The Misfortunes of Nigel

 
NIGEL FARAGE, the valiant champion of British liberties and freedom of speech, has complained to police about a remark made on the BBC satirical news programme 'Have I Got News for You', claiming it breached the 1983 Representation of the People Act. 

Since our Nige ("I'm just an ordinary bloke") had previously been upset about a spoof game made by schoolkids featuring a character called Nicholas Fromage, we needn't be surprised that he takes such things seriously, though it appears the Old Bill have decided they had better things to do.

What upset him this time was a remark by Sunday Times journalist and HIGNFY panellist Camilla Long, who had been challenged as to how well she knew the South Thanet area about which she 'd been disparaging. The panellist replied that she had been there more often than the UKIP leader, who is standing for election in South Thanet.  “By the time I arrived there he’d only been a few times,” she said.  

Farage complains that the BBC has not given his campaign in South Thanet enough coverage. For once I agree.  The other evening the Beeb did broadcast a clip about it, starting with a woman shouting at Farage, showing some drab seaside street, and giving a few locals' comments.  All pretty tame, inadequate, and disappointing.

By contrast here's what a young woman in Broadstairs reported last Saturday (April 25):

"I'm just back from canvassing leafletting etc where we were attacked by far right thugs shouting out support for UKIP as well as other abuse. This was witnessed by many people at Broadstairs sea front. The Police have interviewed us. The Thanet Stand Up To UKIP (SUTU) campaign had just packed up their stall when we were attacked by members of an organisation called South East Alliance, a breakaway group from the extreme right wing English Defence League.

The police were called but the attackers vanished.This followed remarks made by Nigel Farage at the meeting in Broadstairs Pavilion I went to last night in which he singled out and criticised Thanet SUTU as a local organisation vocally opposing UKIP. The same right wing thugs who attacked the Thanet SUTU stall were also there at the UKIP meeting. Farage should have known his remarks could be inflammatory. Labour party canvassers were also attacked. What can I say? "

We'd heard before about Britain First offering its services to UKIP, and a team of its heavies gatecrashed a meeting of UKIP's opponents in London as a reprisal for them staging a protest stunt at Farage's local.  But it seems the Far Right enthusiasts for Farage turning up in Thanet South go under a variety of labels, judging from a report in last week's Mail on Sunday.  

GARY FIELD, as featured in the 'Mail'.  Some say he is known by other names.

 

Nigel Farage was at the centre of fresh controversy last night after National Front members turned up to campaign for him in the South Thanet constituency.

The row started after a group of far-Right supporters calling themselves the East Kent English Patriots supported Mr Farage at an event in Broadstairs on Friday evening.

 They were led by Gary Field, a former regional organiser for the English Defence League, and enjoyed the protection of Ukip’s security teams, which encircled the Broadstairs Pavilion.

Mr Field, who has a criminal record for assault, drank beers behind the cordon with fellow members of his group and gestured to onlookers as a crowd waited for Mr Farage’s arrival.

Yesterday, Mr Farage’s Labour opponent in South Thanet, Will Scobie, claimed a group of his campaigners had been attacked by National Front members chanting for Ukip in Broadstairs late on Friday.

When Mr Farage realised that Mr Field and his supporters had been seen by this newspaper on Friday evening, he moved quickly to disown them, saying: ‘Members of an extremist group today arrived at a Ukip public meeting at the same time as a Mail on Sunday camera arrives.’

Mr Farage’s comments triggered a war of words with the patriots group, which immediately posted a message saying: ‘We went to Ukip meeting with members of Kent NF and after the meeting Nigel Farage went on Twitter saying we have far right extremists here... the question is nig, do you want our vote or not?’

.....

Shortly after the incident, Mr Field posted offensive messages about Mr Scobie, writing: ‘Will scobie you are a liebour [sic] paedo supporting ponse you won’t beat ukip in south thanet you dirty little scummy traitor.’ He added: ‘I have the lynx effect on lefties.’

Mr Field was tagged in 2013 for breaching a community service order after being found guilty of assault.

A Ukip spokesman said: ‘We don’t know who Gary Field is, and therefore we have no responsibility for the actions he takes or the events that he attends. We have made our stance on extremist groups clear. We have no truck with them. End of.’

If UKIP takes no responsibility for Gary Field and the "extremists" whom it attracts, maybe it will at least acknowledge its own members. Like the councillors it has in Great Yarmouth.

David Braniff-Herbert, a trade union activist and gay rights campaigner was in the east coast resort organising leafletters for the anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate, which had booked a town centre hall for them to meet. He was in the centre at around 11am when a volunteer informed him that two people were outside taking photos.

“They’re in a car – two UKIP councillors,” the volunteer told him. “They’re taking pictures of the people as they’re leaving with the leaflets.” This was, he said, an intimidation tactic usually employed by far-right parties. Braniff-Herbert said he then asked the people in the car to stop, but they did not do so, so he responded by taking pictures of the car and the people in i

Told that another UKIP councillor had entered the hall, David went back in and challenged the man.
“I said, ‘I think you should leave,and he said, ‘Well what are you doing?’ and I said, ‘Well, we’re campaigning against UKIP, so it’s not worth you being here.’”

The conversation became increasingly hostile, with David Branff-Herbert accusing the UKIP councillor of trying to intimidate people, and the councillor, Tom Andrews telling him to "fuck off" and slapping him in the face.

Later Great Yarmouth police confirmed that they had detained the 73-year old UKIP member and released him with a caution for minor assault. UKIP said its member had gone into the hall on other business, nothing to do with the campaign.

And so to Hayes, in Middlesex, or outer west London, where I had to go on entirely non-political business on a fine sunny day yesterday, rounding off my visit by repairing to a local hostelry for a lamb rogan josh and pint of ale.

Overheard behind me, a couple were discussing their difficulties with social security, and turning to the topic of the general election, the woman opined that if "this lot", i.e. the government got back in, they would make things worse. "They say they will cut spending on benefits, but they won't say where they'll make the cuts".

To this not unreasonable observation the bloke with her, who did not sound in the best of health, said that he was undecided how to vote. He had previously voted National Front, but they were not standing this time. "They say to vote UKIP, because that's the next best thing".

Not wishing to spoil the lunch I'd just enjoyed or linger longer than I need, having finished my pint, I did not turn to ask the poor patriot what UKIP might do for benefit claimants (Farage has said there are too many claiming disabled benefit, and complained the Tories were "hamstrung" in their welfare 'reforms'), but left to catch my bus. 

 Sure enough, I see the National Front is not standing in Hayes and Harlington constituency, nor is the British National Party, which gained about 1,500 votes there in 2010. But Cliff Dixon, who stood last time for the English Democrats, a right-wing nationalist party said to have been swelled by a number of disgruntled BNP supporters, and gained 464 votes, is now the candidate for UKIP.

Not that I suppose Labour's John McDonnell, whose posters adorn several premises in the centre of Hayes besides the Party HQ, has much to worry about. His vote in 2010 was 23,377 (54.8%), almost twice that of his Tory rival; and though John's health has not been good in recent years, his political vitality and standing seems as strong as ever.

Meddler on the Roof

SINGING from the same...er hymn sheet?  Or getting another report on Tower Hamlets? Eric Pickles, here with Home Secretary Theresa May, is Minister for Communities and Faith. So will he put money where his mouth is, and help repair synagogue roof?

(a real East Enders' tale)

A former East Enders actress says the series is unreal in its depiction of the area's ethnic make up. I've often thought the same about its socio-economic model. I can suspend disbelief and accept residents going to the cafe for breakfast, on Coronation Street or Albert Square, is a dramatic device.
But an entire community living by pulling pints or selling each other dodgy gear from market stalls seems a bit unreal to me.

With no one leaving the Square for work, or social life, I fear the effect of isolation and inbreeding once associated with Fenland villages, though it spares us Walford residents grumbling about London's transport problems or talking about the bus strike.

