3rd December 2012
I did not feel it appropriate to say anything at the time but the former Convervative leader of Gravesham Borough Council in Kent died unexpectedly in hospital in October after returning from a trip to Australia. The loss of the councillor means a by-election is required which is being fought by Ukip amongst other parties. I happen to have seen the election leaflet produced by their candiadate. In my opinion it wishes to play on, and exacerbate, the quite natural fears of voters in respect of an overpowering Europe, excessive immigration from Europe, the loss of green field sites to housing, the expansive nature of our population generally and the possible placement of a third London airport in the Thames Estuary. All good positive stuff.
In Chapter 12 of my book I relate how I believe my body may have been interfered with whilst having day surgery under general anesthetic in hospital for a hernia. If that did happen I surmise it was only possible for the Gang because of their high level of infiltration in that particular hospital. If anyone did see me being injected in the knee they would not have said anything.
Yesterday police were called to a cul-de-sac just outside Cromer where I imagine the Conservative leader of North Norfolk District Council and his wife lived. They found them shot dead with gunshot wounds, the body of the lady in a bungalow front garden and that of the man in a back garden nearby. The supposition is, I believe, that one shot the other and then committed suicide. A person who saw them together last Thursday evening says they were both very happy.
I have not referred to it previously but from the media I read I know Japan has been going through a tough time recently. The backdrop I feel is the bad feeling that still exists with South Korea, China and others following the hostilities of the Second World War. There are territorial disputes with Moscow and Seoul as to who owns islands in The Sea of Japan and Chinese vessels keep intruding into Japanese terrortorial waters. Neither has the Japanese political scene been calm. Since the 2009 election the country has had three prime ministers and last month parliament was finally dissolved to allow the country to decide in just under two week’s time on how the nation should tackle it’s poor economic performance and finances. Amongst all that was the tsunami and Fukushima nucler power plant failure from March 2011 as I go through in Chapter 12 of my book. And then yesterday there was a roof collapse in a road tunnel south of Tokyo killing nine motorists. It is thought steel struts holding up concrete roof panels gave way without warning. For some reason a fire also started. All very difficult and with the Japanese people seeming to be as they are, quite panicking as well I fear.
I have a guess the tunnel accident has given BBC London the confidence to run it’s own prepared story (hopefully it wasn’t the other way round) about a draft report given to Transport for London last year on the condition of the Hammersmith flyover in London. Details were obtained through a Freedom of Information request. It highlighted that salt water from road gritting had rusted internal steel cables within the structure and that therefore there was a small risk of it collapsing without warning at any time. Nevertheless it took TfL nearly a month to physically support the bridge. Just to keep us all happy it was shut two days before Christmas. The repairs lasted for five months.
4th December 2012
It was announced yesterday that Tom Mockridge, the chief executive of News International and who took over from Rebekah Brooks in July 2011, is leaving the company at the end of the month. Rupert Murdoch has stated the decision was absolutely and entirely Mr Mockridge’s alone which I take at face value. If I was invited to speculate I would guess that Mr Mockridge has seen the manouverings taking place within the company over the last week or so in relation to their position on a new press regulatory body, and decided he no longer wants to work for them.
I wrote about the lead singer of metal band Lamb of God being arrested in the Czech Republic in the Chapter 7 appendix of my book. He was bailed and returned to America. The singer has just been charged with manslaughter resulting from a fan falling off the stage whilst he was on it. The musician has previously said apparently that if the case goes to trial he will return to Prague to defend himself.
On of those stories is up on the BBC website today where I suspect quite a few people know the full story. I however do not. The Iranians say they have captured a US military drone. The Americans say they havn’t lost one. Obviously it belonged to someone.
Things seem to be coming to a head in Syria with, I imagine, the opposition closing in on the capital. The Americans obviously have intelligence that the regime has been accessing it’s chemical weapons stores. Mr Obama went on television yesterday to say their use would be totally unacceptable; the world is watching. Meanwhile the UN is pulling all it’s non-essential international staff out of the country.
