Dartmouth: Skewed priorities and poor judgement

Long time, no blog. Apologies for the break, it’s been very busy at Mind Towers.

We are not letting up in our efforts to get to the bottom of the actual ownership of land on which a co-operative hopes to build wind turbines.

The land was formerly the possession of William Dartmouth MEP. However in February 2011 the land was gifted, given away, free of charge and the Land Registry recorded the new owner as Rosscroft Limited.  Trying to unpick who actually owns and benefits from Rosscroft Limited sends us deep into a rabbit warren of overseas directors, ownership by other companies, shareholders who are actually companies where the directors are the former directors of Rosscroft and include Dartmouth’s own solicitor, Tim Haggie, etc.

In short, Rosscroft Limited has been structured in a such a way as to prevent the actual beneficial owner at the end of the trail being identified. It is a determined effort at concealment, the opposite of transparency.

But as we saw in our most recent post on the subject, William Dartmouth has since admitted in a statement that the land is actually ‘owned by a relative’.  When the term ‘family’ was used in a write up of the statement elsewhere, Dartmouth sought a correction to the story asserting that relatives and family are very different.

Following on from that we have received lots of emails from people providing information that variously claim Dartmouth’s illegitimate nine year old son (and therefore barred from inheriting the title), Gerald, as the actual owner for whom Rosscroft is acting, and other claims that a substation for the tubines is planned to be built on Reaps Farm, which is said to be Dartmouth owned (tenant Mr S Lunn), and that the cables to feed to the grid will cross Dartmouth owned land.  If accurate, these essential elements of the wind farm could only be installed with Dartmouth’s permission. More questions clearly need to be answered.

Efforts by some opponents of the wind farm to get Dartmouth to come out against the wind farm plan received this response:

Clearly Dartmouth was far too busy to deal with such minor issues as the concerns of neighbours who have been given the run around over the ownership of land on the Dartmouth estate.  But his substantial workload and excessive travel didn’t stop him from jumping in with both feet to make a foolish comment regarding the winner of the IEA’s now discredited Brexit Prize:

Clearly it’s just a question of what he sees as a priority.  Opposing a wind farm that will blight an area of natural beauty and harm wildlife in the area is not as important as his appalling judgement in spouting off about the non-existant ‘silencing’ of a diplomat who won the IEA prize for, amazingly, producing a completely new solution to leaving the EU that only five other people (the other finalists) and one of the judging panel removed for conflict of interest, have ever brought into the public realm.

Interestingly, although in his statement Lord Dartmouth explained that it was an adjacent piece of land, which is owned by him, that was erroneously included in the application, as of 12.30pm this Good Friday, the planning application Certificate B remains unchanged, listing him as owning land forming part of the application.

Nigel Farage has been copied on the correspondance and we have written to him separately detailing the unanswered questions that Dartmouth needs to address.  But so far there has been no response from him or his office, suggesting that UKIP is either turning a blind eye to one of its MEPs laying the ground for a wind farm development of the type the party opposes, or is busy trying to fight off questions about the use of money by Farage’s European constituency.

So it is we continue trying to discover who the mystery ‘relative’ not family member is; and we will continue to pose the questions Farage does not seem to be asking, and enquiring if he feels the lack of transparency and drip feed of information under scrutiny and pressure by Lord Dartmouth sends the right message to UKIP members and supporters.

The UKIP MEP, family land, a windfarm application, a party denial and EU money

UPDATED BELOW:  An interesting story has been submitted by a reader, concerning a controversial planned wind farm development in Yorkshire that could call into question the position one of UKIP’s highest profile MEPs who is also a candidate in next year’s General Election.

The name of UKIP’s William Dartmouth MEP appears as an owner or tenant of land on a planning application that was submitted to Kirklees Council last year, to build three 100m wind turbines on unspoilt countryside next to Cupwith Reservior (location shown above) near Huddersfield, where the scheme applicant, Valley Wind Co-operative, is receiving funding for the project from the EU’s European Regional Development Fund.

What makes this matter curious is that William Dartmouth’s office has denied that he is directly or indirectly linked to the application site.

