1st September 2013
I think there will have been a bit of anxiety around yesterday morning when shortly after 11am a fire started on an industrial estate in Gravesend, Kent. Fortunately it was not nearly as bad as it looked. The cause was just burning tyres resulting in a massive plume of smoke. People were worried however that two gas holders next door could catch alight. 70 firefighters from Kent and London attended. Everything was contained and evacuation of the nearby homes was not needed.
Sir David Frost died last Saturday night, aged 74, after a heart attack. Although I have not been able to find out it’s location at the time he was on the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship where he was due to give a speech.
Late yesterday afternoon our time Barack Obama announced he had made up his mind that a miltary strike on the Syrian regime should be made. However he was going to give the final say to a vote in Congress when they get back from holiday the week after next. He then went off I understand for a round of golf with Joe Biden.
Having followed the President ever since he was eleected in 2008 I cannot think that was a snap conclusion, well hidden though it was. I feel he will have been pondering on it for a few days and probably consulted with some close aides. I suspect one of the purposes is to keep up the pressure on the Gang. Hopefully some good might come of the G20 summit next week but I am not holding my breath.
Last Thursday’s lost Commons’ vote was just one of principle, with further action dependent presumably on the United Nations inspectors’ report. Logically therefore there doesn’t seem anything further for our MPs to discuss. However I suspect it will come down to political manoeuvring. William Hague was sure on the World This Weekend at lunchtime that the matter is closed. Paddy Ashdown, Michael Howard and Malcolm Rifkind have said they would like it reopened.
John Kerry has said this evening our time that traces of sarin have been found in the hair and blood of people at the sites of the Damascus missile strike on 21st August 2013. Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo today have called on the UN and international community to take deterrent action against the Syrian government.
Egyptian officials have said that yesterday they folied an attack on a container ship as it passed through the Suez Canal. I expect it was the same insurgent group I referred to on 22nd August 2013.
2nd September 2013
Last Friday it was announced that Super Puma helicopter flights are to resume in the North Sea. The black box from the downed aircraft has been examined and it is confirmed there was no mechanical failure. There are now more than 250 people on rigs, some in place for over three weeks. Bob Crow of the RMT union says they have seen the evidence and are happy with the decision.
The UN inspectors travelled by road to Beirut on Saturday and then flew to The Hague in the Netherlands. It seems their collected material is to be analysed at laboratories in Sweden and Finland. Ban Ki-moon has asked for the results as quickly as possible.
It was reported at the weekend that Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Paraquay are experiencing ususually cold weather at the moment with deaths in all countries. Peru has declared a state of emergency across 10 of it’s regions.
The chief executive of The Howard League was on Today this morning. She said that even our new prisons are grossly overcrowded. That does not help society. Most prisoners leave as criminals, the system costs a fortune and one inmate commits suicide every week. She suggests that Ken Clarke showed political leadership when he was Justice Secretary reducing the pison population by 3,000. Since then numbers have stagnated. She argues the Probation Service is functioning extremely well but is being decimated for political purposes.
3rd September 2013
Lady Gaga has given an exclusive interview to BBC Breakfast, which I found on a BBC webpage, as she starts a UK tour. She comes over as a genuine, warm, eccentric person. She freely admits she is obsessive and loves a high. But that stimulation comes from within herself. It occurs when she entertains her live audience and gets positive feedback from them. It is a feeling of friendship and love. She does not wish people who watch her to adulate. She just wants to give members of her audience joy so they have the capacity to love themselves. What I find so remarkable about her is not that she is such a deep thinker, which she obviously is, but that she is completely at ease with herself, warts and all. That gives her, in my view, deep inner confidence and strength.
Earlier today Israel carried out a joint exercise with America in the Mediterranean Sea to test it’s ability to shoot down incoming missiles which proved successful. William Hague has told Parliament there will be a series of bilateral meetings on the edges of the G20 summit to see if progress can be made on the Syrian situation. The UN says there are now two million Syrian refugees in the region. 4.25 million are displaced within it’s borders. That means nearly one in three of the population have had to leave their homes. The BBC webpage has a map showing the sites where the refugees are placed in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. For it’s size Lebanon is carrying by far the greatest burden. It is amazingly stoic of them to help without complaining. We argue about the niceties. The people suffer.
A few hours before he leaves for Sweden, on his way to Russia, some political heavyweights have come out in favour of of Barack Obama on his Syrian position. Supporters include John Boener, Eric Cantor, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The BBC webpage presents a positive feel but I have just watched Channel 4 News and their team think the vote will probably be lost.
I am not going to admit exactly how old this news is but I see from recent editions of the FT that an economic knock on effect is currently taking place around the world. After the money woes of America and Europe, emerging economies have started to feel financial turbulence over the last couple of weeks. The cause is the prospect of interest rates coming off the floor at some point in the future now that the big countries are beginning to grow. That seems to be spooking city slickers.
I will come clean on this one. I have just read the editorial in last Tuesday’s FT on our police. After going through all the failures it calls for a public debate on the future role and nature of policing. It is mute on how it thinks that discussion should take place.
In the same edition, written before our parliamentary vote was called, Gideon Rachman explains what a devil’s den the Middle East has become: so many vested interests trying to protect their own positions. It is hardly surprising America is so wary of getting too involved. Gideon is the second journalist I have heard pass on that western intelligence services say they are extremely worried by jihadist elements in the Syrian opposition.
Last Wednesday’s FT notes that since November 2012 Turkey has used a new trade route, avoiding Syria, to Jordan and other countries onwards in the Middle East. Lorry loads of goods travel by ship from a southern Turkish port down the coasts of Syria and Lebanon to the Israeli port of Haifa. So far about 2,000 trucks have used the service.
4th September 2013
Even as a child of 12 it struck me as pretty coincidental in 1963 that Lee Harvey Oswald should be shot dead whilst walking with police in a public corridor two days after the assassination of President Kennedy. If he had a story to tell there would be no chance of it coming from his grave. I have little doubt, all these years later, that it was a Gang manoeuvre. It has also fixed in my mind that Mark Bridger was viscously attacked in Wakefield jail so soon after arriving there in July. Perhaps Mr Bridger has a story to tell as well. The cause of me writing this note however is that Ariel Castro, who kept three women captive at his home in Cleveland Ohio as sex slaves for 10 years, was found hanged in his prison accommodation yesterday. He was in a single cell on suicide watch, being checked every 30 minutes and by all accounts must have smuggled a cord in there with which to do the deed.
American politicians seem to be remarkably busy at the moment considering they are supposed to be on holiday. Yesterday the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations prepared a draft resolution, for both parts of Congress to support, to approve limited US military action in Syria. You get the feeling that senior members of the legislative body are aware of America’s standing in the world and want to give a lead. It is the quiet ones perhaps, aware of their need to get re-elected, who do not see it that way. At least the issue is being treated as a matter of conscience.
Then President Putin has given a joint interview to Associated Press and a Russian TV station. He warns that he will view America taking any military action as an aggression. I imagine he also wished to look statesmanlike by saying Russia would be prepared to support action if it was proved beyond doubt that the attack was the work of the Syrian government. However I am sure he is already aware of the intelliegence given in private briefings to Congress which obviously hasn’t persuaded him. Mr Kerry on the other hand says he is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was the Syrian regime. So there it lies.
The Huffington Post records that Barack Obama arrived in Stockholm this morning. Besides the Swedish prime minister he will meet with the leaders of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. I remember the lead Syrian chemicals weapons UN inspector is Swedish and one set of samples is being analysed there. Whether the President will get an advanced indication of how their work is going I am not sure.
As you might imagine last Saturday’s FT did some in depth reporting on the previous Thursday’s Commons vote. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said the outcome was accidental, it was not what anyone wanted. Bearing in mind that the government have a working majority of 84 an unnamed Conservative minister called the sequence a catalogue of errors and a shambles. The Tory vote was supposed to be whipped but in reality it appears that hardly happened. It seems that in Mr Cameron’s first telephone conversation with Mr Obama a week last Saturday the likelihood of a military strike the following weekend was discussed. As our Prime Minister had previously said he would take the issue to Parliament that obviously put him under a certain amount of pressure to act, perhaps, more on instinct than deep thought. Mr Miliband withdrew his support by phone at 5.15 on the Wednesday afternoon. The coalition had a revised motion drawn up by 7pm saying their motion was only a first step which they no doubt thought would be acceptable to Labour. With hindsight Labour’s own amendment could have been accepted to prevent them from veering again, but on an issue of that importance with no time for reflective thought, I expect the government never even saw the possibility. The FT says the Daily Mail was openly scornful in the run up to the vote of Mr Cameron trying to do his best in difficult circumstances. It raises the possibility, it seems to me, that their view may have been influenced by some elements in the British security establishment.
I didn’t mention it yesterday but in last Wednesday’s FT there was an article about how industrial-scale theft, sabotage and technical problems are putting severe strain on Nigeria’s oil industry. Crude output is nearly down to a 20 year low. It made me think it could well be a deliberate Gang strategy when I looked through Saturday’s paper this morning. That says the level of lawlessness now emerging in Libya has caused their oil production at the beginning of the year of 1.4 million barrels a day, to fall to 250,000. There are echoes there, it seems to me, of the difficulties Mexican society has experienced in recent years, as far as internal rebellions are concerned. I won’t even mention Iraq which Wikipedia says could have the largest oil reserves in the world. I should think the Americans are extremely grateful they have discovered shale fracking.
The following three, in my view Gang influenced, stories were all on the same page of Saturday’s FT.
Spain has found a new reason to bully, I suggest, it’s small southern neighbour. On the grounds of environmental correctness it says it wants to stop Gibraltar providing port services to oil tankers as they pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, a significant revenue earner for them. The Spaniards argue they are worried there might be an oil spill. With the Gang around of course that is now a distinct possibility.
Belarus has arrested the chief executive of the Russian company Uralkai, the largest potash producer in the world. Mr Baumgertner is an associate of Vladimir Putin. He went to Minsk at the invitation of the Belarus prime minister to discuss tensions between his firm and another and was promptly arrested at the airport. Belarus say they will not hand him back. The indication that the Belarusian prime minister is a manipulated Gang puppet, in my view, is that Russia is it’s largest trading partner. All quite stupid and self destructive one might say. You pity the citizens of the country.
I do not think the Gang are big in Sweden. But I do feel they have a presence, possibly arising from the outcome of the Second World war. If I am right Stieg Larsson threw a light on their existence, and paid the price for his efforts. Essentially the Gang are a hidden organisation. That is the most important thing to them I believe. Consequently it is not possible for them, with the things they do, to have any form of moral code. They just operate to maintain the discipline which is required to protect their business interests; and of course have some fun on the way. Put those factors together and you can get some pretty wicked things going on here in the real world, as we have discovered from our Stafford Hospital and banking revelations. The Gang, in my view, would have deliberately made it as easy as possible for Jimmy Savile to continue his abuse, not for any strategic reason but because some high level Gang members at the time were paedophiles. Jimmy provided them with cover.
The last report on the page was about the temporary closure by authorities of one of the few fee paying schools in Sweden, costing £20,000 per year. The final straw for action which could not be ignored was when two boys were branded with a hot iron, leaving evidence for all to see. The allegation is that the school has a bullying culture to maintain a certain pecking order. If your father is not favoured perhaps that could be a reason why certain slave boys have been subject to beatings, anal rape with a broomstick handle, forced sex acts and the eating of manure.
The last paragraph is a tale of culture within a particular school. One thing we should realise about the Gang in my view is that they look upon themselves as supremely confident. They were around after all without detection for an extremely long time. For that reason, from habit perhaps, they still do not mind those immediately around them, unaware of their presence, to see how they are. From that point of view therefore it is not necessary for us to understand a cause for human behaviour. We just need to use our sense of right and wrong to stamp on their horrible outlook on life as hard as we can whenever it becomes apparent.
To a questioner at his Swedish press conference Mr Obama has now set out his position on red lines, which he first raised in August 2012. Quite reasonably he says it is nothing personal to him at all. He is one individual doing the right thing. His credibility is not on the line. To try and make out it is is just plain daft. When The Chemical Weapons Convention came into force in 1997 98% of the world community decided use of those devices was unconscionable. They drew the red line. Congress is now debating it’s own stance about whether it has a red line on the issue, 16 years later in today’s age. The world, in the form of the international community, must also decide what it’s red line is. He did not mention the UK Parliament.
5th September 2013
I received a reply from No 10 Downing Street on 22nd August 2013 to my Stephen Lawrence request, which I refer to on 26th August 2013. They passed it over to the Home Office. That letter arrived yesterday. Mrs May’s department do not rule out a Public Inquiry but obviously do not have any plans at the moment. When you see the amount of pressure which has to be put on Mr Putin to create a small amount of latitude I feel something will only come of it if the Prime Minister looks upon the move as a political imperative.
Nick Robinson said at the time of last September’s Cabinet reshuffle that Iain Duncan Smith had declined to move from Work and Pensions as he was worried that otherwise his reforms might not see the light of day. It seems his fears were justified. After a critical National Audit Office report out today Mr Duncan Smith has explained that a few months ago he lost faith in his senior civil servants who were handling the reforms. He brought in outside people with proven track records and they have pulled his ship around. He is now confident that welfare Universal Credit will be brought in to timetable and under budget.
There were a series of accidents in fog on the new Isle of Sheppey Bridge in Kent for drivers leaving the island just after 7am this morning. Over 130 vehicles were involved and dozens were injured, eight seriously. As often happens in incidents like that it could have been far, far worse.
