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?

Fag packet found, the EU renegotiation planning begins…

Arch Europlastic, William Hague is reported this morning as having defined the first element of the UK’s renegotiation wishlist – and as expected this ‘concrete’ proposal is a mish mash of tough talk and hollow content.

The former self professed Eurosceptic, who as Foreign Secretary is now Brussels’ cheerleader-in-chief for all things blue with gold stars, will declare in a speech that national parliaments, such as the House of Commons, should be able to overrule legislation proposed by the European Commission if enough legislatures call for it to be thrown out.  This is almost certainly a kneejerk reaction to the European Commission’s prosecution of the UK for applying rules that force EU migrants to pass a ‘right to residency’ test that doesn’t apply to UK citizens, before they can claim various benefits, which is illegal under the EU law the politicians signed us up to because it discriminates against other EU citizens on the basis of nationality.

While this is good pink meat for the Euroweenies who want a ‘reformed’ EU, in reality nothing would change.  The rejection of legislation by the UK would need a number of national parliaments to support the British stance.  So if insufficient parliaments back what Britain wants, then this country would be forced to adopt the legislation regardless.  The sum of the power repatriated to the UK therefore amounts to nil.

So much for reform.

Move over, Cast Iron Dave, because there’s a new Eurosheriff in town!  Concrete Willy is his name, and he has found an old fag packet and angrily scrawled the first empty repatriation of power demand on the back.  Brussels can breathe easy as Britain’s place under the EU jackboot is safe in Hague’s carefully manicured hands.

This plan first surfaced in 2002 courtesy of Gisela Stuart during the constitutional Convention. It has thus already been chewed over many times and completely rejected.  It’s a non starter.  As such this announcement represents mere game playing on the part of Concrete Willy, who is giving little titbits to the lumpen media to distract them from the fact there is no renegotiation plan, much less any exit plan. The Europlastics, carefully steered by the Foreign Office’s europhile quislings, will do all they can to ensure it never gets that far.

Take advantage of the corrupted market

The media has made much of the news that the price of gold has just experienced its biggest fall in over 30 years.  The price of silver has experienced a similarly dramatic decline, to which we can add falls in oil, copper and other commodities.

Talking heads have been emerging from the woodwork since gold and silver started turning south in recent weeks, spouting the establishment’s nonsense that gold is finished, it isn’t a safe haven, its collapse proves the government can print money without consequences for the wider economy etc, etc.

But what we have seen in recent days is a classic bankster raid as part of a governmental war on alternatives to the dollar.  Doing the Federal Reserve’s bidding, the investment banks and big institutions took advantage of a modest decline in gold and silver prices over recent months to attack the market. The dollar must be preserved at all costs, so the US government’s financial industry puppets have stepped up to use Fantasy Commodity paper to

After Goldman Sachs last week advised clients to close their gold positions (‘paper’ gold futures), on Friday the dealing team at Merrill Lynch apparently dumped a futures sell order of around 4 million ounces or 124.4 tonnes of gold, worth approximately $6bn.  Ironically this is the same Merrill Lynch that in September last year said it could see gold soaring in price to $2400 per troy ounce by the end of 2014.

You can be sure Merrill – and Goldman Sachs – still believes gold’s price will soar, which will explain their physical gold buying.  This market manipulation through worthless paper to drive down the price serves to enable the likes of Goldman and Merrill to buy up much larger quantities of gold in anticipation of the longer term price rise, while persuading their dozy investors to part with the illusion of owning gold and pump their money where the US government wants it – into equities and US bonds.

‘The scale of the selling was massive and again underlines how one or two large banks or hedge funds can completely distort the market by aggressive, concentrated leveraged short positions,’ wrote the Got Gold Report.  It’s clear the markets have become so badly corrupted it is now common to see billions of dollars wiped off the value of a commodity by way of a paper exercise.

Thankfully there are still people who have their wits about them and have been seizing the opportunity to buy gold and silver at a lower price.  They can see the unchanged financial fundamentals that make gold a safe haven, namely:

• spiralling national debt becoming increasingly difficult to service
• huge inflationary pressures waiting to burst into the open as a result of reckless printing of money
• an overpriced stock market ripe for a crash where share prices have inflated because of the increase in the money supply
• interest rates that will eventually break out from the efforts to hold them down
• additional tax hikes to fill the gap between receipts and ever growing public spending
• governments that have quietly changed the law to enable confiscation of bank deposits at arbitrary levels

When one sets aside the fantasy paper trading of the banksters that has given the media and uninformed people the idea that gold and silver have lost their value, and instead looks at the real, physical market, one will see quite a different story…

When the economic effects of government policy kick in – and they will despite the lengths to which they are going to suppress the consequences of their actions – all that ‘smart money’ that is diving out of worthless paper gold and silver at the current low price following the advice of Goldman and Merrill will be looking for a safe haven.  They will want to get into physical gold and they will find the price rising, low supply, and the people who advised them to get out of gold sitting atop of a huge pile of the real stuff in high security vaults, bought cheaply by way of a grotesque manipulation of the market.

