The Banks and the FSA's Adventures in Wonderland - UK Establishment smoke and mirrors

The UK Financial Establishment switches on the smoke machine.

FSA: "We won't publish our findings ..." Cries of outrage. "OK we will, then - but only part of them, and not until March ..."

Nobody is to blame, nobody is held accountable, nobody will be prosecuted, nobody can be sued, but "lessons will be learned ..."

Oh, yeah? Until the next time, when they do it all over again. Are these people beyond the law? Are they beyond shame?

The Americans showed no such mercy to their errant bankers - at least some of them got their just deserts. The US still has some remnants of an accountable democracy and a free press, unlike the crumbling and corrupt United Kingdom.

Glasgow and The Herald – the Purcell fallout

There is little I can say now about Steven Purcell as the magnitude of Glasgow’s political corruption under Labour unfolds. I have believed for many years that Labour was failing Glasgow, and my conversion to the cause of independence for Scotland was in significant part based on what had been done to my native city, although Iraq and Afghanistan were my dominant reasons.

I tried to get some of this across in my first political YouTube video in support of the SNP campaign in Glasgow East.

But I had a desperate need for at least one Glasgow hero, regardless of party, and I cast Steven Purcell in this role. I am left with a feeling of deep sadness at what has happened to this Glasgow boy. His political career is irretrievably destroyed and perhaps his health.

Over the life of my blog (with an unscheduled interruption for a heart attack and a quad bypass) I have been critical of the anti-SNP bias in the Scottish print media – a pro-Tory bias in The Scotsman and a pro-Labour bias in The Herald.  My main target was The Herald, because I have expected little from The Scotsman in recent years.

But the decline of the oldest English-language newspaper in the world, with a proud history in objective journalism, and arguably the true voice of Scotland, a voice that resonated beyond its West of Scotland and Glasgow base, worried me deeply, especially since its Labour-biased news and editorial coverage and comment was regularly contradicted by what has always been the glory of The Herald – its Letters page. There the true voice of Scotland was heard, a great, countervailing blast to the distorted and selective reporting on the other pages. The soul of The Glasgow Herald lay in these letters – the fearless, vigorous voice of the people of Scotland.

But in recent weeks, as the wheels have begun to come off the rotten Labour wagon, national scandal followed national scandal and the whole sorry Purcell affair gained momentum, I noted a gradual sea change in The Herald’s reporting, together with a rising note of unease in its tone.

Today, much become clear in The Sunday Herald. Its editorial comment on the Purcell affair goes under the headline -

PR, politics and the press – A conflict of interest? Yes – A barrier to the truth? No

Some selected quotes -

“Since Mr. Purcell’s departure, speculation has grown ever more fevered, encompassing suggestions of a network of powerful figures working behind the scenes to influence the workings of the city. The suggestion that this so-called network includes leading figures from the media is now threatening to undermine public confidence in the integrity of the Scottish press.”

(The colour highlighting is mine – PC)

“There have been hints that some Scottish newspapers have pulled their punches on the controversy, because editors have been too close to Mr. Purcell or, worse, they have been cowed into submission by Peter Watson and the PR firm Media House.”

Commenting on the allegation that a conflict of interest might exist because the legal adviser of the Herald and Times Group, who is also a listed shareholder in Media House and offers a service described as “reputation management”, which is aimed at keeping clients off the front page, with claims of “ …being networked at the highest level and having access to decision makers at the highest levels” as the key to its success, the Herald and Times MD, Tim Blott said he was extremely concerned at the conflict of interest which had arisen in the Steven Purcell case.

The timing is, to say the least, unfortunate, coming on the same day at The Sunday Times carries the headline -

Revealed: Labour’s cash for influence scandal

Steven Byers, former Labour trade and transport secretary describes himself as “… like a cab for hire – at up to £5000 per day”

Other senior Labour figures named include Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon. They all appear to have been caught out by a Sunday Times sting identical to the one that caught the dodgy Labour Lords recently.

COMMENT

This is the Union at work – the United Kingdom – ‘Great’ Britain – our rickety democracy, now rotten to the core, corrupted beyond redemption, with its participants tearing each other apart as the general election approaches.

