1st November 2013
A BBC webpage reports this morning that John Kerry has conducted a conference call to The Open Governmnet Partnership summit in London via videolink. He said that in some cases in the past NSA surveillance has gone too far. He wanted to reassure innocent individuals that they are not being abused in any way through intelligence gathering practices. America’s aim I think is to now set down clear rules, for the spies and for our information, as to what is acceptable behaviour going forward.
As this incident has been publicised on a BBC webpage I shall record it too. Apparently in fact it is the latest of five or six air strikes Israel has carried out over Syria this year. The information has come solely from the Americans and is the bombing of some Russian made missiles in the north of the country thought to be on route to Hezbollah.
2nd November 2013
I am happy to write this down. I think it shows an arguable benefit of secrecy or, as I would prefer to put it, privacy. Now I have done some searching I see Nawaz Sharif has been to London a bit recently. He called in on his way back from the United Nations General Assembly a couple of weeks ago. Then he was here last Monday for the ninth meeting of the World Islamic Forum. On that day he had a meeting with Mr Karzai and Mr Cameron. Then yesterday you have the reported killing by an American drone of the Pakistani Taliban leader in his northern base in the country, the day before peace talks were due to start between the Pakistani government and the Taliban. No offical comment has been made by either the American nor the Pakistani authorities. The only way you can make sense of that, it seems to me, is for the Americans to have recently shared, in private, intellingence with Mr Sharif and Mr Karzai to the effect that those peace talks would not have gone very well. They informed the gentlemen of their plans. Now the sucessful deed has been carried out things seem pretty calm this morning.
In an event which reminds me of the Annecy killings two guards, members of the political party, were shot dead yesterday in a drive by shooting outside the offices of Golden Dawn in Athens. The two murderers, with helmets and leathers, drove up on a motorbike. It seems highly likely they were paid assassins. It would be interesting to know where they were from. The police should find out as there is CCTV evidence apparently and there will be spent cartridges at the scene. The danger now is that Gang induced violence will break out.
It has emerged that the alleged 17 year old murderer of Thavisha Peiris had an alleged accomplice, a 25 year old man with an Asian name. Both have now been charged.
The Edward Snowden story has taken, for me, an unexpected turn. He has been visited by a German Green MP in Moscow and said he would be pleased to receive German investigators so he can brief them on his spying activities for the NSA. Edward is soon to start work as a technical consultant for a major Russian website.
Meanwhile Germany has teamed up with Brazil to propose a resolution for the UN General Assembly later this month. It wants confirmation that any modern surveillance techniques used by member states do not breach a citizen’s human rights under international law. Any resolution will not be binding but it will carry moral authority, especially if it is passed by a large majority. I expect small countries will be totally in favour. It will be interesting to see how the powerful ones react.
In 1998 a man wrote a book about him being an informer for the Royal Ulster Constabulary whilst also a member of the IRA and INLA. In the early 1980s he provided information which led to the arrest of about 100 dissidents of whom 35 were charged with terrorism offences. He testified at their trial in 1984 but it collapsed. Since then he has been in hiding now living under an assumed identity somewhere in south east England. It seems the experience has affected his mental health. He is concerned about his safety and, according to a BBC webpage appearing on the BBC Kent site yesterday, his case has been taken up by his doctor or doctors. The corporation have seen a letter a medical professional wrote last month to MI5. It seems his NHS team are themselves worried for his well being and have therefore asked MI5 to take responsibility for their patient’s safety going forward. I don’t think there is much chance of that myself.
Niger, on the southern boundaries of Libya and Algeria, is apparently on a major human smuggling route to Europe. Last week a group of refugess were being driven northward in two trucks through the desert in the country to Algeria. The vehicles apparently broke down. The refugees’ drivers and minders said they would go for help. They did not return. 52 children, 33 woman and seven men died from dehydration.
There was a discussion about prostitution on Today yesterday. In Sweden, Norway and Iceland it is legal to sell prostitution services but not to buy them. The idea is to reduce, and ultimately eliminate the demand side of the equation. It seems to be a successful model. France could be imposing fines on clients in the near future. Authorities in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland and Finland are moving in that direction as well. I do also feel though that there should be regulated, legal brothels for those men who perceive they need them.
In the Business Questions section of last weekend’s FT was featured a company owner who had had to make redundancies in his small firm. The process had produced a demoralising effect on the remaining employees. The replying expert said that is known as survivor syndrome. You feel guilty you are still there. He said the key to managing the situation is a combination of communication, collaboration and commitment.
3rd November 2013
I wrote about my lavatory experience in Hampshire on 20th October 2013. I don’t like being messed around so I was probably cross but even so if the young lady had looked different when I saw her I believe it likely I would have reacted differently. However she immediately came over as a nice person. She did not mean me any harm. In that circumstance I think I instinctively tried to show her she was getting herself mixed up in quite dangerous things which could get her into trouble.
Ken Clarke was interviewed on The World this Weekend today. He said he did not think Muslim women should wear a full face veil when in the witness box in a jury determined court case. Members of the jury have to decide whether the lady is telling the truth. To do that they need to see all the signals given out by her face and body as well as hearing the sound of her voice.
Secret time again. By chance I happened to see a bit of the Andrew Marr Show on a neighbour’s television screen this morning and I have looked at it on iPlayer this evening. Andrew interviewed Elton John. In my book and on 3rd July 2013 I say he is one of my favourite singers. He is actually a hero. You see so many people in life who face insurmountable odds and succumb to them. Through chance meetings with Bernie Taupin and David Furnish he has worked through those and come out on top, a rounded, contented man. This morning he said he is a musican and he wants to bring people together through his music. His songs in ths past have always been a source of emotional comfort to me. Funnily enough though, in recent times I have not wanted to listen to them. Somehow it would be the wrong thing to do. This is not a time for me when I should be trying to make myself feel happy.
David Miliband was on after Elton. He said the Syrian situation is now apocalyptic. It’s neighbours of Lebanon, Jordon, Turkey and Iraq are under seige. They need support on the scale of the Marshall Plan America introduced to help Europe after the Second World War. Without that sort of initiative they are likely to buckle under the weight of misfortune, with unfortunate consequences for us all.
The last guest was Culture Secretary, Maria Miller. She said she is relaxed about the press setting up their own system of regulation. If it works and has public support she will be the first to applaud it.
When I wrote about the doctor’s surgery on 10th October 2013 I thought, if someone else wanted to publicise it, I really didn’t mind saying something about it too. I imagine Sir David Tang must have thought in much the same way when compiling his Agony Uncle column for last weekend’s FT. When I started reading, it seemd a completely innocuous question. A reader had noticed a man with a female companion fall asleep at another table when dining in a London restaurant. He asked how a lady should best handle such a situation. It turned out the woman was Sir David’s wife and he was the man. He met the issue head on and wrote an entertaining response.
From a radio newspaper review I understand The Oserver this morning has highlighted one of those impossible situations you often get for a weaker party. In this case that position is held by a restaurant goer. It seems some of us pesky people have been booking tables and then not turning up. Some eating places in London are now refusing to take reservations because more than enough people walk through the front door anyway. In that situation many diners apparently are happy to queue in the street, sometimes for two hours. Even if you have never committed a no show in your life and you want to eat at a nice place that is what you will have to do too. The answer of course would be for restaurants to penalise those who mess them around and not the rest of us, such as by taking a refundable booking deposit. It seems however that would be too much trouble for them.
Justin Welby was on the Sunday Programme this morning and obviously takes an expansive, energetic view of how he can best serve God. He was speaking from a World Council of Churches meeting in South Korea and has recently been to Kenya, Iceland, Japan and Hong Kong. He says he feels immensly privileged to be in the position he is.
There has been no official comment but there was a disturbance involving 40 inmates at Maidstone prison yesterday afternoon. No one was hurt. The Prison Officers Association suggest tensions have arisen because cuts in resources mean it’s members cannot provide services expected by prisoners. They fear there could be further trouble.
The US Secretary of State is currently in Egypt, on an unannounced visit for security reasons. Mr Kerry said that history has demonstrated democracies are more stable, viable and prosperous than any alternative. The stability they create brings tourism, investment and jobs.
4th November 2013
A Muslim man has been leading an apparently normal life in west London. Unbeknown to many acquaintences however he was an uncharged suspected terrorist being monitored by a private contractor for our authorities by means of a GPS electronic tag. At 10am yesterday he went to a local community centre. He was still there at 3.15pm, two hours after Ken Clarke’s interview to BBC radio was broadcast. At some time after he walked out wearing a woman’s burka, with no tag, and hasn’t been seen since.
I am confused about the role of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. In my letter of application of 4th April 2009 I asked them to carry out their own investigation into the workings of Kent Police because I did not wish to personalise any issues. When they told me that would not be possible I provided them with the names of three officers, as they asked. Yesterday however I read a BBC webpage informing me they would be carrying out an independent investigation into the plebgate affair as they consider there were procedural irregularities in West Mercia Police’s own internal report. Neither are the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee happy with evidence given to them by two of the three Police Federation officers last week which they now consider to have been incomplete. They have called them back for tomorrow.
5th November 2013
The Sergeant and the Detective Sergeant will be in the Commons later. Meanwhile a BBC webpage published this morning gives me more details. I feel it noteworthy that the two are not as senior as the third man involved, an Inspector, and did not speak to the media immediately after the Sutton Coalfield meeting. Mr Vaz has been on breakfast televison this morning and I understand the issues which concern his committee are that one man denied he made a derogatory remark about the Home Secretary and the other apparently did not give a full account of his disiplinary record when asked. On the first point it seems highly likely Mr Mitchell must have made a copy of his recording available to the committe since last week’s hearing.
I forgot to record it but over the weekend Mr Vaz said of Mr Mitchell’s predicament that if it could happen to a cabinet minister what hope is there for anyone else. To be critical I doubt if events would have unfolded in the way they did had Mr Mitchell been totally transparent from the word go. Perhaps that was the politician in him. Swearing, in the scheme of things, I believe is not a big thing. The public I consider would have been understanding, especially if he had given minimal details about his hard day. However as soon as the Gang saw his defensiveness they went in for the kill. The accused lack of transparency was what the Police Federation concentrated on outside the MP’s constituency office.
North Korea state media has revealed that one of it’s submarines sunk on 13th October 2013. A picture has been released of Kim Jong-un at a naval cemetery viewing many tombstones. I have no doubt that secret intelligence agencies around the world know exactly what that was all about. Is there any terrible reason why we can’t be told as well?
5th November 2013
I thought Rebekah Brooks and her husband, and her former personal assistant and her partner, all looked remarkably confident as they walked into the Old Bailey yesterday after the weekend break of their trial. The prosecution presented their case on Friday. I wonder if the defendants know something we don’t.
A prominent Bangladeshi man, now living in London, was interviewed with his lawyer on Today this morning. In his absence he has been sentenced to death by a Dhaka court for killing 18 intellectuals in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. He contends it is not true and accuses the court of being corrupt and politically motivated. His lawyer says the legal process lacks credibility.
In researching for that paragraph on the BBC website I see there was a 30 hour army revolt in the country in 2009 over pay and other grievances. 57 officers were killed. A court has just sentenced 152 mutineers to death.
The drama of today’s Home Affairs Committee hearing is over. I thought both policemen came over as sincere. One of them in particular did not want to say sorry for what he had done. As he felt like that I think it should have been left there. None of us know what is being said to him in private. The chair of the IPCC told the MPs she hopes her investigation will be finished by the end of the year.
There is a report in today’s Independent, from Edward Snowden information, that the British embassy in Berlin has a listening station on it’s roof to spy on the nearby Bundestag and Chancellor’s offices. A BBC webpage has a picture of the tent like structure concerned. That really isn’t acceptable. I do hope Mr Cameron did not know, especially after he and his family were made so welcome for the night at the Merkels’ official residence in April 2013.
There is a programme on BBC Four at the moment highlighting that the remains of seven of the 16 people executed by the IRA between 1971 and 1981, killed for various perceived wrongs, have never been found. They are referred as The Disappeared.
6th November 2013
It seems international drug gangs have moved into Peru in a big way. The poor people in the coca growing region of the north have benefited as it has brought economic activity to their area. Newsnight reported last night that nine out of ten drug mules to Europe get through. A former drugs adviser in the country said treating the problem as a military war is like trying to catch the wind. The only way forward is a socioeconomic, political approach not by one country but globally.
