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Cameron Could Be Britain’s De Gaulle: So Don’t Vote For Him

 in Sleaze by | View Comments

Bruce Anderson is becoming a caricature of the golf club saloon bar bore. After his enthusiastic espousal of torture, he now gives us this piece:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-cameron-could-be-our-de-gaulle-1960885.html

Actually I agree Cameron could be our De Gaulle: a posturing, arrogant mountebank with a cult of personality, repressive right wing views and an overweening sense both of his own importance and of his country’s true place in the world.

Only genuine nutters like Anderon would see that as a reason to vote for him.

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They Have Got The Wrong Man

 in Ghana by | View Comments

I am very sorry that former Presidential Chief of Staff Kwadwo Mpiani is on trial in Ghana.

It is undeniably true that corruption spiralled in the last couple of years of President Kuffour’s second term, and particularly after the untimely death of Finance Minister Baah-Wiredu. I have a hypothesis, based on wide international experience, that it is a worldwide phenomenon that corruption increases exponentially from around the seventh year in power. In Ghana, it happened to the Rawlings governments too.

I have written in detail about this, and I have argued that it is essential that corruption in Ghana is punished, so that it is not thought that senior politicians have immunity. Ghana must not develop Nigeria’s culture of corruption.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/02/the_uk_and_corr.html

But it seems a great pity that Kwadwo Mpiani has been singled out for the first high profile tria since the NDC came to power. Kwadwo is a hate figure for the then opposition and now governing NDC; I know from many conversations with senior NDC figures that they regarded him as the hub of corrupt dealings.

But in fact, this is the opposite of the truth. Kwadwo was deliberately excluded from the worst examples of corrupt dealings – he was kept out of Sahara, Balkan and Zakhem. This is precisely because Mpiani was not part of the corrupt clique who kidnapped the financial control of the closing stages of the NPP government.

I say this in his defence, despite the fact that Kwadwo and hs brother Sarpong in recent months launched a number of really nasty personal attacks on me and my family in the Ghanaian media. I say it simply because it is true.

It is also interesting that the only high profile corruption trial so far is brought over the Ghana @ 50 celebrations. They were indeed far too extravagant for a developing country like Ghana, but there is one other interesting feature. They are closed, finished, over and done with. There is no continuing revenue stream.

http://news.myjoyonline.com/politics/201004/45113.asp

That is in contrast to the much bigger contracts suspected of corruption, like Balkan, Vodafone, GIA, and Zakhem. These are continuing projects with big money still flying around. Is it wrong to conjecture that projects with continuing revenue flows are less likely to be prosecuted, because money is still available to buy off officials and politicians?

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Crisis is a Greek Word

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The economic crisis in Greece has many ironies, one of which is that an appalling fiscal mess, left by a very right wing government, is the responsibility of a left wing government to clear up. It is the same Augean task (to stick with Greek cultural heritage) as will face whoever takes over from this very right wing government in the UK.

Being nothing but a lowly party member, I cannot pretend that the Mervyn King scenario had not occurred to me too. I had considered that a Cameron administration, with a tiny majority, propped up by some Northern Irish bigots, would inflict such pain on the majority of our society that, before falling after a few years, they would put the Tories out for a generation at least.

In so doing, they would greatly enhance the cause of Scottish and Welsh independence, and with the Lib Dems the second most popular party and the challenger in the large majority of Tory seats, the Tory demise would sweep in a radical change in more promising circumstances. All that had occurred to me.

But it was of course the Thatcher scenario. She was the least popular Prime Minister ever. But then she engineered into a massively popular war the crass Argentinian invasion of the Falklands , and never looked back. The Tories could pull such a trick again. Accompanying another war, they might crank up still further the appalling reduction of our civil liberties.

On top of which we need to pin down electoral reform now, while there is the best ever chance. PR and a 100% elected House of Lords will transform the political landscape of the UK for ever. Let’s look for an outcome that secures that – it is more important than the pleasant prospect of watching Cameron fall on his arse. So I am out again today campaigning for the Lib Dems. This is the first chance to change the two party system for a generation.

