The most powerful rebuttal yet to David Cameron’s deceitful ‘Norway Fax Law’ claims

If, dear reader, you read nothing else this week, please click on the image below and take a few minutes to read the most powerful rebuttal yet to David Cameron’s claims – also made by others such as Nick Clegg, Roland Rudd, John Cridland and others – that Norway outside the EU has to accept EU laws without having no say over them.

The rebuttal of Cameron’s falsehoods and description of the reality for Norway comes not from a mere observer, but the State Secretary at the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, Anne Beathe K. Tvinnereim.

Tvinnereim not only shoots down Cameron’s claims with factual reality, she also corrects the previously reported pro-EU motivated claims of Norway’s Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide.  While the pro-EU sycophantic UK press – particularly the BBC – uncritically reported Eide’s claims that Norway has no influence over EU laws (most of which originate at global level where Norway represents itself and has direct influence), it transpires they were challenged in Norway itself and were a personal opinion not reflected by the majority of Norwegian people.

For the reality that Cameron, Clegg, Cridland, Rudd and other EUphiles pretend does not exist, so they can keep the UK trapped in the political clutches of the EU, click on the image above to read the whole piece.

Will this give UKIP’s minority of aggressive commenters food for thought?

Every so often one comes across something that is a little witty and makes one think.  Below is a screengrab of a comment exchange from the Telegraph about a story on Maersk’s new huge EEE container vessel.

While the vast majority of UKIP supporters are super people and receptive to others’ ideas and views, having been on the receiving end of the cultist wing of the UKIP commentista on the pages of the Telegraph (a small band of aggressive UKIP supporters with a particularly obsessive zeal and intolerance for anything that does not perfectly match their ideals and vision), comment three certainly resonated.

One wonders what the large number of non-commenting readers of comment threads in the Telegraph must think of the yah-boo stuff that gets plastered digitally on that website.  Do the cultists ever stop to wonder how they come across to the silent majority?   Food for thought for some, perhaps?

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The Great Robbery Train rumbles along in Yorkshire

Once again, all bets are off once ‘government’ decides you have given offence by not paying the Council Tax they demand.

While ordinary people who fail to pay are considered law breakers, those who seek to hoover up our money continue to act in an illegal fashion, demonstrating that they refuse to be bound by the rule of law themselves.

We learn from the Darlington & Stockton Times that Hambleton District Council secured liability orders for non payment of Council Tax against 505 households, each being slapped with costs of £123.  Richmondshire secured 216 liability orders, again with costs to each household of £123 and a further 15 orders secured for non payment of business rates with costs for each of those imposed at £176.  Meanwhile Northallerton secured no less than 721 liability orders against households in its district – although the costs sought and awarded were not reported, we can make an educated guess that the same court also awarded those at £123 each.

We have no way of knowing if these cases are flat out refusals to pay, or whether the residents are experiencing financial hardship that makes it difficult or even impossible for them to pay.  But we can be sure that in each case the residents are being asked to pay ever more for ever fewer services, the quality of which are steadily declining.   We can also be sure that in this so-called democracy of ours, these residents have never been asked how much they think the councils should demand, or asked to give a mandate for how the authorities spend the monies collected.

In each case, the cost to the councils of securing a liability order from the court is £3.  Add on administration, postal charges and reasonable overheads and the figure would not exceed costs of £10 in total per case.  So in these 1,457 cases, councils which by law are only allowed to charge ‘costs reasonably incurred’ for liability orders to enforce council tax demands, have gone beyond what the law permits them to charge by around £113 in each and every case.

And the court, in allowing this to happen by not limiting the costs awarded to the councils to those ‘reasonably incurred’, have facilitated the law being broken.  As a result, in just one court sitting, over £164,000 of residents’ money to which councils are not entitled is being taken from residents illegally by a branch of the state, sanctioned by a court that has exceeded its authority by awarding costs far beyond what has been reasonably incurred.

We have returned to the age of the Robber Baron, where the serfs are fair game to be preyed upon and treated as cash cows by those who set aside the rules on a whim and break the law without sanction whenever it suit their own ends.  This is today’s establishment in action.  It is little different to the establishment of past centuries.  The only change is that people who are supposed to be our servants have morphed themselves into our modern slavers.  This is 21st Century Britain.

The self inflicted decline of UKIP

The blog post title on PoliticalBetting yesterday said it all…  ‘All the firms have UKIP in the same direction’.

Courtesy of PoliticalBetting.com

One wonders if there is still time to get Farage out of the pub and talking to the issues.

The polling data is bad news not just for UKIP but also for the wider Eurosceptic community.  It suggest support for UKIP is drifting to the Conservatives, despite Cameron’s strongly pro-EU messaging, and the negative and dishonest picture he and the Tory outriders such as Roland Rudd, Open Europe and the CBI have painted about the future the UK could enjoy outside the EU.  In the absence of leadership the masses will turn to the loudest voice they hear.  Thanks to Farage’s warped priorities, the EUphiles are the only voices being heard.

This blog has been castigated by some in the Faragista cult for daring to criticise Farage and for saying that he represents the biggest threat to UKIP success because of his questionable past, his refusal to do detail and his fear of engaging in the important debate where the EUphile are using lies and misinformation to frighten people into thinking the Only Way is Brussels.  It is too soon to claim we have been vindicated, but it is certainly heading that way and we take no pleasure from it at all.

Despite a spurt in electoral support, Farage’s failure to challenge the fear, uncertainty and doubt spread by the Tory machine and its external allies, and his dumb mute act on the substantive issues about how the UK could leave the EU, enjoy political freedom and still prosper economically as part of the single market, is giving voters the impression that UKIP is all fur coat and no knickers.  People want to know how UKIP could get us out of the EU and Farage won’t commit to an answer and hammer it home time and again.  The lack of substance is being reflected in the opinion polls.

If Farage was doing his job instead of engaging in daft self promotional stunts, UKIP would not only be holding its new supporters, but adding to their number and strengthening the Eurosceptic cause.  This could be an opportunity lost for UKIP and the prospective ‘Out’ campaign.  Getting the support back after it has lost confidence will be harder than winning it the first time around.  Farage is possibly the best ally Cameron has.

