"It’s Easier to Blame Bob Diamond than Reform UK Banking"- Simon Dixon

http://www.positivemoney.org/2012/07/bob-diamond-its-easier-to-blame-him-than-reform-banking-but/

July 4 2012

     It seems like there is a new banking scandal everyday now. Every time I think we have heard it all, a new scandal pops up. I think we are all getting used to billions in financial fraud now. Libor scandal this month, rogue trader last month, and the next banking bailout coming in the next few months, when the bankers get themselves in trouble again. But one thing that still amazes me is how we think that Bob Diamond is the one behind all this madness, Fred Goodwin last time or whoever the next CEO is when we unearth similar financial fraud in Lloyds and HSBC next.
  As crazy as it sounds, I found myself feeling a little sorry for Bob Diamond this morning. Now normally I would be the last person offering any sorrow to the CEO of a bank, but if the truth be told, Diamond just happened to be sitting on the seat at a time when whoever was sitting on the seat would have had the same fate. Our banking system is designed in a way where fraud is inevitable. Remember, politician wants to get more people borrowing money to push up property prices and the economy just as much as Bob Diamond does.

So when George Osborne calls for the job of Bob Diamond, he should take a look in the mirror and wonder why they keep getting more of the same.

   All policies that have come since the wake of the banking crisis have all been about getting back to business as usual. Business as usual for a bank is to find as many ways as possible of getting as many people as possible into debt. That might be through credit cards or mortgages, but the government wants it too. The success of the company is dependent upon it, the shareholders dividends are dependent upon it, the bankers bonuses are dependent upon it and the CEO’s job is dependent upon it. So it is time for politicians, bankers and us to make up our mind. Do we want more debt, more mortgages and more credit cards which will involve more financial fraud to achieve, or do we want real change in banking?

Here is a recent interview I did with Max Keiserlooking at some deeper issues…

   If we want to put an end to the scandals, we need banking reform, we need a complete cultural shift within banking and we need banks that lend to job creating businesses. If we want business as usual then keep blaming the CEO’s and call for Bob Diamond’s job, but have it be known that nothing will change and Bob Diamond is only doing what all the other banks are doing in order to prop up a banking system that needs big change. The change will never come when we focus on the CEO’s and their jobs. It is easy to get angry about their bonuses and their fraud, but the change has to come from government enforcing structural changes in banking and a cultural shift in what the bank is for.

Art Establishment helped Paedophile Painter Graham Ovenden get away with Child Abuse for 20 years- Daily Mail

  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304791/How-art-establishment-helped-paedophile-painter-Graham-Ovenden-away-20-years.html?ICO=most_read_module

• Guilty of six counts of indecency with a child and one of indecent assault
• Ovenden sexually abused under-aged sitters in his paintings
• The abused girls were all aged between six and 14
• The Tate showed Ovenden's pictures of naked girls in its galleries

     Nearly 20 years have passed since police from the Child Protection squad banged on the door of the celebrated artist and photographer Graham Ovenden, searched his Cornish home and packaged up hundreds of images of naked children they considered to be obscene. From that moment the art establishment, in all its pompous glory, has been defending Ovenden’s sexually suggestive works on the grounds (note this, mere mortals) that art must not be confused with porn. Such was the furore raised by the art world over the 1994 arrest of the artist — whose works were selling for up to £25,000 — that, to the incredulity of Scotland Yard, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge him.

    Guilty: Renowned artist Graham Ovenden, 70, was convicted of indecency with children after first being arrested in 1994. 

    Fifteen years later the police were back with another search warrant, and this time he was charged with having indecent images of children on his computer. He was acquitted. Each of these episodes was seen as a victory for art itself and gave rise to learned articles explaining, for example, how Ovenden’s re-creation of pre-Raphaelite photography permitted candid child nudity. One London gallery even put on an exhibition of work under the title The Obscene Publications Squad Versus Art. So it was quite a shockwave that hit the art world this week when Ovenden, now 70, was exposed as a devious paedophile who sexually abused some of his innocent young sitters.
    Ovenden’s pose of genial respectability was torn away as he was found guilty at Truro Crown Court of six counts of indecency with a child and one of indecently assaulting a child. All took place before his first arrest. The children, all girls, were aged between six and 14. Even the Tate, home of British art, which has always stoically stood by him, at last decided it had little choice but to remove its collection of 34 works — including naked child images — from its website. Nor will the works any longer be available to view by appointment. A spokesman said his convictions ‘shone a new light’ on his work. Indeed so. The police could have told them that years ago. But then, down the years, Ovenden — who has a son and daughter by estranged wife Annie, a fellow artist whom he married in 1969 — always had powerful supporters.



