Raging shock as ‘the powers that be’ increasingly run out of control

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It was good intentions that saw healthcare professionals raise concerns about the food that some children were being given in their packed lunches.  It was good intentions that saw education professionals say they should therefore advise parents what a balanced packed lunch should contain.  It was good intentions that then saw education and healthcare professionals unite to dictate what food and drink should be in the child’s packed lunch, or else there would be consequences.  As surely as night follows day it was a certainty that these good intentions would be hijacked and transformed into an agenda to wield control over other people.

Two weeks ago a local news story from Dagenham, east London showed this control agenda in action and running into some scattergun resistance from confused and frustrated parents.  A water-only policy for the drink in a packed lunch has clashed with some parents’ desire to put sugar-free squash in the lunch instead, due to their young children – just fancy – not liking the taste of water.  It turns out the school has made an application for the London Healthy Schools Award, hence its zealous dietary restrictions.  The actions of the school have prompted some parents to keep their children off school, affecting what passes for an education there.

In fact, it is the desperation of Valence Primary School to achieve that award, that has seen staff have been removing drink cartons from children and throwing them away, and pouring out drink from containers to check the colour of the contents.  The school’s headteacher, Elizabeth Chaplin, said that the school had a policy where midday supervisors disposed of half-empty drinks and yoghurt pots to prevent spillages in lunchboxes, which makes things sound inocuous enough, until she goes on to say that children who were questioned over their drink contents were “more than happy to confirm or demonstrate the water content”.  The few reactions to the story from those of an authoritarian bias, prompted me to leave this response:

This local example of the powers that be running out of control has now been added to by a national story from the Daily Mail.  That paper reports that Colnbrook C of E Primary School near Slough, has suspended a six-year-old child because his parents refused to stop putting a pack of Mini Cheddars in his packed lunch, in contravention of their ‘healthy eating’ policy.  This follows a letter sent to all parents in mid January which included the following:

Chocolate, sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks are not allowed.

If your child’s lunchbox is unhealthy and unbalanced they will be provided with a school lunch for which you will be charged.

To be picky, Mini Cheddars arguably do not fall into the list of prohibited foods.  But regardless, such behaviour by this and other schools is another example of the machinations of the state taking ownership for the raising of children and imposition of constraints on parents.  That is unacceptable.

The state’s agents are out of control.  And as for the lack of perspective, for the sake of a cheesy biscuit snack comprising a small part of a child’s diet, that child is having his education, such as it is, adversely affected because the school wants to assert power over his parents.  This is more than wrong, it is perverse.  It would be wrong to describe this as the nanny state, nannies tend to be kind and affectionate rather than power crazed obsessives who abuse their positions to pursue an agenda set down by those who believe they know best and everyone has to fall into line with their viewpoint.  It’s time for parents to shake off their fear of officialdom and take back control of the raising of their children.

Stolen child scandal: Where do you turn when the establishment is out of control?

This is one of the most horrific stories concerning judicial and local authority excess I have ever read, courtesy of Christopher Booker.

• A pregnant Italian woman visits the UK for a training course being run by her airline employer
• It is reported the woman suffers from bi-polar disorder and has been neglecting her medication, resulting in a panic attack
• Having called the police in a distressed state because she can’t find the passports of her other children, the police tell the woman’s mother over the phone they are taking her to hospital to ensure the unborn baby is ok
• The woman discovers she has been taken to a psychiatric hospital, and when she asks to go back to her hotel she is physically restrained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act
• Social services are involved
• Five weeks later, still detained under section, she is refused breakfast without explanation
• She protests and is strapped down and sedated
• When she regains consciousness she discovers she is in hospital – and that the baby has been cut out of her via Caesarian section and taken away by social services
• Essex social services obtained a High Court order in August 2012 for the birth “to be enforced by way of caesarean section”
• Unbelievably, High Court judge, Mr Justice Mostyn, had given the social workers permission for this
• The woman was deliberately not told what was happening, was not represented properly by the local authority appointed solicitors and had no opportunity to object to what was being done to her and her child
• The woman is subsequently refused permission to see her child
• The woman is escorted back to Italy, without her child who, without justification, is kept in British custody
• The High Court in Rome expresses outrage at what had been done to an Italian citizen “habitually resident” in Italy. But the judge there concluded that, since she had not protested at the time, she had accepted that the British courts had jurisdiction – even though she had not known what was to be done to her, was deemed to have no “capacity” to instruct lawyers because she had been sectioned, and had only been represented by solicitors assigned to her by the local authority
• The mother returns to the UK to plead for the return of her daughter
• The judge admits that, since resuming her medication, the mother seemed impressively articulate and a different person from the one he had seen earlier. But, because he could not risk a failure to maintain her medication in the future, he ruled that the child must be placed for adoption
• No offence had been committed, there had been no abuse of the child, there was no evidence of any risk to the child, but the child had been stolen from a foreign and temporary visitor because of a panic attack
• Supported by the mother, her American husband – from whom she is amicably separated, and who is the father of her eldest daughter – asked that the baby be sent to Los Angeles to live with his sister, herself a very capable mother
• Essex social services ruled that this was unacceptable because, even though she was the aunt of the baby’s stepsister, the American woman had no “blood” tie to the baby. So, rather than allow the child to be looked after by her “kin”, she must be sent to live with complete strangers
• Lawyers for the woman are demanding to know why Essex social services appear not have contacted next of kin in Italy to consult them on the case
• An Essex county council spokesman said the local authority would not comment on ongoing cases involving vulnerable people and children – the standard response in the textbook effort to avoid being held to account

This is the most extreme example yet of ‘child protection’ services – which routinely ignore actual abuse when it involves the need for visits, investigations and supervision – going after an easy target who had done nothing wrong, over which they have no jurisdiction, where there was no evidence a child was even at risk – cutting the child out of the mother so it can be put it up for adoption.

If this story does not underline the brutal nature of ‘public servants’ and ‘court officers’ whose actions demonstrate they are completely out of control and giving themselves authority that is wholly excessive and unjustified, nothing else will.  It is shocking, disturbing, frightening, and it makes me ashamed of my country and the dictatorship it has become.

This abuse of power must be defeated.  Whatever it takes.

So where are the hard truths then? – Part 2

Continuing from the previous post… In his comment piece in the Guardian, Russell Brand has himself admitted that he said nothing new or original in his interview with Jeremy Paxman, acknowledging that it was the expression of the knowledge that democracy is irrelevant that resonated with both Paxman and a wider constituency.

In his op-ed, Brand argues that:

As long as the priorities of those in government remain the interests of big business, rather than the people they were elected to serve, the impact of voting is negligible and it is our responsibility to be more active if we want real change.

What Brand this fails to acknowledge or deal with is the reason why the people who politicians were elected to serve are not being served.  It is too simplistic to say the politicians are only looking after the interests of big business.  The fact is the power to effect change in this country has been given away to the European Union and politicians here cannot rein in behaviour of the corporates when EU laws give them a mandate to act as they do.

Whether Brand realises it or not, the issue again boils down to sovereignty – who should run Britain?