Steering clear of anything political seems a soap rule generally, though Coronation Street once had young Ken Barlow worrying his Mum by going on a CND march. (I don't know whether this had anything to do with ex-miner and Left-wing writer Jim Allen contributing scripts. I did go on a march down Cross Lane, Salford. not unlike the one heard going past the Street on Corrie.)  Brookside, which I rarely watched, had brother-sister incest and bodies under patios, one Liverpool-born critic I know praised the "social realism"; but as a regular fan confirmed to me, nobody in the series ever once mentioned the three-year long struggle waged  over Liverpool docks.  

This must have been galling for one member of the cast, ex-docker Peter Kerrigan, who'd entered TV in a Jim Allen play, and hadn't forgotten his old comrades. But in the end it was Robbie Fowler who broke the TV blackout on the dockers.

Anyway, to get back to 'East Enders',  I thought I'd suggest a real East End story, albeit introducing a couple of implausible characters. The Rt.Honorable Eric Pickles MP is, to quote his full job title, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Minister for Faith. After recent tragic events in Paris and before sending out a letter to mosques on their duty to prove they are British, Pickles took part in a photo opportunity alongside Home Secretary Theresa May, both holding up signs declaring 'Je suis Juif' - I am Jewish. My reaction when I saw this was a horrified shudder, but I suppose that is ungracious. There is a way that Pickles could win appreciation.  

Here is an item that caught my eye in the online Jewish News:
"A group of young Jews are fundraising to help save one of London’s oldest synagogues on Nelson Street, Whitechapel. East London Central Synagogue, founded in 1923 is the East End’s oldest purpose built synagogue, but its roof is collapsing and its original features are in need of major repair. Jewdas is aiming to raise at least £5,000 to save the synagogue, and have started a campaign. http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/fundraising-campaign-save-whitechapel-shul-state-disrepair/

Jewdas, as their name suggests, are a witty, irreverant but creative young group whose seemingly wild but well-organised cultural events have breathed new life into their community, and its better traditions, while blowing more than a raspberry at the Establishment. Some of these young people were to be seen marching behind the Young Jewish Left banner on last year's Gaza demonstrations.
Now they are showing the same lack of inhibition taking responsibility for something constructive and positive.

It's almost like a small piece of Cameron's forgotten 'Big Society', but without the big money advertising, over-paid CEOs,  and exploited charity workers.  Jewdas are just amateurs. 

To understand the background, mind, let's start with an item headed 'Politics and race: A tale of two mayors',  which appeared in 2013, in of all places,  The Economist:  

 STRIDING into the east London Central Synagogue, Lutfur Rahman grasps Leon Silver, a wiry Jewish elder, in his arms. Mr Silver hugs back. Since winning the mayoralty of Tower Hamlets, an east London borough with a quarter of a million inhabitants, in 2010, Mr Rahman has allocated some £3m ($4.5m) to repairing religious buildings. The synagogue is one of them. Tactile and soft-spoken, with a beaming countenance, Mr Rahman—a Bangladeshi Muslim—is every bit the local champion.  http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21589485-two-very-different-models-running-diverse-bit-east-london-tale-two-mayors

The contrast in styles was with Newham's Labour mayor Sir Robin Wales, who I'll deal with another time. The E15 mothers protesting social cleansing and taking part in Saturday's housing march have already been dealing with him.

That 'Economist'  article appeared on November 9, 2013,  which happened to be the anniversary of Hitler's Kristallnacht pogroms, a point that's only been given significance now by news of swastika graffiti in parts of east London, and Holocaust memorial posters being defaced.

 Lutfur Rahman was re-elected mayor of  Tower Hamlets last year, but his re-election is being challenged in the courts. In December, although a police investigation found no evidence of fraud, Eric Pickles sent his commissioners in to take over the council, having received a report from Price, Waterhouse and Cooper alleging a “worrying pattern of divisive community politics and alleged mismanagement of public money by the mayoral administration of Tower Hamlets”.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/17/eric-pickles-commissioner-takeover-tower-hamlets

So how does that affect the synagogue?
"East London Central Synagogue, founded in 1923, is the East End's oldest remaining purpose built synagogue. It is a remnant of a once thriving Jewish East End culture, and an important emblem of Jewish Heritage. The synagogue was due a grant from Tower Hamlet's Council to cover much needed renovations - in particular the roof, which the congregation has been waiting to repair for many years. However, due to recent intervention in the running of the council by communities minister Eric Pickles, the grant has been frozen, and is likely to be much lower in value if it is still given. " https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-the-shul

We might add that as well as amalgamating several previous congregations, the synagogue hosts varied cultural as well as religious activities. Keeping it going helps maintain Tower Hamlets' diversity, affording confidence to old East Enders staying in the borough and newcomers deciding to make it their home.  


One does not have to agree with Lutfur Rahman's policy of working with faith groups, or other aspects of Tower Hamlets council, to see that it is not quite the "divisive" policy unduly favouring Muslim groups or places of worship which media and political rivals have been suggesting. We do have to ask whether Pickles, and those egging him on,  have been divisive in singling out Tower Hamlets for intervention.  

And while we admire the spirit of those young people who have taken responsibility for raising funds for East London synagogue, it does not seem unreasonable to ask that Mr.Pickles and his commissioners, and anyone else who meddles in Tower Hamlets, should take responsibility for honouring the council's legitimate pledges.

   The synagogue in Nelson Street.
http://www.jewisheastend.com/nelsonst.html

Mr.Farage Finds a Friend

IT's always nice to follow a character's career, having noticed them early on, and today we heard news of Raheem Kassam, a young man whose latest employer, a right-wing American outfit called the Breitbart network,  was pleased to announce that its London editor Raheem Kassam was moving on to become an adviser to the United Kingdom Independence Party(UKIP)'s leader Nigel Farage.
Extolling UKIP's recent successes, Breitbart says

"As a result, the party is moving onto an election footing, with Kassam set to lead on advising Mr Farage in developing party messaging, strategy, fundraising and publicity. The role is the first of its kind as UKIP grows and professionalises, and Breitbart London understands from senior UKIP sources that Kassam was picked specifically for his political nous and campaigning prowess.
Executive Chairman of the Breitbart News Network Stephen K Bannon said: "Raheem is a huge piece of manpower, as proven by one of the most important political movements in the world bringing him onboard. The entire company will miss his intelligence and drive."

UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP said: "I'm delighted that Raheem has joined the People's Army of UKIP. His experience in media as well in political campaigning will be important to us on the run up to the general election in 2015."

 http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/23/Breitbart-London-Editor-Becomes-Senior-Aide-to-UKIPs-Nigel-Farage

Hat-tip to my friend Marko Attila Hoare for bringing this news to my attention. I must admit I'd hardly heard of Breitbart before, though its name reminds me of the crazy far-Right Norwegian gunman Breivik. Breitbart is not quite that far to the Right, but is named after a 'conservative' American called Andrew Breitbart and specialises in circulating news stories "exposing" what it calls "big government", that is anything resembling the Welfare State and taxing the rich to pay for it.

This would fit Nigel Farage's promises to outdo the Tories in cutting NHS jobs and spending, though his supporters have been denying on TV that they're against the service. (Apparently it is bad manners to remind UKIP spokespersons of anything they or their leader said from one week to the next, or before different audiences).

Breitbart has also been behind sensational stories smearing unlikely political figures by association with "terrorism", described by others as hoaxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_%28website%29

Andrew Breitbart himself died in 2012. Conspiracy theorists claim he was assassinated on orders from President Obama. We are in the world of the Tea Party, and perhaps its wilder fringes.

Breitbart's London edition was launched on February 16, 2014 headed by right-wing journalist and climate change skeptic James Delingpole as executive editor and Raheem Kassam as managing editor. 

Raheem Kassam's work came to my notice in 2009. On December 17 that year the BBC carried a report that a man called Jonathan Hoffman had been barracked during a university debate at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),  by people chanting that he was "Jewish", and as such, not welcome. This referred in fact to a public event held by the SOAS Palestine Society and the British Committee for Universities in Palestine (BRICUP), with speakers from South Africa, one of whom Ronnie Kasrils is himself Jewish, as is academic Steven Rose, who also spoke.