The worst injustice: Contemptuous UK establishment has one law for us, another for them

It is said that justice should be blind.  The story in today’s Mail on Sunday (if it can be taken at face value) demonstrates it is also deaf and dumb.

The big story here is that the police stand accused of failing/refusing to investigate serious fraud allegations.  Further, that the police have only provided information that has been submitted to them to Parliament on the condition that the information is not made public.  Quite where the police get off telling our nominally elected representatives who make the law what they can and cannot do concerning the allegations that have been made, is jaw dropping.

But for a number of people, the claim that the police have deliberately refused their duty to investigate criminal activity, this is far from a new development.

For in the United Kingdom today we have a law enforcement and ‘justice’ system that selectively applies the law in the interests of their ‘friends’ – namely the establishment and the various branches of government and big business and – most importantly – their agents.  It has been that way for many years and it is not being challenged or reported.

But the problem goes far beyond that and has much more important and far reaching consequences.  What we are finding is that the police and the authorities are not only failing to uphold the law and failing to act within the law, they are taking upon themselves to make up law themselves irrespective of what has been decided in Parliament by our nominal representatives.  This shadow ‘field law’ is designed solely with the interests of the establishment in mind and used to maintain the interpretation of what these unelected and unaccountable officers consider to be ‘good order’.

While the Mail rushes into print to splash Graham Freeman’s story, they are nowhere to be found when ordinary people flag up stories of their own backed up with evidence, which has resulted in the police and branches of local government turning a blind eye to crimes being committed by agents of the establishment, such as bailiffs.  Complaints of criminal activity, especially fraud, against bailiffs result in the police twisting themselves into contortions to come up with unjustifiable excuses not to investigate, despite hard evidence of fraud and other offences.  One such ongoing case is being currently documented on a superbly written blog by Peter North.  There are 17 posts so far, but when you read it from the earliest post in June up to the most recent, the story that develops will stagger you.  It lays bare how the various entities display a dogged determination to evade their duty to uphold the law when those who have broken it are considered to be on the same team.  Bringing fraudulent bailiffs to account for their criminal behaviour would undermine the system’s ability to maintain their version of ‘good order’ by extracting money from ordinary people when the establishment deigns to levy it.

When people complaint to the local authorities, on whose behalf the bailiffs are acting, in every single case the authorities wash their hands like Pontius Pilate and say it’s nothing to do with them.  But it goes further, because not only are the bailiffs acting beyond the law, local authorities themselves are behaving in a criminal manner too.  The most common example of this is their fraudulent charges for liability orders.

The Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 (as amended), permit councils to charge ‘costs reasonably incurred’ for liability orders to enforce council tax demands.  The court fee cost of liability orders, according to the Magistrates’ Courts fee schedule, is £3.00.  When factoring in administration and postage overheads the total charged to the resident should be no more than £10.  Yet many councils are charging between £80 – £125 per order, making a profit after costs reasonably incurred.  See here and here.  This is blatantly against the law, yet not a single prosecution has been forthcoming.  The establishment uses the law to ensure people who do not pay the council tax demand in full are threatened, bullied and harrassed until the money is prised from them.  Yet the same establishment works in concert to ensure when it breaks the law, no legal action will follow.  The rules are only for the little people.

Despite this happening hundreds of thousands of times each and every year, with the fraud – at a conservative estimate – running to around £1 billion per year in excessive charging, the media completely ignores the issue.  Despite the reams of evidence that debt is being used by the establishment as a tool to engineer even more debt from which it can profit – turning people into debt slaves – the slavers are being shielded from the rule of law by the dogged refusal of their friends to apply the law.

The implications of this are so serious and far reaching many people struggle to process and accept the unjust reality, and choose to avert their gaze and bury their heads in the sand.  The concept of our supposedly benevolent and munificent institutions abusing the law to extort monies to which they are not entitled from ordinary people, is just too terrible to accept, let alone challenge.

This issue again throws up a critical issue, namely the absence of a written and codified constitution.  The deliberately vague and disturbingly flexible unwritten articles which the establishment relies upon to maintain its control of the people, when it is supposed to be the servant of the people, makes this injustice possible.  Although we know broadly what our rights are supposed to be, the fact they are not enumerated makes it difficult to uphold them through the judicial system.  Rights cannot be given to people, they are ours by default.  But, like entitlements, they are all too often considered by the establishment as gifts to be distributed when it sees fit.  As a result the status quo maintains this unjust state of affairs where regulatory and oversight bodies are supposed to be independent but see themselves as sharing a duty to hold the line against the great unwashed, thus enabling fraudulent and illegal actions to continue without challenge.

And they have the nerve to call this a democracy.

To cap it all, we see Eric Pickles happy chuntering on about the way things are supposed to be, stating in the ‘Guidance to local councils on good practice in the collection of Council Tax arrears’ that some of the tactics and actions carried out as standard practice by bailiffs, break the law:

But where is he when the enforcement of the law is not forthcoming because the police ignore the reports made to them despite the evidence provided, go on to claim that confirmed criminal acts are civil matters, and therefore refuse to fulfil their duty to investigate and bring the perpetrators before the courts?  Where is our supposedly fearless media, fighting for truth and justice?  All we see are the various elements of the establishment obscuscate, convolute, buck pass and ultimately put their financial interests before all else.

We are all familiar with the notion of justice being blind.  But reality nothing could be further from the truth.  People need to understand and come to terms with this shocking fact, justice for all, equal under the law, is a cynically perpetrated myth.  Our response, which should rightly be loaded with contempt and opprobrium, has to be the withdrawal of our consent for these vomit inducing creatures to govern us, as they knowingly aid and abet fraudsters and thieves in the commission of their crimes.  People need to learn how we can withdraw our consent peacefully in order to bring about change.  The writings of Gene Sharp point the way, but they are not a template.  He makes clear that how we challenge the establishment beast is down to us to figure out and execute.  The question now is will we?

