Tag Archives: The Sun

Tories have been … misleading … with ‘Welsh Government handout for asylum-seekers’ claim

Rishi Sunak: he made himself look like an utter halfwit by answering a question about Welsh Government policy in Prime Minister’s Questions.

Senior Conservatives have been telling porkies to get electoral advantage over the Labour Party in Wales, it seems.

Leader of the Welsh Conservatives Andrew RT Davies and Secretary of State for Wales David TC Davies both endorsed a claim that the Welsh Government is planning to give asylum seekers £1,600 per month.

But it seems the claim is utter bunkum, based on a letter that was not what The Sun had claimed. But then, why would anybody believe The Sun? Here’s Nation.Cymru:

The letter – which has been obtained by Nation.Cymru – was not an attempt to create a new asylum seeker policy, but involved three Welsh ministers seeking clarification on a pilot that already exists in Wales regarding 18-year-old care leavers.

The Welsh Government launched the Basic Income for Care Leavers scheme in July 2022 which ensures eligible young people leaving the care system receive £1,600 a month for the first 24 months of leaving care.

The Basic Income for Care Leavers only focuses on the category of care leavers which does include some unaccompanied asylum seeking children who were looked after by a local authority up until the age of 18.

The inclusion of asylum seeker children who were raised in care was always a factor that had been budgeted for by the Welsh Government from the outset of the pilot.

Eligibility for the scheme has not changed since it was set out in a written statement by the Welsh Government in February 2022.

Although it has not yet confirmed how many young asylum seekers leave care on average every year, a Welsh Government source said the number is “a very small proportion of those taking part in the pilot”.

So there’s nothing dodgy about this scheme at all.

But Andrew RT Davies said it was “creating an even bigger pull factor to bring people across the Channel”.

Welsh Secretary David TC Davies said: “Incentivising illegal migrants to risk their lives by crossing the Channel in exchange for taxpayers’ cash is wrong, dangerous and hugely irresponsible. That is why I have denied the Welsh Labour Government their request.”

One of the letter’s signatories, Mick Antoniw, pointed out to him: “This is nothing to do with you. No request has been made to you. Your permission is not required for anything.”

The lunacy even reached as high as prime minister Rishi Sunak, who said the pilot could incentivise people smuggling.

Nation.Cymru has acquired a comment from the Welsh Government that makes Sunak look like a simpleton:

“It is disappointing that inaccurate and misleading claims are being used to trivialise these sensitive issues.”

Source: Senior Tories accused of ‘distorting’ truth over ‘inaccurate’ reports of £1,600 payment for asylum seekers in Wales

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Keir Starmer’s Hillsborough homage highlights his own hypocrisy

Keir Starmer: the compressed lips suggest that when this image was taken, he had said something he wished he had not. Is that how he feels about having written for The Sun, in a direct insult to victims of the Hillsborough disaster and the people of Liverpool generally.

Labour leader Keir Starmer tried to pay homage to those who died, on the 34th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster – but succeeded only in highlighting his own hypocrisy.

Critics of the hard-right-wing Labour leader have spoken up to remind us that Starmer has written articles in The Sun – the (right-wing) news-rag that falsely accused Liverpool fans at the Hillsborough stadium on April 15, 1989.

The Hillsborough Disaster was a fatal human crush at an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, hosted at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium on April 15, 1989.

The police service attempted to hide the fact that its failures caused 96 deaths and 766 injuries – the worst disaster in UK sporting history – by trying to blame it on the fans who were injured and died, saying those people caused the tragedy by being drunk and misbehaving.

West Midlands was the force appointed to investigate the disaster, but has since been accused of malpractices and failures that have been subject to a long-running investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

Not only that, though: the prime minister of the day, the Conservative Margaret Thatcher, refused to release information that made the police look bad.

And The Sun, a newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, published a story headlined The Truth that was nothing but a pack of lies, supporting the fantasy created by the police.

This Site published the facts more than a decade ago.

