“Julian Assange is no hero. I should know — I lived with him and his awful gang.”
– James Ball
Right wing investigative reporter James Ball has attacked Julian Assange once again. This time in the Sunday Times. But is there anything new in his article?
The vindictive former WikiLeaks intern uses the emotive word ‘awful’ to refer to Assange’s gang. But Ball was himself part of that gang. Either his commitment to WikiLeaks was authentic – or he was an opportunist bad faith actor.
Judging by his subsequent career moves and undignified pronouncements, I strongly suspect the latter.
Blairite Ball says that if Assange is not extradited to the US and if he manages to be subsequently freed from jail that he should not be allowed to run WikiLeaks again. Because “as a journalist, Assange is reckless, incompetent and immoral”.
He then runs through a list of vague and unproven smears without going into his own role at WikiLeaks or the nature of his obsession with Assange.
The fact that James Ball, a ‘journalist’ who no longer even works for a newspaper, is recommending, on the record, the wholesale censorship of the man who gave him his biggest break says more about Ball than it does about Assange.
In the following Guardian piece Ball misleads his audience by claiming it unlikely Assange would face prosecution in the US.
The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride | James Ball https://t.co/DUfx0Yefp8
Sponsored journalists like Ball serve higher powers and cannot be trusted to act against their own financial interests in favour of the truth or of their readers.
I find it hard to distinguish between Ball’s agenda and that of Isabel Oakeshott, Darren Grimes, Raheem Kassam, Mahyar Tousi, Andrew Neil, Fraser Nelson, Rod Liddle, the Guido Fawkes mob and many others.
In this article Ball admits to having taken money from the Integrity Initiative, a government and NATO funded propaganda unit designed to shape opinion in a direction hostile towards Russia and favourable towards increased militarism.
Exposé: Britain has created a large-scale information secret service in Europe, US & Canada, from political, military, academic & journalistic communities with the think tank in London at the head of it. https://t.co/xqvDyWoxeV@MaxBlumenthal@BenjaminNorton
The Integrity Initiative was supposedly against Russian interference in UK politics but it amplified anti-Corbyn tweets.
Ball blames Murdoch-owned Fox news for amplifying Russian propaganda but has had no problem attacking Assange in the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times.
Murdoch was in the room in 2017 when Michael Gove ‘interviewed’ then President-elect Donald Trump and Murdoch’s News International hired Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson to work on the Johnny Depp Amber Heard libel case which has meant that she hasn’t seen Assange for over a year.
It’s no secret that money talks but, in today’s anti-Assange hit piece, James Ball keeps very quiet about exactly what attracts him to the billionaire oligarch Mr Rupert Murdoch.
I’ve heard the author of this story Nicholas Hellen is not the nicest of chaps.
Why doesn't @thesundaytimes show the same interest in modern day British victims of pharmaceutical malpractice such as of #Sanofi's #SodiumValproate which has caused birth defects up & down the country & yet no-one has received compensation. #immdshttps://t.co/LflmJe0pHs
And maybe this story is being released for The Sunday Times to remind its readers of its biggest ever investigation.
But given its lack of interest in Valproate, I conclude that the lobbyists have learned and modern day ‘Thalidomide scandals’ are now more easily suppressed / managed.
We all know the press is able to play down the significance of one scandal and play up the significance of another.
Which leaves so much room for distortion and inconsistency.
I believe we are ruled by a power structure that fears truth and goes to enormous lengths to hide it.
The resulting erosion of trust leads to withdrawal & extremism – which only benefits the entities with the most to gain & hide.
If you want to understand more about what Brexit means with regard to consumer protection then watch this video from 2017 featuring Emma Friedmann who campaigns on pharmaceutical regulation.
They used to say on the Guardian website that comment is free.
But now it’s more a case of Comment is banned.
Why?
In the Guardian opinion section, of the 20 main articles, only 3 have a comment section.
This Martin Kettle Brexit piece is from the day before yesterday and yet it is the most high-profile article in the comment section. Why does it not allow comments?
Tom Kibasi’s article was written 2 hours before the Martin Kettle article and has received more than 1000 more shares. However it has been given a lower profile than the Kettle piece.
Of course it’s been allowed no comments. Does the Guardian not trust the public on Brexit?
Three out of twenty articles have comments enabled. Two on Covid and one on the way a city treats its invisibles.
The Brexit deal is simply not up for discussion.
Last night an article was published saying there will be resignations from the Shadow Cabinet – but it was not given due prominence and no opportunity to comment:
For me this is in line with the idea that the government is working with the Guardian to reduce any public involvement in the discussion of Brexit.
Matt Kennard identified the Guardian Government rapprochement following the Snowden Affair
Guardian's deputy editor @paul__johnson joined state censorship D-Notice committee (run by MOD) after Snowden revelations in sop to British spooks. In board minutes, they thank him for being "instrumental in re-establishing links" between UK mil/intel and Guardian. Explains a lot pic.twitter.com/kN27T0QoMm
Where's the line between politics and economics?</p>
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<figcaption>FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump walks as he arrives from travel to West Point, New York, on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 12, 2020. REUTERS/Cheriss May</figcaption>
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"first ensure no-one knows where they stand, then just carry on looting"
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Donald Tee Rump
Lead Chief
<p>When you see these guys conducting their operation you have to accept that they have it sown up</p>
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'Corruptissima republica plurimae leges.' 'The more corrupt the state, the more laws.'
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<cite>Tacitus</cite>
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She’s also the Shadow Media, Culture, & Sport Minister.
This tweet is her gloating at finally getting some detail of the clandestine meeting that took place between then Media Minister Matt Hancock and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
What did Hancock promise to Zuckerberg? The UK Government’s #onlineharms Bill has been delayed. We’ve still not seen it. 18 long months for @facebook to presumably continue threatening what this report describes whilst #onlineharms on Facebook continue causing real life harm 2/2
Jo Steven’s Labour colleague Margaret Hodge is against online anonymity and backs the Online Harms Bill to protect her from the tens of thousands of abusive tweets she gets a month.
Stevens’ predecessor is Tom Watson, who got on very well with Margaret Hodge.
Corbyn
Watson, like Hodge, spent more of his time attacking then leader Jeremy Corbyn over allegations of antisemitism than he did on scrutinising the way media is governed.
So Watson, Hodge, Stevens, and Labour are all for the Online Harms Bill and dead against Jeremy Corbyn.
They think the Online Harms Bill can help them persecute the more left end of the Labour Party that supported Jeremy Corbyn.
Though Zuckerberg is not known as a Corbynista and Facebook’s advertising policy has been used to benefit the Conservatives far more than Labour, he will still be squeamish about cracking down on freedom of speech.
Deplatform
The double standards are obvious. Some messages are allowed to circulate but others are not.
Online behaviour is starting to be regulated, but who regulates the regulator?
Facebook has an Oversight Committee, sometimes referred to as a Supreme Court. This committee will have the final say over whether a post should be removed and why.
For now the Committee will not look into the issue of questioning deplatforming decisions.
The rationale for deplatforming is opaque – and not currently open to appeal. The left has suffered enormously due to the Facebook algorithm and its decisions to delete accounts.
Murdoch & Leveson
What did Hancock and Zuckerberg really discuss? Can’t have been that much. The real conversation is surely between lobbyists and lawyers.
Hancock made noise about policing Zuckerberg because Rupert Murdoch wanted him to.
He argued that the papers had learned their lessons from the days of phone hacking, surveillance, bullying, entrapment and illegal data capture.
That the real threat to society comes from the online giants and that newspapers need to be protected from the likes of Facebook and Google.
UK tabloids pushed for Google and Facebook to be regulated even while they themselves sought to escape regulation by citing the need to protect the Freedom of the Press.
And there you have it.
Freedom is ok so long as it is for a Billionaire who owns a Newspaper.
Never argue with a man who buys his ink by the barrel
And the Ritz is still owned by the tax-exile Barclay brothers who also own the Telegraph and the Spectator – publications that have paid Boris Johnson handsomely.
Matthew Gould : Surveillance Capitalism Spook
Matthew Gould was appointed to head NHSX, a digital form of the NHS, without any competition, temporarily, in April 2019.
Matt Hancock appointed him. He’s still there.
Gould obviously operates in a world of spies, mandarins and geostrategic military lobbyists – democracy and the rule of law mean nothing to him.
Before leaving Israel (he was the UK ambassador to Israel from 2010 to 2015) Gould controversially thanked the British Jewish community for the huge support it had shown Israel over the years.
Nothing wrong with stating a fact?
Maybe, but an inappropriate comment all the same.
It would be easy, from that statement, to think Gould was the Israeli ambassador and not the British one.
It should come as no surprise that NHSX Gould is more loyal to Silicon Valley than British citizens. His concern has been to promote the Cybersecurity Agenda and the interests of the large tech players.
Health data is of little concern to him. But he is concerned about Online Harms if they disrupt national security.
And by that we mean … Margaret Hodge.
Censorship levels have gone through the roof in 2020.
The UK is the first country to test the vaccine on its citizens and will be the first to deliver an Online Harms Bill.
But what will it contain and how will it be interpreted?
Will it be an excuse to launch raids on any person or organisation who expresses ideas that are at odds with government policy, or will it be used to fine and genuinely police the online giants?
Lines are being drawn between distinct racisms at UK universities. Anti-Jewish racism in particular is to be treated differently to other types of discrimination.
How could the need to defend Jews from racism cause controversy?
Could it be that, under these proposals, other students will not be afforded the same protections as Jews?
In India there is tension between ‘high caste’ Brahmins, and ‘low caste’ Dalits / ‘untouchables’ because of both perceived privilege and affirmative action.
In the US there has been a backlash against affirmative action with some campaigners saying that Universities discriminate against certain ethnic groups despite their high academic achievements.
Make them believe, that offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only (in some cases) means of defence.