So while it is all well and good for the Mail on Sunday to splash today’s story about how members of the establishment are covering for each other while only the little people face the full force of the law, when will it focus on the much larger, wider and more insipid injustices we have detailed above, that go on day after day in this country?

I dedicate this post to Madame Justice, in honour of the holiday that she seems to have taken from these parts, and in recognition of the impostor that stands in her stead.

Another day, another effort by Robber Barons to snatch our money without our consent

When the talking heads take to the press and airwaves to witter on about tax ‘fairness’ and the need of taxpayers and businesses to pay their ‘fair share’ the comments and the kneejerk reactions to them are enough to make one lose the will to live.

For while the governmental entities, local and national, are striving to relieve us of ever greater sums of our money, too few people stand up to demand these entities explain why they need so much of it and to account for its use. The media never asks.  There is no accountability.  When the Americans waged a war of independence from the British one of their demands was ‘no taxation without representation’.  Today in the UK we have plenty of taxation, but the only representation we see is the political class representing its own agendas at our expense.

Whenever governmental entities cite the consequences of a lower tax take from us, do you notice how they always provide examples of the effects of lower spending on essential services and describe any inability to confiscate from us whatever they want as being a ‘cost’ to the council or government?  The notion of living within their means is alien to them.  There’s always someone else’s bank account to raid to make up the difference.  Notice also how they never provide examples where essential services are unaffected, but rather the council or government’s discretionary (non essential) spending is reduced, so their pet projects and bribes are scaled back instead instead of core services.  You see, their priorities are always put before our priorities.

If we refuse to feed the parasitic beast then it will dole out punishment by protecting spending on what it wants to focus on, while reducing spending on what it has to focus on.  Rather than enforce the law when it comes to taxation and illegally set fines, local authorities are not even behaving as if they are above the law – they are behaving as if they are the law.  This is a matter of great concern that will be revisited here soon.

But, focusing on local government for now, we must not – like the waste of time press – ignore how council income has increased substantially through the ever growing list of charges and fees which residents have to pay for services that we already pay taxes to provide.  Councils not only get their central government grant and collect council tax from residents, they also make a fortune in charges that far exceed the cost of administration they were supposedly designed to cover.  The total amount that councils take from residents over the course of a year far exceeds the council tax demand we receive each year.  Ask your local paper where they’ve written on that subject.

Despite all this, just over one week ago, the Local Government Association published a briefing note in which it suggested a number of amendments, one of which demanded the government in Westminster scrap its plans to embed council tax referendums in the Local Audit and Accountability Bill:

Not only is local government increasingly abusing its ability to snatch money from us at every turn (as we saw earlier this week in Barnet  and is something that is happening up and down the country) its mouthpiece representative body (guess how that is funded) is demanding that we residents should not be asked for our consent via local referendum for increases above a very small percentage.

Brighton & Hove City Council has already declared its refusal to hold a referendum on any proposed council tax increase.  The leader of the Green Party minority administration in Brighton, Cllr Jason Kitcat, really took the biscuit when he told the local press:

The referendum rule is mad. It’s not really workable and would cost about £300,000 to run.

There you have it.  A sitting councillor who no doubt prattles on about ‘democracy’ and the ‘wishes of the people’ when trying to get elected, declaring that having to seek our democratic consent for a raid on our personal wealth, is unworkable.  In other words, the council should be allowed to demand what it likes and to hell with what residents think.

No doubt Cllr Kitcat subscribes to the view of elected politicians and council officials throughout the country (which Richard articulated so effectively in a post on EU Referendum) that revenue-providers (aka citizens) are confined to expressing their wishes on council tax via approved channels – such as voting – which can be safely ignored, or funnelled into areas where the message can be discounted.  Find one party political manifesto for borough or county council elections that has not been torn up mid-term so a council can do something different.

Of course, forcing residents to declare their revenue raising wishes by voting in council elections also has the happy coincidence of giving the impression these parasitic charlatans have legitimacy for their subsequent actions, which is almost impossible for voters to control once those fat arses settle on the comfy chairs in the council chamber.

Understand this.  Unless you withdraw your consent and stand up to press for change, you are nothing more than a cash cow who risks being turned into a debt slave.  Your rights are ignored by your public servants, you are treated with contempt by them and even the guardians of the law will not uphold the law to protect you from illegal actions that echo the outrageous, lawless and intimidatory behaviours of feudal lords, robber barons and corrupt clergy in centuries long since passed.

Have you had enough yet?

Update: Richard beat me to the punch, and with far more eloquence expands on how councils whine about having to place statutory notices in the local papers, yet won’t yield an inch when it comes to spending a small fortune producing, printing and distributing their propaganda sheets – which always give a self congratulatory take on the news they want to share.

Try and find a single story in those reams of dead trees about why councils issue liability orders to residents that are way above the cost of the administration in producing them, which is legally all they are allowed to recoup.  Find one story about how the bailiffs they contract to enforce their council tax or parking fines break the law by charging illegal fees and claiming for visits that never happened.   Find one explanation about why we pay an ever rising policing precept to the county council, yet the borough council uses money for local services to fund restricted-power PCSOs to make up for a shortage of real police on our streets.  It’s happening everywhere, and no one is holding these slimeballs to account.

Beware! Children at play

No, we are not not talking about the millions of youngsters who are now enjoying their summer holiday.   We are talking about the juvenile delinquents who inhabit Westminster and play their idiotic, copycat, yah-boo games in a crass attempt to appear superior to their opponents; and the childlike fools in the media who publish stupid stories laced with faux shock and concern for the nation’s well-being.

The answer to the question hasn’t changed in years – and certainly not since the last time this pathetic question was asked by the Mail’s space filling dimwits in a roundabout way.  The answer is still our supreme government in Brussels, the EU, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Anyone would think the reason this fact is ignored has something to do with the supposedly anti-EU Daily Mail trying to play down its pro-EU position because its readers are mainly Eurosceptic.  By way of a reminder…

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This is why, addressing Richard’s commentary over on EU Referendum, the Daily Mail – despite its evident distate for Roland Rudd of pro-EU propaganda merchant ‘Business for New Europe’ – the Mail as a newspaper seems quite happy to take stories sourced by him and to spread them uncritically.