Syria is not officially on the agenda of the G20 summit starting in St Petersburg today so all discussions about it will be on an informal basis. One consequence of our parliamentary vote last week, in my view, is that Mr Cameron has been put neatly in an isolated box. In the glare of the world’s media he will not be having any conversations with Mr Obama; they now have no common purpose. Mr Hollande however will be afforded that facility.
It is quite amazing really that otherwise sensible people seem to lose all sense of jugdement just because they receive some news they desperately want to hear. This time it is some Scottish Nationalists who have used the term game on, as reported in Tuesday’s FT, in response to a poll the party has commissioned saying Scots favour independence by one percentage point. More established YouGov put the Noes 30 points above the Yeses. That is a vast difference. I wrote about conflicting opinion polls on 21st May 2013.
In chapter 9 of my book I remark about the useful information I expect British and American governments gained from their censuses in 2010 and 2011. The Office for National Statistics is looking into whether the current system should be changed, relaxed or even dropped. The editorial in that paper does not think it would be a very good idea. It says the surveys are an indispensable yardstick of social change.
In his article in the edition Gideon Rachman suggests, because of their history, countries such as Japan, Israel and Poland will feel much more insecure if American politicians vote against a Syrian strike. I wonder how hard Israel is lobbying in the States at the moment.
David Miliband writes in yesterday’s FT about Syria in his capacity as president of the International Rescue Committee. He says that if we are not careful Syria will mirror Afghanistan when over 40% of the population were displaced to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. He is sad that when international enagagement is needed more than ever by western democracies we seem to be in isolationist mood. Helping innocent victims is not about politics but human compassion. However to make the help real requires strong political will.
Today’s FT notes that between 2008 and 2012 53% of cycling fatalities in London were caused by HGVs which make up 4% of the traffic. Some big vehicles, such as supermarket delivery vehicles, have to have cyclist friendly features by law but the rest do not. Boris Johnson wants to change that by the middle of next year.
The combination of technology and professionalism is a marvellous thing. Justin Webb is in America for Today this week. On Monday he was a third team participant but since he has been a presenter of two. This morning he conducted an interview from there of the former Gloucestshire Police chief constable on the phone here. It worked seemlessly.
I wrote about the government’s plans to reduce the criminal legal aid budget on 4th June 2013. In an interview with The Times the Justice Secretary has announced that, after representations from the Law Society, the changes to put legal aid services into the hands of a few large firms only will no longer take place. I presume his department will now try and reach it’s target of a 17.5% cut in it’s total budget in other ways.
6th September 2013
In the event Syria has been discussed at the G20. Last night’s dinner became a working event with each leader speaking on the subject over a period of three hours. Interestingly it has been the Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta, who has let it be known that no views became changed. I imagine he felt it was more important to tell people what happened than to follow the confidentiality rule which would normally apply.
The BBC Kent webpage commenting on yesterday’s Sheppey Crossing crashes is in the corporation’s 10 most popular at the moment. It makes a point of referring to some critical comment about the bridge made by the Kent Police chief constable, Mike Fuller, when it opened in 1996. In February 2010 it was announced Mr Fuller would be leaving Kent Police to become the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service as I relate in Chapter 4 of my book.
The G20 summit is breaking up this afternoon. America and France’s position was supoorted by the UK, Canada and Turkey. Five countries out of 19 plus the EU is a clear minority. Messrs Putin and Obama did have a one on one meeting which is positive. Mr Putin used an interesting form of words I feel to describe the chemical attack. He said it was a provocation on the part of the militants who are expecting to get support from outside.
Conflicts have to end in a negotiated settlement. For the first world war it was the Treaty of Versailles. However if some of the military combatants are so messed up they cannot stop killing innocent civilians what do you do? You have no alternative in my view but to use the power and influence you have to ultimately get to the right place. To be afraid of what might happen in the meantime if you do the right thing is not the answer.
I hope this is no surprise to anyone but The Guardian, The New York Times and ProPublica have run an Edward Snowden story today revealing that American and British intelligence services have had the ability for many years to break certain encryption codes. They are the ones companies use for financial internet transactions and viewings supposedly to keep our private details private. Gang helpers therefore in my view who needed information for the purposes of their masters targeting particular troblesome individuals will have been able to obtain it with no trouble at all.
7th September 2013
This morning John Kerry was in Vilnius meeting EU foreign ministers. Lithuania is our current president having joined the Union in 2004. Then he was off to Paris. Tomorrow morning he has talks with the Arab League. After that he flies to London.
A man phoned into Any Answers on Radio 4 this afternoon putting forward four reasons why the Syrian chemical attack might have been committed by the rebels. One was that the shells were not of standard design and another that the sarin used did not match the Syrian stockpiled composition. Those may both be true but I still feel it would not have been possible for non-government missile launching equipment to have been used without western intelligence agencies picking that up.
I think it likely, in the fullness of time, we will find out the true story, if only from journalistic sources. If it transpires that Mr Obama and Mr Cameron have been deceived, and Mr Putin’s fears are correct, that would be extremely serious.
The Liberal-National coalition, on the right of Australian politics, won it’s general election yesterday by 88 parliamentary seats to 57. Tony Abbott is the new Prime Minister. Some comentators say it was more a matter of Labour losing than the coalition winning.
Yesterday’s FT reports that western nations are worried about events in resource rich Congo at the moment. There was fighting there last week between DRC and UN troops. It is suspected that neighbouring Rwanda is meddling in the country’s internal affairs. A meeting is being called to discuss the situation in the Ugandan capital bewteen the 11 coutries in the region, together with representatives from the USA, EU, UN and African Union.
One attendee at St Petersburgh was George Osborne. Something the G20 nations, including China, did manage to agree was a gold standard of tax payment for multinational companies so that in the future it will be much more difficult for them to play one country off against another. The key, to start in 2015, will be the automatic and transparent exchange of tax collection information between jurisdictions.
It is unfortunately that the economies of emerging markets should be slowing just as financial attentions are focusing on when the price of cheap money will turn. There was a lady on the early business section of Today yesterday saying the five counties most vunerable to large capital outflows in that situation will be Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia and India.
The Kent Police chief inspector Chief of Tactical Operations was on the programme talking about yesterday’s Sheppey Crossing crashes. He said the first accident happened to a vehicle as it was coming off the brige. Then there were four other separate incidents behind that.
Bernard Jenkin, the chairman of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, was on the broadcast. He identified an unhealthy tension that has arisen between government and their civil servants over the years. As with any failing situation between human beings it has led to a lack of openess and trust; a fear to lead. A blame culture arises and an inability between the sides to accept responsibility for mistakes. The committee recommends a parliamentary commission into the civil service should be set up, to report before the next election.
One positive development for the Americans at the end of the G20 meeting is that Australia, Canada, France, Italy, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey and the UK all signed a joint statement calling for a strong international response over Syria. Germany added their name yesterday.
8th September 2013
At the momenet it seems the Congress vote for Syrian military intervention will be lost. I am a long way from there but from what I read and hear it appears their politicians are consulting with their voters, in Town Hall meetings and the like, and non action is the overwhelming feeling coming across. In a democracy it is how it should be. I think it likely however that the American public as a body are frightened. They do not know why they are frightened but they are. There is no way they can make sense of their world unless someone takes the trouble to explain to them some of the reasons why they might feel frightened. I believe President Obama has decided he must do the right thing. I applaud him for that. The trouble is he is doing it with one hand tied behind his back.
After Madrid were only just eliminated in the first round of voting for the 2020 Olympics against Instanbul last night, Tokyo went on to win against the Muslim country by 60 votes to 36. It was last held in Japan in 1964. I hope it raises their spirits after their nuclear power difficulties.
The Gang are not innovative, in my view. They are always turning to the same things in an extremely stale way. It is just a question of wearing them down.
The authorites took four days to tell us but on Monday a man climbed over the garden wall of Buckingham Palace and broke into the state apartments currently open daily to the public. There he set off a sensor alarm and was arrested with an accomplice outside the grounds. I think that has allowed the tabloid press to fill up many column inches reporting the story. On Wednesday Prince Andrew was walking in the garden and stopped by the police on suspicion of being an intruder. They have apologised to him.
Last weekend I was cutting branches along my boundary with the single track road outside. As the debris fell I pushed it to the side as quickly as I could but there were times when bits would be sticking out into the middle. At no time was a vehicle unable to pass. One thing I can guarantee when I am out there is that the road becomes extraordinarily busy. My supposition is that one of the passing motorists telephoned the police to say my fallen branches were obstructing the highway. I pretended not to notice the police car when it stopped at the top of the hill about 20 yards away with it’s engine running, viewing me. It was there for about 30 seconds. Fortunately for me when they arrived there was not a twig out of place. If they had come down to try and tell me off they would have looked pretty stupid. They turned around and drove off.
The details are a little sparse but on Friday afternoon it seems a Polish man on a coach travelling from Bournemouth to Poland jumped off just after it had passed through the M25 toll booths at the bottom of the QE2 bridge. He left behind a suspect bomb. I imagine the bridge is one of the most sensitive anticipated terrorist targets in the country and it seems Kent Police went into full ptotective mode. The M25 was shut for over seven hours. The man was soon arrested at a nearby distribution depot and has been detained under the Mental Health Act.
The Falkirk Labour party candidate selection affair is a funny business. Something the Gang will always try and arrange is that ordinary people fall out with each other. In this case it does seem possible the two sides have been set up. The party’s investigation into the selection process, which has greatly upset Unite and the whole union movement, was initiated apparently after allegations from at least two people. Those individuals I think have now withdrawn their claims leaving Mr Miliband high and dry. Eric Joyce, the current Falkirk MP who is standing down, was on Today yesterday. His view is that the complaints were in fact true.
9th September 2013
There was a clip of a pretty confident Ed Miliband I thought on a BBC webpage today talking in a supermarket. He said Falkirk was a small part of a much larger picture. He wants to change things. Politics needs to be rooted in the lives of ordinary people. If individuals get involved with Labour because they want to, not as a speck in an amorphous whole, it will make them and their party that much stronger. Harriet Harman has been the person nominated to chivvy the unions along. The message, as I see it, is that union leaders do not carry the same authority as mainstream politicians. If the junior members of the duo do not toe the line, inevitably the Tories will win the next election. Chuka Umunna said on Today this morning he thought in some ways ordinary people are now more political than ever. It is just that they are disillusioned with present party politics.
There was quite a shocking Panorama broadcast this evening on how the police get saddled with dealing with mentally ill people because society doesn’t appear to care enough to deal with them in a more appropriate way. It is estimated that a fifth of police time is absorbed in handling such individuals. The president of the Police Superintendent’s Association has said police cells must not be used for such purposes in future, hospitals are the proper place. The Care Minister, Norman Lamb, has called the situation a national scandal. That does seem a bit incongruous coming from someone inside the government.
A passionate politican he may be but methinks John Kerry is not a very good actor. I am not sure how the subject came up but at his London press conference this morning he rhetorically said everything could be solved if the Syrian government would give up their chemical weapons arsenal. Then he muttered most unconvincingly there was obviously no way it could happen. Cue the Russian foreign minister who said the suggestion sounded like a pretty good idea. Cue the Syrian foreign minister who said he welcomed the initiative. Through it all those based in Washington have been saying there is no way they can ever see it happening. The trick of course is that it is something eveyone can sign up to without damaging their respective current positions.
10th September 2013
One of Robert Peston’s TV programmes in his series on our shopping habits was on BBC 2 last night. Sir Terry Leahy was saying that when Tesco launched their Clubcard in 1994, following on from their Green Stamp books, it changed the face of British retailing forever overnight. Cutomers loved them because they got lots of freebies and Tesco loved them because they could see into the personal circumstances of their shopping households. In the first week of full operation Tesco sales increased 10%. The company now has 27 million Clubcard holders worldwide plus 15 million in Britain.
I don’t think you could have made it up if you had tried. This time yesterday things were looking pretty bleak for President Obama, in my view. He had taken a massive gamble and it wasn’t coming off. Within a couple of days he was about to be humilated by his Congressmen, as instructed by the American people. Once that phrase lame duck was in common usage a lot of folks will probably only have had vague recollection about how it all came about. A final, final push was started I feel, perhaps by some pretty shadowy figures, but no one had any real confidence it would come off. Here is my analysis of what might have happened.
The key I think was the interview by the veteran journalist Charlie Rose of President Assad in Damascus for the Public Broadcasting Service on Sunday morning. Perhaps Justin Webb, when he was in Washington last week, was telling some American journalist colleagues how it has been working over here. At any rate when Mr Rose was asked if he wouldn’t mind going to Syria he was pleased to oblige. The fact that Mr Assad was not expecting the question about giving up chemical weapons was shown by his immediate reaction. He denied that Syria has any. But then he said his country, as a matter of principle, would do anything to prevent a crazy war in his region. In front of the world he had committed himself to putting them beyond use, if he had any. No amount of hidden lobbying or clever arguments after the event could alter it.
The stage perhaps was set a few days before in Mr Obama’s 20 minute meeting in St Petersburgh with Mr Putin. The two countries have been tentatively moving ahead on nuclear disarmament and it would seem logical to include chemical weapons in that ambit. If that is correct I hope it is recognised in due course how positive President Putin might have been during the conversation. President Obama has confirmed that chemical warfare was discussed. President Putin has said he did come up with a couple of new ideas. Then we had Mr Kerry’s remarks in London and subsequent events as I remarked yesterday. I am sure nothing specifically will have been said. That would have been too risky. It was all nod, nod, wink wink. But when you are all on the same page you know where you want to get to.
It was plain from his appearance before the Commons Public Accounts Committee yesterday, with six of his former associates from the BBC and BBC Trust, that Mark Thompson thought he had been wronged when he was Director General. With the Gang being as they are I imagine the others felt similarly, at least to some extent. It was the normal falling between two stools syndrome with no clear line of responsibility. The general conclusion seemed to be that some overhaul of the BBC Trust is required so it better performs it’s regulatory role in the future.
