New coal-fired power plants: All the news that’s convenient to print

It’s almost a week since Steag GmbH, started up the new 725-megawatt Walsum-10 coal-fired power plant, in eco-friendly Germany.  The plant is due to commence full commercial operation before the end of the year.

Germany is consistently cited by environmentalists in the UK as a stunning example of the use of renewables, and evidence that the UK should follow Germany’s ‘wise’ example in moving away from fossil fuels.

How curious it is, therefore, that the same environmentalists have been completely silent about Walsum-10.  For that matter, how curious it is that while the UK is being saddled with more disproportionately expensive and grossly inefficient wind turbines, the UK lamestream media has completely ignored the Walsum-10 story.  You could perhaps understand a single coal plant’s opening being ignored, but no less than ten new hard-coal power stations, or 7,985 megawatts, are scheduled to start producing electricity in the next two years.

The difference between the German approach and the UK approach is stark.  The German government is determined to produce affordable and reliable energy for its industry and domestic consumers and is building substantial new coal to meet its needs.  Meanwhile the UK government is determined to put up wind turbines regardless of the cost and at the expense of reliability and is more concerned with forcing people to use less energy rather than striving to meet demand.

The compliant UK media remains silent.  They only publish the news that’s convenient to print, and in any case the journalists who cover political issues have other more pressing concerns than something as trivial as keeping the public informed.

The Europhile plot to steal a future EU referendum vote

For the last couple of days it has been my intention to close this blog, following my annoyance and despair at the extent of support for the reprehensible Godfrey Bloom; and the continuing ill informed and factually inaccurate assertions made by people in the comments, who nominally share my determination to extract the UK from the EU.

For now, while I consider whether there is any value in carrying on with the blog, there is one important issue that should be brought to wider attention.

Some readers may be familiar with the name Matthew Elliott. He is a Conservative strategist, the co-founder and former Chief Executive of the TaxPayers Alliance, founder of Big Brother Watch and he led the No to AV campaign that saw the Lib Dem effort to force the alternative vote system defeated in a low turnout referendum alongside other elections.

Last week, Elliott’s latest campaign vehicle, Business for Britain, got a mention in the Daily Mail, which reported that:

Tory Eurosceptics will challenge David Cameron to toughen his line on renegotiations with Brussels by calling for the UK to pull out of the single market altogether.

Up to 100 MPs are expected to back a tough manifesto to be released in November by a new pressure group called Business For Britain.

The group is run by leading Tory strategist Matthew Elliott, who ran the No To AV campaign against Lib Dem proposals for electoral reform in 2011 and is widely expected to take the helm of a No campaign in an in-out referendum promised by Mr Cameron for 2017.

The interesting – and concerning – bit here is the last paragraph and the assertion that Elliott is widely expected to lead the ‘No’ (or Out if you prefer) campaign in a prospective EU Referendum.

Why would this be a problem? On the face of it Elliott seems phenomenally qualified to lead such a campaign. The answer can be found in Business for Britain’s own manifesto and an article written by Elliott back in July this year for City AM, in which he wrote:

BUSINESS for New Europe’s manifesto – A Europe That Works – is a useful contribution to the debate on Britain’s membership of the EU, a debate that has often been dominated by political, rather than business voices. But the assumption that the UK’s wealth and job creators would seek to preserve Britain’s place in the EU at all costs has already been dispelled with the launch of our own campaign – Business for Britain – supported by over 750 business leaders, and calling for a fundamental renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership.

The EU Referendum ‘No’ campaign is a vehicle for people who wish to see the UK leave the European Union. The clue is in the nature of the prospective referendum – in or out. Which begs an all-important question that I now ask…

How could Matthew Elliott lead a ‘No’ campaign for people who want to leave the EU, when his latest venture is an organisation making arguments only for reform of the EU, not withdrawal from it?

Elliott is a favourite son of the Conservative Party, which wants to re-pay him for helping defeat the Lib Dem AV campaign, The Conservative Party is an entity that describes itself as Eurosceptic but aggressively fights any suggestion that UK should leave the EU, instead they believe it should be reformed from the inside. A state of affairs that leaves Brussels as this country’s supreme government.

So it stands to reason that Elliott is being tipped for the role of leading a ‘No’ campaign, because the Tories know he favours reform, not withdrawal. Any effort to install Elliott as the ‘No’ campaign leader would be a cynical effort to steal a referendum. No football team would turn up to a match and name one of the opposing team’s players as its captain and put him in goal. Putting Elliott in charge of a ‘No’ campaign would be no different to that folly.

Regardless of his campaigning credentials, no Eurosceptic should be fooled into accepting Elliott as the leader of a ‘No’ campaign. The Electoral Commission must not be allowed to hand control of the ‘No’ / ‘Out’ campaign to a Europlastic who wants to stay firm in the EU.

It would be nice to see UKIP, the UK’s only national political party that advocates withdrawal from the EU, speaking out on this important issue. Naturally the followers of the Farage cult will complain they would if only the media would take notice of them. Well, it doesn’t seem like Farage has any trouble getting the ear of the Guardian’s editorial team and they do have a website on which such messages – if they actually existed – could be shared.

What’s in a name? BBC Northern Ireland conducts cringeworthy contortion

The city of Londonderry in Northern Ireland was given its official and legal name by Royal Charter in 1662.

Although the republican council in the city changed its own identity to Derry City Council in 1984, as a symbol of its rejection of the union with the United Kingdom and desire for unification with the Republic of Ireland, the High Court confirmed in a 2007 decision that the name of the city remained unchanged.  There is no confusion here, even of locals prefer to call the city ‘Derry’ its offical and legal name is Londonderry.

So a certain amount of teeth grinding was provoked today when I heard news presenters and continuity announcers on BBC Northern Ireland – the state’s public service broadcaster – constantly referring to the city as ‘Derry Londonderry’ in a crass attempt to sit on the fence over the city’s name.

Neither the UK government nor the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont have changed the name of Londonderry.  So why is the state’s publicly funded broadcaster being allowed to distort the official identity of Londonderry in this ludicrous manner?

It has long been asserted that BBC NI and Ulster Television (UTV) are reservoirs of republican support and sympathies.  This editorial decision by the BBC does nothing to disprove that assertion.  The default position of the self loathers and socialist broadcast activists at the Continuity BBC to place a premium on any stance that undermines anything British, but surely this sop to those who reject and oppose Northern Ireland’s British identity has no place on the state broadcaster.  This contortion over the city’s name is only being carried out to appease the sensitivities of republicans in Londonderry.

Should the day come that the majority in Northern Ireland choose democratically to leave the union and subsume themselves into the Republic of Ireland, and Londonderry is renamed legally, will the BBC still refer to it as ‘Derry Londonderry’ to acknowledge the sensitivities of the unionists living in the city who wish to remain part of the UK and have so far resisited the republican cultural cleansing that has been taking place to drive protestant unionists out?  Not bloody likely.

The BBC is still the United Kingdom’s fifth column, it remains the enemy within.  This is just another example of it.

He was wrong then and he is still wrong now

Time has done nothing to diminish the pompous stupidity of the sopping wet Europhile Tory, the Rt Hon Geoffrey Howe – now of course Lord Howe – when it comes to matters of ‘Europe’.

