A critique of the fake-Jennifer copy n' paste Tory propaganda operation

A hyper-partisan Tory diatribe is doing the rounds on social media, with many of the iterations purporting to be from the actress and comedian Jennifer Saunders.

The reality is that the poorly written blame-shifting Tory rant was one of those dire copy n' paste jobs that are always doing the rounds in Tory, far-right, and Brexity circles (like the copy n' paste post pretending that the poster had read the Lisbon Treaty for example).

The actual Jennifer Saunders has been forced to come out and distance herself from this vile Tory rant, but that hasn't stopped the page owners from crying victimhood because they were cornered into deleting the post, and posting yet more pro-Tory propaganda on the Saunders fan page.

It's become clear that hyper-partisan Tories are infecting all kinds of local "for sale" pages, community groups, and fan pages with their disgusting pro-government propaganda, and this obnoxious copy n' paste rant is still doing the rounds in Facebook pages and groups all over the country.

As far as I can see nobody has done a comprehensive critique of this mega-viral copy n' paste nonsense, so I guess it's up to me to go through it point by point:

Anyone who has questions about the government's handling of the crisis is a "crayon eater".

An opening sentence aiming insults at anyone who questions the government suggests that this is going to be a very long way from an impartial appraisal of the facts.

The funny thing about this opening salvo is that someone has actually corrected the grammatical errors that appeared in the now deleted version from Fake-Jennifer, but they somehow decided not to correct any of the provable lies, deceptions, and displays of grotesque political illiteracy in the rest of the statement!

This is a lie. Plain and simple. It's a complete misrepresentation of how NHS procurement works.

In 2018 the Tory government set up a government-run company called NHS Supply Chain to manage NHS supplies, with the Tory health secretary Matt Hancock controlling the shares, meaning the government does deal with logistics for the NHS.

The Tories restructured the NHS supply chains to put the health secretary in ultimate charge, but the hyper-partisan copy n' paste Tory liars definitely don't want you to know that.

Furthermore the Tories repeatedly ignored warnings that NHS stockpiles were woefully inadequate. Jeremy Hunt ignored the warnings after Operation Cygnus in 2016, and Hancock ignored the warningsover inadequate PPE again in 2019.

It's difficult to express the level of contempt you should feel towards someone claiming to "respect" NHS doctors and nurses, whilst simultaneously seeking to deflect blame away from their beloved Tories, and onto the NHS.

Operation Cygnus took place in 2016, not "two years ago", and as already mentioned, the NHS actually said that they were unprepared for a respiratory pandemic, with particular concerns about the hopeless lack of protective gear, plus insufficient intensive care beds and respirators.

The Tories were still busy inflicting their austerity cuts to the NHS, and further reducing bed capacity, so the appeals for more PPE fell on deaf ears. The claim that the Operation Cygnus report included the quotes "we can flex" and "we are OK" is frankly absurd, as anyone who has ever set eyes on an internal bureaucratic report before can attest.

The Brexit bit is absolutely confounding. It's ridiculously obvious that four years of Brexit chaos, stemming from the fact the Brexiteers never even had a plan for how to actually do it, means government has been utterly distracted on all the Brexit issues.

The idea that the NHS said "we are OK" is bizarre enough, but "we are OK because ... Brexit" is absolute ridiculousness.
 

Questioning whether the NHS Supply Chain company which is ultimately controlled by Matt Hancock even understand that ships take time to travel from China is being posited as a defence of the government!

Then there's a criticism of globalisation. Why oh why didn't we prioritise UK-based manufacturers? Well because if any government had attempted to do that then the Tories and their minions in the right-wing propaganda rags would have screeched "protectionism", "communism", "Marxism" at them, just like they did with Labour's modest proposals to renationalise rail, water, and the national grid.

You see running things in the national interest is absolutely forbidden by the Tory ideology, if there's the remotest chance of it interfering with the profiteering of capitalists.

And now to make excuses for this grotesque capitalism above the national interest Tory ideology, the Tory tribalists are making out that NHS managers are responsible for the neoliberal globalisation agenda, not the politicians who made the prioritisation of local suppliers illegal!

As a result of four decades of neoliberal pro-privatisation politics, mainly pushed by the Tories, the majority of care homes are now operated by profit-seeking private companies, therefore the Tories are absolved of blame!

The idea that the government should just let care home residents die in a pandemic because the care home is privately operated is quite frankly disgusting.

OK, if the care homes couldn't cope with their responsibilities during the crisis and needed bailing out at the public expense, lets have the debate about renationalisation of care services after the crisis is over, but the government's first priority in this pandemic should obviously be to prevent people from dying, wherever they happen to be. 

It doesn't matter how many times you write MANAGERS in capital letters, the fact remains that the secretary of state Matt Hancock has ultimate responsibility.

And look, it's not just the NHS to blame for the Tory failings either, it's journalists and ordinary members of the public too (who the copy n' paste Tory propaganda brigade quite obviously regard with absolute contempt).

Anyone with any sense can see that the corporate media are crap, not because they criticise the Tories, but because they continually allow them to play politics on easy mode, whilst continually attacking the opposition, and even outright faking scandals about them.

