What comes out to me from the “Black Spider letter” correspondence of Prince Charles published today is how utterly obsequious Tony Blair and New Labour ministers were to him. No sign whatsoever of radicalism from the former “People’s Party” as they fell over to ingratiate themselves with the heir to the throne. I rather enjoyed Charles quite sharp tone to Blair.
I am fundamentally opposed to the existence of the monarchy. It will hopefully be replaced by a better system, but no human system is perfect. Given that we have a monarchy at present, you will perhaps be surprised to learn that I do not see anything wrong in Charles’ letters, which put forward views which are much what we would have expected him to hold. Of course there is interaction between the monarchy and government, and of course we should get rid of this hereditary element. But Charles’ lobbying is hugely less damaging and pernicious than the corporate lobbying I witnessed throughout my Whitehall career. At least Charles is not lobbying them for corporate advantage and giving large political donations at the same time.
While in my view he did nothing wrong in writing the letters, he and government are both very wrong in arguing they should be private. It is when it is secret that such attempts to wield influence between two branches of government – and monarchy is a branch of government – can be most simply perverted to ill ends. That such publication will not occur again because government has legislated to keep it secret, is an example of the privileged arrogance that prevents this from being a genuine democracy.
Altogether not that big a story and it gives Rusbridger and the Guardian the chance to pose as radical. I find the fact that what is published is so anodyne and unobjectionable rather suspicious – what has not been published? Rusbridger is of course the editor who complied enthusiastically with a GCHQ instruction to smash the Snowden hard drives. The existence of other copies does not justify this any more than it justifies book-burning.
By coincidence, a very worthwhile article by Michael Gillard that had been excised from the net has recently been republished, setting out how Rusbridger in 2002 conspired with Andy Hayman of the Met to bury an investigation into police corruption, including the burglary of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. By a further coincidence I was having a pint with Laurie Flynn in Sandy Bell’s four days ago.
Hayman went on to be the promoter of the stream of lies about the murder of Jean Charles De Menezes and the publicist of numerous fake terrorist plots, before having to resign in a scandal involving nubile police officers at public expense in tropical islands.
Rusbridger and his extraordinary wig go on and on as a pretend opposition outlet, their reputation much dented by recent hysterical unionist output which exceeds the Daily Express. But Rusbridger’s continued usefulness to the establishment is not in doubt. The pose of publishing the most harmless of Prince Charles’ letters does little to help a threadbare disguise.
Queen Elizabeth II’s shareholdings remain hidden behind Bank of England Nominee accounts. The Guardian newspaper reported in May 2002 … “the reason for the wild variations in valuations of her private wealth can be pinned on the secrecy over her portfolio of share investments.
This is because her subjects have no way of knowing through a public register of interests where she, as their head of state, chooses to invest her money.
Unlike the members of the Commons and now the Lords, the Queen does not have to annually declare her interests and as a result her subjects cannot question her or know about potential conflicts of interests…” In fact, the Queen even has an extra mechanism to ensure that her investments remain secret – a nominee company called the Bank of England Nominees.
It has been available for decades to the entire World’s current heads of state to allow them anonymity when buying shares. Therefore, when a company publishes a share register and the Bank of England Nominees is listed, it is not possible to gauge whether the Queen,has invested at all.
To oil to the fire the Queen meets with powerful business men every day,who’s to say she doesn’t gain insider information on the market,for lets say Royal approval.
HRH js also
Re my last comment I do apologise
Cont:
HRH is also above suspicion or reproach,therefore her investments cannot be criticised even if we did know where she was investing her huge wealth.
Alistair Carmichael admits he was the one behind the false memo from the Scottish Office.
Know widely as “Frenchgate”
Scotland needs no enemies,when it has sons like him around.
“Alistair Carmichael admits he was the one behind the false memo from the Scottish Office.”
False? The inquiry found the memo was not false, the civil servant who wrote the memo was cleared of all wrong doing.
“The Cabinet Secretary has concluded that there is no reason to doubt that he recorded accurately what he thought he had heard. There is no evidence of any political motivation or ‘dirty tricks’.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/scotland-office-memorandum-leak-cabinet-office-inquiry-statement
The leak itself was a blatant breach of protocol but the memo was genuine.