George Washington
Criticisms of ‘cancel culture’ and ‘no platforming’ are generally used to defend freedom of speech and to allow controversial figures highly sought after platforms at universities.
I was at University in Manchester when Al Qaeda were recruiting heavily as were the BNP.
My preference leans toward freedom of speech.
I understand that deals are done between different student societies, student politicians and union officers in order to keep everyone happy.
But tension is still there.
The idea that there is no racism at university is misplaced.
Yet, it is important to ensure the university environment is a safe one for everyone.
It would be an unfortunate outcome if, by particularly defending the rights of one group, the government ends up making things harder for individuals of that group on campus.
Operation successful, patient died.
Autriche
The Austrian French conversation has historically given us Adolf Hitler and Marie Antoinette.
Now French President Emmanuel Macron has been bonding with the Austrian leader Sebastian Kurz over the rejection of ‘political Islam’.
The article below from the Irish Times references Mehreen Khan of the FT’s piece reminding Macron that he risks alienating France’s Muslim population precisely when he needs them most.
So it looks like tension is only increasing. And that it is all so avoidable. Why bother making life harder for either group?
The English approach to weaponizing anti-Jewish sentiment may help achieve certain political aims in the culture war. But will it help individual Jews?
Will Starmer and Johnson’s approach promote harmony or encourage segregation?
It appears to me that they are both divisive politicians who would prefer as much segregation as possible in society, as would Macron and Kurz.
All this talk of fishing rights in the ongoing French / UK Brexit talks is a complete distraction from how much they all have in common.
The EU and Britain are clearly both focused on a particular way of doing things.
Big Business & Banking are working with Big Government to keep things sewn up for the people up top.
That doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it. But for now resistance against increasing inequality is particularly weak. Whereas inequality has tended to be lowered only after serious struggles, at this point the struggles themselves are being outlawed.
The only reason people are not noticing this is that the spin and propaganda machine is so strong that we are left begging for censorship and to be permanently misled.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”
Bill Gates has sponsored the Guardian Development Section for nearly ten years now.
Many journalists say that if he didn’t fund it that there might not be a development section at all. That at least he pays.
Rashida Jones and I talked to Yuval Noah Harari about COVID conspiracy theories, the role social media plays in spreading misinformation, and the one lie I choose to believe even though I know it’s not always true: https://t.co/7pzUFsMf5Dpic.twitter.com/YEjZaXLTbJ
Every cult needs to recruit. One would have to start somewhere.
So how about using powerful imagery & slogans to tap into undefined ideas about Social Justice?
That would get ‘right thinking’ people feeling that a necessary national debate is taking place.
That one ought to pay attention, and make one’s voice heard.
I feel well qualified to talk about propaganda because I have fallen for so much of it.
Here’s an image from the Stand Together website. Compare the image above with the less adulterated one further up.
As I previously admitted, I’ve fallen for Left and Right propaganda. I would rather find out what the right’s strategy is before it happens than than simply hearing about it on the news.
I doubt very much the right would put up with much dissent among its ranks either but perhaps more than the left.
This is Charles Koch. Owner of Koch Industries. He refers to himself as a philanthropist. It is clear that ‘philanthropy’ is a billionaire’s strategic way to fund ther wider business aims.
The hubris coming out of the ‘mainstream media’ doesn’t dilute. Check out the opening paragraph of today’s anti-antivaxxer piece in yesterday’s FT.
Mr William Wallis appears to have been FT’s Africa correspondent for the last twenty years. Perhaps this explains his attitude to ward the natives here in UK.
Look at this development
The papers are to some degree controlled by the Government and they are forcing vaccinations on us all.
One day they are talking about using celebs and cyberwarfare to encourage vaccination uptake – the next they are using enforced social isolation as a motivation technique.
These government people are not people who like being argued with. Avoid actual confrontation if you can. I think it’s fair to say we are descending into fascism. It’s been happening for a while.
I had to call the council a few weeks ago because I had no money left after I’d applied for Universal Credit and been given an emergency loan of £360.
Normal payments are made 5 weeks in arrears so I was left waiting for the first normal payment to come in.
The council told me I could go to a food bank. They arranged for a voucher to be sent to the Food Bank and off I went on the day I was told to be there.
Therefore I’m currently paying off a Universal Credit emergency loan and going to the North Paddington Food Bank.
The people there are very nice and I don’t know what I’ve had done without them.
When I saw this story in the Guardian just now it didn’t surprise me one bit.
The country is not in a good way and the debate around Universal Basic Income really must be had.
I assume the Labour Party are dead against it but where do they think they will get their votes from when so few people are able to work and many jobs will simply not return?
UK food bank trust says half of users repaying universal credit debts https://t.co/zSCQLh9POF
Going to the Food Bank because you are repaying the most basic bills like council tax and small universal credit loans feels very similar to structural adjustment programmes imposed by the world bank and IMF on developing countries from the 1980’s onward.
James Wolfensohn died the other day – apparently he did something to help 35 countries. I’m not so sure.
James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank and his senior team did more than most to support me and Jubilee 2000 to achieve debt cancellation for about 35 countries. May he Rest in Peace. via @FT https://t.co/G8jsrB9Vsd
The NHS is thinking of asking “sensible” celebrities to persuade the public into taking the soon to be available coronavirus vaccine, according to newspaper reports.
Ministers are alarmed at the impact that online propaganda is having on public opinion. A recent report found that more than one-third of people are uncertain or are very unlikely to be vaccinated.
Footballer Marcus Rashford is the only name that has been suggested.
The NHS source says the Royal Family are being considered, but politicians are off the table.
The army’s 77th brigade contains a defence cultural unit which was set up in 2010 and works closely with psychological operations teams.
It is claimed that soldiers are monitoring ‘cyberspace’ for Covid19 content to analyse how British citizens are being targetted online.
Is this team that was supposed to protect Shamima Begum from being radicalised online?
According to the Sunday Times the team is gathering ‘vaccine disinformation’ from hostile states including Russia.
The stock market has certainly benefitted from the vaccine
So why, given the enormous amount of corruption taking place, wouldn’t the public be rightly sceptical of anything proposed by such a dishonest government?
Yesterday this blog revealed that Matthew Gould, head of NHSX and this country’s former Cybersecurity Chief, had no qualms telling NHS staff to ignore data protection legislation if they felt it got in their way.
When intelligent highly trained civil servants and politicians are openly and serially ignoring the rule of law the British public will know that something is up.
NHSX Boss Matthew Gould makes no secret of the fact that he used Covid to tell NHS Staff to ignore data protection or information governance legislation.
In this interview at Future Med 2020, an Israeli Health Conference whose opening address was delivered by Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu, Gould, former UK Ambassador to Israel and assistant to Tony Blair, refers to a ‘one pager’.
Here are COPI (Patient Confidentiality) letters from the Health Minister to NHS England and Improvement Chief Sir Simon Stevens, to whom Matthew Gould reports, and to Sarah Wilkinson who runs NHS Digital.
For more on the looting of NHS data by private firms such as Google watch The Great NHS Heist which was released late last year.
Gould has form when it comes to spookery. He was UK director of Cybersecurity, UK Ambassador to Israel and worked directly for Blair, Brown and Miliband.
Though it would be extremely bad form to suggest that he was more loyal to Israel than to the UK, Gould is an enigma, no stranger to controversy and clearly in the employ of UK military intelligence but quite possibly also friendly with Israeli Military Intelligence as well. We may never know.
Paul Flynn had to apologise for extremely clumsy working of his critique of Gould whose Blairite credentials suggest he has something of the Common Purpose about him.
But back to the bigger issue, if the Government says it’s suddenly ok for NHS staff to break data protection rules, then why would those rules ever be respected in the future?
By referring to a can-do attitude and not “getting caught in knots about massive detail of the law”, Matthew Gould, like his friends George Osborne, Matt Hancock and Simon Stevens is accelerating the destruction of the NHS.
Where will the cuts in energy consumption come from?
From what level to what level? Who is going to have to make the sacrifices?
If Starmer’s plan is to move Labour in the direction of environmentalism then why does he have people in his Shadow Cabinet who voted to expand Heathrow?
Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, John Healey, Jonathan Reynolds, Jonathan Ashworth, & Kate Green all voted to expand Heathrow in 2018, along with most Tories. Boris conveniently left for Afghanistan that day.
Billionaires Vote Democrat, The Republican Party is for Mere Millionaires
MPs in the House of Commons voted for expansion by a huge majority back in 2018 – and now they are welcoming COP26 to UK. https://t.co/HTcv2t9epE
So the majority of MPs have decided to go with foreign capital to build a third runway.
At the same time that the Government is accelerating deportations, increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric, and airlines are going out of business due to the current financial crisis.
So what’s to be done?
Will UK PLC find a way to be awarded the right to build another runway, even as the Government ploughs ahead with COP26 (sponsored by Nat West)?
Mr Starmer himself voted against the expansion of Heathrow Airport, but that’s not to say that every Labour MP who voted against Heathrow expansion is against expanding airports.
My MP Karen Buck told me that she voted against Heathrow because she prefers Gatwick.
Starmer, like former Transport Secretary and current London Mayor Sadiq Khan, is proud to call himself pro-Business.
Can business and environmentalism co-exist?
When ex Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who will play a prominent role at UN COP26 in Glasgow in November, claims to want to monitor climate risk and avoid climate breakdown I am reminded that he was appointed by the Cameron Government which went from Vote Blue, Go Green, to Vote Blue, Get Real.
This article was written 25 years ago. I’ve never read it but just stumbled across it now. I couldn’t find it when I last searched for it in 2013. I did listen to some of the Richard White podcast above around the same time. Mr White mentions the tar sands in Canada.
The Money System
COP26 looks like it is going to be a an authoritarian power grab by the banks.
It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court rules on Heathrow in January. There will be a ruling on Julian Assange around the same time.
