David Cameron accused of being dishonest over links with 'Conservative madrasa'

A screengrab from Conor Burns's website, showing him with David Cameron. Burns was until recently the vice-president of the Young Britons' Foundation

David Cameron has been accused of being "completely dishonest" about his links to a controversial Conservative party affiliate whose leadership has described the NHS as the biggest waste of money in the UK and suggested that the waterboarding of prisoners can be justified.

In an interview prior to the election campaign, the Tory leader denied all knowledge of the Young Britons' Foundation, which has been dubbed "the Conservative madrasa" because of its radical views and role in training young party activists, including some parliamentary candidates.

Asked about his links to the group last month, Cameron said: "I don't know anything about the Young Britons' Foundation."

But Cameron had already contributed to a YBF-branded guide to essential reading for young Conservatives, according to the YBF's chief executive, Donal Blaney, a Kent-based solicitor. The Guardian has also obtained photographs of him meeting the organisation's director of strategy, vice-president, and then operations director before he denied knowledge of the group. Its director of research, Alex Deane, was formerly Cameron's chief of staff.

The YBF's leaders promote a version of free-market liberalism in line with the US neoconservative movement and some of its residential camps for young party activists involving visits to shooting ranges to fire sub-machine guns and assault rifles. In an article on his own website, entitled Scrap the NHS, not just targets", its chief executive, Donal Blaney, wrote: "Would it not now be better to say that the NHS – in its current incarnation – is finished?"

Its president is Daniel Hannan MEP, a staunch critic of the NHS, which Cameron has claimed is his top priority should he become prime minister.

Senior members of the shadow cabinet have repeatedly tried to distance themselves from the YBF despite having spoken at YBF events. Eric Pickles, the party chairman, and Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, spoke at the YBF's parliamentary rally in March, but tried to distance themselves from the group afterwards. Fox was listed as a member of the YBF's parliamentary council on its website until the page was removed recently.

"The YBF's tentacles reach deep into the shadow cabinet and show the influence of the extreme anti-NHS, pro-torture, neocon wing of the party," said Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman. "If Cameron claims not to know who they are he is being completely dishonest."

In a circular email about a planned YBF-branded manual called Reading the Right Books: Essential Reading for Young Conservatives, Blaney wrote to YBF supporters on 8 January 2009 stating: "I have so far received some 50 suggestions from MPs including from David Cameron, William Hague, Michael Gove, Damian Green, David Davis, Jeremy Hunt, Oliver Letwin and David Willetts." He repeats his assertion about Cameron's involvement on the YBF website.

Cameron has also been photographed endorsing the Conservative candidate for Bournemouth West, Conor Burns, who until recently was the YBF's vice-president, shaking hands with Paul Osborn, the YBF's director of strategy and presenting an award for political activism to Christian May, who was then YBF operations director.

Cameron's spokesman could neither confirm nor deny whether he had worked with the YBF on the planned book.

"Amongst the many hundreds of letters and emails David Cameron's office receives every day, they occasionally include requests for book recommendations," a spokesman said. "The YBF is independent of the Conservative party."

Labour MP Jon Cruddas said: "At best, Mr Cameron has been elusive about his links to the YBF, at worst he is systematically involved in a 'madrasa' for far-right views which he has again and again attempted to disguise. This doesn't bode well if he becomes prime minister on Friday."

On Monday, the YBF launched a nationwide leaflet and video campaign against a hung parliament, which suggested such an outcome could cause unemployment to hit 5 million, Britain to lose its place on the UN security council, and the BNP to eventually win 20 seats in the House of Commons if proportional representation is introduced as a result.

Huhne said yesterday it was a "coordinated, expensively funded and probably illegal smear operation with links right to the top of the Conservative party".

The Lib Dems believe the 500,000-leaflet campaign would have cost more than £10,000, the limit before you have to register with the Electoral Commission, and could therefore be illegal.

Robert Booth @'The Guardian'

Cool

Gulf oil spill: first leak capped, says BP

Zoo magazine advises cutting women’s faces

Zoo Magazine (UK) has published an ‘advice’ column suggesting that a guy who can’t get over his ex should cut her face “so then no one will want her”

Action you can take online

@'Vagina Dentata'

Tories are bashing banks in public. Behind the scenes, though, they're striking a more conciliatory tone with London's financial community.

