By © Muhammad Haque
2145 Hrs GMT
London Thursday 29 January 2009
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO!
Gordon Brown is fronting a Blaired regime and he is bent on sinking deeper into debts hole!
And like a fanatic converted by the congenitally incorrigible zealots, Gordon Brown is bent on funding CRASSrtail while vital areas of social needs get into worse states of dysfunction than they already have been.,.
[To be continued]
from the London DAILY TELEGRAPH website:
Gordon Brown is a busted flush – and he's taking us down with him
Tony Blair timed his exit from No 10 perfectly – Machiavelli would have approved, says Jeff Randall.
Jeff Randall
Last Updated: 7:46PM GMT 29 Jan 2009
Comments 0 | Comment on this article
Tony Blair slipped away, leaving Gordon Brown with the debt bomb Photo: AP
You have to hand it to Tony Blair. As the foundations subside beneath the New Labour project, rocked by a crumbling economy, the timing of his exit is looking more and more like a chronometric masterpiece.
Throughout his occupancy of Number 10, Mr Blair held what the City calls a "put option" on Gordon Brown. This meant that he alone would decide when to hand over the keys to a frustrated chancellor.
As any experienced trader will tell you, calling the very top of a market is almost impossible. Those who manage to do so are either satanically gifted or divinely lucky. I'll let you decide which applies to Mr Blair.
Either way, his departure from Downing Street on June 27, 2007 could not have been more finely tuned had it been left to a Swiss horologist. Having wrung every drop of glory from the Bubble Years, he slipped away just as the debt-fuelled boom was about to go spectacularly bust.
June 28 is the only date in the calendar when both the month and day are perfect numbers. For Mr Brown, however, it signalled the moment when the clock began ticking on some explosive imperfections.
Within weeks of his moving next door, Northern Rock blew up, presaging an avalanche of bank failures and economic turmoil. While Mr Blair is collecting a fortune on the black-tie dinner circuit in America, his old ally is being buried by bad news at home.
When a leader's preferred courtiers are Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson, he invites comparison to Machiavelli. In the case of Mr Blair, it is deliciously appropriate.
Machiavelli's best-known work, The Prince (written in 1513), is still the handbook of choice for political schemers. In it, there are lines that might have been scripted by Mr Blair solely for Mr Brown: "A prince makes himself odious by rapacity, that is, by taking away from his subjects their property."
Or, as Mr Blair said at the 1997 Labour Party conference, where members celebrated a return to power after 18 years: "This country, any country today, will not just carry on paying out more in taxes and getting less." Allelulia brothers! Hear the truth.
Unfortunately, the other half of the double act wasn't listening. This, in part, helps explain why
Mr Brown's administration is
11 points behind in today's YouGov opinion poll. I don't believe the country is hugely enthusiastic about David Cameron's Conservatives. They are simply the default position for voters who are nauseated by Labour's incompetence.
With Britain about to be lashed by the worst recession for 60 years, the coping classes have had enough. The penny is dropping, even in some Labour strongholds, that for all his crude social engineering, stealth taxes and raids on pensions (with the likelihood of yet more punishment to come in the Budget), the Prime Minister has over-promised and under-delivered.
Improvements to the health service reflect only a fraction of the extra billions that have been poured in. Value for money exists as a concept in ministers' briefing notes, but nowhere else.
Education standards are going down. The gap between private schools and state comprehensives is widening. Last week, I dined with half a dozen teachers and professors from one of the country's best universities, all of whom insisted that A-levels had been debased.
Worse still, our Armed Forces are expected to police the world's hell holes on a budget (£33 billion) that is just one fifth of what we hand out for "social protection" (£169 billion). The military is showered in warm words, but suffers from a freeze on real (inflation-adjusted) spending. Of all Labour's wicked deceits, this is the one I find most offensive.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the house that Brown built is more rickety than any other among advanced nations. Britain's economy is forecast to shrink by 2.8 per cent this year, compared with 1.5 per cent in the US, 2 per cent in the eurozone and 2.5 per cent in Japan.
Yes, we are the worst placed among industrialised countries to cope with upheaval. In terms of bald numbers, it will be more painful than either the Thatcher recession of the early 1980s or the Major debacle of the early 1990s.
