Mystery: what were antique clocks doing hidden in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London – and who stole them?
Why are people making a fuss about antique clocks being stolen from the Foreign Office?
What were antique clocks doing at the Foreign Office in the first place?
Who stole them?
And why did the Foreign Office waste nearly a year before informing the public?
If they’re important historical artefacts, shouldn’t they be in a museum?
If not, then maybe our cash-strapped (that’s what they always say) government should try to make a couple of quid out of them – if they’re supposedly worth so much.
Perhaps that’s what somebody decided to do.
It gives This Writer cause to wonder what else HM Govt. is hiding in ministry back rooms and basements.
Perhaps it’s time for an audit of these assets, before any more of them go missing – or to find out how many already have.
More than £50,000 worth of clocks have gone missing from the Foreign Office, the Mirror can reveal.
According to newly released documents, nine antique timepieces, valued at £53,000, were “unlawfully removed” from storage in the department’s King Charles Street building in July last year.
Police were called in, but have been unable to investigate further because of “lack of leads,” the documents show.
The items are still missing, and are on the Police’s ‘stolen antiques’ list.
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It’s possible to blame Tory policies that pushed millions of people below the breadline before the coronavirus crisis struck.
But it’s also entirely possible that these are just extremely selfish people who are seeing others getting something they’re not and want it for themselves.
Either way, it is not acceptable. NHS staff are risking their own lives to help people with the virus and this is a repulsive way to pay them back.
NHS staff are being targeted by muggers trying to steal their identity badges so they can use them to obtain the free food and drinks being offered to doctors and nurses tackling coronavirus.
Health service bosses are so concerned by a spate of incidents that they are preparing to warn all hospital staff to hide their NHS lanyards when they are arriving at or leaving work.
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But Jeremy Corbyn announced the same policy back in June – and the fact was not lost on the Labour leader.
He responded with a ReTweet of his original announcement – with a barbed comment for Theresa May:
.@Theresa_May, you’ve just announced another Labour policy – banning employers taking workers' tips.
Your party has run out of ideas. But stealing a few of ours won’t work. We need a General Election so we can implement Labour's plan to transform Britain. #CPC2018pic.twitter.com/GHWebDFa3Q
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Shadow cabinet office minister Jon Trickett says the ‘loss’ of documents about controversial periods in history is unacceptable [Image: AFP].
This Writer would not believe for a single moment that the Conservative government has ‘lost’ important archive papers on some of the most controversial episodes of recent history – and nor should you.
The politics of the past seven years has shown very clearly that the Conservatives cannot be trusted – and Theresa May’s government least of all. They are trying to whitewash history, in my opinion.
The fact that the documents were borrowed from the National Archives by civil servants means nothing. Civil servants act on the orders of government ministers.
Some of these documents may be easily replaced, such as the Zinoviev letter, which was an attempt by MI6 officers to bring about the downfall of the first Labour government. There are plenty of copies of that item in circulation! So an attempt to whitewash this attempt at political meddling is unlikely to succeed – but you can understand why some might want to try. I wonder, do we know the names of those who ordered that attempt?
“An entire file on the Zinoviev letter scandal is said to have been lost after Home Office civil servants took it away. The Home Office declined to say why it was taken or when or how it was lost. Nor would its say whether any copies had been made.”
That is unacceptable. Those documents are public property and the entire workforce of the Home Office are public servants. They answer to us – and that means they must provide answers to us when we demand them.
The material involved with the Troubles in Northern Ireland has already gathered attention because of the potential to hide human rights abuses by the UK government (or governments). Already, organisations have made their concerns clear:
“Theresa May must order a government-wide search for these ‘lost’ files and their restoration to their rightful place in the archives at Kew,” said Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland programme director.
“Victims of human rights abuses in Northern Ireland have a right to full disclosure of what happened to them and their loved ones at the hands of the state.
“Accountability and justice demand that these files are among the evidence available to families, judges and historians in determining the truth of what happened here during three decades of violence,” said Corrigan.
“Revelations that government departments are requisitioning and then misplacing crucial files strengthen our view that decisions on the disclosure of findings by the proposed Historical Investigations Unit in Northern Ireland cannot be left to UK government ministers, as currently demanded by the Northern Ireland Office.”
Reprieve – the human rights advocacy organisation – also condemned the government, fearing that future possible abuses may be hidden from the public eye.
“This is deeply troubling and unfortunately follows a pattern we have seen before,” said Maya Foa, director. “Ministers have previously blamed ‘water damage’ for destroying crucial files showing complicity in rendition and torture, and right now they are forcing legal cases seeking to expose the truth about UK involvement in George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ into secret courts where the public and press are denied access.”
Similar files held in the National Archives have previously been instrumental in exposing human rights violations committed by the UK in Northern Ireland.
A 1977 letter from the home secretary, Merlyn Rees, to the prime minister, Jim Callaghan, documented how ministers gave permission for the use of torture against internees in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, evidence that was reportedly withheld from the European court of human rights.
In total, more than 1,000 documents – all of which have been declassified and should be available for the public to access – have been removed from the National Archive and no copies are available.
So, serious questions need to be answered:
Why are there no backup copies of these documents? We live in a computer age, and digital copies would provide at least a modicum of assurance that the documents are available, especially if the originals are loaned out on the orders of government ministers.
And who took them? Any ordinary lending library provides material only to people who are valid members of that library and, when they do take items, the library has a record showing who took them and when. This makes it easy to track those items and – if they are kept for longer than the specified time, or lost – fine the person responsible. Why does the National Archive not follow the same security procedures?
“The loss of documents about controversial periods in history is unacceptable.
“The British people deserve to know what the Government has done in their name and their loss will only fuel accusations of a cover-up.
“These important historical documents may be a great loss to history – and their disappearance must urgently be investigated.”
He’s right. Until all the documents are returned to the National Archive, until the names of those who withdrew them are known, and until the ministers who told them to take the documents and hide – or, worse, destroy – them are identified, we can only conclude that the current Conservative government has removed them in order to hide historical facts that are embarrassing to the Conservative Party or its members.
If the current government cannot – or will not – return the documents it has stolen, then it has betrayed the public trust and should resign.
And if you’re laughing at the thought, This Writer wouldn’t be at all surprised.
This is a story of corruption – and the corrupt will do anything to pretend they aren’t crooked.
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Postal ballot papers for Hull East. Notice that no Labour or Green candidates are listed.
High-profile Labour MP Karl Turner’s name has been omitted from 480 postal ballot papers in his Hull East constituency due to what the local council is calling an “inadvertent mistake”.
Yeah, right.
If that is the case, why were Mr Turner and Green candidate Sarah Walpole only missed off the papers for people who registered to vote after April 1? Doesn’t that imply that somebody removed their names deliberately?
Hull City Council had better check every single ballot paper it is preparing for election day, to prevent any further “inadvertent mistake”. Mr Turner was elected with a majority of more than 8,000, so the potential loss of 480 votes was unlikely to affect him. The loss of who-knows-how-many votes on the day might be a different matter!
Mr Turner told the BBC the mistake was “concerning” because people were “being denied the right to vote and take part in the democratic process”.
He added: “I have had calls from people in East Hull who are going on holiday this week and are angry that they are unable to vote. I have asked Hull City Council to urgently look into the matter and review their processes surrounding sending out ballot papers.”
The campaign is moving from desperation into criminality now, it seems. This Writer does not believe for one moment that those ballot papers were altered by “mistake”.
Expect further incidents like that in the last days of the campaign – and we can be sure plenty of last-minute voters will be locked out of their polling stations again, on the stroke of 10pm, just like last time. This gives Conservative candidates an edge over others because Tory voters are whipped into voting as early as possible.
In other news, it seems more than 70,000 ballot papers destined for Hastings and Rye, in East Sussex, were stolen along with the van that was transporting them there. Hastings Borough Council says it is putting measures in place to ensure that none of the stolen papers can be used, and we are being asked to believe that the loss of the papers was incidental to the theft of the van.
Yeah, right. But opportunism is a wonderful thing. Let’s see what happens there.
Both these events could lead to electoral fraud, which is a crime. Vox Political readers are urged to be alert for any possible “inadvertent mistake” in your own constituency and report anything suspicious to the Returning Officer (usually your local council’s chief executive) and to the police.
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The money given to UK banks and the amount paid back by October last year – nothing but interest [Image: claritynews.co.uk].
There’s a passage in Russell Brand’s Revolution in which he quotes a chap called Dave Graeber as follows: “During the bailout of Wall Street, $30 trillion in support and subsidies went to the most powerful players… That was the greatest theft of wealth in history.”
Here in the UK, we were part of that. The Brown (Labour) administration paid a fortune into our own banks to keep them solvent because they were also participants in the global economic crisis – it had to, otherwise all of our savings would have disappeared.
We all thought this was reasonable, at the time. Shore up the banks, sure – they’ll pay us back in the long run. Have they paid us back?
Have they heck as like!
(That’s a colloquialism meaning, emphatically, no.)
The Conservative – sorry, Coalition – government has even been helping them steal some more. Look at this RealFare image:
The bankers involved in the bailout were all on the top rate of tax – bank on it! – so there’s a double tax cut for them, and their employers enjoyed the Corporation Tax cut too. That’s a huge amount of money that the Treasury has given away to people who already owe the nation a huge amount of money!
Meanwhile George Osborne announces more billions of pounds worth of spending cuts, taking money from the poor.
You see – and perhaps this has been obscured lately – government spending involves the redistribution of wealth, and on the face of it this is to make society more equal. What the poorest can’t afford, the state will provide, to ensure a reasonable standard of living for everybody.
But George Osborne, David Cameron and their government have pig-headedly used the financial crisis and the debts created by it to punish the poor and increase inequality.
The bankers have not been asked to give back the money they were given to bail themselves out – that money has been stolen.
The government has withdrawn spending from people who need it and given the money to people who don’t in tax cuts – that money has also been stolen.
Just because it doesn’t appear in the statute books as an act of theft doesn’t make it any less so.
And now it seems another banking crisis is on its way – because the people who caused the last one are still in charge, haven’t learned their lesson (why should they? They were rewarded for the last crisis), and are hell-bent on repeating the calamity because the only people it hurt were too poor to do anything about it – people like yourself.
Look at this, by Michael Meacher MP: “Six years after the financial breakdown in 2008-9 it is therefore disturbing to see the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority seeking public acclaim for the large increase in financial penalties it has imposed on miscreant banks, as though this has changed the culture of hubris that has infected the major banks over the last decade or more.
“The FCA has certainly imposed fines of £1.4bn on the UK banks in this last year, but that is… too modest by comparison with the enormity of their regular annual profits to change the City’s amoral mindset, and above all focused on the banking institutions themselves (the shareholders) rather than on the real perpetrators (the top executives and traders).
“Not a single top executive in the UK financial sector has been convicted and sent to prison, even for such egregious offences as rigging the Libor and forex markets.”
Ed Miliband has promised to reform the banks, “so they support small businesses” – is that enough?
In September 2012, he promised that, if banks did not separate their retail and investment arms, a future Labour government would break them up (with the aim of protecting personal account holders from debts created by the gambling of the so-called ‘casino’ bankers) – is that enough?
What will be enough?
From where this writer is sitting, the banks and financial institutions are sitting on billions – if not trillions – of pounds of money that doesn’t belong to them, while millions suffer and starve.
Going back to Revolution, Russell points out that this kind of money could cancel the debts of everyone, not just an elite; it could create employment and ‘ease’ life for ordinary people, not just an elite.
Ed Miliband could win an election on this. If he said “A Labour government will take your money back from the banks and use it to improve the lives of everyone,” he’d have a landslide on his hands.
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He’d probably say that handling stolen goods is a crime for which the penalty is 14 years’ imprisonment.
The Conservative Party here in the UK is continuing the tradition of financial double-standards for which it is becoming – justly – infamous, by refusing to hand back an alleged £440,000 of stolen money that was donated by convicted tycoon Asil Nadir in the 1990s.
The 71-year-old businessman was formerly head of Polly Peck International, a company that at one time owned the Del Monte fruit juice company whose most famous campaign featured the line “The man from Del Monte, he say ‘yes’!” (that’s the connection with our headline).
Polly Peck expanded rapidly in the 1980s to become an FTSE 100 company, but collapsed even more rapidly in 1990, leaving £1.3 billion worth of debts.
Asil Nadir fled the country in 1993, to escape 70 criminal charges of false accounting and the theft of £29 million from Polly Peck. He returned to fight his case in court during 2010 but was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on August 23.
The connection with the Conservative Party is that, between 1985 and 1990, Asil Nadir donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to Tory funds. The Conservatives have refused to hand it back, insisting that it was received in good faith from a legitimate business.
The problem with that, for the Tories, is we now know enough to believe that it wasn’t.
The Labour Party has called for the money to be returned, and that call has been supported by Lord McAlpine, who was Conservative Party treasurer when the donations were made. He described the money as “tainted”.
A BBC report quoted him as follows: “The money was not Asil Nadir’s to give, although we thought it was at the time.
“Therefore the Tory party has a duty to return it. It will speak volumes about the character of the modern Tory party if they don’t do the right thing.”
Former Tory chairman Norman Fowler made it clear in 2010 that “we will return the money if it was stolen”.
But now the Conservative Party is trying to weasel out of handing back the cash, saying it never received personal donations from Nadir, and has no evidence that the money received via his business interests was stolen.
I don’t think that matters.
The man who was treasurer at the time, and therefore took delivery of the cash, clearly does believe the donation was unlawful.
The Theft Act 1968, section 22, states that a person is guilty of handling stolen goods if, believing them to be stolen, he dishonestly undertakes or assists in their retention, removal or disposal, by or for the benefit of another person, or if he arranges to do so. Penalty: 14 years’ imprisonment on indictment.
Reference to stolen goods includes goods which have been stolen by theft, blackmail or deception. It includes goods, whether in their original state or not, and other goods which represent the stolen goods in the hands of the handler.
Considering the evidence, I reckon we only need to see one of the 17,000+ people, who was formerly employed by Polly Peck or one of its subsidiaries, come forward and make a complaint to the police that the Conservative Party has received stolen goods in the form of this money, and the leaders of the ruling party in the British government will be facing the prospect of 14 years in jail.
Would anybody like to come forward and lay charges?
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