It would have been surprising if Jonathan  Hoffman had not encountered some hostility at this meeting, since he had become notorious as an aggressive leader of the Zionist Federation, and his 'question' at the SOAS meeting was an attack on one of the speakers. But Hoffman was allowed to make his point without interruption, which is more than he allowed Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer at a House of Commons meeting the following year. The Zionist federation chair was escorted out by police after persistent heckling of Dr.Meyer.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/02/445742.html?c=on

Several other members of the SOAS audience were also Jewish, including Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi, who can be heard on video of the meeting introducing herself as Jewish before she spoke, and being applauded. None of them experienced any anti-Jewish chanting, and indeed it seems Jonathan Hoffman himself did not notice it or think it worth mentioning in his blog about the meeting on December 13.

The person who supplied the "antisemitism" story was Raheem Kassam. The BBC referred to his membership of Student Rights, describing this as an "anti-racist" campaigning organisation, though its own website prefers to identify itself as against "extremism". We don't know who else was in Student Rights.


According to a website called Standpoint in which some of his ideas appeared, "Raheem Kassam manages the counter-radicalisation pressure group 'Student Rights' from within the Henry Jackson Society. That's a society dedicated to aggressively bringing American-style 'democracy' to other countries. He also airs his views on the Conservative Home site, which says: 'Raheem Kassam hails from Uxbridge, studied Politics at university and is now a freelance political campaign strategist'".

The BBC had to pull its story about the SOAS event after complaints from people who had been there. But it seems to have continued treating Raheem Kassam as a reliable source on the subject of "extremism", particularly the Islamic variety, in British universities.

Having travelled from the ostensibly liberal Henry Jackson Society to the determinedly conservative (even by American Republican standards) Breitbart outfit, will Kassam be continuing to report extremism from his post in UKIP, with its known contingent of Holocaust deniers and believers in the famous Protocols? He takes up his new job in the same week that the Board of Deputies of British Jews, not known for exagerating (when right-wing parties are concerned) had this to say, about UKIP's links in Europe:

Board Vice President Jonathan Arkush said: “The Board is gravely concerned by reports that UKIP may sit in the same parliamentary grouping as a far-right Polish MEP in a bid to save its funding.  Robert Iwaszkiewicz belongs to an extremist party whose leader has a history of Holocaust denial, racist remarks and misogynistic comments.  He belongs to the far-right Polish JKM, led by Janusz Korwin-Mikke who has reportedly called into question the right of women to have the vote.

 “Furthermore, we entirely reject UKIP’s justification that ‘All groups in the European Parliament have very odd bedfellows (and) The rules to get speaking time and funding are set by the EP, not UKIP’.  Extremists and racists should be roundly rejected, not embraced.  Even France's far right Front National rejected the JKM as being too extreme.

 “For UKIP to choose such a figure as Robert Iwaszkiewicz as a bedfellow, apparently for money, is beyond belief. Nigel Farage now has some very serious questions to answer.  He has placed in issue the credibility of UKIP."  

http://www.bod.org.uk/live/content.php?Item_ID=1302

It's not just 'Nasty Nick'

THE BBC's claims to fair and objective news coverage took a couple of knocks this week, along with the notion by supporters that it is "our" BBC, a voice for the people, and the Right's complaint of "left-wing bias".


Citing what should have been 'privileged' information which just happened to have come into the BBC's possession, a report that a UK Treasury source said Royal Bank of Scotland(RBS) would move its headquarters to London if Scots voted for independence,  the Beeb's political editor "Nasty Nick" Robinson asked the SNP's Alec Salmond how Scots taxpayers would make up for loss of revenue from this and other firms. 

Robinson said:
“Why should a Scottish voter believe you, a politician, against men who are responsible for billions of pounds of profits?”

Indeed he might have said men who lost billions from other people's money, and were recouped by the taxpayers. Why should voters listen to someone they elected, instead?
  
Robinson went on to claim in his report that the SNP leader had failed to answer his questions. In fact, Salmond had answered, and in front of international media, also raising concerns about the BBC's role in a potential breach of financial regulations. He was heckled by Robinson, the BBC's supposedly unbiased reporter.  And the part of the press conference where the SNP leader  answered was edited out so as to make it look as though he could not answer.

http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/bbc-reporter-caught-red-handed-manipulating-video-in-scottish-indy-campaign/http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/bbc-reporter-caught-red-handed-manipulating-video-in-scottish-indy-campaign/

Some reports have sided with Robinson, media people sticking together, but a less Establishment view observes:

Robinson is hard to beat when it comes to qualifications for the Westminster establishment. He was a chum of Boris Johnson at Oxford University, where he was the President of the Conservative Association. This followed his founding of Macclesfield Young Conservatives and a stint as the UK Chairman of the Young Conservatives.

http://dailywales.net/2014/09/11/alex-salmond-versus-bbcs-political-editor-nick-robinson-ouch/

Robinson does seem to have problems with opposition.

Only it is not just 'Nasty Nick' that's the problem.



Last week the Trades Union Congress met in Liverpool. Over the years, trades unions have been weakened, not just by government legislation curbing their ability to fight for their members, but by Britain's loss of jobs and industries, unemployment, privatisation and spreading casualisation and insecurity. But they still have over five million members, and some unions at least are growing. Union leaders like the late Bob Crow,  my own union's Len McCluskey, and the civil servants' union PCS's Mark Serwotka (who I'm sorry to hear is seriously ill) regularly address bigger audiences than most politicians, and are listened to with more respect.


With so many families affected by austerity and debt, no one can say that trade unionists are discussing obscure issues of no interest to the general public. Whether they represent seafarers or railway workers, airline pilots or nurses, firefighters or teachers, the delegates who speak at the TUC generally know what they are talking about, and listening to them you can get a better picture of what is happening in society than you would relying on politicians or the media.

As a trade unionist myself I have got my own criticisms of the union leaders and TUC officialdom, and I know I'm not alone. Of that more to come. Meanwhile I think the BBC should be giving the TUC more coverage, rather than less.

The TUC's general secretary is Frances O'Grady, a popular figure, very different from the old stereotypes of union leaders as boringly grey bureaucrats or grumpy old men. 


Addressing the TUC, Frances O'Grady spoke of the need to defend public services and trade union rights, and also warned that the Tories were dragging the country backward to a class-ridden "Downton Abbey-style society, in which the living standards of the vast majority are sacrificed to protect the high living of the well to do? Where the blame is heaped on the most vulnerable – migrants and claimants – while the powerful and the privileged sit pretty"

BBC viewers did not get to hear the rest of what she had to say. Whether to shut her up, or to underline her point, 'Auntie' Beeb decided that the representative of five million trade unionists should be cut off to announce that the Duchess of Cambridge was expecting another child.

Well, that's us put in our place. Let's tug our forelocks and bless the Duchess. And be thankful we can pay our license fees.

http://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/congress/congress-2014/tuc-general-secretary-frances-o%E2%80%99grady%E2%80%99s-address-congress-2014

http://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/frances-ogrady-speech-tuc-congress-2014


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/08/tuc-warned-britain-heading-for-downton-abbey-society

Where do the Tories get their ideas?

WORKING PEOPLE were marching outside.Part of demonstration against Tory Austerity and in defence of NHS. Greater Manchester Police said it was biggest demonstration they had ever had, and no arrests were made but it wasn't to be seen on BBC TV.
  Photo from Manchester Evening News. 

"FOR HARD WORKING PEOPLE" read the banner greeting delegates arriving at this year's Tory party conference, in Manchester, echoing something said repeatedly at the Labour Party conference in Brighton. Well, they're a little bit rattled, and not too proud to nick a phrase, or anything else.

True enough, I imagine avoiding tax can be hard work, and so can justifying bankers bonuses. If the 50,000 or more (according to police estimates!) people marching outside against austerity and to defend the NHS disagree and don't recognise the Tories as being for them, there were high metal barriers to shield them from view, and security to stop TV from filming the demonstration.

I don't know whether that really explains how so many people filling the streets of Manchester became invisible on the early evening news (though we got a little glimpse later). Not even HG Wells' imagination could run to that, but it's a free country, so we're told, and where would we be without the media?

What we got was David Cameron saying he is "not going to stand by as people's aspirations to get on the property ladder, and own their own home are trashed". Ninety per cent mortgages. It won't lead to a housing bubble, we're assured. Not that house prices are already out of reach of working people. Nor - apart from a woman from the Institute of Economic Affairs - was anyone so rude as to recall the part played by sub-prime mortgages turned "toxic assets" in bringing on the world financial crisis.

