Monthly Archives: December 2012

My Blog in 2012

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

This blog was viewed about 82,000 times in 2012. This modest jump takes the total number of hits to over 167,000 since it was launched three years ago – meaning the number of hits increased by nearly a quarter in a year. As revealed in the full report from WordPress the most heavily read blog was the one disclosing that NHS Direct was facing near oblivion after losing out to GP’s co-operatives and private profit making companies. This has attracted 5400 views – 3560 on one day – just 44 short of  an all time time record for this site.

The second biggest hit was the official inspector’s report disclosing strip searching of women at Gatwick Airport and the humiliation of gay people by border and customs staffs. this attracted 3839 hits and is still regularly getting traffic.

Two of the other big hits are about scandals in the privatisation of the London fire services  and the Whitehall tax scam which  earned me Political Journalist of the Year this year.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude turned out to be the sixth most popular read in 2012 at 2,549 on the tale of how he was always late paying his utility bills and  service charges on his Kennington flat – even though the taxpayer was picking up the tab.

Finally thanks to Twitter, Guido Fawkes,Facebook, the London FBU and Liberal Conspiracy as top referrers to this site. and also to the indefatigable Mrs Angry from Barnet for making the most comments, always noisy and always right!

Click here to see the complete report.

Stuff the poor to help the elderly: Hunt moves to adopt Lansley’s bad plan for the NHS

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Hunt moves to redistribute NHS cash to benefit better off Tory areas at expense of inner city poor

davidhencke's avatarWestminster Confidential

Update: The new NHS Commissioning Board announced this week it was proceeding with scrapping the existing formula from next April – by adopting a flat rate increase  for funding this year. It also announced it will ” conduct an urgent fundamental review of the approach to allocations, drawing on the expert advice of ACRA and involving all partners whose functions impact on outcomes and inequalities.” This will come into force in 2014-15.

In fact this will mean a redistribution to areas with large numbers of elderly people at the expense of poorer areas like the North East of England, Central Manchester  and Salford and the London borough of Tower Hamlets. All this will be in place for the run up to the next general election.

Fresh from creating chaos as part of his so-called NHS ” reforms” Andrew Lansley has let slip another dastardly plan to cope with the genuine burgeoning costs of…

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Exclusive: Police re-open investigation into London political paedo ring

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Elm-Guest-House (1)

ELm House Guest House,Barnes as it is now : Picture courtesy: Exaro News

Exaro News ( http://www.exaronews.com) today reveals that for the last two months the police have secretly been scoping a new investigation into senior politicians and their involvement in a paedophile ring, involving  under age boys, that took place in the 1980s.

This is separate to the current Operation Yewtree  investigation into Jimmy Savile and other celebrities, which mainly involves under age girls.

They are looking again at a raid that took place in 1982 on a  guest house in Barnes, south London, which appeared to be being used as a gay brothel and was frequented by prominent figures including, I am told, ministers, Tory MPs, a Liberal MP and two Labour Mps. Under age boys in  the care  of Richmond council and other local authorities were  visiting or staying at the guest house.

The inquiry-under the title Operation Fairbank – will also examine whether there was a cover up which meant that the Met Police at the time and when complaints about it resurfaced twenty years later  never followed up the investigation. Nobody was ever charged with any offence, even though the place had been raided and people bundled into police cars.

The place – 27, Rocks Lane  in Barnes – is now a very respectable and none of the people living there now having to do with events when it was the Elm House guest house between 1979 and 1982.

Exaro News was put on to this inquiry by a former Richmond Council official and trade unionist and we took him to give evidence to the police who were already investigating similar allegations passed to Tom Watson, the Labour MP. He raised the issue of the 1980s paedo ring in the Commons.

Exaro News will be covering this scandal over the next few days, starting today, and are still investigating, these, and other more serious allegations in other parts of the country. I shall be blogging in more   detail about the difficulties facing the police in handling such a difficult and fraught investigation.

Suffice to say anybody who believes that Tom Watson has raised this issue for pure political gain and this is  a fabricated story better  think again very carefully. I know it has very wide ramifications and could  lead to a scandal even bigger than the hacking inquiry.

My Political Journalist of the Year Award: Praise be the Whitehall moles

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Revealed: My secret source in Whitehall Pic Credit:BBC

Revealed: My secret source in Whitehall Pic Credit:BBC

Today I am really thrilled to win Political Journalist of  the Year Press Gazette awards for Exaro News -award  last night.

But the real tribute should go to a couple of fearless Whitehall moles who put me on the trail of the story  of massive tax avoidance at the heart of Whitehall.

While journalists must never reveal  their sources, there is at least one good tip from this for journos pursuing questionable deals done in Whitehall.

And it came from first source. He was the originator of the suggestion that senior people in Whitehall had set up  highly complicated arrangements to avoid paying any tax and national insurance. And he had heard a rumour  that one of the most grotesque examples was a recent appointment to the top job at the Students Loan Company. A left of centre character who firmly believed in the ethos of public service  he was worried that Whitehall was being corrupted by the widespread tax avoidance. We now know it is rife.

But rather than leak information which breaks the Whitehall rules we devised a different strategy. Between us we drafted a targeted freedom of information request to the Student loans Company and Vince Cable’s Department for Business  which would make it very difficult for either department to deny. During our meetings at various hostelries across London – I won’t divulge his favourite malt  in case the Whitehall thought police try to trace him- we developed the story.

Sure enough after a suitable interval back came some 60 pages of complicated e-mail traffic between Bis, the Student Loans Company, the Cabinet Office and more surprising, the outside advice from private management consultants – one paper was volunteered because they were worried we would distort their opinions – and even letters from Revenue and Customs approving the arrangement. We spent further hours  at certain hostelries analysing the results which were far worse than he thought. We spent much more time chasing up every conceivable angle before Exaro and BBC Newsnight  were ready to go with the tale.

The result was immediate. Ed Lester, the head of the Student Loans Company, had his tax arrangement stopped and Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury who had personally approved his salary had to admit he didn’t even spot the tax avoidance. He ordered a Whitehall wide inquiry.

But it was not all over.  The inquiry identified 2500 civil servants on similar deals. But had they gone too far? Enter a new mole from another part of Whitehall.  Seeing Danny Alexander’s letter to George Osborne he was furious. He felt Alexander had caught too many in his net, including genuine freelances  having bona fide reasons for working this way. This guy, a mischievous right of centre social libertarian character who enjoy’s Guido Fawkes blog, decided the world should know before Danny had a chance. Hence another story for Exaro News and BBC Newsnight.

One might feel sorry for Danny – damned if he doesn’t, damned if he does. Except of course while we all suffer his cuts  paradoxically he has never been so wealthy in his life as a Cabinet minister. And he has lots of  dinners with his chum. George Osborne.

Good for him though in ordering the inquiry. But the greatest thing of all is that he couldn’t cover this up even if he wanted to – thanks to the use of freedom of information. No wonder Jack Straw and Tony Blair now regret giving the public and journos the chance to find out what is really going on government.