Has to be good - by Richard... Sunday, June 26, 2011

Has to be good - by Richard... Sunday, June 26, 2011

Anyone who can write this and then conclude with this:

In the meantime, I thank God for sending us Charles Moore; and I curse her for sending us Nigel Farage.

... has to be worth a read.

Talking to a cabinet minister just before Christmas, he writes, I was horrified at the urbane cynicism with which he observed, "The British don't like the EU, but they're never going to march about it".

Now, this may be true. Another thing that is true is that I tend to use the words "idiot" and "fool", rather a lot. I might even be in danger of over-using them. But nevertheless, this cabinet minister is a fool (mind you, most are).

The British may not march against the EU ... but they most certainly will be marching over theconsequences of our membership of the EU. None of us know when ... but there is a certain historic inevitability about it. I hope he keeps his armoured limousine close by.

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Scottish practices - by Richard...

So, what are we to do with the news that the cost of the Edinburgh tram system is now going top £1 billion, by the time it is complete – if it ever is – more than double the starting estimate?

Originally, it was intended to run for twelve miles from Edinburgh Airport to Newhaven via central Edinburgh, including a stretch on Princes Street. The 23 stops on the route were to be served by a fleet of 27 low-floor trams. Now there is doubt that it will do even that.

However, even a truncated scheme will cost £773 million - £273 million more than the budget for the entire project - and the limited service then offered would not be viable. It would need a subsidy of some £4m a year: there is no prospect that the short route would ever make a profit. And scrapping the whole scheme entirely would still end up costing £750 million.

But the Scots are wearily familiar with this sort of thing. Another recent project was the M74 extension which began with an estimated cost of £245 million in 2001 and a completion date of 2008. The final cost, including land, came to £692 million, and the extension is finally due to open this week.

Such is the surreal nature of the project though, that the opening is accompanied by farcical ministerial assertions that it had come in "£15m to £20m under budget" and that it was opening "eight months early".

But behind the current disaster is a story little known outside Scotland, centering on the establishment in 2002 of a new body by Edinburgh Council, called TIE Ltd (Transport Initiatives Edinburgh), which was supposed to manage the project.

In 2009, the organisation acquired a new chief executive, Richard Jeffrey, who was to manage the project through the construction phase until operation. On 19 May, however, the media conveyed his abrupt announcement that he was leaving on 8 June, just as the news emerged that the City's main Princess was going to be closed for ten months while repeat roadworks were carried out - the street already having been closed in 2009 (pictured below) after an earlier contractural disaster.

This is the third chief executive to have departed. Yet, despite his lamentable performance, Jeffrey is expected to walk away with a year's salary, said to be £155,000, plus other benefits, leaving theHerald Scotland to complain that 72 percent of the construction work remains to be done, while only 38 percent of the budget is left. This confirms, it says, "that cheques have been written out in a wanton and cavalier fashion".

In the interim, TIE has spent £20m on hiring "consultants" to advise them on how to overspend. As well as pocketing huge fees, these people scooped massive bonuses, rent payments and expenses. Creating TIE also meant using a budget that was supposed to be for transport infrastructure is funding an elaborate tier of senior managers and directors.

Amongst the beneficiaries of the consultancy bonanza has been an umbrella outfit called InfraCo which, in addition to high level fees, shared a £140,000 bonus pot for their work. Overall, TIE has paid nearly £250,000 in bonuses to seven consultants for their advice on contractual and other issues.

These included Matthew Crosse, TIE's "project director" who received £370,000 in consultancy fees from 2007 and 2009 paid to his firm, Strategic Lines. Part of that was a £30,550 bonus for his work in negotiating "competitive contracts". Alastair Richards, whose job was to work on the design of the trams, got a £25,000 bonus.

Geoff Gilbert was the commercial director working on the InfraCo negotiations and another key contract. His firm, GGA, took home £230,000 in fees, of which £23,500 was bonuses. David Powell, a project manager on the same contract, was paid £124,124 through firm Linkplan Ltd for the tasks he carried out. £11,200 of that was a bonus.

But the biggest bonus of all went to the lawyer who advised the trams body on InfraCo. Andrew Fitchie, a partner at Edinburgh law firm DLA Piper, got a £50,000 bonus for work on the contract. DLA Piper received over £2 million for legal work for TIE.

Needless to say, the advisers' bonus bonanza was not restricted to the InfraCo contract. Jim McEwan, TIE's "business improvement director", was a consultant who worked primarily on the utility side of the project. His firm, RacReb Consulting Ltd, got £405,000 of taxpayers' money in fees between 2007 and 2010, of which £90,000 was bonuses.