We were given clips of Margaret Thatcher for the faithful, championing the "right to buy", but I suppose  it would have been disrespectful of the dead to blame her for so many Brits being so in debt, remember the words "negative equity", or mention how a big proportion of council homes that were sold have ended up in the hands of private landlords. As for new homes being built, a large percentage are now being sold abroad, not for would-be immigrants, dread the thought, but as an investment. 

Of course when Cameron promises to help people to own their own homes, he does not say anything about the increasing numbers who have not got a home, or those whom the combination of bedroom tax, rising rents and benefit capping are driving from pillar to post.  

 For those already on the pavements, who include a large number of ex-services personnel about whom our politicians and papers care so much, we've seen Redbridge police snatching food and sleeping bags from them, and Westminster council is making it illegal to give them food. The government has criminalised squatting but maybe David Cameron will promise the right to purchase your own bit of pavement and cardboard box.     

  But of course the whole point of the claim to be for "hard working people", to promote marriage, and to support those with "aspirations", is that rather than be angry with the rich who are responsible for the mess we're in, we are supposed to find someone worse off and less respectable than us to take things out on. Which is why Cameron and his crew are expected to announce new measures extending workfare, forcing the unemployed and disabled not only to search for jobs that are not there, but to accept work at less than a living wage, or even unpaid, what amounts to slave labour. Those who are in a job are supposed to feel better that someone is making those lazy b.s work, even if we wake up to find that the employer is getting rid of us because he can not only hire someone cheaper off the dole, but get them free of charge because they have to work for benefit.

There have been setbacks for this drive, companies have dropped out because of resistance and bad publicity, but notwithstanding that old slogan I recall that "Conservative Freedom Works!", it is becoming Conservatives Will Make You Work for Free!", and the government's advisers and septic think tanks are saying Workfare is popular!   

Reading about the so-called Policy Exchange which tends this kind of advice, people ask what it is and where it comes from. Something made me do a search linking 'Policy Exchange' with 'LM' and 'Spiked'. Well you never know. And here is one of the little tales this brought to light. I'll call it

Boris and the Handmaid.


Munira Mirza is an Oldham lass who went to Oxford, and the University of Kent, where she studied under Frank Furedi, the onetime thinker of the Revolutionary Communist Party(RCP), and Living Marxism (LM). A lasting association with this particular strain of "leftism" does not appear to have hindered Munira's career. Quite the contrary.

Today she is the Advisor for Arts and Culture Policy of the Greater London Authority under Boris Johnson's Tory mayorality.

According to her former employer, centre right think tank Policy Exchange, “Munira - author of the Policy Exchange pamphlet Culture Vultures - is not a card-carrying Tory member, but is one of a new generation of thinkers behind David Cameron's makeover of the party that is attracting money and fresh ideas.”
http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Munira_Mirza

It was soon after Munira Mirza joined Boris Johnson's team that the Cuba Solidarity Campaign was told that its Cuba Fiesta stage event was no longer wanted as part of the Rise festival in London. This festival, a hangover from Ken Livingstone's time, when it used to be called Respect (before George Galloway's party took that name), had been used to promote enjoyment of cultural diversity and good relations between communities, but as Mirza told the Cuban campaign, "it is no longer appropriate to have overtly political organisations involved in the programme or in the community area". When it was learned that "United Against Racism" would be dropped from the festival's publicity, trade unions and others who had taken part previously decided to take their support elsewhere.

But Boris' handmaid had set out her ideas beforehand, in a paper arguing that promotion of multiculturalism and emphasis on diversity actually strengthened racial divisions. This was published in 2004 by the Institute of Ideas - an outfit headed by Claire Fox, a former leading member of the RCP and co-publisher of LM magazine. Criticisng the Race Relations Amendment Acts and its requirement on bodies to promote good relations and diversity policies, she also  argued against any special conditions for minorities, and any measures to outlaw religious incitement, treat racially motivated crime differently, or interfere with the "free speech" of such as the BNP.  The Institute of Ideas is particularly keen on free speech. Claire Fox has been a guest on the BBC's "Moral Maze" and "Question Time". 
In 2007, Munira Mirza was one of the authors of Living Apart Together, British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism in 2007, published by the Policy Exchange, of which she had become  an Associate Research Fellow and for whom she also worked as a fundraiser, having the title Development Director.  Unlike the Institute of Ideas, which shared the old RCP offices with Spiked, the Policy Exchange has always shared offices with conservative think tank CChange (active 2001-2007), of which Dougie Smith, her now husband, was the co-ordinator.  ,

As we've said, Mirza does not seem to have had much trouble combining her links to the "Left" and Right. (But then Claire Fox has said these two terms no longer mean anything). Her association with Spiked!, which enables former RCP types esconsed in the Tory media to keep up their 'radical' pretensions, will have brought her in contact with Brendan O'Neill. In 2006 they co-founded the Manifesto Club, an organisation "with the aim of challenging cultural trends that restrain and stifle people's aspirations and initiative" . Brendan O'Neill too has opposed efforts to counter racism, in sport and other fields,

The report Mirza co-authored for the Policy Exchange, ‘Living Apart together’ included references to work from Josie Appleton, Andrew Calcutt, Kenan Malik and Brendan O'Neill. The last two are both former members of the RCP,  O'Neill, who writes for the Daily Telegraph, has been a supporter of the government's "welfare reform", criticising those who drew attention to the deaths of disabled people who had been passed "fit for work" and lost benefits.

Munira Mirza's husband Dougie Smith, is a former vice Chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students, and ex-Cameron speechwriter. In this intertwining of libertarian spirits we are reminded of the coincidence remarked in west London, of former RCP general secretary Kate Davies at the Notting Hill Housing Trust, and her partner becoming housing director with Hammersmith and Fulham council, where former FCS figure Harry Phibbs is a prominent councillor.


http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/notting-hill-but-not-much-trust.html

http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/life-and-death-is-not-game.html 

'Auntie''s Favourites (and Unmentionables)

YEARS ago I knew two brothers from Willesden Green. Both had been in the Labour Party youth section, but whereas one, Cyril, became a Marxist, lecturing for a time at the London School of Economics (LSE), his brother Tony, down from Oxford to the BBC, was a committed Fabian.

One Budget Day a BBC crew were out on the street interviewing people near LSE when Cyril came along. Before the interviewer could step up to him with a mike, an anxious figure came zooming out from somewhere exclaiming "Not him! Not him!" It was Tony from the Beeb, ensuring brother Cyril's incendiary views were not broadcast to the nation.

That story is quite old, and may only concern two individuals, but a few years ago after the government announced it was scrapping plans for a third runway at Heathrow I watched a TV interview with MPs who had opposed airport expansion. They spoke to a Tory or two, and a Lib Dem, I think from Kingston. In the background, you could see left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell chatting to someone, maybe a constituent. Some pleasant parts of John's constituency would disappear under the concrete if the runway had gone ahead. But the interviewer never reached him. Perhaps there just wasn't time, or maybe the interviewers thought John McDonnell was still banned from airtime, as he seemed to be while he was challenging for the Labour Party leadership.

The criteria for whom the BBC invites and whom it excludes may not always be obvious, but nor are they random, or decisions left to individuals.  The individual broadcasters must learn whom or what is acceptable, and what best avoided.

Perhaps the best known case of the Corporation taking a political decision - whether or not it did so on its own - was at the beginning of 2009 when it refused to allow a charity appeal for people in Gaza. It seemed the Season of Peace and Goodwill to All had been cancelled.

  There have been less well known examples. On May 25, 1995, Yugoslav Youth Day, a Serb mortar attack on a cafe area in Tuzla killed 71, mostly young people, and injured hundreds more.  The mayor of Tuzla radioed the UN saying "Tonight we are picking up the pieces of our children".

It so happened that a man from Tuzla, parent of two, was visiting London at the time, and offered to go into the BBC studio to be interviewed. His name is Faruk Ibrahimovic and he speaks perfect English. The Beeb told him he would not be needed.  On Radio Four next morning they had their regular guests from the Serb Information Centre, messrs. Gasic and Gavrilovic, to deny that Karadzic's forces could be responsible for the slaughter of the innocents.

