Smears and False Flags (updated)


9:44 pm - July 18th 2008

by Unity    


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My hasn’t Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) been busy today.

Not only has he been desperately spinning the Charity Commission’s inquiry report into his allegations of impropriety at the Smith Institute for all he’s worth, in the vain hope that no one will notice that the whole thing has turned out to be the expected busted flush but he’s also found time to promote the website of a brand new Conservative Future front organisation.

The ‘Centre for Open Politics’ purports to ‘inspired’ by the work of the non-partisan Washington DC-based Sunlight Foundation, which works to promote openness and transparency in the American political system with a particular emphasis on mapping the influence of corporate funders and lobbyists in the US Congress.

In reality, the two founding members of the ‘Centre for Open Politics’ are Harry Cole, formerly the Vice-Chairman/Treasurer of Edinburgh University Conservative Future, and Amanda O’Brien who, earlier this year, was listed on campaign blog of Michael Rock, the current national Chairman of Conservative Future, as the Deputy Chairman of Essex Conservative Future.

Moreover, as an article posted at Conservative Home in July 2007 reveals, Cole spent much of last summer working out of Conservative Central Office with the previous Chairman of Conservative Future, Mark Clark, and Justine Greening MP, on the preparations for Conservative Future’s national Fresher’s Week recruitment drive and was even given his own e-mail address on the official conservatives.com domain.

Thinking the plot even further, registration information supplied for ‘Centre’s’ domain name indicates that it operates out of the Albion Buildings in Camden, the same location as EOS Online Media Ltd, owners of Messagespace.

And to compound the general impression that this supposed ‘Centre for Open Politics’ is anything but open or transparent, its website makes the claim that it is a non-profit company limited by guarantee, which it isn’t. There is currently no record of this ‘organisation’ on the Companies House register and, in registering the site’s domain as a UK Limited Company, it supplied its registrar, 123-reg.co.uk, with the false, but rather Shappsian, company number, 1234567. See update at end of post… but it remains to be seen whether they really have 1234567 as a company number.

The Centre for Dopey Conservative Future Students sole output, other than three scraped reports of press coverage of the Charity Commission’s inquiry report consists of a press release containing a list of questions all of which the Charity Commission address in their inquiry and announcement that Harry Cole, who describes himself somewhat pathetically as a ‘rappoteur’, has filed a complaint with the Electoral Commission alleging the Charity Commission’s report shows that Gordon Brown personally recieved an undeclared donation in kind from the Smith Institute in the form of the services of US pollster, Bob Shrum.

In view of this last announcement I shall be contacting the Electoral Commission, myself, to advise them of Cole’s undisclosed background in the confidence and advising them that there is ample evidence to suggest that Cole has submitted a wholly vexatious complaint. I shall also be contacting Nominet and his domain registrar, 123-reg, to advise them that the ‘Centre for Open Politics’ has submitted false information on registering the domain and should not, therefore, be listed as a UK Limited Company.

This leaves only one remaining question – is this really what Guido Fawkes, the self-styled, self-promoting scourge of the political classes has come to? Backing a false flag operation run by a pair of congenitally stupid members of Conservative Future in a desperate effort to perpetuate a third-rate smear campaign that has already, in its first incarnation, proved to be no more than a busted flush.

Pathetic doesn’t quite cover it, does it.

UPDATE

This just in from Guido by email…

Your piece on LibCon is materially and substantively wrong.

As you will realise on Monday when Companies house update their website..

Calm down.

Guido Fawkes Esq.

So the two CF stooges have got a company number after all and maybe, just maybe, they’ve found a registered office somewhere other than at the same address as Messagespace, none of which alters the fact that its a blatant false flag operation and anything but open, transparent or non-partisan.

UPDATE

A Check on the Companies House register of proposed companies names shows that registration documents were filed for the ‘Centre for Open Politics’ yesterday, but that they have yet to be allocated a company number – so they did supply a false company number on their domain registration.

UPDATE 20/7/08

Having revealed that the registered office address of the ‘Centre for Open Politics’ is the same as that of EOS Online Media Ltd, COPS has responded by replacing its opening statement with this .gif image, which does disclose their address.