When Brand says that politicians are frauds, he is right on the money about many of them.  This is because there is a significant number of politicians who understand very well the limitations that EU rule has on a government’s scope for domestic governance.  Despite this they make impossible promises and hold forth about changes that need to be made in areas of policy where the UK no longer governs itself – while staying silent about the EU dimension.

However, there are politicians who simply do not understand the EU dimension and think the UK still has the ability to effect changes.  Given the fast moving world of current affairs and the sheer breadth of things they need know just enough about to comment upon, as if they were in control of a brief, these are the people who don’t take the time to learn how this country is really governed, where power really resides and how little can actually be changed even if Westminster was of a mind to.

This takes us back to the so-called ‘democratic process’, which is just long hand for ‘voting’.  This is about the limit of involvement people can have in our so-called democracy.  But where is there any value in voting when the people we elect do not have the power to change those things we are opposed to?  Back to Brand’s op-ed again:

The only reason to vote is if the vote represents power or change. I don’t think it does. I fervently believe that we deserve more from our democratic system than the few derisory tit-bits tossed from the carousel of the mighty, when they hop a few inches left or right. The lazily duplicitous servants of The City expect us to gratefully participate in what amounts to little more than a political hokey cokey where every four years we get to choose what colour tie the liar who leads us wears.

Replace ‘The City’ with ‘the EU’ and Brand has actually got it spot on.  The reason we only get a few derisory tit-bits is they are all there is within the gift of the people we elect to give to us.  The reason they hop a few inches left or right is that all the big issues are dealt with in Brussels, so there’s no point in ideological battles when any mooted changes could not be delivered unless the EU willed it.  That leaves us with the change in tie colour every four or five years, because the three main parties are all fighting over that narrow piece of ground where Britain still has some control over its affairs.  That results in the insignificant differences Brand references.

Somewhere else Brand has managed to land on solid ground is with these words:

I like Jeremy Paxman, incidentally. I think he’s a decent bloke but like a lot of people who work deep within the system it’s hard for him to countenance ideas from outside the narrowly prescribed trench of contemporary democracy. Most of the people who criticized me have a vested interest in the maintenance of the system. They say the system works. What they mean is “the system works for me”.

Perhaps. Or perhaps they just have no imagination.  Perhaps that is why the likes of that fool, Harry Mount, rush forth with a blanket rejection of Brand’s comments and have to work in extremes.  The alternative to what ‘democracy’ we have today, the likes of Mount argue, is violent revolt, lawlessness, social breakdown, chaos.

Not for Mount is there any consideration of a different system where there is real democracy.  One where the politicians have to ask for permission from the people before executing some of their plans.  Not for Mount is there any route to this other than though armed revolt, rather than peaceful, intelligent civil disobedience that demonstrates a removal of consent by the people and removal of power to implement the wishes of those over whom we have no control and who we cannot hold to account.

Just as politicians avert their eyes from the EU elephant in the room, the other parts of the establishment avert their eyes from the one way they can be brought down, without them being given the excuse to use force of arms. Although Brand heads off on a flight of emotional indulgence, he does return to the core issue, possibly without realising what he has hit on, when he writes:

Here’s one for blighty; Philip Green, the bloke who owns Top Shop didn’t pay any income tax on a £1.2bn dividend in 2005. None. Unless he paid himself a salary that year, in addition to the £1.2bn dividend, the largest in corporate history, then the people who clean Top Shop paid more income tax than he did. That’s for two reasons – firstly because he said that all of his £1.2bn earnings belong to his missus, who was registered in Monaco and secondly because he’s an arsehole. The money he’s nicked through legal loopholes would pay the annual salary for 20,000 NHS nurses. It’s not illegal; it’s systemic, British people who voted, voted for it. I’m not voting for that.

What he has described is the result of the loss of sovereignty.  This is what happens when a nation state can no longer levy taxes because it is precluded from doing so by the law that applies in the political union.  This is a powerful case for leaving the EU, where corporatist interests are indeed put first.  We have never voted for it, as Brand asserts.  The politicians simply made it possible by taking decisions in our name and refusing to seek our permission.  It doesn’t take a violent revolution to correct that.  Just making ourselves ungovernable in a peaceful way is far more effective as it breaks the very system from which they derive their power and exert control.  This is Harrogate Agenda territory.  And it doesn’t require a single vote for the least worst choice of identikit political climber, it doesn’t require a spoiled ballot paper.

Brand finishes his piece thus:

If we all collude and collaborate together we can design a new system that makes the current one obsolete. The reality is there are alternatives. That is the terrifying truth that the media, government and big business work so hard to conceal. Even the outlet that printed this will tomorrow print a couple of columns saying what a naïve wanker I am, or try to find ways that I’ve fucked up. Well I am naïve and I have fucked up but I tell you something else. I believe in change. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty because my hands are dirty already. I don’t mind giving my life to this because I’m only alive because of the compassion and love of others. Men and women strong enough to defy this system and live according to higher laws. This is a journey we can all go on together, all of us. We can include everyone and fear no one. A system that serves the planet and the people. I’d vote for that.

He is mostly right.  If we collude and collaborate, if we believe in and want real change, if we defy the system in intelligent ways that frustrate and undermine our tormentors, we can indeed embark on a journey together and bring about a system where we, the people, have the power and our interests are served.

These are indeed hard truths, though perhaps moreso for those people who continue to troop to the polling station and put an ‘X’ in a box, particularly those who do it without enthusiasm because they feel it is their duty to exercise their franchise.  In the main, most of them do not realise all they are doing is legitimising a system where they are not able to vote for the people who really do make the decisions about how Britain is governed.

In such a circumstance, why bother voting?  If it changed anything, they would likely ban it.

So where are the hard truths then? – Part 1

Last week we had Russell Brand, who for reasons passing understanding is now a very rich ‘celebrity’ holding forth on politics and being selected by our dumbed down media to be afforded a platform, telling Jeremy Paxman that he ‘can’t be arsed to vote’ and looking forward to a revolution, in a Newsnight interview.

Now we have the Guardian focusing on Paxman’s confession that he himself, grizzled establishment beast that his is, once did not venture out to vote because looking at the candidates he found ‘the choice so unappetising’.  This was enough to spark off the Guardian’s Michael White into writing an op-ed, that we will look at in a moment, as it actually prompted this post.

Back to Paxman for a moment though.  Regardless of who he works for and the editorial line he takes, some of his withering assessment is illustrative and quite valuable.

Russell Brand has never voted, because he finds the process irrelevant.  I can understand that: the whole green-bench pantomime in Westminster looks a remote and self-important echo-chamber. But it is all we have.

In one recent election, I decided not to vote, because I thought the choice so unappetising. By the time the polls had closed and it was too late to take part, I was feeling really uncomfortable: the person who chooses not to vote – cannot even be bothered to write ‘none of the above’ on a ballot paper – disqualifies himself from passing any comment at all.

At the next election we shall have a choice between the people who’ve given us five years of austerity, the people who left us this mess, and the people who signed public pledges that they wouldn’t raise student fees, and then did so – the most blatant lie in recent political history.

It won’t be a bombshell if very large numbers of the electorate simply don’t bother to vote. People are sick of the tawdry pretences.