My tuppence worth of advice is don’t wait for the lumpen herd, get in now and protect some of your wealth from the economic mess that is coming over the hill and set to hit all of us head on.

An economic storm is gathering

Quite recently, and rather belatedly, I started to take a more serious interest in the economy.  In January I read an article that laid bare the real extent of this country’s debt burden and what history shows us happens when such a situation arises.  The rest of the world fares no better and compounds the parlous nature of the economy globally.

Having gone on to spend the last few months researching, then starting to invest in gold and silver, and writing an almost complete short guide about how to do that most effectively as a small investor, a piece on Bloomberg about billionaire investor, John Paulson, losing more than $300 million of his personal wealth as gold fell to its lowest price in almost two years, caught my eye.

Anyone who has an interest in precious metals will be accutely aware that their cost has fallen rapidly in recent weeks.  A lot of people are falling for the establishment propaganda that has seen comments and actions by George Soros presented as a rationale to abandon gold and silver and pour money into the dangerously inflating stock market bubble.  Goldman Sachs has joined in this week, urging its clients to sell out of gold.  That was the cue for large scale selling by individuals and organisations that has sent gold below £1000 per ounce and silver below £17 per ounce.

Yet the backdrop to this is the likes of Soros maintaining a huge position in gold, Goldman Sachs looking to buy physical metal on the cheap as their clients dump their paper options for unallocated metal which largely doesn’t exist, and governments/central banks dramatically increasing their gold reserves while telling everyone else that they need to be in equities where their monetary investments can be taxed and depositors can be given ‘haircuts’.  As always it is a matter of the establishment saying one thing and doing another.

The fact is the health of gold and silver is anything but poor.  Demand for physical metal is soaring and has even resulted in mints rationing sales of bullion coins and dealers finding it difficult to acquire stock – and with the sudden price change on Friday now taking the decision to suspend sales, knowing they would be overwhelmed by demand for the cheaper gold and silver and would not achieve the mark up over the price they paid.  For ordinary people the price of gold and silver only matters if you need to sell it to liquidise assets.  While the price may fluctuate, the physical metals still have intrinsic value that makes them more valuable than devalued currency that is being eroded by inflation.  John Reade, a partner and gold strategist at Paulson & Co, is one who is refusing to be taken in like the sheeple:

“Federal governments have been printing money at an unprecedented rate.  We expect the strengthening of the economy and stock market to cause money supply to rise more than real growth and eventually lead to inflation. It is this expectation of paper currency debasement which makes gold an attractive long-term investment for us.”

Goldman Sachs and the central banks know this all too well and are simply encouraging people to sell assets, worthless or valuable, to drive down the price so assets can be picked up on the cheap to make the long term investment even more valuable to them.  People who listen to them will be left high and dry as the investment vehicles being recommended fall apart as part of the monetary crash that will come.  ZeroHedge calls is right when in response to the Paulson story Tyler observes:

As for gold as an inflation hedge, here Paulson is certainly correct. The only question is when will the price suppression scheme of gold as an alternative currency finally end. Since various official organizations (such as the Troika) are currently doing all they can to buy the sovereign gold of insolvent nations at firesale prices, it is likely that the period of artificially suppressed prices may continue.

Which, incidentally, for all those who lament the recent price drop in gold, is a good thing: for those who see gold as an alternative currency to fiat, all the recent sell off (as well as alleged or real downward price manipulation) does is provide a lower cost basis for accumulating hard monetary assets. Which is something to be welcomed and not mourned, especially if one plans on holding on to said gold (or silver) as a currency, instead of merely converting it back into fiat at a higher price point, and thus as an asset (something all those who bought BitCoin at $260 and sold at $50 appear to have completely forgotten).

Dr Paul Craig Roberts was the US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He knows how the system works.  Just over a week ago on his website he put some context around what we are currently seeing in a piece that everyone should read.  He can see the writing on the wall.  The video below builds on the article (h/t Silver Doctors):

However, the establishment’s effort to prop up western currencies by encouraging people to act in a way that drives down the price of gold and silver to make these devalued currencies look more appealing, shows that the economy is in dire shape – and is a huge opportunity for ordinary people.  Pushing the price down to prop up the dollar in particular, has made it cheaper for ordinary people to acquire gold and silver before the price takes off upwards.

This week I have taken the opportunity to add another 2oz of gold bullion and 3kg of physical .999 fine silver bullion to my vaulted assets, along with some more 22ct Gold Sovereigns, and silver bullion coins in the shape of .999 1oz American Eagles, 1oz Canadian Maple Leafs, 1oz Austrian Philharmonicas and 1oz Britannias, all purchased legally without having to pay VAT and now safely stored in a secure, non-bank facility that I can access 7 days a week if I choose.  The more that government and the likes of Goldman Sachs try to get me to part with my assets, the more I am convinced to hold on to it.

When the economic storm eventually hits, the value of fiat money plummets, government raids bank account deposits a la Cyprus, at least I will have the comfort that I have no debt, bar what’s left to pay on my mortgage, and that a good proportion of my assets will not lose their value – indeed they will almost certainly be significantly more valuable than today.  Best of all, the government and their banker agents won’t be able to get their hands on it as it is kept outside of their system.

