The BBC is busy promoting its ‘fact-checking’ article on Reeves’ new farm tax. The Verify team consulted with “independent tax expert” Dan Neidle who pooh-poohs claims from farmer groups that the tax will be highly damaging to a high number of family farms. The article finishes that section by saying Environment Secretary Steve Reed “confirmed the ‘vast majority’ of farmers will not be affected by changes.” He would say that, wouldn’t he…
What the top fact-checker sleuths over at Verify have failed to mention is that their “independent expert” is a senior and longtime Labour activist. Dan Neidle wrote in his successful pitch for election to Labour’s National Constitutional Committee in 2022:
“I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for 35 years and have been a ward secretary, ward chair and CLP Secretary. More recently, I’ve been the agent for two MPs and dozens of local councillors, and helped turn seats that were once marginal into Labour strongholds. I’ve practised law for 22 years and have advised candidates, MPs and campaign groups on electoral law, successfully fighting off attempts by other parties to use the legal system against us. I know the Labour Party rulebook.”
The NCC is “a senior organ of the UK Labour Party concerned with discipline.” Neidle was election agent for both Stella Creasy and Emily Thornberry, for whom he deployed such savvy electoral tricks as sending letters from fake neighbours urging a vote for Labour. You’d think with a combined salary of £3.2 million the Verify team may have noticed that one…
Guido’s not saying the BBC shouldn’t consult people like Neidle, just that the readers might like to know who they actually are. It always conducts its due diligence with right-wingers – funny that…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”