Spookspersons

Last night President Obama phoned President Hollande to apologise for the behaviour of his secret services. Le Monde yesterday said that 70 million French phone calls and texts had been recorded in one 30 day period late last year. The former President of Mexico discovered that all of his communications with cabinet colleagues had been recorded too. 

Turkey: GCHQ spied on its Finance Minister and up to 15 others in a Turkish delegation for a G20 meeting. 

Alarm in the States is growing by the day. There are currently 3 bills going before Congress attempting to rein in the surveillance state. One of the Bills is being put forward by a man who was the mainspring behind the now infamous Patriot Act. The New York Times and Washington Post have both run the same or similar stories to The Guardian. No-one from the spooks have visited the paper’s offices and supervised the symbolic destruction of two hard-drives. None of the journalists working at the Washington Post or New York Times have been threatened.

Europe has become similarly exercised. Compare and contrast with the ‘shoot the messenger’ approach carried out on this side of the water. It is as though we live in a parallel universe. Spooksbod after spooksbod have lined up to waffle on about ‘threat to national security.’ We have even had a Tory MP demanding a parliamentary ‘debate’ on the issue. What a farce. On the substantive issue - the recording of billions of phone messages, emails and texts - Big Brother monitoring our behaviour and our thoughts – there is a deathly silence. 

The ‘event’ took place this afternoon and lasted barely half-an- hour. Julian Smith MP,  spooke for over 15 minutes with several interruptions from MPs hostile to his views. 

“It seems highly likely the Guardian has risked our security several times over,” Smith says, to cries of "rubbish" , "nonsense" and "hysterical scaremongering" from other MPs.

He was accused of promoting ‘outright McCarthyism’ by veteran Labour MP David Winnick. David Davis was also unimpressed and repeatedly asked if it was as serious as claimed, why has no-one been charged? Answer came there none.

Junior Minister James Brokenshire (crazy name crazy guy) flanneled on for a further 10 minutes allowing no interruptions to the point where he was accused of behaving ‘like a robot’  and at 5-00pm precisely the ‘debate’ ended. Just the two speakers and a handful of interruptions. Brilliant. 

Mother of all Parliaments? Hardly. 

Shining example of democracy? You are having a laugh ........aren’t you?

Nuclear madness

So let’s get this straight. The Tory-dominated government who have just privatised (aka ‘sold to their mates’) the Royal Mail, are the same ideologically driven government who are offering mega bucks to a nationalised company. Whoa! Surely not goes the cry round the land. Oh yes they are and in the critical field - in so many different ways - of nuclear power. Our right-wing ideologues are preparing to hand over a significant chunk of our electricity infrastructure to the Chinese Communist Party. Yes. The. Chinese. Communist. Party.

“The deal is still to be signed, but already some extraordinary claims are being made about Hinkley Point in Somerset, which will be the first nuclear plant to be built in the UK since 1995.

Here's chancellor George Osborne's take: "If it wasn't Chinese investment or French investment, it would have to be the British taxpayer. I would rather British taxpayers were spending their money on our schools and hospitals and those things, and let's get the rest of the world investing in our energy."

Put like that, you might assume UK taxpayers have hit the jackpot, that EDF of France and China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGNPC) will bear all the financial risks and that energy bills in the UK are bound to fall sometime around 2020 as cheap nuclear energy comes on stream.

Forget it. The UK will be agreeing to buy electricity from Hinkley Point for 35-40 years at £93 per megawatt hour or thereabouts, according to the whisper from Westminster.

That is roughly twice the current market rate for electricity, and far in excess of the £40 per megawatt hour that was airily waved around by the Department of Energy only half a decade ago.

Nuclear power, it seems, can only be bought at a cost roughly equivalent to on-shore wind, complete with its subsidies to landowners. Maybe that is the price that has to be paid for secure low-carbon supplies, but at current energy prices, the first impact of Hinkley Point will be to add to consumers' bills, just as wind does today.

"In the long term," the chancellor continued, new nuclear should lead to "lower and more stable energy bills."

The key phrase there is "long term". The claim rests on the assumption that the costs of other sources of energy will continue to rise and make £93 appear a bargain sometime in the future. That assumption may or may not prove correct – but coming from a government that supposedly thinks fracking will revolutionise the energy market, it's a strange argument to hear.