Powerful supporters: Ovenden is now facing jail despite the art establishment rallying round him

    These included celebrated artists such as David Hockney, Sir Peter Blake and Sir Hugh Casson, as well as Sir Piers Rodgers, the non-artist former secretary of the Royal Academy. And despite the shocking turn of events, twice-married Sir Piers, 68, still has no qualms about his support for Ovenden’s child images. ‘I did stand up for him when he was attacked in the mid-1990s and I think I was right to do so,’ he says. ‘There was no question, as far as we knew, of his having touched or abused any of the children he painted. He made images of children and we [the Royal Academy] felt that they were legitimate. Any other view would make many of the great masterpieces pornography in an utterly ridiculous way.
‘The depiction of children in itself seemed to us to be unobjectionable. We supported Graham Ovenden in that. If I had thought that his intent was to get sexual gratification from young children I wouldn’t have supported it.’
   It remains surprising, however, that the art world, with its many flamboyant ‘experts’, didn’t spot just what Graham Ovenden really had in mind by looking at his collection of drawings called Aspects Of Lolita. This is a series of suggestive drawings depicting the 12-year-old girl lusted after by a middle-aged professor in the Nabokov novel Lolita, published in 1955. One critic this week described Ovenden’s Lolita images as seeming ‘quite baldly and openly sexual in a way that dares the onlooker to accuse him of something’. A number of them of them, including Lolita Seductive, Lolita Meditating and Lolita Recumbent — images of a naked or semi-clothed pre-pubescent girl in different poses — could until this week be seen at the Tate. A second-hand, hardback, 48-page copy of Aspects Of Lolita was on offer on Amazon this week at just under £1,275.
   So is there anything in his background to suggest a predeliction for very young girls? Not on the face of it.
Ovenden enjoyed an idyllic childhood in Hampshire. He grew up in a Fabian household, and the poet John Betjeman was a family friend. After school, he studied at the Royal College of Art and befriended the pop artist Sir Peter Blake, best known for creating the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover for the Beatles. Ovenden has said his main interest is in English landscapes. But what he became famous — and then notorious — for were his studies of girls, and his paintings hung in the world’s most respected galleries.



