Tuesday 28 June 2011

Politics and its 'fringe beneficiaries' - just who is scratching who's back?

Microdave, over at Max Farquar's gaff has a post linking Jewson, the building firm, with the Great Gobal Warming Scam - and one which hopefully, with their permission, I now repeat:
"As many of you will know, Jewson is a major supplier of building materials in the UK, and my title above is a play on the advertising slogan they used to use. Thanks to Stop Common Purpose an alarming connection with this company and the Global Warming scam has been uncovered.
It turns out that the former managing director of that company, Richard Jewson, has his fingers deeply embedded in this particular pie. He happens to be “Her Majesties Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk”, which carries a certain air of respectability,  however this is far from the case. He is on the board of directors of many construction companies, some of which are subsidiaries of the huge conglomerate Saint-Gobain.
Saint-Gobain is a 350 year old company, and now a major supplier, builder, developer & manufacturer of environmental construction materials such as solar panels, wind turbines, and many other products with “low co2 emissions” and from “sustainable resources”. (Quote from source below)
Think that’s bad enough? It gets worseHe is also one of the  Pro-Chancellors of the UEA, which is now famous for its part in the “Climate Gate Scandal” So he has ample opportunity to influence their output in order to further his business interests.
We’re not done yet! He is also chairman of regional media group Archant which publishes the local newspapers in the Eastern region, including the UEA’s home city of Norwich. From my own reading of some of these (which a friend sends on to me) the reader would be forgiven for knowing little or nothing about the “leak” of thousands of emails and other data back in November 2009. Now I can see why!
Whilst perusing his entry on the family firm of Jarrold & Sons I saw yet another thing that set alarm bells ringing. He is also chairman of East Port Great Yarmouth. It spent a considerable sum of grant money developing a new outer harbour, intending to attract container traffic away from Harwich, just down the coast. This never happened, mainly due to the abysmal road and rail links, and also because of complaints from ships captains about severe swells making docking hazardous. There was even more adverse publicity recently when the 2 brand new unloading cranes delivered from China, were removed having never been used, and are now at a port somewhere in the Mediterranean (assuming that the All Seeing Eye didn’t sink them as they were passing his gaff!)
What has this got to do with the story, you may ask? – Well it turns out that the port has now signed contracts with some of the offshore windfarm developers to act as a base for their operations…  How very convenient!!
If you want to read more visit this page linked by Stop CP. Interestingly, it is from last year, and some of the included links no longer work. But considering that the entire MSM is corrupted by the scam, it’s not surprising it hasn’t had wider publicity."
Bloggers, too numerous to mention, continually post on the supposedly free press (not) from which our nation suffers and it must be considered pretty damning that this link between Jewson and the global warming scam was actually raised last year - and by an American - yet not one word, to my knowledge, has appeared in the British media.

Presently any member of the House of Commons and the House of Lords must declare an interest when positions they hold in 'outside' organisations might be construed as implying a conflict of interest (except of course those members of the HoL who have held positions within the EU!). Examples abound of potential conflicts of interest, but to give one example it is only necessary to look at the career and business interests of Tim Yeo, in the context that he is Chair of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change.

Perhaps the time has come whereby any politician should sever any link, position or financial interest with any commercial organisation or other political body on becoming an elected representative of the people?

6 comments:

microdave said...

Thanks for the link - glad to be of service!

WitteringsfromWitney said...

md: To exemplify how much I value our European connection, I can but say in answer to your comment: De Rien!

Which, if your knowledge of French is on a par with my knowledge of things mechanical, translates as: "Don't mention it"!

IanPJ said...

In 220 BC Rome passed a law which forbade senators from entering into business to stem corruption.

If it was good enough for Rome, surely it would be good enough for us.

As for Yeo, we can always hope that he disappears into a vat of his own captured carbon..

Porky D said...

"In 220 BC Rome passed a law which forbade senators from entering into business to stem corruption."

Bad as Rome got, it had nothing on the US, so it aint gonna happen.

WitteringsfromWitney said...

IPJ: Agreed and yes, we can but hope as he produces enough of the stuff with his utterances!

PD: see above, we can but hope...

IanPJ said...

Porky D,
"Bad as Rome got, it had nothing on the US, so it aint gonna happen."

Rome, it must be remembered, was only a democracy for a relatively short period in its long history, replaced by greedy and corrupt dynastic families producing many totally corrupt and oft mad Emperors.

The ironic thing of course is that Washington DC, and its institutions, in both their function and their city layout is based entirely upon ancient Rome.

As we watch the slow strangulation of democracy and rights in the US, corruption at every level on a massive scale, the rise of the dynastic families, powers never granted by the constitution to the presidency simply being taken by decree, I can only think that... History does repeat itself!