All of the the information about the proposed windfarm development was sent to Nigel Farage, and a member of Farage’s staff eventually responded stating that Dartmouth’s office had replied claiming he wasn’t linked directly or indirectly.  This is curious given this screenshot of the land ownership section of the planning application:

What also appears to put a question mark against Dartmouth’s denial, while giving the accuracy of the information above further weight, is a story from 2012 that demonstrates land ownership and three-way linkage between Dartmouth, Carter Jonas and Rosscroft Ltd (whose name appears at the top of the screenshot). The story concerned a planning application to drain Cupwith Reservior.  The applicant was Rosscroft Ltd, the agent was Carter Jonas LLP, and the owner of the reservoir is the Dartmouth Estate of one Earl of Dartmouth (aka William Dartmouth) – an assertion reported  by the Huddersfield Daily Examiner when reporting that Dartmouth’s appeal against the rejection of the application had also been lost.  There is no evidence the media have been asked to correct their assertion.

As if further evidence is required that where there is Rosscroft / Carter Jonas there seems to be Dartmouth, there is an entirely unrelated planning matter, where William Dartmouth was the named applicant for planning permission, with his chosen agent was Carter Jonas LLP.  The links are clear.

Given all this information, it seems that UKIP has accepted Dartmouth’s denial without checking the facts for themselves, calling into question yet again the party’s internal processes for dealing with complaints or reports of conflict of interest among its elected officials.

UPDATE:  We have been sent a copy of a letter that was sent to Nigel Farage personally, just after one of the recent debates with Nick Clegg, from an opponent of the wind farm.  It includes the following paragraph which suggests that William Legge (Legge being the family name of the Earl of Dartmouth) stands to gain in the region of £60,000 per annum if three wind turbines are erected on his land…

So I was delighted on your stance against wind turbines but have to point out the total hypocrisy of your MEP William Legge who is touting his land out for a wind farm as one of the above applications. This land is protected moorland and 300 meters away from a National Trust Bird sanctuary. It is estimated he will receive £20k ground rent per 100m turbine (there are 3 currently planned) – i.e. £60k per year. This is in total opposition to UKIP’s manifesto.  I cannot see how he can be a UKIP MEP and at the same time pursue this course of action in his private life.

View this document on Scribd

It is worth noting that David Cameron’s father-in-law, Sir Reginald Sheffield is often referred to as an example of a land owning rent seeker, trousering an reported £350,000 a year for turbines on his land.  Is the only difference between the Sheffields and the Dartmouths a mere matter of scale?

In addition to wanting the UK to leave the EU, UKIP has a policy against onshore wind turbines.  So, having one of its senior MEPs set to benefit financially from money given in grants by the EU, for the installation on his land of three giant turbines – that the party’s policy formally opposes – would be a serious conflict of interest and a likely resigning matter.  Further, that UKIP does not seem to have diligently investigated the reports sent to them by concerned residents in the area of the planned windfarm that one of their senior MEPs had this conflict of interest, seems to be another failure of internal process. UKIP has questions to answer about that.

But for now, William Dartmouth has questions to answer.

Why is it that he appears to have been untruthful about his interest in the land where the turbines are planned?

As a clearly stated  owner or tenant of the land, as shown on the official planning applications, what does he stand to gain if the application is approved and Valley Wind Co-operative build the turbines?

I think we should be told.

UKIP have been contacted and asked if they wish to respond to this story.

Ukraine signs its Faustian pact with the EU

So there we have it.  The EU has signed its Association Agreement with the self appointed administration in Kiev – which came to power through a coup, rather than waiting for elections promised by Ukraine’s elected President, who is now in exile.

It may be that Ukraine’s electorate might have voted for a party or coalition that remained in favour of beginning the long process of surrendering sovereignty to the bureaucracy in Brussels, but as things stand a political settlement has been rammed through by the political class, without a clear mandate from what remains a disenfranchised population.

Small wonder that Ukraine’s unelected Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, claimed that Ukraine and the EU share the same values.  That democracy is not one of those values has been reinforced once again today.

The hypocrisy of the EU has broken new ground as it commenced the process of taking control of yet another territory without the approval of the people it will eventually govern. Whatever hopes the people in Ukraine had for a democratic, sovereign future have been swept away with a few flourishes of politicians’ pens.

The country has now been carved up between two rival entities.  The EU is set to take the spoils in the west and north, Russia has snapped up the peninsula in the south.  Another triumph for the political class.

The BBC reports that the EU Association Agreement is designed to give Ukraine’s interim leadership under PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk economic and political support.  What it actually does is give the EU ever greater control over Ukraine.

The Carswell conversion gathers pace

At this rate Douglas Carswell, Europlastic extraordinare, will soon be fighting for the UK to remain in the EU, such is the pace of his efforts to toady up to Cameron and the Tory leadership.

A piece in the Telegraph reports on a study by Capital Economics (commissioned by Geert Wilders) into the likely impacts of the Netherlands leaving the EU.  It concluded that the Netherlands would be better off out of the EU, explaining:

Over that 21 year period, the benefits of Nexit to Dutch national income would have accumulated to between €1,100 (£913bn) billion and €1,500 billion (£1.3 trillion) in today’s prices.

