Theresa May's Hostile Environment legislation ruled unlawfully racist

In 2014 Theresa May was the Tory Home Secretary who introduced the vile Hostile Environment legislation that ultimately led to the Windrush scandal, but on March 1st 2019 a key plank of that legislation was ruled unlawful by the High Court because of the way it has unleashed a disgusting wave of racism.

The aspect of Hostile Environment that's been found unlawful is the "right to rent" policy that essentially turned private landlords into untrained freelance immigration agents by threatening them with jail and unlimited fines if they were caught renting property to people who couldn't prove their right to live in the UK.

The combination of this policy, and the Tory government's unwillingness to monitor and oversee the system they'd put in place created a massive increase in racism amongst private landlords.

Instead of implementing time consuming checks on residency status, huge numbers of landlords simply decided to not rent to any blacks, Asians, or foreigners, regardless of whether they had the correct paperwork or not.

The Home Office's own research showed that 25% of landlords would refuse to rent property to people unless they had British passports, yet despite their own department providing the compelling proof that their policy was being used to impose racist discrimination in the housing market, the Tory Home Office issued a statement saying that they were "disappointed" with the ruling, and that they're considering an appeal.

So after having one of their flagship policies being declared racist and unlawful by a British court of law, the Tory response isn't to apologise, it's to issue a statement that they're disappointed in the legal judgement against them!

It's important to remember that the "right to rent" policy is only one aspect of Theresa May's barbaric Hostile Environment. She also used similar threats to try to deny employment, banking services, social security, and even medical treatment to people who couldn't immediately prove their right of residence (like Windrush Brits who moved to the UK prior to 1971 and their descendants).

Theresa May and the Tories didn't just legislate to turn landlords into unwilling and untrained immigration enforcement officers, they did the same to bank clerks, teachers, medical professionals, and millions of ordinary employers too.

The attitude was that the Tory government couldn't be bothered to enforce their own immigration laws, so they would offload the task onto ordinary untrained members of the public, with no concern whatever for the fact that proportions of these ordinary people were always going to be racist, or incompetent, or just too damned lazy to bother doing things fairly, or at all.

And then there's the fact that scores of black British citizens have been refused reentry to the UK, including several who ended up dying in exile overseas.

But the Tories and the appalling "centrists" who colluded with Theresa May to impose this racist legislation by abstaining (Labour right-wingers) and even voting in favour of it (most of the Lib-Dems) can't pretend that they didn't know that these Hostile Environment policies would end up unleashing a sickening wave of racism and discrimination against Windrush Brits because they were warned.

Diane Abbott warned them during the parliamentary debate, but they ignored her. Immigration and anti-racism charities warned them from the beginning that these policies would end up stoking racism, but they ignored them. Even the Residential Landlords Association warned that turning landlords into unwilling and untrained immigration enforcement officers would lead to racist discrimination, but the Tories and "centrists" ignored these people too.

But if Tories and "centrists" are talented at one thing in particular, it's completely ignoring concerns over their own policies (just look at the fact that they're all still pushing ruinous austerity dogma even after 9 years of such wanton devastation that even right-wing economic organisations like the IMF and OECD turned their backs on the austerity ideology years ago).

So every time you see the mainstream media fixating on their agenda of portraying the Labour left (who were amongst the tiny minority who actually voted against Theresa May's racist Hostile Environment in 2014) as a hotbed of racism, just remember that the Tories have actually been condemned in court of law for ignoring all the warnings and imposing racist policies that have breached the human rights of thousands of real people.

Just remember that the mainstream media agenda of smearing the Labour left will always take precedence over reporting the observable reality that Theresa May and the Tories are a proven bunch of racists who ignored all the warnings and deliberately implemented unlawfully racist policies.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg is cynically blaming the EU for the horrible consequences of his own actions

In January 2014 Jacob Rees-Mogg was one of many Tory and Lib-Dem politicians to actively vote in favour of Theresa May's vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation that was subsequently used to discriminate against Windrush British citizens.

You can see Rees-Mogg's support for this legislation on the Hansard Parliamentary record.

