Whole Truth Coalition

Hi All,

This week we will be transfering the New Look webite here and going live !

Please be patient as there are always a few minor glitches in something like this but I will have hem sorted as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience and We hope you like the new site.

Alistair Darling was alerted to the possibility of a meltdown of Icelandic banks ‘weeks’ before they collapsed, taking billions of pounds of British savers’ cash invested in them.

A transcript of a private telephone conversation on October 7 between the Chancellor and an Icelandic government minister shows that Mr Darling had been ‘very concerned’ about the country’s banks well before they failed.

In the transcript, published on the website of the Iceland Review magazine, Mr Darling accused Icelandic Trade Minister Bjorgvin Sigurdsson of misleading him ‘a few months, weeks’ earlier about the state of the Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir banks operating in the UK.

But damagingly for the Chancellor, the full record of the conversation shows that Mr Darling did not believe Mr Sigurdsson’s reassurances at the time.

‘We doubted what we were being told then and I am afraid we were right,’ he said.

Last night, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said the revelation was ‘very disturbing’ and called on the Chancellor to make a statement to the Commons tomorrow.

Mr Cable said: ‘If it’s true that the Government did know all about these problems and doubted Icelandic reassurances, this shifts the balance of responsibility. Mr Darling has to explain himself.’

On October 8, the Chancellor announced that Iceland would not compensate the 300,000 British savers who lost about £4.5billion as a result of Iceland’s banking disaster.

In response, the British Government invoked terrorism legislation to freeze Icelandic assets in the UK - a move that enraged Icelanders.

Mr Darling guaranteed the assets of private UK savers in Iceland. But the Government has said it will not guarantee about £1billion invested in Iceland by British councils.

Read more…

Banks and credit card companies are exploiting obscure legal powers to seize the homes of thousands of people who cannot pay their credit card bills.

In some cases, people owing as little as £1,000 have been served with charging orders – the legal instrument enabling a creditor to order the sale of a property.

The practice has emerged days after Yvette Cooper, chief secretary to the Treasury, called on banks to do more to allow people to keep their homes.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 97,026 charging orders were granted by courts in England and Wales last year, a tenfold increase since 2000.

They allow financial institutions to order the sale of a property to pay off unsecured debts on credit cards, personal loans, store cards and car finance. Some will have been used only to threaten the debtor, or to levy a surcharge on the mortgage to recoup the debts.

Nationwide, the building society, and Northern Rock, which was nationalised earlier this year, are among the most aggressive in using the court orders.

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John Hutton has become the first defence secretary to back a French plan for a European army, branding those who dismiss it as “pathetic”.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times, he said: “I think we’ve got to be pragmatic about those things. Where it can help, we should be part of it.”

His support goes beyond the public position of Gordon Brown, the prime minister, and will antagonise those who believe that further European cooperation will undermine Nato by excluding the United States.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has sought to develop Europe’s military structures with new headquarters and rapid reaction forces, each consisting of 1,500 troops from member countries.

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Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.

The documents – minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments – disclose plans to “speed up” the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to “deal with” public resistance to them.

And they show that the leaders want “agricultural representatives” and “industry” – presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto – to be more vocal to counteract the “vested interests” of environmentalists.

News of the secret plans is bound to create a storm of protest at a time when popular concern about GM technology is increasing, even in countries that have so far accepted it.

Public opposition has prevented any modified crops from being grown in Britain. France, one of only three countries in Europe to have grown them in any amounts, has suspended their cultivation, and resistance to them is rising rapidly in the other two, Spain and Portugal.

The embattled biotech industry has been conducting a public relations campaign based round the highly contested assertion that genetic modification is needed to feed the world. It has had some success in the Government, where ministers have been increasingly speaking out in favour of the technology, and in the European Commission, with which its lobbyists have boasted of having “excellent working relations”.

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Every police force in the UK is to be equipped with mobile fingerprint scanners - handheld devices that allow police to carry out identity checks on people in the street.

The new technology, which ultimately may be able to receive pictures of suspects, is likely to be in widespread use within 18 months. Tens of thousands of sets - as compact as BlackBerry smartphones - are expected to be distributed.