Bob Dawson, head of procurement design, advised TIE on utility diversion. His consultancy, Acumetic, was paid £158,000, including an £18,500 performance-related bonus.

The fiasco has been watched from afar by Subrosa, who has branded the whole scheme a white elephantafter TIE's chairman stepped down with immediate effect last November declaring parts of the project "hell on wheels".

Amongst other things, the TIE has become noted foroutrageous junketing. April 2007 had seen £1,032 blown on a staff quiz night at a top class Edinburgh hotel and a year later bosses spent £880 on a staff party at another venue. Another £800 was spent in August 2008 on a "team event" in a bar, while £3,102 was found for a "board strategy day" in North Berwick.

In February last year, TIE used £1,630 of its budget for an "executive team away-day" at the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena and two months later it spent £2,648 on another one at the same location. It must have been very popular because three weeks later they were there again at a cost to the taxpayer of £4,017.

Richard Jeffrey, still then chief executive, said of the events: "As regards our team at Edinburgh Trams, they are the lifeblood of the organisation and investing in them means investing in the right people to manage what is a complex and difficult project". God help us if he had invested in the "wrong" people.

And on top of all that, £29,549 was spent on foreign business trips by staff. Senior employees had travelled overseas on 29 occasions since 2007, unfortunately buying return tickets. Additionally, £68,000 was spent on membership of professional organisations since 2006.

We really know how to waste money, concludes Subrosa after another egregious failure came to light, cementing in the term "Scottish practices" to add to the Spanish (and Greek) variety.

The term can be used to describe wholesale looting of the public purse on grandiose schemes, enriching contractors, consultants and officials, without care or remorse. There seems to be awful lot of these practices around – and we haven't even started on the English practices.

For all their prattle, is there any politician in the land – or group of politicians - either side of the border, capable of stopping them? If not, what are politicians for?

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Look in the mirror? - by Richard...

Having given over her top slot to rumours about whether Pippa Middleton was wearing knickers at the Royal Wedding, columnist Carole Malone in The News of the World then lambasts Cameron over the circus issue.

We're fighting two wars we can't afford and we've got a Euro debt crisis that could see off the single currency yet Downing Street is busying itself issuing threats against an MP who wants to ban wild animals in circuses, she opines.

"Hell's teeth! Hasn't our Prime Minister got more pressing matters to attend to than trying to stop circus animals (just 39 are left in Britain) seeing out their days at some nice sanctuary in Devon", she then declares – demonstrating a staggering lack of self-awareness. She should really have been looking in a mirror when she wrote that.

Catherine Bennett, in The Observer, however, doesn't stoop to knickers, but makes a similar point: "if you're going to rebel, find a better cause". Yes, the welfare of circus animals is a concern, she says, but not more important, say, than elderly people in care homes.

Cue Booker, although not about care homes – we did them ages ago, and may well return to the subject – but about the "stolen children" saga. The media's reluctance to get involved on this issue is in stark contrast to the amount of space devoted to the fate of 39 animals, knickers, slebs and sundry other trivia which swamp their output.

Then, some stories don't even find their way into the Booker column, such as the bizarre fate of Steve Headley, an ex-policeman, who had lived happily for nine years with his partner and her two children.

Unfortunately for them, last summer, they had attended a "naturist" holiday camp in Norfolk, as they have done before, where Headley briefly helped a friend of his 10-year old stepdaughter by rubbing sun-tan oil into her shoulders. Although this was in full view of 20 other children and adults, including the camp's child protection officer, one camper reported the incident to the police.

Headley was arrested, held in a police cell for 24 hours, then released without charge because the police found he had done nothing wrong. When the family returned to Staffordshire, though, they were visited by social workers, who informed Headley's partner that her children would be taken into care unless she signed a document agreeing that he immediately left the family home and had no further contact with her children.

Terrified, she signed and Headley left the house. Because he had nowhere else to go, he decided that, until the matter was resolved, he would live in his car. Thus began a nightmarish cat and mouse game.

Although no legal proceedings were initiated, the social workers continually intervened in the family's life. The mother was sent for four "assessments", Headley for three. The children were interviewed at school, in full view of staff and other pupils.

The social workers – who clearly believe that any connection with "naturism" is unnatural - came up with ever more absurd insinuations, These included a photograph of Father Christmas with his hands on the shoulders of two young girls, whom they claimed was Headley, It was in fact a school photograph taken at a school Christmas party. The bearded figure was someone else entirely.

