I am involved quite extensively in the making of what I believe to be a valuable independent documentary. It is based on George Ponsonby’s excellent book London Calling, and has the working title How the BBC Stole the Referendum. We have already done a few hours filming of my contribution.
The film is being directed by Alan Knight. It still requires some finance, having raised over £12,000 so far from crowd sourcing. If any readers of this blog can make a contribution, it would be gratefully received. I vouch for the good faith and commitment of the production team, though I am not in any sense connected with the management or finances.
I should like to ask for a couple of other bits of help as well. Can anybody find the BBC footage of the appalling Gavin Esler puff piece for the “Vote No Borders” PR campaign. The BBC broadcast it repeatedly on every TV news programme on 2 May 2014, but seem to have managed to erase all trace of it from the internet. It might also be useful if somebody could take a little video footage of the company nameplate of Acanchi Ltd at 24 Chiswell Street, London, EC2Y 4YX. Footage of the nameplate, the street sign and a little of the surroundings, just to visually establish it is in London. The technical quality of that little bit of video is not terrifically important.
UPDATE
See Gill R’s comment below. The company may be at Unit 311 Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, London N1 0QH. If anyone can easily get to either address and see what they can film it would still be helpful.
Oh, no. The Gilmore woman’s gone into the Cherie Blair racket. Namely, make yourself a cash flow while doing peripheral good works within an appealing charity, likely firmly attached to the international aid teat. Same principle as PFI hospitals…
Link, sorry:
https://camfed.org/about/team/fiona-gilmore/
“Republic of Scotland: It was not really until the C17 that the Scottish traders imported much opium into China and earlier usage was more medicinal and rather than recreational.”
Your point is, fwl, spot on, I think however that you mean the C18th not the C17th.
The underlying problem whether the question be BBC biass, bombing Syria or disqualifying Corbyn is that, as Dean Rusk once put it in terms rather like this “Britain has lost an empire and is looking for a role in the world.”
The “Britain” in question not being the people at large but the enormous military, administrative and commercial middle class which arose in the C19th, dominated the Empire for a couple of centuries and has passed its collective sense of entitlement down to its progeny even unto the third generation.
Thus we have a class desperately hanging on to the new Empire, based in Washington, and their ‘special relationship’ therewith. We have a vast defence budget, about the same size as Russia’s, without any enemies or distant outposts to defend. The money, from Trident down to the base in Cyprus, is a very expensive and extraordinarily deadly make work project for the grandsons of Orwell’s Burma Police colleagues. And the kids who had to give up hopes of policing Rhodesia or picking up planters in the Raffles Hotel.
The entire government and political class shares these ghostly imperial ambitions and is constantly auditioning- as is much of the ‘intellectual’ elite, the academy- for roles in Uncle Sam’s New Order. Hence the slavish devotion to promoting the interests of the United States, disingenuously re-labeled as our own.
In fact it could be argued that the USA would never have dreamed of hegemony had Britain not constantly urged it to pick the Crown out of the gutter, and that the real ideologues of the Empire of Chaos were avowed admirers of Churchill and the Empire, anglophiles who rejected the real US traditions of splendid isolation.
The spectre that haunts the British ruling class is not foreign invasion but Little England, the return to a comfortable independence in which the enormous wealth of the country is mobilised not to produce gold braid for hats or attack squadrons for expensive adventures in distant airspace but to ensure that all who live here are well lodged, well clad, fed, nursed in sickness, respected in old age and cherished in infancy.
Wasn’t Tolkein trying to tell us something like that?
To stop massive fraud postal votes should be counted separately from the polling station votes to ensure that both lot of votes closely tally in their results.
Phil,
You dont fool me son.
Ya feckn troll sockpuppet eejit.
BBC World Service reports that a bunch of Syrian rebels have been to Saudi Arabia to discuss Syria’s future. Saudi Arabia has no legitimacy in any type of peace talks. they have the money to pay for entertainment, but they have sponsored terror in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen Egypt as well as Syria. Unlike Western nations they don’t even pretend to do human rights, so they are automatically disqualified from peace talks.
What about the rebels? What about the rebels. They have achieved their objective of removing the Syrian people from Syria so that they can play jihadi games there. They have achieved their objective to win military support from the asylum nests of spies countries UK and France, through UK and French false-flag terror attacks which have been attributed to Daesh. In addition to the rebels’ bad behaviour Western countries have always assisted them through false=flag operations, which automatically disqualifies them and their rebels from peace talks.
