.
Let us hope this finishes him off and he retires to the obscurity he so richly deserves.
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Irony: the posters behind Priti Patel in this image extol the virtues of ‘UK aid’ – but her idea of helping foreigners is sending them away to suffer genital torture, and her party’s is to cut funding to organisations working to stop it happening here.
Remember when This Site told you Priti Patel wanted to deport a girl so that she could be subjected to the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation (FGM)?
Maybe you thought I must be wrong. Maybe you thought that a UK government would never allow a human being to be put in danger of suffering torture to their private parts. I mean, we’re a civilised country, right?
Think again.
You may also have missed the announcement that the Conservative government has withdrawn its funding for the UK’s only centre dedicated to ensuring that FGM doesn’t happen in this country.
Oh yes – it does happen here.
The Tories are just making sure that there’s no support for any group dedicated to stopping it.
“Ending FGM will not happen if the centre closes down just five years after being set up by the government,” protested Leethen Bartholomew, who leads the National FGM Centre.
“We will not be there to protect the girls who need us. We know that FGM is still being practised in communities across England.
“There are still girls who are being cut and so will face a lifetime of physical and emotional pain. It is a hidden form of child abuse.”
Tories seem to love causing physical and emotional pain. Priti Patel more than most.
And now maybe you think that comment is uncalled-for. If you do, think again – and start judging these Tories by their actions.
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Liz Truss: the queen of cheese is warning that Boris Johnson’s Brexit will cause serious problems.
Boris Johnson’s Brexit border plans could break international trading rules, risk the UK’s international credibility, and lead to smuggling from the European Union, it has been alleged.
And just so you know this is a serious matter, the warning comes in a leaked letter written by the minister best-known – and ridiculed – for her own unnatural obsession with cheese.
Liz Truss – for it was she – outlined four “key areas of concerns” [sic] about the government’s plans to leave EU trading and custom rules at the end of 2020, in a letter to Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove.
Here’s UK Business Insider:
Truss said the plans could create a series of logistical, political, and reputational risks for the government, including:
A legal challenge from the World Trade Organisation.
Increased smuggling from the EU if not all UK ports are ready to carry out checks.
Concerns over the union if EU tariffs are applied to all goods heading to Northern Ireland by “default.”
The undermining of the UK’s international trade policy.
The whole is likely to make the UK even more of an international laughing-stock than it is now – and that’s frankly amazing because other nations have been laughing at us for years.
They can see what happens when a nation falls into neoliberal decline for more than 40 years.
By the end, it has no public services to call its own, no manufacturing industry, no trading partners, no talent and no credibility.
And the members of the Tory government are prime examples of the philosophy that led to this collapse.
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What was it the Jewish Chronicle was saying about the Labour Party being an “existential threat” to Jewish people?
From a purely objective viewpoint (of course), it seems clear that the main threat to Jewish people is coming from rags like the Chronicle, making false claims about perfectly decent people like me.
It stirs up distrust in the community, you see.
And people like Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard should not be allowed to get away with it. This is why I am raising funds to take those who have libelled me to court, so a financial penalty can be imposed on them that is of equal weight to the damage they have caused. Regular readers of This Site will be aware of the existence of my JustGiving page, and I apologise for having to keep mentioning it, but if you have contributed already, please consider making a further donation, or ask a friend to do so.
The Jewish Chronicle had accused me of Holocaust denial, following up on an article in another newspaper (on which judgement is pending). I took the matter to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, which announced a ruling. This happened two weeks ago, but I had to wait for the all-clear to mention the fact. Here it is:
The complainant said that it was inaccurate for the article to say that he had said he “could not
comment” on whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the Holocaust because he ‘didn’t
know’. A commenter on the website had been listing incidents of anti-Semitism on the Left, and
had referred to a leaflet which he said omitted Jews from a list of Holocaust survivors, and put
the number of deaths from the Holocaust at thousands, rather than millions. In response to a
comment about the leaflet, the complainant had said “I’m not going to comment on ‘thousands’
instead of ‘millions’ because I don’t know, but the Nazi holocaust involved many other groups
as well as Jews, and it seems likely that the SWP was simply being ‘politically correct’”. He said
he was referring to not knowing why the leaflet made this claim, rather than to not knowing the
number of Jews who died.
The publication denied that the article was inaccurate. In respect of the ‘thousands or millions’
claim, its interpretation of the comments thread was plausible, and there was no significantly
inaccuracy.