A happy outcome in Cyprus!

For the ‘colleagues’…  The Cyprus Mail reports that:

EU funds co-financing Cyprus-based development and growth projects will be exempt from the deposit haircut, communications minister Tasos Mitsopoulos said yesterday.

Mitsopoulos said that the 37.5 per cent haircut on deposits larger than €100,000 held in the Bank of Cyprus would not impact EU funds.

“This development secures the smooth flow of resources from EU funds to Cyprus, and the continuation of any projects underway,” Mitsopoulos said.  He said that the happy outcome was the result of coordinated efforts by the government of Cyprus.

I’m sure every Cypriot depositor, whether an individual or small business owner, who has seen a large chunk of the money they have worked hard to accumulate stolen by the decree of the Cypriot government, European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, will be delighted to see that government saw to it deposits in the banks belonging to the favoured few were exempt from confiscation.  A happy outcome indeed.

But then, why should the EU not benefit from the same shady deals that have been quietly arranged for political parties, politicians and their families, senior civil servants and corporate businessmen?  One rule for the elite, penury for the rest.

The moment you put your money in a bank it becomes theirs for the taking.  You’re only a creditor.  Now they’ve established the principle of the game, the only question is one of scale. There is nothing to stop them deciding to hoover up the deposits of those with less than €100,000 on deposit if they call it a tax and confiscate the money before a bank goes under.

If Cyprus was a one-off, special case then why…

… does the UK Banking Act (2009) contain the same provisions to confiscate the wealth of depositors in banks, in the way the EU, ECB and IMF ‘Troika’ did, if UK banks get into trouble?

The screenshot below is from a joint paper published in December last year by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (US) and the Bank of England called ‘Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions‘.  It can be found on the Bank of England website.  This section is on page ii.

Click to enlarge

It couldn’t happen anywhere else, the Eurocrats keep saying.  So why are the provisions necessary?

The reality that too many people do not understand is that putting your money in a bank makes you a creditor.  You are lending money to the bank so the bank can use that money to lend it out at a profit to others.  You get some of the profit back as interest. If the bank gets into trouble like Laiki Bank in Cyprus, you are just one of many creditors who stands to lose your money.

Cyprus did not have to restrict its confiscation of people’s deposits to those over €100,000.  The ‘insurance’ policy is worthless if the money is taken as a tax or as part of a restructuring plan.  The promises that underpin fiat currency and the treatment of your money by the state and the bankers are as worthless as the paper promisory notes people are queuing for hours in Cyprus to obtain.

The best option is to put some of your wealth out of the reach of the government, the banks and their crooked financial system.  I’ve removed a proportion of my savings and bought physical gold, and physical silver which is stored in a private, independently audited vault in Switzerland.  If you want to preserve some of your wealth I refer you to sign up and buy gold and silver securely by clicking on the BullionVault banner below:

I am publishing a short e-book on Amazon in the next few weeks for people who are interested in investing in gold and silver.  If you are interested in buying a copy from me directly in PDF format just email me at autonomousmind@hotmail.co.uk.

It’s ok, it’s other people’s money

With so many frustrating issues going on in this declining country, it is only to be expected that people often miss what’s going on right under their own nose.  This morning saw one of those ‘close to home’ issues thrust into consciousness at Mind Towers, with the arrival of an email from Mind Junior’s school that read:

Dear Mr Mind

Did you know that just by registering your child for Free School Meals the school gets extra money?

For every child registered, Xxxxxx Xxxxxx School will get £600.

Registering is quick, easy and confidential. Full details are given in the attached document. Please contact me if you have any queries.

If you qualify, your son or daughter will receive a free, healthy meal at lunchtime, you could receive other financial help, and the school gets an extra £600. If your child does not want to have a school meal, the school will still get the additional funding.

Please read the attached document and make an application if you think you qualify – the additional funding will make a real difference to the provision of education for your son or daughter.

Yours sincerely

And we wonder where our tax pounds go..?  A few moments of research revealed to my blind eyes that variations of this email have been sent to parents by schools up and down the country in recent weeks and that the scheme facilitating this is the Department of Education‘s ‘Pupil Premium’.

Its purpose is set out on the department’s website and explains:

The Government believes that the Pupil Premium, which is additional to main school funding, is the best way to address the current underlying inequalities between children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) and their wealthier peers by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most.

But the department also makes clear that:

Schools are free to spend the Pupil Premium as they see fit. However they will be held accountable for how they have used the additional funding to support pupils from low-income families. New measures will be included in the performance tables that will capture the achievement of those deprived pupils covered by the Pupil Premium. From September 2012, we will also require schools to publish online information about how they have used the Premium. This will ensure that parents and others are made fully aware of the attainment of pupils covered by the Premium.

However as experience has shown us when it comes to public spending, as always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating – if you will pardon the pun. Organisations often find ways around the rules in order to use the resources made available to them in a manner they were not provided for.  The style of the emails and letters sent out by schools show that effort is already underway.

If a family has financial difficulty and cannot afford to provide a meal for their child during the school day, then I feel it is right that the taxpayer funded safety net should kick in to provide for a meal.  It should always be a provision based on need.

