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.

 

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.

'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.

Give the original creator an irony transplant - quick!!

Every now and then, I see a meme on Facebook which seems pretty stupid. This must qualify as one of the most stupid I have seen, unless it was supposed to be ironic, which I doubt. It originally had just the yellow text - I have added the white text in case anyone misses the irony: Sgt Blackman, the 'PoW in his own country', was convicted of shooting a wounded Afghan prisoner in the head. While being filmed. And saying he was breaking the Geneva Convention.

Parking tickets - a few pointers for fighting them and winning.

We've all had those annoying parking tickets in the past, but how many of us fight back rather than just pay the ticket and carry on? It is certainly worth doing, and I hope that some of the contents of the following two letters may prove useful as pointers to others who are sick to death of the parking Gestapo. The first letter is my appeal against an absurd penalty on an empty street in Southwark while visiting my daughter in her student digs at Guy's Hospital on a Saturday evening, while the second is my response to Dartford Borough Council who attempted to imply that the law didn't apply to them but did to me, and offered to waive half of the charge when my friend parked my Jeep 'illegally' overnight a year ago. Don't be put off by mealy mouthed excuses or offers which they are not legally entitled to make. Good luck, and keep fighting!

XX XXXXXXXXX XXXX
Dartford,

Kent DAXX XXX

8th December 2013

 

Southwark Parking Services,

Admail 4197
London SE1 1ZA

Dear Sir/Madam,

Ref: PCN SO34512069 Mercedes E320 PXXX XXX

Weston Street is supposed to be marked with a single yellow line and a pay and display bay. Sadly, both the yellow line and the line marking the edge of the pay and display bays were obliterated. Where the single yellow line was visible, it was incorrectly terminated and failed to end with the necessary termination bar, while the parking bay marking was missing with only vestiges of white paint on the road. As you will be aware, the London Borough of Southwark is required to comply with the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 and your failure to do so is contrary to the requirements of Section 18 (1) (b) of the Local Authorities Traffic Orders (Procedure)(England and Wales) Regulations 1996, which require of the local authority the 'maintenance of the signs for as long as the order remains in force'.  This is not the case in this instance as the signage is clearly defective, and therefore no order can remain in force if it is incorrectly marked or signed.

For your benefit, I would quote to you the precedent from the High Court set in Davies v Heatley  [1971] R.T.R. 145, which clearly states the following:

"Because by s.64(2) of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 traffic signs shall be of the size, colour and type prescribed by regulation, if a sign the contravention of which is an offence contrary to s.36 is not as prescribed by the regulation, no offence is committed if the sign is contravened, even if the sign is clearly recognisable to a reasonable man as a sign of that kind"

I have photographs taken at the time and duly timestamped which show the deficiencies of the road markings and these are attached.

I would also ask that you inform your civil enforcement officer that although he thought he was hiding from me as I left my vehicle, it is difficult to hide a man in a dayglo vest riding a moped, and if this is the policy of LB Southwark I would like to point out that grown men in dayglo vests peeping around corners simply serves to make them look ridiculous.

I look forward to your timely confirmation that the PCN has been cancelled, and until such time, I remain,

Yours faithfully,

Mark Croucher