How is it that the leaders of militant groups from usama bin laden to Mulla Krekar have always managed to find themselves in night clubs? Nobody cares why they were there but it stinks of hypocrisy that Salafis get paid by governments to police the ordinary Muslims’ private lives and then these leaders appear publicly in places of minimal attire.
The hypocrisy of the Saudis in relation to their women, changing their clothes from Burkha to miniskirts on the plane from Jeddah is infamous. infamous hypocrisy is an automatic disqualifier for peace talks.
What about the republican army? It is mixed between practising and non-practising Muslims, Sunni and Shi’a, so it is representative of Syrian secular society, secular meaning freedom from religious compulsion, not atheism. It has worked within the law of Syria and its ally Russia has worked within international law. It has fought against foreign intervention supported by international state actors USUKIS, to defend the freedom of Syria from colonisation and financial subjugation. It is therefore well within the limits of islamic and non-Islamic law to defend yourself against foreign invaders.
The topic is BBC bias. This year the BBC has used its world service to advertise Islamic State and used its spokespersons to sympathise with young men and women going to live there. Now it is trying to represent two disqualified parties in the Syrian reconciliation process as legitimate participants. It promotes the USUKIS idea that Assad must go, if not immediately.
if there are any Scots out there who agree with Craig about Gavin Esler’s propaganda on the BBC, please spare a thought for Syria which has been constantly bombarded by BBC bias for 5 years.
In the Terrorism is Easy thread a certain Dr Nasir Ali commented:
“You are right. All the terrorists have to do is study the Resistance in France during the second world war and follow their example.”
Nasir Ali is a regular contributor to the CM blog. Looking through Google images I think this might be him here:
https://www.icwfd.org/experts.cfm
I don’t want to pursue the subject of another thread on this one, just to say that this comment has got me thinking about political resistance in general.
Gavin Esler could argue that he is part of a Resistance movement against SNP nutters who want to deprive Scotland of its status and security. So could Fred.
All politics is lying, and Right-wing politics always uses Thatcherite slogans like Radical reforms, to mean reversing centuries of socialist equality.
Corbyn started by fetching out his socialist slogans and it looked at first as though we were going to get a dick-waving contest of political slogan deceits.
In Syria Assad is a brutal dictator, and the Saudis are brutal dictators. shut up the pair.
I do not believe that politics is all bad. After the politicians have waved their pointless slogans around and achieved nothing, they have to take practical decisions based on real-politik and facts on the ground.
Nobody is going to force 10 million Kurds who were there before the Turks arrived in Turkey from China to move from their ancestral home. why don’t the Turks go back to china if they don’t like the Kurds in their land, allocated to them by Winston Cameron in 1918.
Nobody is going to force David Cameron to give up stealing oil from Iraq and Syria using the Daesh, Kurdish, Turkish, Saudi, Israeli business trail.
Going back to Nasir Ali’s French Resistance. If the Islamists in Syria think that attacking the Syrian people is attacking Assad or Cameron, they have to think again and see that they have achieved nothing except misery for the Syrian Muslims. Zilch Hitch Zero
If the Asian Muslims of Alum Rock think they have struck a blow against the British Raj by spying on me and spreading malicious rumours, when I have joined their community and religion, they are more than crazy, more than raving mad.
Fuck the resistance slogans which are usually a pack of lies, and give us your practical, sensible ideas.
Total taxes raised in Scotland £54Billion. Total taxes raised in the UK £515Billion. Take £54Bilkion from £515Billiom. = £461Billion (raised in the rest of the UK.. Divide £461Billion by 11 (11/12 pop % of Thevrest of the UK) = £42Billion. Scotland raises £54Billion – Pro rata The rest of the UK raises £42Billion.
Scotland raises pro rata more than the rest of the UK. (and alaeys has – records)
Scotland gets £30Billion back Block Grant (pays for everything in Scotland) plus £16Billion (UK) pensions/benefits. Pays £Billion Defence – plus £4Billion debt repayments on debt it doesn’t borrow or spend. = £54Billion.
The rest of the UK raises £461Billion (less pro rata) borrows and spends £90? billion more. £551Billion.
Westminster adds a pro rata% (£9 – 12Billion? – on Scottish accounts as a deficit, (What’s it spent on in the rest of the UK?) Scotland also pays £4Billion debt repayments on this Defict/debt)
Scotland could cut Tridentillegal wars and tax evasion. Put a tax on ‘loss leading’ alcohol, it would not have to pay £4Billion on debt it doesn’t borrow or spent, cut tax on Oil to be productive again, develop Oil in the West. Scotland would be £10Billon+ better off, and in surplus. It already is in surplus in fuel & energy. Scotland could tax or sell the surplus.
