Thursday, April 10, 2014

Swine flu, Tamiflu and how UKIP exposed the swine swindle in 2010

The Daily Telegraph today carried an article covering the release of an investigation by Oxford University which looked into the government's stockpiling and subsequent use of Tamiflu (oseltamivir).

Back in 2010 when I was working in Brussels, I undertook a review of the use of Tamiflu at the height of the 'Swine Flu' hysteria. The results of my investigation are available at www.swineswindle.blogspot.com, but in précis the outcome of an analysis of existing medical trials and regulatory reports was that:

  1. Tamiflu was potentially more dangerous than swine flu
  2. Young people were particularly at risk from adverse reactions including psychotic episodes and increased suicide risk
  3. It was not particularly effective in treating A/H1N1
All conclusions also reached by Oxford University after 5 years of study. My list of conclusions did not stop there, however:
  • The European Medicines Agency extended the shelf life of Tamiflu to prevent political embarrassment to national governments caused by the destruction of £100's of millions of unused medicine
  • The subsequent widespread use of Tamiflu has been driven by political concerns related to the above
  • The ability of the A/H1N1 group virii to develop resistance to Tamiflu was accelerated by this widespread use
  • The stockpiling of Tamiflu was a result of EU policy
UKIP was not alone in reaching these conclusions, but the medical community was reluctant to rock the political boat, despite evidence published by the British Medical Journal. My own response to that is attached below, with the link to it's publication in the BMJ below.



Publicly available information


4 January 2010


I make no claims to be experienced in understanding clinical trials, nor even to have a medical background: I am by training an engineer. However, it was clear as long ago as June that the use of oseltamivir in combating the current 'pandemic' A/H1N1 strain was neither straightforward, nor without an element of risk. 
 
Under the auspices of Godfrey Bloom MEP (Yorkshire & North Lincolnshire) I undertook an analysis of existing publicly available information relating to oseltamivir treatments and arrived at conclusions which, to a layman such as myself, do not differ greatly from those in this report. 
 
Several questions arose from this research which deserved an answer much earlier in the debate. These included:
 
  • whether the widespread use of oseltamivir would result in increased resistance as appeared to be suggested by de Jong, Thanh and others (New England Medical Journal, 12/2005) and Dharan, Gubereva, Meyer et al (Journal of the American Medical Association)
  • Whether oseltamivir was more dangerous than the A/H1N1 it was supposed to treat/prevent, as suggested by the US FDA (Pediatric ADRs to Tamiflu, 2007), Maxwell's Tamiflu and neuropsychiatric problems in adolescents (BMJ) and the work of Rokura Hama.
  • Whether the rush to use oseltamivir to treat A/H1N1 was related to the imminent expiry of stockpiles purchased in 2005 in the previous 'bird flu' scare which would have lead to the destruction of pharmaceuticals worth £500m in the UK alone. 
As someone involved in advising policy on these matters, I was mystified as to why the scientific community could not address these issues at the time and, worse, actively sought to deflect dissent to the prevailing view which appeared to amount to 'unless we all take oseltamivir we'll die of H1N1'.

I am perfectly happy to accept that my understanding of medicine may well be at fault in my interpretation of at least some of the studies I quote, but there has always been a significant body of opinion which has questioned both the seriousness of the supposed A/H1N1 pandemic, and the efficacy of oseltamivir as either a treatment or a prophylaxis. For any who are interested, my own analysis was published at www.swineswindle.blogspot.com . My apologies for the title, but I am a journalist and not a medical professional.

Yours faithfully,
Mark Croucher
Head of Media
Europe of Freedom & Democracy Group (UKIP), European Parliament, Brussels
 
Competing interests: None declared


Thursday, April 3, 2014

How the EU has introduced 13,242 new pieces of legislation since May 2009

With Nick Clegg still insistent that only 7% of UK legislation comes from Brussels, I did a little research.

Using the Official Journal of the European Union, I went through and counted up all of the legislation contained within the 'Legislative' issue of the Journal since the European elections in May 2009. The results were nothing if not predictable.

Since May 2009, the European Union has introduced the following:

6646 Regulations
501 Directives
6014 Legislative Instruments (modifications to existing legislation, treaties, corrigenda, etc)
81 'other', including Commission guidelines and recommendations.

All of which gives a grand total of 13,242 pieces of legislation.

In a similar period (Jan 2009 to 31st March 2014), the British Parliament at Westminster has introduced 162 pieces of primary legislation (Acts of Parliament) and 14,125 Statutory Instruments (those laws which are introduced either by ministerial diktat or through delegated powers).