British opposition Conservative party Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, delivered his address to delegates at the Institute of Directors Annual Convention in London on April 28, 2010.

George Osborne, the Conservatives' candidate to become Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been reaching out to top U.K. bankers to assure them that, despite the party's populist rhetoric, a Conservative government won't declare war on banks, according to people who have heard his pitch.

To be sure, all three major parties have had to walk a fine line with the U.K.'s powerful financial community during this intensely tight campaign, which culminates in national elections on Thursday.

While the Labour party has decried excessive banker bonuses, it also had to oversee such payouts for employees of state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC. Moreover, Labour has long enjoyed a chummy relationship with the City of London and championed the now derided "light-touch" regulatory approach.

The Liberal Democrats, perhaps the most vocal critic of London's financial community, have at least three "shadow ministers" who worked in the banking industry and received funding from the heads of large London hedge funds.

But the Tories have historically had a tighter relationship with the City of London than the other major parties, and that is seen as a potential vulnerability in an election where bankers have become the bad guys.

Thus, the Conservatives have sought to establish their populist bona fides with strong words. In Thursday's televised debate, Tory leader David Cameron assailed "appalling bonuses" and blasted Labour for being too cozy with the financial industry. "They did very much hitch the whole fortunes of the economy to the City of London," Mr. Cameron said.

Given the potency of the rhetoric, Mr. Osborne lately has tried to mend fences with bankers after lambasting them in public, according to people familiar with the matter. In a televised debate last month, for example, Mr. Osborne lashed out at Barclays PLC President Bob Diamond.

"It really beggars belief that two years after we all bailed them out, we get the Barclays Bank chief paying himself £63 million," Mr. Osborne said.

When Barclays officials called Mr. Osborne's office to complain that the £63 million figure was inaccurate, Mr. Osborne relayed an apology to Barclays, according to people familiar with the matter.

A person familiar with Tory thinking said Mr. Osborne is being consistent with his public and private remarks.

All the same, people in the City say Mr. Osborne's quiet outreach efforts have been frequent. For instance, in phone conversations and private meetings, senior banking executives say Mr. Osborne has tried to allay their concerns that a Tory government would try to force giant banks to shed their investment banking and trading divisions.

Mr. Osborne's assurances come even as the Conservatives publicly back international rules that would restrict risky banking activities. Mr. Cameron reiterated Thursday that retail banks "should not be behaving like casinos" and endorsed the Obama administration's proposal to separate proprietary trading from traditional banks. Such rules could force major U.K. banks to rein in or divest their investment-banking divisions.

Last October, the Bank of England's governor, Mervyn King, delivered a speech in which he advocated separating high-risk activities from retail banking. Mr. Osborne applauded the remarks as "powerful and persuasive."

Further aligning the Conservatives with Mr. King, the party's platform calls for the Bank of England to gain control over supervising the U.K. banking industry, a duty now held by the Financial Services Authority.

The Conservatives' tough talk has alienated some traditional supporters. Last year, for example, Jon Moulton, a private equity fund manager and former Conservative donor, said that while a degree of "banker bashing" was justified, the Tory attack is "merely opportunistic" and could damage the City's long-term prospects.

When bankers have phoned Mr. Osborne to seek clarification about his views on splitting banks' retail and trading businesses, people familiar with the matter say he has tried to ease their concerns and said the Conservatives have no intention of breaking up giant banks.

"They've said, 'We've got an election to win. Things will be said in the heat of an election. We believe it's a good thing for the economy that we have strong, profitable banks','' said a person who has heard Mr. Osborne's private remarks.

The person familiar with the Tories' thinking stressed that the Tories have never advocated a wholesale breakup of big banks.

Mr. Osborne also has sought to quell concerns that Mr. King's support for forcing banks to shrink—an unpopular stance among much of London's financial community—would become official Bank of England policy, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Osborne recently has been telling senior banking executives that Mr. King wouldn't be responsible for banking supervision in a Conservative government, these people said.

The person from the Tory camp said such comments about Mr. King are consistent with the party's official position on financial regulation. A July 2009 Conservative "white paper" proposes restructuring the Bank of England so that it takes "a collegiate approach" to overseeing financial stability, which will "reduce the institutional reliance on the position of governor." A Bank of England spokesman declined comment.

