Category Archives: Uncategorized

A family that plays together stays together: a happy holiday season for the UK’s political-media elite – Des Freedman

Posted on by

A very good read from Des Freedman.Obviously a very happy Christmas for the Murdoch dynasty, their friends and the Prime Minister. What could possibly go wrong now -only immortality eludes them. Very much a tale of power corrupts. Now they have absolute power they must think nothing is beyond their grasp.

INFORRM's avatarInforrm's Blog

rupert-murdochFamilies should be together at Christmas. That’s the simple message we should take from the merry noises emanating from Rupert Murdoch’s London apartment where, on Monday night, David Cameron, George Osborne, Rebekah Brooks and a slew of top News Corp personnel joined the mogul in capping off what has been a pretty decent year for him.

View original post 1,119 more words

Revealed:The ten job Tory who couldn’t live on £110,000 a year

Posted on by
Mark Simmonds

Mark Simmonds; Ex Africa Minister with ten jobs. Pic Credit: venturesafrica.com

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

Some 16 months ago Mark Simmonds, then MP for Boston and Skegness, resigned as Foreign Office minister for Africa and caused a huge stir in the media.

As reported here his reason for going  and standing down as an MP last May was because he found the new restrictions on Parliamentary expenses ” intolerable” and his £110,000 a year income -including employing his wife as secretary- and he couldn’t afford a second home in Central London.

“The allowances that enable members of parliament to stay in London while they are away from their families – my family lives in Lincolnshire in my constituency – does not allow me to rent a flat that could accommodate my family. So I very rarely see my family and I have to put family life first and every single parent listening to this will hopefully understand,” he told the BBC.

As this article shows he had done well out of the previous expenses system selling his Putney home in south London for £1.2m ( which taxpayers covered his mortgage interest payments)in 2010 to buy a 7 bedroom listed abbey in Lincolnshire with a swimming pool and 15 acres of parkland. His Lincolnshire home appears to have been put on the market now for £1.2m but recently withdrawn.

Now in the rush of documents released in the  last days of Parliament the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments – which vets ministers and senior civil servants appointments for possible conflict of interest -has disclosed that since he left the ministry he has had permission to take no fewer than ten jobs.

I have an article in Tribune this week on this.

The ten jobs are Adviser to Bechtel, an international civil engineering company; honorary vice president of Fauna and Flora International; non executive director, African Potash; senior strategic adviser to the private health company, International Hospitals Group; managing director, Kroll, a risk strategy company; chief operating for Counter Extremism project; chairman of the advisory board for Invest Africa; strategic adviser to First, an international organization; non executive deputy chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council and chief executive officer of his own company, Mortlock Simmonds Ltd, a commercial property firm based in Mayfair, London. All but one are paid.

Three of the firms, Bechtel, Invest Africa and the International Hospital Group, he met while he was a minister.

According to ACOBA all the meetings were so the minister could understand their work.

ACOBA say of Bechtel: “ Mr Simmonds did meet Bechtel, as the company wanted to explain what its activities were around the world and to see how best it could use its UK-based expertise in developing markets. However, they also noted that Mr Simmonds was not involved in any departmental policy, the award of grants or regulatory work affecting Bechtel, and that the FCO had no concerns with this appointment.”

However the companies do find his job as a former Africa minister very helpful. As Kroll’s chief executive officer, Emanuele Conti, put it: ” His unique blend of experience gained in business and politics over many years will further strengthen our capabilities in Africa.”

Similarly  African Potash Executive Chairman Chris Cleverly said, “His significant political experience, particularly within Africa, will be invaluable as we continue to roll-out our integrated fertiliser operations, finalising the current agreements we have in place and negotiating future contracts.”

(Incidently another non executive director is former Labour Cabinet minister, Lord Peter Hain)

Invest Africa, as its limited access  website shows  it is a global private members  club for institutions, private equity and wealthy family clients, who want to invest in Africa. Speakers at private events include Cherie Blair, Bob Diamond, former Ceo of Barclays and the King of Ashanti, a wealthy Ghanaian investor. It also organises private business visits to Africa with the help of the Foreign Office.

