The Grenfell Tower block fire and its aftermath

 Robert Henderson

The fallout from the Grenfell Tower (GT) fire is turning it from a very serious and traumatic physical disaster  into a political vehicle for the Hard Left who have been openly encouraged by  the  leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn  who has called for empty properties owned by the rich in the area to be commandeered and used to house those rendered homeless by the fire , while the shadow Chancellor John McDonnell  designated  the deaths murder by political decisions and called for a  “Day of Rage” on the streets.  The street level response to make this into an anti-Government matter  really took off  when  the revolutionary left became involved.  Mustafa al-Mansua  a  Jeremy Corbyn-supporting political activist  was identified as being the organiser of the  protests in Kensington Town Hall.

The newspapers, blogs and especially the broadcast media are now alive with claims of gross neglect and even murder by those in authority.  The strange thing is those making the noise are not those most intimately connected with the disaster. Media interviews with  people who either lived in the block or  those who knew people who lived in the block who were either dead or missing have not been  paeans of rage against the rich or the government. Most interviewees have been rather quiet, subdued and shocked but not bursting with anger against the authorities.

The response of the Government

The response of the Government has been jerky. To begin with the Government largely left the emergency services to get on with the job. The PM Theresa May turned up eventually  but did not meet  any of those living in the GT, confining her visit  to meeting members of the emergency services. Jeremy Corbyn did meet people who lived in the block. The contrast between May and Corbyn’s was used as the tinder to light the Hard Left’s bonfire of rage.

After days of  dithering the Government released £5 million to defray the immediate costs of  providing support for the surviving residents of the block. A public inquiry was rapidly announced and a retired Appeal Court judge  appointed to head it.  Eventually, people  from outside of the Council were appointed by the Government  to run the  Kensington and Chelsea  housing department.

The judge appointed to head the public inquiry  Sir Martin Moore-Bick has been the subject of an immediate campaign  to remove him from the position.  A black Labour MP and one-time minister David Lammy  led the way by citing Sir Martin’s  disqualifications for the role as  being the fact that he is   a  “white, upper-middle class man”.   The key word here is white. Try to imagine a black  man being appointed to such a role and a campaign immediately starting  up to thwart his appointment because he   is black.  Difficult isn’t it?

Most contentiously   promises were made by  Theresa  May in the Commons  that the immigration status of the GT residents would not be checked:

“I would like to reassure people that we will not use this tragic incident as a reason to carry out immigration checks on those involved or on those providing information to identify victims or those assisting with the criminal investigation.

 “We will make sure that all victims, irrespective of their immigration status, will be able to access the services they need including healthcare and accommodation.”

The Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan gave the same assurance :

 “No action must be taken against anybody in Grenfell Tower who comes forward.

“There may be some people who are sub-letting, breaching their tenancy agreement.

“There may be people who have got friends and family visiting, who they are worried about if they report them because they haven’t got immigration status.

“All of those people should feel confident that if they come forward and speak to the authorities, that no action will be taken.

Making such a blanket promise  is reckless  because it could be used as a precedent for not deporting  many illegal immigrants  on the ground that they had suffered some trauma whether as an individual or as one of a number  in some disaster like the GT fire.  Applying the rule to the GT residents could also lead to difficult situations where a GT resident turned out to be not only an illegal immigrant but someone  guilty of criminal acts either here or abroad. Are we really to believe that British officials will turn a blind eye to such people?

There is a third problem associated with the immigrant status promise.  The Government may already have an idea of  the number of illegal immigrants  involved. It may be embarrassingly large. If so it would be in the interest of the Government and the politically correct left-liberal politicians generally  not to have  to admit that so lax are checks on the legal status  of  immigrants  that many illegal immigrants were not only able to come to this country but somehow jump the huge queue social housing . But even if there was only a small number of such people in the GT it would still raise embarrassing and serious questions about the UK’s immigration control and the checks that Councils make on applicants for social housing.  The problem vanishes if the immigration status of GT survivors is removed from the table.

The Government appears to be having second thoughts about illegals. Today (6th July) it is reported that those here illegally can stay for up to a year  if they help the  Public Inquiry and come forward before the end of August.  The Government has also announced a relaxation of benefit rules such as not paying the “Bedroom Tax” if the flat they  move to is larger than the one they have lost.

The support given to  survivors

Apart from the £5 million from the taxpayer mentioned above  many millions more  have been raised by people making private donations to various funds for the survivors. From these sources those who lost a family member or members will be awarded £20,000 for each family member lost.

This raises two problems. The first is the efficiency and competence  and indeed honesty with which the money  is distributed.  Already one  person Anh Nhu Nguyen has been charged with obtaining money by falsely claiming to have lost his wife and son in the fire.  It is alleged that he got   nearly  £10,000 from the fund set up to disburse the £5million from the taxpayer before the alleged fraud was discovered. Nguyen  is also charged with getting food and various goods from  different charities by making the same allegedly false claims.   If this is true, and it is only an allegation at present,  then it casts grave doubts on the competence of those giving out money or goods, whether they be public servants or private bodies such as charities.  There is also the possibility of corruption by those controlling the money either through straightforward embezzlement or through collusion with claimants. The  Government should make it clear now that a strict audit of the disposal of the money from the taxpayer and from private donations will be made.

The second problem is the question of creating a precedent. The private donations are one thing but does the £5 million given by the taxpayer mean that anyone losing their home through fire from now on  will be treated similarly? Don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen.  The reality is that the Government response to the GT fire has been wholly exceptional. 303 people died in fires in England in 2015-16. It would be very  interesting to know what Government assistance was given to the survivors and family members not involved in these  fires or indeed to anyone who lost a home and/or family members in other accidents.

The treatment of the GT  survivors  has been exceptional also in the assurances given by the Council of finding new accommodation within or near the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Most dramatically ,    68  newly built permanent homes have been purchased  in Kensington Row,  an upmarket development in the borough, for a reported cost of £10 million.  These  will be offered to the GT residents by the end of July.  (Some of those  who had paid £1 million plus  to live in the non-social housing part of the development greeted the news  with dismay).  Again the question has to be asked would people suffering  the loss  of a  home on an individual basis be treated like this?

The  mainstream media response

The UK media response has been rather odd. Both the GT  itself and the immediate area in which it is set have  many people drawn from  racial and ethnic minorities. Since the fire  many of the GT residents interviewed are,  judged by their accents or by biographical information they have provided,  first generation immigrants. Shocking as the fire was I suspect that there will be quite a few native Britons who have sought and failed to get social housing   who will be  wondering how it is that first generation  immigrants have been able to get such accommodation when tens of thousands of native Britons have failed to do so despite  being on Council housing lists for many years.  Understandably  the allocation of  very scarce social housing  to immigrants  causes a great deal of resentment amongst the native white workingclass and increasingly amongst the native white middle class who struggle to pay ever more extortionate private rents.

All of this leaves the UK  mainstream  media with a dilemma: on the one hand they want to trot out the usual politically correct cant about the joy of diversity, how enriching it is, how the sun would fail to rise were it not for the huge number of immigrant workers in the UK and so forth.  On the other hand the UK media is rather twitchy about publicising the reality of exactly how much social housing goes to ethnic and racial minorities and generally it is reluctant to show parts of London (or parts of other cities such as Leicester) where the number of white faces is  startlingly  small.(Astonishingly  in these supposedly non-discriminating  times there are  a considerable number of housing associations in the UK which restrict tenancies to particular racial and ethnic groups  – needless to say  white British or white English housing associations have the same degree of existence  as unicorns).  This is because the  mainstream UK media  know that the reality of what is happening to the UK is  both dismaying the native population and is at odds with the multicuturalist politically correct happy clappy  internationalist story the media – especially the broadcast media – regularly sell.

The result of the competing desires and concerns of the media  in this particular set of circumstances was a nervous and muted commentary on the heterogeneous nature of the GT and its environs at the beginning gradually expanding to more adventurous praise of the joy of diversity as time passed and mediafolk thought it was safe to bring out the old political correct mantras because  the ghastly nature of the event had  naturally  engendered  sympathy for the victims.

The  serious issue to be addressed

Stripped of  all the political posturing and ineptitude there is a very serious issue  to be addressed.  Something has gone very  wrong. Individual tenants and the  tenants association for the GT  had raised concerns about fire safety before the fire. Not only was no action taken but the block was recently renovated which resulted in the cladding of the exterior of the building with material which was flammable. Apart from burning the cladding may have both intensified the fire because it provided insulation and it could  also have funnelled the flames upwards.

But there is something missing from the Grenfell Tower story. If the type of cladding used  was seriously inflammable it would be reasonable to expect many fires involving such  cladding because it has been widely used not just on residential housing but also places of work, hospitals, sporting venues and other places of entertainment.  Yet the type of fire seen in the GT  – a very rapid movement over most of the block – seems to have been unique in the UK, certainly in its intensity and tragic results..  This suggests there is something novel about the GT case which acted as an accelerant, that is,  something which drove and intensified the fire. I would suggest the  novelty was  the communal gas supply system which was put in recently which  had reservoirs of gas on each floor. . Eye witnesses to the fire described how as the fire reached a new floor explosions were heard. This presumably was gas exploding. If so that gas may well have been the accelerant energising the fire upwards.  None of this is to suggest the potential dangers of cladding should be ignored. However, it is important to understand exactly how the fire got out of control so rapidly and to make a rational assessment of the dangers of fire other blocks with cladding present.

Could more have been done to save people during the fire? One thing which might have saved at least some of those who died was not done. It was very simple: get all the tenants to flood their flats by blocking their sinks and plugholes and  turning their taps on at full blast. That would to a degree have obviated the fact that the upper stories could not be reached by fire brigade  hoses.  The fire brigade were in contact with many by phone and could have used a loudhailer system to alert everyone else who was in the building.

Did  Right-to-Buy influence fire safety in the Grenfell Tower?

There is a complication I have not heard raised since the fire, namely, the effect of the policy of Right-To-Buy on Council properties with multiple habitation. Right-To-Buy is a Government scheme which originated under the Thatcher Government in the 1980s. It is a confidence trick whereby public assets (houses and flats)  are sold to individuals  who have been a  tenant  in a Council or housing association property for some years  at a hefty  discount from the market price . Hence, the Government has sold that which belongs to everyone .

The effect of Right-To-Buy on a  tower block such as  GT means that responsibility for the block will no longer be straightforward. Take a concrete example. Suppose a flat which is privately owned is above one which is Council owned and the top flat floods the flat below. The Council will say the owner of the flat which caused the flooding is liable to make good the damage to the Council flat . Easier said than done often enough because many flats bought under Right-To-Buy are sold on to private landlords who are looking for rental property. Such landlords are frequently very difficult to either track down or if they can be contacted, less than willing to make good the damage.  Consequently, the tenant can  be left in limbo while the freeholder and leaseholder fight it out.

The complications caused by  Right-To-Buy may have been behind the extraordinary fact (according to the Council) that Grenfell residents said they did not want  sprinklers fitted  because of the upheaval  this would cause. This could have been the leaseholders of flats whether occupying or renting out a  flat  did not want the sprinkler systems fitted because (1) their leasehold agreements would normally require the leaseholder to make a contribution towards their cost and/or (2)  where the flats are  rented out  at commercial rates the installation of sprinklers might  make renting them out difficult while the installation was proceeding.

But even if the tenants/leaseholders  said they did not want sprinklers or any other fire safety precautions  the Council as the freeholder  should and could have overridden their wishes.

The failure of the authorities to produce a comprehensive list of those who died

The failure of the authorities to produce a list of those who died in the block is unsurprising because  potentially there  are eight classes of people who could have been  living there :

1. Council tenants and those living with them.
2. Private tenants and those living with them  in flats purchased under Right-to-Buy  which are still owned by the Right-to-Buy  purchaser.
3. Private tenants and those living with them in flats owned by people  who bought  a flat originally purchased under Right-to-Buy  from either the Right-to-Buy purchaser or from someone who purchased the flat after it had already been purchased  from the Right-to-Buy purchaser. For  example, the Right-to-Buy purchaser sells it on the free market to someone who then in turn sells it to someone else on the free market.
4. Leaseholders and those living with them who purchased under Right-to-Buy and live in the flats they purchased.
5. Leaseholders and those living with them who live in flats which they either  purchased   from someone who obtained the flat under Right-to-Buy or  from leaseholders who purchased  the flat  after it was sold on following the Right-to-Buy purchase.
6. Those who have obtained control of a flat illegally. For example, someone obtains a legal tenancy then “sells” the tenancy to someone who assumes the identity of the “seller” and takes control of the property and pays the rent. Alternatively the flat might simply be given to a friend or family member without telling the Council. The Council will assume that the person living under a bogus name is the original legal tenant
7. This who are living illegally in a sublet part of a flat. These are sublettings which have not been authorised by the Council.
8. Visitors in the GT on the night of the fire.