Let's not pretend that Rees-Mogg and his Tory colleagues were not warned that these rules could be used to discriminate against British citizens without the documentation to prove their nationality, because they were warned by Diane Abbott during the parliamentary debate, and that warning was brushed off with a dose of Theresa May's ridiculously evasive question-dodging waffle.

Rees-Mogg knows perfectly well that it was the legislation that he voted in favour of that created this atmosphere of intimidation and discrimination against Windrush Brits, yet he's popped up on the front page of the Daily Telegraph to spin the extraordinary tale that the EU and pro-Europeans are to blame for the consequences of the UKIP-pandering legislation that he (and most of the other Tory Brextremists) actively voted in favour of.

Here's what he said: "We are not the sort of country that demands to see your papers, but I'm afraid pro-Europeans think we should be They buy into the EU-style relationship between individual and state. It's a shift to state being powerful and individual being weak". 

Yet Rees-Mogg knows perfectly well that he voted in favour of Theresa May's anti-immigrant legislation in order to deny deny housing, employment, social security, pensions, and NHS care to people without the documentation to prove that they are British citizens. 

He knows perfectly well that he voted in favour of Theresa May's legislation to weaken the rights of the individual and to give the state far more powers to discriminate against those without documentation to prove that they're British citizens.

Aside from the fact that Rees-Mogg has completely evaded taking responsibility for his own actions or apologising for supporting such rotten legislation, he's clearly taking the opportunistic cowards' approach of blaming others for what he did himself.

It's bad enough that Rees-Mogg has sunk to the level of blaming his political opponents for the dire consequences of his own actions. But worse than that is the way the Daily Telegraph allowed him to spew this reality-reversing gibberish on their front page, and that other pro-Brexit rags like the Express and Daily Mail rapidly churnalised this rubbish into anti-EU stories of their own.

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Senior government ministers likened Theresa May's anti-immigrant legislation to Nazism, but voted in favour of it anyway!

In 2014 Theresa May introduced the draconian new anti-immigrant powers that the Home Office have subsequently used to dehumanise and persecute the Windrush generation.

These grotesque Faragist rules have been used to deny employment, deny housing, deny health care, and deny social security/pensions to British Windrush citizens, and to make thousands live in constant fear of imprisonment and deportation by their own country.

The parliamentary record makes it clear that a few brave MPs dared to stand up against the tide of extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric to criticise Theresa May's plans, and vote against them. 

Diane Abbott was amongst them, and she had the intelligence and foresight to predict that May's rules could be used to attack British citizens without documentation. The breaking of the Windrush scandal has proven her concerns to have been incredibly prescient and well-founded.

What we didn't know at the time was the secret behind the scenes debates within the coalition government, but in the wake of the Windrush Scandal the senior Civil Servant Bob Kerslake has claimed that some ministers in the coalition government were so concerned that they described Theresa May's new law as being "reminiscent of Nazi Germany".

"There were some who saw it, I shan't name them, as almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the way it's working" - former head of the civil service @SirBobKerslake on the hostile environment policy #newsnight pic.twitter.com/eDVGYvAw8w

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) April 18, 2018

Even more shocking than the revelation that senior government ministers were likening their own government policy to that of the Nazis, was the fact that they just bit their tongues, raised no concerns in public, and then went ahead and actually voted this Nazi-style legislation into law when it went before parliament.

They knew they would have to resign their ministerial positions if they stood their ground and voted against it, so these disgusting self-serving bastards actually voted in favour of a bill they'd privately likened to Nazism for pure political expediency!

The New Labour mob covered themselves in shame too by whipping their MPs into abstaining on Theresa May's Nazi-style immigration witch hunt, while only six principled Labour MPs did the decent thing and opposed it (Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Dennis Skinner, Mark Lazarowicz, Fiona Mactaggart).

This shameful abstention from Labour just goes to show how hopelessly lost they had become in the late New Labour years, but the truly horrific thing is that there were cabinet members in the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition who recognised the fascist intent of Theresa May's bill, but voted in favour of it anyway because they wanted to keep their six figure ministerial salaries.

Perhaps the most worrying thing of all is how far Britain has managed to progress along the road towards totalitarianism with the majority of people not even noticing.