I had never realised it but SMS stands for Short Message Service. From Today yesterday I understand texting started 20 years ago this week. It was developed by Vodaphone and was originally envisaged as a paging device between secretaries and their bosses, and the like. As we all know it went on to feed the culture of the times.
Newspaper editors went to Downing Street today where David Cameron asked them to come back to him with some specific proposals by Thursday. It seems there are three schools of thought. Most of the pressmen who would like to see the new regulatory body still staffed within the industry; those, represented by the FT, the Guardian and The Independent, who feel the body must be truly independent; and outsiders who want the weight of statute. It is a really strange situation. In a democratic society it must be the politicians who have the ultimate power. But there is a massive amout of mistrust by journalists as to how they exercise it. That of course has got nothing to do with the Leveson Report as such. It is much more fundamental. All the victims are looking for is some protection, please.
Today this morning had a couple of pieces on a pressure group called the European Woman’s Lobby, representing 200 NGO’s, who will be asking the European Parlaiment to rationalise laws on prostitution across the union and generally to support women more in relation to their male clients.
Then one of those really interesting sections just before 7am talking to a researcher of the history of terrorism. A man completley focused on his subject so no hint of emotion anywhere. He gave a quick potted history after 9/11 when terrorism dropped significantly until things kicked off in Iraq leading to a peak in 2009. We have been on a plateau since with Iraqi violence starting to decrease but being replaced by such countries as Syria and Yemen. The gentleman said the area the least likely to suffer from terrorism at the moment is North America. It’s all about perception silly.
From yesterday’s FT I see not only South Korea but China as well has expressed deep concern about North Korea’s intended ballistic missile launch this month.
Possibly borrowing a thought from our own press regulation discussions I see from the same edition that Tim Geithner has challenged the Republicans to come up with some ideas of their own as to how falling over the American fiscal cliff can be averted.
5th December 2012
Economic life continues to be difficult. On the day of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement I hear that our economy has effectively made no progress at all since his goverment came to power in May 2010. I do not feel you can blame him for that. We are all in this together. I say in paragraph 40 of my 1st March notes in appendix 10/2 of the book that it would be a struggle of strength and determination with the Gang to the end. It was only a guess at the time but unfortunately that is the way it seems to be turning out. Horrible if you want a job and you can’t get one. Eventually though, I am sure, it will get better.
A good example here, I feel, of how things can creep up without us noticing. As always it is down to having good intelligence. The BBC report today that a French study, drawn from testing the semen of 26,000 men, has concluded the sperm count of it’s males has dropped by a third between 1989 and 2005. Average counts are still fertile but it is obviously a worrying trend. It seems likely something in modern lifestyles, diets or environmenmt is causing it.
Although this is just about perceptions I see there has been a Transparency International report published, derived I think from public surveys in each of 137 countries, saying out of that number the most corrupt are seen to be Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia. The best are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand. The UK is judged the 17th most honest and Greece the most corrupt EU country.
It is absolutely amazing how the hidden workings of Organised Crime can make highly successful people genuinely think that black is white. Today’s FT reports that the former chairman of HBOS appeared before the Paliamentary Commission on Banking Standards yesterday. Apparently six momths before the bank crashed he wrote a letter to the FSA reassuring them what a highly conservative institution HBOS was.
And again, why do some of us let our emotions shut out all our rational thought. A couple of pages on I see that France welcomes at least a quarter more Chinese tourists than we do. Being psychologically and physically on the edge of the continent we are outside Europe’s border-free Schenengen area. Consequently Chinese visitors have to go through a bureaucratic visa nightmare just to get here. That is such a pity. We live in a lovely country. We have a lot to show off.
The same edition implies Mexico’s new president does not want to be distracted by his country’s drug warfare problems. He has produced the Pact for Mexico which aims to introduce competition and transparency into the closed sectors of oil and gas production, education and broadcasting.
One of my diary notes for 15th November 2012 referred to five police officers based in Maidstone being arrested for administrative irregularities. As a result of that our PCC has asked Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to carry out a investigation into Kent Police as a whole to see whether any other possible corrupt practices may have been taking place in the force. Pretty much what I was asking for in April 2009 in my complaint to the IPCC as mentioned in Chapter 4 of my book. Better late than never.
