After two months, the police still refuse to explain themselves.

Cash and most documents have been returned, without explanation, but I still have no idea why the police chose to invade my home on 5 March.  Nor why they have kept my mobile phone and a few other papers, none of which can be of the slightest interest to the police or anyone else.

The Chief Constable of Hampshire, Andy Marsh, has refused to reply both to a Subject Access Request (which allows individuals to know what data is held on them by official bodies) and to a Freedom of Information Request.   Nor have the police revealed the name of the JP who signed the search warrant, the law court at which he or she sits, nor the information provided to secure the signature.

The newly elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire, Simon Hayes, whose website carefully avoids telling the county’s taxpayers how much he and his new office cost every year, has not so much as acknowledged my three letters asking for his assistance.

Only possible explanation for both the police raid and the deafening official silence ever since is that the EU is furious at the contents of my memoirs A Mote in Brussels’ Eye.  Has Brussels persuaded the UK authorities to try to find out who my sources were?  If so, serious questions about due legal process and the rule of law will emerge later.

Meanwhile, I’m not telling.

Leverson or not, a confidential source is just that.  Having started professional life decades ago as an investigative journalist I well understand the principle and am committed to it.

Elsewhere in Brussels, a Member of the European Parliament has put down a written question to the European Commission asking if any EU institutions were involved in briefing the UK police and, if so, why?  We know part of the answer already.  The EU has demanded a refund of all my parliamentary allowances during my five years as an MEP.  That tells me the real issue is an attempt to uncover my sources.

The drama continues…

Other Angles

My book has apparently become a source of information about the personality and character of Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, now that he and his party have emerged as a serious threat to the Tories. 

A Mote in Brussels’ Eye records our work together in the early days, our clashes and separation after the 2004 election, and my first-hand experience of Farage and how he operates.

My earlier book OverCrowded Britain, which started life as a draft UKIP manifesto pledge on uncontrolled EU immigration, has suddenly become a sought-after source of information – for obvious reasons. 

While stocks last, I have reduced the cost on Amazon to £1.99, plus postage.  Each copy is signed, and comes with two free pamphlets – J’Accuse…! and We Want Our Country Back.

The Amazon link is http://www.amazon.co.uk/OverCrowded-Britain-Immigration-Crisis-Exposed/dp/0954012410/ref=aag_m_pw_dp?ie=UTF8&m=A1V6VY2DZ62GK1

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Comments can be left on my blog -  http://amoteinbrusselseye.blogspot.co.uk/

To the Farnham Herald,  13 April 2013

Your correspondent Cllr Andrew Joy rightly applauds the enthusiastic contribution of migrants from the Commonwealth and other parts of the Far East to the British way of life (letters 12 April). But he chooses to ignore the elephant in the room.

Never in this island’s history have such numbers of people arrived as over the last two decades. We are now one of the most overcrowded places on earth, particularly in the south-east. But the great majority of newcomers are not enthusiastic new Britons, as My Joy would have us believe.

They are from the EU. They now have a right to come here. They are economic and benefit opportunists, and who can blame them? They pour in, tens of thousands a year, in an unstoppable flood, regardless of the huge strains on UK housing, education, health and other essential resources – to say nothing of the high unemployment amongst the indigenous population.

British national identity, so rightly applauded by Mr Joy, is deliberately being diluted by the EU as part of the process of creating a country called Europe governed by unelected bureaucrats.

From January next, this already alarming situation will get much worse. The doors will open to everyone now living in Bulgaria and Romania. Yet these are, essentially, still third-world countries. They are also major sources of criminality. According to The Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago, a third of the entire Romanian population in the UK have been arrested since their arrival.

According to Scotland Yard, 27,725 Romanians had been arrested for offences in London since 2008, including 10 for murder and more than 140 for rape. Only Polish immigrants created more crime although their population in the UK was five times larger. They accounted for 34,905 arrests, including 84 for murder and over 120 for rape. Lithuania, another Eastern European country, came third. Over 18,500 criminals from Lithuania were detained by the Metropolitan Police.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch UK, was reported as saying: “The extent of this criminality is a real concern for the ending of all immigration controls on Romanians and Bulgarians next year.” But the risks get worse. “The connection between criminality and Islamism is very tight in Europe,” according to Michael Radu, a terrorism analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute

In that connection, The Daily Telegraph drew attention to the social and cultural gulf between migrants who involve themselves in the British way of life and those who deliberately do not. By far the most numerous of the latter group are Muslims, who choose to remain largely contained within their own community. The facts also show that, rather than making an economic contribution to the British way of life their impact is negative. Overall, they are a serious drain on the welfare state.

Last year, 75 percent of all Muslim women and 50 percent of all Muslim men in the UK were unemployed – a staggering rise from 13 percent for men and 18 percent for women in 2004. Worse, Muslims were on sick leave more than anyone else, with 24 percent of women and 21 percent of males making claims. Muslims were also the most likely among all religious groups to be living in accommodation rented from a council or housing association (28 percent). Four percent were living rent-free.

With the great majority of the five million Muslims living here last year at British taxpayers expense, the total cost to us was over £12 billion. In just one year. Yet that same community scarcely contributed anything to British wealth creation. Who will be generating the wealth for our economy and our future if we continue to tolerate so many takers instead of makers?