During the recent tributes and look back at some of the key moments in the political career of Margaret Thatcher, Howe’s resignation speech in the House of Commons, was referenced and used in audio/visual clips time and again.  The clip used, that was so devastating back then, has allowed people to see in hindsight just how wrong Howe had been about the Euroclub, its aims and direction and its approach:

We commit a serious error if we think always in terms of “surrendering” sovereignty and seek to stand pat for all time on a given deal–by proclaiming, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did two weeks ago, that we have “surrendered enough”.

The European enterprise is not and should not be seen like that–as some kind of zero sum game. Sir Winston Churchill put it much more positively 40 years ago, when he said:

“It is also possible and not less agreeable to regard this sacrifice or merger of national sovereignty as the gradual assumption by all the nations concerned of that larger sovereignty which can alone protect their diverse and distinctive customs and characteristics and their national traditions.”

I have to say that I find Winston Churchill’s perception a good deal more convincing, and more encouraging for the interests of our nation, than the nightmare image sometimes conjured up by my right hon. Friend, who seems sometimes to look out upon a continent that is positively teeming with ill- intentioned people, scheming, in her words, to “extinguish democracy”, to “dissolve our national identities” and to lead us “through the back-door into a federal Europe”.

What kind of vision is that for our business people, who trade there each day, for our financiers, who seek to make London the money capital of Europe or for all the young people of today?

These concerns are especially important as we approach the crucial topic of economic and monetary union. We must be positively and centrally involved in this debate and not fearfully and negatively detached. The costs of disengagement here could be very serious indeed.

The nightmare image envisaged by Thatcher was frighteningly accurate.  What has characterised our experience in Europe is being faced with ill-intentioned schemers whose behaviour seeks to further aims that have eroded and continue to erode democracy, that have dissolved national identity and are building a federal Europe.  Howe was wrong then and he is still wrong now – only ignorance can be no defence for Howe after all these years.

As always, the same justifications for this larceny is presented, economic interests and the needs of business and employers.  As always, the question about why economic and trade relationships require this country to give up control over its laws, borders, international relationships and immense sums of our money, is never asked by our agenda-ridden excuse for a media and never volunteered by the likes of Howe and the political class – who slither through the corridors of what used to be a seat of power and influence, but is now a provincial hub of managerialism and execution of the diktats faxed over from Brussels.

Howe has clearly not learned – or more likely not wanted to learn or acknowledge – the reality, which is why the human-cum-dead sheep is still there even today declaring that if a proposed referendum led to the UK leaving the EU, there would be dire consequences for the country’s global influence.  Compounding this quisling’s idiocy is his willingness to perpetuate the impression that not wanting to be governed from overseas by unaccountable politicians and bureaucrats over which we have no democratic control is ‘anti European’:

The ratchet-effect of Euroscepticism has now gone so far that the Conservative leadership is in effect running scared of its own backbenchers, let alone UKIP, having allowed deep anti-Europeanism to infect the very soul of the party.

The Conservative Party’s long, nervous breakdown over Europe continues and what is essentially a Tory problem is now, once again, becoming a national problem.

Serious mistakes have been made, but the situation is not irretrievable.

The ‘situation’ to which he refers is the perceived bad behaviour in some people in the Conservative Party daring to question our EU overlords and having the temerity to disagree with their rule over us from overseas.  For the situation to be retrieved, those who wish to rebuild democracy, maintain a national identity and oppose a federal Europe – namely those things he derided all those years ago as conspiracy theories and scare stories – need to be silenced and beaten into submission by the party leader.

The irony – perhaps that should read hypocrisy – of a man calling for the leader of the Conservative Party to rein in dissenters, when he resigned as a minister for being reined for his dissent against Thatcher, is not lost on us.

Howe and his ilk are the enemy within. These carefully deceitful and treacherous fifth columnists have spent too many years seeking to destroy this country’s status as a nation state to see their anti-democratic enterprise undone now and people given the opportunity to say No to the political class.

Germans united in regret (and self interest) over Britain’s EU stance

Different day, same inane rubbish in the media where they repeat the same establishment arguments already made ad-infinitum.  This time it’s the turn of the BBC’s Mark Urban to offer a variation on the ‘Germans are displeased with us‘ theme.

There is no real dissent across the German political spectrum on the issues of integrating the European Union (EU) more closely, apart from on the extreme right.

gushes Urban.  Well Mr Urban, with the exception of UKIP, there’s no real dissent across the British political spectrum on the issue either – Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, Plaid and the SNP all crave more ‘Europe’.

From Ralph Brinkhaus, a local member of the German parliament, the Bundestag, to Christine Lemster, a chemistry student at Hamburg University, we heard a similar refrain – the UK and Germany ought to be natural allies, and it is too bad that they cannot unite around EU issues.

Stop, Mr Urban, you’re breaking my heart.  Of course we can be natural allies and we can unite around issues with Germany.  But where is the explanation about why we need to hand over control of our country in order to do so?

We are natural allies with the United States and unite with them around issues, but no one is suggesting we need to have political union with them to achieve it.  So why do we need political union in Europe?  As ever the europhile and EU grant-grabbing BBC demonstrate the closed thinking that colours their reporting of the issue.

The second issue on which there appears to be wide agreement is that Germany opposes the type of renegotiation of membership terms or competencies that UK Prime Minister David Cameron has talked about.

Well, heaven forbid this country should have the temerity to do something that doesn’t suit the agenda of the political class in Germany, or France, or Spain, or Italy.  How damned unreasonable of us.  We should be bloody well ashamed of ourselves for such harbouring such disgracefully selfish thoughts.

The last topic where the Germans offer Tory Eurosceptics cold comfort is on their idea that Britain, even if it actually left the EU, could negotiate the same type of free trade arrangement with it that Norway or Switzerland have.

We went to the Sennheiser audio plant near Hanover; where something like 10% of their worldwide sales are made in the UK, to canvass their view on this:

“I know how complicated it is to negotiate”, said board member Volker Bertels, referring to Switzerland’s long discussions over the terms of access to the European market, adding that in the case of the UK, “we all need to be careful about putting up additional obstacles”.

Once again the media paints this issue as being about one section of one political party.  They are actually doing contortions now to avoid any recognition that it is voters who have pushed this debate to the forefront through opinion polls and their possible voting intentions.  So it’s hard to get an agreement in a short time.  Switzerland got plenty of bi-lateral agreements because they have what others want and are interested in buying what others have to sell.  Provided the trade rules were in place to allow the free flow of goods and services then the market will do the rest.

So many words written by Mark Urban.  Yet none of them are devoted to any examination of the UK’s interests.  Instead he uses his platform to effectively shill for the Germans.  Such is the mindset of the establishment’s state broadcaster.  Is there anyone in the British establishment who gives a damn about this country’s interests rather than agonise about how inconvenient our potential actions might be for other countries?  There’s a word for these people.  Quislings.

Telegraph’s hack pack continues ramping up the pro-EU narrative

If anyone was in any doubt that the Barclay Brothers’ Telegraph is planting its flag firmly on europhile ‘in’ campaign ground, then their Head of Business, Damian Reece, has provided clear evidence of it in that comic, declaring in a piece titled ‘We may soon need Europe more than Europe needs us’ that:

For as long as I have been in work I’ve been writing about Europe’s single currency in one way or another, from the Exchange Rate Mechanism to a eurozone break-up.

We could try to negotiate our own bilateral trade agreements but given our market of 60m people we’re unlikely to win such attractive terms as a market such as the EU’s 500m.