This is equivalent to between €7,100 (5,893) and €9,800 (£8,134) per household each year. But even if the Netherlands is unable to negotiate a status akin to Switzerland’s, the economy would be better off out of the union than in.

Naturally the Telegraph scampered off to the prestigious Carswell for comment, and he didn’t disappoint Conservative HQ with his contribution (emphasis mine):

This report is significant because it has been produced by a credible City research group. It cannot be easily dismissed.

It shows we are no longer alone. It is not just us Brits who have come to realise that European integration is fundamentally flawed. We’re very like the Dutch, a small country that has prospered by trading globally. Think what countries like ours could be in a different type of Europe.

‘In’ a different type of Europe?  That’s not the same as leaving the EU, it sounds more like Cameron’s Deludophile ‘reform’ agenda at work.

It seems that when it comes to the EU, the Carswell residence is playing host to a huge exhibition of the hokey cokey.  One minute he wants out, then he wants in.  It’s amazing how the prospect of being outside Cameron’s wigwam of trust can focus the mind on career and electoral prospects.

But then, Carswell is a politician and the political class across Europe wants a piece of the EU action to service their own interests, regardless of what the voters think.

While 55% of Dutch voters surveyed say they would vote to leave the EU if the stated benefits could be achieved, the Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, immediately dismissed the idea as ‘very unwise’.  It seems he will soon be able to count Douglas Carswell as a kindred, pro-EU spirit.

New Year, but same old hypocritical Labour

Today could not go unmarked following the speculation, hype, scaremongering and bitter argument in the run up to the entitlement of Bulgarians and Romanians to live and work without restriction as ‘EU citizens’ in the UK.

The Guardian, as always, chooses to report on Labour’s words of condemnation – that the government has failed to introduce measures to protect the rights of low-skilled British workers whose jobs may be threatened by the new migrants.

The Daily Mail, however, focuses on Labour actions – as their Chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, Keith Vaz, waited at Luton airport to welcome migrants landing on the first flight of the morning from Romania, even buying some a coffee and having a chat to ask why they had come… as if that wasn’t patently obvious.

This is Labour at its hypocritical worst.  In one breath extolling the virtues and necessities of EU membership and deeper integration, in the next complaining that British workers are being disadvantaged by cheaper foreign labour afforded the right to come here under EU law.

Similarly, while they want to be seen as standing by the working class they serve so poorly and railing against migration Labour has actively encouraged, they also cynically work to position themselves as the friend of the migrants in the hope of electoral reward in the future.

As always, we should judge these political pygmies not by their words, but by their deeds.  They speak louder than words ever can.

To hell with the little people

Just days ago, Richard Branson was again pushing the Europhile narrative, that the UK must remain firmly inside the EU in order to retain access to the single market – which he says is good for British business.

If Branson gets his way, the British population would remain bound to the intentionally anti-democratic EU, our institutions taking political instructions from Brussels while having no direct input to the formulation of global agreements, which actually shape the EU’s directives that are handed down to member states.

Yet while the British people would be stuck with such an unacceptable state of affairs, it seems Branson has seen to it that he will be free of the consequences of being governed by the EU.  For according to press reports, Branson is now a non-domiciled individual who has decided to become a resident of the British Virgin Islands, living on his holiday island of Necker.

All too often we see that many of those people who are most vocal in trying to determine how the British people should be governed, ensure they themselves are not subjected to that experience.  And we are increasingly finding that big business is trying to determine how this country is governed in order to satisfy its vested interests, setting aside the real issue of EU membership, which is politics.

Corporatism must not be allowed to complete its victory over the notional democracy that exists here.  The stakes are too great.  And if those who wish to dictate how this country should be run, but exclude themselves from our society, effectively saying ‘to hell with the little people’ and expecting us to do as they say, not as they do, then we should not listen to them, but instead say to hell with them instead.

Hypocrisy

Are you bored of the engineered Daily Mail – Ralph Miliband – Ed Miliband saga yet?

The media is masturbatory and therefore loves nothing more than satisfying itself through its fetish for stories about the media.  The major issues of real consequence are an irrelevance and ignored, presumably because they require application and journalistic rigour that is sadly obsolete within the UK media corps.

But this moronic spat does have some value – exposing as it does the hypocrisy of some of those directly involved and some of those who pontificate about it in their self appointed roles as ‘political commentators’.