Meanwhile the indigenous population is barely reproducing itself. Stability is 2.1 births per woman. The English are now down to 1.6, yet the Muslim population in the UK is reproducing itself by over four children per woman. Muslims have by far the highest birth rate of all ethnic groups. If the same population growth and birth rate continues as now, by 2030 Britain will have a 40 percent Muslim population. A few years later we could have a Muslim prime minister and the introduction of Islamic sharia law will be on the cards.

Mr Joy should consider the bigger picture when enthusing about migrants. We have huge problems, and we can do nothing about them until we leave the EU and restore control of our borders and our finances.

Ashley Mote

(author OverCrowded Britain)

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Open letter to Damian Hinds, MP for East Hants

12 April 2013

 You Really Must Put Cameron Straight

 Damian, I have read Cameron’s letter to you and all other Tory members.

Not only is incredibly naive, but he has his facts plain wrong on one crucial point.

He says “Around 50% of our trade is with the EU”.  NOT TRUE by a country mile.  And he must know it.

Export trade (in both directions) is barely 20% of total UK trade.

Of that, less than half is with the EU.

I have pointed out to you before – and EVERY minister and senior civil servant knows it – that the Blue Book DELIBERATELY distorts the figures by including in “trade with Europe” the huge exports to other parts of the world which start their journey by going to Rotterdam and Antwerp for containerisation and onwards shipping.

Why try to suggest otherwise by lying?

Even worse, we have a HUGE permanent trade deficit with the rest of the EU.  In terms of trade, they need us far more than we need them.

Why defend this continuous and damaging disadvantage?

He says “We need to be…round the table and having a say in what the rules are”

Does Cameron really expect you to believe that we have choices?  One voice in 27?  One vote in 27?

We all know the EU has long been an ever-increasing, protectionist, customs union. It is not remotely a free trade area.

Furthermore, acquis communauitaire is a rachet. Once the EU has competence it stays with Brussels. Non-negotiable.

Why should anyone believe/take seriously a prime minister (for heaven sake) who can write such a pitiful letter?

You need to put this pathetic man straight. For all our sakes. He is completely out of his depth.

His present strategy (if you can call it that) is utterly unrealistic on several levels – not least your chances of winning a second term.

You claimed in the local paper this week to have been inspired by Mrs Thatcher.

Now is the time to show it – and start behaving like her!

Ashley Mote

PS: I hope you found my new book A Mote in Brussels’ Eye illuminating.

Spectator

7 April 2013

J. Meirion Thomas’ criticisms of management of the NHS (International Health Service, 6 April) vividly reminded me of a comment by a long-retired senior consultant friend who had started life in business and switched to medicine. The NHS is upside down, he argued. In business the most knowledgeable and experienced people become the board of directors, make the crucial decisions and set the strategy. Managers then implement what has been decided. In the NHS exactly the opposite is true. Managers decide and medical staff are expected to fall in line.

Ashley Mote

Times (Obit Editor)

 8 April 2013

In 2001 Leolin Price advised me pro bono on the drafting of a petition to Her Majesty under the terms of Clause 61 of Magna Carta, asking that the Royal Assent be withheld from the Nice Treaty. He was well aware that many of his legal colleagues chose to ignore such ancient parts of the British Constitution. But not Leo. Desuetude had no part in English law. The fact that Clause 61 had not been exercised since 1688 was no matter. It was there, and in good order. The instigator, Lord Ashbourne, and the Duke of Rutland were free to use it – as did many more than the minimum of another 23 hereditary peers whose signatures were required.

Her Majesty acknowledged the force of Magna Carta by responding on the 39^th of the 40 days permitted for a reply. To Leolin Price’s disappointment, and all others involved, Her Majesty preferred to take the advice of ministers.

Leolin Price continued to advise me throughout my time in the European Parliament, and I still treasure the quite brilliant constitutional analysis he provided in 2008 during the battle over what became the Lisbon Treaty. He finished by quoting Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, who said in March 2004 “it is the rule of law which stops a democracy descending into an elected dictatorship”. Leolin agreed passionately.

Footnotes

If I recall correctly, Leo was the owner of a rare copy of Magna Carta

Somewhat to my surprise the full text of the 2001 petition to Her Majesty about the Nice Treaty is still on the internet today. Here is the link: http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/eurorealist/Ourmonarch/petitionnotes.html

 Daily Telegraph

26 February 2013

You report business minister Michael Fallon (26 February) saying that future EU laws should be introduced into the UK in “the least injurious way”.

At last! Government finally admits damage has been done to Britain by the EU’s endless interference in the way we run our affairs.

Ashley Mote

(author, A Mote in Brussels’ Eye)

Spectator

12 February 2013

(published)

Nick Cohen’s piece about the threat to whistleblowers (Spectator 9 February) rang several bells, following my experiences in Brussels as an independent MEP. The very idea that “following correct procedures” would protect them is pure Alice in Wonderland.

There is a long history of vilification of whistleblowers in the EU. Soviet-style long-term sick-leave was enforced on mental health grounds on more than one occasion. Investigation into the whistleblower and his motives was not unusual. Internal retaliation (loss of promotion and threats of sacking for ‘incompetence’ being just two examples) more often turned whistleblowers into victims rather than heroes.

Formal rules like those proposed by Leveson were shown to be hopelessly insufficient, especially when real protection was not guaranteed. The fundamental nonsense of the Leveson proposal is its circular nature. Since when did any institution protect those brave enough to criticise it?