It’s hard not to look at these cases and not feel that British Justice itself is on trial. With the current people in charge, I’m certainly not betting on justice anytime soon, but you never know.
In June at an Israeli health summit Gould, Zionist former UK Ambassador to Israel, was asked how he had managed to use Covid to bring about unprecedented ‘digital health adoption’ in the UK.
In his response Mr Gould appears to have told NHS workers to pay no attention to existing UK legislation. He goes on to suggest that this is a winning formula.
Journalist:
There’s a claim Matthew that Covid 19 was an exceedingly effective accelerator of digital health adoption, maybe the most effective one ever. And you’ve mentioned some aspects of this earlier on when you talked about the adoption of online care and alluded to some of the symptom checkers.
Could you tell us a little bit more about your experience in the UK and how which digital health transformation aspects were accelerated during Covid 19? And what actually changed that allowed it?
Was it regulation that changed? Was it acceptance by the physicians and by the unions that changed? Or maybe it was acceptance by the patients or just bare necessity?
Matthew Gould:
One of the things we did earlier in the crisis that i think made a massive difference was we produced a really simple one-page guide to information governance for people working in health and care saying essentially if you are in good faith trying to look after your patients and acting in sensible ways then you’re not going to get into trouble.
And that was endorsed by our information commissioner, by the national data guardian and it had a really positive effect.
Because it sent a signal: look just be sensible do the right thing, don’t get yourself caught up in knots over um sort of the massive detail of law – but just get on with it. And that was extremely positive and we need to capture that can-do spirit and sort of bottle it and keep it for the future
Who is Matthew Gould?
Matthew Gould is an old school friend of George Osborne.
He worked on foreign affairs directly for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Miliband.
Gould’s friend George Osborne was on the advisory board of Atlantic Bridge which part-paid for Werrity’s travel expenses as he pretended to be a member of the Ministry of Defence.
Anti-Jewish Sentiment
Straight-talking MP Paul Flynn apologised for suggesting that Gould should not have been appointed UK Ambassador to Israel on account of him being Jewish.
Flynn said that Gould was vulnerable to accusations “of having Jewish loyalty” and that the position should be given to “someone with roots in the UK”. Flynn said, “there hasn’t been a Jewish ambassador to Israel and I think that is a good decision – to avoid the accusation that they have gone native.”
Cybersecurity
Upon returning from Israel Gould was UK Cabinet Office Head of Cybersecurity and then worked for Matt Hancock at the Media Department, specialising in the digital economy.
Gould was appointed Head of Cybersecurity by George Osborne after the Talk Talk cyber attack in 2015. Talk Talk was then headed by Conservative Peer Dido Harding who now runs Public Health England’s replacement organisation as well as NHS Improvement.
Horseplay
Gould’s Twitter profile mentions showjumping – a passion for horses that is shared by Dido Harding, Matt Hancock, & Owen Patterson – all of whom have done very well out of the Covid crisis.
Spooky
Sadly Owen Patterson’s wife died mysteriously on his birthday in June.
Harding also runs Track and Trace with Gould. She was also appointed without any interview process. Bizarrely Harding’s husband John Penrose, also a Tory MP, is the UK’s anti-corruption tsar.
Given that Matthew Gould has boasted of instructing NHS workers to ignore the law, perhaps he should be prosecuted for corruption himself.
Double Standards
But don’t hold your breath. The UK Government has shown no regard for international, human rights and employment law on so many occasions lately that we have to accept that normal laws simply don’t apply to them any more.
Maybe one day things will change, but certainly not without a fight.
The UK Broadcasting Regulator Ofcom has released its annual report on the BBC. I like the fact that the BBC exists. But it is an incredibly out of touch organisation.
Even when it appears to be polished, neutral, & honest the BBC is far from impartial.
The report itself contains the word disinformation only three times.
This is highly disappointing because it is well known that the corporation worked with the government to control the coronavirus narrative.
Instead of using simple language to describe the extent to which this took place, when it happened, and why – Ofcom has let the BBC and the government off the hook by effectively saying nothing.
So the UK population was repeatedly lied to and gaslit by the BBC and the government over Covid, lockdowns, and the number of deaths up and down the country, but Ofcom, the so-called regulator, has decided it is best to behave as though this myriad of lies and deception, in which it is now complicit, simply never occurred. There’s a word for this.
Ofcom’s boss Melanie Dawes’ starting salary is £315, 000 a year. She started her new job in February. Before that she had been Britain’s most senior female civil servant – permanent secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which she took over from Bob Kerslake in 2015.
The Housing and Local Government Ministry saw savage cuts during that time.
Dawes’ husband Benjamin Brogan was Deputy Editor of The Telegraph from 2009 till 2014 before becoming Head of Public Affairs at Lloyds Bank. Lloyds received substantial state aid after the financial crisis but the Government finally sold its stake in 2017.
There are some who would say that being married to a right wing former newspaper editor turned banking lobbyist should automatically exclude anyone from running Ofcom, the national broadcast regulator. I share that view. But clearly Ms Dawes, Mr Brogan, and the corrupt former Chair of the Treasury Select Committee and Media Minister who should have known better, Baroness Morgan, saw things differently.
Morgan is a rule onto herself. She flipped from Remainer to Brexiteer in a heartbeat. One of the first things she did when Boris Johnson appointed her Media Minister in summer 2019 was to end all government pressure on Evening Standard and Independent owner Evgeny Lebedev for having sold 30% of Lebedev Holdings to the Saudi State.
Of course Lebedev had always backed Boris and a year later was rewarded with a peerage. Lord Lebedev of Hampton in Richmond Upon Thames and Siberia in the Russian Federation.
I have never previously heard of a Lord of the Russian Federation before – though Lord Barker and Lord Peter Mandelson do lobby for Oleg Deripaska.
One of Brogan’s colleagues when he was at the Telegraph was Peter Oborne.
Crisis of credibility at Telegraph as Peter Oborne says most staff have no confidence in owners or chief exec: https://t.co/W6JTJ3lkQ1 – via:@pressgazette (from 2015)
When Oborne resigned from the Telegraph in 2015 he made it clear that the paper did not report honestly when it came to covering the notorious British Bank HSBC.
Even though it was well known that much money laundering had happened through the bank, Telegraph journalists were discouraged from reporting on the bank’s activities due to fears HSBC would pull its advertising from the paper.
But Lloyds Bank, where Ofcom Boss Dawes’ husband Brogan runs Public Affairs has also been up to no good:
Lloyds sparks outrage as it compensates just five victims of HBOS Reading fraud https://t.co/hhXcVAhV0J
Not only has Lloyds defrauded its Reading business customers of hundreds of millions of pounds, but it has so far got away with compensating only 5 victims.
And who, pray, is responsible for ensuring that the government doesn’t get involved in this affair and that as little as possible of this information is communicated to the public? Benjamin Brogan, Melanie Dawes’ husband.
How Corrupt is Britain?
So not only is she being paid upwards of £300k to police broadcasters, but her husband is being paid to keep his own bank’s scandals out of the news.
Now that’s another Great British Power couple. Not sure if they have any ethics though.
Ben Elliot, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, nephew of Prince Charles, close friend of Zac Goldsmith, and Boris Johnson’s tennis partner, co-founded and co-owns Quintessentially, an elite services or ‘concierge company’ which created and registered the website of an international escort agency offering “high class models” to “high-profile gentlemen”, according the Financial Times.
Quintessentially, a concierge company run by the co-chairman of the UK’s Conservative party, created the website of an international escort agency called Le Besoin and registered it to its London headquarters. By @Tabby_Kinder and @DanielThomasLDNhttps://t.co/FNkq0qVqOD
Le Besoin’s Netherlands profile was last updated in February 2018. An image of 25 year old ‘Bianca’ appears with a German telephone number, a Dubai location, the www.lebesoin.com web address, and an “ask for price” statement.
Tom Parker Bowles and Ben Elliot with their uncle Mark ShandBen Elliot with Boris Johnson
Elliot owns 20% of Hawthorn Advisors a PR firm that has represented Huawei, Tory Lord Barker who lobbied for US sanctions to be lifted against Russian aluminium firm EN+, and Alison Rose in her succesful bid to become CEO of RBS / Nat West.
Quintessentially’s numbers make absolutely no sense as the firm reported $23m revenue in 2018 while claiming to employ 1,000 staff.
There is clearly something other than just business driving this hospitality firm.
For more on the alternative take on Bill Browder and Magnitsky:
‘Information as a biological unit’ came the stern reply.
The Poet Statesman
The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not “artists,” the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat—that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written comedy.
GK Chesterton — The Man Who Was Thursday — A Nightmare
Déja vu
This announcement, in today’s Murdochian Times is almost identical to the one made by former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell in an interview he gave me for Real Media nearly four years ago:
Sadly very few people paid any attention to this interview at the time, but the ideas are bizarrely all appearing in Government announcements.
Now that the government have announced a national infrastructure bank, Green Bonds and their version of a Green New Deal, John McDonnell appears to have won the last election.
Enoch Powell famously claimed that all political careers end in failure.
Mr McDonnell was lambasted by the left for appearing in an interview with Alastair Campbell just before the December election – if he hadn’t done so the People’s Vote mob would have told all their followers to vote Lib Dem and that would have completely destroyed the Labour Party.
So, whether you like it or not, McDonnell essentially took one for the team.
We didn’t start the fire — so who did?
Violent 50s and 60s imagery from Billy Joel here.
Are Roy Cohn, Eichmann, Belgians in the Congo in the same category as Ho Chi Minh ?
Lê Đức Thọ was famously awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for peace along with Henry Kissinger but he turned it down – I wonder why.
Private Eye appears to be dominated by spookery at this point. But not so badly as to no longer be worth buying.