This will come as a shock to many voters, though not, I suspect, to a majority of Daily Telegraph readers. It may surprise, too, some of the Prime Minister's colleagues who, in Rent-A-Crowd style, used to cheer his vainglorious chicanery, especially on Budget day.
Mr Brown's final performance as Second Lord of the Treasury, in March 2007, was a classic of its kind. The opening section was nothing less than a paean of praise to his own genius, a tribute to a decade of micromanagement by a chancellor whose idea of improved productivity was to crank up the output of self-congratulation without asking for a bonus.
Unencumbered by humility or wit, Mr Brown boomed: "We will never return to the old boom and bust." He had, of course, said it before. But this time, I suspect, he really believed that he had cracked it. He genuinely thought that he had found a way to halt the waves of free-market activity.
He went on to explain how (thanks to him) we were doing much better than Johnny Foreigner and to predict that Britain's economy would grow between 2.5 per cent and 3 per cent in 2009, all of which would be underpinned by "monetary discipline" and "fiscal discipline". Oh dear. It was nearly two years ago, I grant you, but it feels like something from an
ill-judged comedy sketch.
Getting Mr Brown face-to-face with reality is not easy task, but the Institute of Fiscal Studies did its best this week with a damning analysis of the country's prospects. At the rate we are going, Britain faces a £20 billion-a-year "double whammy" of tax rises and spending cuts to restore order to public finances. It could take until 2029 for government debt to recede to "normal" levels.
Nobody is saying that the world has not turned sour. The International Labour Organisation fears that global unemployment could rise by 50 million. But this Government's flawed stewardship has exacerbated Britain's problems. Mr Brown continues to bet the bank, but without a mandate beyond the fawning of paid advisers and encouragement of close relatives.
Machiavelli's assessment of the dangers for those who inherit power is a warning for Mr Brown. It will be "a double shame to a hereditary prince, if, through want of prudence and ability, he loses his state". One wonders what Teflon Tony thinks of that.
'Jeff Randall Live', a news programme focusing on business and politics, is broadcast on Sky News at 7.30pm, Monday-Thursday
__________________
33rd year AADHIKAR
0225 GMT Thursday 06 June 2013
AADHIKAR Media Foundation Editor © Muhammad Haque
Founding News Editor
Shah M Azizul Haque
AADHIKAR Media Foundation established with the publication of AADHIKAR the weekly on Monday 19 December 1980 from London E1 UK.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
KHOODEELAAR! asking Gordon Brown again: what more evidence does he have to see before he sees sense and scraps Crossrail?
2115 GMT London Thursday 29 January 2009:
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! How many 'apprentices' can 'Tower Hamlets Council' confect to fund via the Council's touting for the Crossrail hole???
The holes of debts, redundancy, bankruptcy that are opening up across the economy are as nothing compared to the holes of incredulity dishonesty downright lies that were created by Ken Livingstone and other fakers who kept on presenting on saying that the 'City of London' was THE world class centre of finance...
It feels like a century ago when Livingstone saying these things and the London EVENING nostandards STANDARD was retailing the Livingstone fabrications.....
It seems that while even the IMF can see the holes that the Crossrail holes-digging agenda-pluggers have dug the public finances into, the CrossRail-peddlers cannot yet see it. They won’t admit to seeing it….
Or at least the secret cabal that is pushing on with CRASSrail scam cannot see it..
Not if the zany, zealous utterances of Boris Johnson are anything to go by.…
What evidence does Johnson have to justify HIS mouthing the same fakery as was uttered by Ken Livingstone? ..
Why should thousands of existing transport jobs be scrapped to fund CRASSrail?
How much more evidence does Brown need before he will return to a semblance of responsibility and scarp Crossrail?
[To be continued]
----------------------
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! How many 'apprentices' can 'Tower Hamlets Council' confect to fund via the Council's touting for the Crossrail hole???
The holes of debts, redundancy, bankruptcy that are opening up across the economy are as nothing compared to the holes of incredulity dishonesty downright lies that were created by Ken Livingstone and other fakers who kept on presenting on saying that the 'City of London' was THE world class centre of finance...
It feels like a century ago when Livingstone saying these things and the London EVENING nostandards STANDARD was retailing the Livingstone fabrications.....
It seems that while even the IMF can see the holes that the Crossrail holes-digging agenda-pluggers have dug the public finances into, the CrossRail-peddlers cannot yet see it. They won’t admit to seeing it….
