Figures indicate the number of minutes into the broadcast at which the item in question commences.
Brian Gerrish has David Scott (Northern Exposure, Twitter @albion_rover), on video link and Mike Robinson behind the technical desk.
2’] Exaro News has restated to the UK Column its assertion that BBC Panorama used Exaro material (interview footage broadcast on 6 October) without permission.
There is “a stunning silence” from the BBC, says Gerrish.
If the state broadcaster can “simply hoover up other people’s material”, we are in a “very dangerous situation,” he adds.
3’] “Smart borders” initiative: France is pressurising other Schengen Agreement member states to collect data at borders on “EU citizens” as well as third-party nationals.
Germany has just legislated today to enable data collection on telephone records, comparable with Theresa May’s recent “snoopers’ charter”.
Robinson asks where these policies are coming from and why it is “an increasing trend Europe-wide”.
5’] Scott’s opinion: “it’s towards a Big State”.
Gerrish adds that the money behind these developments should be followed.
Robinson discusses Bank of England “ring-fencing” proposals supposedly to isolate failed banks from viable ones.
The deputy head of the Prudential Regulation Authority (which has recently been subsumed by the BoE), Paul Fisher, recently pointed out:
“Banks that have a range of activities would have an interest in using cheap, protected retail funding to engage in its most risky activities” — what Robinson calls “casino banking activities”. “This is the fundamental aspect of [the concept of] too big to fail,” Robinson adds.
7’] Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has lied that HM Government would not backtrack on ring-fencing rules. Despite this, ring-fenced banks will after all be able to shuttle money from retail banking to investment banking through dividends, and the capital requirements are far lower than had been expected.
8’] Robinson concludes that the only means of prevention is complete separation along the lines of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act in the U.S.
Scott points out that deposit guarantees are merely virtual. If everyone’s guaranteed £85,000 (to be reduced to £75,000 next year) is demanded simultaneously, there is no way that it can be repaid.
Besides, Scott adds, deposits are unsecured loans to banks with banks not actually obliged to pursue savers’ best interests.
10’] We are told that our money is safe and that “all the regulators” will make sure that banks are sound, but “the very core of fractional reserve banking is that the money isn’t actually in the bank”. So “fractional reserve banking, as a beast, is inherently insolvent” and the rest of the effort is in covering this up through apparent protection of the saver.
This simply means that restraint is not at issue for bankers. The old regulatory system had inherent caution. But when the U.S. banking crisis of 2008 hit, there were 117 state regulators of banking and they were all ineffective.
11’] Gerrish adds that a free press is what is needed in this situation. This is under threat, as will be discussed below.
12’] The Spectator blog “Lord Leveson’s legacy could be the death of investigative journalism” by leading investigative journalist Nick Cohen states ominously:
“Later this year, or more probably in the spring of 2016, the following scene may play out on the steps of the High Court in London. An editor will appear before the cameras and say: ‘I am instructing my reporters stop investigative journalism until the law is changed.’
The naïve who have failed to educate themselves on the assault on press freedom in Britain will be more confused than outraged.”
Robinson explains that the problem is with payment of legal fees in Leveson’s arrangements: “even if you win a libel case in the courts, you’ll still be obliged to pay the legal fees of both sides”, and this will mean “effectively the end of risk-taking”: newspapers will no longer bother publishing investigative articles.
There is also a need for research by UK Column viewers and others into the sources of funding of an organisation calling itself The Impress Project — it is involved with these plans.
See also: http://impressproject.org/tag/leveson-inquiry
13’] Referring to Tuesday’s news www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-13th-october-2015 at 33’, Robinson reminds viewers of the article “Is The End Of Independent News In Sight?” and particularly the threat of draconian copyright legislation using the “three so-called free trade agreements of TPP, TTIP and TISA” (see UK Column News from the 7th October and also Tuesday’s news at 38’). If this is implemented, websites will be unable to link to other websites’ material.