Starmer himself spoke up about the hurt caused to the people of Liverpool by The Sun when he was campaigning for election as Labour leader in 2020. He said he would not be giving interviews to the paper during his campaign.

Sadly, as soon as he had been elected, that promise ended and he has written for The Sun since, an act that people in Liverpool consider a bitter insult:

Starmer seems to be trying to play on both sides of the Hillsborough argument – claiming to sympathise with the families of the dead and survivors of the disaster while writing for the rag that lied about them.

But memories are long in Liverpool.

Let us hope he finds that out in the local elections next month – and in the general election next year if he stubbornly refuses to learn his lesson.

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Why Starmer was wrong to write for The Sun – by a Murdoch employee

Together? Maybe. But stronger? Future? Unlikely. Keir Starmer’s decision to write for The Sun will have disgusted Labour’s mainstream followers without attracting voters across from the Tories.

The simple fact is that Keir Starmer has access to far more – and far better – media outlets than The Sun, so his choice to write for that rag was a political statement.

The people of Liverpool, where next year’s Labour conference will be staged, will undoubtedly be animated by that revelation. Will they cancel?

Here’s the information we all need to read:

Yes. It’s about stupidity. ‘Nuff said?

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Police agree payouts for Hillsborough ‘cover-up’. What about the Tories – and Murdoch?

The disgrace – no, the word ‘disgrace’ isn’t strong enough: this is the Sun story that mentally scarred survivors of the Hillsborough disaster and the families of those who died. It wasn’t ‘The Truth’ at all; it was a pack of lies.

More than five years after a jury ruled that 96 people were killed unlawfully in the Hillsborough disaster – and that their behaviour did not contribute to the situation – police forces have agreed to pay compensation to more than 600 people for mental distress caused by the attempted cover-up.

I have two questions.

Firstly: why did it take so long for South Yorkshire and West Midlands police to agree to pay up?

Secondly: Why aren’t the Conservative Party and Rupert Murdoch’s News International paying compensation, too?

Let’s go into the circumstances:

We all know that the Hillsborough Disaster was a fatal human crush at an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, hosted at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium on April 15, 1989.

It happened due to gross negligence by match commander David Duckenfield of South Yorkshire Police.

The police service then attempted to hide the fact that its failures caused 96 deaths and 766 injuries – the worst disaster in UK sporting history – by trying to blame it on the fans who were injured and died, saying those people caused the tragedy by being drunk and misbehaving.

West Midlands was the force appointed to investigate the disaster, but has since been accused of malpractices and failures that have been subject to a long-running investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

Not only that, though: the prime minister of the day, the Conservative Margaret Thatcher, refused to release information that made the police look bad.

And The Sun, a newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, published a story headlined The Truth that was nothing but a pack of lies, supporting the fantasy created by the police.

This Writer believes a strong argument could be made that the newspaper story – which led to The Sun being boycotted in Liverpool ever since – caused more distress, more anguish, to survivors, and to relatives and friends of the deceased, than the police cover-up on which it was based (although I know it could not have been written if the police and the Tory prime minister had not lied in the first place).

Civil claims for compensation due to malfeasance in public office by the two police forces were submitted in 2015, during inquests into the reasons the 96 died.

The claimants said the lies had caused them to suffer trauma and psychiatric damage, and the compensation is to cover not only those injuries but also the cost of treatment and counselling.

Those claims were made nearly six years ago and the payments haven’t been made yet (at the time of writing). So I repeat: why not?

And how much are these people getting, to make one of the claimants describe the payout as “insulting” in The Guardian‘s news article about it?

The behaviour of the police was shocking, and undermines public faith in the reliability of our law enforcement officers across the UK – not just in the forces concerned.

But – as mentioned above – they weren’t the only organisations caught lying; they weren’t the only people who deliberately caused further distress over Hillsborough.

Margaret Thatcher withheld information – which was as bad as lying because it presented a false impression that the police were blameless.

She was able to do so because she was prime minister at the time – and she was prime minister because she was leader of the Conservative Party that had formed the then-current government.