Ashley Mote

(Author, A Mote in Brussels’ Eye)

Daily Telegraph

12 January 2013

Some years ago I took part in what passes for a debate in the European Parliament on health and safety at work.

I asked whether the health and safety of lorry drivers in Brussels required smoother roads, and suggested that the city council should replace all the famous cobblestoned streets with concrete.

 To my astonishment, I was ignored.

 Ashley Mote

(Independent MEP, SE England, 2004-09)

 Sunday Telegraph

13 January 2013

EU Commissioners Barnier and Tajani “soon hope to simplify accounting for businesses with up to 50 employees” (letters 13 Jan).

They can do so immediately, and for all British businesses.  They can mind their own business, and stop interfering in ours.

Ashley Mote

Sunday Times

13 January 2013

You report (13 Jan) the anger over the mis-selling of holiday homes in Cyprus. But you omit to mention that most are in the north of the island, where neither the British government nor the EU have any jurisdiction. Since the Turkish invasion in 1974 northern Cyprus has been ruled from Ankara.

Elsewhere, you report “that the European single markets adds about £500 bn a year to the British economy”. But you omit to mention that the UK has had a continuous trade deficit (currently 46 bn) every year bar one since we joined. You also omit to mention that the true deficit is even worse than government statistics declare. All UK exports to the rest of the world going via the container ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam are deliberately – and incorrectly – classified as exports to the EU.

Ashley Mote

My memoirs A Mote in Brussels’ Eye describing my five years in the Brussels lunatic asylum came out as an eBook at the end of January,

Today, March 5, nine policemen arrived unannounced at my front door armed with a warrant to search our home.

Much of my book details my efforts on behalf of the taxpayers of SE England to expose the gross misuse of public funds by the EU, and hold them accountable.

Such an unusually fast reaction by Brussels tells me they are both very angry and terrified.  My book is obviously causing them trouble.

The police team were from the Economic Crime Investigation Team based in Netley, Hampshire.  They were led by Robert Cooper (1234) and financial investigator Nigel Hopkins (11276)

The search warrant, indecipherably signed only yesterday by a JP, is apparently based on the EU’s accusation that I used public funds to investigate them!

No, I am still not making this up.

It seems I should not have paid anyone to assist my work – not anti-EU organisations, whistleblowers, current and former members of EU staff, forensic accountants, a leading constitutional lawyer, Leolin Price QC, no less, or any other lawyers – to say nothing of the scores of individuals with knowledge of wrong-doing who sought me out over the years.

The police took away a few documents which they thought relevant – but one was from the EU itself threatening action!

But they also took every penny of cash they found in the house on the grounds that this was a “money-laundering” exercise!  This afternoon I couldn’t even pay the milkman!

Happily my book is already doing well.  Now it might do even better.  If you haven’t seen it yet, my new blog website has all the details :

http://amoteinbrusselseye.blogspot.co.uk/

A Mote in Brussels’ Eye

By Ashley Mote

The diary of a Member of the European Parliament

A full, frank and controversial account of five years fighting the EU from within the castle walls.

The first ever blow-by-blow memoirs of a British MEP.

Sensational new evidence wrung out of the EU revealing :

Industrial-scale institutionalised looting of British taxpayers’ money.

Indisputable evidence of endemic EU corruption and fraud.

‘Diversity’ the claim, ‘regulation and standardisation’ the reality.

Huge hidden cash piles as the EU demands ever more.

Uncontrolled migration across EU’s eastern borders totally ignored.

Illegal seizure of power and control from nation states.

Dilution of national identities by mass migration and imported criminality.

3000 secret committees endlessly planning new EU ‘law’.

Refusals by the Serious Fraud Office and Scotland Yard to examine unequivocal evidence of illegal payments to Brussels.

EU officials deliberately misleading the House of Lords.

Millions in soft loans to the BBC to buy editorial support.

The European Central Bank authorising a flood of new 500-euro banknotes, used mainly by drug barons for money laundering.

“Nobody is responsible, everybody else is to blame, and who cares anyway?” – EU bureaucrat.

ALSO : the full story of the UK/EU’s connivance to throw Ashley Mote out of the European Parliament.  It failed, but cost the British taxpayer over £1 million.

“Brussels was no gravy train.  This was politics with a passion.  This was kill or be killed – and I almost was”, says author Ashley Mote.

“Sun Tsu, the Chinese author of The Art of War, told warriors to ‘study your enemy’.  I not only studied the EU – I became an expert.  But I was also a known guerrilla inside the gates of the citadel.  That’s what truly frightened them.”

A Mote in Brussels’ Eye in now available from ebook sources

for Kindle, ePub and all other ereaders

Only £5.98 (US$ 9.50)

First reviews:

 A Mote in Brussels’ Eye is a ‘must’.  It will also be an important source for all future writers and historians describing attempts to unite Europe as Charlemagne, Napoleon and Hitler all did before the EU. Very interesting and revealing, and he writes well.

Penetrating and hilarious at the same time. No wonder the bureaucrats hated him.

Need a FREE ebook reader for your computer?

  http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_ipad_mkt_lnd?docId=1000493771   

Amazon Links to buy A Mote in Brussels’ Eye

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France      http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00B40DWMS

Germany  http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00B40DWMS

Italy          http://www.amazon.it/dp/B00B40DWMS

Spain        http://www.amazon.es/dp/B00B40DWMS

Brazil       http://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B00B40DWMS

Japan       http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00B40DWMS

Just before Christmas I received a formal letter of invitation to speak in support of the motion “This House would say goodbye to the EU” at their February meeting.  This week I have received an email abruptly cancelling the invitation because they want “to give speaking opportunities to up and coming young debaters”.