I was travelling clockwise in my car around the M25 for a meeting. When I have done that before, for this particular series in which I am currently taking part, I have invariably been delayed for a Gang induced reason in my opinion. This morning was a little different caused, I suspect, through me delaying myself on Friday by unnecessarily avoiding the clockwise M25 in Hertfordforshire when it was only the anti-clockwise carriageway which was fully closed. As I came up to junction eight the gantry sign said there was a 40 minutes delay between junctions 8 and 10, the first time I have seen a time delay message expressed in that way. Every sign up to 10 then warned there was congestion, an obstruction in the road or a queue ahead. Over that stretch I became stationery three times in all, for short periods each time, the first coming up to the joining slip road at 9 and the third for the one at 10. I was held up for no more than five minutes. The Gang thought I would try and miss the told-of hazard and wanted to have a laugh at my expense. Their confidence levels must be really low.
It is reported today that Swiss scientists have completed their examination of the remains of Yasser Arafat who died in 2004. They have found high levels of the radioactive substance polonium-210. It was also that poison which killed Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
We were not told at the time as far as I am aware but Dungeness nuclear power station in Kent went down during last week’s storm, as reported by a BBC webpage today. It had it’s own power cut meaning that it’s two reactors, which have the capacity to supply 1.5 million homes, were automatically shut down. So far one of it’s two reactors has been brought back online with engineers still working on the other one.
I gave my thoughts about the death of the Pakistani Taliban leader on Saturday. Last night Jemima Khan was on Channel 4 News speaking about a film she has made criticising the American drone programme in Pakistan. Then this morning I heard a clip of her former husband, Inrhan Khan, giving an interview to the BBC. He combined the approaches of the Labour Party in the House of Commons Syrian bombing vote and Mrs Merkel’s when talking about her mobile phone, it seems to me. He said it was inexplicable that the Americans should intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign country just as it was about to start peace talks to end it’s insurrection. That is not the way you treat a friend. I think it likely he was not being entirely truthful about what he knew. But he is a politician. I trust he was speaking in a manner which he thought best represented his fellow countrymen. And if the Americans and his Prime Minister are being totally secretive I really don’t think you can criticise him too much for using that to his political advantage. Mr Khan says that unless the Americans cease their drone strikes he will close all supply routes to Afghanistan which pass through areas where he has administrative control.
Then another example of politicians flexing their muscels I feel came up in the broadcast over the escaped burka dressed terrorist suspect. The Met Police Counter Terrorism Command, MI5 and the UK Border Agency have been told they must create a task force to see if they can find him. I look upon that as a form of punishment.
The programme also covered the possible bullying and coercion of relatively low paid administrative workers at a Colchester NHS hospital. They were told by their managers to alter data in computer syatems to make it appear the hospital was treating cancer patients more efficiently that it really was. They spoke to their union, Unison, some time ago who took the matter to the Care and Quality Commission. The QCC findings have resulted in an investigation being carried out I imagine by the Essex and Kent Police Serious Crime Inspectorate.
The broadcast also covered the news that the rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have said they are giving up their arms and entering into political discussions with the government. The government contend that is because the rebels have been militarily defeated.
Towards the end of the programme an author was arguing that some political decisions in recent and older history can hardly be said to have been in the best interests of ordinary citizens. The historic example he gave was how participating countries gave up the Gold Standard so they could print money to finance their armanent purchases in preparation for the First World War. With the loss of that discipline Wikipedia informs me prices doubled in Britain and America after the war, tripled in France and quadrupled in Italy. Germany of course had hyperinflation. For the present day savers have not received any meaningful return on their cash deposits over the last five years.
I heard on the BBC TV News this evening that the hoped for Geneva Syrian peace talks have been postponed as there is no opposition consensus. That is all you can do in such a situation I feel, hold out the hope of future progress. In any completely interdependent group you can only move forward at the pace of the slowest member. 120,000 Syrians have now been killed in the conflict.
Channel 4 News tonight managed to speak to the Commonwealth Secretary General about Sri Lanka, something they have been trying to do I think for months. The progamme’s investigations have discovered that Mr Sharma did not advise Commonwealth foreign ministers at a meeting in January 2013 that he had received lawyers’ reports stating the Sri Lankan government had illegally sacked it’s chief justice a few week’s earlier. It seems likely next week’s summit of Commonwealth heads of government would not be taking place if he had. I didn’t think Mr Sharma’s explanations for his silence were very convincing.
The next item was about spying, prior to a parliamentary hearing tomorrow. Tom Clarke stood on the beach at Bude in Cornwall and showed us where the underground telegraph warning sign marks the place where the fibre optic cables from America come ashore which I wrote about on 7th May and 22nd June 2013. Then he drove to the entrance gates of a GCHQ listening station a few miles inland which no doubt collects all the data passing through those cables for our Tempora surveillance programme.
7th November 2013
Following the delay in any Geneva peace talks I suspect, there seems to have been an upsurge in fighting in Syria today. A BBC webpage reports that government forces have taken a key rebel town just south of Damascus.
The Shrink and The Sage feature in last weekend’s FT Magazine was musing on whether the lady doth protest too much. For those with a set view I feel it can be a shallow form of words allowing you not to think about the substance of what the other person is saying. A similar expression is, he would say that wouldn’t he. A neighbour used it to me some years ago about a minor car accident I had had with his daughter which I didn’t think was entirely my fault. I mention it in chapter 5 of my book. It stopped the conversation stone dead. There was no point in me saying any more. I immediately accepted full liability.
I am sure The Commonwealth is extremely inportant to the Queen. She will always want to nurture and protect it’s ideals.
Yesterday it was the Secretary General of the Commonwealth on Channel 4 News. Tonight it was the Foreign Secretary. Mr Hague said that he and Mr Cameron thought it more important to engage with those of different views at next week’s summit rather than refuse to participate. I agree with that stance.
Both men are arguing their position out in public. Our three security service chiefs had the opportuniy to do the same thing in front of the Intelligence and Security Committee of both Houses of Parliament earlier in the day. It did not happen like that though. Andrew Parker said that 34 terrorist plots had been disrupted since July 2005. However, as far as I am aware, he was asked no critical questions about that statement. His job is to protect us. It is a frightening subject. We should accept it to be true. That is the culture of the world in which he exists.
We spend £2 billion a year on our secret services. They are big organisations. I suspect people who work for them must feel like very small pegs on a massive board. They are not encouraged to think for themselves, as did Edward Snowden. The bodies seem to be obsessed with catching the maximum amount of intelligence it is humanly possible to obtain, whether it is needed or not. I have no doubt whatsoever that that attitude has seeped over from the Gang. Organised Crime though have a few focused individuals who know exactly what they want to do with their treasure trove of detail. I wonder sometimes if any of the good guys can see the wood for the trees.
The three men almost seemed to be pleading with us to let them go back to their world of secrets where they feel comfortable. They used emotion not rationale. Trust us without thought so we can exit off stage again. However the image came over all the time of a lack of confidence camouflaged by game playing. Every news report told us how the live transmission was being delayed by two minutes, to protect our secrets. How horrible though for the three men to be aware they coudn’t be trusted to say the appropriate thing. That decision was being made, as Gary O’Donoghue hinted on Today this morning, by some powerful hidden person in a control room somehwere. And we were all meant to think, what a marvellous idea. Not that anyone is laughing at us though, of course.
From a Newspaper Review on Today this morning I am aware the creator of the world wide web has spoken about the agencies’ decision to nullify the security encryption of our messages by private firms on a consummate basis. He has called it appalling and foolish. Mr Berners-Lee is not a man who seeks the limelight. I imagine his thought could be that if he speaks too often it will only encourage those with less noble motives, who have no values, to always put the opposite view. That of course just confuses. Sir Tim I feel only speaks publicly if he thinks it pretty important.
Yesterday in Parliament on the programme played a clip of David Camerron accusing Ed Miliband, in relation to Labour’s links with the unions, of being like the mayor of a Sicilian town in his dealings with the Mafia. They are the power behind my throne and I can’t do anything about it.
Glen Greenwald was on the broadcast speaking from Brazil. He was at pains to say that he and his colleagues have acted throughout in a responsible manner. They have not divulged any names or methods which would endanger the safety of individuals nor states. Apparently Mr Greenwald wrote an article in the Guardian shortly after the Boston bombings. He argued that the affect of that terrorism on the residents of the city was exactly the same as for people in the Pakistani tribal lands. They have bombs dropped onto their neighbourhoods from American drones, now piloted from Pennsylvania.
I heard Hazel Blears, a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, speak on Newsnight tonight. She accepted that her group had not been told the name, Tempora, of GCHQ’s listening programme. However she believed she knew all she needed to know about it. Nevertheless if I, as a regulator, had not been told something so simple as the code name of an operation I would start to wonder what else, of more significance, it was not thought worthwhile to tell me. I suspect Ms Blears would feel uncomfortable if it were suggested she had not been acting in an independent way, so it is probably not a subject she would want to think about too deeply. I am not suggesting that GCHQ have set out to deceive, only that they perhaps think to themselves they should not totally trust everybody they come into contact with, even if they are MPs. Just as it is not Mr Greenwald’s job to decide what we should and shouuld not be told about secret intelligence neither is it, in my view, GCHQ’s.
8th November 2013
Last Friday’s FT ran a front page story saying the US Treasury were having a dig at Germany for running a large current account surplus restricting the movement of money around it’s economy. It seems the German finance minister was quite upset retorting that no action on his part was required. Nevertheless the eurozone’s inflation rate dropped in October to 0.7% probably influenced by the deflationary effects of the German economy. It seems however the message was received by the European Central Bank. Yesterday they unexpectedly reduced the euro benchmark interest rate from 1% to 0.5%.
Iran, Iraq and Bahrian are all predominantly Shia Muslim countries, although the denomination is greatly in the minority in the Arab world as a whole. An article in the paper suggests that America wants Prime Minister Maliki to bolster the Sunni tribes in Iraq so they can counter the al-Qaeda insurgency now overwhelming his country. Monthly death rates are currently 1000, similar to the 2008 level. Mr Malaki was in Washington at the time asking to buy military arms and it seems that was America’s condition.
Reading it seven days later I would call David Gardner’s piece there, prescient. He says Iran is supporting both Iraq and Lebanon behind the scenes. And he links Iran and Syria irrevocably together, saying Mr Assad is now completely dependant on the Iranians. He identifies the potential pressure Mr Rouhani must sense. The President has produced forward momentum but unless he shows some tangible results soon those destructive forces within Iran will overtake him. Whilst Israel and Sunni Saudi Arabia seem quite phased by the prospect Mr Obama, David suggests, would like Iran to succeed. His apparent dithering in dealing with Syria has given Sunni jihadism there a great boost. A confident Shia Iran would help him no end.
After a positive paragraph I have to note another entry in the edition that fighting between the Mozambican rebels, Renamo, and the government is the worst it has been for 20 years. People are worried that law and order is breaking down.
A well reasoned article appears, in my view, by Philip Stephens. He says mainland European leaders have strong political will but essentially Mrs Merkel is a cautious lady. The EU needs strenthening and her probable approach will be to have specific treaty changes drawn in a way that no popular referendums are required.
A piece in last Saturday’s FT mentions that France has both internal and external intelligence serves, like us and I think Germany. Apparently the latter in France carry out mass communication suveillance just like GCHQ.
There is also a page of analysis on spying in that edition. A former White House official says American agencies were given the money, particularly after 9/11, and then left pretty much to themselves. The distinction has always been made in America I think between suveillance of foreigners and it’s own nationals. Bearing in mind that the top Gang leaders are American I suppose that is understandable.
In the companies section of the paper Brooke Masters writes that regulators are wringing their hands over the foreign exchange rate manipulation story that broke last week. Their idea for sorting out Libor was to make it based on actual trades rather than forecasts but that is the way Forex has always been set. The new thinking seems to be that discovered wrong doing will be punished where it really hurts, in the bankers’ own pockets. It is hoped that might create a bit of discipline.
Another indication of Saudi Arabia’s present mindset was shown, I feel, during Newsnight on Wednesday. Mark Urban reported that the Kingdom has secured the potential delivery of nuclear missiles to be put on their soil at short notice, should it ever appear Iran are about to obtain the same capability. The war heads have been put aside for them by the Pakistani authorities and are ready to go.
In many ways the NHS seems to be a beleaguered institutioin. A BBC webpage reports today that, because it is so fretful, the Service spends £700 in negligence insurance cover for every baby it delivers on it’s wards. Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committe, calls that situation absolutely scandalous.