First off we have the sick-inducing, BBC favourite ‘moderate Muslim’, Mehdi Hassan.  After his ‘commentary’ in the exploitative Huffington Post and his comments on BBC Question TIme that have attacked the Daily Mail, that paper has let it be known that just three years ago, Hassan was rent-seeking a regular pay cheque there with a gushing, arse licking letter asking to be given a column.  In return he promised to attack Labour from a leftist pespective.

Readers with an interest in these things will be aware that Hassan has been castigating the Mail since long before his begging letter asking to go on its payroll.  His scathing comments about the paper’s coverage of Ralph Miliband were not those of an honourable person suddenly realising the Mail could and would plumb the depths.  Hassan has always asserted such.  It was not the behaviour of a decent person who loves this country and its people, because we know what the Islamic supremacist bigot Hassan thinks of the British.  Below is a reminder…

Then there is Ed Miliband himself.  Wrapping himself in the cloak of decency in order to attack the Mail’s indecency in respect of his father’s views and opinions.  Miliband is playing the sympathy card ruthlessly.  Presenting himself as whiter than white, purer than pure, making a stand against character assassination and that indecency that so turns people off.

At least that is what he does when he is pursuing an agenda – in this instance, government regulation of the press.  But when he is in more private moments, among friends with his guard down, that veneer of respectability is cast off to reveal happy indulgence of those who revel in exhibiting hatred and distasteful sentiments, as Helen demonstrates with the sharing of this picture on her blog…

Ah, hypocrisy.  There’s nothing quite like it.

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?

UKIP, party of the people?

In 2011 the Public Prosecutor of Bielefeld in Germany asked the European Parliament to waive immunity from prosecution for Elmar Brok MEP.  The authorities in Bielefeld wanted to bring a criminal action against Brok for failure to report to the tax authorities a €5,000 (£4,300) fee paid to him for giving a speech by HypoVereinsbank Group, a large Munich-based bank owned by Italy’s Unicredit.

The committee on legal affairs at the European Parliament refused point blank, instead deciding that politicians such as the left wing EU fanatic Brok must have immunity from prosecution for crimes such as tax evasion.  It’s one of the many perks the ‘elite’ treats itself to – considering themselves to be above the law, the rules only applying to the little people.

So it was with interest that in recent days another immunity case concerning a sitting MEP has come to the fore.  It so happens that the Chief Prosecutor of Lyon in France opened a case, also in 2011, and asked the European Parliament to waive immunity from prosecution for Marine Le Pen MEP.  The authorities in Lyon want to bring a criminal action against Le Pen for comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France.

The committee on legal affairs at the European Parliament has agreed with the request, recommending that the right wing Le Pen be stripped of immunity forthwith.  The perk, it seems, only extends to the favoured sons of the EU who travel the world at our expense – including Downing Street – preaching the EU gospel and challenging any opponents to the vision of a a single political entity for the whole of Europe.

But there is another interesting angle to this story concerning our very own UKIP.  It transpires that UKIP voted in favour of Le Pen keeping immunity from prosecution.  This was gleefully seized upon by Labour MEPs, one of whom – the fragrant Arlene McCarthy MEP – took to the Public Service Europe website to ‘expose’ UKIP’s hypocrisy.

Regardless of McCarthy’s opportunism there is a real issue here for UKIP.  How can UKIP declare in all good conscience that is opposes the mainstream political stitch up here and across the EU, yet vote in favour of keeping a group of citizens above the law and out of the reach of prosecutors when accused of criminality?

It is not only hypocrisy, as charged by McCarthy, it is outrageous and plain wrong.  For those who think UKIP represents a challenge to the political class, this should act as a wake up call that under Nigel Farage the party simply aspires to break into the political class for its own ends.  If UKIP doesn’t believe in equality under the law then it cannot claim to be working in the interests of ordinary people.

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.

That’s us told…

The Daily Wail has regurgitated a story that has been doing the rounds on the internet for a couple of days, about a man in Tunisia who died in an attempt to eat 30 raw eggs in a single sitting as part of a wager.

There is nothing in the space filler about the cause of death, just that the man was dead before he could be taken to hospital after downing 28 of the eggs.

Nevertheless, Sara Malm, fearless hack for the noted media campaigner against the nanny state, deigns to round off her incredibly short ‘story’ thus:

Whilst eggs cooked properly are a great source of protein and part of a healthy diet, raw eggs could cause food poisoning and may contain salmonella bacteria.

If you are making food demanding raw eggs, such as mayonnaise or ice cream, use pasteurised eggs to eliminate risks.