A Newspaper Review on Today yesterday told me the Daily Mail had a front page picure of David Cameron’s red box on a train. The most terrible story was that he had left it unattended when he went to the buffet car. No 10 have calmly pointed out the Prime Minister does actually have security personnel around him. Which reminds me of what happended here on Sunday.
As I mentioned in my diary then I am cutting back my boundary trees at the moment. It is something I have not done properly before in the 20 years I have been here. I finished that day. I was fully aware that I would have been hiddenly watched like a hawk but my long arnm lopper was playing up and I wanted to attempt a repair. I walked back to my shed to find a clip, bolt and nut. I was away for about three minutes. I hid my hedge cutter in the bank but I was a bit worried as the electric cable showed where it was. As soon as I had my materials I went back to the roadside to carry out my repair. It was not until I came in for lunch that I realised my garden fork had been taken from just inside my gate. I had put it out of view there together with my barrow and rake. I would say therefore, as soon as the hidden camera in my shed confirmed I was there, a man in a small green saloon, who had been waiting in place for at least an hour for an opportunity, drove up my road hoping to steal my hedge trimmer. When it was not obviously there he stopped at my gate further up to see if I had put anything around the corner as is my habit. I am pretty sure it will have been him, as soon after I returned he drove back the other way. He gave me a friendly nod. I had laid my lopper against the bank whilst I was not using it with its foot just off the tarmac. As he passed he drove his car so his offside tyre went about six inches up the bank over the aluminium tube. He squashed it but my use has not been affected in any way. It must be very difficult for lower participants in the Gang when things only occasionally turn out their way. When they do it goes to their heads and they react in ways they shouldn’t. I could have taken his number and reported him to the police. It would have been my word against his on whether he acted deliberately or not. However I would have been telling the truth and he would have been lying. It would have been fun.
Chris Huhne has served his prison sentence and confirms he does not wish to continue in politics. He is returning to journalism though and has started writing weekly for the Guardian. Using that vehicle, Today yesterday morning and Newsnight in the evening, he has criticised the Murdoch press. He points out that The News of the World focused on his misdemeanour from 2003, during the spring of 2010, just as he was calling for the police to carry out a new criminal investigation into phone hacking allegations. He has also alleged that the Sunday Times groomed his former wife to make criminal allegations, probably whilst telling her she was innocent of any wrong doing. Diane Abbott on BBC 2’s Daily Politics programme implied I thought that she did not necessarily disagree with Mr Huhne’s analysis. Nevertheless he found himself in prison because he broke the law. From a Newspaper Review on this morning’s edition of Today I understand there has been much anger against Mr Huhne in the press; the Telegraph, Mail and Sun were mentioned. The Daily Mail accused him apparently of showing nauseating self pity.
Bridget Kendall was relating on Today this morning how difficult and complicated it will be for the UN to practically deal with them, even if the Syrian government officially admit they have chemical weapons. One good piece of news is that the Iranians support the suggested move. Bridget says the Russians have been talking to Teheran at a high level about it.
Edward Luce’s article in yesterday’s FT, no doubt written on Sunday, says the original Syria plan was to strike militarily over the weekend of 31st August for a period of 48 hours, hitting at least 43 targets plus the presidential palace. Edward suggests Mr Obama closely follows advice on economic matters but when it comes to foreign policy he decides for himself. Apparently he did not consult John Kerry before he resolved to seek Congress’ approval for military action.
Today’s FT says John Kerry made his apparent misstatement in London on Monday as a result of a question from a journalist representing the American ABC network.
I wrote about Alexei Navalny on 18th July 2013. As it happens he was allowed bail when he appealed his conviction which meant he could run in the Moscow mayoral election. He did well securing 27% of the vote, just missing a second ballot run off with the winner. Today’s FT reports that another political outsider won in Russia’s fourth largest city of Yetaterinburg. The editorial says it is the return of real politics to the country.
11th September 2013
North and South Korea have agreed to open the Kaesong industrial zone on a trial basis which was shut in April when North Korea got the hump about something. I first wrote about it on 8th April 2013. Both sides say they wish to attract foreign investment to the area. The BBC webpage reports that Seoul hopes, if that happens, it will make it more difficult for the north to pull the plug again.
Nigel Evans, whom I wrote about on 6th May and 19th June 2013, has been charged with more offences of sexual and indecent assault and rape towards men, now numbering eight in all. A prosecution has been authorised by the Director of Public Prosecutions. With that additional weight on his shoulders no doubt Mr Evans has decided he can no longer continue as a Deputy Speaker. He will not resign his seat though, continuing as an independent MP. Mr Evans has said he is sure of two things. Firstly that he is innocent in accordance with the law and secondly that that innocence will be proved.
I wondered when the Gang machine would start setting up the United Nations for destabilisation in the eyes of the British public. The first instance was highlighted by Today this morning. A lady official from Brazil is compiling a report on adequate housing around the world for the UN human rights council. She has been on a two week visit here looking into the bedroom tax and told Sarah Montague her official report next spring will say it should be suspended as it can effectively force people to act against their wishes. The Conservative Party chairman and MP, Grant Shapps, has said he is writing to complain about the lady to the UN Secretary General. She has not followed due process, nor used correct formal terminology and has acted in a biased manner.
I last mentioned Mark Bridger on 4th September 2013. He was attacked in Wakefiled jail on 7th July 2013 by a fellow prisoner who slit his throat. Mr Bridger I think was not badly hurt. The 22 year old man who did it, a convicted murderer, has been in court today. He has pleaded guilty but the case was adjourned for reports. At one point apparently he asked the judge if he could just be sentenced. He didn’t wish to keep coming back. He just wanted to move on.
I wrote yesterday that John Kerry’s chemical weapons question came from ABC. In fact it was a lady journalist from CBS. To be absolutely certain Today kindly played a clip this morning of her asking it.
Even though circumstances have changed President Obama went ahead with his address from the White House last night in a formal, authoritative speech. The bit I saw was well reasoned, seeing both sides of the argument, but explaining to his fellow Americans why it is necessary to keep up the pressure on the Syrian government in the interests of peace. In contrast to the Gang Mr Obama said that when his goverment takes stern action it is not a pinprick. John Kerry is to meet Sergei Lavrov in Geneva tomorrow.
12th September 2013
There are two pages on the BBC website this morning which really warm the heart.
I noted in the chapter 12 appendix of my book when in April 2012 scientists, through satellite imagery, found vast bodies of wet rock called aquifers under North Africa. The story has now moved on and two particular underground reservoirs in an arid part of northern Kenya are about to be tapped. It should supply sufficiently needed water there, and to the whole of Kenya, for the next 70 years.
Then there is a clip from CCTV of a group of young public spirited lads straightening a ground fixed heavy metal bike rack at 3am in the morning in Boston, Lincs. Apparently it had been hit by a parking car a few weeks earlier. They were getting their evening takeaway at the time and you can see them discussing how best to do it. Eveyone gets a purchase on the metal bar and pyhiscally pushes it upright. I could spend every walk I ever make up my lane picking up litter. However I consciously restrict myself to only doing it up to the junction about 100 yards away. You can’t sort out the world’s problems for it.
Following on from the UK girls stopped in possession of cocaine at Lima airport recently a 28 year old Canadian social worker has been charged at Bogata’s international airport with the same offence. As soon as she arrives at a side room after being apprehended the camera starts rolling. She is not happy and covers her face with her scarf. The Columbian lady officer is seen lifting up her T-shirt, taking off her latex belly bump which makes her look pregnant, removing the packages within it and opening them to show the cocaine inside. I don’t think there will be much point in the lady pleading not guilty. Equally anyone watching will find it difficult to convince themselves that she was doing it for any other reason than her own financial gain.
There will be more on this story I expect but I doubt if it will alter the substance of this note. I have just watched a clip on a BBC webpage of David Grossman for Newsnight reporting from the bi-annual Defence Security and Equipment International sales fair currently being held at the Excel centre in London’s docklands. The page also informs me that Caroline Lucas has today raised a question in Parliament about two particular exhibiting companies, one French and one Chinese, at the event. Lastly the organisers of the show have announced those firms have been expelled for wishing to sell weapons which are illegal under UK law. My suspicion is that it was a team effort between MI5, with the initial intelligence, the BBC and lastly the MP. Ms Lucas will have had no contact with the spooks at all.
I have just read President Putin’s opinion piece in the New York Times. It is marvellous to think how far we have come for it to be there at all. I think it possible we have finally got over the top of the hill.
It is not totally unpolitical, that would be too much to expect, but by and large I feel it is extremely well argued, sincere and brave. He is challenging the President of the United States in the security of his own home. I am sure the last paragraph comprises Mr Putin’s own words. He recognises every inhabitant of the world is born equal. He chides Mr Obama for suggesting that Americans are somehow special. Yet he counters that by saying he has respect for Barack as an individual. His trust in him is growing; by implication he feels they can work together as a team for the good of humanity.
Interestingly Mr Putin says the two Presidents resolved to work together on Syria at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland in June. His body language at the time indicated to me that was not the case but I will take him at his word. Perhaps Mr Obama had not been as sensitive to those around him as he might have been.
In his piece in last Saturday’s FT Weekend Magazine Simon Kuper suggests that rich Americans of the modern technological age, Bill Gates, Eric Scmidt, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckergerg have all gone on to use their positions for human good. My only worry is that, with last week’s stories fresh of possible back doors in their computer systems giving away private details of their customers to others, public perception of their altruism does not change. Our thoughts of our MPs altered a lot when we found out how they prepared their expense claims.
The paper that day relates that the first Chinese cargo ship to travel northwards to Europe from the Sea of Japan, rather than southerly through the Suez Canal, was just about to arrive in Rotterdam. Previously pack ice would have prevented that route. It will be the first of many journeys, cutting nearly two weeks off the voyage time.
I wrote about the Coop Bank on 24th April 2013. Soon after UK authorities unexpectedly stumbled across a £1.5 billion hole in it’s balance sheet. In the business pages of the edition Neil Collins records that there are two distinct versions of how the situation came about. The Prundential Regulation Authority say it was a result of the debt taken on when the group acquired the Britiannia Building society in 2009. Yet the chief of the society when it was taken over says it only added 50% to the bad debt the Coop already had. As Neil says they can’t both be right. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards are looking into the conflicting claims. I hope they get to the bottom of it.
Many years ago, probably soon after email became commonplace, I sent a complimentary message in that form to the FT journalist Isabel Berwick. Her reply seemed shocked she had received any form of positive comment. Anyway Isabel authors the Person in the News feature in that paper, about Malala Yousafzai, now 16. Malala’s rise to fame is a sequence of unforeseeable events. Her father was an activist where his family lived in the Swat area of Pakistan. He no doubt will have ensured Malala’s education and nurture. He was approached by an American documentary maker in 2009 to help find a suitable family to be recorded living under Taliban control in the region. He came to meet Malala and the work ended up being of the Yousafzais themselves. At the time Malala was typical of young Pakistani girls, deferential to her father and mainly speaking only when spoken to. The article doesn’t say how but at that time she started writing about herself and her views for the BBC’s local Urdu service using a pen name. I imagine those two avenues, the programme and the blog, started making her known about. She was attacked and nearly killed by the Taliban in October 2012. After coming to Birmingham for treatment her parents stayed to live here with her and her two younger brothers. I am sure Malala’s mother is as supportive as her father but, Isabel says, prefers not to appear in public. It is amazing, with the attention she has, how one so young is unaffected by it all. A friend say she is intelligent, grounded and humble. I quite often receive emails from Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon, about Malala’s activities which I am pleased to support. I will follow Malala’s achievements. I feel she is steely, obviously focused and completely self contained.
There is an extremely interesting clip of a cup trick on a BBC webpage at the moment. A toy car and two plastic animals are hidden separately under three cups. You are looking for the car and are asked to pick one. The trick, as I see it, is that you are not told whether you are correct or not. You are merely shown what is under one of the other two cups. Your opponent naturally will not show you the car. If you were right the game player will show either of the two other cups both of which have animals under. If you were wrong he or she will show you the cup with the second animal underneath it. That is the key. You are then given another go and, to increase your chances, you should always choose the untouched cup. You might have been right the first time but that was only a one in three chance. Your advantage the second time is that the third cup now has a fifty fifty chance of hiding the car. That is the cup you should go for because the odds are better. Your intuition will advise you to stick with your origianl choice. Logic and probability tell you that is not the best pick. Understanding the way it works allows you to come out on top more often. Following our emotions closely can be a mistake. It is too easy to be led astray by others.
Briget Kendall has just said on PM that she suspects not only the Russians but the Iranians have started putting pressure on the Sryian goverment. Unless you happen to like war the worry of the region going up in flames is now becoming a worrying possibility. Bridget is suggesting I feel that the Iranians are starting to act responsibly.
Scotland and Ireland currently allow women bishops although none have yet been appointed. Today the Church of Wales joined them gaining at least two thirds majorities in their three voting bodies. The church has seven bishops. The Church of England considers it’s position again in November.