Another MP with a bone to pick is the chair of the Home Affairs Committee when talking about immigration. We have got ourselves in a terrible mess in implementation of our policies. Good meaning citizens report over 150 allegations each day that they have come into contact with an illegal visitor. Only 1.5% of those reports are followed up. Keith Vaz says it is about time the government started to take some effective action.
9th November 2013
The Iranian nuclear talks are now in an unscheduled third day in Geneva. The foreign ministers of America, the UK, France, Germany Russia, and an official from China, have flown in so they can take any important decisions which are required. The mood music is good. However I thought Mr Hague spoke wisely in the BBC webpage video clip I saw. He pointed out he cannot see into the future so he doesn’t know if final agreement will be made this weekend. He hopes it will. If not the parties will not give up. They will continue talking and build on the foundation which has been created to date.
I went on the BBC Kent website this morning to look up an address and found a clip there of the Kent PCC, Ann Barnes, receiving quite a grilling from Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics show. She said she really likes her job. It is challenging, exhilaratingly and she loves talking to local people whom it it is all about.
Last Monday’s FT reported on the imminent opening of London Gateway on the Thames at the site of the former Shell Haven refinery near Thurrock. It is a £1.5 billion investment by it’s Dubai based owner and will be able to dock the biggest ships in the world. The port comes with enough land to build Europe’s largest logistics park.
It doesn’t stick in my mind but Edward Luce writes in that edition that Barack Obama made a speech in May 2013 in which he implied his intelligence machine was out of control and he hoped someone would come along and help him rein it in. Edward Snowden went to Hong Kong on 20th May 2013. Wikipedia says he was in contact with journalists from the end of 2012. Consequently E Luce says, at a minimum, E Snowden will be looking over his shoulder for the rest fo his life.
Immediately below that a contributor suggests Russia today is like Britain in the 1960’s. It has lost an empire but has no vison from there. As it’s leader Mr Putin needs to think about his country’s future direction quite hard. No one can help him do that, he must make his own decisions. He will undoubtedly do his best.
Today were talking this morning about the British soldier who has just been found guilty of murdering an injured Taliban fighter in Afghanistan in 2011. It is the first time such a conviction has occured since the Second World War. From reading the Idenpendent I understand the event was recorded by a camera and microphone in the soldier’s helmet which he shoudn’t have been wearing at the time. The footage got onto the laptop of someone else, not in the army. The laptop was taken to a computer shop for repair. The computer repair man noticed some offensive images on it unconnected with Afghanistan. The police were called. When the police looked they found the killing video. What a complicated tale.
It looks like the Iranian talks will not complete this weekend. The hint is that the Frence are preventing agreement. This evening the Iranian Foreign Minister gave an exclusive interview to Jeremy Bowen. He was relaxed and confident. I reckon someone, I am not going to guess who, has had a quiet word with him. Leave it a couple of weeks whilst the French are brought round.
10th November 2013
On 27th September 2013 I said that possibly only Barack Obama and David Cameron away from me and outside intelligence circles, have read any parts my book. If that is correct I feel it must be extremely easy for people not to see the full picture. It would not be difficult surely for badly motivated people to pull the wool over the eyes of another.
I mentioned about my letter to Mrs May and Mr Cameron on 15th August and 5th September 2013. In it I wrote. amongst other things, about my strong suspicion that I witnessed some MI5 staff assisting our UK Gang Master leaving the country on 2nd May 2011, a few hours after Osama bin Laden died. I think it highly likely those typed words caused Mrs May and Sir Hugh Orde to have a conversation. Sir Hugh told Mrs May I reckon that he was aware of my suspicion and had additional information to support it shortly after I sent my intelligence report to Kent Police on 3rd May 2011. For some reason though, under his protocols and code of conduct he felt he could not tell her before. Since that time I believe I have noticed a marked difference in the way Mrs May conducts herself. If I am correct I find it truly frightening that our Home Secretary was not aware of some crucial information that good people around her, for whatever reason, felt unable to tell her.
I have just watched a video clip of Lady Gaga and June Brown appearing on the Graham Norton show. It seems Lady Gaga has a single out at the moment about her body. It’s message she says is that you might be able to do things to her body but you will never touch her heart nor her mind. Separately she says it is her boyfriend who can do anything he likes with her body, no one else.
I was on the top road this morning staining a gate. At about 11.30 a runner went past. From the look of him I suspect he works for MI5. Nevertheless, because of something I obsererved about 20 minutes later, I would not categorise him as a nice person. I wouldn’t share any of my secrets with him.
Details of Friday’s typhoon over the island nation of the Philippines, probably the worst in the world’s known history, are beginning to come in. Possibly tens of thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes. On the most affected island the storm surge rose sea level to the second storey of buildings. Apparently the winds moved through very quickly as I recall happened with our storm a couple of weeks ago.
Yesterday in Geneva is beginning to make a bit more sense. An accommodation with Iran is a really big deal. Far better to raise a temporary spurious delay than to reach a quick agreement over which outsiders perceived they had no control. Members of Congress, and particularly the Israelis, will now be able to inform Mr Obama why he should not settle. They will have to use hard logic. The next meeting with the Iranians is on 20th November. I expect everything to be sorted out then.
When I have watched the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall in past years I thought it tended to uneccessarily glorify our killed warriors. I didn’t feel that last night. I consider the BBC TV transmission was dignified, inclusive and noble. It was gratifying to see the three Party leaders and their wives take the trouble to attend. People in charge of such an event have a great position of responsibility I believe. You are dealing with people’s emotions which can easily be maniputaled in an unfortunate way. Conversely a warm, uplifting memory can be created.
There was a little girl singing as part of the show. You felt for her as she seemed a little nervous. She thought her Dad in the Navy was abroad on his tour of duty. If she had known he was in the wings she would probably have been much better. Those around her though wanted it to be an unforgettable surprise. When he walked on she ran to hug him, so hard she just couldn’t let go.
The art of good politics I suppose is to come up with an idea with which nearly all rational thinking people will agree. I suspect Ed Miliband hit on one this morning. He has criticised payday lenders who spend hundreds of thousand of pounds on adverts on children’s television encouraging young ones to ask the oldies to take out loans so they can be bought lots of nice things. Mr Miliband has said that if he gets the opportunity he will change the law as necessary.
11th November 2013
I was off colour on Saturday. As soon as I woke I had a searing pain in my head, not like my occasional headaches at all. At the same time I had pins and needles in my right leg, the one which had my most recent varicose veins operation. Later in the day the sensation seemed to move to my right arm. I spent a quiet day. When I woke yesterday I seemed to be fine.
John Kerry has said today that France were signed up to a deal with Iran over the weekend. Nevertheless I thought Mr Zarif was very genuine when he spoke to Jeremy Bowen. I suspect that unscheduled interview might have taken his fellow negotiators by surprise. If that is correct is there not a danger Mr Kerry’s words could be found upsetting by the Supreme Ruler, as when President Obama spoke to Mr Rouhani on his way to New York airport recently. I do hope they all know what they are doing.
From Today this morning it seems Mr Zarif also spoke to Jeremy about Syria, another indication I feel that comprehensive discussions were taking place under quite a deep sense of mutual confidence. Mr Zarif said the only way forward for Sryia is a negotiated settlement. My feeling is he would like to be a part of that process.
From Wikipedia I see that Professor David Nutt is a psychiatrist and expert on the effects of drugs on the brain. I remember him being on Today a few years ago sounding pretty upset. It was probably around the time he was sacked by Alan Johnson, the then Home Secretary, for not being on message with the government’s policy on illegal drugs. Now I think he is well respected within his profession. He was on the broadcast this morning talking about a drug his team are developing to replicate the effects of alchohol on the brain, without causing the same harm to the body.
There was also one of those stranger than fiction items on the edition. It concerned a football team playing in a league near Naples which I see from my note of 1st May 2013 is the historical home of the Costa Nostra Mafia clan. Because of intense rivalry between two local teams the fans of one were banned from their next derby match. That it seems did not go down well with some particular powerful people. The team were told they must not play. The players found themselves in an impossible situation. They live in an apparently civilised society yet they were clearly terrified. Nearly half the side decided they must obey. Five players reportedly feigned injury and were stretchered off the pitch. The referee had to abandon the game. Please don’t complacently think it could never happen here.
Soon after that a United Nations official was speaking about Typhoon Haiyan. He said that when people are desperate and have lost everything they turn to unlawful looting. That is very much how it works I am afraid.
12th November 2013
Apparantly research has shown that those of us who are breastfed grow up healthier than those not. There was a discussion on Today this morning about a project which is just to start in two trial areas. Mums will be given supermarket vouchers worth £200 if they breastfeed their babies for six months. I wrote to the PM programme last week, in their democracy series, suggesting indirect financial incentives for voting in political elections.
I am going to make this my last note on the Iranian talks. It is pretty confusing. John Kerry has given an exclusive interview to the BBC’s State Department correspondent, also broadcast on Today this morning. Possibly I have been too conspiratorial. It now seems it was probably exactly as you saw, with the factor that I never noticed any public comments by the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius. Perhaps the French were quite pushy and spoke to journalistic sources privately when silence might have been the better course. At the beginning of the talks the Iranian delegation thought they would be in a postion to conclude things at Geneva but when they heard the French they realised they would have to go back for final ratification.
I listened to Jack Straw speak on the Reflections programme on Sunday on Radio 4. He said that you are made in a pschological sense by your childhood and where you came from. He wanted to share his dark secrets in his autobiography published last year so people could understand how you can be a successful public figure in spite of everything. It was very brave of him to write it all down.
13th November 2013
The new Governor of the Bank of England gave his first TV interview, to Channel 4 News this evening. He said he would do the right thingh for our economy in the future irrespective of any political pressures such as might be created by the 2015 General Election. He was also very assertive about getting our banks and fincial institutions in order after the shenanigans of the last few years.
The history of Inquiries in this country, going back as far as Hillsborough in 1989, is not very noteworthy. I was pleased therefore to see some sharp criticism made by the Children’s Minister in the Department of Education, Edward Timpson, of the serious case review just published into the death of Hamzah Kahn who I wrote about on 5th October 2013. The Minister has written a letter to the chairman of Bradford Safeguarding Children’s Board asking 10 specific questions which he feels were not answered in his report. With Mr Timpson’s administrative position I am sure he will get a full reply. I wish I could say likewise when I try the same thing.
There seems to be a sense of unease in high circles at the moment about how the NHS is going to cope with winter illness. I received the same message in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. Mr Cameron, being the man is his, feels he should show resolve I think and has made it known he will be receiving weekly updates on how the service is doing, even though that carries political risks for him. This morning NHS England announced it would be dividing it’s future resources to create a minority of larger Major Accident and Emergency centres. The rest will just be A&Es.
There was a heart rending piece on Today this morning by Lyse Doucet reporting from Damascus on chidren killed when their school bus was mortared. There was no messing about, you heard the despair of the people talk directly to you. I felt like shouting at the radio to stop it. But I know that is no good. It is only by listening to such things that we will get the incentive to stop them happening.
The President of the World Bank was interviewed for the broadcast. He said the Philippines are one of the best focused and prepared governments for natural disasters. It is just that the effects of this storm have been so devastating. He wants as many replacement buildings as possible, even those of the poorest people, to be built of solid materials which do not act like candles in the wind.
I must say I am not an expert on Miley Cyrus but I understand she is sometimes naked in her music video performances. She has explained she does not want women to be afraid when they do such things, a very admirable aspiration I feel. Evan Davis on the programme I think wondered if it could give the wrong sort of signal to young men, as though she wanted to be available to them. I know what he means. But I think it is a cultural thing, the sort of view our tabloid press encourages for example. Essentially I believe it is the boy’s problem, not the girl’s. If he can’t see she is doing it for herself, not for him, he should be able to.
Poppy seed is the raw material for heroin. Later in the edition it was highlighted that this season Afghanistan has had it’s largest poppy planting ever. A similar upsurge happened in 2002, the year after foreign troops arrived there. Some accuse the country of being a criminal state fuelled by aid money. I can’t see language like that is going to help them sort their problems out.
I saw William Hague speak on the BBC 10pm TV News this evening from Columbo. He said the Sri Lankan government wanted to put itself in the spotlight by hosting the Commonwealth summit. He is going to take that opportunity to lobby them to act more responsibly towards all their people, those they warm to and those they don’t.