It was in response to these comments that the Guardian’s insufferably arrogant Michael White entered the fray with a voter apathy piece.  Now, things are never black and white, there are always shades of grey, which is why there were some parts of White’s piece that seem well judged.  But this is Michael White, so he undoes his good work with some typically idiotic rot:

But Paxman speaks to a wider malaise in which the media itself plays a larger part than it ever cares to admit. Yes, politicians promise too much and under-deliver. But the idea promulgated by Brand, that they deliberately “lie and deceive” while remaining indifferent to voter needs, is risible. If anything, current politicians are too keen to appease voter demands – better services for less tax – than to tell hard truths about our problems.

This is so much establishment bollocks.  Take David Cameron, Nick Clegg or Ed Miliband for example, promising too much and under-delivering.  Why does this happen?  It is perfectly fair to argue that they are lying and deceiving.  It is not risible.  Their failure is not about being more keen to appease voter demands than to tell the hard truths about our problems.

The first hard truth is that they infer action will be taken, or promise action will be taken, on matters where they know all too well the UK Parliament has no control, because sovereignty has been ceded to the European Union.  They know it because they are briefed about the limitations of what they can and cannot do by advisers and civil servants. They don’t make these promises to appease voters, they do it to conceal the extent to which power has been given away.  That is why they indulge in such tawdry pretences.

If these men and their ilk wanted to appease voter demands we would have had, for example, an EU referendum years ago, we would not have invaded Iraq, our troops would have already ended the Afghanistan debacle, illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers would be removed from the country as soon as their claim was rejected, people wanted on terrorist charges overseas who abuse our hospitality by using this country as a base from which to incite violence would have been deported, wind turbines would not be replacing coal and gas power stations at greatly increased expense to consumers, fuel duty would have been slashed, and idiotic rules on waste collection and spiralling landfill costs we are forced to pay would have been dropped. Just for starters.

So Russell Brand is right about the lies and deceit.  What about this assertion from White?

Consensus can be a boring but necessary part of life, at home as much as in politics. Compromise is part of the process of politics whereas polarisation fuelled by outrage (real or fake) is more fun, but also more dangerous.

The reason why there is so much consensus is that the major issues of ideological difference have been removed from national control.  Change cannot be effected, so the three main parties are congregated around the scraps that are left, where there isn’t really scope for wildly divergent viewpoints.   There is a hard truth here, but none of the politicians acknowledge it.  The EU elephant is in the room, the deception is maintained.

The hardest truth of all is that democracy has been utterly subverted.  We hear lots about democracy when politicians seek legitimacy through elections.  But when constituents try to influence how their elected representative votes on a matter in the House of Commons, they are rebuffed by the MP – often with words to the effect of they represent all constituents, not just those who write or call to press for him/her to vote in a certain way.

So where from here?  Since writing this post commenced in the late afternoon, Russell Brand has been given space in the Guardian for a lengthy opinion piece.  The comments and ideas there concerning elections and voter anger will be covered in part 2…

Same old, same old. Still going through the motions on EU’s BBC funding

The latest incidence of the EU throwing yet more public money to the BBC, to fund its proselytising mission on behalf of the Brussels machine, has sparked a reaction that suggests many people are not aware of the long standing and cosy relationship between the biased broadcaster and the bureaucracy.

The Telegraph reports on the £4.5 million handout given to BBC Media Action so it would train (indoctrinate) journalists in countries neighbouring the EU about the bloc, as part of the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy, which aims ‘to create an area of shared values, stability and prosperity, enhanced cooperation and deeper economic and regional integration’.  In other words, EU enlargement.

Nowhere in the article is there any mention of the fact the BBC received nearly £3million in grant money from the European Union between 2008-2012, in addition to grants of over £16 million from supposedly cash strapped local authorities across the UK (front line spending, eh?) to fund ‘research and development’ projects, despite the Telegraph itself running that story in February last year.

Returning to this latest commission payment, bribe, payment, this also has the happy coincidence of enabling the pro-EU Common Purpose termites within the BBC to spread their Marxist, anti democratic tentacles and encourage shadow structures to develop, where CP graduates work to their own shared agenda, regardless of the public’s agenda.

This is just another example of establishment games, taxpayer pays.

It’s your money, but we want it and are taking it…

Here we go again.  The old chestnut of tax avoidance being equated with tax evasion is back in the papers today.

The paywall-free Mail reports about a number of BBC ‘stars’ who elect to be freelancers and paid as ‘personal service contractors’, rather than work on the BBC payroll.

The benefits are clear.  The BBC doesn’t have to pay tax on the money it pays to the freelancer (other than VAT on the invoiced sum), as the freelancer is a ‘company’ entity and responsible for paying taxes due for the services they provide.  The freelancer can pay a lower effective tax rate than an employee, depending on how they organise their directorships, salary, costs and expenses and dividend arrangements.

But yet again we see the grubbing politicians, who are so preoccupied with hoovering up as much of our money as possible in order to control how money is spent, making moronic statements that demonstrate they are trying to con the public and demonise people who have done nothing wrong.  As the Mail puts it:

There is no suggestion that any of the individuals named have acted improperly but  MPs accused the BBC of having ‘staggeringly inappropriate’ arrangements in place for many employees and said it could be ‘complicit’ in tax avoidance.

Complicit in tax avoidance?  What the hell?  This is the equivalent of criticising drivers for going along a road at 30mph in a 30mph limit by claiming they are complicit in driving within the speed limit.  The argument is completely ludicrous.  The pressure that has been applied to lead to this unnecessary change is an example of excessively powerful government that is out of control.  Personal freedom is being infringed as a result of undue pressure being brought to bear by the over powerful state.

There is nothing wrong with tax avoidance, which is the arranging of your financial affairs so that you legitimately pay less tax.  It is legal and responsible.  Yet some politicians, whose only motivation is wanting more of our money to control and use to service their whims, have even gone as far as coining the expression ‘aggressive tax avoidance’ to describe the active effort to find legitimate ways of a person or company arranging their affairs to ensure they pay as little tax as necessary within the law.  In using this description they are deliberately attempting to mislead people into thinking these individuals and companies are engaging in tax evasion – the illegal and criminal act which is the deliberate failure to provide full and accurate information about income and assets to the tax authorities so tax liability can be correctly assessed and demands applied within the law.

Although it is our money the refrain of the politicians is, ‘but we want it and are taking it’.  We no longer have a Parliament.  We have an elected Court of Robber Barons.

Court of Robber Barons

And they are doing all they can to bully, threaten and demonise individuals and companies into handing over money they have no legal obligation to pay.  Starbucks being a case in point, having suffered so much reputational damage at the hands of politicians and blinkered campaign groups who believe government should control everything, they voluntarily offered to pay millions of pounds to the Exchequer they were not liable for in order to put an end to the blackmail they were subjected to.  You read that right, Starbucks were blackmailed into handing over money because politicians did all they could to turn people against the company, which was wrongly being painted as abusing tax law.  That should engender fear in everyone.

Taxation has long since ceased to be the process for raising funds to be spent on essential public services and infrastructure.  It is now a form of oppressive control to restrict the ability of individuals to use their money as they see fit.  The funds raised are squandered on whims and discretionary spending to bribe people into voting the politicians back into office, which is not dissimilar to the use of taxes in medieval times to fund the adventurism of monarchs and luxury of lords.