She died in 2013 but it seems perfectly reasonable to hold the Tories responsible for putting her in a position where she could distort the facts.  Why has the Conservative Party avoided compensating these people?

And that Sun headline has gone down in the history of journalistic infamy. The disgust of the city of Liverpool – in perpetuity – is not enough. Why has News International not offered compensation as well?

All three of these organisations should have offered payouts voluntarily, considering the enormity of the harm they have done, but they didn’t.

The police are only paying up because they were forced to.

Perhaps that aspect of this tragedy is the most damning of all.

Source: South Yorkshire and West Midlands police agree payouts for Hillsborough ‘cover-up’ | Hillsborough disaster | The Guardian

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Starmer’s stand on schools and The Sun is so wrong he should be shamed out of the Labour Party

Apt: Keir Starmer reckons he was named after original Labour leader Hardie – but can anyone doubt that his illustrious forerunner might have said these words, if confronted with evidence of Starmer’s abysmal performance.

Keir Starmer seems to be going out of his way to upset the population of the United Kingdom.

His latest howler – in a long series going back to his very first day as Labour Party leader – is an article in the Daily Mail – the Heil, for crying out loud! – demanding that Boris Johnson ensure that all pupils are forced back into school in September, whether they are safe from Covid-19 or not.

Starmer was responding to the Tories’ manipulation of ‘A’ level results – Education Secretary Gavin Williamson fiddled them so pupils at private schools received better results than less privileged (but more intelligent, undoubtedly) peers. But he got it completely wrong.

Starmer demanded that Boris Johnson make sure that all schools are fully open in September, with hardly a mention of the deadly disease that triggered the decision to close them in March.

“I don’t just want all children back at school next month, I expect them back at school,” he blithered. “No ifs, no buts, no equivocation.”

And no safety measures, either.

Not only is it irresponsible for an Opposition leader to behave in this way – it plays directly into the hands of a Tory prime minister who has been keen to send parents back to work but less keen to ensure their safety against Covid-19 – but it is actually dangerous: it demands that safety measures must be ignored.

Result: Starmer has been pilloried – both for writing in the Heil and for failing to stand up for public safety. He wants to put our children in harm’s way:

https://twitter.com/JamesEFoster/status/1294906176971448320

James Foster touches on another blunder: Starmer’s failure to refuse any support from right-wing rag The Sun.

Interviewed last week by Channel 4 news, he refused to criticise that organ, and suggested that he would welcome its endorsement.

The response has been scathing:

And let’s not forget the people of Aberdeen, who rejected The Sun after it referred to the train in the Stonehaven disaster as “death express”.

At a time when Labour is trying to regain ground it has lost in Scotland – and failing, because the Scots have made their rejection of the kind of right-wing, sub-Tory, fake Labour that Starmer peddles abundantly clear over the last decade or so – courting a rag that insults Scottish people is poison.

It’s also a very-odd u-turn:

And it is one that will turn even more people away:

But Starmer is tone-deaf. His tin ear is so bad that he can’t even tell that he has caused such outrage.

Perhaps the final nail in his coffin is the fact that the 10 pledges he made to party members, for them to elect his as leader, have now been shown to have been lies.

That’s right. He has reneged on all but one of them – and that’s only because he hasn’t yet had the chance. See for yourself:

And that is why Starmer has to go. He isn’t even trying to put up a decent opposition to Boris Johnson’s corrupt Tory gang rule:

The longer Starmer squats in the Labour leadership, the worse the UK will suffer – because there’s nobody to oppose Johnson’s gangsters. He must be ousted before we go past the point of no return…

If we haven’t passed it already.

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Humiliation for two more newspapers that falsely accused Vox Political of anti-Semitism

The Sun and The Express have joined the growing ranks of newspapers that have been ordered to publish a “clarification” after falsely accusing me of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Press regulator IPSO published the rulings against those publications on January 3.

So now, with one ruling left to be published the score stands as follows: Vox Political – 4, libellous newspapers – 0.