I made this experimental video a year and a half ago in homage to Peter Cook and his hero N. F. Simpson. The visuals and audio are taken from the news at the time as well as Simpson’s One Way Pendulum: :
Michael Rimmer
This Peter Cook film says far more about modern politics than any other film I know. Watch it all the way through:
Former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson’s wife is being referred to as having taken her own life.
Today’s Daily Mail article does not mention that she is the sister of Tory hereditary peer Matt Ridley or that she ran Aintree racecourse and was therefore head of the Grand National.
Harding and Matt Hancock happen to share a love of racehorsing.
Harding, like Rose Paterson was, is on the board of the Jockey Club which is responsible for several major horse-racing events including the Cheltenham Festival.
Here Sports Minister Oliver Dowden – justifies allowing the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead despite Covid:
Harding’s husband John Penrose is this country’s anti-corruption tsar, mainly working on local government fraud. Amazing given that his wife Dido Harding is still the Chair of NHS Improvement, overseeing NHS Foundation Trusts, patient safety as well as independent providers that provide NHS-funded care. :
This is a document John Penrose brought out in June:
Penrose’s predecessor was Eric Pickles. Pickles was local government minister before that. A job now taken up by Robert Jenrick. Pickles is also head of ACOBA, which means he is supposed to police the revolving door.
As we know Paterson is a prime beneficiary of the revolving door. But there are many others. Including, no doubt, Eric Pickles himself.
In June 2019 the current Chancellor, Housing Minister, & Sports Minister all backed Boris to lead the Tories.
This blogpost is merely descriptive. It does not seek to make fresh allegations or to accuse anyone of anything. If there is such a thing as corruption in this country, this article may be nodding in its direction, but certainly not pressing charges.
That is for the likes of John Penrose, Eric Pickles, the Police (overseen by Priti Patel), the Courts (overseen by Robert Buckland) and possibly even Parliament (with a Tory majority controlled by Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings)
Just as UK PM Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson makes out that his surname is Johnson, despite the surname on his paternal grandfather’s birth certificate being clearly Kemal, so too does Democrat Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris make little mention of her élite Tamil Brahmin heritage.
Whether re-purposing the original anti police brutality Black Lives Matter hashtag or pretending to be a European artistocrat as opposed to the great grandson of an élite Turk, when courting public favour, politicans and their families are obliged to conform to a rigid set of underlying assumptions.
If these politicians are willing to publicly compromise on day one, then what won’t they be willing to sacrifice when they’re in power?
The Wall Street Journal, which I assume will be rooting for Trump, has published an article about Kamala Harris’s mother’s side.
I can’t help but think Jen Robinson of Doughty Street Chambers had something to do with this spectacle. Robinson is a media lawyer, not a divorce lawyer.
The Amber Heard Trial is actually The Sun Vs Johnny Depp.
So Robinson is actually working together with Murdoch’s lawyers.
The whole Vivienne Westwood thing makes the Assange story newsworthy, in UK tabloid terms, in a way only the likes of Pamela Anderson can.
Westwood and her son Joe Corré funded Real Media, a venture I was once part of, and, though do I agree with them on this issue, it feels as though the issues themselves do not matter – it is all just pantomime.
Riding a wave of public sentiment.
Like they did with fracking. Like they did with Punk.
The new espionage act will outlaw quite a lot of public interest journalism.
It was funny to see the Guardian comment this weekend, when its columnist Owen Jones’ far-right attacker was given a custodial sentence, that no journalist should be subject to personal attacks.
If only they would adopt such a view for Julian Assange.
The fallout from the Russia Report has meant the Govt are planning more draconian measures to ruin the country.
They want to set up a spy register and, following a 2017 Law Commission report they want to introduce a new Official Secrets Act.
This will effectively ban public interest reporting on ‘national security’ matters, eliminate trial by jury and incriminate any journalist that relies on whistleblowing.
The Economist has done a good piece here on the Shadow Banking sector and regulatory arbitrage in banking.
And the New York Times just did a great piece on the secretive Global Anti-Trust Institute :
Not to mention, we had @leticiadlcasado pressing officials in Brazil to answer our questions. Here is our final product, a testament to the time and financial commitment of the Times to do important journalism. https://t.co/EoJXfO9Ogv
Daisuke got a quote from a former EU anti-Trust regulator:
Long interesting & well-researched article in the NYT by @daiwaka on the way the Global Antitrust Institute operates and is financed. Reference to the excellent work of @snaidunl et al.
Apple won a tax case against Ireland last week (worth several billion dollars) but the EU can still appeal.
Some British Remainers are acting as though the coronavirus funding deal the EU struck last week is a sign that everything is going well in those parts.
This piece by ex-IMF man and current Chief Economic Adviser at Morgan Stanley Reza Moghadam seems entirely reasonable until the last line.
In which he leverages his entire argument to call for FISCAL UNION!
But Meng’s lawyers argue, she was transparent about the Iran dealings.
They say there are two slides in a presentation she made to HSBC that were omitted from the U.S. filing.
The Huawei executive at the center of a bitter dispute between China and Canada is launching a new argument to halt her extradition to the U.S. in a fraud case https://t.co/TodcVJzIRv via @bpolitics
In its first public comments about Huawei’s legal battle in North America, the U.K. bank said it has no “hostility” toward Huawei and didn’t “ensnare” the company. The bank said it only provided information to the U.S. Department of Justice when it was compelled to do so.
“In response to the U.S. DOJ’s requests for information, HSBC simply presented the objective facts,” the bank said in a statement Saturday. “HSBC did not ‘fabricate’ evidence or ‘hide’ facts. And HSBC would never distort the facts or seek to harm any of our clients for our own gain.”
HSBC has become embroiled in Huawei’s legal fight to block a U.S. request to extradite Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou from Canada to face trial over allegedly violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. Meng has been under house arrest in Vancouver since she was detained at the request of U.S. authorities in 2018.
When HSBC saw Meng Wanzhou’s presentation in 2013, they were already under a Deferrred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with the US Department of Justice due to lots of previous money laundering activity.
The terms of the agreement meant that any further illegal activity could have cost them their US banking licence.
And who was charged with overseeing HSBC’s compliance with the DPA?
A firm called Exiger.
And who was Exiger’s head of investigations and Europe, Middle East and African (EMEA) business?
The current Head of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) Lisa Osofsky.
Lisa Osofsky has been in the news recently for receiving chummy text messages from a private investigator in relation to the UNAOIL case.
Unaoil twist, a thread: The lifting of reporting restrictions today has also exposed the UK’s Serious Fraud Office chief, Lisa Osofsky, to criticism over her dealings with a US-based agent representing #Unaoil's owners, the Ahsani family. (1/6)
UK's Serious Fraud chief Lisa Osofsky "took the bait" by working with third-party agent David Tinsley in hopes of securing guilty pleas of others in its #Unaoil case.
The SFO "should have nothing to do with someone who had no official status," judge Martin Beddoe said. pic.twitter.com/vuZzfGtdQV
So far no jail time so far for G4S executives who have managed to secure more and more contracts and make millions of pounds from the UK taxpayer since the original fraud was uncovered.
People sometimes ask who regulates the regulators.
Prisoners are managed by G4S and G4S supposedly, when they do wrong, by the SFO.
In today’s Daily Mail BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis claims to have received a supportive text message from the Prime Minister’s Chief Adviser Dominic Cummings after chiding him on the programme in May.
This video by PoliticsJoe goes over the Maitlis monologue.
If she really did receive his text what does the exchange imply?
Newsnight presenters receiving text messages from No10 Special Advisers could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Should this be declared on some sort of a register?
Freedom of Information Request
According to Wikipedia Maitlis was made a contributing editor to the Spectator in 2007:
Wiki also states that Dominic Cummings wife Mary Wakefield was assistant editor at the Spectator at the time:
Though this doesn’t mean Maitlis and Cummings know each other socially, it certainly wouldn’t be that surprising if they did.
Outspoken Zionist Ben Goldsmith, a non executive on the board of the Department of the Environment has been lying to his neighbours about feeding and releasing wild boar from his farm in Somerset.
A National Pig Association statement said : ‘Feeding wild boar is irresponsible but even more so if they are near to or on a pig farm. In addition to the disease risk, they destroy crops, gardens and woodland, cause road traffic accidents and have attacked people.’
The youngest son of the tycoon Sir James Goldsmith opted for victim status by saying he is an enthusiast for ‘rewilding’ – bringing wild animals back to areas from which they have disappeared, and returning areas back to nature without human intervention.
He said he was an ‘easy target’ because he champions rewilding, but insists he did not release the wild boar.
Goldsmith is an enthusiastic Zionist and denies the existence of the far-right and white nationalists in the UK.
He obviously sees no contradiction between his support for bringing animals back to areas from which they have disappeared and the behaviour of the Israeli Government which since the late 1940s has knowingly contravened international law by expelling innocent Palestinians from their homes before either stealing the homes or bulldozing them in favour of Israeli settlements.
Ben Goldsmith’s brother Zac is an environment Minister and currently a member of the House of Lords.
Zac Goldsmith was voted out of his Richmond constituency in December but rewarded with a peerage and made a Minister despite being democratically ejected from Parliament by his constituents.
Zac Goldsmith was defeated by current London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the 2016 elections mainly because Goldsmith fought an Islamophobic campaign under the guidance of Boris Johnson’s election strategist the Australian Lynton Crosby.
What is the legal definition of food in the United States?
Particularly, in the context of food, food products, food industry,
food additives, etc., what is a precise, formal, legal definition of
food?
Some references to potentially useful sources, and some discussion:
The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C) §201(f), which can be found in 21 U.S.C. §321(f) defines food, but in a tautological manner: food is used for food.
(f) The term “food” means (1) articles used for food or drink for man
or other animals, (2) chewing gum, and (3) articles used for
components of any such article.
Similarly 21 CFR §170.3(m) defines food as (for the purposes of the subpart on food additives):
Food includes human food, substances migrating to food from
food-contact articles, pet food, and animal feed.