In his article in Monday’s FT David Gardner opinions that Saudi Arabia is an extremist, Sunni sectarian state. We may not like it but it’s views therfore must be taken into account, and hopefully modified, in any future Middle East discussions.
Yesterday the FT reported, separately from the Geneva talks, that the Iranians have allowed inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to view activity at two of their nuclear sites.
14th November 2013
Tomorrow last year some of us went to vote for Police and Crime Commissioners. On their first anniversary the BBC has arranged a poll which has found that 35% of people do not yet know anything about them. There was a dicussion on Today this morning about PCC priorities between a northern PCC, I think she was, in the studio and the PCC for Kent in Westminster.
John McCririck, the 73 year old former Channel 4 racing commentator was also on the broadcast. He lost his employment tribunal case for unfair dismissal, on the grounds of ageism against his former employer, yesterday. He was satisfied with the outcome, but he was not: satisfied in the process because he perceived the judge in the case to have been proper and fair to him. But dissatisfied in that Channel 4 had also encouraged him to put forward the public personna he did. I imagine they thought it helped publicise their profile as a commercial media station. However at some stage a new broom came in, anonymous suits and skists is the term John uses, and it was decided he was no longer wanted. John and his wife will probably have to remortage their home to pay his six figure legal costs.
A first for the programme I expect was Jim Naughtie’s interview of a fictional character. The person was Hercule Poirot played by David Suchet. Jim asked all the normal sort of questions and the replies came back as normal too. I thought it worked very well.
One front page report in yesterday’s FT passed on the results of a high level Chinese Communist party meeting. It has decided that over the next ten years an open market of transactions and proprietary rights should be established there so that participants in the market decide what goes on and not via direction from above.
The other side of the page peeled back a further layer of slience to show the shocking, hidden workings of our financil institutions in recent years. This scandal is about the foreign exchange, Forex, market trading $3.5 trillion every day which has been manipulated for traders’ own ends. I also wrote about Forex last Thursday.
Inside is a warming story about three hospitals in northern Israel, near the border with Syria, that have been treating badly wounded casualties of the Syrian civil war since a change in Israeli military policy last March.
I think I said I would not write again about last week’s Iranian talks. That issue of red lines again. The paper has reported it was the circumstances of the Arak heavy water reactor in Iran which the French were not happy with. Apparently it is not finished yet but when it is it will easily and rapidly be able to produce plutonium for a nuclear bomb. I wrote about the IAEA yesterday.
Brazil has been so upset at the revelation of American spying in it’s country it has produced several measures it wants to introduce to protect it’s citizens. The editorial in the edition says Russia, Iran and China particularly also restrict use of the internet in their countries. The trouble though is that path goes against the fundamental tenet of the internet. It should be free and accessible to all. The writer concentrates on Brazil’s plan to force internet companies, mostly American no doubt, to physically store records of all Brazilian online traffic on Brazilian soil. The author points out that is distrustful, restrictive, costly and, we all hope, unnecessary.
Seven contracts which Serco have with government are currently being investigated to confirm they are being run properly. Today’s FT says their largest non-exclusive contract with the public sector, worth £2.6 billion to them until it expires in 2024, is to operate Aldermaston in Berkshire where we build our nuclear weapons.
I have remarked before that everything in life is political. In essence I feel politics is trying to persuade someone to your point of view. I find it as much in my private life as anywhere else. In today’s paper is a piece that notes China has conributed $100,000 to the humanitarian disaster in the Philippines. America has sent eight navy ships, plus an aircraft carrier just depatched from Hong Kong.
In yesterday’s paper was an article saying the Israelis are risking failure of the peace process with the Palestinians by making plans for further settlement building in occupied areas. Today’s edition notes that Mr Netanyahu has put that aspiration into the deep freeze after the White House said it was deeply concerned about the proposal. The Israeli prime minister is making a lot of public fuss at the moment about America’s negotiations with Iran. He can only deal with one obvious quarrel with his larger cousin at a time I suspect.
Douglas Alexander was on the World at One at lunchtime talking about the Commonwealth conference. Canada, India and Mauritius are not going out of 53 members. The shadow Foreign Secretary was saying Mr Cameron should not be arriving there today either. I thought his language was unneccessarily critical and extreme. He seemed to be looking upon it as a domestic political issue, for point scoring. It did not appear to me his motivation was what would be best for the people of Sri Lanka.
I have been away for the last couple of days and I listened to Mr Alexander for that last note as I was driving home. I stopped the car in a car park, within a few hundred yards of where a fatal accident occured on 20th April 2011, to write it on my off line laptop while my memory was fresh. It was a remote location but even so two Gang helpers, separately, drove in and out within ten minutes to remind me I was being watched. By the time of the six o’clock radio news however Mr Alexander must have had second thoughts. For that broadcast he said that as Mr Cameron is now in Sri Lanka he should lobby for Mr Rajapaksa to be removed from his current position of Commonwealth chairman.
The Gang will always work, in my view, not only at a persuasive, political level but also on the practicalities of any process. An example of the latter I think is the difficulty Iain Duncan Smith is experiencing in getting his computer systems right for our new Universal Credit system. Barack Obama I feel has had the double whammy of both approaches for his Affordable Care Act. The Republicans will do anything politically to bring it down and his computer roll out has been an absolute nightmare. He has made a televised apology to the American people for it all being so fumbled. He says he understands how upsetting some will find the difficulties.
15th November 2013
When I came home last night I drove eastwards through the M25 roadworks near the Clacket Lane services. All of a sudden, as I was in the middle of three lanes, I had a barrier in front of me, side by side, of one foreign registered lorry and two private cars. It gave me exactly the same feeling as I describe in chapter 5 of my book when I was driving my family up the M40 in 2009. I suspect the idea was to box me in and hit me using vehicles coming up from behind. I immediately slowed down and pulled into the left hand lane. Soon after three or four foreign lorries passed me on the way to catch the ferry at Dover no doubt.
Then coming back from Maidstone this morning I had a similar occurance. This time it was a tractor pulling a horsebox on the back road. I kept well behind and stopped when he pulled up to open the gate. It was only as I started off again outside the farm that I saw the white van behind me with it’s lights on. I should have taken a note of his number, to give to the police, as he drove past the gate but I forgot. My attention was taken, by the Kent Police helicopter I think, flying over The Sanctuary and the field the tractor went into.
David Cameron has travelled to the north of Sri Lanka today where the minority Tamil population live. He wanted to highlight the alleged barbaric treatment of them at the end of the civil war in 2009 as previously documented by Channel 4 News. I am sure that trip was something in his mind before he left our shores. And I cannot think he would not have discussed his plans with The Queen at one of his weekly audiences with her. If she had not approved he would not have done it, I feel.
I think it was yesterday Princess Anne made her president’s speech to the charity World Horse Welfare. She said she hoped for a public debate on how we could improve conditions for horses in this country. 7,000 are at risk of being abandoned or neglected this winter. Her well argued thought is that if, like the French for example, we ate horsemeat that would make the animals more valuable to their owners. Today an unwated nag can be worth as little as £5. If they were worth a decent amount for the abattoir they would probably be better looked after. The RSPCA has said that to look upon equines as a food souce would be difficult for us because we consider them to be companion animals, like pets. However I would have no objection to eating a horse steak, if I thought it would improve the well being of the deceased’s living brethren.
My book is about a pretty dark subject. It was important to me therefore to find a positive view about what someone should do when they were targeted by the Gang. The best thought I could come up with was that they should go and discuss their problem privately with their GP. Although coming at it from a completely different angle I feel Jeremy Hunt has also concluded the counselling, supportive GP can be an pretty powerful force in our society. He was speaking about it on Today this morning. From next April, as a first step, everyone in this country over 75 will have a particular GP responsible for them, who they can contact when they need to and who will be aware of their medical history. The British Medical Association support the move as they believe it will cut down on form filling and improve the doctor patient relationship.
I had missed it but in early September the retired general who was in charge of military security for the Olympics was asked to carry out a review of the workings of ACPO. That was at the request of ACPO itself, I see from a BBC webpage at the time, although officially the overseeing body is the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners for England and Wales. The review was published yesterday and is quite critical of how ACPO has operated over the years, obviously without any form of public scrutiny at all. For example the author himself could not establish the exact number of working groups it has, at a figure over 300. Neither does he think it a good idea assistance chief constables, as well as head officers, to be members. Those without full responsibilty no doubt can form into cabals and frustrate the actions of their more openly viewed superiors. I imagine a few private discussions will now take place and PCCs are due to announce their conclusions in Janaury.
It was reported today that five cyclists have been killed on London roads in the last nine days. That puts everyone, especially politicians, in a pretty impossible position. In creates a climate of fear and puts a lot of pressure on our elected representatives to make knee jerk reactions. All journalists can do I feel is put as focused a spotlight on the situation as possible, in the hope that some people will start feeling guilty.
The managing director of Pearson, owners of the Financial Times, was on a business section of Today this morning. They are leaders in distance learning and he was saying how big data analysis principles are likely to transform the sector. With students’consent it will be quite feasible to see how they are progressing early in the course and schedule, for example, particular module study to benefit them. It will bring about great advancement for their pupils. As far as the FT is concerned he said it is not for sale. It is doing incredibly well and he is proud of it.
I have just been looking into a story that has been around for the last couple of days about the National Crime Agency. Yesterday it gave out the names of three wanted men. Overnight one was arrested in Spain. In doing so I also discovered that in a joint operation with French police and the South East Regional Crime Agency a microlight landing in Essex from France was apprehended yesterday which allegedly had illegal drugs on board. Well, those are two big feathers in their cap then. I wote to the Director General of the NCA on Monday.
16th November 2013
When I opened my double garage door this afernoon to get the car out the restraining spring on one side come off it’s hook. Although it hasn’t happened for over two years now we have previously been through quite a phase of others tampering with it. Overnight, in my view, somone moved the end of the spring coil so it was only resting on it’s hook housing. As the door was moving upwards it slipped off. It causes a sudden, unexpected movement and can be quite frightening.
I think David Cameron did more than could reasonably be expected in Sri Lanka. He insisted on the government supplying him with a military aircraft so he could visit the Tamil north of the island accompanied by British journalists, the first world leader to go there since 1948. On his return he asked Mr Rajapaksa to carry out an inquiry into the alleged atrocities which occured at the end of the civil war. He gave him a clear time limit of next March for doing that. If no action has been taken he will ask the United Nations Human Rights Council to instigate their own investigation. He will have come home with a clear conscience.
I think I have mentioned before that I compose my diary notes on a PC and laptop both of which have no internet connection. On 10th September 2013 I wrote a diary entry which I specifically said I was not going to publish. It stated my suspicion, because of something which had happened, that my PC has a satellite connection inside it which enables GCHQ to see what I am writing in real time. I have now decided to make that suspicion known, in view of last Thursday’s events which I recorded in two consecutive paragraphs written on that day.
The government seem to have become energised in the last couple of weeks about some principles they want to adopt for the NHS. A BBC webpage says today that wilful neglect in the service, from top to bottom, is going to be made a criminal offence. I think that is the right thing to do. You encourage and support your medics as much as you can but ultimately they must realise, if all that fails, they should pay the price. Also, I imagine wilfull is a term open to interpretaion. I feel it is best for a court to define, taking into account all the circumstances of a particular case.
Filimone Lacanivalu is a Commonwealth Fijian soldier who served for us in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan. When he retired in 2010 he wanted to live here. No one told him he had to complete a particular form to make that request within 28 days. He missed the deadline. He appealed and his application rumbled on. Last month he went to a Home Office centre under the mistaken belief that would help his case. Instead he was sent to an immigration unit and arrangements were made to immediately deport him. In my view there is a rotteness in our immigration system. Whilst officials were no doubt acting in accordance with the law, in normal language Mr Lacanivalu was tricked. I consider a similar thing happened to me when I stopped performing a volunteering role in a local prison last year.
Fortunately for the senior citizen some influential people in our society heard of his plight and his case was ultimately reviewed personally by the appropriate Home Office minister and the Home Secretary herself. He will now be staying. Mr Lacanivalu was interviewed on Today this morning. He sounded genuinely astonished he had been helped in the way he had but was obviously very grateful nonetheless. I am pleased for him.
