August 2008

Yokel received a leaflet for a conference recently. It was entitled "The Conference 2008". In fact it was all in block capitals, but Yokel will spare you the shouting.

It is organised by a body calling itself TISPOL with the explanation that it is the European Traffic Police Network. You can find their self publicity at www.tispol.org (web site hosted in Manchester according to a Whois enquiry). Yokel had never heard of them before, so he went for a look round their site, and saw a few of the "usual suspects". Their mission statement tells us that "The TISPOL Organisation has been established by the traffic police forces of Europe in order to improve road safety and law enforcement on the roads of Europe." Oh yes, and it is "co-financed by the European Commission". Perhaps that told Yokel all that he needed to know. Are they the first elements of the European Police Force (to enforce the European Arrest Warrant that already exists)? Their President is currently the Deputy Chief Constable of North Yorkshire, a chap called Adam Briggs. Is he a Common Purpose graduate? The general secretary appears to be a Superintendent in Northern Ireland, the treasurer has another anglo saxon name but is not immediately found by an internet search. It would seem that this body TISPOL is either an ACPO subsidiary, or they have infiltrated it very effectively.

Interesting slogan on the site: "Crossing Borders to save lives". Now Yokel would guess that to be the thin end of a very fat wedge.

What about this conference in Harrogate at the end of September? It is "supported by" the Department of Transport, and by SCS, better known as Speed Check Services. The bookings are being run from the London offices of ACPO. The speakers are from ACPO, TISPOL, PACTS amongst others; and they talk about ANPR, and ITS amongst other things. Largely a european police jamboree, the academics who appear seem to be used to break up the monotony of too many policeman talking.

So, down to the acronyms:

TISPOL is noted above.

ACPO, The Association of Chief Police Officers, announces on its web site: "The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is an independent, professionally led strategic body. In the public interest and, in equal and active partnership with Government and the Association of Police Authorities, ACPO leads and coordinates the direction and development of the police service in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In times of national need ACPO - on behalf of all chief officers - coordinates the strategic policing response." Yokel's emphasis. Embryo national police force?

SCS, Speed Check Services Ltd, clearly have some hardware to sell. They are proud to announce to the world that they have the only accredited digital average speed check system in the country.

PACTS, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, is a self appointed pressure group registered charity in the field of road safety. Much of their web site content is press releases from government departments and government agencies.

ANPR, Automatic Number Plate Recognition. Now there is a conundrum for Yokel. This is clearly a centrally driven policy. But there is nothing overt on the ACPO site, and only mentions in passing on the Home Office site. So how did it "just happen" that we have a systematic surveillance of every vehicle journey in the country allied to "guilt by association" (the assumption of which used to be illegal), and of necessity a "guilty until proven innocent" approach? Who authorised the retention of this data for two years? Under what act? It is interesting that it takes the Australian Privacy Foundation to tell us that: "ANPR has reached epidemic proportions in the U.K., has been implemented in an uncontrolled manner, and relies on seriously error-prone underlying data. It has very serious implications for privacy, and for democratic freedoms more generally." They conclude that "It is crucial that Australian implementations not make the same gross mistakes as the U.K." Why has no-one in UK officialdom spotted that? Could it be that ...? , no, stupid question!

ITS is Intelligent Transport Society. It seems to be a private company of US origin. It seems to have a worldwide following. It's Enforcement Interest Group has proudly told the world that it is interested in: "Speed enforcement – digital, at roadworks, time over distance, back office; Weight enforcement (inc ANPR); Enforcement of hard shoulder running; Border enforcement in Dover; RUC [Road Use Charging] enforcement – London Western Extension and distance-based charging; Cross-border enforcement issues; EU Policy on enforcement; Vehicle Identification." Wow, what a list! Clearly related to all the cables that have been laid alongside motorways in those purple trunkings over recent years. The president of ITS (UK) is former transport minister Steven Norris, and their Head of Professional Services is a former senior police officer and ACPO member Neal Skelton. So ITS is something to watch.