It is clear from their names that the president and bookings secretary are overseas students, probably from the EU.  They equally clearly do not understand how things are done in Britain.

Even their pathetic excuse is untrue.  The Oxford Union website shows five speakers against the motion but only four in favour.  None are exactly “up and coming”.  One is a celebrity chef, for Heaven’s sake!

Of the nine listed, four are known personally to me.  I doubt any of them would have complained at my presence.

But obviously someone has.

When challenged that the Oxford Union had been got at, obviously by one of my more vicious political opponents, there was no reply.  No denial.  No rebuttal.  No explanation.  Nothing.

This, of course, was the debating society that disgusted Winston Churchill by voting in 1933 “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country”.  Over the years since it has also given a platform to numerous villains, pimps and serious criminals, including Malcolm X.

So perhaps I am Better Off Out after all.

Since the Oxford Union is a debating society, comment might be welcome! 

The president is Maria Rioumine.  Her email is president@oxford-union.org

The booking secretary’s email is margaretha.wauben@pmb.ox.ac.uk

El Paso Times, Houston Chronicle, Washington Post, USA Today.

(Also copied to Orpington News)

11 January 2013

Sir -

So an El Paso court has found the 66-year-old Englishman Christopher Tappin guilty after a plea-bargain deal which was – apparently – the only realistic option open to him under current American law.

When the founding pilgrim fathers fled from King Charles I’s restrictions on freedom, they took with them a passionate belief in their birthrights, as acknowledged by Magna Carta in 1215.   Since Jefferson, those birthrights have been a legal cornerstone of the American way of life.  Indeed it was the American Bar Association that paid for the memorial monument at Runnymede, near London, where King John put his signature to it.

England’s Magna Carta enshrined the presumption of innocence, Habeas Corpus, trial by jury and other legal bastions of individual freedom against the overweening power of the State – safeguards which your founding fathers cherished.  To this day state entrapment remains unlawful in the UK and those who indulge in it are themselves subject to criminal prosecution.

The presumption of innocence demands trial before conviction.  No punishment can be inflicted without guilt being proven at trial.  In other words, even plea bargaining must be followed by a full trial.  Anything short of that is unlawful.

Like all great truths, the essence is simple : guilt must be seen to be proven, whatever may have been agreed beforehand.

There are doubtless many reasons for a defendant to plead guilty under the law as currently practised in the USA, but not all of them are for reasons which best serve the rule of law itself.

In Christopher Tappin’s case, deception has been piled on deceit.  All the evidence suggests he would not even have been charged with an offence in the UK – let alone be put on trial.  His extradition was later deemed by many British lawyers to be unlawful.

Now he has been ill-served by the current American legal system, and by the El Paso court.  Those involved are the guilty ones.  Shame on them.

Ashley Mote

(Author, Vigilance – A Defence of British Liberty)

Hampshire, UK

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USA Today

Wall Street Journal, European edition, Brussels

10 January 2013

Sir –

Under-Secretary Philip Gordon has come to Britain to urge the UK to stay in the European Union.

Yet his ancestors fought a revolution to escape subservient colonial status within the British Empire.

So why does he want the UK to continue to be a colony of the European Union?

Revenge?

Ashley Mote

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The Times

9 January 2013

Sir -

Successive recent British governments have talked of the old age pension as a benefit. But it is a right, bought and paid for.

Those of us working in the 1950s and beyond understood we paid national insurance precisely to provide for our state pension.

Indeed, we were urged to add to our contributions to increase our state pension, and thousands did.

The fact that successive governments chose not to invest that income stream to provide for future drawings was their decision – not ours.

Then the Blair government suddenly decided the OAP was a ‘benefit’, as if that changed everything that had gone before.

It was a slight-of-hand that undermined trust – and our current government’s continuing the fiction does nothing to restore it.

Ashley Mote

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The Times

(copied to the CBI)

31 December 2012

Sir –

Whilst it was entirely predicable that the CBI would be campaigning for the UK to remain in the EU (report 31st December), the rest of us know the EU retains the support of big industrial companies of all kinds by bending to the lobbying pressure those same organisations have the financial muscle to mount. Together, they enjoy a self-fulfilling circle of mutual self-interest.

As the great Austrian school economist Ludwig von Mises put it, lobbying is – by definition – always to the disadvantage of those who are not involved, whatever the reason.

To support their argument, the CBI now needs to justify why the rest of us should continue to endure continuous, often damaging EU interference in British affairs and ever-mounting costs.

Ashley Mote

Have you read and considered the implications of Allister Heath’s outstanding analysis of your present problems on page 2 of today’s Business section of the Daily Telegraph? (12 December)

It is the best summary yet of the neglected political and economic priorities and so-called ‘modernising’ trivial diversions which are taking us further down the road Blair started on all those years ago.  Image is replacing substance.  Opportunity is replacing judgement.  Political tactics are replacing the rule of law.

Cameron is proving a disaster.  No vision, no courage, no clarity of thought or decisive action about what really matters.  Just an inexperienced middle manager out of his depth.  He is also now proving an embarrassment, and not just to the Tory party.  The opportunity you had in 2010 has been utterly squandered.