The primary portion of this is also a tautology: food includes food.
It says that ‘food’ includes human food, but what constitutes this
human food?
(This definition serves the purpose of establishing the word food as
more broad, for the subpart, than just human food, including also
residues from contact substances and animal food. But I am interested
in what defines the human/animal food that it refers to).
The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) does not seem to add any definition of food.
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994
amends the FD&C and provides definitions for dietary supplement. The
act deems dietary supplements as food, and also distinguishes them from
“conventional food”. But does not define food nor conventional food.
So the question is: what (besides chewing gum) constitutes food? And where is it defined?
This clip from Sky TV ends by saying that the public mood has changed and so has government policy.
And what is the chief driver of the public mood?
Opinion forming newspapers and television channels.
And Facebook:
In this interview from yesterday Mark Zuckerberg says he has taken down hundreds of thousand of posts that he disagrees with and that he expects an ‘arms race’ in the next US election.
He was referring to outside interference, but who’s to say he won’t pick a winner and act accordingly?
FB’s business model allows candidates to spread disinformation so long as they pay.
So the biggest threat to democracy comes from Zuck himself.
Page Two of today’s Guardian tells us that we’re all organ donors now.
Under such a rule detainees in UK immigration centres, prisons and mental homes could have their organs harvested by the UK for profit.
The state could balance its books by overcharging its human supply chain (patients, migrants, prisoners) for food, accommodation and, er, medical costs.
Would the market price for organs be determined by fit or by how hard they are to find?
Either way, this is the work of the notorious Behavioural Insights team, also known as the Nudge Unit.
All very reminiscent of Jonathan Swift’s 1729 Modest Proposal in which he suggests a solution to hunger could be simply to eat poor kids.
Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick,
Local authority easements brought in under the coronavirus bill coupled with the enormous rise in child poverty over the last ten years mean we are already on that road.
Eugenics and depopulation are currently en vogue so why not just legalise cannibalism and be done with it?
Where there is behaviour and decision-making there have to be incentives.
Toxic Nudge is Good for You
Here’s a Nudge Unit paper on boosting organ market supply chains.
It all takes on a sinister dimension in the current corona climate.
As the blog says, behavioural economics and ‘what works’ means doing what works, as opposed to following common sense or tradition.
In the corona climate this might have worked if we had evidence Brits would automatically socially distance and stop the spread.
But we didn’t.
We had no stats and no data.
So the ‘scientific’ advice was bullshit.
But with non-scientists and unidentified members of the SAGE committee (Dominic Cummings? ) appearing to outnumber actual epidemiologists, what chance did UK population stand?
Yesterday Prince Charles said he needed the help of an army of fruitpickers.
The same Charles who helped Jimmy Saville and Church of England paedophile priest Peter Ball.
"We need an army of people to help."
Prince Charles has called on the British public to assist farmers with harvesting fruit and vegetables that might otherwise go to waste due to a lack of workers during the pandemic. https://t.co/nGeaqvV0wPpic.twitter.com/rUrSmjhcAw
Since Brexit the usual pickers (sometimes referred to as migrants) don’t appear to be around.
Would the produce be shared by the volunteer army or sold in shops so the Prince could turn a profit?
Will any of it go to food banks?
Power behaves today as it normally does. But right now it is more noticeable as the powerful are becoming increasingly desperate.
The subsidies that keep the royal food business going are not enough.
Agricultural labourers are not being paid enough money to survive so now he is asking for volunteers. Unbelievable.
The Tory Immigration Bill going through parliament plans to force ‘migrants’ to pay over £600 to use the National Health Service (NHS).
These are workers on low wages doing essential work such picking fruit and working for the National Health Service.
And yesterday the Guardian ran a story about an ex-soldier from Fiji who served in the British Army all over the world and is now being charged thousands of pounds for his NHS medical treatment.
This is obviously not a one-off. The problem is clearly systemic.
He is only in the news because Amelia Gentleman, of the Guardian, knows this is the right time to tell his story.
She reported the Windrush Scandal / Hostile Environment story.
Funnily enough Amelia Gentleman’s husband Jo Johnson was in the cabinet at the time and was wheeled out onto Channel Four News to defend then home secretary Amber Rudd
Since then he has resigned and Amelia continues to do stories about his brother’s government.
The same mentality that gave us the slave trade is in rude health and Dominating today’s government.
French Pharma giant SANOFI will give the first doses of its new coronavirus vaccine to patients in the US according to its CEO.
This is because the US helped fund the vaccine’s development.
But Sanofi is a French firm and many of the scientists who work there were educated at French universities with money that was paid in by French taxpayers.
French politicians have lined up to say the vaccine should be distributed fairly around the world.
Will Bill Gates step in and resolve the situation?
President Trump has created a task force called Operation Warp Speed to stimulate the pharma industry, the government and the military in the hunt for a vaccine.
In the comment section of the business press there is a view that France did not invest in the vaccine so it should not complain about fair access.
Others are saying that of all the stimulus money that has been handed out in the last few weeks, surely some can be used to pay for the vaccine.
The fact that the US has taken the risk is justification for many that US gets priority access.
But as the US has the Federal Reserve, deep and liquid stock markets, and a huge Government budget, does this mean that America will always have priority access to new drugs?
And look at the US death rates for corona virus.
They are capitalising on the vaccine but death rates are enormous.
The regulatory framework in the US is more favourable for vaccine manufacturers as, since 1986, they cannot be prosecuted for harm.
Once favourable data has been collected, Sanofi could then market the vaccine in Europe and the rest of the world.
The firm in question SANOFI are not exactly angels either.
Their epilepsy drug sodium valproate was prescribed to women of child bearing age for many years and has caused enormous abnormalities in many of these women’s children.
Though SANOFI are being investigated by French prosecutors and Abbott, the US firm that manufactured the same drug, have been sued in the US — in the UK mothers and families affected by SANOFI’s valproate still await justice.
Many have been denied legal aid because the Legal Aid Agency decided they didn’t stand a high enough chance of winning their case.
A review is being conducted into drugs and medical devices by Baroness Cumberlege.
These include sodium valproate, primodos and vaginal / surgical mesh devices.
Cumberlege is a former Tory Health Minister and was appointed to head the review by then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
This is the evidence that was given by Emma Friedmann of FACSaware.
WARNING: this evidence is well presented but very disturbing.
Big pharma have enormous influence in Parliament and in Washington DC.
Let us see if they can do the right thing – when encouraged.
This is an ok piece by Daniel Boffey. But it’s a crap headline. Makes you want to turn the page.
The piece is in response to Ursula Von Der Leyen’s speech in Brussels yesterday.
Much of the info should have been all over the papers throughout the last few weeks already.
Especially the last four paragraphs about the dispute over the coronavirus fund.
All the rhetoric coming out of the EU and business press has been for solidarity within the EU.
But allowing Germany to hand a trillion Euros to its firms while watching the other austerity hit economies only hand scraps to theirs means the EU is effectively picking winners.
That’s not solidarity – it’s exactly what the state aid rules are there to prevent.
And when Germany is asked about showing more support to its neighbours it says it is prepared to lend them money but not give out any grants.
So Germany is happy to make a profit lending to its neighbours – the ones it sells to and competes with – but not to actually help them.
It’s like an abusive partner that you can never escape.
Controlling, coercive, but always smiling and telling you that the problem is you.
Easements are the government’s way of getting councils to decide who does not get social care. This could be a disabled child or a senior citizen. The duty of care has been replaced by a power of care – an obligation replaced by a choice.
Heather Stewart of the Guardian has great content in her piece but the headline is tame.
Great picture on front page of the Guardian – very as a matter of fact tone – but the horror is there for all to see.
Also on the front page. The Govt line is to create a false dilemma between public health and recession. Thus getting Guardian readers in touch with their inner Tory.
And finally the main headline – that the Government could have done more to protect care homes. Whilst this is true, justice will never arrive for those who have unnecessarily died.
The fascists in charge of the European Central Bank (ECB) are accusing their critics of being fascists.
The same tactics were used during the Brexit debate, when all Brexiteers were labelled racist.
In the UK more recently all Corbyn supporters were also labelled racists.
So there is a pattern emerging.
But now the target is anyone who criticises the European Central Bank.
The ECB have printed trillions of euros to bailout banks and large companies while allowing austerity to continue to destroy most of Europe.
This goes against its own mandate and The Bank has had to make regular changes to the rules it follows to make sure that whatever it does is legal.
But it never really consults anyone about this. The people of Europe, whom this is all done in the name of, are never asked to approve any of these measures.
So the ECB is an undemocratic institution which will call its critics fascists before asking EU citizens if they approve of its policies.
To pretend the ECB is perfect and beyond reproach is dangerous.
Yet that is what the business press is doing.
Do they think nobody will notice?
That this lack of scrutiny will not create further division and resentment?
So the question we are being asked is effectively, do you want to be ruled by traditional Nazis (ECB) or Neo-Nazis (AfD)?
And the ECB answer is, that their own traditional fascism is the only game in town because – it just is.
We are being told that 501 out of 33,000 prison staff have been infected and only 401 out of 81,000 prisoners.
But prison staff have access to testing whereas prisoners generally don’t.
So how many tests have been carried out on prisoners?
The UK used to publish international comparison charts for the national figures but now refuse to because they say the comparisons are not meaningful.
But they don’t mind comparing prison staff infection rates with prisoners – despite one group being tested and the other not.
If the Ministry of Justice is not publishing this data, they may not even be collecting it.
We are deep in the world of agnotology, opinion forming, Public Relations and government propaganda.
The contact I have had with the MoJ simply via Freedom of Information requests shows them to be wholly dishonest and utterly slippery.
The words in the pdf below were written in response to a freedom of information request concerning the mistreatment of Julian Assange in prison.