Yokel still can't make up his mind whether to go or not. The speaker worth hearing will be Professor Jim Horne of the Loughborough University Sleep Research Centre, but plenty of the others will only raise Yokel's blood pressure by more than is good for him. Perhaps the rest of the world needs to know what these people are up to. Conference only £225+vat. Plus accommodation, and the Gala Dinner if you wish to attend it.

Still dithering. Does Yokel want his name on yet another ACPO database?

Sit down needed.

[Update for spelling and link corrections.]

Yokel left a comment on Longrider's piece on Card Fraud about the good work being undertaken by the Security Research team in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. The Department is led by Professor Ross Anderson who has ably pointed out the problems in more than one high profile computerisation programme.

So Yokel thought that you might also like the links. Their blog is "Light Blue Touchpaper", and they run a couple of useful web sites: Phantom Withdrawals, and Chip and Spin. It is clear that this team of researchers have yet to be convinced that Chip & PIN is as much of the answer as the banks claim it to be.

Just to be clear about the real achievement of the Chip & PIN implementation, let us consider liability in the event of fraud. When a signature has been used as authorisation, the law is clear that the body (eg bank) that accepted the fraudulent signature bears the loss. That is why they could insure against it. Retailers who accepted cheques (now there is something else for the history books!) equally had the liability if the cheque was bad, and they could insure against it.

The banks got merchants (eg retailers) to accept Chip & PIN by amending the terms of the merchant contract, and appearing to accept the loss themselves. At the same time the banks amended the terms and conditions of their individual account holders to make them liable unless they can satisfy the bank's own security staff that they have in fact looked after their PIN properly. The law is silent, and individual customers must accept the banks' cartel on this matter if the individual wants a bank account at all.

Yokel would just like one question to be answered: "In whose interests will the bank's security staff be operating when investigating an apparent or reported fraud?"

UPDATE: This is the Newsnight report on the PIN Entry Device compromise by the Cambridge team.

It was clear from the outset that there was something pretty smelly about the Russian "defence" of South Ossetia. Now the truth is beginning to out.

With a hat tip to Tangled Web, who in turn tip Samizdata, the report is from Michael Totten in Tblisi. Almost as interesting as the article is the debate that rages in the comments section. Well worth wading through as the article gets a much tougher scrutiny than any mainstream media "factoid" does, see this from the Ministry of Propaganda. At the end of Michael Totten's article, it is clear that there is much more yet to emerge.

But the smell has not abated.

On the theme of "it isn't a problem, its part of the solution" in Yokel's previous post, the news of another data loss has come to the public attention. Yokel notes that it was not announced by the department in question, but was leaked. The Minister had the knowledge on Tuesday.

And this lot want an ID Card scheme that will have a lot more information on it than was lost on this memory stick! In the interests of fairness Yokel includes a link to the people who oppose these things.

Why is this part of the solution? They want to create an effective illusion that there is nothing that can be done, and that we might as well roll over and submit because resistence is futile. To bring that about they need to make people believe that they are powerless, that government is no longer in their control. Not at the ballot box, not anywhere. They want to elicit the "I give up!!!" response.

As seen as a tag line on an email recently:

> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." - Ed Howdershelt

If anyone knows about the background of that quote, please educate us in the comments.

As our Police force dutifully turns itself from the protection of the public into the control of the public, we see the odd item of bad publlicity for the project.

Got Yokel thinking, did that. First off, there are a number of blogs saying words to the effect of "Serves him right, now maybe someone will sort the problem out". Sorry to be a naysayer on this one. It will have no such effect!

