Category: #GiveCorbynAFairChance

#GiveCorbynAFairChance

Tom Watson and Diane Abbott condemn the Tories’ faux outrage in the ‘stupid woman/people’ row

From Morning Star: The Tories are shamefully fabricating a “mini-riot” over whether Jeremy Corbyn called Theresa May a “stupid woman”, say senior Labour figures.

Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said the row was overshadowing the rest of politics with fewer than 100 days until Brexit.

During Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, TV cameras had caught him saying something inaudible to those opposite him after Ms May likened his tabling of a confidence vote in her to a Christmas pantomime, while making panto-themed jokes.

He was recalled to the Commons immediately after the session ended over the incident, and he told MPs he used the phrase “stupid people.”

Opposition MPs had criticised the fake outrage over the allegation of misogyny that a number of prominent Conservative MPs were themselves guilty of, or worse.

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Jeremy Corbyn’s spending plan for public services backed by majority

From The Guardian: Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to put up taxes to fund an increase in spending for public services has received a boost after research showed that 60% of people thought the government should do just that.

The British Social Attitudes survey found that the proportion of people who believed the government should raise taxes to fund more public spending was at its highest in 15 years, following almost a decade of austerity.

Although Labour supporters are more likely than Conservatives to back increased tax and spending, there has nevertheless been a significant rise in support among Tory voters as well, up 18% from 2015.

The findings will bolster the Labour leader’s argument that changing attitudes mean the public would back tax rises and borrowing to invest in public services, a principle which underpinned the party’s last general election manifesto.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Labour Party complains to regulator over coverage of cemetery visit

From the Guardian: The Labour Party has formally complained to the press regulator Ipso about the coverage by several British newspapers of Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to lay a wreath at a cemetery in Tunisia.

In its complaint, the party said The Sun, The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and Metro had misrepresented the event, which the Labour leader attended in 2014.

Labour said subsequent reporting of the incident across the media had seriously misrepresented the event, misidentified those buried in the cemetery and underplayed the role of mainstream Palestinian leaders conducting the ceremony.

The complaint focuses on incidents where newspapers have specifically stated in news stories that the event was commemorating members of the Black September terrorist group or those who carried out the 1972 Munich massacre. Labour says there are no graves for such individuals and the event did not commemorate the Munich terrorists.

Labour acknowledges that the cemetery contains the graves of senior Palestinian Liberation Organisation individuals Salah Khalaf and Atef Besiso, who were assassinated in the early 1990s and have been accused by Israel of having had links with Black September, something the PLO has always denied. However, it insists Corbyn did not take part in laying wreaths on their specific graves.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

40 senior academics condemn anti-Corbyn bias in media coverage of antisemitism

More than forty senior academics write to the Guardian to condemn what they see as an anti-Corbyn bias in media coverage of the antisemitism debate…

“One of the main concepts in journalism education is that of framing: the highlighting of particular issues, and the avoidance of others, in order to produce a desired interpretation. We have been reminded of the importance of framing when considering the vast amounts of media coverage of Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged failure to deal with antisemitism inside the Labour party. On Sunday, three national titles led with the story while news bulletins focused on the allegations all last week. Dominant sections of the media have framed the story in such a way as to suggest that antisemitism is a problem mostly to do with Labour and that Corbyn is personally responsible for failing to deal with it. The coverage has relied on a handful of sources such as the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and well-known political opponents of Corbyn himself.

“Yet where are the Jewish voices who support Corbyn and who welcome his long-established anti-racist record? Where are the pieces that look at the political motivations of some of Corbyn’s most vocal critics?”

[Read full letter and signatories on Guardian website…]

Journalist Owen Jones calls out media bias

Owen Jones talks on BBC Newsnight about media framing of Jeremy Corbyn‘s response to the Russian spy poisoning.

Media bias called out

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Posted by Momentum on Saturday, March 17, 2018

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Andrew Neil lays into Tory MP over “outrageous smear” against Corbyn

From LabourList: Today Andrew Neil used Tory MP Steve Baker’s spot on the BBC’s Daily Politics to slam the claims of Conservative MPs that Jeremy Corbyn “sold British secrets” and “betrayed his country”.

Following the Sun‘s “Commie Corbyn” story, which claimed the Labour leader met with a communist spy in the 1980s and suggested he briefed them on British politics and matters of state security, defence secretary Gavin Williamson said Corbyn “cannot be trusted” and accused him of “betrayal of this country”.

Neil repeatedly asked Steve Baker, “do you think he has betrayed his country?” Steve Baker repeatedly refused to answer the question.

Tory vice-chair Ben Bradley was forced to delete his tweet stating “Corbyn sold British secrets to communist spies” after the leader of the opposition threatened legal action. On Twitter security minister Ben Wallace compared Corbyn to Soviet spy Kim Philby.

“Your security minister has compared Mr Corbyn to Kim Philby. Kim Philby was a traitor – at the time if he’d been found guilty he would have been hanged! That’s an outrageous smear to say of the leader of the opposition,” said Neil.