Or at least the secret cabal that is pushing on with CRASSrail scam cannot see it..
Not if the zany, zealous utterances of Boris Johnson are anything to go by.…
What evidence does Johnson have to justify HIS mouthing the same fakery as was uttered by Ken Livingstone? ..
Why should thousands of existing transport jobs be scrapped to fund CRASSrail?
How much more evidence does Brown need before he will return to a semblance of responsibility and scarp Crossrail?
[To be continued]
----------------------
KHOODEELAAR! diagnosing [2] the Guardian's Crossrail scam-peddler Dan Milmo, TfL and 'the mayor' !
KHOODEELAAR! diagnosing the ' CRASSrail peddler [London] Guardian's Dan Milmo: [see previous post and Milmo's article]
By © Muhammad Haque
1555 Hrs GMT
London Thursday 29 january 2009
Just over five years ago in December 2003, two ordinary people walked from Brick Lane to the Liverpool Street station.
On the way, they talked about a new threat to the East End of London.
It was Crossrail!
When one of them mentioned it to the other one, the first one had no idea that the second one had known of the Crossrail threat to the East End at least since 2000.
It was agreed that the most effective way to stop the Crossrail attack on the East End of London was by getting the ‘local Council’ to Say No to Crossrail.
So when the London Guardian carried a piece apparently about the opposition to the Crossrail holes scam in Brick Lane, it would have been expected by reasonable people that the Guardian would tell the full story.
Not a bit of it.
And five years later, the Guardian is still failing or refusing to tell the truth about the CRASSRAIL threat to the East End of London.
Today [Thursday 29 January 2009] the Guardian has published an astonishing item by-lined to Dan Milmo.
Milmo is not the first sloppy Guardian ‘reporter’. Apart from the fact that he has treated the sum of £Billion as if it were the loose change in Ken Clarke’s pocket after Clarke’s latest trip to the boozer, Milmo is also very much a faker.
A genuine Guardian ‘writer’.
Fakery and fabrication is the game.
So we see this paragraph in his by-lined piece today:
“Transport for London, the mayor's transport authority, warned last year that hundreds of jobs were under threat as it balances its books to pay for the £16bn Crossrail project and to plug a multibillion funding gap in the tube network.”
To all reasonable and unbiased people, that paragraph would suggest that ‘the mayor’ whatever that may be, and ‘Transport for London’ were angels, totally dedicated to telling the truth and devoted to the provision of the best possible transport service for the people of London.…….[and so on]
But that is not what the facts say.
The facts say that ‘the mayor’ perpetrated a lie.
Whoever that person being referred to as ‘the mayor’ was, could not have been telling the truth if what Milmo reports them as saying was what they had indeed said...
The POINT that KHOODEELAAR! has been making for the past FIVE years EVERY SINGLE DAY 24.7 about Crossrail is that it is NOT affordable. Not without sacrificing EXISTING transport infrastructure... and costs commitments.…
[To be continued]
By © Muhammad Haque
1555 Hrs GMT
London Thursday 29 january 2009
Just over five years ago in December 2003, two ordinary people walked from Brick Lane to the Liverpool Street station.
On the way, they talked about a new threat to the East End of London.
It was Crossrail!
When one of them mentioned it to the other one, the first one had no idea that the second one had known of the Crossrail threat to the East End at least since 2000.
It was agreed that the most effective way to stop the Crossrail attack on the East End of London was by getting the ‘local Council’ to Say No to Crossrail.
So when the London Guardian carried a piece apparently about the opposition to the Crossrail holes scam in Brick Lane, it would have been expected by reasonable people that the Guardian would tell the full story.
Not a bit of it.
And five years later, the Guardian is still failing or refusing to tell the truth about the CRASSRAIL threat to the East End of London.
Today [Thursday 29 January 2009] the Guardian has published an astonishing item by-lined to Dan Milmo.
Milmo is not the first sloppy Guardian ‘reporter’. Apart from the fact that he has treated the sum of £Billion as if it were the loose change in Ken Clarke’s pocket after Clarke’s latest trip to the boozer, Milmo is also very much a faker.
A genuine Guardian ‘writer’.
Fakery and fabrication is the game.
So we see this paragraph in his by-lined piece today:
“Transport for London, the mayor's transport authority, warned last year that hundreds of jobs were under threat as it balances its books to pay for the £16bn Crossrail project and to plug a multibillion funding gap in the tube network.”
To all reasonable and unbiased people, that paragraph would suggest that ‘the mayor’ whatever that may be, and ‘Transport for London’ were angels, totally dedicated to telling the truth and devoted to the provision of the best possible transport service for the people of London.…….[and so on]
But that is not what the facts say.
The facts say that ‘the mayor’ perpetrated a lie.
Whoever that person being referred to as ‘the mayor’ was, could not have been telling the truth if what Milmo reports them as saying was what they had indeed said...
The POINT that KHOODEELAAR! has been making for the past FIVE years EVERY SINGLE DAY 24.7 about Crossrail is that it is NOT affordable. Not without sacrificing EXISTING transport infrastructure... and costs commitments.…
[To be continued]
KHOODEELAAR! using a phrase from PRIVATE EYE! ‘Just fancy that!’ prompted by the Guardian’s CRASS Role player Dan Milmo being at it again!
KHOODEELAAR! using a phrase from PRIVATE EYE! ‘Just fancy that!’. prompted by the Guardian’s CRASS Role player Dan Milmo being at it again!
____________________________________________________________________
Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 January 2009 14.29 GMT
Article history
London Underground is to axe 1,000 jobs this year as part of a drive to slash costs by £2.4bn.
Transport for London, the mayor's transport authority, warned last year that hundreds of jobs were under threat as it balances its books to pay for the £16bn Crossrail project and to plug a multibillion funding gap in the tube network.
London Underground said no tube drivers or frontline staff would be affected by the cuts, which it hopes to achieve through a hiring freeze or dropping contract workers.
The announcement shocked trade union leaders, who are already campaigning against more than 1,500 job cuts by rail franchise owners.
Speaking in November last year the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, defended his decision to shelve £3.5bn of transport schemes in the capital, including the Thames Gateway bridge. Warning that job cuts were also on the way, he said: "These cuts need to be seen in the context of the biggest investment in London transport for a generation."
However, Johnson has also admitted to writing to the Treasury and demanding further money to plug a funding gap in the underground network, implying that a recent £39bn settlement up to 2017 will not be enough to cover TfL's spending requirements.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 January 2009 14.29 GMT
Article history
London Underground is to axe 1,000 jobs this year as part of a drive to slash costs by £2.4bn.
Transport for London, the mayor's transport authority, warned last year that hundreds of jobs were under threat as it balances its books to pay for the £16bn Crossrail project and to plug a multibillion funding gap in the tube network.
London Underground said no tube drivers or frontline staff would be affected by the cuts, which it hopes to achieve through a hiring freeze or dropping contract workers.
The announcement shocked trade union leaders, who are already campaigning against more than 1,500 job cuts by rail franchise owners.
Speaking in November last year the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, defended his decision to shelve £3.5bn of transport schemes in the capital, including the Thames Gateway bridge. Warning that job cuts were also on the way, he said: "These cuts need to be seen in the context of the biggest investment in London transport for a generation."
However, Johnson has also admitted to writing to the Treasury and demanding further money to plug a funding gap in the underground network, implying that a recent £39bn settlement up to 2017 will not be enough to cover TfL's spending requirements.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! Brown is getting deeper into the hole of plastic phrasing AND SPIN...
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! Brown is getting deeper into the hole of plastic phrasing AND SPIN...
What does he know about 'your communities' that he has spouted out about in his latest media presentation carried by the BBC from ‘central London’ Where is that ‘central London’ that the BBC keep broadcasting from without any substance and with decreasing contract with reality?
[To be continued]
What does he know about 'your communities' that he has spouted out about in his latest media presentation carried by the BBC from ‘central London’ Where is that ‘central London’ that the BBC keep broadcasting from without any substance and with decreasing contract with reality?
[To be continued]
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! that like the sleaze-ball 'peers' who failed to declare interests, Guardian fails too! Its Ken Lyingstill links
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! that like the sleaze-ball 'peers' who failed to declare interests, Guardian fails too! Its Ken Lyingstill links
[To be continued]
QUOTING the following from the web site of the London Guardian, Thursday 29 January 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/28/house-of-lords-peers-consultancies
Peers failed to declare paid consultancies when tabling questions
Robert Booth and Rachel Williams
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 January 2009 02.11 GMT
Article history
Several peers failed to declare paid consultancies with private companies when they tabled parliamentary questions or spoke in debates about issues of interest to their sponsors, the Guardian has learned. Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, a leading trade unionist; Lord Christopher, an expert on the nuclear industry; and Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP, were among those who did not declare consultancy work on occasions when the parliamentary business they were engaged in appears to be relevant to the interests of the firms paying them.
The revelation, from House of Lords records, could put them in breach of the peers' code of conduct which demands they reveal any "relevant interest in the context of the debate or the matter under discussion … in order that their audience may form a balanced judgment of their arguments". It comes amid growing concern at possible abuses of the rules which allow peers to earn money outside their parliamentary work. Lady Royall, leader of the Lords, said on Tuesday that the rules must be changed to ensure that peers "cannot earn a living that warps their work as parliamentarians".
Brooke, who is paid £36,000 a year plus expenses by management consultancy Accenture, asked questions about policies that directly affect Accenture's aviation and railway clients without referring to his earnings. Christopher, who spoke in a debate about nuclear waste, did not mention his role as a self-employed non-parliamentary consultant to Sellafield Ltd. Browne did not reveal his position on the advisory board of Sustainable Forestry Management, an investor in sub-tropical and tropical forests around the world, when he tabled a question to ask if the government supported "lifting the ban on forest carbon credits in the European emissions trading system". Neither did he mention his positions on Deutsche Bank's advisory board on climate change and the energy advisory board of Accenture, the management consultant.
Browne strongly denies any wrongdoing and there is no suggestion any of the peers were involved in the banned practice of "paid advocacy" – taking payment for specific parliamentary questions, votes and amendments.
But the lack of declarations highlights a widespread ambiguity over whether a peer's consultancy arrangement is "relevant" to a particular topic under discussion and must be declared. This has allowed peers to advance the interests of companies or industries with which they have relationships.
Christopher, a consultant to British Nuclear Fuels since before he became a peer in 1998, has frequently spoken about nuclear energy. But in a debate on radioactive waste management in October 2006, without reminding peers of his links to the industry, he said the general public's perception of nuclear waste was "grossly misleading". Last July, again without mentioning his interest, he asked whether a partnership in nuclear energy with France could help safeguard Britain's electricity supply. On several other occasions he has declared his interest and in 2004 prefaced his contribution to an energy bill debate by saying that British Nuclear Fuels, "has neither asked me to speak nor given me any brown envelopes, so I feel reasonably free to express my views". He was unavailable for comment last night.
In the register of members' interests, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe declares his parliamentary consultancy agreement with Accenture, and although he asked no questions directly about the firm, he asked several questions about issues related to Accenture's clients, without declaring his role.
Accenture advises airlines including US Airways, Air France-KLM and Thomas Cook, and in June Lord Brooke said in the Lords that the UK was "desperately short of airport capacity in London and the south-east" and asked a minister to confirm that the government's policy was "unilaterally restricting the growth of its aviation industry". Accenture also advises Network Rail which is responsible for large parts of Crossrail, the planned high speed rail link across London. In July Brooke told the house that, as a supporter of the scheme, he was worried that the credit crunch was reducing the possibility that it would become reality. Again he did not mention his work for Accenture. Brooke could not be reached for comment.
In March 2008 Lord Browne joined SFM's advisory board and in April 2008 he joined Deutsche Bank's advisory board on climate change. He did not declare either post in the register of interests until 28 October, which his spokesman said last night was "an administrative oversight".
On 6 October he tabled a question asking if the government supported "lifting the ban on forest carbon credits in the European emissions trading system". Deustche Bank has a climate change investment fund in its subsidiary DWS. It says its climate change advisory board assists it in shaping and implementing its strategy in the area.
"Any suggestion that he would say or do anything in the House of Lords or anywhere else that differs from his own personal beliefs for financial gains is not just offensive but patently ridiculous," Browne's spokesman said.
Often, when peers fail to mention their consultancy deals, it is unclear whether they should have done. "People like me exist to give advice but at the end of the day, regardless of advice given, it's up to a member's own judgment how he conducts himself," said Brendan Keith, registrar of Lords' interests. "They're acting on their honour."