But what we are seeing is that even if a family’s means – augmented by some form of credit or benefit that makes their children eligible for free school meals – enable them to provide a meal for their child, schools are encouraging them to register for free meals just so the school can claim more taxpayers’ money. Encouraging parents and carers to register for something they may not need – and implore them to do so even if they don’t need or want to take up the free meals – so it benefits the school, feels like fraud.

If a family is getting by without making use of free school meals, then do they really have the ‘need’ that free school meals are being used as a measure to gauge? Once again it seems the government have failed to think things through and a proportion of the £1.25bn of our money set aside for the poorest in our society will be hoovered up by schools for people who in reality do not fall into that bracket.  But as always no one seems to care because it’s other people’s money and the government can always pick our pockets for more of it in the future.

A man without conviction, belief or substance

(A thank you to those kind people who have been emailing to ask how things are going.  The job is going well and I’m getting into a routine, so hopefully I can start to get some more posts up.)

When looking at Conservative Home one can’t help but be struck by the volume of anti Cameron pieces in the media that are being trailed in the Newslinks. Just take today’s offerings as an example…

Ken Clarke reportedly accuses Cameron of treating Andrew Lansley badly…

…as the Telegraph reflects on a “week of compromises”…

…and others identify Cameron’s style of government as a problem

…and the Treasury select committee condemns the leaking of the Budget

For a moment I had to check I wasn’t on Labour List.  But what is notable about these pieces is that the attacks are not ideological.  They are not about policy.  These have been spawned by the abject failure of leadership. And there is a lack of leadership because the leader, David Cameron, has no principle or clear political direction.

It is dawning on people who supported the Conservatives in the hope Cameron would reveal an inner conservative after assuming residence in Downing Street, that Cameron is not a conservative. What is more worrying is that it’s becoming apparent that Cameron is nothing. He is not a conservative, he is not a liberal, he is not a social democrat and he is not a socialist.  In fact he stands for nothing – apart from the desire to attain office – and he has successfully deceived people  by pretending to hold their political convictions when he holds none.

Government is like any business or organisation.  At the top there has to be a clear dirction and a sense of purpose or else it flounders.  In the case of a business it loses customers, money and ultimately fails or gets broken up by another that does have a sense of purpose. In the case of an organisation people lose interest and drift away leaving an ineffective rump that can achieve little if anything, then finally closes down.

In the case of a government it loses authority – it fails to honour promises central to its election campaign thus treating its supporters with contempt; it twists and turns in an effort to appease the immediate audience even when that appeasement contradicts pledges and commitments that have been made; it abandons those who believed the direction was set even if that was unpopular with some people; it operates in exactly the same manner as previous governments it criticised; and ultimately it leaks support because no one of any stripe can trust anything that comes from the mouth of the leadership, as the leadership believes in nothing that it is saying.

Expedient government quickly turns into lame duck government and the country suffers as a result.  The only person responsible for this is the autocratic meglomaniac, David Cameron.  Devoid of conviction, belief or substance , he is not only continuing the decline of this country overseen by Labour, he is accelerating it under this insipid coalition of the self interested.

While the used-to-be-Conservative party will suffer for this and enable a resurgence of the undeserving and incompetent Fabians, the ultimate casualty will be the country, followed by democracy itself.  We find ourselves in troubling and difficult times and the political class has no answer.  We need to find another way or there will be nothing left worth preserving.

Update: Dr Richard North of EU Referendum references this piece on his blog and corrects an assertion I have made. It’s a valid point he makes and his piece is a must-read posting.

The faux Conservative party continues its decline

If you are one of the increasing number of people who are sick to death of the Vichy Conservatives, cheer yourself up by reading this piece on ConservativeHome and many of the comments from ever more disaffected Tories who are waking up to the Cameroon coup of that party.

As more people come to realise Cameron is as much a conservative as Michael Foot ever was, they are severing their links with the party and turning their back on the Tories.

As you would expect, there are the usual cries of those fools who claim not sticking with Cameron’s social democracy will only let Labour back in. But they are among a shrinking band of people who haven’t realised the only difference between this coalition government and Labour are the faces of the people in Ministerial positions.

For the average voter it is now obvious that whether you vote Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem you still get the same political class consensus undermining this country, eroding our democracy and snatching more of our money to serve their own narrow interests rather than ours. Only embarrassment at being conned so well is preventing many conservatives from ditching Cameron’s quisling social democrats. But as the anger builds the ejection of the Cameroon cuckoo from the Conservative nest draws closer.

DECC deliberately misleading MPs over Met Office forecast

Following on from this post about recent Parliamentary answers on the subject of the Met Office winter forecast for 2010-11, the very next day saw the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) at it again:

Nuance is one thing.  But constructing answers that distort the forecast advice from the Met Office is something else altogether. To say the information being shared in the answer by Gregory Barker on behalf of DECC is selective is an understatement.  The Parliamentary written answer supplied to Peter Lilley on 10th February deliberately excludes information the Met Office included in the forecast and thus distorts the context.