Simon Kuper’s article in the FT Magazine last weekend was an observation of today’s culture in western society. Technology is changing at an ever quickening pace and we humans are finding it difficult to keep up. Facebook and Twitter are our means of communication. We all want to participate but are unsure what to say. It is easy to get confused and pass that emotion on. People have difficuties in their lives, such as losing a job, so that loss of identity gets broadcast too. As an example of how your values can get twisted in certain groups Simon spoke to a barrister. The man said he has to plead the case of whoever hires him. The profession makes you combative and persuasive, yet amoral. Just like a psychopath I suppose.
Further in there is an article about one of John McCain’s seven children, the only one who chooses to live in the public eye. 29 year old Meghan sounds like a vivacious lady who loves life. She currently has a talk show on American cable TV. She says the Republican party needs to accept the diversity of the population in which it exists. It would help if it had a few thinking wowen in it. She believes that if the party does not open up it will die. A daughter I feel of whom her father is proud.
The editorial says that if an accommodation can be reached with Iran that should help not only the Arab-Israeli peace process but also conditions in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. It notes that Mr Obama will be able to ratify any nuclear settlement by executive order, bypassing Congress. It feels that is just as well. Some members appear to put Israel’s concerns above the interests of their own countrymen.
17th November 2013
It is now known that secret talks towards a Northern Ireland peace process took place in the early 1990s between the IRA and John Major’s government. I think the perceived wisdom is that was a thought through decison on the freedom fighters’ part. However I heard Norman Tebbitt say on the Reflections series on Radio 4 at luchtime that it wasn’t like that at all. They had been infiltrated by British intelligence and their leader was just about to be charged with multiple counts of murder. The change of strategy got him off the hook. Some years before, after the Brighton Bombing in 1984 Mr Tebbitt asked several times apparently that the high command of the IRA, of whom all the names were known. should be outed as the perpetrators of the atrocity. He was always told that would not be a good idea.
Mr Tebbit’s wife was permanently paralysed in the attack on the Grand Hotel. After that, despite considerable behind the scenes pressure apparently, he withdrew from high politics so he could look after her. If his wife had gone away, to heaven, he would not of course have been under the same constraint. I would like to think that in such circumstances I too would have acted in the same principled way as he did.
Steve Wright was chattering away on the prerecorded Love Songs broacast on Radio 2 this morning. He was talking about an aspiring pop singer whose name does not mean anything to me. He said the person is unusual in that they have great emotion but with the self knowledge of how to keep it in check. They are in control of themselves.
18th November 2013
I was writing some diary notes last night on my offline laptap. Without warning my memory stick suddenly became corrupted. Windows XP would not read it at all. This morning I tried it on a machine running Windows 98. Fortunately it was recognised. Two particular directories seem to have been affected, one losing nearly all files from October 2011 and the other from April 2013. I last backed up on Thursday afternoon and the diary file containing subsequent notes was one of those lost. Initially Windows would not run a Scandisk. After much faffing around I eventually got there. It created 14 DIR folders and about 700 FILE????.CHK files. About half way through the list I found the paragraphs I was missing.
It my view that could only have happened using facilities of the state. For an individual who is trying to do his best for his family and his fellow citizens, to be treated like that is pretty shocking I feel.
19th November 2013
I am noting this weather event as Prime Minister Letta has referred to it as a national tradegy. The Italian Mediterranean island of Sardinia is off the coast of Italy immediately south of French Corsica. Yesterday a cyclone blew over the island causing considerable flooding and damage. At least 18 people died.
A Sunni jihadist group today attacked the Iranian embassy in Beirut, killing at least 22 and injuring 140. The first suicide bomber drew people to the location. The second one caused most of the deaths I understand.
In July the Prime Minister called on Google and Microsoft’s Bing, which account for 95% of internet searches, to make it difficult for users to find illegal images of sexual and child abuse. It seems they have been working on that since and yesterday jointly said that provisions are now in place to warn people about those search queries. There was a meeting between the various interested parties in Downing Street yesterday.
Just over two years after the death of Colonel Gaddafi Libya is in the control of a multitude of militias, some loyal to the government but many not. In the last 10 days it has suffered a lot of violence, with 43 killed last Friday alone. Jeremy Bowen was on Today yesterday reporting from Tripoli. We all hope the forces of law and order will gain ground but it is by no means certain. The best that can be said I think is that an uneasy overall stalemate currently exists, within chaos.
The Francis Report into the workings of the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust, issued last February, made 290 recommendations. Jeremy Hunt announced in Parliament today that he is, at least partially, accepting all but nine of them. He says he wants to create a uniform, caring culture throughout the NHS. A massive challenge in my view, which is acheivable, but will take a long time to produce. Mr Francis has said he thinks the government’s response has been carefully considered and thorough.
20th November 2013
When Keith Starmer was the Director of Public Prosecutions I always thought he seemed to have a good appreciation of the workings of Organised Crime. I suspect the same goes for the Northern Ireland attorney general, John Larkin. You see things from a lofty perspective and realise there must be a guiding hand there. Mr Larkin has said today that he feels there should now be no further police investigations, inquests or inquiries in the Province about killings which took place there before signing of the Good Friday Agreement 15 years ago. It is obviously a delicate issue. You do not want to deny justice to anyone but it is good for us to be able to move on. It is unhealthy, in my view, to dwell too much in the past. I suspect the Gang, in their Masonic meetings, are always harping on about the injustices they suffered in the Second World War, a subject I touch on in chapter 7 of my book.
I received a letter today from a police constable in the Hampshire Constabulary, presumably about the incident at the A303 Services I related on 20th October 2013. He did not give any details. A crime reference number has been allocated. I imagine he must know my name and address because someone has given him the registration number of my car, although I did not notice anyone looking at it at the time. I of course am only the registered keeper of the vehicle. If I had been in his shoes I think I would first have wanted to establish who the driver was at the time. However he has jumped straight in and invited me down to Basingstoke to be interviewed by him under caution, in the presence of a solicitor if I wish.
I noted on 16th October 2013 that Sir Hugh Orde does not appear to think highly of the IPCC. On Monday a BBC webpage reported that the Commission, in conjunction with the office of the London mayor, is thinking of investigating a complaint it has received about the Met Police head Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe. It relates to his alleged misconduct when he was on duty near to the Hillsborough stadium on the day of the tragedy in 1989. At the time he worked for South Yorkshire Police.
Today, at an ACPO conference, the Derbyshire chief constable said that interest from police leaders, inspection regimes and PCCs to reduce crime figures are having the unintended consequence of creating pressure to manipulate true figures. It is a question of greater sensitivity I suppose from those overseeing parties. Domestic and sexual violence apparently is currently increasing.
I hadn’t realised the timing of the Iranian embassy bombing yesterday but it was the day before the resumption of the nuclear talks in Geneva. Mr Netanyahu has been to Moscow to lobby Mr Putin. Ayatollah Khamenei has made some extreme remarks about Israel. The Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister is hopeful. The most enlightening remarks though I feel have come from President Obama. I applaud him for his openess. He says the offer on the table is for Iran to stop any activity which could produce nuclear weapon material and to allow inspections to verify that. In return, after a confidence building period of six months, sanctions would be substantially eased.
I alluded on 24th April 2013 that I feel I have a personal interest in the Coop Bank story. I think that is why I have shied away from it over the last couple of days. It has transpired that the former chairman of the bank, appointed in 2009, probably wasn’t up to the job. I feel the same could be argued for the former Kent Police Chief Constable who moved on in 2010. The Prime Minister said in the Commons today that there will be an independent inquiry into how the Coop situation came about under powers introduced by the 2012 Financial Services Act. I heard Robert Peston say on PM this afternoon he also expects there to be a separate regulatory investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Another inquiry that David Cameron announced over the weekend was into union tactics during the Grangemouth chemical plant dispute. From reading the BBC webpage at the time I now understand that dispute arose almost entirely as a result of how the company treated their union official who was also involved in the kurfuffle over selection of the Falkirk Labour party candidate. The Unite union thought the company was picking on him, which it probably was, and called a strike. The employer then said they would shut the plant down. That would all have been down to Gang influence on both sides in my view.
Also on Sunday a leading health professional asked for a considered debate on the age of consent for sexual intercourse. I wrote about the subject on 22nd June 2013. No 10 Downing Street immediately said the Prime Minister would not be changing the current age of 16. I feel that was a bit of a defensive reaction. As a non-politician I feel there is no reason why such an important subject should not be genuinely discussed. Politicians seem to be silent as well about the position of illegal drug use in our society. If they did take the trouble to find out what we really think they might be pleasantly surprised.
Jeremy Hunt was on Newsight last night talking about his Health Service reforms. He said in the past hospitals concentrated on their waiting list target and balancing their financial books. Under the new regime he wants them to impress their regulator. That will mean caring for their patients and having sufficient staffing levels.
A man and his wife from north Norfolk were on the Today programme this morning speaking about their past debt problems. Things got so bad they were afraid to go out of the house, in case they were approached by debt collectors. They would not personally answer the phone. The Centre for Social Justice has reported this morning that our levels of personal debt are nearly double what they were 10 years ago.
The edition also had a piece about Guantamano Bay where some terrorist suspects have been incarcerated without charge, outside of the American legal system, for over 10 years. Currently the camp has 84 inmates who have been cleared for release but who are still there. For reasons which I must say I don’t really understand President Obama has found he is impotent to close the centre as he said he would in 2009. Interestingly Ritula Shah said the remaining men appear to be controversial although she does not know why. I suspect that migt be the nub of the issue. We live in a world of secrets. Some people have suspicions about what the men were up to but they couldn’t possibly tell anyone out of their close circle. Perhaps they worry that their means of information collection might all come out if the men start talking to journalists; and the public would find that unacceptable. So there they stay. One of those impossible situations for victims I sometimes write about.
21st November 2013
Yesterday I criticised politicians for not being prepared to discuss our age of consent for sexual intercousre. I suppose to be fair I should set down what I think about it.
Nauture’s purpose of sex is to produce babies, to perpetuate our species. As they grow older girls become able to conceive. All societies, as far as I am aware, have an age when they are able to legally consent to that possibility. However the very fact that it varies, shows to me it is arbitary. That is the essential point I feel. If we properly recognised that reality we would not be afraid to talk about the subject. It just comes down to what the majority view is.
I went to see my local man about my hedgetrimmer yesterday. As I was out I also went for a walk. It is an usual area, houses amongst woods in a higgledy-piggledy fashion. I imagine it started to grow before our planning laws came into effect in 1947. After about 45 minutes I could see two horses walking towards me in the distance on the upadopted tarmaced road on which I was walking. There was a close boarded six foot high timber fence on the verge to my right and I decided to stand behind it so I could not be seen as they approached. The riders were two thirteen year old girls. As they passed one looked behind her at me. That little madam, in my view, knew exactly why she was there. Her companion will have known absolutely nothing about it. She, I expect, was just pleased her friend wanted to go riding with her.
From a link on a BBC webpage I have just watched a clip from an interview Ed Miliband gave to ITV News last night about the former Coop Bank chairman. I was pleased to see him looking relaxed and confident. He said that, as far as he is concerned, Labour have acted with complete integrity in their dealings with that gentleman over the years. The Daily Mail has published an uncorroborated story this morning that the man left a charity in 2004 over false expenses claims he had lodged of up to £150,000.
Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of John F Kennedy’s death. I do not mention it in my book and only in passing in my diary notes. Although I have no doubt it was Gang engineered it was essentially a personal tragedy for the Kennedy family. The world has just had to move on without him. I was 12 at the time and cannot remember where I was or what I was doing when it happened. Funnily enough I do know those details for the day Marilyn Monroe died in 1962. That probably says more about me as a youngster than anything else.
Simon Kuper talks about it in his article in last Saturday’s FT magazine. He says that Dallas, the scene of the murder, felt guilty about it for over 10 years afterwards. However they now see it in context. The building where Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marxist apparently, shot from has been turned into a museum. I would certainly wish to visit it if I ever go to Dallas.
In her piece in the periodical Gillian Tett was writing about Wikipedia, virtually my only source of independent non journalistic information, although I do realise that sometimes it is not accurate. It seems someone has been editing her Wikipedia page to give a particular slant on her character whilst remaining factually accurate. I imagine she is not entirely happy about that but she says she would not want to change Jimmy Wales’ idea. Some people however, it seems, employ companies whose sole purpose is to negate bad online profiles of them. I am pleased I am not in the public eye.