Of course, by using an image for this information it means that it cannot be read and indexed by search engines, and there’s still no mention on the site of its founder’s connections to Conservative Future.

Someone need to urgently explain Healey’s law of holes to the Center for Dopey Conservative Students- when in one, stop digging!

ANOTHER UPDATE

My, my – its seems there’s more undisclosed information about Harry Cole that needs to be brought into the light in the interests of openness and transparency.

Further research shows that, on top of everythng else, Cole is also the Vice-President for Recruitment, Promotion and Expansion of Conservative Future Scotland and one of two elections officers for Conservative Future Sudent Life.

AND ANOTHER UPDATE

Guess who’s on Facebook?

Yes, its young Harry Cole – and my does he an interesting list of friends on Facebook. There’s Guido, naturally, and Iain Dale, Shane Greer, Donal Blaney, Tim Mongomerie and Sam Coates… you can figure out the rest.

And while we’re on the subject of young Harry, why not visit his 2008 EUSA Presidency campaign website and its accompanying YouTube channel and his Harry for President Facebook site.

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About the author
'Unity' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He also blogs at Ministry of Truth.
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Reader comments


Oh dear, oh dear. Is this what the leading lights on the right have come to?

2. Tim Ireland

I promised myself a quiet weekend this weekend, but I was spammed by these idiots at 2:15am this morning. Did anyone else get this Pollyanna toss?

” Hey Guys, lighten up! Come and join me and all my top fun tory mates at the Sunshine Center!!!!?! ”

If they have indeed managed to register as a company, they’ve just broken the law, yes?
http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_basics.aspx

3. Tim Ireland

Ten minutes after I posted this comment, the Centre for Dopey Conservative Future Students got in touch to apologise and claim that it was the work of a mysterious ‘someone’ who used their spammy network tool to spam me.

So it can’t possibly be their fault, now can it?

(leaves knives out for children to play with)

Amusingly, if I want to reply to their apology, I have to sign up first, which itself is a wee bit spammy.

Oh well. At least the launch was conducted in a professional manner.

(rolls eyes)

I’l also like to point out that if they truly believe in “advocating greater political transparency and openess [sic]” they should at least (a) learn how to spell it, and (b) be open and transparent enough to acknowledge the role played by Daddy Staines, who himself is a paragon of transparency and openness.

(rolls eyes)
(sprains extraocular muscles)

4. jailhouselawyer

It’s like a breath of fresh air that the Centre for Conservative Future Students has apologised for being in the wrong. Will the Left learn from this lesson? I doubt it…

5. Tim Ireland

Thanks for that, and thanks for giving your input under your own name this time, John.

(If you were behind a trolling of these twits you would tell us, yes?)

6. Tory Dipper

These twits are so open and transparent they’ve already banned me 🙂

7. Tim Ireland

I suspect that you were banned, Tory Dipper, for using their Noddy networking system to spam several bloggers, including me. I suspect you were banned with great haste because they were a wee bit embarrased about how easy it is to abuse their Noddy networking system and use it to spam people in the way you did. So please stop pretending that you were banned for saying or revealing anything of substance, because you weren’t.

If you’ve been around longer than your Blogger.com profile suggests (and I suspect you have), then you should know that using sock-puppets on right-wing tosspots from the neighbourhood of Dale and Staines allows them to play the “Wahhh! But they *all* do it, too!” game.

You’re not helping.

8. Charlieman

Unity, please be careful about making assumptions about company addresses. One man and his dog operations typically use accommodation addresses (12 Acacia Avenue doesn’t sound very professional on the press release), and the rule appears to apply in this case.

In the 1980s, when Guido ran publicity fronts for Nicaraguan and Angolan counter terrorist organisations (more commonly known as murderers), he used a favourite accommodation address. The same address was shared by an Oswald Mosley appreciation society and by a myriad of Trots. You couldn’t make assumptions about that coincidence.

9. Tory Dipper

I confess to being more than five months old, my blogger profile clearly needs much improvement.

Oh dear! It looks like Timmy jumped in at the deep end on this one. I defy anyone else to read my blog and really believe I am a Tory (Tim did!).

