Tory Chairman Brandon Lewis has some explaining to do ...

On March 1st 2019 the independent media site Evolve Politics exposed an absolutely despicable Tory Facebook hate chamber full of bigotry, racism, anti-Muslim hate, and the kind of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that would have sent the mainstream media into paroxysms of condemnation had they been found in a Labour group run by Labour Party councillors.

One of the most disturbing comments was posted by a woman called Dorinda Bailey where she agreed with someone calling for all mosques to be bombed, but criticised them for using a swear word in their comment!

When Ash Sarkar asked the Tory chairman Brandon Lewis about this despicable mosque-bombing comment he responded with a simple one sentence reply; "she is not a member of our Party".

The problem of course is that there's loads of evidence out there that Dorinda Bailey is an active member of the Tory party, or at least was one until very recently.

Here's a picture of her out on the campaign trail with the Tories during the 2018 local elections.

And here's evidence that she was actually one of the Tory party candidates in the Bradwell ward of Newcastle-under-Lyme, which means she was definitely a Tory party member within the last year, which makes Brandon Lewis's "not a member" comment extremely evasive and deceptive at the very least.

If Dorinda Bailey has been thrown out of the Tory party within the last year, Brandon Lewis clearly has an obligation to explain why.

Did the Tory party know about her bigoted tendencies. If so, why were two other Tory party councillors running the Facebook Tory hate-chamber with her?

Don't they have rules in place for preventing party members from co-operating with people who have been thrown out of the party?

But there's also the possibility that Brandon Lewis was outright lying that she's not a member since he provided absolutely no evidence to support his "not a member" claim.

It's pretty obvious that any political party that is serious about combating bigotry and racism in their ranks should be transparent about how they deal with proven bigots who stood as their official party candidates in elections less than a year previously.

It's pretty obvious that Brandon Lewis and the Tories have an obligation to explain why someone who was until very recently a party member (at the absolute best) was behaving in this despicable manner on a pro-Tory Facebook page run by other Tory Party members, and provide documentary evidence to back up Brandon Lewis's assertion that she's not a member of the party, and an explanation of why.

Will the mainstream media pick up on this and work to hold Brandon Lewis and the Tories accountable?

Will they pick up on the fact that Brandon Lewis has used the exact same "not a member" line to distance the party from a bigoted Tory party member who organised an extreme-right protest involving a hate group called the North East Infidels?

Will they pick up on the fact that stating "not a member" is absolutely insufficient when Tory party activists have been caught spreading bigotry and hatred in a pro-Tory Facebook propaganda page. At the very least the disciplinary processes used to remove them from the party should be detailed, and an apology should be made for the bigoted behaviour.

The likely answer is no. They won't pick up on this issue because it contradicts the whole narrative they're trying to construct, that it's the Labour left (who were actually amongst the tiny minority of just 18 anti-racist MPs to oppose Theresa May's unlawfully racist "Hostile Environment" legislation in 2014) who are the nasty racists.

But just imagine if this was the other way around and it had been a Labour Party candidate at the 2018 local elections who had agreed with a proposal to 'bomb all synagogues' using a picture of them grinning alongside a famous Labour Party figure as their profile picture as they made their despicable comments.

Do you honestly think the media would allow Jeremy Corbyn to get away with evasively claiming "not a member of our party" with no apology, and no details whatever of the disciplinary procedures used to remove that person from the party?

Of course they wouldn't. It'd be spun out into a days-long re-examination of the Labour anti-Semitism issue and used as personal ammunition against Jeremy Corbyn (and whoever was pictured alongside the racist bigot too).

This disparity in mainstream media coverage that's actually just as concerning as the rampant bigotry and racism in the Tory ranks, and Brandon Lewis's outright evasiveness in not apologising for it.

If they're working as hard as they can to portray one side as having a bigotry problem, whilst deliberately turning a blind eye to the much worse bigotry problem on the other side (and the other side's deceptive, evasive, and unapologetic responses to it) then they're not reporting the news, they're manufacturing it.

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You won't hear about this latest Tory scandal on the mainstream news

The Tory party are in the midst of a massive scandal about their callous discrimination against Windrush citizens of the United Kingdom that was caused by Theresa May's UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation in 2014. So the last thing they needed was another scandal involving festering extreme-right bigotry in their party to erupt, but erupt it has.