@'WSJ'

Murdoch takes a different stance in the US

The Black Dog Podcast 07

  

Something’s just leave a mark for ever, Cabaret Voltaire in 1978 was one of them. For the first time in our early listening days it was difficult to understand how the sound was being made. It was just so different, it meant something and it still does.

Sheffield vs Downwards via Ealing

Here we collect some of our early favourites along with cuts from the Downwards label run by our friend Karl. We’ve also included a couple of new cuts from Raudive (Oliver Ho) that just happened to land at the same time as the mix was being made. Enjoy.

Tracklist:

01. Automotivation 2 – Cabaret Voltaire – Sheffield

02. Birth – Raudive – Ealing

03. It Slipped Her Mind – Sandra Electronics – Downwards

04. Victims – Tropic Of Cancer – Downwards

05. Revox Love – Machinagraph – Sheffield

06. TV AD – Machinagraph – Sheffield

07. Do The Mussolini (Head Kick) – Cabaret Voltaire – Sheffield

08. The Set Up – Cabaret Voltaire – Sheffield

09. Entrance (Machinagraph Edit) – Raudive – Ealing

10. Chemistry (Machinagraph Edit) – Antonym – Downwards

11. Spread The Virus – Cabaret Voltaire – Sheffield

12. New Girls Neutron – Vice Versa – Sheffield

13. Being Boiled – Human League – Sheffield

Download
HERE

Or subscribe to the Podcast

   07. X353 Sheffield vs Downwards via Ealing by The Black Dog

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Better the devil you know. Vote Labour

This is only a snapshot. What are the issues that affect your life? And what are the policies that prospective Governments will employ to deal with them? That is how to choose a Government and a leader.

And as you ponder your ballot box decision, do not ignore the claims of an outstanding candidate in your constituency on purely party political reasons. If they will deliver what you need, through hard work and determination, then they are priceless, even in opposition.

For those who would be Prime Minister, skills in the glare of TV debate are peripheral. What we gained from the Debates was entertainment not enlightenment. Brown was dreadful. Cameron not as good as expected. Clegg better than anticipated.

Cameron is good on his feet – better than he showed at debate. He has energy and toughness but is utterly and fundamentally the wrong man for Liverpool and places like it.

He is 43-years old and hails from a long line of stockbrokers. He was educated at Eton College and Oxford University. He will inherit multi-millions from both sides of his family. He is a direct descendant of King William IV and is the fifth cousin twice removed of our present Queen. He’s worth an estimated £3m.

His right-hand man, the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, is another Oxford University man and stands to inherit the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor in Ireland, as well as a huge slice of his dad’s luxury wallpaper company. Not that he needs the money as he already benefits from a company trust fund and is reckoned to be worth £4.3m.

What empathy can these guys REALLY offer a single mum in Norris Green or a pensioner in the North End of Birkenhead?

In their entire, comfortable lives they will never once have to worry about how they’re going to pay the gas bill, or whether they can afford a holiday. Never once.

Never once will they worry about gangs of yobs creating havoc in their street or junkies leaving needles where their kids might stand on them.

A new, modern and inclusive Tory party is to be welcomed and encouraged. This though, isn’t it.

Clegg has begun to sound like a broken record as he offers “genuine change”. Change is fine – as long as it’s change for the better. There is nothing behind Clegg’s polished public persona to suggest policies that will deliver a better Britain.

And to revert again to a football comparison: What are England’s chances in the World Cup? Take out Rooney and Gerrard and the answer is not very good. Beyond Clegg and the redoubtable Vince Cable, who do the Lib Dems have to form a cabinet of quality?

Which leaves Brown. He is a shrewd and decent politician with a conscience and a flair for the spread sheets of economic analysis. A communicator? You wouldn’t fancy him to successfully place an order at McDonalds.

He has though, shepherded this country through the worst of the economic crisis. The recovery is fragile though, and we share Brown’s concern that the Tories or the Lib Dems risk that recovery with a more cavalier approach to savings and spending.

And beneath Brown are some wonderfully gifted lieutenants, notably the brilliant Alistair Darling and Prime Minister-in-waiting Ed Balls.

Brown has done well with the economy and superbly well with our system of Education. He has fallen short on Crime and horribly short on Health. If we elect him as Prime Minister these last two must be improved hugely and rapidly or Brown’s extended stay will be short and bleak.