Earlier at the outbreak of the Bosnian war I heard a TV news announcer say that "the Muslim authorities" in a particular town were investigating a murder. For a moment, as I entered the room I wondered naively why the religious authorities were entrusted with such matters, but what I saw on TV was an ordinary Bosnian police car. Perhaps the driver was a Muslim, perhaps not. You would not expect a report on crime in London to say it was being investigated by the Anglican church authorities ( nor even , as a friend adds, the Masons!) But throughout the Bosnia war the Beeb would only refer to Bosniacs as "the Muslims". I don't think they ever got around to interviewing visiting Bosnian General Jovan Divjak (who happened to be Serb), nor diplomat Sven Alkali (a Sefardi Jew), as this would only have confused the poor listeneners and viewers.  (Though General Divjak  appeared in the BBC documentary The Death of Yugoslavia).

I think the BBC's coverage of the Bosnian conflict had been slanted to serve the dominant faction at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for which official recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state was reluctant, and blamed on German pressure: whereas Britain's arms embargo (cf it's 'non-intervention' policy re Spain), and belief in partition (these foreigners only want to kill one another) went with an inclination to support traditional allies, the nationalist Serbs. However it was only some time later that Dame (now Baroness) Pauline Neville-Jones, who had been Lord Hurd's chief of the Joint Intelligence Committee, became a BBC governor.      

On November 2, 2005, the BBC TV London news had a report on the Skies Are Weeping concert, dedicated to American campaigner Rachel Corrie, killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza. The concert, for which Rachel's mother had flown over, had taken place at the Hackney Empire the night before. It was the world premiere of a cantata dedicated to Rachel Corrie by American composer Philip Munger.

 Having given the event no previous publicity, the Beeb's coverage focused on its "controversial" nature, featuring a small Zionist demonstration outside, and giving the last word to the demonstration's organiser Jonathan Hoffman. I wondered why the reporters had not interviewed the concert's organiser and soprano Deborah Fink, who could have told them that there were far more Jewish people like herself enjoying and participating in the concert, and more Jewish people among the celebrity sponsors, than Mr.Hoffman's sorry bunch, which included Kahanists and Christian Zionists, outside. It turned they had interviewed Deborah, who explained to them what it was about and why Jewish people were involved along with Palestinians and others. But someone must have decided that this was all too much to take in, and so Deborah Fink was simply edited out, and became an unperson, while not for the last time, Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation became a star. On February 16, 2006 the BBC sent Deborah an apology, admitting they had given a misleading impression. It was not the last time they had to apologise for news items in which Mr.Hoffman has appeared.

Still I suppose the BBC's belated and inadequate coverage of the Skies Are Weeping concert compares favourably with its two year blackout on the Liverpool docks strike and lockout, only lifted by Robbie Fowler revealing a dockers' support tee shirt to the cameras on Match of the Day.   

University lecturer and East End councillor Rania Hafez recently found herself invited to discuss women's rights and Islam on BBC One with none other than Tommy Robinson, alias Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, of the English Defence League. Amenable though she might be to civilised discussion, Ms. Hafez decided that the ex-BNP founder of the EDL was not someone suitable with whom she wished to have a friendly chat, nor would she lend herself to BBC programme makers' pretence that he was.


To Yaxley Lennon and Nick Griffin, we must add another offensive personality for whom the BBC seems to have a soft spot lately, and that is the Israeli musician Gilead Atzmon. Now if the BBC wants to broadcast him on sax with his Orient House ensemble or whatever I've no objection. He is entitled to pursue his profession, and his music has given a lot of people pleasure. He only becomes  objectionable when he takes the saxophone out of his mouth.

But the BBC's Persian service, for instance, seems to have decided lately that its Iranian audience could not get enough of Atzmon on the Iranian government-sponsored Press TV, and they must have more of him assuring listeners he is not an antisemite before explaining his antipathy towards "Jewish identity" and other sins on the BBC.


If the BBC wanted to find an Israeli dissident to interview, there is no shortage to hand these days. There's Professor Ilan Pappe, author of 'The Ethic Cleansing of Palestine' , who is at Exeter, and Iraqi-born Avi Shlaim at Oxford. Miri Weingarten, of Physicians for Human Rights is here in London, as is journalist Rachel Shabi.  Moshe Machover, a founder of the left-wing group Matzpen is a professor emeritus of Queen Mary's College, and in touch with left-wing Iranians through his activity in Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI), which supports workers resisting the Islamic regime and opposes war and sanctions. Such people and their views might be of interest to the Iranian audience, even if they are not good sax players.

But unlike Atzmon, they have not taken sides with Holocaust deniers, hinted that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion might contain some truth, or spent their time denouncing the motives of Jews who are on the Left and involved in pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist campaigns. All of which makes me wonder what are the motives of the BBC in providing a platform for Atzmon?

Still, I see his latest interview is on You Tube, and being touted around as "superb" by David Icke's supporters. So maybe Icke too will soon be on the Beeb,  expounding his view that the Royal Family are descended from reptiles. At least that should be more entertaining than Atzmon. 

        

Whom they were watching

MAKING frequent visits to Broadmoor and Chequers, entertainer Jimmy Savile met deluded and dangerous creatures whom most of us would shun. (TOP) Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliff was just one. AND BELOW Jim 'll Fix It for Tory Boy to become Foreign Secretary. 

NOW the investigation is into who fixed things for Jim. 

REVELATIONS continue about the predatory sexual activities of the late Jimmy Savile, about the rumours and reports that were ignored or even supressed by people in authority, so that Savile could use his status as popular entertainer and charity worker as cover for alleged abuse of children and vulnerable patients.

Leaving aside their own role in not following up the stories about Savile which supposedly "everyone" knew, the newspapers, such renowned respecters of privacy, are falling on the BBC, roping in other suspects(all dead of course), and blaming "the Permissive 'Sixties"  (which so many of us missed), but that's the Mail  of course yearning back to authoritarian 1930s.

The NHS too has come under fire.

But while some have shown us pictures of Savile shaking hands with Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliff, in Broadmoor hospital, others have reminded us of his more frequent handshakes with Margaret Thatcher, and the times he was guest at Chequers. Underlining Savile's adoption by the Establishment, we learn that the government appointed him head of a task force to manage Broadmoor after the psychiatric hospital's management board was dismissed. 

Getting back to the BBC however, was it really that "permissive" back in those days, and did it really fail to check the background and extra-mural interests of employees?

Quite the opposite. Jimmy Savile must have been safe - or considered "safe" - because he was not considered "political".  Got on quite well with the Establishment in fact. Others had different experiences.

Michael Rosen is a well-known broadcaster and poet, who has been Children's Laureate,  has strong views on education and literacy, and frequently gets invited to visit schools. So far as I am aware there are no untoward rumours or allegations about him. But Mike has not always had an easy career path.

His first step into broadcasting came as a Graduate Trainee at the Beeb. A bright young lad with left-wing parents, Rosen made no secret of his own left-wing views. In 1972 he was sacked, told that no department in the BBC had a place for him.  "We think it would be better if you went freelance.’ In fact, at least two departments, Arts Features and Further Education, wanted to employ him but were prevented from doing so because there was a ‘security problem'. According to John Laird, who was in charge of Graduate Trainees, ‘I was called by the chairman of one board who said: "You’ll be glad to know we’ve appointed Rosen." Then he called again, embarrassed, and said it had been “blocked".'

 Michael Rosen obviously made it back to the microphones eventually. But it took some time and determination.


Film and TV director Roland Joffe received an Academy Award nomination for "The Killing Fields", and top prize at the 1986 Cannes film festival for "The Mission".In the spring of 1977 he was commissioned by the BBC to direct The Spongers, a new play by Jim Allen about the failures of the welfare state. Producer Tony Garnett informed the BBC’s Drama Department that he wanted to hire Joffe as the director. But there was an unusually long delay in confirming his appointment. Eventually Garnett was summoned by Shaun Sutton, Head of Drama, to his fifth-floor office at the Television Centre, Wood Lane.