In a classic abuse of language, the politicians hark on about people having to pay their ‘fair share’, even though this invariably means people with larger incomes and who use public services far less than most other citizens, paying the same contribution as many other people combined.  There is no sense of proportion in all this.  They have the money and the government wants it, so it rigs the system to ensure it gets it.  But in their bubble this is supposedly fair.

The only way this country will ever see responsible taxation and use of our money by the government is when the people have the power to block spending plans that service the interests of the politicians rather than the interests of the population.  This road leads back to The Harrogate Agenda, and the fifth of the six demands:

5. No taxation or spending without consent: no tax, charge or levy shall be imposed, nor any public spending authorised, nor any sum borrowed by any national or local government except with the express approval the majority of the people, renewed annually on presentation of a budget which shall first have been approved by their respective legislatures

Only with such democratic control can anyone in this country ever talk about tax in terms of fairness.

And you still think this is a democracy?

The problem for someone who has initials that lend themselves to being nicknamed ‘GOD’ is that sooner or later, they start to believe that is exactly who they are.

For we hear that Lord Gus O’Donnell – an unelected and unaccountable civil servant who ascended the greasy pole to become Cabinet Secretary, a real life version of Sir Humphrey Appleby, enjoying and wielding immense power over the way this country has been run in recent years – has recommended that aspiring MPs should be forced to meet ‘pre-qualification criteria’ before being allowed to stand for election.

It doesn’t stop there.  O’Donnell also recommends in his piece, called ‘Better Government‘ that government policies should be vetted by former ministers, accountants and ex-civil servants, arguing that radical change is needed because the country is ‘in a bad place’.  In the article where he outlines his ideas, O’Donnell states that:

• Politicians have a “ludicrous bias” in favour of older people
• Health provision is “expensive and inefficient”
• The education system does not produce the skills that businesses need

Yet his solution is to engage, among others, the very former ministers and ex-civil servants who presided over the creation of the mess in the first place.

Has anyone spotted the little flaw in all this?

Yes, that’s right.  It is the people who should decide who represents them (however badly), not some self selecting, establishment appointed cabal that is unelected and unaccountable.   As usual, there is no place whatsoever for ordinary people like you and me in determining who gets to hold this significant influence, and we will have as little influence over those people as we do over the current crop of politicians who do so badly by us in return for so much.

While a ‘source’ at the Cabinet Office has responded by saying that:

It is not clear who would oversee the pre-qualification of Parliamentary candidates, and for what purpose. At present they undergo rigorous scrutiny by the electorate. It’s called democracy.

the concern we should have is that this was dreamed up at all.  And now it has been mooted, you can be certain there will be politicians who will spot opportunity in all this and their voices will, over the years, add to O’Donnell’s call and seek to put his recommendations into practice.

O’Donnell wrote in his article that:

There are very few jobs that do not require individuals to undertake training and development before being promoted, so this would bring MPs into line with the reality of their constituents’ lives.

But this fails to recognise that the role of an MP is to represent their constituents, not serve their own interests by seeking advancement.

However, that said, we should recognise that the idea of training for MPs who have been elected does have some merit.  It might put an end to many of the nonsensical, ill informed and ignorant comments they make about lawmaking and fatuous assessments of where power resides, which demonstrate they do not understand the structures of governance, how laws are made or what processes bring them into being.

But it is insulting for O’Donnell to call for the creation of an Office for Taxpayer Responsibility to vet government policies and opposition manifestos, when such an office is not accountable to taxpayers.

As it is taxpayers are not consulted about how their money is used.  Such an entity would simply be the addition of an extra layer of bureaucracy and control, that only serves to move ordinary people further away from anything resembling democratic control over the actions of the political class, rather than improve governance.

It is small comfort that the aforementioned Cabinet Office source accepted that improvements were needed.  But to be of any impact they would need to be something of the magnitude of wholesale structural reform and, in particular, empowerment of voters, which is the central tenet of the Six Demands of The Harrogate Agenda.  And we can be certain that approach will most certainly not be something that is put on the table.

As always, this is another example of the establishment talking to itself and arranging the furniture in a way that suits its wishes, doing unto us what they will, without our consent or any reference to us.  Until that central problem is rectified, nothing that GOD or any of his establishment ilk suggest will improve our situation.

It is sometimes said the voice of the people is the voice of God.  Not in this case, evidently.

Trust in the police is not damaged, it’s broken

Inspector Ken MacKaill, of West Mercia Police; Detective Sergeant Stuart Hinton, of Warwickshire Police; and Sergeant Chris Jones, of West Midlands Police are the three Police Federation representatives who gave a false account of the meeting they held with Andrew Mitchell over the so called ‘Plebgate’ affair.

Yesterday they collectively flicked Mitchell and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) a middle finger, with a non-apology over their disgraceful, politically motivated actions when they knowingly lied while giving their version of events, in a press conference they called for the sole purpose of demanding that Mitchell resign.

We acknowledge the investigation’s criticism relating to our poor judgement in talking to the media following the meeting with Andrew Mitchell, for which we take this opportunity to apologise.

We would like to emphasise (as we did to the investigation) that in no way did any of us ever plan or intend to mislead anyone about what occurred during this meeting or otherwise.

Their ‘apology’ was only for talking to the media.  They have refused to apologise for their conduct and their attempted deception.  In effect, they are saying ‘Yes, we lied, what are you going to do about it?’  Now it is time these officers had the book thrown at them.  They do not deserve to carry a warrant card.  They have been shown to be dishonest.

Any person convicted of an offence on the contested evidence of any of these three officers, would seem to have sufficient grounds to appeal their conviction.  The fact is Mackaill, Hinton and Jones lied.  This has been proved by the secret recording made by Andrew Mitchell.  There is no escape from this fact.  They have demonstrated that their word as police officers cannot be trusted.  They thought they could get away with lying about the discussion they had with Mitchell, a Cabinet Minister.  So what else have they thought they could get away with in dealings with far more lowly people?

The public cannot have confidence in these officers – or their Chief Constables who are content to keep them in positions of power they have already shown they are willing to abuse.  They have no credibility.  They have no integrity. The public deserve better.

The fact that Mitchell took a recording device into the meeting before he had any certainty that these officers would lie, demonstrates he already had no confidence that they would tell the truth.  If a Cabinet Minister is that suspicious of police, what message does that send to the rest of us?

At the same time the IPCC was, for once, telling it the way it is regarding the conduct of these three officers, there was another officer giving evidence into his shooting of Mark Duggan.  An officer who, despite claiming he clearly saw a gun in Duggan’s hand, thus prompting him to fire, seemingly did not see that gun nestle some 10-20ft away, over a fence, from the scene of the shooting.

That officer’s evidence was contradicted by the previously silent cab driver, who told the court Duggan was trying to flee.  In years gone by I would have accepted the officer’s evidence, relying on honesty and integrity.  Today, not a chance.  Not without irrefutable evidence to back up his assertion.  From Hillsborough to de Menezes, dishonesty has become a stock in trade for too many officers, confident their colleagues will close ranks to shield them.

While minor in comparison, one consistent behaviour of many police officers up and down the country has reinforced my opinion.  Namely, their dogged refusal to act on complaints of criminal actions by bailiffs.