He concluded: “The real scandal, Mr Baker, isn’t what Mr Corbyn has supposedly done or not done. It’s the outright lies and disinformation that your fellow Tories are spreading.”

[Read full article on LabourList…]

“On planet reality the Tories are the radical economic extremists, not Jeremy Corbyn”

From Another Angry Voice: “Every single time you hear someone from the political right trying to make out that Jeremy Corbyn is some kind of hard-left economic extremist (as if the Tories are economic moderates in comparison), you’ve got to remember that they’re trying to convince you that black is white.

“In reality Labour’s core economic policies under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (public ownership of the rail industry, water companies, mail service, health service, police services & national grid + a National Investment Bank) are quite normal centre-left policies that are commonplace across the developed world.

“Not only are these policies commonplace across the developed world, they’re all incredibly popular with the public. Renationalisation of our core infrastructure and services has overwhelming public support.

“There is a constant right-wing political narrative that Jeremy Corbyn is a terrifying hard-left economic extremist which rarely ever gets challenged by the mainstream media. But the really crazy thing is that while mainstream media hacks continually allow right-wingers to smear Jeremy Corbyn and Labour as economic extremists when they’re not, they’re simultaneously letting the Tories get away with implementing one crackpot economic policy from the hard-right fringe after another.”

[Read full article on Another Angry Voice…]

Newly revealed CCTV footage supports truth of Corbyn’s “Traingate” claims

Video from Double Down News:

EXCLUSIVE: New CCTV footage reveals Jeremy Corbyn told truth a…

EXCLUSIVE: We reveal never before seen CCTV footage that proves Jeremy Corbyn told the truth about #Traingate

Posted by Double Down News on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Who ever could have imagined that Richard Branson, an owner of a privatised train company with a personal net worth of $5 billion, would have a motive to smear Jeremy Corbyn?

 

Poll reveals how many people actually think Corbyn pledged to wipe student debt

From Daily Mirror: Tories have repeatedly accused Mr Corbyn of tricking students into voting for him by saying he didn’t “see why” they should suffer with historic student debt. But a poll has found only 17% of those who read the Labour leader’s statement think he was promising to wipe out all student debt.

[Read full article on Daily Mirror website…]

Jeremy Corbyn – a mainstream [Scandinavian] social democrat

Jonas Fossli GjersĂž writes on OpenDemocracy: “From his style to his policies Mr Corbyn would, in Norway, be an unremarkably mainstream, run-of-the-mill social-democrat. His policy-platform places him squarely in the Norwegian Labour Party from which the last leader is such a widely respected establishment figure that upon resignation he became the current Secretary-General of NATO.

“Yet, here in the United Kingdom a politician who makes similar policy-proposals, indeed those that form the very bedrock of the Nordic-model, is brandished as an extremist of the hard-left and a danger to society.

“So who is right? Is the Norwegian Labour movement some dangerous extremist group that unknowingly has occupied the furthest leftist fringe of the political spectrum? If so, a casual glance at the UN’s Human Development Index would suggest that Norway certainly has not suffered as a result of successive Labour-dominated governments. Or is it, perhaps, that the British media’s portrayal of Corbyn, and by extent his policies are somewhat exaggerated and verging on the realm of character assassination rather than objective analysis and journalism?

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9 things every voter needs to know about the Corbyn-IRA smear campaign

From Another Angry Voice: “We all knew perfectly well that the billionaire right-wing press barons and their lackeys in the Tory party would attempt to smear the hell out of Jeremy Corbyn during this election campaign.

“They hate his policies of standing up for ordinary people and repatriating vital British infrastructure and services out of the hands of multinational corporations and foreign government like China and Qatar.

“They hate his policies so much they’re absolutely fixated on trying to destroy his reputation with anything they’ve got, and his early involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process is seriously the best they can come up with, because they know it feeds into the anti-Irish bigotry that still unfortunately exists in Great Britain.

“In this article I’m going to set the record straight by detailing 9 things that every voter should know about the Corbyn-IRA smear campaign.”

[Read full article on Another Angry Voice…]

Labour MP Barry Gardiner highlights media double standards

Meme from Another Angry Voice:

#BarryGardiner #MediaBias #GiveCorbynAFairChance #GE17 #StopTheTories

Posted by Stop the Tories Channel on Saturday, June 3, 2017

 

Tory attack ad misrepresents Corbyn views on IRA, says Labour

From The Guardian: Labour has accused the Conservatives of creating “fake news” after a Tory attack video that went viral was edited to show Jeremy Corbyn refusing to condemn the IRA, when in fact the Labour leader said: “I condemn all the bombing by the loyalists and the IRA.”

The 85-second montage of Corbyn’s quotes has been circulating online for the last week and has been viewed 5.3m times, three times more than any other political campaign video. The Conservatives are also paying Facebook to insert it into people’s news feeds. It is subtitled: “On June 9th, this man could be Prime Minister. We can’t let that happen.”

