Don’t Menshn You’ve Been Hoaxed

The post-Parliamentary career of (fortunately) former Tory MP Louise Mensch has not been a happy one: apart from an addition to her “chick lit” oeuvre, it has been steadily downhill: the Murdochs were persuaded to sink millions into the money pit that was the group blog Heat Street, which has now thankfully folded, and her career as an analyst for Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) along with it.

Along the way, Ms Mensch has started a blog called Patribiotics, which has published ever more lurid allegations about Combover Crybaby Donald Trump. Despite warnings that much of what she was putting out there was nothing more than batshit conspiracy mongering, her followers kept faith. But now has come news that she and co-conspirator Claude Taylor have been hoaxed. And it is the paper she hates most that broke the news.

Yes, the Guardian has the story: “Explosive allegations about Donald Trump made by online writers with large followings among Trump critics were based on bogus information from a hoaxer who falsely claimed to work in law enforcement” reads the damning headline. Taylor Tweeted out fake details; Ms Mensch backed him up.

Such as? “The source’s false tips included an allegation, which has been aggressively circulated by Mensch and Taylor, that Trump’s inactive fashion model agency is under investigation by New York authorities for possible sex trafficking … Their false stories about Trump have included a claim that he was already being replaced as president by Senator Orrin Hatch in a process kept secret from the American public”.

How easy was it to rumble the source? “The source falsely claimed to be an official named ‘Caitlin’ in the office of Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general. She shared details of her hoax on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation from followers of Taylor and Mensch. The Guardian verified her true identity and confirmed that she is not named Caitlin and does not work for Schneiderman”. That easy.

Could it get any more implausible? As if you need to ask: “Taylor and Mensch also repeated an invented claim from the source that former president Bill Clinton knew of criminal wrongdoing by Trump’s model agency and was was preparing to testify for the prosecution”. Louise Mensch is bang to rights. Claude Taylor has said sorry.

So is she going to hold her hands up and admit getting it badly wrong? But Ms Mensch is incapable of apologising, or even admitting she fouled up. So the Guardian revelations have been followed by a defiant series of Twitter outbursts. “I am at a loss to understand why @Jonswaine would assert contrary to my explicit denial to him that I ever had any contact with this person” she began, but Swaine didn’t assert that.

It got worse: “It is utterly false my story was sourced to the woman @TrueFactsStated knew. I have never had any contact with her in any way”. Her claims just happened to come out only after his, that’s all. “If @JonSwaine and @TheGuardian think @RealDonaldTrump is not being investigated for @TrumpModels by @AGSchneiderman - they are flat wrong”. Pony up something Taylor hasn’t, then. We’re waiting.

Still she persists: “I cannot understand why @jonswaine and @guardian are falsely reporting that my story had anything whatever to do with Claude's source”. As so often with Ms Mensch, she gets busted, she shouts “liar”. Won’t work. Yet on she goes, digging all the way: “The @Guardian and @jonswaine simply made this up. My story (as I told him at length) is not sourced to a woman whose name I don't even know”.

Louise Mensch has been able to spin her successive crocks of crap for so long partly because of her establishment background, and more especially because, as a part of the Murdoch empire for so long, few were prepared to call her out for the fraud she was.

That period of deference is now well and truly over. Louise Mensch has been caught bang to rights spinning one unhinged and most likely poorly sourced conspiracy theory after another, on top of all the untrue and often defamatory rubbish she got away with in the UK. It’s time for the media to call her out for what she is: a film-flam artist, a huckster, a grifter, a con artist, a deluded fantasist, a Walter Mitty character who has lost touch with reality.

And don’t forget, Westminster people: the Tories allowed her to become an MP.

Jon Snow Sexism Accuser BUSTED

Meet Katie Glass. She is yet another taker of the Murdoch shilling, and might have remained no more than moderately well-known, until she decided - merely by coincidence, you understand - to put the boot in on Channel 4 News lead presenter Jon Snow. He had, she claimed, been jolly rotten to her when she was just starting out.