Assange FOI
They told me that Julian Assange has not been held in solitary confinement because nobody in Britain is held in solitary confinement.
I pointed them to articles and news videos in the mainstream press stating otherwise, but they stuck to their guns.
The idea that all prisoners are treated equally is laughable when we know that they are not.
That no information will be revealed about the mistreatment of Julian Assange because the people mistreating him want to protect his data and consequently his human rights.
These people are sick. Truly evil.
Guardian
The language in the excerpt at the top is sanitised.
The Guardian is basically providing a platform for Ministry of Justice propaganda, but not providing any analysis or critique.
The truth is being told, but there is also massive distortion.
Why?
Because the real story is not being told.
The government have all the access to the information and they are getting it out on their own terms.
They know the Guardian are dependent on them for future stories and that they can therefore be trusted not to rock the boat.
The corruption in this country is off the charts and platforms such as the Guardian saying so little / nothing about this makes them generally complicit.
I know of some good people who work there and put out brilliant work.
Felicity Lawrence and Diane Taylor in particular.
Paul Lewis has also been doing some great work on the coronavirus contracts for surveillance and the SAGE committee.
But we don’t really have a critical press in this country. They have been bought off by private interests and are more interested in using blackmail and kompromat to pursue private agendas than in holding power to account.
The View has arranged an online art auction and virtual exhibition to raise funds for the second edition of the View Magazine, a magazine for women trapped in the criminal justice system.
This short video was produced yesterday to help promote the auction.
Sarah MapleJohan AnderssenCarolina MazzolariJohan AnderssenFrances Aviva BlaneJake TilsonAnish KapoorJulie BrookBob and Roberta Smith
Hopefully it will serve as a publicity vehicle and more people will subscribe to the magazine.
Here is some more publicity about the magazine.
COVID19 has hit independent magazine The View Magazine’s sponsorship revenue. 13 leading UK artists have stepped up and donate original artwork
● IncarcerationNation a virtual exhibition and online auction, will go online on 8 May 2020 to support the summer issue and continue this important platform for women in the criminal justice system to continue running
● The View Magazine is written by women for women in the criminal justice system, dedicated to our solicitors, advocates, families, friends and supporters
●80% of women in prison have a mental health issue, 50% are victims of abuse
Women need advocates for rehabilitation and reintegration if the cycle of offence and incarceration is to end, art is a proven route to rehabilitation
The View is the only magazine of its kind in the UK containing content written by women prisoners and those on license in the community (with contributions from their families, lawyers and supporters). Created by women in the prison system, the artwork shows the value of creativity for wellbeing and rehabilitation, as well as how it is a profound vehicle for communication and connection.
The second issue focuses on the COVID 19 crisis in women’s prisons and solutions for women to stay safe and healthy with recipes by celebrity chef Ruby Tandoh, using ingredients available to buy from prison canteens. We have also published a letter women can use, with legal advice and links to solicitors who will act for them pro bono, to seek compassionate release on the grounds of vulnerability during the pandemic, for underlying mental health and physical health issues. Appeals Barrister Matthew Stanbury guides women through how to write a grounds of appeal against sentence, in terms that are accessible.
The art speaks to truth, honesty, and power, at the same time as being vulnerable. It’s not just cathartic or therapeutic – the art shows real talent.
As well as providing necessary diversion and emotional escape, art permits the women to express themselves and re-establish their own identity. The art features strong women, identity, psychology and the roles played in society.
Following a successful launch in March of The View Magazine, our partnership and sponsorship team forged good contacts in the legal fraternity for our second issue, in June. Supporters and contributors of The View were interviewed on BBC Radio London and the first issue has had coverage in The Times, Big Issue, Huffington Post and Uncommon Ground Media. Our campaigns to raise awareness of the issues women are facing under COVID 19 and 24 hour lockdowns in prisons were covered on BBC News, Channel 5 News and the Today Program.
The magazine is distributed at no charge to serving women prisoners. We couldn’t have foreseen the COVD-19 crisis and its impact on fundraising. We set up a community interest company last month and none of our staff take a salary. All the contributions go to printing the magazine and disbursing funds to women prisoners for their contributions. COVID-19 struck and the world was tipped off its axis. Promises of support were withdrawn, emails were left unanswered and the business community collectively stopped answering its phone. The View rapidly looked as if it might fade forever from view.
Following the kind donation of a piece of art from celebrated artist Bob and Roberta Smith, our determined partnerships director Simon Burgess reached out to other artists to extend their generosity, and now we have amassed museum quality art from among the UK’s top artistic talent.
More on the magazine:
“The View is an essential and beautifully produced toolkit for women prisoners to survive prison and come out unbroken. I am proud to support this venture and I believe it will equip women and the larger public to become more informed about the state of the women’s estate and the issues such as being hundreds of miles from their children and families that women prisoners endure,” Baroness Uddin, the magazine’s Patron.
“Women in prison are uniquely powerless because they are detained in places that are largely designed and controlled by men. The View is a great idea, it advocates for women in prison and will be a force for positive change to bring prisoners and those who run them together through creativity.” – Ian Acheson, former prison governor and Government Terrorism Expert
“We loved the mag at Downview [women’s prison in Surrey], it was such a breath of fresh air. It tells it like it is and the extra money will be handy when I am released. At last someone is hearing what is happening to us, because The View is the truth. We feel like we have someone to turn to and someone who knows the answers and who doesn’tjudge us like some of the charities that come in here, telling us how it is. You lot know, you lot have been here, in our shoes.” Maggie, prisoner, HMP Downview
Human rights violations are becoming the norm in this country. It is often the authorities who help to deliver them.
The Guardian does not go out of its way to present itself as a racist paper.
But it has to make decisions about who it employs and the coverage it provides.
There may be some degrees of unconscious bias going on.
But how unconscious really is it?
Alan Rusbridger edited the Guardian for many years and has been heard saying that his graduate hiring policy was primarily Oxbridge.
I’m all for reading the brightest and the best.
But does that mean that nobody outside Oxbridge should get a look in?
It’s Ramadan at the moment.
I know this because though I’m not Muslim and unlikely to devote my life to reading the Abrahamic scriptures, I found myself twice last week wolfing down the naughty but nice seasonal sweets sold at the Kurdish grocer round the corner from me.
A lockdown luxury.
I look forward to Ramadan for this – though I am naughty as I do not fast!
Either way, I have Muslim friends. Injustice meted out against anyone is bad.
I am grateful to the otherwise corrupt Guardian for covering some of these issues, though it is far lighter than I would prefer.
Sadly there is so much other under reported injustice that, in this environment, any coverage at all is a blessing.
Abuse of Trust
The way the conservative government collaborates with press barons and abuses the apparatus of government is a huge problem.
Today Priti Patel will be exonerated of all bullying despite plenty of damning evidence appearing in the press.
This is because the inquiry was led by the Cabinet Secretary – Mark Sedwill.
Yes, politics is a dirty game, but Sedwill in particular appears to be more Machiavellian than most.
Like Michael Gove, he will produce contradictory arguments depending on the occasion and the outcome he prefers.
As Groucho Marx famously said, “If you don’t like my principles, I have others”
And then we have Trevor Phillips. Like Priti Patel he is using his ethnicity to hate on ethnics. And he loves it. But what choice did he have? He cut his teeth as racial equality campaigner and now that that sort of thing is no longer in fashion he has no choice but to go the other way.
Ex-Prospect Editor David Goodhart is also at Policy Exchange and has also made the journey from posh lefty to radical racist. Goodhart is descended from one of the Jewish founders of Lehman Brothers. The racism they would have had to contend with is not something Goodhart appears to take into consideration when dishing it out himself. I remember seeing him on Channel Four News during a debate on the Windrush Scandal. He said the entire episode was not the Government’s fault. Very similar approach to the one taken by Mark Sedwill when exonerating Priti Patel, who is currently running this country’s deportation policy and is under no scrutiny whatsoever.
This is still chaired by Blairite Yvette Cooper. One of the three other Labour MPs on the committee is very new, the ‘BME’Janet Daby, and the other two, Shadow Africa Minister Stephen Doughty & Shadow Immigration Minister Holly Lynch supported Owen Smith over Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 coup.
I can’t say too much about Stuart McDonald of the SNP who is also on the committee.
In short, it’s all a bit of a racial and political whitewash.
So there really is no scrutiny of Priti Patel or the most right wing government in living memory when it comes to bullying, racism, immigration, police violence.
I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but I feel it is important to concretely quantify how deep the shit is that we are in.
Feeling it is one thing, talking about it meaningfully quite another.
Over at the European Central Bank things are very much focused on the pandemic. ECB President Christine Lagarde features in yesterday’s video.
But the real story is about Germany not wanting to help its neighbours.
France asked Germany to put money into a coronavirus fund and Germany said it would be happy to give loans to other countries, but not grants.
As a result President Lagarde said she would be happy to increase the ECB’s balance sheet by printing another €750 billion – €1trillion euros to buy a broad range of bonds from AAA Government bonds all the way through to non investment grade junk bonds.
This is highly controversial. It is interesting to see the language being used to describe these moves.
The PR people at the ECB only seem to have let this story out via the FT.
The term they repeatedly use to describe bonds that have been downgraded to junk status is “Fallen Angels”.
The ECB have already been buying bonds for a few years. They launched a QE programme in late 2014 to prop up the Euro and financial markets.
Some views from this morning.
Although we’re told this is a pandemic crisis, the IMF saw it all coming in October:
‘Tis well known they like their football in Newcastle.
Tino Army — Faustian Pact
In January 1996 the club bought flamboyant Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla from Parma.
Known as Tino, Asprilla was a showman and one of the most popular players Newcastle ever had.
However, despite building up a big lead over Manchester United that year, Newcastle only went on to finish second.
The following year Asprilla scored a hat trick against Luis Figo’s Barcelona in the Champion’s League – the last goals he scored for the club.