13th September 2013
I don’t think there is much point in me not being specific about this any more. Yesterday Douglas Alexander said it was Labour who prevented a positive parliamentay motion on 29th August 2013. And that it has allowed Russia to persuade the Syrian government to give up it’s chemical weapons. Although I don’t think it can be said categorically how the vote would otherwise have gone he is most probably right. In my note of 29th August 2013 I indicated I knew what that was about. Separately, on 26th August 2013, I stated what I was doing the previous Tuesday evening. It is my belief the private conversation with my Police and Crime Commissioner triggered the poison gas attack a few hours later. However it is not really something you want to talk about. If it makes any sense, it is a greater burden knowing that other people know what you know than just knowing it yourself. Obviously I cannot be held responsible for the deadly barbaric actions of others but sharing the information here, depending on how you react, could increase the pressure on me greatly. I hope you can understand. On the day before the vote I sent an email stating my belief to a front bench colleague of Mr Alexander. I believe it was forwarded to his Inbox. I should also say that as I composed my message I was not hoping, nor even had the thought, that the Government might be deafeated.
15th September 2013
It is reported today that Melissa Reid, caught at Lima airport last month with Michaella McCollum in possession of cocaine, has decided to plead guilty to lessen her sentence. My reading of what she has told the Mail on Sunday is that she did do it but under duress without without being paid. As far as I am aware Michaella has not spoken publicly at all. When I have seen images of them together Michaella comes over as having the more dominant personality. If she is guilty, and was on a payroll, that could account for her silence. From her point of view, I am sure, there are some people you do not grass on.
On Thursday afternoon a black man, in his twenties was stabbed when people were around him in a Leicester street. He later died in hospital. In the early hours of Friday morning a house about a mile away was fire bombed. Inside muslim family members of a mother and three teenage children perished. The father, a neurosurgeon, was away working in Dublin. The police currently hold five people in custody whom they are questioning about the incidents. The local MP, Keith Vaz, visited the football ground where the man was a coach to offer his support. His sister has said he was a lovely person. She had never had a cross word with him in all her life.
I believe it likely all five murders were Gang engineered. Firstly it seems the man who died on Thursday was liked and respected by everybody. All who knew him therefore will be deeply shocked. It seems probably he was stabbed in some form of street argument. In the confusion a targeted killing therefore would have been quite possible. The word around apparently is that the arson attack was an act of revenge against the wrong property. So again the family concerned could have been picked, using that cover story, for particular Gang purposes.
They say a week is a long time in politics. At the moment it is also an age in the Middle East. John Kerry’s apparent gaffe was last Monday. Since then Syria has applied to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and the bipolar powers have decided on a timetable, ending in the middle of next year, for them to give up their chemical arsenal. The trick will be to keep up the pressure on the Syrians so they can see no realistic course but to continue on the path their President has started.
We do seem, a bit, to be living in a world of fantasy at the moment, with different sides thinking and saying simply what they want to believe. But we are moving forward so I don’t think anybody should be complaining too much. I note the Russians are suggesting, in direct contrast to the Americans, that the Syrian opposition hold some chemical weapons. I feel it would be nice to think that might be correct. It would inextricably bring the rebels into the decommissioning process and involve local ceasefires to be negotiated for UN personnel to carry out their work on the ground. Whilst they are doing that they might just as well talk about a complete peace process.
16th September 2013
In my diary note of 22nd May 2013 I implied I thought I had upset the Gang Master. During the conversation concerned I had been speaking about good gangs and bad gangs. It is that difference in motive which is the key I consider. The world is permeated with bad gangs in my opinion, to a far greater extent than is currently imagined. The best way of combating the threat, it seems to me, is to borrow the positive elements of the gang system, peer to peer support and solidarity, whilst rejecting the negative strands of intimidation and small mindedness. It is what I have been trying to do since in my private life.
If that is the correct approach you can see connections perhaps to the current Syrian situation. Russian opinion makers, after many false starts and prevarications, have finally agreed to join the American leadership gang. Mr Obama now wishes to enlarge that to a bigger group of like minded people. In a White House press release issued on Saturday, which I read via a BBC webpage, the President has said he wants to include the UK, France and the United Nations in his strategy.
In one of those intelligence led operations no doubt twelve men were arrested last Thursday in a plot to steal millions of pounds from Santander Bank. It seems the bank were contacted several months ago by police so they were ready when a bogus computer maintenance engineer called at their Surrey Quays branch in south London. He fitted a keyboard video mouse, readily available on the internet, to one of the machines which when operational would have allowed an off site accomplice to control other computers connected to it. Data from those computers could then have been transferred to a criminal network.
On 5th August 2013 Avon and Somerset police wrote a letter to Christopher Jefferies, at Mr Jefferies’request, to apologise for any untoward treatment and suspicions he received from them in the Joanna Yates murder investigation. Then the chief constable and Mr Jefferies met on Friday afternoon to draw a line under the matter. Both men appeared on Today this morning. My speculation is that was a policy decision taken by ACPO possibly after a meeting of chief constables last week.
Saturday’s edition of Today reported that there has been a significant rise in the number of children going missing from care homes in Northern Ireland over the last eighteen months. The worry is they are being sexually exploited, sometimes without even realising it themselves. The PSNI have launched a major investigation in conjunction with other agencies. So far they have identified 22 youngsters the circumstances of which they wish to look into. Two years ago Barnardos said two thirds of girls in their care homes in the province were at risk of being abused through initial grooming and the like.
On the previous morning’s edition Michael Gove’s remarks that he met a wall of silence when trying to compile data on English children’s homes, were passed on. The secrecy around them he called absurd. Because of data protection rules even the police and local authorities have found it difficult to find out from the regulatory body Ofsted, for example, where a private children’s home has opened it’s doors. Mr Gove has been looking into the situation since last year. One thing he has discovered is that more than half of chilren’s homes are located in areas with above average crime levels. The Education Secretary thinks we should be receiving better value for money for our bill of £200,000 per child per year in the establishments. Last week he published as much information as possible about the homes. More shocking than all that though in my opinion is that Ofsted only became responsible for reporting on the children’s care home system under The 2006 Education and Inspections Act as I record in chapter 6 of my book. The current site visit inspection system did not start until April 2011.
On that programme a man from Cambridge University was relating how the Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov, who defected to the West in 1969, was killed by an agent of that state, with KGB help, on Waterloo Bridge in 1978. Aparently a special gun was used to fire a sarin poison pellet into his thigh. Those were the days.
Shortly after 8am their time a man with a rifle started shooting inside a building at the Washington Naval Yard a few miles from the White House. The gunman was shot dead after killing at least 12 people and injuring four. The Senate building was locked down for a couple of hours. A sombre President Obama has referred to yet another mass shooting.
The UN inspectors have reported unequivocal and objective evidence today that sarin poison gas was used in the 21st August Damascus attack. 85% of blood samples taken tested positive for the chemical. The means of delivery were surface-to-surface rockets fired from the north west.
17th September 2013
The Russian and French foreign ministers have agreed to disagree at talks in Moscow today. France is quite sure the Syrian government was responsible for the 21st August attack. Russia says it has has serious grounds to believe it was a provocation by rebel forces. Mr Lavrov wants the truth of the matter to be established under the auspices of the UN security council. The credibility of American and British intelligence services is clearly on the line.
You can see that forces are pulling both ways in Iran at the moment. Yesterday evening Facebook and Twitter started working there normally for a short period, the first time since they were blocked in 2009. However the governement have said it was a mistake, their official policy banning them has not changed.
It seems the lone gunman in Washington was a disaffected former petty officer in the naval reserve. Yesterday he had legitimate access to the site as an outside contractor. He had worked there for a week. US media report he had received treatment for paranoia, sleeping problems and hearing voices.
There is a good news story on the BBC website this morning about a teacher who unexpectedly gave birth last Thursday in an Essex primary school classroom. Her contractions started so quickly she did not have time to get to hospital. There are nice posed photos shown of her colleagues who helped her and the ambulance crew who attended.
Barclays received their private financial crash bailout from Qatar Holding in October 2008. Coincidentially it seems that was the same time the bank started issuing sloppy and incorrect paperwork to it’s personal loan customers, 300,000 in all. The mistake has now caught up with them. Compensation is going to have to be offered to those affected under orders no doubt from it’s regulator. The information has come to light because Barclays need to raise £5.8 million extra capital, also under a stricter policy imposed by the FCA, and under the rules it must make a clean breast of things to any potential investors. It’s offer document also discloses it has been fined £50 million for paying hidden sweeteners of £322 million as part of it’s 2008 restructuring.
There were three interesting items on Today this morning, I thought, in the run up to the 7am news. Firstly the two senior politicans in the Northern Ireland assembly have invited three American officials, headed by Richard Haas, to see if they can bring the opposing parties together to agree solutions to the Province’s most intractable problems. Talks start today and are scheduled to complete by the end of the year.
Then Iran has announced it hopes to launch a cat into space in a few month’s time, the second animal flight this year. The liquid fuel it is using means there is no prospect of it having military capability. That I reckon will increase national pride, a good emotion, and will help towards the country’s goal of achieving human space flight by 2018. I suspect it might also have checked beforehand that it would not upset anybody.
Lastly there was an interview with the thirteen year old girl, now a mature woman, with whom Roman Polanski had admitted sex after he carried out a photo shoot with her in 1977. His then pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969. That must have caused terrible emotional trauma for him but quite rightly eight years later there was no reason to look upon him as other than a respectable man. She and her mother had no uncomfortable thoughts about her being alone with him. But he gave her champagne and a sedative, a jacuzzi was involved and he imposed himself. She said no at least once but after that she just wanted it to be over so she could go home. She was upset with her mother when she reported it to the police. That meant she could not forget about it. The rape trial, and the consequences of the publicity, were far worse experiences for her than the act itself. She said the judge was wavering and inconsistent. His behaviour was unfair on both her and Mr Polanski. The defendant ended up running away and his case therefore is still outstanding under the American penal code. He is not a free man and lives under the threat of extradition procedings on his journeys. As the lady says, her relationship with him has never been concluded and there is no end in sight. What a strange world we live in.
Yesterday’s FT has a photograph of a very happy looking Benjamin Netanyahu in the company of John Kerry on Mr Kerry’s visit to Israel the day before. The adjoining article says Mr Assad’s rapid agreement to relinguish his country’s chemical arsenal, 40 years in the making, is likely to greatly weaken his power in the region in the longer term.
The paper also says that 1700 people have met violent deaths in Karachi in the first six months of this year. Law and order in Pakistan’s city of commerce is in danger of breaking down. The country’s military is trying to do something about it.
After writing about Barclays this morning I read a piece in that edition by it’s former chief executive. Just after he attained that post in January 2011 he appeared before a parliamentary committee asking that the time for bankers feeling guilty about past events should be left behind. He wanted us all to start moving forward in much the same way, I think, as before. Fortunately I suggest that did not happen. However in this article he does call for adequate global measures to be put in place so that any future city bankrupty will have no affect on financial markets.
The editorial in today’s FT notes that this year’s UN General Assemby is next week. It will be attended by Mr Rouhani. The paper hopes discussions then will take place to help normalise Iran’s standing in the world. As is always the case though, in extremely difficult situations, there are risks wherever you look.
18th September 2013
On Saturday I was going to a meeting near Oxford circus travelling on a bus through the City. Understandingly roadworks there are normally carried out at weekends and Saturday was such a day. There were three lots from Bank to the start of High Holborn. It was making me late but it was not a personal meeting so, although frustrating, did not matter too much. As we came up to Holborn tube station the on-board voice computer announcement told us our journey would terminate there rather than Oxfod Circus. I thought I would walk. There I was striding along the street when suddendly a voice told me from my right to cheer up. He said it might never happen. When I stopped to look it was a New Issue vendor. I am a quick thinker and immediately gave him a bit of verbal. In fact I shouted at him extremely loudly. Heaven knows what passers by thought but no one appeared to take any notice. However the chap would not let it go. In spite of my extreme displeasure he thought he was being clever and wanted to carry on with his theme. It was not until I said that if he uttered one more word I would phone the police to report his harassment of me, that his attitude changed. He suddenly became worried and gave me a proper apology. It was not until a bit further down the street that I realised it was all to do with the bus being terminated early. The Gang anticipated I would be looking tense after that as I walked along. What a conceited lot. They really do think the world revolves around them.
It is the first anniversary tomorrow of the Plebgate Affair when Andrew Mitchell allegedly called police officers plebs in Downing Street during an encounter lasting 45 seconds. The former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, and the once Conservative Party leader, Lord Howard, are unhappy. Both suggest the fact that the internal police investigation into the matter has still not been published, is not acceptable. Scotland Yard say it is a complicated investigation and they are getting through it as quickly as they can.
There was more implied critiscism of the police at the top of the Channel 4 News programme this evening. They conducted an interview of Peter Francis, the undercover policeman assigned to cover Stephen Lawrence’s family after his murder in 1993; and also of his mother’s solicitor. Several weeks ago I think the police wrote to Mr Francis saying they would like to engage with him about his allegations of police misconduct in the matter but they could not grant him immunity from prosecution. Mr Francis says he wishes to tell the truth about what happened, not to the police whom I imagine he does not trust, but to a Public Inquiry or Select Committee of MPs.
It was reported on Saturday that up to half a year’s normal rainfall had fallen in a week in parts of Boulder County, Colorado. 2,500 people have been moved from their homes and four people have died.
Then Mexico is being hit at the moment by two big storms, one on the east coast and one on the west, the worst weather pattern for decades. At least 40 people have been killed. Thousands of tourists are being evacuated from Acapulco.
Gary McKinnon I think was our most famous teenage computer hacker but there was also a young man apparentently involved with Lulz Security caught operating out of his parents’ Essex bungalow in 2011. I have read other stories about youngsters committing high computer crime from their parents’ homes. The latest was reported on Saturday from Argentina. This time a 19 year old working in his bedroom is supposed to have headed a gang of hackers targeting international money transfer and gambling websites. The youth apparently was netting $50,000 a month.
Six people, including the driver, have been killed today when their coach entered the path of a train travelling in Ottawa. The coach crashed through a closed level crossing barrier.
