Friday 30 November 2018

Happy Saint Andrew's Day

Today ought to be a public holiday throughout the United Kingdom, before which there would be nothing to do with Christmas. 

Saint David's Day, Saint Patrick's Day and Saint George's Day, which are all in these Islands' incomparable spring and early summer, ought also to be public holidays throughout the United Kingdom, and away with pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks were on holiday.

This is now Labour Party policy. But I have been saying it for 20 years, in stark contrast to many Labour MPs. 

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Get Back On Track

It is now more expensive to take the train from London to Manchester than it is to fly to New York and back. Yet the fares are still to go up by a further three per cent in the New Year.

Like the huge majority of the population across all political allegiances, and like so conservative a figure as Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday, I support the renationalisation of the rail services as each franchise came up for renewal, and thus at no cost.

I would make that the backbone of a rebuilt network of public transport, eventually free at the point of use, and extending to every village in this or any other constituency. 

Even prior to that, I would require the approval of the House of Commons for any increase in public transport fares, with the cost of HS2 diverted to reconnecting many towns to the rail network. That would include several towns in North West Durham. 

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

All Rise For Queen Laura?

Does Laura Pidcock even think that she is a politician? 

Her supporters appear not to view her as one, and they become hysterical (quite literally, in some cases) if she is subjected to any questioning or criticism about her views, or her lack of attendance at the House of Commons during Britain's biggest political crisis since the War, or her failure to perform constituency duties, or the company, such as that Oliver Kamm, that she is perfectly happy to keep.

Instead of mentioning any of this, we are supposed to fall silent at the mere fact that she has what they seem to think is the first baby in the history of the world, a baby whose existence would be irrelevant even if that were the case.

And we are expected to be pathetically grateful that someone in her office is still advising callers to try leaving a saucer of milk at the foot of the tree. £77,379, plus lavish expenses, for that? Nice "work" if you can get it.

But all of this seems to be the wrong question. It is like asking what the Queen does. The Queen does not do. The Queen is. And Laura Pidcock does not do. Laura Pidcock is.

She has turned the role of Member of Parliament for North West Durham into a purely ceremonial position.

Even then, she has this year fulfilled its one ceremonial duty, that of laying a wreath at Lanchester War Memorial on Remembrance Sunday, only because she had been so heavily criticised for her failure to attend the rededication of that Memorial a short time earlier.

Laying a wreath on Remembrance Sunday, and maintaining a staff to redirect occasional callers or correspondents to people who might be in a position to help them. That is her "job". She is not a politician at all. She is royalty. And her loyal subjects expect her to be treated as royalty.

Well, even though she would still have been in school when I was first introduced in these parts as "the man who should have been our MP", neither I nor anyone else expects me to be treated as royalty.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

At The Gate?

This whole #VicarGate business is extremely disturbing. 

So she has to support herself by secular employment? Even a lot of the Church of England's clergy do that these days, and if you count academia and schoolteaching then they always did.

Eastern Orthodox priests are expected to work the land like everyone else. Few of the Free Churches have ever been in position to pay very much, if anything. And so on.

Ignore the Wikipedia entry on what I am about to write. It is all over the place, and I do not have the time to begin to correct it.

The white clerical "dog collar" is in fact properly called the Roman collar, and it was originally just the collar of the Diocese of Rome. It was never worn in this country, even by Catholics, until it was introduced by Italian missionaries in the nineteenth century, so it is certainly not the property of the dear old C of E.

Nor, even, is the small and detachable version for slipping into shirt collars. That was invented in the Church of Scotland. Lynn Hayter has as much right to it as anyone else.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day Eight

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day Nine

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 15

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 16

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Thursday 29 November 2018

Independent, Indeed

I do not hold with this #VicarGate on Twitter. Lynn Marina Hayter is the pastor of a small church as Lynn, and works as an extra as Marina.

Her collar on Newsnight certainly did not suggest that she was a "vicar" speaking on behalf of the Church of England.

No, the BBC scandal today relates to the attack on a Syrian boy in Huddersfield.

That that footage went viral, such that someone has now been charged, was initially thanks to a tweet by my mentor and my tormentor, my unresigned Campaign Patron, George Galloway.

Yet the Today programme has accused George of "politicising" the incident. Had it not been for him, then the BBC would never have known about it.

So no, the BBC is not fit to host the Brexit Debate between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.

In any case, it wants that to have a format weighted in May's favour, and it wants to broadcast the debate at a time when no one will be watching.

By contrast, ITV, the much-mocked station that has so far broadcast 60 films by John Pilger, wants this debate to have a simple format, and wants to show it just before the final of that thing in the jungle.

ITV it should be, then.