Despite the law being clear that bailiffs cannot practice unless they are appropriately certificated by a judge and remain so, despite the law being clear that bailiffs are not allowed to misrepresent their powers to debtors, despite the law being clear that bailiffs must not threaten or intimidate debtors and despite the law being clear that bailiffs may only levy certain charges above the debt as set down in a schedule, not one bailiff who has broken the law pertaining to these rules and had a debtor file a complaint against them with police, has been arrested and prosecuted.  This despite hundreds if not thousands of people having been victims of such criminal abuses.

That fact, moreso than any lie by a few bent coppers with an axe to grind about changes to police pay and conditions, demonstrates that trust in the police is not merely damaged, rather it has been completely broken.  Broken because the police are selectively refusing to uphold the law when they consider the offender is on their side and the victim has it coming to them.

Perhaps this explains the determination of the Chief Constables of Mackaill, Hinton and Jones’ respective forces to not bring disciplinary action against these untrustworthy officers.  Policing has become partial.  Its supposed independence abused for self serving ends.  Senior police officers repeatedly speak of policing by consent, but what far too many people in this country are experiencing daily is policing with contempt.  The bobby on the beat has been replaced by the paramilitary plod – separate from the community and viewing it as an enemy to be suppressed.

We cannot accept this any longer.  It is time to make a stand.

Nuclear disaster in the UK

The news over the weekend and this morning confirms the UK is in the throes of a self inflicted nuclear power disaster.  The fall out has the capacity to be catastrophic for energy consumers.

This concerns the deal, mentioned in passing in our last posting, that sees the French and Chinese consortia behind the financing and construction of HInkley Point C in Somerset, guaranteed a minimum price for the energy generated that is nearly double what we pay for nuclear power today.

The comment I intended to make at this point is eclipsed by Richard’s observations, which more eloquently articulate what I intended to say:

What is very far from clear, though, are the exact reasons why nuclear has increased in price so much. Nevertheless, in what is clearly a rigged market, the most likely culprit is the regulatory ratchet.

Increasing the time taken to approve schemes, and adding to design and construction costs, regulation is reckoned to be enough to have caused the massive price hike. And much of the regulation will have been promoted by Green activists, the aim being to price nuclear power out of business.

According to this seminal book, the process has been going on a long time. Now, it would appear, the activism has achieved its effect. We have a nuclear disaster – but not one that the Greens had predicted.

As fuel costs rise fuel poverty will kill vastly more than nuclear power is ever likely to. That is the real disaster, made all the worse by the fact that it is largely the result of deliberate ploys to increase the price of nuclear generated electricity.

We have recently seen similar efforts across the European Union by green activists to make the potential of shale gas to provide a secure, domestic source of energy, unaffordable through regulatory cost.

This is not about safety.  This is not about efficiency.  It is certainly not about providing sufficient energy to meet the growing demand of a rising population.  It is solely about forcing countries to adopt what the activists perceive as ‘green’ and ‘clean’ energy because the alternatives would have been made uneconomic due to politics alone.

These green groups are pursuing their own narrow, dogmatic and flawed agenda, but have been appointed by the EU as the ‘voice of the citizens’.  Without our consent or input these groups have been installed as our ‘representatives’ to government – but are following an agenda that we have never been asked to consider, let  alone endorse.

John Kerry’s u-turn – what has changed?

Spotter’s badge for Jeremy Poynton in the comments who links to a powerful blog post over on SayAnythingBlog.

The post shares with readers John Kerry’s 1971 testimony before Congress, where he argued America’s involvement in Vietnam was never about national security, that America lost its sense of morality by bombing villages in Vietnam and most striking of all that America should stay out of internal civil wars in other nations – no matter how bad they might be – because history shows that is the right thing to do.

The post compares these comments with his comments this week vindicating military intervention in Syria.  It lays bare the complete and utter u-turn Kerry has executed since becoming Secretary of State in the Obama administration and part of an establishment that is determined to undertake exactly the same actions Kerry railed against 42 years ago.

What has changed?

It can be argued that as Kerry’s immersion into the establishment has resulted in this change to his worldview.  It is a consequence of iving in the unhealthy political bubble that exists, separated from the realities of life and the views of ordinary people outside the ring of steel that protects the elite.  As such he and his ilk are cut off from all sources of information bar that provided by political advisers and government apparatchiks – who themselves live in the bubble and are therefore susceptible to bias confirmation and reinforcement by other narrowly focused minds.  This structure exacerbates the widening disconnect between the electorate and the political class and is perhaps the reason why the interests of the establishment always seem to be so very different from our interests.

The only way this problem can be recognised, challenged by the people and ultimately corrected is to adopt properly democratic structures.  Increasing frustration among voters suggests people are becoming more receptive to the idea of discussion about this otherwise dry topic. Make no mistake, being asked to vote for MPs, Mayors and councillors every 4-5 years is not the be-all and end-all of democracy.  A measure of a democratic society is the degree to which voters have control and influence over their representatives after they have assumed their seat in a political chamber.

Too many people believe that the act of voting delegates authority to the elected to do what they see fit in our interest.  The fatal flaw in that belief is demonstrated by the existance of the echo chamber described above and the way our interests are consistently trumped by party political interests and the wishes of highly influential individuals and groups who finance those parties.

Increasingly and even more disturbingly, we are seeing governments claim citizen involvement in the governance process because of their inclusion of membership body Non-Governmental Organisations, such as WWF and other environmental and sustainability pressure groups, as equals sitting around the table with elected politicians.

This nefarious state of affairs is highly sinister as the governments choose which NGOs they will embrace and award a seat at the table, give them funding from our pockets and allow them to dictate the rules the rest of us live under.  We have no control over the leadership of these organisations and no control over which organisations are selected to be part of the establishment club.  One member of Greenpeace cannot overturn a campaign direction of travel to ensure the NGO does not push government (such as the EU) to impose highly damaging and hugely costly policies on the rest of us.  This is a theme that will get more prominence soon.

Closing the loop, the issue of John Kerry’s re-programming therefore is symptomatic of a much wider, much bigger and much more dangerous problem with democratic structures, one that need to be addressed if the people are to again be the masters and our representatives and public officials are to be the servants.  We owe it to ourselves to bring about the necessary change.  An excellent starting point are the demands of the fledgling Harrogate Agenda.

The UK, war and the British people

This is not a reference to the impending armed adventure in the Middle East.  This is not the UK being at war with Syria, but the UK government being at war with its people.

If there was ever a compact between the government and the people, it has long since rotted away.  The latest example of this is the news that the government and police are rushing to investigate an alleged fraud by the services provider, Serco, concerning irregularities in records kept for its £285m prisoner escorting contract.

The investigation focusses on the allegation that Serco overcharged the government a sum in the ‘low tens of millions’ of pounds.  As well as the probability of criminal prosecutions, the company faces being barred from tendering for other government contracts.  The punishment, if Serco are found to have engaged in fraud, will be swift and sure.  As well as column acres of media coverage, we can be certain the matter will surface in the House of Commons as MPs rush to criticise and condemn both outsourcing per se and the company’s actions and greivous offence against the ‘public’.

Here we see the government pressing the full force of the state into action to punish any offences committed against it.