Of those eight categories the only readily identifiable people will be the Council tenants  and the leaseholders who live in the  flats.  These details would have to be known to the Council because rents have to be collected and leaseholders need legal documents showing  they are the leaseholder and  giving the conditions of the lease.  But  that would only provide one person per flat  whose name would be  known to the Council.

The Council will also have details of leaseholders who were renting out properties.  However, leaseholders who rent out are often difficult to track down because their contact details are not up to date or they use a company to manage their properties.

Even with Council  flats the position is not necessarily simple (see 6 and 7) . Flats may have been taken over by people other than the legal tenant or part of a flat may have been  sublet illegally. The Government has  announced that there  will be an amnesty for illegal sublettings but whether those who have illegally sublet know about the amnesty or trust the promise is another matter.

There is a further fly in the ointment. There may be people from  the block who are  illegal immigrants and consequently are reluctant to come forward to identify themselves. Nonetheless, it is not unreasonable to think that if there are those here illegally they will still be  reluctant to come forward.  As mentioned above  Theresa May and Sadiq Khan’s  have given assurances that no check will be made on the immigration status of any resident of the GT.  However, it is probable that those who are illegally here will like the  illegal subletters  either not have heard the assurances or do not believe them.

Notwithstanding these difficulties the Council  has many sources of information which should allow them to build up a fair picture  of how many people were killed in the fire and who was living there. It is probable that a majority of the flats were  legally occupied Council or leasehold properties.  Even if only 50% of the surviving  residents have  made themselves known to the Council  they would be able to give  not only information about  those living with them  but at   least basic details of their near neighbours.  In fact the situation is much better than that with the Council saying that they have spoken to someone from 106 of the 129 flats in the block.  This should allow  a well founded estimate of the people who lived in the block and  their identities.

In addition the Council will have  Council tax records, the electoral register, social work records .   Internet searches on databases such as the Electoral Register  or even simply putting a tenant or leaseholders name and address into Google  are worth a go.

If it proves  possible to circumvent the privacy  provisions of the Data Protection Act,  what could  be very effective would be  the setting up of a website with all the known names of tenants, leaseholders and any other people already identified as resident in the tower block with an invitation to the public to send in any details of others  they think lived in or  were simply visiting the building on the night of the fire.

To date the death count is 80,  but “Police investigating the Grenfell Tower fire have recovered 87 sets of human remains but cannot confirm they are from 87 individuals.”

What is a plausible number of  residents  for the GT?  Reports say around 600. If that is correct it looks as though quite a few have simply gone AWOL.

The overall impression the aftermath of the   fire has left

The first thing to note is the unpreparedness of the Council.  They were completely out of their depth. The Council’s ineptitude was  made more potent by the leaping on the bandwagon of victimhood and blame by  all shades of the left from hard left activists to leading members of the Labour Party.  The Government , already in a profoundly shaken and demoralised state after the disastrous election result in June,  with a Prime Minister lacking precious little credibility  and the mainstream media making great play with the idea of the callous haves not caring about the have nots, reacted with something close to panic and kept giving away  more and more ground.

But there was another force at work. Many,  probably the large majority of the residents of GT were either first generation immigrants or from  ethnic minorities born in Britain. This  brought political correctness into play. Imagine if the tower block had been overwhelmingly  inhabited by white Britons. Would the response have been so fervid? Would the hard left have been out in such force? Would a black MP like David Lammy have been accusing the authorities of covering up the true death toll? Would millions of public money have  been shelled out or 68expensive  flats  to rehouse those who had lost their homes?  Or would the authorities and the politically active have been much less interested? I will leave those questions to the reader to answer.

The Tories and Blairites were ideologically hidebound fools to underestimate Corbyn

Robert Henderson

The attitude of Tories towards Jeremy  Corbyn ranges from amused condescension to  an unseemly childlike  and profoundly undemocratic glee as they  dream of a country with no serious political opposition to hinder them .   Blairites respond with poorly disguised incredulity  to the probability  that  a man who does not buy into the NuLabour credo will become the next Labour leader and gnash  their teeth and wail that  a Corbyn led  Labour Party will be at best  cast into the wilderness of opposition for a decade or more and at worst rent asunder never to be a serious political force again. In the mainstream media, most of whom  have sold their souls to the idea of free markets, free trade and the general paraphernalia of globalism, articles and editorials  forecast the end of days if Corbyn becomes  Prime Minister.

Interestingly, this hysteria  has not diminished   Corbyn’s popularity one whit and will  probably help fuel   his rise to what promises to be victory in the leadership race without the second preferences being counted.   Why has Corbyn  garnered so much support? The quick answer is he  offers  an alternative to the free market, free trade religion which has been fed incessantly to the public for decades as the only possible economic system for a modern state.

This immediately gives  the man  pull with those who have old Labour values, but he has attracted a much  wider range of support.  The young have flocked to his meetings.  Surprising at first glance in view of Corbyn’s age, but readily understandable  when it is remembered that   British politicians generally have either failed to comprehend or refused to admit that the world they have created over the past 30-40 years is much tougher and more uncertain for today’s young than it was for them when they were young,  with housing now hideously expensive, well paid jobs difficult to come by and university education leaving graduates with a debt of £40,000 or more and no suitable jobs to go to.   Corbyn is offering concrete policies to help them, not least a huge social housing programme.

But it is not just the young who are suffering.  There are millions of older people of working age through to those in retirement who no longer live a life with any real security, as they struggle with ever increasing private rents and zero-hours contracts.   Corbyn speaks to them as he speaks to the young.

Finally,  there are the huge numbers of people from  across the political spectrum who detested the  wars which Blair dragged Britain into and have a strong animus towards Blair himself.   Corbyn shares their views,  going so far as to state  that Blair should be tried for war crimes.

Why did the  British political class so misread Corbyn’s potential?  The Tories as a breed are simply insensitive in their approach to the poorer sections of society.  This is epitomised by their inability to understand that to those  living lives of great economic  uncertainty  there is nothing more enraging than to be constantly told  the colossal lie “We are all in this together” by rich politicians, as happened  in so often Britain after the Lehmann crash in 2008. They simply assumed that those who were not comfortably off and secure in their jobs and housing  could be ignored.

The most striking thing about  the Corbyn phenomenon is not that he looks as though he will win the leadership election with policies which bear some resemblance to Labour’s old core values. No, the real eye-opener is  how out of touch the Labour elite have become with the lives of ordinary people.  They  either believed  they could manipulate the vote to get the result they wanted  no matter what the electoral process was or so believed the Blairite gospel  of free markets and globalisation that they simply could not conceive of people voting for someone who had the audacity to suggest that Old Labour ideas of state ownership and a disengagement from military adventures  were the way forward.    Whichever reason it was, the Labour leadership was willing to agree to a new electoral process which chooses  the party leader  on the basis of  a  one man one vote  with the vote   granted   to  not only existing party members , but also to affiliated union members and every Tom, Dick and Harry who coughed up £3 to register as a supporter..

The potential dangers for the  Blairites in such a system (entryism from the left, enemies of the Labour Party voting and so on)  should have been obvious,  but they would have remained unimportant  had  Corbyn  been unable to get sufficient support from Labour MPs to go on the ballot form. If there was no Corbyn in the race all that would have been left were varieties of  Blairite to choose between.  The Labour elite’s blind belief in the unshakable dominance of Blairism is shown in the readiness of Labour MPs to give Corbyn enough votes to put him on the ballot.    Many who gave him their  vote  admitted it was simply to ensure there was a left wing candidate in the leadership, race much as Diane Abbott  was placed on the ballot for the previous leadership election.   When Corbyn entered the race his candidature was treated as a joke by the Tories and as of no more than a sentimental wave to Labour’s past.

In summary Corbyn is running rings around the other candidates because:

1) He offers something different. With him there is an alternative. The Blairites have been so  feeble because like all dominant politicians they have not had to argue their case within Labour  for a very long time. They ended up believing their own propaganda. Moreover, their case was never strong because Blairism is essentially Tory-lite plus political correctness writ large.

Blair hollowed out the Labour Party of all its core values: Thatcher did the same for the Tory Party. All we are left with are two neo-liberal internationalist parties wedded to globalism and political correctness.   Corbyn is offering the  chance of restoring some of those lost values to Labour.

2) Blairites and Tories are portraying Corbyn as  a member of the extreme left. This is objectively wrong.   Had Corbyn been putting forward his present ideas  thirty years ago as Labour MP he would have faced accusations of being a centrist sell-out. Worse for the Blairites they do not understand that many people who are  not rabidly left wing would welcome the energy companies, water companies, the Royal Mail and British Rail being returned to  public ownership because they understand instinctively that absolutely essential aspects of the economy should be in public hands. For such people this does not seem like leftwingery but a government just looking after the national interest. Ditto protectionist measures to protect British industry.

3) The people who attack him including the other candidates and many Labour MPs  offer no real argument against him. All they do is point at him  and say either that he is absurd or is living in the past.  They offer no  real argument against what he proposes. On economics his opponents simply assume that anyone who does not unreservedly  buy into the laissez faire religion is either mad or bad. The Tories and the Blairites are both making the mistake of imagining that pointing at Corbyn and shouting “socialist”, “looney left”, “nationalisations”,  “unions” will make him   profoundly politically toxic to the British electorate.

4) When he is attacked over potentially seriously damaging  issues such as  being rather too eager to sup with  terrorists or  the anti-semitic,  his accusers go way over the top.  For example, on his supposed  equivalence between Isis and the USA in Iraq, Corbyn has condemned Isis pretty emphatically and simply said that where the USA has behaved badly it is reasonable to say that should be condemned as well. Or take his wish to see the railways renationalised by letting the licenses run out. All the laissez faire gentry are saying it cannot be done because of the cost and legal quibbles over ownership of assets such as rolling stock.   This is obvious nonsense because the East Coast line was taken back into public ownership without any cost or difficulty and run efficiently.   The effect of such exaggeration negates the criticism which could reasonably be put on Corbyn.

5) In the present circumstances Corbyn has the priceless asset of not having an aggressive personality. That makes the increasingly angry  attacks on him seem absurd.

6) Corbyn actually answers questions rather than trotting out soundbites. Moreover, his answers mostly show he has been well prepared on anything which is likely to crop up. You may  not agree with his policies – I disagree with many of them – but at least Corbyn presents a coherent plan of action for this policies.

7) He doesn’t panic when asked awkward questions.

8) Unlike the three other candidates Corbyn is a recognisable human being, someone untrammelled by focus groups and advisers or years in office being controlled by the party elite

9. The other candidates haven’t got an ounce of personal authority between them. You watch them robotically trot out the NuLabour mantras and think, God, is this the best the Labour Party can do for a leader?

All that Corbyn promises may well turn out to be pie-in-the-sky. But that is to miss the valuable public service the man is doing.  If Corbyn becomes leader, and perhaps even if he does not but makes  a strong showing, the timeworn  consensus between the Tory and Labour Parties will be broken. That alone  would be a healthy development because it would force not merely the Labour Party to develop and justify its ideological position but also shift the Tory Party from a blind belief in laissez faire economics.

Corbyn, although a strange bedfellow, also has great utility for those who wish to leave the EU. He has given strong indications that he might well move to the OUT camp. To have the leader of one of our two major parties  campaigning to come out would be a massive boost to the OUT campaign.

