27th May 2013
There has been a bit of comment about this morning on Mr Cameron having left for a week’s holiday with his family last Saturday. I think lots of papers have photographs of the Camerons sipping coffee in Ibiza next to those of Lee Rigby’s family visiting the site of his death. Get a life people. I don’t think it is on to try and infer somehow that Mr Cameron should also be grieving for someone he did not know, however terrible was the manner of Lee’s demise. You don’t have to be totally mean minded to sell newspapers.
More comment has been made, including by the Home Secretary, about the decision of Newsnight and Channel 4 News to interview the radical Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary at the end of last week. I did have Newsnight on at the time but Mr Choudray’s views do not interest me and I did other things during his interview. If someone I cared for however was infuenced by his arguments I would assimulate them so I could express a reasonable counter response. Provided he is genuine in his thoughts I have no objection to him expressing them on television. It was brave of him to do so and indicates he does believe what he says. I am prepared to treat him with common courtesy until such time that I, in my own mind, have reason to suppose otherwise. I do not want others to make that decision for me.
In no way do I wish to belittle the loss for Lee Rigby’s family but last Wednesday we lost a life in a war of attrition. On 11th September 2001 we lost a lot more. In comparison with eleven and a half years ago we are now suffering pinpricks. We might well lose a few more. No one can stop a couple of people deciding to target and kill one individual if that is really what they want to do. It is almost bound to happen again. However, when it does, that will be a pinprick too.
During a Friday afternoon last October a man driving an unmarked white van went beserk and over a period of 30 minutes drove into two men, five women and seven children at five locations around Cardiff. One of the women died. The driver was arrested and he came to court on Friday. His barrister says he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. After discussions with the prosecution an agreement has been reached that the man is willing to plead guily to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility for the death, and attempted murder in relation to some of the injuries. The victims and their families will now be consulted to see if they are happy with that before it is decided whether to accept the man’s pleadings or procede with the full murder trial as originally envisaged.
Rape occurs when one dominant partner has sex with the other without the second person’s consent. It is always a male offence I think, I am not aware of a woman who has ever been convicted of rape. It can however be committed against a man, presumably by anal sex, or a woman. The key word in all that it seems to me is consent. Some rapes are open and shut, gang rape for example, some are not. Even when consent is given, as related in my note of 16th May 2013 about the groomed young girl, a crime can still arise of sexual abuse. However if she had been 16 at the time the law would have been helpless to intervene. For me though age should not be a determining factor. If you are vunerable to manipulation it does not matter whether you are 13, 16 or 25, you still deserve the assistance of society. The really difficult situations where rape is alleged though, it seems to me, is where sex takes place in private between two over age individuals. The dominant one will invariable say there was consent, the other possibly on reflection, that there was not. Obviously that shows a big problem, if only because the second one feels so strongly he or she considers the circumstances of the past event must be resolved. I am an inclusive person. My gut feelings in circumstances like those are that the second person needs to talk about how they see things. Sex is not a long term activity. It is one aspect of a partnership. I think the second person might well like to speak on more than the sex act itself. Should that be the case I think the second person should be helped and encouraged to talk about the wider picture, so they can move forward in the way they feel best for themselves. If they conclude, at the end of the process, that a legal prosecution would be the appropriate path, that would be their right. I personally feel, as I say in chapter 8 of my book, especially with our courtroom adversarial evidence gathering approach, that judges should be our last port of call.
Now I have got that off my chest I will go onto how it has all come into my mind.
The former Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross has written a book called Crime, being serialised I think in the Mail on Sunday. One of his chapters has the heading, Sex. He has used some wording in it I understand which, if you were an unkind person, you could use to acuse him of being an apologist for rapists. That, it seems to me, is beside the point. If the words written are Mr Ross’ genuinely held views, and he has broken no laws, then he is entitled to express them. They should be listened to with respect and an open mind. To his credit, in my opinion, Mr Ross is not cowed by the reaction. I heard him speak on Radio 5 live this morning. He says the views he puts in that chapter are not necessarily his own but derived from data he has researched. You do not shoot the messenger.
Jim Muir was on Today early this morning saying that the recent rocket fire into the Hezbollah area of Beirut did come from within Lebanon. The ownership of the weapon though is not know. More recently there has also been a rocket sent from Lebanon into Israel. Helpfully Hezbollah say it wasn’t them. I think the Israelis are a bit too sensible to react to it.
Within that segment was a piece on the up to 200,000, mostly Korean, comfort women who were enlisted by the Japanese to assist their military personnel throughout Asia during the war. The phrase is a euphemism for concubine or, to be more blunt, sex slave. If it were an individual private arrangement I think it would be reasonable to say Japan was a pimp. Quite shocking really. Most of the ladies are dead so for the few left to record their experiences I feel will be useful for historians.
Friday’s FT reports that for about a year a group of Israeli and Palestinian businessmen have been discussing their own suggestions for a two state peace settlemment. The initiative is called Breaking the Impasse and was organised by the World Economic Forum.
28th May 2013
We made ourselves unpopular in Brussels yesterday when, with France, we would not agree to extending the EU arms embargo on supplying Syrian opposition groups which expires at the end of this week. The minority was just us two with the argument for maintenance of the status quo for the other 25 being spreaheaded by Austria, then the Czech Republic. Also prominent in that view according to the Guardian were Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden. We have given a reassurance we will take no supply action until after June’s peace conference and the matter will be reviewed again on 1st August. Austria are upset. Their foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger, says that as a result his country will consider pulling out it’s 380 peace keeping soldiers on the Golan heights, fearful no doubt that they could now be in harm’s way.
