Tag Archives: Tom

Ongoing award for people on PIP with ‘light touch’ review after 10 years – but is it true?

(This could be a record for the speed at which fears voiced in a Vox Political article have been confirmed. Around an hour after I published what follows, I received the comment that now appears at the end of this article.

(Read the piece – and then check out what a disabled person told me about it.)

If you don’t know what Personal Independence Payment is, then you haven’t read this Site for very long. Or properly. Have a quick search; you’ll probably have to try Disability Living Allowance for the early years.

Done? Well, I’ll carry on anyway.

DWP minister Tom Pursglove (who?) has been telling other MPs that there are guidelines about the assessments carried out on people claiming PIP.

He said they’re intended to determine the “needs arising from a health condition or disability” – not the condition itself.

He said regular reviews are a “key feature of PIP”, in place to ensure “payments accurately match the current needs of claimants”.

(In reality, this often means that payments are withdrawn because claimants are determined to have magically got better. Alternatively, claimants are put through continuous reviews to find out if, say, the limbs they lost have grown back.)

So when Mr Pursglove said, “Claimants with very high levels of functional impairment who are on the highest PIP awards, and whose needs are only likely to increase, should receive an ongoing award of PIP, with a light touch review at the 10-year point,” I had a doubt.

If you actually searched back through This Site’s DLA and PIP articles, you’ll know my reasons.

Did you spot the cop-out words “should receive”?

He didn’t say people with degenerative conditions will receive an ongoing award, and he didn’t say they will get a light-touch review.

All we need is one claimant to come forward, say they have a degenerative condition and have not received this treatment, and the whole Tory/DWP house of falsehoods will fall down. Again.

ADDITIONAL: It took around one hour for that one claimant to come forward. In a comment on the Vox Political Facebook page, that person stated the following:

“Ha ha, is it bollox true. Just had my PIP review on a degenerative condition and they CUT my award. Took them three years from review letter to review interview. The system is designed not to work for the claimant. Have you ever tried ringing the PIP line? What a dysfunctional joke that is.”

So there you are: Pursglove debunked.

Source: People on PIP most-likely to receive an ongoing award with a ‘light touch’ review after 10 years – Daily Record

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:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

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!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tory MP has hissy fit at Suella Braverman being called ‘extreme right wing’

Is this cognitive dissonance at its worst?

Cognitive dissonance – as I’m sure most people know – is the condition of holding two opposing beliefs and attitudes simultaneously.

From his behaviour, we can conclude that Tory Tom Hunt holds very similar political views to those of Suella Braverman.

From his words, we may conclude that he does not understand that those views are held by people in the extreme right wing of his party.

His outburst on the BBC’s Politics Live on Monday derives from this incongruity, as Maximilien Robespierre explains:

Robespierre also draws attention to the inconsistencies in Hunt’s own words: surveys of the UK population are supposed to show that they support Braverman, meaning people have spoken up to say this – but it is also the “silent majority” who support her. Which is it, then?

And of course Hunt is wrong in the premise on which he bases his indignation. Labour’s Steve Reed wasn’t saying that Braverman belongs to the extreme right wing of politics; just to the extreme right wing of the Conservative Party.

In that, Reed was correct. Hunt was pushing a false, straw man argument by trying to suggest that Reed was saying one thing when in fact he was saying the other.

He probably thought he was being clever but came across as precisely the opposite.

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

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

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:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

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.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

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!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Why did Tory MPs laugh when Chris Bryant RIGHTLY mocked their intelligence?

Led by a donkey: can anybody really blame the Tories for lacking intelligence when this is the quality of their leader (I know it’s a satirical image but it makes the point very well, doesn’t it)?

It seems some Tories aren’t even intelligent enough to recognise themselves.

This has been a bad week for anybody who wants to tell us our Conservative MPs have two brain cells to rub together.

Tory MP Tom Hunt tried to tell us Rwanda was in Europe on the BBC’s Politics Live. In fact, the dictatorship to which Priti Patel wishes to ship people arriving in the UK illegally is in east Africa.