The full ruling against The Sun can be found here. It has been ordered to publish a clarification as follows:

“A previous version of this article reported that Mr Sivier had said it was “not a big problem” if Jews were taken off a list of Holocaust survivors. He has contacted us to say that he was in fact referring to anti-Semitism in the Labour Party as not being a “big problem”. The article also reported that he said he did not know whether thousands or millions of people died in the Holocaust; he assures us this comment referred to him not knowing why the SWP had referred to “thousands” of victims on a pamphlet it had prepared, and that he accepts that around 17 million people died.”

There’s a lot wrong with it – the main issue being that it’s not a matter of me saying the newspaper was inaccurate; the factual evidence proves it was wrong.

The ruling against The Express is here. That publication must publish this clarification:

“Mr Sivier has contacted us to point out that his statement “I’m not going to comment” had been made in reference to not knowing whether the SWP had referred to “thousands” rather than “millions” of Holocaust victims on a flyer, and was not a reference to his own beliefs about the number of victims of the Holocaust. He also says that his reference to there not being a “big problem” was made in relation to the general issue of anti-Semitism on the left and not in reference to the specific issue of omitting Jews from the list of Holocaust survivors, as the SWP was alleged to have done on the flyer. Mr Sivier denies making any comments that could be interpreted as anti-Semitic and we are happy to make this position clear.”

Again, the fact show that this isn’t about what I said or denied; it’s about the facts of the matter which the Express ignored.

IPSO’s ruling also fails, in both cases, on a major point, referring to a comment by the late Tam Dalyell that Tony Blair, as prime minister, had been “unduly influenced” by “a cabal of Jewish advisors”. This had been raised by a commenter on this website, who put it forward as an example of left-wing anti-Semitism and demanded that I provide an opinion on it. In response, I stated that it was impossible to do so, as the commenter had provided no background information to either corroborate or disprove the claim. Therefore, “(without further information) concerns that Tony Blair was being ‘unduly influenced’ by ‘a cabal of Jewish advisors’ may have been entirely justified.”

IPSO’s adjudicators, in their ruling, stated that “The complainant said that he had not intended to suggest that this was accurate, but that it might theoretically be accurate.” This is a straightforward lie.

I have written to IPSO on many occasions pointing out the correct meaning of my words, despite the fact that it is self-evident to anybody who reads them. I wrote: “I said that a person hearing such a claim may have been entirely justified to be concerned – unless or until they had further information to corroborate or disprove it.”

There is no way this can be interpreted as me saying Mr Dalyell’s words “might theoretically be accurate” and IPSO’s adjudicators, being in full possession of the wealth of information I have provided to them, must have known this. Therefore they deliberately lied in their ruling.

There is one adjudication left outstanding – regarding The Sunday Times, the first newspaper to publish the false claims about me. I have made the facts of this matter clear, so it will be interesting to see whether the ruling changes in that case.

But I am also aware of the passage of time. Libel cases may not be initiated more than 12 months after publication of the words that form the basis of the complaint. As I mention above, those words were published on February 4 or 5 last year, and it is January 5 at the time of writing. I wonder whether IPSO has been deliberately running down the clock to make it impossible for me to take these newspapers to court.

Such court action would also have to prove that I have suffered serious harm – in this case, financial harm – due to the damage to my reputation. This would be difficult to prove as my income from This Site has always been low. In addition, the number of people visiting Vox Political skyrocketed after I started reporting that IPSO had adjudicated in my favour – first against The Mail and then against the Jewish Chronicle. So it could be argued that the IPSO rulings have achieved my aim and turned public opinion back to my favour. It could even be argued that I have benefited from this affair. It would be a twisted argument, but that’s British litigation for you.

It now seems unlikely in the extreme that anybody genuinely believes me to be an anti-Semite, or to harbour any ill-feeling toward Jewish people based on their religion or ethnicity. Anybody professing such a belief is likely to be doing it for political purposes.