Back to Greece. The European ideal – which at its internationalist core I regard as a good thing – is suffering from overreach. The Eurocracy have always been expansionist, and taken the view that to secure expansion is more important than the detail. Thus Greece and Portugal in particular were admitted to the Euro when everyone knew that it was a fudge, and that their dim relationship with the convergence criteria was based on fake statistics.

The same is true with the accession criteria, which in areas like corruption, transparency and the rule of law Bulgaria and Romania were deemed to meet, when plainly they did not. On human rights, dreadful treatment of their Roma was ignored. All that too will come back to haunt the Eu.

The problem with faking the convergence criteria, and the fundamental flaw in the Euro, is that there is no real mechanism to enforce a broadly similar fiscal policy across the single currency. The system of peer review relies on the (in this case Greek) government’s own falsified statistics, and has few teeth even if it had good information. The result in effect is that individual countries can practice free quantitive easing – just print themselves money. This devalues the money everyone else has in their pocket, as the Eurozone is now noticing rather sharply.

We are already lending Greece more money through the IMF than the amount we would need to give if we were part of the Eurozone rescue package. I do not think these loans will halt the markets, who have identified the fundamental weakness in the Euro’s structure and will go for it mercilessly.

There is much speculation that Europe should boot Greece out of the Euro and we should see a return of the drachma. I think broadly that should happen. But there is an alternative to the return of the drachma – which Greece would simply create far too much of, and would soon have toilet paper status. Greece could be kicked out of the Euro, but still use the Euro as its currency, merely losing the ability to create it, with the government having to raise the money by bonds and import cash physically from another European state. That is on a more institutionalised and thorough scale the way the dollar works in countries with junk economies. Once Greece has really reformed it can rejoin the Euro properly.

Humiliating, but it is actually a very Greek idea. King Croesus’ Lydia was the first state whose currency was so sound it was used internationally. It remains a famously good idea over millennia.

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Jack Straw Faces Disbarment From Parliament and One Year in Jail

 in The Election by | View Comments

Jack Straw is guilty of the criminal offence of treating – offering food and drink to electors as an induucement to vote – under the Representation of the People’s Act 1983, Clause 114 (2). The maximum penalty is one year in prison. As a corrupt electoral practice it brings disbarment from parliament for life – including the House of Lords.

The evidence against Straw is overwhelming. Free food was given to hundreds of Blackburn Muslim voters at a rally in his constituency on Sunday 25 April 2010. Speeches were made specifically calling on the recipients of the free food to vote for Jack Straw in Blackburn. He also made a speech urging them to vote for him, and he approached voters individually to ask for their votes in the hall where the free food was being given out.

Affidavits have been sworn to this effect and handed to the police. You can see them here:

Download file

A complaint about him has been formally made to Blackburn Police and given police report ref LC-201004271237.

Treating is not an obscure offence. It is number 2 in the Electoral Commission guidebook for police officers

http://www.tinyurls.co.uk/I2081

It is also detailed in the Association of Chief Police Officers “Guidance on Preventing and Detecting Electoral Malpractice” .

Download file

At Page 22 of the ACPO guide, there is important information on how Blackburn Police should be conducting this investigation:

1.1Suggested action for all cases:

preserve evidence

respect the secrecy of sealed documents and seek advice before opening

when election documents become evidence in a potential crime, the method of preservation by the police should include consultation with the elections office to agree a mutually beneficial way forward

invite the suspected party for interview under caution or consider Section 24(e) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 (as amended by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005)

consider advice from the Special Crime Division of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)

inform the Returning Officer and the Electoral Commission via police SPOC

advise Police National Information and Computer Centre (PNICC) in scheduled return of all allegations and outcomes or immediately if there is a major allegation