His colleague Ben Bradley, after the Archbishop of Canterbury criticised the government’s Rwanda policy, said: “We separated the church from the state a long time ago … Commenting on government policy is not Justin Welby’s job”. Perhaps he should have been told the Church of England is Britain’s state church and its Archbishops sit in the House of Lords.

And many Tory MPs have tried to convince us that it would be unthinkable to get rid of prime minister Boris Johnson while a war is happening (even though the UK isn’t even a participant in the Ukraine-Russia conflict) – despite the fact that we have done exactly that, many times in the past.

So Chris Bryant, for all his many other faults, should have been cheered when he made his comments in the House of Commons on Thursday (April 21).

He said:

“Can we have a debate on geography and history lessons? I gather that one Conservative Member has recently stated that we are sending refugees to a ‘safe European country, Rwanda’.

“Another Conservative MP said that the Church of England was disestablished many years ago, which will come as news to the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Her Majesty.

“Many Government ministers have also said that we cannot change the prime minister during a time of war, despite the fact that we changed prime minister four times during the Afghan war, once during the first world war, the second world war and the second Boer war, and twice during the Peninsular war. Can we have a debate on the intelligence of Conservative Members?

Here’s a video clip of the moment, for posterity:

Much of the laughter came from Opposition benches but the Conservatives joined in.

But perhaps the most laughable moment was when Mark Harper, Leader of the House, suggested that Bryant should try to raise the quality of his debating.

Tories need to learn that, before criticising others, they need to work on improving themselves.

Source: MPs laugh as Labour MP calls for a debate into the intelligence of Conservative MPs

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

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

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:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

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.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

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!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tom Watson: what an absolute, reality-bending t*t

Tom Watson: his latest outburst suggests he is out of touch with reality.

Does anybody remember the deputy leader of the Labour Party when it was led by Jeremy Corbyn? His name was Tom Watson and he was a right-wing obstacle.

Like many of the people who tried to get in Mr Corbyn’s way, he pretended he was on-side (sometimes). In hindsight, we could say that he said whatever he thought was to his advantage.

So it may come as no surprise to you that Watson is continuing in similar vein, now he is out of the spotlight. Maybe he thinks this will bring him some attention again.

In his newsletter (yes, I was surprised too), he has written some reality-bending tripe, as spotted by Kevin Schofield, below:

For clarity: Jeremy Corbyn never embraced factionalism; he wanted Labour to present a united front but right wing factionalists like Watson wouldn’t have it. They did everything they could to split the party because, contrary to the description of Labour on the back of their membership cards, they were – and remain – neither socialist nor democratic.

For clarity: Jeremy Corbyn has never “given succour” to Vladimir Putin. So supporters of Mr Corbyn – people we might describe as “true Labour” – don’t have to go “contorting themselves” in any way. Indeed, it is Watson who is trying to take us through contortions in order to present this twisted impression of his former leader.

Let’s have a quick look at Mr Corbyn’s record:

@thejeremycorbyn

Some of us have never supported Putin.

♬ original sound – Jeremy Corbyn

Here’s some further evidence of Mr Corbyn’s historical (and current) opposition to Putin:

For those who can’t read images very well:

2008: Mr Corbyn asserted that Putin was rigging elections.

2010: Mr Corbyn called for Putin’s UK assets to be frozen.

2012: Mr Corbyn called for a “Magnitsky” Act against Putin’s Russia. It would have sanctioned those it sees as human rights offenders, frozen their assets, and banned them from entering the UK.

2012: Mr Corbyn called for the Russian Arms Corps to be banned.

2016: Mr Corbyn accused Putin of war crimes in Syria.

2022: Mr Corbyn demanded that Putin withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine and end the humanitarian catastrophe there.

