12th November 2012
I am pleased to report that John Humphrys was his normal robust self this morning. David Dimbleby has been on Today and suggests that as Mr Entwhistle did not stand up for his own position on Saturday, but merely related the facts, perhaps he was not the best person to be leading the BBC. At the end of the programme Liz Forgan said she thought the new director general should probably come from outside and that he or she should be brave, calm and trustworthy.
A small insight here into the competency of my local Gang. Going through my diary notes for the website I see I saw . . . . on 2nd August three days after I finished the book. The Gang were so sure I would stop to tell him they had absolutely no Plan B in case I didn’t. Therefore the cyclist who found me where he didn’t expect had to turn around and run like a frightened rabbit. Whoever that cyclist was he must have been staying at . . . . at the time.
Last Monday’s FT says the cost to the American economy of Hurricane Sandy will be $30-50 billion.
There is a very strange story up on the BBC website today about Israelis and Nigerians cooperating in a kidnap plot. The year was 1984 and a Nigerian government minister had fled his country to London after a military coup. He was accused of embezzlement which he denied but the new rulers wanted him back in Nigeria alive. One morning he was jumped on as he walked out of his front door, bundled into a van and driven to Stansted airport where there was a Nigerian Airways cargo plane waiting. When he arrived he was sedated within a crate with an Israeli doctor to ensure he did nor expire. In a second crate were hidden two Israeli nationals one, Alexander Barak, alleged to be a former Mossad agent. A Nigerian diplomat was also in attendance. All were apprehended at the airport due to the diligence of the Customs officer on duty.
I see that an anti-royalist was arrested in Auckland charged with planning an assault on the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall about an hour before they were due to arrive there at the start of their Jubilee Australasian tour. His intentions might have been similar to what happened in Regents Street on 9th December 2010 as related in Chapter 9 of my book. In any event I suspect information for the arrest was gained with the help of British intelligence services.
The Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait have today recognised the new Syrian opposition grouping. Turkey and and western nations have welcomed it’s creation.
Lionel Barber, the editor of the FT, had a front page article in last Wednesday’s paper on the outcome of the American presidential election. I look upon that as sticking one’s head above the parapet. I admire him for it.
That paper also reports Vladimir Putin has sacked his reforming defence minister in some form of power struggle. The reasons given were that the minister is corrupt and has had an affair.
From that source I also see Israel has announced new settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Not a very concilitary move as the new American president takes office.
13th November 2012
I have read various commentators say over the months that Greece is too far down for a financial bailout to work. It looks as though those predictions are going to be correct. I heard on the 6.15 Business News on Today this morning that in spite of the recent Greek parliament vote, it doesn’t seem as though it will be possible to square the circle of the country’s massive debt and it’s poor earning capacity to pay that off. The only way out is appears is to allow it to default within the eurozone.
In Chapter 7 of my book I describe buying a coffee in Kent at the start of a day trip to France. It was not Starbucks. Yesterday executives of Starbucks, Google and Amazon appeared before the Commons Public Accounts Committee to answer questions on their tax arrangements. Unfortunately, and to the embarrassment of the companies I hope, the gentlemen did not have the knowledge to answer all the reasonable questions put to them. My understanding is that Google’s ultimate profits end up in Bermuda, Amazon’s in Luxembourg and Starbucks in the Nertherlands under a special tax deal with their government. I do think it scandalous that large companies such as that do not appear to be paying their fair share of tax in this country when their typical customer has no option but to pay his or her PAYE as demanded by HMRC.
It seems Newsnight’s child abuse report was a joint venture with the non profit making Bureau of Investigative Journalism based at City University. Yesterday the head of BIJ stepped down in light of the poor standards of journalism exposed in the Newsnight broadcast.
A summary of the internal inquiry ordered by George Entwhistle was released by the BBC yesterday. It’s two main findings I think were that the normal checks and balances adopted in invetigative journalism were not used and there was confusion within Newsnight itself as to who was responsible for signing off the report.