But is £93 the real cost anyway? The devil will be in the detail of this contract – specifically, in the indexation formula for the strike price. If Hinkley Point's entire output is tied to the rate of inflation for 40 years, we could be staring at a truly astronomical cost by the end of the contract.

"The government surely can't be that dumb," comments one City analyst..... 

......The Department of Energy and Climate Change refuses to comment until the talks are completed, but Steve Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, has a blunt assessment of where negotiating power lies: EDF has the government "over a barrel" and the contract may be an "absolute disaster" for taxpayers.

Strictly speaking, judgment must be reserved until the contract is signed and published. But Osborne's Chinese spin should make us nervous.

How is it meant to be good news that, among all the possible sources of capital to partner EDF at Hinkley Point, we have ended up with a company controlled by the Chinese Communist party? Nils Pratley, Guardian 19/10/13

Then there is the small matter of decommissioning nuclear power stations. Dounreay on the north coast of scotland has cost taxpayers £2.5 billion to date. There are also the contaminated beaches and bays. Massive clean up costs paid for by the taxpayer not the company responsible. 

What will the final cost be for Fukushima?

Royal Mail Robbery

The bunch of crooks running the country have flogged off a national asset to their mates in the City. There is a thin veneer of small shareholders who will be used to provide a fig leaf of respectability. Experience shows that a few years down the line the fat cats will have their grubby little paws all over the profits. Ian Bell, writing in the Herald was singularly unimpressed.

“IF someone told you that your house was worth X thousands and offered to take it off your hands, you might be peeved to see the homestead then going for X+50%.

If you discovered that the agent and his friends had been less than frank about X, then divvied up the proceeds, you might be furious.

That would be the sane response. Sanity is not generally the prominent feature, however, when a British government embarks upon a privatisation. Time after time, the same odd little quirk is evident. The price named for shares in a state asset bears only a scant resemblance to the price achieved. Public property is always sold cheap.

In the case of Royal Mail, the Government took the wise and responsible decision to ask a "syndicate of banks" to give advice on pricing. Next, rabid foxes will be invited to comment on the design and protection of chicken coops. The upshot has been, in that overused word, a scandal.

At the time of writing, the share price is still moving upwards. In City parlance, the institutions are piling in to secure public property that was supposedly strike-ridden, antiquated, not fit for modern purposes and not far from death's door. Suddenly, almost overnight, Royal Mail is an extremely attractive investment. It seems those banks miscalculated slightly.

Roughly speaking, they got their sums wrong by around 45% to 50%. Yesterday, shares the Government and its experts had priced at 330p were touching 490p. One way or another, the taxpayer - we, the owners - has probably lost out to the tune of £750m. Business Secretary Vince Cable puts it all down to "speculation" and "froth". Other words spring to mind.

You can believe the Government is inept, or you can believe, like the Communications Workers Union, that this was the idea all along. You can say that the banks simply looked at Royal Mail's £400m-plus adjusted profits for 2013-14 and applied the usual multiplier, thus arriving at 330p. An easy, uncomplicated sum.

To achieve such faith, however, you would first have to imagine that no-one noticed the parcels business. In that regard, Royal Mail has 36% of the entire UK market, a share that is growing as the internet grows. But then, the derided, old-fashioned habit of delivering letters to every corner of the country also brought a 3% increase in revenues, even as volumes fell.

In fact, profits achieved by Royal Mail have increased from £18m in 2010-11 to £403m. The idea that the group had to be rescued by go-getting private enterprise is almost insultingly stupid. In total, the business sold off on the cheap had a £9.3bn turnover last year. It is, or was, growing fast. Whatever Coalition ministers might claim, that was why it had to go. Lame ducks do not attract market frenzies.

Hedge funds and other investors also seem to have spotted a few other things that the banks' experts missed. Royal Mail is a big, very big, property owner. What's more, many of its sites are in prime city-centre locations. "Marketing mail" - junk, to you and me - meanwhile brings in more than £1bn annually. The brand, what with that logo on the stamps, is unbeatable. And the privatised group is promising to pay some very generous dividends.

