Fake news – Tories at it AGAIN!

Tory HQ Has Been Accused Of Misleading People On Twitter – Again:

“A video appears to show Jess Phillips criticising Labour’s new manifesto – but she isn’t.

The Conservative Party has been accused of misleading voters again on social media, this time by tweeting a video of Labour candidate Jess Phillips with the wrong date on it.

The edited video, posted by the @CCHQPress Twitter account and now deleted, showed the parliamentary candidate saying: “You can never, ever deliver all of those things that you are pretending to deliver when you go to the electorate.”

@CCHQPress has dated the video November 21, 2019, giving the impression Phillips was criticising Jeremy Corbyn on the same day he launched Labour’s general election manifesto.

But the clip has been taken from an old interview, when Phillips appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on October 3 to promote her new book.

The video was reaired this morning during an interview with shadow education secretary Angela Rayner.

During the original interview, Phillips was questioned by Susanna Reid about keeping manifesto promises — before the general election was announced.

Phillips said: “I think there is an argument to be said that you can never, ever deliver all of those things that you are pretending to deliver when you go to the electorate.

“In reality, things change. Globally things change, situations change. Facts change.

″[We can’t deliver it] in all cases. I can’t control the trade war between America and China and I have to, each and every day, and at the moment it is on a day-by-day basis and it is not good, and I have to say: ‘What is the best thing, the best decision I can make today to make sure my constituents are better off?’”

The video also labels Phillips a “Corbyn ally” – in reality, the 37-year-old candidate for Birmingham Yardley has been a vocal critic of the Labour leader in the past, going as far as to say he wasn’t the “practical choice” for leader because people would not vote for him.

The edited video has been criticised on Twitter.

One person said: “You know she’s not just talking about Labour right, but all politicians? She’s speaking truth whereas you only pretend to use facts.”

Another added: “Edited and old. Get a grip.”

It’s not the first time the Tories have been accused of misleading the public with a video.

The same Twitter account came under fire just this week after it rebranded itself as “FactCheckUK” during Tuesday evening’s televised leaders’ debate.

The @CCHQPress page normally carries clear Tory branding and logos and is equally clearly named.

But as Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn went head-to-head on Tuesday, the account renamed itself “FactCheckUK” and minimised any references to Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ).

Twitter warned that a repeat of the incident would result in “decisive corrective action”.

On November 5, they were accused of unfairly editing a video of Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer, to make him appear unable to answer a question on Brexit. However, the party stood by the edit, PA Media reports.

The Tories have also purchased the website labourmanifesto.co.uk.

The website purports to showcase Labour’s manifesto but instead actually attacks the party’s policies. It accuses the party of promising “higher taxes” with “no plan for Brexit”.

The Conservatives came under fire for rebranding as a “fact-checking service” during Tuesday night’s televised election debate.

Twitter and the Conservative Party did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the video.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tory-hq-twitter-jess-phillips_uk_5dd69210e4b010f3f1d3a842

Tories not to blame for poverty under a Tory government says Tory Minister Priti Patel

“The Conservatives have come under fire after a senior minister gave a disastrous interview claiming the government was “not to blame” for poverty.

Labour said the comments from Priti Patel, the home secretary, were another example of the “cruelty” of the Tory government, in a fresh blow to Boris Johnson’s election efforts.

It comes as the Conservatives complained about an interview Michael Gove gave to Channel 4, where the top Tory accused the broadcaster of political bias.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-news-live-general-election-bexit-polls-labour-manifesto-latest-a9211656.html

Note: this comes after news that Labour complained about bias at Sky where its general election set had “Brexit election” plastered all over it.

More Tory fake news – this time on housing policy

The Sun has this headline:

“Labour in La La Land

Jeremy Corbyn will force Brits to sell land at a fraction of the price so he can go on huge housebuilding drive’

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10389467/corbyn-seize-property-housebuilding-drive/

The reality:

Labour’s plan is for land to be sold to councils and developers at its value BEFORE planning permission can be applied for rather than as, at present, being sold AFTER planning permission has been granted.

That won’t please East Devon Green Party candidate Henry Gent, who currently stands to make millions of pounds on the option he has given to Persimmon to build hundreds of houses on his farm land.

If Corbyn gets his way, he would get only the agricultural value of the land – making it significantly cheaper to build houses.