Unconditionally Thinking

Durham made me an unconditional offer, and there are now graduates who were not born when that happened.

Oxford used to make an offer of two Es to anyone who "passed the entrance exam", and people from some schools seemed to find that a lot easier than people from others.

Is the problem today just that the wrong sort are being favoured in this way?

"Predicted A-level results" are in fact a fairly poor prediction of eventual A-level results, which in turn bear no resemblance to classes of degree even in the same discipline. Like a lot of people's, my degree was not in any of my A-level subjects, anyway. 

The reason to get a degree is to get a degree, as the end in itself, for the sake of the learning. And the reason to get A-levels is to get A-levels, as the end in itself, for the sake of the learning.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day Seven

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day Eight

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 14

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 15

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Wednesday 28 November 2018

Rest In Power, Harry Leslie Smith

You ought to be on the fifty pound note.

By the way, everyone knows that that simply is not going to be Margaret Thatcher, don't they? I mean, it just isn't.

Socially Distinguished No More

It amuses me no end that while no one wants to join Chuka's Keep Out The Riff-Raff Party, an MEP who was previously the Political Editor of a national newspaper has joined the original, accept-no-imitations SDP.

If another one did so, then it would have as many as the BNP had (I mean that comparison purely numerically) when it was decided that Nick Griffin therefore had to be allowed on Question Time.

But the eternal bottlers of Chuka's Keep Out The Riff-Raff Party are only on Question Time  or anything else these days in order to "balance" supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. So where would that leave them?

At home on the sofa, like the rest of us. That's where.

Out Of My Own Pocket?


If I had an annual salary of £77,379, plus lavish expenses, then I would pay one tenth of that out of my own pocket. Has the Chosen One, the great future Leader of the Left, the Member of Parliament for North West Durham, done any such thing? I only ask.

In the flesh, I have only ever met George three times, and one of those was many years ago. Ask his seconder, my erstwhile housemate, Tom "The Speech of the Night" Hamilton, about that one. I doubt that George even remembers me from it. He has never mentioned it since.

But we were in daily contact for many months at one time, and I have been a caller on his radio programme twice. The second time, he asked me directly to stand for Parliament, as he has also done several times when reading out my tweets. He is really quite picky, both about who he allows through, and about whose tweets he reads out.

On that second occasion, he began with, "Do I have the honour of addressing the great David Lindsay?" When we met in person a few weeks later, he publicly embraced me. From that event, the inscription in my copy of his book I'm Not The Only One reads, "To my comrade David Lindsay, with respect, George Galloway."

He has signed several published round-robin letters of mine, notably the one in The Guardian about fake news, the one in the Morning Star about Donald Trump, and the one in the Northern Echo about the Teaching Assistants, which set off the ongoing persecution of me. He has also signed several that have not been published, including one that furiously denounced that persecution.

At his invitation, I appeared in the pilot for a television programme of his that, sadly, was never commissioned. He once said live on air that he would take a peerage if I did. And, perhaps more seriously even than that last point, he has never formally resigned as one of my Campaign Patrons.

So if I had an annual salary of £77,379, plus lavish expenses, then I would pay out of my own pocket one tenth of the £50,000 that he needs in order to make his vitally necessary documentary film about the killing of Dr David Kelly. Has the Chosen One, the great future Leader of the Left, the Member of Parliament for North West Durham, done any such thing? I only ask.

A Chambers and Partners Band 1 legal practice is now on standby to pursue an action to bring about a Coroner's Inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, an action before the International Criminal Court against those who had brought slavery back to Libya, and an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland inviting it to exercise its declaratory power against Tony Blair and his accomplices in the aggression against Iraq in 2003.

All of these actions are to begin immediately upon my election to the House of Commons. As are the actions to bring about a Coroner's Inquest into the death of Dawn Sturgess, and to challenge the legality of the recent bombing of Syria after the confirmation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that no nerve agent had been used at Douma.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. If George can find anything in those seven thousand words with which he disagreed, then I should be fascinated to hear what it was. The present MP, however, would find a very great deal with which to disagree. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Non-Jobbing Jarvis

The great and the good of Labour local government in South Yorkshire, and their asserted hangers on, are gunning for Dan Jarvis.

In six months as the Mayor of their "City Region" he has done, well, pretty much nothing at all, really. 

As a result, nearly £17 million of potential funding is sitting unclaimed. 

Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram gave up their parliamentary seats in order to do this job in Greater Manchester and in Merseyside. 

But Jarvis remains the MP for Barnsley Central. How much work is he doing in that capacity, either? 

His critics are absolutely right that he is not doing his job. But at the same time, more than one of them will be eyeing his parliamentary seat. 

Oh, well. That's called politics.