On four occasions when speaking in debates on education and language, crossbench peer Lord Quirk did not remind peers of his non-parliamentary consultancies with Pearson Education, a textbook publisher and the Linguaphone Institute, a language course firm. In December, during a debate on preparing for a multilingual Olympic Games, he told peers: "One of the problems that we have in this country is that only west European languages are appreciated," and he said it was a "suitable moment" for immigrants who spoke languages such as Arabic, Pashto and Turkish "to realise that they are appreciated and that their language is needed". Linguaphone and Pearson both sell Arabic and Turkish courses and Linguaphone produces a Pashto course as well.
In November Quirk asked about the government's budgets for supporting the most talented pupils at key stage 2, and in May he highlighted a CBI report documenting employers' concerns at educational deficiencies. Quirk could not be contacted last night.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Clement-Jones is co-chairman of the government relations practice of DLA Piper, an international law firm. According to the section of the register of members' interests which deals with declarations of parliamentary lobbying work, he acts for Eli Lilly, a large US pharmaceutical firm, and TransMedics Inc, a medical technology manufacturer. He receives payment of £61,000 in respect of his services to his law firm's government relations arm.
In September last year he asked a series of questions about the registration and licensing of medicines, without prefacing the questions with a declaration of his interest in the medical industry. His questions focused on herbal medicines. He wanted to know the rate of approvals by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency following the introduction of a European Union directive. Eighteen months earlier, in March 2007, he asked about the government's decision to make it illegal to offer kava kava and melatonin for sale in the UK.
Clement-Jones said the questions were not asked on behalf of Eli Lilly or Transmedics, and neither was involved in herbal medicine.
He added that the questions were motivated by his own interest in herbal medicine and unpaid links to the herbal medicine industry. "This is nothing to do with clients," he said.
__________________________________________________
[To be continued]
QUOTING the following from the web site of the London Guardian, Thursday 29 January 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/28/house-of-lords-peers-consultancies
Peers failed to declare paid consultancies when tabling questions
Robert Booth and Rachel Williams
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 January 2009 02.11 GMT
Article history
Several peers failed to declare paid consultancies with private companies when they tabled parliamentary questions or spoke in debates about issues of interest to their sponsors, the Guardian has learned. Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, a leading trade unionist; Lord Christopher, an expert on the nuclear industry; and Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP, were among those who did not declare consultancy work on occasions when the parliamentary business they were engaged in appears to be relevant to the interests of the firms paying them.
The revelation, from House of Lords records, could put them in breach of the peers' code of conduct which demands they reveal any "relevant interest in the context of the debate or the matter under discussion … in order that their audience may form a balanced judgment of their arguments". It comes amid growing concern at possible abuses of the rules which allow peers to earn money outside their parliamentary work. Lady Royall, leader of the Lords, said on Tuesday that the rules must be changed to ensure that peers "cannot earn a living that warps their work as parliamentarians".
Brooke, who is paid £36,000 a year plus expenses by management consultancy Accenture, asked questions about policies that directly affect Accenture's aviation and railway clients without referring to his earnings. Christopher, who spoke in a debate about nuclear waste, did not mention his role as a self-employed non-parliamentary consultant to Sellafield Ltd. Browne did not reveal his position on the advisory board of Sustainable Forestry Management, an investor in sub-tropical and tropical forests around the world, when he tabled a question to ask if the government supported "lifting the ban on forest carbon credits in the European emissions trading system". Neither did he mention his positions on Deutsche Bank's advisory board on climate change and the energy advisory board of Accenture, the management consultant.
Browne strongly denies any wrongdoing and there is no suggestion any of the peers were involved in the banned practice of "paid advocacy" – taking payment for specific parliamentary questions, votes and amendments.
But the lack of declarations highlights a widespread ambiguity over whether a peer's consultancy arrangement is "relevant" to a particular topic under discussion and must be declared. This has allowed peers to advance the interests of companies or industries with which they have relationships.
Christopher, a consultant to British Nuclear Fuels since before he became a peer in 1998, has frequently spoken about nuclear energy. But in a debate on radioactive waste management in October 2006, without reminding peers of his links to the industry, he said the general public's perception of nuclear waste was "grossly misleading". Last July, again without mentioning his interest, he asked whether a partnership in nuclear energy with France could help safeguard Britain's electricity supply. On several other occasions he has declared his interest and in 2004 prefaced his contribution to an energy bill debate by saying that British Nuclear Fuels, "has neither asked me to speak nor given me any brown envelopes, so I feel reasonably free to express my views". He was unavailable for comment last night.