Well that’s us told, and without a trace of ‘we know best’ hectoring in sight… not!

Perhaps this signals the Mail’s crusade against the nanny state is at an end?  Efforts to discover if Malm is related to Edwina Currie have so far drawn a blank.

Important question – If this is such a problem for Cameron, why isn’t this a problem too?

On Friday night the Telegraph ran a story about David Cameron’s comments to a group of factory workers in Wales, about food prices being increased to subsidise cheaper alcohol, explaining:

The Prime Minister claimed that “a family with a reasonable drinking habit” was “actually subsidising the binge drinker” because supermarkets were increasing the price of food to fund cuts in the cost of wine, beer and cider.

Tim Worstall challenges this by asking, ‘Even if it’s true, so what?‘  But there is a much more important question that should be asked.  If that increase in cost, to subsidise a real terms benefit to a minority of people who don’t need it at the expense of the majority, is such a problem for Cameron then why aren’t we reading something like the following in the papers…?

The Prime Minister claimed that “a family with reasonable energy consumption” was “actually subsidising super wealthy landowners and profitable renewables companies” because energy providers were increasing the price of electricity and gas to fund excessive tariffs that are paid for energy which is generated by wind and solar power.

If it is so outrageous and unacceptable for binge drinkers to benefit from food price subsidies footed by responsible ordinary consumers, why isn’t it equally outrageous and unacceptable that a small cabal of opportunist subdidy farmers benefit from artificially high tariffs for energy, also footed by responsible ordinary consumers?  If he feels so minded to have a cause, then why isn’t Cameron focussing on something almost identical that costs families significantly more money each year?

Perhaps the problem is that Cameron is a stinking hypocrite who not only exhibits the worst kind of moral equivalence but is also in thrall to environmental lobbyists; not to mention a band of influential wealthy people who play host to lucrative wind turbines while gifting money to fund his rapidly shrinking party.

Arse kissing establishment BBC scum

Strongly worded title perhaps. But after the previous post from the early hours of this morning that’s the cleaned up version of the description of the hypocritical parasites known as the BBC. Moments ago on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme John Humphrys interviewed Margaret Hodge, champagne socialist chairman of the Public Accounts Select Committee.

Yet again Hodge took the platform afforded to her to describe companies who legally structure their headquarters and finances to pay tax overseas instead of here in the UK as ‘immoral’.  She proudly informed Humphrys that she no longer shops at Amazon or drinks at Starbucks as a result.  This despite the revelation that the family business Hodge herself owns shares in – and allegedly uses tax minimising measures to hold others in trust and in children’s names – pays just 0.01pc tax on £2.1bn of business generated in the UK.

But that of course is ok for a taxpayer soaking, troughing hypocrite like Hodge, who last year allegedly earned from her £1.8million worth of shares a dividend from Stemcor of more than £56,000 – much greater than the gross pay of the vast majority of the population.

Despite this knowledge, John Humphrys either took the decision not to challenge this hypocrisy, followed an editorial decision not to bring it up or timidly accepted a demand from Hodge not to bring it up (we will never know because any FOI request to discover the truth will be met with the standard refusal because the information is supposedly held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature,’).

This is the contemptible establishment at work.  Whipping up discord, hysteria and resentment among sections of society over perfectly legal behaviour, but in cowardly fashion carefully evading scrutiny of their own alleged behaviour by simply omitting any mention of it.  Yes, scum.

When will the state’s increasingly untrammelled power become ‘too much’?

‘You have money and we are taking it.’  This increasingly the attitude of the British government and its agencies and it is a phenomenon stretching across Europe and into the Americas.

In fairness to the state it has played a blinder.  It has successfully turned one part of society, the less well off, more aggressively against better off members of society, despite the fact the less well off stand to gain nothing from an increase in the tax take.  The only beneficiary is the government which possesses an almost limitless capacity for squandering the money and leaving the country with nothing to show for it.

What used to be simple envy or disdain of the better off has been transformed into resentment and outright hostility.  The media has been an willing accomplice, fanning the flames and parroting a narrative that anyone who seeks to keep their tax liabilities to a minimum is somehow being unfair to the rest of society, not paying their fair share and by definition morally repugnant.

The hostility first became entrenched when it was directed at the lavishly remunerated corporate officers and the bonus happy bankers.  But now it has broadened to encompass anyone who is not an average PAYE employee.

Never mind that many of those people being subjected to unjust anger have taken huge risks to build businesses and create jobs, while working 18 hour days, going without holidays, not being able to spend time with their families and working when unwell because there is no luxury of sick pay to fall back on.  No, unless their pockets are being turned out to satisfy the state’s fetish for controlling how their money is spent, without any form of consultation or consent, they are the most selfish scum of the earth.