Not only was Theresa May allowed to get away with introducing this vile Nazi-like legislation back in 2014 because members of her own government were too self-serving to speak out, and because of the pathetic abstentionism of the timid and directionless Labour leadership at the time, but this legislation has been allowed to fester away, destroying peoples lives for over four years, and the vile wannabe-tyrant who created it has actually been promoted to Prime Minister!

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Fake News BBC parrot Theresa May's lie as their number one story

Theresa May stood at the dispatch box and lied. She lied that the decision to destroy immigration landing cards was taken by the Labour Party in 2009 when it wasn't. She lied because she was desperately trying to deflect criticism over her grotesque 'hostile environment' policies that led to the dehumanisation, detention, denial of rights and even and deportation of Commonwealth British citizens. And most of all she lied because she thought she could get away with it.

If the British press had any instinct to hold the UK government to account they would have looked into her claim, immediately found it to be contradicted by the previous day's Home Office admission that the documents were destroyed in October 2010, and run a story criticising the Prime Minister for lying to the House of Commons, and for cynically misleading the British public in order to deflect negative attention away from herself.

But that's not what happened. That's not what happened at all. Instead of investigating her claim, the BBC and various other mainstream media outlets uncritically parroted her lie, and helped her misleadingly deflect the Windrush criticism onto others.

Of course the billionaire owned right-wing propaganda rags and the legions of Tory social media propaganda accounts got in on the misdirection act, but the behaviour of the BBC is much more problematic. They didn't just make Theresa May's lie the number one story on their website, they also uncritically regurgitated her lie into millions of homes and workplaces in TV and radio news segments.

When the state broadcaster refuses to investigate even the most blatant of government lies, and instead uncritically parrots the lie into the homes and onto the devices of millions of people, they're not worthy of the name journalists, or news reporters, they're nothing but impotent court stenographers, and cynical mind manipulators.

But let's not forget the real issue here. The real issue isn't that a batch of documents were destroyed and when. It's that in 2014 Theresa May introduced horrific new anti-immigrant rules giving the government the power to deny employment, deny health care, deny benefits and pensions that people have paid for through decades of National Insurance contributions, and to make British citizens live in constant fear of imprisonment and deportation to places many of them last saw when they were toddlers.

The reason she inflicted this appalling state of limbo on thousands of British citizens was just to grub a few votes off UKIP by appealing to the extreme-right ultranationalist anti-immigrant demographic.

Nobody in the Tory party complained about this blatant Faragisation of the Tory party and the UK government back in 2014, and even now still none of the supposedly more liberal One Nation Tories dares to stand up and criticise what Theresa May has done in their name.

Theresa May brought in these harsh new rules in 2014, and she was undeniably warned at the time by Diane Abbott that such rules could be used against British Commonwealth citizens without paperwork, but May just evaded the question and waffled on about whatever she wanted to, in the way we've all become all-too-familiar with since she became Prime Minister.

If the BBC was up to it's job it would have reported that Theresa May lied. If the so called free press that are not constrained by impartiality rules were up to their jobs they would be calling for Theresa May's resignation for introducing such disgusting rules, then lying to parliament and the public to try to deflect the negative attention. And if Theresa May had the slightest shred of personal integrity she's would have already shown her contrition by tendering her resignation.

None of that has happened. None of that is likely to happen. But the more the media and the political establishment class circle the wagons to protect their own elitist class from the rest of us, the more furious the British public are going to get until something gives.

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Theresa May's despicable response to the Windrush scandal

The Tories know that their treatment of Windrush citizens has been absolutely despicable, but instead of taking personal responsibility for it and resigning, they've resorted to the most ridiculous campaign of bluster, smears, misrepresentations, and outright lies.

The absurd Data Protection excuse

When a whistleblower revealed that the Tories had deliberately destroyed the archive of landing cards from the Windrush generation the first Tory instinct was to lie their way out of trouble.

The Tories initially tried to claim that the archives were destroyed because of Data Protection concerns.