The non-economic costs of mass immigration to the UK

Robert Henderson

Debate about the costs of mass  immigration in mainstream politics and  media concentrate overwhelmingly on the economic costs. Indeed, public debate is very often solely about the economics, whether that be the difference between tax paid and benefits drawn by immigrants or the supposed need for immigrants because of their alleged superior skills or work ethic . These costs are important – although never honestly calculated: see https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/what-a-true-assessment-of-the-economic-costs-of-mass-immigration-would-include/ – but the more damaging costs are the non-economic ones which change the tenor of a society.  That is not to say that the non-economic costs do not have economic implications, for example, the 2011 riots in England did,  but what I am considering here are the psychological and sociological costs. I concentrate on Britain,  but the vast majority of the points listed apply to any first world society with a large immigrant population and  many of the points apply to any society, rich or poor, which  has suffered a large influx of immigrants. The non-economic costs to Britain are:

1. The colonisation of parts of the UK, especially in England,  for example, much of inner London, Leicester, Birmingham and Bradford by immigrants who create separate worlds in which to live with next to no attempt at integration.  This makes living in such areas for native Britons very problematic,  because not only will they  feel they are a minority in their own land, a severe psychological burden,   those native Britons who are parents  will have a very real concern that the state schools (where the  large majority of British pupils are educated)  in their area will be Towers of Babel in which their children will be neglected, taught more of the cultures of immigrants than their own culture and quite probably bullied simply for being native Britons. The poorer native Britons in such areas will often not have the option of moving – as white liberals frequently  do – to an area where there are few immigrants because of the cost of moving, especially the cost of  housing.  It is also much more difficult for someone in an unskilled or low-skilled occupation to find such work in areas without a large immigrant component.

2. The damaging effect on the morale of the native British population of seeing parts of their country colonised with the connivance of their elites.

3. The damaging effect on the morale of the native British population of  employers and politicians  claiming that immigrants are more able and possessed of a superior work ethic than the native Briton.

4. Immigrant Ghettoes. Their formation is a natural tendency amongst immigrants which was  given a great deal of added energy by the British elite’s adoption of  multiculturalism in the 1970s. This  was both a consequence of the  Left-Liberal internationalist terminally naïve  happy-clappy “we are all one big human family” ideology and an attempt to ameliorate when it became clear that  assimilation/integration had not taken place amongst the black and Asian immigrants of the fifties and sixties after several generations had been born in Britain.  The effect has been  to create long-lasting ghettoes which are not only separate from the British mainstream but hostile to Britain, its native population  and its culture

5. Censorship. The need by the British elite to suppress  dissent amongst  the native population at the invasion of their country  has resulted in a gross diminution of free speech. They have done this   through legislation, for example, the Race Relations Act 1976, Public Order Act 1986 and the Race Relations  (Amendment) Act 2000; by creating a willingness amongst  the police to intimidate by pouncing with the greatest zeal on those who dare to be any other than  rigidly politically correct in the matter of race and immigration (this done  frequently with no intention of bringing charges because no law on the statute book will  fit the pc “crime” but simply to frighten),   and through the complicity of those in the media and employers (especially public sector and large private employers) to punish the politically incorrect heretics  with media hate campaigns or the loss of jobs.

6. Double standards in law enforcement. As mentioned above,  the police and the Crown Prosecution Service  show  great eagerness in  investigating and prosecuting  cases when a white person (especially a white Briton) is accused of being racist on the flimsiest of evidence  and a remarkable sloth where someone from a racial or ethnic minority group has been blatantly racist.  The case of Rhea Page is an especially fine example of the latter behaviour whereby a vicious indubitably racist attack by Somali girls on a white English girl and her boyfriend did not result in a custodial sentence (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070562/Muslim-girl-gang-kicked-Rhea-Page-head-yelling-kill-white-slag-FREED.html#ixzz1flw8TY6p.) The strong reluctance of the British state to act against crimes specific to  ethnic and racial minorities can be particularly seen in the case of “honour killings”, Female Genital Mutilation and the clearly racist grooming of white girls by men from the Indian sub-continent.

7. The general privileging racial and ethnic minorities over the native British population.   The incontinent pandering to immigrant cultures, especially Muslims, by politicians, public service organisations, large private businesses and much of the  mainstream media. The pandering ranges from  such material advantages  as housing associations which cater only for specific ethnic and racial minorities (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/the-truth-about-social-housing-and-ethnic-minorities/)  and a toleration of customs and morals which would be unreservedly declared to be wrong if practised by the  native population, for example, the ritual slaughter of animals.

8. The incessant pc propagandising in schools and universities, even in subjects which do not seem to readily lend themselves to pc manipulation  such as economics and geography.  The most pernicious effect of this ideological corruption of schooling  is to effectively  rob native British (and especially English) children of their history. This occurs because the general history of Britain (and especially that of England) is not taught (there is no meaningful chronology of British or any other history delivered to children because themes rather than periods are the order of the day) and the history which is covered is heavily slanted towards  portraying the British as pantomime villains forever oppressing subject peoples and growing rich on the wealth extracted from them.  The upshot is the creation of several generations of native British (and especially English) children who have  (1) no meaningful understanding of their history and general culture and (2) have acquired  a sense that any praise of or pride in their own land, culture and history is dangerous and that the only safe way to get through school is to repeat the politically correct mantras of their teachers.

9. The piggy –backing on “anti-discrimination” laws to do with race of the other politically correct mainstays of sexual and gender equality and lesser entrants to the equality game such as age and disability.   Racism is undoubtedly the most potent of all pc voodoo words and without it the present gigantic edifice of the “diversity and equality”  religion would in all probability not exist, or would at least exist in much less potent form.

10. The claustrophobia of diversity (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/the-claustrophobia-of-diversity/). A sense of paranoid claustrophobia (something common to totalitarian states) has been created amongst the native British population  by the suppression of  dissent about mass immigration and its consequences, by the imposition of the multiculturalist creed and by the   ceaseless  extolling of the “joy of diversity”  by white liberals who take great care to live  well insulated against the “joy”. The effect of this claustrophobia  is to generally reduce the native British population to an ersatz acceptance of the pc message,  but the discontent every now and then bubbles over into public outbursts such as those of Emma West   (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state/). Such outbursts, which are a basic form of political protest, are increasingly visited with criminal charges and jail sentences.

11. The enemy within. The creation of  large communities of those  who are ethnically and racially different from the native British in Britain produces  de facto fifth columns. We are already seeing how countries such as India and China respond to any attempt to restrict future immigration for these countries by making veiled threats about what will happen if Britain does this.  At a less direct level of foreign threat, British foreign policy is increasingly shaped by the fact that there are large ethnic and racial minorities in Britain.  There is also the growing numbers, especially amongst Muslims in Britain, of those who are actively hostile to the very idea of Britain and are willing to resort to extreme violence to express their hatred, actions such as the 7/7 bombings in London and the recent murder of the soldier Lee Rigby.

12. Violence based on ethnicity and behaviours  peculiar  to immigrant groups such as “honour” killings”, street gangs  and riots.  Every self-initiated British riot since 1945, that is a riot started by rioters not violence in response to police action  against a crowd of demonstrators,  has its roots in immigration. The Notting Hill riots of 1958 were the white response  to large scale Caribbean immigration; every riot in Britain since then has been instigated and led by blacks or Asians from the Indian Sub-Continent. This includes the riots of 2011 in England which the politically correct British media have tried desperately to present as a riot which in its personnel was representative of modern England.  In fact, it began with the shooting of a mixed race man in North London  by police and even  the official statistics on the race and ethnicity of those convicted of crimes in the riots show that blacks  and Asians comprised  more than fifty percent of those brought to book (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/the-black-instigated-and-dominated-2011-riots-and-the-great-elite-lie/).

13. Uncontrolled immigration. The larger the number of immigrants, the louder voice they have, the greater the electoral power. This in practice means ever more immigration as politicians pander to immigrant groups by allowing them to bring in their relatives or even simply more from their ethnic group.  This trait  has been amplified by the British political elite signing treaties since 1945 which obligate Britain to take large numbers of asylum seekers and  give hundreds of millions of people in Europe the right to reside and work in Britain  through Britain’s membership of the EU. Britain cannot even deport illegal immigrants with any ease because either the originating countries will not take them or British courts grant them rights to remain because of Britain’s membership of the European Convention of Human Rights.  The overall effect is to create de facto open borders immigration to the UK.

14. The introduction of ethnic based voting. This is phenomenon which is in its infancy as a serious threat, but it can already be found in areas with a large population of Asians whose ancestral land is the India sub continent.  This is a recipe for eventual racial and ethnic strife.

15. The corruption of the British electoral system. Voter fraud had been rare in Britain  for more than a hundred years before  the Blair Government was formed in 1997.  This was partly because of the general culture of the country and partly because of the way elections were conducted (with the vast majority of votes having to be  cast in person)  made fraudulent voting difficult. The scope for postal voting was extended from special cases such as the disabled and the old to any elector by the  Representation of the People Act 2000. The frauds which have been discovered since the extension of the postal vote have been disproportionately  amongst Asians whose ancestral origin were in the Indian sub-continent (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1271457/General-Election-2010-Postal-vote-fraud-amid-fears-bogus-voters-swing-election.html). The influence of fraudulent voting could be substantial because around 20% of votes cast in the 2010 General Election were postal http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/105896/Plymouth-GE2010-report-web.pdf).

All of these things gradually erode the fundamentals of British society including immensely valuable and rare values and behaviours such as respect for the law, trust between the population at large, mutual regard  and a large degree of tolerance for others. Most fundamentally, the native British, and especially the English, have been seriously deracinated.  They no longer know their history and worrying many seem to view their nationality as merely one ethnicity competing with many others. That is a dangerous mentality because no people will survive if it does not have an innate sense of  its own worth and fellow feeling for those sharing the same territory. In short, patriotism is not an optional extra ( http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/patriotism-is-not-an-optional-extra/).

The British elite since 1945 has been programmed to attack the very idea of nations. Mass immigration has been the tool they have chosen to  attain that end in Britain. We have the word of Andrew Neather, a special adviser  to the Blair government that the massive immigration (over 3 million net) during the Blair years was a deliberate policy to dilute the native culture of the UK:

” I [Neather] wrote the landmark speech given by then immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000, calling for a loosening of controls. It marked a major shift from the policy of previous governments: from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here.

“That speech was based largely on a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit, Tony Blair‘s Cabinet Office think-tank.

“The PIU’s reports were legendarily tedious within Whitehall but their big immigration report was surrounded by an unusual air of both anticipation and secrecy.

“Drafts were handed out in summer 2000 only with extreme reluctance: there was a paranoia about it reaching the media.

“Eventually published in January 2001, the innocuously labelled “RDS Occasional Paper no. 67″, “Migration: an economic and social analysis” focused heavily on the labour market case.

“But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

“I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far.

“Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing. For despite Roche’s keenness to make her big speech and to be upfront, there was a reluctance elsewhere in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour‘s core white working-class vote.

“This shone through even in the published report: the “social outcomes” it talks about are solely those for immigrants.

“And this first-term immigration policy got no mention among the platitudes on the subject in Labour’s 1997 manifesto, headed Faster, Firmer, Fairer.

“The results were dramatic. In 1995, 55,000 foreigners were granted the right to settle in the UK. By 2005 that had risen to 179,000; last year, with immigration falling thanks to the recession, it was 148,000.

“In addition, hundreds of thousands of migrants have come from the new EU member states since 2004, most requiring neither visas nor permission to work or settle. The UK welcomed an estimated net 1.5 million immigrants in the decade to 2008.

“Part by accident, part by design, the Government had created its longed-for immigration boom.”

(http://www.standard.co.uk/news/dont-listen-to-the-whingers–london-needs-immigrants-6786170.html).

That should be seen for what it was, the most fundamental form of treason,  because it is far more damaging than selling a nation out to a foreign invader arriving by military means.  Such invaders can be eventually driven out or the invaders assimilated because the numbers are not massive.  Mass immigration totalling millions  of those determined to retain their  own culture can never be undone by such means.

Civitas meeting: Transforming the market: Towards a new political economy

Civitas meeting: Transforming the market: Towards a new political economy 13 November 2013

Speaker: Dr Patrick Diamond

Diamond’s talk was based on his recently published Civitas tract http://civitas.org.uk/press/EAdiamond.html

Diamond is firmly in the NuLabour camp, having been involved in various positions servicing the last Labour government,  including that of  head of Policy Planning in 10 Downing Street. He now holds several academic positions at London and Oxford universities. He is also a Labour councillor for the London Borough of Southwark.

What is his recipe for “transforming the market”?  This extract from his Civitas tract give the bare bones of it:

“The government is an enabler, directing strategic investment to growing sectors and firms, providing fertile conditions for entrepreneurship.