Ba’al isn’t sock-puppetry impermissible here? And what do you make of “jewboy”? Shall we assume Mary approves due to her conspicuous silence? Ordinarily she would whine like a bitch to complain about people changing their avatars or using the pseudonym Anon when afaik there is only one Anon presently?
I reckon Habby and JSD were absolutely right to flag the moderator. Where is he/she?
Note English Knight etc was banned by Craig personally for sock-puppetry and racist trolling. At some point I had highlighted this to the Moderator who took notice and deleted some comments so it’ll be interesting to know why this hasn’t happened in this instance, yet. The moderator does of course need days off, as we all do.
Finally, I thought the conversation exploring anarchy–please don’t make that another ‘ism–was going rather well. That got derailed because of this trolling. The proof of the pudding.
Well Zevul is an unusual name.
Villager (17h20)
Good to be able to read you again; as usual, you hit several nails on the head.
@John Goss – I wondered whether you could briefly summarise your notion of a ‘Rothschild central bank’. Have you read Carroll Quigley? Are you genned up on the Bank of International Settlements in Geneva?
The BIS is another one of those cases. All the chatterers talk about ratings agencies. Now they’ve been given the OK by the media, they’re all experts.
But if they ever get as far as naming some, they stop with the so-called ‘Big Three’: Standard and Poor’s, Fitch and Moody. They don’t mention the BIS. The higher-ups in the opinion chain haven’t given them the OK.
Reminds me of banks. Chatterers have been allowed to talk negatively about banks since 2008. Before then, they didn’t dare. The more idiotic among them concentrate on traders’ bonuses, as if that’s where most of the profits are made. Or they talk about ‘casino banking’ and squeaky clean ‘high street banking’ as if that’s a big distinction. (Let’s not expect them to suss the role of either casinos or banks in laundering drug money.) But I’ve noticed that none of them have the courage to say anything critical about insurance.
In the US, the finance sector (mainly banking, insurance and accountancy) accounts for 8% of GNP and 50% of non-farm profits. That means they’re taking half the profits made in the entire country. It means your average person works two and half days a week to make profit for financial interests and two and half days to make it for the rest of the employers.
As you were saying Republic of Scotland.
Nicola Sturgeon condemns Alistair Carmichael leak ‘dirty tricks’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-32849065
Go back to Craig’s post on the matter. In the comments, see Charles Crawford’s dismissal, backed up by Habbabkuk and Resident Dissident who as usual ridiculed anyone throughout who disagreed with Crawford’s take and who saw through the nonsense. The trolls’ connections are clear for all to see.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/frenchgate-definitely-the-security-services/#comments
‘CHARLES CRAWFORD
4 Apr, 2015 – 2:47 pm
Come off it.
There is of course not a single shred of evidence that this is anything other than an authentic record of conversation. Talk of MI5 Zinoviev-style machinations is self-promoting mischievous drivel, as you well understand.
My sense is that it is 100% a record written in the Scottish government system somewhere. The focus is very much on immediate detailed Scottish business, and it is the French CG (In Edinburgh) doing the talking: no French CG would be bothering to brief someone in Whitehall on such matters.
It probably got copied to the FCO and other parts of Whitehall as a routine matter as some of the substance has an FCO or foreign policy angle. Maybe someone there copied it to No 10 or an FCO SPAD and the rest is history.’
‘CHARLES CRAWFORD
4 Apr, 2015 – 4:03 pm
My substantive take on the full text as published by the Telegraph: obviously a real memo or an extract from one.
But NB it does not follow that even if the memo accurately records what was said on the phone, the Sturgeon/ambassador meeting said precisely the same! We are dealing with a summary of a summary.’
#hearsay
http://charlescrawford.biz/2015/04/04/that-sturgeon-miliband-memo-analysed/
Cut it out Villager. Get back to the playground.
@Technicolour – Stop the City were much better than you make them sound by saying they were the forerunner of Occupy, with its jazz hands and links with Peter Joseph’s ‘Zeitgeist’ and Jacque Fresco’s ‘Venus Project’.
Say what you like about the anarchist Dave Morris, the guy behind Stop the City, but he isn’t like that!