Repeatedly the social workers have told his partner that they were discussing taking her children into care, but they have still initiated no legal proceedings. Although he continued to live in his car for a year, Booker last week advised him that the document signed by his partner had no legal force, which astonished them. He was therefore fully entitled to return home. On Thursday the family, reunited for the first time in a year, enjoyed a celebratory dinner.

Recently, Cranmer did a story about another unhappy father, deprived of contact with his son – but these are not stories in which the media are interested, or will even allow in their pages. In fact, as we see with Cameron lauding the single mums and attacking "absent fathers", neither the politicians nor the media are even on the same planet. All we get from them is the likes of this insensitive Spectator cartoon (above), which completely miscasts a growing tragedy.

Slowly the disgust of people is growing, as awareness spreads that the political classes have lost the plot. The hits on this and other independent blogs attest to that dissatisfaction with the MSM and its political friends. Numbers are everything in this game and even if there are too few of us yet to make an army, we are increasing in strength. And Pippa Middleton's knickers are helping us on our way.

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The EUterus - by Richard...

It's a name for the new Council building in Brussels, the one which was used as a headquarters by the occupying Nazi forces during WWII and now performs a similar role for our new masters. Cranmer explains the idea, calling it the "womb of the cult of death".

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Ignoring the elephant - by Richard...

The circus elephant in the room is still at large as the media continue to chew over the bones. Claiming ownership of the campaign to ban the use of wild animals in circuses is The Sunday Express which directs its ire at Cameron for the failure of the government to implement a ban.

It cites a Friday statement which said he was "minded" to outlaw using wild animals but the Department for Food and Rural Affairs, which instead wants a licensing regime, still insists there are "unavoidable legal difficulties" surrounding a possible legal challenge by circus bosses in the European courts. And that's as good as it gets.

Yesterday, The Independent (devoting its front page to the story - pictured) had much the same thing, also reporting Cameron as insisting that he was "minded" to outlaw circuses from keeping wild animals.

According to this newspaper though, Cameron says it is "not right" to still have lions, tigers and elephants performing in the big top. "We are minded to have a ban, but need to clear some obstacles," he told a press conference at an EU "summit" in Brussels.

Nevertheless, says The Independent, "despite Mr Cameron's conciliatory language on implementing a ban – and the promise by Agriculture minister James Paice to 'respect the will of the House' – there were signs last night the Government was prevaricating".

We are then told that the Department for the Environment is understood to be still arguing there are "legal problems" in implementing an outright ban and to be standing by its alternative proposal for a tough licensing regime for circuses.

Now, as our readers are very well aware, these "legal problems" are a matter of EU law, with the government convinced that to implement a ban would be contrary to EU law.

It really cannot be the case that the writer of The Independent piece was unaware of this – at least, one hopes so – in which case the refusal to identify the EU as the cause of the problem is more than a little interesting. This Europhile newspaper has been leading the fray in the media for the adoption of the ban, and it must be acutely embarrassing that its darling EU is blocking the way.

But this inability to report the elephant is not unique to the Europhiles. Even the self-proclaimed sceptic Daily Express was reporting yesterday that "Ministers were against introducing a ban next year, fearing it would attract lawsuits from circus owners and workers".

This paper thus did not mention the EU in its story, taking exactly the same line as the idiot Andrew Pierce in The Daily Mail, which told its readers, "Ministers opposed a ban because of fears that it would leave the Government open to lawsuits from circus owners and workers".

Exactly the same formula was seen in The Scotsman though. It seems that copy-and paste journalism is rampant – as always.

But it is not only the media which is ignoring the EU circus elephant. The RSPCA on its website is demanding action, with David Bowles, director of communications, saying: "Parliament has spoken, and government should listen". Any attempt to delay or avoid a complete ban would be wrong-headed and simply not acceptable, he says, with not a single mention of the EU.

Part of this, undoubtedly, is the insistence on trivialising politics, reducing it to the level of a low-grade soap opera, as does this piece in The Mail on Sunday.

The media and political classes have become so debauched that all they can think and write about is "self". The actual issues are of such little interest that they cannot be bothered to research them properly, much less report them accurately.

That said, I take some flak on the forum for attacking Pritchard - a potential ally. My view, though, it MPs wrote themselves out of the script a long time ago, Pritchard along with the rest, who is at heart just a vain egocentric like the rest - incapable of listening or learning, still denying EU involvement.