Now let us compare this laser-like focus of the state on punishing fraud amounting to perhaps £20-30m with the state’s focus on a much larger and more widespread criminal enterprise made up of fraud, harrassment and threatening behaviour, amounting to many hundreds of millions of pounds – possibly over £1bn – committed in the last year alone against many of the more than 1.8 million members of the public who had unpaid charges put into the hands of bailiffs… the wilful overcharging and illegal application of fees by local authorities through liability orders and the illegal charges, false accounting and criminal behaviour of bailiffs.

This week another example of the many instances of this racketeering has managed to sneak its way into local news coverage in Wales, where a Caerphilly resident owed unpaid council tax just £180, yet despite receiving no warning letters was faced with bailiffs, acting as an agent of and on behalf of Caerphilly County Borough Council, at her door demanding payment.  Not only that, but the bailiff fraudulently added a further £200 charge to the debt for their services.  The amount set down in law that bailiffs can charge is £24.50 for their first visit and £18.00 for a second and final visit.  They can only charge for two visits.  Attempting to charge hundreds of pounds in the way they do is blatantly illegal.

The bailiff is reported to have returned to visit the resident last week and told her that if she did not pay £75 he would come back and change the locks on her house.  This is not only a clear example of harrassment, it is also an attempt to extract money with menaces as bailiffs do not have the power to change the locks on a residential property over an unpaid debt, and asserting such a course of action is a clear offence.  A fraud is being perpetrated against this resident, a mother of four with limited means. She is just one in over a million.

As is standard practice in such cases, which all too infrequently get press attention in this way, a Caerphilly Council spokesman said:

We are unable to comment on individual cases, but the council makes every effort to assist residents who are in arrears before taking further action.

You will note that despite Caerphilly being wholly responsible for the behaviour and actions of their agents and representatives, the council has not addressed the illegality of the bailiff’s effort to charge fees above the legal amount or taken any steps to address the harrassment and intimidation by the bailiffs they engaged.

The police’s readiness to investigate and take action against Serco, which is alleged to have committed crime through fraudulent overcharging for services and charging for services not undertaken, contrasts dramatically with the refusal of the police to investigate and take action against bailiffs who are alleged to have committed crime through fraudulent overcharging for services and charging for services not undertaken.

The double standard is clear.  The people of this country are being denied the protection of the law when the state and its agents break the law to suit their own interests, yet when the state feels it has been wronged its full arsenal is brought to bear on the alleged offender, be that a rich company being greedy or hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who struggle to pay the ever increasing sums demanded by government to service its activities.

And new methods of gouging money from the public are being developed all the time.  A report in the Telegraph explains how over 1 million drivers in the last year have had traffic enforcement charges (mainly parking infringments) put into the hands of bailiffs, with the AA observing that even when mistakes are made, councils seem to readily wash their hands of drivers trapped in a cycle of threats from debt collectors and bailiffs:

The bailiff process is virtually unstoppable, even for the innocent and getting someone to listen is virtually impossible.

The fact that bailiffs are now swanning around like bounty hunters in vehicles with ANPR cameras to find vehicles with outstanding warrants is sinister.

The story also includes a reference to evidence given earlier this year by the London Motorists’ Action Group to the Transport Select Committee that bailiffs “frequently and fraudulently demand fees which are far in excess of the permitted statutory level.”

Barrie Segal, who runs the AppealNow website also said for the Telegraph piece that, “It’s a bit like the wild west, but there are no good guys out there to look after motorist”.  And this is the point, the double standard reinforced, the police – the supposed good guys – are refusing to do their sworn duty turning a blind eye to fraud committed on behalf of the state, while always going after anyone who is alleged to have committed fraud against the state.

How is this not a war being waged on the people of this country by those who are supposed to serve us?

If the media really wanted to add value…

… then instead of doing the Tories’ dirty work by focussing on trade union entryism into the Labour Party, in an effort to paint Ed Miliband as even weaker than Neil Kinnock, as regaled on Political Betting, they should focus on entryism into the British civil service and the various Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) around the world.

While the media plays its party political games of petty intrigue and personality politics, notionally democratic government is being subverted from within by the left wing entryists who are driving their own agenda and achieving in the shadows what has been rejected by voters at the ballot box.

Consider DEFRA and the Department of Energy and Climate Change.  Both of these departments are stuffed full of closet environmentalists and sustainability activists who control the flow of information to the Ministers of State, thereby influencing their thinking and the approach to implementing government policy.  These are the socialist idealists who went to college, secured a degree, and understanding how government works in this country, joined the civil service and have worked their way into positions of influence from where they can aid or hinder the government of the day.

Local Government has a similar problem to central government departments.  Think back through the raft of child abuse cases and other failures of social services departments and in many of them you will find the leadership of those departments is infested with members of the Marxist organisation, Common Purpose.  The media has barely scratched the surface when it comes to exposing Common Purpose and its nefarious agenda, so it is hardly surprising anyone casting a casual glance at the matter would not understand the serious consequences of this unaccountable body training ‘leaders’ from across the full gamut of public services bodies to work and act in a particular way – beyond authority.

There are even more serious issues with entryists across Europe who have worked their way into a raft of NGOs, that due to the way the EU works, actually inform and direct policy making.  So at a time when people in the UK are waking up to the potential for stabilisation of energy prices through the use of shale gas, we are finding entryists at work formulating the EU’s policy and regulations on shale extraction.

With the entryists striving to hold the line on the adoption and use of unreliable and hugely costly renewables and their ‘dirty’ and hugely costly STOR back up, while pressing for the eradication of hydrocarbons from the energy mix, the risk is that the cost of adhering to the regulations being developed for shale extraction may very well reduce the number of parties willing to invest in this energy source.  The result of this would be more of the ‘reduce demand by driving up cost’ approach that is pushing hundreds of thousands of people into fuel poverty, and scaring the poor away from heating their homes in even the coldest weather.

Each of these issues could easily spawn a number of blog posts in their own right and it may be this blog covers them in more detail in the coming days and weeks.  But with this kind of coverage and exposure being limited to the blogosphere, rather than the larger platform the mainstream media enjoys, the opportunity for raising awareness among the public is greatly reduced.

Thus we remain ill served by our media and its selective and agenda strewn editorial lines, packed full of tittle tattle and yah-boo nonsense at a time when the public is largely ignorant of what is being done in their name and with their money, by people who are subverting democratic control and accountability.

Police backed into a corner over bailiff phantom visits and illegal fees

No doubt this will be shamefully ignored by the media, including those journalists who read this blog.  It seems a determined effort by Avon and Somerset Police to not investigate the bailiff and debt recovery firm, Rundles, for the criminal application of attendance fees that exceed the statutory limits – and fraudulent phantom visits – has run out of road.

A compelling and detailed case history has been sent to Detective Inspector Caroline Stainer by Peter North.  North’s stand against the illegal fees and refusal to pay for phantom visits has so far resulted in Rundles clamping his vehicle, even though they had no right to do so, North being convicted of criminal damage for removing it by cutting the padlock and Rundles then reporting his car as stolen even though they were not entitled to possession of the vehicle and did not have possession of the vehicle.