Osbourne has destroyed the Oil sector (tax/take 75%) deliberately. Costing Scotland thousands of jobs and £Billions. Vulnerable people are being sanctioned and starved. Illegal wars are costing £Billions. The Tories are destroying the Scottish economy again. Thatcher secretly and illegally took the equivalent of £Billions from Scotland. Labour/Unionists buried th McCrone Report for over thirty years and illegally took the equivalent of £Billions out of Scotland £220Billion. Illegal wars, banking fraud and tax evasion through the City of London are Increasing the deficit and the debt. Westminster are cutting public services, not supporting the NHS and are increasing the debt. QE. Lowering living standards.
Labour were raising £600Billion in taxes and borrowing £120Billion.(Cooked the books)
The Tories are raising £515Billion and borrowing £90Billion. (Cooking the books)
Scitland is self sufficient, but could be £Billions better off Independent,
Tories are building Hinkley Nuclear £25Billion HS2 £70Billion, spending £170Billion on Trident. All public money which is being wasted and could be better spent. ‘White elephants’ with no business case. They are costly mistakes. Cutting NHS/public services/starving vulnerable people and illegal Wars – cost more.
Cameron’s Fire/Flood/Famine. Illegal wars, public spending cuts, starving vulnerable people.
Vote SNP/SNP Independence.
Peace Talks and cease fire are better than eternal war. (Western Wars for Oil and resources) . Russia tried to brokers Peace Talks with Assad and Syria, The West refused and went on another bombing spree.
The Tories have cut support for Renewables. Banned Turbines, Stopped Coal, Oil & Gas production. More Oil Coal and Gas had to be imported putting up the balance of payment deficit and the debt. Losing Thousands of jobs in Scotland/UK. They are deliberately mismanaging the economy. Thry are lining their pockets with £Million/Billions of public money in fees consultancy and contracts for their associates, family and friends.
Bevin, yes your right C18. Interesting post; I will think about Tolkein – never been that keen on his books. Just listening to Petula Clarke talking about the different worlds inhabited by that wonderful crooner Frsnk Sinatra, and it sets you off thinking about the shadow side of the US. I think I might read some more Robert Ludlum (ie his own works; you read the Prometheus Deception and the Aquitaine Progression and you have to wonder who he was talking to. He has nothing like the style of Le Carre or Forsyth, but he had something).
Bevin at 12.34. What a great piece of writing – thanks
Scotland could introduce an Estate/ Land, rate/tax for all the illegal higher tax evaders.
The people in the Middle East should have the Vote denied by the West for so long. They could decide their own future. Without the West manipulation. Israel should have to abide by UN Resolutions or be sanctioned.
Come back Mary. Now
Malcolm Offord is the CEO of Badenoch & Co, whose unexexeptionable aspirations are set out here:
http://www.badenochandco.co.uk/
He is also a director of the Three Stills Company, by virtue of his having invested in this as yet unrealised project to produce whisky at Hawick. Other investors include the Ballande Group (France, booze) and Drake Enterprises AG (Switzerland, financial services, opaque), while the Indian drinks octopus, Tilaknagar, is reportedly linked with Three Stills in efforts to sell the product in India. Which might be a bit premature, considering that even crap whisky needs aging, and none will even be produced for some time.
Also, there seems to be something of a downturn in the industry as a whole:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/01/scotch-whisky-exports-decline-sales
Offord is or was also, with Camila Batmangelidjh (!), on the advisory board of the Iain Duncan Smith lovechild, the Centre for Social Justice.
O/t but immediate:
Live feed of Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee attempting to get some sense out of Blair re his involvement with Gaddafi starts at 1030 today. Here:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/844fde5d-5cc9-4d0f-8b70-70838cc07518
For those accustomed to Blair’s selfrighteous, self-aggrandising, arrogant and evasive response to any interrogation, this will probably be the usual borefest, but, you never know, something interesting may emerge.
On the subject of moderation, Craig is right. When a thread becomes a conversation between two or three people, it is effectively killed for others.
Only in as much as booze is conceivably nutritional to a degree, does it differ from heroin.
When a thread becomes a dispute about moderation, that’s good?
The more profitable something is the less socially useful is it.
Scotland people is Live moderation booze about socially.
My contribution to the one-liner ping-pong, made from the 1st,2nd,3rd,4th,678th words of he sentences above. Come on lazy boys, let’s have some logical discussion here.
Whatsh the shentre for shoshal jushtish got to do with BBShe Biash?