The government is a  regulator, managing the inherent volatility and instability of markets, while promoting competition in product and capital markets.

The government is an equaliser, ensuring the supply of public goods and human capital helps the least advantaged, while ensuring the basic distribution of household income accords with basic principles of fairness and social justice.

And the government is an innovator , promoting experimentation, technological adaptation, alongside the discovery of new markets, services and the advancement of knowledge.” pp49/50

This has the ring of someone reciting a catechism whose end is in its saying not in its doing.

Diamond’s  buzzwords for curing the ills of the British economy are decentralisation and localism. This dovetails with the Labour version of the Tories’ risible “Big Society” which I heard  John Cruddas  outline not so long ago (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/one-nation-labour-work-family-and-place-a-taste-of-labours-next-election-propaganda/). Read this in conjunction with this report and you will have Labour’s economic and social programme  for the next general election.

There is a good deal of “back to the future” in his  programme. He wants to create a ‘super ministry” combining the Department of Business,  Innovation and skills (BIS),  the Department of Communities and Homes and some Treasury functions to “ decentralise and devolve economic power away from London.”  Older readers will be irresistibly reminded of the first Wilson government in the 1960s when work, and especially public sector work, was to be sent to the less prosperous parts of Britain. Thankfully Diamond  at least spared us any ancient embarrassing rhetoric such as “the white heat of technology” or “picking winners”, but that is what he thinking.

Diamond’s wish to see Britain’s economy “rebalanced” away from services and towards manufacturing also resonates with Wilson’s desire to shift more people into manufacturing. This he attempted  to do with arguably the most absurd tax ever introduced in Britain, the  Selective Employment Tax (SET).  This  was placed on service companies only, the idea being that this would make more people seek manufacturing jobs  because service employers would find it more expensive to employ people and the number of service jobs would fall. In turn the hope was that manufacturing wages would be lowered because of increased competition for such jobs. This last was an heroically optimistic scenario because of the power of the unions at the time.

SET failed for the wondrously obvious reason that it increased the costs of service employers without improving the circumstances of manufacturers, whose wages remained  much the same,  while demand for  their goods was at best not increased and at worst might have even fallen if unemployment in the service sector rose due to the increased cost imposed by  SET and reduced overall demand.   This meant manufacturers could not employ more people.  All  SET could do in the circumstances of the 1960s,  if it had any effect at all,  was reduce employment and/or raise retail prices.

So many things are to Diamond’s mind “too centralised” or  overly  concentrated in particular areas .  Apart from  general economic power and government,  he pointed to banks, infrastructure such as airports and even the Arts. Leaving aside whether localising affairs is desirable, there is an inherent problem with making things more local and decentralised. There needs to be not merely the bricks and mortar of regional banks and companies, councils with much more responsibility and so on, there needs to be a class of people who can handle such responsibilities at the local and regional level. None exists at present. Nor can such a class be created by conscious policy.  It is something that happens, if it happens at all, naturally.

At one time Britain did have a healthy political and managerial class who were willing and able to assume the burden of exercising local power. But that class grew naturally from the fact that the whole of society was of necessity  conducted at the local level because of poor communications. But from the advent of the railways onwards localism became less and less the natural state of affairs.  We have now reached a  point where the exercise of  political power and initiative  at the local level  is feeble because those with real political ambition do not see serving at the local level as important. It is all very well to lament this and say power and influence should be shifted back to the local level but how able and ambitious people can be persuaded to confine themselves to local government is another matter. Frankly, I doubt whether the clock can be turned back.

As part of his worship of the local Diamond is much taken with Germany with its regional banks, workers directives  and technical schools.  He wants Britain to copy them. In this he is making the profound but common error of believing that what works in one society will work in any other society. This was doubly  odd because he recognised in one part of his talk (and does so in his written tract) that the transfer of methods from one society to another was problematical, but still went on as though the problem did not exist when he got to the detail, such as it was, as to what should be done in Britain.

Germany is decentralised because that is the way it has always been. A latecomer to the nation state (1870), the German state has always been in practice a federation with some of the larger components such as Saxony and Bavaria having histories as substantial kingdoms in their own right.  The consequence is that regionalism comes naturally to Germany in a way that it never would do in Britain and especially England,  because England has been centralised in the sense that it has been a kingdom encompassing those with a broad common ethnicity for many centuries. In modern Germany the sixteen Lander form political entities which each  have both size and a separate history   to create and maintain  regional loyalty. In England there are no such hard core regional loyalties. Regional sub-divisions of England are no more than geographical expressions, the South West, the North West, the South East, Midlands and so on.  Even the North East – the  region of England often put forward as having the strongest regional identity – is far from being an area  with a separate identity around which all the inhabitants can coalesce.

Diamond’s scheme for remedying the ills of the British economy has many other weaknesses. He is sold on predistribution.  This is, almost inevitably these days, an ideological import from the USA.  It is the political equivalent of selling snake oil to the ill.  The idea is that silly old traditional methods of redressing inequality such as progressive tax regimes and benefit support (which actually work) are forsaken for ethereal aspirations that  encourage long-term investment,  providing good quality public services, particularly healthcare and investing in the skills of the young , workers on company boards, a minimum wage pegged to inflation and so on.  The problem is these will not work while mass immigration and relatively free trade exists both in terms of imports and the export of jobs through outsourcing.

The broad sweep of Diamond’s ends I would have sympathy with, the re-industrialisation of Britain, greater material equality, an end to the worship of markets, long term planning by companies and so on.  The problem is his means. They will not work because he is always trying to work within the context of both a market economy and globalisation. Take his strategy for manufacturing. To increase this, especially in terms of making it much broader as well as larger in GDP terms, some form of protection would have to be used, be that traditional controls such as quotas and tariffs or state control of vital industries together with fiscal measures to ensure the price of essential goods and services are within the reach of the poor.   We can be sure of that both because economic history has no example of a country industrialising except by protecting its domestic market and because simple logic tells you that it is impossible to compete across the economic board  with countries whose labour forces are earning a fraction of British wages, who have scant regard for health and safety and whose governments ensure that it is very difficult to enter their markets by economic regimes which are anything but laissez faire.

Diamond’s attempt to get round this problem is for Britain to concentrate on high-tech industries. There are two problems with this. The first is strategic whereby it is dangerous for any country to leave itself at the mercy of world events by being unable to produce a wide range of products either at all or in sufficient quantity to tide the country over in an emergency.

The second difficulty is the sheer impossibility of creating  sufficient jobs to employ enough of a  large population like that of the UK to compensate for the export of lower tech, lower skilled work. Even if it was in theory possible, it would be impossible to find enough people capable of  high tech work because the way IQ is distributed means that even in a country with a strong average IQ such as Britain will have huge numbers of people who have mediocre to poor IQs –for example, there are around 6 million people with IQS of 80 or less in the UK.  Thus two reasons for a broad-based economy come together: the impossibility of providing enough high tech, high skill jobs and the need to cater for the less able in society.

The audience questions and remarks

What was heartening was the anger which quite a few of the audience (it was a deliberately small gathering of around 25) expressed about the way British governments had failed to protect British companies and British economic interests generally. “Britain is becoming a servant economy” was probably the best of the comments summing up where Britain is headed if the current laissez faire policies continue to be followed.

These points were made by other members of the audience:

–          The takeover of  British companies by foreigners was made much easier with the abolition of the Mergers and Monopolies Commission  (which had a public interest test)  and its replacement with the Competition Commission (which has no public interest test but simply a test for the proportion of the market a takeover would involve).

–          Manufacturers comprise only 11% of GDP but 50% of British exports.

–          Manufacturing jobs are generally better paid than service sector jobs so their loss is more keenly felt both by the individual and in terms of GDP.

–          Foreign direct investment is often concerned with the acquiring of British assets rather than new investment.

–          Energy costs are killing manufacturing in the UK.

The owner of JLS Ltd, John Mills (who is currently the largest Labour Party donor and a one-time Camden Councillor),  advocated a deliberate 20%  devaluation of the pound . I have discussed this with him on another occasion and the problem with it is this: starting the devaluation is easy enough, but stopping it   at the level you want it is not. The danger is that the currency  will deflate way beyond the desired point because the brakes fail to halt the decline in its value.  It is also worth remembering that the value of the Pound against major currencies has dropped 20% or so since Lehman Bros failed in 2008.

I managed to make a few points. These were:

1. That it is impossible to rebuild manufacturing except behind protectionist barriers, official or unofficial, the proof of this statement being the fact that it has never been done.

2. Most immigrants are not engaged in highly  skilled work but low-skilled or unskilled jobs, which in itself gives the lie to the idea that immigrants are doing jobs which Britons could not or would not do. I further pointed out that many of these jobs involve dealing with the British public  – in shops, cafes, call centres and so on – and that many of those  so employed have completely inadequate English. To claim that a foreign worker who cannot speak fluent English is a better employee in such posts than a native English speaker is a self-evident nonsense.

3. That British unemployment, especially youth unemployment, cannot be cured while our borders are effectively open both because of the EU and the unwillingness of all the major parties to halt immigration from outside the European Economic Area.  (Diamond flatly refused to discuss the question of immigration, contenting himself with “We shall have to differ on immigration”).

4. Diamond stated in his talk that healthy economies relied on “efficient, effective and non-corrupt public sectors”. I broke the dreadful truth to him that Britain no longer has such a public sector. Privatisation (especially PFI) has greatly increased the opportunities for corruption in public service. Increase the opportunities and corruption increases. It is a very simple equation.

Diamond accepted that corruption had  worsened in central government public service but bizarrely claimed it had reduced in local government circles. The reality is that corruption has increased not decreased in local government because so much of local government work has been contracted out. Diamond attempted no justification for his claim merely asserted it. (It is a very strange thing but I have never been to a meeting dealing with the same general subject area as this one where anyone other than me  has raised the issue of corruption, this  despite the fact that there are regular examples of it in the mainstream media).

Privatisation has also reduced the efficiency of public services, because  where used it destroys the chain of command within the public service.  This occurs because where there is a private contractor involved the public service provider cannot instruct those employed by the private contractor but must work through the contractor’s management. This can lead to very complex arrangements.  I gave the example of major London hospitals where there are  routinely PFI contracts for the food, the laundry, the ward cleaning and the maintenance and cleaning of the multi-media installations (TV, phone, internet).

5. That giving more power,  including greatly increased borrowing powers,  to local councils is  a recipe for disaster because of the lamentable quality of the large majority of councillors. I urged anyone around the table who doubted this to go and view their local council in action, especially in the committees and subcommittees.

6. The laws which allow directors who do not meet their statutory responsibilities to be punished are rarely enforced. I gave as examples the provisions within the Company’s Act to remove the personal; limited liability of directors and to ban people from being directors.   I pointed out that these provisions  had not been used against any of the directors of RBS, HBOS, Lloyds or  Northern Rock, despite their extremely reckless behaviour.  Had the limited liability of directors such as Fred Goodwin been removed the directors could have been sued for every penny they had.  As for banning directors, I told the meeting that from my own experience with the Inland Revenue of  trying to get even the directors of tinpot concerns banned  was well nigh impossible and that to get a mainboard director of a Footsie 100 company banned was in practice impossible unless the director was convicted of a criminal offence against the company such as embezzlement.

What needs to be done

If Britain’s economy can be reshaped it can only be done with a judicious use of protectionist measures, the renationalisation of vital services such as the utilities  and an end to mass immigration.  Diamond will not even consider doing any of this.

There was one issue which I did not get a chance to raise  because of the constraints of the meeting.  Nor was the issue touched on by Diamond or any of the audience. It concerned technological changed.  Robotics and 3-D printing bid fair to turn our economic world upside down. I include below links to a couple of articles which deal with problems they will create. Just in case you are tempted to say Oh that’s just sci-fi, especially in the case of robotics, go online look at the latest robotic developments, for example, a humanoid robot which can walk over rough ground (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10360951/Meet-Atlas-Boston-Dynamics-unveils-robot-that-can-walk-on-rocks.html)

and a humanoid robot that has human eye movements very well imitated. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/10413987/Meet-ZENO-R25-the-first-affordable-human-robot.html)

The implications of Robotics are explored in these essays:

https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/robotics-and-the-real-sorry-karl-you-got-it-wrong-final-crisis-of-capitalism/

https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/the-geepees-a-cautionary-tale/

Making plans on the basis that our economy and society will remain in broad terms similar to what it is now is a mug’s game.