As we reminded readers recently, we cannot trust the media because it is ‘in the tank’ for the EU and we should therefore view all stories through a prism of scepticism, where we question whose agenda is being serviced.

Talking out of his Barnet

The Leader of Barnet Council, Richard Cornelius, is another example of a politician who resorts to weasel words and refuses to acknowledge or accept when his council has exceeded its authority and broken the law.

Speaking after Barnet Council was found to have illegally driven up the charges for controlled parking zones in the borough in order to raise revenue, rather than simply maintain the scheme, Cllr Cornelius tried to play down the seriousness of the issue by saying:

It is fairly clear that the council raised the price of parking permits, after five years of a price freeze, too abruptly and rather charmlessly. I will make sure that doesn’t happen again.

With the council considering spending more taxpayers’ money to pursue an appeal, Cllr Cornelius then attempted to play the ‘everyone else is doing it’ card:

Both our pricing and spending are very much in line with other London boroughs.

That of course doesn’t make it right.  Cornelius is whining like a spoiled child at the unfairness of being pulled up for his council’s illegal behaviour.

This matter is yet another case of councils doing what they think they can get away with.  It is also a splendid example of the importance of residents taking an interest in what goes on in Town Halls and challenging councils who think they can bully people into compliance through threats and using taxpayers’ money to fund legal action.

The lesson from residents is not only that you can take on local authorities when they are in the wrong and win, but that we all have a duty to do so.  The forget they are supposed to be our servants and we need to correct the unacceptable imbalance in the relationship.

Defeated Council to spend yet more taxpayers money in attempt to rob residents blind

The local government resident-robbing machine is hard at work in the London Borough of Barnet.

The Evening Standard reports that a Judge in the High Court has ruled Barnet council acted unlawfully when it increased the cost of residents’ parking permits and visitor vouchers in controlled parking zones (CPZs) in order to raise revenue.

From the Standard’s piece there is a familiar story here.  Residents in part of the borough are frustrated at parking problems in their streets caused by commuters trying to park close to the local London Underground station.  So they get the council to agree to create a controlled parking zone in certain roads where residents and their visitors will have permits to park and everyone else gets a ticket or towed away – even though they also pay for a road fund licence and were entitled to park there.

To meet the administration costs, the council imposes an annual charge, which in this case back in 2001 was £20 per year for the first vehicle in each household and 35p for each visitor permit.  After several years the council puts up the administration charge, in this case in 2006 to £40 for the first vehicle in each household and £1 for visitor permits.  Doubtless Barnet feels the amount of administration of the CPZ scheme warranted such an increase.

But then, in the way councils do because they feel they can do what the hell they like, Barnet sought to turn these residents into official cash cows to subsidise other transport related matters the council wanted to spend money on.  So in 2011 Barnet donned its balaclava mask, put on its black and white hooped sweatshirt, and took it upon its collective self to charge residents in the CPZ £100 for the first car in each household and £4 per visitor permit.  As one resident, who unhelpfully for Barnet is a solicitor who does know a bit about the law, pointed out:

Simply holding a summer BBQ or a children’s party could cost £40 in parking charges. An elderly person enjoying regular visits from a relative could face an annual cost of £800.

Extrapolate that across the whole CPZ and you can see there is serious money being taken from residents for the council to spend as it sees fit.

However, it would seem Barnet Council’s solicitor is underused (not consulted) or overpaid (incompetent in the law), because the council did not have the power under the 1984 Road Traffic Regulation Act to charge local residents for parking in order to raise surplus revenue for other transport purposes!  And that is what was held by Mrs Justice Lang in a rare example of the judiciary upholding residents’ complaints about the illegal behaviour of councils and their agents.

But, not content with having their kleptomaniac tendencies reined in by the High Court, Barnet is udderly determined to milk its unwitting cash cows and now intends to spend a significant sum of taxpayers’ money to appeal the case – so desperate are they to suck every drop they can from the taxpayers’ teat.

For the moment it seems at least one council that acts as a law unto itself has come unstuck.  But this is just one example of what councils up and down the country are doing, blatantly ripping off and pressuring residents to part with ever larger sums in fees and charges to service its own agenda, without any consideration of the legality or the probity of their actions.  We will watch with interest how the case pans out.

EU FUD Watch: Speaking truth to propagandists

Update: The comment thread over on EUobserver (linked below) has seen a couple of Euroweenies trying to hold their fatuous line, but they are having their arguments systematically broken. This is what happens when people challenge ludicrous EUphile claims with facts from the real world.  They have no answer.

EUobserver describes itself as, ‘The trusted source of EU related news and information. Editorially independent, open-minded and balanced news about the European Union.’

In other words it is a propaganda organ of the EU, publishing stories with that service the EU view of itself and the world.  As usual, the party line is followed to the letter today by EUobserver‘s resident Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) spreader, Benjamin Fox, who gleefully tells readers:

Japan has become the latest economic power to urge the UK not to leave the EU, warning that the move could put over 100,000 jobs on the line.

The warning comes as the UK government prepares to publish the first batch of audits on EU policy making this week as part of its ‘balance of competences’ review.

This is a story that Richard has already covered on EU Referendum.  The fact is the EU and the single market are different things.  The EU is political, the single market is economic.  We can leave the EU and still remain part of the single market, so none of the FUD about jobs being on the line or our export markets being closed to us is justified.

Given its readership, it is worth the effort to correct the record in the story’s comments section, in other words speaking inconvenient truth to the propagandists.   Being uncertain of EUobserver’s treatment of voices that challenge the party line, it remains to be seen if the comment will be permitted to stay online.  But just in case it doesn’t, a screenshot of it is shown below:

The media is determined to ignore the truth and deny a platform to those who want the British people to know and understand that leaving the EU does not mean we cannot still be part of the single market, membership of which is extremely important to UK businesses that export to other single market members and import goods we want to buy from within the single market.

