Monday 28 October 2019

Vladimir Bukovsky: Death of a Dissident

I was saddened to learn of the death of Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, but to be frank he had been very ill for a long time, and so it was to be expected. It was only his incredible strength that carried him this far, I am sure.

I first met Vladimir in 2004 at London City Hall - which we ironically nicknamed "Ken's Kremlin" - at a cocktail event. I was to meet with him on numerous occasions over the years.

I greatly admired him for the fact that he withstood more than a decade of imprisonment and so-called "psychiatric treatment" in a variety of Soviet hell-holes and he never once broke.

He was actually instrumental in one of the most interesting episodes in my career in politics. In early 2006, over a nice dinner at Rose Blanche, in Grand Place, Brussels, he told me a very interesting story. And so we hatched a plan....

A follow up meeting was arranged in June of that year, at the Victory Services Club in London, and so I came to be introduced to former Deputy Head of KGB, Oleg Gordievsky. I had never met such a high ranking KGB officer before - at least not knowingly - and so I was intrigued. What a lovely chap he turned out to be.

After 15 minutes debate between Oleg (who was somewhat suspicious of Chilean Merlot) and Vladimir as to which red wine to order, before arbitrarily settling on a gin & tonic, patiently answered most of the 101 questions I had for him, and he told some very interesting stories (His autobiography Next Stop Execution is well worth a read).

We were joined by London MEP Gerard Batten, and we got down to business. Via telephone, the discussion was joined by former spy Alexander Litvinenko, and it started to get very interesting.

To cut a (very) long story short, the plan we had hatched over Flemish beef stew and a bottle of Georges DeBouef Morgon (I never forget a good dinner) came together, and Romano Prodi was outed in the European Parliament, live on TV, as a former KGB asset just days before the Italian Presidential elections. Job done!

The story ended sadly, however, as Litvinenko was murdered by the FSB, on Vladimir Putin's orders, in London just five months later.

Vladimir Bukovsky will always remain, I am sure, the only person I have ever met who watched Stalin's funeral from the roof of a hotel overlooking Red Square. As a 10-year old boy he witnessed the crush that led to the deaths of over 100 mourners - just one of the many horrors of the Soviet era that was to be covered up for many years.

Such wonderful characters are becoming increasingly rare, sadly...

Thursday 26 September 2019

Nigel Farage's Brexit Party "Biggest Earners" in the European Parliament

The 28 MEPs from Britain’s Brexit Party have collectively declared outside earnings of between €2 - 4.5 million euros (£1.7 - £3.9 million) per year, making them the highest earners in the European Parliament, Transparency International said on Thursday (Sept 26th). 
The party, founded by former UKIP leader and career politician Nigel Farage, won the most British seats in European elections this year. It says Britain should leave the EU without a deal.
Transparency International, a watchdog which monitors EU lobbying and outside activities of members of the European Parliament, published its report on Thursday on MEP's self-reported income from second jobs and other sources. 
The head of the Brexit Party’s delegation, Nathan Gill, said it topped the list because it had selected representatives who are successful outside of politics. 
“Our MEPs are not reliant on their MEPs salaries,” Gill said, adding that party chairman Richard Tice had pledged to donate his entire European Parliament salary to charity. 
Each MEP is paid €8,700 per month as a base salary and €4,500 in tax-free allowances for working in the EU parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. This is in addition to multiple pension funds, private medical care for MEPs and their families, and assistants allowances that are routinely abused by "employment" of kin. Whilst the latter practice was banned after 2014, there were cases of "you employ mine, and I'll employ yours". Farage's former paid assistant, Ray Finch, on being elected to the European Parliament in 2014 promptly employed his former employer's wife as an assistant, thus circumnavigating the rules.
Nigel Farage himself had previously been outed in the Parliament by then MEP Nikki Sinclaire who drew attention to the fact that Farage was paying both his wife, Kirsten, and his "former" mistress, Annabelle Fuller, from his taxpayer-funded parliamentary allowances.

According to Transparency International, many parliamentarians have not updated their declarations in years and there is no way to know how accurate they are. 
“It’s self-reported, they can do whatever they want,” said Raphaël Kergueno, Policy Officer at Transparency International EU. 
Parliamentarians have to adhere to a code of conduct with respect to financial interests, and an advisory committee is in charge of examining possible violations. In the whole year of 2018 the committee audited only five parliamentarians, according to a parliament report. 
“This is why the system is problematic, because they don’t take it seriously,” Kergueno said. 
https://eutoday.net/news/politics/2019/nigel-farages-brexit-party-biggest-earners-in-the-european-parliament
Read also:
Follow EU Today on Social media: 

Monday 29 July 2019

World4Brexit: Nigel Farage launches US based fundraising scheme

Nigel Farage has reportedly launched a Brexit lobbying group which can spend unlimited amounts of money pushing pro-Brexit messages while keeping the names of its donors secret.
“Pushing pro-Brexit messages”, of course, also means furthering Farage’s personal career.
World4Brexit is registered in Michigan USA for tax purposes and is registered as a ‘501(c)(4)’ group - a not-for-profit group which can accept donations of up to $5,000 and keep the names of donors secret. 
Farage is on record as stating that all money raised by the group would be “above the board and legal”
Donald Trump's former advisor Steve Bannon, who heads Brussels-based far-right organisation The Movement, is expected to give "informal advice" to the campaign group. Interestingly, Farage’s former assistant in the European Parliament, and who was named in the British media as his live-in mistress, one Laure Ferrari, is identified in legal documents obtained by EU Today as one of two nominees for the role of Secretary-General of The Movement.
Previously, she was appointed by Farage to the role of executive director of the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE), an entity set up in the shadow of of the ADDE. 
Following an investigation into IDDE, the UK Electoral Commission also opened an investigation into whether UKIP accepted "impermissible donations" from the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE), a pan-European political party established in 2014, which included members from UKIP, as well as the controversial Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), one The Sweden Democrats, whose members, in the early days of the party's existence, openly adopted Nazi regalia.
According to the Guardian, UKIP stood to receive around £1million per year from ADDE and £580,000 from IDDE.
 The European Parliament advised the commission that "it has formally concluded that both ADDE and IDDE used EU grant funding for the benefit of UKIP in breach of its rules and therefore, these expenses were declared as non-eligible for the financing”.

Related articles

Farage’s new Brexit Party also quickly attracted from the Electoral Commission over the source of its income, stating that “the fundraising structure the [Brexit] Party have adopted, coupled with insufficient procedures, leaves it open to a high and ongoing risk of receiving and accepting impermissible donations, and being unable to maintain accurate records of transactions.” 
Of course, it it appears to have been set up that way. Bob Posner, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, speaking at a hearing of the UK Parliament’s sub-committee on disinformation, told MPs that the party was open to a “high risk” of fraudulent donations via Paypal.
MPs were told that the Brexit party had not been collecting data concerning Paypal donations “systematically” and noted that its funding structure was based around attracting money from small donations, which “does have risks attached to it”.
In June, the Commission asked the Party to check £2.5m it has received in donations to ensure it has come from legitimate sources. The Commission will oversee these checks, it is reported.
Many will be asking, “is World4Brexit another of Farage’s money making schemes?”
This will also of course raise yet again questions about the possibility of Russian funding that have dogged Farage in recent years. His relationship with Bannon has attracted attracting speculation: The Movement, of which Farage has spoken positively, comprises mainly of far-right populist parties that have either sought, or received, Moscow geld.
Despite having launched only in July of this year- the first posting was on the 12th -  World4Brexit’s Twitter account, which appears to be a sort of online photo album for Farage himself, as of the morning of the 29th shows an impressive 4,687 followers. However, many of the accounts of these followers appear to be fake - either paid for followers or part of a “follow me” scheme. Its all about appearances….
This article originally appeared on www.eutoday.net

Friday 10 May 2019

WANTED MAN: THE STORY OF MUKHTAR ABLYAZOV: A Manual for Criminals on How to Avoid Punishment in the EU

With the tenth anniversary of his flight from the authorities in his homeland of Kazakhstan fast approaching, the raft of transnational court cases involving fugitive embezzler Mukhtar Ablyazov show no sign of abating. 

In a global saga which stretches from an institutional aversion to tackling kleptocracy in the United Kingdom to United States President Donald Trump’s shady business partners, the murky world of Mukhtar Ablyazov even led his family to make a pit stop in the Central African Republic to pick up diplomatic passports. 

Yet despite having judgements against him totalling $4.9 billion in the British courts alone, almost six years since he fled from the UK to avoid three concurrent 22-month sentences for contempt of court, Ablyazov remains a free man.   

So who is this criminal mastermind, a man found to have committed ‘fraud on an epic scale’ in the UK and sentenced in absentia in his homeland of having ordered the assassination of his erstwhile business partner? A country boy turned kleptocrat, current estimates as to the total amount embezzled by Ablyazov stand at in excess of $10 billion, yet from his villa in France, Ablyazov continues to bemoan his plight to be a simple case of ‘political persecution.’ 

This is an argument supported by parties such as the NGO, the Open Dialog Foundation, whose activities, a report from a conference held in the European Parliament in November 2017 found, are funded by companies ‘flagged and sanctioned by the West.’


Now available from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WANTED-MAN-ABLYAZOV-Criminals-Punishment/dp/1910886955


“In his book, Cartwright shines a light on the extraordinary antics of the fugitive kleptocrat and his retinue. Exhaustively researched, yet succinct and easily comprehensible, Wanted Man: The Story of Mukhtar Ablyazov lays bare the startling facts behind this opaque tale.”
Stephen M. Bland
Award winning author & Journalist

“For those of us who have fought tirelessly for Human Rights, it feel like a punch in the stomach when someone abuses mechanisms to slyly promote their own self interest.  Such actions undermine the work of genuine Human Rights activists and deserve to be highlighted. I commend this book for doing just that.”

Nikki Sinclaire
Former Member of the European Parliament
Member of the EP Committee on Human Rights 2009-2014 


"Gripping... an expose of how money talks in the EU and in individual member states. Corruption is a growing problem and as always, as this book shows, the guilty remain at large, and the taxpayer foots the bill."


Colin Stevens, Publisher, EU Reporter.

Wednesday 8 May 2019

Is Great Britain on the verge of collapse?

There was a time, during the post-war boom of the 1950s and 1960s, when a working class family could live comfortably on one income, and in such circumstances private home ownership was growing. Those days are but a distant memory now. 
Those born in this millennium, poorly educated in Britain’s failing state schools and with little chance of obtaining meaningful employment, many on the notorious Zero Hours contracts - around 780,000 people are employed on zero hours contracts in the UK, roughly 2.4% of people in employment, or about one in 40 workers - are unlikely to be able to even afford the rent on a modest home, let alone raise the enormous sums now required in order to obtain a mortgage and acquire property of their own. 
In the London district of Bermondsey, once a grim slum on the south side of the River Thames, and which under the guidance of social reformer Dr Alfred Salter became a beacon of urban regeneration allowing under-paid and exploited dock workers to buy their own modern homes, and to enjoy a high level of health care, the cost of a so-called starter home, usually a one-bedroomed flat or small house with little or no garden, now “costs an average of £638,530, a ‘mid-market’ home an average of £691,300 and a top-of-the-range home nearly £1.5million,” according to a survey by the Sunday Times, carried out in conjunction with mortgage broker Habito and published recently (April 14th). What chance would a young couple or a single person with a reasonable income and level of job security have of getting on the property ladder have under such circumstances?
Social housing is no longer a viable option as much of what was available was either demolished in order that the land could be sold to private developers, or sold off cheaply to tenants under Margaret Thatcher’s government. Much of what is still available is occupied by those with the most pressing needs, often economic migrants and refugees, denying local families access. This situation, incidentally, was exploited ruthlessly during the run-up to the June 2006 Brexit referendum, and was one of the major factors in the result.
Schools themselves, as mentioned above, are failing, with the situation set to get worse. A letter obtained by EU Today, and signed by six headteachers in an area renowned for the high quality of its state schools refers to real term cuts in funding of 10% for the education of 11-16 year old pupils over recent years. Over the same period funding for sixth formers has dropped in real terms by 20%.“We have held off from writing to parents until now but are finding it increasingly unrealistic to maintain the high quality of provision for your children we feel currently exists. We are blessed to have a great range of highly successful schools in the area, but if nothing is done to reverse this funding crisis immediately, we will almost certainly not be able to operate at the same level in the future.”
The letter also points out that funding intended to pay for education is being used to pay “local government pension contributions”. The government is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
As for the national curriculum, pupils learn little of their country’s history, but are well versed in the US civil rights movement of the 1960s. Health and nutrition issues get but a cursory glance, tucked away in domestic sciences; however no primary or secondary school class is complete, it would appear, with at least one trans-gender pupil.
When launched by the then minister of health, Aneurin Bevan, on July 5th 1948, the National Health Service  was based on 3 core principles: that it meet the needs of everyone, that it be free at the point of delivery, and that it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay.
The NHS was designed to meet the needs of an island nation with a largely homogenous population of 50 million, impoverished and traumatised by two world wars, and looking for social change. The NHS promised, and it delivered. It is, however, totally unsuited for today’s globalised high-tech world. 
The population of the UK today officially stands at 66.85 million, but nobody believes that statistic for one moment. 
Trolley Crisis
To appreciate the inadequacy of the NHS one really needs to live, work, and possibly raise a family on the continent in order to make comparisons with what is accepted as the norm there.
But to put it it into stark contrast, the UK has amongst the highest rates of cancer mortality in Europe - research suggests that the main reason for low survival rates in the UK seems to be delayed diagnosis, underuse of successful treatments and unequal access to treatment, particularly among elderly people. It is also the only country in the EU in which average life expectancy is actually declining. Hospital waiting times are virtually unheard in the other member states. And yet the NHS is amongst the most expensive health services not just in Europe, but globally.  
What it lacks in results, it makes up for in its services to the labour market: the NHS is the largest employer in the UK. It employs legions of managers and administrators, and also heavily supports the private sector by outsourcing, at considerable expense, many of its functions. The recipients of these lucrative health contracts, however, are often based offshore. 
Unless they wish to see a end to their career, senior politicians are obliged to repeat the mantra about the NHS being the jewel in Britain’s crown. It is not. It is a monkey on our backs. There is much talk of reform, but reforms would take decades, and today’s politicians think only in 4-5 year electoral cycles, and so we cannot expect words to be translated into actions. In any event, the NHS does not need to be reformed, it needs to be replaced.
Much like the NHS, what was once a public transport network has also been privatised and asset stripped. Take the case of the railways: archaic infrastructure that requires constant and highly expensive attention, and which is often the cause of delays and trains cancellations, remains the responsibility of the taxpayer, whereas the highly profitable train services themselves have been sold off to the private sector. One employee of Greater Anglia Rail told EU Today “customer services are being cut to the bone, we have no staff on the trains. Customers complain about fare increases, trains don’t run on time, all profits go to a Dutch company”.
Compare this to continental railways where onboard train managers and buffet cars are the norm, passengers are assured of a seat, trains generally run on time, and fares are a fraction of what British commuters pay. British railways are a classic example of a system in terminal decline. 
Britain is currently experiencing a murder rate of almost Biblical proportions. In particular, knife crime is on the rise, with multiple killings in various parts of the London on a single day often now being reported. On March 26th, two boys both 17, and four men aged 18 to 26 were knifed in separate attacks in London. 
The following morning, shopkeeper Ravi Katharkamar, 54, was murdered with a knife wound to his chest as he opened Marsh Food and Wine in Pinner, north-west London.
On April 16th a man was killed after a car was driven into a mass brawl outside a north-west London tube station, bringing the tally of murder victims to 36 so far this year.
Oxford St Stabbing
A recent study, published in the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, found that 21% of the 590 fatal stabbings in London over a 10-year period were flagged by police as involving gangs: in 2017-18 the proportion rose to 29% suggesting that gang culture is spreading in the capital.
The hopelessly inept Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service Cressida Dick, limply stated that “youth knife violence is at the worst level I have ever seen it”. It not known if Ms. Dick, who was in charge of the bungled operation that saw the brutal slaying by police officers of Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes at Stockwell underground station in 2005, intends to do anything about the state of affairs she is currently presiding over. (Ms. Dick is the Met’s first openly gay Commissioner, and she is openly conducting a relationship with a subordinate, which surely should raise serious questions.)
It should not require the deductive skills of Sherlock Holmes to link this appalling situation to the fact that more than 600 police stations have closed in the last eight years, largely due to budget cuts. It has been explained, however, that these closures are partly because people now rarely report crimes at police stations. How can they when there are no stations left open?
It is interesting to note that whilst stations offer no service to the public, administrative work often continues apace behind the closed doors.
Burglaries are rarely, if ever, investigated by police, who no longer even attend the scene in most cases.
The current terrorist threat in the UK has provided the government with what politicians would term a beneficial crisisUnder the guise of this threat a major change in the way Britain is policed has taken place. The lack of visible policing, the failure - or is it lack of will? - of the police to protect the public, the closure of police stations and the move towards intelligence led policing all point to a major shift in priorities. The police no longer protect the public, they police them in order to protect the state.
Brexit has itself provided the government with another beneficial crisis. The security forces have been making preparations in order take to the streets to quell civil unrest in the event of supermarkets running out of French cheese or Veuve Cliquot Champagne. 
In January, it was announced that Her Majesty’s Government had issued a formal notice calling up British army reservists to help tackle the impact of crashing out of the EU “on the welfare, health and security of UK citizens and economic stability of the UK”.
Why are they really making such preparations?
Britain is a horribly overcrowded nation in which public services are in decline and in which the indigenous population has lost its identity. Cities are seething in gang violence, and the background smell in every town centre is that of cannabis, the police having given up on the fight against drugs long ago. 
There is real danger on the streets, and those few who take the time to look up from their iPhones will be aware of the growing legions of rough sleepers in shop doorways. Britain is now a country in which the elderly, the mentally ill, and the displayed sleep in the street, and police officers carry sub-machine guns. It has become an ugly place indeed.
Img 0332

The two homeless men, pictured left, sleep outside a supermarket close to London's exclusive Eccleston Square. As visitors from the continent arrive at Victoria coach station this is the sight they are met with. 
All this is happening in the fifth largest economy in the world. Exactly where is all the money going? 
If the UK is the successful economy that the government claims, why is the maximum weekly state pension £141 in the UK, £304 in France, £507 in Germany, and £513 in Spain? Again, where is all the money going?
Post-Brexit, we can expect to see employment laws relaxed and environmental regulations adjusted to suit the needs of industry at the expense of public health - London already has amongst the worst air quality in Europe, resulting in thousands of premature deaths each year. Mayor Sadiq Khan’s charges for motorists entering London’s ultra low emission zone will achieve nothing to solve this health crisis.
It is a sad truth, but one that has to be faced up to, that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will not be with us forever. The length of her reign has already been astonishing, and has given the nation a sense of stability and consistency: there are octogenarians today who were schoolchildren when she ascended to the throne in 1952. She is one of the last links to the Britain that many of us were born into and grew up in. We need to consider whether the affection, loyalty, and trust that she inspires in the British people will be transferred to her heirs and successors, to the “what Megan wants, Megan gets” generation of royals. 
The complete failure of the British government to manage Brexit has been but another symptom of the failings of the country’s out of date and out of step party system. Only in times of such confusion and despair could a political anachronism the likes of Jeremy Corbyn appear to some to make sense. 
Only in such times could his former lover, the ghastly hypocrite Diane Abbot, be presented to the public as Shadow Home Secretary. Abbot is all over the British press today (20th April) having been photographed drinking alcohol at lunchtime on a London train in flagrant contravention of a ban that has been in place since 2008.  The Home Secretary, it should be noted, is responsible for maintaining law and order in the UK.
The current ongoing eco-protests taking place in London have led to 682 arrests at the time of writing, leading to a crisis in those London police stations that remain open; they are running out of cells. How would they cope in a real state of emergency?
Any one of the failings described above should give cause for serious concerns. Coming altogether as they do, and the parlous state of Britain’s armed forces has not even been discussed here, a picture emerges of a country, a society, facing crisis or even collapse. If Britain’s infrastructure is unable to cope, if the forces of law and order have lost control of the city streets, and Her Majesty’s Government, paralysed by indecision and incompetence is unable to enact the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box, then to quote Virgil, "as I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.