None of this gave the Government or its advisers pause for thought when they picked a price. They did the fabled "small investors" the usual small favour with the bribe - if the shares could be sold - of a few hundred pounds. The rest of us had to watch while a public service was put in harm's way and then swallow the fact we were being short-changed on the deal. Given the scale of the injury, the insult was suitably big.

In all this, an old argument looms. One of the things driving those frantic investors is the belief that Royal Mail will distribute around £200m in dividends - just for starters - as a private company. That's a fifth of a billion that could be going into improving the business. It will be extracted from an enterprise that had to be privatised, if you believe the Government, precisely because it stood in need of just that kind of investment. But hedge funds do not look at the world in that way.

To maintain the dividend, costs will have to be squeezed, yet again. Workers whose pay and conditions have never been enviable will have to be clobbered, yet again. Services and routes that cannot be justified on the balance sheet will be questioned and picked apart. The cost of parcels and stamps will come under what is called "pressure". There will be a straightforward, unavoidable choice between profit and public service.

Needless to say, a majority of voters were opposed to this sell-off. Most polling put the balance of opinion at three to one against. We now know, furthermore, that we got a very bad deal for a sale we did not want. So Dr Cable and his colleagues might care to explain in whose interests they acted.

It goes without saying that the banks will pick up substantial fees for what has been lousy advice. Investors in those banks, very often the same institutions that have been gobbling up Royal Mail, will benefit in turn. Those intent on making a quick killing in the days and weeks ahead can scarcely lose. The entire affair has been a carve-up, astounding in its audacity.

But we are not supposed to say such things. We are supposed to believe that a stampede for shares is proof of "success". We are supposed to realise that any industrial action by Royal Mail workers has ceased, of all of sudden, to be a threat to the viability of the business. And we are supposed to buy the idea that this public institution will continue as before, universal service obligation and all.

Those of us who have seen these things before will recognise all the hallmarks: Tories and their City friends stripping an asset in the face of public protest. This time around, they have the assistance, with no hint of hesitation, from the Liberal Democrats. But anyone who has been paying attention should know that Labour toyed with versions of this scheme more than once.

The familiar cry that "even Margaret Thatcher didn't go this far", while true, is of no real relevance. The Royal Mail sale might even count as a lesson to those of us liable to invoke the 1980s. Perhaps the Coalition is more determined than right-wing governments of the past. What this privatisation says is that nothing is now sacred or safe if there is a choice between public and private ownership.

Alex Salmond asserts that Royal Mail would be renationalised should the SNP become the government of an independent Scotland. I'm very glad to hear it. Labour is making no such promises, after all. It is also clear, however, that the First Minister's vow has not deterred the City in the slightest. The lesson in that, at least, is familiar. Once lost, these public assets are never regained. Thieves never bother to return stolen goods.” 16/10/13

Since the article was written, shares have continued to climb. They are now trading at £5-00. The Financial Times has the news today that the government were warned by two investment banks that they were selling it off far too cheaply. Even their mates thought it was a rip-off! 

Georgie Porgie

‘Georgie Porgie pudding and pies

Looks really smug while he tells us lies’  

“So Facebook paid zero corporation tax last year by channelling sales through Ireland in another example of an internet company making a mockery of British tax rules. 

Was this what chancellor George Osborne had in mind when he tweeted in April that he was ‘thrilled to welcome’ Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg to Number 11 and that her efforts were ‘good for economy and society.’ 

Thanks to Private Eye for again exposing hypocrisy and bullshit at the heart of our democracy in their latest issue.

In another article P. Eye exposes the ways that Lord Rothermere goes to some length to avoid paying any taxes in the UK. For the uninitiated, the ignorant and the ‘not bothered,’  it may need spelling out that Rothermere owns the Daily Heil - a rag that makes much of its Britishness. And supports the Tories......

P.S. There is also clever little cartoon featuring Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin listening to the sounds emanating from The Hundred Dacre Wood

David ‘The most open and transparent government ever’ Cameron

                                                              Thanks to Steve Bell for his perception.

The bag of wind masquerading as a Prime minister has been unhappy to learn about the extent of state snooping and he wants to act. He wants the Guardian silenced and hey presto - problem gone. 

So rather than being ‘open’ and ‘transparent’ he wants to put the lid on what our security services are getting up to – in our name and using our money. It is now absolutely clear that our political elite have not got a clue about the scale and impact of what the spooks are up to. The news that Brazil are developing their own internal government communications system should act as a wake-up call. It also shows why Cameron is wrong. The impetus to allow light in will come not only from citizens in the UK but also from overseas pressure. 