Simmonds also has previous connections with the private health industry. Before he became a minister he was an adviser to Circle Health, a private  health company. He also took up to £50,000 a year from his own company.Circle Health walked away from running Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon.

The former minister is prevented from lobbying any government ministers or departments until August next year. After that he is free to lobby as many of his former ministerial colleagues as he likes.

What does this say about British politics. Nothing he has done is illegal and he has obviously been scrupulous in telling ACOBA about all his job offers or they could not be easily traced.

However to my mind this seems to be symptomatic of the state of British politics at the moment where for some MPs it is just another business career . A different way to make a lot of money and garner valuable contacts and connections. And probably becoming so common place at the top that some people won’t even see it worth reporting.

 

 

 

 

Child sex abuse survivors: a dangerous precedent to withdraw funding

Posted on by

 

_DSC9895

Graham Wilmer, head of the Lantern Project charity Picture reproduced courtesy Rory Wilmer Photography

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

The recent media row over the alleged therapy techniques used by the abuse survivors charity, the Lantern Project, which led to the withdrawal of funding is a dangerous precedent.

The row pushed essentially by two newspapers by the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail ( see article here) could have much wider implications than just in the Wirral where the charity is based.

Essentially the allegations centred around two high profile survivors Esther Baker and one known as ” Darren” . Esther’s allegations are currently being examined by Staffordshire Police in a very detailed investigation which  has already led to one arrest and another person being interviewed under caution.

I am not going to comment further on the investigation particularly as the Solicitor General, Robert Buckland, has warned the media of ” the risk of publishing material that gives the impression of pre-judging the outcome of the investigation and any criminal proceedings that may follow, or which might prejudice any such proceedings.”

Indeed I am frankly surprised that both papers thought  they could comment on an active police investigation by casting doubt on the credibility of a survivor and perhaps there may be a case of drawing this to the attention of the Attorney General.

What more concerns me is the decision of the Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group to withdraw substantial funding for the charity in the wake of the Sunday Times allegations.

The reduction appears to be part of a £20m cut affecting other services but by withdrawing the £150,000 and stating firmly they disagree about the use of the therapy -Unstructured  Therapeutic Disclosure – which some people think can cause the medically  unrecognised false memory syndrome- is specifically aimed at cutting support to survivors. As it says “There is no recognition or recommendation of this approach by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).” And it questions whether the Lantern Project has the skilled staff to do this – even though the charity itself refers people back to the GPs in these cases.

However the effect of the withdrawal of the money  is not confined to just two high profile survivors – one of whom-Darren – doesn’t seem to have received the therapy anyway.

It turns out that the charity has been helping  at least 200 to 400 other families and provides or did provide a website forum for some 1000 survivors in the area. Wirral, faced with these other cuts, is not going to provide any money to other organisations – even if they could provide the services, which they can’t anyway.

Also its stance on staff could have implications for other groups that provide counselling to survivors.The Wirral decision on staffing required could provide an excellent excuse for a cash strapped NHS to withdraw support from other charities by saying they should employ psychotherapists as well as trained counsellors. And it is clear that the NHS is going to face a grim winter just providing  basic high profile services to the elderly and sick.

Those who have been concentrating on attacking the charity for supporting these two high profile cases seem to be totally unaware of the effect on other survivors who will now lose support.

They have not entirely been successful either. Norfolk Police Commissioner’s Office which is distributing the £7m to survivors organisations earmarked by the home secretary, Theresa May, is NOT withdrawing money from the Lantern Project, despite being briefed by Wirral CCG. And subject to a professional audit will continue to do so next year.

And the Daily Mail and Sunday Times coverage has had an unintended consequence- the Lantern Project has received £55,000 in two large donations from survivors or their families helped by the project. The money is part of  large compensation payments awarded by the courts on other cases taken up by the Lantern Project.