The Best Estimate?

These post-Brexit growth figures are designed to ensure a vote to Remain in the coming referendum between that and the Government's deal.

And even Remain would in fact be better than that deal. Just not for that reason.

Councils of Despair

By all means send in the Commissioners to take over the running of Rotherham.

And of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

And of Durham County Council, which if anything is the worst of the lot.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day Six

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day Seven

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 13

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 14

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Tuesday 27 November 2018

It's No God-Awful Small Affair

What wonderful news from Mars. As a species, this is what we do. This is why we are not all still living in caves in one small part of Africa. The continent, by the way, to which the twenty-second century will belong. But of that, another time.

We must celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past.

That expansion and development must now include space exploration, fuelled by, and fuelling, fusion power.

If there is, or has ever been, life on Mars, then it is purely microbial. But even if it were a lot more advanced than that, then just as our species has dominion (which by definition includes responsibility) over the beasts and thus over the land, and just as our species has dominion over the fish and thus over the waters, so our species has dominion over the birds and thus over the sky.

Dominion, in order to be fruitful and multiply. Over the land, and thus over everything on and under the land. Over the waters, and thus over everything in and under the waters. Over the sky, and thus over everything in the sky, as far up as the sky goes. And the sky goes up a very long way.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Assange Never Met Manafort

Craig Murray writes: 

The right wing Ecuadorean government of President Moreno continues to churn out its production line of fake documents regarding Julian Assange, and channel them straight to MI6 mouthpiece Luke Harding of the Guardian.

Amazingly, more Ecuadorean Government documents have just been discovered for the Guardian, this time spy agency reports detailing visits of Paul Manafort and unspecified “Russians” to the Embassy.

By a wonderful coincidence of timing, this is the day after Mueller announced that Manafort’s plea deal was over.

The problem with this latest fabrication is that Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry.

Neither Manafort nor these “Russians” are in the visitor logs.

This is impossible. The visitor logs were not kept by Wikileaks, but by the very strict Ecuadorean security. Nobody was ever admitted without being entered in the logs.

The procedure was very thorough. To go in, you had to submit your passport (no other type of document was accepted). A copy of your passport was taken and the passport details entered into the log.

Your passport, along with your mobile phone and any other electronic equipment, was retained until you left, along with your bag and coat.

I feature in the logs every time I visited. There were no exceptions.

For an exception to be made for Manafort and the “Russians” would have had to be a decision of the Government of Ecuador, not of Wikileaks, and that would be so exceptional the reason for it would surely have been noted in the now leaked supposed Ecuadorean “intelligence report” of the visits.

What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort?

Furthermore it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security – would not know the identity of these alleged “Russians”.

Previously Harding and the Guardian have published documents faked by the Moreno government regarding a diplomatic appointment to Russia for Assange of which he had no knowledge.

Now they follow this up with more documents aimed to provide fictitious evidence to bolster Mueller’s pathetically failed attempt to substantiate the story that Russia deprived Hillary of the Presidency.

My friend William Binney, probably the world’s greatest expert on electronic surveillance, former Technical Director of the NSA, has stated that it is impossible the DNC servers were hacked, the technical evidence shows it was a download to a directly connected memory stick.

I knew the US security services were conducting a fake investigation the moment it became clear that the FBI did not even themselves look at the DNC servers, instead accepting a report from the Clinton linked DNC “security consultants” Crowdstrike.

I would love to believe that the fact Julian has never met Manafort is bound to be established.

But I fear that state control of propaganda may be such that this massive “Big Lie” will come to enter public consciousness in the same way as the non-existent Russian hack of the DNC servers.

Assange never met Manafort. The DNC emails were downloaded by an insider. Assange never even considered fleeing to Russia.

Those are the facts, and I am in a position to give you a personal assurance of them.

I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services.

I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But to see the partisans of the defeated candidate (and a particularly obnoxious defeated candidate) manipulate the security services and the media to create an entirely false public perception, in order to attempt to overturn the result of the US Presidential election, is the most astonishing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime.

Plainly the government of Ecuador is releasing lies about Assange to curry favour with the security establishment of the USA and UK, and to damage Assange’s support prior to expelling him from the Embassy.

He will then be extradited from London to the USA on charges of espionage.

Assange is not a whistleblower or a spy – he is the greatest publisher of his age, and has done more to bring the crimes of governments to light than the mainstream media will ever be motivated to achieve.

That supposedly great newspaper titles like the Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post are involved in the spreading of lies to damage Assange, and are seeking his imprisonment for publishing state secrets, is clear evidence that the idea of the “liberal media” no longer exists in the new plutocratic age.

The press are not on the side of the people, they are an instrument of elite control.