So it is against that backdrop of sown division, mistrust and resentment that two stories this weekend combine to paint a picture of our elected and supposed representatives running out of control, rigging the rules against the ‘ordinary’ citizens to suit ideological interests they have adopted from a plethora of unelected and unaccountable bodies that are positioning themselves as a de facto global administration.

The first story concerns the shocking actions of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) falsely accusing a company’s directors of fraud, shutting down the company making over 30 people unemployed and using draconian powers that prevent the former owners from challenging the action through the courts while pressuring them to settle the accusation with payment to cover the alleged £7 million in taxes and duties.  There was no evidence.  All this happened on the basis of a suspicion that something fraudulent was going on.  Indeed, HRMC’s defence of their actions was to state there was no evidence the company wasn’t acting fraudulently, a clear inversion of the principles of justice.

The second story concerns HRMC tearing up the basic principles of privacy and data protection.  At the behest of the government, HRMC is to use credit reference agencies to cross-check details of the income people declare on their tax returns against their spending patterns to identify “high” and “medium” risks of both illegal and legal tax avoidance.  As we have said on this blog and Twitter before, tax evasion is a crime, but tax avoidance is perfectly legal.  So why should HMRC bother checking to see if people are legally minimising their tax liability?  The clue can be found in the comment by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander:

“It is simply not fair that at a time when most people are making a contribution to balancing the nation’s books, there is a small minority of taxpayers who try to escape their responsibility.”

Really? Who determines what is ‘fair’?  Never mind that some of these people pay more in tax each year than a lot of other people earn.  Never mind the risks and sacrifices many of them have made as detailed above.  No, they are supposedly escaping their ‘responsibility’ – a word the definition of which governments of every stripe over the last 20 years or more have simply not grasped and believe to be a one-way street that travels in their direction.

We are witnessing a concerted effort to demonise those who have something the government wants in order to enable the government to use nefarious mechanisms to obtain it.  In the eyes of the government – as it stokes up the spiteful societal divisions it is fostering by using vocal members of the less well off as useful idiots to demand exactly that which the government wishes to do – this state over reach is justified for being a populist measure demanded by the public.  And for fear of kneejerk vilification, by the unthinking useful idiots and hypocritical, comfortably wealthy trough hogging politicians, many reasonable and right thinking people who see the wrong-headedness of the government’s behaviour and irresponsible waste of our resources, keep quiet.  This is the UK in 2012.

Small wonder we see cries of frustration such as this in response to the tightening grip our supposed servants are exerting on ordinary people.  Common sense is evaporating and manipulation of the people by those who make the rules is all pervasive.  What will it take before the slumbering masses wake up and realise the state’s self conferred and increasingly untrammelled power has become too much?  When will people take the power back?

More Guardian hypocrisy and another David Leigh link to the KGB

Hot on the heels of the implosion of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) for falsely asserting Conservative peer Lord McAlpine was a paedophile, the Guardian is leading with a story about ‘the existence of an extraordinary global network of sham company directors, most of them British’ citing yet another organisation of ‘investigative journalists’.  The Graun goes on to explain:

The UK government claims such abuses were stamped out long ago, but a worldwide joint investigation by the Guardian, the BBC’s Panorama and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has uncovered a booming offshore industry that leaves the way open for both tax avoidance and the concealment of assets.

Concealing assets if they are subject to taxation is tax evasion, therefore illegal.  Fair enough.  However once again we see an agenda at work to demonise the perfectly legal and responsible activity of tax avoidance.  This is the latest example of outrageous hypocrisy on the part of the Guardian, given that its parent company makes use of offshore arrangements in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying tax in the UK.  It even resulted in a protest by Guido co-conspirators outside the Graun’s plush offices in London.  Strangely, the piece doesn’t make any mention of Guardian Media Group’s behaviour, let alone criticise it.

So why is the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) focussing on this issue?  Could it be because it has a political agenda that ignores the sins of the left and focuses on eeevil capitalists?  Of course it could.  Here is a little bit of history of the ICIJ courtesy of Gerard Jackson…

The ICIJ is the offspring of the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIR) which in turn was founded by the notorious Institute for Policy Studies, a Marxist organisation which acted as a front for the KGB during the Cold War.

