Dear oh Dear This RBS/Mind in Croydon Pension Saga is really dragging on.

Addressing a meeting of New Labour activists in Bristol the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said;

"We are exploring all the legal action necessary to recover pension payments from people who received too much". For that reason I think it is important to define exactly what legal powers Gordon Brown has at his disposal.



Above and beyond the offenses committed as part of the Bristol Abuse Case (BAC) Mind in Croydon and Croydon Council stand accused of a separate charge of attempting to carry out a scientific experiment carrying a statistically significant risk of death without the consent of the test subjects. This is an offense under the Nuremberg code which was ratified internationally in 1945 and accepted into UK law shortly afterwards. As an aspect of international law this code supersedes any and all domestic UK law meaning that the UK government may pass no law which contravenes this code or attempts to protect an offender from prosecution. For example a UK court would have no power to say that an offender cannot be imprisoned, executed or have their assets siezed on conviction. Case law of how to go about prosecuting a so called Nuremberg offence is a little thin on the ground because since the fall of the Nazi Reich nobody else has been stupid enough to commit the offence meaning the only legal framework we have to try the Croydon accused are the Nuremberg trials themselves. This framework allows for the convening of a special tribunal at which the burden of proof, the rights of the accused and the sentence that may be passed are defined at the discretion of the trial judge. In short there is legally very little you cannot do to a Nuremberg offender.

Further more it has been successfully argued that Nuremberg offences are so severe that any state actor committing them is carrying out an act of war. As such they forfeit any recourse under civilian law and can only be protected by the laws of war. Unless the Croydon accused were displaying appropriate military signage at the time the offence was committed then they have to be considered as being engaged in clandestine operations or espionage and as such have no protection under even the laws of war. Therefore the only limit to the punishment they can receive is the imagination of the person administering that punishment. So when I say I have the right to see the Croydon accused crucified and then have their rotting corpses hung out as a warning to others I am referring to a legal right.

Suddenly being asked to pay a small fine in instalments looks like the best plea bargain in the history of plea bargains.

Royal Bank of Scotland Record Biggest Loss in British History.

This is quite a difficult story for me to report on because in the old cipher RBS used to refer to me but with a headline like that RBS can only refer to Mind in Croydon. So discussion over the RBS CEO 's pension become discussion over how much the CEO of MiC will continue to be paid.

All I have to say on that issue is that if Mind in Croydon's boss, whose name I couldn't be bothered to learn let alone remember, continues to concern himself with how much he will be paid I will have to invoke my right to have him crucified on the green outside Croydon Town Hall and then have his body hung from one of those signs which say; "Welcome to Croydon, Please drive Slow."

After Last Nights Post the Brits Were Full of Venom

and tales of how they were going to fuck me up. That's as clear proof as you're going to get that the post hit the nail firmly on the head and all this talk of negotiation and apology was nothing more then an illusion of decency to provide a cover to allow the Brits to regroup.

Lead amongst those reading the death sentences were the Conservatives who announced they would veto any moves to bring about the change that is so desperately needed. They did not do this out of any concern for national security or a desire to preserve the British way of life. They simply did it because they saw a political oppotunity to win votes from people who consider themselves to be British Loyalists. Later that night the son of the Conservative leader died suddenly.

There is nothing funny about a dead child so I was hoping so I was hoping to leave the Cameron's alone with thier grief. Sadly the Brits have no such compassion and are already trying to spin the story with me in the role of the dead boy so I will say this; I wish the Cameron family every sympathy at this difficult time and hope they come to understand that people's lives are not political playthings and this is what reality feels like.

I can't be bothered with sentences today.

So here's a collection of phrases;



NHS infected blood story. Brits primary networks eviserated. Retreat to secondary networks. Secondary networks incomplete. Action/Response game to prove viability. Croydon negotiating position?

This is going to end up looking like Twitter if I'm not careful

But this local free sheet is the gift that just keeps on giving. First up we have the news that Mind in Croydon rather then being disavowed by the Mind UK umbrella and stripped of it's charity status has just been awarded a £6000 Croydon PCT grant and a £200,000 National Lottery grant.Then there's this story;



Which like the front page story in my last post reads an awful lot like incitement. I should point out that campaign has been up and running for the best part of a year and has been driven mainly by the local COE church so if you'd gone with the idea that the Croydon Free sheet was only publishing these stories to act as a warning then you've lost a bet. Likewise if you were led to believe that the recent upswing in violence was orchestrated so Croydon Council would be given enough rope to hang itself the Gordon Brown camp have misled you. Central government has had enough evidence to act against Croydon Council since mid-2006. Besides if they were permitting the action to gather evidence against Croydon Council why on earth didn't they put together an evidence gathering team.

I really did expect more from the national media, especially the Cleopatra veterans of the BAC.

Dreaded double post.

Until recently Croydon Council had to rely on the local Croydon Advertiser Newspaper group to act as it's propaganda arm to provide positives stories to make residents feel good about their broken borough. Eventually though this task became to great for even the Advertiser so the Council were forced to set up their own monthly free sheet through which to propagate their drivel.

The latest edition of this taxpayer funded publication came out today with a front page that looks like this;



Beneath the headline
People power does the trick and the tag line Fed up with their local parks bad reputation, residents decided to do something about it the article talks about local residents coming together to address the security and facilities of an area of open ground right by my home. It then goes on to name certain streets and encourages people to undertake events and activities to see the area becomes a resource for all to use. In light of the recent break-ins, beatings and grave desecration's that have gone on it is very hard to read this article as anything other then a Croydon Council publication being used to incite violence and criminal behaviour.

For this reason it is very important that the obligations Croydon Council have to me are no longer described as a "taxpayer bailout". They are quite simply the fine and compensation that a criminal entity will have to pay as a punishment for it's crimes and as any judge will tell you the criminal does not get to choose it's punishment.

I do so love the Numerical List.

Conversationally they are admittedly a little dull but in terms of displaying a sequence of events and demonstrating those events space in time they are very effective. Take the events through which I started my day;

1. Woke up,
2. Realised where I was,
3. Swore loudly,
4. Got out of bed,
5. Swore loudly,
6. Had a cigarette,
7. Swore less loudly,
8. Made a cup of tea,
9. Turned on the TV news,
10. Swore loudly and threw things at the TV.

As you can see the numerical list breaks down a complicated operation into a series of simple processes that must be completed one after the other.

I'm sorry if this post doesn't make much sense to you but don't be disheartened. The people it's aimed at have done 12 years at private school, three years at one of the UK's better universities followed by two years of vocational training yet they still can't grasp the idea that 2 may only occur after 1 and before 3.

I'll try and put this in terms that the British Government can understand

So excuse me if I sound like an absolute cock.

The geographies of urban crime within Croydon reveal an interesting offender profile. There is a very clear split between poor, high crime areas in the northern wards such as Thornton Heath and rich, low crime wards in the South. The Council's official public relations publications and it's unofficial ones like the local paper go to great lengths to explain this away in terms of deprivation of differences in the proportions of non-white residents. The real cause however is something called tolerance policing. This is often seen in the drugs game when local police and local authorities identify a drug dealer and tolerate his activities on the understanding that he will in turn minimise associated violent crime like burglary, mugging and turf wars. For a number of years Croydon Council have been doing a similar thing with burglary. This means they are allowing a certain man to break-into any homes he likes in the North of the borough on the understanding he doesn't break into any of the rich people's homes in the south of the borough where most of the council live.

This guy is our old friends Linda's ex-common law husband and was resident in Linda's council house at the time the first wave of break-ins at my grandmothers house occurred. Then because he's a wife beating streak of piss the relationship broke down and he was forced to move to another council property in South Croydon from where he launched a campaign of intimidation against his ex. This forced Linda to contact the local police for protection. They turned round and offered some help on the condition she continued the break-ins against my grandmother so she got her sons and their friends to continue the intimidation. When it became clear this behaviour would elicit a response the ex started up again in the hope that I would be used as a proxy to beat up Linda. This caused me to hold fire and Croydon Council to move Linda for a brief time on the grounds she was being harassed by this violent ex-partner. After he'd been forced to go to ground for a time he resurfaced to mount the failed attempt to rob my grandmother again. As a builder he is probably responsible for digging up Derek Bentley's headstone and has recently been promising work to Eastern European labourers who are prepared to rob my grandmother's property. Alongside the usual tax evasion and VAT fraud associated with the building trade he has three outstanding arrest warrants on him for, I believe, a driving offence, a theft offence and breach of a Magistrates bail order and is known to the police from local level right the way up to Scotland Yard.

This means that if the government were seriously looking for leverage over Croydon Council they could send in a police firearms team to take his door tonight, leave him to sweat in custody tomorrow, bring him before a Magistrate on Monday morning and have him crying himself to sleep in HMP Belmarsh by Monday night. As MI5 informants, like police infromants are nothing more then weak minded individuals almost always motivated by cowardice this show of force would, in a moment, change the negotiation with Croydon Council from how much money they will be rewarded with for their criminality and ensuing failure into the question of should they be allowed to escape with their lives?

If this doesn't happen I will have no choice then to conclude that Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and Jacqui Smith are all individually endorsing Croydon's crime rate in the hope that the ensuing gossip will get Croydon residents to elect a Labour council come the elections in June. This of course won't make the slightest bit of difference because Croydon's nothing more then a massive MI5 internment camp so whoever's in the council there's never going to be a game here to win.

The other question of the weekend is who is going to ruin Jade Goody's wedding because the gay rights for gays brigade despise her for spoiling the arc of their narrative.

Sorry the Bourgeois Middle Class Anarchist can't come to the phone right now.

It's just his constant companion father, the long serving MI5 agent whose previous deployments include infiltrating and breaking the British trade union movement 1977-1980 has found a new game. He's now started going round to his 87 year old mother's house telling tall tales about men he's stopped trying into her house. Of course most of these men don't really exist and the only man who's tried breaking into her house is doing so under the protection of Croydon council. He's responsible for about 90% of the break-ins in Thornton Heath and has three active arrest warrants on him including one for jumping bail.

The idea of telling my grandmother these scare stories rather then simply having the guy remanded is to make her so scared she will side with one grandson over another. The grandson he's trying her to get to side with is a guy called David Bowden. He represents the new generation of MI5 agents currently working for an organisation called the Institute of Ideas. His next deployment is to be sent to Brussels where he will attempt to infiltrate a group called Libetas who lobby the European Parliament. Libetas is an anti-EU group who masterminded the Irish No vote to the Lisbon treaty. If he is successful in this mission Peter Mandelson's camp will become stronger making it much easier for companies to repeat the situation we saw at the Lindsey oil refinery.

The Bourgeois Middle Class Anarchist is also dredging through hundreds of pages of local government legislation looking for ways of tipping over Croydon's MI5 laden council without giving the knuckle draggers an education. He is also monitoring the Israel situation because that country is the single biggest drain on the UK taxpayers. When he's not doing that he's debating whether he'll cause a fatal split in the UK workers movement by pointing out that with support the Lindsey strikers got 102% of what the Union asked for. It's just a shame the Union's so neutered they didn't ask for more.

Super Puma Ditching

Last night MI5 decided to bring down a Super Puma helicopter in the North Atlantic. The reasons they decided to do this are threefold;

1. It promotes discussion of an incident back in 2005 when the British Army Air Corp decided to fly a military variant Super Puma helicopter over my house.

2. Last night I looked up a document called the Local Authorities model code of conduct. This along with the local government act 2000 and the local government act 1973 clearly defines Croydon Council's right to exist. The act of me reading it caused those involved in Croydon Council to, pardon my language, shit their pants. Around 40 minutes later there was a BBC newsflash that a helicopter had gone down in the north Atlantic and the RAF were mounting a rescue operation. An hour later came the news that all on board the craft had been saved.

3. It allows the Brits to take revenge on the CIA by planting the idea in the minds of the American public that the CIA brought down the aircraft that ditched in the Hudson river and aircraft that killed the 9/11 widow. I know as fact that this simply isn't true and I also know that the Brits have so little clue of what really happened they been forced to appeal for witnesses.

I wasn't going to post today.

partly out of respect for the Brit Music awards but mainly because watching the special needs kids fight amongst themselves gets boring after a while but a Puma helicopter crashed in the north Atlantic so clearly MI5 (those Brits) think something exciting happened. They of course get really sulky if they're not being included so here's an update of today's smear stories.

First up Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire who set up the Stanford series of 20:20 cricket matches has been charged in the USA for running a financial fraud in which investors were promised massive returns which never appeared. Aside from the fact he's clearly a sleazy fraudster this is America's way of pulling the Brits into the headmasters office ands saying;

"In 2006 you promised us that the Bristol Abuse Case which you dreamed up would be a massive success. Now three years on it has clearly failed and failed on a massive scale. We suggest you get your act together and change your tactics."

Of course in the British media they story is spun so that I, rather then the Brits, is cast as Stanford even though I didn't dream up the BAC and have been saying on an almost daily basis that it was doomed to failure. MI5 obviously have to spin the story because they can't allow the British public to know that they are being accused of failing to deliver on their promises because MI5 Loyalist may then realise that MI5 never deliver on their promises.

The other story that came up today is that the law lords have ruled some "Muslim preacher of hate!!!" can be deported. I don't speak stupid so I don't understand how this relates to me because rather then trying to deport me the Brits have actually gone to great lengths over recent years to make sure I can't leave the country. Although it makes no sense it is aimed at me because MI5 are currently really desperate to find reasons for people to hate me because last night I ripped one of their games to shreds. I did this my explaining that when ever a social movement like the anti-war movement, the anti-capitalist movement or most recently the Plane Stupid campaign springs up MI5 start to infiltrate it. Once they've got people inside the campaign those people encourage other members of the campaign to give up on large scale, national, effective actions and instead return to their home communities and focus on small, local, ineffective actions. This helps the campaign to be broken up into small, bite-sized chunks which can then be persecuted and harassed by local councils.. As MI5 are a bit thick and only really have one tactic this small statement had them foaming at the both and baying for revenge. This in itself is a shame because a sharp operator would use the incident to highlight just how doomed to failure the Brits current approach to me is highlighting the need for them to change their path sooner rather then later.


Anyway do we think I'm back to my ranting best?

Me and my Father went shopping today

And in a repeat of an incident we had this time last year a lot of the items on my usual shopping list were strangely not in stock. For reasons I won't go into I could tell that this was a purely locally organised effort so we'll have to put it down to Croydon Council's recent ill-advised attempt to play spy games.

I can only assume that Croydon Council is picking up so much local support for their efforts because they've put about a rumour that if they are to meet their financial obligations to me they would have to either raise council tax or cut local services.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact there is a specific clause in the settlement agreement which states that payments to me may not be funded through central government grants, cuts to local services or rises in council tax. Instead the money must be shown to come from direct cuts to the real world incomes of specific, named local council employees.

That clause probably explains why those specific, named council employees are so against the deal. After all if it was only taxpayers money at risk they'd probably go out an buy a big screen TV to watch it on.

Oh dear the Brits are Still Batting on a Thicky Wicket.

Last week a certain British tabloid ran a story about a 13 year old boy who had just become a father. This story is nothing short of a work of art featuring multiple themes on many complex levels. It is so complex and beautiful that it has completely baffled the British "Intelligence" service to the extent where they've been begging for someone to sit them down and explain it too them very, very slowly. They've done this by conjuring up three lads who also claim to be the father spinning the story into an argument over who should take responsibility for the child in that this smear would get a reaction out of me.

For that obvious reason I won't be discussing the story in any further but I will say that if the UK intelligence services, the UK government, Croydon council or anyone else for that matter think I have a financial, legal or moral obligation to any child there are plenty of well worn routes they can use to establish the truth of the claim beyond any doubt.

While I'm here I might as well use the opportunity to mention one other example of domestic violence that I forgot to mention in my other posts. Someone has taken to letting there dog run free in my garden in order to scare the foxes and my cat. Apart from the implications of setting dogs on a foxes mating ground the only problem is that they decided to do it on a snowy day. I know it sounds arrogant but I can't help but feeling I've been dumped here in Croydon in the hope I'll train up the local council.

They say a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.

And this picture tells you pretty much all there is to know about the Global War on Terror.



It shows the latest anti-terrorism arrests that happened last night on Britain's M65 motorway. As the arrested are only about 18 hours into their 28 day pre-trial detention the police are remaining tight-lipped on the matter. All they've released so far are some pictures of their firearms team looking windswept and interesting, the fact it is an anti-terror investigation, the number of people arrested and that five properties have been sealed off awaiting the arrival of an ominous sounding "specialist search team." Although it sounds sinister this search team is simply the Metropolitan police's "Viking" search team. These are the guys you'll see in blue overalls on their hands and knees going over crime scenes inch by inch or walking across fields in a long line looking for missing children. They are basically incredibly patient people who are very good at finding stuff. This stuff could be anything from tiny fragments of plastic or paperwork right up to large hauls of drugs or dead bodies. Of course if there's any suggestion of firearms or explosives the bomb squad are called into to carry out the search.

Although the police are yet to reveal which specific anti-terrorist offences the arrests have been made under I suspect they're offences of providing material support to terrorists. That is to say the suspects have been driving round the UK collecting clothes, tents, blankets and money to help the Palestinians. These materials were then to be transported across Europe and into Egypt before being smuggled into Gaza through the famous smuggling tunnels. Stuff like tents and blankets are of course little use in firing rockets into Israel or preparing suicide bombers to blow up trains but sending them to Gaza is of course an act of terrorism for one very simple reason. Israel has managed to convince the US, the UK and Egypt that humanitarian aid can only be sent to Gaza if it can be used as a weapon of war. That is to say aid agencies are only allowed to give aid to Fatah to distribute so they can use that aid to buy votes and ferment a further political collapse in Gaza making it impossible for the Palestinians to engage in any future peace process with Israel.

The people detained are clearly a bunch of amateurs who got themselves pranged up during the demonstrations outside the Israeli Embassy so I don't know how long it will take for them to be released but as with all other matters relating to national or international politics I must once again take a moment to apologise for the Brits;

Their translators assured them that "election" means the same thing in Hebrew as it does in English so now they're having something of a nervous breakdown and getting more then a little sloppy.

On a related note the results of Jade Goody's cancer tests are in and she's nothing more then a dead girl walking so I guess it's true what they say; As soon as you allow the cancer into you life you're chance of success instantly drops to zero.

Oh I get the Rhianna thing now.

For a while there I thought it might actually be true so I decided to ignore it but better late then never here's an update on my domestic violence.

First up there was another Croydon murder. In this incident a Ghanaian man nicknamed King was stabbed to death at a bus-stop in front of his three year old daughter. To make matters worse he was on his way to the local Mayday hospital to visit his wife who had, that afternoon, given birth to his son. The guys name, the name of the hospital and the location of the incident may have lead people to read far too much into the incident. There is no need, the hospital closest to the scene is indeed called Mayday Hospital and is known locally by the rather optimistic nickname MayDie hospital. Violent crime and murder are not unusual events in Croydon, there have been two shootings since this murder, and the town is often used as a location for a TV show called The Bill which is the UK's answer to The Wire. All this means I don't think there was any more or less government conspiracy in this murder then there is in all the other murders.

The second incident is a clear of example of state sponsored violence though and concerns the open publishing news service Indymedia. Back in December 2008 the sentences were handed down in the trial of 7 activists involved in the Stop Huntingdon [life sciences] Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign. Whatever you may feel about Animal Rights activists the SHAC campaign was so successful the UK government was forced to pass a whole raft of new laws to make their activities illegal and set up a whole new police force, The National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU), to prosecute the campaign. It was under these new offences that the activists were convicted with Judge Butterfield handing down sentences totally 50 years. The severity of the sentences were no doubt influenced by a previous Animal Rights case where activists desecrated the grave of a relative of the owner of a farm which bred guinea pigs to be used as well guinea pigs in animal testing even though there is no suggestion that the 7 convicted had anything whatsoever to do with that offence. In furore that followed the sentencing of the SHAC 7 a "person unknown" published the name and address of the sentencing judge on the Indymedia site. As this violates Indymedia's own publishing rules the comments were removed as soon as a moderator became aware of them twenty minutes later. The moderators prompt action to protect Judge Butterfield's privacy did not stop NETCU from raiding the offices of the company that houses Indymedia's servers and seizing equipment on the pretext of finding out who made the offending post.

The police's decision to carry out this raid is quite peculiar because Indymedia do not log the IP's of people who post on the site, the equipment seized was a hard drive mirror which wouldn't have IP addresses on it anyway and NETCU already have a legally admissible wiretap on Indymedia website which allows them to log user's IP's before they even get access to the Indymedia server. After the police had time to establish for themselves that the seized equipment would offer them no clue as tot he identity of this mysterious poster they decided they were going to return this property to it's lawful owner. Instead they decided to take another legally odd decision of arresting an employee of the company that hosts Indymedia's servers under the 2007 Serious Crime Act. His home was raided, his personal property seized and her was held for 8 hours before being released without charge.

Now if I was a judge and the police who had carried out these raids were Animal Rights activists appearing before I would have no choice other then to describe their actions as "An attempt to interfere with the contractual relationship between lawful companies" - an offence under the Terrorism Act which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The offence is further aggravated because my sources tell me that Judge Butterfield's personal details were posted from a computer belonging to Kent Police.

The third example of violence in this very long and tedious post also involves grave desecration and concerns one of Croydon's most famous residents, Derek Bentley. Bentley was one of the last men to be executed for murder in the UK. His case was made famous when he was played by Christopher Eccelston in a film called Let Him Have It which tells Bentley's very sad story. With a mental age of 11 Derek Bentley was coerced into robbing a Streatham factory by his friend Christopher Craig. During the course of this robbery they were interrupted by a policeman who Craig shot and killed. As Craig was only 16 when he fired the fatal shots it was impossible for him to be executed for the crime so the British State decided it was going to take it's revenge by hanging Bentley claiming that he ordered the shooting by uttering the ambiguous phrase; "Let him have it Chris."After a long battle by the Bentley family Derek was finally pardoned for a murder he did not commit and his body was laid to rest in the consecrated ground of Croydon Cemetery under a headstone bearing the inscription; Derek Bentley 1933-1953. Murdered by the British State.

Two weeks ago somebody entered Croydon's cemetery, dug up the gravestone and delivered it to a local police station. The police returned the gravestone and decided there was no need to investigate any further. This is a shame because it quite clear whoever committed this offense was able to gain easy entry to the council run cemetery, was able to dig up a headstone unhindered and knew that I studied the Bentley case extensively for my GCSE's. They probably also knew that one of my great aunts is buried in the plot next to Bentleys. This grave was also desecrated during the offence.

Sorry I didn't bother post about any of this earlier but once you've lived with this level of violence for 20 odd years you learn that it's all Britain has too offer and stop being shocked by it.

So My Little Brother got Beaten Up.

It actually happened on February 1st the Sunday when the snow came down but I didn't get to hear about it until the Tuesday just gone which sort of proves how often me and my brother talk.

My brother doesn't really know what happened so I, by extension, don't really know what happened either. From what he has told me though it sounds as if he was walking home when he got swarmed by four of five of what the Daily Mail would call delinquent hoodies. After giving him a few good punches and a few good kicks his attackers left him and his property to continue their walk home. He was wearing glasses at the time and during the course of the attack these got pushed against his face and cut his nose open so he had to go to hospital the next day and have the cut glued and closed up with butterfly stitches.

The incident was reported to the police but with no clear description of the attackers, no witness and no clear motive for the attack the local lodge have decided they're not going to investigate further. If there were to ask me to help with their enquires I think there are three possible scenarios they should consider;

• It was just a random attack. This is Croydon after all where the local council can hardly be described as competent. You may have heard about us from one of the murders or that time we topped the Operation Trident league table with 27 shootings in 27 days.

• Laws of War. Someone recognised my brother, correctly identified him as a government informant and did what needs to be done. I'll admit that's a little bit funny but he is my younger brother so if there needs to be some kicking done I'll do it.

• The Council Did it. The attack happened opposite a building called Stonebridge Lodge which is a privately owned building which provides sub-standard Bed&Breakfast accommodation all for a tidy profit paid for by Croydon Council's Housing Benefit Department. This means that someone at the Housing Benefit department could have ordered the attack by getting the owner of Stonebridge Lodge to put the word about that my brother was delaying the council in meeting it's obligations because if my brother was to move out of my mother's flat I could move in and the council would then be able to pay me housing benefit. This is of course nonsense because if the council can pay on my mothers property then they can certainly pay out on my fathers property.

Of these three scenarios I think the third is by far the most likely because when the first housing benefit application went in I got the impression that someone had been rattling the cages of the local hard cases. I could just be wishful think on my part though because if Croydon Council did order the attack then it means they're now so far in the shit they've gone and beaten the crap out of one of their own informants.

So did Britain enjoy it's little show trial?

A famous leader once said that to keep a population docile and obedient the government only needs to provide two things; Bread and Circuses.

With the UK economy firmly in a recession that could be as bad as the great depression itself it is clear the British government has run out of bread. Their only hope now is to provide the best damn circus the world has ever seen. Today they gave it their best try by summoning the former senior executives of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) to appear in front of a House of Commons select committee to explain why their greedy bonus culture destroyed the UK economy.

So well publicised was this exercise in blood letting that MP's, members of the public, reporters and the bank executives themselves first had to run a gauntlet of protesters outside the building. Even though they'd been whipped up by three days of Ministerial hysteria of bank bonuses these protesters just about managed to avoid turning up with pitchforks and burning torches but were still upset enough to turn their ire on anybody who arrived by taxi. The hearings themselves were televised live but not one but two BBC channels in the hope that they would be a bruising exchange between the cartoon supervillan bankers and the heroic MP's who had come to save the day.

In the end it didn't turn out quite like that because the first thing the bank executives did was admit they'd made mistakes and were very sorry about those mistakes not least they themselves had lost an awful lot money in the process. This pretty much took the wind out of the committee's sails because they knew full well that the people in front of them had already lost their jobs and there was nothing they or anybody else to do to change the past. The MP's still tried to make a go of it though by trying to grill Sir Tom McKillop, the former RBS chairman over why he decided to buy Dutch Bank ABN Ambro when it's shares were at the top of the market. McKillop admitted that yes it was a big mistake and added that with the benefit of hindsight he would not have done it if he knew at the time it was the top of the market.

By the time the committee got round to Andy Hornby the former head of HBOS they had nothing to through at him other then the fact that his previous job was with Asda, the successful supermarket chain. The MP's lack of ammunition came as no great surprise because prior to September 2008 HBOS was a comparatively strong bank. It didn't give out sub-prime loans, the loans it did approve were backed up by a strong book of good assets and they were particularly invested in so-called toxic mortgage backed securities. In fact the only problem that HBOS had was then when American banks started collapsing and the Large Hadron Collider got switched on persons unknown *coughs*Lloyds-TSB*coughs* started short selling HBOS shares in massive volumes. This caused the share price to collapse causing a crisis in confidence that dried up HBOS' cash flow. With no access to ready cash HBOS had no other choice then to be "rescued" by being forced into a shotgun marriage with Lloyds-TSB creating a super bank which in effect nationalised some 60% of the British Banking industry.

All in all watching this particular circus ended up being almost as dull as writing about it so I really hope the government gives it another go. They could perhaps invite the Chief Executive of Lloyds TSB and the Chief Executive of the Wellcome trust to appear and explain why the economy, along with some many other things, really started going wrong in the summer of 2006.

2009, The Year of the Protest.

It's only February but I think the police's overtime budget must already be feeling the strain because no sooner had the Israeli war protests had drawn to a halt then a whole new wave of people took to the streets.

First up were the Tamils who on Saturday called out 10,000 to protest the Sri-Lankan governments latest bloody offensive against the Tamil Tigers. To my enternal discredit I know almost nothing about this long running conflict but the stories of atrocities by both sides and the figure 250,000 civilians trapped by the fighting certainly explain why people are angry. The demonstration itself passed off peacefully enough with no real arrests and the police's main concern seemed to be that some demonstrators would try and set themselves on fire in protest.

On Sunday the Free Tibet campaign set up a picket outside the Chinese Embassy to "welcome" the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, on his visit to London. This picket quickly took on a threatening tone when Embassy officials decided to set of fireworks and smoke bombs in an attempt to shield the protest from the Prime Ministers delicate eyes. As the explosions started some of the protesters attempted to break out of the pig pen and charge the Embassy. They were soon wrestled to the ground by the police and two were arrested. In spite of the snow that the Free Tibet protesters always seem to bring with them the protests continued throughout the Prime Minister's visit. These peaked with Cambridge university showing just how useless it is when a student decided to make the very original protest of throwing a shoe at Wen Jiabao. To make matters worse he missed and missed by miles.

I'm actually a bit surprised that the Free Tibet protests weren't much larger and much angrier but I suppose that's what happens when the supposedly free media are ordered no to report that the British Government has formally changed it's official position on Tibet. Prior to the 2008 Olympics Britain respected the territorial independence of Tibet and was working with China to ensure greater freedoms for the Tibetan people. In November 2008 the British Government did a dramatic U-Turn and now fully recognises China's sovereignty over Tibet and will no longer raise the issue of Tibetan rights with the Chinese government.

The most important bit of protest news however came on Monday when workers at the Sellafield nuclear power plant in Cumbria walked out in support of wildcat strikes across the energy industry. Although these walkouts are mainly 24 hour stoppages and mostly limited to construction workers they echo the large scale Trade Union disputes that brought the British government to it's knees in the 1970's. However unlike the bad old days of Scargill when workers walked out to secure nothing more then massive pay-rises this dispute is much more complicated.

During the 1990's, as part of the setting up of the European Union, a law was passed that allowed any, individual, EU citizen to travel to any other EU country in order to compete against local workers for any job. When Total decided that they needed to carry out construction at their Oil refinery in Lindsey, North Lincolnshire they decided to abuse this law by using it as an excuse not to offer any of the available jobs to British workers. Instead they decided to only advertise the positions in Italy where pay rates and Health & Safety regulations are much lower. Once all 90 of these jobs had been filled the company then shipped all the workers over to the UK in one go and housed them on company property for the duration of the construction project. How legal this employment practice is remains a matter for much dispute and even if it is found that a series of European Trade Commission rulings mean it follows the letter of the law it is most certainly not in the spirit in which the law was passed.

As if to prove just how badly the workers have got the government by the bollocks on this issue the government has already begun to pour scorn on them. First they accused the workers of being protectionist which is simply not true. Ending this practice would not in any way prevent non-UK firms from tendering for construction contracts in the UK nor would it prevent workers from any EU country from applying for UK jobs. Next the Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson, who was European Trade Commissioner when the European Trade Commission approved this practice attempted to label the workers as "Xenophobic" - political code for Racist. Again this is not true because nobody is trying to stop Italian or any other EU workers coming to the UK and competing for jobs that are advertised in the UK. In fact I've heard BNP activists have been attempting to join the pickets only for the police to advise them to leave for their own safety.

So What Was That Whole Israel/Gaza War About Then?

Between December 26th and January 19th Israel went to war in Gaza on the pretext of stopping rocket fire into southern Israel and breaking Hamas, the democratically elected government of Palestine. Following three weeks of fighting which left 13 Israelis and 1330 Palestinians dead the Israelis ended their campaign with neither of these objectives being achieved leaving many to question what the hell it had all been about.

The short answer is that it had nothing whatsoever to do with Hamas and everything to do with internal Israeli and therefore global politics.

In order to explain more fully how this war started I must first explain how another, much longer war ended. Many older Israeli's will be familiar with how the Cold War started using it, as they did, as a fantastic opportunity to play the USA off against the USSR in order to get the best weapons. What they may not be so familiar with is how this long conflict came to and end. In the early 1980's, after 40 years of conflict, civic officials including politicians, spies and business from both sides of Europe’s Iron Curtain got tired of fighting and fell in love. The officials on the Communist side of the curtain fell in love with the rampant greed and violent inequality of Capitalism. Their counterparts on the Capitalist side fell in love with the control, domination and subjugation of the individual inherent in Communism. With this common ground reached a marriage made in hell was formed and barriers across Europe began to crumble as a kind of peace ruled the day.

After the USSR collapsed this disparate group of kindred spirits, who I shall call the Second Worlders, joined forces and decided to hijack globalisation and use it as a vehicle to create a violent world based on the greed and inequality of Capitalism mixed with the controlling, Totalitarian governments of Communism. Chief amongst these Second Worlders was a one Mr Anthony Blair who became the Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1997 starting a trend of similar leaders across the world including Nicholas Sarkozy of France and Hillary Clinton of the United States. In Kadima's Tzipi Livni this crop of second worlders saw a natural ally who would help them in their quest for world domination.

So strong was this allegiance that when he took up his new job as the quartets Middle East Peace Envoy, Tony Blair decided, possibly with the help of his friend the British Prime Minister, that rather then use this position to, I dunno bring peace to the region, he was going to use it to boost Ms Livni's political career at the expense of her party leader Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. This project came to fruition in November 2008 when a series of fraud investigations forced Mr Olmert to stand down and Ms Livni was asked to form a new coalition government and become Prime Minister. Unfortunately by this point Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister in the Coalition, and leader of the Labor (no relation) party had decided that he would be able to take power all for himself if he was able to present himself as a strong, competent leader in contrast to Kadima's more liberal image. As a former head of the army Mr Barak decided that the best way to get Israeli voters to rally behind him was to win a short, successful war against Hamas and so Operation Cast Lead (OCL) was born.

For their part Ms Livni and her international backers were more then happy with this idea because they knew that many younger, more liberal Israelis were already getting war weary so a long war with lots of casualties would quickly turn them and many older Israelis against Barak’s war for votes. So this is what Ms Livni and her supporters set about turning Operation Cast Lead into. Firstly they raised the point that in the 2006 Lebanon war the use of overwhelming airpower had quickly turned the world against the war forcing Israeli to bring it to a premature end. This meant that Barak had to commit to deploying ground troops within Gaza raising the possibility that many would be killed in urban warfare with Hamas. Next Livni, the foreign minister, convinced Barak, the defence minister that Operation Cast Lead would be much better received if it could be portrayed as a "policing operation" rather then an all out war. To this end she helpfully went out and got her British friends to supply Barak with some of the tactics used by the British Police to maintain order in violent demonstrations. These tactics are very labour intensive meaning that in order to incorporate them in OCL Barak would have to call up a vast number of IDF reservists tearing husbands away from wives and fathers away from their children during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

Having made sure that OCL would cause the maximum disruption to Israeli civilian life the 2nd Worlders set about making sure there was a thriving anti-war movement in Israel ready and waiting to recruit disgruntled Israeli voters. This mainly involved making sure there were plenty of liberal Israelis reading to take to the streets in protest waving signs like "No blood for Knesset Seats!" and "Don't support Barak's war for votes!". More key though was making sure that local officials were prepared to allow well funded campaigners to set up peace camps and "reflection zones" in city centres. No doubt Ms Livni had also been assured by her British allies that they would take steps to make sure that certain bloggers would put in a repeat of their performance in the 2006 Lebanon war. These bloggers would of course post everyday, reporting on the mounting death-toll, global protests against the war and dismissing Ehud Barak as a war-mongering idiot killing innocent Palestinians to win himself votes. Of course if these bloggers were still held in any regard in Israel then this daily commentary would challenge the official Israeli broadcasting of the campaign and strengthen the wave of opposition to Barak's war.

Once the war itself had started Livni and her backers had two further tasks. Firstly they had to make sure Hamas were prepared to make a fight of it in order to maximise the number of Israeli military deaths. This was done by making sure that key people (MI6's Iran network) had ready access to the tactics the IDF were intending to use so Hamas military commanders could use this information to draw up a strong defensive plan. Livni's second task was to make sure that the war went on for as long as possible. This would be done within the coalition government by coming up with reasons like "There's too much cloud cover, your laser-guided bombs might miss." and "You can't start the land invasion now, the element of surprise has been lost." to delay every phase of Operation Cast Lead. It would also be done externally by using her role as Foreign Minister to delay the Franco-Egyptian peace talks and prevent the UN passing a resolution to stop the fighting as soon as it did.

All things considered I think that Livni would have been happy to see OCL continue for another week, making Barak even more unpopular by embarrassing Obama, before ending with a slow, phased withdrawal from Gaza. This meant she could delay the release of the reservists, keeping them with their units until the first week in February. Only allowing them home in time for them and their disgruntled relatives to vote in the election and sweep Tzipi Livni into power on a wave of opposition to Barak and his war. Britain and it's Labour government would of course have been more then happy to help make this happen because with a natural ally in charge of Israel it would be much easier for them to spread their nasty ideology of Totalitarian Capitalism across the globe. Plus they would also be able to serve Israel up on a plate to the Chinese as a part payment for the massive national debt that the United Kingdom has managed to run up over the last decade.

In the end things didn't quite work out like this. The bloggers didn't turn up and Hamas decided that there was little point trying to fight tanks with rifles. So after a few curious incidents like the Israeli tank commander's decision to kill three of the ten Israeli troops who died in the conflict Ehud Barak finally won the power struggle within Israel's coalition government and was able to end Operation Cast Lead exactly when he wanted too.

Now Israelis will go to the polls on February 10th to decide if they want to be ruled by Ehud Barak who fights short, pointless wars for votes or Tzipi Livni who fights long, pointless wars for votes. Personally I wouldn't vote for either of them as they both sound like an absolute pair of liabilities but I doubt I'll have much influence. After all the last time I endorsed and Israeli politician it was Ehud Olmert and look what happened to him.