Avon & Somerset Police, like forces up and down the country, have turned a blind eye to such criminal behaviour by bailiffs, because they consider the activity of recovering debts on behalf of branches of the establishment – even by illegal means – as upholding law and good order.  The blatant abuse of the law, use of illegal methods to enforce collection of debts and even false reports of a vehicle theft to ensure harrassment of the debtor, as exhibited by Rundles, needs to be put to an end and punished severely.

The self promotional claims of Rundles contrast dramatically with the reality of the behaviour of their bailiffs on the ground.  Rundles, which describes itself as ‘a 5-star debt recovery agency specialising in council tax, penalty charge notices and national non-domestic rates’ say on their website:

Our team of certificated bailiffs is one of the largest in the country. Each of them is handpicked for their skills, attitude and approach and given comprehensive training to make sure they continue to deliver excellent collection rates.

Integrity and transparency are vital to us. Our clients’ accounts are fully audited by an independent Top 20 accountancy firm and Dun & Bradstreet recently gave us a 5-star rating, which means the condition of our business is superior to other firms in the industry.

The evidence presented by North lays utter waste to these claims.  It is no wonder collection rates are ‘excellent’ when people who do not know the rules bailiffs are supposed to follow and are subsequently cowed into paying more than they owe, thus made victims of fraud in pursuit of debt recovery.  Particularly when local authorities who are responsible for the conduct of the agents they retain, also ignore the illegal behaviour and tactics deployed.  Councils seemingly feel their residents are fair game for such maltreatment if for whatever reason they don’t pay the monies demanded, at the time and in the way the council demands.

North has drawn a line in the sand and is refusing to be fobbed off.  Any failure by the police to act now, after so much detail has been provided that shows the bailiffs have engaged in fraud and criminal behaviour, would represent a scandal of immense proportions and destroy any faith ordinary people have in the police and local authorities.

Crime is crime.  The establishment does not have immunity under the law.  It does not have a free pass to behave illegally with impunity.  Our public servants need to remember their place and serve.  That process needs to kickstart with the bringing charges against the bailiffs from Rundles acting on behalf of South Gloucestershire Council.

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 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.

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.

This witch hunt distraction is getting taxing

Margaret Hodge was welcomed back to her regular and unscrutinised place on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, to continue the tax avoidance witch hunt with an attack Google for having the temerity to structure its business in such a way as to minimise its tax liabilities.

The tired old line that HMRC should investigate Google, for doing something Hodge accepts is within the law, was trotted out by the tired old hypocrite as red meat for the spittle flecked trade unionists, those who expect to be kept by the productive part of the economy and some smaller businesses that due to their domestic nature are unable to benefit from transfer pricing and structuring their activities across different jurisdictions.

It is increasingly annoying to see individuals and companies being demonised for taking legally compliant steps to keep as much of their money as they possibly can rather than fork it over to the government, as various politicians and talking heads are rolled out to declare this has ‘cost’ the ‘country’ money, often suggesting that others will have to make up the shortfall or ‘services’ will need to be cut.

Hodge did it again today declaring Google’s actions ‘cost’ the country money and that they are not paying their ‘fair share’.  Firstly, it is not the country’s money to begin with and secondly, Google’s actions have not incurred a single penny of state expenditure so there is no cost.  The only ‘cost’ to the taxpayer will be any ministry activity stemming from demands for waste-of-time ‘investigations’ into activity that  is legal under EU law.  However, should the companies feel pressured into paying more tax than they are required to do under the law, there is likely to be a cost to customers of those businesses which would probably increase prices to preserve its margins to satisfy returns for entrepreneurial owners and investors.

But what is most annoying is the unchallenged platform afforded to idiots like Hodge which sees her given a free pass to make her ridiculous assertions.

Not once has a single interviewer on national TV or radio, speaking to these people of prestige, ask them to qualify their claims that money not taken from people is a ‘cost’, much less justify why exactly the government needs all this money to begin with and detail what it is spent on.

Not once have they challenged them to explain why the amount taken from us keeps increasing but the scope and delivery of services is continually reducing.

Not once have they demanded an answer about why discretionary spend on non-essential bribes and whims seems to continue unimpeded and only the essential services government should be focussing on are affected by downward changes in spending allocation. Make no mistake, spending by the government is still rising, fuelled by increased taxes from a growing workforce and dangerously irresponsible levels of borrowing.  This witch hunt is a deliberate ploy to distract us from the government’s abuse of our hard earned money.

Taxation is necessary to fund essential infrastructure and services.  Taxation laws should be clear and simple.  The amount of tax taken from individuals and companies should be kept the the minimum necessary to provide only  essential infrastructure and those services that safeguard the vulnerable in our society and those in need of a hand up.

But taxation is abused by the government, which gets involved at great cost in matters that should be none of the government’s business.  Government abuses taxation to bribe voters and further vaguely ideological ends by confiscating our money and redistributing it in a deliberate effort to make people dependent on the state while restricting our power and ability to choose for ourselves the most beneficial ways the money can be spent to support our families. Dressing up this witch hunt as being in the interest of the British people is disgraceful.

While government continues to use taxation as a tool of coercion and to further its own interests at the expense of ours, every single legal loophole that enables an individual or a company to reduce the amount of tax for which we are liable is not just appropriate, it is imperative.

Is it now too late for Britain? (part 2)

Following on from the previous post, is this quote part of a speech we can expect to see delivered in London some day in decades to come?

Today, this Parliament, on behalf of the people, takes responsibility and apologises for the policies and practices that forced the separation of mothers from their babies which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering.

We deplore the shameful practices that denied you, the mothers, your fundamental rights and responsibilities to love and care for your children.

Can we expect to hear and read stories of how some mothers were drugged, while others had their signatures were forged, so the government and its agencies could take children away ‘for their own good and for the good of society’ and give them to childless couples to adopt?

This is what happened between the 1950s and the 1970s in Australia and text above is an edited part of the state apology delivered by Julia Gillard.  The thoroughly evil practice of snatching children from their parents and giving them to strangers was driven by a combination of religious fervour and moral outrage at the existance of single mothers, who were considered to be scandalising society.  I am not a fan of people apologising for the historical actions of others, over which they had no influence or involvement.  But the fact one was considered necessary for those children who were torn away from their mothers and as adults are trying to deal with it even now, speaks volumes.

It was a repugnant policy that was enforced by self regarding, intolerant people who believed they knew what was best for everyone else and abused their power to effect their vision.  That pattern of behaviour should sound eerily familar.

Yet despite that apology being issued in Australia only two months ago, we see in the UK today a Judge advocating exactly that kind of action by the state.

As if this modern day tilt fascist, untrammelled state power wasn’t enough, many of the comments of the brain-dead drones who inhabit the Daily Wail’s comment threads wouldn’t be out of place at a Nazi eugenics conference.  These are the ‘centre right’ people who supposedly rail against an overbearing state intruding into the lives of ordinary Britons.  Yet throw them exactly that kind of proposition, wrapped in the dog-whistle red meat of ‘law and order’, and suddenly the red mist descends, logic evaporates and they believe there aren’t nearly enough jackboots marching along government corridors.

