We do not believe you - we do not trust you

The ramifications of the leaks by Edward Snowden rumble on - with more momentum in the States than here. Our supinely inert elected representatives have so far failed to subject the executive to any hint of real scrutiny. The Intelligence and Security Select Committee is not chosen by MPs - they are all put in their places by the executive and are all ‘senior’ MPs, former Ministers etc - so all part of the system. Their chairman (Riffkind) works for an arms company...

Richard Norton-Taylor writing in the Guardian gave a helpful reminder:

“In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Katharine Gun was charged with leaking a secret email from the NSA requesting GCHQ for help in what amounted to a dirty tricks campaign: a plan for the bugging of offices and homes in New York belonging to UN diplomats from the six "swing states", countries whose support would be vital if Washington and London were to win a Security Council resolution authorising the invasion of Iraq.

We do not know how GCHQ responded to the request because the authorities, apparently afraid of what may emerge in a criminal trial, suddenly dropped the charges.

The past, Hague suggested in his blustering — and carefully worded — response to the NSA leaks in the Commons on Monday that everything about the way GCHQ gathers intelligence is tickety-boo.

It may be, but ministers have not explained how their assertions should be accepted on trust now.

Unanswered questions remain.

One we could call the Blunkett Question — after the former home secretary intervened in the Commons on Monday to ask Hague how ministers could control the way personal information offered by the NSA, opposed to having been sought, could be used by GCHQ.

In such cases, authorisation would be "extremely difficult", Blunkett said.” Guardian online 12/6/13

As citizens of the UK we are rightfully wary of our political leaders - and their motives.

“Whilst not strictly connected to the GCHQ or the security services I think the police undercover penetration of peaceful direct action groups demonstrates that the authorities have no moral compass. These were after all people who's most serious "criminal acts" were to lock themselves to things or have occupations. Most of these trivial acts were only made illegal by shifting the goal posts. It was completely disproportionate to have such long term operations, and for them to have relationships and even children using their aliases.

We can also see this pattern with legislation introduced to supposedly tackle terrorism being misused for trivial matters not in anyway related to terrorism.

Likewise when both CS gas/Pepper spay and Tazers were given to the police we were assured they would be only a last line of defence only used as protection against attacks with weapons. We were told they would not just be used to control or threaten people. As soon as they were introduced, all that was forgotten, and these weapons were widely used in a way, which the public were assured they would never be used.

So without knowing anything about GCHQ we can be pretty certain that Hague's justification is risible nonsense. We know very well there will be disproportionate use of these powers and abuses. It's as certain as night follows day. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Give secretive organizations great powers, and they will abuse them. There is not a single society on earth where this has not happened.” SteB1 Comment is Free Guardian

The visit to the Bilderberg secret meeting by so many of our senior politicians makes the point. Along with Balls, Osborne and Cameron there were such worthies as Ken Clarke, Shirley Williams and Mandelson. 

“(Our PM spends time with the Bilderbergers) protected by the overwhelming security barrier thrown up by the British State, paid for by British taxpayers, and calls it a 'private meeting' which does not need to be witnessed or documented by civil servants, contrary to the usual ministerial rules. Not much of a protest from our 'elected representatives' or the wonderful press; one wonders why?” sarkany (ibid)

One wonders why indeed.

And as for Cameron’s claim to run the most transparent government ever? It was risible when he first said it - the claim is even more laughable today.

Corporate Whores

Hidden among the torrent of news and speculation about the NSA and its monitoring menace was the news that Cameron, Osborne and BALLS! Yes! Bloody BALLS – attended the Bilderberg meeting in sunny Watford.

This was a strictly off the record meeting. Three public servants, for that is what they are, paid for by us, attend a secret meeting of the most influential CEO’s and Financial cheeses in the world. No civil servants in attendance, no minutes, no record of any kind. So who are these corporate whores really working for?

Corporate whore Cameron emerged to offer blandishments about the amount of surveillance taking place and to reassure the plebs. Corporate whore Hague had been on the media over the weekend offering patronising bilge along similar lines - if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. Er, not quite Mr Hague. 

Corporate whore “Rockets’ Riffkind, who also claims more cash for chairing the Commons Security Committee, has also been on the media offering similar platitudes. No mention did he make of being paid thousands every year to promote the arms and security industry. Odd that. His senior colleague Yeo is in the mire for doing similar.... 

This afternoon, Corporate whore Hague reassured mainly supine MPs that GCHQ is working under laws and policies. Whose laws and whose policies? He said that any claims to the contrary are ‘baseless’ but without giving any evidence to back up his assertion. We are expected to trust a corporate whore from a government and Parliament of corporate whores. 

Corporate whore Osborne will soon be publishing his financial review. No doubt the poorest and most vulnerable will be expected to pay more than their share so Osborne’s Bilderberg chums can continue with their tax-free existence.

And when Osborne speaks in the Commons he will be opposed by Corporate whore Balls – who will engage in sham outrage while knowing that he would have done exactly the same. 

A reminder why all this matters.

“We're supposed to know virtually everything about what they (government) do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

This dynamic - the hallmark of a healthy and free society - has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That's the imbalance that needs to come to an end.” Glen Greenwald

Having Corporate whores in charge is bad for democracy. What do these sleazeballs really think? Are they expressing honestly held views or are they in the pockets of the wealthy elite. Our security services seem to work for the same elite via our government. 

There are  the odd very brave exceptions like Edward Snowden. 

And as for the hoi polloi? 

“There, there, don’t you worry your pretty little heads about it - concentrate on “The Voice’ and which celeb is falling out of their clothes this week...” 

For Cameron, Osborne and Balls to attend the secret Bilderberg meeting is really taking the piss. It shows the contempt they hold us in.

Go Go Yeo

Here we go again. Another snout in the trough has been caught on camera.

“The paper (Sunday Times) alleges he coached the boss of a firm, owned by a company that was paying Mr Yeo, before the businessman gave evidence to his committee.

Mr Yeo denies this, and says he intends to contest all the allegations.

The BBC understands Mr Yeo has referred himself to the Parliamentary standards commissioner.” BBC Online 9/6/13

Conservative blogger Guido Fawkes is not a fan. 

“The reporters approached Yeo posing as representatives of a solar energy company offering to hire him as a paid advocate to push for new laws to boost its business for a fee of £7,000 a day. He told them he could commit to at least one day a month, despite the fact that he already held four private jobs and was in negotiations to take a further two. Setting out what he could offer, the MP said: “If you want to meet the right people, I can facilitate all those introductions and I can use the knowledge I get from what is quite an active network of connections.” Asked if that extended to government figures, Yeo replied: “Yes.” The House of Commons code of conduct forbids members from acting as paid advocates, including by lobbying ministers. Yeo also said he could help them by guiding them on submitting evidence to his own committee, which he described as “a good way of getting your stuff on the map”.

Confirming what we knew all along: Yeo is one of parliament’s most shameless Honorable Members.”

The brass neck of these slimeballs is quite breathtaking. Having been caught bang to rights on camera they still claim to be innocent and that they will contest the allegations vigorously. Following his mate Mercer, Yeo says he has ‘referred himself to the Parliamentary standards commissioner’ as though we should be impressed. 

The one Commissioner who did her job properly (Elizabeth Filkin)was disgracefully hounded out by senior (mainly Labour) MPs after she investigated Peter Mandelson’s murky financial dealings. Since then we have had establishment stooges, one of whom was described by Private Eye as ‘feeble.’ The current occupant, Kathryn Hudson, has been in post under a year. The speedy self-referral by the entrapped snouts implies that they are confident they have nothing to fear.

Nothing less than a complete clear out of these self-serving sleazeballs will do. Mercer and Yeo should be investigated by the police for corruption. And thrown out of the Commons.  It would be a start.  

Big Brother

The revelations from across the pond that the NSA has been listening in and monitoring computers, emails, mobile phones and landline phones has surprised many. That GCHQ have now been brought in to the picture should come as no surprise to anyone who has monitored the one-way street that is the so-called ‘special relationship.’ For a sovereign democracy we are pretty crap at being sovereign and democratic. 

Glen Greenwald, a diligent and principled US journalist has this pithy summation of where we are and where we should be:- 

“The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they (government) do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

This dynamic - the hallmark of a healthy and free society - has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That's the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.” Glen Greenwald Guardian Online 7/6/13 (My emphasis)

How do our third-rate leaders figure in this scenario? Are they up to the task? Do you trust them?

“The UK's electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence from the world's biggest internet companies through a covertly run operation set up by America's top spy agency, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The documents show that GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, has had access to the system since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from it last year.

The US-run programme, called Prism, would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside the UK.

The use of Prism raises ethical and legal issues about such direct access to potentially millions of internet users, as well as questions about which British ministers knew of the programme.

In a statement to the Guardian, GCHQ, insisted it "takes its obligations under the law very seriously".

The details of GCHQ's use of Prism are set out in documents prepared for senior analysts working at America's National Security Agency, the biggest eavesdropping organisation in the world.” Guardian Online 7/6/13

Pretty clear-cut to these eyes.

There is another extremely topical angle to this highlighted by a commentator calling themselves 'stfual' on Comment is Free, Guardian

“Watching Obama on TV describe how data collected by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft is only used to spy on non Americans outside of the USA. Can the Guardian ask the British Government and European Administration what they plan to do about data collected by tax avoiding American companies being used to spy on British citizens?” 

‘stfual‘  Comment is Free 7/6/13

More Balls

“Ed Miliband's party (is) following a tactic pursued by Tony Blair's party. In important things, it turns out, the younger of the MiliBros has not altered fundamental Labour policy to any significant degree, despite all the chatter about a "break with the past". What was good enough for Tony is good enough for Ed. A Tory plan, smudged up a little, will do as a Labour plan.

Equally, if Mr Balls takes himself all the way to Canary Wharf – now there's symbolism – to give a speech at Thomson Reuters to say that "we will start, we will plan, we will expect in 2015-16 that we will inherit the current spending plans that the Chancellor sets out and we will work within them", what have the last three years been about?

Just that Mr Osborne was a bit hasty, a bit wrong, a bit slightly different from anything Labour might have done? It hardly counts as a grand refutation. Mr Balls has spent the last three years telling us that the Coalition erred in matters of fundamental principle. Now he simply says that Labour would do nicer cuts....

....In his speech, Mr Balls said a lot about growth and nothing much about how growth could be achieved. The purpose of his address was to assure someone – who and why? – that "Labour will take a tough and fair approach to deficit reduction". Not a single life will be improved by such nonsense. No single existence will be changed because Mr Balls thinks there's £100 million to be had from stripping away the winter fuel allowance from people in his income bracket.....

....Labour will not have worked it out yet, but the Shadow Chancellor's speech down in Docklands was catastrophic for his party. Set aside all the trimmings, it said that the Tories were right all along, that their view of how a state must balance its books must not be disputed, that cuts – quibble over the details, if you like – must always be made. (My emphasis) So the Shadow Chancellor sides with a Tory Chancellor whose record of achievement is, let's say, patchy. So a Labour hack who failed to notice warnings of the biggest financial catastrophe in a century says that, all of a sudden, he can fix things.....

.....Ed Balls says he is "striking the right balance for the British economy". Vote for him and the other Ed and you'll get "action now to raise living standards, growth and long-term investment". Were Mr Balls to be doing his job, he would explain what happened and why, if you give him access to the Exchequer, it would never happen again. That Ed Balls would give you analysis, explanation, and a promise. Instead, you get a character who accepts the logic of everything his supposed opponent has done, and sympathises faintly for the inconvenience.” Ian Bell, The Herald 5/6/13

He is not alone. Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian is similarly unimpressed. He sums up, “Britain’s political class, Balls included, remains in thrall to banking ideology. If bankers think austerity is good for the nation’s soul, Osborne and Balls will agree. They are talking not economics but redemptive theology. Present and future generations must apparently pay for the sins of their fathers, with no hope of release, however daft the policy.

This is cruel rubbish. History has given the Labour party a golden opportunity to return to its principles and redefine the economic leadership of Europe. Balls has fumbled it.” Guardian 5/6/13

What a load of Balls

Billed as his ‘big speech’ it was remarkable for what Shadow Chancellor Balls did not say. Although he emphasised just how ‘ruthless’ he would be as Chancellor, he failed to tackle the legacy of his years in government. A legacy of duplicity, deception, off-the-books accounting and enhanced tax avoidance. Not to mention launching attack dogs on his own colleagues. For every Tory wheeze, the BallsBrown combo had at least ten of their own. 

Private Eye has put Balls’ contribution to our current malaise in context. 

Balls was part of the team at the Treasury who scrapped corporation tax on company dividends and introduced the ‘lighter touch’ approach to tax administration and financial regulation. We know only too well how that worked out. 

What did ‘Ruthless’ Balls have to say about this catastrophic period? Nothing. 

“The Brown crew’s neglect of the tax system extended beyond corporate tax to super-rich individuals too, as the ‘non-domiciled’ tax break that allows some of the wealthiest to escape tax on offshore income was extended, despite promises to end it, and as private equity bosses were given tax rates famously lower than their cleaners” P.Eye No. 1341

What did ‘Ruthless’ Balls have to say about this unfairness? Nothing.

“One particular, and so far under-reported, series of tax scandals stands out as a monument to team Brown, however, the sale of Britain’s public assets to tax havens in the service of tax avoidance.

The first big one was the sale of the country’s tax offices to Bermudan company Mapeley Steps Ltd (Eyes passim ad nauseam). This was swiftly followed by an exodus under what is now just another tax avoider’s plaything: the private finance initiative. No sooner had these suspect contracts been signed than they began to be traded, with explicit official encouragement, and the most enticing places to sell them to were offshore havens.” ibid

PFI: or pay for two, get one (hospital, school etc); off balance-sheet, the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’ (Public Accounts Committee). “More than 200 of Britain’s state schools are at least partly owned offshore.” ibid

What did ‘Ruthless’ Balls have to say about PFI’s? Nothing.

“Thus it was the owners of some serious British public infrastructure have for years been earning income from them tax-free offshore. The Home Office, would you believe, is owned by a company that pays interest to its parent company HSBC Infrastructure Ltd, in Guernsey. Both the Ministry of Defence headquarters and the Treasury buildings are a quarter-owned from the Channel Islands under similarly tax-driven arrangements. None of the contracts concerned has paid tax even though, under Treasury rules, they were signed off as value for money on the basis they would.” ibid

What did ‘Ruthless’ Balls have to say about this fiasco? Nothing.

What did ‘Ruthless’ Balls have to say about:

• billions in evaded/avoided tax
• rent controls
• zero hours contracts
• cost of Iraq misadventure
• cost of Afghanistan 

Absolutely nothing.

“Mr Balls admitted that he had more work to do to win back trust over the public finances.” 

Telegraph 3/6/13

Not half.

The stench of corruption

How bad do things have to get before the people of the UK say enough? The latest examples of sleazeballs on the take are bad but not a surprise. The remark, “I may have evaded the rules but I haven’t broken them,’ by one of the '3 Lords a Leeching' does take the biscuit. What is more disturbing is the extent to which our political leaders are in bed with big business. All the talk of tackling tax avoidance needs to be viewed in this light. The Murdoch connection with our politicians was well and truly aired throughout the Leveson Inquiry. Similar cosy arrangements exist today with Google for example. 

“Rachel Whetstone, Google’s top global spinner, is married to David Cameron’s old barefoot guru Steve Hilton. She used to be director of communications for Tory leader Michael Howard and , before that, was Cameron’s deputy in the PR department at Carlton TV. The PM is godfather to her younger son.

Naomi Gummer, one of Google’s main ‘public policy’ executives, meanwhile, is the daughter of Tory PR adviser Lord Chadlington, the president of Cameron’s local constituency association. Dave and Sam Cam attended her wedding a year ago, as did the then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt –whose special adviser she was before taking Google’s shilling. Heading in the opposite direction, Google’s former European PR woman Amy Fisher now advises justice secretary Chris Grayling.

With Google, as once with Murdoch, the Cameroons have followed where the Blairites led. Sarah Hunter, the Rebekah Brooks-lookalike who was Tony Blair’s chief adviser on media policy at No.10, went on to become Google’s ‘head of UK public policy’. DJ Collins, a Whitehall ‘spad’ of the Blair era (and close friend of D. Miliband), has in recent years been Google’s European director of communications. 

With so many chums in Whitehall, is it any wonder Google chairman Eric Schmidt is still welcome at Downing Street as a member of Dave’s council of business advisers?” Private Eye No 1341.

Should any innocents out there still think all of this is irrelevant consider the way ‘eminent’ political leaders have appeared on the airwaves recently exhorting us to accept internet intrusion (Reid/Howard), or to arm various factions around the world (Riffkind). All three of them are corporate whores - Reid and Howard for the security industry, Riffkind for an arms company. 

These creeps are not an isolated example. This practice is widespread and is tantamount to corruption. It is this corruption which is all pervasive in our democracy. It goes from individual slimeballs on the take to corporations receiving incredible tax deals and ‘sweeteners’ not to mention the old boy network which has greased many a palm.

We used to look at corruption in other parts of the world and consider our system was better. 

Not any more.