I expect it was an intelligence led operation that has enabled authorities, using sonar equipment, to find two cars on the floor of a lake in Oklahoma. One car, with three skeletons inside, is thought to have entered the water in 1970 and the other, also with the remains of three people inside, sometime in the 1950s.
The Russians seem to be pretty sure they know something we don’t about the 21st August attack. One of the sides must be wrong. Following a visit to Damascus by their deputy Foreign Minister they wish to put evidence to the UN Security Council which they say implicates the involvement of the Syrian opposition. The have accused the inspectors’ report as political, one sided and biased primarily I think because no visits were made to older sites where the Russians say rebel forces were involved in poison gas launches.
19th September 2013
Following the wedding of Tony Blair’s son in Buckinghamshire at the weekend his 25 year old daughter was held at gunpoint on Monday evening when she was walking with friends on a London street. It was an attempted robbery apparently. The police are linking it with a similar incident half an hour earlier.
Last Thursday a nineteen year old man was in court charged with the murder of the Leicester football coach. Tomorrow an eighteen year old man will appear in the same court for the murders and housefire of the nearby family home. Two young men who had their whole lives in front of them.
All of a sudden America media seem to be taking a much larger profile in their national life. This time President Assad has been speaking to Fox News in Damascus. He confirms that his government is serious about getting rid of it’s chemical weapons stockpile. In a bit of televised negotiations he says it will be an expensive exercise, possibly costing $1 billion. He appeared to be saying that if America wants it done quickly he hopes they will pay some of the bill.
Then NBC News has been to Teheran to talk with their new president. Mr Rouhani has reiterated Iran does not wish military nuclear capability. In a confidence building measure, for internal hegemony reasons I suspect as much as anything else, the country has released 11 political prisoners. The fact that has happened I think has allowed the president to say Ayatollah Khamenei sees things just as he does. People are mooting that direct contact bewteen America and Iran will be made at the UN next week in the hope that a formal meeting between the two presidents can be arranged.
Marianne Faithfull was the subject of Who do You Think You Are on BBC 1 last night. Her mother and grandmother lived in Vienna at the end of the second world war. They were both raped by Red Army soldiers when they entered the city in 1945, two of an estimated 100,000 women who suffered that fate. That is an incredible number and a terrible way to inflict human psychological damage. Marianne said the experience made her mother hate men, a feeling she passed on in part to her daughter. Marianne said she was not able to have sex without being under the influence of drink or drugs until she was in her fifties. At the end of the programme she thanked the BBC for giving her a better understanding of the past experiences of her family.
Apparently America has drunk tanks where inebriated people are put until they are in a fit state to leave. ACPO suggested yesterday that the arrangement could be introduced here to be run by private companies. Besides receiving a fine for their drunkeness the company would charge for the supervised accomodation used. It would not be cheap and, it is hoped, serve as a deterrent.
The Costa Concordia, beached in January 2012, was finally righted in the early hours of Tuesday morning, to be towed away for scrap in due course. It safely rolled onto the seabed cradle built for it as hoped. It was a unique feat of engineering, reputedly costing over £500 million so far. It seems even the salvage team themselves were unsure it could be done until right up to the last few days. I see similarities there with the current Syrian situation. You have a clear plan in mind but you live day by day, taking one step at a time. Eventually, with a bit of luck, you get there.
On Monday a known deer poacher in Austria killed three police officers and one paramedic after the law tried to apprehend him. He had taken one hostage and retreated to his farmhouse home. His charred remains were later found there. Those are the bare facts. But you wonder why it happened. It seems likely the man snapped. He had been pushed too far and could not take any more. I feel that it what happened to Derek Byrd in Cumbria in June 2010 when he killed 12 people before taking his own life.
The BBC published a webpage this morning saying that PCCs have issued 178 performance targets in England and Wales to the police forces they cover. It seems the corporation have analysed PCC websites and looked through published documents to arrive at their figures. With that background I thought there was an interesting interview on Today this morning. John Humphrys asked the PCC for Cumbria whether he was setting targets for his local force. The gentleman said he didn’t know because it did’t matter to him. John kept his cool, I am pleased to say, and asked again. They both knew there was a specific figure. You could almost see the man accept that the game was up. He immediately said in a resigned manner, 31. What was remarkably I thought was the way it happened. The man intitially was less than truthful, for political reasons no doubt. He changed his mind on what to say. It was done openly, transparently and confidently, for adults to hear. No one minded too much. It is what we humans do.
On the wider point I do feel arbitrary targets are corrosive as the Home Secretary indicated to the police superintendent’s conference last week. They give the signal you do not trust the organisation and feel a need to control them: get them to tick your boxes to satiate your desires. You are almost inviting them to trick you. The Thames Valley PCC has set a target for his service apparently to disrupt 20 organised crime groups who prey on vunerable people and isolated communities. Crime gangs not in that category therefore can obviously be left alone.
Although I didn’t watch it there was a Channel 4 Dispatches programme broadcast last week about Cyril Smith, MP for Rochdale from 1972 to 1992, who died in 2010. Police have said he abused boys at a children’s home he opened in the 1960s. It seems a dossier of evidence against him went missing in 1970. The programme apparently made allegations of security services involvement.
It’s interesting I feel that sometimes you get an event which shocks the political establishment. It should be a spur therefore to create good change. This time the location was mainland Europe and the occurance the fatal stabbing of a left wing political activist and singer on an Athen’s street on Tuesday night. The man who did it immediately gave himself up and indentified himself as a member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party who have 18 seats in parliament and, it is alleged, influence in the police and the judiciary. A Greek journalist was on Newsnight last night saying it appears some in Golden Dawn would like to have a bit of legitimate political power. They want to tone down their rhetoric and reach out to the more mainstream politicians. It seems a Greek gang did not like that idea very much, found a volunteer to do a horrible deed, and acted to frustrate the intention. Very predictably tonight there is rioting at various locations across the country.
20th September 2013
I was aware when I wrote my note on Monday about the attempted cyber theft from a branch of Santander Bank that I was not including a date for the crime. From a BBC webpage I have just read the attempt was made last week. That confirms my suspicion I feel that the police were onto the gang concerned beforehand and waiting for them to make their next move. Today’s page reveals that the group carried out a successful theft of £1.3 million, using exactly the same procedure, from a Barclays Bank branch in north London in April. I imagine branches make end of day checks of the amount of money they hold and it was immediately picked up. Today the eight top men of the gang, each fulfilling a specific role and including the Mr Big according to the lead detective, have been arrested. I imagine the police now have all the evidence thy need. It seems the control centre for the operation was somewhere in central London. The whole thing reminds me of the long running trouble Kent Police had with cash machine thefts in the county, as I relate in my book. The London operation thankfully was nipped in the bud.
Gillian Tett was writing about spies in last Saturday’s FT Magazine, particularly Valerie Plame who was exposed as a CIA agent in 2003. The rumours were that the leak came from the White House who were upset about statements made by her diplomat husband. Using that source and the lady’s subsequent fictional book it seems spying is very lonely isolating work. You are a silent cog in a massive bureaucratic and political machine. Mrs Plame stresses that that sucessful intelligence requires collaboration. It also seems that during her time in the CIA Iran was trying to obtain nuclear bomb components from such locations as Vienna.
Earlier in that edition Simon Kuper’s subject was the legalisation of drugs and Euthanasia, the ending of a life for humanitarian reasons. He says the Netherlands are pragmatically permissive on both subjects. Soft, but not hard, drugs can be bought in registered coffee shops yet people there comprise a calm, civilised society. Legalised euthanasia is a work in progress. Simon hopes some country will take on the baton. The French president has made comments in that direction. In the 10 years to 2010 Americans dying from Alzheimers rose by 68% with 5.2 million of them now estimated to have the disease. It certainly seems to be the case that such afflictions as dementia and memory loss are remarkably common amongst old people in our society. If we have a problem in that area we need to manage it sensitively and responsibly.
In the newspaper John Authers was writing that the pattern of our financial crash, the worst for at least eight decades, has been different from all those before it. The fall of Lehman Brothers clearly showed that finanial institutions can be too big to fail. After that shock Qantatative Easing prevented the end of the world as we know it but it only bought us time. QE has allowed house prices to recover, banks to become profitable, employment to creep up and kept inflation at bay. However we have to come off the drug at some point and the time is now approaching. At this juncture in procedings calm nerves are needed.
A few years ago there was talk about the Crystal Palace being rebuilt. But people obviously decided the problems were insurmountable and the idea was dropped. Now I see from that edition that the project has been resurrected by a Chinese company who are in talks with Boris Johnson. It would be absolutely marvellous I feel if it could happen. It would be just like the confidence of the Olympics all over again and make such a difference to that part of south London.
There was in depth analysis in the paper by James Blitz of the past week’s Syrian events. He says President Putin has long held the idea of an international effort to rid Syria of it’s chemical weapons expressed as far back as at the Mexico G20 summit in 2012. He raised it again with Mr Obama at St Petersburgh. The American President politely listened but, James writes, no one on the western side thought it would go anywhere. The Russians arranged for the Syrian foreign minister to visit Moscow on 8th September 2013 where the plan was put to him. And that I suspect is where some good spooks came it. I think it likely they briefed the American journalist who interviewed President Assad on the same day what particular question to ask him. To get two top Syrian individuals pulling in the same direction was a good plan I feel. I would even go so far as to speculate that the Russian and American governments knew nothing about it at all. And the rest, as they say, is history.
On the next page the editorial speaks of Russia’s apparent new standing in the world. It asks therefore that it should not forget what is going on in it’s own back yard. There is nothing wrong with former Soviet republics gravitating towards the EU if they think that is best for them. Just as Russia has been arguing in Syria it should not be using coercive tactics to get it’s way with it’s neighbours.
The issue also mentions that Serco has just lost an Irish governmental contract as a result of it’s UK prison services difficulties. I used to own some shares in Serco and press comment had always been what a well run, efficient conmpany it was. The report shows in my view how it should work in private corporations. No matter how good you are you should always operate in a transparent way for all to see. If you trip up, business forces will bring about corrective action. In my view Serco are still predominantly a good, sound company.
In the winter of 2012 I went to an evening function in the old Barkers department store building in Kensington High Street arranged by a charity which I was thinking of financially supporting. It was an unpleasant experience as I was badly crowded by the Gang including a lady floating around the room taking my picture. When I got a bit up tight male reinforcements wearing black were quickly brought in from outside somewhere. I noticed that the American company Whole Foods had a shop there. Like Enron before them I see they are based in Texas. I hadn’t come across their name since until I read a piece in that paper. They are an upmarket organic food retailer yet are opening a new outlet in a poor area of Chicago. Because of Gang influence I expect it will outwardly do fine but I would not advise potential investors to put any money into the company.
Today reported this morning that 70% of mosques in Pakistan today are celebrating daughters. The idea is to try to get men to value their girls more. Horrific stories were related of female infanticide and abuse of young girls. It is also a problem apparently in poor parts of India.
The were two lovely phrases on the progamme. The first was the weather lady reporting we are going to get some very usable weather this weekend. The other was a man saying the Ministry of Justice are fascinated by the irrelevant. In that discussion both contibutors thought the government’s plans to start bringing in a smoking ban in prisons next spring is a bit balmy. The other man could not understand why ministers are being so small minded and petty when there are some massive issues currently affecting our prison population brought about in part by the present cost cutting programme. The first man hoped the policy might jolt prisoners into fighting back. If they group together and have a few discussions about it they might find even those locked up can have political power where they live.
A subject which interests me is how your genetic make up can have a bearing on your health. I have a very rare blood group so I imagine some substances which affect me probably wouldn’t have any impact on most people. In December 2012 David Cameron announced the creation of the 100k Genome Project for us to map the genectic code of 100,000 unwell patients so better treatments could be devised for their unique characteristics. The Department of Heath have set up Genomics England to handle the project. Today were talking about it this morning in relation to the 60 million NHS records we hold for every individual in the country. Such comprehensiveness of health data is unknown, I think, anywhere else in the world. It means, with patients’ consent, that big data could be analysed, and alogorithms written, for the benefit of global human health. The subject apparently is called bioinformatics and it could make us a world leader in the field attracting reasearch and investment by the major pharmaceutical companies.
The programme helpfully translated some remarks Vladimir Putin made to Russian journalists yesterday in Valdai, between Moscow and St Petersburg. He said it was his own idea to write his letter to the New York Times. He said nothing he had not expressed publicly before. He had no control over what was published so was pleased the text appeared in full.
It was a lead item on Radio 4 News this morning that the Syrian deputy prime minister, as reported in today’s Guardian, has told the paper his government hopes for a ceasefire of the civil war as the opposing forces have reached stalemate. However I see from a subsequent BBC webpage that, if he made it, he has now retracted the statement.
Writing directly to the American public is becoming a habit. This time it is Hassan Rouhani in today’s Washington Post. Like Mr Putin’s piece I feel it is very well written and makes it plain he wants to look forward, not back, in a spirit of peace. He emphasises, as in any emotionally difficult situation, the importance of talking about the things that matter to you. He wants to hear how other people see things so an acceptable compromise of competing aims can be reached. He says he has the mandate to get things done. He just hopes those on the other side of the table do not let him down.
When watching Channel 4 News over the last fortnight it has seemed to me at times they are quite angry about something. If I had to guess I would say it is politicians generally with whom they are unhappy. Today a UKIP MEP had his whip withdrawn after he made an inappropriate joke when talking to journalists at a side function to their party conference. Before the decision to let him go he also biffed a Channel 4 jounalist on the head with a brochure in the street when he saw red at what he thought was unbefitting questioning.