The complainant had not expressly said that he “could not comment on whether thousands or
millions of Jews died in the Holocaust”. There was no reference in the discussion surrounding the
leaflet to “whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the Holocaust”, because the leaflet had
explicitly not referred to Jews among the victims of the Holocaust. The publication was entitled to
give its own interpretation of what the complainant had meant by his comments. However, the
article did not make clear that it was reporting the publication’s interpretation of the
complainant’s comments. This represented a failure to take care, in breach of Clause 1(i). The
article gave the impression that the complainant had said something which he had not, on a
subject liable to cause widespread offence.
As with MailOnlinepreviously, IPSO has let me down as far as punishment is concerned.
The Jewish Chronicle gets off with a light slap on the wrist: “Having upheld the complaint… the Committee considered what remedial action should be required. The publication had offered a clarification which set out the complainant’s position in relation to the number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and on the meaning of his comments. This clarification made the complainant’s position clear, and addressed the article’s misleading presentation of his comments. This was sufficient to meet the terms… and should now be published.”
A full clarification, admitting that the paper had misled readers and apologising to me, would have been more appropriate.
And there are other outstanding matters that will now require a court ruling – which is why I am appealing for funds.
But for now, the score stands thus: Vox Political – TWO Libellous newspapers – NIL.
Please be sure to share this information far and wide.
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But in the words of somebody much nastier than me: It is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it may well be the end of the beginning.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation has upheld my complaint against MailOnline, that it misrepresented me in an article accusing me of Holocaust denial and other examples of anti-Semitism.
It is the first adjudication among five complaints against news organisations that made similar allegations against me on or around February 4. You’ll see the issues when you read the full adjudication below. IPSO was supposed to publish it on the organisation’s website last Thursday but, for some unaccountable reason, this has not happened. As I have assurances that it is not being challenged, I’m going ahead and publishing it here.
The ruling regarding the alleged statement about a “cabal of Jewish advisors” to Tony Blair is wrong; I did not suggest that anyone could be justified in suggesting that Mr Blair was influenced in such a way – I stated that anyone hearing such a claim could be justified in being concerned about it, at least until they were presented with the evidence on the matter. There is, therefore, a world of difference between what MailOnline – and now IPSO – attributed to me and the fact of the matter, and claims that the publication’s interpretation of my words is reasonable are false. I will have to pursue this in the courts.
The punishment is completely inappropriate. Ordering MailOnline to do something it had already offered to do – and which I had rejected because it was not enough – is frankly pathetic. MailOnline has been found to have been inaccurate in its reporting of me and should be forced to admit that it was wrong and apologise.
IPSO’s view is that “the Committee decided that the footnote clarification was sufficient on this occasion… [and] there is no requirement for MailOnline to publish the decision; it will be published on our website. Again, were the Committee to have considered that the breach of the Code was such that [publication of] an adjudication was required, the publication would have been required to publish this in a position determined by the Committee.” Weak.
The ruling in my favour over the false claim of Holocaust denial is very interesting, as the original allegation came from a leaked Labour Party report on me. Labour has raised several charges of anti-Semitism against me – among which, Holocaust denial is notable for its absence. But the Information Commissioner’s Office has ordered the party to provide me with all the information it holds about me, after it was found to have broken the law by failing to honour a Subject Access Request I sent out in February – so I will see the information that led to the news outlet’s claim (or I will know that Labour has not sent all the information required of it).
That will have a huge bearing on the outcome of Labour’s investigation. As the party has been caught lying about me, this casts a shadow over all its other claims.
But the main benefit to come from this will arise when I launch my court cases against the organisations that have lied about me but are not subject to IPSO regulation. Having a ruling in my favour here will weigh heavily against my opponents in that arena.
But I need the funds to be able to do that, which is why I have a JustGiving page dedicated to that purpose.
If you want to help put an end to frivolous, lying accusations of anti-Semitism, please visit the page at https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/mike-sivier and donate some cash. I’m hoping to raise £25,000 and have a long way to go.
Here’s the IPSO adjudication:
Decision of the Complaints Committee – 02821-18 Sivier v MailOnline
Summary of Complaint
1. Mike Sivier complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that MailOnline breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “Journalist accused of anti-Semitism and ex Militant member among the far-left activists who have been let back into Labour after Corbynistas tightened their grip on the party”, published on 4 February 2018.
2. The article reported on “secret documents” seen by a different publication, which showed that the Labour Party had allowed “far left activists” back into the party. It said that the complainant was being given back his membership after being “expelled…over claims he had posted anti-Semitic abuse online”. The article said that the complainant “reportedly said it ‘may be entirely justified’ to say Tony Blair had been ‘unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers’”, and that he also “said he was ‘not pretending it was a big problem’ if Jews were omitted from a list of Holocaust survivors”. It went on to say that, according to the other publication, the complainant “claimed ‘I’m not going to comment’ on whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the Holocaust as ‘I don’t know’”.