In the register of members' interests, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe declares his parliamentary consultancy agreement with Accenture, and although he asked no questions directly about the firm, he asked several questions about issues related to Accenture's clients, without declaring his role.
Accenture advises airlines including US Airways, Air France-KLM and Thomas Cook, and in June Lord Brooke said in the Lords that the UK was "desperately short of airport capacity in London and the south-east" and asked a minister to confirm that the government's policy was "unilaterally restricting the growth of its aviation industry". Accenture also advises Network Rail which is responsible for large parts of Crossrail, the planned high speed rail link across London. In July Brooke told the house that, as a supporter of the scheme, he was worried that the credit crunch was reducing the possibility that it would become reality. Again he did not mention his work for Accenture. Brooke could not be reached for comment.
In March 2008 Lord Browne joined SFM's advisory board and in April 2008 he joined Deutsche Bank's advisory board on climate change. He did not declare either post in the register of interests until 28 October, which his spokesman said last night was "an administrative oversight".
On 6 October he tabled a question asking if the government supported "lifting the ban on forest carbon credits in the European emissions trading system". Deustche Bank has a climate change investment fund in its subsidiary DWS. It says its climate change advisory board assists it in shaping and implementing its strategy in the area.
"Any suggestion that he would say or do anything in the House of Lords or anywhere else that differs from his own personal beliefs for financial gains is not just offensive but patently ridiculous," Browne's spokesman said.
Often, when peers fail to mention their consultancy deals, it is unclear whether they should have done. "People like me exist to give advice but at the end of the day, regardless of advice given, it's up to a member's own judgment how he conducts himself," said Brendan Keith, registrar of Lords' interests. "They're acting on their honour."
On four occasions when speaking in debates on education and language, crossbench peer Lord Quirk did not remind peers of his non-parliamentary consultancies with Pearson Education, a textbook publisher and the Linguaphone Institute, a language course firm. In December, during a debate on preparing for a multilingual Olympic Games, he told peers: "One of the problems that we have in this country is that only west European languages are appreciated," and he said it was a "suitable moment" for immigrants who spoke languages such as Arabic, Pashto and Turkish "to realise that they are appreciated and that their language is needed". Linguaphone and Pearson both sell Arabic and Turkish courses and Linguaphone produces a Pashto course as well.
In November Quirk asked about the government's budgets for supporting the most talented pupils at key stage 2, and in May he highlighted a CBI report documenting employers' concerns at educational deficiencies. Quirk could not be contacted last night.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Clement-Jones is co-chairman of the government relations practice of DLA Piper, an international law firm. According to the section of the register of members' interests which deals with declarations of parliamentary lobbying work, he acts for Eli Lilly, a large US pharmaceutical firm, and TransMedics Inc, a medical technology manufacturer. He receives payment of £61,000 in respect of his services to his law firm's government relations arm.
In September last year he asked a series of questions about the registration and licensing of medicines, without prefacing the questions with a declaration of his interest in the medical industry. His questions focused on herbal medicines. He wanted to know the rate of approvals by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency following the introduction of a European Union directive. Eighteen months earlier, in March 2007, he asked about the government's decision to make it illegal to offer kava kava and melatonin for sale in the UK.
Clement-Jones said the questions were not asked on behalf of Eli Lilly or Transmedics, and neither was involved in herbal medicine.
He added that the questions were motivated by his own interest in herbal medicine and unpaid links to the herbal medicine industry. "This is nothing to do with clients," he said.
__________________________________________________
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! updating the evidential commentary on the crass role for Big Business Crossrail agenda played by the London Guardian
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! updating the evidential commentary on the crass role for Big Business Crossrail agenda played by the London Guardian
0855 Hrs GMT London Thursday 29 January 2009:
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO!
That the Crassly conceived London Crossrail was also CRASSLY peddled.
NO truth in the hype they do. No ethics. No logic. This applies across the board to the behaviour of every single one o the peddlers of the Big Business crassly conceived scam.. In the case o the Guardian, which has a historic and ‘congenital’ problem with identifying with the truth, CRASSrail is the ‘appropriate’ vehicle to express the Guardian’s twisted stance on the truth..