That is not to say I never want to be known about, I am proud of what I have achieved, but probably not during my lifetime. As I write there is not one person close to me who feels comfortable with exploring what I have done. It would not be fair, any longer, for me to push against those feelings. I would however like other ordinary people to be forewarned and therefore forearmed. If they wanted to take that further I would not hold back. But it would not be up to me.
Last December BBC Kent ran a report on the previous September’s monthly meeting of Thanet District Council. They showed a webcast recording to a professor at the LSE who called it dysfunctional. Apparently councillors spend a lot of the time arguing instead of getting on with the business in hand. As a result the council commissioned their own independent investigation which has just reported. It refers to a pervading sense of secrecy and corruption around councillors and officials.
This time last year the 400 member general synod of the Church of England narrowly voted against having women bishops. Yesterday they overwhelmingly decided the other way with only 8 hands against. It is amazing how a collective view can change in such a relatively short time. I have no doubt that the theological views against the ladies were genuinely held. But I suspect the reasoning of most was being ruled by their emotions without them realising it. With some calm, thoughtful talking nearly all have changed their minds. Twelve months ago as a body they were massivly out of step with modern day society with whom I am sure they all want to connect. I fully anticipate caring safeguards, subject to the will of the majority, have also been put in place for those who still find the change difficult to accept.
I see from Wikipedia that institutions of the EU are spread over four cities, Brussels, Luxemborg, Strasborg and Frankfurt. Over the years Brussels has become the effective main centre. However monthly visits are still made to Strasbourg by MEP’s for four day sessions, probably to alleviate French sensitivities about their involvement in the European project I suspect. The members though feel those excursions are a bit of a waste of time and voted yesterday to stop them. The change however can only be made within the treaty itself which is in the gift of the countries themselves. They need unanimity for any new arrangement. I wonder if France will block it.
A gunman made an apparently random shooting attack in the reception area of a newspaper office in Paris on Monday critically injuring a member of staff. The suspect was apprended yesterday, after a tip off, in a parked car after seemingly having taken an overdose of drugs. He is now in hospital. It is one of those pretty strange tales. In 1994 he was jailed as part of a three person anarchist group who bungled an attempt to steal some weapons in Paris. Four people were killed before they were finally caught. After leaving jail, at some point he came to live in the UK returning to France in July. I would say he is mentally unwell and I suspect the workings of his mind might have been manipulated by the Gang.
Over the next few years the government wants to slim down the size of the regular army and partially account for that by expanding the Army Reserve, previously called the Territorial Army. I haven’t seen a full explanation why but some Conservative MPs are not happy with that. They are led by John Baron. Yesterday in Parliament, on Today this morning covered the debate. A proper revolt didn’t materialise and only 11 Conservatives and one Liberal Democrat voted against the government plan.
I thought there was an extremely insightful, detached contibution by Jeremy Bowen on the programme talking about the changes flowing through the Middle East. The old order has broken down with Iran almost looking like a beacon of stability. The essential faultline is the sectarianism between Sunni and Shia. Sunni Saudi Arabia is beginning to look highly defensive, if not paranoid, even though their sect is vastly in the majority. People will have to understand themselves that to keep on killing each other is not the way. It will take at least a generation to sort out.
The edition also passed on MI5’s view that there are 200 to 300 Britons currently fighting for the rebels in Syria. One day the majority of those men will be coming home, most probably with hatred in their hearts.
The Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration was on the edition saying there is a worrying and destabilising lack of communication between the UK Border Force and HMRC in policing our borders. They need to work as a team and are not doing so. In one case nine million cigarettes were found by customs officials inside a container at Felixstowe docks. Tax officials however took no action. If you work at the docks something like that does not give you job satisfaction.
There was a programme broadcast tonight by Panorama about Northern Ireland. The story was also covered by Today. As Jeremy Bowen would analyse it, I am sure, it shows just how much a better position the Province is in than 40 years ago. British Troops moved there in 1969. In the summer of 1971 a secret army squad of about 40 men called the Military Reaction Force was set up and operated for about 18 months. Three members of that group agreed to appear on the edition, disguised, because they feel their contribution to bring the conflict to an end has never been appreciated. The name of the unit gives the game away I feel. It would do anything required, including the killing of unarmed suspected IRA men, to get back at the terrorists. They were fighting a war, at the height of The Troubles, in a civilian environment. There was 10,000 shootings in 1972. Perhaps it was necessary at the time. As far as the particpants were concerned the end justified the means. I think a culture of more humane values has since returned to the North’s society. Although of course not on the same deadly scale I trust that path will also be trod in due course by the leaders of America’s intelligence community.
The Panorama programme of course also puts into context the note I wrote about Mr Larkin yesterday.
The lead item on Channel 4 News last night was their joint investigation with the Guardian using Edward Snowden files. They have seen two documents. The first shows the NSA were thinking of starting mass surveillance of the communications of British citizens, with or without our agreement. The second confirms that we did give our concurrence in the first half of 2007 when Tony Blair was Prime Minister and Margaret Beckett Foreign Secretary. Mrs Beckett wrote me a letter on 12th September 2013.
There was a interview in Monday’s FT with the new Minister for Crime Prevention in the Home Office, Norman Baker. He is a Lib Dem and says he wants to bring that influence to his place of work. The discussion touched on the minimum pricing of alchohol and public policy towards recreational cannibis use.
Tuesday’s paper reports it is now thought the Nairobi shopping centre attack was a well planned operation. The terrorists were four Somali men who were all killed in the Westgate complex. It seems that for four months beforehand they rented two properties in Nairobi whilst they prepared themselves. That would all have been under the noses of the authorities. Memories of 9/11.
An article there also suggests that America and Canada, with their shale gas resources, could soon become self sufficent in their consumption of energy. I imagine that could make Saudi Arabia feel quite uneasy.
22nd November 2013
Thanks to Christopher Caldwell in last Saturday’s FT I think I have a better understanding of the health story in the USA. He writes that Americans have the best private medical healthcare system in the world. 85% of them are covered by it. Barack Obama wants to extend that to 100% under a single government funded system. However the means of doing it are not straightforward. The new scheme will still be operated by the existing insurance companies but with reimbursement from national funds. That means of course that the government is not in control of what happens on the ground. The new provision of cover is more extensive and expensive than many existing policies so some insurers are shutting the old ones down and replacing them with the new. Many voters are not happy. It is something the President specifically said would not happen. However he only spoke about the actions of his own administration and not those of the insurance providers. It seems, as President, he did not see the groundwork for the new system was sufficiently prepared. He is now paying the price. Neither was the change sold properly to subscribers I suspect. It was expected that at least 500,000 people would take out the new plans whereas the take up has only been about 100,000. Citizens feel let down and his approval ratings have plummeted. The Republicans scent blood. Many Democrats are panicking. They fear they will not be elected at the mid term elections. The editorial says it is looking quire dire. Once a President starts loosing credibility as is currently happening, all his policies, such as immigration reforms and his desire for future tax increases to help with the nation’s debt problem, become white elephants. The best thought the paper can come up with is that Mr Obama uses his strength of character to bluff his way through.
23rd November 2013
About a month ago a lady rang a charity after seeing their representative on the television. She is 57 and lived in a home in Brixton and elsewhere for at least three decades with a 69 year old lady and a lady aged 30, plus the hetersexual couple, both 67, in charge of the household. Within a few days they had left the property and are now being looked after elsewhere. The couple have been arrested on suspicion of slavery. The police are carrying out a major investigation involving house to house enquiries which is likely to last months. Information so far is that the residency started on an equal voluntary basis but at some point obviously that changed. The Guardian says the younger lady is the the man’s daughter and has lived in tbe group all her life. The police have said they believe the ladies have been psychologically and emotionally controlled. They are in an extremely fragile state and it will take them a long time to get back to some form of normality.
The significance of the story I feel is not that it happened but the way it is being treated by the authorites. It is an example of our brave new world. As for prococious sexually aware young teenage girls, I think before there would have been a thought that the three should have been able to look after themselves. It would all have been brushed under the carpet. Now we realise it is highly important to understand how it all happened; the way someone can shackle another without having any physical chains at all. It is a problem of our times.
There were three MPs on the Any Questions panel for the programme broadcast at lunchtime. Athoug I didn’t count I would say they used the word constituent at least 10 times. I thought that was most appropriate.
Then immediately afterwards, on Any Answers, a man said we are entitled to have our own opinions but not our own facts. It would be lovely if it were so. Perceptions of course are all about thinking things are true which aren’t, as politicians know too well.
Sir Bernard Hogan Howe said on London radio that personally he would not ride a bike in London due to the dangers associated with it. He later gave a more considered statement but I expect he was trying to be helpful, in view of my note about cycling in Surrey and Sussex of 20th October 2013, and in London of 15th November 2013.
In quiet weather conditions the roof of a supermarket suddendly partially collapsed in Riga on Thursday killing 54 people. The Latvian president has referred to it as murder and asked for foreign experts to go there to try and establish how it happened.
The report into the near Heathrow airport disaster of January 2008 found that there had been ice build up in fuel lines causing the two engines to fail, coincidentially, simultaneously. Luckily for us those in the know are not going to let that sort of accident again. Some types of General Electric engines in the new Dreamliner planes apparently are susceptical to ice build up when near high level thunder storms. The airlines have been advised.
Speaking your mind in public can be a very tricky thing for a politician. Attorney general Dominic Grieve gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph published today in which he said corruption is a concern in this country, especially amongst some immigrant communities due to their culture back home. In response to a question he thought it appropriate to say that Pakistanis are much more likely to give hidden favours than Indians. That of course upset some honest people with Pakistani heritage. I feel they overreacted in an unthinking way. Nevertheless Mr Grieve later apologised for his remark.
Adam Brimelow authors a BBC webpage today saying that we have a problem at the moment with patients, recovered after their treatment, not leaving hospital expeditiously. Last month they occupied over 78,000 beds each day which should have been available for others. It seems it is down to the interested agencies not working as a team properly, so isn’t likely to be sorted out overnight. It is increasing pressure in the system back to the point of entry, the hospital A&E department, and no doubt could make a difficult winter that much worse.
The lady doing Thought for the Day on Today this morning was saying she thought uncertainty and doubt is a positive thing. It keeps you on your toes spiritually and otherwise. I suppose, if you like challenges, she is right. But I don’t think many of us do. We would rather have a quiet life. Trying to work things out from incomplete information really does my head in sometimes.
Finishing off last Saturday’s FT the paper also reports again I think on the meeting of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party I wrote about on 14th November 2013. It was historic in that it looked so far ahead. Although decisions were short of detail they will be relaxing their strict family planning policy, and generally want to make their society fairer, both socially and economically. One thing though did seem clear. The party will be maintaining it strong grip on political power.
Another page noted that the venue of the recent Commonwealth conference in Columbo was decided in 2009 when Labour were in power.
The edition also reports that the European Commission is playing tough on Italy’s national debt alleviation plan. Along with four other countries the Commission says it is not good enough. Some Italians are quite upset and say they will take no notice.
24th November 2013
If there was any playing to the gallery last time in Geneva it did not happen this week. Not a word was said as the talks progressed. I understand negotiations were tough but in the early hours of the this morning a deal was struck. Ccontinuing enrichment of uranium will be allowed which the Iranins insist on but not to a level suitable for a bomb as the western powers required. In return international sanctions worth about $7 billion will be relaxed on a temporary basis. A time limit of six moths is now being fixed for the sides to reach a final agreement. On the World this Weekend at lunchtime William Hague said we should have faith in the power of diplomacy on the one hand and be aware of the pressure created by sanctions on the other.
The Israelis are not happy. They are calling it an historic mistake. It seems to me Mr Netanyahu is taking a big gamble. He is saying in effect that the Iranians are so shifty they cannot be believed when they say they have no wish to create a nuclear bomb. We should not discuss anything with them therefore to try and achieve peace over the coming months. If a final settlement does come then which works, and he refused to be involved with it at all, he will have been discredited.
Also on the World this Weekend a parallel was drawn between the Brits who went to Spain to fight in their civil war and those who are in Syria today. Then as now our security services were very worried about the men returning home. The BBC’s Paul Wood was saying the mindset of the two civil wars does seem similar. However in Syria it is no longer a traditional insurrection. In some ways the government have become irrelevant. It is now rebel group figting rebel group. Some estimates say there are 1200 armed factions in the country.