I am extremely pleased to see that America and Russia are moving ahead with common purpose on the peace conference. The weak point in the chain at the moment is the Syrian opposition who were meeting in Instanbul yesterday to discuss their position. Their Gang mentors have told them they must not attend without a prior commitment that Mr Assad will leave office. They were given an informal deadline that they must decide their view by last night but it did not happen. Senator John McCain has made an unexpected visit to Syria to speak to their leaders. You can only keep your fingers crossed.
A think the BBC have been feeling a bit frustrated this morning about the lack of information being given out for an incident at the maximum security Full Sutton prison near York yesterday. At lunchtime we know that three Muslim prisoners, not there for terror offences, attacked and took hostgage for four hours a male and female prison officer. Officers from the North East Counter Terrorism Unit attended I think and the two were released. Neither prison staff needed to be detained in hospital.
I have just heard the Foreign Secretary speak on the World at One. He says we have no plans to supply arms to the Syrian opposition at the moment but we have given no specific commitments to the EU about our actions looking before or after the beginning of August. We will take it as it comes.
Although I do not definitely know whether the live broadcast of Newsnight last Thursday was subsequently edited for posterity as a mentioned on Sunday, I think it likely it was. As for the airtime given to Mr Choudary it is of course a matter of editorial judgement. I think the correct decision was made there. If I am right about Thursday I believe that was the wrong judgement. I don’t think Mark Urban is a liar. What he said should have been allowed to stand. Just because a person tells you national security is involved does not necessarily mean it is. Much more likely I would have thought that someone wanted to save themselves a bit of embarrassment.
Last Thursday a report from the Commons Home Affairs Committee called the appointment of Paris Brown as a Youth Police and Crime Commissioner for Kent, a fiasco. Ann Barnes, the adult commissioner, has called such words a disgrace. It seems there were other criticisms in the report which Ms Barnes says were not based on factual information. The committee say they will not be responding to Ms Barnes’ views under the argument no doubt, that a dignified silence at this stage is best.
Austalia apparently, as reported early by Today this morning, hasn’t had a recession like the rest of us. The reason is because China, it’s largest trading partner, has a voracious appetite for it’s mineral resources. The news this morning therefore that Chinese hackers have been discovered viewing Australia’s intelligence agency’s future plans, could be quite embarrassing. The allegation was made in an ABC investigative television programme on Monday. The government say however that it will not effect their relations with China.
Following on from that horrific little girl court case I wrote about on Sunday, told me by Today, they have come up with an equally shocking story this morning. The details are known after a FoI request by Radio 5 Live. The affected man himself was on early this morning describing how he and his wife were arrested by police in September 2010 for money laundering in relation to his business as a mortgage broker. To hear him speak you cannot other than believe he is innocent of the charge. However he remained on police bail, having to report to the station every few weeks, together with 57,000 other people currently, for two years and eight months to the beginning of this month. At that point his solicitor suddenly got an email informing them no further action would be taken. In Gang speak that happened, in my view, simply because it was possible. The gentleman said it had devastated his life leaving him unable to pay his solicitor’s awaited legal bill. The possessions of his wife and children removed from his home still haven’t been returned by the police. Later the Nottinghamshire chief constable, the ACPO lead on Criminal Justice, said totally naively in my view that police try to do a really good job and we should all trust them to do that. The Law Society propose that if the police want to extend bail for more than a month they should attend a court to explain the circumstances.
I have read in the FT that David Cameron ordered the parliamentary enquiry last week over the death of Lee Rigby. Sir Malcombe Rifkind, chair of the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, was on the programme explaining how investigations into the role of MI5 will be conducted. I hope his committee’s report will put as much information into the public domain as possible.
A very relaxed George Osborne was on the transmission talking about this year’s spending review and the large cuts being asked of government departments. Contrary to scurrilous weekend newspaper reports it seems, he says agreement has been reached with seven mostly small departments. That though means there are still over 20 to to go which will be the more difficult ones.
I have no idea why but one of my favourite charities is the Woodland Trust. I was therefore interested to hear on that edition that the charity have received grants of £2.47 million for them to carry out a five year £3 million project to replace 130,000 acres of conifer plantations across the UK planted since the war, with native boadleaf species.
From an article I have just read in yesterday’s FT I think you can see Mr Kerry’s strategy for a Palestian-Israeli peace. I would like to think he has Mr Netanyahu on board, at least to the extent that he will not make things worse. But from a speech Mr Abbas has just given, full of perceived grievances, there is a lot of work to do on his side of the fence. I made my note yesterday about the World Economic Forum just thinking it was an item of interest. It seems however there is probably one of those under the surface schemes going on. It was to the WEF that Mr Abbas gave his speech. Then I am informed that John Kerry is asking Tony Blair to try and mobilise a $4 billion range of investments for Gaza and the West Bank to increase their economic activity. If that comes off it will greatly increase their spirits. Mr Kerry I feel wants to get a virtuous circle of Palestian optimism going. Over the coming months the Gang will create as much bad feeling as they can. Mr Kerry needs to put as heavy a weight of Palestinian uplifting vision on the other side of the scales as he can. I wish him luck.
There was an interesting piece in that paper by an Indian commentator comparing India today to Britain in the late 1970’s. We had Mrs Thatcher come along to save us. He hopes something similar might happen for India. They have a general election next year. I few pages earlier I read about an attack by Maoist rebels in central India killing 28 people including two senior politicians from the Congress party.
I see from today’s FT that the detail of yesterday’s EU summit outcome, after 13 hours of talks, was that the other states agreed to the Anglo-French wish so that all other sanctions against the country of Syria, other than the arms embargo, could continue. The Dutch foreign minister said he counted his blessings that the outcome was no worse than that.