All that time I’ve maintained a stubborn opposition to Britain’s membership. But now an equally difficult choice is looming, which centres on what sort of Europeans do we want to be or, perhaps more realistically, what sort of Europeans can we be?

Having spent years currying favour with its readers with various criticisms of the EU, now that push is coming to shove the Telegraph’s hack pack is declaring itself for the UK to stay firmly inside the EU pumping out evidence-free strawman articles and commentary, while downplaying or completely ignoring every negative aspect of membership.  For example, in light of a raft of opinion polls how could Reece have possibly concluded that:

There is a consensus here that the UK must retain its membership of the single market but that we should remain outside the single currency.

Where there is evidence that Reece’s assertions simply don’t stand up to scrutiny, he simply dismisses it, as he does in this little section:

But as the brakes come off world trade, the biggest beneficiaries will be members of the biggest trading blocs. Those outside these groups risk missing out on the biggest benefits of multilateralism and trying to join after the event risks less favourable terms. We could try to negotiate our own bilateral agreements but given our market of 60m people we’re unlikely to win such attractive terms as a market such as the EU’s 500m. It’s true the likes of Switzerland do it but I don’t believe we should be aspiring to be Switzerland — no offence to the Swiss.

So his argument is undermined by evidence that the Swiss, a much smaller entity than the UK, successfully negotiate bi-lateral agreements. So to deal with that inconvenient fact he puts up another strawman that we shouldn’t be aspiring to be like the Swiss.  Eh?  That’s the only way he can make his argument stand up?  Such deep thinking.

The even more inconvenient fact Reece dodges is that Switzerland – with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein – make up the EFTA group of countries. and they do have real influence along with all-important independence.  The EFTA countries are highly competitive, open economies representing a sizeable market with strong per capita purchasing power.  There is always an option for Britain to join that bloc, if only as a temporary step, and that bloc could easily cooperate to secure attractive world trade terms.  Indeed, EFTA could easily transform itself into something different and even more beneficial.  But of course when europhilia is coursing through one’s veins, one is blinded to any alternative to remaining in the EU’s unnecessary and anti-democratic political union.

It seems the only europhile argument is that we should sacrifice this country’s ability to govern itself in return for the illusion of ‘influence’ and access to a market that is in any case open to other countries outside the EU.  And Reece is buying in to it along with the mythical renegotiation meme pushed by the Tories and their little helpers that still leaves the EU in control of the UK.

As faith in the political class is at an all time low and still falling, thankfully so is faith in the fourth estate as the disdain and mistrust extends out to encompass the whole establishment – a point Lord Justice Leveson would do well to grasp.  That much is clear from reading the almost 900 comments the overwhelmingly majority of which ridicule, challenge and deconstruct Reece’s supposed new-found europhilia.

But the important fact to take from all this is the establishment is setting itself against the wishes of the people, therefore serving interests other than ours.

It will necessitate an organic, grassroots campaign of a type not adopted here before, reaching out directly to the electorate to explain why leaving the EU will be beneficial for this country.  It’s the only way a positive message can be presented that by-passes the lies and distortions of the political class and their poodles in the mainstream media.  Battle needs to be joined for the future of the United Kingdom.

Rodney Leach – Tory, Baron and pro-EU quisling stooge

The shape of a new Europe therefore writes its own script – a neighbourly alliance, partly federal, partly by treaty between independent states, in which those who want to share a currency and economic sovereignty and those who just want co-operation would be equally welcome. Only trade, the bedrock of the original Common Market, would be universal. In truth, it is not the eurozone that is the “core” of Europe – it is the single market.
–  Baron Leach of Fairford (Rodney Leach)

Actually Rodders old chap, the core of ‘Europe’ (by which the lazy Lord means the EU) is not the single market.  It is the goal of political union.

Everything the EU does – and everything it has done in its previous guises – is and has been designed to further the federalist ambitions of creating a super-government to rule the entire continent.  The single market was just a construct designed to enable politicians like Edward Heath and Harold Wilson to lull their electorates into a false sense of security as they signed away the independence of their country thinking they were just joining a trading bloc.  Leach knows this but won’t say it for fear of frightening the horses.

Yet this is the man in charge of the supposedly eurosceptic organisation, Open Europe, which tries to deceive people into believing that they share the same values and aspirations as those who want the UK to leave the EU, while working actively to keep the UK firmly inside the EU.

If Leach’s cannot be relied upon to be honest in describing the objectives of the EU how can anyone rely on anything he says?  Leach is clearly not a eurosceptic and nor is the organisation he chairs.  For the avoidance of doubt, in the paywalled Times article – laughably titled ‘The sceptics have won. Now for a new Europe… This is the perfect chance for Britain to work out how to loosen its ties with Brussels’ – from which the quote above was re-produced by ConservativeHome, Leach also said that the voice of:

moderate sceptics, who want to stay in the EU but might want “out” if the Government can’t negotiate a changed relationship… is too seldom heard.

There it is again.  The europlastic ploy of the hijack and redefinition of the term ‘eurosceptic’ to make it fit with the interests of the political class.  Now it seems the mood music being played by the Tories is that being a ‘moderate sceptic’ means wanting to stay in the EU if things change a bit. What does that mean, exactly?  Leach helpfully explains by saying these supposed moderate sceptics want to:

limit Brussels’ involvement in areas such as policing and crime, fisheries, farming, employment law and regional policy

Loosening the ties, as the now clearly identifiable EuroLeach puts it.  In other words, they only want some powers back but otherwise want to leave Brussels in overall control of government of this country and its affairs. And they push this line despite the raft of evidence that the pick n’ mix approach EuroLeach and co are pushing is a fantasy option that is rejected by the ‘colleagues’.

So it’s clear the only purpose of the changed ‘relationship’ with the EU that EuroLeach and his cohorts at Open Europe advocate is to make continued membership of the EU and government from Brussels easier to take (hence their effort to suggest being a member of EFTA leaves a country like Norway with no influence over EU trade measures resulting in rebuttal by Witterings from Witney, Boiling Frog and EU Referendum, and a certain amount of embarrassed Open Europe backtracking of the claims).  It has nothing to do with the UK taking control of its own affairs again.  Yet these are the go-to people for the media seeking ‘eurosceptic’ viewpoints on a range of EU-related stories.

Far better to describe EuroLeach and Open Europe for what they are… the enemy within.  They are unreconstructed pro-EU quisling stooges.

Tackling the Open Europe ‘in’ campaign

It’s nice to see the good folk at Open Europe being challenged by readers in the comments section over on their blog about their repeat of the plainly deceitful claims that the UK would have to follow all the rules of the EU while having no say, if we left the EU and joined EFTA; and that by staying inside the EU the UK has ‘influence’.

Open Europe takes its lead from Rodney Leach, also known as the Tory peer, Baron Leach of Fairford. Leach, like all Tory europlastics, claims to be eurosceptic yet advocates and campaigns for the UK to remain firmly inside the EU – which is in no way eurosceptic. The doublespeak is deliberate as it always has been, as the Tories say one thing while doing the exact opposite. Thanks to his marshalling of Open Europe the group is nothing less than a deliberately misleading false flag operation.