A Vice investigation has revealed that a Generation Identity extreme-right white-supremacist by the name of Darren Harrison has infiltrated the Tory party, and that they liked him so much that they actually selected him to stand as a Tory local election candidate in Watford.
When the scandal broke the Tories suspended him from the party and high profile Tory figures like Brandon Lewis and James Cleverly who associated with him have rapidly distanced themselves. But it's highly likely that they'll just wait for the furore to die down let him sneak back, just like the disgraceful bigots Ruth Davidson welcomed back in the Scottish Tory party with open arms a few months after the scandal died down.

The Tories can hardly claim innocence because, up until it was hastily deleted when this scandal broke, Harrison's Twitter feed was absolutely full of right-wing extremism, including open support for Generation Identity right-wing extremists when they were banned from entering the UK by the Tory government, retweets of the former-EDL leader and terrorist-inspiring hate preacher Tommy Robinson, and pictures of him cavorting with his extremist mates.
He even wrote a letter to the Home Office complaining that his extremist mates had been prevented from entering the UK and bragged about it on Twitter.

Harrison's infatuation with the extreme-right wasn't just Twitter-based either, he also attended a number of Generation Identity events in person.

The only way it's possible that the Tories didn't know about his extremist activities is if they carried out literally no background checks whatever (such as scrolling though his Twitter feed or just asking him if he's involved with any extremist organisations). The other option is that they knew about it, but felt that imitating Trump by appealing to the extreme-right neo-Nazi demographic in Watford would be a good move for the party.

If they didn't do it on purpose, then their only possible excuse for allowing such an individual to progress so far within their party is absolute and total incompetence.

It's absolutely incredible that the Tories are busy banning Generation Identity extremists from entering the UK on the one hand, but putting them up as Tory local election candidates on the other.

But don't expect to hear about this scandal in the mainstream media or on the BBC news, because the number one priority for most of them right now is running damage limitation and distraction tactics for Theresa May and the Tories over the outrageous Windrush scandal.

Credit to vice for breaking the story: read their article here.

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Sajid Javid just baselessly called hundreds of Jewish Labour Party members "neo-fascists"

The Tory government minister Sajid Javid has just stood up in parliament and accused the Labour activist group Momentum of being "neo-fascists". 

Aside from the fact that it's the political left who have always stood in solidarity with the Jewish people to fight against actual fascists from the political right (as at Cable Street where they beat the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, when they beat back the rise of the National Front in Lewisham in the '70s, and the regular criticism of modern neo-Fascist hate groups like Britain First from the political left), there's also the well-known fact that the leader of Momentum is a Jewish guy called Jon Lansman.

Now if we know anything at all about anti-Semitism then surely we know that it's deeply anti-Semitic to baselessly resort to calling Jewish people Nazis just because you disagree with their political views.

So where is the tide of outrage about this hard-right government minister deliberately and offensively tarring hundreds of peaceful anti-fascist left-leaning Jewish people with the vile ideology that resulted in the mass genocide against their ancestors?

Aside from the blatantly anti-Semitic nature of his revolting smear-tactics, there's another thing to realise about Sajid Javid:

When Zac Goldsmith and the Tories used vile extreme-right propaganda tactics copied straight out of the BNP playbook to attack Sadiq Khan during the London Mayoral election in 2016, guess who remained absolutely silent on these disgusting tactics?

Then there was the blind eye that Javid turned when the actual fascist Britain First leader Paul Golding recently threatened to violently intimidate anyone who dares to oppose or criticise right-wing politicians like Rees-Mogg.

Then there's the fact that Javid refused to criticise his fellow Tory MP Bob Blackman after he shared extreme-right Islamophobic propaganda on his Facebook page just a few days before he hid behind parliamentary privilege to shout his offensive slurs at Jewish Momentum members.

When his own political party used neo-fascist tactics copied straight from the BNP, Sajid Javid remained silent; when the Britain First neo-Nazi thugs threatened to act as a violent enforcement militia for the Tories, Sajid Javid remained silent; when his fellow Tory MP shared disgusting fascist propaganda on Facebook, Sajid Javid remained silent.

And then after all of that silence he resorts to full bore anti-Semitism by slurring every single Jewish member of Momentum as neo-Nazis.