The police claim the scheme, called Project Midas, will transform the speed of criminal investigations. A similar, heavier machine has been tested during limited trials with motorway patrols.

To address fears about mass surveillance and random searches, the police insist fingerprints taken by the scanners will not be stored or added to databases.

Liberty, the civil rights group, cautioned that the law required fingerprints taken in such circumstances to be deleted after use. Gareth Crossman, Liberty’s policy director, said: “Saving time with new technology could help police performance but officers must make absolutely certain that they take fingerprints only when they suspect an individual of an offence and can’t establish his identity.”

Details of the type of equipment and the scope of its use have been revealed in a presentation by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).

The initial phase of the Mobile Identification At Scene (Midas) project, costed at £30m-£40m, will enable officers to perform rapid checks on the fingerprints of people arrested or detained. The marks will be compared against records on Ident1, the national police database which holds information on 7.5 million individuals.

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Bright teenagers are a disappearing breed, an alarming new study has revealed.

The intellectual ability of the country’s cleverest youngsters has declined radically, almost certainly due to the rise of TV and computer games and over-testing in schools.

The ‘high-level thinking’ skills of 14-year-olds are now on a par with those of 12-year-olds in 1976.

The findings contradict national results which have shown a growth in top grades in SATs at 14, GCSEs and A-levels.

But Michael Shayer, the professor of applied psychology who led the study, believes that is the result of exam standards ‘edging down’.

His team of researchers at London’s King’s College tested 800 13 and 14-year-olds and compared the results with a similar exercise in  1976.’

Read more…

What they also fail to mention is the effect on the population, especially children of Fluoride, vaccines, mobile phones, Aspatame, cell towers, Junk food etc etc.

Britain’s most expensive credit card, which carries an interest rate of 227 per cent, is being promoted as a solution for hardpressed families this Christmas.

The Easy Shop card is linked to Argos and offers one possible solution to parents who do not have the cash to buy presents for the children.

However, MPs and debt experts last night condemned the extortionate charges as ‘wicked’ and warned struggling shoppers to reject the card.

Argos chiefs revealed last week that the company’s sales are running around 9 per cent down on this time last year.

The firm apparently believes that the Easy Shop card will help its bottom line in the crucial festive trading period.

A customer borrowing £100 on the card and repaying it over 27 weeks at £5 a week would pay a total of £135, which equates to an APR  -  annual percentage rate  -  of 227 per cent.

The card is produced in association with the finance company Provident Financial.

The rate of 227 per cent is based not only on the interest that must be paid but also takes into account how the loan is repaid, the length of the loan, and the timing and amount of payments.

Retail giant Argos teamed up with Provident Financial to produce Britain’s most expensive credit card

The Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable MP described the marketing of cards and loans with such extortionate interest rates as ‘wicked’.

Dr Cable has been warning for ten years about reckless lending and spiralling personal debt, which now tops£1trillion.

He said: ‘A lot of people are finding it increasingly difficult to borrow from the mainstream high street banks.

‘Many may well feel they have to fall back on things like this. There is a real risk of a very large number of people being exploited as a result.’

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For the past 12 years, retired builder Mike Kamp has exercised his age-old right to collect firewood from the forest near his home.

But the health and safety axe has finally come down on an 800-year-old tradition which dates back to the Magna Carta.

Forestry chiefs say they have been forced to overrule the charter due to the ‘increasing constraints’ of modern legislation.

The Magna Carta of 1215 included a Forest Charter which recognised the rights of commoners to get subsistence from common land. They were granted ‘estovers’ - dead wood - for fuel, to repair their homes, fix tools or make charcoal.

Mr Kamp, 59, uses a wood-burning stove at his cottage near Betwys-y-Coed, North Wales, and enjoys walking through nearby Gwydir Forest. But now he has been told by Forestry Commission Wales that he can no longer buy a licence to forage.

Mr Kamp said: ‘They are claiming there are health and safety issues. But people have walked through the woods collecting firewood for hundreds and hundreds of years without too many safety problems.’

Soaring fuel prices have led to more and more people combing woodland and forests for firewood. But the Forestry Commission is suggesting they buy the same wood from local merchants - who will still be allowed into the forests.