Katie Glass

Benefiting from the allegedly upmarket megaphone given her by the Sunday Times, she told “As a cub reporter, new to London, I once approached him nervously at a National Portrait Gallery party. He was dismissive and rude, ridiculing me in front of his female fans for not recognising a portrait of the former Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez … ‘If he was a singer in a rock band called Up your Jumper, you’d know who he is,’ he said, pleased to have embarrassed a girl 30 years younger, and 30 times poorer, than him”.

Evening all

Why a young woman calls herself “a girl” appears rather incongruous, but hey ho. Ms Glass may want to give the impression of being objective, but her shoddy research and partisanship soon give the game away, starting with an attack on new intake Labor MP Laura Pidcock. “How would [Ms] Pidcock respond to someone spouting such offensive nonsense towards any other group? She’d (rightly) call it hate speech”. Er, hello?

Laura Pidcock said that she would not socialise with Tory MPs, not that she wouldn’t talk to them, or work with them. Then comes her smear of the Labour Party over Manchester councillor Amina Lone. “Look how [she] has been treated by her own side after daring to speak out against the abuse of children by grooming gangs. She has been barred from standing for re-election after seven years on the council because of her ‘outspoken’ campaigning for gender equality within the Muslim community”.

And to that I say baloney. Amina Lone was barred from standing as a result of her poor attendance. She was given the benefit of due process, including an appeal, a process which started some time ago. Unless Ms Glass - or any other hack - has information to the contrary, they should not be making assumptions just because they fit her agenda.

It gets worse: Ms Glass also told “Still, hearing [Ms] Pidcock reminded me why I’d rather be friends with Conservatives [OH WHAT A GIVEAWAY]. Tories always get their round in [gratuitous money smear: check!] and are much less judgmental, partly because they are so much more confident about their own views”.

As writer and campaigner Jack Monroe has pointed out, this “less judgmental” and “confident in their own views” combination gave her the benefits of “Michael Portillo telling me ‘I shouldn't have bred’, on a national TV programme”, the joy of seeing “IDS sniggering in Parliament while a member of the public told assembled MPs that she hadn't eaten for days”, and the never to be forgotten experience of hearing “David Amess comparing lesbianism to paedophilia to a group of schoolchildren”.

Could it get worse still? It certainly could. Katie Glass is also so objective and even-handed that those she admires include, er, Katie Hopkins. I kid you not: this has brought forth such Twitter gems as “oh i dunno, I should have read more Katie Hopkins” and “Katie Hopkins?! She's a sweetie really”. The Final Solution is such a sweet idea, isn’t it?

It certainly doesn’t stop Ms Glass going yet further in support of her idol, and doling out a little partisan kicking on the way: “Show me pictures of Hopkins! They don’t offend me. What does is lib censorship”. Murdoch shilling taker stock response - liberal equals leftie equals authoritarian equals intolerance equals Very Bad People.

And what also comes in the list of Murdoch gofer characteristics is that total lack of self awareness: “Instead of trying to silence Katie Hopkins, the real issue is why so many people feel this way”. Oooh, now, let me think … it wouldn’t have anything to do with the way certain parts of the press frame issues, would it? Including the Murdoch press?

Katie Glass isn’t a mere disinterested bystander. She’s a highly partisan hack who has no problem in dispensing with some facts, twisting others, not bothering with the most basic of research, or indeed, cosying up to the far right when it suits her. She is quoted approvingly by propagandists at CCHQ. But she can now consider herself a hero of the right-wing press - albeit a disposable one when the Murdochs get fed up running loss making papers.

As for investigative journalism - that’s so old and Guardian, isn’t it? Pass the sick bucket.

Mail Carnival Killjoy Fail

This weekend is not only the August Bank Holiday in England and Wales, it is also when the Notting Hill Carnival is held, drawing visitors to West London in their hundreds of thousands. There has been an especial poignancy about this year’s event, in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. But for one paper, the Carnival has to be sold to its readers as A Very Bad Thing, as Carnival goers are not its kinds of people.