This is all very amusing, and typical of Guido. It looks like he really hasn’t grown up from the days of the Federation of Conservative Students and dodgy alliances eh?

11. Tim Ireland

Tory Dipper, I did not read your blog and believe you were a Tory, so please cease that clumsy deflection.

I did not notice or recognise your name at all in the spam you put out via the Centre for Dopey Conservative Future Students’ Noddy network, and the reason why is that (I now discover) that so far you have only turned up as the occasional troll.

Perhaps if you had issued it under your main Identity (i.e. the one you used before you started this one 5 months ago) then I might have recognised you. And perhap now you might undersatnd why identity is an issue.

Now, would you care to disclose your main identity? Or would you rather keep playing childish games that are exceedingly helpful to manipulative, lying twits like Staines?

I got the same spam email from ‘Tory Dipper’ as Tim did. I ran his IP address through my own blog’s database and he turned up under his main identity.

I know who he is.

13. Tim Ireland

Yes, but what we don’t know is if they’ll have the courage to own up to it here and now.

C’mon ‘Tory Dipper’. If what you did was so clever, sensible and/or harmless, why not put your main identity where your mouth is?

14. Tory Dipper

May I ask a question first? WTF is a “main identity”?

Ok folks, can we please take this off-topic discussion somewhere else? I’d like to keep it to what Guido and his mates are up to.

thanks

16. Tory Dipper

Sorry, no hijacking intended, I’m off to other climes.

17. Tim Ireland

OK, Sunny. Back to the topic.

So, are we saying – in Staines’ defence – that MessageSpace is a “one man and his dog operation”?

If so, then – as we were eventually informed by the totally open and transparent peeps at MessageSpace when they found themselves in a tight spot one day and finally decdied to say something other than “no comment” – Paul Staines “is neither a shareholder, director or employee of MessageSpace and never has been” then ‘Guido’ cannot be the ‘one man’ and must therefore be the dog.

Attack dog one day, guard dog the next, willing bitch when required… which brings us back to square one, I’m afraid.

“Oh, look! Here’s a report I found from some people I have no connection to who are quite rightly campaigning for more transparency.”

18. jailhouselawyer

Dear Tim,

It was no secret before, nobody thought to ask. I don’t troll. But, now and again I will play mind games. I still smile when I think of the amount of times some on Guido’s blog thought I was you. Had I posted under my own name, Guido would not have allowed my comments through. Remember how many attacked me not under their own names. I learned about this from you, although you were pointing out how the Right did it, I thought I could do this. Three years ago I was computer illiterate. Two years ago I got a computer. In between then and now, I went on CIF. It was an education. Got involved in some flame wars, and was the last man standing along side billstickers. Sunny called me a racist. It wasn’t true. In the end he apologised. I’m still on the banned list at Iain Dale’s Diary, which is a shame because it means Total Politics refuses to acknowledge Total Bollocks written by axetogrind. As Jailhouselawyer is a co-author of the non-aligned blog, it does not take a rocket scientist to work out who is behind it. Communication is a fine thing. Recently, in New Zealand the police decided to offer the lad a job who has Aspergers Syndrome and was involved in computer hacking fraud big time. So, why am I on the dole? I’m in the job market. Why has the foremost expert on prison law and criminal justice not got a job? Are people frightened of me? Not because of violence but because of what I know? I would go to the source if I wanted to know something.