Robert Henderson 29 11 2013

The Marxist Ralph Miliband and how he bit the English hand that fed him

Robert Henderson

The Daily Mail has put the cat amongst the pigeons by examining the character of Ralph Miliband, the father of David and Ed. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435751/GEOFFREY-LEVY-SATURDAY-ESSAY-Red-Eds-pledge-bring-socialism-homage-Marxist-father.html#ixzz2gSu79fxm)

Ralph Miliband (originally Adolphe Miliband) was born of  Polish Jewish parentage  in Belgium.  There he  became a member of Hashomer Hatzair (“Young Guard”), a socialist–Zionist youth group. He fled Belgium with his father in 1940 and came to England.  He was sixteen when he arrived in England, A year after he arrived he was writing this in his diary:

” ‘The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the Continent . . . To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation.’  (ibid)

Interestingly, although  Ralph Miliband attacks not Britain but the English, all the present day British media have translated the attack on England into an attack on Britain.

But we do not need to rely on a 17 year old’s words to doubt his feelings for the country which had given him refuge. Ralph Miliband’s unequivocally  adult beliefs do that.  By its very nature Marxism is incompatible with representative government and democratic control. It also operates completely outside morality, which it dismisses as “bourgeois morality”. The end always justifies the means until the attainment of a universal state of  communist development, a state which can never be legitimately changed. Interestingly, it mimics Islam which also has as its end a universal state, in their case an Islamic theocracy  (the world Caliphate) which which will brook no alteration once established.

Miliband senior  was an exceptionally  committed and enduring Marxist, who died still believing in the revolution of the proletariat and the eventual attainment of universal communism.  That means by definition he was an enemy of this country because Marxism is antithetical towards British values and traditions. It also means he was a  hidebound ideologue and like all ideologues, hopelessly equipped to deal with reality*

Ed Miliband has frothed at the mouth over the Mail’s attack on his father, giving a saccharine description of his father’s “love” for Britain, with his “evidence” being how he had spent three years in the Royal Navy fighting Hitler and how glad he was to return to the country every time he left it (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2439593/Why-father-loved-Britain-Ed-Miliband.html#ixzz2gSuPSzL1) .His service against Hitler can plausibly be put down to the entry of the Soviet Union into the war: as for being glad to return to Britain, this was scarcely surprising because it had been first a place of safety during the war and then a residence in which he and his family did well.  But there is nothing in Ralph Miliband’s adult writings or speeches which ever suggested he liked the people or society of the the British. Indeed, the every reverse  because his politics involved sweeping away much that was distinctively British or English, especially the ruling class and their institutions. Here he is writing to the American leftist C Wright Mills:“Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, the great Clubs, the Times, the Church, the Army, the respectable Sunday papers . . . It also means the values . . . of the ruling orders, keep the workers in their place, strengthen the House of Lords, maintain social hierarchies, God save the Queen, equality is bunk, democracy is dangerous, etc. ‘Also respectability, good taste, don’t rock the boat, there will always be an England, foreigners, Jews, natives etc are all right in their place and their place is outside . . .” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435751/Red-Eds-pledge-bring-socialism-homage-Marxist-father-Ralph-Miliband-says-GEOFFREY-LEVY.html)

Miliband senior  was emotionally committed until the day he died in bringing communism to Britain.His son Ed can scarcely complain that his father’s attitude to this country and his politics were given a public airing because he himself has recently been banging the socialist drum, saying he was going to bring socialism back to Britain (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10325076/Ed-Miliband-Im-bringing-socialism-back-to-Britain.html), something plausibly  attributable to his father’s Marxist influence beyond the grave.  As the Blairite blogger Dan Hodges remarked, Ed Miliband constantly refers to his parents, and his father in particular, in his speeches and the influence on him.  Nor is Ed Miliband unaware of  his father’s undemocratic views for in his first speech as Labour leader he said   “I suppose not everyone has a dad who wrote a book saying he didn’t believe in the parliamentary road to socialism…”(http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100239016/if-ed-miliband-wanted-his-father-to-be-off-limits-he-should-have-kept-quiet-about-him/).Ralph Miliband gave this country nothing of worth and took much from it. For him it was a milch cow to be exploited.

*  By ideology I mean a set of ideas, religious or secular, to which an individual subscribes blindly regardless of the objective and testable truth of the ideology or of any contradictions which it may contain.  Read more at  https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/against-ideology/

Operation Elveden become nonsensical over Piers Morgan’s illegal receipt of information from the Met

Note: The most likely explanation for this absurd email from Marion Kent is that Elveden are well aware of the toxic (for them) nature of the case and they are paralysed by the knowledge.  Robert Henderson

From: “Marion.Kent@met.police.uk” <Marion.Kent@met.police.uk>

Sent: Friday, 27 September 2013, 15:12

Subject: Re: Operation Elveden and their refusal to investigate Piers Morgan et al

Sent on behalf of Det Chief Superintendent Gordon Briggs

Dear Mr Henderson,

I have been asked to respond to you on behalf of Commander Basu in his absence.

I am aware that DI Smith has now passed onto you, as you requested, the contact details of Detective Chief Superintendent Bonthron, the OCU Commander of the Department of Professional Standards. DCS Bonthron is over seeing the review into your original complaint, a review which I asked him to undertake to assess whether there may be any new lines of enquiry which can be progressed. DI Smith wrote to you on 29.07.2013 to notify you of this. Your complaint concerning Mr. Piers Morgan sits outside of Operation Elveden’s terms of reference and it was for this reason that DPS have been asked to take the lead and review your case.

DCS Bonthron has recently informed me that you have made a formal complaint about Operation Elveden’s decision not to re-investigate your allegations and whilst that matter too is being investigated it is more appropriate for you to liaise with him so that he can update you on the progress of both issues.

Yours sincerely

Detective Chief Superintendent Gordon Briggs

Operations Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta.

————————————————————————————————————————————-

To

Detective Chief Superintendent Gordon Briggs

Operations Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta.

CC Det Chief Superintendant  Alaric Bonthron

Head of the Metropolitan Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards

Keir Starmer (DPP)

Alison Saunders Chief Crown Prosecutor (London)

G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division)

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Met Commissioner)

Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden)

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden)

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Sir Gerald Howarth MP

mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

29  Sept 2013

Dear DCS Briggs,

Thank you for your email of 27 Sept. You write “Your complaint concerning Mr. Piers Morgan sits outside of Operation Elveden’s terms of reference and it was for this reason that DPS have been asked to take the lead and review your case.”

This is frankly bewildering. Operation Elveden’s remit is to investigate the illicit supply of information by police officers to the media. I have supplied you with a letter in which Piers Morgan admits  receiving information in circumstances which can only have been illegal.  Please explain to me  by return how that part of my complaint against Morgan is not within Operation Elveden’s remit.

To aid you let me remind you of what AC Cressida Dick told the Home Affairs Committee:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/67/67we18.htm

Home Affairs Committee

Written evidence submitted by AC Cressida Dick, Metropolitan Police [LSP 40]

Question 3—Your policy regarding leaks by police officers to the press where no payments have been made

Operation Elveden’s terms of reference are “to investigate alleged criminal offences that police officers or public officials have accepted money for supplying information to journalists”. The terms of reference have not been changed, however when suspected criminal wrongdoing that does not include payment comes to light it cannot be ignored.

Of the 64 arrests made on Operation Elveden, only one has been where payment is not a feature of the investigation. It is difficult to comment further on this issue without potentially prejudicing future prosecutions.”

And

“LETTER FROM AC CRESSIDA DICK TO EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE SOCIETY OF EDITORS, 26 MARCH 2013

I am writing to you concerning the Metropolitan Police investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police and public officials (Operation Elveden) which is running in conjunction with the Operation Weeting phone-hacking inquiry.

In the light of some recent reporting and commentary about Operation Elveden I thought it would be helpful to reassure editors on a number of points. I am sure you will understand that for legal reasons I will not refer to current active cases. I believe it is important to remember that we are not investigating victimless crimes nor has the remit of Operation Elveden been extended to any police officer who has simply spoken with a journalist, as has been suggested. The investigation is about police officers and public officials who we have reasonable grounds to suspect have abused their positions in return for corrupt payments. However when suspected criminal wrongdoing that does not involve payment comes to light it cannot be ignored.”

That is of particular interest because it commits Elveden to pursuing investigations even where no payment to the police can be proved. Of course, it is odds on that the Mirror did pay the police officer concerned, but whether or not that can be proved after this period of time Morgan and Edwards can be readily pursued for this part of my complaints against them. In fact,  Morgan’s letter hands you their prosecutions on a plate.

I would further remind you that the information received illegally by the Mirror caused  me considerable damage so it definitely was not “a victimless crime”.  You might care to tuck away in your memory the fact that I had a heart attack 11 months  after the Mirror story appeared, an attack almost certainly down to the stress generated by  the story and its aftermath.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

 

Piers Morgan’s illegal receipt of information from the police, his perjury and Operation Elveden

Robert Henderson

On Monday 21 January I went to New Scotland Yard (NSY) with the intention of providing evidence to Operation Elveden  of Piers Morgan  and Jeff Edwards’ receipt of information illegally from the police and their perjury before the  Leveson Inquiry when they lied under oath.

I was unable to gain entry. Those on the entrance were insistent  that I would have to make an  appointment.  (I cannot help  but wonder what would have happened if I had turned up without an appointment to give, for example, evidence about a murder or terrorist plot: would it have been  “Sorry sir, we can’t see you without an appointment”?)  I  rang from outside the NSY   to try and arrange an immediate  appointment only to be told by the Met’s central switchboard that  no one was available to make the appointment. I left my details and a civilian worker phoned me later in the day and made an appointment for the local police  to visit me at 11.00 am on 22 January.  He gave me the case  reference CAD 3124/2/Jan.

Two uniformed PCs turned up from Holborn police station (I gave them the  details, but as they admitted themselves, the case was more than a little out of their normal range of work.   (That was precisely why I had gone directly to the NSY rather than ringing to make an appointment. I knew if I tried to make an appointment I would in all probability be  directed  to my local police station.  Some people may think it is a very curious thing that Operation Elveden does not have a direct phone line or public email address for those wishing to give information to use ).  In the circumstances I could do no more than run through the details  and pass on to the two PCs  the following documents:

1.Piers Morgan’s Letter to the PCC date 16 October 1997  in which he admits receiving information from the police in circumstances which can only have been illegal.  (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/piers-morgan-lied-to-the-leveson-inquiry/)

2. A copy of the Daily Mirror  story about me dated 25 March 1997 which produced the complaint to the PCC  which caused  Morgan to write the letter in which he admitted receiving information from the police in circumstances which can only have been illegal.  (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-failure-to-charge-piers-morgan-with-illicitly-receiving-information-from-the-police/)

3. Copies of the then director of Presswise Mike Jempson’s correspondence on my behalf with the PCC relating to the Mirror story dated 23 December 1997, 9 January 1998, 20 January 1998, 18 February 1998, 2 March 1998.

4. My evidence to the Leveson Inquiry of  Morgan ’s perjury dated 23 December 2011 (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/referral-of-piers-morgans-perjury-to-the-leveson-inquiry/).

5. My evidence to  the Leveson Inquiry of Edwards’ perjury dated 25 March 2012 (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/leveson-inquiry-jeff-edwards-and-another-prima-facie-case-of-perjury/).

6. My original submission to the Leveson Inquiry dated 25 November  2011 (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/the-leveson-inquiry-the-blairs-the-mirror-the-police-and-me/)

7. Sir Richard Body’s Early Day Motion 10th November 1999 which dealt with the general context of the events surrounding the Mirror story  with the role of the Blairs at its heart. (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/when-tony-and-cherie-blair-tried-to-have-me-jailed/)

8. A copy of my Wisden Cricket Article Is it in the Blood? (from the July 1995 edition). It was my gross mistreatment by the mainstream British media after the publication of the article that led me ultimately to write to the Blairs asking for their assistance after all other available avenues of redress had failed me (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/is-it-in-the-blood-and-the-hypocrisy-of-the-media/).