It includes a clip from Corbyn’s appearance on Sky News last month when interviewer Sophy Ridge asked whether he could “condemn unequivocally the IRA”. The Labour leader said: “Look, bombing is wrong, all bombing is wrong, of course I condemn it.” Ridge responded: “But you’re condemning all bombing, can you condemn the IRA without equating it to.” Corbyn said: “No.”

The clip was cut off there but the full quote was: “No, I think what you have to say is all bombing has to be condemned and you have to bring about a peace process. Listen, in the 1980s Britain was looking for a military solution, it clearly was never going to work. Ask anyone in the British army at the time 
 I condemn all the bombing by the loyalists and the IRA.”

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Anti-Corbyn BBC headline makes out that being Prime Minister is a closed-book exam

The top BBC headline yesterday afternoon was that, on Woman’s Hour, Jeremy Corbyn was not able to recall the cost of Labour’s childcare policy off the top of his head.

Not that it hadn’t been revealed – Angela Rayner had announced it previously, and he had access to it.

Nor that he got it wrong, but that he couldn’t immediately remember it and had to look it up.

And the follow-up question was whether this meant we couldn’t trust Labour with our money.

Running the country isn’t a closed-book exam. You don’t have to know every relevant figure without notes.

If you don’t know it, isn’t it a good reaction to say so and look it up, rather than trying to bluff or refusing to answer?

#BBCbias #MediaBias #GiveCorbynAFairChance: The top BBC headline yesterday afternoon was that, on Woman's Hour, Jeremy…

Posted by Stop the Tories Channel on Wednesday, May 31, 2017

(Meme republished from @thesatireparty)

“If Jeremy Corbyn was wrong on Northern Ireland, so was Nelson Mandela”

Kevin Meagher writes in The New Statesman: “It was entirely legitimate for Corbyn and others to take an interest in the pressing affairs of Northern Ireland, especially as we now know that Margaret Thatcher’s government was engaged in secret talks with the IRA from the time of the Hunger Strikes.

[Read full column on The New Statesman website…]

Compared: Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC Online headlines on the Labour and Tory manifestos

Via The Pileus:

#BBCbias #Kuenssberg#GE17 #LabourManifesto #GiveCorbynAFairChance #BBC #BBCnews

Posted by Stop the Tories Channel on Thursday, May 18, 2017

Most people agree with Income Tax increases for high earners

From The Canary: A poll conducted by ComRes for The Daily Mirror surveyed 1,021 adults online on 11 May. It asked them about their opinions on Labour’s manifesto policies; how far left and right certain political figures and parties were; and broader thoughts on both Labour and the Conservatives.

#GiveCorbynAFairChance #MediaBias: MOST PEOPLE AGREE WITH INCOME TAX INCREASES FOR HIGH EARNERSA poll conducted by…

Posted by Stop the Tories Channel on Friday, May 12, 2017

Respondents also support:

  • Renationalisation of railways (52% agree, 22% disagree)
  • Banning zero hours contracts (71% – 16%)
  • Scrapping student tuition fees (46% – 37%)
  • Building 100,000 council houses per year (54% – 24%)
  • Keeping the pension age at 66 (74% – 15%)
  • Renationalising Royal Mail (50% – 25%)
  • Keeping the foxhunting ban (78% – 12%)
  • Giving Parliament a veto on the final Brexit deal (36% – 35%)
  • Creating a ‘national education service’ like the NHS (43% – 20%)

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Labour #GE17 policies in one meme

Via “The People Vs The Government, DWP and Atos”: Strangely enough, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph reports on the Labour #GE17 manifesto didn’t have room for any of these Labour manifesto policies…

#GiveCorbynAFairChance #LabourManifesto: The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph didn't have room on their front pages for any of this 🙂 #GE17 #StopTheTories

Posted by Stop The Tories Channel on Thursday, May 11, 2017

An example of BBC anti-Labour bias…

#ChangeTheDebate #GiveCorbynAFairChance #BBCbias

Posted by Stop the Tories Channel on Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Only 11% of all newspaper articles about Corbyn accurately state even one of his actual policies

From Another Angry Voice: A London School of Economics study into how Jeremy Corbyn is represented in the media found that only a paltry 11% of all newspaper articles about him bothered to accurately state a single one of his actual policies. In the Daily Mail and Daily Express that figure was 0%.

Given this lack of unbiased political coverage it’s not difficult to understand why so many people are so unfamiliar with Jeremy Corbyn’s actual policies, and tend to judge him as if politics is some kind of vapid personality contest.

#GiveCorbynAFairChance: A London School of Economics study into how Jeremy Corbyn is represented in the media found that…

Posted by Stop the Tories Channel on Tuesday, April 25, 2017

[Read full article on Another Angry Voice, featuring a summary of Corbyn’s real policies…]

Meme from Wear Red – Stand Up and Be Counted

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