Not that this is unusual but Eoin Clarke's latest "oooh, it's all so corrupt" piece of blogging is rather (and intentionally) misleading. Eoin claims:
The graph above shows the donations Richard Branson's Virgin have made to UK MPs since 2006. Among those who accepted donations from Virgin are more than 30 MPs including 6 Government ministers, 4 of whom were Cabinet Members under this government. The accumulated value of those donations as you can see from the graph rose to more than £106,000.
The implications of this claim are, I guess, that Virgin (who have, as Eoin points out, secured a few NHS delivery contracts) are using these "donations" to get the support of MPs. And that it's those evil Tories again! Unfortunately, Eoin doesn't provide his source, doesn't list the MPs (anyone want to bet several are former or current Labour front-benchers) and, by using a cumulative graph, rather obscures the most interesting point - since 2010, Virgin's donations have dried up. Indeed, the big surge in gifts and freebies from Sir Richard's businesses was from 2008 to 2010, when a certain Gordon Brown was the Labour Prime Minister.
Why do I suspect that the actual information (that Eoin fails to link to) doesn't quite support the "evil, corrupt Tories are selling off the NHS in return for trinkets" line that our fearless blogger peddles?
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5 comments:
When i first came across him and his blog he seemed an OK chap (even tho i disagreed with him on polictis), but since then it has gone rapidly don hill with getting more tin foil hat blog than any facts.
But he is a Labour party memebr #justsayin
Oh and he like so many lefties are very quick to block people on twitter, guess the lefts *urgent engagment* has filtered tho yet ;)
I'm going to guess that the reason is because he's deceitful, dishonest, and partisan, but it could also be because he's moron.
So they don't like Murdoch, they don't like Branson. Let's switch analogue TV back on then as there isn't much left without them.
Progressive? More like marching back to the 70s.
A little while ago he unearthed clear inproper financial links between the tories and BSkyB because a director of Eversheds is a tory donor, and Eversheds have represented BSkyB on numerous occasions.
That would be Eversheds, the giant international law firm who could probably be linked to every major corporation and every political party if one was minded to look.
Like Steve C, I can't quite decide whether he's a nasty piece of work, or just a bit of a fuckwit.
In his early days you could have quite a good discussion on his blog - he didn't censor much and simply said he wanted "well-mannered debate". Nowadays if you put up a comment he doesn't like, or if he simply doesn't like YOU (never mind the comment), he deletes it. He's been Murphy'd, I think.
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