It’s unsurprising therefore that we see the Guardian’s David Leigh right in the thick of the ICIJ, listed as one of the consortium’s five UK based journalists.  He of course denied being part of the BIJ, despite having never corrected his Guardian colleague Roy Greenslade’s long standing claim that he was part of that group.  Perhaps Leigh, whose name is headlined as co-author of the Guardian piece, will be content to accept his membership of this particular group of self important hacks.  But if he does, it risks opening an old can of worms for Leigh.

Why so?  Here’s a name from the past.  Richard Gott.

Richard Gott was the Guardian’s literary editor but in December 1994 he resigned after Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky contradicted Gott’s denial that he was a paid agent of the KGB.  In the finest traditions of Guardian weasel words, Gott went on to say:

“I took red gold, even if it was only in the form of expenses for myself and my partner. That, in the circumstances, was culpable stupidity, though at the time it seemed more like an enjoyable joke.”

This seemingly left Leigh looking like an idiot as he had come bounding to Gott’s defence and ranting against the security service after the BBC’s attempt to hire Gott in 1981 was prevented because Gott failed to obtain security clearance.  Gordievsky’s subsequent story put that failure into context.  But when you consider Leigh is part of an organisation that was itself a front for the KGB, perhaps Leigh knew exactly what he was doing all along and just supporting a comrade in need.

There is something very wrong with the Guardian and the people it hires.  Rank hypocrisy, double standards, treachery, deceit, smear campaigns, acting as a mouthpiece for those who despise our country… all are synonymous with the bile-filled ‘progressive’ activists who infest the office in Kings Place.  No wonder the KGB loved the Guardian and considered it highly susceptible to penetration.  The only surprise is that Guardianista weren’t signing up in their droves to join the Soviet intelligence community.

Entwistle robs the public purse of £450,000 to fund comfortable lifestyle

It’s a point that has been made many times elsewhere, but one that has to keep being made because it keeps happening.  If I were to resign from my job my employer would process the paperwork and I would leave on an agreed date.  The same follows for all hardworking taxpayers.

So why is it George Entwistle is able to resign from his position as Director General of the BBC of his own accord after just 54 days in the job and get a pay off amounting to one year’s salary – £450,000?  The pay off amounts to £8,334 for each of the rudderless days he held the position.  In addition to this he also has a licence fee funded pension pot of £877,000.

I would ask is it not incredible that decision makers at entities like the BBC, local authorities and quangos feel perfectly at ease doling out our money like confetti in this way.  But it isn’t incredible, it’s nothing less than a scandal.  The total absence of accountability to the public – and the unique way the BBC is funded, no doubt – makes these kind of completely unjustifiable pay offs possible.  We little people are irrelevant and our dissent doesn’t matter.

That’s benevolent Auntie in action for you.  When not turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the rape and sexual assault of juvenile visitors to its studios by one of its star turns over the course of decades; when not peddling ‘progressive’ socialist propaganda as unbiased comment via its news and current affairs; the nation’s supposedly beloved broadcasting institution treats licence fee payers with undisguised contempt, looking after itself and the vested interests of its self selecting executives, who consider the public purse to be a personal piggy bank to fund astronomical salaries and pension pots the rest of us can only dream of.

Compare what the BBC has sanctioned for Entwistle today with their howls of moralising outrage over the bonuses for bankers and private company executives.  Apart from scale, where is the difference?

There is only one phrase to describe the BBC and its leadership, hypocritical thieving scum.

Sadiq Khan MP and a lesson in historical ignorance

From the Daily Wail…

A left-wing MP has claimed that new immigrants know more about the nation’s heritage than many Britons.

Labour justice spokesman Sadiq Khan said that it  ‘frustrated’ him to see newcomers obliged to sit citizenship tests when many people ‘know b***** all’ about British history.

Mr Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and MP for Tooting in South London, said he met many people who have gone through the citizenship ceremony who  feel ‘so excited and enthused’.

But he added: ‘Then I’ll be canvassing in my area and there’ll be people who have lived in the same home for three or four or five generations who know b***** all about our country, about our heritage.

‘It frustrates me that you’ve got new citizens who have an obligation to learn about our country but we aren’t doing enough to make sure everyone shares that knowledge.’

It is hypocritical of Khan to protest in this way.  For many years Khan and his socialist ilk have strived to demonise the history of this country and teach only a slanted and pejorative version of our past.  They have consistently cited our imperial and colonialist history as something of which this country should be ashamed and therefore should be swept under the carpet – denying younsgters the chance to learn with balance some of the positives of what we also contributed to the world in those days.

The socialist airbrushing of our past has been reflected in the history syllabus in state schools as the focus switched from teaching historic facts about our country and its place in the world to indoctrinating youngsters with the kind of marxist nonsense spewed forth by the likes of the arch-apologist for communist inspired genocide, Eric Hobsbawm.