Another indication I feel that the American Gang are bedfellows with the ‘Ndrangheta turns up in that issue. The report passes on that a Belfast businessman, is alleged to have laundered money for the IRA into fraudulent holiday resort developments in Calabria, home of the ‘Ndrangheta. He was arrested in Senegal last month on behalf of Italian financial police. He fled there apparently when he realised authorities were after him. Extradition procedings to Italy are now in train. Without namimg them the piece says the three main Mafia gangs are based in Calabria, Sicily and around Naples and have a combined annual turnover of 100 billion euros.
29th May 2013
Last Wednesday I said they were things I did not want to record. On reflection though, and after all this time, it would be extremely inconsistent of me not to be as open as I feel comfortable with. I, of all people, should not be hiding behind bad feeling. On Tuesday evening last week I had a meeting with two of my five children. It was important in that the three of us knew it had really been set up to talk about things that matter in our private world, which is what happened. Before that talking in my family, in my view, had always tried to be at a polite conversational level. The next morning I had another pre-arranged discussion with my doctor. We are all in a calm state trying to edge our way forward. It is a bit like witnessing the birth of a new child. You have expectation but you have no idea where it will really lead. You just hope for the best.
I think those sentiments must pretty much apply to where we currently are on Syria. The building blocks are in place, the Russians are keeping their cool, I have faith in President Obama. The fault line is the Syrian opposition. From Jim Muir’s comments on the BBC webpage this morning it seems their friends, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are doing things to make matters worse. The rebels need a unified position. To stop the fighting I would have thought might be a good place to start. There is no point however trying to move forward on anything unless you are on firm ground. If the opposition cannot agree amongst themselves what it is they want, it would be useless for the peace conference to take place.
Jim says the Syrian National Coalition meeting which began in Instanbul last Thursday should have finished on Saturday. They are still arguing with each other. The fighting Revolution Movement within Syria itself has issued a statement saying those in Turkey do not represent their views nor the collective national will of Syrians.
There was a 3.8 magnitude earthquake last night centred on the western tip of North Wales between two seaside towns in Gwynedd. No damage was caused. I look upon that in the same way I did the New York commuter train train crash I wrote about on 18th May 2013. It is a warning to people in the know to keep quiet. More details are in my book. I have heard a seismologist say that such events in the UK should only happen once or twice in a couple of years. Probability is a law of nature. The Gang should bear that in mind.
I did not mention it as the event was not on home territory but on Saturday a French solder, carrying out a public reassurance patrol I imagine, was stabbed in Paris. He was not seriously hurt. A Muslim convert man has now been arrested and admitted making the attack. No connection to the Gang themselves will be possible I am sure but again I feel it shows how things are beginninmg to fall apart for them. The man was known to the police and most stupidly, it appears, he left a can of drink he had been using near the scene of the crime. It had his DNA on. If you rush about, and are nor properly organised, that is the sort of mistake which happens.
The younger Woolwich man, Michael Adebowale, was discharged from hospital yesterday and taken into police custody. I would be surprised if they didn’t start questioning him this morning. If he has not wanted to speak to them that might explain why detectives have been out in the town today asking the public if they have any more information to give. The man arrested on BBC premises last week has written to the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee asking them to investigate whether Michael Adebolajo was mistreated by British and Kenyan authorities. I expect they would have done that anyway.
Although there has been no word from America as far as I know the BBC report sources in Pakistan today who tell them the second in command of the Pakistani Taliban has been killed in an American drone strike. It is the first drone operation there apparently for six weeks.
If British forces pick up enemy combatants in Afghanistan, UN rules say they should had them over to local forces within 24 hours. However if you feel your prisoners will soon be out in the shadows again threatening our soldiers, or indeed if you fear they will be tortured by a few in Afghan society, you are in one of those impossible situations beloved of the Gang. Currently we have about 90 insurgents in our custody there, some for as long as 14 months. There has never been any secret about that but the story has hit the headlines this morning through UK solicitors trying to get two men released by application to our courts. Presumably they are British residents and the grounds that their detention is illegal. The Defence Secretary has been on the airways all day explaining the government’s position. A no win situation for him I am afraid.
This isn’t a new story either but through impartial statistical analysis the Doctor Foster team have discovered you are much more likely to die in hospital after a planned procedure which takes place at the end of the week rather than the beginning. You are at highest risk for twenty four hours after an operation and if that is over a weekend survival rates change significantly. Although the total death rate is under 1% you are 44% more likely to die for a Friday operation than a Monday.
My take is that it is Gang influenced. Hospitals are much quieter places at weekends and, in my view, it becomes feasible for the Gang to have a sufficient weight of helpers on site to carry out their wicked schemes. If strange things are happening in our world statistics are often a way of picking it up.
I have listened to a few discussions recently about Bitcoin transactions where goods and services are traded without real money changing hands. It all seemed a bit strange and does look now, as seemed probable at the time, that our criminal friends are fully involved. The attraction apparently is that those virtual transactions can be a useful device for laundering money.
Liberty Reserve was a virtual currency exchange operating out of Costa Rica. You bought it’s currency with real money, tansferred that currency to another account possibly on the other side of the world, then the currency could be converted back into cash there without any record of where it had came from. Verification of account holder identities was virtually non-existent. My guess is that it may not be too difficult for criminals to pass illicit money around between themselves in a single country but the great advantage of Liberty Reserve was it’s global nature. It was designed by the Gang for the Gang to enable money transfers throughout the world. American authorities have just shut the operation down with the top man being arrested in Spain. Over 7 years it processed 55 million transactions worth $6 billion for 1 million users, 200,000 of whom were US based.