The full table by month is shown below for the European legislation:

Month Regulations Directives  Legislative Instruments other
2009
May 93 18 89 0
June 115 20 108 0
July 132 8 95 0
August 94 27 48 0
Sept 123 9 128 0
Oct 130 23 97 0
Nov 116 14 79 0
Dec 139 17 209 0
2010 0 1931
Jan 120 21 114 0
Feb 77 10 83 0
Mar 109 11 128 0
Apr 94 6 81 0
May 106 1 64 0
June 112 10 91 0
July 119 8 97 0
August 89 12 57 0
Sept 98 2 144 0
Oct 118 7 95 1
Nov 113 9 95 0
Dec 171 14 119 3
2011 2609
Jan 71 7 70 2
Feb 121 8 90 1
Mar 115 19 108 1
Apr 119 22 91 3
May 104 4 77 1
June 108 1 120 4
July 114 11 120 4
August 115 1 43 2
Sept 103 6 179 2
Oct 125 3 114 8
Nov 131 7 94 3
Dec 159 9 175 2
2012 2797
Jan 77 2 67 1
Feb 94 3 83 5
Mar 115 6 112 3
Apr 82 2 55 0
May 87 1 71 0
June 121 2 107 0
July 120 3 115 1
August 82 2 93 2
Sept 109 1 93 3
Oct 112 5 179 1
Nov 109 14 107 1
Dec 153 7 168 3
2013 2579
Jan 83 4 98 1
Feb 89 7 55 2
Mar 122 2 107 0
Apr 92 0 54 2
May 106 5 75 4
June 136 22 102 2
July 107 4 87 0
August 89 5 67 0
Sept 106 0 46 1
Oct 131 2 123 0
Nov 158 5 210 0
Dec 190 10 151 1
2014 2663
Jan 86 17 70 2
Feb 104 7 96 1
Mar 133 18 121 8
6646 501 6014 81 13242

Monday, March 17, 2014

Sinclaire and her multiple applications to work for UKIP....

A friend of mine this morning drew my attention to an article in yesterday's Sunday Mirror regarding Nigel Farage and Annabelle Fuller which stated:

"We can also reveal that ex-UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire – who this week asked Farage why he used public money to pay Miss Fuller – was snubbed for the job his alleged mistress was given.
Mark Croucher, who was UKIP’s director of communications between 2001 and 2007, confirmed he interviewed her for a job in the party’s press office.

She was turned down because of her “abrasive personality” and Miss Fuller was recruited instead. UKIP insiders say it raises the prospect that Sinclaire asked her explosive question as an act of revenge.

The source said: “Nikki has never got over the fact Annabelle was chosen above her to work for the party. She is a woman scorned and that has come back to haunt Nigel this week.”"

In fact, what I actually said was

"I employed Ms Fuller in the UKIP Press Office in 2006 while I was director of communications. We - myself, my deputy Clive Page, and the party chairman at the time - interviewed a significant number of candidates for the position, and the consensus was that Annabelle was by far the best. She was employed solely on her merits as the best and most suitable candidate for the position, and her subsequent performance proved that that was the correct decision.....
  
Regarding Ms Sinclaire, she was an unsuccessful applicant for the position at the time, just as she was an unsuccessful applicant for my then position, for Clive Page's position, and for a number of other paid roles within UKIP. Her subsequent actions, her on-going bitterness and abrasive personality, her arrest for expenses fraud and her association with members of the far-right including those on paid positions on her current staff have proved that our decision with regards to Ms Sinclaire were correct."

Sinclaire was not interviewed for the position as we only bothered to interview candidates with some ability. There is little point in employing as a press officer a person who could have an argument in an empty house.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

PIE, the Daily Mail, and Downing Street child porn: a coincidence too many?

It may be that you are wondering why when a close associate and long time friend of the Prime Minister who works as an aide at No10 Downing Street is arrested for child pornography offences, the only comment by the Labour Party you can find comes from the otherwise nondescript John Mann MP, member for Bassetlaw and a member of the Treasury Select Committee whose concern is solely to be sure there are 'no policy implications'.

All very strange, although it is possibly not unconnected to the allegations surrounding Labour MPs Jack Dromey, Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt and their links to the Paedophile Information Exchange organisation while they were working for the National Council for Civil Liberties in the 1970's and 80's. That particular story has been rumbling around for many years now without getting a wider airing until the Daily Mail ran with it last December before going rather quiet on it.

Meanwhile, Patrick Horn - the adviser in question at Number 10 - was informed by Downing Street officials of the likelihood of his arrest on the 12th February, and was arrested in the small hours of the 13th February. It would appear that Downing Street was informed in advance of the arrest, and indeed warned Horn, which gave him an opportunity to resign his position before the arrest occurred. What else it may have given him an opportunity to do is a matter for speculation.

What interests me in all of this is the timing. If Horn was arrested in the small hours of the 13th, he was presumably interviewed that day, and very possibly the following day as well. Newspaper reports state that the police 'subsequently examined computers and offices used in Downing Street by Rock, who was the deputy director of No 10's policy unit'

'Subsequently' in this sense would appear to mean in the days following, ie either on Friday the 14th, or Monday the 17th.

