Category Archives: Uncategorized

Why the Tories have only themselves to blame for not reining in BBC excesses

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Last week top BBC figures cut a pathetic stance in front of the Public Accounts Committtee. But two years ago Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, actually PREVENTED the National Audit Office from getting direct access to their accounts. Don’t take my word for it, see the actual correspondence between Sir Micheal Lyons, Chris Patten, Jeremy Hunt, and Amyas Morse, head of the NAO released under Freedom of Information to Exaro News. How dare Maria Miller now say she wants direct access to accounts, it could have been done two years ago

davidhencke's avatarWestminster Confidential

Remember the great fuss from the Conservatives on how they were going to hold the BBC to account, expose those mega salaries paid to Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman and make sure the taxpayer got the best value for their money from the BBC.

Well if you beleive  culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Lib Dem culture spokesman Don Foster, it will be all happening from next year in the new cash frozen agreement to fund the BBC. He has spent the last year telling us about his success in allowing Parliament’s National Audit Office the right to launch any inquiry it likes into whether the BBC is value for money.

To quote him directly: “It is right that licence-fee payers have confidence that the BBC is spending money wisely, so I am pleased that the NAO now has the right to full access to BBC information. Its new power to decide which…

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Housing development where Osborne gave his speech will have separate entrances for rich and poor

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The true nature of Osborne’s recovery: £1.4m front door homes for the rich ( marketed overseas) and 70 back door homes for London’s poor. ( the rich will need servants to live somewhere near). See Jules Birch’s blog on the marketing and history of the development. Those living in social housing are actually BANNED from using the posh front. entrance. A new apartheid?

Tom Pride's avatarPride's Purge

(not satire – it’s George Osborne!)

George Osborne chose a new housing development in London yesterday to give his speech on how the economy is ‘turning the corner’.

The chancellor said the development – One Commercial Street – was “a physical reminder” of what has been happening to the economy.

Well, he’s certainly right about that.

Because the cheapest private apartments for sale at One Commercial Street start at £750,000 with penthouse suites costing millions.

And the 70 units which have been sold to a housing association  – included because of Section 106 affordable housing requirements – will be in a separate part of the building and will have a completely separate entrance round the corner and well out of sight of the exclusive entrance used by the well-heeled, mainly foreign private tenants.

Yes – Osborne’s absolutely right about One Commercial Street being a physical reminder of the economy.

A rich minority living lives…

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Judge throws out £30,000 copyright claim against this website

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A deputy district judge has summarily dismissed a claim against this website and Exaro News claiming over £80,000 for publishing two pictures to illustrate the activities of a former Met Police photographer who ran an agency that publicly offered to pay thousands of pounds to public officials for stories on celebrities.
The court findings and background to the story is published on the Exaro website today
The case was brought by Newspics Ltd, the company owned by Matt Sprake, an ex police photographer who works for a number of national newspapers.
For bloggers the ruling by district court judge Stuart Quin at Milton Keynes County Court is interesting since he accepted the case brought by Exaro’s lawyers.Vertex Law,who argued that publication of the pictures amounted to what is called “fair dealing.”
This allows copyright to be waived whoever owns it if the pictures are used to illustrate a story and can be seen to be relevant to the story and in the public interest. This could be significant for bloggers who want to illustrate public figures in a story which is a matter of public interest whoever owns the copyright.
Mr Sprake who denies paying anybody was also summoned by Lord Leveson to give evidence to his inquiry into the press use of undercover work and invasion of privacy.
Mr Sprake claimed Exaro and this website had obtained the pictures from private sources. Exaro argued that this was not the case as the pictures were in the public domain.
The original story is on the Exaro website and on this blog. The pictures which showed Mr Sprake dressed in full photographer’s gear after the bombing in Canary Wharf in 1996 and sitting in the PM’s chair in the Cabinet Room at Number Ten Downing Street were used to illustrate his claims on his website. This said NewsPics advertised a menu of services under the label “surveillance photography”, claiming: “You can utilise the very same skills that are used by the security services and the police.”

UPDATE:October 25 Milton Keynes County Court have now awarded default costs against Newspics, the company owned by Matt Sprake and his wife, for £23,599.39 so Exaro News and myself can recover legal costs. He has 14 days to pay.

