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MSM, Progress try to attack #Corbyntaxreturn, fail SPECTACULARLY

It’s always amusing to watch someone attempt to mock another person and make an idiot of themselves. All the sweeter when the mocker taking a pratfall is the director of right-wing ‘cuckoos in the nest’ Progress.

Earlier today, Jeremy Corbyn released his tax return, putting huge pressure on the squirming and surly Philip Hammond, who had spent days dodging the question and then finally and grumpily refused point blank to release his own return – on national television.

Hammond’s refusal raised the very serious question of what he’s hiding about the amount – or lack of it – that the multi-millionaire contributes to the Treasury in tax, as the SKWAWKBOX pointed out.

True to form, however, the ‘Pavlov’s saboteurs‘ in the media and Progress director Richard Angell jumped on what they thought was a clever observation that had caught Corbyn out – a supposed omission in the details he released:

waterson fail.png

schofield-fail

angell-fail

They were referring to a supposed discrepancy in the released return, claiming that Corbyn’s income figures were missing his additional salary as leader of the Opposition. Tories red and blue across social media were jumping for joy at this unexpected opportunity to attack the Labour leader.

However, all they managed to do was fail spectacularly.

In their rush to undermine Corbyn’s intelligent politics (and hand a reprieve to a Tory Chancellor squirming on a hook of his own making, but that doesn’t seem to matter even to supposed ‘Labour’ Angell), they had forgotten a very, very basic maxim:

Some documents have more than one page. DuhCorbyn’s tax return, for example.

So eager were our eggy-faced anti-heroes to wave their trophy-find in triumph that they neglected to read beyond page oneHad they done so, they would have discovered that Corbyn’s document spans SIX pages.

And on page three, lo and behold, are the details of the additional income.:

jc-tax-p3

The full document can be viewed on Corbyn’s site.

Angell and a number of journalists attempted to paint Corbyn as having committed a faux pas. All they succeeded in doing was to don huge dunce’s caps. Ah well, couldn’t happen to a ‘nicer’ bunch.

But it’s also a serious matter. The mainstream press and broadcasters will almost certainly be propagating this information as fact tomorrow, in yet another example of ‘mainstream fake news’. So we need to share this information far and wide so that the right people are shown as the clowns.

Over to you.

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28 comments

  1. ….this info needs to appear on National TV and in the MSM rags so they don’t taint by association….all the people from with Labour attacking JC in this way must be removed from the Labour party so as they can sit where they rightly belong…i.e…way to the right of Labour..

  2. It’s hilarious to watch anti-Corbyn propagandists like Kevin Schofield of Politics Home and Norman Smith on BBC Radio 4’s Today) desperately rowing backwards, and claiming “there’s confusion” after their desperate, diversionary smear attempt turns out to have been utterly unfounded.

  3. Buzzfeed’s Jim Waterson has had the opportunity given to him on a plate to counter both Angela Eagle’s #brickgate MSM lies and the dubious Copeland by-election but has spurned both in favour of further unwarranted and lazy attacks on Corbyn. So much for the brave new world of internet based news!

  4. Erm Page 3 covers income from ‘Other pensions and retirement annualities’, so if that is his Leaders’ income it’s in the wrong place and labelled incorrectly. Alternatively, it might just be the pension he received from his years of public service?

    1. If it’s in the wrong place, take it up with the HoC PAYE dept, as they’ll be responsible for it. He won’t get a parliamentary pension until he retires.

  5. That additional page is for pension income and is the declaration of the parliamentary pension that Corbyn receives because he is over 65. Nothing to do with his Leader of the Opposition salary which is missing.

    No faux pas from journalists on this occasion and it is not them who need to put on a dunce’s cap.

    1. He claims next to no expenses/BIK. £7 15/16, I think £80 the year before. One reason why the Establishment wants him gone, no doubt.

      1. Inaccurate reasons and amounts. In actual fact Corbyn’s backbencher expenses claims year on year were a little above average for a London MP, for example in his final year as backbencher year ending April 2015 he claimed £160,000 – £10,000 more than Government Minister Patel. His expenses rose year on year from £100,000 claimed in 2002 to this £160,000. I have no doubt however that using actual, verifiable facts and accountable expenses figures magically turns me into a Tory! Blairite! Troll! peddling Fake!!! News!!!

      2. I can’t reply directly to your comment but please note that I said April 2015 i.e. 2014-2015 expenses were £160,000. You seem to have misunderstood the data. Nor are the categories and amounts for wages, office costs and general expenses out of the ordinary, although he obviously would not need to claim travel expenses. He didn’t claim for a moat or heating in his stables, but nor did most MPs.

    2. As leader of the Opposition, he no longer claims expenses. They are instead paid direct by Parliament, as is the PM’s, and therefore do not appear as claims.

  6. The header says ‘Pensions and retirement Annuities’ rather than income – am I missing something?

    1. I don’t know. That designation will have come from the HoC admin responsible for PAYE, as that’s how he was taxed on his income apart from around £1200

  7. It seems like he put part of his income in his pension section. Not really a big deal – a simple mistake. It does seem a little bit of a school boy error though – if you’re going to make a big deal of your tax return maybe get someone to check it.
    I also notice that, despite what the article above says, you can’t actually view the tax return on his website now (you can see it all pix-elated but you can’t zoom in to properly read it).
    Jeremy Corbyn is an honest and decent man, and attempts to smear him as having fiddled his taxes are baseless. But I think this does speak to his competence and his ability to trip over his own feet.

    1. You can see it in detail – the images are small but high-res (I suspect an attempt to make them enlargeable). Right-click, copy image, paste into paint and then resize to 200% and it’s all perfectly legible.

      This has nothing to do with *Corbyn’s* competence, though. Highly doubtful he does his own tax return and the misapplied entry in pensions almost certainly originates with whomever at HoC admin does PAYE.

      1. Stop following the Labour PR line in trying to blame HMRC for this. This is nothing to do with them or their guidelines, the figures come from Corbyn’s own accountants and they botched.

        A simple and indeed harmless mistake has now been turned into a major PR disaster. They could so easily have not done this. What was it supposed to achieve other than get the fact that Philip Hammond is very well off onto the front pages?

        But instead of “wealth-shaming” the Chancellor, Labour has only underlined it’s lack of financial literacy and total inability to implement any kind of communication strategy. What a day.

      2. HMRC have not had a single mention in the series of articles. Are you smoking something? There is no mistake – unless it’s on the part of the HoC admin team. And Hammond being ‘well off’ is irrelevant. Way to miss the point entirely.

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