When are you and your back-bench colleagues going to wake up ?
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Please Get Your Facts Straight

I read your In Touch leaflet with interest – until I got to two horrific errors of fact.

1. You claim “Net immigration is now falling.” No Sir.

That is disingenuous. At best, it can only be partly true by ignoring uncontrolled immigration from the EU, and – as your own Home Secretary said only last week – “Britain is powerless to stop tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans coming here to live next year.” Added to which it completely ignores the UK’s uncontrolled additional population growth arising from Muslim migrants averaging some five children per woman, while the indigenous population is now below sustainability at 1.6. Unless a clear-sighted UK government finds the determination to stop uncontrolled migration from all sources, by 2050 the UK may well have an Islamic government – and that is not alarmist. It is a demographic probability.

2. You claim our deficit “is now down by a quarter”. Not true. Even Osborne admits it.

In the original Coalition spending review he proposed increasing current spending from £158 bn in 2010-11 to £171 bn in 2014-15. 2010-11 turned out to be £160 billion, and last year spending reached £166.7 billion. This was £3.3 billion or 2% more than the 2010 plan for that year. Even more importantly it was HIGHER in absolute terms – and currently shows no signs of turning down. His Autumn Statement [confirmed] these facts – and indicated the prospective situation getting worse.

Meanwhile, if you wish to sustain any credibility at all in this constituency, you really must not make such absurd claims.

Damian, we desperately need a government with the wisdom, clarity of thought and sheer courage to get to grips with the big issues we face – and take a scythe to the bureaucratic pussy-footing around the edges we have seen over the last two years. You have had long enough and are looking increasingly like disorganised ditherers. (Distinguished exception – Michael Gove.)

………………………………

Use Government Resources Act 2000 to control UK money to Brussels

For the 18th year in a row, the EU’s Court of Auditors has failed to approve the Annual Accounts. What a surprise!

Yet again, the unlawful disbursement of many billions of pounds to a body where fraud and corruption is endemic is publicised, complained about, and will then be ignored.

One senior EU bureaucrat once described Brussels money-management to me as “institutionalised looting”.

Yet we have a weapon. This loss and waste of public funds is contrary to the UK’s Government Resources Act, 2000.

The Act calls for public accounts to ‘present a true and fair view’. The EU’s do not.

The Act also demands ‘that money provided by parliament has been expended for the purposes intended by parliament’.

That legal requirement has never yet been enforced on Brussels. It could, and should, be applied to the EU’s disbursement of UK funds.

Mrs Thatcher drafted a Bill to set up an escrow account to hold funds due to Brussels in London until the EU’s financial management was brought up to acceptable international financial accounting standards.

Resurrect that and everything changes. Instantly. In Brussels and London.

……………………….

The Law of Succession

Below is the letter my friend and former colleague John Bingley has had published in the Daily Telegraph today. It is important for two reasons.  First, he is right in law. (The editor of the DT would have checked the legal facts before publishing this letter.)  Secondly, the rule of law is even more important than the law itself.

I trust you will use your good offices to ensure that the government is fully acquainted with the law on this matter…and its wider implications.

SIR – Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, is working on ways to disband the custom of male primogeniture. This would require an Act of Parliament, passing into law by Royal Assent.

The Bill of Rights regulates government and any use of prerogative power, most particularly that of Royal Assent. Is this constitutional regulation merely to be ignored or set aside as inconvenient?

The rule of law is at stake. It must be maintained at all costs. The law that controls the use of prerogative power denies such authority to the Crown.

If the Queen were to give Royal Assent to an Act of Parliament changing the rules of succession, she would be breaking her Coronation Oath and thus have to abdicate. There is precedence for this principle, which was followed by the King of Belgium in 1999. An abdication must cause an election.

If these principles are violated, the executive may use them as precedence to accrue any power at any time.

John Bingley
West Sussex

PS from AM: For the record, I have known and worked with John Bingley for many years. At least one constitutional QC who knows us both has described John as a professor of constitutional law still looking for a chair! That describes him perfectly. John was one of my key sources when I was writing my first book Defence of the Realm published by the original Magna Carta Society

A platitudinous reply prompted a second email to Damian Hinds : Supporting the change is not the same as changing the law. The constitutional implications are significant, as John’s letter demonstrated.  I trust you will draw the attention of your lawyer MP friends to its contents. Many thanks

Seriously Unhelpful Banking 

With the banks having been in bad odour for some time, you might think that the claim to provide “helpful banking” (the NatWest slogan) would begin to take on real meaning.

But you’d be wrong.  At least you would if my recent experience is anything to go by.

For over 40 years I had been a customer of NatWest.  At one time they also held the account of my thriving but modest multi-national business.

A few years ago I was persuaded by the then manager at my local branch to transfer my account on-line.  Reluctantly, and with hindsight, I now consider that a serious error of judgement on my part, in view of what followed.

The last significant transaction on the account was a small electronic transfer out.

Then, out of the blue, shortly afterwards I received what appeared to be a standard letter from the NatWest Account Closing team in Bolton which referred to “your recent request to close the above account…”  I had made no such request.

A cheque made out to me for the alleged full sum was enclosed, without any evidence of either the sum or the request.

Had NatWest been got at?  Was I being got at?  Had the fear of my forthcoming memoirs spread fear in high places?

Was I being neurotic?  What followed suggests not.

