The following email is from
the Conservative Campaign HQ, it’s packed with the most jaw-droppingly blatant lies and it marks the launch of their election campaign:
Your friends need to see this:
| Our plan is working – and we need to stay on the road to a stronger economy. Please share our poster today and let everyone know:
Let’s stay on the road to a stronger economy When the Conservatives came into office in 2010, Britain was on the brink of bankruptcy. People were losing their jobs and families were worried about the future. So we took difficult decisions to get our economy back on track. Five years later, thanks to the measures we’ve taken and the hard work of the British people, the deficit has been halved, new businesses are opening up across the country, and there are a record number of people in work, with the security of a pay packet. We need to stay on the road to a stronger economy – and your friends need to know about the important choice facing Britain in this election year. Britain has come a long way in five years. We can’t go back to Labour’s way of more borrowing, more debt and higher taxes. Instead, let’s stay on the road that has brought us this far – the road that is securing a better future for everyone in our country. Thank you, Conservative Campaign HQ Promoted by Alan Mabbutt on behalf of the Conservative Party, both at 4 Matthew Parker Street, London, SW1H 9HQ |
Here is my response
Lie number 1. “When we came into office in 2010, Britain was on the brink of bankruptcy.”
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) head rebuked Osborne for lying: Robert Chote said that the UK was never at risk of bankruptcy. Yet despite this public rebuke for lying, the Tories continue to peddle the same lie. Having established the OBR to act as a check on the government, the Chancellor and the Conservative Party might want to listen to its head and finally concede that there was no basis for his claim in 2010.
For the full list of official rebukes for Tory lies, please see here
Lie number 2. “People were losing their jobs and families were worried about the future.”
Note that after an increase in people losing their jobs under the Tory-led Coalition since 2010, the apparent decrease in job losses in the first graph coincides with the introduction of the new benefit sanction regime in 2012.
We know that the Conservatives measure unemployment by using a conveniently heavily biased system called “off-flow” that includes all of the numbers of people thrown off Jobseekers’ Allowance through sanctions. Indeed, it emerged during an ongoing inquiry instigated by the parliamentary Work and Pensions Select Committee, through research conducted by Professor David Stuckler, that more than 500,000 Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) claimants have disappeared from unemployment statistics, without finding work, since the sanctions regime was substantially extended in October, 2012.
And let’s not forget that sanctions are a draconian and target-driven removal of lifeline benefits – the amount of money that the state previously deemed necessary for meeting basic needs, and as such, cannot possibly be justified when all they may ever achieve is forcing people to focus on basic survival rather than on gaining employment. The Work and Pensions Select Committee have accused the Conservatives of using benefit sanctions to massage unemployment figures.
Other problems with off-flow and the far-fetched claims of the Conservative Party are highlighted in: A letter of complaint to Andrew Dilnot regarding Coalition lies about employment statistics.
The Treasury saw a drop in revenue of 25 billion pounds from income tax, which doesn’t tally with the account of rising employment and this certainly refutes the claim that was made about wages rising last year by this Government, too.
As for “families were worried for the future”, the impact of this government’s austerity measures has had a significantly negative impact on women and children, and particularly lone parents. The setting up of the Welfare State enshrined a commitment to state support for those unable to support themselves.
This government is dismantling that commitment. In the process they are destroying many of our basic rights: to universal free healthcare; protection from domestic violence and abuse; decent, affordable housing; pension and employment rights; education and training; and access to the legal system. Some facts:
- More than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit
changes will come from female taxpayers. (Parliamentary research 2011). - 92% of single parents are women. Although they are amongst
the poorest in our society, they face not only the brunt of the cuts
with the slashing of their benefits, but government and media
demonisation as “benefit scroungers”. - Women’s unemployment is rising sharply, largely owing to
public sector cutbacks. Black and minority ethnic women are
particularly hard hit. - Poverty levels not seen since the 1930’s Depression, are
returning, as is childhood malnutrition. - 1 out of 6 charities fear they will have to close in 2013 due to lack of funds.(From the Charities Aid Foundation report 2012).See also: Austerity measures disproportionately affecting women should be consigned to the bonfires of history from November 2014
Lie number 3. “So we took difficult decisions to get our economy back on track.”