Let us just remind ourselves of the advice from the Cabinet Office to the rest of Whitehall, approved by the Met Office.  Note the elements of the forecast that have been omitted by DECC:

This is a disgraceful manipulation of the information, for which the only possible purpose is to protect the Met Office from scrutiny for the fundamental failings in its seasonal forecasting.  The Met Office did not forecast an extremely cold early winter.  While saying there was a 70% chance of an average or colder winter, it caveated this by saying there was a 60% chance of an average or warmer winter.

The summary clearly states there was ‘a slightly increased risk for a cold and wintry start to the winter season’ – something DECC refuses to concede in its answers to MPs.  When a department is allowed to get away with deception of this type it is undermining the parliamentary process and perpetrating a fraud against the public.  It is outrageous.

The Met Office winter forecast lie is finally nailed

And heads must roll.

With compliments to Katabasis whose FOI request has been dealt with more quickly than mine… The information in the FOI response he has received today and written up in a detailed blog post goes into much more detail than Bishop Hill’s release from the Quarmby audit team.

A look at the information makes clear there is nowhere left for the Met Office to hide.  The Met Office has been caught ‘cold’ lying about its winter forecast in a disgraceful attempt to salvage its reputation.  Its claim that it forecast the cold start to the winter lays in tatters thanks to an exchange of emails between the department and the Cabinet Office.

As a result the Met Office is completely discredited.  Also utterly discredited is the BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, who on the Met Office’s behalf used a column in the Radio Times (later carried in the Telegraph and the Daily Mail) to state that:

In October the forecaster privately warned the Government – with whom it has a contract – that Britain was likely to face an extremely cold winter.

It kept the prediction secret, however, after facing severe criticism over the accuracy of its long-term forecasts.

(My emphasis in bold italic above and below) Harrabin went on to say in his piece that:

Why didn’t the Met Office tell us that Greenland was about to swap weather with Godalming? The truth is it [The Met Office] did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October. But we weren’t let in on the secret. “The reason? The Met Office no longer publishes its seasonal forecasts because of the ridicule it suffered for predicting a barbecue summer in 2009 – the summer that campers floated around in their tents.

The email exchange in the screenshot below proves this is a lie. The Cabinet Office civil servant (bottom message) confirms the weather outlook supplied by the Met Office earlier that day is what the government will use in its ‘Forward Look’.  The Met Office employee (top message) agrees with it.

The all important sentence is the first.  ‘The Met Office seasonal outlook for the period November to January is showing no clear signals for the winter’.  The Met Office knew this was the case when it sent Harrabin scurrying off to spin its lie that the Met Office ‘did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October‘.  The briefing to the Cabinet Office contains no such warning – and vindicates the parliamentary answer given by Francis Maude when questioned about the forecast the government received from the Met Office.

What is worse is that the Met Office knew this, yet with its claim tried to place responsibility for the lack of prepareness for an extremely cold start to the winter on government inaction.  Harrabin added to this by saying he had put in a FOI to the government (referenced in this post) to discover what they were told, the insinuation being it was the government that had something to hide.  This is very dangerous ground that leans towards the possibility of the Met Office and a BBC reporter engaging in a joint effort to undermine the government’s credibility.

This leads us to ask a serious question that must be answered: How is it possible that Roger Harrabin could claim the Met Office line he was retailing was the ‘truth’ with such certainty?

• If Harrabin had seen the evidence and still spun his line then he has knowingly lied to the public
• If he spun his line without seeing the evidence then he is utterly incompetent and the public can have no faith in the stories he broadcasts and publishes on the BBC

Either way Roger Harrabin’s position is now untenable and in addition to resigning he must make a full public apology.  As for the Met Office, the buck stops with the Chief Executive, John Hirst, who has looked on as this false narrative was constructed and insinuations were made to deflect criticism from his department, yet did nothing to correct it.

We now have the truth.  It is what many people have suspected since the story materialised.  It’s now time for those who are funded by taxpayers’ money and who engineered the deception, and those who allowed it to happen, to pay the price for their actions.  Over to the executive board of the Met Office and the trustees of the BBC…

>>  The story from the beginning as it developed  <<

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Pity those foolish trusting souls

Forgive them for they knew not what they did.  They were desperate for change and those cast-iron pledges were so plausible and made with such conviction. How could someone not honour such clear and unambiguous promises?

He just seemed so… sincere. The narrowed eyes, the tightened lips, the determined set of his jaw. The recognition of the urgent need to act to put right so much of what was wrong. He knew what we wanted, what the country needed, and he told us he would deliver it. His promises of change gave us hope.

Not letting matters rest there on the Lisbon Treaty.

Replacing the Human Rights Act.

Repatriating powers from the EU.

Not raising VAT.

Keeping universal child benefit.

Despite his promises, his commitment and his determination, none of them have been honoured. And now we add to the list another broken promise to reduce the exorbitant duty on fuel when prices rise to a high level. Another issue, but the same outcome.

He has overseen more U-turns than a driving instructor. Pity those foolish trusting souls who closed their ears as the warnings were sounded long before the election.  How could so many have been taken in?

