Deception Of The Young TURCs – Verdict

The distress shown by the flannelled fool Henry Cole to yesterday’s mild grilling on Zelo Street was as significant as it was loud and petulant: there were five comments (two in person, and three via two sock puppets), disclosure of part of a personal email (that’s in the memory bank, Hen), and a Twitter meltdown where he made the mistake of using the same abusive term as one of those sock puppets.

And every word of that post stands: Cole performed a blatant act of deception when he suggested that cricketer Darren Gough had endorsed the so-called Trade Union Reform Campaign (TURC), and he, or one of his pals, appears to have deceived Gough himself. Moreover, he was revealed to not just be an advisor to TURC, but actually running the show.

That last is not what he said on the Guido Fawkes blog on January 18: when talking up Liam Fox’s presence on the group, he said “For the record, Neo-Guido advises the group on a pro-bono [sic] basis about social media”. “Neo-Guido” is the typically pretentious term used on the Fawkes blog to refer to Cole. So what of the various Cole counter-claims and their veracity?

“I don’t have the energy to engage with that lonely lunatic,” moaned Cole. “His blog post is riddled with inaccuracy, smear, piss and wind”. So no denial, then. Following that came “Fenton blog is bollocks. As ever” (ditto). There was more “bollocks” as Cole lashed out at Dick Mandrake, plus the smear “You always seemed the slow one of that lot”. He riffed on that theme in his “real” comments, too.

Yes, someone bleating about being smeared was in the meantime happily making autism smears: “it’s like trying to have a conversation with Rain Man’s slightly less articulate cousin. Thank you for confirming you [sic] smears to be just that”. Then, rather later came an anonymous repeat of the “lunatic” jibe, with added “demented” for good measure. This merely confirmed the real identity of the commenter.

And the smearing while accusing others of it is not confined to his incoherent and petulant attacks on this blog: he made the accusation against Laurence Durnan of Political Scrapbook without waiting for the latter to even reply to Cole’s latest minor Westminster Village “news”. This was followed by using the S-word against someone who had committed the crime of retaining their sense of humour.

What we have in Henry Cole is not just another personification of Olbermann’s Dictum (“the right exists in a perpetual state of victimhood”), but also someone who is fundamentally dishonest, but cannot and will not do other than spin, rant and dissemble rather than admit to having a problem. And those thus afflicted inevitably suffer the same fate: they ultimately lose credibility and fade from view.

That’s not a very bright future, but if he wants it that way, who am I to stop him?

Express Hypocrisy Pickle

“Councils Pick Widows’ Pockets” screamed the Sunday Express headline, in yet another example of Dirty Des’ finest saying something untrue, but with the underlying story being based around a kernel of fact. And this one has a bonus, with Communities Secretary Eric Pickles being caught in an act of routine hypocrisy as he has shot first and not asked questions at all.

That kernel of fact is the Government move to “localise” support for Council Tax in England. This is, in reality, a double-edged sword: councils get more decision making power over the range of tax discounts offered, but they also get 10% less money from central Government (more information HERE). So there will be a shortfall to make up, if tax rises are to be avoided.

Each council has given its response to the Government consultation, and it is some of these that the Express has picked up on. And the discount that has taxed Des’ hacks is that for single person occupancy, which at present automatically gives 25% off Council Tax. Many of the responses have suggested that the discount might cease to become an automatic one.

This has been enough for the Express to claim that there is not merely a plot, but an Organised Labour Plot. This, though, is undermined by the inclusion in the list of shame of Colchester Borough Council, where there are only seven Labour councillors to 24 Tories and 26 Lib Dems. Bedford, also mentioned, has just 12 Labour councillors out of a total of 41.

But this has been enough for Fat Eric to pronounce “There is clearly a well-orchestrated campaign being run by the Labour Party to target the elderly, single mothers and the most vulnerable. They want to punish people who have worked hard all their lives and paid their taxes simply because they live on their own. There is a gross sense of injustice at raising taxes that could force people out of their homes. This is a widows tax and shows how out of touch Labour is”.

Perhaps, then, Fat Eric could explain this snippet from one council’s response to the consultation on “localising” support for Council Tax (Paragraph 17): “Significant savings could be achieved by abolishing automatic discounts for particular categories and incorporating all support into one comprehensive means tested scheme. Savings could therefore be achieved from people more able to pay rather than just the most vulnerable in society” [my emphases].

The name of that council is Epping Forest Borough Council. Much of its area is within the parliamentary constituency of Brentwood and Ongar, where the serving MP is one Eric Pickles. So Fat Eric is fine with a majority Tory council in his own back yard doing it, but if Labour do the same thing, it’s wrong. There’s proper hypocrisy for you.