I think it likely today’s prank phone call to the King Edward VII hospital was an extremely silly Gang little game. If that is right they are very much on the back foot. Early last year I think they would have ploughed straight in with British based broadcasters. Today they have to use the other side of the world in order to be adequately protected.
6th December 2012
Tobias Buck wrote in last Saturday’s FT that he thought Israel would have been surprised by the negative reaction they received from most European countries in last week’s Palestian sponsored UN vote. He followed that up in yesterday’s paper by musing whether there is a coordinated European approach to try and get Mr Netanyahu to bend. On Monday Britain and France called in our Israli ambassadors to express disapproval at their intended settlement expansion plans and Germany issued a statement of criticism. He suggests we are all beginning to lose trust in Mr Natanyahu’s good faith. Today Mr Natanyahu is in Germany when I hope the pressure will be continued. The key though, of course, is how America handles the situation. Mr Obama has a very tight political tightrope to walk.
On Monday politicians at Belfast City Hall decided, by a vote of 29 to 21, only to fly the union flag from their public building on designated days, as happens I understand in most of the UK. It was a compromise put forward by the Aliiance Party. Nationalists did not want the flag flown at all, Unionists wanted it fluttering all the time. You might have thought that was a grown up solution but some Unionist politicians were so upset they decided to encourge their supporters to go out onto the streets to protest. The Gang of course do not look a gift horse in the mouth and things became violent at City Hall on Monday night with 15 police officers being injured. Things could have got entirely out of hand when the protestors gained entry to the courtyard of the building. That was all the police’s fault for not doing their job properly. Then the following night rioting took place in Carrickfergus. The party offices of the Alliance Party there were ransacked and the home of a couple in Bangor County Down, Alliance Party councillors, was attacked. This morning the PSNI Chief Constable has asked, effectively, whether people wouldn’t mind growing up before somebody gets seriously hurt. The police will be analysing the events to see if they can identify whether a conspiracy has been taking place. And all because, in my view, some senior Unionist politicains could not bring themselves to condemn the violence on Tuesday morning after a proper democratice vote. It does seem to me, if you put yourself forward for political office, that does involve taking on a few responsibilities. One is to show some leadership to your supporters who are not able to control their emotions, hopefully as well as you can.
I do feel sorry for Starbucks. I expect they just want to have people think a bit better about them. Google and Amazon are much more hard headed. Google for good reasons I feel, Amazon perhaps less so. Starbucks have said they want to pay more tax next year irrespective of whether they make any profit. I am not sure that was a very wise thing to say but the intention is plain. I for one would not want to be too critical of them.
It does seem possible that the appearance of the three executives before the Public Accounts Committe could have been a seachange moment as far as public opinion in concerned. Whoever decided it should happen is a smart person. It meant that all of us who want to watch could see, out in the open, how these things work.
I made a diary note about John McAfee on 23rd November 2012. The BBC reports today that he has been arrested in Guatemala for entering the country illegally and is likely to be deported back to Belize. Apparently he had been travelling with his girlfriend and some journalists from an, American I think, magazine. They took a photo of him on a street in Guatemala City and put it on their website. From the background features in the photograph the authorities were able to work out where he was.
During part of this year I was going to a set of buildings, occupied by a body in the public sector, doing voluntary work. The body decided they did not want me to help anymore. They did not tell me that however beforehand. On my last day with them I was taken to one side within five minutes of arriving and asked to leave immediately. The body asked for their property back which I had on my person and which was kept in my car when off site. I have absolutely no doubt that if I might have done anything wrong or infringed any laws, like Mr McAfee, I would have had the book thrown at me.