This means that the charity can continue to do some – but not all of its work. But the damage to services helping survivors has already been done.

UPDATE Dec 13: Since publication of this blog the Sunday Times (see below) has withdrawn its allegation that Esther Baker received the controversial Unstructured Therapeutic Disclosure at the time she made allegations of child sexual abuse. This does cast some doubt on  Wirral’s decision to withdraw the money.

sunday times correction

 

Untrustworthy Truss: The dishonest cover up that left farmers owed hundreds of millions of pounds

Posted on by
George getting out in time before the Northern Powerhouse runs into trouble

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

This week  Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss chairs a highly publicised  emergency Cabinet committee to save large swathes of the nation from a flooding disaster. I hope she does a better job than supervising payments to  England’s farmers.

Last week her department  and one of its agencies were involved in one of the most callous and dishonest pieces of news management this year.

It has left tens of thousands of farmers without any  money for Christmas and they will be lucky if they are paid by the end of January.

The reason is her department and the Rural Payments Agency have been involved in a monumental mess over  the introduction of a new computer system to pay farmers their annual cash from the European Union.

This money is not small beer. This time last year some £1.3 BILLION was paid out to over 96,000  farmers in England and it helps keep our  food at reasonable prices in the shops.

Last week the National Audit Office revealed that the computer system set up to pay the money didn’t work properly, cost 40 per cent ( at £215m to the taxpayer) more than planned and , as a result,farmers had to revert to using paper applications.

The report even for National Audit Office terms was scathing. it revealed a total mess across Whitehall with quarrelling officials from the Cabinet Office to the Government Digital Service making a pig’s ear of the whole business.

I wrote about it in Tribune. Here is one damning paragraph  in the report:

” The Programme has been set back by numerous changes in leadership. There were four senior responsible owners within the space of a year, each bringing their own style and priorities. Repeated changes were disruptive to the Programme and caused uncertainty and confusion for its staff. The Department failed to prevent… deep rifts in working relationships and inappropriate behaviour at the senior leadership level. ”

Now this body- the Government Digital Service – has just been given an extra £200m by George Osborne, the Chancellor, so it can digitalise driving licences and passports.  If their handling of farmers money is anything to go by, you will find you won’t be able to get a driving licence or passport by the next General Election.

You might wonder why you have not heard about this mess.  A copy of the damning NAO report was sent to every national newspaper but their reporters deemed it too boring to publish. The situation was condemned by Meg Hillier, Labour chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, but it fell on deaf Parliamentary lobby ears.

But worse than this  the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs deliberately misled the public and the media about this state of affairs.

Last year when the first farmers received their cash under the old system, Elizabeth Truss couldn’t wait to boast, in a run up to the election, how successful the government had been in getting the money to farmers. You can read about it here.

This year this completely misleading statement was put out and Elizabeth Truss was nowhere to be seen. It boasted of  33,000 farmers receiving the cash. Last year it was 96,000. In other words it had fallen by 65 per cent – an appalling state of affairs.

To my mind the whole saga shows we are governed by a Metropolitan elite – with no press interest in the plight of anyone outside London and complete disdain for rural issues. That is why obviously Elizabeth Truss thought she could get away with no one knowing anything about this mess. And she has succeeded.

There is a great opportunity for Labour and the Liberal Democrats to take this issue up – it chimes with the parties’ interests in backing grass roots politics away from Westminster.

There is also a sting in the tale – do you know the European Union can fine the UK for not paying the money promptly. A similar problem some years ago meant the department was fined over £600m.  So due to ministers’ incompetence some of your taxes – will go to pay millions of pounds of EU fines. You couldn’t make this up.

 

 

 

 

Oldham West: How Labour is defeating the UKIP challenge

Posted on by
Jim McMahon victorious Labour candidate
Jeremy Corbyn ; a difficult but challenging task ahead

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

Anybody who has followed UKIP’s recent performances in council by elections would not have been surprised at the resounding victory by Labour over UKIP at Oldham West, the seat held by the late Michael Meacher MP.

