Tag Archives: short

Is the NatWest/Nigel Farage row another enormous scam to profit the super-rich?

Nigel Farage: why is the loss of his bank account a scandal and not the removal of many accounts belonging to Muslims? Is it because super-rich people can profit from it – including his GB News boss?

Why have we seen such a media outpouring of sympathy for Nigel Farage over the closure of his Coutts & Co bank account when the same thing has been happening to Muslims since the turn of the century and they’ve had no coverage?

Is it because Sir Paul Marshall, owner of Farage’s employer GB News, runs a hedge fund that took out a “short” position on Coutts’ owner NatWest’s stock – bet that the bank’s market price would fall? Stock has now fallen by £850 million and Marshall’s hedge fund – Marshall Wace – has made a fortune.

And is the Tory government also preparing to sell its 40 per cent shareholding in NatWest and an incident that artificially lowers the price would mean any of their friends and donors who bought those shares would be able to make a very fast profit when they rise after the scandal is over?

That would be very corrupt, wouldn’t it?

Here’s what has been happening over at GB News:

In its report, The London Economic adds that “it’s only a snip of the billions under management at the firm and is likely to have been computer driven” – but how do we know that?

It seems clear that Sir Paul Marshall has been in a position both to know in advance about the situation with Farage’s bank account, to use it to give the bank bad publicity and engineer a share price collapse, and to profit from that collapse via his hedge fund.

That would be insider trading, which is illegal. Anyone convicted of it faces unlimited fines and/or up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

It depends on when Farage’s account was closed, when news reports of the closure appeared, and whether GB News was among the first to report it (it doesn’t even have to be the first). Did Farage mention it to his boss?

Next:

This makes sense as the Tory government has ‘form’ in this regard; it sold shares in Lloyds Bank at a loss in 2017.

Finally, and possibly damningly: perhaps the biggest reason this whole affair smells worse than a pile of Haddock that have been dead for four weeks is that the media have known about people having their bank accounts closed for no reason since some time around the turn of the century.

That well-respected (and then right-wing) reporter Peter Oborne spent years trying to get UK news outlets to report on the plight of innocent Muslims whose accounts were closed in this way, to no avail.

I’ll let him explain:

So we have a situation that has been ongoing for two decades or more, of which reporters, editors and bosses in the mass media are well aware; it becomes a public scandal only when a high-profile political figure who is now a presenter on a news channel is disadvantaged by it – allowing the owner of that channel to make millions of pounds from it; and it lowers the share price of a commercial organisation in which the UK government has shares, leading to speculation that those shares will be sold to make a profit for people who are already very rich.

Are you prepared to shrug and say it all seems perfectly innocent to you? Or would you like an investigation of what may be considered fraud under UK insider trading laws?

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Sunak urged to put the sick to work to solve labour crisis

At breaking point: the UK’s National Health Service. Now a former Tory pensions minister thinks it should work harder to make people with short-term conditions (and Long Covid, apparently) fit to rejoin the labour force.

It’s not as bad as it looks… but that depends on what the Tories do – and we know they are ignorant, entitled, and stupid.

It seems Rishi Sunak has been looking at ways of encouraging people aged over 50 to stay in work rather than taking early retirement, to fill the enormous gaps in the UK’s workforce – but this won’t work.

Instead, according to Sir Steve Webb, who served as pensions minister in the coalition government between 2010 and 2015, Sunak should be trying to get sick people back to work.

We’ve been here before, haven’t we?

Fortunately, it seems this isn’t a new drive to kick people with serious life-altering conditions off benefits like ESA, PIP and Universal Credit.

Instead, the idea is to improve NHS treatment times to shorten waiting lists and make people fit for work quicker, rather than leaving them hanging around doing nothing.

There’s just one problem: nurses and ambulance paramedics are striking because current NHS pay and working conditions are so shocking that they can only survive with the help of food banks – meaning it is practically impossible to entice anybody to work there.

That’s a Tory plan, of course – run the NHS down to make privatisation of health care look like a good idea.

Their problem is that it means they can’t solve their workforce problems that way. And the over-50s wheeze is just tinkering at the edges.

We all know that Brexit is responsible for the labour shortage – right? – and that was a Tory policy. The deprecation of the NHS is also a Tory policy.

So the destruction of the UK economy must also be a Tory policy – and one that has been in practise since before the EU referendum in 2016.

Think about that one for a while.

Another idea was to improve care for people with Long Covid, so they recover from this long-term debilitating condition.

Good luck with that, Sunak!

There are no proven cures for the condition and the Tories haven’t exactly been exerting themselves to find one.

In fact, there seems to have been a concerted effort by the Tories to ignore Covid-19 as much as possible.

The most recent statistics show 380 deaths in the week to December 9, while 1.4 million people in the UK have the disease. The total number of deaths is now 210,837 – and that’s according to figures that few people now trust.

Hospital admissions in the UK apart from Scotland, up to December 15, stood at 6,244, up from 4,645 the previous week, and continuing an upward trend.

Still, out of sight is out of mind, right? Statistics covering the growth rate of the various will cease to be published in early January because the UK Health Security Agency says we’ve learned to live with it.

Oh, really?

I’d say 380 deaths per week suggests we’ve been taught to learn to die with it.

Source: Get the sick back to work to end Britain’s labour crisis, Rishi Sunak told

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Did Truss-supporting bankers make fortunes ‘shorting’ the pound? Insider dealing?

Easy money: it’s not quite a backhander for bankers who supported Liz Truss to have made fortunes “shorting” the pound in anticipation of its fall during and after Kwasi Kwarteng’s financial statement.

It is being reported that

Liz Truss-supporting investors made “small fortunes” as the value of the pound plummeted following the radical Conservative budget announced on Friday.

This is deeply concerning because it suggests corruption – that these businesspeople who helped Truss become prime minister may have been given knowledge of what Kwasi Kwarteng was going to say and advised to bet that the value of the pound would drop (also known as “shorting”).

An anonymous source quoted in the Sunday Times told the paper they had attended a dinner with hedge-fund managers who were said to have won big betting against the pound last week.

They were quoted as saying: “They were all supporters of Truss and every one of them was shorting the pound.”

The paper added: “Several made small fortunes on Friday betting against the currency.”

Seems straightforward enough, doesn’t it? Well…

Responding to speculation the traders were given insider knowledge of the budget before it was announced – which would be illegal if it were used for their financial gain – Tim Shipman, who co-authored the piece, said: “It’s not fraud, it’s just a bunch of city people having a view and betting on it. It wasn’t a Tory dinner where the mysteries of the budget were secretly conveyed over the canapes.”

Do you believe it?

A lot of people made a lot of money and they were all Tory-supporting backers of Liz Truss, but it was entirely innocent?

Some people have doubts:

What do you think happened?

Source: Liz Truss City backers ‘made small fortunes betting against plunging pound’, report claims

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Corruption scandal makes it easy to believe Johnson has sold us all out over Brexit

Boris Johnson and Jennifer Arcuri: If an inappropriate relationship with her is proved, should claims of another inappropriate relationship – with hedge fund-owning backers who have bet on the disastrous effect of a “no deal” Brexit – also be investigated?

What is Boris Johnson’s Brexit really about?

It has been alleged that he is in cahoots with a number of ‘City’ financiers who backed his campaign to become Tory leader – and prime minister – on condition that he push the UK through a “no deal” Brexit that would enrich them (and, by connection, him).

The claim is that these hedge fund bosses have bet heavily on what’s known as “shorting” – and stand to make £8.3 billion if the pound plummets and inflation skyrockets after the UK crashes out of the EU without a withdrawal agreement.

It’s what Mr Johnson’s own sister has been saying – and also former Chancellor Philip Hammond.

Such a claim is extremely damaging to BoJob’s reputation as it implies that he is working, not as a servant of the public, which is the reason he draws a publicly-financed salary, of course – but in the interests of a shadowy group of self-motivated mobsters who are quite happy to endanger the entire UK economy for their own gain.

And, of course, to satisfy his own personal greed when they pay him off for his services.

Is there any evidence to support the claims? I don’t know. Mr Hammond and Ms Johnson must have reasons for saying what they have, otherwise they have put themselves in a very actionable position.

But what makes them believable to the public is the fact that Mr Johnson has been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) over allegations that he overruled his own officials to give favourable treatment – thousands of pounds in sponsorship grants and places on trade missions – to his friend Jennifer Arcuri when he was Mayor of London.

It is potentially a criminal offence – made worse by the fact that, as London Mayor, Mr Johnson would also have been Metropolitan Police and Crime Commissioner.

Of course, if the IOPC decides Mr Johnson’s behaviour towards Ms Arcuri was inappropriate, it makes it easy to believe that he is in collusion with these hedge fund bosses to rig Brexit – against the best interests of the UK as a whole.

The BBC – in its apparent role as propaganda arm of the Conservative Party – has run a story in which Downing Street has claimed the Arcuri allegations are politically-motivated, as it was timed to happen days before the start of the Conservative conference.

If that were true, why were the allegations published in the overtly pro-Tory Sunday Times, rather than by a news organisation that opposes Mr Johnson’s party, like The Guardian or The Mirror?