21st September 2013
In this paragraph I am using the same names for the first two properties as in my book. The other two I have not referred to directly before. I was out on the bank at Tolkien House this afternoon cutting the hedge so had a good view of the road below. I witnessed a drug run, two days after I had reiterated my information yet again to a local police officer. The director for the session, a man in his fifties with a paunch I have not seen before, drove down between 3-4pm in a grey 4×4 and went up to The Sanctuary. The drugs came down at 5.45pm in the back of an open flat bed truck. It was followed by a car and a commercially signed van. I heard the truck turn into the gravel drive at Edgefoot Farm. Ten minutes later …. …. of Edgerock Cottage, the enforcer over there, went down. The drugs will be packaged up into retail sachets overnight and taken out in the morning.
I suggest in my book it could be possible that the American Gang, as I have referred to them, were persecuted by the Nazis, inflenced by the European Gang, during the second world war. I believe American Gang members are masons. I write in my book that the Germans killed between 80,000 and 200,000 masonic members in concentration camps. If that under-the-surface battle is correct you can imagine the European Gang, even though Germany lost the war, were in the ascendency in the years after. Perhaps that changed at the beginning of the 1960s.
I have read a BBC webpage today about the release of previously classified information by the American government. John F Kennedy became USA president on 20th January 1961. Three days later a B-52 bomber, with two hydrogen nuclear bombs on board, was flying above North Carolina. Somehow the pilots lost control and the plane went into a spin. It’s bomb doors opened and the load fell. One bomb remained dormant but the other went into activation mode and started to prepare itself for an explosion. It had four fail safe mechanisms, three of which failed. It was only that last one which prevented a change in world history. The Hiroshima nuclear bomb killed over 90,000 people. This device was 260 times more powerful.
If it had exploded it is difficult to imagine how an inexperienced president might have reacted. I suspect that politically he would have found it impossible to admit is was a mistake. A few influential Gang members would have been mobilised and the American State would have blamed the USSR. The pressure on the Commander in Chief to remain silent during that process would have been immense. The clarion call for a revenge attack would have become unstoppable and, in that scenario, the American Gang would finally have achieved revenge against their European enemies. The points of attack would have been just where they wanted them.
If that speculation is correct it did not play out through a fortunate quirk of fate, untouched by human hand. Nevertheless the Gang did not give up. The American organised attempt to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs was in April 1961 leading to the Cuban missile crisis, which I wrote about on 15th October 2012, the following year. East-West tensions at the time must have been unbearable. Perhaps the European Gang blinked. The Berlin Wall started to be erected in August 1961. In the summer of 1963 President Kennedy travelled to Berlin to show his support for all the city’s inhabitants and castigate communism. In November 1963 Mr Kennedy was assassinated.
I have made those German connections after watching Andrew Marr’s television programme, The Making of Merkel, this evening. Mrs Merkel grew up in Eastern Germany and became politicised when the communist hold on the country began to fail in the late 1980s. On reunification in 1990 she was elected to the Bundestag. In 1994 the then Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was looking for an East German to be in his cabinet and he chose Mrs Merkel, whom he called his little girl. Andrew says that over subsequent years she had to suffer misogynistic attitudes from her male colleagues. She took that stoically, showing no emotion other that smiling politely. However she obviously has a hard edge. She was instrumental in the fall of her mentor after Mr Kohl was involved in a financial scandel. Interestingly from the developments of recent weeks, her forum for doing that was by writing unexpectedly and controversially in a German newspaper. In 2000 she became leader of the Christian Democratic Union party and in the 2005 national election beat Gerhard Schroder by 1% of the popular vote. After weeks of negotiations between the parties she was on top and became German Chancellor, a position she has kept ever since. Her husband, like Dennis Thatcher, keeps in the background. I am sure he is totally supportive to a lady who has no children. I suspect that has given Mrs Merkel the ability to be extremely self contained in public. She keeps her own counsel. Not through design nor desire her challenge has been the European financial crisis. Under her stewardship Germany has become the undisputed leader of Europe which I feel is greatly to her credit. Her intitial reaction I think was that deficit countries must clear their debts irrespective of pain suffered but when that threatened the stability of the Union in Greece she softened her stance. Ultimately for her the European Union project was more important and she adjusted her tack to protect the euro accordingly. Her public supported her.
It is a strength I feel for a politicain to be able to change their mind. She did that with nuclear generation. Before the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 nuclear accounted for 20% of Germany’s power generation. However once she saw the sort of nasty games the Gang can get up to, in my view, she decided that risk was not for the German people. She knew she could deal with any political difficulties that might subsequently arise. I imagine for her it was just a question of doing the right thing.
22nd September 2013
The Gang are not a very happy lot at the moment. We need to be told who is in charge. Yesterday they decided to go out and terrorise and kill a few shoppers. The venue chosen was an Israeli owned shopping centre in Nairobi. Al-Shabab also feel frustrated. If it were not for an African Union military force in Somalia they would be in charge of that country imposing their version of sharia law. It would not take a lot of persuasion I am sure to convince them to retaliate aginst the neighbouring state which has supplied just under a quarter of those troops.
The militants entered the centre looking to murder any non Muslims they found. I heard that one Indian man was asked the name of the phrophet Muhammed’s mother. When he did not know he was killed. So far at least 39 people have died and 150 are injured. The militants have taken hostages and are fighting with security forces. The Kenyan President has spoken to his people on television. I expect most of the terrorists will go to heaven, as they would see it. We will have to pick up the pieces here on earth. And please don’t think it could never happen where you live. If you allow it, it will.
Other killings in the news are 40 lives lost to two suicide bombers this morning as Christian worshippers left a church service in Pershaw, Pakistan. Then yesterday at least sixty people were killed in three blasts at a funeral in Baghdad in their inter communal violence.
64 year old Bo Xilai, whom I have written about before, has been found guilty of corruption and bribery by the Chinese state. He has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
I am a supporter of the Howard League for Penal Reform. From their mailing just received I see that, partly through their discussions with police, the number of girls under 18 arrested by our forces fell by 45% in the three years to 2011. It is recognised that that degree of involvement with law enforcement can be quite destabilising to ones so young. Fourteen forces reduced their numbers by over 50%. Only the City of London showed an increase.
Last weekend I watched Stephen Timms MP give a presentation to a meeting in London. He was on the Sunday Programme this morning ahead of his suggestion to the Labour Party Conference that they should be more welcoming to those of religous faith.
Damian McBride was colloquially known as Gordon Brown’s spin doctor during part of his premiership. Extracts from his book are currently being published in the Daily Mail to coincide with the opening of the Labour party conference. He says that when Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008 Mr Brown feared the breakdown of law and order. He thought it might be necessary to deploy troops on the streets. That was a year and a bit into my own story. My recollection from the time was that Mr Brown, alone of world leaders, appreciated the great danger we were in. It seemed to me, possibly incorrectly, that it was his plan to pump liquidity into the financial system that was taken up by the rest of the world. I well remember how he reacted at the time of the Royal Marsden hospital fire, as I record in my book, in January 2008. It was the first time the Gang revealed what they are all about. He is undoubtedly, in my view, a man of true motive.
In May 2013 a Pakistan International Airways plane was diverted to Standsted airport after two male passengers made a commotion on board. Yesterday the same thing happened to a Sri Lankan Airlines plane. Two men were arrested on suspicion of endangering the aircraft. I imagine the incident was handled by Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate. The current chief there was the Commander of North Kent Police between 2004 and 2008.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons based in The Hague syas it is satisfied with the details of it’s chemical weapons it has received from Syria in accordance with it’s prior commitment.
Swami Ramdevja is a spiritual leader from India. In his own country he campaigns against corruption. On Friday he flew into Heathrow airport to attend a yoga related meeting in Glasgow tomorrow. He was held for eight hours by immigration oficials. Then he was told he could stay for 24 hours only whilst we decided what we wanted to do with him. In that time I imagine officials sifted through all available information on him to see if they could find a reason for sending him home. When he returned to the airport yesterday to find out his fate he was told he could go to his meeting. He was accompanied to the airport by Keith Vaz MP, to show his support.
It is quite incredible what small minded tricks the Gang get up to. You can tell it must be them because no other respectable criminals would sink to such stupid behaviour. The Venezualan government has just requisitioned a toilet paper factory because it is worried about supplies running out in the country. Earlier this year it imported millions of rolls to counter a chronic shortage of tissue. It will now have to investiagate the problem in some detail to see exactly why the product isn’t getting through to customers. They will get there but, as with all these pinpricks, it will be a bit energy sapping.
A Metropolitan Police officer died in hospital this morning, only the second to perish as a result of a crime commited whilst on duty since 1999. The other was in 2009. 47 year old family man Andrew Duncan was knocked over by a car in the early hours of Friday morning in Sutton where he was manning a speed check with a colleague. A 25 year old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder or manslaughter and a woman on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.
Following my note on Friday about the possibility of smoking being banned in prisons, Channel 4 News pointed out this evening that gaols are the only pulic institution where smoking continues after it was made illegal in those places in 2007. It seems possible the change is being introduced because of the Government’s fear of being sued by non smoking prison guards arguing they are being forced to smoke passively.
After hearing a discussion on Today yesterday morning it has sunk in that things were already going awry on President Obama’s Syrian retaliation stragey before our Commons vote on 29th August. My understanding is that he hoped to launch a military strike oner the weekend of 31st August. However on the Wednesday evening David Cameron conceded to Labour that we would not be involved in that action without a second parliamentary vote. If Mr Obama wanted us on board that stance on Wednesday will have delayed the weekend timetable whatever happened the following evening. The President had a busy schedule the week afterwards. Perhaps he had a bit more time to mull over his surprise announcement on the Saturday than I previously thought.
23rd September 2013
Angela Merkel’s CDU party won 41.5% of the vote in yesterday’s election, a level just a smidgen short of an absolute majority. If that had been acheived hers would be the first absolute government for 50 years. Negotiations now start to find a coalition partner.
For the last 12 months my 17 year old son has been borrowing quite a slazzy mobile phone with an inbuilt keyboard whilst his relative has been on a round the world trip. When he finished his suparmarket shift on Saturday, and took it from the bag in his locker, it was broken. The screen was cracked. He assumes he must have misused it in some way. At school today a surprising number of people asked him why he hadn’t replied to their messages. His relative and partner return to this country next Tuesday.
Last week American markets were fully expecting the Federal Reserve to start tapering down it’s input of liquidity into the financial system. In the event it seems there was a last minute change of heart. I expect the deciding factor was the worry that Democratic and Republican politicians are in the mind to have a stand off in the next few weeks about how to bring down America’s debt. That would be destabilising of course and destroy confidence. Friday’s FT editorial points out that the Fed’s volt-face will also damage trust in the eyes of market men that the regulator doesn’t do what is indicates.
The BBC journalist Paul Wood had just left northern Syria when he spoke to Today on Saturday. He said that al-Qaeda in Syria have been convinced all reporters are spies so really it is impossible to talk to them and find out how they see things. Enough of their fighters have now moved into the area that a critical mass has been reached. Sharia law operates in controlled fiefdoms. Local people are frightened. Paul said there are essentially now three forces in Syria, the government, democratically minded rebels and fighters who wish to see an Islamic emirate. The latter have designs not only on Syria but the whole region. A partitioned country seems quite likely.
24th September 2013
Our summer 2011 disturbances have been called by some The Blackberry Riots as those handsets were primarily the means of organisation. A Blackberry I understand is still the favorite phone of most financial men. However since 2008 the Canadian company has not done very well in it’s larger market. Then it was worth £50 billion, now it is £3billion. Last week it announced it was laying off more staff making a 40% reduction in numbers since 2011. Today it announced it is being bought out by it’s largest private investor, also a Canadian company. I believe Blackberry is a heavily influenced Gang company. The fact that it will now be removed from public investor scrutiny means, it seems to me, that the Gang will be able to re-strategise it’s involvement within it.
The dust is now beginning to settle after the Kenyan shopping centre attack. The international dimension was shown I felt when William Hague chose to be interviewed on Sunday empasising that a number of Britons were victims. The home aspect came out when David Cameron cut short his annual stay with The Queen at Balmoral to chair COBRA meetings. I expect both knew then that a likely later element of the story would be the Britons, and other nationalities, in the attack force itself. The Kenyans will have had high level international support from the start I believe. That has kept them calm and given them confidence. Judges at the International Criminal Court where he is standing trial for war crimes have allowed Kenyan’s deputy president home for a week so he can help with the crisis. The country’s deputy foreign minister is currently in the States where she has told the PBS television station that the widow of one of the 2005 London bombers, from Northern Ireland, was probably one of the militants involved. The Gang, in my view, certainly have a thing about women.
The arching theme about the story though, I feel, is that the Gang master wants us to know he wishes to intimidate us all wherever we live. As he is a hidden operator he cannot always do that as effectively as he would like but he will physically strike in the places he can. From a quick browse I have noted people from 13 countries, some of them famous in their fields, were killed inside the mall.
I heard a clip of President Obama speak at a church service following the shooting at the Washinton naval complex last week. He talked not to politicians but directly to his people. He pointed out that no other advanced nation suffers as much internal violence as does America. Their murder rate is three times higher than in other developed nations and ten times higher when guns are involved. They have a culture of killing. They should do something about it.
I heard on Today yesterday that one of the worst typhoons in 30 years was about to hit Hong Kong and southern China. I have not heard much comment about it but I expect it is extremely big news over there.
Going back to Kenya, on that programme a leader in al-Shabab in southern Somalia was confident enough to speak to the BBC about their operation. He said as far as he was concerned there were no Americans, British or women members in the Westgate attack. The Gang of course would not necessarily want him to know even if they were.