I immediately went into my local branch to find that a new manager was not due in post until the following week.  The junior manager I met was thoroughly unhelpful – almost obstructive.

Back home I sent an email via NatWest’s website recounting my experience and pointing out that – from where I stood – there appeared to be a risk that their on-line system had been hacked into.

A month passed, I had no response to my email, and both the new manager of the local branch and the office in Bolton failed to return my calls.  So I wrote to Stephen Hester, the CEO of RBS (NatWest’s parent company) about what had become a curious and disturbing set of circumstances.  After rehearsing the facts, my letter continued:

Since your staff are incapable (or terrified) of answering me, I now have no option but to write to you.

I have been unable to access my on-line account to check that the sum sent is correct.  Neither have you (NatWest) provided a detailed statement from start to finish of my electronic banking.  That, alone, is unacceptable, particularly bearing in mind that my account was entirely electronic.  I have no paper records whatever.

Furthermore – and this is vitally important – I cannot cash the cheque since I have no other account in my name.  This point needs addressing urgently.

After much time phoning your service centres (various) I finally made contact with a Mr Nitin Patel, based in Leicester and who – he told me – was a member of your “care” team!  He, at least, tried to help and I spoke to him several times.  He finally tracked down a letter from your Account Closure Department B in Edinburgh [dated several weeks earlier] which had obviously never been posted.  Even Mr Patel had trouble with this.  First he told me it had been posted and returned unopened – improbable, but theoretically possible.  But during a second conversation some days later he denied making the comment.  His overly anxious tone suggested to me that he had been “got at”.

I finally received from Mr Patel a copy of the Edinburgh letter four months later and three weeks after my account was apparently closed without my knowledge or agreement.

The letter was obviously a standard form.  It included the words “having reviewed your accounts [I had only one] we have made a commercial decision to close them [them ???] ….Unfortunately we aren’t able to give you the details behind our commercial decision…”

So your letter did not even provide an opportunity to review the material facts, let alone invite a considered response.  That is not “helpful banking”.  That is neo-totalitarianism!

During my various conversations with Mr Patel, he told me that he had discovered the decision to close my account had been made by your AML Operations team.  He did not know of it – indeed, he had never heard of it before – but thought that AML probably stood for Account Management Liaison, or some such.  When I put it to him that it might equally stand for Anti-Money Laundering, or something similar, he agreed and did not express any great surprise.

I have very good reason to believe that you were encouraged/pressured/forced to act against me by an institution of the European Union – quite possibly the secretariat of the Parliament.  My track record as a vocal anti-EU MEP (2004-09) is well known, as is the fact that I am about to publish my memoirs which will blow the whistle on a large number of cases of fraud and corruption in the EU which I uncovered during my time there.  The EU is still – to this day – trying to force me to reveal my sources inside their system.  As an experienced journalist, now author, I will do no such thing.  The gross misuse of British taxpayers’ funds should be a matter of the greatest concern to us all.

So how did the EU know about that particular NatWest account?  It was – originally – the one into which my salary and allowances were paid.  They could easily have assumed it was still “live” and they were right.  If so, I have no need to guess the garbage they fed you.

Alternatively, you may have caught up with my court case in 2007, which was a political hatchet job orchestrated by the European Parliament to get me out of Brussels because I was causing too much trouble.  The British government mounted a spurious prosecution which is subject to dispute to this day.

At the time, the then manager of my local branch – a lady, whose name I no longer recall – called me in to discuss my situation – and my account there.  She was horrified at what she learnt that day, and promised to investigate internally.  Later we met again, when she made a firm commitment that my account was safe and secure, and would remain open for as long as I needed it.

Is the decision taken by AML Operations in Edinburgh actually NatWest retrospectively reneging on that promise?

If both those possible reasons for your decision are incorrect, I have a right to hear your explanation.  Helpful banking this was not.

I await your response with great interest.

(letter ends)

Shortly after writing that letter to Stephen Hester I learned that NatWest claimed to be the only bank offering a current account to anyone with credit or other difficulties – not that I had.   But it made the irony of my current impasse even more curious.

Eventually I received a reply from a minion in Hester’s vast empire.  Indeed it was so inadequate that I wrote to Hester again, saying:

Since my letter of complaint I have found myself dealing with a member of your staff, Colin Beveridge.  I am singularly unimpressed.  His last letter is either disingenuous or based on a falsehood.  Either way it is totally unacceptable.  Hence this second letter to you.

Are you seriously expecting me to believe that a decision allegedly taken somewhere deep inside NatWest remained unknown to senior management until some five months later?  I don’t believe you. I simply don’t believe you!

You had a problem of your own creation and you didn’t know what to do about it.  That’s why you have been so secretive and refused to explain yourselves, let alone justify your decision.

Not long ago you, Mr Hester, were on TV apologising for NatWest’s monstrous IT cock-up.  Quite right too.  You struggled, but at least you faced the music.  Well, here’s a bit more music to face.

You said, on Sky and the BBC (and I quote your words exactly) “For us, customers come first….and they expect us to be accountable” That is my position.  I hold you accountable.  Please explain yourselves.

You then went on to say, without qualification, that all customers who wished to switch to another bank would have their accounts switched for them by RBS/NatWest at no cost and no inconvenience.  Standing orders, direct debits, etc would all be moved for them.  You caused my present problem.  I accept your offer of a solution.