Show Some Respect

If this television debate is to feature an advocate of full and uncompromising Brexit, then there is simply only one credible candidate, since he is head and shoulders above all other orators in that cause. Step forward, George Galloway.

When it comes to this sort of thing, then there is a very conscious exclusion of George. In 2015, UKIP and the Green Party, each with one MP, were permitted to participate in the General Election debates, but Respect, with one MP, was not. Guess who Respect's one MP was.

George and I can drive each other to distraction. It is impossible to see us in the same party again, as we were until 2003. Mind you, it is impossible to see either of us in any party again. On that score, we have both become Groucho Marxists, who would never join any party that would have us as members. Not that any party ever would have us as members.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It is increasingly obvious where George intends to stand, and nowhere could be more appropriate for him, complete with the dragon-slaying in this case.

I, meanwhile, will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Stranger Things

Being a connoisseur of this kind of thing, I have long been aware of the continuing SDP. 

And of the continuing Liberal Party, which is also very Eurosceptical indeed, even to the point of participating in Bob Crow and Dave Nellist's No2EU list at the 2009 and 2014 European Elections.

Anyway, with today's defection of Patrick O'Flynn to the SDP, it now has as many Members of the European Parliament as the Liberal Democrats have.

Should we look out for defections to it in the House of Lords? And for ermine-clad defections to the Liberal Party? Stranger things have happened.

The Liberal Party's participation in an electoral list organised by Bob Crow and Dave Nellist, for one.

And for another, the accession of Patrick O'Flynn, formerly the Political Editor of the Daily Express, to the SDP.

The Rich Seam of Funds

Poignantly, this is in the Daily Mirror. In 1982, and again in 1992, Arthur Scargill tried to persuade the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme to buy the Mirror Group. In those days, it could have done so. Be angry. 

Nigel Nelson writes: 

Ministers will take £617million from the miners’ pension fund this year to top up Treasury coffers – bringing the total removed to more than £4.4billion in 24 years. 

The scandal has left retired pit workers receiving disgracefully low payouts averaging £84 a week, with at least 6,000 having had pensions cut.

Successive governments have mined the rich seam of funds since 1994. The Tories have pocketed two payments of £51million in the last two years alone and never put a penny back. 

Labour MPs in former pit constituencies, led by Gloria De Piero, say it is time the Tories stopped taking the money and instead gave future windfalls to ex-miners and their families.

Ms De Piero, for Ashfield, Notts, said: “After years of gruelling work to keep Britain’s lights on, mineworkers are being repaid by governments raiding their pensions for billions of pounds.” 

When British Coal was privatised in 1994 the Government agreed to act as guarantor for its pension payouts, with future surpluses split 50/50 between the Treasury and scheme members.

The Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme has about 200,000 members who, while working, contributed 5.25 per cent of their pay to their retirement.

But the fund is doing far better than expected, leading to the Treasury’s windfall. Ms De Piero and the National Union of Mineworkers want extra money shared out more fairly.

The MP said: “It really is time the deal was renegotiated. We need alternatives so pensioners get a fairer share of their pension investment profits.” 

Labour’s Dennis Skinner, the MP for Bolsover, has told ministers: “Stop stealing the miners’ pensions.” 

The Treasury’s £617.2 million take emerged in figures released last week by Energy Minister Claire Perry – who also revealed it will snaffle another £427million over the next three years. 

She said: “I’ve asked officials to work with trustees on options for revising the scheme to all parties’ benefit.” 

A Whitehall spokesman said: “The Government guarantee ensures pensions, including inflation rises, are always paid – so payments including bonuses will not fall in cash terms.” 

Get your hands off our money 

Pensioner Keith Stanley, 68, former Notts NUM general secretary. 

“The NUM was against this deal from the start. Everyone kept telling us how good it was, that we’d get 33 per cent more. Well, the Government got 100 per cent because they never put a penny in.

“All the money that generated these surpluses came from miners’ contributions and they’re the ones who should benefit. 

“We can’t go back in time and what we’ve lost we’ve lost. But ministers shouldn’t take any more. 

“I’d have a better pension now if the bloody Government kept its hands off it.”

Not Always At War With Eurasia


Only a few seconds, from two minutes in. But when they wanted someone to explain these things to nine figures' worth of people from the Baltic to the Pacific, and from the Arctic to the land border of North Korea, then they gave me a call. 

And yes, if invited, then I would say the same thing on Ukrainian television: we have no side in this, and we should stay the hell out of it.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day Five

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day Six

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 12

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 13

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Monday 26 November 2018

A Meaningful Vote?

Not if you voted for Laura Pidcock.

Her baby was born in July. July. Yet she is not returning to the House of Commons until the end of January. We could be at war in Ukraine by then. I almost want Theresa May to win the Brexit vote on 11th December by one vote, due to the absence of Laura Pidcock.

But in any case, all the gossip is that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives. Therefore, I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

One Law For One, One For Another?

I carry no candle for Vladimir Putin, and in any case he cannot stand again for the Presidency to which he has only recently been re-elected.

But imagine that, four months before a Presidential Election that he had intended to contest, he had looked at his eight per cent approval rating, and declared martial law. How would the world have reacted?

Well, in Ukraine, four months before a Presidential Election that he does intend to contest, Petro Poroshenko has looked at his eight per cent approval rating, and declared martial law. How should the world react?

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Ill Repute?

The word on the street has become quite deafening that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives, so that any one of us might be the First Past the Post here at North West Durham.

Therefore, I call on the Conservative Association here to condemn the acceptance of funding from Christopher Moran and his "10 floors of whores", and to call for that money to be donated instead to charities that worked to rescue victims from the sex trade.

And I call on all other candidates and parties to join me in calling for the proliferation of lap-dancing clubs to be halted and reversed, for the application of the technology that is already used for age verification in order to block pornographic websites altogether, and for it to be made a criminal offence for anyone aged 21 or over to buy or sell sex, with equal sentencing on both sides.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

A Brief Meeting, Indeed

"Briefed" on Brexit by Gavin Barwell this evening, Labour MPs should ask him about Grenfell Tower. 

They are only having him along to wind him up, anyway. There is not one of them with any interest in anything that he might have to say.

Ça Va, Manu?

As an uncouth youth once infamously addressed him.

How is that great white hope, Emmanuel Macron, looking now? I almost look forward to the emergence of a "British Macron". But I shall believe in the new "centrist" party when I see it.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

By Way of Observation

To find out where the real power lies, find out who you are not allowed to criticise.

On the subjects of Roger Scruton and Nigel Farage, both Rowan Moore and poor Carole Codswallop used yesterday's Observer to attacks criticism of George Soros as "anti-Semitic".

Codswallop, by the way, is a Kamm-like believer that she is telling the truth. Like him, she may or may not be bad, but she is certainly mad.

Oliver Kamm Is Cross

Of course Wikipedia's Philip Cross is Oliver Kamm. The only person who does not believe that is Kamm himself. He genuinely has no recollection of how he has spent many hours of every day for many years.

Poor people are mad, but rich people are "eccentric". Common people are mad, but posh people are "eccentric". People who are not Oliver Kamm are mad or bad, but Oliver Kamm is the Voice of Sanity and the Champion of Truth.

His absolutely sincere delusion that he is not Philip Cross would in itself be enough to have him committed under mental health legislation. But his position makes that delusion a public nuisance. Thereby making his committal a matter of public urgency.

"Failed To Reach A Verdict"?

"Perverting the course of justice" is a CPS go-to when it is really desperate for a conviction.

They tack it onto any and everything when they know that they have no real case for the main charge. It provides a cover for their own wanton criminality and general incompetence. But not this time. 

Not that there has yet been justice for Fiona Onasanya. Unless the jury is convinced beyond reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt, then the defendant ought to be found not guilty.

That is also why we should not have conviction by majority verdict. It is not conviction beyond reasonable doubt. For centuries, we never had it. Most Common Law jurisdictions still do not have it.

Unless the prosecution has convinced all 12 jurors beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty, then the verdict should be not guilty. Not a mistrial. An acquittal. A recorded verdict of not guilty.

And no more of allowing the acquitted to be tried again for the same offence. There was none of that for many centuries, either. Nor does it exist in many, if any, other Common Law jurisdictions.

What's that you say? "Rogue jurors"? You mean people who might stand up to the State? And on the basis of personal experience of the bad things that it sometimes does? Where will it all end?

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Marching Orders

Why are there British troops in Ukraine? Why have there ever been British troops in Ukraine? Bring them home. Now. And never send any there again.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Inclement Conditions In The Gulf

The United Arab Emirates need not imagine that it is off the hook.

As soon as Matthew Hedges is home, then all action that would otherwise have been taken against that country still needs to be so.

Look up the crimes of the hundreds of others who are being granted "clemency" along with him. This is an insult, and it must not be allowed to go by the by. Yet it looks as if it will be.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day Four

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day Five

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 11

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 12

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Sunday 25 November 2018

Martial Arts

At the height of its conflict in the East, Ukraine did not declare martial law.

But four months before a Presidential Election that Petro Poroshenko had been on course to lose, he has given himself the pretext to do so.

The blackshirted, Swastika-waving regime in Ukraine (yes, really) is entirely in the wrong here. But this is not our dispute.

We should stay the hell out of it, and we should insist most forcefully that, in any active sense, everyone living in this country do the same.

Bear Facts

We would have no side in any war between Russia and Ukraine.

We would actively prosecute and punish anyone who tried to use our soil as a financial or other base or asset for either side in that war.

We need to say that, loudly and clearly, from the outset. 

Which is now.

Who At Any Rate Seeks The Cachet

“An arriviste, certainly, who can’t shoot straight and in Jopling’s damning phrase “bought all his own furniture”, but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing.”

So said Alan Clark of Michael Heseltine. 

I thought of that last night, at one of Lanchester’s annual set piece events, when no fewer than four people, by no means all of them very friendly with each other, separately came up to me and warmly told me in so many words something that had vaguely occurred to me on previous occasions. 

It turns out that one’s choice of side over my never-ending and farcical bit of trouble has become a test of respectability. Whatever one’s rank, style or title on paper, to side against me is to be a touch below the salt, and not quite One of Us. Like Simon Henig, in fact. Or the Crown Prosecution Service. 

Curiously, I have been here before. Perhaps this theme is to recur in my life, every 20 years or so?

Once before, so far, I have been the unlikely totem for perfect English gentlemanliness against those who were also not quite English, or not quite gentlemen, or both, but who positively revelled in that sorry state of affairs. 

I cannot recall paying for a lunch or a dinner in about a year. Yet I ate an awful lot of very fine lunches and dinners that year. Whatever one’s rank, style or title on paper, to side against me was to be a touch below the salt, and not quite One of Us. 

And here I am again. An arriviste, certainly. But one who at any rate seeks the cachet. And all the nouves think that I am the real thing.

Including the nouves who are trying and failing to lock me up, a suggestion that is treated by absolutely everyone as downright satirical. That is no small part of why they are trying to do it. But I am never going to prison. Based on past form, I am never even going to stand trial. 

Simon Henig, Oliver Kamm (also known as Philip Cross), Not Dame Alison Saunders, whoever is running the CPS these days, whichever barrister the CPS might use against me: whatever your rank, style or title on paper, to side against me is to be a touch below the salt, and not quite One of Us.

And you know it.

Deal Breaker

And so to the one thing with which Theresa May might be able to buy off the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, Caroline Lucas and Sylvia Hermon.

A referendum between this wretched deal and Remain.

In which case, since even staying in the EU would be better than this, vote Remain. The struggle could begin again the next day, as it did in 1973, in 1975, and in 1983.

In any event, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Trucial Tricks

One of the closest advisers to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, is one Will Tricks, who was formerly the MI6 station chief in Abu Dhabi. 

The questions need to be asked daily on the floor of the House of Commons, "What security clearance does Will Tricks still hold? What are his continuing links to the British intelligence and security services?"

"We never comment on such matters" will not suffice. In this case, the only acceptable answers are "None" and "None". 

No one is asking these parliamentary questions, nor will they. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day Three

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day Four

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 10

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 11

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Get Off Our Knees And Tell The Truth


With its luxury hotels, lavish malls and pristine beaches, Dubai has become a destination of choice for British tourists looking to combine relentless sun with shopping. 

Abu Dhabi, meanwhile, is bringing culture to the desert sands with galleries, museums (including a branch of the Louvre), a new international literary festival and a motor-racing Grand Prix for those bored by all that art and history. 

The twin glass and steel cities dominate the United Arab Emirates, a collection of princely statelets on the Persian Gulf and between them, Abu Dhabi and Dubai attract a million British tourists every year. 

They certainly work hard on their reputation, employing an army of publicists while roping in celebrities such as former cricketer Andrew Flintoff as ‘ambassadors’. 

Manchester City is under Abu Dhabi ownership. Dubai spreads the word by sponsoring Arsenal’s vast new stadium through its Emirates airline. 

But the welcoming, even cultivated, image that the UAE so eagerly projects is a sham – one that has now been violently exposed by the treatment of British academic Matthew Hedges. 

Arrested at Dubai airport on May 5 and accused of spying, he was last week sentenced to life imprisonment after a five-minute trial. 

No one can truly imagine that 31-year-old Mr Hedges was engaged in espionage. A Durham University student, he was in the UAE to study for a PhD. 

His research involved interviews which touched on sensitive areas. Someone denounced him, and he ended up in jail, for life. 

That is how it works there. The kitsch glamour of Dubai and Abu Dhabi is no more than a distraction from a sinister reality. 

Britain should be ashamed of its cosy links with the regime – and of the craven advice it gave to Mr Hedges and his wife, Daniela Tejada. 

For months, she has been anxious to publicise the outrageous treatment of her husband, yet the Foreign Office told her to stay silent.

When it comes to the truth about the UAE, the grim prison cells containing Mr Hedges are a good starting point.

Political opponents are routinely held without trial and on occasion tortured, as David Haigh, the former managing director of Leeds United, can testify. 

Haigh spent two years in an Abu Dhabi jail on charges of fraud and says he was raped, Tasered and punched. A guard told him: ‘Be careful, British prisoners die here.’ 

Female foreign workers who fall foul of the law are often raped. Haigh saw fellow prisoners being tortured with electric shocks and being beaten before they disappeared. 

No wonder Mr Hedges was shaking when allowed a brief meeting with his wife. 

The dark impact of the UAE goes well beyond its own parched borders. 

The Emiratis have become a leading force for Middle East instability, starting with the influence they hold over Mohammed bin Salman (known as MbS) the notorious Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

He is widely blamed for ordering the grotesque murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Fearing liberals and Islamists in equal measure, MbS and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the 57-year-old Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, have embarked on reckless foreign adventures.

In Yemen, the UAE has enthusiastically joined the Saudis in the grinding, bloody war against Iranian-backed Houthi militias, which had ousted the regime that the Saudis support. 

More than 10,000 people have died while millions are at risk of famine. 

Unlike the Saudis – who are conducting an air war, advised by the RAF – the UAE has boots on the ground in Yemen’s killing fields, with around 1,000 special forces troops. 

Their methods are not pretty. It has been authoritatively reported that they run torture centres where inmates are attacked by dogs or sexually assaulted with metal poles. 

The UAE has paid mercenaries to travel to Yemen and stoke the conflict. 

At first, these were former paramilitaries from Colombia and El Salvador, but latterly a private company run by an American-Israeli called Abraham Golan – the ‘go-to guy for crazy s***’ in the words of the CIA – has supplied former American special forces troops for £1.16 million a month. 

Together, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have tried to blockade Qatar, a commercial rival to the UAE, and in so doing have ruptured regional alliances with countries including Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. 

The Emiratis have also meddled in Syria and Libya. Their malign influence is felt around the globe, in fact.

Wahhabis – followers of the very hardline version of Islam accused of inspiring IS – have significant influence in the UAE, and it is in the fleshpots of Dubai and Abu Dhabi that militant financiers, arms dealers and terrorists mingle – along with plane-loads of Russian and Colombian prostitutes which, unlike mild-mannered academics, are generally welcomed in Emirati clubs, restaurants and bars.

Yet until the sentencing of Mr Hedges, the UAE escaped even the mild admonishments that the British Government has occasionally handed to the Saudis. 

Why do we have such cordial relations with a gangster government? 

There are historical reasons. From 1853 to 1968, the ‘Trucial States’ were under the protection of this country. The region, moreover, has always captured the imagination of a certain type of diplomat. 

A brilliant old Foreign Office hand once told me that, whereas no one working for the Chinese or Russian ‘desks’ had any illusions about the crimes of the regimes they monitored, diplomats with the ‘Camel Corps’ were different. 

Romantic Arabists abounded, enthralled by the legend of T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and fascinated by tribal monarchies based on deference. 

There are hard-nosed reasons, too. The UAE has strategic significance and controls the narrow entrance to the Persian Gulf. 

Because the UAE claims to be curbing the regional influence of Iran, we and other Western governments are willing to sell them huge quantities of weaponry. 

The UK is also deeply involved in the arming and training of its military and security forces, and it’s no surprise to find that the chief security adviser is a former MI6 agent, appropriately called Will Tricks. 

We are the biggest foreign direct investor in the country. 

Major British firms and banks have bases in the UAE and ten British universities have satellite operations there, though that might change now that Dubai has shown what it really thinks of academic freedom.

In return, the UAE has huge investments in this country. Thames Water, Gatwick Airport, Travelodge and London’s new ring sewer system, for example, are all dependent on its money.

The UAE also spends prodigious sums on PR and lobbying firms to influence our politicians. 

The Emiratis know that the oil and gas on which their wealth is based will eventually run out, so they are scrambling for influence instead. 

And we are all too happy to oblige – hungry for their money, desperate to pretend that Britain is still a global player. 

Earlier this month, the UAE enjoyed something called a National Festival of Tolerance, promoting the country as ‘a role model for tolerance and peaceful co-existence that gains the respect and appreciation of the whole world’. 

Mr Hedges and his family will take a different view. 

It is time for the Foreign Office to get off its knees and tell the truth. We have done enough kowtowing to this repulsive regime.

Pearls of Wisdom

David Olusoga writes:

Everything about the United Arab Emirates is unlikely.

Nothing about its transformation over the past century from a string of tiny, backwater Arab emirates, best known for their pearls and pearl divers, into a petroleum-fuelled federation of extraordinary wealth and ambition was particularly likely.

Even for the Middle East, where the laws of econophysics rarely seem to apply, the UAE is exceptional. 

Equally unlikely was the decision by the rulers of the seven emirates to use a hefty chunk of their vast wealth to do more than just buy Ferraris and build skyscrapers.

In 2007, the UAE and the French government began work on the creation of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The star of this billion dollar gallery is Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, bought in 2017 for £351m, making it the most expensive painting ever sold.

Nine years earlier, Sheikh Mansour, the UAE’s deputy prime minister and a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, spent a mere £210m on buying up Manchester City FC.

Since then, Mansour has used his family’s fortune, estimated in some quarters at around $1tn, to supercharge Manchester City, building the club into the football powerhouse it is today. 

City are not just another football club with a wealthy foreign owner but part of a wide-ranging geopolitical strategy, aimed at transforming the UAE into what its rulers from time to time refer to as a “soft power superpower”. 

So having bet the farm on soft power and the cultivation of global influence through sport, art and tourism, the past few days have been among the most unlikely in the UAE’s history, as so much of that influence and carefully managed reputational capital has been thrown to the winds. 

By stumbling, apparently unprepared, into the crisis surrounding the dubious conviction of Matthew Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student from Durham University, on charges of spying, the UAE has garnered exactly the wrong sort of publicity. 

Attention has been cast not just on the handling of the Hedges case but on the UAE’s soft power strategy and our complicity in it. 

But it’s not just the rulers of the UAE and its allies that have been grappling with moral questions. 

The first were the fans of Manchester City – and Hedges’s life-sentence came just a week after Amnesty International had argued that the UAE’s investment in City and its success is an attempt to “sports-wash” – to use football and the loyalty of supporters to whitewash the UAE’s “deeply tarnished image”. 

The emotional compact between football clubs and their supporters is visceral and usually lifelong. 

The abandoning of a football club, an institution at the centre of supporters’ lives, self-image and sense of community, is not like switching toothpaste. It is more akin to a self-inflicted amputation. 

It is perhaps not surprising – though nonetheless depressing – that City fans have taken to social media to defend the UAE and its legal system. 

Others constructed convoluted, moral-relativist hypotheses designed to at least get them through the week. 

Followers of the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the late inventor of the five-stage model of grieving, might recognise this as indicative of the bargaining stage of grief, the one that comes right after denial and anger and just before depression and finally acceptance. 

The other group thrust into the same dilemma were a handful of Britain’s best-known and most loved authors and historians, who had all signed up to take part in the 2018 Dubai festival of literature. 

The historian Antony Beevor, celebrated for his groundbreaking books on the Second World War, was not one for bargaining or acceptance. 

Seeking unconditional surrender, he was among the first into the frontlines, withdrawing from the festival in support of Hedges. 

Reinforcements arrived in the form of the novelist Sabine Durrant and Frank Gardner, the BBC journalist and security expert. 

For all three, the thought of sitting on stage while Matthew Hedges sat behind bars was too much to bear.  Joining Beevor, both Durrant and Gardner withdrew from the festival.

Other writers due to appear at the festival are, like thousands of Man City fans, monitoring the Hedges case and hoping for a quick resolution that would allow them, in good conscience, to walk to the stage in Dubai or take their seats at the Etihad Stadium. 

Hopes are pinned on a hearing on Thursday, with reports that UAE officials are already studying a request for clemency from Hedges’s family.

If, as seem entirely possible, some accommodation is reached and Hedges released, then how much of that will be down to the diplomacy of the Foreign Office (whose minster and officials are rather belatedly proactively involved in the case) and how much will be down to some fans and a bunch of UK novelists and historians? 

Has the UAE’s desire to become a “soft power superpower” rendered this autocratic, absolute monarchy strangely sensitive to public opinion in distant lands? Can, in this instance at least, soft power be made to flow both ways?

If so, the season ticket holders of Premier League teams with links to the Middle East could become players rather than pawns in the game of global influence. Can they, from the terraces and through social media, pioneer a new form of inverted sports-washing? 

This moment is one in which we can think not just about Matthew Hedges – still facing the prospect of a life behind bars for the crime of researching his PhD – but also about our personal interactions with repressive states. 

And we might want to reflect on the fact that what brought this dilemma home was the plight of one of our fellow citizens rather than the UAE’s role in the Saudi-led war in Yemen against the Houthi militia. 

All year, pictures of skeletal Yemeni children have been displayed on our screens and littered across our newsfeeds. 

Yet despite those images ,sales of tickets to the Etihad Stadium, the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Dubai festival have so far been little affected.