14’] The Common Purpose-established HackedOff campaign has been driving much of the Leveson recommendations, which became a public scandal in 2013 when the Daily Mail lifted UK Column material on Common Purpose involvement. Robinson focuses on the key people at HackedOff and reads the CV of Joint Executive Director Daisy Cooper which reveals that her previous affiliations, in most-recent-first order, include:
Lewes Town Council (Sussex)
Lewes District Council
Operations and Projects Manager, Hacked Off
Liberal Democrat Party presidential candidate
Stakeholder Manager, Department for International Development
Director, Commonwealth Advisory Bureau
Strategic and Technical Advisor, Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group
Strategic Planning Officer, Commonwealth Secretariat
Project Officer for UN Reform, Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit
Constitutional Law Seminar Tutor, Law Department, University of Leeds
Liberal Democrat Party parliamentary candidate for Suffolk Coastal constituency
Editorial Advisory Board member, The Round Table: Commonwealth Journal for International Affairs
Her “sidekick”, as Robinson notes, on the HackedOff board is Dr Evan Harris (a former Oxford MP for the Liberal Democrats famed for his love of abortion and euthanasia).
16’] Robinson notes from the above CV that the Commonwealth, once again, is key to Common Purpose global plans for regulation.
“Why is someone with that kind of CV now running a campaign to regulate the press?”, he asks.
Robinson refers to the Royal Over-Seas League / Round Table / Commonwealth Association document “Commonwealth organisations and the Peoples’ Commonwealth: common purpose or parting of the ways?” from which it is clear that there is “common purpose” (in lower case) behind these press-gagging efforts even when the organisation Common Purpose is not overtly involved. This even extended to providing staff to the Leveson Inquiry itself.
Robinson adds that another organisation from the Common Purpose stable, CSC Leaders, which describes itself, in the words of its Plymouth-based director Sam Stewart, as “an assembly of 100 of the most exceptional individuals from across the Commonwealth … [to] build global relationships needed by the leaders of tomorrow. CSCLeaders is the renewal of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences and represents a partnership between HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences (UK Fund) and Common Purpose”.
18’] Responding to this, Scott points out that the UK and her daughter countries once upheld openness in public discourse and government and matters of the press. “We realised a long time ago … that criticism of our wise overlords was essential to maintain freedom”, hence why these developments are so worrying.
Scotland, with its smaller population and with its unique institutions critically dependent on “the right people acting in the right way”, has fewer checks and balances than other Anglophone countries. A couple of law firms have been able to gain shocking levels of control in the Edinburgh establishment, which non-Scots, even in English-speaking nations, can hardly believe. These law firms have been found not to act in their clients’ best interests and threaten the press with impunity.
20’] Gerrish says that press control in the UK is not yet total by any means, as little articles still give “pieces of the jigsaw”. Banks and HM Government have not obtained press dictatorship yet.
“We mustn’t be under any illusion that it can get much worse … we must defend the liberties we have,” Scott says.
The tendency, Gerrish says, is that people who disagree with the government will be locked up in psychiatric institutions.
22’] The Richard Littlejohn article is summarised by Gerrish (on screen) as another hatchet job to shut up Tom Watson MP (see yesterday’s news). Littlejohn’s assertions, in Gerrish’s summary, are:
Not a shred of evidence
Deranged witch hunt
Nothing credible
Leon Brittan has been exonerated
Myriad of inquiries — nothing much achieved — pervert priests will always be with us
Call a halt to this farce of investigations right now
If they do name a few guilty men, they will all be dead anyway
Gerrish summarises Littlejohn’s attitude as: “Even if they are abusing children, well, we’ve just got to let them get on with it.”
He uses “vile language”, displaying “not one shred of concern for child abuse victims” and undertaking no investigative journalism.
24’] Littlejohn’s Twitter profile appears to have been hacked by someone he has crossed, but his own website (shown on screen) shows him dipping his pen in blood/poison. This shows his “callous disinterest”, Gerrish says.
25’] Scott mentions that BBC TV programme This Week with Andrew Neil featured Bea Campbell, an authoritative concerned speaker of long standing on the topic of child abuse, being sighed and tutted at by Neill.
Former Conservative MP Michael Portillo, also sitting opposite Campbell in the show, had “very interesting body language; he looked exceptionally uncomfortable … fidgeting.” He then laid into Campbell ferociously, cutting across her replies repeatedly.
Scott continues: “[Portillo] said several times that ‘we’re picking names at random’.” Yet there is nothing random about the names identified from witness testimony by Chris Fay and Bill Maloney, says Scott.
Neill then pressed Campbell about evidence, but she could not bring much of that into the public domain owing to an ongoing police investigation.
28’] Andrew Neill then incredibly asked Campbell live on air to give evidence that the former Home Secretary had been implicated in offences.
