David Cameron

Revealed: Britain’s ‘secret listening post in the heart of Berlin’

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-britains-secret-listening-post-in-the-heart-of-berlin-8921548.html

Image of GCHQ donught buildingClaims that GCHQ has maintained spying operations even after US pulled out

Concerns were raised tonight that Britain operates a top-secret listening post from its Berlin embassy to eavesdrop on the seat of German power.

Documents leaked by the US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden show that GCHQ is, together with the US and other key partners, operating a network of electronic spy posts from diplomatic buildings around the world, which intercept data in host nations.

An American intercept “nest” on top of its embassy in Berlin – less than 150 metres from Britain’s own diplomatic mission – is believed to have been shut down last week as the US scrambled to limit the damage from revelations that it listened to mobile phone calls made by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But the NSA documents, in conjunction with aerial photographs and information about past spying activities in Germany, suggest that Britain is operating its own covert listening station within a stone’s throw of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and Ms Merkel’s offices in the Chancellery, using hi-tech equipment housed on the embassy roof.

The potentially toxic allegation that Britain has a listening station in the capital of a close European Union ally will test relations between London and Berlin only days after the row between Germany and the US about its own clandestine activities. Jan Albrecht, an MEP for Germany’s Green Party and a leading campaigner on privacy and data protection, told The Independent: “If GCHQ runs a listening post on the top of the UK’s Berlin embassy, it is clearly targeting politicians and journalists. Do these people pose a threat?

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27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingRevealed: Britain’s ‘secret listening post in the heart of Berlin’

Firefighters to hold fourth strike over pensions

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http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/05/firefighters-union-fourth-strike-pensions

Union members to walk out on 13 November in ongoing row with government over impact of rise in retirement age

Firefighters in England and Wales are to stage a fresh strike in their row with the government over pensions.

Members of the Fire Brigades Union will walk out for four hours from 10am on 13 November. It will be their fourth round of strikes in recent weeks.

The union also announced that it would ballot members for other forms of industrial action, in an escalation of the dispute.

Firefighters walked out on Monday and last Friday in their ongoing row over what will happen to firefighters who fail fitness tests as their retirement age is moved from 55 to 60.

The union fears there will be job losses if firefighters are not offered other work in the service.

Continue ReadingFirefighters to hold fourth strike over pensions

Peers seek to delay lobbying bill for three months CORRECTED

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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/05/lobbying-bill-peers-seek-delay-three-months

Crossbench peer Lord Ramsbotham wants to refer part of bill on regulating charities and thinktanks to special committee

Image of a dog's breakfast in dog food bowlAn audacious attempt is to be made to delay the lobbying bill for three months in the Lords by putting its controversial plans for limiting the campaigning activities of charities into a special committee for detailed consideration.

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The call for a pause is being made by an alliance of charities, thinktanks, faith groups and unions.

It is being argued that a pause would allow the government to get the bill right, and to hold the consultation it failed to hold before the bill was published.

Ministers argue that they have already made substantial concessions in the Commons to meet the fears of charities and pressure groups, who say the bill will have a chilling effect on their campaigning ahead of the general election.

Simon Barrow, the co-director the Christian thinktank Ekklesia, has warned the bill is too weak in bringing corporate lobbyists to account but unjustifiably limits the freedom of expression on charities, civil society organisations and thinktanks – restrictions that amount to gagging orders.

The House of Lords constitution committee warned “effective parliamentary scrutiny matters in relation to every bill but it is of manifest importance where legislation is of constitutional significance. The present bill directly affects the ability of people and organisations to engage with the government and to participate in political and electoral campaigning.”

The committee asked whether part two was necessary.

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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/05/government-offers-concessions-lobbying-bill-charities-elections

Lord Wallace under pressure to delay bill, allowing fresh scrutiny, amid concerns over gagging of charities at election times

The coalition government started to offer concessions on the lobbying bill ahead of a vote on Tuesday afternoon that might lead to proposals for a three-month pause in the bill’s scrutiny and reference of the regulation of charities at election times to a special select committee.

Lord Wallace, the minister handling the bill, has written to coalition peers saying he is willing to raise the threshold substantially to ensure smaller charities are not covered by the bill’s provisions that restrict the campaigning activity of charities during an election period.

Ministers have also proposed that scrutiny of the section of the bill addressing charity campaigning could be deferred as long as six weeks, so long as the rest of the bill continued as normal.

Lord Ramsbotham, the cross bench peer pushing for a full three month delay, does not appear likely to be accept the compromise, and will push for delay to allow a fresh scrutiny of the bill.

Lord Ramsbotham’s plan, with Labour backing, would mean the referral of part two of the bill to a special select committee, which would also delay consideration of other aspects of the bill.