Despite this the press still refers to the group and its current Director, Mats Persson, as eurosceptic and quotes its comments as being eurosceptic – which causes confusion among voters who believe (rightly) the term means wanting the UK out of the EU, not staying part of it and trying to ‘reform’ it. After all, what kind of eurosceptic claims the UK’s options outside the EU are limited and all of them harmful?

To successfully campaign for UK withdrawal from the EU it is necessary to take every opportunity to show up the Open Europe position for what it is and to reclaim the definition of eurosceptic, so its meaning cannot be corrupted by europhiles determined to drag the UK ever deeper into Brussels’ control.

Norwegian Foreign Minister lies about EEA to help British ‘in’ campaign

There is only one kind of person who is even more enthusiastic about the EU than the legion of EUrocrats, and who will say anything – even blatant lies – to advance its agenda.

That person is a furiously frustrated member of the political class who is a wannabe EUrocrat, but is trapped outside the doors of the Brussels/Strasbourg gravy train by the voters in his/her country who are determined to remain independent.

One such EUthusiast is the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide.

Like the rest of the political class in Norway, Eide is desperate to take his country into the EU.  Although Norwegian voters continue to return socialists to office in Oslo, they savour their independence and do not want to be part of the EU.  It is a classic political class/electorate disconnect.  The political class see they can do nicely out of the EU, the voters see it will be a bottomless pit into which they will be required to pour their money while at the same time giving up tcontrol of their own laws and regulations.

As an EU wannabe, Eide is keen to suck up to the EUrocrats at every opportunity in the hope of some financially lucrative reward later down the line.  This explains why Eide lied shamelessly in an effort to con Britons into thinking that leaving the EU and becoming part of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) – which along with the EU makes up the European Economic Area (EEA) – would strip Britain of any remaining influence in Europe and lead to ‘regulation without representation’.

Eide knows it’s a lie.  The EU knows it’s a lie.  And thanks to this clinical dissection by Richard over at EU Referendum, you too can now see for yourself that it’s a lie.

It’s interesting to note that the BBC was very keen to promote these lies.  Where was their fact checking?  Where is the evidence of their duty to impartiality and accuracy? This is another glaring example of the ludicrous nature of Lord Justice Leveson’s assertion that mainstream journalists enjoy a “powerful reputation for accuracy”.

Clearly Leveson’s cocksure comments were just another steaming pile of establishment-generated bullshit.  Once again it has taken the blogosphere to uncover the truth and publicise it in the face of concerted political and media deception.  Let the good Lord Justice hold a lucrative enquiry into that and force the BBC to be held to account. We won’t hold our breath for that to happen.

Syria providing another example of never letting a crisis go to waste?

It is generally accepted that military powers like to test out their capabilities in a genuine theatre of war, and Syria would represent the first proper opportunity since David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy signed an agreement for greater military co-operation, for French and British ground forces in particular to operate as a unit within a combined logisitics and joint command structure in live operations.

So it was interesting to learn that according to the website DEBKAfile, a joint NATO-Arab military intervention force is being readied for offensive action in Syria [H/T Nourishing Obscurity]. This part of their story particularly stood out:

In the second and third weeks of November, British and French naval forces, plus 2,600 special ops combatants from both nations, performed landing-and-capture exercises against fortified locations on the coast and mountains of Albania as practice for potential operations against similar terrain in Syria, where the Alawite Mountains loom over the coastal towns of Latakia and Tartus.

There remains significant consternation about the nakedly political decision to create an EU-wide military force, initially by tying together the two most effective armed forces in the bloc, by making British military capability dependent on active French support.  The future state would see Britain incapable of conducting combined operations using air, sea and land forces without French involvement and advance the military ambitions of the EU.

Syria would provide Britain and France with an essential testing ground for interdependent military operations – and provide the politicians with the opportunity to declare the wisdom and effectiveness of the tie-up.  What odds this motivation is a significant driver in what DEBKA report is happening?  It could be that in typical political fashion another crisis has emerged bringing with it the imperative not to let it go to waste.

We’ve already seen the first step towards an EU army taken by the UK.  No doubt this next possible next step means the supposedly EUsceptic Tories will be delighted.

UK economy struggles but Government pledges £2bn of UK aid to help Third World go green

So the government that never tires of telling us the story that Liam Byrne left a note in the Treasury saying, ‘I’m afraid there is no money‘ and which is launching an aggressive assault on businesses (particularly small ones) to squeeze ever more money in tax from them because of the state of public finances, has pledged almost £2 billion in “climate aid” to help finance foreign projects including wind turbines in Africa and greener cattle farming in Colombia.

The story goes on to say that each household will contribute £70 to schemes to tackle climate change in developing countries before March 2015, under plans championed by Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary.

The political class is serving the interests of someone. It’s just not the people of the United Kingdom.

When vulnerable British pensioners die of cold this winter, because they can’t afford to heat their homes and have not been helped by the welfare safety net we have paid into that is supposed to be there for them in such circumstances, think back to this insane spending decision and the politicians who squandered our money while pleading the need for austerity. Then consider what is behind it.

Words cannot describe the visceral hatred I feel for these repulsive parasites who, like a virus, are slowly destroying this country.

Will Conservatives finally accept Cameron and Europlastics have deceived them over EU?

Well, Conservatives, your man has spoken.  Governor Cameron has decreed from on high thou shalt not have a referendum on membership of the European Union. So what are you going to do now?

Cameron, pictured meeting his overlord outside the provincial gubernatorial residence in London, described himself to the Liaison Committee in Parliament as a ‘practical Eurosceptic’ – confirming the extent to which the name has been corrupted, hijacked to become the diametric opposite of what it has always meant and been commonly accepted to mean.  He said:

“I want us to be influential in Europe about the things that matter to our national interest – promoting the single market, pushing forward for growth, making sure we get lower energy prices.

“Those are things we will be fighting for but I don’t see the case for an in out referendum on Europe.

“We are in Europe, we have got to make it work for us.”

So because he doesn’t see the case the British public will be denied their democratic entitlement to determine how this country is run.  And in case he had not made clear his very personal position would be projected upon the nation he also said:

“I don’t support an In/Out referendum because I don’t think that’s the question people want asked about the EU.”

If Cameron was honest he would tell the British people: ‘What you want is irrelevant. Every decision I make has democratic legitimacy because I say so. I am in Downing Street and you can do nothing about it. I want this country to be part of the EU so that’s the way it’s going to be.  If you don’t like it, tough.’

So that covers ‘our most instinctively Eurosceptic Prime Minister for 20 years‘.  What about the Europlastics? You know, those Tories who wrapped themselves in the cloak of Euroscepticism to enhance their electoral prospects, but who are nothing of the sort.

The charade continues, as Richard North on EU Referendum points out.  How?  Step forward George Eustice, Europlastic Tory MP for Camborne and Redruth. George describes himself to all and sundry as a Eurosceptic, but he doesn’t want us to leave the EU. He doesn’t even support the idea of a referendum.  He is a co-founder of a group of around 80 Conservative MPs who also claim to be Eurosceptic, but who only want EU reform while Britain continues to be ruled by bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg. Eustice is quoted by the BBC as saying his group would promote a:

“sensible discussion about how we can radically overhaul the EU and make it fit for purpose in the 21st Century”.

and:

“It is important we start to come up with thinking about what the EU will become and how we want to start to change it.”