Every organ of the state and of a free democracy is infected by this, including a free press and media. Those who profited from it, and accepted and exploited its patronage for 13 years under the laughably named People’s Party, Labour, are now jumping ship in all directions, and fighting for a place on whatever lifeboats they can find, desperately trying to ally themselves with what they see as the coming new ascendancy.

Wake up, Scotland! We have choices – in the general election, in the 2011 Holyrood elections and in a referendum on independence. We must rid ourselves of this poisoned Union and find a new, clean road for Scotland.

 

The Chilcot Enquiry - criticisms

There has been a barrage of criticism directed at the Chilcot Enquiry, ranging from its terms of reference to its composition and its approach and style in interviewing witnesses. The background and objectivity of its members has come under merciless scrutiny, and it has been branded as an establishment stitch up and whitewash before it even started. The lack of someone with a legal and inquisitorial experience and qualifications among its members has repeatedly been advanced as a weakness.

Whatever the secret intent of those in Government who set it up - and we can hardly be surprised at their behaviour - it is what it is, and we must judge its performance against the constraints it operates under. It has no power to compel witnesses to attend, evidence is not given under oath, and there is no remit to place blame, only to "learn lessons", that most abused of phrases by those desperate to avoid accountability.

Within that context, I don't share the view expressed by many that it is doing a bad job, and I think that when the final report is published, Sir John and his team may surprise us all.

Like most commentators, I feel that Sir Roderic Lyne is the most effective member of the team, and no one should be misled by his polite, gentlemanly style into thinking that he has not secured vital admissions from some witnesses, and perhaps more importantly, nakedly exposed the evasions that perhaps said more than the answers given.

We'll just have to wait and see ...

The State of the Union – UK, that is …

How any rational Scottish voter can contemplate voting for the Tories, Labour or the LibDems in the imminent general election baffles me.

THE CHARGES AGAINST THE UNION

We have a Union engaged in pointless, unwinnable wars, killing the flower of our young people.

We have a Union committed blindly to outdated, and strategically irrelevant nuclear weapons of mass destruction, at enormous cost, at a time when the Union is close to bankruptcy and deep cuts in essential services are about to be made.

We have an almost wholly corrupt Westminster structure, as the expenses scandal and the political donations to the three major parties have so devastatingly exposed.

Among the minor parties, we have one fascist party and one neo-fascist party.

We have corruption in the House of Lords, with criminal prosecutions of peers of the realm already underway, and with perhaps more to come.

We have parties being funded by mega-rich donors – all three major parties - who are avoiding UK tax, and using the money saved – the taxpayers’ money – our money - to bankroll the political party that they believe will grant favours and preferment that will make them even richer, and more able to subvert our democracy.

We have one of these parties (the LibDems) accepting money from a convicted fraudster and refusing to give it back.

We have a governing party (for the moment) committed to covering up complicity in torture by our security forces.

We have a governing party that has been systematically trying to dismantle the ancient legal freedoms of the peoples of these islands.

We have two dominant parties that have no real, fundamental differences between them on war, nuclear weapons, the economy, privilege and patronage, a fact being belatedly recognised by the electorate, as witnessed by the narrowing of the opinion poll gap between them.

We have a third party, the LibDems, with vestiges of principle and sanity, but effectively lost and powerless in the corrupt system of which they are a part.

We have three parties with delusions of an international role for Britain as a great power, based on brandishing its WMDs, when the reality is that all they have is the rump of a wholly discredited Empire, built on ruthless exploitation of subject peoples, and reluctantly dismantled only when those subject peoples threw off its yoke.

We have three parties whose Scottish minions oppose attempts to free Scotland from the twin curses of drink and violence, because of their political expediency, subservience to vested interests and commitment to insane, simplistic sound bite solutions.

We have three parties in Holyrood hell-bent on denying the Scottish people a voice in their own constitutional future.

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Scotland, waken up, or shrink into poverty and irrelevance in the next decade. You have a real choice – England doesn’t. Saor Alba!