Meet the Real Israeli Defense Force: the US Congress
Israeli Gears
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
It started as a rather melancholy Friday afternoon in the West Bank. Nothing unusual. Just another funeral for a promising young man who died much too young. Under the implacable shadow of the Wall and in the rifle sights of Israeli soldiers, more than 200 mourners walked down the cobbled street toward the old cemetery in the village of Beit Ummar. Some shouted angrily at the soldiers, condemning Israel for yet another senseless death.
The funeral was for a college student, Jafaar Awad, who slipped into a coma and died only two months after being released from an Israeli prison, where his serious illness had festered untreated for months. Awad was only 22 when he died, as have so many other Palestinian prisoners, from medical neglect at the hands of Israeli jailers.
As his family huddled around his grave, the IDF launched a dozen tear gas canisters toward the mourners, scattering the stunned grouping. Then automatic weapons fire strafed the crowd, bullets hitting more than a dozen people, including Jafaar’s cousin Ziad Awad. Ziad was struck in the back, the bullet piercing his spine. He was rushed to the Al Ahli Hospital in Hebron, where he died of his wounds. KillingTrayvons1Ziad was only 28
A few hours after Ziad’s murder at the hands of Israeli snipers, the IDF issued a terse statement saying that Israeli soldiers fired on the crowd of mourners after people where seen throwing stones.
I’m surprised the IDF even felt compelled to issue a justification for a kind of killing that has become routine: kids were throwing stones, skipping rocks, jumping rope, blowing bubbles, tossing dirt on an open grave. They had no option but to shoot.
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/22/israeli-gears/
Ref the film ‘We Are Many’
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1432286253.html
It is discussed in this Medialens thread, more for what it omitted. Craig gets a mention.
N: Not the Occupy I’ve seen in the UK, or Spain. Some stuff in the States was weird, I agree. Still, probably ‘the forerunner of the Climate Camps and to a certain extent Occupy UK’ would have been more accurate.
We Are Many: I’m surprised that anyone can watch the trailer and feel superior.
N_
“Are you genned up on the Bank of International Settlements in Geneva?”
________________
So as to give Mr Goss no excuse not to answer you, it should be noted that the Bank for International Settlements is in Basel.
ary
“Cut it out Villager. Get back to the playground.”
________________
But he’s right, isn’t he. You’re always going on about people’s avatars changing colour or whatever but when an anti-semitic troll drops his turdlets under a succession of different avatars and names there’s not a squeak out of you.
“The Cabinet Secretary has concluded that there is no reason to doubt that he recorded accurately what he thought he had heard. There is no evidence of any political motivation or ‘dirty tricks’.”
____________________________
So it’s okay to leak info to unionist newspapers on the grounds of what he “thought he heard.”
Alistair Carmichael gave the okay to release the false memo,on the grounds of what “he thought he heard.”
Carmichael when asked explicitly on the 17th of April about the memo denied knowing of its origins,dirty tricks indeed.
Carmichael wouldn’t have retained his MP status if the public knew about his outright lies.
I put it to you that “what he thought he heard” isn’t fact,though the Scoland Office peddles any old unionist shit for truth these days.
Btw this blog entry’s been up for quite a while now…has anyone heard/seen anything of the Craigster lately? I’m wondering if he’s gone to Vienna for tomorrow’s Eurovision to lend his support to British entry, Electro Velvet?
Ba’al isn’t sock-puppetry impermissible here?
Dunno. Guess it depends if anyone’s watching, and then if they can prove it. Shit happens, and the default position of this blog is not to censor. Craig has clearly stated, and sometimes polices, his views on antisemitism: appeal to him if it really bothers you. For me, worse things happen at sea.
And what do you make of “jewboy”?
Not as much as you want, probably. I’ve heard it used without apology by devastatingly county Tories;
sticks and stones, again. There was an awkward moment in that conversation as the speaker checked out my somewhat Mediterranean features and had second thoughts about the remark, but even if I had been of the Hebraic persuasion, it would have been exceedingly bad form and deeply not done to have commented on this infelicity. Also wholly useless.
Shall we assume Mary approves due to her conspicuous silence?
Lets. If you think that would be fun. But why ask me?
Here you go N.
Interesting info on the BIS.
http://www.bilderberg.org/bis.htm
Here is what they get up to when left to their own devices.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_globalbanking118.htm
Don’t let anyone tell you banksters are are innocent,they’re not.