All those calls for a referendum and opinion polls saying a majority of Britons want this country to leave the EU fall on deaf ears where Eustice and his sidekick and former EU gracy train rider Chris Heaton-Harris are concerned.  They want Britain to stay firmly inside the EU and their group is designed to ensure that happens regardless of what the majority of this country’s citizens want.  Repatriation of powers has been abandoned and the EU project cannot and will not reverse integration. The group’s aims are on a par with other myths, such as the tooth fairy, Loch Ness monster and the Easter Bunny.

Despite this we see Roger Helmer, a self professed Eurosceptic MEP who says he wants an In/Out referendum – and who is Honorary Chairman of The Freedom Association, the pressure group that runs the Better Off Out campaign – publicly supporting this group of pro-EU reformers.

How can we trust anything we are told by Roger Helmer, the most prominent member of the ‘Better Off Out’ campaign, when he pledges to do anything he can to support a group of MPs that is committed to i) denying the British public a referendum and ii) keeping Britain firmly inside the EU?  Maybe now the penny will drop among those who feel this blog has been unfair to Helmer for exposing his stunningly contradictory position.

Of course Helmer could confound this criticism by denouncing Cameron’s stance, urging Conservatives to take on Cameron, and rejecting the Eustice / Heaton-Harris Europlastic grouping which is actively seeking to undermine that which he claims to stand for.  So what has the great man decided to talk about on his website the day after Cameron and Eustice’s comments?  Fuel poverty.  And even then he only mentions one of the EU’s directives and laws imposed on this country that are increasing energy prices and plunging poorer families into fuel poverty.  Perhaps it is all part of his strategy.

The reality of the Europhile Conservative position, of supporting ever closer union and denying the population an opportunity to reject EU membership, has been laid bare in words and deeds. It is unambiguous.  It is unmistakable. The myth cannot be sustained any longer. So for how much longer will Conservatives who want Britain to leave the EU stay in that Europhile party, kidding themselves Cameron is a Eurosceptic?  The fantasy is over.

Update: The excellent Witterings From Witney weighs in with a clinical evisceration of another Europlastic, William Hague.

Want the UK to leave the EU? It’s time to tackle the faux Eurosceptics

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Not many readers would have thought the musings of Noam Chomsky would have found a place on this blog, but this blueprint for limiting and tightly controlling people perfectly describes what is taking place inside the Conservative Party today.

The subject on which MPs are being pacified and herded into a controllable pen in the manner Chomsky describes is the European Union.

The Conservative Party is limiting the spectrum of acceptable opinion among its MPs by encouraging some of the new intake to form a group to promote ‘moderate Euroscepticism’.  Irrespective of the construction of the word ‘Eurosceptic’ it has commonly been accepted as a description of those who wish to see the UK withdraw from the European Union.  But as we have seen in history, from time to time words are hijacked by people with an agenda who change the meanings and understandings associated with them.  The term Eurosceptic is currently being hijacked in this way by people who wish the UK to remain firmly inside the EU while giving voters the impression they support the majority’s wish to leave.

The members of this group, led by George Eustice (a former press secretary to David Cameron who laughably describes Cameron as a ‘genuinely Eurosceptic Prime Minister’) believe the EU can be reformed and the UK  must remain within it, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the entity being fundamentally anti democratic.  Therefore, although the members of this group describe themselves as ‘moderate Eurosceptics’, they are not Eurosceptics of any type.

They are better described as Europlastics, cheap and nasty imitations of the genuine product.

As one might expect the group has started to attract some attention with some journalists attempting to define it.  Patrick O’Flynn of the Daily Express recently wrote:

So, what to make of a new group of Conservative MPs who do not wish to leave the jungle altogether but simply to gravitate further out towards its edge? The group of 70 or so younger Tory MPs is proposing that Britain renegotiates the terms of its EU membership with a view to repatriating substantial powers from Brussels.

These MPs, such as Chris Heaton-Harris and George Eustice, have solid Eurosceptic credentials. Their new group has been heralded as a radical innovation.

O’Flynn has unwittingly assisted in the effort to redefine the word Eurosceptic with his assertion, underlining the subtle corruption of the real meaning in order to undermine the term and make it meaningless to all intents and purposes.  However, O’Flynn adds some valuable background insight into this group that may help open the eyes of those who have been blinkered by the idea these people are anything other than Europhile:

But one very senior source from the Better Off Out part of the political spectrum puts his scepticism in striking terms: “This is just a Tory Whips Office stunt. It is full of people who want to be Cabinet ministers. They haven’t said what powers they want repatriated, when or how it is to be achieved.

“This is a cynical distraction to try to stall the momentum among grass-roots Conservatives for having a referendum on leaving the EU. They are offering a fake alternative to try to take the wind out of our sails.

“When nothing substantial gets renegotiated they will then just blame Nick Clegg and promise to do better when there is a Tory majority. If that occurs then they will find another excuse for effectively doing nothing.

“They are attempting to kick Britain’s subjugation by the EU into the long grass alongside human rights reform, immigration control and an inheritance tax cut.”

The story has more than a ring of truth about it.  George Eustice’s wing man in this little project is none other than Chris Heaton-Harris, a man who has developed a cosy relationship with the very Tory whips behind this Licensed Dissenters club.

It was Heaton-Harris who, at the behest of the whips, torpedoed a motion concerning the European Financial Stability Mechanism to bail out eurozone countries.  The motion would have required the Government to place the EFSM on the agenda of the next meeting of the Council of Ministers or the European Council and effectively mandated British ministers to vote against continued use of the EFSM unless a Eurozone-only arrangement relieving the UK of liability had been agreed.  In so doing, Heaton-Harris put the interests of the EU ahead of UK taxpayers.

Unsurprisingly, it was also Heaton-Harris who led a group of 14 Tory MPs who sent a letter to the Financial Times arguing that the financial crisis sweeping Europe was an opportunity for the UK to shape Europe’s post-crisis order.  Without any sense of irony, having scuppered the motion to ensure the UK would not be subject to any financial liability for European bailouts, Heaton-Harris argued that the solutions to the crisis proposed by eurozone countries amount to no more than “throwing good money after bad” and will further expose the British taxpayer to any future economic meltdown!

If you are one of the majority of people who want the UK to leave the EU, it is time to ‘call out’ people like Chris Heaton-Harris and George Eustice, and those who support their efforts to stall momentum for an In/Out referendum, such as Roger Helmer.  Genuine Eurosceptics are being led up the garden path by these tricksters who professes to be Eurosceptic but in reality are Judas goats in Cameron’s petting zoo.

Some Eurosceptics have been stunned to see Helmer and friends being challenged in the last week by Autonomous Mind and other blogs such as EU Referendum, Witterings From Witney and Ironies Too as he has stated he wants an In/Out referendum.  Our exposure of the doyen of the Conservative Eurosceptic movement – an oxymoron if there ever was one – looking both ways on the EU has caused rumblings and is forcing people to look beneath the words at the all important actions.  That is as it should be, after all, how can Helmer’s position be squared with his endorsement of Heaton-Harris and Eustice, who are working hard to keep Britain in the EU and whose efforts to create a ‘moderate Eurosceptic’ grouping are seen as undermining the prospects of a referendum being held?

Helmer cannot continue to have it both ways and he needs to pick a side.  His ‘having it both ways’ position cuts the legs from underneath those who want a referendum.  By staying firmly inside a Conservative Party that is determined to remain firmly inside the EU, and giving support to those who want to keep Britain in the EU Helmer gives false hope to Tory members and supporters who would leave the charlatans behind if they realised there was never any prospect of their wishes being realised.