Oh, and he had a few things to say about the attempted murder by nerve agent of Sergei and Julia Skripal in 2018, too:

On Putin, Mr Corbyn’s conscience – and that of those of us who support him – should be clear.

And for clarity: there were occasions when Watson certainly appeared to support Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to lead our country:

If he is now saying Mr Corbyn was “never” fit to do so, then it casts (more?) doubt on his behaviour as Labour’s deputy leader.

A few years ago, a leaked Labour report (allegedly?) showed right-wingers in the party conspiring to prevent it from winning a general election by giving the impression that it was full of anti-Semites (among other things). The findings of the inquiry into the veracity of that report – promised in mid-2020 – have yet to be released.

Do you think this makes the revelations in that report less plausible – or more so?

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

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

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:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

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.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

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!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Dawn Foster: mainstream journalist blacklisted by The Guardian dies aged just 34

Tributes are being made to Dawn Foster, the journalist who was fired from The Guardian for – rightly – identifying centrists as the cancer in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

Ms Foster has died at the tragically young age of 34, after a long battle with illness.

But it is not her illness that comes across as the most upsetting part of this. Scan down the tributes below and you will see that friends of Ms Foster are incandescent with outrage over the fact that she was blacklisted by The Guardian for writing something we now know to be a clear and demonstrable truth:

That was written about the 2017 general election result, which Labour very nearly won – and, it is believe, would have won if not for centrist saboteurs. They had better luck in the 2019 election, after having carried out two more years of wrecking. Read the full article via the link below.

It should be pointed out that there were some in the Labour Party who rated Ms Foster.

For This Writer, though, the extraordinary thing about her was this perception of her work (with apologies for the strong language, which is not mine):

 

She wasn’t; many, many journalists – including This Writer – criticised Watson continually after his agenda became clear. That was in 2015, so we spent many years doing it.

But we were on the social media and she was in the mainstream. Her blacklisting demonstrates the high degree of censorship carried out by the UK’s media giants.

They really do tell you what to think – and, critically, what not to think.

I’ll close with perhaps the best tribute that I’ve seen, and I hope that everybody reading this will support the sentiments it conveys:

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

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

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:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

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.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

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!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tory Hunt’s argument to block refugees is WRONG. Will the Tories really use it to change the law?

Border Force: if it has to enforce a new law blocking legitimate ways for refugees to come into the UK, won’t it be creating a market for people-traffickers?

Take a look at the following clip, from the July 6 edition of BBC2’s Politics Live.

The antagonists are left-wing social media presenter Ash Sarkar and Tory MP Tom Hunt, and they’re discussing plans by the Johnson Tory government to block ways in which refugees can come to the UK.

She puts forward common sense points about the reasons people would want to come to the UK after leaving a home country where they may be in danger – and points out that cutting off legitimate ways of entry will send more folk to the people-traffickers.

He repeats the oft-debunked – untrue – claim that refugees must settle in the first safe country they enter – and blusters. A lot.

As I stated on Twitter: “You can sympathise with every adult woman trying to reason with a little boy having a tantrum, can’t you?”

The concern is that it is Hunt who is in a position to make a new UK law on refugees.

On this evidence, it will be prejudiced – if not downright racist.

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

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

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:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

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.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

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!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Hypocrisy of UK MPs sanctioned for criticising China human rights abuses

Hypocrite: Iain Duncan Smith oversaw the deaths of thousands of unemployed, sick and disabled people who were victimised by his ‘reforms’ to the UK’s benefit system. How dare he criticise another country for doing the same to its people?

Shame on the Tory MPs who are whining because China has sanctioned them for highlighting that country’s abuses of the Uighurs!

Yes, you read that right. Shame on them, because they are hypocrites.

They seem to think it is perfectly reasonable to claim moral superiority over the government of another country for abusing its citizens’ human rights, while turning a blind eye to the fact that they are doing exactly the same to the people of the UK.