Yet more ‘media plurality’ hypocrisy from the Guardian

The ever dwindling band of Guardian readers were subjected to one of editor Alan Rusbridger’s reality-warping, self indulgent rants of vested self interest on Sunday.

In his piece ‘The overwhelming case for plurality’, Rubbisher ludicrously says that his media plurality meme:

‘is not just about Rupert Murdoch – allowing media power to be concentrated in the hands of a few multibillionaires will impoverish society.’

So how do the Guardian’s lavishly paid mandarins, who continue to churn out excuse after excuse to set aside the BBC’s domination of the media landscape, walk their talk?  In a classic piece of ‘do as we say, not as we do’ the Guardian Media Group sold its GMG Radio enterprise, which includes the stations Smooth Radio and Real Radio, for around £70m to Global Radio.

The outcome is that Global Radio now controls over 50 per cent of the UK commercial radio market.  How very plural.

One can’t help but wonder what the Guardian’s reaction would be if Rupert Murdoch controlled over 50% of UK commercial radio.  Clearly plurality remains the hollow excuse for the assault on News Corp and the left wing media’s continuing efforts to neuter BSkyB as a rival to the BBC while chipping away at News International’s newspaper business.

Tory Party faced with new rift as MPs prepare to mount coup

So reads a headline in the Independent.  But this isn’t another instalment in the recent string of stories planted in the media to convince voters that backbench Tory MPs will rein in David Cameron and protect the right flank of the party from UKIP.

No, this story is different from the fayre trotted out in the pages of the Failygraph as it marks the increasing confidence of the Cameroons and a concerted effort they have undertaken to eject members of the so called ‘awkward squad’ from official positions on the executive of the backbench 1922 Committee.  And it will come as no surprise to regular readers that at the heart of this operation to protect the ‘instinctively Eurosceptic’ Cameron is supposed critic and prominent Judas goat, George EUstice – his former press secretary.

Cameron, with an ever watchful eye focused on crushing any dissent of his autocratic control of the party, has seen to it that parliamentary private secretaries – MPs who are ministerial aides and therefore are expected to toe the leadership’s line – are now able to vote in the election. This means the backbench group, which is supposed to hold the leadership (and by definition any Conservative government) to account could now have its executive and direction influenced by the leadership.  It is the political equivalent of castration – or at least it would be if there were any more than a tiny handful of Tory MPs with balls.

It is classic Cameron.  If anyone opposes his direction he changes the rules enabling his minions to be dispatched to initiate a hostile takeover.  They keep the opponents’ organisation structures intact and wear their clothes, but change the language and corrupt definitions to mean the opposite of what they did.  He has already done this by adopting the mantle of Eurosceptic despite his words and actions being entirely Europhile.

If successful, this putsch against the 1922 will still see the committee describing itself as holding Cameron to account and putting pressure on him to be ‘more conservative’, yet it will be entirely supportive of Cameron’s actions and utter all the sycophantic words of endorsement he wants to hear.  And no doubt the Failygraph will continue to publish op-eds from various talking heads earnestly telling readers that Cameron will soon show his conservative credentials, that there is real pressure for change inside the party which will win the day and there’s no need to support UKIP.

Only a simpleton could believe it.

Daily Mail or the Hypocrisy Herald?

There are few things as darkly amusing as rank hypocrisy in the media.  It shouldn’t be amusing, it should be cause for annoyance and disdain.  But it’s hard not to laugh with incredulity when one media organisation tries to assume moral superiority over another for behaviour it is also guilty of.

Climbing on its high horse is the Daily Mail, which is attempting to lord it over Sky News because the channel removed a story about a deal between Bernie Ecclestone, F1’s chief executive, Red Bull and Ferrari.  The headline is unambiguous.

As the saying goes, those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

If there were sound effects accompanying the Daily Mail piece it would be the cacophany of window panes smashing to pieces under a barrage of rocks, for this blog recently caught the Daily Mail removing a significant story from its website without explanation.  What started out as a piece about Guardian journo David Leigh engaging in phone hacking (screenshot below)…

silently and quickly became this and remains such to this day…

The difference with the Sky News case is that the Mail has not explained from where the pressure came to spike the David Leigh story they removed.  One rule for friends and one for competitors?

Perhaps the Sky News website should reciprocate with a story titled, ‘How Dacre’s empire works: Unnamed Daily Mail editor orders David Leigh phone hacking story to be removed from Daily Mail website after upsetting Guardian journaist pal.’