Follow the money: The London Marathon and Islamists

By Paul Wiffen:

"Anyone who has been following Channel 4’s wonderful series of Dispatches will be starting to piece together an ingenious conspiracy which is using London’s most famous sporting event to fund radical Islamists who have managed to take over Tower Hamlets Council (with a little help from their friends George Galloway and Jim Fitzpatrick, MPs both standing in Poplar and Limehouse)

The first piece of the puzzle was supplied by their program on March 1st, where Andrew Gilligan revealed Britain’s Islamic Republic with Fitpatrick’s help (and many moderate Muslims and other Asians who are alarmed at what is going on).

As if this weren’t frightening enough, a few weeks later (in which they showed the Politicians for Sale sting which made all the papers), Ben Laurance investigated the way that the money which floods into the London Marathon through sponsorship and charity fundraising is divided up.

The program traces much of the money raised through the London Marathon Golden Bond Charity places as ending up with Tower Hamlets council. If this were a fixed fee for provided some of the course and facilities this would be one thing, but it is being siphoned into a separate limited company as a percentage of the money raised through Golden Bond charity places

Putting these two together, it is clear that much of the money raised through the Golden Bond Charity places in the London Marathon is funding the radical Islamists in Tower Hamlets council. Why is nobody talking about this?

The crowning glory of the story was revealed this Monday in the Evening Standard, which carried this excellent piece on the situation there which reveals how both Labour MP Jim Fitpatrick and George Galloway's Respect both connived in the takeover of the council by radical Islamists in return for support in their own political campaigns but fell out over the seating arrangements at a wedding which Fitzpatrick was invited to by his erstwhile Muslim allies.

They are both now standing against each other in Poplar and Limehouse in an attempt to take control of the constituency which contains Canary Wharf and much of the City of London business.

Fortunately, UKIP has found a brave soul to stand up against this in the shape of City Finance Director Wayne Lochner who is involved in several businesses in and around the Canary Wharf area and lives there as well. One is the group which manages the sponsorship deals of some of the world’s biggest sporting stars, including footballer Ronaldo, cricketer Kevin Peterson, F1 drivers Mark Webber and Kimi Raikonnen, both Nadal and Andy Murray in tennis and many other name players in all these fields. Clearly Wayne is used to getting the maximum advantage from both sides when sportsmen compete and is set to do the same when Galloway and Fitzpatrick go at each other in the coming election."

Wrong on so many levels ...

It's difficult to know where to start with this article in The Evening Standard...

A Town Hall is poised to ban open-plan design in new housing developments because it is unpopular with Asian families.

A six-month investigation by Tower Hamlets found affordable units in the borough — aimed at key workers and people on low incomes — were vacant. But there are more than 22,000 people on its housing waiting lists.

The council believes this is because many families, particularly those of Asian origin, are not interested in homes with a combined kitchen and living space. A report on the problem says: “Separate provision would be much more suited because the [Asian] lifestyle requires separate seating space for male and female visitors and also the type of food cooked, heavy in oil and spices, which can have strong odours.”

Despite the borough's large Asian community — almost 37 per cent of the population, according to the latest census — only 12 per cent of the open-plan units were sold to Asian buyers. Almost 70 per cent of those sold recently have gone to white people.

Tower Hamlets is now set to alter its planning guidance to specify the need for separate rooms in all new developments. The Greater London Authority has recommended separate living and kitchen areas in large family units...

Developers often prefer open-plan designs because they are cheaper to build. But if they fail to find the extra space in family-sized affordable homes in Tower Hamlets, they are unlikely to win planning permission.

Waiseul Islam, chairman of the council's group on affordable home ownership, said: “Overcrowding and the demand for social housing have continued to rise locally, and shared-ownership schemes designed to assist people into home ownership haven't been as successful as anticipated.”

... so I don't think I'll even start, because it would take me all afternoon.

Said is said (2)

The much maligned Nigel Hastilow (who has an unashamedly fine taste in music) wrote the following:

"When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most say immigration. Many insist: 'Enoch [who warned that that uncontrolled immigration would change our country irrevocably] Powell was right'. He was right. It has changed dramatically."

Now, it may be that Hastilow is lying in that nobody has ever said to him that 'Enoch* was right' (which seems unlikely**), but apart from that, this all seems fair enough to me.

I can't help thinking, if the Conservative and Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s had been fast forwarded to Bradford and Tower Hamlets in the 21st century and back again, maybe they would have been a bit more cautious.

* My problem with Enoch Powell is that he was Health Minister in the early 1960s, and was responsible for recruiting nurses from the West Indies, which may have seemed like a good idea at the time ...

** I have heard plenty of people say this sort of thing. Fact.

More Olympics Fun

Here's another story which puts the extra £1,000 (?) which Tube drivers wangled themselves for turning up to work during the Olympics into stark perspective:

Tenants are being driven out of their homes during the Olympics so their landlords can cash in on soaring rents. Even long-term residents have been told they will be evicted because of the shortage of accommodation expected in London in July and August.

One east London private tenant has allegedly been told to move out for a month during the Games – or sign a new contract permanently increasing the rent by £500 a month. Antonia Bance. from Housing charity Shelter, told Metro the Olympics were creating a ‘perfect storm’, exacerbating the shortage of homes in east London.

She said: ‘It’s a strong possibility that a large number of east London tenants may face eviction, rent hikes and losing their homes as a result of the Olympics.’

Property experts believe the temptation to cash in on the Games boom will be too strong for some landlords. Most could get tenants out legally by giving them notice in April or May. Monthly rent on a two-bedroom flat in Tower Hamlets or Hackney would normally be about £1,400. However, properties are being advertised for the Games at up to £7,500 a week.