They now ask themselves how could one man be so dishonourable.  They wonder why more people did not grasp that he would say anything we wanted to hear in order to reach Downing Street. The fog is clearing and revealing he always had his own agenda that did not include keeping any of these key promises. Reality has dawned on them.  The deception is complete.

Conservative. Labour. Liberal Democrat. It matters not. The faces and the colour scheme may change, but none will depart from their common path. Their route is constant, their destination a place we do not wish to go. That reality is now bathed in brilliant light. The view could not be more clear.

Soon will be the time for courage. How many will dare to tread new ground and reject the self serving consensus? How many will stop, remember the litany of lies and broken promises, recognise the three heads as belonging to a common body and reject all three? Will there be enough of them to put an end to the conspiracy of the political class and take back power so the servants no longer act as our masters?

Far from being the warmest year on record…

Yes, Met Office again… There has been plenty of media coverage of claims that 2010 was the warmest, or close to the warmest year on record.

But while the Met Office has been focusing the attention of the media on the record cold December statistic with its right hand, its left hand has quietly confirmed that in the UK 2010 was the 12th coldest year since the ‘national series’ of weather recording started in 1910.

So which of these is the bigger story? The one that tells us we have just had our coldest winter month in 100 years? Or the one that, against a backdrop of a so called ‘consensus’ telling us that runaway global warming is transforming the planet, the UK has just experienced its 12th coldest year in the same period? Is this another example of attempts to ‘hide the decline’?

A record breaking month can be dismissed as an anomaly and fit with the global warming narrative. But a year-long record that shows temperatures have been warmer for 88 of the last 100 years calls the whole global warming hypothesis into question. Predictions made in the 1980s and 1990s of what would happen now are crumbling in the face of observation.

But the climate change wealth redistribution vehicle called the ‘money train‘ rolls on with the full support – including copious amounts of our money – of the government. In spite of the growing evidence that there is no crisis, the arrogant ignorance of the political class is telling. This is what David Cameron said in December 2009:

‘A very small number of people take a different view on the science, but the policy is driven by me, and that is the way it is going to be.’

It is not a very small number. No matter, accountability for the scandalous defrauding of the public that is being perpetrated can rest with Cameron too. It is no suprise this 12th coldest year fact has been played down to the extent that hardly anyone knows about it? Just whose interests are being served here? As if we don’t know.

From ‘hide the decline’ to hide the truth

Michael Mann worked at the University of Virginia’s (U.Va.) department of environmental sciences when he produced what was hailed at the time as the “smoking gun” affirming the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming – the Hockey Stick – which is one of the most high-profile claims used to advance massive economic-intervention policies in the name of “global warming.”

Mann’s records have remained at U.Va. since his departure from the faculty. They were created by Mann who was using taxpayers money in the shape of research grants. The Washington Examiner picks up what happened when a request was made to see the research data so others could test whether it was sound:

In response to a previous FOIA request, U.Va. denied these records existed. However, during Cuccinelli’s [Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli] pre-investigation under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (“FATA”), a 2007 law passed unanimously by Virginia’s legislature, which clearly covers the work of taxpayer-funded academics, U.Va. stunningly dropped this stance. For this reversal, the taxpayers of Virginia owe Cuccinelli a debt of gratitude.

Still, the school has spent upward of half a million dollars to date fighting Cuccinelli’s pursuit, now before the Virginia Supreme Court. However, Virginia’s transparency statute FOIA gives the school one week to produce the documents, and offers no exemption for claims U.Va. is using to block Cuccinelli’s inquiry.

These e-mails and other documents relate to claims made by Michael Mann to obtain, and claim payment under, certain taxpayer-funded grants. Mann worked at the university’s department of environmental sciences when he produced what was hailed at the time as the “smoking gun” affirming the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming.

First there was the blatant lie that the records did not exist, which was only dropped when the pre-investigation under the state Fraud Against Taxpayers Act began.

Then the supposed justification for withholding the records was given as ‘academic freedom’.  But U.Va. was perfectly happy to release emails and other material to Greenpeace that were compiled by Patrick Michaels, who also formerly worked in the same university department but was sceptical of Mann’s claims and the notion of a climate catastrophe. U.Va. has no legal basis for refusing the FOI, however:

In court in August, U.Va. opted against robustly defending, as a legal argument, its academic-freedom rationale for refusing to produce the records. Yet even this week, it is asking the Virginia Supreme Court to deny Cuccinelli’s request for documents possibly showing whether the dense Hockey Stick smoke indeed indicates fire.

So, just what is contained in Michael Mann’s records that makes the University of Virginia and/or Mann so desperate to withhold them from scrutiny? What is it they have to hide? The truth, perhaps?

Hat tip: Real Science

David Laws’ return would be contempt of taxpayers

‘He was forced to resign as Chief Secretary to the Treasury over revelations about his expenses claims, but there was widespread sympathy for him at Westminster.’ That is the Daily Mail’s summary about the disgraced former Lib Dem minister, David Laws.

