Complaint

The various things hidden in the cupboard

In one of our posts of last year about the hoax played on the Gaul families with the continued help of the police authorities and of their informants, we expressed doubt that the matter of the human remains found in Russia was genuine and relevant to the Gaul tragedy. We understood that that was a pretext for keeping a tab on the families at a time when damning proof about the cover up was about to emerge. By keeping in touch with the families the police in Hull probably wanted to make sure that none of them got access to that proof.

A year after that Russian story - as we anticipated - nothing happened.

At the time we felt sorry for those whom the evidence incriminates; today, this is no longer the case.

EU comedy and humour

The text published at this link offers all the ingredients of a good comic piece of writing: 

http://echr.coe.int/Documents/Resolution_Judicial_Ethics_ENG.pdf

As a famous novelist once claimed, humour is the justice that the law never is. 

Further details will be posted soon.

Clarification

Some people seem to believe that any honest resolution to the serious breaches of the law revealed by us, would somehow have catastrophic repercussions, would even trigger international conflict and war.

Of such nature are the spin and the disinformation and so pervasive the arguments that those who've heard them could be easily taken in.

The reality, however, is very different. Our disclosures do not hold such sway, and to claim otherwise is fantasy. (The Tory party and members of the Royal Family have known our problems for over eight years, and during this time, the political circumstances have not stayed the same.)

The main reasons why the British state continues to cover up the truth and deny those involved their basic rights have more to do with ordinary, yet very effective, blackmail targeting the very top of the Establishment. As blackmail doesn't look so pretty, those who have surrendered to it have decided to dress up their abject failure as honourable deeds and sacrifice required by the complex circumstances of the moment.

The perfidy of our rulers knows no bounds.

Good society

“We cannot do that, do you want them to start asking for compensation”, argued a public servant - by “them” meaning the public who paid their salaries, in general, and the victims of marine accidents, in particular. Behind that line lies a sincere astonishment that the entitlements of ordinary members of the public could seriously be considered.

When it came to expenses, however, – some quite inexcusable – public servants would say, “We’ll charge it to the Vote.”, the “Vote” meaning the same unsuspecting public, destined to be sponged by the State as a matter of course, rather than as an exception. The politicians’ disregard for the voters’ interests may have rubbed off on the public servants who worked so close to government politics

We must emphasise that the authors of the above statements were not elected representatives, but bureaucrats appointed to public positions by virtue of a job contract. It is possible that when making those comments – and let’s not be too affronted by them, as more shocking admissions will soon need to be copied and shared – the unelected bureaucrats in question, just like our elected officials, may have felt that their elevated status and allegiance did not rest with the taxpayer.

Scotsmen and creatures from another planet (interlude)

Magna Carta celebrations in a lawless land

With straight faces, royalty, government and officials have taken part in a string of celebrations marking the 800^th anniversary of Magna Carta.

“No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights and possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land”.

The old barons forced the rule of law upon King John – their protection against the arbitrariness of the monarch. Eight centuries on, Prime Minister Cameron vowed with patriotic energy to “restore the reputation” of the charter’s values with a new British Bill of Rights.

I’m not sure I would say that the reputation of the Carta’s values has been tainted (although the Home Office has been trying very hard to discredit its ideals), but it is certainly the case that the reputation of those duty-bound to uphold the ‘justice for all’ principle lies in tatters. Today’s barons don’t like the hassle of due process when it is a lot easier to get what you want by might.

Cameron’s British Bill of Rights – aimed at supplanting the Human Rights Act – may do away with our right to be free from torture and thus give the State the power to chastise us with iron rods and scorpions, but it will proudly assert the supremacy of the UK courts over Strasbourg. Nothing has yet transpired as to what that Bill will contain, but I can see that many are sceptical about it – after all, who can trust the protections of a Bill of Rights drafted by this generation of lawmakers?

“We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right”

Yet, as we know only to well, the Magna Carta celebrants are in the business of doing exactly the opposite.

Cadre Rotation

In October 2011 we reported on the transfer of Mrs Theresa Crossley from Head of Shipping Policy in the Department for Transport to the position of Head of Department for Safety and Standards in the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). 

After four years at the helm of the aforementioned department, Mrs Crossley - whose progress we’ve been interested to follow, there being between us a bond of shared confidentialities - came home to be appointed as UKPMG executive director. Apart from having worked for the European Commission and being therefore remarkable, and apart from her very promotable qualities, Theresa Crossley will bring her wealth of experience and valuable contacts to the new job. UKPMG mention on their site, “Many of the issues that confront UK ports are raised, debated and promulgated in Europe via the European Commission.” Hence, their new executive director will prove useful in raising the stakes of such debate. (We do not suggest any impropriety on the part of UKPMG, of course.) 

It may also be noted in passing that John Prescott, the Department for Transport former chieftain, has also been recently elevated from his dormant status within the House of Lords to the avant-scène of party politics, and is now providing his party leader with his exact knowledge on matters of climate change. 

 

                                          (drawing by Dan Perjovski)

As somebody famous said, the reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

Reasons and Pretexts

Another year begins with more of the same: chaos, corruption, opportunism, cowardice and indifference on the part of the State. 

The issues raised in this blog are still unresolved, and the prospects are looking a little more uncertain – if we take into account the fact that 2015 is an election year. 

In this case as in many others, there is a web of reasons and pretexts behind the official recklessness. 

Many times we’ve been informally told that the reason for burying alive the matter of the formal inquiries into three maritime disasters, was pressure from the US administration, pressure which was unbearable to the British authorities. This almost reasonable sounding justification, meant to give official wrongdoing the immunity of an act of God, has, however, two major faults: first, it is partly a cop-out and, secondly, it has got nothing to do with us – that is we shouldn’t care a toss about who is pressuring whom. 

Let me explain: the terms of our relationship with the British state that we are subjects of - in the context of the disclosures that we have made about the Gaul RFI and the other official cover-ups - do not include any deference to the whims of a foreign government. 

We have the duty to be loyal, pay taxes and obey the law of our land in exchange for various rights and legal protections that are conferred on any British citizen. This is a bond based on mutual obligations. Even the medieval vassalage was a reciprocal relationship. What is more, equality before the law has been the basic principle of citizenship since Ancient Greece. Since ancient times, a citizen has been understood as a person free to act by law, free to ask and expect the law’s protection. In today’s Britain, however, this no longer seems to be the case. 

The claim that a foreign country can impose the suspension of the rule of law here – and do so for no reason other than to assist corrupt political allies – be it a pretext (1) or a reason (2) - has and should have nothing to do with the victims of sea tragedies or with us. 

And, anyway, what would happen if Britain withstood such pressures? Would we be invaded or our foreign trade sabotaged? We don’t think so. It might have some tit-for-tat repercussions, such as unpleasant things being revealed in the press about our government, prominent politicians (‘revelations’ similar to those in the child abuse scandal etc. pursued with similar frenzy) and even members of the royal family, but these are not legitimate reasons to suspend the law. 

It is therefore far more likely, we suspect, that our government, with the 2015 general election in mind, wants to please powerful lobbies and donors and to avoid any skeletons being dragged out of the cupboards by well-connected political enemies (LINK). I don't think there is one person in public life who cannot be blackmailed. To these ends, the British authorities are prepared to ignore crime and – so as to give the culprits added satisfaction - aid and abet in the continued victimisation of whistleblowers and witnesses. 

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(1) It is already known that former Labour government figures have been in the habit of asking the US government to oppose disclosures about their crimes (see the official interventions prior to the publication of the Torture Report)

(2) The US government may try to solve their foreign policy problems by dispensing sweeteners, for the sake of unity, at others' expense.