The first thing to note is that this is a Tory government that wilfully sold off our private NHS medical data to drug companies and health insurers without our consent. To hear them suddenly pretending that they care about data protection laws is most absurd.

The next thing to note is that Data Protection rules have a very clear exemption for material of historical importance. You'd have to be completely cracked to imagine that the boarding cards of the Windrush generation who came to help Britian rebuild after WWII had no historical significance whatever and needed to be lobbed into a skip.

And one final point on this ridiculous excuse is that *if* the Tories know for a fact that data protection concerns really were their motivation for destroying these documents, they know who authorised the destruction, but they're hiding that information from the public domain presumably because it's harmful to their party.

Anti-Semitism smears

When Theresa May was cornered by Jeremy Corbyn on the destruction of the Windrush boarding cards she resorted to the age-old Tory tactic of misdirecting attention with smears. She said she was going to ignore the question because Jeremy Corbyn has supposedly "let anti-Semitism run rife through his party".

The facts of the matter are difficult to square with Theresa May's smear-mongering: Anti-Semitic views are very much more common in the Tory ranks than in the Labour ranks. Labour Party members are significantly less likely to hold anti-Semitic views than the general public, rates of anti-Semitism have declined dramatically since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015, and last but not least Theresa May's vile anti-immigrant 'hostile environment' legislation was all about attracting the extreme-right ultranationalist blue-kip demographic who are by far and away the most anti-Semitic demographic of all.

Denial of personal responsibility

The legislation that has been used to dehumanise, deny employment and healthcare, and deport Windrush citizens was introduced in 2014 by Theresa May. She was warned of the dangers at the time. In the 3rd reading parliamentary debate Diane Abbott clearly raised the problem of Theresa May's harsh new immigration rules being used against British citizens, but Theresa May just fobbed it off with a load of evasive waffle.

Theresa May was warned at the time that her attack on immigrants could end up wrecking the lives of people who have every right to live here, she ignored it, and now she thinks that she can just say "sorry" and wash her hands of responsibility, rather than offering her resignation like anyone with a shred of integrity would do.

Absurd misdirection

Despite the Home Office having admitted that they destroyed the Windrush landing cards Theresa May decided to blame the decision on Labour with a truly ridiculous piece of misdirection (one that was lapped up and uncritically reported by the right-wing press and the BBC).

The misdirection involved switching two very distinct decisions. In 2009 the Labour run Home Office made the decision to move out of the Croydon building in which the Windrush landing cards were kept. And in 2010, under Theresa May's watch, the Home Office made the decision to destroy the cards rather than find a place for them in the new building.

By switching decision one and decision two to blame Labour for her own department's decision, Theresa May is once again assuming the general public to be a total bunch of irredeemable half-wits who couldn't tell the difference between a blue frog and a yellow frog because they're both frogs.

Another assumption they're making is that we're so dim-witted that we'll simply forget that they openly admitted destroying the documents just one day previously (using their absurd data protection story).

Conclusion

If you're the kind of person who abhors institutional racism and believes that people should take personal responsibility for their own errors and misjudgements, Theresa May's actions in regards to the Windrush scandal should sicken you to the core.

If however you're totally chilled about institutional racism and prefer your politicians to resort to ridiculously responsibility evasion, unconvincing stories, blatant smears, cynical misdirections, and outright lies the instant they get caught doing anything wrong, then Theresa May's behaviour should have you purring with pride in a job well done.

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Who were the 18 MPs who bravely voted against Theresa May's anti-immigrant lunacy in 2014?

Back in 2014 the then Home Secretary Theresa May introduced new immigration rules designed to create a 'hostile environment' for immigrants. The introduction of these harsh new immigration rules was clearly a ploy to appeal to the extreme-right ultranationalist demographic, and it coincided with a significant upsurge in anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Tories, and especially from Theresa May.

In light of the Windrush scandal the Tories simply cannot pretend that they were not warned about the serious consequences of this piece of legislation. They were warned, and these warnings are recorded on the Hansard parliamentary record.

During the debate Diane Abbot raised concerns that these harsh new powers could have negative impacts on could have on "people who are British nationals, but appear as if they might be immigrants" (people like the Windrush generation and other perfectly legal migrants from the Commonwealth).