We have sleepwalked into a surveilance state with barely a whimper. The shenanigans over ex-Chief Whip Mitchell revealed to our elite what a lot of us already knew. Senior cops were all over the airwaves yesterday talking about integrity and trust. 

Orgreave, 

Hillsborough, 

Jimenez, 

Tomlinson, 

Peach, 

Spying on the Lawrence family, 

Undercover cops having babies with women they were monitoring, 

Undercover cops acting as agent provocateurs, 

Special Branch colluding with the building industry blacklist, 

Unaccountable deaths in custody,..................

......................... says all you need to know about modern policing. 

Trust!  

What trust?

Need more convincing?

“National police unit monitors 9,000 'domestic extremists'
Officers familiar with workings of unit indicate that many of campaigners listed on database have no criminal record

A national police unit that uses undercover officers to spy on political groups is currently monitoring almost 9,000 people it has deemed "domestic extremists".

The National Domestic Extremism Unit is using surveillance techniques to monitor campaigners who are listed on the secret database, details of which have been disclosed to the Guardian after a freedom of information request.

A total of 8,931 individuals "have their own record" on a database kept by the unit, for which the Metropolitan police is the lead force. It currently uses surveillance techniques, including undercover police, paid informants and intercepts, against political campaigners from across the spectrum.

Senior officers familiar with the workings of the unit have indicated to the Guardian that many of the campaigners listed on the database have no criminal record.

As as Scotland Yard was battling to contain the fallout over the activities of a former undercover police officer who was asked to dig for "dirt" that would undermine the Stephen Lawrence campaign, evidence emerged that the main witness to his murder was also targeted.” 

Thanks to John_Northants at Guardian online

Brazil shows the way

Like a Russian Spring, the ground is beginning to move. Thousands of miles away in a country only recently described as ‘near third world status’ there are significant moves being made which will impact not only on the internet, but critically, also undermine and threaten the profits and standing of the vast American software industry. Brazil is among the fastest growing economies on the planet. They were not impressed to find they were being spied on. They told NSA and GCHQ to stop. You would not know this from most of our media who daily chant their mantra, “We do not need to know what we have not been told.” 

“Brazil has confirmed plans to create a secure email service, following revelations of cyber-surveillance techniques used by the US and UK....

...President Rousseff's announcement follows allegations that the NSA hacked state-run oil company Petrobras and intercepted billions of emails and calls to Brazilians.” BBC Online 14/10/13

Brazil will set up an internal communications system with the assistance of GMX, the German internet provider. They will use encryption to reduce the risk from prying. International e-mails will still be at risk but the President has called a summit meeting for 2014 to discuss internet security and to bypass American control.  

Other countries – and major non-American companies – will no doubt follow suit. Spying on Petrobras was financial snooping. It had nothing to do with the spurious ‘war on terror.’ All the time the yanks have been hypocritically talking up the Chinese threat they have been busily snooping away. 

Meanwhile back on this side of the pond there are signs of hope here too. A week ago the chief spook went public with his fears about how much damage the Snowden revelations had done. This was swiftly followed by a series of stooges singing from the same hymn sheet. Sadly this included journalists who weirdly were also engaged in banging on about ‘press freedom.’ However, the other side of the coin is now being put. 

First we have  the ex Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, who was less than impressed by what has been going on:

“Not the least of the inadequacies exposed by fallout from the Snowden revelations has been the sickly character of parliamentary oversight of the security agencies, even after recent reforms. An intelligence and security committee that goes into brief private session, only to emerge blinking into the daylight with protestations of apparent fealty to the security services, is a poor substitute for grown-up scrutiny. Co-option is not a uniquely British problem, but it surely is underlined when, amazingly, the ISC is chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind – once responsible for MI6 as foreign secretary.

He seems badly compromised, and the ISC should never again be led by someone whom the public might perceive as having an axe to grind or an interest to defend.