Celebrated artist: Ovenden pictured in his Bodmin studio

    Only now, after his conviction, are some observers finding a new significance in Ovenden leaving London for Cornwall in 1975 and founding with a group of fellow artists the so-called Brotherhood of Ruralists which took a traditional, backward-looking view of art. In Cornwall, he settled on an estate called Barley Splatt on the edge of Bodmin Moor. Its eccentric house of Cornish granite, complete with turrets and slit windows, was set in 22 acres of grounds with a beech wood, pastureland and a tumbling stream. It was here that Ovenden entertained fellow artists, writers, musicians . . . and children. When he gave evidence at Truro Crown Court, Ovenden portrayed Barley Spratt as a hidden Eden, where children could live as nature intended. They were encouraged to run free — and naked when it was warm.
    The jury was told that Ovenden was a man of good character, with no convictions, cautions or reprimands. The artist denied the abuse ever happened. He told the court he had taken pictures of children—- including those in various states of undress — but said they were not indecent. 'Witch hunt': Ovenden told the court he had taken pictures of children in various states of undress but said they were not indecent and accused police of 'falsifying' images from his home computer. In evidence, Ovenden said there was a ‘witch-hunt’ against those who produce work involving naked children and he accused police of ‘falsifying’ images recovered from his home computer. He argued that he had a ‘moral obligation’ to show children in a ‘state of grace’. The idea of pictures of naked children being obscene was ‘abhorrent’.
    His artistic haven in Cornwall, where he encouraged girls to pose, provided the perfect opportunity for him to create ‘fine art’ images that echoed some of the 19th century pornographic pictures of children that emerged in the early years of photography. In this context, although it makes difficult reading, it is worth repeating just a part of what prosecuting counsel Ramsay Quaife told the jury in Truro this week. He described how Ovenden would dress the children in Victorian-style nighties before leaving them naked and blindfolded, then get them to perform what he called ‘taste tests’.
   ‘The defendant would put tape over her eyes,’ said Mr Quaife. ‘She could not see anything. The tape was black, stretchy and smelt of glue. ‘Although she could not see, she could hear the defendant and she could remember the sound of his belt buckle.‘The defendant would tell her she would do a taste test and would get 10p for every taste she got right. He would then push something into her mouth . . . he told her it was his thumb.’ In fact, Ovenden was performing a disgusting indecent assault on the girl. Prosecutor Mr Quaife also described how naked girls with taped eyes were moved into different positions and photographed so that their genitals could be seen.
    Until this week, Ovenden’s defence against allegations of his pictures of children being pornographic was to use mockery — depicting his accusers as ignorant philistines. On the second occasion he was arrested — and charged with having indecent images of children on his computer and making indecent images — he bizarrely paraphrased Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the police officers, telling them ‘it is but skin and film’.
    The case against him was lost that time when the Crown Prosecution Service failed to call as witnesses two key police officers without whom, said the angry judge, a fair trial was not possible. The freed Ovenden accused the police of being ‘transfixed by childhood sexuality’. After that, in a series of interviews, Ovenden grandly declared: ‘You should not create a neurosis about child nudity. The pervert is the one who puts the fig-leaf on.’And: ‘A man once told me that each time he looked at a photograph of a [naked] child the first thing he looked as was the genitals. Surely that makes him the pervert and not me.’It all sounded so high-minded and grave, this fine-art speak. And with the art world’s support, his life and his work continued uninterrupted, his seedy obsessions impregnable as ‘art’. It is a situation which comes as no surprise to Brian Sewell, the distinguished art critic and commentator.
    ‘In my experience whenever the police have attacked artists’ work, the police have lost every time,’ he says. ‘The art world does seem to have rules of its own. Whether it should or not is another matter.
‘Pictures of nude figures can be beautiful works of art, of course. If, on the other hand, you’re setting out to make an erotic photograph, then this is indefensible, because you are setting out not to remind people of the beauty of the human body, the skin, the eyes, but to remind them of what arouses lust.’ But how does one know an artist’s true intention? ‘I certainly do not know what Ovenden had in mind,’ says Sewell, ‘but he should have known very well the consequences of what he was doing. He should have behaved differently. He has only himself to blame.’ And yet, even after his conviction, for which he is on bail awaiting a likely jail sentence, Ovenden has still not been cast adrift by dedicated supporters.


Respectable: The Tate Gallery in London only removed its collect of 34 Ovenden's works from its website last year

   Among his staunchest defenders are the art-loving explorer and author Robin Hanbury-Tenison, 76, and his wife Louella, a former High Sheriff of Cornwall. Indeed, an Ovenden portrait of one of their sons — fully clothed — hangs in the sitting room of their manor house. ‘I simply do not believe Graham is capable of the allegations made against him,’ declares Mrs Hanbury-Tenison. ‘They are not credible in my view.’

   Her husband adds: ‘These accounts are coming from women who are now in their 40s. One wonders why it has taken so long. I find it outrageous that there is shock-horror at him having painted little girls naked in the Sixties and Seventies. For this to be compared with the gross activities of people like Jimmy Savile or the appalling pornography on the internet — it just defies belief. ‘The blindfolding of a child [for art] — yes, I can see what he was trying to do in representing innocence and justice. ‘But it is the last gasp of puritanism to be concentrating on somehow making that innocence of childhood into something vulgar.’
   As for Ovenden’s pictures of children, the great explorer says that the European art world is ‘laughing at Britain over its obsession with this matter’, adding: ‘As Oscar Wilde said, there is “no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality”.’Oh lucky man, Graham Ovenden, to have such loyal friends. Sir Piers Rodgers, too, says he would not change the decision he took in 1995. ‘I would probably continue to take the same view now about his work that I did then,’ he admits. ‘What is obscenity is a matter of judgment.’ Too true, and most of us will be forming our own judgments about Ovenden’s ‘art’ in the light of this week’s court case.