It seems clear that Boris Johnson will have to work very hard if he wants to make sure this mud won’t stick to him.

And what if the claims are true, but he fails to deliver the “no deal” Brexit these hedge fund bosses want?

Will they not be annoyed? And won’t they want some kind of compensation?

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Tories are using the poor for medical experimentation

Seal of approval: We asked TV doctor House MD whether he foresaw any problems with the Early Access to Medicines scheme. "Nuh-uhrr," he replied.

Seal of approval: We asked TV doctor House MD whether he foresaw any problems with the Early Access to Medicines scheme. “Nuh-uhrr,” he replied.

Concern has been raised over a plan announced by Health Secretary (and misprint) Jeremy Hunt to give new medicines to people who are severely ill, years before they are licensed.

In comparison, little has been said about findings by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing that people in deprived areas live shorter lives and spend more of those lives in poor health.

There is an obvious conclusion to be drawn from this:

If poorer people spend more time in ill health, then they are more likely to be given experimental drugs before those treatments are clinically proven.

In other words, the Conservative-led government is using the poor as guinea pigs for drug trials.

The BBC quoted Mr Hunt: “What patients want is sometimes to try medicines that may not be clinically proven to be effective but are clinically safe. We are streamlining the process so these medicines can be used much earlier – particularly if they have early promise – and that is something which will bring hope to a lot of patients.”

How does he know these medicines are safe? How does he know that people want them? How does he know that they’ll do what they say? He doesn’t.

This shows what he wants – to make the UK a profitable place for pharmaceutical companies by giving them a market for drugs that could be completely useless – or could have unforeseen effects.

It’s more marketisation for our once-great NHS.

Long-term readers will be aware that Mrs Mike has been receiving treatment from the NHS in England, including injections to alleviate the severe back pain from which she suffers.

I asked her if this announcement was worrying for her – as a poor person who has spent much of her life in ill-health.

“Nuh-uhrr,” she said. That seemed conclusive, so I threw her lunchtime slab of raw meat into the cage and locked the door before she could reach me.

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Does Cameron really think Scotland will stay in the UK because he wants it?

Why Cameron is on a hiding to nothing: Many Scottish people have not forgotten how British governments have mistreated them. [Image: Ceasefire Magazine]

Why Cameron is on a hiding to nothing: Many Scottish people have not forgotten how British governments have mistreated them. [Image: Ceasefire Magazine]

David Cameron gave a speech today in which he made an impassioned plea for Scottish people to vote for staying in the United Kingdom – and if any of them needed an excuse to do the exact opposite, there it is.

He made his comments from the Olympic Park in London – which says everything you need to know about his relationship with Scotland. Was he afraid of the jeers if he travelled up to Edinburgh?

“I passionately believe it is in their interests to stay in the UK – that way Scotland has the space to take decisions while still having the security that comes with being part of something bigger,” Cameron wittered. But he has been shrinking the state. The UK as a whole is much smaller – economically and philosophically – than it was four years ago and that’s his fault.

“In the UK, Scotland is part of a major global player,” he burbled. But the rest of the world now looks down on the UK because of his unstatesmanlike behaviour when dealing with foreign powers. He has diminished the UK in the international community and the Scottish people are well able to see that.

Appealing for those of us in the other UK countries – England, Wales and NI – to apply emotional blackmail on our friends in Scotland, he gibbered: “From us to the people of Scotland, let the message be this: We want you to stay.”

Cameron must think we all have memories so short we could qualify as brain-damaged. Conservatives have historically used Scotland as the testing ground for every rotten little policy they wanted to try out – remember the Poll Tax? – because of no special quality other than the fact that there are no Conservative MPs there.

I don’t want Scotland to vote for independence because I think Scottish people have contributed hugely towards the culture shared by everybody living on the British Isles – it is possible they have added more to our society than the English who dominate our political lives.

In return, they have been treated abominably – most particularly by English Conservatives – and that is why I can’t see Scotland staying in the Union while an English Conservative is in charge in Westminster.

If Scotland does go, you should all know what will happen next: Wales will become the testing ground for rubbish Tory policies. They won’t try it on Northern Ireland because that province’s history tells them exactly what they’d get in return – and if that isn’t a good enough reason for the Welsh people to go feral and start causing havoc, I don’t know what is!

So well done, David – you have considerably worsened our chances of remaining united.

My only hope is that, if Scotland does secede from the union, its leaders keep the door open, so that there always remains the possibility of some form of reunification on terms that strengthen both countries – when (or if) a reasonable government is returned to office in the UK.

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