Channel 4 News had an eight minute piece on the decriminalisation of drugs this evening. Washinton State legalised the possession of marijuana today after a public vote last month. Colorado will do the same in the New Year. Mr Obama, apparently, has not said a word about that. Around the world 25 countries have legalised the possession of drugs to some degree including several in South America and Portugal, Spain, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Switzerland in Europe. In India you can smoke cannabis for religious reasons but elsewhere in the region they seem pretty hard on drug use. There was a very wound up man, in my view, in the studio saying we should be much tougher on drugs. One of his arguments was that if alchohol or tobacco were just coming onto the scene no one in their right mind would be happy in allowing them to be freely used. So why would anyone with an iota of sense suggest that we should be softer on drugs. The point he misses I feel is that demand side of the equation. It is surely immensely disrepectful for one individual to say to another that if they prefer to consume drugs, rather than tobacco or alchohol, they should ultimately have their liberty taken away. That is a matter for public opinion generally to decide not for one strong willed person. If you wish to harm youself by consuming drugs, without affecting others, it seems to me that should be a decision for you. Perhaps the gentleman also thinks anyone who harms their body by over eating should be similarly legally penalised, bearing in mind the massive cost that puts onto our National Health Service. All in all a very difficult subject.
7th December 2012
Things are not easy in Egypt. Property is being damaged and some people killed. But I can detect no Gang silly games. Probably the Muslim Brotherhood are not being as inclusive as would be best. It seems President Morsi has become quite small minded of late. However the essential of the situation I feel is that Mr Morsi is a democratically elected leader and therefore carries legitimate authority. He has announced a referendum in a week’s time and that decision of the people when it comes should be respected. No doubt it will not be perfect. Arrangements can be changed in the future as needs be. The problem I suspect is that quite a few of Mr Morsi’s opponents know they will lose the referendum and cannot stomach the fact. A bit like what has been going on in Northern Ireland this week.
It seems possible Russia might be having second thoughts on it’s Syrian position. It’s all about politics I suspect and they would not want to find themselves marginalised by ending up on the losing side. Hilary Clinton was in Dublin yesterday for an Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe meeting. I believe she had meetings with Mr Hague and Russian foreign minister Sergev Lavrov. The UN envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi also flew in, in case he could help.
Today Mrs Clinton is in Belfast, no doubt to try and pour oil on some troubled waters there. I see she then goes to Belgium and the Czech Republic.
Labour’s Shadow Businees Secretary, Chuka Umunna, was on Channel 4 news last night talking about the Starbucks story. At one point he used the phrase, get a grip. You could tell from his reaction that Jon Snow was quite taken aback.
There appears to be more of the Norovirus winter sickness bug around this year than normal. The medical column in last weekend’s FT magazine wrote about it and by chance I heard a piece on yesterday’s Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2. Although some form of skin contact or throat inhalation is required it is incredibly infectious and makes the patient feel terrible for up to a week. In January 2005 there was a pop concert in Aberdeen’s Music hall. Someone with Norovirus was sick on the entrance steps meaning many trod in that person’s vomit as they went in. It seems that led to particles of the infected material getting into the air conditioning system. Consequently, of the 1500 people there 500 caught the virus. For all that though apparently it is not a complicated virus and can be controlled by old fashioned cleanliness techniques. Such a pity that it makes us feel so unwell.
The BBC webpage tells me that the Hamas political leader since 2004 is in Gaza today after his wife arrived there last night. He travelled openly through the Rafar crossing from Egypt. It is his first visit to the territory. Wikipedia says he has lived in Damascus since 2001. It seems clear to me that would not have happened unless Israel had agreed beforehand to allow him safe passage. It is a confidence building measure. And I suspect the Israeli Prime Minister’s visit to Germany yesterday had something to do with it. Thank you Mr Netanyahu.
It has been announced today that the duty nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who first took the hoax phone call at the King Edward II hospital on Tuesday morning has been found dead. I hope the lady and gentleman disc jockeys in Austaralia feel proud of themselves. It is never a good idea, in my view, to play silly games in this life picking on others, however innocent the action may appear to you. It is unkind whether you know your victim of not. You should not do it.
David Cameron said he was in favour of same-sex marriage in church this afternoon. For an opposition politician I thought it was kind of the Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, to offer a degree of support by saying she hoped he would not be deterred by opposition from within his own party and beyond.