UK relations with Saudis: Grovelling to Oil Despots Demeans us all. - Dan Hannan

  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/3678411/Grovelling_to_oil_despots_demeans_us_all_/


      For the past 48 hours, our television studios have been filled with well-fed, sleekit men in pinstripes telling us how critical Saudi Arabia is to British interests. "British interests" is, of course, a much nicer phrase than "my place on the board of a Saudi-funded company", which is often what they really mean, but never mind. They have set the terms of the debate. As far as commentators are concerned, this is now a moralityversus Realpolitik issue. On the one hand stand the namby-pamby liberals, with their concerns about feminism and capital punishment; on the other the hard-faced hommes d'affaires with their talk of defence contracts and counter-terrorism.


What prompted King Abdullah's comments?

Yet to posit the debate in these terms is to beg the question. Let's stop for a moment and analyse the contention, made by every recent British Prime Minister, that the Saudis are "our key allies in the region". What precisely are these "allies" doing for us?

King Abdullah began his visit by saying that the Saudis had given Britain counter-terrorist intelligence on which we failed to act in advance of the London bombings. British security sources have denied the claim, and you can see their point: none of the Tube bombers had any connection with Saudi Arabia. So why did the monarch make this curious contention?

Perhaps he was trying to anticipate the criticism that his country is a teeming womb of terrorism. Most of us now know that 15 of the 19 bombers on 11 September 2001 were Saudi nationals, and that the majority of foreign jihadists in Iraq are also Saudis. At the same time, there is growing concern about the way Riyadh funds some of the dodgiest mosques in Europe. A devastating new paper by Policy Exchange, authored by Dr Denis MacEoin, draws attention to material sponsored by the Saudi authorities which describes Jews and Christians as enemies of Muslims, lauds jihad and urges that apostates be killed. We meekly accept that it is impossible to open a C of E church in Riyadh, yet we put up with this insidious hate-mongering because, well, the Saudis are "our key allies in the region".

Some analysts go further, charging "our key allies in the region" with sponsoring terrorism. Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, has written a detailed book alleging Saudi involvement in terrorism in Afghanistan, Palestine and further afield. The Saudis strenuously deny any such involvement, and it is true that, at least since 2001, they have been working to turn the radicals away from violence.

But, even if the Saudis are not directly backing the jihadists, they are sitting on the swamp which breeds the mosquitoes. Saudi Arabia is experiencing a population explosion. Like all countries with a surplus of young men, it is potentially violent. Many urban Saudis have had enough of living under what they see as a corrupt tyranny, in which the entire state is treated more-or-less as the personal property of the family after which it is named. They are angry with their regime, and angry with those who support it, not least the British. In an eerie repetition of the mistake we made with the Shah, we are propping up an unpopular kleptocracy, thus ensuring that we shall be blamed by its successors.

"We need stability in the Middle East" say the pinstriped ex-ambassadors in their Olympian way. Well, stability certainly suits the House of Saud, which is spared any criticism over the kinds of policies which we regularly condemn in Burma and Zimbabwe. But, to borrow a metaphor from chaos theory, Saudi Arabia is drinking stability from its environment. In order to maintain itself in power, the regime is displacing the resentment of its people to foreign quarrels. As Lenin might have put it, Saudi Arabia is "exporting its internal contradictions".

What, then, ought we to be doing about it? Should we boycott the regime? Should we work to overthrow it? Should we, as Mark Steyn once suggested, place the Holy Sites under the Jordanian Hashemites and divide the rest of the kingdom among pliable Gulf monarchs?

No. But neither should we demean ourselves by this nauseating obsequiousness. Saudi Arabia is one of many dictatorships around the world, neither the mildest nor the harshest. We should deal with it in a brisk and businesslike manner, as we do the many other regimes which fall somewhere between the categories of "distasteful" and "rotten".

This, though, is not enough for the Saudi lobby in London. So determined are they to grovel to the House of Saud that they secured the prejudicing of our legal system in order to prevent a handful of princelings from being accused of bribery. (I can quite understand why people might need to be bribed in order to buy the Eurofighter, which was obsolete long before it came into production, but that's another story.)