Fred
22 May, 2015 – 5:18 pm
“The Cabinet Secretary has concluded that there is no reason to doubt that [Alistair Carmichael]recorded accurately what he thought he had heard.”
………………………………………………………………………………………
In other words Fred; Carmichael did not record accurately what was said but what he “thought he had heard.”
He then leaked the memo and lied to the public saying he knew nothing about it.
Not a very trustworthy person if you ask me.
Becky Cohen
22 May, 2015 – 7:13 pm
“Btw this blog entry’s been up for quite a while now…has anyone heard/seen anything of the Craigster lately?”
…………………………………………………………..
Well there was an earthquake in Ramsgate this morning perhaps he fell out of bed.
@ROS I remember when the UK built its first nuclear power station the Queen was advised
to invest in uranium. Check this out.http://www.sxolsout.org.uk/zcase.html
However hard the trolls try to involve me in what another commenter writes about Jews thus hoping to paint me into a corner, they fail. ‘Not as green as cabbage looking’ is the phrase. The plight of the Palestinians is what concerns me.
“Carmichael did not record accurately what was said but what he “thought he had heard.”
I don’t think Charmichael claims to have heard anything. He leaked a memo about a meeting he was not at.
Charmichael might well have been set up. The BBC are going to great lengths to stress how decent a chap the civil servant, who apparently mistranslated, is.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-32849065
Mr Scorgie
“Not a very trustworthy person if you ask me.”
_______________
But no one is asking you.
Mary am I impinging on your playground? Second childhood? Although I find it hard to believe that you were not one of those sneaky little kids going “Mummy, mummy” to every little thing, just like you do in tugging at Habby and Anon’s coattails should they change their avatars.
Another point is, it shows you never had any children — I would rather be innocently observant and straight-forward rather than your cowardly innuendoes that show what a shrivelled, narrow mind you have.
Your silence in this situation of the Sochi/Really Troll speaks volumes. The fact that you don’t see that, itself screams at us of the stuff of your content.
Sorry, but you simply cannot keep painting the whole Jewish people — and yes I had an aunt who was Jewish, she was lovely — as criminals and slimy for hitting back at the Israeli Government. At a political level I propose the Arabs are much slimier and more corrupt, even with their own people, let alone in geopolitics. And pray, what have the Arabs done in these decades in supporting their Palestinian brothers, even our Palestinian brothers at the level of the Human Being?
Do you believe if the Arabs were sincere, rather than regimes of self-serving, corrupt sons-of-bitches they wouldn’t have been able to find a Goddamned solution in nearly 70 years? Do the Saudis, for example, have no leverage with the Great Satan the US of A? Have you ever spoken about the inequalities within the oil-rich Arab world?
I’ll tell you of my playground Mary. It is Humanity and Nature. And becoming aware not just that we are an integral part of part of Nature, but also knowing one’s self, who we are. Self knowledge about the the total, the whole individual (word derived from same root as indivisible). That includes one’s suffering, pain, angst, anger, sorrows, conflicts, pleasures, desires, joy and so on. Man can only really know himself through the mirror of relationship.
What’s your playground Mary? Copy, copy, copy, paste. For the sake of what, for God’s sake? Knowledge? All knowledge is limited. And, at any rate, if you don’t first have self-knowledge, you’re wasted.
For the record, I would say Habby figured you out very early in your game. I’m even loathed to call yours a game. Its just routine and mechanical what you do. And sad and pathetic when you ‘respond’ to people, or choose not to respond, as with Fred recently.
“‘Not as green as cabbage looking’
Green, no.
Cabbage, yes.
Dave Lawton
Thanks for the link,though I knew most of it, it’s common knowledge about the Queen and her buccaneer Tiny Rowland,to those who care to take an interest.
I see plenty of discussion here that I will be pleased to respond to. I’ve been working all day, and I am about to do some driving, so I can’t respond as quickly as I would like. Ba’al Zevul, I have a good deal of respect for you, and I wish to give a full and thoughtful response to what you have said, including where I think you have a point. Phil: you have expressed a good deal of my motivation more succinctly than I think I could have. Thank you.
Kind regards,
John