I am out on a leisure trip today and tomorrow. My second stop was Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. After a 20 minute walk I had my lunch at a pub on the quayside sitting at a table on the flood wall the other side of the riverside walk. From a starting point of ten minutes after I left my car, to my return, I would estimate I came across 30 Gang helpers doing favours for their friends. None of them will have known I was the target. However the lady who has been near me for the last half hour, with her Mum and three year old son on a bike, and who is currently 20 yards away from me in the park car park as I type, will I am sure have worked it out. When I arrived at the pub it was quiet. Then it got quite busy. As a sat outside I had 17 Gang helpers around me with one well-to-do Gang member who looked completely out of place amongst his put upon entourage. The majority of the 30 walked past whilst I was there. Nicely for me it was all very low key, no doubt because I was out of my own Gang area. In a situation like that though you do pick up the little idiosyncrasies of the Gang director with whom you are in contact. Among the outside crowd at the pub were two leather clad mature men who turned up on noisy motorbikes. I would never have seen that in Kent.
25th September 2013
Have just had my breakfast in quite a large budget Great Yarmouth hotel just off the sea front. I noticed a coach party of about 50 in the lounge when I arrived last night. I was first down when breakfast opened. A few minutes later the Gang helpers arrived comprising four ladies. There was a frail quiet one who immediately stood in the inter-room doorway and faced me as she texted. She then sat at a table with her younger enforcer. Also in my direct line of vision was a loudly spoken lady with a second quiet one as support facing away from me on her next table. The text must have been to give my position in the room. A few moments later I could see from my position in the bay window three men come out and stand on the steps of a hotel down the street, two in ties and shirts and one other. They were there, on and off, throughout my meal. There were also some walkers passing though the otherwise deserted street including quite a few single middle aged men with dogs on leads. I think it quite pssible the three ladies will not have done any favours for the Gang for months, if not years. However once you have shown you are willing to help them you are on their books for life. The enforcer lady was in place to be activated at a moment’s notice.
I have been to Great Yarmouth on business many times before but only to the industrial estates. I have never made it to the town centre. This morning I had a good walk round and stopped for a cup of coffee on the sea front before I left. It took the Gang about 15 minutes to ascertain where I was but then I had quite a surreal 5 minutes. It was a bit as if I was watching a film with a choreographed sequence of background bit players walking in front of me every few seconds. Amongst them I counted seven couples, some young and some old. The funny thing was in each case they were holding hands. I would think the prospect of that happening by chance are pretty high. I must see if it is possible to get a bet on such a sequence sometime.
This evening I am staying in a village pub, extended with outside motel type rooms, a few miles north of Kings Lynn. About one mile out coming in from the north I came across a Norfolk Constabulary small van, driven by a senior looking single officer, driving along a quiet B classified road. When I pulled into the establishment there was an unoccupied Norfolk Police patrol car sitting in the car park. I had my evening meal in the pub. As I walked away from my room a man was behind me but I genuinely forgot my paper so I ended up sitting down after him, meaning I chose where to sit in relation to his table. He was an unhealthy looking 30 something. In my view he was a criminal Gang helper aspiring for better things. He had a frown on his face whenever I looked at him. I expect he knew he would get a good ticking off when he got back for not sitting down after me. His cover was a single middle aged lady a bit older than the attractive one on her own I saw go and sit on the sea wall at Hunstanton as soon as I noticed her a few hours earlier. In the pub I sat amongst three occupied tables. There was a quiet staying tradesman, I would say, having his meal on my left. I saw him look at his phone when he finished and he suddenly seemed to become agitated. He stayed at the table for another 10 minutes before he left. However I suspect that was not quite as instructed. A few minutes later he came back to the bar, in my direct line of vision, and bought a glass of red wine. Just as I was finishing I saw the single girl go up to the bar after she had eaten three quarters of her meal. As I left I asked if she had returned her food for a refund. She confirmed she had. Her steak was overcooked and dry. I expect she knew that was the establishment’s policy before she spoke to them. Then the final point of interest was the young lady who served me. Tonight was the third time now I have noticed that a staff member in a pub, female in each case, picks up after I have sat down that something is going on around me. She suddenly started doing her job exactly as trained and I caught her looking at me when she had no need. I had diarrhoea today six hours after eating my breakfast so I hope that doesn’t happen again.
A conclusion I reach in my book is that 9/11 was retaliatory action by the Gang for the loss of investor confidence in Enron which ultimately caused it to go bankrupt. I believe the Labour party have thought about the workings of Organised Crime a bit since the chemical weapons attack in Syria last month and that in part was the reason for Ed Miliband’s surprise announcement at their conference yesterday. He wants to signal who should be in charge. He said that a new Labour government would freeze energy prices for 20 months after coming into office. Aapparently it is an immensely popular policy in focus groups who feel badly treated by the electricity and gas companies. But it has also created a real hornets nest both because of the perceived left wing controlling nature of the proposal and the upset caused to the companies themselves who see it as anti business. We will see how it all goes.
26th September 2013
There was no meeting nor handshake between Mr Rouhani and Mr Obama at the UN on Monday. I heard it said that the Iranian president, for internal political reasons, did not feel it wise to do so without a demonstrable step forward to show those at home. As far as I aware the America president, who wanted it to happen, accepted the situation with good grace. Things are moving on it seems using the good offices of the French, who have historical links with the Iranians, and the EU. On Monday Catherine Ashton met the Iranian Foreign Minister and the next day Francois Hollande had time with the President. After those encounters, I presume, the Iranians feel confident enough to say to the Washington Post that they hope for a nuclear agreement within the next six months. Another consequence could be the Israelis are getting twitchy their old enemy is hoodwinking everybody but them. Mark Regev was on Today this morning imploring us all not to trust Iran’s soothing words. Even so he found it difficult to argue that talking should not be given a chance.
I was at Castle Rising castle when it opened this morning. I was accompanied by a Gang member of my age and his wife. He had an expensive camera. I think he was about to take a photo of me but when he realised I was glaring at him from the other side of the keep he thought better of it. They only bought an entrance ticket from the separate office on their way out, after that incident. They did not park in the car park so perhaps they walked up from the village.
As I leave Norfolk I do have to say the Gang director here comes over as a bit amateurish. His helpers appear uncertain and timid. He is very much into anticipation of likely actions through prior intelligence, gender enticement and complicated sequencing. However that mode of operation is completedly predicated on the target having no pior knowledge of what it is all about. Once you have that learning it is completely ineffectual and just seems plain daft.
I had a coffee today in an establisment which had free newspapers to read. From today’s issue of the Star I am aware the the recent Princess Diana information I referred to on 14th August 2013 is an allegation that the driver of her car crashed after he had a laser type light shone into his eyes.
Coming back I stopped in Newmarket. There I was shown what I presume was a drug deal in the High Street at 4.30pm close to TK Maxx. A nice looking chap in his twenties on a bike gave a really rough looking man some cash. In return he received a large brown paper folded envelope. The older man seemed tense and quickly departed. The younger one looked relaxed, pleased and grateful. I imagine it is something he has done many times before.
There was a programme on Radio 4 this evening about Samantha Lethwaite whom I mentioned on Tuesday as the widow of a 7/7 bomber. The presenter Simon Cox was on PM this afternoon and I have read a BBC webpage and Wikipedia. She grew up in Aylesbury, Bucks, a town which is part of my story. She converted to Islam after she became friendly with a local Muslim family. She met her Jamacian born Muslim convert husband through the internet. She is remembered as shy and sweet. Immediately after the London bombings she expressed sympathy for the victims’ families. She was placed in protective police custody for a while when her home was fire bombed. I expect that is when things started to go wrong for her. She had friends around her who in fact were not her friends at all. In September 2005 they might have persuaded her to sell her story to the Sun for £30,000. She comes over to me as a lady who needs others around her. Perhaps she was so overcome by the manipulation of it all her heart became full of hate which she could not control. I would say she is a Gang helper who has became like putty in evil people’s hands. She seems to have disappeared from this country during 2009 or later. By the time her photograph appears in a forged South African passport dated January 2011 the glint in her eyes shows that her personality has changed. Simon said that even after all this time her old acquaintenances in Bucks cannot accept she has turned into a planner or perpetrator of terrorist attacks.
I have looked into Samantha’s story of course because she is currently in the news. Kenya has today asked Interpol to ensure she is detained wherever she may be found in the world. The request is not based on the shopping centre attack but alleged terrorist incidents involving tourist resorts in 2011. It seems clear the Gang wish to make her a heroine figure. The Kenyan deputy foreign minister’s statements about her in New York could only have come from sources inside American intelligence agencies in my view. I suspect President Obama is not sure whether that information is true or not. In case it is he has arranged for the Interpol interception request to be issued whilst ensuring it does not state the current investigation as the reason.
I am also interested that Interpol has been used as the vehicle. I noted on 3rd August 2013 that the organisation was asking it’s members for any intelligence they had on prison escapes. Here it is again in it’s role as a global police force just as the United Nations is performing this week in governmental terms.
Interpol was also mentioned on a BBC webpage I read this morning as a contributor of experts helping the Kenyans investigate their crime. Specialists are going as well to Nairobi from the USA, UK, Canada and Germany. I am really pleased to see Germany in the list. I noticed reports a couple of weeks ago that German intelligence sources had told it’s press it had intercepted telephone messages before the Syrian chemical attack implicating involvement by elements of the government regime although not leading to President Assad himself. At the time I was not too sure about that. But I have not seen anything since to indicate it was inaccurate.
27th September 2013
I note I have been putting off for too long now concerns the lack of popularity of my book. It has not been read by anyone I do not know. I anticipate a lot of people will know why that is. I do not. All I can do is speculate and hope I am near the mark.
It will definitely have been read by security services and, I hope, Mr Cameron and Mr Obama probably on a totally classified basis. I know the Gang have been through it. I don’t think Mr Hague nor Mrs May have looked at it. I can see spooks have briefed journalists on parts of it but I expect that is on a completely unattributable basis. I have a feeling MI5 do not share information with the police unless it is necessary for national security. That section of our community would therefore be cut out of the loop. Why should that overall state of affairs be? My best guess is that MI5 staff have advised all they speak to it is best they do not know more than they do. Both politicians and journalists could be criticised for not passing on credible information to the public once they have taken the initiative to fully find out what it is. The same argument would be used for my website. President Obama has already been embarrassed by the Gang, in my view, by the comments he received in his ricin letter as I referred to on 17th April 2013. Perhaps the inference is made that the potential harmful consequences for anyone less powerful than he, if they had all my details, are just too great. With no hard evidence to go on it is not possible to put forward an indisputable argument on how criminals work. Even if you believe it you have no option but to keep it to yourself. That I am afraid is the best convoluted conclusion I can come up with.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN body, has published a report in Stockholm today saying they are 95% certain humans are the dominant cause of global warming. The artic ice cap has reduced by 40% since the 1980s. Average World temperatures have increased by 0.9% over the last century. We need to keep the increase under 2% over the next 50 years or there is a danger our ecosystems will become unstable and the changes irreversible. We could be lulled into a false sense of security because it now seems possible some of the additional heat is being absorbed by the oceans and not the air. Another complication is that increases will not be uniform over the globe. Because our weather is affected by the gulf stream it seems our temperature is likely to decrease not increase. The government chief scientist was on Today this morning. He said the issue was one of communication. People have to understand the dangers involved. He said we have three options, to mitigate the effect of climate change, to adapt to it or just watch it happen suffering in the process.
Before that, on the first Business News of the broadcast was a man saying that the companies who extract carbon from underground are investing more money on the activity than ever. They are lobbying politicians for all they are worth that they should be allowed to continue. He described the situation as like living in two universes. Governments want to reduce fossil burning. Commerce are in denial of the larger picture. They want to continue making their profits.
Then last night Channel 4 News had a piece on on the massive pressures the future changes will put on us all. Our natural tendency will be to put our heads in the sand and hope it all goes away. That of course will make the final reckoning much worse. The programme concentrated on the current drought in Texas. That is causing it to fall out with neighbouring states and Mexico whom it accuses of stealing it’s water. It is suing everybody it can think of in the courts. The programme’s conclusion is that our future is one of weather and resource instability. It will all be extremely difficult to manage.
It would be nice to think the Stockholm report will be the start of a long slow process to make our world as nice a place to live as possible. Of more immediate effect will be two happenings in New York yesterday. Firstly America and Russia agreed the wording of a UN resolution to be ratified later by the Security Council. It does refer to Chapter VII of the UN Charter which authorises the organisation to use power if necessary but the Americans have agreed that wording will not become operative against the Syrian government without a second vote. That of course is exactly the same solution David Cameron came up with recently in the UK parliament when he could not agree with Labour. UN inspectors are due to start their work next Tuesday.
Then by all accounts they was a most productive meeting last night at the UN between the foreign ministers of Iran, America, Russia, China, Germany the UK and France chaired by the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton. Teams from Iran and the west will be meeting again next month in Geneva. At the end of the meeting John Kerry and Mohammad Zarif stayed on to talk privately.
That ending in itself was only a little thing but it is pleasing to see our leaders appreciate the importance of personal relationships. I reckon the Gang certainly look upon it as a key subject. I have noted several times now how they like to listen to the way you converse with others when a distrused person is amongst you and when not. It may give them the slight edge of intelligence they need about your thoughts. The most recent instance was when I attended a volunteer meeting last week. A person whom I have previoulsy referred to as a Gang helper in my notes arrived late and left early. My demeanour was the same when he was there and when he wasn’t. What was interesting for me though was it showed me the room, in a public sector building, was being bugged by the Gang.
