By Anthony Webber:
THE MYSTERY OF WHY THIS “CAMPAIGN IS BEING ACTIVATED PROMOTED BY MAINSTREAM MEDIA
Recently a campaign has reared its head called “don’t pay” which is attempting to persuade consumers to not pay their energy bills.
The idea is that if enough people commit to not paying their energy bills, if they go up in October, then they will not pay them.
The reality is that it is highly reckless and irresponsible to persuade people to not pay bills without informing them of the dire consequences to them if they do so.
Martin Lewis, the money advice specialist, who was misquoted in order for it to appear that he supported this campaign, has subsequently released a video advising people not to support the “don’t pay” idea, giving plenty of reasons as to why they shouldn’t.
The bizarre feature about this campaign is how they have manged to obtain any publicity at all from some mainstream media, who should have carried out some basic due diligence before allowing themselves to be duped into promoting it.
To quote a blogger who investigated “don’t pay,” Miri Anne Finch, she said “despite being a hugely high-profile movement with inordinate levels of exposure over social and mainstream media alike, there is not a single name or face publicly associated with this movement.” She goes on to say “if you haven’t the intestinal fortitude to put your name to such a high profile, high stakes movement that’s trying to galvanise millions of people to highly subversive action – then you have no business spearheading such a movement.
So “don’t pay,” step out of the shadows, or step down.”
“This is profoundly important because, if there are no names behind a movement, there’s no transparency regarding the background, motives, and more. If there is no transparency, there is no accountability. The shady, faceless “don’t pay” is telling you to do something which could have all sorts of serious and undesirable- and if ( and when?) it all goes wrong, they will be able to disappear into the ether without having to bear any of the consequences.”
As an organisation that is dealing with very significant amounts of money via selling hundreds of thousands of leaflets and taking four figure sums in donations, supporters should be able to see how this money is being dealt with – is “don’t pay” a sole trader? A limited company? A charity? There is absolutely no information on this whatsoever, and this should have serious alarm bells ringing.”
There is much more in her attached article, which also refers to the investigative work done by Unity News on the issue:
https://miriaf.co.uk/dont-play-uk/
If new supporters communicate with “don’t pay” they are not given full names but only first names, which could be false anyway.
It is highly unsatisfactory.
Since some question marks have been raised about “don’t pay” a number of people who originally committed to the campaign, have changed their minds.
What is concerning is that such people are told that they cannot be removed from the “don’t pay” list.
So even though “don’t pay” recently said that 75,000 had signed the commitment not to pay, it is unknown how many have changed their minds, because they are not being allowed to come off the list.
What is also concerning about “don’t pay” is that it is playing to the worries and vulnerabilities of millions of people who are deeply worried about paying their rising energy bills.
It gives them false hope and the impression there is an easy way out of this crisis that so many people are in, but is dishonest because “don’t pay’s” so -called solution is not one, and involves huge risk for those who follow their advice.
It is also based on a false premise, that the price rises are the fault of the energy companies. Whilst they can be accused of some profiteering and preferring shareholders over consumers, that is an issue for the government to address. The price of energy is the fault of the government, not the energy companies. The energy price rises are primarily caused by the government’s policy on Ukraine, and the government believes that the public should tolerate these rises in order to support their Ukraine policy.
It is unacceptable to expert the public to endure the misery of such price rises, which alongside, rises in fuel, food and other goods, and rising interest rates, inflation and recession, put everyone in an untenable and intolerable position.
It is dishonest of the “don’t pay” campaign to pretend that the Ukraine policy is not the main cause of the problems, and to wrongly place the blame with the energy companies.
It is all quite mischievous as it distracts attention from the blame from where it truthfully belongs and attempts to put it where it doesn’t.
This campaign conveniently lets the government off the hook.
This is one reason why it is important to know the motivations of those behind this campaign.
This “don’t pay” campaign can achieve nothing substantial, as the only decision which can stop energy prices rising is to end the disastrous self- defeating policy on Ukraine.
The only other action the government can do is to give yet another £15 billion to help people with their energy bills, which would total £30 billion, which would be of no help with the other rising costs facing the whole nation.
Any money given in energy help would be our money anyway, which we had already paid in taxation, so it would involve cuts in services elsewhere, which would make our situation worse. The alternative would be to borrow more, which would put any even greater burden of repayment on our future generation than they have already.
The stark reality is that the UK cannot afford the luxury of a foreign proxy war on behalf of others, which penalises us and makes us destitute.
So the sooner the UK becomes neutral and resumes normal trading with countries who supply essential energy and food supplies the better.
“Don’t pay”! should be ignored and not allowed to prey on the nation’s misery.
It is far better to sign the petition for the government to change their policy on Ukraine:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/617939
Some examples of the journalism on this issue:
The first ones basically properly inform the public about the dangers of the campaign:
Martin Lewis has done a video about 6 hours ago, warning about the “don’t pay” campaign so maybe my complaint to him had an effect !
https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/19435979/martin-lewis-warning-refusing-pay-energy-bills/
The “Big Issue” has written a warning about it one day ago:
https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/dont-pay-uk-risks-lawyer/
And Energy Live News one day ago quoting what the Ofgem Chief says:
https://www.energylivenews.com/2022/08/05/ofgem-chief-advises-against-dont-pay-campaign/
Below are mentioned the media who have effectively promoted “don’t pay” with little or no journalistic due diligence, and there are many:
The questionable background to the campaign, which comes out in a Euro news article promoting it, written 2 days ago:
And the Guardian doing the same two days ago:
ITV promoting the campaign, not saying that Martin Lewis has not endorsed it, two days ago:
https://www.itv.com/news/central/2022-08-04/what-is-the-dont-pay-campaign
The Independent promoting it two days ago:
And also one week ago:
The London Economic promoting it 23 hours ago:
The Daily Mail promoting it 19 hours ago:
Sky News promoting it three days go:
The Tab promoting it 4 days ago:
The Huffington Post promoting it four days ago:
Time Out promoting it, one week ago:
The Natural World promoting it, two weeks ago:
Novaria Media promoting it, four weeks ago:
https://novaramedia.com/2022/07/11/could-dont-pay-pull-it-off/
Dazed promoting it three weeks ago:
Dominic Cummings promoting it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IRaCEKRwB0
History debunked promoting it ( amateur video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFtcTeEUa5Y
There is no way this campaign would have got even 75,000 supporters without this blatant promotion by so many media outlets. It is nothing short of a complete disgrace.
What is shocking about the promotion of these stories by most of these media, is that they have promoted this very questionable campaign without any serious investigative journalism:
As to the actual names of the people involved?
Who is backing them financially?
Who is behind the campaign?
Does it have any connection with any political groups or individuals?
What about the financial transparency and accountability of the campaign’s fund raising?
No effort made to put a different point of view to the campaign
No mention of the fact that the energy price rises are not the fault of the energy companies, but the fault of political reasons, mainly caused by the government’s policy on Ukraine and Russia.
No mention of the act that a changed political policy on Russia and Ukraine would be the best course of action for bringing energy prices down, and that there is a political petition campaign, which aims to change that policy:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/617939
No effort to give a warning about the consequences to individuals of following the campaign’s “don’t pay advice, which was simply irresponsible journalism.
Clearly a lot of the old mainstream media have not mentioned this campaign and that is to their credit and also perhaps they saw through what was going on and even they could not promote a campaign so discreditable. This especially so when it is stated the campaign was started in June “run by a group of anonymous activists.” That should have put the red light signs on for anyone of sense !
Anthony
Anthony Webber
Independent Political Commentator
Joint Founder, National Alliance for freedom
@tony_webber ( twitter)
Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