In fact I expect them to avoid telling the Police National Information and Computer Centre – the authorities will try to bury this quickly and corruptly in Blackburn. There is a plaque proudly displayed in the entrance of the police station where I reported this treating. It states that the station was opened by Lord Taylor of Blackburn – the highly crooked Labour Party politician who was last year suspended from the House of Lords for Corruption –

http://richardwilsonauthor.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/sunday-times-exposes-uk-government-corruption-labour-members-of-the-house-of-lords-agree-to-take-cash-for-backing-legislation-changes/

The police station plaque bears another name also – Lord Adam Patel of Blackburn, who was put in the House of Lords because of his work as an “enforcer” of the Blackburn Muslim vote for Jack Straw, and who was himself present and implicated in the present instance of massive treating – see the affidavits above.

I am therefore sending copies of the dossier to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to be sure it is investigated properly, and the full rigour of the law applied to Mr Straw.

Christopher Hope of the Telegraph contacted Jack Straw’s constituency office, who gave one lie and two irrelevancies in reply to this accusation of treating. Straw’s defence is:

1) That people were asked to make a voluntary contribution to the cost of the food.

That appears to be a simple lie by Straw. All of the witnesses to whom I spoke – and I interviewed many others who were too scared to swear an affidavit – said they were never asked to make any contribution.

2) That the Returning Officer had approved the arrangements in advance.

He can’t. Straw’s people are, to say the least, very chummy with the Returning Officer. But Treating is a criminal offence and the Returning Officer can no more OK it than he can OK burglary. The Returnng Officer has no role at all in determining whether treating has taken place, which is solely a matter for the police, crown prosecution service and courts. Mr Tom Hawthorn of Electoral Commission HQ in London has confirmed this to me. It is also made very clear here:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/guidance_issued_on_eros_consent

3) That the advertisements for the event did not mention that free food will be provided

This is a complete irrelevance introduced by Jack Straw. Prior advertisement is nowhere a condition of the offence. The offence is of offering food and drink to influence someone to vote. Crimes are not mitigated because you do not advertise them in advance.

As I see it, the Police now have to act. Either Straw has to be charged under Representation of the People Act 1983, 114(2), or I have to be charged under the Representation of the People Act 1983, 106 – for making a false statement about a candidate.

If no action is taken against Straw, I shall be advertising free meals for anybody in Blackburn who wishes to vote against him.

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YouGov and Murdoch Boost Cameron Again

 in The Election by | View Comments

Last night’s YouGov poll gave Cameron a full five percentage points more than the average of the four other respected polling organisations who effectively asked the same question at the same time.

http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/04/30/is-this-camerons-platform-for-downing-street/

The YouGove polls are simply a part of the Murdoch/Mail propaganda blitz to push Cameron into No 10.

In my last thread I posted the email I sent last night to Stephan Shakespeare, CEO of YouGove, asking whether yet again YouGove had fixed their poll by opening their online polling for a very brief window immediately after Cameron had finished summing up and before the others had summed up.

Shakespeare has replied that he does not know and he has nothing to do with the polling operation (which he recently defended in an article on Conservative Home).

Personally I find it rather difficult to believe that former Conservative parliamentary candidate and Jefrrey Archer campaign manager Stephan Shakespeare was not paying the closest attention as last night’s debate figures were produced by YouGov for Murdoch, his firm’s biggest paymaster.

I also find it even more difficult to believe that he could not get the answer to my question in moments if he genuinely did not know the answer.

It is also worth noting that the threatening letter from YouGov’s libel lawyer Olswang

Download file

attempts no denial that this really was a YouGov poll:

pushpolling.jpg

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Debate Chat #38 – Most Vicious Political Attack of the Night

 in Uncategorized by | View Comments

To everybody’s surprise, YouGov for Murdoch have produced a post debate poll showing a far greater lead for Cameron than any other poll. So YouGov have made the most vicious political attack of the night. I have just sent this email.

To:

[email protected]

Dear Sleazy Stephan,

Could you kindly confirm whether you again opened voting in your post debate poll as soon as Cameron finished his summing up, or did you wait until everyone had finished summing up this time?

Craig

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