9. A letter addressed to the new head of Operation Elveden Deputy Assistant Commissioner  Steve Kavanagh dated 21 January 2013.  A copy of this is below.

On the 23 January 2013 I received an email advising me that the information I had given had been forwarded to Operation Elveden and a message was left on my answerphone   asking me to contact Operation Elveden on Friday 25 January.

That the two PCs found the matter somewhat daunting is  unsurprising as  it has a very heavy political loading  because of the involvement  Tony and Cherie Blair who had attempted to have me prosecuted during the first week of the 1997 General Election campaign under the Malicious Communications Act. So weak was this complaint that,  despite the Blairs’ celebrity and Labour’s  almost certain  win in the election which would make Blair Prime Minister, the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaint with a  firm NO CRIME on the same day it was submitted to them by the police for guidance.

I have restricted my complaints to Operation Elveden strictly to that which is within their remit.  However, these examples of criminality and misbehaviour by those with power or influence are only a small part of the overall story of the Blair Scandal.   My experience from 1997 to 2007 when Blair retired was of being in  a Kafkaesque world in which,  despite being subjected to harassment which ranged from death threats and an internet campaign which attempted incite violence against me to regular interference with my post, the police did not solve any of the crimes which I referred to them. This was scarcely surprising as they ignored the evidence I provided, no matter how strong it was.  The most blatant example of this behaviour was the failure of Det Supt Jeff Curtis of Scotland Yard  to question Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards of the Mirror about receiving information illegally from the police even though they had the  letter from Morgan admitting he had received information from the police.  The Crown Prosecution Service and the Police Complaints Authority  backed up the failure of the police to investigate meaningfully or sufficiently by refusing any complaints of police inactivity which I referred to them.

The complicity of the elite went  far beyond crime. The mainstream media engaged in a conspiracy of silence after the publication of the Mirror story, neither allowing me a public voice nor even following up the Mirror story ;  The PCC repeatedly failed me; my MP Frank Dobson refused to help in any way, as did  institutions such as  Liberty  and the Index on Censorship. If I went to lawyers they would blanche as soon as they found the Blairs were involved and refused to act for me.

If I manage to get Operation Elveden to prosecute Blair and Edwards, it may be possible to bring the larger story to the mainstream media.    Let us hope so because one thing I can vouch for from long personal experience is that where people  with power and influence are involved the laws which govern us fall rapidly into abeyance.

———————————————————————————————————————————-

To

Deputy Assistant Commissioner  Steve Kavanagh

Operation Eleveden

Metropolitan Police

New Scotland Yard

8/10 The Broadway

London  SW1H OBG

(Tel: 0207 230 1212)

21 January 2013

CC Gerald Howarth MP

mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

Dear Mr Kavanagh,

I submit conclusive evidence that (1) the editor of a national newspaper  received information from the  police illicitly and (2) when questioned under oath at the Leveson Inquiry committed perjury by denying that he had ever received information illicitly from the police .

Piers Morgan

The editor in question is Piers Morgan when he edited the Daily Mirror.  The evidence of his receipt of information is beautifully simple: he admitted this in a letter to the PCC dated  16 October 1997 in which  he wrote “The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect”.  If the information had been given legitimately there would be no reason for protecting the source.   Nor, because no charges were laid or investigation made, could there have been a legitimate reason  for releasing  the  information. A copy  of the letter is enclosed.

The  letter was sent to me after I complained to the PCC about a dramatically libellous article Morgan published about me on 25 March 1997  (copy enclosed).  The illicit information related to complaints made about me by Tony and Cherie Blair to Belgravia Police  in March 1997. I had written to them seeking their help and,  when they refused, I circulated copies of my letters and  the replies I received to the mainstream media at the beginning of the 1997 election campaign. The Blairs did not go to the police when I sent the letters, only after I circulated them to the media.  The  complaints  had so little substance  that they were dismissed by the CPS with the ruling “NO CRIME” within a few hours of them  being submitted to them for guidance by Belgravia Police.

The odds must be heavily on the  Mirror having paid for the information because it is difficult to see what other motive  a police officer would have for  releasing such information.  However, by accepting information illicitly from the police, whether or not money was paid, offences relating to Misconduct in a Public Office and  the Official  Secrets Act were committed, both by the police officer and Mirror employees including Morgan.  If money was paid by the Mirror to the police officer,  further offences arise under  the laws relating to corruption.

The evidence of Morgan’s  perjury before the Leveson Inquiry is contained in the copy of my submission to the Inquiry informing them of the perjury dated 22 December 2011 which I enclose.

I ask you to investigate both Morgan’s receipt of illicit information from the police and his perjury before Leveson.

Jeff Edwards

In addition to Morgan’s perjury, the Mirror reporter who wrote the story about me, their then  Chief Crime Reporter Jeff Edwards, also committed perjury before the Leveson Inquiry by denying ever receiving information illicitly from the police.   The details are included in the copy of my submission to the Inquiry informing them of the perjury dated  25 March 2012 which  I enclose .

As Edwards was the reporter who wrote the story to which Morgan referred in his letter to the PCC, he must have been the person to whom the police officer referred to in Morgan’s letter gave the illicit information. .

I ask you to investigate Edwards for his receipt of illicit information from the police and his perjury before Leveson.

The original police failure to meaningfully  investigate my complaint

In 1997 I made a complaint about the illicit supply of information about me by the police to the Mirror. The case was handled by Detective Superintendent Jeff Curtis of Scotland Yard .  No meaningful investigation was undertaken because, as Det Supt Curtis eventually admitted to me during a phone call, the  “investigation” was ended without anyone at the Mirror being  interviewed; not Morgan, Edwards or anyone else.   I enclose my final letter to  Det Supt Curtis dated 2 December 1999, Det Supt A Bamber’s reply to that letter 13 December 1999 and the PCA’s letter dated November 1999  refusing  to investigate further. This again is self-evidently absurd because of the  failure to question Morgan and Edwards.

I ask you to investigate Ian Curtis for perverting the course of justice by failing to investigate conclusive and incontrovertible evidence of  a serious crime.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

Administrative justice: Gordon Brown misbehaved in the same general way as Jeremy Hunt

A very large research laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute,  is being built on land behind the British Library in Kings Cross, London –  http://ukcmri.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/objection-to-ukcmri-planning-application-for-a-research-centre-in-brill-place-london-nw1/.

The land on which it being built was publicly owned. It was sold by ostensibly  public tender  by the Department of  Culture, Median and Sport (DCMS) in 2007 to  a consortium the United Kingdom Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCRMI).

Just as the decision on the Murdoch bid to buy all the shares in BSkyB that News  Corps did not own was supposed to be decided impartially by a minister (Jeremy Hunt),  so was the sale of the land by the  Secretary of State for the DCMS . The reality was that there was no impartiality exercised. As is clear from the documents below which I obtained using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Gordon Brown persistently interfered with the sale by putting his weight behind one of a number of bidders. This invalidated the bidding process and

I made great efforts to get the story into the mainstream media and politics  – see http://ukcmri.wordpress.com/. These were unsuccessful which says a great deal about both our politicians and political  journalists. Nonetheless, it does stand as evidence of the persistent willingness of politicians to misuse their power  and of the British media to suppress political stories when it suits them.

There is another strong public interest in this story because the Francis Crick Institute will by dealing with highly toxic viruses and bacteria in its research. This makes it a serious and potentially catastrophic danger to London, both from lapses in bio-security and terrorist action.  The full story can be found at http://ukcmri.wordpress.com/.

Robert Henderson 27 4 2012

Gordon Brown’s involvement in the sale of the land to UKCRMI

February 21, 2011
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To make  the matter as simple as possible to follow,  I have selected from the  documents in my possession which show Gordon Brown’s illegitimate involvement in the sale of  the land to UKCRMI six which form a paper trail from the period before the closing date for expressions of interest  to the announcement of the sale of the land by Gordon Brown.  Some of the  documents are lengthy. To prevent readers having to plough through them   I have highlighted  (by bolding) the passages in the documents which refer directly or indirectly to Brown’s interest.  Where a figure such as  [40] appears, that means redaction has occurred under the exemptions in the FOIA –  the number relates to the clause number of the exemption.  These documents  also give a good sketch of the background to the bidding process.

Further relevant documents can be found athttp://ukcmri.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/objection-to-ukcmri-planning-application-for-a-research-centre-in-brill-place-london-nw1/

————————————————————————————

NB This document shows that  Brown was interfering even before the closing date for expressions of interest was closed.  The relevant date is not that on Rosemary Banner’s letter, but the enclosure which came with the letter, i.e., 1 August 2007. 

HM TREASURY

I Horse Guards Road London SWIA 2HQ

Rosemary Banner

Head of Information Rights Unit

Tel: 020 7270 5723

Fax:

rosemary.banner@hm-treasury.x.gsi.gov.uk

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

Mr R Henderson

24 June 2009

Dear Mr Henderson

Freedom of Information Act 2000: medical research centre   We wrote to you on 27 August 2008 conveying the conclusions of the internal review carried out in relation to your complaint to the Treasury about the handling of your April 2008 request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

In light of your complaint to the Information Commissioner we have reconsidered the single item of information that falls within the scope of your request that has not already been disclosed. As a result of this re-examination we have identified additional information that we are now able to provide to you. Please see attachment at the end of this letter. For the avoidance of doubt we should make it clear that the Treasury continues to regard its original decision not to release this information as correct at the request and review stage. However, given the passage of time, we believe that the public interest in withholding has diminished and can now be released.

We have, however, decided to continue to withhold two sentences from this information under section 35(1 )(a) of the Act. These sentences continue to relate to ongoing policy. We have explained our position to the ICO regarding this, and are able to clarify that the redacted sentences contain information on a bid for funding from the MRC that the Department for Business Innovation and Skills are assessing in the normal way. Funding decisions have not concluded. As always the Government will publish actual funding provisions once a decision has been reached. Due to the way funding bids are negotiated and assessed this was been a live issue at the time of the request; internal review; and remains so at this present time. To be helpful we refer to evidence published by the select committee in December 2007. You will see that at that time the bid was £118 million.

http://www. parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmdius/1 85/1 85we02.htm

The Treasury is not able to comment as to what the final figure will be until a decision has been made, I reiterate that once decided it will be announced publicly.

Rosemary Banner

Head of Information Rights Unit

For HM Treasury

EXTRACT of relevant information extracted from a report prepared

 1 August 2007

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH (NIMR)   MRC concluded some years ago that the NIMR’s future location should be close to a London Teaching Hospital. With this in mind, MRC purchased at their risk for £28M in March 2006, but with Treasury’s knowledge, a one-acre site at the National Temperance Hospital location (NTH) in London.

MRC has recently learnt that its earlier preferred site for NIMR, a three-acre site adjacent to the British Library, has now become available. This larger site would have the major advantage of accommodating more translational research. Encouragingly MRC has most recently proposed that the site would be developed in partnership with Cancer Research UK (CRUK), Wellcome Trust and UCL as a potentially strong consortium. The Wellcome Trust have mentioned that they would be prepared to make a sizeable investment to help establish a new world class medical research facility in North London if they can secure DCMS-owned land and planning permission from Camden Council. At present the consortia has registered its interest in buying the site.

This project has had a very long gestation period, during which the arguments for the strong scientific case for relocating within London (which has a cluster of medical research and teaching hospitals) and the need to retain MRC’s highly skilled staff.

The recent preparation of a suitable business case has been further complicated of late by both the re-emergence of the British Library site as a possible location.  

The PM is also most recently stated that he is very keen to make sure that Government departments are properly coordinated on this project and that if there is a consensus that this is indeed an exciting project then we do what we can to make it happen. This is extremely helpful from a DIUS and MRC perspective, but, formally a NIMR relocation project in London has yet to receive Lyons approval from Treasury (for either the first planned NTH site or the possible BL site).

MRC have employed Deloitte to prepare a full business case for the relocation project.

The scientific and operational case for a London location is strong in our view.

Key Dates for the Preparation and Appraisal of the NIMR Proposal

– July 2007 — Letter to Treasury to inform CST of MRC’s proposed bid for the BL site.

-July/August 2007 — Expression of interest in the BL site registered by  the MRC Consortium.

-September 2007 — further substantive discussions with MRC/Deloitte  on Lyons and emerging business case material.