Everything seems to come down to our genes nowadays. Today had a report this morning suggesting it possible that the make up of our internal code could have a bearing on who becomes obese. It seems for example genes might make some of us still feel hungry when we have eaten loads. A couple of funding bodies are setting up a research team in Cambridge for a project on the subject.
From a Newspaper Review on the transmission I understand The Independent report this morning that MI5 have rebuked the Home Secretary for supporting the Communications Data Bill after the death of Lee Rigby. I find that a little strange. I would have thought Mrs May, and indeed other former Home Secretaries who have spoken over the last few days, thought they were arguing the security service’s position for it, knowing it doesn’t like to speak for itself. A bit hateful you might say. Something it does show though perhaps is that we are all politicians now. In such a situation I feel Mr Parker should let it be known what MI5’s official position is and be prepared to give reasons for it.
Channel 4 News reported last night that the English Defence League have had four marches since last week’s murder, two in Woolwich, one in Westminster and one in Newcastle. A contributor was saying that after a big upset like Woolwich, disturbances tend to go on for about a week so hopefully it will not last too much longer. Then this morning I saw a BBC webpage saying that Aononymous UK have published a stolen EDL database giving such details as names, addresses and mobile phone numbers of their members and supporters. If the EDL and Anonymous were in Iraq they would be killing each other with bombs.
A very supportive editorial of Barack Obama appears in today’s FT following his drones speech last week. Strategically he wants responsibilty for drone strikes transferred from the CIA to the Pantagon. Apparently in his speech he quoted James Madison in saying no nation can preserve it’s freedom in the midst of continual warfare. I think that reasoning applies to an individual as well.
30th May 2013
In the chapter 11 appendix of my book I talked about the atrocious killing of 16 Afghan civilians in their village by a crazed sergeant in the US army in March 2012. The media report today that the man has agreed a plea bargain with the authorities. He will accept he is guilty and they will not execute him. In a society such as Afghanistan that will naturally make the bereaved families deeply unhappy. However for Americans I feel it is, overall, the best thing. It recognises he almost undoubtedly did not act with rational premeditation and it takes the retribution aspect out of the equation. Justice does not have to be revengeful. As far as I am aware the man has not given a full account of why he acted as he did.
Mark Bridger was found guilty at lunchtime for murdering April Jones. The judge says he will complete his life in jail. Mr Bridger was on a hiding to nothing in my view. He was a known liar, he had pornographic images of children on his computer and he himself told the jury he believed he was unwittingly responsible for April’s death. His only hope was to tell the truth which I believe he did not. With that outcome April will now be considered dead as a matter of fact. If anyone should have the temerity in the future to suggest she might still be alive they will be shouted down as being completely bonkers. I don’t know if she is alive but if so the Gang will look upon it as a job extremely well done. It will bolster their confidence no end.
Today are going to broadcast a series of items in coming weeks about men and women. This morning a psychologist was saying our society has changed over the last 40 years or so. We are far less sexist than we were. Domestic violence is now considered wrong and it’s incidence has dropped dramatically. Before it was tolerated as was a man’s casual sexual exploitation of several partners. In every sphere of life women are climbing up the ladder. Women are now less likely to to be treated as sex objects by men. Then later on there was a mixed discussion about type casting into gender roles. The two ladies said we should all be more feminist, men and women.
The BBC report a spokesman for the Syrian rebels as saying there are 7,000 Hezbollah fighters currently in Syria. The French foreign minister estimates it is more like 3-4,000. Then on Channel 4 News this evening came an illustration, in my view, how everything has become so sectarian in the Middle East since the Gang have been on the back foot. The Sunni leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, used to live in Shia led Syria. But last year he moved to Qatar, supporters of the Sunni Syrian opposition. In his exclusive interview he clearly says the Damascus regime does not have legitimacy. Quite bizarre really as they were his protectors for so long. Just before the programme reported Bashar al-Assad as saying Syria will retaliate against Israel if it makes any future attacks on Syrian territory. Things are clearly getting pressurised and difficult.
I heard Iain Duncan Smith on The World at One at lunchtime talk about the announcement today that the European Commission are to take us to the European Court of Justice for alleged discrimination towards some EU immigrants. Before we pay social security to EU nationals living here we apply a right-to-reside test which British people of course would automatically pass. Mr Duncan Smith says we will challenge that opinion and believes other EU counties such as Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria also consider the Commission often get things wrong. He relates that yesterday Austria won a case in the European Court against the Commission to the effect that a German national living in Austria was not entitled to receive social security benefit.
One of the first major decisions taken by Lord Hall, the BBC’s new DG, I imagine has been to scrap it’s Digital Library project, as reported in last Saturday’s FT. The idea was to give all it’s staff immediate access to it’s archived data to assist in programme making. However the technology required for it was complicated and they went about it poorly from the start. They appointed Siemens as their partner in 2008 with no competitive tender but dropped them a year later. After that I think the cost just got greater and greater without any significant forward movement. The loss to the taxpayer is just under £100 million and the BBC’s chief terchnology officer, himself paid around £300,000 per annum, has been suspended while they try and find out where it all went wrong.
The next page talks about corruption allegations in Indian cricket. They have been made for several years now covering the whole make up of the industry and the worry is that the wrong doing has become so institutionalised, for a hugely popular sport, that it can’t now be beaten. Mention is made of a particular young talented but temperamental player. The piece says he has been uncaringly left, by those in charge, to cope with all the pressures on his own. One of his associates says that if he had had a counsellor and a mentor it would have made a hugh amount of difference to him.