Tory MPs Iain Duncan Smith, Nusrat Ghani, Tim Loughton, Neil O’Brien and Tom Tugendhat all merrily voted in support of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that will strip many of us of our human rights – and remove from all of us the right to protest in any meaningful way against further Tory atrocities against us.

Duncan Smith is well-known as an advocate of harm against his fellow UK citizens, having presided over the deaths of many thousands of benefit claimants – that occurred for no documented reason – under the cruel regime he imposed at the Department for Work and Pensions. But now he’s saying

Those of us who live free lives under the rule of law must speak for those who have no voice.

He was quite happy to deprive benefit claimants of their voices – and to look the other way when his policies deprived them of their lives. In their thousands, remember – not just one or two mistakes.

Attacking human rights abuses anywhere else in the world must be, for these people, an act of abominable hypocrisy.

Note also the typical reaction of the bully: these are people who sneered at us for protesting against the Police Bill and then went right ahead and voted to strip us of our rights – but when the shoe is on the other foot and they’re being singled out by China, suddenly they’re whining about how unfair it is.

Boris Johnson is, of course, the worst of the lot.

Despite being omitted from the list of UK MPs selected for sanction by China, he had the cheek to say

Freedom to speak out in opposition to abuse is fundamental and I stand firmly with them.

Fine words from the prime minister whose sickeningly draconian Police Bill strips his own people of that very freedom.

I do not wish to defend China. It’s treatment of the Uighurs is vile and should be opposed by all those of good faith. But these Tories are not opposing China in good faith. They’re trying to steal undeserved good publicity by attacking a country whose human rights abuses are – currently – worse than their own.

But it doesn’t work that way – or at least it shouldn’t.

Any attack on anybody’s rights as a human being is an attack against all of us – everywhere.

Johnson and his other little Tories might think they can take what moral high ground there is to be gained because their abuses aren’t quite as bad. But we know where that thinking leads.

The abuses become worse.

The number of people being oppressed grows.

The UK’s Tory government already fits every description of a fascist state that is worth reading. If you’re not feeling Johnson’s jackboot on your face yet, it’s just a matter of time.

So don’t waste any sympathy on these liars. They don’t deserve it.

Source: Uighurs: China bans UK MPs after abuse sanctions – BBC News

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

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

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:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

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.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

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!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Revolutionary political campaigner is resurrected for modern times

This Writer is a big fan of comic books – or graphic novels, if you prefer. They have an immediacy that mere words on paper (or screen) sometimes fails to evoke.

When it comes to political ideology, I’m surprised that comics haven’t been employed to get the points across more often before now.

So I think writer/artist Paul Fitzgerald’s bid for funding to support Tom Paine’s Bones – his graphic retelling of the story of the radical human rights and political reform advocate whose work inspired the American Revolution and the formation of a democratic United States – is well worth supporting.

Here’s a quick description of the man and his career:

Through his strong and vocal stances on human rights and political reform he became a key figure in the American Revolution. His pamphlet Common Sense, which advocated for independence and an egalitarian government for the Thirteen Colonies, became the most widely read pamphlet during the American Revolutionary War (1775 – 1783).

His work reached an international audience and Paine’s The Rights of Man, which defended the French Revolution, so infuriated locals in Didsbury and Deangate, in 1793 that they carried out mock trials and executions, burning effigies of Paine in the process.

Even after his death in 1809, Thomas Paine continued to be a thorn in the side of those in power. His bones were unearthed from his grave in America by the radical William Cobbett and carried to the outskirts of Manchester and Salford, just after the Peterloo massacre had occurred in 1819. Fearing the presence of Paine’s remains would foment rebellion amongst a populace still raw from the massacre, troops prevented Cobbett from entering with the bones.

That’s an influential man; his power extended beyond the grave.

Paul Fitzgerald, an artist from Hulme in Manchester also known as Polyp, has been busily working to take Tom Paine out of stuffy lectures on politics and philosophy and onto the illustrated novel page. You can see an example of his excellent work above.

He has launched a Kickstarter campaign for £15,000 to get the project published and I would urge you to help out if you can. Just click on the link and make your donation.

