Craig Murray on Andy Burnham

Anybody who signs a letter “I remain, Your Royal Highness, Your most humble and obedient servant” should not just be debarred from politics, but should be sniggered at by everybody they encounter for the rest of their life.

Quite.

Treating Jack Straw differently

From BBC News:

A UKIP parliamentary candidate is to be questioned over allegations he tried to influence voters by giving away sausage rolls at a party event featuring snooker star Jimmy White. 

Kim Rose, standing in Southampton Itchen, said he had been told to report to police over allegations of treating. 

Electoral Commission rules state food and entertainment cannot be provided by candidates to "corruptly influence" votes.

Craig Murray (whose headline I have nicked) reckons that such matters are handled differently when a cabinet minister is involved. Writing yesterday, he quoted a blog post of his from the 2005 general election:

On 24 April 2005, in an election rally in Jack Straw’s Blackburn Constituency, over one hundred Blackburn electors were given a full free meal by the Labour party, with Jack Straw present, having just made an election speech to the lucky partakers of this generosity. ... 

There was no shortage of witnesses – protestors were ringing the hall. The police were actually providing protection for this criminal event, and showed no interest in the fact that the proceeding was illegal. Jack Straw runs Blackburn as a personal fiefdom. 

I therefore went to a police station and made a formal complaint. This obliged the police to investigate, and to do them justice, the detectives of Lancashire Police did a very good job, establishing the facts of the incident. They then sent a file to the Crown Prosecution Service. 

The Crown Prosecution Service returned the file to Lancashire Police, saying that the offence was “Trivial” and there would be no prosecution. As this was one of the worst examples of large scale electoral treating since it was made a criminal offence in 1832, presumably this means the CPS has decided that the law on treating has fallen into desuetude, and candidates may now provide food and drink to electors. 

Or only New Labour ministers?

It seems Craig was right.

Understanding the Putin regime in Russia

Two of my favourite bloggers have been looking at the nature of the Putin regime.

Craig Murray writes:

The immediate cause of the MH17 disaster was a missile shot by pro-Russian forces who mistook it for one of the military aircraft they had been regularly shooting down. It is a terrible tragedy – and tragically not unique. There have been several such events in my lifetime, including the USS Vincennes incident and the Soviet downing of a Korean airliner. 

The problem is that Vladimir Putin has revived the Soviet cult of perfectionism – the idea that the state simply cannot make a mistake. That Putin-backed forces could commit an error is therefore unthinkable, as that would imply that Putin made an error in backing and supplying them. 

Putin cannot make errors. We have therefore seen a stream of desperate propaganda stories emanating from the Russian media, such as the allegation that it was the government in Kiev attempting to shoot down Putin himself. These narratives are aimed at the domestic Russian nationalist audience, but are accepted by the small band of ardent Putin supporters in the West.

And Cicero's Songs writes:

The scale of the human rights breakdown under Putin is now so complete, it is legitimate to ask, in the twenty-first century, "if Russia has such a warped structure that it simply can not be a free society, should the country even continue to exist?" 

For there is little doubt, that even without the 14 other Soviet Republics, Post Soviet Russia remains an Empire both in fact and in spirit. For example, there are over 185 different national groups, speaking over 100 native languages in the Russian Federation, of which 27 have some official status, although only Russian is designated as the state language. Although Russification, official and unofficial, has continued, the percentage of the population that is ethnically Russian is in steady decline- Russia is growing more diverse and not less. 

That goes for the economy too. Many people, used to the glitz and obvious wealth of Moscow and St. Petersburg can be totally shocked by the contrast, not merely with the seedy and run down state of most other cities, but the dire poverty that exists even in the rural areas close to the capital. Russia has one of the largest wealth gaps ever seen in human history, with brutal poverty literally within sight of the richest individuals on the planet. 

But such astonishing inequality is the result, not of entrepreneurial graft, but of the capture of the natural resources of the country by a self-selected criminal class. Rent seeking and exploitation are the watch words of this mafia, and it has crushed the vast bulk of the population. The creative and intelligent class are driven to the margin or seek better lives outside the stultifying control of the Kremlin propaganda machine.