Just seven months after he had to resign for defrauding the taxpayer and lying about his personal circumstances over his expenses claims the political class is preparing to parachute David Laws back into a ministerial position as if he had done nothing wrong. It has been coming since the week he took his extended break from the front bench. There is no clearer example of the contempt in which the taxpaying public is held by the politicians in Westminster. There is no clearer example of the moral bankruptcy that permeates Westminster.

Where in the past dishonourable conduct and wrongdoing could have been expected to result in a shamefaced resignation from Parliament and a by-election, now it only attracts a short spell on the backbenches before a triumphant return to the trappings of power. It is seen as a minor inconvenience on a politician’s career path and the short suspension is merely a small and utterly resentful sop to the public. MPs think they are a special case. They have an arrogant sense of entitlement and convince themselves they are a special case and should live by rules that suit them.

In any other occupation David Laws would have been summarily sacked by his employer for knowingly claiming money to which he was not entitled and telling lies to make it appear his claim was within the rules. But in the Westminster bubble these pompous, overblown egomaniacs can do what they like and know there will be no consequences, or consequences so trivial they are not worthy of being applied.

£40,000 of taxpayers’ money was claimed fraudulently by David Laws. Regardless he kept his seat and MP’s salary and perks. Now it seems he will shortly get more money in salary and a ministerial car and have a degree of influence over people who have been honourable and not taken what is not theirs. It’s sick and it’s wrong.

It is time the Westminster swamp was drained and the parasites removed.

Cameron’s lies on the EU and Human Rights Act

An excerpt from a speech on Fixing Broken Politics delivered in May 2009 as reproduced on this blog in January 2010.

THE EU AND THE HRA

But the tragic truth today is that no matter how much we strengthen Parliament or hold government to account…

…there will still be forces at work in our country that are completely unaccountable to the people of Britain.

People and organisations that have huge power and control over our daily lives and yet which no citizen can actually get at.

Almost half of all the regulations affecting our businesses come from the EU.

And since the advent of the Human Rights Act, judges are increasingly making our laws.

The EU and the judges – neither of them accountable to British citizens – have taken too much power over issues that are contested aspects of public policy…

…and which should therefore be settled in the realm of democratic politics.

It’s no wonder people feel so disillusioned with politics and Parliament when they see so many big decisions that affect their lives being made somewhere else.

So a progressive reform agenda demands that we redistribute power from the EU to Britain and from judges to the people.

We will therefore hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, pass a law requiring a referendum to approve any further transfers of power to the EU, negotiate the return of powers, and require far more detailed scrutiny in Parliament of EU legislation, regulation and spending.

And we will introduce a British Bill of Rights to strengthen our liberties, spell out the extent and limit of rights more clearly, and ensure proper democratic accountability over the creation of any new rights.

These are the words and promises of David Cameron when in opposition. In government Cameron has:

• failed to deliver a referendum on Lisbon or the EU because he believes we are better off in
• presided over one of the most intense periods of redistributing power to the EU in our history
• broken the promise to repatriate powers from the EU
• done nothing to increase scrutiny in Parliament of EU legislation
• abandoned the British Bill of Rights
• left the discredited Human Rights Act on the statute book

To quote Cameron:

‘It’s no wonder people feel so disillusioned with politics and Parliament when they see so many big decisions that affect their lives being made somewhere else.’

Too true. And also when they are lied to by a deceitful, two faced hypocrite like him, who will say anything to achieve personal power then break those cast iron promises because he had no intention of ever honouring them. Quisling bastard.

Cancun – another nail in our economic coffin

“We’re talking about a [combined] reduction in emissions of 13-16%, and what this means is an increase of more than 4C.

“Responsibly, we cannot go along with this – this would mean we went along with a situation that my president has termed ‘ecocide and genocide’.”

These were the words reported by the BBC of Bolivian climate change conference delegate Pablo Solon. Do you notice the casual yet earnest way this man states as fact that CO2 emission reductions of 13-16% means global temperatures will rise more than 4C? It is not fact. It is a piece of guesswork based on flawed computer models that have failed to accurately project anything. The whole thing is about money.

Yet people who rely on the BBC and other mainstream media for their information, and are not aware of the significant body of scientific dissent from the supposed consensus, will accept such unsubstantiated comments as facts and as is intended, panic and press for a ‘solution’. This is what the climate change lobby, the pressure groups, the corporates and the governments want because they can then execute their political and financial – not environmental – plans. Plans such as the carbon trade and climate change fund that will leave ordinary people in the western world poorer, people in developing countries deceived and the corporates and their big business investors even richer than now.

The agreement in Cancun brings the UN’s plan to assume hegemonic control over the political structures of the world much closer. It takes another step towards the dismantling of democracy and places more power in the hands of the unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in the supranational bodies that seek to control us. A global ruling elite is cementing its power in full view of a world of uncomprehending people who have been conned into believing this is being done for their own good.

And what of the environment? Around the globe climate will continue its natural cyclical changes, sometimes warming and sometimes cooling. Doomesday prophecies of catastrophing warming will not materialise. If anything the new cooling phase signalled by Joe Bastardi will destroy the credibility of the warmists, whose narrative will smoothly move on to ‘human overpopulation’ and ‘natural resources’ as the new justification for taking our money, undermining democracy and eroding our liberty. No wonder the BBC and its fellow inspid media parasites do all they can to keep inconvenient facts off the airwaves.