I concluded at points in my book that in many ways we are our own worst enemies and I feel the Newsnight debacle illustrates that very well. The Gang saw how top BBC management had dealt with the Jimmy Savile affair, realised it had made the programme extremely vunerable and decided to take what for them was the appropriate action. You kick a dog when it is down. All the experienced decision makers in the team were no longer there. It was a bit like child’s play to take advantage of such a destabilised office and see that the normal standards of reporting were thrown out of the window.
A BBC webpage today tells me it is estimated that cigarette smoking killed 100 million people in the 20th century. Amazingly, as with the drug prescribing habits of Lady Isabella Frankau in this country in the 1960’s as I relate in the the chapter 11 appendix of my book, it seems that is down to one man. He was Buck Duke from North Carolina who in the 1880’s pioneered the mechanised production of ready rolled cigarettes, together with their marketing and distribution.
I see that Abu Qatada came to this country with his family from his homeland in Jordan in 1993 and was granted asylum, on the grounds of religious persecution, in 1994. We have been trying to get rid of him nearly ever since. Or at least since 2002 when we started using our anti-terrorism laws to try to legally extradite him. Bizarrely though, I also read on Wikipedia that there are rumours MI5 have worked with him for the purpose of obtaining information about his unsavoury compatriots. And here we are in 2012 with the gentleman still causing considerable embarrassment to our politicians. By all accounts he is a person with much hate in his heart but it seems there is no evidence he has broken any English laws. It is just that we hate him as well. However the BBC report the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruling yesterday was not totally negative. The word is that if the Jordanians could strenghen their legal code a bit our judges might accept their foreign cousins are actually capable of reaching fair judicious decisions. The whole nub of the story though, what crime Abu Qatada is alleged to have committed in Jordan, I have not found in my ten minutes of looking on the internet.
14th November 2012
The Gang Master will have known I told someone yesterday that I intended to make the website live today or tomorrow. In the end I decided on tomorrow. He will also know, and I myself have no idea why I feel like this, that solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is immensely important to me, and has been since I was a young man. So I don’t suppose it should have too much of a surprise to me when the news came in this afternoon that Israel, using drone intelligence I think, have killed Hamas’ chief military officer as part of a series of air and naval strikes in the Gaza strip when he was travelling in a vehicle. I hope you can imagine how that makes me feel. I don’t really know what else to say.
However whilst I have no doubt the Israelis will not listen to any of their friends over the next few hours and days I do hope the emir of Qatar and the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood have enough in their well of goodwill with the Hamas leadership to persuade them not to rise to an orgy of pointless killing.
When I got back from Sittingbourne this afternoon I found a dead robin lying outside the sun lounge door. From it’s position it had not flown into the window.
15th November 201
I shall make no comment on this whatsoever but the BBC webpage informs me that this morning the prime minister has called a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss the Syrian situation. Nick Robinson has been briefed that we feel the point has been reached where something must be done. Mr Cameron hopes he can persuade Mr Obama to adopt a new approach with him. Present at the meeting will be Nick Clegg, George Osborne, William Hague and Philip Hammond. I expect Ken Clarke might pop along as well. Going onto the Cabinet Office website I see that the council meets weekly.
Someone who I liked listening to when he had a Sunday morning radio show, Dave Lee Travis, was arrested this morning on suspicion of sexual offences. It will obviously all come out in the wash but it seems likley to me he might have groped Liz Kershaw in the past.
I think it was very kind of Lord McAlpine to give a radio interview to his accusers, in the form of the BBC, last night. Becky Milligan struck just the right tone in her questions and without any prompting from her at all Lord McAlpine said he was terrified to find himself a figure of public hatred. A few key words which express the position very well I would have thought.