Thanks to the Labour government’s excellent management of the consequences of the global crash caused by the banks and financial insitutions, we were out of recession by 2010. So the Tory austerity measures, which targeted the poorest people, were completely unjustifiable. Osborne used the “bankrupcy lie” to legitimise an entirely ideological Tory-led programme of “shrinking the state“, cutting social support for those who need it and slashing public services. However, whilst the poorest paid dearly, this government handed out £107, 000 each per year to millionaires in the form of a “tax break”.
“This government will not cut [the] deficit in a way that hurts those we most need to help, that divides the country, or that undermines the spirit and ethos of our public services.” Keynote speech by David Cameron, at the launch of The Conservative party’s manifesto in Milton Keynes, June 7th 2010.
That was another lie.
The economy is NOT “back on track” at all, despite the savage and punitive cuts imposed on the most vulnerable citizens.
Lie number 4. “The deficit has been halved.”
Cameron has been rebuked twice for lying about “paying down the debt” already. The national debt is still rising. It currently stands at more than twice its level than when the Coalition took office. Osborne is responsible for more debt than every Labour chancellor in history combined. Even the staunchly Tory Spectator commented that it’s: “… a depressing point: the Tory leadership is prepared to use dishonesty as a weapon in this election campaign.”
Fraser Nelson also refutes that the deficit has been halved – see: Which Tory MPs will repeat the porkie about ‘halving’ the deficit?
For a government whose raison d’etre is deficit reduction, the Coalition really isn’t very good at all.
Lie number 5. “New businesses are opening up across the country.”
Thanks to Mike Sivier for the infographic
Lie number 6. “Our plan is working” / “..the road that is securing a better future for everyone in our country.”
Current human rights abuses of women, children and disabled people cannot possibly be regarded as “securing a better future for everyone.” The Tories have also pledged to repeal our human rights act and to withdraw from the European Commission on Human Rights. A government that cannot respect human rights and recognise the equal worth of citizens is certainly not interested in securing a better future for everyone at all. Nor can the slashing of public services, the National Health Service, welfare and other social protections be in anyway about securing a better future for all of us, or even “most” of us.
How is increasing hunger and malnutrition in our “best interests” as a so-called civilised society. This is the 5th wealthiest nation in the world. Shame on this government.
Lie number 7. The first Tory election campaign picture is not a photograph of a British road, as Osborne claimed: The Road to Weimar image shows Tories can’t be trusted to tell the truth. – Mike Sivier.
Let’s not forget the Tory 2010 pre-election promises, broken and deleted from record on the internet. And valid criticism of their spinner of Tory yarns and opposition smears, also deleted. This is not a democratic government that values political accountability, nor is it one that is prepared to bear any scrutiny at all.
And the word “Tories” is clearly an abbreviation of “tall stories”
I think this is the campaign poster that my friends need to see, Mr Cameron, it’s honest, unlike yours, and we aim to make sure that as many people as possible see this, because unlike you, my friends and I are never conservative with the truth.
And that “important choice facing Britain” that you speak of?
Yes, it’s definitely a Labour vote.
Thanks to Robert Livingstone for the excellent and honest memes.
Politics and Insights 
Reblogged this on sdbast.
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Our family has suffered directly and painfully from the ‘austerity’ measures introduced by this government… we are an average working class family, husband working for the minimum wage, children striving to make something of their lives and myself a disabled stay at home mum. All my children wish to attend university, so four children with an average of three years fees at £9000 per year….. not bad just my family alone would start their lives with nearly £110,000 worth of debt just for an education that the conservatives have decided is only a fundamental right of the wealthy…. the list is endless, zero hour contracts, effectively ending any workers rights that were fought so hard for by myself and my ancestors… wiped out in 5 years, benefit cuts and disability allowances axed….. of course only to ‘weed out’ the ‘scroungers and misfits’….. what everyone forgets is that this is a welfare state paid for BY THE WORKING PEOPLE’ of the UK, we are taxed on everything, road tax, VAT, council tax, again the list is endless… so we work for the minimum wage, pay our taxes on everything, pay our ‘national insurance’ contributions, only to be told that we are scroungers and losers if we ever need any of OUR money back because we are in need….. We need to ensure that this country is not run by the ‘entitled’ rich who care only for squirrelling their own (probably corruptly acquired) wealth at the cost of the people they claim to be working for, when in reality they see us as nothing more than cockroaches who are infesting their privileged lifestyle….