Unlikely Allies

From the Evening Standard:

Tower Hamlets council is threatening to take the Government to court if it refuses to ban a march by far-Right group the English Defence League. Leaders are warning of violence if the event goes ahead on September 3 and will seek a judicial review if Home Secretary Theresa May does not ban it..."

As we know, EDL marchers tend to be very well behaved on the whole, the violence comes from the Islamists and deluded lefties who attack them.

From the BBC:

Protesters have disrupted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra's BBC Proms concert at London's Royal Albert Hall... The Palestine Solidarity Campaign had earlier called on people to boycott the concert and urged the BBC to cancel it. In a statement published on its website ahead of the Proms, the pro-Palestinian group claimed the IPO showed "complicity in whitewashing Israel's persistent violations of international law and human rights".

So it's the same lot attacking an Israeli orchestra as it is attacking the English Defence League.

Here's a thought: if the EDL are ever allowed to hold a rally, wouldn't it be fun if they invited along an Israeli orchestra to perform at the end, just to show a bit of solidarity? We can get the people from Rye Playland to do the security.

"Wealthy areas head alcohol table" *

"Hazardous drinking - consuming between 22 and 50 units per week** - was highest in the Surrey area of Runnymede and lowest in the London borough of Newham", according to this report.

What a f***ing surprise. According to the 2001 Census...

1) "Newham has the second highest proportion of Asian population in England and Wales, with the second largest proportion of Bangladeshis in England and Wales (Tower Hamlets leads in both these statistics)".

They're not 'Asians' FFS. They are Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Who are Muslims. Who tend not to drink alcohol.

2) "The proportion of the population under the age of 19 has increased by 23 per cent in this period, with a decrease of 11 percent in those aged 55 and over. Newham has a very young age structure, with the highest proportion of children under the age of one in the country ...".

Again, I think you'll find that very young children don't drink much alcohol.

* The headline itself is nonsense of course. There is a separate category for 50+ units called "harmful drinking", the areas most affected are the usual suspects: Manchester, Liverpool, Salford etc.

** Half a pint of beer or a teeny tiny glass of wine = 1 unit. So 22 units = one-and-a-half pints a day or two normal sized glasses of wine a day. And 50 units = three-and-a-half pints a day or just over a bottle of wine a day. So just enough to get a buzz on in the evening but hardly excessive.

Community generated land values (part the manieth)

From yesterday's Evening Standard:

The Nationwide also found that Londoners are willing to pay nine per cent more for homes within 500 metres of a Tube or railway station, compared with seven per cent in 2010. It means that people are prepared to pay £27,000 more than they would for a similar property a mile away.

Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said: "We examined how the proximity to a Tube or railway station impacted on property prices in Greater London after taking account of other characteristics, such as type, size and local neighbourhood. Interestingly, only six per cent of properties in London are more than a mile away from a station. The vast majority of these are in outer suburban areas, where stations tend to be more spread out serving larger catchments."

The best-served boroughs are Westminster*, Camden and Tower Hamlets, where more than three in four homes are within 500 metres of a station. These boroughs are also some of the most expensive in the capital. Havering and Bexley are the least well-connected boroughs, with fewer than 20 per cent of properties within 500 metres of a station. The cheapest homes are those where the nearest station is on the outer reaches of the Metropolitan line.

Now, this is a bit chicken-and-egg, do people move to be near a train station, or do they build the train stations where more people are? It's both, of course. The train lines have to meet in the middle of town, so that is where most stations will be; it is also the most densely populated (whether by people or by businesses), it would be the most densely populated anyway, but having lots of train lines makes it more so.

But ultimately, it is population density which drives land values. Despite what NIMBYs pretend, most human beings are in fact very sociable beings and like being near other people, or at least to have easy access to what other people have to offer, it makes exchange of goods and services easier.

If you bear this in mind, solving Alice's problem is quite simple, and her four "great truths" turn out to be three "great misconceptions" and one truth.

Alice rounds off by saying: "The harsh truth about UK public finances is that the people who benefit from it also have to pay for it."

On a moral level, correct. Why should a high earner pay more for the same "services" than a low earner? The answer is "he shouldn't", but that is the wrong question because people seem to suffer from the grand delusion that earned income (or private wealth) is a suitable subject matter for taxation.

The real question is: "Which are the most important services which 'the state' (i.e. the people acting in co-operation, with a government to act as referee and final arbiter) provides?" and the answer is: simply existing in a stable form and thereby generating rental values (compare rental values in Dubai with those in Somalia). If we re-think her question in the context of Land Value Tax, it's quite clear that the owners/occupiers of those plots which benefit most from the existence of "the state" are automatically also paying most. Those rents are the natural source of national revenue, in the same way as selling cars is Mercedes' natural source of revenue. it would be insane for Mercedes to give away cars for free and pay its workers by levying an income tax on everybody else in Baden-Württemberg.

There is no real reason why the government (in the narrow sense) should be providing "services" above and beyond the core function of merely exercising its rôle as democratically appointed referee and final arbiter. And the government certainly shouldn't be demanding payment for those extra "services", neither from the recipients and nor from other people who happen to earn a lot of money or have a lot of private wealth.

Think about it: shareholders don't pay cash for their dividends (which would be a nonsense), they just get them in exchange for having financed/helped create the business, in the same way as citizens who abide by the rules all play their part in generating land rental values and so all get a Citizen's Dividend or free healthcare or whatever.

* Cluebat: which three or four people own most of the land in these areas?