Why? Because it is not a problem. Imagine that it was your job (as Gauleiter) to deliver a docile population to the new rulers of the country, prepared for the Police State that was to come. What would be your problems? Most of the Council Estate dwellers have already been sorted out by the utter failure of most of the state Education system to do any sort of proper education over the past decade or two. "Grade inflation" is just one of the more obvious ways that it has been kept out of the public eye for so long. Then the Political classes have been bribed by the promise of big fat salaries and the chance of getting their hands on the levers of power in the New World Order. Of course they are promises that will prove hollow in due course, but the damage will have been done. Yokel will enjoy his "told you so" but will not be able to share it with others for fear of being denounced to whatever the Thought Police are called at that time.

The remaining big thorn in your side, Gauleiter, is the middle class; the professionals who were taught to think as part of their training. The professionals who even have to think as part of their daily jobs. They are likely to spot what you are up to and do something about it. Not what the Dear Leader in the Berlaymont Building wants, is it? What is to do now? Emmigration? Yes it helps. Get the thinkers to leave, and replace them with twice as many Submitters. Still not enough though, especially for the older thinkers that no other country in the Anglosphere will admit for permanent residence (yes Yokel is bitter, otherwise he'd be gone too!).

There is only one thing for it! The thinkers must be cowed. They must learn that thought has its boundaries! The report above is but one example. Yokel has blogged recently about a couple of other incidents in the same vein, and sadly concludes that they are not accidents. They are deliberate. Just like the war of attrition on motorists. They are an essential part of the destruction of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and for the complete integration of the Regions of Scotland, Wales, North East, North, Yorkshire & Humberside, West Midlands, East Midlands, East of England, London, South East, and South West as fully participating Regions of the EUSSR.

You will do as you are told from now on Citizen.

There may yet be signs that the mainstream media are waking up to the fact that they have been asleep on the job! That they have become so used to the lazy man's way of accepting the kindly government press release instead of making their own findings and reports. I don't much care for the Independant, ever since it decided that the numbers of readers it craved were to be found by abandoning its title and moving leftwards to keep the Grauniad company. So it was a welcome surprise to read that it doesn't like the legislative achievements of the present government.

Surely the old cynic can't have been right all along: "If it can't be taxed, make it illegal!".

Hat tip to Old Holborn for spotting that breath of fresh air.

Tell Yokel he's wrong, please! But he's been having a think. The government process might not have started with the Security Industries Authority (a Home Office quango), but Yokel's train of thought did. And then it went on to the Retail Industries blacklist noted in his previous post. Similar blacklists are alleged to have been running in the offshore oil industry and in the construction industries for many a long year.

Now there is the drive for overt government regulation of the professions. Lawyers and doctors used to be left to regulate themselves, now it has to be through government.

It seems as though the agenda is to ensure that every employable person in the country has their status recorded on a government approved database somewhere. So government controls the training and employability of everyone. These agencies will also work to integrate government and private firms, in the way that we now see references to the "police family" including security companies! Already the Borders Police are making life very difficult for those who employ non-EU nationals.

This control freakery is suffocating, but then that is probably what it is intended to do. Just like it did in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. Welcome to the EUSSR (hat tip for EUSSR due to someone, but Yokel's memory can't tell him who, sorry).

Yokel really didn't want to be stuck at a keyboard this morning, with his blood pressure rising fast fast, but he's got to let off some steam!

Reader, you might have gathered by now that Yokel thinks that the end times of the true scriptures are not far away. For Jesus said: "And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." "All these are the beginning of sorrows", verse 8. The world is doing pretty well on the wars front, nation is rising up against nation and the observant can see more to come, and there are plenty of earthquakes and famines on the go. The good news is that God knows about them, and he has told us "See that ye be not troubled". After all, John 3:16 reads: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." For those who have not accepted these things, Yokel just asks that you look around and consider if there might be some substance in them.

Assured that God knows about what is going on, and that He cares, then we can ask "What comes next?" without fear. Some time ago Yokel had a passion for reading about the end times in scripture. He didn't like what he found. Putting his own view on it, it seems that the horrors of the 1939-45 war were just a dress rehearsal and that God stayed the hand of His opponent and gave us the victory. But we have squandered it. Even so God still cares for later in Matthew 24 we read: "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened." So even in his righteous anger at our Nation's deliberate turning its back on Him (just consider how anti-Christian is our present government in Britain), He still cares.