Demonstrated with the utmost clarity by this affair is the very simple premise – if we are going to force any changes to the way this country is governed, we are going to have to do it ourselves. We cannot rely on parliament or the media.

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The penny drops - by Richard...

Actually, it seems to be dropping, according to Booker, but at last there does seem to be some recognition that Greece's problems with the euro is by far the most serious crisis that the great European "project" has ever faced.

Unlike me, Booker watches the idiots' lantern occasionally, and observes that, as their sad, bewildered faces show whenever they appear on our screens, the EU's leaders have nowhere to turn. The "colleagues" cannot afford to allow Greece to fall out of their beloved euro, which might trigger an international currency crisis, the consequences of which no one can calculate.

On the other hand, they cannot afford to continue pouring tens of billions of euros, which will never be repaid, into a basket-case economy. They – and we – are impaled on an impossible hook.

One of the few sources of pleasure in this mess has been to witness the discomfiture of our own homegrown euro-zealots who, a decade or more ago, were obsessively urging Britain to join the lemmings as they set off for that ultimately inevitable cliff, says Booker, then offering a narrative about the BBC's Today programme.

But that is very small compensation when you see what HMG is up to, according to The Observer. Despite the Boy claiming "victory" in getting Germany to agree that the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism will not be used, thus limiting UK contributions to the bailout to its IMF contributions, it seems other dirty dealing is afoot.

The treasury, we are told, is urging British banks to take a hit, cooperating in a "soft" restructuring of Greek bond debt, rescheduling something like £2.5 billion of debt, taking below market interest rates. That may or may not work, but both Moody's and Fitch have indicated that any soft restructuring will still be regarded as a default.

Either way, therefore, the British taxpayer is going to be screwed - although Tim Worstall isn't too worried about the Bond "haircut", given that the City gave out £8 billion in bonuses last year.

Nevertheless, as Booker reminds us in his column, we in Britain are approaching a financial abyss almost as great as that into which Greece has been falling. Last week, the deficit on our Government's annual spending widened yet again, to £143 billion, which means that we are having to borrow nearly £3 billion a week. That equates to £5,700 a year for every household.

The BBC continues to prattle on about those terrible "cuts", as various groups of public sector workers plan the widest series of strikes we have seen since the 1970s. But when did you last hear the BBC tell us that our overall public spending is rising, not falling? When did the Todayprogramme tell us that by the end of the year, our national debt will have soared to £1 trillion, having doubled in six years?

When did it mention that, despite all those closed libraries and care centres, the Government is still having to borrow the equivalent of £100 a week for every household in the land, to pay, inter alia, for the 1,600 employees of the NHS who earn more than the Prime Minister? And that's not even mentioning the 46 BBC executives who enjoy similar perks, including the £834,000 a year we pay the director-general himself.

Forget poor old bankrupt Greece, says Booker. Here in Britain, too, we ain't seen nothing yet. And I'm not entirely sure that penny has dropped.

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Nice and easy does it - by Richard... Saturday, June 25, 2011

If you want an example of cheap and easy journalism, the above is a good example - all generalities, but naming no names. If you really want to hurt them, though, and force through change, you have to name names, as we did in April 2005, going after Barroso and Spiros Latsis, and their little scam.

Booker and I did a lot of work on this and, for once, UKIP did some good work. As the story unfolded, it was very clear that the Latsis empire was involved in a massive network of bribery and corruption, including the EU commission and much, much more.

And what happened? The piece that Booker did in The Sunday Telegraph got pulled, and this was forced on us by a nervous newspaper management. The EU parliament stuff that we were able to report eventually was sunk by gutless MEPs and with the rest of the MSM also diving for cover, we got nowhere.

The Mail story is right in principle. Greece is being dragged down by a huge amount of corruption – but the problem starts with billionaire robber barons who are stealing on an industrial scale, with the help of a nexus of international partners, in which the EU and Barroso are central players.

So doing nice, soft, easy stories is going to achieve precisely nothing – but just what you expect from the entertainment industry.

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Matured stupidity - by Richard...

Very early in my career, I made an interesting discovery. Stupid old women were not stupid because they were old. They started off their lives as stupid young women, only people (especially males) tended to be more forgiving. And when she was young, this one, currently pontificating about the "Freedom Flotilla", must have been very stupid indeed, to judge by this:

Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: what else would I do? I am in my 67th year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content. It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one's understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

The antidote is here, as banned by HuffPuff.

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