Get a grip people of the UK and remember this welfare state is OUR welfare state built and paid for on the backs of the working class.
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Yes, the money paid into the welfare state, or social security if you like, is ours, it was never this government’s to cut and hand out to the millionaires, Dawn, well said.
They can’t be regarded as remotely democratic, as they don’t reflect or serve the needs of the public.
Only a few more months….
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Your children could study in France or Germany for nothing (at least in terms of tuition fees)
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Politicians tell us that Austerity is needed to cut public spending cuts, as this is the cause of the recession. They call a deficit and a national debt, when they are entirely too different things. The UK has had a deficit for 300 years to no ill effect at all. And there is no national debt, as it needs to be 100 per cent of 100 per cent of GDP to be on the road to bankruptcy.
Public spending cannot cause a recession. The high finance folk know recessions come like sometimes in life it must rain and comes from the private finance world not governments.
The biggest lie is that the state pension is a benefit and pensioners are a burden on the state and younger people.
The Coalition’s Pension Bills 2010-2014 will leave the poorest half of the over 60s within working poor / on benefit from unemployment / disability / chronic sick with NIL STATE PENSION FOR LIFE and for bulk of rest
LESS NOT MORE for women born from 1953 and men born from 1951.
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
If Labour did a u-turn in its 2015 manifesto and repealed the Coalition’s Pension Bills 2010-2014 then they could win big in contesting such seats as that of Lib Dem Pensions Minister Steve Webb and even Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg and make up the number of seats in England and Wales to make up for the Labour MP seats predicted to be lost to the SNP in Scotland.
And it would not the taxpayer a penny.
As the Coalition is wrongly calling a surplus since 2013 in the National Insurance Fund, that is actually the
non-paid out state pension since 2013.
The full and ring fenced National Insurance Fund has not needed a top up from tax for decades.
So the Coalition is taking from the poorest workers a compulsory deduction of 12 per cent per year from wages, only to permanently deny 7 years payout to a couple and then cut the state pension massively, if not give it out at all after 2016.
As it is the over 60s who are the best voters, Labour could gain seats in 2015 and form a majority government by paying out the state pension with no cost to the taxpayer, and not the predicted 4-way coalition in a hung parliament, that will paralyse Labour’s hopes of bringing in their policies in parliament in London.
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Reblogged this on nearlydead and commented:
Don’t believe the Tory lie machine
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Thanks nd 🙂
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well said dawn!!I worked all my life until I became too unwell to continue,paid my taxes but now I need help I am labelled a scrounger!! my son was made redundant months ago so had to apply or esa,he missed the bus when he had to sign on Christmas week ,rang them to say he had and was on his way,got sanctioned for 2 weeks and had to claim hardship allowance of the grand sum of £43 for him,his partner and his 2 sons aged 18 months and 6 months!! anyone can become ill or lose their job through no fault of their own but seems nobody thinks it can happen to them,w david Cameron who claimed every penny for his disabled son?,god bless him!!.so many suicides over the past couple of years from disabled and vunerable people ,people need to wake up and see the damge the tories have done,god forbid they get back into power
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Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating.
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Thanks
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It’s no surprise that the wick has been turned down on the torch. But the arsonists of the NHS are planning their next moves. God help the infirm and old after the next election. My pension projection isn’t good and there are some that are so well off, that they can blow their pensions on a good meal and night out. The cuts that are in the pipeline will reduce your homes value and your working wage. After all they need cheap labour from this country to stop the increase in Ukips popularity. I would like a vote on Europe at the election, not a promise or well if we win we will…
So I have no trust in them anymore and the road to recovery needs to be level and not potholed. The Europe question needs to be answered, before we loose the controls at the borders, through cuts. I have already been affected by the NHS cuts and prevented from receiving treatment. Dave drop some of your cabinet before the election or are you worried that they will bring out the knifes just before May. A change of policy may help, but somehow you’re so far out of touch with the poorest people of this country.
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Reblogged this on stewilko's Blog and commented:
Makes me laugh and shudder with utter disgust. Sick awful idiots
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Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & THE SIEGE OF BRITAIN POLITICAL JOURNAL.
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all part of the plan hon.
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Good documentary
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Reblogged this on amnesiaclinic and commented:
The tories have £78m in their election kitty – so there will be much more of these lies all dressed up.
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