Leaving the European Union is about extracting this country from political control by the bureaucrats in Brussels.  Nothing more.  There is a mechanism for it that enables us to negotiate an agreement to remain part of the single market.

An independent Britain will have the opportunity to take a seat at the ‘top table’ where rules and regulations are made at the global level – before they are handed down to the EU to implement throughout its member states.  An independent Britain can strike its own trade deals that suit British interests, rather than accept compromise deals borne of the muddled and contradictory interests of 28 competing EU member states.  This is the reality the politicians don’t want the British people to know or understand.

So spread the word loudly, far and wide.  There is a beneficial alternative to the status quo.  There can be a brighter future and a new world of opportunities for this country – and the enabler is leaving the EU.

Media bias and UKIP’s failure highlighted yet again

Another day and yet another example of how the the media distorts coverage of matters EU, while UKIP continues to act as if the cat has got its tongue by offering no Eurosceptic view on the subject in question.

Robert Watts, writing in the Telegraph, gives that pro-EU paper’s take on the burden British businesses experience as a result of EU regulations.  According to Watts, the details will be laid bare in a series of reports which will be published on Monday by the Foreign Secretary, Concrete Willy, beginning with a focus on how the EU affects UK taxation, health, overseas aid, foreign policy, animal welfare and food safety.

Watts goes on to tell readers that a further 26 reports will be published in coming months, ‘in a boost to the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservatives’.  Having made his reference to Eurosceptics, Watts runs off to get a Eurosceptic quote from… yes you guessed it, the Tory stooge EUphile ‘think tank’ Open Europe which, as the Telegraph intended, prattles on about the non-existent fantasy renegotiation where the UK can supposedly secure more flexible membership terms from the EU.

Where the main Eurosceptic force, UKIP, is supposed to be leading by rebutting the bullshit coming out of the Tory delusion department, instead we get the Europlastics of pro-EU Open Europe taking a break from acting as official minder to Andrea Leadsom (wherever she speaks about EU matters, Open Europe are at her side keeping her on message) in order to blaze a trail for the Tory line, being the only supposed Eurosceptic voice that readers hear – and in the absence of any challenge, those readers assume what they hear to be accurate and well informed.

The problem is not only that UKIP isn’t establishing itself ‘go to’ organisation for Eurosceptic commentary in the mainstream media, it is that UKIP isn’t even talking about this issue on its own website.  How can potential supporters take UKIP seriously when it is voluntarily absents itself from engaging on core issues concerning the negative aspects of EU membership, just as the subject gets serious media profile?

When it comes to boosting Nigel Farage’s personal profile, no column inches or photo opportunities are spared.  But when discussion turns to subjects that are supposed to be at the heart of the very reason for UKIP’s being, the party goes AWOL.  This isn’t a one off, this is part of a consistent pattern.  The only logical explanation is that Farage deliberately refuses to engage on these topics because he doesn’t understand them himself.  He determination to not do detail means he doesn’t have anything of value to add and he is scared of being bested in an argument as a result.

This is just the latest in a long line of examples of both the public and the UKIP membership being ill served, by the press and the UKIP leader respectively.  In such circumstances how can we Eurosceptics possibly hope to win any prospective EU in-out referendum?  The media is ‘in the tank’ for the EUphiles and the sole Eurosceptic political party is asleep at the wheel as its leader plays ‘look at me’.  The media is serving its own interests and Farage relies upon his cult to lash out at any criticism of his ineptitude.  With this seemingly unresolvable issue, we can be excused for asking ourselves why we bother.

News management in return for political patronage

Is it the journalists?  Is it their editors?  Or is it the media moguls who own the news media?  Wherever the responsibility resides, the fact is the British press ignores stories that undermine the agenda of the political class.

There is no contradiction between the press turning a blind eye to inconvenient realities on essential matters such being able to leave the EU but still enjoy access to the single market, or the global organisation origins of the myriad of regulations that flow to us via Brussels, and journalists scuttling through the sewers to get stories that undermine or wreck the careers of individual politicians, or the election prospects of particular parties.  It is understood in such circles that while some of the actors are expendible and faces might occasionaly change, the collective objectives are shared throughout the establishment and are therefore untouchable.

If the British press were genuinely committed to transparency and ensuring the people can know and understand what the political class is doing and how it is doing it – i.e. reporting the facts regardless of views and objectives of the respective hack, editor or owner, the press would readily publish stories that debunk the lies and misrepresentations that are continually reported without question, challenge or scrutiny.

This is why, despite definitive and absolute knowledge that journalists at a number of heavyweight publications and news organisations have read blog posts and detailed evidence that catagorically refutes David Cameron’s ludicrous  ‘Norway fax law’ and ‘top table’ claims; and John Cridland of the CBI’s argument that leaving the EU would damage UK commerical and employment interests – even though leaving the EU is political and what matters commercially is the economic issue of maintaining access to the single market – those journalists, their editors or the moguls who own the publications, ensure the story is never published in the news and editorial sections.

Revealing such information – while of vital importance to ensuring the people of this country understand the options open to them and beneficial alternatives that are available concerning the way this country operates and is governed – is detrimental to the interests of the politicians and the parasitic media that feeds off them in return for patronage in the form of career moves, access to the ‘big beasts’ and the occasional scoop that drives readership and therefore advertising revenue.  So it is simply omitted from the record. The chums continue to rub along together, pissing out of the tent on the rest of us while just about tolerating each other within it.

Instead, such news and information is consigned to the comparatively small readerships of columns by fearless journalists such as Christopher Booker and Mary-Ellen Synon, polemecists such as James Dellingpole, or blogs such as EU Referendum, The Boiling Frog, Witterings from Witney etc.

Concealment of the truth in this way is nothing less than a carefully coordinated and orchestrated deception.  The British public is being lied to because the truth is being withheld from ‘the record’.   This demonstrates the news  in this country is not honest.  The media has no integrity.  It cannot be trusted.  It is riddled with agenda and vested interest.  It does not reflect reality.