31st May 2013
I would like to record that on 16th May 2013 I look a journey from Wales, where I had been staying with a relative, to Kent. One of my children had just repaid me a significant loan in cash and and I decided to bank that by calling at the Brittania Building Society branch in Wellington, Shropshire. I believe my car has a Gang tracker attached to it. As I got out of my vehicle I immediately recognised Gang activity by the dishevilled man sitting alone on a nearby bench. The overall atmosphere in the half hour I was present struck me pretty much as in my own main town. I had a coffee in a town centre cafe. Whilst there a middle aged man in a wheelchair and his lady companion started to enter the establishment but then, when she was in the door, he suddenly decided he didn’t want to come in after all. However they came back ten minutes later and this time had a cup of tea and cake. I think it likely that man had a rapping of the knuckles later on with the Gang Master also starting to take an interest in the overall scene, which he would not normally do.
Standing next to her partner Paul, I have just watched a clip of April’s mother, Coral Jones, speak on a BBC webpage following Mark Bridger’s conviction yesterday. She talks with calmness and dignity. She thanks the media for the respect they have shown her. When she finishes Paul puts a comforting arm around her.
On that page a criminal psychologist says Mr Bridger shows a high level of emotional intelligence meaning he has the ability to assess and control the emotions of himself and others. He appears to think that if he keeps stalling then eventually things will blow over. In a sense of course he is absolutely right. However she makes the point that if you question a person repeatedly, especially one who is trying to hide something, then the truth will usually emerge. His prison psychiatrist will want to engage with him about what has happened to April or her body. Mr Bridger has a life without freedom in front of him. He needs, I feel, to think about how he can make the best of that for himself. He should do what is right for him not what is right for others.
I see this morning that it was to a Hizbollah influenced Lebanese TV channel that Bashar al-Assad spoke yesterday. Mr Assad, I am sure, is a worried man. I expect he would not view his statements made there as threatening at all. However for me they were. He said he was expecting some super-duper modern armaments from Russia at any time. He would retaliate against Israel if they upset him in any way and a place he would probably try and attack them, in such an eventuality, would be the Golan Heights. I have no wish to be disrespectful to Mr Assad at all but I think it is helpful to take him out of the equation all together. Those words have actually been spoken by the Gang Master himself. He is livid that we should be trying to usurp his authority. If we do not buckle down he will take it out on the ones he has always made to feel victims, the Israelis.
I do not wish to be personal here either but as my diary knows I am a Today listener. I think the team have now got it just right. They project a relaxed, friendly air. They treat all contributors with respect no matter how odd their views. And they ask leading questions, as though they are thinking out aloud, to prompt the interviewee to get to the nub of the issue. It is amazing how often you hear that person says nowadays, that is exactly right, or something similar. They are a good bunch.
After reading Wikipedia I believe it is illegal in the UK to have images of child pornography on your computer. Scenes of adult pornography are not criminal unless the authorites consider them extreme, presumably involving sadism and the like. With that background an independent government adviser has said on Today this morning that Google in particular should protect us, especially the susceptible ones, from legal pornography more than they do. He says they are very good about removing search results when a bad site has been brought to their notice. But he feels they should be pro-active in the area. They should set a safe search setting by default so users has to change it themselves if they wish to view pornography. Even then it should not be made easy for them, for example by setting up a registration process to include your stated age. The suspicion is that Google have taken no action because because they are worried about losing market share, and profits, to competitors. It reminds me of the American gun control debate. It is not difficult for sensible people to see what is the right thing to do. But even so it is amazingly difficult, with all the hidden pressures around, for that to happen out there in the real world.
That story in my view is all about taking advantage of opportunities. Journalists should not make the news, in order to sell newspapers or for any other reason. However the Mark Bridger case makes it a legitimate story to cover and on which to invite comment. The protection of the thought processes of impressionable people is something we should all ponder on I feel.
The Queen has visited Woolwich Barracks today in a engagement that had been in her diary for some time. I can feel the emotion welling up inside me as I type she did not need to do that. However it is marvellous she did.
Leee’s family say they have been truly staggered by the generosity and kindness of everyone with whom they have come into contact. They ask that Lee’s death should not be used as an exuse for any form of violence. The police have told the English Defence League they will be prevented from marching from Woolwich to Lewisham tomorrow although they will be allowed to peacefully demonstrate in central London. I see Lee’s commander has said he was returning to barracks at the time of his murder not leaving.
The man arrested on BBC premises last week has now been charged with, not that serious I think, terrorism linked offences. It seems he posted on the internet videos and messages would could be interpreted as inciting others to commit acts of violence.
A BBC webpage informs me this afternoon that figures from the Office for National Statistics say households in Nottingham on average have our lowest disposable income. It is the poorest city in the UK.
Very efficiently the Air Accidents Investigation Branch published it’s interim report today on last Friday’s Heathrow air incident. It was human error and, it looks now, could have been a pretty serious accident. From what I have read and watched it is clear the cowling casing latches for the two engines were undone when the aircraft was taken out of it’s hanger on Friday morning. On tarmac visual checks, including by the pilot himself, did not pick it up. That however is not surprising as the engines have a known design fault meaning a person has to lie on the ground under one to see if it’s latch is properly closed. There have been several instances of the error being missed on takeoff before but not for five years when procedures were tightened. The casings detached as the aircraft gathered speed along the runway for takeoff. It has never previously caused an engine fire which happened here. Indeed the damage to the aircraft was extensive affecting fuel pipes, the hydraulice system, tyres and landing gear. One engine had to be shut down because it was alight. If both had been in that state the plane would have been in exactly the same position as the British Airways plane from Bejing landing on 17th January 2008. As this one was ten minutes out from the airport I don’t think there would have been any chance of it gliding down to earth safely.