-September 2007 — MRC NIMR project included by RCUK in the 2007 Roadmap consultation.

-October 2007 — first full draft business case prepared by MRC/Deloitte.

-October 2007 — MRC consortium formally bid to DCMS for the BL site.

-November 2007 — Full revised business case received and Lyons case consideration undertaken by Treasury.

-December — Progress submission to Ministers.

-December 2007 — MRC Consortium formed and, if successful in bidding, payment to DCMS for the BL site.

-December 2007 — MRC’s NIMR project prioritised by Research Council Directors for receipt of DIUS funding through the Large Facility Capital Fund.

-February/March 2008 — Submission to Ministers for approval of LFCF allocation to support the MRC’s NIMR project, subject to our final assessment of (a) the outcome of the Lyons case (b) the full business case and (C) prioritisation by RCUK of the use of the available LFCF,

April/May 2008 — DIUS Ministerial announcement of NIMR relocation project approval (subject to all the above).

Further Background to the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) The NIMR is one of the MRC’s largest and oldest research institutes. The NIMR is recognised as once of the UK’s foremost basic research institutes with a strong scientific track record and reputation. NIMR currently  houses the World Influenza Centre (WIC), which was established by  World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1948. The Centre, works with a  network of collaborating laboratories to detect and characterise the emergence of new influenza virus anywhere in the world including avian virus H5N1. NIMR is also at the forefront of international research to discover how molecular changes in the virus affect its ability to infect people and cause disease.

The NIMR has been at its present site since 1950. If it were to remain there the buildings would need substantial refurbishment. It is currently a ‘stand-alone’ Institute not physically linked to any University, Medical School or Hospital. In 2003 the MRC set up an expert Task Force to examine the strategic positioning of the NIMR research within the MRC portfolio. The Task Force concluded that their vision for NIMR would be best delivered through an intramural — i.e. with the staff employed by MRC — research institute on a single site in central London in partnership with a leading university and hospital (they received proposals from King’s College and University College) and this would enhance: – The multidisciplinary nature of NIMR’s work, providing access to other biologists, physical scientists, engineers, and mathematicians – Opportunities to collaborate more closely with clinicians and strengthen the focus of translational research.

Remaining at Mill Hill was considered by the Task Force where the majority view was that this would not be a viable option as it would not deliver Council’s vision for a world class research institute carrying out basic, clinical and translational research in partnership with a leading university and hospital. The position was endorsed by the MRC Council. This disappointed some staff at NIMR and there has been much lobbying of Ministers and MPs and as a result the issue has received some media interest.

MRC Council selected UCL as its preferred partner for the renewal and relocation of NIMR in Central London, in close proximity to a major teaching hospital (University College Hospital) and relevant university departments, including chemistry and physics.

The MRC Council approved an outline Business Plan for the renewal and relocation of NIMR in July 2005. The Business Plan confirmed the feasibility of developing the renewed Institute on the National Temperance Hospital (NTH) site in Hampstead Road, which MRC bought (at its own risk but with Treasury’s knowledge), for £28M in 2006, suggesting that the new site could provide accommodation for up to 1,058 staff, including 248 from UCL and potentially 40 additional research staff.

MRC have recognised that their development of the business case needed to ensure a successful project and to satisfy the requirements of DIUS and Treasury requires additional skills to those residing within the MRC and most recently further advice has been procured by MRC from Deloitte for assistance with preparation of the business case.

It was also not our intention at review stage to withhold names of senior civil servants of the email provided at initial request. While we explained that the sender was Jeremy Heywood from the Cabinet Office we overlooked to state the other officials who were recipients of that email. They were: The Permanent Secretaries of DIUS and DCMS Ian Watmore and Jonathan Stephens; the Managing Director of Public Spending in HMT, John Kingman; and the Chief Operating Officer, DCMS Nicholas Holgate.

————————————————————————————

NB This document shows Brown’s  interest just before the short list of bidders was decided. 

RESTRICTED – POLICY & COMMERCIAL

To James Purnell Margaret Hodge, Jonathan Stephens,Ros Brayfield

From Nicholas Holgate

Date 18 September 2007 ____________

SALE OF LAND TO THE NORTH OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY

Issue: mainly for information but also to ask how you would wish to be involved in this transaction.

The Department owns 3.6 acres to the north of the British Library. With the completion of the new train terminal, we are able to sell it and have been conducting a competitive process so that Ministers can choose what represents best value, comprising not just the proceeds from sale but also the use to which the bidder intends to put the land.

2. We are bound to be concerned about proceeds:

a. There is an obvious obligation, on Jonathan as the department’s Accounting Officer, to secure the best return we can for the taxpayer;

b. the Government is close to breaching its fiscal rules and has set itself a demanding target for asset disposals. Your predecessor strongly rebutted the Treasury’s proposal that we should sell assets worth £150m by 2010-11 and it has not formally been debated since your arrival; but we are likely to have to raise some funds from disposals. In any case:

c. proceeds from this sale are earmarked to contribute towards the budget of the Olympic Delivery Authority for 2007-08.

3. Subject to Treasury agreement, we can nevertheless also take public value” into account. We are aware of two such bids one led by the Medical Research Council, with support from the Wellcome Foundation and others for a research facility; and one that wishes to remain confidential but which is essentially related to faith and education.

4. The facts are:

a. We have now received 28 bids in response to a prospectus. Amongst other things, the prospectus drew attention to the local planning policy guidance, which steers bidders towards a scheme that is roughly 50:50 commercial and residential development with 50% affordable housing. It is Camden Borough Council and the Mayor who will have the last word on what is in fact built on the site;

b. Our professional advisers have scored the bids on various criteria and are interviewing the top seven plus two others (the medical research bid is one of the two others) next week;

c. There is a significant financial gap between the top bids and the medical research bid.

5. Jonathan and I are meeting Jeremy Heywood (who is aware of both public value bids), Ian Watmore (Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills) and John Kingman (Treasury) tomorrow. We need to agree an orderly and appropriate process for selling the land, given the public value bidders, other Departments’ interest and the likelihood that the Prime Minister might wish to take an interest too.

6. We will report back to you then. Subject to your views and others’, one potential way forward is a. DIUS economists be invited to assess the public value of the medical research bid. We will need some such calculation if we sell at a discount. DCMS should not do this as we should display some neutrality between bidders . We decide whether we expect the medical research bid to match the best bid, improve their offer but not necessarily to match, or take a lower value on the chin. Given their backers, they can afford to match. But they may refuse to play; and/or we may not wish to be seen to be reducing their funding for good causes just to maximise proceeds;

c. We see whether there is a Government champion for the other bidder;

and

d. We then fairly characterise the two public value bidders and the best commercial bid (or bids, if they differ significantly in what they propose) to Ministers and No 10 for a decision.

Nicholas Holgate

Chief Operating Officer

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NB This shows Brown’s interest a few weeks before the sale to UKCRMI was agreed.

BRIEFING NOTE FROM POLICY ADVISERS DATED 12 NOVEMBER 2007 TO THE PRIME MINISTER COPIED TO No 10 OFFICIALS.

THE NOTE WAS ENTITLED: PROJECT BLISS – CREATING A WORLD-LEADING MEDICAL RESEARCH FACILITY IN LONDON

Disclosable extracts:

We are close to being ready to announce Government support for the creation of a world-leading medical research facility in London.

The key component being finalised is the sale of land, which will allow the BLISS partner organisations (the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College London) to develop their detailed proposals for the creation of the centre.

We anticipate that the deal will be finalised over the next few days and we should be able to announce the outcome of the process In the next few weeks. On current plans, we would expect the sale to complete during December and preparations for development to begin straight away. The expectation is that the Institute would be up and running by 2012.

This is an important opportunity to demonstrate what the UK’s commitment to medical research really means in practice. And it fits very well with the focus of your intended health speech.

What would you be announcing?

• We would be committing Government support to the creation of a new centre for UK biomedical research, with 1,500+ scientists, at a level commensurate with the very best institutions in the world.

• The BLISS consortium brings together four of the leading medical research institutions in the UK – the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College London.

• The Centre responds to the vision, outlined in Sir David Cooksey’s review of UK health research presented to Treasury in 2006, of better integration and translation of research into patient and public benefit. The Centre will benefit from economies of scale, enhanced infrastructure, the critical mass to optimise collaboration, and the capacity to take scientific discoveries from the lab bench to the hospital bed.

• These four key partners, together with the expectation that other organisations would come forward to invest In the centre or to lease research space, bring a powerful combination of skills and capabilities — basic research, applied research, the capabilities to convert research and innovation for public and commercial use, and the skills and opportunities presented by access to a leading university and teaching hospital. The potential, In terms of understanding disease, and developing new drugs, treatments and cures, is huge.

How to announce?

The suggestion is that you announce this a few days before your health speech, planned for 6th December. We would suggest a visit to a high-tech medical site in the morning to get pictures, followed by a meeting at No lO with all relevant stakeholders (primarily the four partner organisations) at which you make the formal announcement and ‘launch’ the project. Let us know your thoughts on whether this is the right way to proceed with the BLISS announcement?

Background

The vision for the BLISS Centre has six themes:

Research innovation and excellence • Bring together outstanding scientists from two world-class research institutes (MRC NIMR and the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute), collaborating with UCL, to address fundamental questions of human health and disease. • Through Wellcome Trust funding, development of tools for integrative biology, with an emphasis on the development of advanced microscopy imaging and on the mathematicaland computational needs in this field.

• Increase scientific innovation through new links with the physical sciences, life sciences, mathematics, engineering and the social Sciences at UCLI

• Develop close links between the Centre and the outstanding hospitals nearby (Including the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases at Queens Square, Great Ormond Street, Moorfields and University College Hospital) and other major hospitals in London (including Hammersmith Hospital and the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre at Hammersmith, and the Maudsley Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry)1 State-of-the-art research facilities

• Develop a multidisciplinary research complex operating in state-of-the-art facilities, with the size and diversity to be internationally competitive with the world’s top research institutes.

• Establish a new centre for development of advanced imaging technologies and analysis. A national focus for biomedical science

• Interact with other local centres of excellence to foster and facilitate collaboration between basic, translational and Clinical scientists1  Host national and international research meetings and conferences, facilitated by its proximity to national and International transport links and the conference facilities of the British Library. An effective interface with technology transfer and development

• Facilitate the effective development of therapeutic and diagnostic devices and drugs, by allowing the technology transfer arms of MRC and Cancer Research UK to work closely together.

• Drive innovation in developing tests and technologies through interaction between researchers and development laboratories.

Finding and developing the scientists of the future • Provide an attractive environment to secure and retain world-class scientists by providing an outstanding setting for research and collaboration. • Boost the recruitment and training of scientists and doctors of the future by providing an excellent environment for postgraduate and postdoctoral training, and for training outstanding clinical scientists committed to medical research.

Engaging with the public

• Educate the public on important issues in health and disease.

• Bring together and enhance partners’ public information and education programmes, with a particular focus on engaging younger people.

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NB This document shows Brown’s involvement just prior to the sale of the land.

BRIEFING NOTE FROM NO 10 POLICY ADVISER TO THE PRIME MINISTER DATED 27 NOVEMBER 2007

COPIED TO NO 10 OFFICIALS

ENTITLED “MEETING WITH PAUL NURSE ON BLISS PROJECT”

You are meeting Paul Nurse who is likely to lead the BLISS institute, along, with Mark Walport, Director of The Wellcome Trust, and Harpal Kumar, Head of Cancer Research, two partners in BLISS

We are close to being ready to announce Government support for plans to create a world-leading medical research facility in London, led by the BLISS consortium made up of the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College London.

We have now effectively finalised negotiations on the sale of the 35 acre site, adjacent to the British Library: a price has been agreed with DCMS, and the deal is complete subject to agreement on how much of the proceeds DCMS will retain. We are therefore ready for an announcement next week on the sale of the land – but will not be announcing full details of the project overall, as there remain various Issues to resolve, including reaching agreement on business plans and gaining planning permission. We would therefore announce the Government’s support for the vision of the new centre – rather than definitive support for the centre itself. The Project BLISS consortium brings together four leading medical research institutions in the UK and will create a new centre for UK biomedical  research, with 1,500+ scientists, at a level commensurate with the very best Institutions in the world.

