Tag Archives: Great Britain

‘Free Speech Is Dead’ – Police in Khan’s London BAN Pro-Trump Rally at U.S. Embassy, by Jack Montgomery

Posted on July 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

When only one side is allowed to assemble and make its views known, it cannot be said that a nation has freedom of assembly or speech. From Jack Montgomery at breitbart.com:

London

Police in Sadiq Khan’s London have used the Public Order Act to prevent a rally in support of U.S. President Donald Trump outside the American embassy, despite permitting a large, ill-tempered anti-Trump rally on Friday.

Protestors attending the ‘Welcome Trump’ event had planned to gather outside the embassy and march from there to Whitehall, where they would have joined in with a separate ‘Free Tommy Robinson’ event in support of the activist and independent journalist who was recently imprisoned for contempt of court after reporting on a grooming gang trial.

But the Metropolitan Police Force, which answers to a large extent to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, used the Public Order Act to impose a raft of restrictions on both groups of protesters which made this impossible —  despite allowing far larger anti-Trump protests at which at least six people were arrested to go ahead on Saturday, with demonstrators carrying signs emblazoned with harsh profanity and messages such as “Die Trump Die”.

“I was planning to go to the American embassy to meet with a group of demonstrators who are planning to welcome Trump into the country… it’s really good to see him in this country, and speaking truth to the people in power in this country,” explained David Kurten, an elected member of the London Assembly for the Brexit-supporting UK Independence Party.

“But as I came out of the police station I was handed this piece of paper by a couple of friendly police officers, who were just doing their job, but they’ve imposed Section 12 Public Order Act conditions on the assembly outside the American embassy, which means that people are not allowed to proceed or have a march or any kind of demonstration,” he claimed.

To continue reading: ‘Free Speech Is Dead’ – Police in Khan’s London BAN Pro-Trump Rally at U.S. Embassy

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“Big Four” Audit Oligopoly Strikes Back at Plans to Break it Up, by Don Quijones

Posted on July 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

Four giant firms control most of the world’s accounting market. From Don Quijones at wolfstreet.com:

After a series of sudden corporate collapses, audit firms face a crisis in the UK.

Deloitte, one of the so-called “Big Four” accountancy firms that have effectively cornered the global audit industry, has warnedthe UK government and regulators that any attempt to break up their oligopoly could backfire. Forcing the Big Four — which also include KPMG, PwC and EY — to split could harm Britain’s standing as a global financial center just at a time when the City is straining under Brexit pressures, the accountancy firm told a parliamentary inquiry.

“The Committees, and other commentators, have suggested that the break up of the largest professional services firms should be examined as a means of increasing competition and ensuring audit quality,” Deloitte said. “We do not believe that this is a viable solution to either matter and would be concerned that it would damage both audit quality and the UK’s position as an attractive capital market.”

In April, following a string of corporate scandals and collapses, the UK’s top accounting regulator, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), called for an inquiry to explore the possibility of breaking the audit arms of the Big Four accounting firms — KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Price WaterhouseCoopers — into separate pieces. Serious doubts remain as to how genuine the regulator’s stated intentions are, since the FRC faces its own government inquiry following accusations of being too soft on big accountancy firms.

The influence of the Big Four is virtually unparalleled across the industries in which they operate. Their alumni control the international and national standard-setters of the accounting industry, ensuring that the rules of the game suit the major accountancy firms and their clients. Their reach also extends deep into the heart of government. “There’s no major policy change without the big four involved,” says Richard Brooks, award-winning journalist and author of Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism.

To continue reading: “Big Four” Audit Oligopoly Strikes Back at Plans to Break it Up

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Gross Incompetence, by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Posted on July 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

There is no easy or graceful exit for Great Britain from the EU. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at theautomaticearth.com:

Here’s the lowdown: the EU’s single market mechanism dictates freedom of movement for labor, capital, services and goods. These are not divisible; you cannot have one without the other. Still, that’s precisely what Theresa May, again, is proposing. She basically wants to keep the UK in the single market for goods, and make other arrangements for the rest. The EU will not accept that because it could have 27 other countries coming with their own versions of single market à la carte.

So why does she come with version 826 of what she already knows will not be accepted? And why did her cabinet comply? There are a few possibilities. Perhaps May has finally understood that there is no manner of leaving the EU left to her that will not lead to utter disaster. Maybe she just wants the whole thing to stop. Or maybe Boris Johnson et al, sensing failure for May, see a chance to dethrone her and take over power. Then again, maybe they all look for a way to blame the EU for their own failures.

It’s hard to say, really. What’s obvious, through the comments of industries like Airbus and Jaguar Land Rover, is that 100,000s of jobs are at stake, along with 100s of billions of investments in Britain. Large enterprises are often branched out all through the EU, and they need to comply with EU rules; separate rules for their business with the UK would be a nightmare.

And even smaller companies, to varying degrees, face those same problems. For all you may think of the EU, it has arranged the single market strictly and successfully. There are enormous advantages for companies in that. Take those away and they will look at relocating towards the continent, where they would regain those advantages.

There appear to be three options (and May’s plan is not one of them): a hard Brexit, new elections, or no Brexit at all.

To continue reading:  Gross Incompetence

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How The United Kingdom Became A Police State, by Neema Parvini

Posted on July 7, 2018 | Leave a comment

Only recently have people begun to notice the United Kingdom’s descent into a police state, but it’s been going on under the radar for at least 20 years. From Neema Parvini at mises.org:

This article will demonstrate how the United Kingdom has steadily become a police state over the past twenty years, weaponizing its institutions against the people and employing Orwellian techniques to stop the public from seeing the truth. It will demonstrate, contrary to official narratives, that both overall levels of crime and violent crime have been increasing, not decreasing, as the size of the state in the UK has gotten bigger. It will also expose how the Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010, deliberately obscured real crime data with estimated crime rates based on survey data as opposed to the real numbers. I will demonstrate that, contrary to popular opinion perpetuated by progressive myths, life was much safer in Britain during the era of classical laissez-faire from the 1850s to 1911.

In his 10 years in power from 1997 to 2007, Tony Blair passed an astonishing 26,849 laws in total, an average of 2,663 per year or 7.5 a day.1 The Labour Party continued this madness under Gordon Brown who broke the record in 2008 by passing 2,823 new laws, a 6% increase on even his megalomaniac predecessor.2 In 2010, Labour’s last year in power before handing over the reigns to the Blairite social radical, David Cameron, there was a 54% surge in privacy cases brought against public bodies,3 and the Cabinet were refusing freedom of information requests at a rate of 51%.4 The vast number of new laws under Labour does not count the 2,100 new regulations the EU passed in 2006 alone, which apparently is average for them.

Many of these vast changes under Blair and Brown were in the area of criminal law. By 2008, Labour had created more than 3,600 new offences.5 Many of these, naturally, were red-tape regulations. To give you an idea:6

  • Creating a nuclear explosion
  • Selling types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed
  • To wilfully pretend to be a barrister or a traffic warden
  • Disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer
  • Obstructing workers from carrying out repairs to the Dockland Light Railway
  • Offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day
  • Allowing an unlicensed concert in a church hall or community centre
  • A ship’s captain may end up in court if he or she carries grain without a copy of the International Grain Code on board
  • Scallop fishing without the correct boat
  • Breaking regulation number 10 of the 1998 Apple and Pear Grubbing Up Regulations
  • Selling Polish Potatoes

There are many more. However, there were also some more serious breaches of civil liberty.

To continue reading: How The United Kingdom Became A Police State

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Crime, Government, Privacy, Surveillance

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German Officials Admit “Still No Evidence” From UK That Russia Poisoned Skripals, by Tyler Durden

Posted on June 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

It’s a toss-up as to which phony-baloney story has been more botched: Russiagate or Skripal. There may be a connection between the two. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

It seems notably fortuitous that the world is now distracted with the ongoing actions surrounding President Trump – whether in Quebec tweet-slamming PM Trudeau, or in Singapore ahead of his historic summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

We say ‘fortuitous’ since it offers UK PM Theresa May some breathing room as her dramatic, quickly determined, and globally propagandized claims that Russia was the culprit for the poisoning of the Russian ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter; remain entirely unsubstantiated by any proof.

However, just as May was hoping the world had forgot dozens of nations expelled hundreds of Russian diplomats on nothing more than her word and the constant Russophobic narrative pumped thru the eyeballs and earholes of the rest of the world; the Germans just threw a rather loud wrench in the slient-running PR campaign that has taken the Skripal-murdering Putin off the frontpage.

German media reports that the German government has zero evidence from the British authorities that could back London’s claims that Moscow was behind the poisoning of the Skripals.

More than three months since the start of the probe into the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, RT reports that the UK is still conspicuously tight-lipped when it comes to any real evidence that could prove its accusations against Russia.

This week, the German government informed a parliamentary oversight committee during a closed hearing that it still has not received any evidence suggesting that Russia might well be behind the incident that took place in early March, German TV station RBB reports.

“It is [still] only known that the poison used in the attack was a nerve agent called Novichok, which was once produced in the Soviet Union,” Michael Goetschenberg, a correspondent of German ARD and an expert on security services, told RBB, commenting on the results of the hearing, which he is familiar with.

Apart from this information, which was released by the British authorities soon after the incident, no new data on Russia’s alleged implication in this case was provided to Germany so far, he added.

To continue reading: German Officials Admit “Still No Evidence” From UK That Russia Poisoned Skripals

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Investigations

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Rape Gangs: A Story Set in Leafy Oxfordshire, by Douglas Murray

Posted on June 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

The officials who let rape gangs do their thing never face any penalties for doing so. It certainly is no bar to career advancement. From Douglas Murray at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • What price has been paid, is being paid, or might be paid at some stage, by all those public officials who tacitly or otherwise allowed these modern-day atrocities to go on, doing nothing to stop them?
  • Families of some of the abused girls related that they had tried consistently to raise the alarm over what was happening to their daughters, but that every door of the state was closed in their faces.
  • If Britain is to turn around the disgrace of its culture of ‘grooming gangs’, it should start by changing the risk-reward ratio between those who identify these monstrous crimes and those who have been shown to have covered them up.

Since the arrest of Tommy Robinson on May 25, the presence generally — and incorrectly — referred to as ‘Asian grooming gangs’ has been back in the news. This has reignited a debate about whether victims are getting justice and whether perpetrators are encountering it.

In all this at least one key element is missing. What price has been paid, is being paid, or might be paid at some stage, by all those public officials who tacitly or otherwise allowed these modern-day atrocities to go on, doing nothing to stop them? The policemen, politicians, council workers and others who were shown to have failed time and again. They have never been sentenced to prison for any of their oversights — and perhaps criminal charges (not even charges of criminal negligence) could never be brought against them. It is worth asking, however, if any of these people’s lives, career paths, or even pension plans were ever remotely affected by their proven failure to confront one of the greatest evils to have gone on in Britain. That is the mass rape of young girls motivated by adults propelled by (among much else) racism, religiosity, misogyny and class contempt.

To continue reading: Rape Gangs: A Story Set in Leafy Oxfordshire

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British ‘Justice’: Poppycock, by Bruce Bawer

Posted on June 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

The British government and media have ignored Muslim grooming gangs—groups who abduct and rape children—for decades. From Bruce Bawer at gatestoneinstitute.com:

  • Instead of arresting rapists, the police, in at least a couple of cases, actually arrested people who had done nothing other than to try to rescue their children from the clutches of rapists.
  • So much concern – legitimately so – about the sacred right of the rapists to a fair trial, including the presumption of innocence and an opportunity to retain the lawyers of their choice – but so much readiness to excuse the denial of the same right to Robinson.
  • These decades of cover-ups by British officials are themselves unspeakable crimes. How many of those who knew, but who did nothing, have faced anything remotely resembling justice? Apparently none.
  • As any viewer of British TV news knows, a “trained professional journalist” in Britain observes all kinds of rules of professional conduct: he calls Muslims “Asians,” he describes any critic of Islam, or anyone who attends a rally protesting the unjust incarceration of a critic of Islam, as a member of the “far right,” and he identifies far-left smear machines as “anti-racist groups.”

The coverage here during the last few days of the Tommy Robinson affair in Britain appears to be having at least a small impact in certain circles in Merrie Olde England. Dispatches have come in from some of the tonier addresses in the UK explaining, in that marvelous tone of condescension which no one from beyond the shores of England can ever quite pull off, that those of us who sympathize with Robinson have got it all wrong; that we simply do not grasp the exquisite nuances of British jurisprudence, specifically the kingdom’s laws about the coverage of trials – for if we did understand, we would recognize that Robinson’s summary arrest and imprisonment did not represent an outrageous denial of his freedom of speech, his right to due process, and his right to an attorney of his own choosing, but were, in fact, thoroughly appropriate actions intended to ensure the integrity of the trial he was covering. Those of us outside the UK who think that British freedom has been compromised and that the British system of law has been cynically exploited for ignoble purposes are, apparently, entirely mistaken; on the contrary, we are instructed, Britain’s police are continuing to conduct themselves in a responsible matter, Britain’s courts are still models of probity, and Britain’s real journalists (not clumsy, activist amateurs like Robinson) persist in carrying out their role with extraordinary professionalism and propriety, obeying to the letter the eminently sensible rules that govern reportage about court cases in the land of Magna Carta.

To continue reading: British ‘Justice’: Poppycock

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