That being said, I will consult my legal advisors on possible action against IPSO if it persists in the lie, and I will continue raising funds to fight false claims of anti-Semitism against me. I may also consider using these funds to help other people who have also been falsely accused. These lies harm the fight against genuine anti-Semitism (which is increasing), and it is important to identify the perpetrators of these false complaints.

There are also other cases that I need to bring to court in the very near future. I’ll say more about that in a future article.

So these are important victories, and the failings of the adjudication won’t make any real difference. They support the fight against false accusations of anti-Semitism. And you can help that fight by contributing to my crowdfunding campaign – the details are directly below.

Visit our JustGiving page to help Vox Political’s Mike Sivier fight anti-Semitism libels in court

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Did Walker movie bomb threat arise from bitchiness by The Sun over Momentum ban?

Jackie Walker: She has a right to have her story heard. Who is trying to deny her that right? And why?

Remember Jackie Walker, the former vice-chair of Momentum who was ousted from her position and suspended from the Labour Party on the basis of spurious claims of anti-Semitism concocted by the Jewish Labour Movement, Israel Advocacy Movement and complicit “news”papers?

It seems Ms Walker turned her experience of being smeared as an anti-Semite into a stage play, The Lynching – and now film-maker Jon Pullman has created a full-length movie about it, entitled The Political Lynching of Jackie Walker.

Shot in the UK and Europe, with commentary from friends and foes, the movie follows Ms Walker’s activities for more than a year, filming her at work, in performance, and across the kitchen table to interrogate the issues that lay behind the headlines, and the woman behind the activist. The film was due to have its premiere screening at the Labour Party Conference on the evening of September 25.

But the screening had to be cancelled – and the auditorium evacuated – after organisers received a bomb threat.

Obviously, at the time of writing it is far too early to make any suggestions about who may be responsible – but we may definitely suggest that whoever it was disapproves of free speech, especially if it presents a coherent, logical and possibly persuasive narrative that is different from their own personal bias.

And what encouraged them to commit this prank (I would be very surprised if there really was a bomb at the Liverpool auditorium in which the film was due to be screened)? Well…

May I draw your attention to this article, which I regret to inform you was published by a periodical known as The Sun which describes itself as a newspaper (although opinion on this is divided).

Headlined Fury as far-left activist who said Jews were behind the slave trade tells Labour members she’s been ‘lynched’, the piece states: “A far-left activist who was kicked out of Labour for making anti-Semitic slurs is putting events at the party conference – in which she claims she was “lynched”.

“Jackie Walker has sparked fury by hosting a film and a play at the annual get-together aimed at clearing her name.

“Ms Walker was formerly vice-chair of Momentum but was fired after she claimed Jews were responsible for the slave trade.

“Labour MP Louise Ellman blasted the attempts to promote her worldview, saying it was “disgraceful” for banned activists to be tolerated by other party members.”

This smear piece was accompanied by an image of a flier advertising the film screening, which clearly showed its date and location: Blackburne House, Georgian Quarter, Falkner Street, Liverpool at 7pm on September 25.

I call it a smear piece because it presents a lie as truth – that Ms Walker “claimed Jews were responsible for the slave trade”.

This is based on a fragment of a conversation between Ms Walker and a friend on Facebook’s private Messenger service, that was hacked by members of the Israel Advocacy Movement and given to the Jewish Chronicle as proof of anti-Semitism.

But Ms Walker, speaking afterwards, explained that she was referring to the Caribbean slave trade, of which her own ancestors had unique experience. This is from an article written nearly two years ago: “Yes, I wrote “many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade”. These words, taken out of context in the way the media did, of course do not reflect my position. I was writing to someone who knew the context of my comments. Had he felt the need to pick me up on what I had written I would have rephrased – perhaps to “Jews (my ancestors too) were among those who financed the sugar and slave trade and at the particular time/in the particular area I’m talking about they played an important part.”

“For the record, my claim, as opposed to those made for me by the Jewish Chronicle, has never been that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic Slave Trade, merely that, as historians such as Arnold Wiznitzer noted, at a certain economic point, in specific regions where my ancestors lived, Jews played a dominant role “as financiers of the sugar industry, as brokers and exporters of sugar, and as suppliers of Negro slaves on credit, accepting payment of capital and interest in sugar.””