Disturbingly this will be news to some readers here.  But hopefully, as this deception becomes increasingly recognised and understood, more people will consider what the read and hear through the prism of scepticism, asking themselves how the story worked its way into the arena, who benefits from what has been published or broadcast, and what else is likely to be known but is going unreported.  Those same people may even then be minded to dig for more information and read reports that are cited from themselves to see if the media coverage reflects reality.  Getting to the truth requires effort.  Never moreso than today.

Spread the word and encourage others to look beyond the headlines and seek out what the establishment would rather we did not know.  They can begin here.

Self confessed murderer of Lee Rigby attacked in prison

Reports in the media claim that the self confessed murderer of Lee Rigby, Michael Adebolajo has been ‘attacked in prison’ at HMP Belmarsh, with sources saying he has had two of his teeth knocked out.  It’s a start, I suppose.

Clearly he is not so tough when he can’t run someone over to incapacitate them without warning then, with an accomplice, butcher them with knives and meat cleavers while they are unable to defend themselves.

May this be only the first such retaliation directed at that feral beast, and may the rest of Adebolajo’s life be filled with fear, pain and suffering.

Thoughts from outside the NHS bubble

From time to time the blogosphere has the ability to restore one’s faith in the capacity of social media to provide contributions of immense value.  One such contribution can be found on Cranmer’s website today, written by Rev’d Dr Peter Mullen.

It is a piece that speaks truth to sentimental delusion.

This blog rarely ventures onto the subject of the NHS.  My personal experience of the health service’s impacts on my family and friends is far more negative than positive and as Rev Mullen points out in his piece, the NHS has the same status in Britain as that of a cow among Hindu devotees.

The NHS cannot be criticised in any way without a legion of those devotees hurling bile filled invective at the person offering the criticism.  Never mind that among other failings, the poor and declining standard of care in the NHS resulted in the death of my mother, came within a whisker of ending the life of my wife moments after she gave birth to our precious son, and made the final days of her step-father’s life undignified and needlessly painful.

I have done battle with the Nursing Directors, Consultants and Managers, each of whom attempted to defend clear failings to the point of saying black was white, all because their primary concern was worry about a possible legal case for compensation, rather than a desire to correct the problems at source.  As I found, when all else fails and their argument has been comprehensively destroyed, the next things to be destroyed are the incriminating medical notes and ability to recall conversations held in front of witnesses.  All that could remain is blind faith in the NHS, which is why Rev’d Mullen’s description of the service as the National Health Church is so apt.

The NHS is not fit for purpose.  It is a bureaucratic behemoth, violently resistant to change, and imbued with and unwarranted self belief that is fuelled by those cheerleaders inside and outside it – many of whom have political motives for supporting what has been little more than a charnel house for tens of thousands of people in recent years, whose conditions would not and should not have resulted in death or long term suffering.

The people and businesses of this country are forking over £95.6 billion pounds of our money this year to fund the NHS in England – an organisation that has an unjustified sense of entitlement and expectation.  Entitlement to operate in its own interests rather than that of patients and expectation that people should not criticise it, because it comprises, as Rev’d Mullen so incisively observes, those who are described as ‘angels…wonderful…caring…tireless…salt of the earth’.

There are still NHS staff who don’t feel the job of providing care and comfort and affording dignity to patients is beneath them.  There are still doctors and consultants who recognise their job role is trying to heal patients by treating them for their ailments, rather than constructing departmental fiefdoms and playing politics.  There are even managers who add value to the NHS by trying to administer the hospital effectively so patients get the care they need and the taxpayer gets value for money.  But there are too few of each of them in the ‘modern NHS’.

There are better options for the use of our money to achieve the better medical outcomes.  But all the while the political class, media and National Health Church faithful continue to prop up this broken socialised construct, we will all be stuck with it or be forced to pay more of our money to go private in order to get the standards of care and treatment the NHS is supposed to provide but all too often fails to deliver – with far too many casualties paying the ultimate price in this pseudo-religious war.

STOR: Are even higher diesel generator costs just over the horizon for energy customers?

On current figures, as Richard North, Christopher Booker and James Dellingpole have explained in recent days, the Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR) scheme that provides back up for wind power and renewables in the form of a national network of diesel generators controlled remotely by the National Grid, is expected by 2020 to cost UK energy consumers close to an extra £1 billion.

However it is possible that figure could increase substantially for energy consumers because of factors that investors, who are rushing to install generators to cash in on incredibly lucrative standby payments and grossly inflated tariffs per MWh, may not have considered.

There is a very reasonable possibility that the propensity of the EU to impose regulation on anything that moves could be extended to things that don’t, such as stationary diesel generators that comprise the STOR network.  The subject of regulation of diesel generators forms a discussion piece on the website of the Association of Manufacturers and suppliers of Power Systems (AMPS).

The EU is nothing if not a fan of harmonisation and standardisation.  For while at this time the EU Stage IIIA regulations affect emissions from portable and rental generator sets in the power range of 18-560 kVA, but not emissions from stationary, non-road diesel generator sets such as those used for STOR-type prime, peak shaving, load shedding or emergency standby power, the EU could decide to move to adopt US Tier IV-style regulation for diesel stationary engines.

Stage III A of the EU regulations covers engines from 19 to 560 kW including constant speed engines, railcars, locomotives and inland waterway vessels, Stage III B covers engines from 37 to 560 kW including, railcars and locomotives and Stage IV covers engines between 56 and 560 kW.  If these regulations were to be applied to stationary diesel generators, which arguably pose a greater risk to people because of their fixed locations and their in situ emission of the nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and other particulates the regulations are designed to limit in fixed locations, existing generator sets may need to be modified or replaced.

The investors who are piling in for their cut of the STOR largesse are not going to want to see margins eroded by the need to replace or update at significant cost their gen-sets.  The costs will be passed on when the government’s operating reserve becomes a hostage to fortune upon which it is ever more reliant due to its obsession with renewables at the expense of conventional energy generating plant.