They published their ideas in June 2019:

Click to access 12081_19-Land-for-the-Many.pdf

Kicked-out Tory Oliver Letwin understood the problem, but stopped short of offering a solution:

“Under the 1961 Land Compensation Act, councils are not permitted to buy agricultural land at its current value; instead they must pay a speculative “hope value”, based on the value of the land with permission to develop the site. That can easily make land more than 100 times more expensive than its actual worth. In his review of build-out rates (the report about the problem of land-banking that concluded that land-banking wasn’t a problem…), Oliver Letwin suggested that the residual land value of large sites should be capped at about 10 times their existing use value. Clearly better than paying 100 times the value – but does it go far enough?”

https://www.bdonline.co.uk/opinion/its-not-just-labour-thats-getting-behind-a-land-value-tax-/5099426.article

So this is both fake news and OLD news!

The fakest of fake (Tory) news

Was Owl the only one who found this reprehensible?

“Tories pretend to be factchecking service during leaders’ debate

The Conservatives have been accused of misleading the public after they rebranded their official Twitter account as “factcheckUK” during the televised leaders’ debate and used it to publish anti-Labour posts.

The public have increasingly turned to factchecking websites, such as the independent Full Fact, the BBC’s Reality Check, Channel 4 News’ FactCheck and the Guardian’s Factcheck, to verify claims made by politicians.

During Tuesday night’s debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, the Conservative party renamed their main media account as “factcheckUK”, changed its logo to hide its political origins, and used it to push pro-Conservative material to the public. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/19/tories-tweet-anti-labour-posts-under-factcheckuk-brand?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

“Watchdog bans DWP’s ‘misleading’ [aka lying] universal credit adverts”

“A series of government ads extolling the virtues of universal credit and purporting to bust negative myths about the flagship Conservative welfare policy has been banned because it is “misleading”.

In an embarrassing indictment of the policy before next month’s general election, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found that a claim that people moved into work faster on universal credit (UC) than under the old system could not be substantiated.

Two other claims – that jobcentres will pay an advance to people who need it and that rent can be paid directly to landlords under UC – were also found to be unsubstantiated.

The adverts, part of a £225,000 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) campaign to detoxify UC, appeared in print in the Metro newspaper and on its website, as well as on the MailOnline, in May and June.

They attracted 44 complaints, including from the Motor Neurone Disease Association, the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) and the anti-poverty charity Zacchaeus 2000 Trust (Z2K), who have called for the DWP to apologise in light of the ASA ruling.

The Z2K chief executive, Raji Hunjan, also demanded an investigation into working practices at the department.

“If it has misled the public on UC, its flagship policy, what else is it misleading us on?” Hunjan said. “The next government must engage with the compelling evidence that points to the harm UC is causing, leaving many people reliant on food banks and others destitute. Enough is enough.” …”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/nov/06/dwp-misleading-universal-credit-uncovered-ad-banned?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

“The Conservatives edited interview footage to falsely suggest Labour’s Keir Starmer was left speechless by a Brexit question”

“The Conservative party have been accused of spreading fake news, after posting footage of Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer which was edited to falsely suggest he was left speechless during an interview.

The video, which has been shared by senior government figures including the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, is an edit of a video Starmer took part in this morning on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

In the video, the Shadow Brexit Secretary is asked a series of questions about Labour’s Brexit policy, the last of which appears to leave him lost for words.

However, footage of the full interview shows that Starmer immediately answered the question put to him by the show’s hosts.

Social media users accused the party of spreading “fake news” after the misleading nature of the video was pointed out by the BBC journalist Daniel Sandford.

“I hate this stuff. I saw too much of it in Russia, and it only ends badly,” Sandford, who is the BBC’s Home Affairs correspondent, posted on Twitter.

The Conservative Party were contacted for comment.”

https://www.insider.com/video-tories-accused-of-sharing-fake-news-campaign-video-about-labour-2019-11

“None of pledged [200,000] starter homes built, says watchdog”

ANSWER: THERE ISN’T ONE!

The comments by developers at the end of this post, in BOLD, defy comment!

“A government plan to create 200,000 new homes in England for first-time buyers has resulted in no homes being built, the National Audit Office has found.

Announced in 2014, “starter homes” were meant to be aimed at those under the age of 40 and sold at a 20% discount.