Will Theresa May do anything to discipline her own government minister for debasing parliament by resorting to anti-Semitic smear-mongering? Doubtful

Will the Tories like Brandon Lewis who was promoting his "respect pledges" on social media just a few weeks ago call his fellow Tory out on his hyperbolic and offensive slurs? Doubtful

Will the mainstream media call Sajid Javid out for baselessly smearing hundreds of Jewish Labour Party members as Nazis just days after the whole anti-Semitism furore? Doubtful

Just like Javid's own personal attitude to Zac Goldsmith's disgusting use of neo-Nazi propaganda tactics, his fellow Tories will doubtless turn a blind eye and refuse to hold their own to account.

And given the blind eye the mainstream media have turned to half a dozen other bigotry and bullying scandals within the Tory ranks this week, few would expect mainstream journalists to call him out either.

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The Tories are now so toxic they're having to pay people to support them on Twitter

Over the last few years the Tories have been completely thrashed on social media.

During the 2017 General Election there wasn't a single pro-Tory article in the top 25 most shared articles on Facebook, and since the General Election by far the most viral Tory tweet is Ben Bradley's grovelling apology for writing defamatory comments about Jeremy Corbyn, rather than anything that casts them in a good light.

The Tories know that they're getting thrashed on social media. They know that the Tory brand is increasingly toxic to the under-50s, and that they only really appeal to the hard-right ultranationalist Blue-kip demographic, and that Labour's 500,000+ membership equates to a voluntary army of online campaigners they haven't got a hope of competing with.

The Tory solution to this situation is quite extraordinary. Instead of devising policies that actually appeal to the younger generations, their Chairman Brandon Lewis has announced his plan to lob a load of cash at the problem by hiring huge numbers of paid Twitter astroturfers to spread pro-Tory propaganda.

This Tory astroturfer strategy is useless for a number of reasons.

One of the main reasons this strategy stinks is that people are very much more likely to engage with a political post from a friend, family member, or a famous person they admire, than with the posts of fake @ToryBoy28783654 type propaganda accounts, so the Tories are going to be paying out significant amounts in wages to people who will have far less natural reach than genuine Labour campaigners.

Another problem is that widespread public knowledge that the Tories have hired an army of astroturfers will seriously delegitimise the social media postings of genuine Tory supporters.  The existence of the Tory astroturf army will create the suspicion that genuine Tory types are just paid social media mercenaries, rather than people who genuinely believe in what they're doing.

Another problem for the Tories arises from the election expenses rules. If any of this mercenary army of Tory astroturfers promote specific Tory MPs during election periods, then their wages should surely be classed as local election expenses.

If the Tory astroturf mercenary army are to comply with the election rules, there needs to be transparency about who these people are, what they're being paid, and which social media accounts they're operating.

A lack of transparency would allow the Tories to bypass election expenses rules, but transparency would wreck the whole project, because what's the point of running a load of fake pro-Tory accounts if everyone knows that they're fake accounts?

Additionally there's the Russia thing. It's a well established fact that Russians have been using "bot farms" staffed by paid propagandists to interfere in other countries' elections. In fact the Tory MP Damian Collins has been probably the most vocal MP in attacking Facebook and Twitter for their inadequate responses to questions about Russian meddling. 

The fact that the Tory Chairman is suddenly proposing that the Tories use the exact same shady "bot farms" and astroturfing propaganda tactics as the Russians in order to influence political debate creates a very strong impression that the Tory party is a ridiculously contradictory shambles, where one hand literally doesn't have a clue what the other is doing.

Then there's probably the most obvious problem of the lot. If you have so little natural support that you need to pay people to campaign for you, you quite obviously don't have any policies that are actually worth campaigning for.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The most viral Tory Tweet of 2018 so far is a grovelling apology for defamation!

There's no better proof of the absolute ineptitude of the Tories when it comes to social media than the Tory MP and vice-chair Ben Bradley issuing a humiliating retraction of his seriously defamatory comments about Jeremy Corbyn. 

On the 19th of February I made a defamatory statement about @jeremycorbyn. I have apologised to Mr Corbyn and here is the complete text of my apology. Please retweet. pic.twitter.com/6JZc8O9E82

— Ben Bradley MP (@bbradleymp) February 24, 2018

Part of the apology agreement specified by Jeremy Corbyn was that Bradley would Tweet his apology.

The violent Jacob Rees-Mogg supporter likes to dress up as a Nazi for fun!

If you're the kind of person to mindlessly accept the mainstream media presentation of events at face value, you'd now be under the impression that on Friday night a bunch of violent leftist goons tried to attack the hard-right Brextremist, Tory leadership favourite, and darling of the Britain First hate mob Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The reality, as is so often the case, is completely different.