In the AMPS piece it is clear the power systems manufacturers have already been anticipating what this means for their profits.  As Richard Cotterell, the General Manager at the Perkins Engines Company Large Engine Centre in Stafford makes clear:

France, Germany and Switzerland and other European countries have their own regulations. India, for example, regulates diesel engines up to 800 kVA, whereas the EU only regulates [non-road, portable gensets] up to 560 kW.

Furthermore, the emissions regulations set for electric power engines are several years behind highway engines, so as Perkins also manufactures on-highway engines we are less apprehensive about more stringent emissions legislation. Our electric power division in Stafford, UK will be able to leverage Perkins in-house expertise and knowledge that our brothers have in Peterborough, as well as our parent company Caterpillar has around the world.

In other words, they can bring modification solutions to the market quickly – but it will be at a cost to the owners of the gen-sets.  Perkins stands to do well out of a change in the regulations, as does its fellow Caterpillar company, FG Wilson (now Caterpillar NI), which is Europe’s largest manufacturer of diesel & gas generator sets and power generating solutions.

Interestingly last summer, FG Wilson as it was then, began to implement a significant redundancy programme across its plants at Larne, Monkstown and Belfast when it decided to move the manufacture of retail size gen-sets to China because that’s where its major market for the units is. A Caterpillar employee tells me its strategy is to build its equaipment as close to its customer market as possible.  So it is noteworthy and very telling that the manufacture of large gen-sets of the type used in STOR diesel parks has been kept in Northern Ireland, as demand for them in the UK is robust.

Ultimately the inescapable fact is that the UK government has put this eye wateringly costly STOR in place at our expense and we could soon see our supreme government in Brussels take regulatory measures that further add to the cost, which we will also be expected to cover through our energy bills.  We are in a lose – lose – lose situation and despite the huge implications for energy customers the mainstream media and the likes of its eco-activist, climate defending superstars like the BBC’s Roger Harrabin, remains silent.

US Government is learning from the EU playbook

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) seems to have taken a leaf from the EU playbook on how to get its own way, namely when people don’t vote for the result you want, make them vote again.

That is sort of what is happening in the case of George Zimmerman, who was found not guilty by a  jury of murder and manslaughter after shooting dead Trayvon Martin while being beaten by him on the ground.

Having seen prosecutors and the media do everything they could to paint Zimmerman as a racist and position that as the reason he allegedly ‘racially profiled’ Martin leading to him following Martin, then getting involved in an altercation in which a shot was fired – yet a jury considering the evidence deciding Zimmerman was innocent of the charges – the DOJ have apparetly set up an email address to receive tips from the public about Zimmerman in the hope of harvesting evidence that would enable them to launch another prosecution against him for civil rights violations.

The DOJ appears determined to keep up its witch hunt against Zimmerman until somehow he is deprived of his liberty.  The answer of the jury was not the one they wanted to see.

Separately and in a classic example of contrasting fortunes – something that is also in keeping with mendacious EU habit of protecting their friends when it suits them – the DOJ has announced that it will not prosecute the US Internal Revenue Service (equivalent of HMRC).

This follows allegations that the IRS improperly accessed or disclosed the tax information of  conservative political candidates standing against Democrat Party representatives, after it exclusively targeted Democrat opponents for politically motivated tax audits and investigations.

Justice is supposed to be blind.  However, increasingly in the US it is just another political tool to be deployed in service of agendas that play to the biases and interests of the Democrat Party and their affiliated organisations and campaign groups.  Zimmerman is being harrassed and victimised in disgraceful fashion by the DOJ at the behest of the Democrat leaning civil rights movement, while the IRS is having its outrageous behaviour in support of the Democrats swept under the carpet.

Tammany Hall must have been moved to Washington DC.  The stench of corruption is overpowering.

Energy prices, energy gaps and ignoring the elephant in the room

The appearance of Paul Massara, chief executive of RWE npower, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning signalled a continuation of the slow burn of superficial media coverage about the issues of energy prices and energy gaps.

Massara was there to explain his argument that government policy is the major factor behind rising energy costs.  It is hard to disagree with when one considers the imposition of levies and charges that are being tacked on to the cost of gas and electricity.  But Massara certainly isn’t telling the whole story and is deftly attempting to play down the ways in which the energy companies – and other investors highlighted in recent stories about the Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR) scandal – are cashing in at consumer expense.

However, nothing the government or the energy companies are saying is acknowledging the elephant in the room.

For at the heart of all these measures, charges, initiatives and regulations that consumers are being hit with is one simple fact – the aim of the government is to drive up prices to reduce demand.  In other words, the policy is to force people to use less energy, rather than governments seeking to provide enough energy to meet the demand of a growing population.

The cart is being put before the horse in this way to satisfy a wrongheaded and retrograde direction of travel, one that seeks to reverse decades of human progress while describing this plan, in classic doublespeak, as progress.

Behind this is the nefarious ‘sustainability agenda’, which dictates that the ever growing number of people must get by with less, and to ensure they do consume less governments will impose measures to limit supply and force prices up.

The very notion of encouraging innovation to find cleaner, more affordable and more efficient ways of meeting the growing global demand for energy, is heresy.  It must not be discussed, for no one must be given the impression there is an alternative to the vicious agenda being followed by the global political elite and the corporates that stand to make a fortune for delivering less to their customers.

While the media, government ministers, assorted talking heads and the lavishly remunerated cartel of CEOs from the big six energy firms continue to postulate, comment, argue and prattle their various offerings about our energy future, the root cause of all this remains a globally determined diktat that has never been put to the people in consultation or presented to them for their approval – yet for which the people are expected to pay vast amounts more in return for very much less.

This is the huge elephant in the room from which they are averting their eyes, in case the rest of us notice what is happening and take a stand against the political and corporatist class.

Germany’s rebellion against wind power picks up pace

Reading the propaganda that Greens and wind power fanatics churn out the state of affairs in Germany, one could be forgiven for thinking our Teutonic cousins are experiencing a universal condition of rapture and living in a wind energy utopia.