So what gave rise to this morning's sermon from Yokel? Rumbling away in the background is the deliberate planned action by Russia to re-annexe Georgia. As another blogger has said, "If anyone out there really believed that Russia's attack was about South Ossetia or Kosovo, do get in touch with me. I have a bridge I'd like to sell you." Also in the background are the actions of the EU to form itself into a country regardless of the wishes of the people it would thereby subjugate. Note that the link in the previous sentence is to 2001, not the current furore! The EU must surely be one of the players in Daniel 7:23-25. But then the Islamic Ummah also closely fits the description in v23 of being a kingdom different from all kingdoms. So things are going wrong with our world, big time.

But it was closer to home, with the smaller things that are also going wrong that made Yokel's blood pressure really boil. Firstly there is the out of control teenage girl who called the Police because her father slapped her. She has cost him his career, because of the Political Correctness of it all. What does that tell us about the Police? Read the comments on the link! Then there is the Deputy Head Teacher whose career is at an end because of unfounded allegations.

And the Police now control what you are allowed to read? That article and the associated comments point to a contradictory state of affairs. The alleged Al-Quaeda Manual that was download from a US Dept of Justice web site was deemed to run foul of section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000. So the Police say that "The university authorities have now made clear that possession of this material is not required for the purpose of your course of study nor do they consider it legitimate for you to possess it for research purposes." But it was on the Reading List for the studies in question! So the Police now have charge of all University courses and research studies?? Looks like it! [The US DoJ originals of the manual, edited, are split into four parts, part one; part two; part three; part four. The Air University mirror, cited by the White House, hosts it here.]

And now there is the nPower advertising campaign intended to boost their "green" credentials. But just how do they intend to go about it? They set up, and it is being pushed through schools so it must be official Party Policy, the "Climate Cops". Have a look at the Teachers' Zone and the materials it contains. Who else encouraged their nations' youth to snitch on family friends and neighbours? Would this approach pass the Hitler/Stalin test? Too right it would! It is just what they did as part of the early preparations for the pogroms to come. One or two people have had something to say about it, EUReferendum is one, and (provided you can stand the swearing) Ian_QT at the Devil's Kitchen is another. In response to a challenge, Richard North explains at length what is wrong with the idea.

And Yokel hasn't even started to explode about the national employee blacklist that is being run up by some employers! There's more around on that one, but Yokel has had enough writing this post, and you dear reader have probably had enough reading it, so please go scroogle for it yourself. Yes, the Home Office is in there somewhere, calling it a partnership!

Alas, Yokel concludes that there is little that can be done on a human level to right these wrongs. The people in charge plan to profit one way or another from the situations as they are. Our leaders are immoral or evil, or worse. Instead we must pray. Pray to the one true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose Son paid the price for the sins of those who will turn to Him. He calls us all. Please answer that call and accept Him.

Not the kind of thing that Schillings Solicitors tried to do to Craig Murray, or some Texan lawyer who is trying to cover up his assett stripping of the UK charity SPCK (a Christian bookshop chain, well they used to be until he declared them bankrupt in Texas).

No, its just that words don't slip easily off the ends of the fingers. There is so much going wrong, and so little time to write about it. And a heavy heart.

Blogging will continue to be erratic.

Update: Three SPCK links and a starter or two for the punch up started by Schillings (on behalf of Alisher Usmanov) against Craig Murray.

A bit of flotsam came quietly into Yokel's inbox the other day. It said it was from Number10. It said that the Prime Minister's Office had responded to the petition. You too can read the response, it is at: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page16518 . You knew it anyway, didn't you. Not a blind bit of notice. All perfectly legal. Traitors.