Yes some noisy protesters turned up to interrupt a Jacob Rees-Mogg speech, but Rees-Mogg went over to talk to them and they certainly didn't "attack" him as claimed by desperately dishonest outlets like the (Daily Mail owned) Metro in their coverage of the incident.

As Rees-Mogg was talking to the protesters, one of his supporters waded in violently, striking a young woman twice in the face, escalating the scene from unruly but peaceful protest to a violent melee. 

The mainstream media and a whole bunch of politicians (including a load of clueless Labour Politicians) mindlessly regurgitated the hard-right Guido Fawkes/Breitbart propaganda line that the violence was instigated by the left, when the video evidence proved that it was instigated by the white-shirted Jacob Rees-Mogg supporting goon.

The outrageous Tory opportunist Brandon Lewis even used the Orwellian misrepresentations of this incident smear Jeremy Corbyn and launch a new government crackdown on political protest to supposedly protect free speech.

A crackdown on political protest to protect free speech is bonkers enough in it's own right, but it's off-the-chart lunacy when it's coming from the political party who brought us the gagging law, unprecedented state snooping powers, a plan to ban academics criticising the government, and relies on an army of death threat hurling blue-kippers to crush any signs of dissent within their own party!

The mainstream media obviously didn't bother to investigate the identity of the violent right-wing thug who escalated the situation, because to do so would have totally undermined their carefully crafted propaganda narrative that the left, and ultimately Jeremy Corbyn, are to blame for the violence.

Fortunately independent media did bother to investigate, and the white-shirted goon has been identified as Paul Townsley, a martial arts instructor from Bristol with a penchant for campaigning for Jacob Rees-Mogg to replace Theresa May as leader of the Tory party.
 

Townsley's son then helpfully confirmed that it was his dad who instigated the violence at the event.

And then on the Monday morning the independent blog Skwawkbox delivered the huge scoop that the mainstream media completely missed; pictures of Townsley actually dressed up as a Nazi.

Jacob-Rees-Mogg has denied having any connection with Townsley, but this denial is now coming under scrutiny too, and if Rees-Mogg does have any political, financial, or business connections to this violent hard-right goon, he'd better come clean soon, because independent media will definitely find them.

Whether he has political or financial connections to Townsley or not, a refusal to condemn his violent actions at this point would clearly be another display of cowardice from the Brextremist in chief (after his refusal to condemn the Britain First hate mob who have been mobilising to support him).

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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How Tory cuts to the fire service are killing people

Since 2010 the Tory party has been slashing away at the nation's fire service.

Between March 2010 and March 2016 the Tories axed 9,668 firefighter jobs and the cuts have still been going on for the last year, meaning it's 100% certain the number has easily exceeded 10,000 by now.

The Tories have already slashed the fire service budget by 30% and they have another 20% cut planned by 2020.

By the time of the 2015 General Election the Tories had already shut down 39 fire stations, including 10 in London that were shut down in the same week that the taxpayer owned bank RBS announced a mind-boggling £607 million in bonuses for their staff despite having lost £5.2 billion that year!

The closure of fire stations and the significant reductions in staff and vehicles at remaining stations mean that response times have been soaring all over the country, especially in rural areas. For example in Suffolk the average response time has already increased from 10 minutes to 13 minutes, and with even more Tory cuts in store it's only going to get worse.

Anyone who thinks "oh it's only three minutes, what are you complaining about?" clearly has no experience of how vital seconds can be in an emergency situation, let alone whole minutes.

People are dying because of these cuts. The government's own statistics revealed that the number of fire related deaths soared 17.4% in a single year between 2014/15 and 2015/16.

The Tory minister for policing and the fire service Brandon Lewis is blazé about the deterioration in the nation's fire safety due to the ongoing campaign of Tory cuts, in fact he says that there's room for even more reductions in fire service budgets beyond the 30% cuts they've already announced and the 20% cuts they're planning by 2020.

People are dying because of their fire service cuts and the Tories literally don't care. In fact they're intent on making the situation even worse by continuing their relentless economic assault on the nation's fire service.

Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to reverse the planned Tory cuts and rebuild the fire service. This means that if you vote for a Tory government on June 8th you're voting for more people to die in house fires. You think their lives are a worthwhile sacrifice for whatever benefit you think you'd be getting from a Tory government.

Now that you've read this article and seen the evidence you just can't pretend that's not what you're doing.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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