Once again the Westminster Parliament appeared out of touch with local reality when it assumed that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership would mean the end of Labour as a serious fighting force and a close run result at Oldham, heralding a revival for UKIP.

The combination of a popular young local candidate in Jim McMahon, the leader of Oldham Council, and the fact that the Labour Party  has had a surge in membership meant that the party was well  placed to win.

The serious loser is Nigel Farage who ran a vicious anti Corbyn campaign using the worst of the deluge of bad press coverage, expecting a big boost from white working class voters in Oldham. But it didn’t happen – hence his outrageous attack today on Asian voters for keeping Labour in poll position.

This is a real problem for Farage because his entire strategy is to get the votes of mainly white working class voters in the North so he can replace  Labour as the official opposition by winning swathes of Northern seats.

This is clearly not happening in Oldham. Despite I suspect some switching  from the Tories to UKIP – resulting in the Tories very bad performance where their share of the vote dropped to under 10 per cent.

If you analyse the UKIP bad run of  council by-election results – it shows they are falling back  everywhere except in their traditional heartlands in the Fens, Kent and Essex. They are making no headway in London

The Oldham West result was preceded by a similar UKIP slump in a council by election in Chorley in Lancashire. In Chorley Labour recorded a 12.7 per cent swing –taking the seat with 57.3 per cent share of the vote and winning with 697 votes. The big loser was UKIP whose share of the vote dropped by 12.4 per cent – getting just 76 votes.

And there have been similar bad performances – including two last night -one in the London borough of Newham where there was an 9 per cent swing to Labour and UKIP got only 3.9 per cent of the vote.Labour got 1440 votes, UKIP, 78.

The other was in the Malvern Hills – a Tory heartland – where UKIP was pushed into third place, halving their share of the vote, to 13.3 per cent from 27.7 per cent. They got 56 votes. Labour, standing for the first time in the ward, got nearly 23 per cent of the vote, 96 votes with the Tory winning with 268 votes.

Where UKIP do have presence – their effect has been to hit the main parties without winning outright. In Ashford, Tories took a seat from Labour by two votes and in Rochford, Essex, Labour took a Tory seat by four votes.

However pundits or commentators want to play it.- this was a good result for Labour, a bad result for UKIP, and an appalling result for the Westminster Establishment who had written the Labour Party into the history books.

 

The full result
Jim McMahon (Labour) – 17,209 (62.11%)
John Bickley (UKIP) – 6,487 (23.41%)
James Daly (Conservative) – 2,596 (9.37%)
Jane Brophy (Liberal Democrat) – 1,024 (3.70%)
Simeon Hart (Green Party) – 249 (0.90%)
Sir Oink A-Lot (Monster Raving Loony) – 141 (0.51%)

 

 

 

 

The “Jane” date rape case: A flawed report from MPs on the Home Affairs Committee

Posted on by
Keith Vaz MP
Leon Brittan when he was EU commisisoner in late 1980s

Keith Vaz MP, chair                  Leon Brittan

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

The House of Commons home affairs select committee has produced a number of outstanding reports on the criminal justice system. But its latest report on the Met Police’s handling of an investigation in allegations that Leon Brittan was involved in an historic ” date rape” case is not one of them.

The MPs have admonished the Met Police, demanded that a prominent MP, Tom Watson apologise to Leon Brittan’s family for helping the woman who made the allegation; produced a biased conclusion of how the Met handled the case and given fresh impetus to the idea that celebrities should be given special treatment. The report can be read here. 

Since then my extremely assiduous colleague Mark Conrad has found new information from witnesses interviewed by the Met Police which  are  at odds with the account given by the  original investigating officer and what was broadcast on the BBC  Panorama investigation into child sex abuse. You can read his article on the Exaro website. Mark Watts, Exaro’s editor in chief, has also done an analysis of the police evidence to the committee here.