29’] The Spectator carries an article by Alistair Jackson: “Why won’t the Met speak out on Tom Watson’s biggest claim?”
Gerrish points out that although Jackson is “boasting” that he spent much of the last three years working for BBC Panorama, “he didn’t bother to speak to the victims”. His article is “pretty unpleasant stuff.”
Gerrish has also challenged Jackson on this and awaits a reply.
30’] The Guardian reports: “Submissions to Theresa May’s child sex abuse inquiry accidentally deleted”
Gerrish summarises that Goddard, “a 63rd-rate judge”, is “being paid half a million pounds a year to lose information”.
31’] The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse website carries an apology which simply invites victims whose data was “instantly and permanently deleted” to resubmit it — so that it can be lost again, Gerrish comments.
Her payment is shown on screen as Gerrish builds up a screen diagram of the extent of the “Goddard Inquiry scam” of fake independence, with concentric rings of public bodies around Justice Goddard.
Her IT support is believed to be provided by the Home Office.
NSPCC staff are filtering all the calls to the Inquiry, and the UK Column can find no evidence that the police have conducted background checks into the people manning those phones. The assurance has been given by the Inquiry that this arrangement is “only temporary”.
33’] Melanie Shaw update: Gerrish is certain that the drive by Nottingham City Council to house her in a room with drug users all around her is a deliberate attempt to break her down and lose the evidence that she can provide.
Gerrish adds: “To be fair to Goddard, she might not know it’s going on, because the Home Office is censoring her mail.”
35’] Scott responds, pointing out the narrow scope of the equivalent inquiry in Scotland and raising the question of “who guards the guards”. There is no independence, he notes.
37’] Scott updates viewers on Robert Green’s case against Dame Elish Angiolini. Green has now had a reply from the Supreme Courts at the Court of Session in Edinburgh (which remains the supreme court for criminal matters in Scotland, unlike Scots civil matters, for which the Supreme Court in London has jurisdiction).
Green had been sued by Angiolini, the then Procurator Fiscal (chief prosecutor) for Scotland, in relation to the Hollie Greig abuse allegations from Aberdeen. He discovered that Angiolini’s court costs were being paid from a secret slush fund within the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), the Scottish state prosecuting body of which she was then head, even though the case was civil and COPFS has an exclusively criminal-law remit. (See UK Column News from the 2nd October from 53’.)
Green wrote on 30 September 2015 to ask the Supreme Courts of Scotland about this.
He has now had a reply (shown on screen) from a Miss Yvonne Anderson, on behalf of Lord Stewart at the Court, which includes a quotation by Lord Stewart (last two paragraphs of first page):
“Mr Green currently has two complaints, as I understand his letter. The first complaint is that in a civil action against him at the instance of Dame Elish Angiolini QC he did not have the benefit of legal aid while Dame Elish, as he has now discovered, had her representation paid for out of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service [COPFS] budget.
The second complaint is that COPFS will not release to Mr Green details of the amount of fees and outlays paid by COPFS on Dame Elish’s behalf. The reason for non-disclosure is said to be that disclosure would be likely to substantially prejudice the prevention or detection of crime and the administration of justice.
“As to the first point, my understanding of Mr Green’s concern is that he was disadvantaged in the now-concluded litigation by an inequality of arms although I am not clear that he goes so far as to state that a substantial injustice has resulted. It is not my role to give advice as to what Mr Green’s remedy might be, if there is a remedy. I very much regret that there is nothing I can do in a personal or a professional capacity to address his concerns.”
This constitutes admission by the highest justice in Scotland that inequality of arms (unbalanced representation in court) is acceptable if there is not a great uproar about the miscarriage of justice that ensues, and that disclosures by the prosecuting authority can be prevented by the specious claim that they would render the state unable to tackle crime.
38’] Scott summarises: Green was denied all legal aid while, simultaneously and secretly, all Angiolini’s civil law fees were (unlawfully) paid by COPFS. This has now been acknowledged by the Supreme Court and is “an injustice that must be addressed”.
39’] Scott announces that Audit Scotland has commenced inquiries into concerns about the use of public monies for court costs, with particular reference to the Angiolini v. Green case. More information can therefore be expected in the coming weeks.
40’] Gerrish says that Green has already been receiving threatening bailiffs’ letters even while the legal dispute over Angiolini’s legal funding continues.