The reality is, as one finds all too often, very different.  As Dellers explained in his piece in the Mail on Sunday, sudden fluctuations in Germany’s power grid caused by the ebb and flow of wind have led to serious industrial damageand the number of short interruptions in the grid has increased by 29 per cent in the past three years – resulting in some firms on the grid reporting damage running into hundreds of thousands of euros as a result of unexpected stoppages.

In 2006, when wind farms were few and far between, engineers in eastern Germany running coal, gas and nuclear power plants took action to stabilize the grid roughly 80 times a year.  Today, as the amount of electricity generated by the region’s 8,000  wind turbines rises and falls by the hour, engineers have to intervene every second day in order to maintain network stability. The knock on effect cannot be underestimated either as neighbouring Czechs and Poles are so fed up with the instability that they are on the verge of blocking the disruptive wind-produced electricity from their power lines.

These are just some of the technical problems that are conveniently being ignored by Ed Davey and the rest of the coagulation government.  But from Germany, via stories in publications like Spiegel that are ignored in our own patsy press, we also discover that the dash for wind is seeing increasing setting the establishment and big business against ordinary citizens who are declaring enough is enough.

The excessive costs borne by taxpayers and energy customers is becoming a major issue.  The effects on residents who are being physically affected by the consequences of living close to the noise and vibration of the turbines is being increasingly reported and stirring opposition.  And of course the blight of the landscape and the horrific death toll inflicted on insects, birds and bats is also making many former supporters of wind switch to opposing the proliferation of ever bigger and more harmful masts, some in new developments and others replacing existing smaller masts as part of a process of ‘repowering’.

Despite all this, the UK government presses ahead with plans to erect more wind turbines around this country, citing its carefully constructed fictions about the efficiency, cost effectiveness and future benefits of wind farms.  But the tactic of wind advocates of citing Germany as a wind power success story is increasingly failing to stand up to scrutiny as the counter consensus becomes stronger.

Factor in the extortionate costs to energy customers and taxpayers of providing generous incentives to corporates to install CO2 emitting diesel generators as back up for wind via the short term operating reserve (STOR), as we start to see the makings of a dramatic shift away from the renewables fantasy.  What we are seeing in Germany we can soon expect to see here in the UK.  Then things could get interesting.

STOR scandal: Revealing the rip off to millions more people

Following the exposure of the rapidly growing use of diesel generators, to provide energy when the wind doesn’t blow to turn those intermittent and inadequate turbines, the story revealed by Richard North and Christopher Booker in being brought to a much wider audience via the Mail on Sunday today, courtesy of James Dellingpole.

Making use of Richard’s content, Dellers makes the key points that should make a lot of people sit up and take notice:

The National Grid’s eye-wateringly expensive solution to counter the instability of wind power is known as the Short Term Operational Reserve, or STOR, to generate a reserve capacity of eight gigawatts (GW) by 2020, the equivalent of about five nuclear plants.

The diesel-generators will provide immediate computer-controlled back-up for that significant period when the wind turbines are not working, but at a hefty premium.

Currently the wholesale price for electricity is around £50 per megawatt hour (MWh) but diesel-generator owners will be paid £600 per MWh.

At 12 times above the market rate, this represents a bigger cash bonanza even than that currently enjoyed by wind developers, who receive a subsidised price of between two and three times the market rate, depending on whether their turbines are on land or offshore.

With the huge reach that can be achieved by the Mail due to its millions of online readers, the STOR scandal is starting to gain some traction.  This increased attention will surely lead to more scrutiny about why the UK is decommissioning coal and nuclear power stations to be replaced with ineffective wind turbines, that in turn rely on hugely expensive, CO2 emitting diesel generators as back up when electricity demand exceeds what can be supplied.

The detail that should make people’s eyes open wide in disbelief is that in 2010, the scheme was already costing us £205 million a year, yet by 2020 this is expected to rise  to £945 million.  All this money being taken from us in addition to what was already being taken to fund our energy needs – and it is only being taken because the politicians have wantonly abandoned reason and made us increasinly dependent on the least efficient, least reliable and least affordable form of power generation, which necessitates diesel generators to be on standby to make up the shortfall when the wind drops off.

To call this a scandal doesn’t come anywhere close to underlining the scale of this corrupt rip off or the extent of the carbon con that is being used by the government to enrich corporates at our expense.

STOR Scandal: Ripping you off to line corporate pockets

Richard is away plane spotting so I’ll try to do my bit for the cause… Booker’s column in the Sunday Telegraph today spreads the word to more readers that under the Government’s STOR (Short Term Operating Reserve) scheme, the National Grid has been signing up, at vast expense, thousands of diesel-driven stand-by generators to provide instantly available power to “balance the grid” when the wind isn’t blowing.

 
As Booker explains, so huge are the sums the grid is offering to make this power available that hundreds of canny investors have seen that this is one of the great money-making rackets of our time. In old industrial sites, quarries and supermarket premises all over the country they are piling in to install dedicated “generator parks”, capable of producing up to 100 megawatts (MW), in return for “availability payments” of up to £47,000 a year for each MW of their capacity. They then receive additional payment for the amount of electricity they actually feed to the grid, giving them an equivalent of £600 for each MW hour supplied – 12 times the going market rate.

What does this mean for energy customers?  Before long STOR alone will be adding five per cent, or £1 billion a year, to our electricity bills. Yet no one involved wants to talk about it. This is a scam so colossal that it makes the owners of those useless wind farms, who get subsidies of 100 or 150 per cent, seem miserably underpaid. As Booker puts it, this new energy scandal makes the wind industry look underpaid.  And that is exactly what this is, a scandal.

In the name of decarbonising our economy and fighting climate change, ordinary customers like you and me are footing the bill for inadequate and grotesquely expensive wind energy solution that simply doesn’t work.  To make up the shortfall in wind energy’s capacity to deliver the power we need, the government is encouraging – with even more of our money – the construction an even more grotesquely expensive back up solution powered by hydrocarbon fossil fuel.  STOR is best described as the Government scheme to make corporates richer at your expense, which exposes the fight against CO2 as a blatant fraud.