3. The complainant said that he had not been “expelled” from the Labour Party: he had been suspended while an investigation was carried out into allegations that he had posted material which might be interpreted as anti-Semitic – not for posting “abuse”. He said that another commenter on his website had stated that a Labour politician had said that Tony Blair was “unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers”. He said that, without further context, it was impossible to analyse this claim; he had replied saying “I would point out that (without further information) concerns that Tony Blair was being ‘unduly influenced’ by a ‘cabal of Jewish advisers’ may have been entirely justified”.
4. The complainant said that the other comments reported had been distorted by being removed from their context, and denied that they were anti-Semitic. A commenter on the website had been listing incidents of anti-Semitism on the Left, and had referred to a leaflet which he said omitted Jews from a list of Holocaust survivors, and put the number of deaths from the Holocaust at thousands, rather than millions. The complainant denied having said that he didn’t know whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the Holocaust. Rather, in response to a comment about the leaflet, he had said “I’m not going to comment on ‘thousands’ instead of ‘millions’ because I don’t know,
but the Nazi holocaust involved many other groups as well as Jews, and it seems likely that the SWP was simply being ‘politically correct’”. He said he was referring to not knowing whether the leaflet made this claim, rather than to not knowing the number of Jews who died. He had gone on to say “Nobody has said anti-Semitism on the left doesn’t exist…But it isn’t organised and is mostly the work of aberrant individuals”. The commenter had then accused the complainant of “pretending that there isn’t a problem”. The complainant had replied “I’m not pretending there isn’t a problem, I’m just not pretending it’s a big problem”. His comment that he was “not pretending it was a big problem” had been referring to the problem of anti-Semitism on the Left in general, and not to the omission of Jews from the list.
5. The publication denied that the use of the word “expelled” was significantly misleading; the article did not suggest that the complainant had been permanently removed from the party, as its entire premise was that he and others had been readmitted. It nevertheless removed this word from the article and substituted the word “suspended” in its place. It also denied that the term “abuse” was misleading since the allegations related to the posting of content which might be interpreted as anti-Semitic. In addition, the publication said that it had accurately reported the complainant’s comments in relation to the “cabal of Jewish advisers”.
6. The publication said that the article was entirely accurate in reporting the complainant’s other comments; the interpretation that had been made of the comments was reasonable. It acknowledged that the complainant may have a different interpretation of the comments, and offered to publish a footnote clarification as follows:
Since first publication Mr Sivier has contacted us and asked us to point out that his refusal to comment on the issue of why the SWP flyer referred to “thousands” rather than “millions” was a reference to the choice of wording by the SWP on their flyer and not a reference to the number of victims of the Holocaust. He also says that the reference to there not being a “big problem” was directed to the general issue of anti-Semitism on the left and not the specific issue of omitting Jews from the list of Holocaust survivors. Mr Sivier denies making any comments that could be interpreted as anti-Semitic and we are happy to make his position clear.
It also offered to publish a standalone clarification on its website as follows:
An article on 4 February entitled “Journalist accused of anti-Semitism and an ex Militant member among the far-left activists who have been let back into
Labour after Corbynistas tightened their grip on the party” reported on allegedly anti-Semitic comments made by mike Sivier. We now understand that Mr Sivier denies that these comments could be interpreted as anti-Semitic and we are happy make his position clear.
7. The complainant denied that the article contained a reasonable interpretation of his comments. In reference to the claim regarding the number of Holocaust victims, his original comment had made clear, through the use of quotation marks, that he was referring to the use of the words in the leaflet, rather than to his own beliefs. The commenter had said that the complainant was “defending the indefensible, and pretending that there isn’t a problem” with anti-Semitism on the Left, and it was in response to this that he had said “I’m not pretending there isn’t a problem, though. I’m simply not pretending it’s a big problem”.
Relevant Code Provisions
Clause 1 (Accuracy) i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text. ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving IPSO, due prominence should be as required by the regulator. iii) A fair opportunity to reply to significant inaccuracies should be given, when reasonably called for. iv) The Press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.
Findings of the Committee
8. The Committee noted that the article had reported claims about the complainant which had previously been published elsewhere, and had presented them in this light. However, the comments which the article reported on were publicly available, and the publication was responsible for reporting them accurately.
9. The article had originally stated that the complainant had been “expelled” by the party. The Committee acknowledged that, read alone, this might suggest that he had been permanently barred. However, the sub-headline indicated that he had been ‘suspended’, and the article made clear that he was eligible to be readmitted; indeed, this was the premise of the article. In these
circumstances, stating that he had been “expelled” was not significantly misleading, and there was no failure to take care over this claim. Similarly, it was not misleading for the article to say that the complainant had been expelled “over claims” of “abuse”: the suspension had related to allegations of anti-Semitic comments made online, which the publication was entitled to characterise as “abuse” when the basis for this was made clear. In addition, the newspaper had not stated as fact that he had in fact engaged in “abuse”, but had stated that he was suspended “over claims” of such behaviour. There was no breach of Clause 1 on these points.