Mr Kamp said: ‘That would be very carbon-intensive. The contractors would need vehicles to go into the forests to get the wood and to move it to the users. That defeats the whole object of the exercise.’

Peter Garson, head of estate management at the Forestry Commission Wales, said: ‘We understand Mr Kamp’s disappointment, but this is an area where we are subject to increasing constraints in terms of health and safety.

‘We have a duty of care to the public in our wood.’

The ban currently applies only to Wales, but is likely to be extended to Forestry Commission woods across Britain.

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British businesses are being tied up with record levels of Brussels red tape, a report warned yesterday.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance says that UK firms are struggling under the ’severe burden’ of EU regulation, which is estimated to cost £150billion a year.

The study found that there are currently 16,980 EU laws in force in this country and they are increasing at a rate of 2,000 a year.

It said that Whitehall had added to the regulatory burden by using EU directives as ‘vehicles for their own policy agendas’ and attaching numerous additional clauses and extending their scope - a practice known as ‘gold-plating’.

Ben Farrugia from the alliance said: ‘Regulations are an enormous burden to business, particularly in a time of financial hardship. The EU’s addiction to regulating and Whitehall’s compulsive gold-plating have added billions to business costs in recent years.

‘Both the legislative process which has created this regulatory tangle and Britain’s relationship with the EU needs a serious rethink.’

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England’s largest exam board has been forced to make its science GCSE easier because it was too difficult for pupils to get a good pass.

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance said it had lowered the mark needed to achieve a grade C in the exam ‘under protest’.

It had reluctantly agreed to a request from England’s new qualifications regulator, Ofqual, to bring it into line with the level set by rival exam boards.

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At present, fluoride is added to children’s milk in 42 primary schools in the city. This will continue, and the local NHS is also planning to begin talks on the possibility of adding fluoride to water.

Read more…

Bendy-buses with the slogan “There’s probably no God” could soon be running on the streets of London.

The atheist posters are the idea of the British Humanist Association (BHA) and have been supported by prominent atheist Professor Richard Dawkins.

The BHA planned only to raise £5,500, which was to be matched by Professor Dawkins, but it has now raised more than £36,000 of its own accord.

It aims to have two sets of 30 buses carrying the signs for four weeks.

The complete slogan reads: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

As the campaign has raised more than anticipated, it will also have posters on the inside of buses as well.

The BHA is also considering extending the campaign to cities including Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh.

Read more…

Essential surveillance kit for the new green police: the Energy Saving Partnership has taken out a patent on Heatseekers, thermo-imaging vehicles which, at full potential, have the capacity to identify 1,000 properties an hour, or 5,000 properties a night, that are leaking carbon. “Once the property has been scanned, a dedicated team of energy advisers will visit householders to show them the thermal image scan of their homes,” says Inspector Knock-on-the-Door.

 That’ll go down well after midnight.

The Guardian

David Blunkett said yesterday that the Government’s recent decision to reclassify cannabis was based on public opinion - rather than hard evidence.

The former Home Secretary was responsible for the widely-criticised original decision to downgrade the drug from a class B to class C drug.

Following an outcry from police and health professionals, Jacqui Smith, the current Home Secretary, has been forced to end Labour’s four-year experiment by reversing the decision.

She ordered the switch back, which was announced in May and takes effect in January, in defiance of the Government’s independent advice body the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

She said there was a ‘compelling case because 80 per cent of the cannabis seized on the streets was the stronger ’skunk’ variety - and the potency of the drug has increased dramatically, rising threefold since 1995.

Mr Blunkett told MPs: ‘There has been a debate about new forms of cannabis - skunk - and I understand why people respond in a democracy to general feeling.’

Read more…

There is a long tradition of the military suppressing news that it considers detrimental to national security by slapping a D-notice on it.

But when the D-notice committee decided that the time was ripe to publish its own official history, nobody imagined that it would fall victim to its own system.

 The history of the D-notice committee has, in effect, had a D-notice slapped on it by the D-notice committee

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The European Commission plans to help the Irish government communicate “Europe” better to citizens after June’s shock No vote on the Lisbon treaty, with a new inter-institutional agreement to pull together the PR efforts of the main EU institutions.