1st June 2013
It was announced early yesterday evening that a body, most probably of 17 year old Georgia Williams, had been found in woodland near Wrexham. The police say they came across, no doubt forensic, evidence in a house in Wellington, Shropshire on Thursday that she had died there. A 22 year old man from the town has been charged with her murder.
I have heard on the Radio 4 news this morning that Georgia’s body was found after a tip off. I suspect the information might have come from MI5. I do hope that does not mean some form of inappropriate games were being played somewhere.
There have been more tornadoes in Oklahoma near Moore, this time a series of smaller twisters rather than the single big one of 20th May 2013. Five people have been killed and power cut to over 60,000 homes.
If you upset the Gang leadership they will always test you. This time it is Istanbul in my view, host of the Syrian opposition meeting. The BBC reports that the riots started with a small peaceful protest against the building of a shopping centre in a city park. However the Gang soon got hold of that, just like our 2011 summer riots, and turned it into a mass anti-government protest. That has only been possible of course because of simmerimg resentents already there ready to be tapped. It also seems the policing might have been unnecessarily forceful.
Jim Muir notes on a BBC webpage published last night that the Syrian opposition has finally given up in Instanbul on reaching a common position after eight days of talks. He compares that with the Syrian regime who are putting forward a clear, strong stance. The peace talks will be going ahead. He says the rebels do not have much time left to sort their act out. On Today yesterday I heard him say the Qataris and the Muslim Brotherhood appreared to be trying to push their own agendas within the opposition movement.
I do not read anything about Germany very often in relation to Syria. However that page tells me the German foreign minister travelled to Washington yesterday for talks with John Kerry. I do hope there is no element of guilt there by the Germans that they should be seen at this point acting positively. Responsible people should not need that kind of motive.
I wrote on 26th May 2013 about being under constant sound and camera surveillance by the Gang in my home. It is not nice. It is with mixed feelings therefore that I read and listen this morning to the joint sting operation set up by Panorama and the Daily Telegraph on Patrick Mercer, MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire. Fiji was finally fully expelled from the Commonwealth in June 2009 when it’s military government refused to call democratic elections. The journalists set up a fake lobbying company and hired Mr Mercer to suggest to parliament that Fiji should be readmitted to the Commonwealth, a country I suspect in which he has never before shown any interest. Mr Mercer told them his charging rate was £1000 per day and it is alleged he expected to be paid £24,000 in all. It is against parliamentary rules to be paid for such activity. Yesterday Mr Mercer resigned the Conservative whip in Parliament and says he will not stand again as an MP. I feel that can only be interpreted as an admission of guilt. The Panorama programme will be broadcast this Thursday.
I heard the economic journalist Tim Hartford say on PM on Thursday that MI5 has about 10,000 staff. He has been asking questions and apparently there are some 2000 suspects on their terrorist watchlist. To keep 24 hour surveillance on one individual can involve 20-30 officers. So if we did that for all 2000, MI5 numbers would have to be increased approximately five fold.
The trouble with the large seismic forces in the world, in my view, is that when we individual members of the public come up against them we are pretty much crushed underneath. To their credit Today were highlighting one example yesterday morning. The Englishman Garry Barlow worked at the In Amenas plant in Algeria partly run by BP which was attacked in January 2013. He expected to be protected both by those in charge at the plant and by the Algerian goverment. However that did not happen and he was killed. His wife not only has to deal with her grief but also the fact that she has been shunned by BP and the Algerians in not being given any information surrounding the circumstances of her husband’s death. The lady, caring for two teenage children, needs closure. She is not being given it.
I would love to know how this story got into the national press to which I was alerted from a Newspaper Review on the programme. Five years ago a lady set up a dog show in a village in North Kent not that far from where I live. It has become more and more popular until last Bank Holiday Monday it attracted 2000 people and 1000 dogs. A small village cannot take numbers like that. There was nowhere to park and with the weight of numbers tempers became frayed. A teenage steward was punched in the face and pet owners who did not win verbally abused the organisers. The lady in charge says she will not be doing the show next year. She called some people there just like football hooligans and was able to indentify one individual as solely present to cause trouble. That is how gang culture works in my opinion. You get lots of already destabilised people in one place and then give them a bit of leadership to vent their frustrations.
I’m not quite sure how to express this but until the financial crash it was almost as though we got ourselves into a position in the western world where you could only make money if you were acting in some form of underhand way. I include my own business in that as I describe in my book. Since 2008 however that world has gone and will not come back. The legacy is that there are not sufficent jobs for those who want them. Our leaders need to work out honest ways for businessmen to operate so they can offer us honest jobs. Five years on however it is not going very well. As Gavin Hewitt was saying on Today yesterday the unemployment rate in Europe is still going up, it is not even remaining stable. Referring to destabilisation in the last paragraph senior European politicians now realise, I think, how potentially explosive that is, especially for the young. There are now six million people under 25 without work in the EU, for example 55% of those unemployed in Spain. The German finance minister has said we are in danger of losing a generation. It is not only the Syrian opposition who need to get their act together. It is European leaders too.
For some reason it was not referred to on the live page record on the Today website for that day but at 8.48 a piece was broadcast about the current position in Benghazi. After the end of their civil war in October 2011 Libyans have been trying to rebuild their country. As you might expect that has had it’s ups and downs and Benghazi has become quite a lawless place. The government have just deployed special forces there to try and contain the various private armed militia groups.