10. In response to a commenter referring to comments by a Labour politician stating that Tony Blair was “unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers”, the complainant had written “(without further information) concerns that Tony Blair was being ‘unduly influenced’ by ‘a cabal of Jewish advisors’ may have been entirely justified.” This comment was accurately reported by the publication, and it was entitled to rely on the words the complainant had used. There was no breach of Clause 1 on this point.
11. The complainant had not directly said that he was “’not going to comment’ on whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the Holocaust as ‘I don’t know’”. There was no reference in the discussion surrounding the leaflet to “whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the Holocaust”, because the leaflet had explicitly not referred to Jews among the victims of the Holocaust. The publication may have inferred this meaning from the complainant’s comments, but it reported this as something he had said. The article did not make clear that it was reporting the publication’s interpretation of the complainant’s comments; they were presented as direct quotations. Because the comment thread was publicly available, this represented a failure to take care, in breach of Clause 1(i). The article gave the impression that the complainant had said something which he had not, on a subject liable to cause widespread offence, a clarification was required to avoid a breach of Clause 1(ii).
12. As set out above, the complainant had suggested that omitting Jews from a list of Holocaust survivors in a leaflet may have been for “’politically correct’” reasons. However, he had not explicitly stated that omitting Jews from the list was “not a big problem”, as the article said Claiming that the complainant had said this, when his comments were publicly available, his represented a failure to take care over the accuracy of the article, in breach of Clause 1(i). Because the article gave the misleading impression that the complainant had made a claim that he had not made, it required clarification to avoid a breach of Clause 1(ii).
13. The footnote clarification addressed the two inaccuracies identified in the article, and made clear the complainant’s position with respect to these two points. It was therefore sufficient to address the inaccuracy and avoid a breach of Clause 1(ii). The Committee welcomed the offer of a standalone clarification; however, the footnote correction was sufficient to address the inaccuracies in the article, and the Committee did not require a standalone correction in this instance.
Conclusions
14. The complaint was upheld under Clause 1(i).
Remedial action required
15. The publication had offered a footnote clarification which set out the complainant’s position in relation to his comments. This clarification addressed the inaccuracies within the article, and was sufficient to meet the terms of Clause 1(ii). It should now be published.
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Contaminated: Investigators examine the park bench in Salisbury where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found after they were poisoned.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has not accepted the UK’s claim that Russia was behind the alleged nerve agent attack against Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury last month.
The UN inspectors’ report stated, “The results of the analysis by the OPCW designated laboratories of environmental and biomedical samples collected by the OPCW team confirms the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical that was used in Salisbury and severely injured three people.”
It doesn’t actually name the chemical, although the UK has firmly stated that it was a Novichok nerve agent. The classified (non-public) version of the OPCW report gives its chemical composition – a “complex” formula, according to The Guardian.
This is odd, as Cornell University professor David Collum has stated, “The compounds are simple as hell to make. Doing so without killing yourself would be more challenging but within the capabilities of many laboratories.”
So we now know that the chemical used against the Skripals was both simple and complicated. That’s helpful!
And what of the claim that it could only have been created by the Russian government? Boris Johnson has leapt in to claim (again) that the OPCW report confirms this: “There can be no doubt what was used and there remains no alternative explanation about who was responsible – only has the means, motive and record.”
There’s only one problem: The OPCW report actually corroborates what chemical experts at Porton Down said – neither report even attempts to identify the origin of the nerve agent.
So we now know that the chemical used against the Skripals could have been manufactured by the Russian government or in many other laboratories. That’s helpful too!
Or rather, it isn’t.
And what makes it worse is the jabbering of a warmongering racist like Boris Johnson, pumping up international tensions with Russia on the basis of nothing but his own hot air.
There is no evidence to prove that the Russian government created the nerve agent that attacked Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
And now we know, based on the evidence of Porton Down and the OPCW, there never will be.
There certainly is not enough information to take us into conflict with that country.
This Writer would still like to know how the Skripals were treated and whether this treatment corresponds with known remedies for nerve agent attack. Let’s say I want to know for my own peace of mind.
The only other possible way of finding out the origin of the nerve agent is if investigators track down the people responsible for the alleged attack.
My concern about that is the fact that the UK’s Tory government leapt to the conclusion that Russia was responsible so quickly that all other options were ignored – and this may have prejudiced investigations beyond repair.
What is the current situation with regard to this part of the story?
Does anybody know?
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