“It’s not about the European Commission interfering with the procedures and referenda on the Treaty, but it is investing in trying to correct the situation where so many people said they didn’t know anything about the EU, or didn’t know enough to take a position when they were asked,” communication commissioner Margot Wallstrom said on Wednesday (22 October) in Strasbourg.

Ms Wallstrom plans to sign a “memorandum of understanding” on launching a new communication “management project” in Ireland when she visits Dublin on 13 to 14 November.

The one year partnerships - already up and running in Germany, Hungary and Slovenia with eight other EU states about to sign up - see the commission provide EU literature, journalist training, school manuals and other civic education programmes.

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Scientists are a step closer to being able to wipe the mind clean of painful memories, a deveolpment that will offer hope to those with a fear of spiders or who are trying to bury traumatic experiences.

Neurobiologists believe they will soon be able to target and then chemically remove painful memories and phobias from the mind without causing any harm to the brain.

The researchers think that the new technique could help war veterans get over the horrors of conflict and cure people with debilitating phobias.

It could even eventually be applied to ease the pain of a failed relationship or a bereavement.

“While memories are great teachers and obviously crucial for survival and adaptation, selectively removing incapacitating memories, such as traumatic war memories or an unwanted fear, could help many people live better lives,” said Dr Joe Tsien, a neurobiologist at the Brain and Behaviour Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine.

Read more…

Following a landmark Commons vote, Britain will become one of a handful of countries in the world to encourage ground-breaking research by implanting human cells into an egg taken from an animal, usually a rabbit.

Pro-life MPs warned that the step could lead to the creation of half-human, half-ape “humanzees” or “minotaurs” - a claim denied by the Department of Health.

Hybrids - called “admixed embryos” by the scientific community - are banned in at least 21 countries, but scientists believe that they could be used to find cures for dozens of serious conditions, from heart disease to dementia.

MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill after being told that it could revolutionise the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, bringing to a close one of the most bitter Parliamentary wrangles of recent years

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Merck is trying to market its cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil to women who may not benefit from it after U.S. sales shrank in July and August, according to a Bloomberg article

As pointed out by Jim Edwards over at Bnet “Merck is simply adjusting its strategy to the inevitable grind of numbers: As more girls get the shot, its remaining market declines — and thus Merck must target increasingly marginally profitable populations”

Even though 75% of the most effective market for Gardasil (teenage girls from 13 to 17 years old) has not received a dose of Gardasil, Merck would rather focus on women ages 19 to 26, who have been less likely to get the shots than try to go after teenagers.
“We see tremendous opportunity,” said Bev Lybrand, Merck’s senior vice president of vaccines. “We have a number of programs under way to get after these women.”

Gardasil has difficulties that marketing must overcome. These include price, effectiveness, and possible dangerous side effects (the CDC said it has received reports of 21 deaths and almost 10,000 side effects in women following vaccination). The latter is an especially difficult hurdle if you have to target mothers of teenage girls rather than the girls themselves — it’s taboo and even illegal in some cases to market to minors under the age of 18. For example, Merck cannot do direct mail or email marketing to teenagers by collecting names and postal/email addresses. That needs parental permissions.

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The geniuses at Homeland Security who brought you hare-brained procedures at airports (which inconvenience travelers without snagging terrorists) have decreed that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. This means The Investigator — at the risk of compromising national insecurities — would be remiss not to make you aware of the hottest topic in U.S. counterintelligence circles: rogue microchips. This threat emanates from China (PRC) — and it is hugely significant.

The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to “call home” if and when activated.

The reality: It may actually be true.

All computers on the market today — be they Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Apple or especially IBM — are assembled with components manufactured inside the PRC. Each component produced by the Chinese, according to a reliable source within the intelligence community, is secretly equipped with a hidden microchip that can be activated any time by China’s military intelligence services, the PLA.

“It is there, deep inside your computer, if they decide to call it up,” the security chief of a multinational corporation told The Investigator. “It is capable of providing Chinese intelligence with everything stored on your system — on everyone’s system — from e-mail to documents. I call it Call Home Technology. It doesn’t mean to say they’re sucking data from everyone’s computer today, it means the Chinese think ahead — and they now have the potential to do it when it suits their purposes.”