How strange then that on Wednesday the 19th February, the Daily Mail - a Tory supporting newspaper - resurrected it's 13th December story about Labour links to PIE, and ran it on the front page not just that day, but for several days afterwards. I recall that when I read the first and following stories, I was slightly puzzled about several things.
  • Why now, when there was no 'new' evidence?
  • When new evidence began to appear, where did it come from? There was little to nothing by way of attribution accompanying the articles
  • Who was their source for this new information?
Now, perhaps I just worked at Westminster for too long, but I'm a bit cynical about the timing. The Harman/Dromey/Hewitt story continues to rumble on, but all of a sudden the timings look a bit too convenient to be entirely coincidental.

It is certainly strange indeed to discover that despite the arrest of a close ally of the Prime Minister which entailed the search of government computers for child pornography in Downing Street, the best Labour can muster is a statement from an obscure back-bencher and a few words from Tom Watson, who'd make a speech at the opening of an envelope if he thought it would get his picture in the Guardian.

So what did happen? I'm flying a bit of a kite here, but I suspect that someone in Downing Street had a brilliant idea. Say nothing about Horn until asked, but in the meantime get the Daily Mail to resurrect their story from December about Labour front benchers and PIE in the 70's and push it for all it was worth. Need more information to sustain a week's worth of front pages? No problem, we're the government, what do you need?

Now, nobody could think that the Horn situation could be hidden forever - it was only a matter of a couple of weeks, if not less, before someone noticed that he was no longer in Downing Street. But that, of course, doesn't matter. By then, the Labour leadership would - with luck - be embroiled in their own paedophile related crisis, and would be keen to not rock the boat on subjects related to senior officials and child pornography.

I can imagine the assessment when - and indeed if - such a scheme was dreamed up. In the short term, it would cause embarrassment to the Labour front bench while they dealt with the PIE allegations. By the time the Horn story came to light, Labour would not be keen to shout 'senior Tory paedophile' because they would be accused of hypocrisy, having vacillated over Harman et al. This is why the only Labour MPs sticking their heads above the parapet were publicity hungry backbenchers. In the long term, the genius at Downing Street would realise that the two stories would coalesce in the public imagination, party lines would be lost, and the 'they're all the same' mentality of the general public would take over leaving few memories of the specifics. Politicians are already held in such low esteem that that would make no difference, but it would prevent a political advantage - and political capital - being made by the Labour Party.

So, perhaps I am too cynical. Perhaps it was indeed a coincidence that the Daily Mail began pushing this story days after Horn's arrest, digging out new evidence regarding PIE from the 70's and 80's, and felt it was genuinely in the public interest. And perhaps the timing of the Horn arrest and the subsequent admission by Downing Street was motivated by good intentions. But my experience of Westminster is that such coincidences rarely happen.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Is Lady Stocking worth more than 1,000 Rwandans? Guardian nonsense on foreign aid.

The Guardian has this morning gone on the attack over suggestions that the cost of flood damage across much of the UK should be taken from the foreign aid budget. The suggestion was first made by UKIP leader Nigel Farage and subsequently made into a national campaign by the Daily Mail.

The Guardian naturally reels off a list of impressive sounding statistics provided helpfully by those organisations who are responsible for the disbursement of aid. How many children were vaccinated, how many people were provided with fresh water, how many schools were opened. All terribly noble stuff.

But I am reminded of some research I did back in 2001 when I first stood as a candidate for UKIP. The EU's own report on its poverty reduction efforts in Rwanda saw it spend something in excess of $250m over a five year period, and yet the report stated that there had been little impact on poverty reduction, and few wider tangible benefits to report. To put this into context, at the time Rwanda had a population of 7 million, and a per capita income of under $140 and yet giving the equivalent of 4 months wages per person had somehow not managed to make anybody - except those in charge - richer.

The question must be whether things have changed. As things stand now, almost 20% of the nation's GDP is in the form of aid payments. A report by the HRF Foundation - When foreign aid hurts more than it helps - has found that heavy inflows of aid did not materially affect the lives of the vast majority of Rwandans. According to an IMF report, while the richest 20% (predominantly Tutsi) of the population shared over 50% of the nation's GDP, the poorest (predominantly Hutu) 20% shared 10 times less, with only 5.4%. The country ranks amongst the most unequal in the world. The reports authors argue that what such huge tranches of foreign aid have achieved is to ensure that while the nation is broadly peaceful, the repression which lead to the genocide in 1994 between Hutu's and Tutsi's is being reinforced by aid payments which enable the Tutsi minority to cement its position of power, while denying aid to the majority Hutu population. Is this really what we wish to achieve with our foreign aid budget?