41’] What is remarkable, Scott adds, is that Green gave Angiolini’s representatives a 56-day notice period to answer questions about the funding of her case, which expired, and thus the matter should have been considered abandoned at law. Only six months later did Angiolini’s team begin hounding Green again.
This is “not only flying in the face of common law and good honourable practice with financial matters, but also seems to be a very strange decision when there’s ongoing investigations by public auditors”, Scott says.
42’] The claim by Lloyd Quinan (see yesterday’s news at 24’) that Unionist Scots are bad parents is reviewed by Gerrish as a segue into today’s Spectator article “What Scottish professors have to fear from Nicola Sturgeon’s power grab” and coverage by NO2NP campaign http://no2np.org/blog against the Scottish Government’s Named Person scheme of compulsory state guardians of children.
43’] BBC Radio Scotland’s Kaye Adams Programme held a panel on the Named Person scheme in Inverness on 7 October (extensively written up by NO2NP), which Scott attended (photo shown on screen), and this was also covered by the Alice Through the Looking Glass blog.
Scott notes that all those on the “government payroll” who appeared on this programme, hosted in an Inverness primary school where Highland Council has been piloting Named Person since 2008, were unsurprisingly very much in favour of the scheme. Second from right in Scott’s photo is Bill Alexander of Highland Council, “the apostle of the Named Person scheme”.
The key issue on which there was “evasion from Aileen Campbell” (the Scottish Minister for Children and Young People) and “duplicity from Bill Alexander” during the panel was the issue of consent.
44’] Bill Alexander was also permitted a nasty smear at NO2NP which Adams did not challenge: he said that a NO2NP campaigner was a Christian and therefore driven by homophobia.
Christine Cameron, the school’s headteacher, when asked what would be done with parents who did not want her (for example) as their child’s Named Person, replied, “Well then it would be my job to convince them that I’m here to help …”.
45’] Why not make the Named Person scheme opt-in, Aileen Campbell was asked. “And she fumbled and hedged and hemmed and hawed.”
The whole scene on the panel was “very incestuous”, Scott notes: there were —
three Highland councillors
two headteachers and their state boss
one of whom is Named Person for the other one’s children
In short, a small coterie of backers, all chummy with each other.
But “that [sort of scenario] is not the concern,” Scott points out; the concern is when this is rolled out universally.
When it comes to conflicts on medical opinion and a child’s best interests in medical care, Named Person is ominous enough that Scots parents are already leaving the country, Scott points out.
If you are “different, poor, or don’t get on with the Named Person” for any kind of political or religious reasons, you will be under threat. The “sheer variety of human beings” means that there is endless scope for trouble:
- some Named Persons will be wicked
- some will have other agendas
- some will be paedophiles
- some will have designs on the husband or wife of the family
- they can control when investigations start
- it represents a huge transfer of power to state functionaries
- there are enormous risks of personal abuse of these powers by the Named Persons themselves
- but also by dint of the fact that the State is hereby imposing its will to a greater degree on the families of Scotland
48’] For Argyll online newspaper reports: “Conviction of Elgin ‘Named Person’ and placement on Sex Offenders’ Register exposes additional risk to children of Scotland’s state guardian scheme” (see also yesterday's news at 12’) and states: “This genuinely indefensible law sees the universal appointment of a state guardian to every child in Scotland from birth to legal maturity, a guardian with automatic access to the child; and to privileged and exclusive access to information relating to them and denied to parents …
“While the Scottish Government says airily that of course parents can object if they have problems with specific Named Persons for their children, the Acting Minister for Children and Young People, Fiona MacLeod MSP – in a fairly recent and markedly incompetent and stubborn radio session with Kaye Adams – which included public phone-ins – was utterly unable to substantiate how in fact a concerned parent could get the imposed Named Person for their child changed. “
Alice Through the Looking Glass comments on this in the blog “The Named Person scheme is no laughing matter” and concludes:
“Nicola Sturgeon has laughed off accusations that she is running a ‘big sister’ state as campaigners fight a new Scottish government scheme that will allocate every child an official representative to look after their wellbeing.
Would Nicola Sturgeon stop laughing and investigate what the sex offender has done in Moray Council with the files of 200 children.
Can she assure us, these files are safe?”