Discussed theoretically in high-tech security circles as “Trojan Horse on a Chip” or “The Manchurian Chip,” Call Home Technology came to light after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a security program in December 2007 called Trust in Integrated Circuits. DARPA awarded almost $25 million in contracts to six companies and university research labs to test foreign-made microchips for hardware Trojans, back doors and kill switches — techie-speak for bugs and gremlins — with a view toward microchip verification.

Raytheon, a defense contractor, was granted almost half of these funds for hardware and software testing.

Its findings, which are classified, have apparently sent shockwaves through the counterintelligence community.

“It is the hottest topic concerning the FBI and the Pentagon,” a retired intelligence official told The Investigator. “They don’t know quite what to do about it. The Chinese have even been able to hack into the computer system that handles our Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system.”

Read more…

Russia’s richest man entertained George Osborne and David Cameron’s chief fundraiser on his yacht in Corfu, leading to discussion of a £50,000 donation to the Conservative Party.

After the furore of Lord Mandelson’s stay on the same yacht, friends of the new Business Secretary have let it be known that he was not the only senior politician to enjoy the hospitality of Oleg Deripaska this summer.

In a letter to The Times, Nathaniel Rothschild, a mutual friend of Lord Mandelson and Mr Osborne, said that the Shadow Chancellor and Andrew Feldman, chief executive of the Tory party, spent time on the Queen K.

The allegations made by Mr Rothschild sparked a furious exchange of claim and counterclaim.

Mr Rothschild said that Mr Osborne and Mr Feldman discussed a donation from Mr Deripaska for Tory coffers. He also said that Mr Feldman suggested that Mr Deripaska might channel the money through one of his British companies.

The claim was vehemently denied by the Tories, who said it was Mr Deripaska who, at a later date, offered money. The Conservatives say they did not take up his offer. Donations by overseas residents are illegal, as is using a British company as a proxy to disguise an impermissible donation, under legislation passed in 2000.

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A vaccination given to babies has been linked to asthma.

Experts believe the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough jabs might provoke an immune system response which predisposes the body to the lung condition.But delaying the vaccines by two months from the recommended age dramatically reduces the risk, doctors found.They set out to test a theory that the timing of the triple jab affects the development of childhood asthma. 

For the study, 11,531 children received four doses of the combined DTP jab. Babies are supposed to have their first dose by the age of two months. It was found the likelihood of developing asthma by the age of seven was halved if this initial dose was delayed by two months.
Of nearly 5,000 babies studied who had the jab at the scheduled age, 13.8 per cent developed asthma. This compared with a rate of 5.9 per cent in babies who were four months or older at first DTP immunisation.

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The chief prosecutor has warned the surveillance society is threatening to ‘break the back of freedom’.

Sir Ken Macdonald, Director of Public Prosecutions, said the state was poised to take powers to keep information on everyone and ‘we might end up living with something we can’t bear.’

His message  -  delivered ten days before he steps down as head of the Crown Prosecution Service  -  was a parting shot at ministers who aim to make every phone call, email, test message and internet visit available to police and security services.

Sir Ken said: ‘We need to take very great care not to fall into a way of life in which freedom’s back is broken by the relentless pressure of a security state.’

Read more…

Now this is what should be happening here in the UK . Look at the mass of people rising up to be the ‘Heroes’

1. Generators (Good ones cost dearly. Gas storage, risky. Noisy…target of thieves; maintenance etc.)
2. Water Filters/Purifiers
3. Portable Toilets
4. Seasoned Firewood. Wood takes about 6 - 12 months to become dried, for home uses.
5. Lamp Oil, Wicks, Lamps (First Choice: Buy CLEAR oil. If scarce, stockpile ANY!)
6. Coleman Fuel. Impossible to stockpile too much.
7. Guns, Ammunition, Pepper Spray, Knives, Clubs, Bats & Slingshots.
8. Hand-can openers, & hand egg beaters, whisks.
9. Honey/Syrups/white, brown sugar
10. Rice - Beans - Wheat

See the full list here…