Theresa May completely dodged this question with the kind of evasive waffle we've all become so familiar with since she became Prime Minister.

The Lib-Dem MP Sarah Teather (who went on to quit parliament in disgust at the grotesque Lib-Dem colusion with the Tories between 2010 and 2015) raised concerns about people being denied health care.

These concerns have been totally vindicated as it's turned out that Windrush immigrants who have lived in the UK since childhood and paid tax their entire working lives have been denied healthcare, including life-or-death cancer treatments.

Others to speak out were the The Green MP Caroline Lucas who raised concerns about the shocking 32% error rate in Home Office deportation decisions, John McDonnell who spoke about the appalling conditions in immigration prisons, and Pete Wishart of the SNP who called it a "dreadful" and "terrible" piece of legislation and concluded that the Tories might as well have had Nigel Farage at the dispatch box rather than Theresa May because "this is nothing other than a UKIP bill".

Jeremy Corbyn was the last of the MPs who bravely stood up in opposition to the vile Blue-kip anti-immigrant Juggernaut, here's what he said:

"I will vote against the Bill on Third Reading for a large number of reasons. We have ordained that the Home Secretary will have executive power to take away citizenship in the future and to create a generation of stateless people. The handing over of that power is, I think, a very dangerous thing for any Parliament to do.  

 We have a number of other serious concerns about the Bill, such as those covered in the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about the forced removal of people; the death of Jimmy Mubenga, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather); the use of the detention system; the denial of health care access; the problems of forcing landlords to become agents of the Home Office; and the reality of life for those people who have legitimately sought asylum in Britain and are starving on the streets of our cities because we do not have a system in place to give them proper support.  

The Bill does not answer any of those problems. It is based on prejudice and headline chasing and has nothing to do with the real needs of people who are desperately seeking support, help and assistance rather than the cold behaviour shown by the Government today."

The bill was voted on immediately after Corbyn's passionate appeal for sanity in the face of headline chasing, UKIP-appealing, extreme-right, anti-immigrant lunacy from the government. Only 18 MPs (including the two tellers) voted against the bill.

Now that the disgusting consequences of this grotesque legislation are becoming more clear (especially in relation to the Windrush generation who have been imprisoned, made homeless, denied work, denied health care, and even deported as a consequence) it's very important to pay tribute to the 18 brave MPs who stood up and voted against this travesty of a bill, while the rest of the House of Commons blithely went along with this overt display of blue-kip extremism by Theresa May.

Diane Abbott (Labour)
Jeremy Corbyn (Labour)
Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru)
Mark Lazarowicz (Labour)
John Leech (Liberal Democrat)
Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru)
Caroline Lucas (Green)
Angus MacNeil (SNP)
Fiona Mactaggart (Labour)
John McDonnell (Labour)
Angus Robertson (SNP)
Dennis Skinner (Labour)
Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat)
David Ward (Liberal Democrat)
Mike Weir (SNP)
Eilidh Whiteford (SNP)
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru)
Pete Wishart (SNP)

Note that all three Plaid Cymru, and the one Green MP all voted against the bill. Five of the six SNP representatives voted against it. Just six MPs from the Labour left voted against it (three of whom are now the leader, shadow Home Secretary, and Shadow Chancellor), and just three of the 57 Lib-Dems voted against it (one who resigned in disgust in 2015 and two who lost their seats in the furious public backlash against their party's collusion with the Tories at the 2015 General Election). Not a single Tory MP voted against it.

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Playing 'good Jew - bad Jew' to delegitimise Jewish people you disagree with is blatant anti-Semitism

One of the most extraordinary things about the anti-Semitism furore is the way that Jeremy Corbyn's right-wing opponents are prepared to issue blatantly anti-Semitic statements in order to attack him as an anti-Semite, but they repeatedly get a total free pass from the mainstream media.

First we had Theresa May using the grotesque "self-hating Jew" trope to attack every single Jewish member of the Labour Party as tolerant of anti-Semitism, then we had the Tory government minister Sajid Javid hiding behind parliamentary privilege to smear hundreds of Jewish Labour activists as supporters of the fascist ideology that resulted in the genocide of their forefathers!