What's f***ing wrong with a little coded racism, c***?!? Er, with the greatest of respect, Mr Jay

That paper, as if you need to ask, is the Daily Mail, where the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has clearly decreed that Carnival equals Very Bad Things, but not because many of those taking part are not white, oh no. That drives headlines like “More than 30 people are arrested as drugs and violence mar 'family day' at Notting Hill carnival and festival faces its most intense security operation yet”.

And the reality? “Police have arrested 33 people at Notting Hill Carnival for alleged crimes ranging from being drunk a disorderly to assaulting a police officer … A total of 20 people have been taken into custody for drug-related offences while five people are believed to have breached the Public Order Act … Others were taken into custody for grievous bodily harm and criminal damage”. Not unlike any weekend in London, then.

Still, how about trying to link the Carnival to terrorism? No problem for the Dacre doggies. “Steel barriers, concrete blocks and weapons checks are some of the measures being used to help protect the world-famous carnival from the threat of a Barcelona-style terror incident as well as acid attacks … Police said there is no specific counter-terrorism intelligence but security plans had been 'thoroughly reviewed' following the attack in the Spanish city earlier this month, in which 15 people died after being hit by a van”.

"You think we'll blend into the background, Sarge?"

"Yeah, just keep still and nobody will notice"

There is no specific intelligence which suggests a Barcelona-style attack, but the Mail is going to talk about it anyway, just to make sure Daily Mail readers are discouraged from visiting. And the Mail throws in acid attacks as well, just to make sure. And don’t forget, “Officers will be stationed around the perimeter of the carnival zone, carrying out checks for weapons and corrosive substances”. Scary things happening, see?

Only at the end of the article is the reality for many who live in the Carnival area allowed to intrude: “Hundreds of hand-drawn tributes, flowers and candles laid in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire will be protected by fencing, while a 'ring of care' will be formed around the tower by police officers to protect the Lancaster West estate from the hundreds of thousands of passing carnival-goers”. Yes, Grenfell was part of their world.

But most Mail readers will already have made their minds up - or had them made up - by the horror headlines for which the paper and its website are so infamous. Only at the very end do they see “At 3pm on both days hundreds of thousands of revellers along the route are expected to pause and observe a minute's silence to mark the tragedy, in which at least 80 people are confirmed to have died”.

Instead, it’s all about drugs and violence. Hardly a mention that as many as a million people will attend Carnival this year, the vast majority of whom will have a great time.

The Daily Mail - your predictable blast of spite and misery. No change there, then.

Sun Slags Off Its Own Local

Hacks and pundits may no longer indulge in the long drinking sessions that prompted Private Eye magazine to create the fictional journo Lunchtime O’Booze, but they are still partial to the odd scoop at lunch or after work. And for the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, that usually means local pubs and bars around the Borough Market area - which brings us to a little bar called the Rake.

The Rake is tucked away at the back of Borough Market, and is busiest in the early evening. The inmates of the Baby Shard bunker are among that clientele. But this little craft beer outlet, which offers a dazzling array of speciality beers, all of them decent, and boasts the prominent wording NO CRAP ON TAP above the bar, found itself in the news after the press discovered that one exotic craft keg offering was selling at £6.70 a half.

Our free and fearless press did not stop to ask why that might be, or to stop and think that your average pint at the Rake might cost rather less. “The Rake pub at London Bridge charges £13.40 for a pint of Cloudwater Double IPA beer - leaving drinkers in disbelief” screamed the idiotic Sun headline. The rest of the article wasn’t any better.

“A PUB is selling pints at a staggering £13.40 … The Rake charges that for its 8.2 per cent strength Cloudwater North West Double IPA beer … It has left drinkers spluttering in disbelief. Some Twitter users called it ‘ridiculously marked up’ and ‘hideously expensive’”. Yeah, right. Did the Sun hacks stop to think what made that beer so expensive, or indeed why, as they admitted, it sold out so quickly they were too late to sample it?