Tonight I caught Diana Johnson MP trying to avoid me in the street. She didn’t when she wanted my first vote in 25 years prior to the last election. Ok, she had her dog with her and my dog Rocky did let her’s know he was Top Dog. He’s not really aggressive, nor dangerous, he does some chest beating. I see through him, I know he’s scared at times. Tell me about it. I was 20 and looked 14 with a mental age about the same, in a man’s world, “Monster Mansion”, HMP Wakefield. I was like a shadow on the wall. I look up and and the vultures are waiting to swoop down on this “chicken”. I look around and see the biggest guy around, I decide to form an alliance with him. Henry a gypsy, Romany, he said. When Dale claims to know where the term chav comes from, he was wrong, even the Telegraph knows it comes from Romany for boy. Nowt wrong with a chav. The term has been bastardised. Can’t blame the youth of today for it. Henry was convicted of rape, a senior police officer’s daughter. He said she consented and it was only when it was discovered who she had had sex with that it became rape. I don’t know the facts, I didn’t judge him, I felt I needed a friend to help me get through in a maximum security prison. Henry was without doubt the strongest physically pound for pound on the Wing, and in the prison, at weightlifting, until I took it up and at first he laughed at me. But, I soon became the strongest pound for pound at Bantam weight 9 stone, 127 lbs. Sorry Europe, I don’t understand metric. It doesn’t compute. To cut a long story short, Henry was used by the screws to sort out a problem inmate. Then at the end of the Association period, we walked out of his cell and I pointed out to him the group of six inmates at the other side of the Landing. I said don’t run, confront them or they will go after you like a pack of wolves. We walked over and it went off straight away. I had read about Alexander the Great, we stood back to back, a young Screw tried to blow his whistle but couldn’t get a peep out because he was so shit scared. I indicated to Henry that we ought to throw the Screw over the landing onto the safety netting for his safety. His bum hitting the wire sent off a little peep on his whistle. It was heard by Officer Daley, my Personal Officer, he came running to hit the alarm bell. I noticed his face was as white as a Senior Officer’s shirt. Then I got distracted from what was happening about me because I was in the middle of a fight. Henry got hit on the head by a stainless steel food tray. Split his scalp open like a knife cutting into a green outside red inside melon. Blood everywhere, down his face, T-Shirt. It looked worse than it was. Nevertheless, Henry panicked when another three inmates jumped in on the other side, and broke ranks and fled, Banging himself up in a Pad. He said afterwards, when he was licking his wounds, it was only then that he realised he had deserted me in the face of nine enemies. I thought I had the situation contained, when I feel a pair of arms come from behind pinning mine down. I flipped him over my back and shoulders, and recognise Mr Daley on his way down.” Oh sorry, Mr Daley”, I said, stooping to pick him up, “You caught me unawares. Are you ok?”. Can’t say I thought much of his thinking going for me when nine others were going for me at the same time. Perhaps, he had his reason(s). Soon after, the Heavy Mob arrived. By then it was all over. I was safe. I had survived. Henry was in the hospital for treatment and observation. I asked Mr Daley if I could bang up in Henry’s Pad instead of my own, he said it was ok. There was a 25 inch TV on a shelf above the door, it was plugged into a spare light socket, and there was a V-Shaped portable-TV ariel on the window ledge. One day, a woman in a block of flats across the road saw the TV ariel through her binoculars and phoned the prison to report it. She was asked why she was looking at the prison through binoculars as it was against the Official Secrets Act. I was not then a Jailhouselawyer so I didn’t know. I did opine, when I entered the gates of Armley Prison in Leeds in 1971, that the law stopped outside of the prison gates. Twenty years later, Lord Justice Woolf, following the Strangeways Prison riot on April Fools Day 1990, in his Report stated that justice stops outside the prison gates. I was B Wing’s Three’s Landing Cleaner, it was written in marker pen on a huge white board at the Centre Office. Next to Hirst: 836208. Mr Daley shouted me one day, I looked over the Three’s Landing, He said go and check Henry’s window ledge to see if there is a portable-TV ariel on it. There was, I moved it to mine, then went back to check the window ledge and went to report that there wasn’t the last time I looked. It was a honest response. Was he issuing a warning to get rid of it from view? They didn’t want Outsiders knowing what went on inside our prisons.

Tonight, I accosted Diane Johnson MP, who I haven’t seen since the last General Election. Both dogs got agitated a bit, I was short of breath after running after her and Rocky wanting to go and remind her dog who’s Top Dog around here. And Kathleen who has ME, had just said I was bad tempered, as in short tempered, with Rocky’s whining whilst we were talking in Judge Humphrey’s and his partner’s kitchen in their house. He’s a dog. Dogs like food. He’s a Golden Labrador X with some kind of a hound the Rescue Centre informed me. Therefore, he sniffs for food and other scents more than most breed of dog. IMHO. Just an observation.

I said to Diana Johnson, as she went behind her iron railings and gate, I was considering chaining myself to the railings, as a protest about the lack of government response to the ECtHR judgment in the Prisoners Votes Case. I said, Kathleen has ME, and it was not fair that I have to go begging there for money. The government states that I need £110 per fortnight to survive, NatWest Bank and Yorkshire Water have decided 50% of that will be taken for overdrawn on nothing in my account, when a DD goes in and the money is not there to cover, and the other is for back debt. I have back pain. Not severe, just tingly. It’s the Chill Out Zone, John Lee Hooker playing. I said, why is it when I am so knowledgeable on crime and prison and law and the rest of it, I am unemployed.

In the kitchen, Kathleen got an ash tray out for us to have a smoke. Oh dear, I thought, and said, this is what I was trying to tell you, I took the tobacco pouch out of my shirt pocket and displayed the dog ends I had been smoking from my saved emergency rations. Old habits die hard.

When I came out after the five years, I went to Bath. Where Clarence Mitchell lives. It was 1974. That’s three years and seven months, it would have been three and four but for the escape from Lewes Prison in May 1973. I had the money that Henry and I had earned running a smuggling racket with Ronnie Rackett a civilian workman in the Building Yard. One time we got an order for a 3.10 shotgun and a .38 revolver, Security (Burglars) turned the jail over when word got out. It was intended to do a hit, gangster on gangster, I said to Henry we should rethink the situation, it would have been bad PR for the Prison Service, therefore we would have got a hard time as a result. The guns went out the same way they had come in, in a compressor towed by a dumper truck. They even had the Army in with metal detectors scanning the football field gardens and veg patch.

Was there a man with night-vision binoculars watching some activity in Praia da Luz on the evening of May 3 2007?

Martin, Kathleen and Humphrey’s son is at Oxford. He works on and off for Dianne Johnson MP, who I mentioned I was talking to earlier tonight. I said, we really have to look at the issues of penal reform giving that neither the government nor penal reform groups do anywhere near enough. Lets hope Shami Chakrabati gets Liberty involved. I said, I felt that the government was stalling until the Tories get in at the next election… Thatcher is becoming a faded memory. My reasoning was that the government would rather, if they felt they were going to lose, abdicate responsibility to the Tories. I did not support the government move to go to war with Iraq. Still, I voted for Labour. My elected MP could be asking questions in the House, why the State is letting me down badly. Why soon it will be eat or heat in the fuel poverty of Winter.

From Hull to eternity…

19. Tim Ireland

John, we were asked politely by our host to take this matter elsewhere.

Has Paul Staines got nothing better to do than harass the employees of the Smith Institute because that’s what his behaviour looks like to those of us who aren’t party political.

21. Cheesy Monkey

@19

What? Is any of that relevant? Are you relevant? No? Take it outside or calm down, perhaps by knocking out a couple to a mental image of Ann Widdecombe wearing nothing but a puce thong, snail-trailing her way on top of a reinforced mirror…

Back on topic:

Perhaps here or on another blog there should be a permanent page with a list of Tory scams and which bullshit bloggers are involved with each one. Just a suggestion.

22. Andy Strang

Post 19!! I think a certain lawyer needs to have a lie down..
As for Harry, you can’t fault the lad – his sister is gorgeous!

23. Clive Summerfield

Re 24:

Harry’s sister may be gorgeous, but his (or whoever registered the Centre for Open Politics domain) numeracy skills are appalling. Since when has 06651412 been the same as 1234567?

And look at that incorporation date, typical young lad, all excitable and suffering from premature registration…

Name & Registered Office:
CENTRE FOR OPEN POLITICS
ALBION BUILDINGS 1 BACK HILL
LONDON
UNITED KINGDOM
EC1R 5EN
Company No. 06651412

Status: Active
Date of Incorporation: 21/07/2008

Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Company Type: PRI/LBG/NSC/S.30 (Private, limited by guarantee, no share capital, section 30 of the Companies Act)
Nature of Business (SIC(03)):
None Supplied
Accounting Reference Date: 31/07
Last Accounts Made Up To: (NO ACCOUNTS FILED)
Next Accounts Due: 21/04/2010
Last Return Made Up To:
Next Return Due: 18/08/2009

24. Captain CumQuick

She failed her degree… Enough said


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