Five police officers, a detective inspector, a detective sergeant and three constables have been arrested in Maidstone for possibly persuading suspects to admit to offences they had not actually committed, in order to improve vehicle crime targets. The information apparently came from another officer. The difficulty with that I fear, is there will be no hard evidence. It will just come down to one person’s word against another’s. And if the police suspects corroborate what the whistleblower is saying that will not look good for the other five officers. Seems a bit like the Ched Evans case to me. I think the Kent Chief Constable might suspect the same. He makes the point that all charged people in this country are innocent until proved guilty.
Last Thursday’s FT reports that the BBC has reviewed all it’s freelance contracts for presenters and contributors and will be moving 131, about a sixth, onto a staff basis. The purpose is to address the public perception that such people are avoiding tax they should be paying. However, as the report indicates, it is an imprecise science. When you are dealing with a person’s private financial affairs, which are really not your business, I imagine it is difficult to decide the fairest way of remunerating them.
The same paper tells me that ahead of her talks with David Cameron in Downing Street last week, and thinking about Conservative eurosceptics, Mrs Merkel said being alone in this world doesn’t make you any happier. I’m not sure you could imagine a man saying that and, of course, it is absolutely bang on.
There are some aspects of my private life, where other private people outside of my family circle are involved, I have not thought it appropriate to refer to in my published writings. However you may recall I did write about a prisoner escape at the beginning of Chapter 5 in my book. And of course, just because you don’t fully know how I live my life, does not mean some other well informed people are in the same position.
I was interested in an article in last Friday’s FT saying that the government has changed course on it’s prison privatisation programme. Four prisons that were to be transferred to the private sector no longer will be. Now the government says it only wishes to outsource building maintenance and other facilities management to the private sector with the core work of custodial services being retained by Her Majesty’s Prison Service.
Xi Jinping has just been appointed as China’s leader for the next ten years. Journalists say he comes over as much more comfortable in his own skin and open minded that most elite Chinese men. It also seems he will have the opportunity over the next few years new appoint Politburo members in his own mould, if he wishes. We shall see.
The Gang are trying to create war between Hamas and Israel. That is a tragedy for us all. It is just an outflowing of the putrid bile they hold within themselves which has to come out when things are not going their way. I have thought about putting my last couple of days’ diary notes immediately onto the website but it would do no good. Something I have learnt over the last months is that you have to allow people to reach their own decisions. With emotion and rhetoric as it now is over there you will not be getting anyone to apply any rational, caring thought at the moment.
A particular civilian death so far, one of many but important nonetheless, is of the 11 month old son of the BBC’s picture editor in Gaza, Omar Masharawi. The child was in a building in a residential area. It seems possible it was targeted by an Israeli shell.
Last Friday’s FT remarks that Republican supporting groups, often with Karl Rove at their core, spent $1.3 billion supporting particular candidates. Some say Mr Rove was President George W Bush’s right hand man. However, as the piece suggests, no swing states fell to the Republicans so it was not a very good return on their investment. The New York Times says that an American casino owner spent $60 million supporting eight Republican candidates, none of whom won. Why do people think it is all about money?
I wrote the other day it seemed Greece would have to default on it’s debts. Last Friday’s FT editorial does not necessarily agree. It still thinks it possible, with more loans and lower interest rates, it might just be able to pay itself out of trouble.
16th November 2012
It is 11am and as I sit here in my home office I can see 12 pigeons on the lawn to the right of the house all with their heads busily bobbing up and down. No doubt they are feeding on some grain that was put down for them last night.
Dave Lee Travis has spoken to the media this morning from the gate of his garden. He is upset at what has happened to him. He asks to be treated as innocent until he is found guilty. He is disappointed therefore that his employer at Magic AM has decided to take him off air with immediate effect. The police confirm his arrest has got nothing to so with child molestation. Mr Travis says it is a matter of his word against that of two adult women. A difficult situation.
You do wonder why politicians dig such big holes for themselves sometimes. I hope I am not one for extreme language but I do have to agree with the Labour Party that yesterday’s police and crime commissioner elections ware a shambles. One polling station in South Wales, a Gang stronghold in my view, did not see a voter all day. It is not as though a sensible person could not have foreseen what would happen. I did write about it in Chapter 11 of my book. What are we going to do with them.