You all seem to be intoxicated by the Mark Golding concept that the UK government is a colonial dictator that subjugates democracy within the Union dor the sheer exercise of totalitarian power and subjugates democracy abroad for imperial gain.
Ian Duncan Smith is a floor-mop used by the toilet for sluicing down the UK toilet.
That’s you and us and our stupid little ideas.
The BBC is the organ of UK dictatorial Fascist power. Thanks to Hillary Benn for reminding us of the F word.
Whatsh the shentre for shoshal jushtish got to do with BBShe Biash?
Malcolm Offord.
Whatsh the shentre for Malcolm Offord got to do with BBShe Biash?
Malcolm Offord was a major donor to No Borders.
Whatsh the shentre for Vote No Borders got to do with BBShe Biash?
See Craig’s original post. Your carer will help you put your teeth in.
Excuse me boys, I am asking you a question. Mary is not here with her educated and informative comments for you to hide behind. Do you think the colonial re-stigmatisation of Islam – Victorians used to call its opponents in India fanatics – the theft of 10 billion dollars of oil from Syria and Iraq via Islamic State , and the forced exodus of 14 million Syians from their country and proposed forced exodus of 10 million Turkish Kurds :
is a good idea, or can’t you be bothered to answer?
“I think I might read some more Robert Ludlum (ie his own works; you read the Prometheus Deception and the Aquitaine Progression and you have to wonder who he was talking to. He has nothing like the style of Le Carre or Forsyth, but he had something).”
I recently read le Carre’s “Constant Gardener”. The protagonist exposes a Big Pharma plot to test AIDS vaccines in Kenya. Is this what the corps have been doing for decades under the guise of “aid”? I read recently that dwarf wheat was introduced by the Rockefellers via Norman Borlaug’s research into India as the Green Revolution. Then it was unleashed upon the West and look at us now. Reap the whirlwind.
Try three threads back Giyane, the HJS/Trump page 3. I’ve hit lots of moderation keywords there, must have had almost a full house. I think you can still say shopping-trolley though.
Thank you Ba’al. Malcolm Offord is a neo-con Tory agent who wanted to keep the sheep in the pen at the Independence referendum for collective punishment by the centre for social Justice.
I obviously didn’t understand Craig’s point. Now the use of the word Centre becomes clear.
Furthermore the Universal Credit will close loopholes between the many agencies – if they can ever get the software to work. We will be kept penned in our individual kennels.
It makes the Tory foreign policy sound prefereable, driving the flock without food through wolf-infested mountains.
Scary stuff, Jeremy Stocks, like US websites, full of aliens and monstrous creatures, to keep us from thinking about the Fascist realities of cutting benefits at home and colonial genocide abroad.
jeremy Stocks
You are as you describe yourself, a large slug. Can’t see any lettuce.
Even in those denouncing the BBC, there’s a sneaking admiration for it, for its breathtaking hypocrisy and audacity, for its sheer power and its imperative need to use it for the most despicable terrible ends. It’s unreformable, it’s not an observer in or of domestic matters or in the world, but a major player. Validation, soma for the incorrigibly smug, all the while massaging their heads with a shovel.
Thanks for looking into the issue of postal votes Ruth, imho the electoral register should be checked for being accurate and up to date.
If an election officer decides to check to postal votes plus by ( accidentally, off course) including all previous tenants, i.e. includes an older electoral registers into the checking routine, than you have a plethora of votes to play with.
next step to deliver them to the address last known and have them picked up by someone who fills them out and signs as best as possible.
unsigned postal votes could be signed in the electoral office after being received, because if they are slightly out or wrong during the checking process, they still count as a signature.
I think that councils with a previous record of postal vote fraud should be overlooked by the EC during the whole election, if that means beefing up the EC so be it.
Postal votes should be discontinued, those who are truly invalid should get two officers come round with a mobile ballot box, they should be obliged to let that person vote and then take the box away to the next person. Holiday makers leave instructions for proxy votes or should be enabled to vote electronically against their NI number, one number one vote, multiple votes for the same number are disqualified.
But the system suits the party politicians, hence the acting aghast at the idea of a referendum on electoral reform, hence the ultimatum, the one option take it or leave it approach. And what do they choose for us? the worst possible option AVplus, a glorified FPTP system that would change nothing.
Unless there is a fair proportional system of voting, nothing will change form the inherent setup, no scrutiny will be applied, not by the EC or the BBC or the wider media, they are all part of the perpetuation, and hence, continuation of the establishment rule.
The City of London Corp pirates will never be reigned in, they’ll argue for UDI first.