49’] The former president of School Leaders Scotland, Carole Ford, has written a letter (shown on screen) that symbolises the “useful counter-publicity from the general public” (as Gerrish puts it) to the Named Person scheme. Opposition is growing slowly but steadily; there is now a steady stream of opinion-makers standing up to oppose the scheme.
50’] The best example of the above is the Spectator feature by Adam Tomkins, professor of constitutional law at Glasgow University: “Centralising, illiberal, catastrophic: the SNP’s one-party state” which opens as follows:
“Imagine a country where the government so mistrusted parents that every child was assigned a state guardian — not a member of their family — to act as a direct link between the child and officials. Imagine that such a scheme was compulsory, no matter how strongly parents objected. Imagine that the ruling party controlled 95 per cent of MPs, and policed the political culture through a voluntary army of internet fanatics who seek out and shout down dissent.
Welcome to Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland in 2015. “
Tomkins goes on to describe the Scottish National Party as the party that have betrayed the country they purport to champion”.
51’] Scott finds it highly important that Tomkins joining the fight is an effort “to preserve the basic notion of liberty that Scots have done so much to defend”.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s response to this article was a laughing tweet: “LOL (as I believe the youngsters say these days!)”
But such dismissiveness is “not going to work,” Scott says, “because people are seeing through the bodyguard of lies that surrounds the Named Person scheme. It’s very slippery and it constantly moves the goalposts around the natural human instinct of child protection: ‘welfare’ becomes ‘wellbeing’, ‘wellbeing’ means ‘well, everything associated with happiness’.”
52’] NO2NP highlights one of the Scottish Government’s targets for all children: they must be cycling by age 4. Also shown on screen is the poster for a later hastily cancelled “free training opportunity” entitled “HOSTILE AND NON-ENGAGING PARENTS AND CARERS TRAINING”, where Scottish state officials would have learned how to deal with “ambivalent” parents.
Scott explains that the Scottish Government’s rationale behind this is that the State must use proxies (supposedly indicative of future bad behaviour) to intervene early, although there is no evidence to back this up.
“If the State intervenes early enough and often enough,” he adds, the thinking is that crime will be cut, unemployable people will be no more and money will be saved. It is “nonsense from start to finish”, but its effect is that the State will now only “wait until there’s an indication”, not an actual problem, before intervening.
These “proxies for bad parenting” are, then, such indicators as children not being able to cycle by the age of four — although it has been pointed out that world-beating Scots cyclist Chris Hoy could not ride a bike at that age!
“Parenting is enormously complex and the State is in no way fit to judge; the worst parenting in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland is parenting by the State,” Scott says.
54’] The Times, The Courier, the BBC (see yesterday’s news at 9’) and the Daily Record all document Scottish public discontent at Police Scotland in its new reframed unified state police incarnation, particularly with reference to Sheku Bayoh’s death during or after arrest in Kirkcaldy.
55’] Sir Stephen House’s successor at the helm of Police Scotland is now being sought. A name “being talked up just now” is the man who was responsible for “illegal spying on journalists in Scotland”, he adds, which “gives us an indication of what we might expect under his reign” if he gets the Chief Constable of Scotland post.
Bad as House was, “we may even find ourselves nostalgic for the halcyon days when it was just a matter of police on the street with guns and stopping children for ‘consensual searches’ and all these things, because there could be worse things ahead for us.”
56’] Scott adds that “the Bayoh case continues to give us alarming information”. This “rather slight man” (not the man mountain that the Police Federation of Scotland representative made him out to be) had two officers sitting on him with a combined weight of 43 stone (600 lb).
57’] Closed-circuit TV footage of the Bayoh arrest has now been unearthed and shown to those of his bereaved relatives who could bear to watch it.
58’] “The real power is in the truth and in exposure of what is going on,” Gerrish concludes. “You can see the Establishment recoil when they’re faced by real evidence of the truth.” “Follow the money” is always a true maxim, “but if you want to understand how Britain is being run by a criminal paedophile elite, follow the trail of the paedophiles and follow the trail of those newspapers and BBC programmes that are trying to close it down.”
The UK Column now hears that the Metropolitan Police may be on the verge of handing the Brittan investigation to another police force.
Gerrish’s closing advice: “Don’t sit at home getting depressed and glum; get out and talk to people; don’t research alone late at night.”
He thanks donors and subscribers to the UK Column, without whom this work could not go on.