And then there is the more obviously undeserving waste. The Daily Telegraph reported in December 2012 on the following:

* £800,000 out of the EU aid budget is being spent on a water park being built in Morocco by the French owners of Center Parcs
* Iceland has received £20 million from an EU fund subsidised by British aid. The funding is to prepare Iceland for EU membership - even though two-thirds of the country no longer wish to join
* a former Lancashire detective turned DfID consultant was given £223,683 for fighting corruption in Jamaica, one of eight consultants paid more than £100,000 for their work

But even when we focus on the alleged successes of our aid programme - which is now inextricably linked with that of the EU - the reality is less than impressive. As the Guardian reports:
European aid, in particular, has helped almost 14 million new pupils enrol in primary education and connected more than 70 million people to improved drinking water, since 2004, according to the European commission.

Which sounds good until you recall that the EU aid budget for this year is over £9bn, and it has been at a similar level for some time. If we assume total EU aid over the past decade to be in the region of £65bn (and that is a conservative estimate), this is equal to the combined GDP of the world's 34 poorest countries according to the EU's own index of GDP. Even worse, in many of these countries and those just above them on the GDP table, national wealth is actually falling rather than rising.

The problem is that while committing 0.7% of GNI to international aid makes anyone touched by the madness of government feel all warm and soft inside, it seems to escape their notice that much of that money is simply being poured down the plughole whilst making the lives of the poorest citizens of countries which receive aid worse rather than better. We should not make the mistake of thinking that these are isolated incidents either - you do not have to dig very deeply on the internet to find a wealth of information concerning misappropriated aid payments, such as:

"Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an independent non-profit organization, suspended US$367 million in grants to Uganda in August 2005, after discovering that $45 million had been diverted to sham NGOs created by local politicians"

which is taken from the report "Killing them Softly: Has foreign aid to Rwanda and Uganda contributed to the humanitarian tragedy in the DRC?", written by a former aid worker with experience of both military and civilian humanitarian mission. One hardly needs to descend to the language of 'Bongo-Bongo' land to make the point that there is something seriously wrong.

Part of the problem is the extent to which the aid agencies have become an increasingly politicised industry. The Guardian quotes Oxfam as saying "that money should be redistributed from the UK's wealthiest population sectors to help alleviate suffering in the sodden flood plains. British bankers had received more than €70bn in bonuses since the onset of the financial crisis – far more than the UK's aid budget, according to a statement by the aid agency". Am I alone in wondering what the one has to do with the other outside of the pages of a Labour Party manifesto? Has Oxfam suddenly decided to run for office? We should not forget that Oxfam itself works in Rwanda, where its own publicity states that "60% of the population subsist on less than $1/day", and yet it is their disbursement of aid which helps to cement that in place. Oxfam states that it is assisting "by organising village sessions on such cross-cutting issues as...gender", a favourite topic - along with climate change - of the pro-Labour former Chief Executive. As head of Oxfam Lady Stocking earned £119,000 in 2012/13. The average salary in the banking industry according to Reed International is a more modest £48,000, while the average salary of a Rwandan Hutu is £120. Is Lady Stocking worth more than 1,000 Rwandans? You decide. It's not as if she has ever worked outside the public sector.

I won't pretend to know what the answer is to the foreign aid question. I think most people would agree that we are right to give it, but probably not in its current form, and that is without mentioning aid given to nations which have space programmes and aircraft carriers or are members of OPEC. That much of what we give is wasted, mis-spent, diverted to inappropriate uses or supplied with political strings attached is beyond question. If we are failing to help those most in need, then why has aid become such a sacred cow?



 

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Labour links of 'non-political' residents featured in UKIP leaflet

A row erupted in the Manchester Evening News today over the inclusion of three local residents in a photograph used in a UKIP publication. The three residents - Bernard Caine, Irene Lawrence and her daughter Rachel - claimed that the photograph was used without their permission. The article says,

"Mr Caine, who says he has no party political affiliation but on this occasion has picked Labour candidate Mike Kane via postal vote, added: “It is diabolical.”

Irene, 67, said she only went to the meeting because her housing association asked her to go."

That Mr Caine should vote for Labour candidate Mike Kane is not entirely a surprise as they were both directors of the Parkway Green Housing Trust back in 2006/7 and worked closely together. There are a host of other organisations which Mr Caine has occupied senior positions and in which he would have worked closely with Kane.

As for Mrs Lawrence, she is far from a stranger to Mr Kane either. She was a director (for 11 years) and chairman of the Willow Park Housing Trust, and also worked closely with Kane for many years, most recently over the building of a skate park on the estate in 2010 - as featured in the Manchester Evening News which ran the story about their 'lack of political affiliations' while relegating the story about vandalism and theft from the UKIP office to a side bar.

It is not of course just Mike Kane that Bernard Caine has worked with. He was also a fellow director of the Manchester Tenants & Residents Federation Ltd with Labour councillor David Royle.