It’s a bit different when you see the full picture rather than just a fragment, isn’t it?

Hugo Gye, who wrote the Sun piece, would have had no excuse for ignorance of the facts of the matter – including the fact that Ms Walker has not been found guilty of any anti-Semitism at all by the Labour Party’s own disciplinary mechanism, so what motivated him – and the newspaper – to promote the lie?

Was it mischief?

Remember, Ms Walker is a former vice-chair of Momentum, and Momentum has banned The Sun from its fringe events at this year’s Labour conference.

By publishing its story about Ms Walker, along with details of the film screening, this publication might as well have been giving instructions to anyone with an agenda to push the false accusations of anti-Semitism and suppress the facts.

The bomb threat could easily have been triggered by this bitchy story.

We may never know for sure.

But, like so many of the accusers’ recent efforts, it seems likely that this attempt at repression will backfire.

People are going to ask why.

Why seek to silence an accused person who was only trying to put forward her side of this case?

What does this film show, that the accusers have to fear?

The threat – to kill by explosion people attending the premiere – is so extreme that people will want to know the answers to these questions. Is the accusers’ case really so fragile that they have to resort to such extremes in a bid to maintain the illusion of Ms Walker’s guilt?

Well? Is it?

Jackie Walker isn’t the only person to face vexatious claims of anti-Semitism.

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‘Journalists’ whine as Momentum bans ‘The Sun’ from Labour conference fringe event

This is Momentum’s argument for refusing to let The Sun into its ‘The World Transformed’ event – and it is persuasive.

This is what years spent abusing privilege gets people.

Journalists (and I use the word with tongue firmly planted in cheek) from the mass-market news media think they have a right to go where they want and behave as they please. They don’t.

People organising events with limited admission are well within their rights to bar certain people from admission – and Momentum had a very good reason for telling reporters from The Sun to do one.

Here‘s the issue encapsulated by iNews:

“Momentum has banned The Sun newspaper from attending its conference event in a show of “solidarity” with a boycott over its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

“The pro-Corbyn Labour group said journalists from the Sun are not welcome at The World Transformed, its fringe conference event coinciding with the main party conference in Liverpool this weekend.

“In a statement, it said the paper had ‘smeared’ victims of the Hillsborough stadium tragedy, in which 96 Liverpool fans died.

“And it said it was supporting a long-running boycott of the paper in the city.”

That is correct. Here is Momentum’s statement in full:

And here’s the response from one disgruntled – well, he calls himself a journalist:

Mr Hodges has a history of being incorrect. Look at his recent run-in with Michael Rosen.

Also weighing in with histrionics was Grauniad hack Heather Stewart:

She was dumped back in her box, pretty much tout suite.

The Guardian has taken a strong anti-Labour, anti-Jeremy Corbyn direction in recent years and there is a campaign to force it back towards impartial reporting – or into bankruptcy – by boycotting the publication while it persists in its current behaviour. You can understand why, can’t you?

This is the new status quo – and right-wing MSM hacks need to get used to it: Actions have consequences.

That’s right. And that’s why ‘journalists’ from The Sun are going to get this response from now on:

Any questions, Rupert Murdoch?

If so – too bad. Nobody can be bothered to talk to you or your lackeys.

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Tory rag revives ‘benefit scrounger’ lie to smooth over DWP’s bad publicity

The state of this:

This Writer suspects that the editors of The Sun have run this story because the Department for Work and Pensions has been shown up for denying benefits to people who deserve them, in order to meet a quota.

The policy has caused a huge amount of suffering – both due to deprivation and damage to mental health. So The Sun runs a piece attempting to remind the easily-led that benefit claimants are an underclass in Tory Britain, worthy only to be ‘nudged’ off-benefit and toward death.

“And,” as @TyronWilson puts it, “when you actually read the story it says that she saves her benefits all year and doesn’t spend money on herself so she can do this for her kids.”