As for ordinary members of the public expressing their opinions, you hardly had to be a trained virologist or epidemiologist to figure out that just letting the virus spread exponentially through the population for weeks instead of following the established WHO protocol (test, trace, isolate) was a very poor strategy in the crucial early stages.

That's why South Korea - who tested and contact traced from the beginning - has a total of 243 deaths, and the UK has 20,000+ according to the official statistics, and almost certainly double that when all the care home and community deaths are finally counted.
 

"The government has probably made some mistakes" is some hell of an under-estimate in regards to a crisis that's taken tens of thousands of lives, followed by rather a lot of words to argue that anyone who dares to discuss what these "probable mistakes" might be, deserves to be dead.

Ah yes, "let's get through this and beat this together" by ... erm ... copy n' pasting incredibly divisive, hyper-partisan Tory screeds full of outright lies, blame-shifting, Trumpian rhetoric, ALL CAPS SHOUTING, and a load of insults and sneering condescension towards ordinary members of the public who dare to ever engage their critical thinking skills.

The worst thing about fake-Jennifer and all the other Tory partisans sharing this outrageous rubbish is that they're probably stupid enough to believe that propagating such egregious blame-shifting lies is good for the country, because they're incapable of separating the interests of Boris Johnson and his cabinet of hard-right thugs, from the interests of the nation as a whole (which are obviously best served by not having a lazy, incompetent, elitist liar like Johnson running the show).

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Why you need to speak to someone who works in the NHS

I'm not asking you to just believe what I write here (even though I've backed it all up with links to evidence). 

I'm not asking you to believe Jeremy Corbyn when he says that our NHS needs to be saved from the Tories, and their wanton ideological vandalism of it.

I'm asking you to speak to someone who works in the NHS to ask them about a number of specific issues.

Almost everyone knows someone who works for the NHS. 

Everyone knows someone who knows someone who works in the NHS.

If you have to ask a mutual friend to introduce you to an NHS worker so you can meet them for a coffee/beer and chat about the issues facing the NHS, I'm sure they wouldn't mind at all. 

In fact they'd probably be very happy to meet someone who shows some actual interest in their work and working conditions.

Some of the issues to ask about:

• Ask them how they think the £20 billion in NHS cuts between 2010 and 2015 affected the quality of care the NHS could offer, and how another £22 billion in NHS cuts is affecting the quality of care the NHS can offer now.

• Ask them how they feel about the way the Tories introduced new rules to make it much easier for them to force the closure of NHS services without taking the views of local people or staff into consideration.

• Ask them whether waiting list times and record waiting times at A&E departments have been rising, and whether they agree with the Tory policy of simply scrapping any waiting list targets that are being missed and scrapping the four hour A&E target instead of actually doing anything to address the dreadful problems they've created.

• Ask them whether they think Theresa May's decision to scrap NHS bursaries had anything to do with the 31% decline in applications for nursing courses, and the shortfall of an astounding 70,000 nurses in the NHS, and whether they think the NHS recruitment crisis will get even worse as the supply of new nurses slumps dramatically as fewer and fewer new nurses enter the system.

• Ask them about NHS privatisation and how ever more NHS services being carved up and given away to profiteering private sector health companies like Serco, Virgin Health and (the major Tory party donors) Circle, reaching an all-time record of £9.2 billion worth of NHS privatisation in 2018.

• Ask them how they feel about the years of below inflation pay rises for NHS staff whilst MPs bagged a whopping great 10% pay rise for themselves.

• Ask them how they feel about the Tories' £4.6 billion cut in the social care budget, and what kind of effect that is having on the already overstretched hospitals that are having to pick up the pieces.

• Ask them whether the junior doctors were treated fairly and with respect during their confrontation with then-Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

• Ask them whether Jeremy Hunt's comments that people should just Google their health symptoms instead of seeking medical advice was a risk to public health.

• Ask them whether they share Theresa May's view that Jeremy Hunt was "an excellent health secretary".

• Ask them if they actually know anyone working in the NHS who has confidence in the pompous liar that Boris Johnson has put in charge now (Matt Hancock).

• Ask them about the £3 billion wasted on the massive 2012 top down reorganisation of the NHS that the Tories repeatedly promised not to do before they sneaked back into power in 2010.

• Ask them how they feel about the scores of A&E units, maternity wards, mental health facilities and NHS walk in centres that have been shut down by the Tories since 2010, and whether these closures have markedly increased demand elsewhere in the NHS.

• Ask them about the secret plans the Tories drew up to close even more A&E units, maternity wards and walk in centres.

• Ask them if their own primary care trust is in deficit.

• Ask them how they feel about the Tories going on about how much they care about mental health issues as they simultaneously slash the mental health budget and instruct their outsourcing contractors to specifically discriminate against people with mental health conditions.
  
• Ask them if they know any EU citizens who work in the NHS and whether they have left, or are thinking of leaving because of the threat of a ruinous Tory hard Brexit.
  
• Ask them whether the 92% decline in the number of NHS nurses arriving from EU countries is likely to exacerbate the NHS recruitment crisis.
  