Now, it may well be true that neither Bernard Caine nor Irene Lawrence belong to the Labour Party, although I have my doubts about their innocence in that regard. Be that as it may, what is undoubtedly clear is that in an area where the Labour Party vote is weighed rather than counted it would be almost impossible to reach the chairmanship of a Housing Trust without having the whole-hearted support of the local Labour administration. Such support would hardly be forthcoming unless it was reciprocated, and they wholeheartedly supported the Labour administration.

It may also go some way to explaining why certain Labour activists were telling those who displayed UKIP posters in the windows of their social housing that they were 'their' houses, and they couldn't display UKIP posters their. Are the housing trusts as corrupt as the Labour administration? We couldn't possibly comment.
 STOP PRESS! :D

Have a look at these two pictures. Is that Bernard Caine - 'local non-political' resident - on the right at a meeting with Mike Kane and Harriet Harman at the beginning of the  by-election campaign? The second picture is definitely of Mr Caine, taken at the funeral of Paul Goggins, the former MP where he was widely quoted, not least by the BBC - "Bernard Caine said Mr Goggins was always there for his constituents" - in a strictly non-political sense.


Tuesday, February 11, 2014

'We told you so' - flooding concerns not just a publicity stunt

It was with some amusement that I read in the national media suggestions that Nigel Farage is 'courting publicity' with his visit to the flooded Somerset Levels.

As publicity stunts go, this one is particularly long running. Attached is an article from the Dartford Messenger on the 8th January 2003. You will recognise a (rather younger) Nigel Farage protesting against the building of a housing estate on the flood plains in Dartford which were formerly occupied by the (frequently flooded) Joyce Green Hospital.

The hospital is of course long gone now, replaced by a new housing estate. While the houses have escaped flooding in the recent rains, the adjacent dual carriageway - Bob Dunn Way - sits at a lower lever, and was closed for much of January because of flooding. The cause of the flooding? Heavy rain which would formerly have soaked into the flood plain can no longer do so because of the new housing estate, and so instead it runs onto the road.

Bob Dunn Way is a major arterial road linking Junction 1A of the M25 with access to South East London. The result, predictably, was gridlock across many local roads.

If you read the article, Nigel says the building on flood plains is a 'recipe for disaster'. He also mentions that he has been studying flood problems in the South East.

Needless to say, the Environment Agency approved the development at Joyce Green, helpfully redrawing their flood maps to show there was little risk of flooding. With the current heavy rain and the proximity of the already swollen river Thames, we can look forward to more travel chaos in Dartford over the coming few days. Would it be publicity seeking to say 'He told you so'?

Thursday, February 6, 2014

We told them so - Postal Voting parliamentary inquiry, 2003

The news today that UKIP leader Nigel Farage has written to the Electoral Commission raising questions about the security of postal voting - mentioning the Unions Together organisation we investigated yeaterday - cast my mind back to 2003, when I appeared for UKIP before the ODPM parliamentary committee considering postal voting.

Even then it was clear that there were likely to be problems with postal voting. A representative os the Metropolitan Police's Special Branch stated quite clearly that voting fraud in Asian households was difficult to police for cultural reasons related to patriarchal society, and much discussion centered on the provision of marked voting reigsters so people could check whether their vote had been cast:


Mark Croucher of the UK Independence Party does not believe that provision of a marked register to voters would help detect fraud:

“[…] people who make a conscious decision to abstain and not to vote presumably take sufficient interest in a political process to make those checks, but in terms of finding out on a wider basis you do not remove the element of fraud from it. If people cannot be bothered to vote then they are unlikely to check to see whether they have or not"
 
Appears in the Hansard record of proceedings, as does:
 
 Q326 Chris Mole: Do you believe that having all-postal voting favours one political party over any of the others? Conversely, do you believe not having it favours one party over any others?
    Mr Forse: It probably has an advantage for the larger parties over the smaller parties, but not individual parties.   Mr Croucher: I would concur with that entirely...  it makes it much easier for existing and established parties to turn out people who are members of their parties and to encourage them to vote by post... So, yes, we tend to feel that it is an advantage to the major established parties and a disadvantage to smaller.

Mr Forse was representing the Scottish National Party as I recall. I got rather a hard time of it over Europe from several of the MPs on the panel - the details have not survived to the published version of Hansard! - but finished off by saying

"Attempting to somewhat artificially inflate turn-out by using convenience as a means to twist people's arms into voting is perhaps the wrong approach to it. Perhaps making politics more relevant to the people that we are asking to vote would be the answer. We historically never had a problem."

Naturally, this was not what our elected MPs wanted to hear: one can only guess whether they had already worked out how to subvert the postal voting system before they bothered with the Parliamentary inquiry. UKIPs written submission - which was prepared by former MEP & party chairman Dr John Whittaker - covered almost everything except the prediction of institutionalised corruption of the system by the trades unions in concert with the Labour Party. Fraud in sections of the Asian community was raised by the police, and by the Post Office. Did they pay attention? Of course not.