And there is always the backstop reason for stories like this:

It’s miserable and mean-spirited – as is anybody who believes and/or supports it.

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Right-wing press must shape up or shut up after Abbott targeted for abuse AGAIN

Diane Abbott pleaded for peaceful protests after the death of Rashan Charles – she certainly did NOT defend rioting.

When right-wingers- especially right-wingers running newspapers – find a metaphorical dead horse to flog, they really put their back into it, don’t they?

Editors of the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Daily Express took it upon themselves to misrepresent Diane Abbott after she spoke up about rioting that has taken place in London after the death of Rashan Charles, a 20-year-old man who died after being “restrained” by police.

The trouble started shortly after around 150 people gathered in Dalston, near where Mr Charles was tackled by officers on July 22.

Protesters threw bottles at police and barricaded Kingsland Road, a long main road which runs past the police station where the protest started peacefully and also through the area where Mr Charles died. The disorder is said to have lasted around an hour, between 10pm and 11pm on Friday (July 28).

The Metropolitan Police said a 17-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm, while a police officer suffered an eye injury but remained fit for duty.

Ms Abbott, in whose Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency the rioting took place, put out a press release saying: “The anger and upset at the death of Rashan Charles is understandable. But Rashan’s family have explicitly spoken out against hostile actions. We must respect their wishes and any protests must be peaceful.”

The Express misrepresented her with this headline: “‘It’s understandable!’ Diane Abbott defends anger as violent rioters HIJACK protest“.

Of course, Ms Abbott wasn’t saying that rioting was “understandable”. She said “anger and upset” was. She was asking for protesters to respect the wishes of Mr Charles’s family – in fact advocating peaceful protest, not “hostile actions”.

Ms Abbott herself responded to similar lies in the Mail –

– and also in The Sun:

Perhaps these right-wing propagandists have been emboldened by the apparent success of the Tory Party lie that Jeremy Corbyn promised to write off student debts if elected into office in June. In fact, he said no such thing and there was no such promise in the Labour Party manifesto.

Another recent right-wing lie is the Tory claim that parents having a job lifts children out of poverty, when in fact the rise in the number of working families simply means there has been an increase in working-household poverty.

They try to pretend that valid arguments – like those presented in a recent Momentum video about the selective amnesia suffered by certain middle-class Tory voters about the help they had to become comfortably wealthy – are “hateful” attacks on bourgeois “caricatures”, but are able to mount no coherent argument against its claims.

And does anybody remember the squawks of upset after This Site pointed out the political aspects of the disastrous fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower last month? Again, this had no basis in fact – the fire happened because safety regulations had been relaxed to the point where landlords could put flammable cladding on the building without being questioned over it, while neither council chiefs nor MPs reviewed safety rules.

Yes, it seems I was the first to point out specifically that there was a political angle to the disaster, on the morning after it happened. The Tories and their lapdogs in the press only picked up on articles that followed in other sites, again claiming that these criticisms were inappropriate.

And yet now – because of pressure from myself and the others – it’s the only story to be told about Grenfell.

Perhaps the uptight right believes Ms Abbott is fair game because she has carried out a few poor performances, notably in a radio interview about police funding and personnel. It was what’s known as a “gotcha” interview – one in which politicians are criticised for failing to memorise relevant information about a policy, rather than for the policy itself. Many Conservative politicians suffered the same fate in the run-up to the general election, but did not receive nearly as much negative attention.

It was later revealed that the MP has been suffering from a long-term illness – but This Writer does not recall seeing any apologies from the gutter newsrags.

Really, the tone of political debate needs to be improved, and massively.

Emotion-based, evidenceless claims from the right are pointless; we can all look up the facts.

And personal attacks that deliberately misrepresent comments by any politician are also ridiculous, because they can use the social media  – as Ms Abbott has – to dismiss these claims, almost before the printing presses have finished churning out hard copies of the lies.

The choice facing the right-wing media is very simple, then:

Shape up – or shut up.

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