Craig Murray on Haute de la Garenne

Craig Murray wrote on his blog last year:

I receive, constantly, emails from people wishing me to take up various cases on my blog and furnishing information. 95% of the time I do not publish because I am not able to investigate fully (there is just one of me) and I do not know the source: the exclusives on this blog come mostly from my access to well-placed sources I have known for years through my past diplomatic career, and trust. 

A notable proportion of the cases brought to me by those I do not know involve alleged paedophile rings. I was sent information about Haut de la Garenne for years, which named a string of senior people alleged to take advantage of organised paedophilia in the care home. Among the judges, politicians and aristocracy, there was indeed the name of Jimmy Savile. 

I have to admit it was not just that I could not prove any of it, I was actively sceptical about what seemed a random list of names of the famous. We now know for certain that Savile visited the place several times. The whole Haut De La Garenne investigation always seemed to obscure more than it revealed; I do hope it is now re-opened, and taken away from the local Jersey police.

It is also worth watching the video included in this post...

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John Hemming MP explains why he voted against the government on secret courts (among other things) on Monday.

Remember those shameful "Keep Calm and Rape On" T-shirts on Amazon? They never existed. I Am Pete Ashton explains.

Craig Murray warms to Palmerston.

"The British continue to suspect that they lost something special, even moral, when their society graduated from an aristocratic empire to a modern democracy. Like all nostalgics, we take comfort in a past that only seems so good because so few are alive to remember it well." Tim Stanley on History Today is unimpressed by Downton Abbey.

"A growing number of pilgrims ... are lacing up boots and sneakers to walk across America. While their treks may not have the religious underpinnings of pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela, Mecca, Jerusalem or the current Kumbh Mela gathering in India ... they are nevertheless acts of faith and quests for existential meaning," says Kate Murphy in the New York Times.

Aqeela's House visits... well, Market Harborough actually. She took some nice photographs and I shall go and look at the town's old post office again myself.

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Caron's Musings tells Nick Clegg that he can't go on about diversity and continue to pass over women.

"But what if the Lib Dems should do unexpectedly well in the 2015 election, maintaining or even increasing their representation? This would certainly give the party a new moral authority after all they have been through. But the toxicity of the Tories remains; they are simply on the wrong side of history. With an increased representation, the party may well have the choice of partners, and if so, it should try to strike a deal with Labour, and one that gives the party increased overall clout in government." Thinking Liberal does not want to see the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition continue after 2015.

Craig Murray continues his investigation of the activities of Adam Werritty.

"Even in a bookshop as frequently visited as this one, it's inevitable that a few books will slide into obscurity - but the long decline takes place over years or decades, whereas e-books have the unwanted capacity to vanish instantly, leaving no trace behind. No volunteer comes along to brush away the dust and restore them to a more prominent place on the virtual shelf." On Wenlock Books, Jacob Sikstone reflects on a week working in that Shropshire bookshop.

It's a while since we have had a recipe, so here is Wild Shropshire: Food and Foraging with bacon, broccoli and goat's cheese soup.

London Reconnections visits the Connaught Tunnel. It has been disused since North London Line trains ceased running to North Woolwich in 2006 but will soon form an important part of Crossrail.

Uzbek child labour and Uzbek human rights violation

This morning's Independent quotes Tim Collins telling representatives of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (who he thought were working on behalf of the government of Uzbekistan):

"And where we want to get to – and this will take time, this is where David's team are magical – is you get to the point where even if they type in 'Uzbek child labour' or 'Uzbek human rights violation', some of the first results that come up are sites talking about what you guys are doing to address and improve that, not just the critical voices saying how terrible this all is."

Let's see what we can do to slow that process down:

• Uzbek child labour
• Uzbek human rights violation

And, of course, the best source on Uzbekistan is Murder in Samarkand by Craig Murray (who blogs here).

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"That the British Defence Minister holds frequent unrecorded meetings in the Ministry and abroad with somebody promoting the interests of foreign powers is much, much worse than a little cash-grubbing." Craig Murray looks at Liam Fox and Adam Werritty.

"Don’t let’s pretend that it is really such a mystery why such modern institutions, targeted and standardised to within an inch of their lives, have become so inhumane," argues David Boyle on The Real Blog.

Caron's Musings writes this blog a memo on the subject of Tim Farron.

Is a battle for Stamford Bridge about to begin? asks twohundredpercent.

Spitalfields Life looks at Richard Jefferies in the City of London: " Whenever I feel lost in the metropolis, his writing is always a consolation, granting a liberating perspective upon the all-compassing turmoil of urban life and, in spite of the changes in the city, his observations resonate as powerfully today as they did when he wrote them."

"'Gone to Earth' is positioned here as an archetype of the 'film as safari' genre, a glimpse of rare, exotic lands," says Cinespect. Those rare, exotic lands are the Shropshire hills and this Powell and Pressburger films has been showing as part of a season at the 92Y in New York.

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Barry Stocker on Liberal Vision looks at the ideas of the American liberal philosopher John Rawls. He is a blind spot as far as I am concerned: I am more of a Mill, Popper and Rorty man.

Lynne Featherstone writes about the Coalition government's decision to outlaw wheelclamping on private land: "As soon as I became a Home Office minister with wheel clamping as part of my portfolio, I was deluged by letters from other MPs (representing their constituents) asking when we would do something about rogue clampers."

"The Russians call it Kompromat - the use by the state of sexual accusations to destroy a public figure. When I was attacked in this way by the government I worked for, Uzbek dissidents smiled at me, shook their heads and said "Kompromat". They were used to it from the Soviet and Uzbek governments. They found it rather amusing to find that Western governments did it too." Craig Murray thinks he knows what is behind the accusations against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

Blood and Treasure harvests the insights of Listening to Britain, a compilation of reports on domestic morale produced by the Ministry of Information in 1940: "Mr Attlee’s cap is depressing picturegoers." "Amongst all classes, dislike of Belgians is growing." "Glasgow is generally bewildered."

England's batting collapse this morning has little consequence for the Ashes this winter, argues The Corridor. Phew!

Liberal Burblings marks the passing to two veteran television series from Yorkshire: Last of the Summer Wine and Heartbeat. I never found the former very funny, but grew to like the latter if only for the chance of hearing a Spencer Davis Group rarity. Heartbeat was also interesting when it started as in those days the legacy of the 1960s was a subject of contentious debate.

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Paul Crossley calls on his readers to oppose plans for a vast factory farm for cows in Lincolnshire: "There are so many reasons why this kind of cow factory farming is a disaster. It relies on huge quantities of imported feed. To grow this feed, rainforest is chopped down, destroying wildlife and increasing climate change. Keeping cows indoors all year round can increase the risk of disease. Industrial milk production also threatens smaller, traditional dairy farms."

There are now 18 Liberal Democrat blogs in the top 100 UK political blogs, according to the Wikio rankings. Mark Pack has the list.

Craig Murray offers a guarded welcome to the announcement of an inquiry into the British government's complicity in torture: "Unlike the Chilcott Inquiry, the personnel of this inquiry are not obviously packed with supporters of the government view."

Fixed-term parliaments should be for years, not five, argues Mark Reckons.

Singing my Song has made a personal pilgrimage to Walshingham: "It meant a lot to me to be able to take in the traditional starting-point of the route at the Red Mount Chapel in King's Lynn, and then the Anglican shrine by way of being the closest we could manage to the traditional end-point (the Priory ruins having closed for the day by the time we arrived)."

York Stories looks at the refurbished York Central Library. I used to study their occasionally when I was a student. The downside was the mewing of the peacocks in the gardens of the Yorkshire Museum next door.

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1. Good news: Craig Murray has joined the Liberal Democrats.


2. You will probably have heard that the Tories had a social media catastrophe yesterday in the shape of the collapse of their #cashgordon campaign. Andrew Hickey has the juicy details.


3. RandomPottins introduces us to a strange episode in the career of Donald McIntosh Johnson, who was a wartime Independent by-election candidate, stood as a Liberal in the 1945 general election and later became a Conservative MP, until he fell out with them too.


4. There was a stunning programme on sudden blindness on Radio 4 this morning. Niles's Blog heard it too and has the link to the BBC website.


5. Which Liberal Democrat blogger met a station cat in South Shropshire? I suspect I would be the bookies' favourite, but in fact it was Liberal Bureaucracy in Craven Arms.