Cloudwater is one of the country’s highest regarded microbreweries. The beer the Sun is ranting about is heavily hopped and then dry hopped - and it takes longer to brew. Moreover, you would not buy a pint of it. As the Manchester Evening News discovered, a bar in that city which sells the same beer - when they can get hold of it - charges £6 a half - not much less than the Rake - and won’t sell you a pint.

A comparison of monumental idiocy

That doesn’t matter to the Sun, which has indulged in a crass “5 BARGAIN BEERS” comparison. This involves comparing the kinds of beers the Rake’s clientele - like their own hacks - would not go near, and which are served in a pub hundreds of miles from London, with speciality craft beers. We are not talking like with like here.

The average cost of a pint in London nowadays, sadly, is around £4.50. The Rake will sell you an average strength pint of cask beer - and it’ll be bloody good cask beer - for no more than £4. Think about that. Then go to Time Out or TripAdvisor and look at the long lines of glowing five star reviews. This is a deservedly very popular bar.

As for the Sun - all that rant will do is to show anyone who knows their beer that it’s not worth wasting their money on propping up a cheap and nasty red-top rag. Paradoxically, its hacks won’t stop heading over to the Rake after work, which shows what a total and absolute shower the paper’s senior editors and managers are.

You want to be knowledgeable about a subject, any subject? The Murdoch goons want you to know that you won’t get that knowledge from them. Don’t Buy The Sun.

Labour Brexit Switch - Silly Party Speaks

After Keir Starmer very clearly signalled a change in tack from Labour on Brexit, the Single Market and Customs Union, and also kept the door open to remaining in both if this could be reconciled with changes to free movement rules, the pressure was back on the Tories. The decision to thoroughly brief the Observer, at the start of a week when negotiations on Britain’s departure from the EU will resume, was not an accident.

And if there was to be a policy shift, even a mere clarification or re-definition, then there had to be punditry. Sadly, the politics shows are still off the air as today is part of the England and Wales August Bank Holiday weekend, so pundits were reduced to sounding off on social media. Some made careful and thoughtful observations, while others confirmed Dirty Harry’s observation that “A man’s got to know his limitations”.

The Sensible Party offerings were typified by BBC host and author Andrew Marr, who was brief and to the point: “This is a big moment in the politics of Brexit”. Indeed it is. Also on the Sensible side was Rupert Myers of GQ and the Telegraph, telling “All those people who made excuses for Labour's position on Brexit - this is a very sensible move by the party”. There were also Sensible contributions from left-leaning pundits.

One of those was Owen Jones, able to state unequivocally “No-one can now argue there's no difference between Labour and the Tories on Brexit”. But assembled against these figures were many dissenting voices, starting with the Slightly Silly representative Iain Dale, who mused “I'd almost bet money on Corbyn or McDonnell undermining Starmer's latest Brexit policy within the next few says. Wonder if they agreed it”.

But he just hadn’t read the Observer article. Further into the Silly Party universe, the loathsome Toby Young declined to lower himself to pass direct comment, not that he wanted to avoid being ridiculed even more, you understand. So he merely RTd a sniping Tweet claiming “If you are still unclear about Labour's position on #Brexit, here's a simple explanation”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start.

Also going in to bat for the Silly faction was the Mail on Sunday’s not even slightly celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges, who knew more than Keir Starmer about his own policy: “Tory position is they will completely leave SM within two years. Labour's is they will completely leave SM within four years”. He ignored the option to stay in both the Single Market and Customs Union, but minor details, eh?

Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham had decided Labour wanted Remain by the back door, telling of Stephen Bush’s thought that a transition period might become rather open-ended “This has been the key Remain strategy since late last year. Hence why Leavers insist transition is strictly limited to as short as possible”. That’s next week’s Guido Fawkes line, then.