It is time to stop people being taken in by the Eurosceptics-in-name-only and time to show them up for what they are.

The end of the Eurosceptic

The more that people scrutinise and check facts for themselves, the less able the politicians are to deceive themselves and the public.  Following on from our exchanges with Roger Helmer, the always excellent EU Referendum offers a matter of fact piece about the enemy within.

What is clear, as some in the comments section have alluded to, it that it’s time to jettison the devalued and misleading ‘Eurosceptic’ label.  When it comes to the EU there are only two camps now, in or out, EUphile or Withdrawalist.  Any MP who votes in favour of any Bill or amendment that facilitates EU integration and closer union cannot, by definition, be a withdrawalist. Pragmatism is code for inaction.

When you look at the voting records of Tory MPs and MEPs, there are hardly any who consistently vote against handing further power to the EU. Less than a dozen out of over 300. If you want the UK to leave the European Union then don’t vote Conservative.  Like Labour and the Lib Dems, they are the enemy within, aided by a collection of ‘licensed dissenters’, Judas goats and useful idiots.

Stealth editing becomes stealth censorship

Airbrushed from history?  Words that were never written?  Did it not happen?  Was that the intention? We should be told.

News media around the globe, from the US to Australia, from India to the Gulf States, reported the story that the Guardian’s investigations executive editor, David Leigh, had admitted to engaging in phone hacking yet denied it when asked about it by the Guido Fawkes blog.  One of the most senior journalists at the paper which pursued the ‘phone hacking’ story so vigorously had himself been pressing * and # keys to listen to another person’s voicemails. Around the world the Leigh hacking story was deemed worthy of coverage.

But there is a bigger story to this that every UK citizen needs to know about.  It concerns the nefarious activities of a number of Britain’s journalists to collude with each other in an attempt to ‘walk back’ a story to remove it from public record.

As a bit of context, this blog has already previously pointed out the BBC, the world’s largest news gathering organisation whose stories have a global reach, ignored the story.  Completely.  Since the story re-emerged this month, because the BBC referred to Leigh’s hacking in a piece by Torin Douglas back in April,  it has published not a single word of the case against David Leigh, a case which underpins the gross hypocrisy of the Guardian’s position and criminal actions of its staff.  So interwoven are the left wing Guardian and left wing BBC, neither will do anything that harms the other, even if that means leaving their respective audiences in ignorance of an important story.

Elsewhere, although some UK newspapers ran the story on the back of the Guido Fawkes blog post, efforts to find reports of the story on the wire service run by the UK based Press Association turn up a blank too.  The PA, often accused of leftist bias, turned a blind eye to the Leigh story despite its substantial reporting of the phone hacking story.

But far worse than all this are efforts by some media outlets that have already run the story to delete their report in an attempt to airbrush it from history.  Let us be clear, this is not a retraction of the story.  This is not an open correction of an error.  It is a conscious effort to forever scrape from that outlet’s own virtual record any trace of their report in order to rewrite history.  It seems the UK audience is being denied news and information from the UK involving British journalists, because some British journalists will close ranks to shield each other.

Which paper has done this?  Is it a left wing rag?  The Mirror or the Star perhaps?  No.  This was the action of a supposedly truth seeking, supposedly conservative newspaper.

The Daily Mail.

Without explanation the Daily Mail has deleted the David Leigh phone hacking story.  A search to see if only the story’s title or location had changed shows it has not been moved or altered, simply deleted.  The only sign it ever existed is the Google search result thrown up when looking for stories about David Leigh and phone hacking.

Why is this important?  Because in months and years to come, when people look back to research a piece and see what had been reported at the time, the Daily Mail’s official digital archive and archive discs will not contain any trace of the story.  It is tantamount to telling a lie.  It is an effort to remove a story from history.  And no justification has been provided for it.  If you missed the now deleted article, here is a screengrab of it.

The Daily Mail should explain why the story has been deleted barely 10 days after it was published.  This is how history can be manipulated and managed by people with an agenda to conceal something.  And it should be of concern to everyone who cherishes the idea of an open and transparent news media.

How farcial it is that the record of this British story about the honesty or otherwise of the media in this country will be confined to a few mid-circulation papers such as the Express.  In contrast a large number of overseas titles, which saw the significance of the story and felt it important enough to report to their own domestic audiences, will be the source British researchers will need to rely on.

Again we see the dark underside of a self serving and manipulative element in the British media that is content to conceal facts inconvenient to their friends despite an obvious public interest significance.  The incestuous relationships between supposedly competing stables in the UK and the desire of too many journalists to put future career opportunities before a fearless pursuit of the truth, ill serves the British public and keeps many in a state of engineered ignorance.

If they can do it with the David Leigh story, what else are they choosing not to report to the British public?

Tottenham shows it’s time to end the Jody McIntyre roadshow

Update: Bubbling with excitement, McIntyre enjoyed a second night of riot tourism this time in Brixton.  The journalistic giant, pride of The Independent, The Guardian and New Statesman, returned to his lair in the early hours to bash out some tweets glorifying the violence:

Those who have watched his evasive BBC TV interview from last year will be familiar with his technique of not answering a question, instead posing another of his own. Well, he does it on his keyboard too. There remains not a single word of condemnation from McIntyre of the looting, arson and criminal damage.  So will the newspapers continue to give this thug a platform?:

When this round of rioting is over we can but guess what ’cause’ he will attach himself to next as an excuse to take to the streets yet again and add to disorder and criminality.

————-

Original Post

Thanks to The Guardian, The Independent and the New Statesman, the self promoting rent-a-protester, Jody McIntyre, has been afforded the oxygen of publicity and a platform to spout his special brand of bile.  We’ll come back these media giants further down.

Jody McIntyre describes himself as a ‘journalist’ and ‘political activist’.  The reality is he is nothing more than a trouble-seeking wannabe thug who gets a thrill from being right in the thick of violent disorder.  On his blog he tells people:

Jody McIntyre is a journalist and political activist. With a regular blog for The Independent, he has also written for The Guardian, the New Statesman, Electronic Intifada and Disability Now.

That apparently depicts journalism despite an apparent lack of payment for his ‘work’.  In reality he is trying to cover his activities in a veneer of respectability they do not warrant.  What is noteworthy is that despite his complaint that disabled people are badly treated and discriminated against he seems to think his cerebral palsy and use of a wheelchair should exempt him from being treated in the same way as other protesters.

As McIntyre lives in south London it should come as no surprise that he was present in Tottenham, north London, last night as parts of the borough were consumed by rioting, arson, looting, house breaking and muggings.  But more of McIntyre’s big night out (presumably only for the purposes of ‘journalism’…) in a minute.  First, let’s examine the legend Jody McIntyre would have us believe, then add the reality he and his band of anarcho-fans would prefer people didn’t know.

McIntyre came to prominence during the student protests in London when he was twice taken out of his wheelchair by police and moved to the side of the road.  His complaints about his treatment were quickly picked up by the media looking for a police ‘disproportionate force’ and in no time he was on Sky News and the BBC claiming he had been ‘attacked’.