 

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

How the headlines are made....

In honour of the most recent UKIP coverage the following joke:

David Cameron and Nigel Farage are on the terrace of the House of Commons having a drink, it's sunny but gusty and the wind blows David's hat off his head and in to the river.

"Don't worry David," says Nigel, "I'll get it!" and he jumps over the wall and in to the river.

However, there is no splash. David peers over the wall and to his surprise sees Nigel walking on water. Nigel strolls across the surface of the Thames picks up David's hat and takes it back to him in front of the entire House of Commons press lobby.

The next day the headlines read: "Nigel Farage Can't Swim!"

What would have Peter Mandelson and Nick Griffin working together? Wythenshawe, of course

Whilst doing some digging around, I came across some quite interesting information about the groups currently ranged against UKIP.

In the current Wythenshawe & Sale East by-election, UKIP have seen leaflets put out by a variety of organisations, including Unions Together and Solidarity. There is also a host of online campaigns, including Hope not Hate, Action2014 and British Influence and even a comedy tour, the 'StopUKIP' tour which is currently playing to rows of empty seats across provincial theatres.

There are several interesting points to note about these groups. Firstly, with the exception of Hope not Hate, none of them are registered with the Electoral Commission despite their spending being high enough for registration to be required by law. Search their on-line database, and you won't find entries for Unions Together, Solidarity, Action2014, British Influence or Stop UKIP.

So who are they all?

Hope not Hate we already know: funded by a mixture of unions, central government and outside trusts and campaign bodies such as Peter Mandelson's 'Progress' group and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation - with some help from Lord Ashcroft for their increasing anti-UKIP workload - they are targeted against UKIP. Their on-line campaigning is handled by Blue State Digital, whose political director Gregor Poynton is the husband of Labour MP Gemma Doyle. Poynton was a former employee of the Labour Party. Their managing director, Matthew McGregor, is a former Hope not Hate and Labour Party activist who worked on Ken Livingstone's London Mayoral campaign. Blue State Digital are the company who helped Hope not Hate evade up to £70k in tax as described in an earlier post.

Unions Together are an umbrella groups for political campaigning by trades unions: their membership comprises ASLEF, Bectu, BFAWU, Community, CWU, GMB, MU, NUM, TSSA, UCATT, Unison, UNITE, Unity and USDAW, but of course is dominated by the largest. Ostensibly set up to act as a pressure group within the Labour movement - "we campaign within the Labour Party because we want to help make sure that Labour stands up for the needs of our members" - their forays into electoral politics are relatively recent. A disclaimer at the bottom of their website reads 'website hosted by Blue State Digital'. One of Unions Together's tasks is harvesting of postal vote forms for Labour, as discussed in my previous post: such actions are questionable, if not directly illegal.

Then we have British Influence and Action2014 - the latter being wholly owned and operated by the former. The co-presidents of British Influence are Danny Alexander, Kenneth Clarke and Peter Mandelson, which tells you all you need to know about its political views on Europe and UKIP. British Influence don't use Blue State Digital for their on-line campaigning, they use a company called Mass1. Mass1 include amongst their clients the Labour Party and several unions including the TUC, Unite, GMB and PCS. There are three directors of MASS1, who are:

Mark Epstein - who worked with Blue State Digital director Matthew McGregor on Ken Livingstone's campaign
Tom Gutteridge - who also runs 'The People's Operator', a mobile phone company which donates part of its profits to campaign organisations, and runs a scheme for large unions and campaign organisations including GMB, Unite and the Labour Party
Peter Luff - who is also a director of the European Educational Research Trust Limited, a 'charity' which has failed to file returns with the Charity Commission for over 3 years, and which in 2008 donated almost its entire income to the European Movement.

Finally, we have leaflets put out by "Solidarity". Originally I had assumed that these were from the 'Revolutionary Socialist' group as they were so full of bile against UKIP, but closer examination reveals that the issuer is actually the 'Solidarity Trade Union' set up by the BNP in 2005 and not recognised as a trades union by anyone apart from the BNP. Nowhere on their leaflets does it mention the BNP, and given their attempt at class based attacks they are likely only to be of use to Labour as it tries to pretend it is still interested in the working man. Once again, Labour and the BNP seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

All of these organisations have a single aim in common: to ensure a Labour victory. With the exception of Hope not Hate, none of these organisations are operating legally: they are not registered with the Electoral Commission, and therefore are not entitled to take part in an election as a 'third party'.

So where are the Electoral Commission in all of this? Springing into action? Of course not: nothing has been heard from the organisation which is supposed to police all of this. And how about Hope not Hate? Are they shouting as loudly as they usually do about the BNP's fake trades union? Of course not: there is a deafening silence from Lowles and co.