17th November 2012
Last weekend’s FT Magazine had a First Person article about a chap whose house overlooks a small public car park on the perimeter of Heathrow airport. It is frequented by aircraft spotters. They are invariably middle aged men. Some arrive at 8am and leave at 7pm three days a week. Some have radio scanners to listen to the control tower, some have laptops with radar-style software to keep a record of all aircraft movements, some have high strength binoculars and take photographs keeping a record of all aircraft indentification numbers. The vast majority, in my view, will be Gang helpers.
The same edition had a piece about Dasha Zhukova, the partner of Roman Abramovich. She wishes to bring contemporary art and culture to Russian society, to give people choices so they can decide for themselves what they like. The last sentence of the article notes Ms Zhukova is only 31. ‘If she wants to change the world she has plenty of time in front of her’.
Last Saturday’s FT newspaper had a report about Owen Paterson, the environment secretary, saying a record number of very serious tree diseases now exist in the world. France is currently suffering from an outbreak of plane tree mould. The Horticultural Trades Association is advising it’s members to sue the government if they lose money due to ash dieback, even though experts tell us it’s spores are carried on the wind. The Gang do like to encourage our compensation culture.
I have just read Max Hastings write in that newspaper, in the context of paedophilia, that some victims go on to lead apparently normal lives, though some do not. Perhaps the key word there is apparently. Anyway I agree with what he says. None of us, in my view, should necessarily dwell on the past or wish to blame others for the people we have become under nature’s complicated laws, through our experiences of life. Having written that I emphasise I wish no critisicm towards Steve Messham whatsoever.
The Person in the News article in the paper is about the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, from which I know the Anglican Communion comprises 80 million people, a quarter of them Nigerian. It seems he might have been an inspired choice by the Crown Nominations Commission. I am also aware the it’s chairman is the father of an FT journalist.
Ann Barnes an Independent candidate and the last Kent Police Authority chairwoman, was elected as the county’s first police and crime commissioner on Thursday. I heard the head of ACPO say on the radio this morning that he knows her well and the same will obviously go for our Chief Constable. Not ones to miss a political trick, I suspect it was the Gang behind the demonstration today outside Kent Police headquarters asking Ms Barnes to tell Kent Police off for their heavy handiness in dealing with protests about the live animal exports currently taking place at Ramsgate docks.
It is said there were a high number of spoilt papers in Thursday’s election. It does not strike me though that many people would go to the trouble of getting themselves to their polling station only to scribble on a piece of paper anonymously. However it would be just the sort of think a local Gang director would ask all his helpers to do. In typical Gang fashion there would be no risk to the individual at all in doing that but the person would no doubt be extremely fearful of what would happen to them if the favour wasn’t met. It’s all about control you know.
In the early Business News on Today yesterday I heard a nice brief explanation of what will happen if America goes off the ‘fiscal cliff’ at the end of December. A bit more fully, if no agreement is reached between the Democrats and Republicans beforehand many tax cuts for average workers, businesses and high earners will end. At the same time automatic spending cuts in the defense and healthcare budgets will come into effect. And over the cliff Americans will go, into recession.
It seems to me the advantage of having good quality knowledge, knowing the truth, is that you can put it to good use to keep yourself safe. That is why I put the details I did in Chapter 12 of my book. One thing we can do for example is not take antibiotics we do not need. There was a lady doctor from the Health Protection Agency on Today yesterday just before 7am telling us about it. Antibiotics have been in use for so long now that, through natural mutation, some bacteria are becoming resistant to them. I am not quite sure I follow the reasoning but I think it runs along the lines that it you take an antibiotic you do not need that will kill off some germs inside you which actually might not be causing any great harm. However the danger is that they will then be replaced by one of the bugs which is resistant to antibiotics.