Two million people in this country use payday lenders, half of them with annual household incomes of less than £15,500. If you run out of money just after pay day and borrow £100 for a month you will be asked to pay back £137. You can see how easy it is for unsophisticated people to let their debt position get completely out of control. However, even with usurious rate of interest, payday loans are legal. That is down to the government to do something about. Unsurprisingly though in my view, with that amount of money to be made, some payday lenders resort to sharp practice and predatory behaviour with their clients, pushing them into unmanageable financial difficulties. That aspect is down the their regulator, the Office of Fair Trading. Margaret Hodge, the chairperson of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, was on the programme and called the OFT feeble. They have not yet fined one unscrupulous payday lender in spite of all the evidence.
And therein lies a tale I suggest. At the end of March I requested a funding of my Shares ISA account with my stockbrokers using a confirmed direct debit mandate. The transaction however never happened. The stockbrokers blame my bank and the bank blames my stockbrokers. The stockbrokers are not prepared to provide evidence to me, which they say they have, to support their contention. They plead it is in bulk form and also contains details about other clients which they cannot pass on under the Data Protection Act. I must take them at their word. What has been interesting however in our correspondence is that they have been almost falling over themselves for me to take my complaint to the regulator, in this case the Financial Ombudsman. I assume they know something I do not, probably that in exactly the same previous circumstances the ombudsman has supported their position. Therefore it is my intention to take out a County Court summons for damages against them for preventing me investing 2012/13 tax free funds in my ISA for as long as I wished into the future. I shall let my diary know how that goes in due course.
There is also a lot of comment around at the moment about the financial difficulties of the Cooperative Bank, for example on the front page of this morning’s FT. The FT also had an article in last Saturday’s paper about the bank where they quote a member of the Commons Treasury Select Committee saying that the regulator’s role in allowing their true postion to continue for so long, unseen to the public, needs to be looked into. If any of us thought a brave new world of regulation arose out of the ashes of the financial crisis I think those people are mistaken. The Gang are not going anywhere. We need to up our game.
I wrote about cattle, badgers and tuberculosis in chapter 12 of my book. 6000 milking cows have had to be slaughtered so far this year after catching TB. The government have finally grasped the nettle and authorised two private culls of badgers to start today in west Glocestershire and west Somerest. The initial tial is to 1st December 2013 and it is estimated up to 70 badgers a night could be shot dead when a cull is in operation. Everything will be strictly recorded and the idea I think is to get some authoritative figures to show doubters that humane badger culls are effective in reducing TB. Interestingly I see on a BBC webpage today that in a YouGov poll 37% of those asked did not have strong views on badger culling. Of the remainder a small majority were against it. Those who love badgers more than cows though I think will take a lot of persuading.
On 12th April 2013 I said my phone wasn’t working properly when I got back from holiday. I haven’t yet updated my diary on how that all sorted itself out. I anticipated it would be extremely complicated and that is exactly how it was. Then, as often seems to happen with me, I was extremely lucky. Without that stroke of good fortune it would have been an ongoing nightmare for weeks.
My telephone provider is a subsidiary of BT and when I felt ready I began contacting them about the fault. Twice they tested the line and twice it was fine. However on the second call the chap, from my description, thought the problem might be with the exchange. He also said that if I did lose connection to the public network and it was not due to my equipment it was his company’s policy to pay their customer compensation. They offered to send their engineer here to investigate the situation on the understanding that, if the difficulty was mine, I would have to pay his charges myself. My worry there was I have a small telephone system under the stairs, which I used to have in one of my former offices, for transferring calls between the house and my garden office. It is old fashioned and I thought a modern engineer might just look at it, shrug his shoulders, and assume that must be the cause of the trouble. Instead therefore I contacted the engineer who put it in for me in 2009. He visited on 25th April. Right from the word go he thought it was an off site problem of varying signal strength, such as caused by touching wires hanging from telegraph poles. But his experience also told him a fault like that is extremely difficult to find especially if BT are sceptical. However he first had to eliminate my apparatus so he went through the various procedures such as changing ports and things. With all those impulses and repeated calls going through the external system the phone line from the exchange went down. He immediately told me to ring my phone company to report it before it started working again. That in itself was not straightforward as I have very poor mobile reception here but fortunately I got through and they tested it while I held on. They agreed it was not working. My engineering went away happy, his job done. Then phase two started.
Those events ended about midday. When I tried the phone about 4pm it was working. As I knew I was entitled to compensation I thought I would see if the company would pay the whole of my engineer’s bill, in excess of £100, as we had shown the difficulty not to be my offence. As you might guess I had, I feel, a difficult representative. In our email correspondence he point-blankly refused. Neither did he give me any information about the circumstances of the fault. Neither did he tell me I was entitled to any compensation at all. It was like getting blood out a stone. Through me asking specific questions which could not be avoided I eventually found out that my phone line was restored 45 minutes after the fault was reported and Openreach said it was a bad card in the exchange. His reply to the compensation issue however was the most interesting. He said it was such a small amount, without telling me how much, that he thought I would have been insulted if he had mentioned it to me. I decided enough was enough and went to his supervisor. He told me the sum was £2.45, I think, and was satisfied with how my issues had been handled. I thought it was time to bring correspondence to an end and made an offer which I hoped could not be refused. The immediate reply came back that my suggestion of £5 compensation was accepted.
Two pipe bombs were thrown at PSNI officers near Belfast on Tuesday in a murder attempt. Fortunately no one was hurt. A man was arrested by police in Shrewbury this morning in connection with the incident. My guess is he threw at least one of them.