So far your bank’s behaviour has been utterly unacceptable.  And if you and your staff continue to obfuscate I will be obliged to conclude that the public statement made on TV by you personally, Mr Hester, was humbug – mere humbug – and worthless.

Given the thrashing all UK banks have had in recent times shouldn’t that concern you?  Or are your critics right – you are just a bunch of greedy, grasping opportunists, little more than scheming crooks who put the interests of your customers a very long way last?

Your behaviour towards me suggests your critics have a point.  You have shown not one iota of your ‘duty of care’ as my banker towards me as a customer.  You have been self-serving, arrogant, deceitful, careless, inefficient and thoroughly obstructive – without a single word of explanation or apology.

Quite apart from all else, you and your minion still have not provided me with a detailed statement from the start of my on-line banking facility to show exactly why you think the cheque you sent to close my account was correct.  To this day I have been unable to access my on-line account to check that the sum sent is correct.  That, alone, is scandalous.

Worse – I am now left wondering why, in the circumstances, I should believe you, even if and when you eventually get around to supplying that essential information.

Meanwhile, at great inconvenience and with the help of my family, I have managed at last to cash the cheque.  But you directly deprived me of my own funds for over five months.

Mr Hester, I hold you to your word – you are accountable.  You need to explain yourself, and provide some adequate restitution.

(letter ends)

Once again Hester had a minion do his dirty work for him.  A curt reply from a Miss Dempster told me that I was no longer a customer and – therefore – not entitled to any information or help.

I wrote to Hester again:

Yet again you and your staff have ignored my complaint, and failed to provide the information I asked for.  Surely by now you should have realised that I am not going to go away….?

Which bit of the following paragraph in my last letter did you fail to understand?

“Quite apart from all else, you and your minion still have not provided me with a detailed statement from the start of my on-line banking facility to show exactly why you think the cheque you sent to close my account was correct.  To this day I have been unable to access my on-line account to check that the sum sent is correct.  That, alone, is scandalous.”

Having a junior send me a single piece of otherwise blank paper merely showing your alleged closing balance is not good enough.  Neither is the tone of her letter acceptable.

Your bank is in a mess – you are part of a banking system we taxpayers have had to rescue – you have made a decision to close my account for reasons you refuse to admit – you have failed in your duty of care to me as a long-standing customer – and now your arrogant junior staff write sharp little letters trying to be clever over details.  Seriously counter-productive!

When I ran my small international business and helped bring millions in foreign earnings into this country I would have sacked anyone on the spot for the behaviour your staff have shown towards me.  They, and you, should be ashamed.

Now – just for once Stephen Hester – please sort it!  I insist on having – in writing – all the transactions of my online account from its opening to your peremptory close – and I want them now.  Every last detail, please.

I also still want to know why you closed my account so recklessly and without any known justification.  Or don’t you have the courage?  Afraid of what might follow?  You should be.

Hester has never replied.

To this day I still have not the faintest idea why my account was closed in such a peremptory manner.  Nor what so scared NatWest management afterwards to keep any explanation secret.

Was it just a cock-up which they subsequently could not bring themselves to admit?  Or something more sinister?   Did someone or an organisation now hiding in the shadows put them up to it?

Do they know something about me that I don’t even know about myself?  At least that would be a first!

But what I do know is this.  NatWest is run by cowards who ignore any concept of a duty of care.

NatWest is not to be trusted.  Helpful banking it is not.

You report that the government wants to build houses on another 1500 square miles of land, much of it British countryside.

Yet developers are sitting on many thousands of acres of land already granted planning permission.  Tens of thousands of brown-field sites lay undeveloped.

Right now, potential house-buyers are having great difficulties getting mortgages.  The banks are sitting on their hands building up reserves.  They are now also risk-averse.

According to the Empty Houses website, and based on information available from local authorities, over 700,000 houses in the UK are empty.  Almost half have been empty for more than six months.

And who, exactly, are these homes for?  The UK’s population may be growing but that is not the whole story.  Foreigners, particularly Islamists, are adding new-born children at more than four per woman, whilst the indigenous population is rearing an unsustainable 1.6 children per woman.

Europeans continue to pour into the UK, over four million of them since the EU forced the UK to open its borders.  They are free to enter at any time, while migrants from the Commonwealth and the third world have to argue their way in.

Recently you reported that 45,000 Poles had returned to the UK despite our failing economy and higher unemployment.  Wages and job prospects in the UK were still better than in Poland.

You also report today that high earners are leaving the UK to escape high tax rates. We may be growing by a net 1000 a day, but that does not fully reflect the damage being inflicted on the British economy.

We may be powerless to stop an accelerating exchange of skills and experience for destitute migrants seeking a better life and the chance to send money back to whence they came.  But that is no recipe for economic growth.

Despite all these undeniable facts, our Prime Minister wants to relax planning rules and encourage new houses on green field sites near towns and villages with inadequate infrastructure to cope.

He is enraging his core rural support.

(Not published by the  Daily Telegraph)

…on payments to Brussels

We have to hope Cameron’s determination to freeze the EU’s budget for next year is based on a thorough briefing.

Is he aware, for instance, that little of the EU’s annual expenditure of some 100 billion euros is paid in advance? Yet the EU routinely retains many billions in cash on its balance sheet, which is extraordinary since its debtors are the member states – which do not normally go bust.