Sutton looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘There is a problem with Joffe’s contract,’ he said. 'He hasn’t got BH (Broadcasting House) clearance.' Astonished, Garnett asked why. Sutton refused to give a reason except to mutter: 'It was the man in the mac in Broadcasting House.'

The attempt to blacklist Joffe had nothing to do with the BBC’s Drama Department. It had come from the Personnel Office at Broadcasting House on the advice of MI5. .What might have seemed like random decisions affecting this or that individual were part of a system.that had been in place since 1937.

"All BBC employees had a personnel file which included their basic personal details and work record. But there was also a second file. This included ‘security information' collected by Special Branch and MI5, who have always kept political surveillance on ‘subversives in the media’. If a staff member was shortlisted for a job this second file was handed to the department head, who had to sign for it. The file was a buff folder with a round red sticker, stamped with the legend SECRET and a symbol which looked like a Christmas tree. On the basis of information in this file, the Personnel Office recommended whether the person in question should be given the job or not. A former senior BBC executive recalls seeing one journalist’s security file, stamped with a Christmas tree symbol: 'For about twelve years it had recorded notes such as "has subscription to Daily Worker” or “our friends say he associates with communists and CND activists." It is fair to say that there were contemporary memos from personnel officials adding they thought this was ridiculous. But it was still on file.‘

The names of outside job applicants were submitted directly to C Branch of M5. They were then passed on to the F Branch ‘domestic subversion', whose F7 section looks at political ‘extremists', MP’s, lawyers, teachers and journalists. After consulting the registry of files, the names were fed into MI5’s computer, which contains the identities of about a million ‘subversives'.

Once MI5 had vetted an applicant their decision was given in writing to the BBC’s Personnel Office. MI5 never gave reasons for their recommendations. But, quite often, if they said a person was a ‘security risk', that was enough to blacklist him or her permanently. Members of board interviews were advised not to ask questions. And it was only when an executive or editor put pressure on the Personnel Department that MI5's decision was overruled.

 Extract from: Blacklist The Inside Story of Political Vetting, by Mark Hollingsworth and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Hogarth Press, LONDON, Published 1988 ISBN 0 7012 0811 2


When the information about MI5 vetting at the BBC became public in 1985, the Corporation tried to make out it had only affected a small number of staff, and been related to "sensitive" matters and security issues. Alasdair Milne, then Director-General, said: 'It may sometimes look foolish, but it is another source of information when you are trying to work out whether people are up to certain jobs; Clearly we are involved, a number of us, in very sensitive areas of material and the process of establishing that people can handle that sort of material is important, even in a democratic society.'“

In fact, the blacklist and vetting applied widely, and to departments and programes that have little to do with "sensitive" material.  Of course sometimes one can see reasons, though they are not usually given. There were "problems" raised about employing  a guy called Jeff Perks. Well he had been a member of the Communist Party. And while at the National Film School he had made a film with Mike Rosen about the Shrewsbury building pickets. Tory MPs did not like it. They still don't like things coming out about the Shrewsbury pickets. 

Yvette Vanson, known for her films about Steven Lawrence and about the miners in the Battle of Orgreave, was blacklisted when she first went for a job at the BBC because she had been in the Workers Revolutionary Party. Newsreader Anna Forde faced obstacles at the Beeb because she had a boyfriend who had been in the Young Communist League.


A young journalist who was given a three-month contract as a Researcher for Nationwide, the now defunct daily magazine programme, in February 1982 reported a rape by a Saudi Arabian army officer being concealed by Manchester police because of diplomatic pressure.

A few days after the item was broadcast he received a memo from his editor congratulating him on ‘an excellent story' and a fine start to his career at the BBC. But a week before his contract expired, he received a letter from the Personnel Department informing him that it would not be renewed. His editor, who had planned to retain him, protested to Personnel, who eventually conceded there were ‘security reasons’. The journalist had been a student activist at Manchester University, and then, briefly, a member of the small Maoist group, Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).

(Blacklist, Hollingsworth and Norton Taylor)

Maybe if the BBC and its security advisers had devoted less time and effort to vetting left-wing job applicants and members of staff, they could have done something useful, like taking some of their more Establishment and Tory-inclined stars to the vets.


http://www.bilderberg.org/mi5bbc.htm 

http://www.yvettevanson.com/profile-interview.php

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215910/Jimmy-Savile-What-Stoke-Mandeville-nurses-told-patients-Jimll-Fix-It-star-came-calling.html 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9606494/Jimmy-Savile-sex-scandal-government-to-investigate-Broadmoor-role.html 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2216489/Sir-Jimmy-Savile-set-Broadmoor-keys-How-sick-star-access-mentally-ill-patients.html

Syria: are we getting a true picture?

MASSACRE VICTIMS. But where, and whose? The BBC used this pic to illustrate its news, and they say "the camera does not lie", but the photographer who took the picture tells a different story.

THERE seems little doubt that Bashir Assad's regime in Syria is using massive military repression against its people, and has massacred civilians, just as his father did. Whether those fighting against the regime are all fighting for freedom and progress for the people is another matter. Some of them are at least equally politically capable of massacres, even if not deploying the same military hardware.

A recent article in Socialist Worker was headed "The two sides are not the same", but this grossly oversimplifies the conflict in Syria. There are more than two sides in Syria. There are left-wing forces opposing the regime, but there are also reactionary salafis and returned jihadists who would treat ordinary Syrians with democratic aspirations as at best expendable, and in fact an enemy to be fought.

The Saudi regime which is the most reactionary in the Middle East is sending money and arms to rebels in Syria, at the same time as it sends tanks and helicopters to gun down people fighting for their rights in Bahrain. But Saudi Arabia, besides wanting to remove the Assad regime as an ally of Iran, is a favoured ally and of course arms customer of the imperialist West.

Only last week the Saudis concluded a £1.6 billion contract for Hawk trainers and pilot training with BAE systems. This is a continuation of the massive al Yamamah agreement from Thatcher's days.

So there have been no recriminations over Saudi support for the Taliban, which was also partly aimed against Iran, no condemnations from Western politicians of armed infiltrators and death squads who came over the border from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, and not much said about reports that al Qaida has moved people into Libya and now Syria as well. (Remember the early days of the "war on terror" when we were told the CIA and MI6 could simply cut off its funds?)

The BBC may not be worst of news broadcasters, though Palestine Solidarity campaigners recently held a demonstration in London over the Beeb's failure or unwillingness to report many of the things happening in Occupied Palestine. We hear about Murdoch and Fox news.

But today there comes a heartfelt cry of anger from a news professional over the way the British corporation has misused his work. It should certainly give food for thought.

"Somebody is using illegaly one of my images for anti Syrian propaganda on the BBC web site front page.

"Today Sunday May 27 at 0700 am London time the attached image which I took in Al Mussayyib in Iraq on March 27, 2003 (see caption below) was front page on BBC web site illustrating the massacre that happen in Houla the Syrian town and the caption and the web site was stating that the images was showing the bodies of all the people that have been killed in the massacre and that the image was received by the BBC by an unknown activist. Somebody is using my images as a propaganda against the Syrian government to prove the massacre.

"Al Musayyib, Iraq - May 27, 2003
An Iraqi child jumps over a line of hundreds of bodies, in a school where they have been transported from a mass grave, to be identified. They were discovered in the desert in the outskirts of Al Musayyib, 40 km south of Baghdad. It has been estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 Iraqis had been reported missing in the region south of Baghdad. People have been searching for days for identity cards or other clues among the skeletons to try to find the remains of brothers, fathers, mothers, sisters and even children who disappeared when Saddam's government crushed a Shi'ite uprising following the 1991 Gulf War.

Marco Di Lauro
Photographer

The use of the picture could be a genuine mistake, perhaps the result of understandable haste to get a picture, and inadequate staff and resources for the news. Some professionals point to the danger of accepting pictures from just any source without checking.

As photographer David Hoffman puts it: "Will we see an explanation from the Beeb? This is what happens when the bean counters dump the experienced professionals in favour of free interns sourcing free pics".