But legislation to take the project forward was never passed.
Labour called the policy a total failure, but the government said it had a “great track record” for house building.
Former prime minister David Cameron committed to the scheme in the 2015 Conservative Party manifesto as a way of tackling the affordable housing crisis.

The project was also supposed to support the wider growth and regeneration of local areas, and some town centres.

The homes were meant to be built across the country by the end of the decade and more than £2bn was set aside for the first tranche of 60,000 dwellings.

According to the National Audit Office (NAO), between 2015-16 and 2017-18, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) spent almost £174m on acquiring and preparing sites originally intended for building starter homes.

These were in places such as Plymouth, Bury, Basildon, Stockport, Bridgwater, Cinderford and Bristol.

But the spending watchdog said the sites were all now being used for housing more generally, only some of which was affordable.

‘Dashed expectations’

It said the scheme had faltered because the necessary legislation and planning guidance had never been put through Parliament, despite expectations it would happen in 2019.

As a result, even new homes conforming to the intended specifications cannot be marketed as starter homes, which has made getting developers on board challenging.

The NAO said the government also no longer had a budget dedicated to the starter homes project. …

… David O’Leary, policy director at Home Builders Federation, said that even though starter homes had not got off the ground, the scheme had not been a total failure.
He said the engagement it had generated between local government, builders, mortgage lenders and valuers was positive.

“The difficulty in creating a workable set of rules demonstrates the importance of ensuring that proper consideration is given to the practical implementation of interventions and their market impacts as early as possible.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50296672

“Boris Johnson criticised for selective quotes about NHS in letter to voters”

“Boris Johnson has been criticised for misleading voters over the Tories’ record on the NHS, after he sent letters to voters in swing seats that selectively quoted a charity.

The letter, sent out across marginal seats such as High Peak and Reading West, highlighted comments from various media sources and charities praising the long-term plan for the NHS, which was set out before Johnson took office.

One of the highlighted quotes, from Sarb Bajwa, the chief executive of the British Psychological Society, lauded the plan for a “clear commitment to mental health through increased spending and introducing access standards”.

But Johnson’s letter missed off subsequent parts of the quote saying that there was “still a long way to go”, though the plan showed the NHS was listening to concerns about mental health provision. It also highlighted the need for “immediate action for children and young people’s services as they have become woefully underfunded and overstretched” and for mental health provision outside the NHS to be resourced effectively. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/04/boris-johnson-criticised-for-selective-quotes-about-nhs-in-letter-to-voters?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

“Health Secretary Matt Hancock deletes ‘1,000 more GPs’ claim after statistics watchdog censure” – real number 41

“The health secretary has deleted claims of a “terrific” increase of 1,000 GPs joining the NHS in just three months, after being censured by the government statistics watchdog.

Matt Hancock made the claim in a tweet last week and was widely criticised by doctors and health groups who said he was misleading the public, as the actual figures showed qualified doctor numbers fell.

Those figures were also drastically inflated by the new intake of junior doctors who started GP specialty training in August.

Even counting these doctors, who work under supervision but by third year are seeing patients largely unsupported, there were only an additional 41 doctors when compared to September 20 …”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/health-secretary-matt-hancock-gps-statistics-uksa-censure-false-facts-a8655961.html

Tory”attack lines” document leaked

“The 22-page briefing document is likely to embarrass Conservative HQ as it exposes the party’s strategy for the 12 December poll. …”

A few pages – note fake news like “we are not privatising the NHS … continuing to [de]fund publuc services … the prime Minister’s “Great New Deal” (shades of Trump there and really pretty much May’s old deal – but worse!).

https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-leaked-tory-dossier-details-attack-lines-for-candidates-11852076

Lies, damned lies – and fake news and General Elections!

PLEASE, PLEASE be on your toes when general election parties and candidates give you their promises and “good news”.

A couple of examples, one local, one national from the past few days:

Swire says Ottery hospital is “safe”.

NO, NO, NO!

READ THE LETTER! It does NOT say in-patient beds will be re-opened or that current outpatient services will be maintained at the current level or that they will be increased – only that the situation is “under review”:

And:

Government has “stopped” fracking. TOTALLY UNTRUE!

“The government said it would not agree to any future fracking “until compelling new evidence is provided” that proves fracking could be safe.”

All it has to do is move the goalposts about what it considers “safe”!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/02/fracking-banned-in-uk-as-government-makes-major-u-turn?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other