My main quarrel with the MPs is the conclusions of the report. Not only do they seem biased towards  the investigating officer Paul Settle whose work they describe as ” exemplary” but they appear to ignore compelling evidence given his superiors, notably Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse.

As Rodhouse put it “I think this investigation was following the evidence where it could and conducting a thorough investigation of all the circumstances. That was not done within DCI Settle’s investigation. I understand his rationale but there were other inquiries that needed to be conducted before we could say we had done the job thoroughly.”

Or “. It is highly unusual to undertake an investigation of this nature without interviewing the person who is accused.”

Not only is this ignored in the conclusions but the report indemnifies Mr Settle before, as the report itself says, there has been a  thorough review by another police force to see if the Met Police got it right. One would have thought the MPs would await its findings rather than act like a kangaroo court in  this instance.

And what are MPs doling praising a senior police officer for NOT following standard procedure in  rape cases which is to interview the accused? Or do they think important people deserve special privileges?

They also attack Tom Watson for intervening in the case. As far as I can see the evidence shows that his points had already been acted on independently by senior Met Police officers, so, in effect, it had no influence. In fact the senior police officers agreed with him. His language about the Brittan at a very sensitive time might be another matter.

Finally the report makes a big point about the police not informing Leon Brittan’s family that the case was not proven. They emphasise that this was appalling because he was a high profile figure.

I understand the problem here is that the police aren’t required to inform any accused person that the case is dropped – whether it is Lord Brittan or Joe Bloggs. That is the point the MPs should take up – they are not elected just to represent celebrities but all the people. And they should  not want special treatment just because someone is famous.

All in all , this strikes me as a report rushed out to meet a media feeding frenzy rather than  considered findings of a group of MPs on how the police should handle a very difficult and complex issue.

 

 

 

The Media’s Attack on Corbyn: Research Shows Barrage of Negative Coverage – Media Reform Coalition

Posted on by

This factual analysis shows what everybody suspected – there has been an unrelenting media attack on Jeremy Corbyn in the media since he was elected.It is by a press dominated by unelected multi millionaire owners. This is chilling for democratic debate. The scale of the bias is staggering, particularly in the news coverage.

INFORRM's avatarInforrm's Blog

corbyn_coverage-360x222New research by the Media Reform Coalition shows how large sections of the press appeared to set out systematically to undermine Jeremy Corbyn in his first week as Labour Leader with a barrage of overwhelmingly negative coverage.

View original post 568 more words

Spending Review: Caveat Emptor- Buyer Beware

Posted on by

George-Osborne1

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM 

Today the Chancellor, George Osborne, launched the autumn spending review.

From the statement you might guess that he has climbed down over welfare spending cuts by abolishing his plan to cut tax credits, climbed down over big cuts to police budgets and acted to save the mental health budget and save the NHS from further cuts. All terribly good news along with more money for defence equipment, the security services, already announced.

But if you look at the figures he still planning  the same  huge level of cuts  but apparently with no pain.

For a start we are going to have no changes to the tax credits – yet there is going to be a change to the new universal credit which will replace a whole series of benefits. So the government will still be cutting the welfare bill by £12 billion. No details yet but it will be sneaked through when the figures are announced much later, hitting another group. And he is proposing to sell 20 per cent of the Department of work and Pensions estate- selling off  Jobcentres and benefit offices.

The NHS is getting more money but will have to make £22 billion of efficiency savings and provide a 7 day a week service. How? No details.

The police may not get their budget cut but the budget is not protected against inflation which is expected to start rising – so there is a hidden cuts inside this announcement.

And  the government claimed it had protected the science budget – but within hours engineers were announcing that a major demonstration project into carbon capture – which could save some coal fired power stations from closure – had been cancelled.

And both the extra money for defence and spending by HM Revenue and Customs – on equipment and tackling tax evasion- is going to be financed by axing thousands of civilian jobs in defence and closing down almost all local tax offices.