But worst of all has been the argument, heavily deployed in recent days, including by Sir Malcolm himself, that any more daylight than we currently enjoy simply assists the nation's enemies. Andrew Parker, the new director general of MI5, should be slower to employ this foolish, self-serving rhetoric that naively raises a perfectly legitimate question: how should we ensure that those privileged to be granted special powers to intrude into everything that is private serve a real public interest, rather than the dangerously false god of securitisation for its own sake?.” Guardian 14/10/13 (my emphasis)

He was swiftly followed by Lord Blencathra who had spent some time assessing the security services. 

“Britain's spy agencies may be operating outside the law in the mass internet surveillance programmes uncovered by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to Lord Blencathra, the former Conservative Home Office minister who led a formal inquiry into the data communications bill.

The Tory peer – David Maclean when he was an MP – said he felt "deeply, deeply uneasy" about programmes that allow the security services to examine the internet activities of British citizens without the consent of parliament.

In an interview with the Guardian, Blencathra said that the public had a right to know their internet data might be "lifted" and shared with US intelligence services – and that MPs should either vote to approve the surveillance programmes or put a stop to them.

He also condemned the fact that his committee scrutinising the data communications bill – subsequently killed off by the Liberal Democrats – was never told about GCHQ's existing mass surveillance capabilities. A joint memo from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ made no mention of them, he added.

"Some people were very economical with the actuality. I think we would have regarded this as highly, highly relevant. I personally am annoyed we were not given this information," said Blencathra, who was an ally of Michael Howard and considered on the right of his party.” Guardian 15/10/13

More proof, if any were needed, that our spooks do not tell their political masters what is going on. 

Well fancy that!

Straw slithers out from under his stone

Can you name the most egregious politician in the UK? There are plenty of candidates. Here is one worthy of serious consideration.

Slime forward John Whittaker ‘Jack’ Straw. 

So why him and why now? Is he not yesterday’s man? 

Sadly, slimy Jack keeps popping up in the media going on about ‘security’ and ‘official secrecy.’ His latest offering came yesterday: 

“The Guardian has shown "extraordinary naivety and arrogance" over the publication of articles based on NSA  documents leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, the former foreign secretary Jack Straw has said.

Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time of the Iraq war in 2003, said the Guardian was wrong to assume that it could judge whether details from the files would pose a threat to anyone's security. The Guardian has said that it is taking care not to publish documents that would threaten national security or the security of individuals.

The former foreign secretary told the BBC: "I'm not suggesting for a moment anybody in the Guardian gratuitously wants to risk anybody's life. But what I do think is that their sense of power of having these secrets and excitement – almost adolescent excitement – about these secrets has gone to their head.

"They're blinding themselves about the consequence and also showing an extraordinary naivety and arrogance in implying that they are in a position to judge whether or not particular secrets which they have published are not likely to damage the national interest, and they're not in any position at all to do that." Guardian 11/10/13

Fair comment some might think. But can this be the same slimy Jack who back in April this year was citing ‘official secrets’ as the reason why he could not possibly defend his action to render to Libya two enemies of Gaddafi? It surely can.

“Former foreign secretary Jack Straw and Sir Mark Allen, a former senior MI6 officer, have said they cannot respond to allegations of conspiracy in the torture of a prominent Libyan dissident, pleading the need to protect official secrets.

They do not deny being involved in rendering Abdel Hakim Belhaj into the hands of Gaddafi’s secret police in 2004 but say they did nothing unlawful.

Their blanket refusal – and that of MI6, MI5, the Foreign Office, and the Home Office – to explain their alleged role in the seizure of Belhaj and his wife in Malaysia and their flight to Libya on a CIA jet is contained in court documents seen by the Guardian.” April 2013

This was apparently all part of the deal to get Gaddafi back into the fold – and at the same time give BP access to all that lovely Libyan oil. What’s a little rendition and torture between friends?

Since April it has all gone quiet. Very quiet. 

Just like the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War. Remember that? It seems ‘official secrecy’ is proving more than useful in preventing the learned judge from getting access to the necessary cabinet papers thereby preventing him from coming to a clear and transparent judgement about the biggest foreign policy fiasco in the modern era. 

These slimy, mendacious, nasty bastards would rather no-one knew anything about their skullduggery.

Then they can continue to appear on the media with their ‘elder statesman’ persona unchallenged and their self-serving comments demanding their dirty washing stays hidden.

And continue to take their thirty pieces of silver from arms dealers and oil barons.