Photo-journalist John D McHugh comments: "As professionals we abide by a code of conduct that outlets such as the BBC can trust, but by accepting and publishing anonymous, unverified submissions, they leave themselves open to this kind of deception. It also highlights the very real dangers associated with using photographs from an unknown source and/or citizen journalist. As professionals we abide by a code of conduct that outlets such as the BBC can trust, but by accepting and publishing anonymous, unverified submissions, they leave themselves open to this kind of deception."

This points to a much wider issue than Middle East coverage of course, in the way news media have been changing, and turning to non-professional (and cheaper)sources of material. Or as in this case, accepting what turns out to be pirated material recycled for a different news story!

All the same, I can't help suspecting the Beeb would have been more circumspect in accepting pictures for a different news story -as it is for reporting some news atories at all.

Finally though, as someone who regularly uses Facebook - from where I received this story about the misused recycled photograph and the photographer's understandable indignation - I am all too frequently asked to look at or share pictures which are supposed not just to illustrate some event but to clinch an argument or prove a point. Seldom do the pictures tell me anything I didn't know, and sometimes one feels embarassed to suggest to the person posting who is on "our" side that the picture they are using looks suspect or posed, so that if I wasn't already convinced it would cause me to have my doubts.

Here in the tale of even a genuine photograph being recycled is a reminder that, contrary to the old saying, the camera - and more especially its misused product - can lie!

Pan Am 103: A friend comments and makes some helpful corrections

In response to my previous posting about questions being raised over hidden evidence on Pan Am 103 and the Lockerbie disaster, a friend writes:

Interest in this case even at this late stage from anyone the left is
welcome: many thanks for your piece. The campaign fell instead to
politically moderate folk with a sense of justice and remarkable
staying power. Jim Swire has been inspirational; Christine Graham,
one of very few MSPs of merit, has been raising the issue for years;
Paul Foot wrote a Private Eye pamphlet in 2001. And so on. Whatever,
there are small but significant errors in your piece.

Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up by a remotely detonated bomb . . .
The detonator was not activated remotely but by a timer concealed in
a radio-cassette. Timers play a critical role in the story.

. . . alleging a Syrian-based group had arranged the bombing as a
gift to Iran.
Not just allegations but a strong case with Europe-wide police
investigations reaching an advanced stage. A good book (Lockerbie
- The Real Story by David Johnston, 1989) detailing the case
against the Syrian-backed PFLP-GC doesn't even mention Libya.

As Libyan leader Gaddafi sought better relations with the West he
was persuaded to let Al-Megrahi face trial in a Scottish court . . .
This is too simple. In the context of the sanctions crippling Libya's
economy, "sought better relations with the West" reads a bit like an
apology for the blockade.

Those who persuaded the regime to reconsider included Nelson Mandela and Scottish legal academic Robert Black QC. (Mandela was well disposed to Libya because of Gadaffi's
long-term material support for the anti-apartheid fight.) The two argued that fears that the accused would never get a fair trial in Britain might be answered by holding a trial elsewhere.

The US in particular wanted not a trial (given the poor evidence, it
might well have found the men innocent) but Gadaffi's head on a
block. Happy to help, senior pro-Labour law officers argued that
Scottish law explicitly prohibited a trail outwith Scotland. Black
showed that to be absurd. But al-Megrahi is adamant that the final
decision to stand trial was taken by the two accused, convinced as
they were that they would be cleared.

The trial being, in the event, a farce, Black and others have worked
honourably ever since to expose that. Mandela, to his great credit,
visited Megrahi in HMP Barlinnie a few years ago - few long-retired
elder statesmen would travel to a dump like Barlinnie to pledge
support for a pariah like al-Megrahi who, by the way, was not an
intelligence operative but a small-time sanctions buster, more Arthur
Dailey than spook.

Lockerbie bombing victims' relatives called for a public inquiry.
Some relatives have also campaigned tirelessly for an inquiry ever
since the trial.

the official report released in Scotland . . .
The SCCRC report was NOT released, it was leaked to The Herald. The
Scottish pretendy-government and Westminster played the blame game as
to who suppressed what but both were happy to keep it hidden even if
His Royal 'Eckness Prince Alec of Salmond has since huffed and puffed
about "justice being served". Aye, right.

Blair had been happy to seek a deal with Gadaffi by misusing that
rather odd Anglo-Libyan "Prisoner Transfer Agreement" as lubricant
but the PTA did not apply in Scotland. The decision to release
al-Megrahi was taken by Scottish Injustice Minister Kenny MacAskill
who seemed to hope he would quietly pop off within weeks as any good
wog should. (al-Megrahi would have died pretty much on cue given the
standard of palliative care to be had in HMP Greenock. To the
disappointment of many, he hasn't.)

MacAskill is one of that fearsome breed, Edinburgh lawyers, compared
to whom Freemasons with Vatican connections are as lambs. If it takes
controversy to cover for chums in a scandal, so be it. Duty calls.
The notion of Holyrood / Westminster collusion is advanced only by
those who do not understand just how much the Nats hate McLabour (and
vice versa) and do so as only those without substantive disagreements can.

I'd never argue that the bombing and proxy invasion to depose Gadaffi
was driven primarily by a need to cover up the Lockerbie scandal but
it seemed to be an added attraction given the zeal with which the US
and the Brits have since pressed for evidence-cooking by what passes
for a Libyan government.

showing that Megrahi had admitted regular visits to Malta to see a
woman friend . . .
Ashton's book confirms that al-Megrahi did have a lover in Malta.
What is sick about the story is that BBC hack Reevel Alderson was
given sight of critical documents on condition that he did not report
the dalliances as doing so would reveal the leak's source. It seems
that's just what the little shit did:
(http://www.megrahiyouaremyjury.net/?p=458)

BTW, al-Megrahi reportedly used secret passports to visit his lover
in Malta but not to travel there to blow up Pan Am 103. An oversight, perhaps?

David Bruce

Council and Company

NOBODY likes paying too much tax, and how some people manage to avoid it, by not being on PAYE for a start, is lately the subject of some envy and accusation, not to say admiration. Labour's Ken Livingstone has had to rebut suggestions of hypocrisy over his criticism of tax evasion, because his earnings from talks and articles etc are paid into a company, though as he points out this is quite normal, and ennables him to employ staff, rather than being salted away in an overseas tax haven.

These days many workers in ordinary jobs are self-employed of course, particularly when it suits big companies to have them take responsibilities without security. Some blacklisted workers such as electricians have had no option. But a report by BBC Radio 4's File on Four programme found something quite different.

"Almost 100 permanent posts at local councils are being filled by people paid through limited companies, the BBC has learned. Dozens of high-earners are allowed to make their own tax arrangements rather than be paid through the PAYE system. Public accounts committee chair Margaret Hodge described the situation as a "tax avoidance scheme, which is totally wrong".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17339374

As a former leader of Islington council back in its red flag-flying days, Margaret Hodge might take note of what's happening in its Labour neighbour.

"Hackney Council in London had the highest number, with 39 people in permanent posts paid through external companies", says the BBC report. That's not bad for what's been called the poorest borough in London, if not the country, and a council which has lost responsibility for some schools and estates because it was deemed unfit to run them.

I'd be interested to hear more about this from friends who live in the borough (one of them is a councillor), but meantime its interesting to read what happens lower down the scale, when for instance regular council staff are replaced by agency workers.

http://libcom.org/library/workers-report-general-conditions-conditions-generalisation-hackney-street-cleansing-dep

Moving over from Hackney in the east to Hammersmith in relatively prosperous (for some) west London, we read:

"In one case investigated by File on 4, the chief executive of a London council's housing arm was paid more than £900,000 ($1.4m) through his company over a four year period. Nick Johnson took up his post with Hammersmith and Fulham Homes Ltd in early 2008 after retiring from Bexley council in south London, where he had been chief executive.

His £900-a-day fee was paid into his company, Davies Johnson Ltd".

We've met Nick Johnson before in this blog. He's the partner of Kate Davies, or Kate Marshall as used to be, back when she was a leading member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Nowadays she is chief executive of the Notting Hill Housing Trust, a charity, though don't go mixing her up with the volunteers you might find working in charity shops.

http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2010/02/notting-hill-but-not-much-trust.html

Here's a report in the respectably Tory Daily Mail about Nick Johnson, which seems to shows what an enterprising fellow he is:

A council chief who retired on a gold-plated £50,000-a-year pension on the grounds of ill-health walked into a new publicly funded £260,000 job four months later.