I am an emtional person. That is how I was made. You must therefore forgive me when I write the following. I have been reading the Financial Times for a long time now and knew they would rise to the occasion. Today’s editorial is measured and responsible. It applies blame equally to the Palestians and the Israelis but, most appropriately of all and as I have seen many times in the past, it gives sensible, common sense advice on how the two sides, with the help of their friends, can get themselves out of their current mess.
Normally if someone in public life is having an affair I think most would agree that is a private matter. However as last Saturday’s FT suggests should that person be the head of the CIA, as Mr Petraeus was, he would be open to blackmail which is not an appropriate situation. Some of us do have to live by standards which don’t apply to normal citizens. It is something which goes with the job. The fact that Mr Petraeus did not understand that himself until it was pointed out to him by others, meant that his offer of resignation to Mr Obama, and that it would be accepted, was inevitable in my view.
That edition also reports that China seems to have ended it’s near two year economic slowdown. It’s industrial growth rate has just risen to 9.6% from an earlier figure of under 8%.
The retribution for Egypt sending it’s prime minister to Gaza yesterday has arrived. The driver of a school bus and 50 young children in the vehicle with him were killed today by a train as they were driving across a railway track 230 miles south of Cairo. The railway crossing gate was open. The gate keeper was asleep and has been arrested.
Hamas has now fired rockets into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel have destroyed the office compound of the Hamas leader. Thousands of troops ready for invasion are gathered on the Israeli border with Gaza. I have listened to the Israeli spokesman, Mark Regev, a couple of times today. He accepts that his government’s main duty is to protect it’s citizens and is also aware that Palestinian civilians should not be hurt. Yet he appears to genuinely believe the best way of achieving those aims is to use overwhelming military force against his neighbour’s leaders.
The lead item on this morning’s Radio 4 news was about the Annecy killings. The French prosecutor has said no motive has been found. The police team are assuming the assailant must have been a deranged local man, possibly with connections to Switzerland. It is thought the weapon was an antique Luger gun issued to Swiss soldiers before the first world war. Swiss army personnel are allowed to keep their weapons on retirement.
18th November 2012
After his experiences in Northern Ireland I feel the ACPO chief, Sir Hugh Orde, is always a man who has his eye on the larger picture. I suspect he is worried that the Gang will do everything they can to bring the new police and crime commissioners into disrepute after so relatively few people voted for them last week. He was very clear on Today yesterday morning in saying that, as far as the police are concerned, they will work with the commissioners in a positive and respectful way.
I didn’t mention it in my book because I thought it would bring back too much distress for too many people for a non-core element of the Gang story but I see the RMT union is today commemorating at Kings Cross station the fire there on 18th November 1987 in which 31 people were burnt alive. It is thought a dropped lit cigarette or the like under the wooden underground escalator caused the fire. The secretary of the RMT says the fire happened due to the culture of complacency and systematic failure which existed at the station at the time.
After my bath this afternoon I went to pick some fresh trousers from the wardrobe. The ones I chose I haven’t worn for a few weeks and when I came to do the zip up I discovered that someone had damaged some of the teeth at the top of one of the runners and pulled that part of the runner away from the fabric. I have taken a photo. Have tried to put it back in but it hasn’t worked so far.
I see Turkey is also a key ally on the Palestinian side in the current conflict and various talks are going on with Hamas, many behind the scenes no doubt. All the statements of Mr Netanyahu this morning indicate he wants to do just what he wants to do, without thinking too hard about where the consequences of his actions might lead. If he entices Hezbollah to attack his country, a much more formidable foe than Hamas, I do not think many of his citizens will be saying, thank you very much Mr Prime Minister for all you have done for us. Neither will Hezbollah ask his permission beforehand. Just as he did last Wednesday they will simply carry out the deed. After that it will be a question of picking up the pieces as best we can.
Journalists have been targeted in Gaza again. Today it is two buildings in Gaza City used, amongst others, by Sky News and ITN. Eight Palestinian journalists were injured, one with a leg amputation. The Israelis says it was a legitimate attack as one of the media organisations using the buildings was the Hamas al-Quds TV channel.