When Mark Regev spoke to Today yesterday morning perhaps he knew what Mr Rouhani would say later in the day at the UN. It was that no country should be able to destroy another through having nuclear weapons. I imagine he pointed out the illogicality of Israel arguing that it is responsible enough to hold such destructive force but Iran is not. It is unfair I feel to blanket together the inhabitants of a whole country in that way. Mr Rouhani called on Israel to become a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which it currently refuses to do.
Today reported yesterday that 13 islamist groups have announced they no longer wish to be represented by the Free Syrian Army. Instead they are aligning themselves with the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusara Front who believe in sharia law. Apparently it is estimated only 10% of the rebels are militarily effective and support a western style democracy.
I won’t make any comment on the next note but I do think it provides food for thought, not for the intention of what was meant to happen but the reason why it did not.
Yesterday I read a BBC webpage about what happened in the USSR on 26th September 1983. Looking at Wikipedia I can see a lot of Gang stuff was going on at the time but there are no obvious indications of what it might have been all about. My guess is that it was a global power play between opposing gangs. On 18th August a hurricane hit Texas killing 22. On the same day a driver deliberatly drove a road train into an motel near Ayres Rock in Australia killing 5. Three days later the opposition leader of the Philippines was assassinated in Manila. On 26th August heavy rain in Spain caused flooding killing 45. On 1st September the Soviet Union mistakenly shot down a South Korean airliner killing 269. On 16th September Ronald Reagan announced the Global Positioning System would be made available for civilian use. On 23rd September a bomb aboard a Gulf Air airliner exploded killing 117. On 25th September 38 Provisional IRA prisoners escaped from the Maze prison, the largest prison escape in British history. On 26th September Soviet military computers reported the bloc was being attacked by five nuclear missiles from America.
The BBC informs me the man checking the instuments at the time had had a civilian education. Perhaps that made him think independently. All his colleagues were professional soldiers brought up to obediently obey orders. His emergency sirens went off five times I think, one for each missile supposedly launched against his country. The computers told him that each one of 28 safety security checks had been passed. In a situation like that his job was to inform his commander who no doubt would have ordered a retaliatory attack. However to him that level of warning seemed just too perfect to be plausible. He concluded it was a false alarm and did nothing. He was right. As he remarks the world might be very fortunate it was he, by chance, who was on duty that night.
28th September 2013
I heard on Today this morning that Nick Clegg had made a speech at the United Nations. Looking into that I see he called for the Security Council to be enlarged to include Japan, Germany, Brazil, India and the continent of Africa. He praised Brazil for tackling deforestation, Mexico for embodying climate change targets into law and South Korea for leading on the issue of nuclear security. He asked us all to raise our vision, to be ambitous to achieve what the world needs.
Seven males have now been charged with the murders in Leicester. Their ages are 16, 18, 19, 19, 19, 20 and 24.
Greek police have today arested, on criminal conspiracy charges, the leader of Golden Dawn, three more of the party’s MPs and thirteen others. One was a policeman on protection duties for the party. I feel that will definitely be associated with Angela Merkel just having been re-elected to office. I think it must be reasonable that a country which needs financial support from a larger club should be expected to conduct itself under the same values of that group.
On a show of hands the 15 members of the UN Security Council unaminously passed the Syrian chemical weapons resolution last night. It is now a binding document under international law. Ban Ki-moon has called the outcome historic. John Kerry said it showed diplomacy really does have the power to peacefully defuse weapons of war. It did take two and a half years but they got there in the end.
I am sure it has been a big story in America over the last few days but, behind with my FT reading, I had forgotten about the possibility of a funding beakdown for the American government at the end of this month. Two weeks later the country will stop paying interest on it’s debt. That would really spook the markets. It is all back in our news today. The American political system has stopped working and President Obama, to his great credit I suggest, has decided the obsession for power at any cost must finally stop. He has told the Republicans in the House of Representatives that it would be political suicide for them to freeze government’s functions just because they don’t like his health care plans which are now law. They should think about their country not about him. He challenges them to do their worst. He will not back down. I think he is right. It is the only way of making them see sense.
That is a stand of courage by one man I believe. To take on all that pressure, knowing the consequences of failure, cannot be easy. Yet at the same time last week he was dealing with Syria and Iran at the UN. A bad call of judgement and either of those could have gone pear shaped. I feel it was very understandable therefore that Mr Obama wished to have a political trophy before the Iranian leader went home yesterday. Mr Rouhani must have thought his visit had gone sufficiently well for him to be seen having direct contact with the western leader. He spoke to Mr Obama for 15 minutes on the phone, on his way to the airport I think. Both men thought the conversation went well.
The Kenyan attack was a terrible thing but I do believe the world stepped up to the plate. It is plain the Kenyans felt supported throughout. We were able to pass on the benefit of our experience on the best way of tackling the Gang problem. For example it is probably after speaking to us that their intelligence chiefs are to be questioned by MPs next week to explain why they seem to have had no knowledge about preparations for the shopping centre attack. The BBC report that the terrorists rented a shop several weeks before the assault which they used to store weapons and ammunitionn and distribute them to service areas where they would be available for re-supply purposes. I understand British and Israeli intelligence agents are now helping the authorities on that side of things, hopefully so such a scenario cannot happen again.
Channel 4 News had a report on buying illegal drugs such as opium, cannabis and heroin online last night. Once you are set up it is as easy as buying off Amazon or eBay. First you need the software to access the dark web where the sites are and a vitual money account. Your goods are delivered by Royal Mail. What intrigued me though was the absence of one particular drug, cocaine. The answer seems obvious. The Gang will not allow it to be included. Cocaine is their business operation and they have the power to keep it that way. If I worked that out I am sure the intelligent people at Channel 4 will have too. I am surprised therefore that not the slightest verbal hint of it was made in the piece.
Last week it was just before the Labour party conference that extracts of Damian McBride’s book were published. More sinisterly in my view the vice chairman of the Conservative party was arrested yesterday by Mancheter police, the city where their conference starts tomorrow. He has been accused by a woman of raping her in the 1960s.
Peter Taylor presents a Panorama programme on al-Shabab on Monday. He was on Newsnight on Thursday and said that westerners who want to sign up are told to go to Kenya and contact one of the radical clerics, for example in Mombasa. From there they could go to a northern town, then to one of the islands off the coast. Then they travel by boat into Somalia. That is all so typically complicated of the Gang in my view. They want to involve as many people in their clique as possible whether their motives are ideological or financial. They meanwhile remain totally hidden. Everyone says how porous the Kenyan-Somali border is. The obvious track north eastwards surely would be to have a professional tight knit group who took recruits directly over the border from Nairobi. That however is not the Gang’s way of doing things. It is not their culture.
29th September 2013
On Friday I tried unsatisfactorily to work out why my book has been such a flop. After watching the first episode of Atlantis on BBC 1 last night I have thought of another possibility. Other people have a perception it is the best way to protect me, to keep me safe. If so I would not agree. Overall I did enjoy my break away last week. I am a person who appreciates the little things in life. Yet it is so frustrating when you have a personal goal and you are not getting there.
The ACPO lead on intelligence matters and Durham Constabulary Chief Constable writes in the Observer this morning that the war on drugs has failed. Organised crime gangs, of which there are 43 in his police area, use illegal drug sales to fund their other activities. If the supplier of narcotics were say the NHS the power of gangs and their hold on a lot of people would be removed at a stroke. He points out that the prohibition of alcohol in the USA in the 1920s allowed organised crime to become entrenched in their society. Similarly, as I describe in my book, it was the actions of a single lady doctor here in the 1960s which led to our Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, creating our prohibition of drugs.
When I was young, probably in the 1970s, Italian politics was always in the news. They didn’t seem able to keep a government for more than a few months before it collapsed. The country came over to me as a real basket case. Today it is in political crisis again following the resignation from the ruling coalition of five ministers in Silvio Berlusconi’s party because they were not getting their way. It will now be up to the state’s president and prime minister, both of whom will have some knowledge, to work out what would be best for their fellow citizens.
Bearing in mind what is currently happening in American politics there is a very obvious connection to be made there in my view. America is the home of the American Gang. Italy is the historical home of the European Gang.
A BBC website this morning passes on the conclusion of an article in the British Journal of Sports Medecine. It is that a high number of athletes could have such a poor level of oral health that is lessens their competitive performance. From 302 examinations at last year’s Olympics 76% of participants had gum disease. I have had problems with my gums for a few years now.
Something I have decided in my private life is that wherever possible I must look forward not back. Justice of course though cannot do that. It’s purpose is to establish the truth of what happened in the past. However just like the rest of us judges have the power of discretion in their decison making. The subject came up on Today yesterday when they were discussing the role of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, set up in 2002. The institution is not recognised by Israel and the USA and is not fully supported by at least 41 UN member states. As I mentioned on Tuesday the Kenyan deputy president is currently on trial there for crimes against humanity in relation to the killing of 1000 people in Kenya after their 2007 elections. The argument is that it is more important he should be at home over the longer term to assist his country in it’s current difficulties.
Philip Hammond has announced at the Conservative party conference today that the UK is to create a reservist cyber defence force comprising people with knowledge in that field. It’s job will be to protect computer networks and national data when attacked. Mr Hammond says we also wish to create a deterrent capability as we do for nuclear warfare. That means we could use cyber methods to to disable enemy communications, weapon firing capability, means of transport and hardware generally. He said battlefields have always been on land, sea and in the air. Then we had rockets and satellites in space. Now we also have cyber waves.
I see that Duck Tours originally started in America and now run throughout the world. Here a company used to serve tourists in Liverpool and one still does in London. The Liverpool firm shut after sinkings in March and June 2013 and a London boat caught fire today. It is clear to me that English Duck Tours are being targeted and bullied by the Gang. The police will realise that as well as I. But then you get to one of those impossible situations the Gang are so good at creating. Really a senior police officer should warn the public of the risks of going on a Duck Tour, as the American government have just done about it’s citizens travelling to Kenya, much to the chagrin of the Nairobi government. However, as there is no evidence, they might then be sued by the London company and be ridiculed for scaremongering by some journalists and poiliticians. So they will say nothing.
Just for me but I see from Monday’s FT that Ed Davey has gone on a ten day visit to China to promote investment for our green energy programme. (I put a no publication marker for myself on this paragraph. However after hearing an item on Today on 1st October, which I shall be commenting on later, I have decided to include it).
David Gardner made the simple point in last Monday’s FT that America’s recent blossoming of relations with Russia came about solely because innocent Syrian civilians were gassed, using rockets fired from within their own country, in the full view of the world. He then goes on to write about Iran. It seems to me the chemical weapons attack must be the key there as well. Not so much for Mr Rouhani I feel who has always leant towards the west but for the Supreme Leader himself. The ongoing economic sanctions are bound to have also been a consideration. Perhaps the fact that America did not retaliate with force against the Syrian government has made a difference to him. It is even possible he knows something about me. Now I think about it I suspect Bridget Kendall knew a bit more than she was saying when she referred to the Russians being in contact with the Iranians as I noted on 10th Setember 2013. The thing about me I feel is that I am an independent person looking out on the world who will always record what he perceives to be the truth whatever that may be.
There was an article in Tuesday’s paper reporting that China wishes to join talks that America is having with about 20 other developed contries towards a new Trade in Services Agreement.
That issue also recorded a donors’ meeting the same day at the UN for the Palestinian Territories. It was chaired by Catherine Ashton and attended by John Kerry and Tony Blair. Israel pledged to provide funds for various economic projects.
In Thursday’s FT Quentin Peel notes that the Green Party are the most pro-European in German politics followed by the SPD. Angela Merkel’s CDU previous partner was the FDP who were rejected by voters. The CDU will be going into coalition with one of the first two groups so ipso facto the new Germany will be more pro-European than the old.
30th September 2013
My eldest daughter tried to phone me last night to follow up two emails she sent me during the week. She said it rang once at her end and then the line went quiet whilst apparently being connected. My phone made no noise. By coincidence I rang her about fifteen minutes later as I also wanted to have a word about her subjects. We had a positive conversation I felt. That of course is not the sort of thing which should be happening in my life.
I am a creature of habit. At about the same time on a Monday morning I put the dustbin bags out. As I walked up the steps this morning I noticed unusual vehicle activity outside. I was walking back when a white Vauxhall van going to The Sanctuary next door went past. The driver shouted an obsenity at me. I followed him down the road and as he went through the security gate we had a verbal exchange with each other. Nevertheless during that high emotion my rational mind was fully functional. I made sure that at no time was I in any physical danger. It was not something I could have done if I lived in America for example. I would have been worried about being shot.
The man is a builder foreman next door where they are carrying out works. The authorisations they have received are not in accordance with national planning law in my view. The van is one of two identical ones that come and go from the property. That means of course if you see one in the distance you do not know which it is. In my view the man is the Gang enforcer in the current set up over there in the same way as I wrote about the resident of Edgerock Cottage on 21st September 2013. That last man stopped his vehicle, walked back and had a go at me as I was coming up my lane a few months ago. On that occasion I said nothing. Afterwards I regretted I had not thought quickly enough to walk up to his passenger seat and suggest to his teenage son there that he try and persuade his father to get some help for the obvious mental pressures he was under.
My gate is four yards wide with a wall on both sides. As the man drove past this morning he was travelling at about 20 miles an hour. I was five yards away from the gate on my property side. Travelling at that speed he would not have had time to look directly sideways as he passed, notice me and then say something. What he had to do therfore was shout at me through his open window as soon as he came into view. That, I am afraid my friend, rather gives the game away. It was all a very carefully ochestrated set up.
As highlighted on Today this morning, although overall numbers are decreasing there were still nearly 300 children aged under 12 in a drunken state admitted to surveyed casualty units last year. The highest incidence areas were Western and North East Scotland and South Wales.