And representing the Very Silly Party - looks like Tarquin FinTimLimBinWhimBinLim Bus Stop F’tang F’tang Olé Biscuit Barrel had the day off - was Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, ranting “Corbyn promised he would leave the single market. He has now betrayed every Labour voter at the General Election. Liar!” Nigel Farage just called “Liar” on someone else.

Will the Silly Party up its game when the politics shows return? Don’t bet on it.

Afghanistan? Patrick Mercer? Forget It

The desperation of some within the Murdoch mafia to shill for Combover Crybaby Donald Trump knows no bounds: as the 45th President of the United States sinks deeper into a mire mostly of his own making at home, the Super Soaraway Currant Bun is prepared to scrape the barrel in no style at all in its efforts to curry favour with someone who may well be out of office before the year is out. And it’s a favourite Murdoch subject.

Patrick Mercer - rumbled again

Yes, it’s the idea of cheering on wars that someone else has to pay for, a idea that Creepy Uncle Rupe has been peddling for decades. But this time he and his grovelling acolytes in the Baby Shard bunker have come unstuck, as they are cheering on a war very few in the UK care about - Afghanistan - and have used a discredited former MP to shill for it. Step forward Patrick Mercer, who left Parliament in 2014, and in disgrace.

As the BBC reported at the time, “MP Patrick Mercer has resigned the Tory whip to ‘save my party embarrassment’ after claims by the BBC's Panorama that he broke Parliament's lobbying rules … It is alleged he accepted £4,000 to lobby for business interests in Fiji … Mr Mercer said he was taking legal advice and had referred himself to Parliament's standards commissioner … The Newark MP said he took the money for consultancy work outside parliament. He added he would not be standing at the next general election”.

He didn’t get to that next General Election. But now there he is in the Sun, pontificating “DONALD TRUMP is right to send troops back into Afghanistan … While critics and intolerant ‘liberals’ mock his U-turn, he has been statesmanlike and brave to change course … The threat from Afghanistan is severe and getting worse by the day”.

Then we get to the nub of Mercer’s argument: there are, he claims, an “estimated 120 ­Pakistani nuclear weapons kept at a dozen or more sites close to the Afghan border, in the middle of Taliban country … That is what British, US and other Nato countries’ troops have died for … It was never really about control of the poppy crop, more schools, equal rights for Afghan women or other placebos - it was simply nuclear-tipped ­realpolitik”.

Of course it was, and that’s why no-one used the argument for all those years we were in Afghanistan. This is complete bullshit. And it is coming from a technophobe who paraded himself in front of New Scotland Yard with a load of CDs and declared himself dissatisfied with the Police’s stance on counter-terrorism. Unfortunately, he was accompanied in this exhibition by an amateur shyster called Dominic Wightman.

Wightman and his side-kick Glen Jenvey had conned Mercer something rotten. Worse, the then MP had been warned about his new pals, but disregarded the warning. Patrick Mercer may have been a soldier; he was also appallingly gullible. So it has proved again: a fat paycheque has been waved in his face, and in exchange he has been prepared to sing the praises of someone totally unfit for the office of The President of the USA.

Our Government has plenty on its plate without listening to Rupert Murdoch’s cheerleading for the Combover Crybaby. Ignore Mercer’s mercenary bleating. And Don’t Buy The Sun.

Labour Brexit Switch - GAME ON

Last month, I wondered how Jeremy Corbyn was going to square Labour’s Brexit circle, putting some of the obvious questions: how could access to the Single Market be achieved without being part of it, or indeed, part of the Customs Union? How could Britain regain the confidence of financial institutions looking to relocate their head offices out of the country? How would car manufacturers be persuaded not to pack up their factories and take them across the channel (investment in that sector has declined significantly of late)?

I also noted “The major anxiety for British voters, and increasingly so, is their economic well-being - which may be significantly and potentially adversely affected by departure from the EU. Decisions are about to be made - look for the process to accelerate by September this year - on future investment. Those decisions, should they indicate businesses and jobs moving out of the UK, will only serve to increase that anxiety”.

