Labour matters points to a recent news story by Cathy Newman of Channel 4 news. In it, she covers a speech by George Osborne describing how he is going to make “Tory Whitehall learn from Tory Town Halls” and points to Hammersmith and Fulham Council as an example.
Have a look at Ms Newman at about 1.14 seconds in the news story on the Labour matters web site. She’s talking about planning gains from the Westfield centre and is filmed in a new library saying: “It would have cost 2.2 million to build… but taxpayers didn’t pay a penny of that…. private developers paid for a new library and two new train stations…. Well this library’s proof, the Tories say, that the public sector can get more bang for it’s buck. And when you look at all the gleaming glass and steel and think that the taxpayers got all this for free, it’s very hard to complain”
Yes, very hard to complain. Except says Labour matters, the deal to build the Westfield centre was signed by a Labour authority. So, as Labour Matters suggests, either the Tories hoodwinked Cathy Newman when briefing her or she’s willingly broadcast a misleading story.
1 comment so far ↓
I really don’t think it’d be the latter.
Taken as a whole, this package was decent journalism. As I remember it, the grist consisted of speaking to some real people affected the policies of a ‘flagship’ Tory council – some rightly aggrieved users of social care services suffering a drop in living standards thanks to increased charging and the like – rather than just the usual ‘big speech’ treatment of a politician at a podium in SW1. Hardly a propaganda coup for the Conservatives.
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