Immigration: Hypocrisy from the Home Office to Waitrose and Marks and Spencer

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waitrose: aiding and abetting the end of higher agricultural wages

waitrose: aiding and abetting the end of higher agricultural wages

high class/low wage produce from hugh lowe farms pic credit: twitter

high class produce from hugh lowe farms pic credit: twitter

While a Home Office van tours the London borough of Brent telling illegal immigrants to go home or face arrest the food suppliers to our most ” ethical “supermarkets are going out of their way to encourage low paid immigration to Britain to pick the strawberries, raspberries and blackberries now on sale in Waitrose and Marks and Spencer.
The most prominent is run by Marion and Joe Regan. She is one of the leading lights in the fruit growers world and she supplies strawberries to Wimbledon, Waitrose and Marks and Spencer.
Look at the website more closely and you will find it is in English, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Russian The reason is Hugh Lowe Farms are desperate to recruit labour and are targeting workers from these countries to come to Britain. The Bulgarians and Romanians – though not allowed to come here until next year – can come through a government seasonal workers scheme run, yes, by the Home Office – the very ministry behind the offensive vans.
Why Russian you may ask. Well, believe or not, fruit growers are worried ( Nigel Farage of UKIP please note) that when the Romanians and Bulgarians get the freedom of the whole EU, they won’t want to come here. Why? Because the UK under the Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition – is now being regarded as such a low wage economy and so expensive to live in – that they would rather work on farms in other EU countries.
So the fruit growers want to RELAX immigration control further and get the Home Office to approve a seasonal workers scheme for Ukrainians from next year to pick their fruit. The reason Ukrainians are even poorer than Romanians – and can’t get access to the EU.
One might have a smidgeon of sympathy for the growers need to attract workers if it were not they are also the leading lights in abolishing from the end of September the Agriculture Wages Board – which guarantees slightly higher wages than the minimum wage and the supermarkets, while officially neutral, are aiding and abetting them.
This allows lower wages from British workers recruited for the next season – a group as you can see, the fruit growers have great difficulty in recruiting already or they wouldn’t be chasing people abroad.
Waitrose can be directly implicated in the move behind lower pay – since one of their leading women executives, Heather Jenkins sat on the Farming Better Regulation Task Force – the very body that recommended its abolition. Waitrose say her role was independent, but I presume they gave her time off to do it.
Lord Currie, chair of Leckford Farms, ( more in a separate blog about him later) a major supplier to Waitrose and having opened the company’s first farm shop, is hysterical about abolishing the board.
So when you next shop in Waitrose or Marks and Spencer just remember the fruit on sale there from Britain is most likely picked by foreign workers whose suppliers are keen to get rid of a board that provides a minimum standard for workers in an already low paid industry.
Of course Waitrose and M & S deny to me that want to cut wages, so does Marion Regan of Hugh Lowe Farms in Kent- promising to put them up. But Marion Regan’s company was so lax in checking its own website – that until this week it was advertising for foreign workers on its foreign language sites at last year’s rate of pay – a full 11p an hour lower than the legal rate.

Thatcher Cabinet stifled Kincora child sex abuse inquiry 30 years ago

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Lord Prior; pic courtesy of uk.parliament

Lord Prior; pic courtesy of uk.parliament

Jim Prior,now Lord Prior. blocked the opportunity for a full-scale public inquiry into the notorious Kincora child abuse scandal, Cabinet minutes released under the 30 year rule revealed today.

The minutes of the Cabinet meeting (see http://bit.ly/19zxFqT ) reveal on 10 November 1983 Jim Prior, then Northern Ireland Secretary, proposed not to have a full Tribunal of Inquiry – the same mechanism, used to investigate  the Bloody Sunday atrocities, the North Wales child abuse scandal and the Dunblane massacre.
The minutes reveal the Cabinet – who included the now all ennobled Leon Brittan, then home secretary, Michael Heseltine,defence secretary and Norman Fowler, social services secretary, bought the Royal Ulster Constabulary line that there was nothing in it. He said he was being “pressed to hold an inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry”. But he didn’t believe Parliament would buy it.
But he said two police investigations had discovered nothing and no further criminal charges were likely.
Instead he proposed to hold a much lesser inquiry, which he did later, to, as he put it “to halt further spread of rumour and unfounded allegations.”
This particular Cabinet minute now looks sick in view of the decision of the Police Service in Northern Ireland to re-open an investigation into the historic allegations at the children’s home where children were sexually abused in the 1970s and early 1980s. As Fiona O’Cleirigh reported on Exaro News the scandal will now be re-opened.
The question is were Thatcher’s Cabinet in 1983 hopelessly naive or were they covering up something they did not want to be ruthlessly exposed in the public domain.

NHS 101 :Bye Bye NHS Direct, Hello rip off merchants

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The announcement today that NHS Direct is to pull out of the NHS 111 services should be no surprise to anybody.
As readers of this blog will know the chief executive already had deep misgivings as https://davidhencke.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/exclusive-byebye-nhs-direct-leaked-chiefs-e-mail/ revealed.
It was already clear that private profit making providers were taking over many services – putting in cheapskate staff in call centres who are probably Googling your symptoms on the net as you speak. And a lot of them don’t have qualified medical staff on board on a 24 hour basis. This is certain if you want to cut costs from £20 to £9 a call and make a profit on each call for their directors.
No wonder NHS Direct couldn’t compete and accident and emergency services are flooded with calls.