In a blow to reconciliation with the Taliban no doubt the BBC reported this morning that the head of Afghan intelligence has been wounded, possibly seriously, by a suicide bomber. The chief used 20 different guesthouses in Kabul to reduce his risk from harm but that obviously didn’t help him too much.
Lord Justice Leveson has hopped off to Australia and from there, at a privacy symposium, he has said new laws are needed to prevent mob rule by the internet and trial by Twitter.
I noted yesterday that in the Gang financial world we are in for a long hard slog. Evidence of that, in my view, was shown by the Radio 4 news this morning which reported that ‘Which’ has polled 550 people working in banks. Two thirds said they were experiencing more pressure than ever before from their superiors to sell unsuitable financial products to customers. A half agreed they had deliberately mis-sold policies to meet their targets.
The Kyoto climate change protocol is being wound down to a new agreement to start in 2015 at the insistence of the Americans. In future the brunt of the burden will not be on rich countries alone but also on upcoming ones such as China and India. There has been the annual UN meeting in Doha this week about it, attended by some 200 countries with Qatar and Saudi Arabia being joint hosts. From listening to Today this morning it seems to have been a bit of a joke with no one interested in going anywhere. Someone said we need a form of world government.
In Chapter 6 of my book I talk of the fire in a vegetable packing plant in Atherstone-on-Stour in November 2007. Four firefighters were sent into the blaze when no people were inside and lost their lives. The police believe the blaze was started deliberately but no one has ever been charged. Today Warwickshire County Council, as fire authority for the building, have been fined £30,000 for keeping inadequate records of the premises for the assistance of it’s firefighers.
8th December 2012
I admit that my first note on the King Edward VII hospital incident was prejudiced. I am an emotional person. To be a bit more analytical I hope it hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention that Syndey, where the two disc jockeys are based, is where Lord Justice Leveson is at the moment. And the issues raised are exactly the same as he was dealing with in his enquiry. The massive commercial pressures existing in some parts of our society lead a few to slip into immoral ways just for the sake of money. You have to be quite strong to resist the temptation. Which means, when the dust has settled, that Gang surrogates will want to get back to normal transmission as quickly as possible. I hope Ms Gillard will do her best to see that doesn’t happen.
The Treasury Minister David Gauke was on Today this morning getting a grilling from John Humprys on the tax position of multi-national companies. He didn’t want to be disrespectful to public feeling on the issue I thought but hoped we would realise it is a pretty complicated subject. In today’s world of international tax architecture it is not a problem one country can fix on it’s own. He said that with the Freench and Germans we are trying to get the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) to do something about it.
William Hague is in Bahrain at the moment, rather unexpectedly I think, at a regional security annual forum. He has given an interview to the BBC overnight reinforcing Mr Obama’s remarks on Monday that if Syria attempts to use chemical weapons against their population, America will take action, presumably in the form of preventative air strikes. From what Mr Hague was saying I imagine it is known chemicals have been prepared and are ready to be flown from airfields on receipt of the appropriate order from the government.
Conspiracy is a funny thing. When something odd happens you do have to suspect some hidden dealings. Going against my note yesterday about the over-running climate change conference, it has ended today by all accounts remarkably successfully. And that in spite of a last minute spoiling attempt by Russia which was ruthlessly dealt with by the chairman, the man who we were told was happy to talk about anything except the matter in hand. Previous piecemeal provisions have been tidied up to allow a significant push forward at the meeting in France to be held in 2015. More importantly though, I understand, the world including America has accepted the principle that poor countries such as low lying island states can be compensated for the harm past air pollution from rich counties will cause them in the future. As a back stop the existing Kyoto Protocol has been extended until 2020.
I wrote about last year’s UN meeting in Durban in Chapter 11 of the book. I suspected a positive conspiracy there. It was messy but overall produced a positive outcome. If the same has been going on in Doha for the last two weeks it has been a much more professional effort.
By coincidence the BBC’s Russian correspodent had a report on Today this morning from a town in Russia whose main factory has just closed. The residents it seems are badly served by their public officials. That obviously makes conservative, traditional people unhappy but they still have great trust in their President. They look upon Mr Putin as their potential savour, if he really knew what was happening to them, not part of their problem.