I certainly wouldn’t have predicted a couple of months ago that Iran might be involved in a negotiated settlement in Syria but it is beginning to look like a distinct possibility. I suspect the game changer could be that interested parties can see that Russia and America are serious about getting something sorted and have concluded they would be best advised to openly throw their hats into the ring. To do things in the old hidden Gang way is too risky. I heard Jim Muir say on Today this morning that people are looking ahead to a possible partitition of Syria. Whichever side, Sunni or Shia, secures Qusayr will also control the Syrian hinterland around it. That is why Hezbollah need to openly fight for it. Then in Thursday’s FT I read that earlier this year Iran put forward a six point peace plan for Syria involving new elections. Iran have an, imperfect in my view, democratic system so I imagine they feel comfortable suggesting a similar arrangement for others. That was followed up last Wednesday by a conference in Tehran with Shia ruled Iraq I think being the most significant attendee. Iran have decided I reckon that they need a seat at the Syrian peace conference to keep the Sunni threat at bay. I think that strategy is a jolly good idea. Jaw, jaw is beter than war, war.
2nd June 2013
Today had a discussion yesterday about Homeboy Industries, an organistion in Los Angeles who offer a comprehensive menu of services when men and women come out of prison. Looking at the Homeboy website it looks to me like a good gang set up offering a dozen or so categories, such as anger management and tatoo removal, which it’s clients can following up. The lady was saying the course, to go through all the complex range of issues virtually all former prisoners will have, must last at least 18 months. That is not cheap but prison is more expensive and their re-offending rates are half those of the American average. Police in Scotland are looking to set up a similar scheme there.
A BBC webpage reported yesterday that some al-Qaeda men, whom their military intelligence service had been monitoring for three months, have been arrested in Iraq with ingredients and facilities for making sarin and mustard gas. The men have confessed planning attacks.
There was a decidedly optimistic two part editorial in Thursday’s FT. The top congratulated the European Commission on relaxing it’s severe fiscal regime so that countries can try and get a bit of growth going. The bottom said global economies have finally turned the tide against those secretive tax havenes dotted around the world.
It has not only been the BBC and Daily Telegraph apparantly who have been investigating political lobbying. The Sunday Times have been at it too. Their jounalists approached three members of the House of Lords, one a former chief superintendent of Durham police and President of the Police Superintendents Association, supposedly seeking to advance the interests of a solar energy company. All three Peers deny they have done anything wrong. Coincidentially one of them, not the former policeman, was also approached by the BBC Panorama team and their fake Fijian firm.
We are fools if we do not think sex is an important element of our lives, whatever our orientation. Thanks to a Radio 4 newspaper review this morning I am aware there is a report in this morning’s Mail on Sunday about a now finished love affair affecting No 10 Downing Street. You read the report and you can only guess what it is hinting at. It is obviously a personal tragedy for those involved. No Cabinet members are implicated. If it does become public it appears it would destabilise the country’s normal political processes. We will see if the press and Westminster Village are able to hold their tongues. I think the Gang approach will be to try and get those at the heart of the matter so upset that they want to go public on their hurt.
A phrase in the piece which interests me is that sources told the paper the Prime Minister immediately realised the importance of the story. I have a suspicion that if Mr Cameron hadn’t seen the significance the Gang might have encouraged the probably existing bad feeling towards him in some sections of the press to boil over, so they would act rashly in view of his perceived naivety.
The Met Office have said that May was the coldest for 50 years and the fifth coldest since records began in 1910.
James Reynolds was on the Sunday Programme on Radio 4 this morning from Instanbul. Nearly 1000 have now been arrested in their disturbances and although things are quiet this morning no one is quite sure where we go from here. After listening to James I think people are angry and worried about a perceived loss of freedom to an increasingly authoritarian state. The disturbances have obviously been spontaneous just like the Arab Spring. The young people, as yet, have no representatives to speak for them. I hope that will change. The key figure at the moment though I feel is Mr Erdogan. I have noticed myself that he is an extremely emotional prime minister. In international politics I feel that is probably a good thing. But perhaps not at home. A bit more understanding of the sensibilities of his own aspiring young might help a bit. Turkey has a great future in front of it. It would be a great shame if Mr Erdogan jeopardised that in any way.
There is a BBC webpage published this morning to coincide with Sir Mervyn King’s appearance on Desert Island Discs. He says he does not want to write any memoires on his retirement from the Bank of England to say he was right and everybody else was wrong. He will be happy for historians to make their assessment in 20 year’s time.
A 23 year old year old lady has given birth to quintuplets in the Czech Republic, the first in that country. Mother and children I think are doing well. We are told they were conceived naturally. I remember the Walton family and their sextuplets, born in Liverpool in 1983 and only the fourth set to survive in the world, went on to become quite famous people.
We have a spell of decent weather coming at last. I have been out in the garden today working in a flower bed about five yards in from the footpath running up the side of my plot. On the other side are the grounds and long drive of the neighbouring property which I call The Sanctuary in my book. When I walk up to my shed from that point I can’t see back. A couple of weeks ago when working there I found my hand held hoe broken at the end of the day which I don’t think I caused. After a bit this morning some very chatty walkers went up the path. I went to a different point to get a better view of them as they strolled by. Then suddenly, behind them, was a young man about 13 years old riding up the drive on a bike. I have never seen him at the property before. I supect he was hiding behind the trees to pinch one of my small tools as soon as I walked away. When I was looking at the walkers I suspect his mentor was observing me from the opposite direction. He thought I would see the boy and sent him a text. However my position was such that he would have remained hidden from me. Silly games.
I don’t understand the ins and outs of it but Friday’s FT says the government wants the private sector companies who will be bidding for the £500 million worth of contracts for probation services to be completely transparent in the risks they are passing over to their voluntary sector partners. I think the worry is that, if a contract turns sour, it should not be possible to hide exactly where the faults arose.
That paper reports that Mr Obama hopes James Comey will become the next director of the FBI. Mr Comey was general counsel to Connecticut based hedge fund Bridgewater Associates from 2010 until early 2013. He is currently a law school lecturer.