Incredibly, right-wingers have tried to argue that silencing and delegitimising Jewish voices you don't agree with by smearing left-wing Jewish people as "self-hating Jews" and "neo-fascists" is somehow not anti-Semitic behaviour!

Now the right-wing (and non-Jewish) Labour MP John Woodcock has gone even further by slamming Jeremy Corbyn for celebrating the Jewish Seder festival with a left-wing Jewish group called Jewdas.

Apparently Corbyn is still an anti-Semite for attending and participating in a Jewish festival, because the people there are somehow the wrong kind of Jews.

Using grotesquely divisive 'good Jew - bad Jew' shit to delegitimise and dismiss Jewish voices you disagree with is about as clear an example of anti-Semitism as it's possible to see. But Woodcock didn't just get a free pass on it, his vile comments were uncritically repeated all over the mainstream media, including the oh-so-impartial BBC.

It's difficult not to resort to anger when you see a person resorting to spectacularly divisive anti-Semitism in order to smear one of their political opponents as anti-Semitic, but perhaps the best response to this kind of sick hypocrisy is humour.

One of the most telling responses to Woodcock's vile effort to delegitimise and silence left-wing Jews came from the poet and children's laureate Michael Rosen, who wrote him a poem (see picture).

Not only did Woodcock resort to the anti-Semitic game of dismissing Jews who don't agree with him as illegitimate Jews, he also attached a link to the filthy extreme-right Guido Fawkes hate chamber to his Tweet.

If anyone has any doubt about why politicians (and especially Labour MPs) should not be giving free publicity to Guido, just find any Guido article about Sadiq Khan or Diane Abbott and take a look through the disgusting tidal wave of bigoted and abusive filth in the comments section.

Not only has Woodcock resorted to the anti-Semitic 'good Jew - bad Jew' game in order to smear Jeremy Corbyn as anti-Semitic for actually attending and participating in a Jewish religious festival in his spare time ... he's also posted a link to one of the most outrageously bigoted extreme-right hate chambers in British politics whilst pretending to oppose bigotry!

Here are a selection of Guido comments about Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott for you to consider as you evaluate John Woodcock's decision to support this site whilst simultaneously posturing as someone who is opposed to bigotry!

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Exposing Amber Rudd's lamentable gibberish about cyber security

In the wake of the WannaCry ransomware attack on the NHS, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd gave a number of excruciating interviews in which she talked a load of lamentable rubbish.

The mainstream media simply haven't Tories to account. Rather than focusing on the astounding negligence that allowed such a big attack to happen, much of the mainstream media have been passing the story off as a "one of those things" type of event, and refusing to subject the nonsense Amber Rudd was spouting to critical scrutiny.

Where's Jeremy?

Before we get to dissecting the absolute crap Amber Rudd was talking about the NHS ransomware attack, it's worth asking why she was wheeled out to talk about it rather than the actual health minister Jeremy Hunt. Presumably Hunt was hiding because he's even more IT illiterate than the Amber Rudd, which is a terrifying thought given how much contemptible rubbish she spouted herself.

They were warned

On the actual morning before the attack the British Medical Journal published an article by Dr Krishna Chinthapalli, a neurology registrar at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. The article identified the lax attitude to cyber security and warned that hospitals are "ideal targets" for ransomware attacks, and that "hospitals will almost certainly be shut down by ransomware this year".

If a neurology registrar was aware of this kind of threat and warning about it, what excuse do the Tories have for sitting on their hands.

Seven years warning!

The Tories had seven years warning that Microsoft would be turning off security updates on the outdated Windows XP system, however it's been estimated that some 90% of NHS hospitals are still using this outdated operating system.

In 2014 there was the option of a rolling one-year renewal of the protection for  NHS systems still using XP but the Tories turned it down in order to save a paltry £5.5 million. As a result the NHS is facing an enormous bill to recover the damage caused by this ransomware attack.

The Tory government sat on their hands and did virtually nothing, leaving the NHS extremely vulnerable to this attack, yet the majority of the press are playing this story as if it's "just one of those things" and refusing to subject Amber Rudd's comments to the critical scrutiny they so thorughly deserve.

