I've been watching the general election campaigns warming up with some interest, particularly with respect to what appears to be increasing desperation in Tory ranks.
But this is what really struck me as to how low the Tories, or in this case one of their chief bloggers, will go.
These three tweets were posted last night on Twitter by a blogger who calls himself "Tory Bear". His tweets, and blogs, are generally a series of childish personal insults, smears and innuendo, but even he has sunk to a new low here.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I always felt that mocking politicians was fine, but mocking disability is just cheap and nasty.
Similarly, I think it's reasonable to hold a politician to account for his actions, but to deliberately repeat smears about drug dependency is not only desperately vicious, but also seeks to trivialise what is a serious issue for thousands of people.
And finally, just in case you thought the above wasn't tasteless enough, there's always the last resort of the utterly vile scoundrel: label your opponent as a paedophile.
Jolly well done, Tory Bear. Cowardly enough to tweet this disgusting abuse, and cowardly enough to try to delete the evidence when called to account for yourself.
Yep, the offending tweets have now been deleted. Classy.
No doubt he'll get away with it, and be free to continue his trivial vendettas against other people, but I for one think this spokesman for the Nasty Party has shown his true colours. Vote blue - fight dirty. Just the sort of people we want to ru(i)n our country for the next four or five years.
I have been casually following the Healthcare debate in the United States recently, most notably because of some of the more bizarre and outrageous statements that have been made about Britain's "socialised" healthcare system. Did I say statements? I meant lies.
For example, Fox News's Glenn Beck - never a man closely acquainted with the truth at the best of times - claimed that world-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking would have been left to die by the NHS. Hawking immediately rebutted:
"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he said. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."
That just about covers that, then. Well done Glenn. As "fair and balanced" as we have come to expect.
It gets worse, though. Much worse.
Hypothetical question - what would YOU do, if you knew you had (a) no coherent argument, and (b) were about to lose a debate? That's right... you reach for Godwin's Law (Limbaugh), call the other side Nazis (Beck), and harp on incoherently about an "evil" system involving state-sanctioned murder by "death panels" (Palin).
Nurses model their new NHS uniforms [above]
Obviously we have come to expect this sort of behaviour from the Fox News brigade, and the shock-jocks. This isn't new. But for a recent VP candidate, and probable future Presidential candidate, this demonstrates an alarming shift towards the loony end of the political spectrum from the Republicans.
Even the British are at it (or, at least, one Brit who makes a career out of talking complete bollocks). The NHS isn't perfect, but this doesn't tally in the slightest with my experience of the NHS. This, however, is a reasonable riposte to Mr Hannan which I wholly endorse:
Despairing of anything that might resemble a proper fact-based debate in the United States, I turned closer to home to see if the recent elevation in this story's prominence might actually prompt the Tories to come up with a policy. I've been waiting a long time for this moment. Would "Call me Dave" Cameron oblige, or would there just be more mealy-mouthed words about supporting the NHS, while packing his team of health ministers with people paid by private healthcare companies?
Searching for Tory policies these days is no small task. Yes, they make statements on a daily basis - and some of these statements appear, at first glance, to be policy-type commitments... but on closer inspection they generally turn out to be piffle. Thus far, I have found one in particular that caught my eye, thanks to the snappy name they gave it - the "Bonfire of the Quangos". Oh yes, Tories, very clever and hilarious. Shame there's no substance, but never mind. At least you've set your stall out in terms of not supporting massive unelected organisations running the nation's infrastructure. And fair enough, I say.
Back to their health policy. I went to the one place where surely I'd be able to find an unadulterated summary. For the first time in my life, therefore, I visited the Tories' own website - and look what I found:
Few things matter more to our country than the NHS – it’s an institution that binds the nation together.
And a Conservative Government will work tirelessly to earn the trust of the patients and staff of the NHS.
* We will always provide the funding the NHS needs and are committed to real increases in health spending * We will scrap Labour’s plans to cut A&E and maternity services, which are not supported by evidence that patient access and care will be improved, so that patients have access to high-quality services at their local hospital * We will protect family doctor services by opposing Labour’s plans to impose impersonal "polyclinics" at the expense of local GP surgeries * We will make money available for 45,000 more single rooms in the NHS over five years, almost doubling their current number. This will mean every patient going into hospital for planned care can have a single room if they want one * We will reform the way drugs are priced so that all new treatments that are clinically effective are made available, ending the situation whereby cancer drugs that are routinely available in the rest of Europe and not provided in this country * Most importantly, we will set the NHS free from the ministerial meddling that has resulted in money being diverted from patient care to wasteful bureaucracy. We want to deliver an NHS that provides the best health standards in the world, and ensure every patient is able to choose a good healthcare provider for their needs.