We already have those of ‘the left’ giving endorsement to concept of the state owning the population and doing what it sees fit, when it likes.  This has already resulted in too many children being snatched from families by social services – often without any evidence of a child protection issue or just cause – after secret court hearings that are closed to the public, and with sinister restrictions placed on the families to not even discuss the facts of the case, or risk being imprisoned for ‘contempt’ of court. Some of these children have been pushed through the adoption system, only for their parents to be subsequently exonerated of any wrong doing, but prevented from taking back custody.

Now we have those of ‘the right’ baying for babies to be snatched in exactly the same way from anyone tagged as a criminal, prostitute or drug user.  Clearly they are too stupid to recall just months ago their outrage at children being removed from their foster parents because they were supporters of UKIP and therefore considered by some bureaucrats to be ‘racist’ – and that their approval of snatching children the state has identified as being ‘in the interests of the child’ from other families has the capacity to be extended on a whim beyond ‘criminals’ and used as a broad weapon of coercion to force people who challenge the state into complying with its demands.

This is one of those points where I wonder if the effort of trying to democratise this country is worth it, hence the title of these linked posts.  The spittle flecked outrage of the semi literate morons applauding a disturbing call for a dramatic increase in state power and the ability to steal children in the way described makes me think they deserve to be stuck with the spiteful bastards they are giving succour to.

Perhaps we should let them suffer the inevitable consequences down the line when their willingness to heap power into the hands of unaccountable politicians and bureaucrats who will rig the system still further to suit their own ends, come back to bite them on the arse.  Then they will bloody well have cause to be outraged.  Perhaps it is too late to save this country from itself.

Is it now too late for Britain? (part 1)

A (thankfully) retiring Judge, Alan Goldsack QC, has made a speech calling for the forced snatching of babies by the state from mothers or families, to stop them from following said parents into crime, prostitution or drug use:

Some people become criminals because they enjoy crime and think it’s a good way of life and if they don’t get caught they think they can have a good lifestyle.

But a frightening thing is the number of people I see who are the grandchildren of the people I have prosecuted and defended 40 years ago – because crime runs in families in the same way that being a doctor, teacher or lawyer does.

We have to get in on the ground and remove young babies from the families that are going to produce the next generation of criminals, and that is why I did family law right up until the end because I think it is very important work.

I have read so many pre-sentence reports where I said to myself ‘why was this person not adopted at birth? All the signs were there’.

How about the likes of Goldsack stopping and thinking about why known criminals who have gone through the justice system are re-offending?  We have too few prison spaces that allow inmates to go through rehabilitation and be helped to change their behaviour and start building skills they can take into the community after their release.  Many just need to be given a chance to sort their lives out. Yes, some people are plain criminal and will re-offend.  Fine. Leave them locked up for longer where they can do no more harm to society.

It’s not the failed care system that should bear all the blame in the way Goldsack asserts.  It’s the failed penal system that keeps turning out on to the street unreformed offenders who have been coddled with a raft of facilities they probably couldn’t afford on the outside, and allowed to take drugs to ensure prison officers get a quieter time of it.  Goldsack’s vision is one of surrender to the inevitability of repeat offending and shifting blame away from the legal system he is part of.  It’s pathetic.

It is only the suggestion of a retiring Judge, but make no mistake the Common Purpose indoctrinated elements of social services will seize upon it and push it up the agenda.  Give this additional power to the state and there will be injustices and corruption by the bucket load as rights are trampled down and the bonds between many mothers and children up and down the country are severed without good cause or effective checks and balances.

The litany of risible excuses continues as the state ensures no crisis should go to waste

Within hours of the savage murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, some elements within the government and wider political class were already pondering if this outrageous crime could be turned to the state’s advantage in pressing home the effort to increase surveillance and reduce privacy and individual freedom of the general population.

We know this because within days it has slipped out that people were calling for legislation, that had been rejected on the grounds that they would infringe civil liberties, to be revived, amid the sense that the public revulsion at what happened on the streets of Woolwich would make them more accepting of the sweeping powers the state wants to afford itself at the expense of our right not to be treated as criminal suspects and have our communications and affiliations spied upon and recorded.

Today, Cameron’s self appointed media mouthpiece and cheerleader, Matthew d’Ancona, was at it again in a rambling piece that eventually got to its intended destination, when he wrote:

National security, like politics, is the art of the possible. The number of people who might, conceivably, move from agitation to acts of violence is very high – far beyond the surveillance capabilities of a normal police service and domestic intelligence agency. Those who are psychiatrically deranged can be sequestered on precisely those grounds. The law allows detention without charge for a strictly limited number of days. There are other constraints that can be imposed upon terror suspects. But all attempts to strengthen these measures are ferociously opposed on the grounds that they infringe civil liberties – witness Nick Clegg’s hostility to government plans to extend monitoring of emails and internet use. Witness, too, the by-election forced by David Davis when he resigned his seat over Labour’s proposal to extend the maximum period of detention without charge.

Ah yes, the hackneyed old crap that if only these misguided people could be overcome and persuaded to stop resisting the sacrifice of yet a bit more freedom and privacy, the government could do something to help tackle such atrocities.  Spread enough FUD around and some people might be convinced to open all windows and doors into their lives to the government, so it can pry, snoop, monitor and record who they engage with and when as it so chooses, combining that with video footage, financial data, health records and details of movements to build up a portfolio of intelligence information any time it wishes.

How would monitoring the email and telephone communications of every man and woman in this country have made any difference when it comes to the brutal killing of Lee Rigby?  We know there were two attackers.  We know they conspired to indulge their appetite for bloody violence.  We know the arguments they fall back on in a pathetic effort to justify their evil intentions and actions.  We now also know that both men were already known to the security services and had made no secret of their views and those hatemongers they fell into line behind.

So what possible difference would it have made, or will it make in the future with people minded to copy their vicious example, to monitor who they – and every other person living in these islands – emailed and telephone?  What would such intrusion into our lives do to prevent or tackle the kind of barbarous behaviour the people of Woolwich witnessed last week?  How would the state extending its perceived control over us reduce the threat?  And in any case, what is the point when, despite being armed with sufficient information to identify an extremist threat to the well-being of British people, the organs of the state fail to deal with what is right in front of their collective noses?

The state not scrutinising, monitoring and snooping as much into our lives as it wants to is not the reason Lee Rigby died.  His death is being cynically and nauseatingly used for political ends, turned into an excuse to treat the population even more like untrustworthy conspirators who are considered to be up to no good unless evidence shows otherwise.  Well, the government can fuck right off.  The country is the British people, not the parasites in Westminster seeking to assert themselves as a higher class that should have oppressive control over the rest of us.

Too many laws exist already.  The UK is the most monitored and spied upon place in the western world.  We have more CCTV per head of population than any nation on the planet.  Yet none of what the government has in its surveillance arsenal prevented last week’s attack and none of it will prevent a similar one in the future.  Individuals and pairs of people already know not to talk about their plans, or share them electronically across communication networks like the email and phone systems.

So the politicians, such as Dr John Reid, Jack Straw, Alex Carlile and Admiral West, seeking to ram through further infringements of our liberty and freedom in light of last week’s hate killing, are using that incident as an excuse to achieve other self serving  ends, which is nothing short of an outrage.

We are not the property of the state and we should resist its efforts to treat us as such – particularly when such gross and shameless opportunism as using the murder of a young soldier is deployed to justify the contemptible political actions they are planning.