6. The Croydonian has metamorphosed into Chiswickite, but it has kept up its study of old volumes of Hansard. We are in 1960, when Manchester Moss Side was represented by a Tory opera buff.

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1. Prof. Paul Reynolds excoriates (hem, hem) Tory plans to introduce street cameras with number plate recognition software to North West Leicestershire.


2. Invaluable work from the Environmental Justice Foundation and Anti-Slavery International in exposing child labour in Uzbekistan is highlighted by Craig Murray.


3. Skipper argues that Alistair Darling has proved himself the real star of Brown's original cabinet.


4. On the Guardian Books Blog Alison Flood celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - and Alan Garner's work in general. But why no mention of Elidor?


5. Unmitigated England explains why the Wheel & Compass in Weston by Welland has an ungainly third storey. It's a 19th century dormitory for railway navvies.


6. The lucky people of Seattle can look forward to a season of British film noir. Scarecrow Video has the programme and some Youtube clips.

Craig Murray on Michal Kaminski

The debate over the Conservative Party's allies in its new European Fruitcake Alliance has generated more heat than light. But Craig Murray has a notably fair and informative post on the background of Michal Kaminski and Polish society in general.

Writing of his four years based in Poland, he says:

It would be a lie to say that I encountered casual anti-semitism every day. But I did so often enough to be severely worried - and often from very nice people who did not otherwise have weird opinions.

Anti-semitism was absolutely endemic in the Polish Catholic Church, and still is. There has been no serious attempt to eradicate it, despite the odd rap on the knuckles for Walesa's priest Father Jankowski or the rabid crowd at Radio Marija - Kaminski's most important media support. It is worth noting that whilst within the Polish Catholic Church, the conservative Polish Pope John Paul II had always been considered a far liberal.

I should add that a young black British businessmen reported to me that being spat at was an almost daily occurence.

The strange thing is that I adore Poland, and Poles, and Polish culture. I was ever so happy in my time there. There are reasons for the development of this deep-seated racist strain which are historic. There is a limit to how far you can blame individuals for adopting attitudes which are widespread in their culture; and without understanding you cannot change attitudes.

Random thoughts on the Norwich North result

First of all, the result suggests that the scandal over MPs' expenses is already fading into memory.

The Conservatives, despite being as deeply mired as anyone else, had no difficulty winning the seat. More than that, Ian Gibson (who was deselected over his own claims) emerged as a popular hero amid widespread claims that he would have won if he had stood as an independent. And the most plausible anti-party candidate, Craig Murray, failed to make much of an impact.

The result was a triumph for the Conservatives, but it is hard to be too enthusiastic about their candidate. Chloe Smith, though she did her best to hide it, is a wonk from Conservative head office. She is a female Miliband. She even looks like a female Miliband.

Labour's performance was a disaster, reminding them uncomfortably of the days when they hardly held a seat south and east of that mythical line from the Severn to the Wash. By succumbing to swine flu their candidate made himself the embodiment of this government's decline.

The Liberal Democrats worked incredibly hard and could not quite manage to stand still. No doubt a longer campaign would have suited them and enabled them to overtake Labour, but we still need to have a long, hard think about what we now offer that could possibly excite the voters. A Fresh Start for Britain does not promise to be much help.

It was a good result for UKIP, suggesting that they will now be a presence in elections at all levels. I suspect they are mopping up a lot of disaffected traditional Labour voters at present, but in the long run this may pose a threat to the Conservatives.

The Greens will be disappointed by their showing. Could it be that, though everyone feels warm to them, being presented with Green policies in an election campaign puts people off them? Still they did win an impressive local by-election in Hove yesterday.

And the Libertarian Party put up an 18-year-old and got 36 votes. The revolution may have to be postponed.

Those Norwich North candidates in full

BBC News has the list of candidates in the by-election (polling is on 23 July):

• Peter Baggs (Independent)
• Thomas Burridge (Libertarian Party)
• Anne Fryatt (None of The Above Party)
• Bill Holden (Independent)
• Laud Howling (The Official Monster Raving Loony Party)
• Craig Murray (Put An Honest Man into Parliament)
• Chris Ostrowski (Labour)
• April Pond (Liberal Democrat)
• Rupert Read (Green)
• Chloe Smith (Conservative)
• Glenn Tingle (UK Independence Party)
• Robert West (British National Party)

Note that Ian Gibson is not standing.

Craig Murray's evidence on British complicity in torture

Craig Murray sends us to the Parliament website and the video of his appearance today before the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Later. Blairwatch points out that Craig's evidence is now on Youtube. The first part is below...

Craig Murray's tribute to Sir Clement Freud

Craig Murray remembers his predecessor as rector of Dundee University:

I was more than once the beneficiary of Freud's largesse as he took groups of apparently random students out for boozy meals. For the student charities' campaign he produced The Rector's Cookbook, a collection of recipes that could be cooked in one pan on a single gas ring - in those days a not unusual sole cooking facility for a Dundee student.

He did a promotional piece for STV in a student flat in Springfield, equipped with a fold-away gas ring that swung out from the wall. Halfway through his cooking demonstration the cooking ring collapsed, the pan clashed to the floor, spraying everyone with chilli, and a jet of yellow flame shot across the room, setting fire to the bedclothes.

Freud turned to the camera and said, in the slowest and most deadpan voice imaginable as the room blazed around him: "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect demonstration of the conditions which students have beed reduced to under the Labour government."

Craig Murray to give evidence on torture to select committee

Craig Murray writes on his blog:

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has agreed to hear my evidence on torture on Tuesday 28 April at 1.45pm. Many thanks to everyone who helped lobby for this.

I am delighted, as I have been trying for over four years to lay the truth about British torture policy before Parliament. I will testify that as British Ambassador I was told there is a very definite policy to accept intelligence from torture abroad, and that the policy was instituted and approved by Jack Straw when Foreign Secretary. I will tell them that as Ambassador I protested formally three times in writing to Jack Straw, and that the Foreign Office told me in reply to my protests that this was perfectly legal.

I will prove my evidence with documentation.

Craig Murray needs your help

On Tuesday 10 March the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights will discuss whether or not to hear my evidence on the UK government's policy of using intelligence from torture. They discussed whether to hear my evidence on 3 March but failed to reach a conclusion.

The government is lobbying hard for my exclusion. I need everybody to send an email to jchr@parliament.uk to urge that I should be allowed to give evidence. Just a one-liner would be fine. If you are able to add some comment on the import of my evidence, or indicate that you have heard me speak or read my work, that may help. Please copy your email to craigjmurray@tiscali.co.uk.

Read the rest on his blog.

The Catholic Orangemen of Togo by Craig Murray

Craig Murray, the author of Murder in Samarkand, has decided to self-publish his new book after threats of legal action scared off commercial publishers.

He will be making The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known available free online from 12 January as a PDF hosted on over 100 different websites, in almost 30 different jurisdictions. He has also had books printed for those who would prefer to read it in that format.

Craig hopes to get copies into bookshops soon, but it is proving difficult. So if you want a hard copy of The Catholic Orangemen then the best thing to do is visit Craig's website.

Another good reason for buying it this way is that Craig - and Amnesty International - will make more money if you do.

Anyway, here is the blurb from his new book:

Craig Murray's adventures in Africa from 1997 to 2001 are a rolliciking good read. He exposes for the first time the full truth about the "Arms to Africa" affair which was the first major scandal of the Blair Years. He lays bare the sordid facts about British mercenary involvement in Africa and its motives. This is at heart an extraordinary account of Craig Murray's work in negotiating peace with the murderous rebels of Sierra Leone, and in acting as the midwife of Ghanaian democracy. Clearly his efforts were not only difficult but at times very dangerous indeed. Yet the story is told with great humour. Not only do we meet Charles Taylor, Olusegun Obasanjo, Jerry Rawlings and Foday Sankoh, but there are unexpected encounters with others including Roger Moore, Jamie Theakston and Bobby Charlton!

Above all this book is about Africa. Craig Murray eschews the banal remedies of the left and right to share with us the deep knowledge and understanding that comes over 30 years working in or with Africa. Gems of wisdom and observation scatter the book, as does a deep sense of moral outrage at the consequences of centuries of European involvement: even though he explains that much of it was well-intentioned but disastrous.