• Ask them how they feel about the Chairman of Conservative Health saying that the only way the Tories could bring in charging for NHS services is if there was a feeling in the country that the NHS is "falling apart". and whether the ongoing crisis in the NHS might actually be part of a deliberate Tory strategy to bring the days of universal health care to an end.

• Ask them whether they feel that their colleagues are ever more stressed and overworked as they try to cope with increasing demand for services while funding and staffing levels are slashed year after year.

• Ask them whether they think the NHS can actually survive if the Tories carry on like this.

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Who on earth would trust the Tories?

The Tory party reaction to the Cambridge Analytica scandal is every bit as cynical and opportunistic as you'd expect.

Instead of focusing on the election rigging psychological warfare tools these shady characters have built on the the Facebook data they stand accused of stealing, the Tories are attempting to reframe the whole debate to paint Facebook as the big bad villains, and to promote the Tories' pre-existing agenda of clamping down on Internet freedoms.

In an article for George Osborne's Evening Standard propaganda sheet the Tory Culture minister Matt Hancock has bragged about his plan to "bring an end to the Wild West culture" of social media. 

This article makes his Facebook-blaming, responsibility-shifting, censorship-pushing agenda all too clear. Not just by what he says, but also by what he conspicuously fails to say.

Here are some of the many issues that Matt Hancock "forgot" to mention in his "Wild West" article.

• Cambridge Analytica is a subsidiary of a company called SCL which has numerous financial ties with the Tory Party.

• The SCL chairman is a former Tory MP called Geoffrey Pattie and was previously run by the chairman of Oxfordshire Conservative Association Julian Wheatland.

• One of SCL's main investors is Roger Gabb who has donated over £700,000 to the Tory Party.

• Two other major Tory party donors (Jonathan Marland and Vincent Tchenguiz) have also invested money in SCL.

• The disgraced head of Cambridge Analytica Graham Nix had undisclosed meetings with the Tory Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

• In the run up to the 2017 General Election the Tories openly bragged to the Daily Mail about how they were going to use Cambridge Analytica to win the election. 

• In the end the Tories never signed the deal with Cambridge Analytica, but they definitely used similar tactics to bombard targeted individuals with masses of pro-Tory propaganda and outright lies.

• The Tories spent a mind-boggling £2.1 million on their campaign of Facebook dark ads, which is extremely odd behaviour for people who are now intent on making out that Facebook are the big bad villains of the story.

• The Tories know that Cambridge Analytica worked with the Leave.EU campaign to help rig the Brexit referendum, but they're continuing with the Brexit process regardless and show no inclination towards launching an investigation into whether Cambridge Analytica and Leave.EU committed criminal offences during the referendum campaign.

• The Tories know their bigoted Northern Irish DUP bedfellows had contracts with the Cambridge Analytica/SCL election riggers, but they're not going to do anything about that because they know their government will fall without the support of the 10 DUP votes they bought with £1 billion of taxpayers cash.

• The Tories have a demonstrable track record of using legitimate concerns as a smokescreen to attack Internet freedoms and undermine free speech in general.

One of the reasons the Tories are trying to shift the focus of the blame onto Facebook is really obvious. They recognise that the intimate financial links between the big players in this dodgy election rigging outfit and their own party look terrible, so shifting as much of the blame as possible to Facebook is a simple deflection tactic.

Another reason they're keen to blame Facebook is the £2.1 million they blasted on targeted dark ads.

The Tories outspent Labour by 4:1 on Facebook ads, but their influence on the site was more than negated by a rag-tag bunch of viral left-wing bloggers working on shoestring budgets.

If you'd spent such a huge amount of money in an effort to buy Facebook popularity and ended up getting humbled by a tiny bunch of bloggers who didn't even spend a single penny on buying Facebook ads, you'd be furious too.

Which brings us to what the Tories have in store for Facebook. There's no doubt whatever that the Tories will seek to use this mess to their own advantage, even though the money trail flows right back to the Tory party.

The most likely approach they're going to take is to strong-arm Facebook into clamping down on the freedom that has allowed independent voices to gain popularity by challenging the pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, wage repression pushing, welfare slashing, hard-right political agenda that so often goes completely unchallenged by the mainstream media.

Meanwhile they have absolutely no intention of clamping down on the use of the kind of targeted political dark ads they used extensively during the 2017 general election campaign. 

Sensible proposals include updating the existing rules against spreading political lies during elections, a requirement that all political ads be logged with the electoral authorities, and for geographically targeted social media ads to be classified as local election spending.

You'll never hear Tory politicians proposing any of these measures, because all of them would go against their self-interest.

When the Tories say that they want to make the Internet "safe", it's obvious that what they actually mean is that they want to turn social media into another comfortable "safe space" for themselves, where those who challenge the hard-right neoliberal orthodoxy are pushed to the margins. And if they can cynically make use of a crisis that was actually created by their fellow Tories at SCL/Cambridge Analytica to achieve it, all the better for them.

Anyone who paid attention to the bullet points above has got to be able to see that a bunch of Tories promising to keep us safe on the Internet is akin to a skulk of foxes promising to take care of security for your chicken coop.

 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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