Asprilla, along with Cantona, Kanchelskis, Zola, Ravanelli, Vialli, Gullit, Ginola, & Desailly, was among the first wave of mid nineties big money overseas transfers in the Premier League.
Agents made big money, as did managers. Former Arsenal boss George Graham was reprimanded for taking ‘bungs’. But he wasn’t the only one.
Corruption existed but didn’t get much coverage.
Match Fixing
Some players got accused of match fixing. Including former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar, Wimbledon goalkeeper Hans Segers and Aston Villa (former Wimbledon) striker John Fashanu.
They cleared their names but Grobbelaar and Segers got done for betting irregularities all the same.
The men had been accused of colluding with a Malay betting syndicate.
In 1992 Lou Macari, former Swindon manager, was accused of betting his side would lose to Newcastle in an FA cup game they lost 5-0. He claimed someone else placed the bet as an insurance against the club exiting the tournament early. And the players were suffering because house prices were so expensive.
In the mid nineties betting rules changed and spread bets were allowed on the timing of throw-ins and the number of corners and yellow cards in a game. These could all be gamed by players. Simple match fixing was no longer the only threat to the integrity of the game.
Arsenal manager, Frenchman, Arsene Wenger knew about match-fixing from his time in France. Olympique de Marseilles, with Chris Waddle, and their owner Bernard Tapie were convicted of it in the early nineties.
Wenger called for the practice of betting on the number of throw-ins and the timing of the first throw-in to be banned.
Sometimes players were seen booting the ball off the pitch right at the start of the game in an obvious attempt to manipulate the timing of the first throw in.
This interfered with the free flow and trust in the game.
Money. By paying the players higher and higher wages, they were less and less incentivised to get involved in match fixing. They still gambled but there have been few match-fixing scandals (to date).
When Marseilles were done for match-fixing they were at their height. They apparently paid opponents to go easy on them in the run up to bigger games.
Johnny Foreigner
The EU Bosman ruling on free transfers and the lifting of the cap on foreign players meant England became the perfect place for talented footballers to retire on fat cash.
Just as the prevalence of ecstasy and rave culture was credited with helping end football violence in the 90s, so too did the influx of foreign players play a role in the fight against racism.
Till then most local clubs were owned by local businessmen, but as club football became televised globally, so too did foreign ownership become normal.
Rise of the Owner Manager
In 1995 Blackburn won the Premier League under Manager Kenny Dalglish. The club was owned by local steel magnate Jack Walker. He famously preferred no black players.
Three years previously (1992) Leeds United had won the title with Eric Cantona as striker.
Their then manager Howard Wilkinson is the last English Manager to have won the English Premier League. (nearly thirty years ago)
So why can’t English Managers win their own League and why can the England football team no longer win tournaments?
Why do England lose?
It is often said (in England) that the English invented football. Maybe this is true.
They certainly helped create many footballing institutions – and the rules.
It is also often said that the English invented the English Language.
From a copyright perspective english is more like an open source set of memes than an actual language in its own right
But, like football, it now belongs to everyone – if you can afford it.
Football, cricket and boxing were all broadcast on terrestrial TV till the early 90s.
At which point they started shifting over to Rupert Murdoch’s paid Sky Sports station.
Ticket prices shot up and many fans were simply priced out.
So yes, England may have invented football, but capitalism and government lobbying stopped many English people from being able to access it in their own homes.
The gap between elite speakers of english and the so-called hoi polloi still exists – though distinctions are far from simple due to the dynamism of English capitalism and, though unfashionable to say, class boundaries.
Of which Pygmalion / My Fair Lady’s Phonetics Professor Henry Higgins was most aware.
An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him, The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.
Hear them down in Soho Square speaking English any way they dare
Just as Professor Higgins wondered “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak? ” FT’s anthropological sport columnist Simon Kuper wrote, Why England lose? also known abroad as Soccernomics.
Now you’re talking
Language is a vehicle for a culture.
In the case of English, it’s like the dollar. The reserve currency. Accepted everywhere.
Sure, the Yuan / Renmibi is the future, and the changeover should have already happened, but it hasn’t.
English is the bastard child of many different vehicles. And it is currently the language of business.
Saudi Arcadia
So when Saudi Arabia buy a British Football Club that is a big deal.
They could have done this years ago but stayed out of UK football.
Leaving the football to the Qataris and Emiratis.
When Brazil’s Neymar moved to Qatar-owned Paris St Germain from Barcelona for €200m in 2017 it was clearly more than just a football transfer.
It was a geo-strategic chess move.
Saudi bought the Salvatori Mundi Leonardo painting around the same time.
Highlighting the difference in their investment strategies.
At the time there was a global PR campaign against Qatar. Saudi had accused them of hosting terrorists. Though this may have been true, the Qatari Royal Family and military were anti-ISIS, whereas Saudi themselves are rumoured to have been funding ISIS.
Butchers without Borders – Boris & MBS in 2016
Buying art and not football teams is in keeping with the old Saudi Arabian way.
But at last year’s Davos in the Desert the managing director of Manchester United spoke about the club’s approach to international marketing and e-sports.
President Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner spoke there too, as did Prime Minister Modi of India and Ali Parsa of Babylon Health.
Saudi PIF have stakes in Babylon Health’s app business which takes NHS money away from GPs (primary care doctors) and pays it out as profit to private shareholders like the Saudi Government.
The logic of a post-Brexit dirty money City of London oligarch playground dictates that you must be present in all markets where there is money to be made.
So instead of a local or even a British businessman owning and running Newcastle United it is now normal that the revenue and profits will start going to Saudi Arabia.
Just as it is quite normal that Saudi are making money undermining the NHS through Babylon.
Butchers without Borders
There is still no covid testing of passengers arriving at UK airports from around the world. Home Secretary Priti Patel, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and London Mayor Sadiq Khan appear to have been silent on this.
Jeremy Hunt the former Health Secretary is now the Chair of the Health Select Committee. He is supposed to be scrutinising his successor on the nation’s health. There is supposed to be a ‘grilling’ tomorrow.
On Thursday 16 April we will be questioning the Secretary of State @MattHancock about the management of the Coronavirus outbreak. pic.twitter.com/vqTipf0poW
— Health and Social Care Committee (@CommonsHealth) April 14, 2020
Given that Hunt himself did so much to turn the health sector from a public service into a profit centre, we can safely presume Hancock is not going to face tough questioning.
For the simple truth about the UK Public Health System NHS story, watch The Great NHS Heist:
Press Freedom
As Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt made a big deal about press freedom around the world, but said nothing about the plight of political prisoner Julian Assange at home.
Assange is currently locked up 23 1/2 hours a day in Belmarsh and has a lung condition. Covid has affected the prison and yet he is not being removed for his own safety. I wonder how many other at risk prisoners have already died of Covid?
It turns out Hunt’s bid for Prime Minister was backed by a close ally of Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – the one who ordered the murder, in Istanbul, of Washington Post Journalist Jamal Kashoggi.
To conclude, there are lots of ways in which judgements can be made about you.
This is not new.
But there are more and more ways in which data can be collected and for it to be twisted against you when you least want it to.
So psychologically prepare for yourself to be attacked.
You need as much access to your own data as the people (or machines) who are going to be deciding your future.
Even having the data may not on its own be enough to get your voice heard when you need it to, as we have very much moved into the age of the jobsworth.
For all the privatisation that has been going on, this is a golden age for officaldom.
The pay may or may not be great but the job is secure and the opportunity for psychopathy is immense.
As we rub up daily against the business methods and logic of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, the Russian, Saudi, Brussels, Chinese and American Governments it is worth remembering that nothing lasts forever.
Surveillance is there to prosecute people. And innocent people will be prosecuted as corporations reinforce the power of the state and vice versa.
As the solider in the Dr Strangelove scene says below –
You’re going to have to answer to the Coca Cola Company
When should lockdown measures be eased? As governments weigh the expert advice from scientists, economists etc, we'd like to know what you think. What is a good #coronavirus exit strategy? Get in touch #BBCTheBriefing and I'll see you at 05:00 BSThttps://t.co/yCDRwt4Ile
The BBC News Presenter’s Tweet above consists of a short question and a statement, followed by another short question.
This is effective communication. Her job is to stimulate discussion. To guide viewers into the issue and also to help set the agenda.
This is the science of public opinion. It overlaps with agenda setting, propaganda and disinformation.
Competing claims don’t always get the same attention.
So who, or what, drives the agenda?
Is it a fixed or ever changing group of people?
Does Agenda Setting strategy depend on the situation?
The following quote is from the wikipedia entry on Agenda Setting
Although this topic would be interesting on any occasion, the current corona virus helps shine light on the workings of agenda setting.
It is much clearer to see the government’s messaging strategy as it is currently so prominent.
This means it is possible to speculate on the government’s objectives and definitively observe its methods.
Below is the oft repeated UK government slogan. It is Orwellian in its gaslighting.
If you have Covid19 you are encouraged to stay at home.
If you don’t have it, you are encouraged to stay at home.
So if you need help, you are encouraged to die quietly at home.
So the Covid19 story in the UK is one of propaganda and accounting.
Few people are being tested so nobody knows who has it and who doesn’t.
This means the disease can spread easily without anyone knowing where the hotspots are.
The technology for tracing is being rolled out late and is instead being used for general surveillance purposes.
The following Guardian article uses the word de-anonymisation to describe ministers taking data about the whole population and using it to target individuals, as you would expect in a full on police state:
NHS coronavirus app: memo discussed giving ministers power to 'de-anonymise' users https://t.co/VddxpDIVHU
This is just one example of the agenda. In France and at EU level the tracing conversation has already started. People know it means surveillance but they are forced to accept it along with all the other government imposed lockdown measures.
The population has trouble fighting draconian government measures at the best of times. But during an unprecedented global reaction to a post-war pandemic it is particularly hard to organise when you’re not even allowed to meet.
The yellow vests in France gathered to oppose Macron every weekend for over a year but have stopped thanks to Macron’s lockdown.
And in the UK all we have been treated to by the corporate backed media has been coverage of Boris Johnson supposedly contracting a severe case of corona virus which necessitated that he self isolate and eventually go to intensive care.
The same agenda setting techniques that were at play during the Brexit campaign are being redeployed during the corona virus.
The aim is not to defeat the virus.
It is to make sure the Conservative government cling to power and deflect all scrutiny away from them and onto anyone else such as the public, health care professionals, public commentators, regulators, suppliers, large corporations and even the opposition.
The following quote by Peter Pomerantsev is taken from the wikipedia entry on Vladmir Surkov, Vladimir Putin’s long standing head of communications.
It is hard not to see similarities with the way modern Britain is run. More effort is made here to convince the public that the government does not interfere with independent regulators, that there are checks and balances in place to protect the public.
But when something is important, then it’s political, and you simply can’t argue with the decision because no-one will hear you out or give you a platform.
Britain is a brilliant place to be rich and powerful. Otherwise you must do what you can to survive.
The Daily Mail has been one of the only periodicals to cover the permanent scandal taking place at the Court of Protection.
Here’s the story:
Here’s the Editorial:
I have long said that when the Mail is bad it is evil but that when it is good it is brilliant.
Christopher Booker, who passed away last year, used his Sunday Telegraph column to, amongst other things, report on the war against families and specifically senior citizens being conducted by the Family Courts and Court of Protection.
Now that we are entering a period of draconian legal power grabs, there is no reason why the Family Courts and Courts of Protection wouldn’t find a way of granting themselves and their select clients yet more anonymised and unaccountable power.
UK Health Minister Nadine Dorries started exhibiting coronavirus symptoms on 5th March while signing a coronavirus statutory instrument in Parliament.
I don’t think there’s anything worth celebrating here, though I must say, I’ve never like Dorries. It is remarkable that she is a Health Minister as she is more famous for being very right wing and a writer of chick lit.
Here’s a bit more on statutory instruments. Looks like they can bring in quite sweeping rule changes with these.
Jesus among the Doctors
What is going on around here then? Jesus is getting some pointers from his mum in the Temple perhaps.
I wonder what he would have done during a time of Coronavirus.
As a religious man, would he have had the time to associate with the non religious?
UK Infectious Diseases Report 2006
Of course today the only valid religions being financialisation and, er, that’s it.
The consumer society with its sexualisation of food and travel has a lot to answer for. If it weren’t for our permanent need to travel around the world we wouldn’t have diseases like Coronavirus spreading so quickly.
But where is this disease really from?
If Russia did start it (not saying they did) then they have played a blinder. But where do we go next? They have had an Oil War with Saudi, managed to influence elections and social media generally and yet they behave as though have no real aggression planned.
Henry Kissinger told me when portraying a miser always remember to stress his generosity. And so we come full circle. The age of austerity, for which I am the poster child, is upon us. But never so much as what is to come. The billionaire class must be allowed to live in a world of abundance. But the rest of us must learn to multiply at an ever decreasing rate. For automation requires of us no more than to fuel the automation. A bit of nepotism is also known to grease the wheels. Automated nepotism is the way we are going. There was too much new school meritocracy in the past. But once you are admitted you must learn to think differently. To keep your kith and kin down. If you can’t get used to that, you don’t deserve to survive. It’s not a loyalty competition. It’s just random mutation.
Sexual Harassment, Psychological Abuse, Self-Harm, Mental Health, & Privatisation Contracts
Farah Damji edits a magazine for female prisoners called The View.
She granted me an interview yesterday.
We spoke about the state of the prison system, specifically for women.
The conversation lasted an hour and twenty minutes.
The issues she raises are not getting out into the public eye.
If the public were to discuss these matters, billions of pounds worth of outsourcing contracts with the Ministry of Justice would be jeopardized.
Because the public would realise that billions of pounds spent on providing services for prisoners from education, rehabilitation to mental health is being tragically wasted.
We are talking about large scale corruption and incompetence.
But most people are simply not interested in ‘Prison Reform’.
There is enormous waste in the Ministry of Justice, where contracts are tendered to private and third sector organisations with little or no scrutiny and are causing actual harm.
This should be a scandal on the scale of the infected blood and the sexual abuse inquiries.
This is a recent article Farah has written on Medium.
The mainstream media’s coverage of Farah in the press is simply hysterical. She is demonized and made to look mad, bad and dangerous. But she has never committed a violent offence.
There are false reports of a Personality Disorder diagnosis — she suffers from C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), a condition which is exacerbated in prison. At Farah’s trial in Southwark Crown Court last week the Judge, HHJ Gledhill QC, made it clear he found it offensive that Farah knows her rights.
She is a woman who demands that her rights and those of all women in the criminal justice system are observed.
Somehow, this is pathologised and made dangerous by the very agencies meant to ensure that they observe the rights of the most vulnerable women in society.
Farah has written extensively about G4S and privatisation, including in a prison newsletter she started called The View, and is worried that if she is incarcerated again, she will be suicided by the state and become another death in custody statistic.
At the bottom of Farah’s recent medium post, some the View Magazine’s supporters are named. Amongst them are Baromess Uddin, Courtenay Griffith QC and Peter Woolfe the restorative justice campaigner.
Farah has identified that amongst The View’s supporters are, New Economics Foundation and Big Society Capital which are conduits for the sanitisation of privatisation.
They support hedge funds and private for profit companies board the criminal justice gravy train.
Though Farah has identified the sinister effect of privatisation on the well being of prisoners, it is these very purveyors of performance related social impact bonds that have also helped support her newsletter.
This type of philanthrocapitalism preys on the most vulnerable in society and gamifies and monetises their suffering.
As Lenin once said, The Capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.
Or in this case, the prison owners will lease you the laptop on which you describe the torture & drug dependency their shareholders impose upon you.
Which they then turns into a performance-related financial derivatives market.
The seasoned paedo enablers at the Sun could tap into their homophobic and racist side.
But what prejudice can the white paedo nationalists evoke when duelling with heterosexual white male capitalist Phil Hogan?
If they want a spat, he’ll bring it.
Hogan and Murdoch have a lot in common.
Cold heartless Neo-Liberalism.
But Hogan used to be the EC agriculture commissioner.
He will want to protect Irish farmers from US hormone and chemicals crossing the border.
He has also pushed through laws in financial services and won’t want Ireland’s tech and tax avoidance rackets to be played with.
Even Steve Bannon would have little to say about Phil Hogan who is smarter, tougher, more Irish and more capitalist than the billionaire dependent US Rasputin.
But in as much as you can describe it, it can adhere to communicative principles, for instance:
This article appears in the Sun.
Pay Fury is efficient signalling. Pay is a short word and Fury is highly emotionally loaded. It’s words like this which earn tabloids their money. Fury is a brilliant word for a tabloid style article on anything you wish to highlight.
Pay Fury is a category, a genre in itself.
You can trot this out forever and it will always work.
Health Killjoys pocket £100k
Killjoy is loaded – it means meanspirited, no fun.
Pocket when used as a verb is like trouser – it means took home or earned but is more evocative of securing funds without really working for them, ie stealing.
More than 350 nanny state killjoys pocketed x for y.
The language is of sensation and excess. The emotion, morality, direction, size, certainty, outrage are all embedded in just a few words. That is what words can do. And if you know how to get words to do these things, then you can achieve big things. The tabloid press exist for agenda setting.
“For telling us what to do”
What do the top managers at the Sun earn?
They tell their readers what to think about. They don’t mention what they don’t want anyone to know.
They obviously underpay the underlings.
But the overall goal is to undermines public services and promote post-Brexit private healthcare.
All communicators should be monitoring this paper.
For uncut real time agenda setting you need to stick your head in The Sun.
Few call out how similar the line the Daily Mail trots out is to Labour’s.
Alex Brummer, the Mail’s City Editor, is forever warning about foreign takeovers.
So’s Larry Elliott of the Guardian.
Mail Business Editor Ruth Sunderland who, like Brummer, is ex Guardian, can’t stand Corbyn and McDonnell.
Despite holding identical views on the fleecing of the worker, the consumer, and the shareholder.
So is this country’s progressive opposition actually just an occasional alliance between the few business journos that manage to get genuine stories into the press, and a few backbench & opposition MPs who then put them in front of Select Committees?
Does the non-binding scrutiny of select committees lead to consistent meaningful progressive change?
The very few people who own newspapers, tv stations and silicon valley social media platforms can, of course, run their own campaigns.
And of course there may be some autonomy in the News Room.
For the rest of us, the shop is closed.
Progressive change is slow and often torpedoed by lobbyists.
But how else to allow the “growth” of the economy while allowing for a bit of social justice?
This appears to be as far as Press Barons would stretch — they are the ones who matter — guardians of public opinion — controllers of dissent.
And they prefer their ad revenue, tax avoidance, financial portfolios and blackmail rackets to acknowledging their readers’ views thirst for community, opportunity and genuine political change.
So real change, at scale, never happens.
Foreign Takeovers
British Steel and Cobham are traditional UK Industrial and Defence firms. If they are to be key to the UK’s future strategy then they ought to be saved. But if the UK plans to be the farm on tax competition and financialisation at the cost of everything else then these industries as well as many others will be let go of sharpish.
Let’s see if central government cross subsidises loss making industries and regions in return for precious votes. I hope it does.
It’s quid pro quo in the devolved political market place.
But what about the people who have been losing out down south, particularly in cities like London?
And will UK Small & Medium Size Enterprises get any help exporting abroad?
Or will Big Capital rule the day and allow the UK to become a hedge fund only environment with all industries sold off?
Deregulation doesn’t stand still.