In some respects, this should be regarded as an accolade. The threat of UKIP in a safe Labour seat has brought together the far-right and the far-left in their attempts to halt the UKIP juggernaut. A plethora of left wing advertising agencies back them up with all the power that the champagne socialists of Islington can muster. In a week, we'll know how well they succeeded.

Union postal vote applications go straight onto Labour's computer system


I was taking a look at 'Unions Together' earlier on this morning. In case you weren't aware, that is the operating name of TULO, the Trades Unions and Labour Party Liaison Organisation. They are currently taking part in the Wythenshawe & Sale East by-election despite not being registered with the Electoral Commission, but that is another matter. TULO is located - according to their website - at 1 Brewer's Green, London SW1H 0RH, which is also - coincidentally - the registered address of the Labour Party.

On their website, they feature a section called 'Make your voice heard' to make sure that you are registered to vote, and which allows you to apply for a postal vote. For voter registration, it helpfully encourages people to hold voter registration drives, and supplies materials including voter registration posters in Polish. No, really.

Of more interest is the postal vote application. When you follow the link, it invites you to select your union and download a postal voting form. The unions features are ASLEF, Community, CWU, GMB, TSSA, UCATT, Unison, UNITE and Unity. Clicking on the union link will bring up a pdf document with a postal voting application and a pre-printed address label. All of the forms have the appropriate union's logo displayed in the top right hand corner, but otherwise are pretty standard. Except for one thing. In the bottom left corner is a data protection disclaimer permitting the union to use the details you have supplied to contact you in the future.



So, having filled out the form in blissful ignorance of this, you then send it to the address on the pre-printed reply label:

Nothing particularly controversial there, you might think. Except that if you Google that address, you find that the National Communications Centre is actually the National Communications Centre for the Labour Party.

So what does this mean? It means that every single postal vote gathered by the unions ends up on the database of the Labour Party even before it is submitted to the Electoral Registration Officer in the constituency concerned. As the form also asks for phone numbers and e-mail addresses this is undoubtedly quite useful for another organisation which operates from the same address, the Labour Party Contact Creator software team, which promises:


Of course, they suggest that it will 'allow the Labour Party to meet the challenges of the 21st Century'. Others might suggest that it will 'allow the Labour Party to circumvent the Data Protection Act while breaching the spirit of electoral legislation and the Electoral Commission's guidelines on the handling of postal votes'.

TULO and Unions Together is noted as being promoted by Byron Taylor at the Brewer's Green address above. Byron Taylor is also a Labour councillor and Deputy Leader of the Labour Group on Basildon Council who is 'committed to Basildon' just two years after being Labour's candidate in Stoke on Trent at the general election.

Needless to say, the Unions Together website is hosted - outside the UK, of course! - by Blue State Digital, who are also responsible for Labour's online presence and help Hope not Hate evade VAT, as discussed previously.

Friday, January 31, 2014

'Charity' evades £70k in VAT on political campaigning


A supposedly charitable organisation which has received over £150,000 of government funds for fighting racism in deprived areas has been defrauding the government of tens of thousands of pounds after misusing its charitable status to escape paying VAT.
Hope not Hate Ltd receive most of their funding from large Unions and enjoy the support of many Labour MPs including jailed expenses fraudster Denis MacShane, but a significant percentage comes from the Department for Communities and Local Government which is funnelled through its charitable arm, Hope not Hate Educational Ltd.  Hope not Hate Educational Ltd was previously called the Searchlight Educational Trust. Since 2010 it has received over £150,000, getting over £63,000 in 2012 alone.
Hope not Hate Ltd, the non-charitable arm, was originally formed as a campaign within the Searchlight group and dedicated to anti-racism and anti-fascism. The group campaigned for many years against the National Front and the BNP, with Hope not Hate first being set up as a separate campaign under campaign director Nick Lowles in 2009. Following internal arguments between Lowles and Searchlight founders Gerry & Sonia Gable, Hope not Hate was separated from Searchlight and incorporated as a limited company under Lowles ownership, and with him as sole director. General Secretary of both Hope not Hate Ltd and Hope not Hate Educational Ltd is Labour Party activist and failed NEC & parliamentary candidate Ruth Smeeth. Having lost the safe Labour seat of Burton & Uttoxeter in 2010, she is currently working to lose Stoke on Trent and Kidsgrove in 2015.
Since 2010, it has been very much refocused as an anti-UKIP party as UKIP continue to make considerable gains in the polls. At one stage, Hope not Hate worked with UKIP to keep members of the far-right out, but it ceased co-operation with the anti-EU party when Lowles took control. Lowles background is within the hard left, having formerly been associated with both the Communist Party and the Socialist Worker's Party before fronting the Hope not Hate campaign from which he now makes a tidy living. 
 In the 2010 General Election, Hope not Hate Ltd filed total expenses of over £319,000 with the Electoral Commission, of which £310,000 was spent in England, with the rest split between Wales and Scotland. Most of this spend was directed against the BNP. Amongst Hope not Hate's biggest suppliers was Blue State Digital Inc, or BSD. BSD sprang from the activists surrounding Howard Dean's run for the US presidency, and morphed into an international political fund raising/consultancy business before being purchased by Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP Group in 2011.
Hope not Hate spent heavily with BSD. In total the invoices amount to £ 71,050. Of these invoices, £31,500 worth were from BSD UK, while a the remainder were invoiced from the US. Of the £39,500 invoiced by BSD US, all were for a 'monthly technology fee' and a 'monthly strategy fee'. Being invoiced by a US based company, VAT would not be included on the invoice, but should have been declared and paid by Hope not Hate as they are VATable services, and the additional expenditure should have appeared on their ElComm declaration.  There is no record of this VAT relating to the controlled period having been paid.
Of the remaining £31,500, all of it was invoiced by BSD UK, and for exactly the same services with one exception - there is a single invoice for 'Advertising' for £1,000, which includes VAT of £175. The remaining £ 30,500 has been invoiced free of VAT. On the total of £71,500, Searchlight paid only £175 of VAT, and appear to have evaded VAT which amounts to £12,258.75 at the then prevailing rate of 17.5%.
An accident? Not likely. As far back as 2002, the Charities Commission warned Hope not Hate's predecessor Searchlight about conducting political activities which were not concomitant with its charitable status and stated in its report that " A charity must not issue material that supports or opposes a particular political party or the government or seek to persuade members of the public to vote for or against a candidate or for or against a political party". It also warned that it should not  mix its charitable activities with its political ones and should establish a clear separation between the two bodies.
So why were they not charged VAT on what were clearly VAT-able invoices? There are two alternatives. The first is that BSD - now a part of Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP Group - either 'forgot' to charge or deliberately undertook to defraud HM Customs & Excise by not including VAT. The second is that as a charity, Searchlight/Hope not Hate Educational Ltd is not liable for VAT, and can apply for an exemption certificate which when given to suppliers permits them to not charge VAT on invoices.