Yesterday I read a report that the annual Christmas day seaside swim at Lowestoft, running for 35 years, will not go ahead this year after the two organisers asked for others to assist them but no one came forward. Yesterday evening a car crashed into a pub on the A12 15 miles south of Lowestoft. No other vehicles were involved I believe. Of the six young men in the car two were killed at the scene. I think it possible the vehicle was being driven too fast and an unexpected road hazard caused the inexperienced driver to lose control.
I noticed a report in the FT the other day which I have just looked at again. In a televised question and answere session in India with Mr Cameron on his way to the Commonwealth meeting, the chairman of Tata said the UK has a very open, accomodating business environment unlike his home country. In the early hours of Friday morning a fire broke out in the turbine hall of the Tata steelworks at Scunthorpe. Three people were taken to hospital.
Life, in my view, is all about having good quality information. When Ed Miliband won the Labour Party leadership against his brother I did not realise it had caused high personal difficulty between them. Neither of them gave any hint in public. I sent an email to David just after the contest, on 28th September 2010, which misread the situation. I am grateful therefore for the younger man to have said on Desert Island discs broadcast today that it did cause ruptions between them, which still haven’t entirely healed. Nevertheless David is still his best friend.
There was a discussion about modern day slavery on Sunday this morning. It seems to happen without anyone noticing. It was said we all need to be more aware and observant of what goes on around us. Globally it is estimated 27 million people live in some form of servitude. Theresa May has told the Daily Telegraph that slavery is all around us. It is a personal priority for her to do something about it.
25th November 2013
I notice that at the picture taking session in Geneva yesterday the French foreign minister Mr Fabius, at his initiative, embraced both Catherine Ashton and his Iranian counterpart Mr Zarif. That makes me think he did feel guilty about something.
I am back with the Brixton slavery case much quicker than I anticipated. It has emerged today that the main alleged captor is a man of Maoist Marxist-Leninist beliefs who was prominent in London in the 1970s. It has previously been reported that the three women left the flat around the middle of October. I see my first note mentioning Ed Miliband’s late father, who was also a Marxist, is dated 1st October 2013. That is quite a coincidence it seems to me.
If I am right about that I trust the conclusions are plain. First the Gang have all encompassing intelligence, far better I suggest the all the world’s national security agencies combined. But more than that it shows their small mindedness, The are just like children. And as we all know when children get hold of toys which are too big for them some pretty nasty things can happen.
The Dispatches programme on Channel 4 this evening was about morbidly obese people of whom there are 1.5 million in the UK. A lady was shown whose excessive weight has caused ailments of heart disease, kidney problems, high cholestreol, osteoarthritis, slipped disc and asthma. She takes 30 tablets a day at a cost to taxpayers of over £5,000 a year. A man had a failing kidney. He was too fat to be eligle for a transpalnt. He therefore has to have dialysis at a cost of £45,000 per annum. It is estimated the current liability of obesity to the NHS is £5 billion a year. Unless something is done urgently the Service will become bankrupt in the foreseeable future.
A proven solution it seems is gastric band surgery, fitting a collar around the neck of your stomach so that you feel full after eating a small amount of food. Unfortunately however various departments of the NHS are so dysfunctional it appears, the operations are just not being done even though there is plenty of capacity for them.
It seems almost like yesterday to me but it was two years ago that Ed Miliband commissioned an independent review into England’s policing system. The former Met Police head Lord Steveens made his report earlier and he appeared on the Today programme this morning. He said the 43 existing forces should be trimmed to at most eight, that PCCs should be enhanced and improved, and the IPCC and The Inspectorate of Constabulary should be merged. In the wider context he suggests police officers should be more professional, possibly with chartered status like accountants and surveyors. And, to my mind, that they should become more political for example in their dealings with journalists. He makes the point that private companies performing police services are even less accountable to the public than the police are themselves. He confirms the view that local networking should be the bedrock of policing.
Jeremy Bowen highlighted on the edition that secret talks have been taking place between Iran and America since the spring. He said it has been a personal triumph for Baroness Ashton, who before the process started you would not have thought should be involved at all. I remember that she became EU Foreign Affairs representative in 2009 on the nomination of then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. At the time general press comment was quite negative about her appointment I thought.
Iraq is currently going through the most terrible time. 200 people have died violently in the last week. The government has asked the international community to help it somehow. Andrew Hoskin reported from Baghdad on the broacast. He visited a privately secured, gated shopping mall there. Inside is western normality, people feel nervously safe. Outside you just hope for the best, that the violence will pass you by. The citizens are in the eye of the storm, out there on their own. It is a bit like I feel sometimes. People watch and see how you cope. But they do not get involved.
26th November 2013
Apparently there is a official National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyle poll of 15,000 Britons carried out every ten years. The one just published has found that people aged 16 to 44 say they have sex less than five times a month. In the previous two the return was over six times. I always think it must be difficult to get accurate figures for our most private moments like those but, if correct, I am surprised it is so infrequent. I do not believe it indicates a mentally healthy society.
Two reports came out yesterday on the affairs of Royal Bank of Scotland which is 80% owned by the taxpayer. One was commissioned by RBS themselves but the other, sent to the Business Secretary Vince Cable, was the more damning. It suggested that a few people at the bank for example deliberately put some small companies out of business, by calling in their loans. The assets would then be brought into the bank at a knock down price and sold on at a higher valuation. Mr Cable says he is appalled by the conclusions.
The CPS have announced today that one prosecution will be launched in the plebgate affair, against the off duty police officer who said he witnessed the event from outside the gates of Downing Street. As far as the officer who wrote the police log is concerned no legal action will be taken. It is his word against Mr Mitchell’s and there is no sound recording in existence of what was said. Even so five officers, not including the note taker, are to face internal disciplinary charges of grosss misconduct for their actions following the incident. Mr Mitchell indicated in his press conference I think that he intends to take his claims to a civil court where people will have to swear the truth of what they have said.
On 23rd April 2013 I wrote about the humiliation some can feel in the sex industry. They are trapped I suspect because they think they need the money. Pornography is a Gang influenced world and, from a two year investigation just completed by the Children’s Commissioner for England into child exploitation and gangs, it’s culture is creeping resolutely into our wider world. If you are a certain youngster, of which it seems they are about 19,000, you are trapped in that environment. It is generally accepted that you can be raped and abused, and must put up with it. In gangs children raping children is considered normal. The report refers to the sexual sadism it has discovered.
27th November 2013
Part of the reason for Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi being under so much pressure in June 2013 has surfaced this week. A criminal court case against their previous personal assistants has started on the charge of stealing £685,000 from the couple using credit cards made available for their use. One allegation published so far is that Ms Lawson is a habitual illegal drug user.
I am pleased that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe is taking an interest in the Madeleine McCann enquiry. He has said today he feels there should be a joint British and Portuguese police investigation. Otherwise I expect the teams could fall between two stools. It is invariably best I feel to take an inclusive approach unless you know for certain it would be unwise.
As I mentiond on Saturday Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has been talking about cycling in London. A remark made on Monday’s edition of Today has led me to a BBC webpage which reports that Operation Safeway has started in the capital Until Christmas at least, 2,500 traffic officers will be deployed at 166 key junctions to ensure that all road users act responsibly. Fixed penalty notices will be issued as necessary.
That I think will have made the Gang leadership pretty angry. Yesterday evening at 4.45 there was a small fire in a signal box near London Bridge station. I expect it was soon put out but unfortunately it was in a crucial part of the network and happened at the start of the evening rush hour period. All signalling there and at Cannon Street, Charing Cross and Waterloo East stations was knocked out, shutting the hubs down. Service started to be resumed at 7pm. Commuters to Kent and Sussex had a horrible journey home.
I try not to get too emotional, it does me no good, but I am so pleased to read a BBC webpage this evening that more parties are getting involved for the planned January Geneva II peace talks. The Sunni supporting Turkish foreign minister has been in Shia Teheran today. Both sides have called for a ceasefire before the talks which the Syrian government say they will attend. I feel the Persian involvement opens up a new dynamic. The Syrian opposition need to get their act together and engage in the process. Otherwise the possibility now arises I feel that the participants will go above their heads in order to protect the Syrian people. If the rebels want a bit of control and power, which they obviously do, this could be their one and only opportunity.
The Italian Senate voted today to expel Silvi Berlusconi following his conviction for tax fraud. The 77 year old will continue to lead the Forza Italia party. He is defiant. Mr Berlusconi said the country should be mourning for democracy.
Nigel Farage was on Today this morning talking about our new immigation rules from 1st January 2014. Before the interview started I suspect John Humprys checked with him that it would be okay to ask about the MEP’s private life. John received the nod. From the piece I am aware Mr Farage has just had a major operation to deal with neck injuries he sustained in a light aircraft accident on 6th May 2010. He will be off work for a few weeks. I feel it was very good of him to be so transparent.
Yesterday in Parliament on the programme covered Norman Baker’s appearance before the Common’s Home Affairs Select Committee. From the excerpt the members seemed to be extremely interested in his book about the death of Doctor David Kelly. Mr Baker played the subject down. However he did confirm the book’s main concern was the strange lack of any proper inquest into the doctor’s death, the first time that has happened apparently for such a high profile death. Some of the MPs said they would read Mr Baker’s book. I have ordered a copy from my local library.
I thought it was quite interesting how the Iranian negotiating team returned to adoring crowds in Teheran at the beginning of the week. President Obama meanwhile had to justify his position to highly vocal critics in American public life. A group can only move forward at the pace of it’s weakest constituent.
The was a report on last Thursday’s Newsnight about Serco’s new contract to manage community service, or payback, within the criminal justice system in London. Previously it would have been handled solely by the probation service. Now the public body only deal with some aspects. It seems there are tensions between the two. The piece highlighted the deficiencies it had found on Serco’s side. At the end however statements were read out from Serco and the Ministry of Justice. They said that overall they thought the new arrangements are working well.
Last Thursday’s FT reports there could be a consumer spending bubble growing in Russia. The head of their central bank apparently is worried. If the loans which are being taken out can’t be repaid it will lead to a financial crash.
Further in, an article notes that Slovenian banks hold 7.8 billion euros of bad loans, equal to a fifth of economic output. It has been the result apparently of irresponsible crony capitalism. The prime misister though is determined the country will sort out it’s own problems.
Friday’s edition passes on that Amazon is dicussing with Transport for London to create drop off points where customers can collect goods in it’s station concourses. TFL has just reached an agreement with Asda apparently to do the same thing in the car parks of six tube stations.
The same paper had an interview with the Commander who is head of the organised crime unit in the Met Police. The subect was cyber crime, the growth industry of the criminal world. The force is tripling it’s budget for the capital to £15 million a year with 400 officers involved and is also asking private industry to financially contribute. Apparently computer crime costs the UK economy £81 billion annually.
The issue quotes the French foreign minister as saying he fears the Central African Republic is on the verge of collapse with genocide a possibility. Organised Crime like failed states.
28th November 2013
The Gang are all about doing what is possible. If they can persuade you to do something audacious which makes the rest of us feel ashamed of our fellow man, that is fantastic. The motive for this escapade I suspect is that Yorkstone paving is a premium product which isn’t easy to get hold of.
Last Friday night theives stole 40 square metres of that paving from a public road just outside Rochester Cathedral in Kent. The operation will have taken some time to perform and it is suggested the men were disguised as council employees. I imagine though they probably didn’t realise there was a CCTV camera somewhere in the vicinity, able to watch them. A 35 year old man from Chatham has been arrested on suspicion of theft.
The BBC reports today that the Commons Public Accounts Committee has been looking into the poistion of student loans. Full time students currently have to pay a maximum of £9,000 for their courses. Repayments only have to be made once their later working salaries reach a certain level. The debt to the government is now £46 billion and rising fast. Late repayments by former students now stand at over £5 billion and the committee is concerned information about that situation is pretty hazy. The MPs call for a more robust stategy. It is obviously important in a country that laws are obeyed. Once rules are flouted respect for the order of society starts to break down.
There are some uninhabited islands between China and Japan which both countries claim as their own. Last weekend China also declared that the airspace, over them and surrounding sea, as being in it’s control. That has now affected Taiwan and South Korea as well. Quite rightly I feel, other countries have signalled they are not cowed by that unilateral statement. On Wednesday the US let it be known it had flown two military aircraft over the islands and today we hear that Japan and South Korea have done the same. It is obviously an issue which needs to be talked about.
