How can you tell when Boris Johnson is lying?, Re-defining the meaning of 'New' and 'Promise', Quote from Keynes.

Q. How can you tell when Boris Johnson is lying?

A. You can see his lips moving.

Perhaps this election campaign is going to be the dirtiest one ever.  At least it got off to a terrible start if you believe in honesty and truth.

With the launch of Tory Election Campaign launch we see:

1.   A Minister resigning over claims he knew about a former aide sabotaging a rape trial

2.  A perfectly good interview between Piers Morgan (Journalist) and Sir Kier Starmer (Labour) being doctored and published by the Conservative Party to make it look as if Starmer was unable to answer a question about the Labour Brexit policy

3. The Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative) being widely criticised for condescending behaviour towards the victims of Grenfell Tower and another Tory MP trying to support him but just making it worse.

And that was just Day 1.

Re-defining 'New'

Since then we have had a promise of 50,000 new nurses, with a re-invented definition of the word 'new' which now appears to include 19,000 nurses who are already employed by the NHS but would otherwise have left!

Re-defining 'Promise'

Boris Johnson Prime Minister promised us Brexit by October 31st,  Do or Die, Dead in a Ditch, etc. Does this now mean that anyone can promise anything even if we know we can't deliver it??!! Have the Tories also re-defined the meaning of to 'Promise'?

Nigel Farage launching his campaign for his Brexit Party: Clearly a parody

If the governing party is doctoring TV footage and creating fake news, how can we criticise other (such as the Russians) for doing the same thing?

And I can scarcely believe that the Tory Party have now set-up their own 'Fact Check' service to criticise the Labour Party. There are several independent Fact Check services that are useful for people to use to check whether anything a politician has says is accurate (answer: probably not in the case of certain well-known politicians). The Conservatives have defended their new Fact Check service saying it is clear it is produced by them because it states @CCHQPress - which is apparently the Conservative Party press office. Everyone knows that don't they?

Fake news campaign circulating widely on social media

And then there is the meme stating that Jo Swinson and her husband have been profiting from EU hand outs and that this is why they are so pro Remain. And another one that has gone viral which is another piece of fake news saying she had tortured squirrels and refers to them as 'pleb bunnies'. Her response to this was 'Not news, not true, Just total bollocks'. Even sadder is that people actually believe this stuff.

Boris sees the catastrophic flooding in Derbyshire as a photo opportunity

Then there's the Labour party who launched their manifesto on November the 21st. Wow aren't we spoilt for choice.

They want to take the country back to the 1970's when even the Soviet Union refused to trade with us. Free broadband for all, 100,000 new council houses every year, free university without loans or fees, nationalisation of the railways, Royal Mail and the utilities, just like in the 70's when the UK was widely referred to as "the sick man of Europe". Even if you think any one of these policies may be desirable, where on earth does the money come from?

Any why won't Jeremy Corbyn apologise for the anti-semitism scandal in his party? Quite exceptionally, the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis has spoken out this week basically advising people not to vote Labour. These behaviours were all unheard of over the last 50 years.

The Labour party seems to think they can pay for all of this by raising taxes for business and for the richest 5% but not taxing the 95% any more than at present.  The size of state they are talking about is as large as Germany or Sweden, countries where everyone has to pay much higher taxes. Otherwise not only does it not add up, but the top 5% emigrate and businesses re-locate. What do you have left then? A poor, mal-functioning soviet style state with large amounts of very poor quality publicly owned services. And a population which is much poorer. Everyone looses out. The Soviet Union collapsed because this model is unsustainable, China has fast adopted capitalism, Cuba is doing the same. The only socialist state left is North Korea. 

Soviet public housing

People aged 50+ will remember the 3 day week and how terrible nationalised utilities, railways and industry (e.g. Brititsh Leyland cars) used to be. And it really was terrible, no doubt about it. Since de-nationalisation, the private companies have invested billions and are bringing these services back up to the quality we deserve. Last thing we need is to reverse all this and at a massive cost to so do. It would be catastrophic.

As Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of somebody else's money"

Finally, I finish with a quote from arguably the 20th century's most influential economist:

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

John Maynard Keynes

Few, if any of our political leaders will admit to changing their minds.