How could Labour differentiate itself from the Tories’ determination to perform the hardest of Brexits if they could not get a deal in their negotiations with the EU? Well, now we can get an idea of how, after Toby Helm at the Observer brought readers “Labour makes dramatic Brexit shift and backs single market membership … Party opens clear divide with Tories, with support for free movement and paying into EU budgets for up to four years”.

There was more: “In a move that positions it decisively as the party of ‘soft Brexit’, Labour will support full participation in the single market and customs union during a lengthy ‘transitional period’ that it believes could last between two and four years after the day of departure, it is to announce on Sunday”. And yet more.

“[Labour] will also leave open the option of the UK remaining a member of the customs union and single market for good, beyond the end of the transitional period … Permanent long-term membership would only be considered if a Labour government could by then have persuaded the rest of the EU to agree to a special deal on immigration and changes to freedom of movement rules”. But had Jezza signed off on the move?

Yes he had: “The decision … was agreed after a week of intense discussion at the top of the party. It was signed off by the leadership and key members of the shadow cabinet on Thursday, according to [Keir] Starmer’s office”. And the timing could not be better for Labour, or worse for the Tories: Brexit negotiations restart this week.

David Davis has let it be known - well, to the Murdoch Sun, at least - that he is going to be really, really tough with the dastardly Eurocrats. But he said that before, only to cave in when the time came. With many of his own MPs concerned about the slowing economy and the prospect of significant numbers of jobs migrating across the Channel, Davis has now been put under the cosh by Her Majesty’s Opposition.

One rebellion by pro-Single Market Tory MPs and Theresa May could be on her way. And well she and her party know it. Small wonder those who support The Blue Team are trying to play down the Labour move this morning. The rules of the Brexit game just changed.

Top Six - August 27

So what’s hot, and what’s not, in the past week’s blogging? Here are the six most popular posts on Zelo Street for the past seven days, counting down in reverse order, because, well, I have shopping stuff to do later. So there.

6 Labour Councillor Sacking Fantasy Manchester Councillor Amina Lone was not barred from standing the in the next round of local Government elections because of her having spoken up for Sarah Champion. The timeline proves it.

5 Laura Pidcock Hit Job EXPLAINED The new intake Labour MP for North West Durham was turned on by the right-leaning part of the press for saying she would not socialise with Tory MPs. Why the ferocity of the backlash? It’s not hard to see why.

4 Tommy Robinson DEFAMES Scots Minister Stephen Yaxley Lennon made a series of highly damaging statements against Humza Yousaf, a minister in the Scottish Government. He can’t stand any of them up, so it could get interesting.

3 Prison Planet Antifa Lies BUSTED Battersea basement dweller Paul Watson was caught by Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat fame backing a number of fake “Antifa” Twitter feeds in order to support the totally fictitious claims about a “violent Alt-Left”.

2 Tommy Robinson Breaks The Law Stephen Yaxley Lennon arrived back from his holiday and recorded his passage through passport control, including identifying the UK Border Agency officer concerned. That’s illegal.

1 Guido Fawked - Owen Jones Climbdown The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog pulled a nudge-and-wink smear on Owen Jones, suggesting his recent crowdfunding exercise was not all above board. They couldn’t back this up, so ended up making a humiliating climbdown. Another fine mess.

And that’s the end of another blogtastic week, blog pickers. Not ‘arf!

Sun Backs Another Quack Economist

The Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun have missed no opportunity to let their readers know that they believe leaving the EU is A Very Good Thing, and not just because it would be easier for their bosses to bully an isolated UK than getting their foot in the door in Brussels, oh no. To this end, the Sun has brought forth a whole raft of articles featuring allegedly leading economists - except they aren’t.

UKIP - Rogering the UK once again

The first to get bigged up was the appalling Patrick Minford, who championed the policies that saw unemployment go through the 3 million mark in the early 1980s and stay there for far too long afterwards. Minford also backed the Poll Tax. His claim that Britain would thrive outside the EU by unilaterally abolishing tariffs would bankrupt the country in short order, as would his talk of no longer having any manufacturing industry.