The maintenance of such huge cash and near-cash balances suggests the deliberate retention of member states’ surpluses, which is against the EU’s own rules. It also displays signs of ‘own-state’ resources – the hallmark of an emerging independent state.

Such obviously unnecessary and excessive cash surpluses totally undermine the EU’s demanding substantial increases in funding next year or any other.

(Not published by the Daily Telegraph)

…on exporting jobs…

The EU have funded the export of UK car workers’ jobs before.  In 2006, 105 million euros were given to the Slovak government to encourage Peugeot to expand its car production in Trnava, after which Peugeot closed a plant in the UK.

When challenged (by me and others) the Dutch commissioner Neelie Kroes, who held the competition portfolio, nit-picked. She claimed the company had received the funds from the Slovak government before Slovakia became a member of the EU.

Strangely, she forgot to mention that the EU was pumping millions of euros into Slovakia at the time, to boost public support for membership.

Now the same technique is being used with Turkey.

(Not published by Sunday Times)

…and importing criminality

You were right to warn of the consequences of Romanians and Bulgarians being free to move here in 2014, when many tens of thousands will take up the opportunity.

We will import more than people.  Judging from the MEPs and staff from those two countries I encountered in Brussels after 2006, when they arrived as ‘observers’, we will be importing trouble as well. Their norms of behaviour and attitudes are not ours. The majority view appears to be that the state is there to be fleeced.

In a nutshell, we cannot have open borders and a viable welfare state. We already know it simply doesn’t work.

(Not published by Sunday Telegraph)

…on the role of MEPs

Anthony Saunders’ letter about local MEPs taking no interest in his problems should surprise nobody.  The south-east of England region of the EU extends from east Kent to west Hampshire, round London to north Oxfordshire.  It takes in over 80 UK constituencies.

Ten MEPs represent the six million people who live in this amorphous area, and all ten could live in the same village.  Nirj Deva MEP (Conservative) doesn’t even declare an address in the SE region.  Neither did Baroness Nicholson (Lib-Dim) and Dr Caroline Lucas (Green) when they were members.

During my time, (2004-09) I was the only MEP who lived and worked west of East Sussex.  I tried to make myself available to constituents from the whole region who needed help with problems generated by the EU – of which there were far too many.  As a result of the indifference of most of my fellow MEPs, I was often the MEP of last resort.

Elected representatives they may be, but MEPs have no power to initiate or repeal what passes in the EU for ‘legislation’.  Nor do they have any real control over the EU budget.

Everything is decided by secret committees of bureaucrats. The European Parliament has rightly been described as just an expensive talking shop full of highly paid monkeys pressing buttons for bananas. Its true role is to provide an illusion of accountable democracy. But it is actually nothing of the sort.

Anyone wanting to know more about the EU might find my memoirs A Mote in Brussels’ Eye of interest. It is a full, frank and controversial account of five years fighting the EU from within the castle walls. This first ever blow-by-blow diary of a British MEP will be published as an ebook before Christmas.

(Not published by the Surrey Advertiser)

… and on extradition to the USA

It is a great mystery to people in the UK why your federal government wanted to extradite Gary McKinnon for hacking into US military computers.

Surely he deserved a Congressional Medal for pointing out the weaknesses in the Pentagon’s security systems?

(Not published by USA Today)

…On Pensions for EU Bureaucrats

You report the excessive levels of pensions for EU bureaucrats.

But you did not mention the routine abuse of the EU’s disability retirement scheme which, according to the EU’s own Court of Auditors, costs taxpayers over £50 million a year.

Research during my time in Brussels revealed that most so-called ‘invalid’ retirees were in their 30s or 40s and had lodged psychological or stress-related complaints.

They left with life-time pensions worth 70 per cent of their final retirement-age salaries.

As the Court of Auditors commented: “These are not coal miners or deep-sea fishermen. It’s not normal for so many to retire for ill-health.”

(Not published by Sunday Times)

…On Leaving The EU

Christopher Booker “cannot imagine any British government” simply leaving the EU. That does not mean it cannot be done.

The rule of law is even more important than the law itself, and Westminster has the power to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 which took us in.

Admittedly, we currently lack a government with the vision, courage and determination to act decisively on British membership of the EU – or anything else for that matter.

But that does not change the law or the need.

(Not published by the Sunday Telegraph)

…On the Power of EU Quangos

You seriously under-estimate the number and power of quangos advising the EU.

In 2006, the Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde and I finally prised out of the European Commission the names of 3000 secret committees advising the EU, the membership of which did not include any MEPs.

We were given only the name of each committee, in French, from which we might deduce its strategic objectives. There was no information about the membership of each, its budget, the scope of its operations or how it could be held accountable by elected members. So much for the EU’s much vaunted claims of transparency.

Nobody elected these committees, and we could not sack them. Yet they were (and still are) the driving force behind all the EU’s regulations and directives.

Later, I equally secretly unearthed people who sat on these committees. Most were ivory-tower academics with little understanding of the practical effects and costs of implementing their ideas. How else could the EU come up with such mind-numbing detail in its so-called ‘laws’?

The EU is not a parliamentary democracy – that was never intended. This is rule by secret committees, faceless bullying bureaucrats, and accountability by smoke and mirrors.

If each of those 3000 committees had a mere 12 members each, the EU’s total staff and advisors must now well exceed 100,000.

Remember the British Empire? When the sun never set on it a mere 2000 British civil servants ran the whole global show!

(Not published by Sunday Times)