And while there is a £600m fund for mental health inside the NHS many voluntary organisations looking after the mentally ill and handicapped will be hit by the huge cut in local government funding.

There is more privatisation on the way – the rest of air traffic control, ordnance Survey and the Land Registry.

So what looks like a series of good announcements are often little more than smoke and mirrors. And in this budget it will depend more than most on the small print hidden in government announcements. Journalists are often fooled into first believing the initial message only to find it starts to unravel over the next few weeks when the policy bites. This is a Caveat Emptor Spending Review- buyer beware.

 

Jimmy Savile: How the BBC have by passed Dame Janet Smith’s child sexual abuse review

Posted on by
Jimmy Savile BBC

Jimmy Savile: Credit: BBC clip

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

The BBC is an extremely adept organisation in managing news – especially involving its own organisation. So faced with the huge Jimmy Savile scandal it launched a review into how the culture at the BBC allowed such a monster celebrity to get away with such vile and nasty crimes for so long.It also had a remit to decide what child protection and whistle blowing policies were needed to prevent it happening again.

The Corporation appointed a very well respected former judge, Dame Janet Smith, who investigated the appalling misdeeds of murderer Harold Shipman – a GP who killed his own patients.

Her report finished over a year ago  remains unpublished because of ongoing police investigations and no date has even been set when it will see the light of day.

But midway through her inquiry the BBC suddenly changed  the remit of the inquiry – separating the investigation into what  went wrong from the recommendations  of what is needed to put everything right in the BBC’s present day child protection and whistleblowing policies.

This change in  the terms of reference of an inquiry -midway through an investigation- looks pretty unusual to me. It hasn’t happened elsewhere to my knowledge. The reason given was the trial of BBC presenter Stuart Hall was delaying the report’s publication ( rather ironical given that it is still not published) and there was a need to get the BBC’s child protection and whistleblowing policies sorted out. In fact the trial was over within six weeks.

Nevertheless by then the BBC had appointed Good Corporation, a business ethics company, without tendering, to do the work  on changing present day policies for an unknown fee.

The full saga is reported by me and Tim Wood on the Exaro website today.

The findings of Good Corporation’s report were made public last July on the very day the BBC issued its annual report and accounts which dominated the media. You can read them on Exaro here. They are full of praise for the BBC’s current child protection policies and have little criticism of its whistleblowing policies.

Evidently the BBC is a wonderful place to work, women are rarely sexually harassed by men and  don’t  formally complain about this sort of thing anyway and with a few tweaks whistleblowing works perfectly.

What I find extraordinary is that  the BBC seem to have got away with putting the cart before the horse over Savile. We have no idea what Dame Janet Smith has found out about BBC culture, though there are rumours that the report could be damning

Yet  we have a business consultancy already acquitting the BBC of any problems over child protection and whistleblowing before we know. what the report says. How can the lessons be learned without first presenting the evidence.

Finally there is an extraordinary rub. All this information I have reported is in the public domain but has never been reported by the press which seemed to be asleep on the job. The change to the terms of reference and Good Corporation report findings were openly announced by the BBC. Yet no one was interested  even though Jimmy Savile is the most prominent paedophile ever to have lived in the UK. Amazing.

 

Four reasons why a partisan press helped win it for the Tories – Steven Barnett

Posted on by

Steven Barnett’s comments are particularly interesting on the role of new media. it suggests that the dominance of the right is also being reflected on line and the danger that internet will just be the Left talking to the Left and the Right talking to the Right. The hoped for on line balance against traditional media may still be a long way ahead.

INFORRM's avatarInforrm's Blog

Press ElectionBarack Obama’s hugely experienced aide David Axelrod – who advised Ed Miliband on his campaign – was unequivocal about the press hostility which he faced in the run-up to this election: “I’ve worked in aggressive media environments before but not this partisan.”

View original post 772 more words