That did not stop the Murdoch mafiosi selling him to an unsuspecting public as if he were something akin to the Second Coming. Nor has it stopped them from introducing another quack economist, this time a man called Roger Bootle, who is clearly very important, as he wears a dark suit, and folds his arms in a very important manner.

“Britain will boom once free from the EU’s ‘destructive policies’, a top economist claims … Roger Bootle said in a report backed by 15 other experts that the EU is a ‘comparative economic failure’ hamstrung by ‘cack-handed’ decisions” declares the Sun, continuing “[he] authored a report claiming the EU’s economic policy has created an ‘unmitigated disaster’ in mainland Europe”. Does the EU have a single economic policy?

Whatever. Bootle does go on to tell “While the leaders of the rapidly growing countries of Asia were busying themselves with the fundamentals of economic growth, in Europe their equivalents were obsessed with unnecessary and damaging integrations”. That must be why Eurozone economies are enjoying consistent growth at the moment, then.

But there is a problem with putting Roger Bootle forward as a credible face of economics: he’s got significant previous when it comes to being less than totally impartial on the EU. Specifically, Bootle is rather close to UKIP, close enough to have made a key speech to the party’s 2012 conference in Birmingham, and his schtick repays revisiting.

He said then “that the creation of the euro was a mistake and that the best solution would be for Germany to leave. What's more likely to happen is that another country beginning with G (Greece) will leave”. Wrong twice, eh? Still, he’s got plenty to say.

Such as “The downside to the Single Market is that you have to apply all its rules and regulations throughout the whole economy … In the UK’s case, about 12 per cent of our GDP is directly accounted for by exports to the EU … This means that some 88 per cent is not. Yet that 88 per cent must also obey all the EU’s rules”. Perhaps he’d like to tell us which of those rules our producers should ignore. And include his costings.

And after that, he can tell us about his links to UKIP. And why he got it all wrong about the Eurozone, which is now growing rather more rapidly than the UK is.

The more desperate the Sun gets, the easier it is to pick apart their rubbish. Here all day.

Traingate - Branson Bashing Pointless

The saga known as Traingate has leapt back into life after a group called Double Down News obtained full CCTV footage of the train on which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn could not find a seat when travelling from London’s Kings Cross terminus to Newcastle last year. The message from the footage is that Jezza was wronged by the original response, which suggested there were plenty of empty seats.

That much of the press proceeded to ignore this new angle on the story then provoked yet more indignation among many on the left, which has culminated in an orgy of Branson bashing, mainly using images from packed trains departing from Kings Cross yesterday evening. While this is understandable, I have to tell all those doing the bashing that this is an exercise which verges on the completely pointless.

Enter the obligatory pantomime villain

Let’s consider some of those pesky facts, starting with the V-Word.

The trains have Virgin on the side, therefore this is Richard Branson’s fault. Virgin Trains East Coast is actually 90% owned by Stagecoach.

The trains were all rammed full - anyone could see that. Yes they were, and they could also see that it was the Friday evening before the August Bank Holiday weekend. During the Edinburgh Festival. And Friday evenings are always a busy time. That doesn’t mean Jezza’s train was not full, of course, but equally it doesn’t prove it was.

Virgin overbooked (or oversold) the train. Let’s take this nice and slowly. You can, and at busy times are strongly advised to, get a seat reservation. But you can also buy a ticket for immediate travel with no reservation. Ticket sellers (all of them, not just VTEC) can sell as many of the latter as are demanded. That’s the reality of train travel in the UK.

We had to stand and/or sit on the floor. The railway will try its best to get you to your destination. But when you’re allowed to buy walk-up fares without the need for reservations, the result at busy times should be obvious. And the remedy is equally obvious, although less palatable: you get left on the platform.