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Continue ReadingPeers seek to delay lobbying bill for three months CORRECTED

HS2 … the high-speed train route with the same old staggering fares

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http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2013/nov/02/hs2-train-fares-commuter

With commuter tickets already costing thousands of pounds, will anyone be able to afford to travel on it?

Image of channel tunnel trainThe government says its proposals for High Speed 2 “assume a fares structure in line with that of the existing railway”. So we can probably expect to fork out an absurd sum for a ticket unless we trawl through websites three months in advance, can be absolutely certain we are going to travel on the 3.42pm on a Tuesday afternoon, and we craftily split the journey half way to Manchester. Get any stage wrong and the inspector will haul you off the train and land you with a huge fine.

It is remarkable that in the debate on HS2 so little has been said about fares. Will taxpayers be expected to pump billions upon billions into a Mitterrand-style Grand Projet then find it’s out of the reach of anybody other than swish executives on expense accounts? The omens, despite the government’s reassurances, aren’t good.

Take the prices for travelling on our only existing high-speed track, HS1, that whizzes through the Kent countryside. If you live in Ashford, the opening of the line promised a huge improvement in train times into the capital. Sure enough, it now takes just 35 minutes into London St Pancras compared to the 61 minutes it takes on the former route into London Victoria.

But at what cost? A season ticket for commuters from Ashford to a London terminal using the old route, plus an onward journey on the tube, costs £4,996 a year. That’s a pretty staggering sum for a 54-mile journey (about the same as London to Brighton). But if you want to take the HS1 trains, and save half an hour, the cost rises to £6,360. A commuter paying 40% tax has to earn £10,600 a year just to pay to get into work (oh, and there’s a £700 to £900 a year bill to park at the station).

The Ashford example suggests that using HS1 costs 27% more than the fare structure of the existing railway, which I think we can rely on as a better indicator of what fares will be like on HS2 than what the politicians are telling us. The – so far – lacklustre economic gains that HS1 has brought to north Kent should also deflate some of the more ambitious claims about the impact of HS2 on northern cities. An analysis in the Economist this week suggests HS1 has brought benefits for London, but little elsewhere.

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Continue ReadingHS2 … the high-speed train route with the same old staggering fares

Russell Brand on Revolution

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Well worth reading and I will adopt and adapt some of his suggestions.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution

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Cameron, Osborne, Boris, all of them lot, they went to the same schools and the same universities that have the same decor as the old buildings from which they now govern us. It’s not that they’re malevolent; it’s just that they’re irrelevant. Relics of an old notion, like Old Spice: it’s fine that it exists but no one should actually use it.

We are still led by blithering chimps, in razor-sharp suits, with razor-sharp lines, pimped and crimped by spin doctors and speech-writers. Well-groomed ape-men, superficially altered by post-Clintonian trends.

We are mammals on a planet, who now face a struggle for survival if our species is to avoid expiry. We can’t be led by people who have never struggled, who are a dusty oak-brown echo of a system dreamed up by Whigs and old Dutch racists.

We now must live in reality, inner and outer. Consciousness itself must change. My optimism comes entirely from the knowledge that this total social shift is actually the shared responsibility of six billion individuals who ultimately have the same interests. Self-preservation and the survival of the planet. This is a better idea than the sustenance of an elite. The Indian teacher Yogananda said: “It doesn’t matter if a cave has been in darkness for 10,000 years or half an hour, once you light a match it is illuminated.” Like a tanker way off course due to an imperceptible navigational error at the offset we need only alter our inner longitude.

Capitalism is not real; it is an idea. America is not real; it is an idea that someone had ages ago. Britain, Christianity, Islam, karate, Wednesdays are all just ideas that we choose to believe in and very nice ideas they are, too, when they serve a purpose. These concepts, though, cannot be served to the detriment of actual reality.

The reality is we have a spherical ecosystem, suspended in, as far as we know, infinite space upon which there are billions of carbon-based life forms, of which we presume ourselves to be the most important, and a limited amount of resources.

The only systems we can afford to employ are those that rationally serve the planet first, then all humanity. Not out of some woolly, bullshit tree-hugging piffle but because we live on it, currently without alternatives. This is why I believe we need a unifying and in – clusive spiritual ideology: atheism and materialism atomise us and anchor us to one frequency of consciousness and inhibit necessary co-operation.

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[7.30pm edit: I don’t want anyone thinking that I intend to be some political or spiritual leader. There were suggestions of this in the Jerusalem Post articles of 7 & 8th July 2005 which were the script to be followed in the July 7 bombings and investigation.

Brand acknowledges the role of materialism and self-interest in his article. From a personal perspective, many years ago I had a young man and a young woman presenting themselves to be used and I have the different odd nod of acknowledgment [1/11/13 and respect which is appreciated] every now and again. Apart from that it’s been a real pain and nothing but a real pain. Granted while I am occasionally successful in my endeavours, I don’t personally benefit from it and it does take some effort. ]

Continue ReadingRussell Brand on Revolution