However the TV interview showed Jody McIntyre up to be slippery and evasive and his story was clearly questionable as the footage was not very clear.  When challenged about his self description as a ‘revolutionary’ who believes in ‘direct action’ McIntyre sought to get off the subject as quickly as possible.  Clearly it would be inconvenient to present himself as merely a concerned citizen when the reality is he goes out of his way to get stuck into the action anytime there is a protest, no matter what the cause.  However McIntyre can be seen trying to crawl away from the police officer in the middle of the road as he resisted before being pulled to the kerb where he wouldn’t cause an obstruction.

So here we had this poor, wheelchair bound, young lad who just wanted engage in peaceful, democratic protest, being mistreated by the police. Not once, but twice.  Or did we?  Because, before this incident, McIntyre had been right at the front of violent clashes with the police.  He deliberately put himself there despite knowing violence was taking place. He actually describes it on his blog!  Here are some snippets…

As we parked up, and began walking back down the Strand, we saw a crowd emerging from Aldwych; around 2000 students had set off from LSE. However, they were only marching down one side of the road, and we were in a militant mood. Me and Finlay crossed over, into the oncoming traffic, and within seconds the whole crowd had followed.

It was an endless sea of people, but unfortunately, they had been corralled by police and NUS stewards into one lane of the dual carriageway. Me and Finlay immediately set to work, tearing down the metal barriers which separated the two lanes. Oncoming traffic drivers looked on in wonder.

The people with the music system must have had the same thought. All of a sudden, the bicycle burst out of the crowd, rushing through the pair of armed police guarding the private road of the Treasury. A group of 200 followed, including me in my wheelchair, and Finlay pushing at full speed. A dubstep tune came on, and the chanting began; “Fuck Cameron! Fuck Cameron! Fuck Cameron! Fuck Cameron!” Not the Treasury’s proudest day.

The building was occupied on the day the Browne Review was released, so here the police were ready for us. We flooded into the courtyard, but the riot cops were called within minutes. As batons began to swing, me and Finlay stood our ground on the front line. I stood up on my wheelchair, but attempts to re-take the courtyard soon fizzled out as a riot van was brought in.

In front of us, a huge glass building towered; it was the Conservative Party’s Headquarters, and it was under attack. The crowd was so tightly packed that even with the wheelchair, it was a huge effort to force our way through. Around half way we gave up. The crowd was swaying. “They’re smashing the windows…”

Me and Finlay looked at each other. We knew that we had to make it to the front. Kareem started pushing the wheelchair again, and Finlay cleared a path in front of us.

It wasn’t long before the next surge came. A Mexican wave of bodies. I fell out of my wheelchair and pushed through two cops. Finlay stood behind me, the wheelchair still in his hands.

Scores of demonstrators followed. Finlay came running in with the wheelchair a couple of minutes later. Victorious chants rang in the air; “Tory scum! Tory scum!” “When they say cut back, we say fight back!”

But then, the chants changed… “To the stairs! To the stairs!” Two policemen blocking a tiny door were soon brushed aside, and around fifty of us forced our way through before they had a chance to re-seal the entrance.

It was an epic mission to the top. Nine floors; eighteen flights of stairs. Two friends carried my wheelchair, and I walked. We couldn’t give up now.

When we finally made it to the roof, a feeling of calm descended. I looked over the edge; thousands of students, three massive bonfires and masses of passion still occupied the courtyard. The Tory’s HQ was on it’s last legs. And we were on the roof.

This is only the start.

Gentle lamb, isn’t he?  All of this activity, yet no complaints about being disabled.  Yet the moment the police moved him out of harms way on a street, Jody McIntyre was screaming blue murder and citing his cerebral palsy and seemingly sporadic wheelchair use to underline their sheer evil and lack of concern for the disabled.

Inconveniently for McIntyre, not only was his involvement in the street part of the violence photographed, but the photographer even posted a blog piece explaining what McIntyre had done and why his subsequent complaint was vexatious.  It is a must read piece.  One of the photos included in it is of McIntyre, on his feet, about to hit a police officer – known in legal parlance as assault.

Despite this the Graun, the Indy and the marxist Staggers all publish his self indulgent tosh.  Fast forward from last autumn in central London to last night in Tottenham.  By 10.00pm it was clear that the peaceful protest outside Tottenham police station had been hijacked by those bent on violence and criminal activity.  But where there is violent protest, there is McIntyre.  We know because Guardian journalist Paul Lewis tweeted a message to McIntyre earlier today:

McIntyre was also online, winding things up and revelling in the disorder on his Twitter account.  The tweets below were screen captured at 2.00pm today, putting the time of posting the first image at around 11.00pm last night, at the height of the trouble and the second one at around 5.00am this morning when looters were still destroying businesses:

So here we have a man who is given a platform in The Guardian, The Independent and the New Statesman, out in the thick of the violence until early morning and inciting people elsewhere to riot in similar fashion.  A man who went on to condemn the police as troublemakers as properties, vehicles and businesses were torched, journalists and media were attacked and robbed, bystanders were mugged, and residents overrun by thugs who broke down their doors to steal from their homes.

The question is, having fallen for his deceitful sob story last year and given this man an unwarranted veneer of respectability, will these media outlets now remove the platform they provided this violence glorifying hooligan?  Or will they show themselves (again, more on this during the week) as part of this country’s enemy within who endorse and provide assistance those who engage in pre-meditated criminality, be it as a battering ram on wheels or walkabout agitator?

It is time to end the glorification of troublemakers like McInytre. It’s time for these papers to withdraw their endorsement and put an end to the Jody McIntyre media roadshow.

Odd one out? The insipid, biased BBC

David Leigh is the Guardian’s investigations executive editor.  He is now the subject of an investigation after the Guido Fawkes blog double sourced accusations that Leigh had admitted some years ago to engaging in ‘phone hacking’.

When Harry Cole asked Leigh about his ‘phone hacking’ activities, Leigh denied it.  This is because Leigh is a liar.

If David Leigh can lie about this after making a written, public admission of criminal behaviour, what else has Leigh lied about?  The veil is being drawn back and now Leigh and his Guardian cronies are going to come under intense scrutiny – and this blog will be reminding people in the coming days of other David Leigh activities that he has denied despite evidence.

The Guardian, with its uniquely smug air of self satisfied arrogance, has eagerly pursued its agenda to undermine News International as part of the effort to stop Rupert Murdoch regaining full control of British Sky Broadcasting. That effort has been driven by a desire to protect the BBC’s utter dominance over the dissemination of news in the UK and significant presence overseas, and it has seen key members of the Guardian – including editor Alan Rusbridger – strutting around TV and radio studios to pontificate about ‘phone hacking’ outrageous.

Needless to say, other news media outlets around the world are thoroughly enjoying the delicious irony of The Guardian being put under the microscope for the very crime it has spent years pushing to the front of the news agenda, as some of the headlines reveal from a Google search.  But there is one glaring omission from the international cast of media outlets covering the story…

The BBC. (Important edit: Although the BBC did refer to Leigh’s hacking activity in piece back in April, since Leigh’s denial being reported globally it has gone very quiet)

As you can see, the BBC does not mention David Leigh in any news story anywhere on its site today, and has not done so in the past week.  And a search of the BBC site using its own internal search engine reveals the same resolute refusal to cover a story that is being reported from Australia to the United States:

This reinforces our condemnation of the BBC for outrageous bias, only selecting news stories that support the BBC’s worldview or agendas.  And one of the BBC’s agendas is presenting its close friends at The Guardian as trustworthy, authoritative and reliable.