Hopefully this could become part of a series exploring the origins of modern political thinking.

Source: Breathing life back into Tom Paine’s bones – graphic novel aims to resurrect neglected political reformer – The Meteor

Tom Moore and David Clapson: outrageous disparity in the way Tories treat veterans

Found on Facebook:

“Incredible how differently Britain treats its veterans, depending on their circumstances,” says the caption.

No, it isn’t really incredible at all. It’s more Tory divisiveness. The difference here is that the difference between the two subjects is so marked.

Captain Sir Tom Moore was “one of us”. He had been living, retired, in relative comfort – a former Army officer who, seeing the plight of the National Health Service after years of Tory underfunding and the dismantling of its equipment to fight pandemic infections, literally stepped in to do his bit, raising £33 million in funds by walking laps of his back garden.

(And what happened to that cash, by the way? Did it pay for vital treatment or was it frittered away on crony contracts for Conservative chums?)

Former Lance Corporal David Clapson was “one of them”. After serving as a member of the Royal Signal Corps for two years in Belfast at the height of the “Troubles” in the 1970s and then spending 16 years working for BT, he gave up his career to become a carer, looking after his mother.

After she became too ill to stay at home, he started looking for work and claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance – making him a scrounger from the state in the eyes of the Department for Work and Pensions, run at the time by Tory Iain Duncan Smith.

So when he missed an appointment with a Job Centre advisor, the DWP axed his benefit, leaving him with no means of support.

He died soon after – not of starvation, but of diabetic ketoacidosis. Mr Clapson, who suffered from diabetes, had been unable to afford the electricity needed to keep his fridge working, meaning that he could not keep his insulin at the required temperature, rendering it unusable.

When his body was found, his assets totalled £3.44, six tea bags, a tin of soup and an out-of-date can of sardines. He had no food in his stomach at all.

Captain Sir Tom Moore was lionised as a hero. Lance Corporal David Clapson was treated like scum.

In terms of character, they seem to have been very much the same. Both obviously cared very much about the well-being of others and did what they could to help.

The only difference seems to be that the former, being “one of us”, was given every opportunity to make the impact he wanted, while the latter, being “one of them”, was denied even the means of survival.

It’s the Tory way. If you’re “one of us”, you get the best. If you’re “one of them”, you get nothing. Which are you?

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

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

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:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

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.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

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!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Sickening hypocrisy: Johnson’s tribute to Captain Sir Tom Moore

The late Captain Sir Tom Moore: a better man than Boris Johnson.

I didn’t take part in the national hysteria over Captain Tom Moore’s NHS fundraising, extraordinary though it was.

The health service had been put in an impossible position by the Conservative government of the day, and it seemed to me that this act of criminal negligence (it has cost more than 100,000 lives so far, no matter how you fiddle the numbers) was being compounded by unusual cruelty in forcing a 99-year-old man to do laps of his garden in order to make up the shortfall.

And what has been done with the £33 million that he raised, by the way? Does anybody know?

The event as a whole seemed to be nothing but a distraction from the abominable mess that Boris Johnson and his forerunners had created.

It strikes me as a tragic irony that Captain Sir Tom Moore should now have passed away having contracted the disease against which he had raised so much money to protect people.

And then Boris Johnson, the incompetent poser whose deliberate inaction put this centenarian ex-serviceman to so much more trouble for his country, had the nerve to record a video paying tribute to him.

If the prime monkey had admitted that it was due to his own failures that Captain Sir Tom had been put to so much trouble; if he had agreed that his government had been forced to rely on a solitary member of the social group most threatened by the pandemic because of his short-sighted selfishness, then he might have vindicated himself, if only slightly.

But he didn’t. He tried to use a great man’s death for his own gain.

That isn’t a tribute.

It’s an insult.

Source: Captain Sir Tom Moore: ‘National inspiration’ dies with Covid-19 – BBC News