Our draft NHS Autonomy and Accountability Bill, published in 2007, set out plans to release NHS staff from top-down interference and allow them to concentrate on doing what they do best: providing top-quality care to patients.
A vital part of this is the creation of an independent NHS Board to take responsibility for dividing up NHS funds between different parts of the country away from Ministerial meddling. This body will allocate money fairly and in a way which will help secure equal access to healthcare for all.
Much of this is, of course, rubbish. How can anyone, for example, disagree with the first sentence - and are there any political parties that don't say just the same as the Tories' second sentence? And what is "top-down interference", if it's not just "doing as your boss has instructed"?
The bit that interests me most, though, is the creation of a new NHS board to replace "ministerial meddling". (Funny, I thought it was the Health Secretary's job to get involved in the NHS, but no... apparently it's meddling.)
How big would this NHS Board have to be, to run an organisation with 1.5 million employees, and a budget of around £100 billion? Even Andy Burnham realises that this would involve the creation of the world's largest Quango.
Could it possibly be, that Cameron was once again talking out of his Eton-educated multi-millionaire completely-out-of-touch pandering-to-the-Mail behind? Again?
Given all the private healthcare interests already ensconced in Cameron's shadow cabinet, I think we can see through these statements to the real future of the NHS under a Tory government. And it makes Glenn Beck look almost sane.
To save yourself the mental anguish of opening a link to dailymail.co.uk - the article basically bemoans the fact that "The Authorities" (their capitals) are trying to scare us all to death over swine flu. Yes, "The Authorities". Not, as you might have thought, "The Mendacious Nazi-Friendly Tabloid Press", oh no.
I couldn't be bothered to read the whole article - seems only fair when it comes to the Mail to judge them without actually reading it - but it did strike me as odd that a paper which has been so sensationalist about swine flu could even attempt to try something so blatantly hypocritical (and staggering to think that a large proportion of their readership would swallow this without hesitation).
Here are a selection of front pages from the previous week:
So, as you can see, it's all the fault of The Authorities. Shame on them all. I bet The Authorities cause cancer and are bad for house prices, too.
Now I believe in giving everyone a chance - even racists and liars - so I picked another story from last week which grabbed my attention, and thought I'd see how that was dealt with. As a 'control' in this experiment, I compared the Mail's reporting to The Guardian (left-of-centre quality daily), and The Telegraph (close to the Mail's political stance, but written by people with intelligence). Here's what I found. I warn you - it will not come as a surprise.
The story I checked was this - the release of the latest UK crime statistics by the Home Office (or, if you prefer, "The Authorities").
The Home Office website summarises the report, very briefly, as follows:
Here are some significant crime statistics from our most recent research, Crime in England and Wales 2008-09:
* the number of police recorded crimes fell by 5% between 2007-08 and 2008-09 * police recorded 6% fewer violent against the person offences, 10% fewer vandalism offences and 10% fewer offences against vehicles, but home burglaries have increased by 1% * the risk of becoming a victim of crime as measured by the BCS rose from 22% to 23%, but is well below its peak of 40% in 1995
Overall that looks pretty good, I'm sure you'll agree. It certainly could be worse - if you don't believe me, watch The Wire.
So how did the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail report this story? I searched their websites last week, and found four articles in the Guardian, five in the Mail, and four in the Telegraph.
Let's start with the least sensationalist - the control in this experiment, if you like. The Guardian article headlines were as follows:
The Guardian also added a Comment piece: Massaging the crime figures in which they (maturely and unsensationally) discuss how the figures provided by the Home Office might have been measured.
Let's move on to The Telegraph. Surely they will be equally responsible, and not whip these figures up into some sort of crime wave hysteria. Won't they? Let's have a look:
Pickpocket thefts and bag snatches rise 25 per cent, British Crime Survey shows - followed by an article that then demonstrates that almost all categories of crime show a fall, and fails to mention the most likely reason for a 25% increase in reported thefts is down to an increase in reporting, rather than an increase in theft.
The Telegraph also posted a video report, following up on the above story.
Well, I thought... while I am slightly surprised at the Telegraph's relentlessly downbeat attitude to their headline writing, surely the Daily Mail can't out-sensationalise them, can they?
Now, I don't know about you, but when I woke up this morning I did not expect that today would be the day I was mugged by a teenage crack whore, raped by a gipsy (sic) immigrant benefit scrounger, and then caught a virulent deadly virus from a politically correct remark.
But now I just wish I'd stayed at home. I'm terrified. And there's no point, now I've reached this level of abject fear, to point out some fluffy rubbish like "The REAL worry is today's culture of fear" when we all know...