Which is more likely? It's a 50:50 choice, really. Would a multi-national company have accidentally forgotten to invoice VAT? And if they deliberately didn't invoice VAT, why not? The only reason would be the production of an exemption certificate, and yet the services supplied would not fall within the permitted use of such a certificate. The question - if this is the case - must be whether BSD were aware that the services they were providing fell outside the scope of such a certificate. For links between senior BSD managers and directors and the Labour Party, see below and make your own judgement.
If most likely assumption is that Hope not Hate Ltd evaded VAT by supplying BSD with Hope not Hate Educational Ltd's VAT exemption certificate, and then used it to benefit from VAT evasion on work which was subsequently submitted to the Electoral Commission as expenses of Hope not Hate Ltd. By the time they ceased supplying invoices to ElComm, they had evaded over £12,000 in VAT. This is what is directly provable. BSD still act on Hope not Hate's behalf, and it is not unreasonable to assume that their bill has not got smaller than the £6,300/month they were previously billing. Since the 2010 General Election, 45 months have passed which would represent at current rates over £ 56,000 of VAT illegally evaded by Hope not Hate, bringing their total VAT evasion to almost £ 70,000.
Would BSD have been aware of this? It is difficult to imagine they would not. BSD ultimate owner Sir Martin Sorrell is trenchantly pro-European, calling only last week for the Conservative Party to adopt a more pro-European position, and he is a frequent collaborative letter writer to national newspapers calling for 'more Europe', along with other tycoons such as Sir Richard Branson. As BSD are charging for 'monthly strategy fees', it is difficult to imagine that they do not have at least some input into the anti-UKIP stance Hope not Hate have increasingly adopted.

This is probably assisted by the close links between the Labour Party and BSD. BSD were contracted last year to run Labour's on-line campaigning ahead of the 2015 general election, while BSD Political Director Gregor Poynton - husband of Labour MP Gemma Doyle - was the Labour leadership's preferred candidate for the Falkirk West seat currently held by former Labour MP Eric Joyce. BSD themselves operate Scottish Labour's website and host it on non-UK based servers.

Sample Blue State Digital invoice from Electoral
Commission - note the lack of VAT
Elsewhere, there are close links between BSD and Hope not Hate which probably help in the turning of a blind eye to misuse of charitable status. Matthew McGregor, MD of BSD UK, is a former Hope not Hate activist who previously worked for John Cruddas and Ken Livingstone, while Fabian Society staffer Richard Speight previously worked for BSD. Whether BSD knew or not, it is the responsibility of the seller to ensure that they are charging the correct amount of VAT, and with the close links between the Labour Party, Hope not Hate, the unions - many of whom BSD also represents - and BSD, it is inconceivable that there was not an awareness that HnH were campaigning politically rather than on a social ills.

At the time of writing, it is believed that formal complaints will shortly be made to HM Customs & Excise, the Electoral Commission, the Charity Commission and the police.

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