.When the Guardian ‘media group’ [what Group!, it apes the Daily Mail...] does anything about any local councils, it does so by looking at the in come from advertising revenue that it craves and quite often receives [more often than the DAILY MAIL to be sure] from local councils...
Most of the times, the Guardian peddles a line that ends up accommodating and promoting the local Councils. This makes it impossible for the Guardian to claim to be interested in let alone actually practising ‘journalism’ that is contributing to the upholding of the truth in the given circumstance.…
When the LYING Guardian performed a racist, tokenistic one-off piece of reporting on the community’s opposition to the Crossrail hole-scam, it sent an alleged journalist to talk to people in Brick Lane...These Guardian was only able to find one person whom it quoted in a contrived way and failed to give most of the information that affects the costs, the purpose, the transport relevance, and the economic and environmental implications of the CRASSRail scam or about the community in the London E1 area.…..
But then the Guardian, being the lying symbol of the 'mainstream' media in Britain, has a long history of lying about the area and in this context lying about the Bangladeshi community... On every single occasion that the lying Guardian has published anything about the Bangladeshis, it has got the facts wrong. It has got the evidence wrong. And it has ended up aiding and abetting those that are manifestly, demonstrably and objectively at odds and are inconsistent w with the social, the moral, the historic, the linguistic, the cultural and the democratic and the human rights of the community...
0855 Hrs GMT London Thursday 29 January 2009:
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO!
That the Crassly conceived London Crossrail was also CRASSLY peddled.
NO truth in the hype they do. No ethics. No logic. This applies across the board to the behaviour of every single one o the peddlers of the Big Business crassly conceived scam.. In the case o the Guardian, which has a historic and ‘congenital’ problem with identifying with the truth, CRASSrail is the ‘appropriate’ vehicle to express the Guardian’s twisted stance on the truth..
.When the Guardian ‘media group’ [what Group!, it apes the Daily Mail...] does anything about any local councils, it does so by looking at the in come from advertising revenue that it craves and quite often receives [more often than the DAILY MAIL to be sure] from local councils...
Most of the times, the Guardian peddles a line that ends up accommodating and promoting the local Councils. This makes it impossible for the Guardian to claim to be interested in let alone actually practising ‘journalism’ that is contributing to the upholding of the truth in the given circumstance.…
When the LYING Guardian performed a racist, tokenistic one-off piece of reporting on the community’s opposition to the Crossrail hole-scam, it sent an alleged journalist to talk to people in Brick Lane...These Guardian was only able to find one person whom it quoted in a contrived way and failed to give most of the information that affects the costs, the purpose, the transport relevance, and the economic and environmental implications of the CRASSRail scam or about the community in the London E1 area.…..
But then the Guardian, being the lying symbol of the 'mainstream' media in Britain, has a long history of lying about the area and in this context lying about the Bangladeshi community... On every single occasion that the lying Guardian has published anything about the Bangladeshis, it has got the facts wrong. It has got the evidence wrong. And it has ended up aiding and abetting those that are manifestly, demonstrably and objectively at odds and are inconsistent w with the social, the moral, the historic, the linguistic, the cultural and the democratic and the human rights of the community...
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! That the Crassly conceived London Crossrail was also CRASSLY peddled. NO truth in the hype they do. No ethics. No logic
0715 Hrs GMT London Thursday 29 January 2009
In this linked item, which is supposed to be an anti-pollution, pro-environmental outlet, they are ecstatic about 'the Guardian picking up their story' about London City airport...
Then they make an assertion which contains the evidence of their contradictions.
They say 'commuters' have welcomed Crossrail. Then they say businesses..
We would during today 29 January 2009, ask them directly to show who else has welcomed the crass scam. Then we shall examine their plugs for CRASSrail in fuller details.
[To be continued]
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In this linked item, which is supposed to be an anti-pollution, pro-environmental outlet, they are ecstatic about 'the Guardian picking up their story' about London City airport...
Then they make an assertion which contains the evidence of their contradictions.
They say 'commuters' have welcomed Crossrail. Then they say businesses..
We would during today 29 January 2009, ask them directly to show who else has welcomed the crass scam. Then we shall examine their plugs for CRASSrail in fuller details.
[To be continued]
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