Yet despite sparking a fresh row over extravagant town hall salaries, Nick Johnson – who earns more than twice as much as the Prime Minister – insists his pay packet is ‘really not a lot’.

Mr Johnson, 57, is eligible for the full income from his final salary pension scheme because he left his £203,000 job as chief executive of Bexley Council in South London on health grounds.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325261/Council-chief-quits-203k-job-50k-pension-lands-260k-job-keeps-pension.html#ixzz1p2alnjBa

I guess the government could cite this as an example of success in getting people with ill-health back into work again, though I don't suppose many will do so well financially.

One of Tory Hammersmith and Fulham council's leading lights is Councillor Harry Phibbs, one time Federation of Conservative Students star whom even Norman Tebbitt found too right-wing. He has been known to criticise profligate spending by other public bodies.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1301568/Bloated-BBC-delivering--face-cuts.html

So it is nice to see the council showing its more generous side in paying Nick Johnson so well. (He for his part has acted as a council spokesman on occasion) But after opposition councillors raised concerns about the arrangements, the accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was asked to report on whether the council risked facing a bill for unpaid tax.

In a confidential report seen by the BBC, PwC told the council:

"Normally the position of chief executive is considered to be an office holder. On that basis there would be a medium-to-high risk that there was a PAYE obligation on Hammersmith and Fulham Homes Ltd." The report went on to say Mr Johnson's particular duties were such that he might be able to claim his arrangements were lawful - but that the taxman might take a different view.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17339374

Then again, Her Majesty's Customs and Revenue can be known to tread very carefully when approaching people at a certain level.

Another gap in the BBC's map?

IMPLYING Palestine is not free was "contentious", says the Beeb.

AMONG my prized posessions is a map. It came into our family's possession when my Dad bought a big old picture frame for summat else, and cleaned it, revealing this map of the world that was printed in 1801. Beside old ill-defined regions with names lost in legend and the mists of time, such as Tartary and Cathay, it has countries yet unsettled, like "New Holland" - Australia as we call it today.

And blank spaces, with gaps in coastlines where the mapmakers of the day were honest enough to admit that the lands lay unexplored. Terra Incognita, as they say. I'm told the map is not rare or valuable, but it was a great aid to my education and I'm only sorry I've nowhere to hang it now.

Having empty spaces and missing names from a map is another matter when the places have been erased, and it determines your picture of current affairs, and that of those who depend on you for their awareness. When it signifies not just places you have not been, but where you have decided, or been told, not to go.

I've remarked before on the US customs officers who undermined their government's official "two states" position by refusing to clear imports of Taybeh beer on the grounds they were labelled "brewed in Palestine", and they said there was no such country as Palestine. It made light of Obama's talk of pre-1967 borders, but foreshadowed US opposition to UNESCO recognition of Palestine, and Newt Gingrich's arrogant assertion that Palestinians are an "invented people".

Gingrich once seemed to have different views, urging Arab Americans to invest in Palestine, but standing for the top office is an expensive business, and some of Gingrich's current sponsors are the kind who think Palestinians ought not to exist and have no right to a place on the map.
OK, so American politicians are the best money can buy, you may sneer, but what's the BBC's excuse?

Here's an item from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's website:

BBC Trust rules in favour of censoring 'Palestine'

The BBC has denied it was wrong to edit the word 'Palestine' from an artist's peformance on Radio 1Xtra, but has said its producers may have been 'overcautious'. This final ruling issued at the end of January, marks the end of an eight month campaign by PSC to hold the BBC to account for its bias in censoring the lyrics 'I can scream Free Palestine for my pride/still pray for peace' from a rap performed by the artist, Mic Righteous, on 1Xtra. In an extraordinary exchange of correspondence, during which the BBC's excuses for cutting out 'Palestine' grew ever more bizarre, one producer wrote: 'Referencing Palestine is fine, but implying that it is not free is the contentious issue'. PSC would like to thank all our members who wrote to the BBC on this issue, and especially those who carried on the campaign for eight months. Read PSC's press release, New Statesman article, the Washington Post and Left Foot Forward blog on the BBC's decision. PSC's Amena Saleem has written in Electronic Intifada today about the BBC's ingrained bias against Palestine. Follow the Twitter debate @PSCupdates PSC campaigns actively against media bias, and the Mic Righteous campaign is just one of many we instigate and run. Our aim is to try and change media coverage of Palestine for the better.

http://www.palestinecampaign.org/

I'm not a great fan of rap music and its use in propaganda (nor of the endless circulation of posed photographs and suspect videos ) but I guess that's a generational thing. It's certainly no excuse for censoring them. Why should we accept that the name "Palestine" is unmentionable?

I used to find it irritating when some Palestinian organisations always referred to Israel if at all in inverted commas, and more often "the Zionist entity". As though pretending it was not there could make it go away. But they were refusing to recognise a state which was denying their rights and oppressing them. Whereas Palestine, whether you are referring to the clearly defined geographical area of the mandate, or those parts of it not taken up by the internationally recognised state of Israel, is not oppressing anybody.

But nor is it yet free, as anyone can ascertain by noticing the presence of barbed wire and Israeli soldiers, trying to travel without encountering a road block, or seeing those killed or injured by the occupiers. If the BBC reporters are unable to reach places like Bil'in (those inadequate maps again!) or have been advised against venturing into the Anata hills at night to see Palestinian homes being demolished, they could at least stick around Ben Gurion airport where they might have seen the Birmingham delegation that was not allowed to deliver childrens books collected for a Palestinian school. They might even have interviewed a friend of mine who was prevented from visiting his in-laws, or asked why Professor Norman Finkelstein was treated as a "security risk".

But according to the powers that be at the BBC, implying that Palestine is not free (oh gosh I'm rapping) is a "contentious issue", don't you see?

As it happens this is not the first or only time I've noticed the BBC's erasure of some countries or nationalities.

During the early part of the Bosnian war I was puzzled one day to hear a BBC news reader saying that "Muslim authorities" were investigating the suspicious death of an aid worker, near the town of Zenica. Thinking it was strange that such a matter was being entrusted to the religious authorities, I came into my room where the television showed not some cleric in a green turban but a policeman, in a police car, going up a hill.

Then it dawned on me. Although the British government, perhaps under pressure, had recognised Bosnia and Hercegovina, the Foreign Office under Douglas Hurd (and some British military commanders) were carrying on as if Bosnia was just -"the Muslims", one of three warring factions supposedly consumed by age-old hatreds, and neither entitled to defend itself nor get a fair hearing on the Beeb. The term "the Muslims" became de rigur, so that the only time you heard the word "Bosnian" was when Karadzic's forces were referred to as the "Bosnian Serbs". No wonder the poor listeners and viewers got confused. I think they were meant to be.

When Bosnian army General Divjak, who happened to be an ethnic Serb, came to London, I wondered how the BBC would describe him. Likewise Bosnia's ambassador in Washington, Sven Alkalaj, currently Foreign Minister, whom being of Sefardi background they might have to introduce as a "Muslim Jew"! But I need not have worried. So far as I know such visitors simply did not make it to the microphones, unlike the Serb information Centre in London, (staffed by Royalists!), who seemed to have a season ticket to the BBC.

If that was down to government pressure and/or old Establishment links, the reason for preventing the name Palestine disturbing listeners is less clear. But it goes with the BBC's refusal to broadcast a charities' appeal for Gaza, as if the amount of damage and suffering inflicted on people there was also "contentious", and with the failure to cover many issues and struggles in the occupied territories , even when internationals like Nobel prizewinner Mairead Corrigan have been injured.

This week some villagers in the Jordan valley went on humger strike hoping to attract world attention. The French-based company Veolia which is out to expand its contracts in Britain, is implicated in occupation activties in the Jordan valley, as well as in the ring of settlements around east Jerusalem. Let's see what publicity is given to the hunger strikers, trying to resist occupation by peaceful means. I wish PSC and others trying to oppose media bias and censorship the best of luck.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/twilight-zone-this-is-no-life-1.410809