Yesterday’s FT editorial suggests Mr Monti has done a good job nursing Italy back to economic health and credibility. Interest rates on Italian bonds, used to borrow money from international investors, had recently fallen to their lowest level in two years. That is until Mr Berlusconi’s party abstained on two parliamentary votes on Thursday causing political turmoil. Italian bond yields went up and shares fell. Mr Berlusconi has also indicated he might renege on an earlier pledge not to run for prime minister next year.
9th December 2012
From the 8am Radio 4 news newspaper review this morning I know today’s Sunday Express reports it is feared the lady disc jokey in Sydney might harm herself because of the pressure she feels after the apparent suicide in London. It might well be true. However if the lady does not in fact feel like that it seems to me to be an argument to make those who would criticise her, feel guilty. One of my dairy notes dated 23rd October 2012 records Simon Kuper writing that it is an old mafia trick to pull people in with you against their better judgement.
There was a nice Observer story in the same radio segment about a Cabinet Office cleaner who left a note on Nick Clegg’s desk asking if he could help introduce a living wage. When his employer found out the cleaner got moved. The Deputy Prime Minister therefore wrote to the employer asking for the man to be reinstated. The cleaner has said Mr Clegg is a good, polite man and his kind intervention has made a big difference to his life.
One of my book chapers is called That Underlying Political Force. It is written in the context of nasty Gang manouverings but of course hidden workings can be in the other direction too. The chairman of King Edward VII’s hospital is a hereditary peer. Wikipedia informs me he is also a senior Tory having served in Margaret Thatcher’s government in the Lords. No doubt he has good connections to this day. Yesterday he wrote a strong letter to the chairman of the company which owns the Sydney radio station calling their behaviour truly appaling and asking for an assurance that such an incident could never happen again. In effect, in my view, he has been able to harness the disquiet of the public in both countries to put considerable pressure on the company to change it’s ways. My note yesterday suggested that perhaps the Austalian prime minister was the lady for the job. However, of course, there is usually more than one way to skin a rabbit.
There was a lovely discussion on compassion on the Sunday programme this morning. It is not one of my words but a lady contributor said it is the feeling where you take on resposibility for the pain you see in the world around you. Also you always treat others, no matter who, in the same way you would like to be treated yourself.
Overnight Mr Monti has decided, in view of the lack of support from Mr Burlesconi, that he will resign as soon as the current Italian budget is passed, thereby bringing elections forward by a few weeks. I just hope Mr Burlesconi doesn’t allow his apparent need to inflate his own ego to blind him from what is best for his country.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, Terry Waite, was held captive by Hizzbollah in Lebanon between 1987 and 1991, before being released. Last week he returned to Beirut to tell Hizbollah he felt no ill will towards them and to ask if they could help in making things easier for Christians in Syria. A marvellous gesture of him and, I hope, another interlocking piece of confidence building measures in the Middle East.
Hamid Karzai said yesterday he believed the recent suicide bombing in Kabul was planned in Pakistan. It was too complicated to be just a Taliban operation. That view, almost definitely I would think, has come from an American intelligence briefing. If so it is nice they put their confidence in Mr Karzai. The other interesting feature is that the Taliban have denied outside help. That would also fit in, in my view. One of the Gang’s cleverest traits I feel is that they arrange a situation, without you knowing necessarily they are doing it, so you believe you are getting just what you thought you wanted. You are then likely to close your mind to any little outside nudges on the way. The possibility that you are dancing to another’s tune never even occurs to you.
One good aspect of the current Egyptian situation I feel is that Mr Morsi’s actions have unified the opposition. It does seem the president is now trying to compromise. He announced yesterday he was willing to rescind some of his previously announced powers. Hopefully some of the more extreme views in the Muslim Botherhood are being sidelined. The army, as guarantor of public order, should also I think feel obliged to exercise a postive influence. The opposition’s immediate reaction is that the concession makes no difference to them but hopefully their leaders may calm down a bit over the next few days and start concentrating on trying to influence the referendum result next weekend.