The statement says: NHS Direct is seeking to withdraw from the NHS 111 contracts it entered into as these have proved to be financially unsustainable. The Trust will continue to provide a range of web, mobile and telephone services for patients which complement NHS 111 and support the NHS. These services are unaffected by the discussions currently taking place.

Nick Chapman, NHS Direct Chief Executive said:
“We will continue to provide a safe and reliable NHS 111 service to our patients until alternative arrangements can be made by commissioners. Whatever the outcome of the discussions on the future, patients will remain the central focus of our efforts, together with protecting our staff who work on NHS 111 to ensure that the service will continue to benefit from their skills and experience.”

I would suggest anyone using NHS 111 for advice should ask the call operator for his or her medical qualifications and quiz her or him about the source of the information. If unsatisfied demand to speak to someone who has medical qualifications, because for every call made to NHS 111 the private owners are making money out of you as a taxpayer. Otherwise be wary of using the service at all.

Crosby Textor reaction: You’re just a two bit blog

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managing director and business partner of Lynton Crosby

managing director and business partner of Lynton Crosby

Swift  and arrogant reaction to a rather critical piece today on Lynton Crosby’s  forthcoming libel action in Australia against Labor defence material minister, Mike Kelly.

A splendid exchange between Tom Watson and Mark Textor on Twitter followed publication.

  2. .@tom_watson pity about gross factual errors herein. Quoting 2 bit blogs now Tom? Poor old thing. Nite!

    3:04 PM – 21 Jul 13 ·

  3. @markatextor Oh, and if you don’t know the author of the blog, he’s @davidhencke. He’s very well known in the UK. Have a nice day now.

  4. @tom_watson @davidhencke couldn’t even get the name right. Lolz!

     3:11 PM – 21 Jul 13 ·
    Tweet text

  5. @markatextor I’ll let you get some sleep. It sounds like you need it.

Evidently Mark Textor’s sole objection to the piece was an error I made – which I am happy to apologise and have already corrected – mispelling his name –  substituting an e for an o.

The managing director modestly describes himself on the Crosby Textor website “As Australia ‘s most successful pollster and campaign strategist, Mark Textor is acknowledged as the most astute judge of public sentiment in Australia today.”

Indeed he may well be but I hope his clients who pay him millions get better advice than he gives himself. All I would say is beware of two bit blogs they sometimes can bite.

Will Lynton Crosby be downed by a man who felled a Somali warlord?

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Official Australian Government portrait of Mike Kelly MP, defence materials minister and twitter libel fighter

Official Australian Government portrait of Mike Kelly MP.

A perfect storm is gathering for David Cameron in the autumn. His Downing Street spin doctor friend Andy Coulson and Rupert Murdoch’s favourite News International employee, Rebekah Brooks, are facing trial for alleged phone hacking .Now Lynton Crosby, his Tory election strategist, looks likely to be embroiled in a libel action in Australia while the country is engulfed in an election campaign.

The two cases will overlap and will mean a very interesting examination of Crosby and partner Mark Textor’s election disputed ” push  polling” techniques to denigrate Labor opponents and might well provide a useful insight into how Crosby will try to get Cameron re-elected.

The case has been bought by Crosby and Textor against a Labor minister, Mike Kelly for tweeting as the Sydney Morning Herald  reported “”always grate [sic] to hear moralizing from Crosby, Textor, Steal and Gnash. The mob who introduced push polling to Aus.” This led to a libel suit on the grounds that it damaged their business and ” push polling ” is meant to be illegal in Australia. They also deny doing it.

They seek aggravated damages because they say Dr Kelly failed to apologise, used sensational language and published the tweet knowing it was false, or with reckless indifference to its truth or falsity.

But what is really interesting is the man Crosby is fighting. He is not the guy  you might think is an obvious Labor or Labour politician.

No the defence materials minister is something else. Crosby is taking on an Australian military hero – a rare case of a soldier turned politician. He has a  decorated military record. He has worked with the UN peacekeepers in Timor and hostage rescue in Kenya.

He was involved in the legal prosecution of Saddam Hussein and the execution of a Somali warlord after he was convicted of 31 murders. He also served with the International Red Cross in Bosnia.

The warlord  Hussan Gutaale Abdul  had attacked and killed 16 aid workers and repeatedly driven an armoured car into emaciated refugees awaiting food distribution He was arrested by an Australian patrol, held in a cage at Baidoa airport and later flown to Mogadishu to be held by US forces. He was found guilty of 31 counts of murder.