When a free democracy lowers its standards in order to accommodate a sleazy autocracy, the former is diminished and the latter magnified. We are, all of us, slightly cheapened by the readiness of our leaders to appease a handful of rich men. And don't fall for any nonsense about British jobs, by the way. We pay the same price for Saudi oil that other purchasers do, and they the same price for our luxury goods. Our foreign policy is not, or at least ought not to be, synonymous with the interests of BAE Systems.

I never thought I'd say this, but I admire the LibDems, who have boycotted meetings with Saudi officials. That they are behaving ethically is clear enough. But they are also behaving patriotically, advancing Britain's true interests, as opposed to the interests of a handful of lobbyists, government contractors and defence conglomerates.

We should be pushing for the spread of democracy in the Middle East, so as to drain the swamps where the mosquitoes hatch. Instead, we are repeating the age-old Foreign Office mistake of propping up "our" chaps simply because, you know, they're the ones who happen to be there. It's the error we made in Egypt and Iran, and one that we're repeating in Uzbekistan. Will we never learn?

Soldier Dying after being Exposed to Uranium in Iraq and NHS Can't help Her

Katrina Brown, 30, was exposed to radioactive material in Basra
Diagnosed with rare systemic sclerosis which is slowly attacking her organs
She believes the illness is linked to exposure to depleted uranium
Says her only hope is having stem-cell transplant to regenerate her organs

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2303368/Soldier-Katrina-Brown-dying-exposure-uranium-Iraq-raise-110k-NHS-help.html


Katrina Brown is suffering from a rare, deadly illness after being exposed to uranium while serving in Iraq    A soldier who developed a deadly illness after being exposed to uranium in Iraq is facing a race against time to raise the money she needs for potentially life-saving treatment. Katrina Brown, 30, was exposed to radioactive material while serving as a medic at a 600-bed military clinic in Basra in 2003. She was diagnosed with rare systemic sclerosis in 2008 which is slowly attacking her major organs - and will eventually lead to her death if left untreated. Mrs Brown, who joined the Army at the age of 17, believes the illness is linked to exposure to depleted uranium. She was handed a card before flying home from her 2003 tour warning her she had been in contact with radioactive materials. She currently survives on 18 pills a day, costing over £3,000 a month.
    Now, she believes her only hope is to have a stem-cell transplant in a bid to regenerate her organs. But the procedure is not available on the NHS and the health service has said it cannot pay for her transatlantic care. She is is now trying to find £110,000 to fly out for an operation in America after being turned down for funding by a host of charities. Mrs Brown, who lives with her husband Martin in Gloucestershire, said she still holds on to the dream of returning to her Army career. She said: 'Since I was diagnosed, everything's been a battle - as well as battling the illness I've been fighting to try and access the right treatment. 'Now we've been offered this ray of light but obviously we need help to raise the money. 'I've lost about 90 per cent of my mobility and the longer I live with the illness, the more I'm deteriorating physically, but I know I can't give up.'

Ms Brown was exposed to radioactive material while serving as a medic at a 600-bed military clinic in Basra in 2003. She was diagnosed with rare systemic sclerosis, which is slowly attacking her major organs
'We found out about this treatment in Chicago in November. 'Since then, I've started to be dream a little and it's given me such a lift to think about going back into the Army - and that I might have had my last Christmas not working.' Mrs Brown believes she needs the immunotherapy treatment before the end of the year as her physical condition continues to decay. 'I have to raise the money quickly or I will miss the timescale,” she said. 'You are supposed to have it done within four years of diagnosis. I’m in my fourth year.' The stem cell treatment involves effectively wiping out her immune system and 'rebooting' it. She said: 'It’s not the army’s fault. I was just doing my job. I just want to raise the money and get the treatment.'

If you wish to make a donation to Katrina's medical care, please click here.

London Horrible ...,a Dump and most Cruel of Cities

Map shows London in a Different Light

A map shows London in a different, and not altogether flattering, light – according to the most popular queries posed by people on Google.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9966785/Map-shows-London-in-different-light.html