Taxing Times: The Tories to use taxpayers’ money to bail out their ruinous ‘brexit’, while they leave the NHS to die on the vine, but the media would like you to focus on their lie about ‘you know who’ and the non-story about his publicly released tax returns. Roger C. Follow Mar 6, 2017 · 4 min read

Isn’t it all rather transparent?

When Labour has positive events for the public to cheer on, like the leadership and those Labour MPs who support the NHS attending a sizeable march in London against Tory cuts and privatisation or when Labour’s leadership release their tax returns for public scrutiny, it is very important that a negative spin is found. This is especially true when the events to cheer on directly reflect badly on the Tories, as the march for the NHS did and the Tory leadership refusing to release their tax returns does. It also follows in the wake of Hammond saying that the Tories will be setting aside £60billion to offset the damage to the British economy of the Tories’ ‘brexit’, and the NHS can whistle for the money it needs.

What are the headlines this morning? Jeremy Corbyn has not declared all his income to the tax man. That is shocking. That a senior public figure would be so audacious as to try and hide some of their official salary, that is public knowledge, must smack of lunacy … how on earth did Corbyn expect to get away with it? Oh, having turned to page three of the tax return I can see that he has declared all of his income and paid the correct amount of tax.

Idiots in the media from the BBC down reported the non-story:

And, of course, other idiots were happy to jump in too:

But there’s the ‘clever’ thing. The media deliberately misreport on Corbyn’s tax returns and then, when the ‘error’ is pointed out, the story becomes about the ‘confusion’ surrounding Corbyn’s leadership. The ‘muddle’ is thrown at Corbyn and the media (and assorted interested idiots) make a go of making it stick. The story becomes that the story became about Corbyn, Corbyn is a distraction, Corbyn is deflecting attention from the wonderful policies that the members care so much about, Corbyn is getting in the way of the message … if only Corbyn would step aside and let someone else take over that didn’t make it all about them.

The issue with the media (and assorted interested idiots) isn’t really about Jeremy Corbyn, he’s just a latest target. The media lie to the public and are not held accountable. The media splash a lie across the front pages and bury a retraction with the shipping forecast. Just last week we were treated to a scoffing campaign in the media at John McDonnell’s suggestion of a ‘soft coup’, involving the media. Labour supporters have been complaining long and hard about bias in the media, which is also scoffed at. This week starts with a false story about Jeremy Corbyn’s tax returns and stories about Corbyn’s successors; the calls for him to resign never cease in the media. But the issue with the media is lack of accountability, there are no downsides for those manipulating the media to lie to the public.

Advertisers continue to pay for ad space, regardless of what they are sandwiching their products between. Why isn’t their a margin of error index score on the masthead of every newspaper, signalling the likelihood of you being told the truth if you read it or watch it or listen to it? If there was then the headline would be ‘YOU ARE BEING LIED TO’. Let’s call it what it should be, a liars index. On a scale of 1 to 100, how likely are you going to be lied to if you read this newspaper. We could gauge ‘news’ reporters on their ability to tell the truth. What would Nick Robinson score if his tweets were gauged for veracity?

The public are being mugged off. Mugged off by the media, who are carrying the Tories and undermining the opposition. The same media that sold you the lies about ‘brexit’ are giving you the lies about Corbyn for free but you’ll pay for them all the same but, you know, keep blaming Corbyn.