When the death penalty was pronounced  Gutaale physically attacked Kelly and Kelly wrestled him along the road to his place of execution.

For his bravery,Kelly became a Member of the Order of Australia for ” exceptional service or performance of duty”

Kelly told the Sydney Daily Telegraph :

“There was quite a bit of scuffling. I got attacked. He had always threatened he was going to take me with him if he went down. He jumped on me in the court room. I had to use my rifle to subdue him by buttstroking.”

He said a price was put on his head as a result of his work to bring warlords to justice: “There were continuous radio broadcasts calling on people to do all sorts of nasty things, to disembowel me. It wasn’t an office job.”

The cancerous Lynton crosby

The politically “cancerous ” Lynton Crosby

Crosby of course is none of these things. His previous life as a farmer’s son is sketchy but his main interest at Crosby Textor the company co founded with MarkTextor, is pretty vicious campaigning for right wing parties in Australia and the UK. Their client list is secret but the ones that have been disclosed involve tobacco, fracking and banking.

I don’t know who is going to win the libel action. But if I had a choice of buddies it would be Kelly over Crosby.

Kelly is brave and  has  been  fighting against evil dictators and war lords and trying to bring peace and stability to the world. Indeed he might deserve a place in the Imperial War Museum in Lord Ashcroft’s  roll call of military heroes.

Crosby seems to be solely motivated by money and is filling his boots with gold from a product that will  spread cancer world wide. No wonder David Cameron can’t give a straight answer to journalists about his involvement in dropping plain packaging for cigarettes.

Crosby is a cancer in the heart of Whitehall. He and Textor’s contribution to the world is to help increase cancer rates and damage the environment  for their own  private gain through a company that hides its clients from public view.

Justin Welby: An apology on sexual abuse is not enough

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Justin Welby: Apology not enough Pic credit: The Guardian

Justin Welby: Apology not enough Pic credit: The Guardian

The decision by the Church of England Synod spurred on by  Justin Welby and John Sentamu,  archbishops of Canterbury and York, to apologise for past sins of child sexual abuse is welcome. But it is not nearly enough.

The words are fine. They offer to apologise unreservedly” for the failure of the Church of England’s systems to protect children, young people and adults from physical and sexual abuse inflicted by its clergy and others and for the failure to listen properly to those so abused.

They add: “The sexual and physical abuse that has been inflicted by these people on children, young people and adults is and will remain a deep source of grief and shame for years to come.”

But as I reported on Exaro News  for an independent inquiry. Graham Wilmer, of the Lantern Project, calls for a Commission for  Truth and Reconciliation ( see http://www.ctruk.org.uk/)

They are big fears as the Stop Church Child Abuse put it : “is this a game, another in the decades of games played out in the public,to present a church responsive to its past failings and moving forward in harmony with survivors; until the next time, the next case that reveals further abuse, cover up and denial, and the inadequacy of effective procedures?” 

Unless there is a real rethink by all the churches and public institutions we are going to get nowhere. In my view from  limited investigations into historic child sexual abuse  the temptation to cover up abuse is enormous. Perpetrators  are often subtle, cunning and very plausible. They know how to get around systems – and are often helped by institutions that don’t want to face up to the shame of public disclosure.

We need to go much further and involve all churches including the  deeply reluctant Roman Catholic church to tackle what amounts to a tidal wave of historic abuse in this country with no fewer than four police investigations involving hundreds if not thousands of cases that have been uncovered.

That is why I am delighted  that Tom Watson, Labour MP who made the original allegations about a historic sexual abuse ring in Parliament is now  going to concentrate on pursuing this investigation – and will no longer be drawn into the time-consuming  battles that  are at present engulfing Labour’s campaign machine.

 

The Murdoch Tapes: Fleet Street, Hypocrisy and the Police

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Are the Met Police on Operation Elveden interested in Rupert Murdoch’s comments? This seems to be the point of this blog which is highlighting that the audio ( there is no actual tape) has re-opened the whole issue of payments to police officers and public officials By Fleet Street for stories. I have also put this up as a summary of all the latest development and links to blogs and articles for those keen to follow events.

INFORRM's avatarInforrm's Blog

MurdochLast month, Private Eye reported that Sun journalists had taped a meeting with Rupert Murdoch in March 2013.   The Executive Chairman of News Corporation was quoted as taking a supportive view of the position of arrested journalists.  This story was not followed up at the time.  It broke again this week when the investigative journalism website, Exaro and Channel 4 News claimed an exclusive on the story and released a transcript of the recording.

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