Well yes, but…

One can imagine how painful it must have been for Little Lou at the Barclay Brother Beano to write these words…

‘Glaciers have grown in western Norway, New Zealand’s South Island, parts of Asia and the Tierra del Fuego in South America.’

That is a very global and hemispheric spread there and in those 21 words we see a flat contradiction, through observation rather than computer modelling, of the ‘global warming’ narrative. The warming is clearly not global at all. If glaciers are growing then the obvious conclusion is that those areas are cooling. Unless of course you are Al Gore or the Met Office, in which case cooling is evidence of warming. No, really.

But being a committed true believer and having an agenda to advance, it was quickly on to the ‘Yes, but…’ for fearless Telegraph press release cut and paster, Louise Gray, as she devoted the remaining 329 words of her article to spreading the official warmist line in the worst tradition of the most repugnant propagandists. In fairness readers of the Barclay Bro. Beano are permitted to wave at the reference to Glaciergate as it passes by at startling velocity thus:

‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a separate science body attached to the UN, was forced to admit that a previous report was wrong to claim the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.’

But that’s it. For La Gray the mission is to do the bare minimum by including a factoid that allows her to deny lack of balance, then swifty divert attention from the embarrassing shoddy science, non existant peer review and the IPCC’s desire to accept any half baked claim as long as it adds to the propaganda effort. The counter evidence has to be rebutted, downplayed, given short shrift, airbrushed from the record. And that is exactly what Gray does by immediately adding:

However the new report made clear that glaciers are being lost in the region, albeit on a slower scale.

So that’s that then. The message from warmist central is move along. Nothing to see here. We screwed up our propaganda effort with a report that was so obviously riddled with fiction and hysteria it was torn to shreds, so we have substituted it with another report drafted at breakneck speed saying the same thing – only without the time sensitive prediction that showed us up as the delusional idiots with vested interests we are. No matter what the observation or the evidence says we will continue to force our unjustified and laughable claims down your throat.

Meanwhile the farce of Cancun continues unabated – despite the irony of the resort experiencing a record low temperature for this time of the year of 54F yesterday morning – as the great and the good from every special interest group with hands in the climate change money jar talk about the environment but focus on how to get more of our cash into their accounts. Laughing at them is not enough. We have to stop them before they destroy our economies and our way of life.

As for the increasingly desperate propagandists at the Beano, bring on that paywall!

BBC pushes sinking Maldives narrative again

Once again the BBC’s sense of balance sees them interview someone with a vested financial interest in the climate change narrative as it relates to rising sea levels.

This time it is the turn of the President of the Maldives, who continually holds out the begging bowl claiming the west is causing sea levels to rise and therefore needs to pour money into his island state’s economy. And why shouldn’t he? After all this whole issue is about redistributing money from us to them, not about anything to do with the environment.

Not A Sheep dropped the BBC a line with some pertinent observations that could form the basis of a question or two. What odds will you offer that these observations were singularly ignored because they are inconvenient to the global warming narrative? The BBC’s bias on this subject is unacceptable.

Cameron driving the climate change money train

The redistribution of money from ordinary people to the big corporations, enforced by government legislation, will continue apace under the Cameron Coalition.

The Huskie-loving huckster has signalled his determination to ignore flawed and questionable arguments about mankind changing the climate and to press ahead with the enrichment of the parasite class and their corporate sponsors. The Guardian reports Cameron as saying the coalition’s ambition is to be the greenest government ever formed:

“I passionately believe that by recasting the argument for action on climate change away from the language of threats and punishments and into positive, profit-making terms, we can have a much wider impact,”

However, the profit making will be the preserve of the corporates with poor old Joe Public footing the bill. Cameron wants his fellow parasites to make the economic case for action and points out that the low-carbon market is worth up to £3.2 trillion and forecast to grow by 4% annually. This isn’t money going into our pockets – it is money being taken from them to fund the global climate change scam that will impoverish hundreds of millions of people while making members of the elite even more wealthy.

It has already been happening as shown in a Sunday Telegraph article today. But as usual with that Barclay Brothers comic, the ability to join the dots, spell out the true nature of the scam and make the direct connection all the way back to Cameron and the parasite class, is missing.

A fraud of unfathomably immense proportions is being committed against ordinary people. Taxpayers’ money continues to be poured into scientific ‘research’ departments that can be relied upon to produce the necessary predictions of catastophic climate change, which in turn spawn legislation and new forms of taxation, that in turn is channelled to the corporates to provide ‘zero carbon solutions’ that have zero effect on the climate because the changes are overwhelmingly driven by nature.

The media spins the given lines without question despite physical observation conflicting with the doomesday predictions. Meanwhile the destruction of natural resources and genuine pollution are ignored and continue to worsen because there is no profit in it for the corporates. This is without doubt the biggest scam in history and people are allowing it to happen because of a misplaced belief that all these ‘experts’ and ‘leaders’ couldn’t possibly hatch such a plot. For God’s sake people, wake up.