The Centre responds to the vision, outlined in Sir David Cooksey’s review of UK health research presented to Treasury in 2006, of better integration and translation of research into patient and public benefit.

The Centre will benefit from economies of scale, enhanced infrastructure, the critical mass to optimise collaboration, and the capacity to take scientific discoveries from the lab bench to the hospital bed. The Centre will create a place for:

• collaboration, between leading scientists and clinicians, working on some of the most pressing medical problems of our time;

 • excellence, maintaining the quality of the UK’s life sciences research base;

• application, making links between research, medical practice and the pharmaceutical industry;

• innovation, translating research innovation into new treatments;

 • learning, bringing forward a new generation of scientific leaders;

  •discovery, showcasing the challenges and potential of life sciences to a new audience.

• Using the close proximity to the British Library, the Centre will develop a public engagement and education programme.

Sir Paul Nurse

Sir Paul Nurse is President of Rockerfeller University, formerly Joint Director General of Cancer Research UK and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Medicine. His appointment has not yet been publicly announced,but he is set to lead the project as chair the Scientific Planning Committee.

Briefing note from Bliss

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NB This document from just before the sale of the land shows  the extent of Brown’s involvement with the suggestion that he would arbitrate.  

Sent: 27 November 2007 13:09

To: HOLGATE NICHOLAS

Cc: _[40]_____________

Subject: RESTRICTED – Land to the North

Hi Nicholas,

Jonathan spoke to Jeremy Heywood this morning. Jeremy said he needed the bid to be agreed by next Wednesday – 5 Dec (or Thursday  latest) as PM wanted to get MRC in then (or possible public announcement.

Jonathan explained that there are two issues from our point of view: .No revised formal offer has been received by DCMS .HMT are not being helpful of recycling returns – without an improved offer from HMT JS said it would he v hard to justify.

JR said he thought the offer was sent to us yesterday – have checked but  nothing in JSs post or email – JH will chase. JH also said he would go   back to HMT to see what more they can do, but that ultimately PM may have to arbitrate.

Cheers

[40]

[40]

Private Secretary  to Jonathan Stephens

Department for (Culture, Media and Sport 2-4 Cockpur Street, London

SWlY 5Dl1 email: [40]@culture.gsi.gov.uk tel: 0207211 fax: 020 72116259

————————————————————————————

NB This document shows Brown’s state of mind immediately after the sale of the land was agreed.

Treasury document

From – name censored

Sent: 04 December 2007 19:49

To: name(s) censored.

CC: name(s) censored)

Thanks for everyone’s help and support in making the announcement tomorrow happen. The PM is truly delighted that departments have been able to work together to secure this huge opportunity for Britain

RESTRICTED – COMMERCIAL

Moral Simpletons Target Innocent Man

Note by Robert Henderson: Below is  the article I wrote in response to a Daily Mirror story about the Blairs and me which was published at the beginning of the 1997 General Election campaign (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-failure-to-charge-piers-morgan-with-illicitly-receiving-information-from-the-police/).

The Mirror published the story after the Blairs had tried and dismally failed to get the police to investigate me for alleged offences under the Malicious Communications Act. The Mirror refused to publish the article or make any retractions from their story despite the fact that they had no evidence to support their wondrously libellous claims about me. The full story of the Blairs attempts to intimidate and harass me can be found at https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/when-tony-and-cherie-blair-tried-to-have-me-jailed/

————————————–

Moral Simpletons Target Innocent Man

Robert Henderson

The Mirror story on 25 March ‘Pest targets Blairs’ contained one correct fact, I have been in correspondence with the Blairs.

The article states that I have been incessantly bombarding the Blairs with letters. False. Beginning in March 1996, I have written Blair nine letters and his wife four. My last letter to his wife was dated 25th February: to Blair 27th January. This year I have written one letter to Blair.

I wrote to his wife as a last resort after Blair had persistently refused to deal with my serious complaints against two members of his party, my MP, Frank Dobson and Diane Abbott. The complaints concerned Dobson and Abbott’s behaviour towards me. I have only written as often as I have because of Blair’s persistent refusal to act honourably.

My letters to him all dealt with legitimate political subjects, namely the obligations of an MP to his constituents, Diane Abbott’s hypocrisy towards me (she got on her “antiracist” high horse after the publication of ‘Is it in the blood?’), the publicly demonstrated anti-white racist behaviour of some Labour MPs, the misbehaviour of the media towards me, my inability to gain redress from both the Press Complaints Commission and the Broadcasting Complaints Commission and, lastly, the committal of perjury by a barrister and a well known firm of solicitors.

My letters to his wife were primarily a conduit to Blair – this I made clear in my first letter Mrs Blair. Nowhere in my letters have I made threats. Never have I attempted to force my physical presence on either of the Blairs. Let me put the fears of this extraordinarily nervous couple to rest. You are not nor ever have been in any physical danger from me. (Terrified of beggars, terrified of me. This is a man to be prime minister?)

The Mirror quotes the Walworth Road insider as saying that my letters are full of “graphic racist filth” and “sewer language”. This is utterly untrue. There is a simple way to resolve the matter. I challenge the Mirror to first publish the letters upon which the article was based and then my correspondence with the Blairs in its entirety. Let the public judge.

The Mirror’s misrepresentation extended to completely fabricated quotes such as “If he gets in elected he’ll let in all the blacks and Asians”. It will come as a surprise to your readers to learn that I did not address the subject of Labour immigration policy in any of my letters. Frankly, I do not believe that a Blair government will make any substantial difference because Britain has not operated a meaningful immigration policy since we joined the EU. However, it would be nice to know one Labour policy before the election. So what is Labour policy on immigration Mr Blair?

I have expressed my personal opinion of the Blairs in my letters, but that is legitimate because they are public figures. The referral of the correspondence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is shameful and sinister: the opening of a Special Branch file on me ludicrous.

My judgement of Blair is that he is not intellectually or temperamentally equipped to be prime minister because he possesses a subordinate personality – by which I mean he is not one of Nature’s number ones – and is at once extremely nervous and intellectually vacuous. Like all weak men in positions of authority, he acts in an authoritarian manner to hide his deficiencies. I am also not ready for the embarrassment of a prime minister with the voice and manner of an overly earnest fifth former. (“I vow, pipe, pipe…I vow, pipe, pipe…I vow, pipe,pipe, pipe”).

People may disagree with my interpretation of Blair’s character, but it cannot be legitimately argued in a democracy that public judgement of the personality of a potential prime minister is illegitimate. Blair’s referral of the letters to the CPS is reminiscent of his authoritarian treatment of dissident Labour MPs and party activists. The man is simply unable to handle contrary opinion or criticism. (Still dreaming of a 1000 year Blaireich young Tony?) In a stable political environment such as ours, only weak men need to suppress dissent.

As for his wife, all I have done in one of my letters is point to the distance between her lifestyle and traditional Labour values and express my disgust at the hypocrisy of the decision to send her son to a school outside the borough. (Why should your children not be educated in the type of school the murdered white schoolboy Richard Everitt had to endure, Mrs Blair?) His wife is a public figure both by her association with Blair and her active political past. Ergo, criticism of her is licit.

I would add that more vicious and vulgarly expressed criticism of the Blairs appears regularly in the National Press. For example, on  4/2/97 the Daily Telegraph printed a story recently under the heading “Blair like a scared child says US interviewer”  and a Barbara Amiel article of  24/2/97 ‘I prefer my Cherie sour’  depicted his wife as a curious mixture of the churlish and the submissive. As for vulgarity, how about computer simulations of a bald Blair?

That an ill-written sensationalist comic as the Mirror is become – I remember when it was a bona fide newspaper – should accuse anyone of sewer language is a joke in extremely bad taste. As for “graphic racist filth”, what about the Mirror story on 26 March headed “She should be hanged” showing a photograph of the black murderess, Sharon Carr? That type of presentation is grossly inflammatory as any black will tell you.

By referring the matter to the CPS, Blair is saying in effect that there will be two standards, one for the media, one for private citizens. This is incompatible with both the principle of equality before the law and democracy.

The article mentions assault through correspondence. The Mirror article was infinitely more damaging than my correspondence with the Blairs. If anyone is to be charged with this novel idea of assault it is the editor of the Mirror. Speaking of which I come to a more conventional form of assault.

The Mirror photographer, who gave his name as Simpson, began firing off shots before either he or the accompanying reporter, Graham Brough, had introduced themselves. That broke the PCC code of Conduct. I then told him that I suffered from an illness which included exceptional sensitivity to light. He continued snapping. That is an assault.

I also told the reporter and photographer that I did not give my permission for the use of the photographs. The Mirror has used one. That breached the PCC code of conduct.

Perhaps the most contemptible part of the article was the claim that I had the mentality of a stalker. I suggest that the Mirror looks at the beam in its own journalistic eye. It is papers such as the Mirror which harass people for no better reason than to provide copy that possess the mentality of a stalker.

The decision to print this article is better described as deranged than reckless. The matter is made worse because the writer of the article, Jeff Edwards, claimed during a telephone conversation with me (which I have on tape) that he had seen my correspondence with the Blairs before writing the article. Moreover, I recently sent copies of my more recent correspondence with Blair to both the Mirror editor and political editor. The awful truth is that these grotesque libels were committed deliberately not through recklessness. I can only suppose that recent Mail accusations of murder in the Stephen Lawrence case have removed the last vestiges of restraint from Fleet Street.

Because of the deliberate fabrication and the seriousness of the libels, I have asked the DPP to instigate proceedings for criminal libel against the Mirror editor, Edwards and the anonymous Walworth Road informant if he or she can be identified. Readers should note that Walworth Road have refused to allow me to speak to anyone with real authority within the Labour party.

The Mirror’s behaviour since the article has been as cowardly as that of Labour. Neither the editor nor deputy editor has been willing to speak to me. Obviously the Mirror has no confidence in their story.

I have written to Blair asking him to(1) identify the Walworth Road informant before sacking them and expelling them from the Labour party and (2) issue a statement making clear that your article was a tissue of inexcusably vicious lies.

As for refusing to comment when the Mirror reporter called at my flat, this is untrue. I told him I was happy to comment in writing but was unwilling to give an interview. I refused the interview because my experience since the publication of ‘Is it in the blood?’ has left me in no doubt that no person working in the media can be trusted to behave honestly. It is not that mediafolk operate a different code of morals when dealing with the private citizen, they do not operate any code of morals at all.

I cannot but feel that my offences are ones unknown to English law, namely the heinous crimes of not taking Tiny Tone immensely seriously and failing to grant him fawning respect.

Let me summarise your article in words which your readers will be able to understand with the aid of a dictionary. It was a cargo of ancient male gonads.

Have Liam Fox and Adam Werritty committed crimes?

The Labour MP John Mann has asked the Metropolitan police to investigate Andrew Werritty for possible fraud arising from his misrepresentation of himself as special advisor to Liam Fox.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/8829803/Liam-Fox-affair-Adam-Werritty-facing-fraud-investigation-by-police.html).

There are grounds to investigate not only  Werritty but Fox himself. On Friday 14 October I circulated this letter to amongst the mainstream British media:

Sir,

There is an unresolved question about Liam Fox and Adam Werritty: have criminal offences been committed?

Werritty has gone about issuing business cards which represent him as an adviser to Liam Fox. Those who had dealings with him have put on record that they believed he was Liam Fox’s special adviser because of the way he represented himself.

If such false representations have resulted in Werritty gaining money or benefits in kind that would constitute the offence of obtaining property by deception contrary to section 15 of the Theft Act 1968 (False Pretences in old money).

If Fox has known this was happening and permitted it, then he would be guilty of the criminal offences of either being an accessory or engaged in a conspiracy to obtain property by deception.

Even if no material benefit has been gained Fox and Werritty could well be guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act by divulging information covered by the Act to those not entitled to receive it. Indeed, if Fox has supplied such information to Werrity (who has no official standing) he could be guilty.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

I have since written to John Mann urging him to broaden his call for criminal investigation:

16 10 2011

Dear Mr Mann,

I see you have urged the Met Police to investigate Werritty. Quite right. However, there are good grounds for investigating Fox as well, both for possible conspiracy to defraud and breaches of the Official Secrets Act.

I enclose below a letter I circulated to the media on Friday. It gives the reasons why there are prima facie grounds for suspecting criminal offences have been committed.

If I can be of any further help, please let me know.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson