Tag Archives: mail on sunday

The Mail on Sunday and Nigel Farage in one day? Vince takes the fight to the right

I certainly didn’t think I’d ever be embedding Nigel Farage’s LBC show on this site, but the first 20 minutes of today’s is well worth watching because our Vince is on there.

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Vince to quit? The party’s “senior sources” have been out and about stirring again…

It’s not even six months since my co-editor Caron Lindsay urged fellow Lib Dems to make nice and drop the internal briefing against colleagues. This followed a spate of whisperings against Vince Cable and Tim Farron among others. The voices off against Vince even prompted Nick to start an internal inquiry, though, as Jonathan Calder observed here, nothing more was heard of it.

Today, though, the Mail on Sunday reports:

Allies of Vince Cable reacted furiously last night over a Liberal Democrat ‘whispering campaign’ suggesting that he is on the brink of walking out of the Coalition. The Mail on Sunday has been told by two well-placed sources within the party that the 71-year-old Business Secretary is considering leaving the Cabinet immediately after the party’s autumn conference.

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LibLink: Vince Cable: Smell the coffee, Boris. The Mansion Tax has slipped in already

Mansion Only - Some rights reserved by Gerg1967This story appears under the byline of a “Daily Mail Reporter” which is a bit odd, because I don’t think they’ve let any of them into the Cabinet yet, and certainly not any who oppose the Tories. The reference to “my Cabinet colleagues’ kind of gives the game away that it’s our Vince who has taken on Boris over the Mansion Tax. Now, there’s another debate I’d like to see alongside Nick vs Nigel. Vince vs Boris. One day, maybe..

Anyway,  Vince started by pointing out that action was taken in the Budget to tax corporate property buying:

One less publicised move was a crackdown on people using high-value property to make easy capital gains from property inflation and then dodge tax, hiding behind a corporate façade.

At a time when families are desperate for housing, thousands of luxury flats sit empty in tower blocks along the Thames. The Government is stopping this abuse by charging a penal rate of stamp duty and a charge on the property value – a mansion tax.

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LibLink: Danny Alexander: Get real, Lord Lawson, it’s the low paid who need our help

Danny Alexander by Paul WalterLinking to the Daily Mail usually brings me out in hives, but there are occasions when it’s ok. Danny Alexander taking down Lord Lawson for suggesting that further tax cuts should be focused on higher earners is one such case.

In today’s paper he starts by reminding people that it was a Liberal Democrat priority to cut taxes for the lowest earners. He missed a trick by reminding people where Tory hearts lay – an inheritance tax cut for the rich, but that’s by the by.

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LibLink: Danny Alexander: Scotland can’t go it alone and keep the pound. That’s not bullying, it’s reality

Danny Alexander has taken to the pages of this week’s Mail on Sunday to write about the Scottish independence referendum.

He tackled the hostile reaction from some nationalists to David Bowie’s entreaty at the Brits. “Scotland, stay with us.” said the rock legend.

David Bowie’s call sparked strong reactions on both sides of an ever more passionate debate. He was attacked for being a ‘celebrity’, being English and not living in the UK.
And why shouldn’t a ‘celebrity’ have a view and express it? Why shouldn’t an Englishwoman have a view on  an issue that will change the country she lives in, too?

Come

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Two Liberal Democrats on holiday together. They MUST be plotting to overthrow Nick Clegg

Today’s Mail on Sunday has a story which reaches all sorts of wild conclusions from a few raw facts. Of course you could argue that that’s the rule for virtually all stories in that publication. And you’d be right.

The headline screams: Cable holds “secret ski summit” in French Alps with peer plotting to oust Nick Clegg.

It doesn’t take you very long to realise that this wasn’t some great plotting session, but, in fact, a holiday during the Parliamentary recess.

The piece also contains the revelation that their hotel boasted a gym, jacuzzi and swimming pool. How very unusual that is …

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The “affair” is none of our business – but how did it get in the papers anyway?

Today’s Daily Mail carries a story of a love affair which, apparently, has shocked David Cameron so much and got Downing Street panicking to the extent that they are worried about his political agenda being derailed.

From the story, which has no names or much in the way of detail, we can deduce that two middle aged people had an affair which is now over and which caused distress to others. No current cabinet ministers are involved and, from what I can gather, no Liberal Democrats either.

When you get down to it, it seems that the Mail has published a story …

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Mail on Sunday’s shocking Ed Miliband revelations

Ed Miliband has a big job ahead of him, to bring the Labour Party back to power following their second worst general election result since the second world war.

I wish him well and congratulate him on his victory. Whatever concerns people may have about the way he came second among both MPs and party members, he’s won fair and square by the rules the Labour Party set for the contest.

Personally, I would have problems being in a party that thought that particular setup was a fair and democratic way to run elections, but I’m not in that party and …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 44 Comments

Is the Mail on Sunday in a different time zone? Or how it got a string of facts wrong

The Mail on Sunday appears to have made a basic and repeated series of factual errors in a piece today about Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone.

In the piece the paper repeatedly claims that Lynne has sent tweets in the middle of the night: “1am tweets”, “one post, made at 1:38am…”, “at 12:29am…” and so on. There’s even a screenshot apparently verifying this pattern of middle of the night tweets.

Except, if you take a look at the Twitter website and look up the tweets in question you see they are all time-stamped with different times. Take the two in …

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According to the Daily Mail, I’m a foreigner

Given the Mail on Sunday’s story casting aspertions on Nick Clegg for not being properly British in their eyes (“His wife is Spanish, his mother Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin doctor German. Is there ANYTHING British about Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?”) now seems a good time to revive a post I wrote on a previous occasion when the Mail took to defining British:

As Sunder Katwala has pointed out, the Daily Mail has said it thinks it is a mistake for people who were born here but whose parents where born overseas to be counted as

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 17 Comments

Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday accused of printing false comments from health and safety experts

The Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday both ran very similar stories at the weekend:

The professional body that represents health-and-safety experts has warned businesses not to grit public paths. (Mail)

The professional body that represents health and safety experts has issued a warning to businesses not to grit public paths. (Telegraph)

Both then went on about health and safety gone mad etc.

Only one problem.

The experts had said nothing of the sort.

The Sunday Telegraph had approached the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health who in fact gave a comment which said the opposite of what the newspaper subsequently reported. Far …

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