There aren’t enough trains, are there? Gone are the days when a scratch set of coaches could be dug out of the nearest carriage sidings, scrubbed down and used to relieve Friday or holiday (or both) crowds. And the Government specifies the timetable.

Why don’t they just hire or buy more, then? Neither VTEC, nor any other franchised operator, can just go out and hire more trains without Government say-so. The DfT underwrites lease charges, and without its approval, nothing new gets bought or hired.

It was better when it was publicly owned. East Coast, the Government-run operation which came before VTEC, ran the same trains. And they got busy at busy times, too.

It was cheaper when it was publicly owned. This is, in the case of book ahead fares, probably true. VTEC got the franchise by agreeing to pay significant amounts to the Government, and that meant increasing revenue beyond routine fare increases. Which is part of the strategy of successive Governments (Labour, Coalition and Tory) to make passengers pay more of the cost of running the trains.

Trains being full at busy times is not confined to one operator. And it will carry on happening while there is the right to buy a “walk-up” ticket without a seat reservation. You have an alternative - no seats available, you don’t get on (as seen in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal). You wouldn’t be allowed on a coach or aircraft without a reserved seat. This, too, is nothing to do with Richard Branson.

And one last caution to those chanting “You’re getting nationalised in the morning”: none of what is being complained about would change under Labour’s plans to bring franchised operations back into public ownership. I’ll just leave that one there.

Labour Councillor Sacking Fantasy

The right-leaning press has been getting itself terribly worked up over the story of Labour Councillor Amina Lone, who has represented Hulme on Manchester City Council for the past seven years. Ms Lone has been barred from standing for Labour again, a poor attendance and campaigning record being cited. But she has also publicly spoken up for Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, and this has given the press an opportunity.

Sarah Champion - not sacked, and not involved

As with too many of these stories that turn out not to be what they seem, the deliberate linking of Ms Lone being barred and her defence of Ms Champion was aired first by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, specifically by newly anointed teaboy Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham.

“Readers will remember Amina Lone, the Muslim Labour councillor who defended Sarah Champion and spoke out about abuse by some British-Pakistani men. Just days later, Cllr Lone has been barred from re-standing by the Labour Party. They are using a spurious allegation that her attendance record isn’t up to scratch” they tell.

Thus the link between Sarah Champion - about whom the press has already set its pants alight claiming she was sacked from the shadow cabinet, when she wasn’t - and another nudge-and-wink suggestion that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is indulging in controlling and underhand behaviour. And censorship.

And as so often, the press takes the Fawkes massive on trust, with the Murdoch Sun claiming “A LABOUR councillor has been sacked by the party just a week after she spoke out to support sexually abused children … Amina Lone, a councillor in Manchester, defended Sarah Champion after the MP wrote an article for The Sun pointing the finger at gangs of Asian-origin rapists in northern towns”. Subtle, isn’t it?

You didn't take HIM on trust again? Oh dear!

The Dacre doggies over at the Mail were singing from the same hymn-sheet: “A Labour councillor who spoke up in support of an MP effectively sacked by Jeremy Corbyn has been deselected … Amina Lone went on TV to say that Sarah Champion was being treated as a 'scapegoat' after she was forced to resign for saying the UK had a 'problem' with British Pakistanis abusing white girls”. But there is a problem here.

And that is that there is no link between Ms Lone being barred from standing again, and her recently speaking up for Ms Champion. We can see this by looking at the original Manchester Evening News story on which Wickham based his customary distortion of reality. This article makes no mention whatever of Sarah Champion.

What it does say is “Coun Lone was ordered earlier this summer to face an interview on the grounds that her local campaign and council attendance records were not up to scratch … Ultimately she was not re-selected … She also lost a subsequent appeal”.

So this example of a Councillor being given the benefit of due process began some time before she spoke up for Sarah Champion. Once again, the Fawkes rabble invents something and our free and fearless press fails to engage brain before rushing to publish.

Taking their cue from a known liar once more - and the press wonders why the public has so little faith in its ability to tell the truth. I’ll just leave that one there.