Last weekend Swiss voters rejected a proposal to make a chief executive’s pay of every company there no higher than 12 times the rate of it’s lowest paid employee. Monday’s FT says the referendum vote was 65% against. I imagine most people thought it a bit too radical and the uncertainties of implementation too great. Even so the comment is that the subject remains on the political agenda.
I do think we members of the public are often more grown up and committed than politicians give us credit for. Last week Ukraine unexpectedly froze it’s negotiations with Brussels to join the EU. The same paper reports that a lot of ordinary people are not happy about the situation. So much so that the day before an estimated crowd of up to 100,000 gathered in Kiev to protest.
An indication that the Gang are strong at the top of Chinese and Spanish society, in my view, comes in a piece in that issue. A criminal court in Madrid has just ordered the arrest, should they ever go to Spain, of the former Chinese president, the former prime minister and three other former high ranking former officials for alleged crimes of genocide in Tibet. Besides being a bit pointless the ruling has produced the desired effect. The current Chinese leadership are livid about the move. Divide and rule.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was president of Iran from 1989 to 1997. Following last weekend’s agreement part of the front page of Tuesday’s FT is taken up with an interview he gave in Teheran to Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Lionel Barber. He said he was hopeful of a full nuclear deal within a year.
Inside the paper Abigail Fielding-Smith interviews the Syrian deputy foreign minister in his Damascus office. Mr Mekdad says he and his colleagues are beginning to have confidence that the west understands how his government are confronting terrorism on behalf of the whole world.
The edition also reports that Suadi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar have all cautiously welcomed last weekend’s outcome as a tentative move in the right direction.
I do find it amazing that tragedy can continue to take place in our world affecting ordinary people and nobody seems to take any notice until strategic global interests are threatened. Thanks to the editorial in the paper I am aware that 620,000 people have been displaced in the Central African Republic since Muslim rebels overthrew the government last spring. The country is 80% Christian. It is a much smaller country than Mali, which had it’s problems in 2012, with a population of 4.6 million. From the Gang point of view therefore it must be that much easier to destabilise with jihadist views. It urgently needs some military peacekeeping help.
I imagine Mr Barber was in Teheran on Monday and got back on Tuesday. Yesterday David Cameron wrote an article in the FT on immigration. My guess is that he had had a private conversation with someone who told him there is growing unrest amongst the troops on the issue and it might be an idea if he tried to get a grip on things. Mr Cameron gave an TV interview to Nick Robinson yesterday about it. I thought he looked quite worried.
At last I feel I have read an authorative version of what happened in Geneva three weekends ago, by Peter Spiegel in yesterday’s FT. It seems Mr Zarif was unconvinced President Obama would be able to out-persuade or outmanoeuvre his critics at home so as to delivered on a lifting of economic sanctions. Catherine Ashton did her best to persuade him but he was still unsure. She therefore asked if John Kerry would reassure Mr Jarvid personally, face to face, which he was happy to do. However diplomatically you need a uniform front in that kind of arena so it meant all the other five foreign ministers had to go as well. I think Mr Jarvid was convinced and that it was probably Gang influence in the French team which managed to scupper the deal at the last moment. However no one panicked, all remained calm. Mr Jarvid had to go back to Teheran for further instructions or action and it was agreed all would meet again in two weeks. After the first encounter Mr Jarvid decided he only wanted to deal with Lady Ashton, rather than having six sides bearing down on him at the same time. Trust and confidence was beginning to build and all parties, including the Russians and Chinese, thought it would be a good idea for such one on one talks.
The Governor of the Bank of England has said today the government’s Funding for Lending scheme is to be refocused away from private mortgage loans to business finance. Separately this morning’s FT, which will have gone to press last night, reports that the direct to applicant Help to Buy scheme will be reviewed by the B of E immediately it detects that a housing price bubble is being created.
The paper also says that yesterday Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, incorprorating it’s Bavarian affiliate, reached it’s grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party following the national election result announced on 23rd September. The SPD side of the bargain has now to be ratified by a referendum of it’s members.
Mishal Husain interviewed the shadow Health Secretary on Today this morning. At one point Mr Burnham in an instinctive, natural way complimented Mishal on the quality of one of her questions. I thought it made a difference to her. In my view it is how we should react with each other, to engender mutual, respectful confidence.
The progamme reported on some arrests which have been made by the National Crime Agency investigating match fixing in British football by Asian betting syndicates. The games it seems have probably been in the Conference League not involving professional footballers. An associated interview was with an investigative journalist. He said the pressure towards corruption in football is massive. Gambling gangs now have global networks in place targeting dodgy players and match officials everywhere. It is a real problem in Italy apparently where club owners are also involved. He highlight the nub of the problem as a gambling culture. Once you are caught up within that your emotion takes over and your sense of right and wrong can fail. The solution he says is to have a strict rule that you do not bet and play. And it should be far easier to be honest, so you can whistleblow in private.
I know what he means. I have a Betfair account with a balance well under £50. I use it infrequently. I once bet on Andy Murray to lose. As I watched the match on television I really, really wanted our British hero to go under. It was quite a surreal sensation.
I heard a clip on the World at One today of Boris Johnson talking about elitism last night. He very honestly said he thinks inequality is inevitable and beneficial. It creates competition between invididals. I agree with his first view but not his second. I feel it is relevant to point out that Mr Johnson comes from a favoured background. Rivalry, in my view, does not come from inequality it comes primarily from your genes. There is no need to artificially promote competition.
29th November 2013
Girlguiding UK has conducted a survey of 1200 females, including non members, under 21. It’s chief executive has called the results a wake up call. She says they give a disturbing insight into the state of equality for girls in the UK. Three quarters of respondents answered that sexism affected most areas of their lives. 87% thought women are judged more on their appearance than their ability. 80% of those between 19 and 21 said they had experienced sexual harrassment. In spite of all that thought the questioned girls are mostly positive about their futures. That is how we are. Human beings are a resilient bunch.
Although I don’t pretend to be an expert I think the system in the Us Senate used to be that any member could just raise an objection to a government bill or presidential nominee for high office. Then there would have to be a vote on it, with associated delaying tactics, requiring a two thirds majority of the chamber. I imagine that procedure is rooted in America’s belief that it’s rulers and president should not be too omnipresent and that consensus is the best means of decision making. Anyway Saturday’s FT notes that all changed last Thursday when the Democratic Senate leader unexpectedly raised motions to only require simple majorities in the future in such circumstances. With the current Democratic majority those all passed.
I think it is probably for the best, for Democats now and, no doubt, Republicans in the future. If you are elected by the people you should feel you have power not impotence.
On the front page was a report that a few days before Prince Andrew hosted a dinner at Buckingham Palace for JPMorgan executives and dozens of corporate clients. Keith Vaz MP said that in his view such an event could compromise the position of the Royal Family in our public life, in the eyes of some members of the public.
After reading a small piece in that edition I understand much better the latest development in the Russian Greenpeace story I last wrote about on 10th October 2013. The Dutch government action did result in a hearing at an international tribunal hearing in Hamburg. Both countries are signaturies to the UN convention of the Law of the Sea. The decision was that the Greenpeace ship and crew must be released for a $5 million bail bond. Although the Russian foreign ministry said the tribunal has no jurisdiction over it’s criminal prosecution, by yesterday all 28 activists and two journalist had been released on bail.
The Person in the News in the paper is the disgraced former chairman of the Coop Bank. It notes that his expose was due to an sting operation by the Daily Mail where he was secretly filmed apparently paying £300 in cash in a parked vehicle to buy a quantity of cocaine and crystal meth. I am not a fan of the Mail. However in the full circumstances of the story to that time I feel their expose was in the public interest.
The magazine featured an article on the business opportunities created by the computer hacked world in which we live. One of the main players in cyber protection today is Price Waterhouse Coopers whom I remember as a straightforward accountancy firm. They are very particular about whom they employ in their team and carry out extensive background checks. The main element for them is that the person must be of the highest integrity. Besides computer geeks their team includes solicitors and management consultants, so they can properly brief chief executives on the security challenges, and reputational risks, confronting their companies. Hackers are no longer just clever young lads working away in their bedrooms. Besides criminal gangs they can be politically motivated groups, commercial spies and even foreign state sponsored cells. It is not the sophistication of all those attacks apparently which is key but their persistence. And the nigger in the wood pile will always be the person working for you who, for whatever reason, wants to do you down.
Thanks to Eddie Mair on yesterday’s PM programme I have a good handle on this story. An Iranian man living here since 2000, Bijan Ebrahimi, resided in a council maisonette in Bristol. His family say that due to back problems he was registered as disabled and had been bullied by those around him for years. His previous home was subject to an arson attack. In July 2013 local youths vandalised the hanging baskets he tended at the front of his property. He took photographs of the youngsters concerned as evidence. Someone contacted the police alleging that he did that because he was a paedophile. The police went to his home and arrested him for a breach of the peace. As they did that a mob of about 20 people gathered and chanted paedophile at him. The police established the allegation was groundless but residents still believed it to be true. Two days after Mr Ebrahimi returned home one of his neighbours knocked him unconscious, dragged him into the street, poured white spirit over him and set it alight. That man pleaded guilty to murder yesterday and another to assisting him. As I wrote on 15th October 2013 once you have them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow. Our veeneer of civilisation is no more than skin deep. If you think otherwise you are a fool.
As this is politics it is difficult to get to the bottom of but yesterday the government said it was again looking into plain packaging on cigarettes after putting the idea on hold last July. An independent review will be carried out, to report next March, and enabling legislation will be drawn up in the interim so any accepted recommendations can be brought in quickly. The most likely explanation it seems is that the government were just about to be embarrassed in the Lords by their own legislative insertion and ministers wanted to take the initiative away from them.
Cathy Newman interviewed William Hague on Channel 4 News last night about a summit he and Angelina Jolie are planning in London in June on war zone rape. He says it is a deliberate weapon of war and should be a moral cause for our generation.
David Yelland was editor of The Sun between 1998 and 2003, immediately before Rebekah, then Wade. He and the current editor of The Spectaor, Fraser Nelson, were on Today this morning at separate times, for the first anniversary of publication of the Leveson Report. Mr Yelland said that editors are like angry donkeys leading the journalistic lions on their newspapers. Mr Nelson was more mellow than I remember from the recent past. He made the point that, whatever the details, a new sytem of press regulation is coming. He feels politicians do lean on press editors. However it should not be forgotten the backdrop is that printed news is losing readers in droves. That creates a lot of pressure. 50% of us now get our news from the BBC. No single newspaper gets into double figures.
I heard someone say on Today this morning that just because something goes through your mind it doesn’t mean it has to come out of your mouth. I’m having to bear that in mind all the time.
30th November 2013
A short report in yesterday’s FT on the News of the World hacking trial relates that bewteen October 2005 and August 2006 the phone line within the newpaper’s offices which was used to hack into targets’ phones was rented out privately, on the basis I imagine that there should be no smoking gun to be discovered. That is not how you would expect responsible journalists to behave.
In the centre of the edition Matthew Engel was comparing the attributes of cricket to other human pursuits where striving endeavours are involved. You bat on until felled by a sudden blow. I know exactly what he means. No one knows of course when that blow will come.
Following my note yesterday about the Bristol killing I am getting a suspicion that the Brixton slavery case is going to show us as much about how some people lead their lives within our community as anything else. I hope the lesson will be that we need to reach out to those people.
The thirty year old lady in the Brixton Maoist commune is being called Rosie. It seems she is the daughter of an white British woman who on Christmas Eve 1996 jumped out of a window of a house where the group were then living. The woman died in hospital eight months later. The cousin of the female was interviewed on Today this morning. He is a most incredibly thoughtful man talking with care, caution, respect and compassion. Now she is apparently free his starting point is that it is for Rosie to decide what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
At about 10.30pm last night the only police helicopter in Scotland, with two police officers and a civilian pilot on board, crashed onto a sngle storey Clydeside Glasgow pub causing the flat roof to cave in. Fortunately there was no explosion nor fire. However there are bound to be several fatalities. The editor of the Scottish Sun was leaving a city centre car park at the time and witnessed it. He heard the engine splutter and the machine fall straight to earth. We were all unlucky this time. I personally think it is not a coincidence that the pub is right on the riverside. A few yards south and the machine would have fallen in the water. That is a completely horrible twist. If someone wishes to kill themselves they have an absolute right to do so. It is a tortured mind however which takes it further than that. Yesterday morning I saw the heavy black and white helicopter, which I have mentioned before, fly over the bottom of my garden in direct view of where I sit in my home office