Astounding negligence

Here are some damning statistics [source]

• The average annual spend on cyber security across England's NHS trusts is a paltry £22,000! 

• 43 NHS Trusts admitted that they don't know how much they spend.

• 7 NHS trusts (covering two million patients) admitted that they spend absolutely nothing!

If these statistics aren't compelling proof of the Tory government's calamitously negligent attitude towards cyber security, then I really don't know what is.

Not the time for boasting

In response to this ransomware attack Amber Rudd had the gall to claim that "the UK is a world leader in cyber security".

If hackers can disable our vital infrastructure and services so easily because of the government's incredibly lax approach to dealing with vulnerabilities that they were repeatedly warned about, we're clearly not a world leader in cyber security are we?

The idea that the aftermath of probably the most humiliating cyber security cock up in history is the time for actually bragging about how wonderful our cyber security measures are is so out-of-touch with reality it would be comical if it weren't so damned serious.

Confused priorities

Instead of focusing on the task of ensuring that our vital national infrastructure and services are safe from hacking and acts of cyber-terrorism Amber Rudd and the Tories focused their efforts on passing the Snoopers' Charter.

The Tories were so utterly fixated on enabling the Food Standards Agency, the Gambling Commission, the Health and Safety Executive and dozens of other non-terrorism related government agencies to trawl through the private communications data of innocent people, that they left the door wide open to this kind of cyber attack.

Rudd has clearly confused cyber-security with cyber surveillance. The NHS ransomware debacle is absolute proof that the Tories are dangerously negligent when it comes to cyber security.

What we're world leaders at is intrusive and oppressive cyber surveillance laws that would have made the Soviet KGB or the East German Stasi turn green with envy.

Backed up?

Amber Rudd told BBC Breakfast that she didn't know whether the NHS files that are being held to ransom are even backed up.

If there was ever an example of an unprepared minister not knowing what the hell they're talking about, this was it ... Yet somehow the mainstream media have not fixated anything like as much on this car crash demonstration of incompetence as they did on Diane Abbott's inconsequential display of innumeracy last week.

Lessons to be learnt

Perhaps the most astounding of Amber Rudd's responses to the biggest cyber attack the NHS has ever suffered was the observation that " "There may be lessons to learn from this".

There is no doubt about it whatever. Of course there are bloody lessons to learn from this.

One of the main lessons for us to learn is not to trust the Tories to protect our nation's vital infrastructure and services from cyber attacks, because despite repeated warnings that something like this was virtually inevitable, they negligently allowed this attack to happen on their watch.

More media bias

We all saw how the mainstream press relentlessly attacked and ridiculed the shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott after she jumbled up her numbers when trying to promote what is actually a very good policy of reversing the savage Tory police cuts by hiring an extra 10,000 police. 

Yes the car crash interview was excruciating, and no I'm not saying that such ineptitude didn't deserve coverage, but the problem is the way the mainstream press have simply let the actual Home Secretary Amber Rudd get away with talking absolute gubbins in a series of car crash interview about this NHS ransomware attack.

Some inconsequential innumeracy from Diane Abbott dominates the news agenda for a whole day, but Amber Rudd spouting lamentable nonsense over a massive Tory cock-up barely gets any critical scrutiny at all!

Conclusion

Amber Rudd has clearly demonstrated that she's miles out of her depth; that she's unwilling to accept any Tory responsibility for the atrocious negligence that preceded this attack; and that she's even got the brass neck to boast about how great things are in the wake of this humiliating failure.

But instead of hold her to account and subject her pathetic nonsense to any kind of actual scrutiny, swathes of the mainstream press have dutifully regurgitated her ludicrous comments entirely free from any critical analysis whatever.

The fact that the mainstream media fixated so much on Diane Abbott's inconsequential display of innumeracy, yet they let Amber Rudd completely off the hook for talking such contemptible garbage about an incredibly negligent Tory cock up, is yet another demonstration of the way a significant proportion of the mainstream media are intent on blatantly favouring the Tories.

 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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