This omission of the story, which is damaging to David Leigh and The Guardian, is not the BBC turning its attention away from ‘phone hacking’.  We have ample evidence this bias by omission in a deliberate effort by the BBC to keep its audience in ignorance of inconvenient news and information.  This is an utter corruption of the BBC’s public service remit.

At the time of writing, in the last 24 hours Google shows BBC News has published no less than 8 stories related to its obsessive coverage of the ‘phone hacking’ scandal.  This screen capture shows them:

The BBC’s relationship with The Guardian is an incestuous union devoted to the pursuit of an illiberal-left agenda, funded by taxpayers’ money.  BBC News is nothing more than a propaganda outlet that puts its own interests before its obligation to report news honestly and impartially. This is their idea of honest and transparent media.

Thus the BBC treats the British public with contempt, taking our money and using it to distort the news while behaving as an activist, advancing views and theories without any semblance of impartiality.  As such it is our duty to resist this corruption and work towards the destruction of BBC News.

Hilarious if they were not so dangerous

The good Dr North at EU Referendum draws our attention today to two related pieces in that newsprint spattered bastion of Marxism known as The Guardian.

It seems a left wing, self appointed band of self professed worthies has announced that they are launching a campaign to hold to account Britain’s ‘feral’ elite for the series of crises which have scarred the country.

Expenses, bonuses and hacking crises share the same origins, says this campaign group, which proposes to create a 1,000-strong “public jury” that would be selected at random and ensure that power is taken away from “remote interest groups” which currently treat the public with contempt.  As North explains:

This is the view the likes of Greg Dyke, Caroline Lucas and Lord Smith of Clifton, who think we need a “people’s jury” to apply a “public interest first” test more generally to British political and corporate life. Overworked as a cliché or not, you really could not make this one up.

And he’s right.  The ‘feral elite’ they describe is comprised of figures from the establishment.  Yet without any sense of self awareness or the evident rich irony, the campaign group itself is made up of 56 academics, writers, trade unionists and politicians from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party – in other words, left wing figures from the establishment.

A look at the list of signatories to their open letter in the Graun betrays the motivation and the objective of this little enterprise.  This is not about holding the ‘feral elite’ to account, it is about undermining their rivals in the establishment in order to secure more influence for themselves and their liberal-left worldview.  If you don’t believe that, just look at their stated priority areas for attention in the background article about the campaign:

• Media ownership and the public interest

• The role of the financial sector in the crash

• MP selections and accountability

• Policing and public interest

• How to apply a ‘public interest first’ test more generally to British political and corporate life

Quelle surprise seeing media ownership, code for ‘nail Murdoch and any opposition to the BBC and Guardian’ right up there at number one.  You can almost see the conversation where these people were asking themselves what could they do to capitalise on the current anti News Corp sentiment and solidify the dominance of the BBC on the airwaves.  This campaign is their vehicle to control the levers of power without having to share the cockpit any longer.

As if there are not enough clues as to the real aims of this campaign – oxygen of publicity by the Guardian… main figurehead the former BBC Director General Greg Dyke… supported by Media Standards Trust (deputy chair, Julia Middleton, the CEO of Common Purpose) board members Helena Kennedy QC, BBC hack Robert Peston and Amelia Fawcett who is also chair of Guardian Media Group…  – the activity is being facilitated by Compass.  Note their slogan.  The one thing absent from the campaign is any form of ideological balance.  That should tell us all we need to know.

This is nothing more than a raid.  It is an attempt to get support from unwitting people, who would reject the leftist dogma out of hand if presented to them openly, who feel concern at what they see around them.  But people who will fail to realise the state of affairs this campaign claims it wants to tackle has largely been shaped by its very signatories since 1997 because it suited their interersts in their establishment positions.

The campaign is nothing more an attempt to use people as pawns in the power games of the elite.  As North rightly concludes in his blog post:

The trouble is, you will never get the “feral elite” offer anything that amounts to the transfer of real power. If we want power, we are going to have to take it. The time is not yet, but what we are seeing here is the elites falling out. The time must be near.

That time cannot come too soon.

The Foreign Office story the Belfast Telegraph should have told

Today we have yet another example of the media missing a serious point of public interest in order to focus on triviality and matters of little consequence.  It demonstrates further proof that the media is not fit for purpose and the public are ill served by it.

According to the Belfast Telegraph:

The Foreign Office has been left red-faced after it inadvertently published a confidential briefing which suggests European Union foreign policy chief Cathy Ashton was not experienced enough for her job.

The story explains how the briefing document in question contained sensitive material that appeared to be blacked out but could in fact be read by anyone using a computer to copy and paste it into another file, before going on to point out that the Foreign Office memo reveals that the UK Government felt only a former foreign minister, prime minister or head of state would have “enough authority” to become the EU’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs.

This is no big deal in the scheme of things.  What would have made the story a heavyweight piece and added value to readers was if it had focused on the information that followed:

The document calls for a “strong, effective” High Representative who could help build a “credible” European diplomatic corps, known as the External Action Service (EAS), and “represent EU foreign policy in the wider world”.

While it is no secret, there would be a great deal of value drawing the attention of readers to this.  For here we see the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, funded by British taxpayers, was (and still is) actively encouraging and supporting the EAS and the projection of ‘EU foreign policy’. The UK is demonstrably and evidently nothing close to independent. Not that one would see that from the absence of any mention of the EU on the FO’s home page.

The Foreign Office is stuffed to the gills with Europhile officials and is seen here to be working in its own interest rather than that of the people of the United Kingdom.  There has been much discussion about how the EU diplomatic missions have the capacity to supplant the work of British embassies around the world, thus making it clear how Brussels policy overrides UK policy.

Many citizens who have missed this creeping Eurofication of Britain’s place in the world could benefit from having the reality of our situation writ large and examined in detail for them. But the media is watching the birdie and devoting its energies to triviality rather than substance. Is it any wonder why so many people do not think the EU is a pressing political issue?  But then, that is what the political class wants and its media toadies are helping them to hold the line.

BBC groupthink

Just a quick observation… When one happens across a BBC employee on Twitter you often see the same old disclaimer applied in their description.  But all too often we don’t stop to consider what this actually tells us.  Here is a typical example of a disclaimer from Nick Sutton:

Editor of @BBCRadio4’s The World at One, The World This Weekend and What The Papers Say. Not many views expressed, but any that are are mine and not the BBC’s.

Then there’s this from Gary Duffy:

UK Editor, BBC News website, and former BBC correspondent in Brazil and Ireland. The views expressed here are mine and not those of the BBC.

And also this offering from Anita Anand:

TV and Radio presenter- wife and mum – not scared of twitter just single magpies now. These views are not the bbc’s they are mine all mine…mwha ha haha..

There are many more besides.  Of course, what none of these people point out is that unless they held the views they did they wouldn’t be employed by the BBC in the first place.

The disclaimer some BBC employees include is supposed to shield the BBC from accusations of bias when these people sound mock or criticise people who do not subscribe to the narrow ‘progressive’ worldview held by Beeb employees around the world, but when taken as a whole it demonstrates there is a defined groupthink that exists at the BBC that is all pervasive.

It would be perfectly fine – as long as we were not compelled by law to fund these people under pain of fine or imprisonment. But we are and that is why it remains insulting and unacceptable.