On balance, though, he has done enough to earn a new mandate (his first from the electorate) and an extended run at creating the fair and prosperous society we all crave.

Sometimes, it’s better the devil you know. That’s why, for now, it must be Brown and Labour.

Alastair Machray [Editor] @'Liverpool Echo'

Remember 1983? I warn you that a Cameron victory will be just as bad

On the eve of the 1983 election – which, until this year, seemed destined to represent for ever the low watermark of Labour performances – a young member of the party's shadow cabinet delivered what was to be one of his most compelling speeches. Neil Kinnock knew a landslide defeat was imminent so, speaking in Bridgend, he sketched the world to come. "I warn you," he began, addressing a nation about to descend into the bitterest stretch of the Thatcher era. "I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old."

It was a rhetorical masterpiece from a man whose oratory would later be much mocked. But its power was its prescience. Kinnock saw the Thatcherite tsunami that was coming and warned of the deluge that would follow.

This time even the most pessimistic Labourite cannot feel the certainty Kinnock had then: all kinds of permutation are still possible. But if the Labour vote crashes close to, or even below, 1983 levels, then David Cameron in Downing Street is the most likely outcome, whether governing as a minority, in alliance with the Lib Dems, or with a narrow majority of his own. What would he do if he gets there? What cautionary message might a 2010 Kinnock issue? For those still weighing their vote, here are a few salutary thoughts.

I warn you that a chance some have waited for all their adult lives will slip away, perhaps taking another generation to come around again: the chance to reform our rotten, broken electoral system. If Cameron wins, he will not only thwart any move to fairer voting, he will act fast to rig the system in his favour. Even neutrals agree that his plan to cut the number of MPs by 10% – presented as a mere cost-cutting measure – will be one of the grossest acts of gerrymandering in British political history. Cameron will redraw the boundaries so that his rivals lose seats and he gains them, locking in a semi-permanent Conservative majority. Reform of our absurd, unelected second chamber will be postponed indefinitely, enabling Cameron to pack the Lords with his mates and sugar daddies, including perhaps a few more of those businessmen who so obligingly sided with the Conservatives in condemning Labour's plans for national insurance.

If, on the other hand, Cameron is kept from Downing Street courtesy of a Labour vote tomorrow strong enough to make a Lib-Lab coalition plausible, then there's a clear chance for the 55%-plus majority who regularly vote for liberal or left parties to prevail and reform the system – ensuring that, from now on, the Conservatives hold power only as often as their minority status suggests they should. (They were always a minority party, even in the Thatcher heyday.) In other words, the victor tomorrow will get to set the rules for decades to come. This is a winner-takes-all election and the stakes could not be higher.

I warn you that the economy could slide back into despair. Maybe people have not paid attention to this argument because Gordon Brown has been making it, but the danger is real. A sudden shut-off of the public spending tap could well send a frail recovery staggering back into recession: the dreaded double-dip. It's happened elsewhere and could happen here. The US and other economies are seeing the tide turn, but that's because they've kept the public cash coming. Cameron's aim, played down in the rhetoric because it polled so badly, is to cut spending immediately, ushering in what he once proudly trumpeted as an "age of austerity".

If Britain were to return to recession, then brace yourself. For many, this last downturn has not quite felt like the worst since the Great Depression, whatever the economists say. Unemployment, house repossessions and bankruptcies are all fractions of what they were in the 1990s recession. That's not by accident. It's a function of Labour's active interventionism, which has sought to reduce the impact of the downturn on those at the sharpest end. Such state activity clashes with every Conservative instinct. Cameron still describes government as more problem than solution. Last time the Tories were in charge, dealing with a recession that was actually much less severe, the pain was greater and the weakest suffered most. There is nothing in current Tory policy – despite Cameron's final debate plea to the camera that it's "the most vulnerable, the most frail and the poorest" he truly cares about – to suggest it won't be like that again.

Indeed, there are at least three signs that point in a gloomy direction. First, despite all the austerity talk, the Tories have clung to their promise to give an inheritance tax break to the 3,000 richest families in the country. In the words of Nick Clegg, it's the "double-millionaires" Cameron wants to help. And yet, given the hole in the public finances, cash will have to come from somewhere. The obvious source – not that the Conservative leader has ever been challenged on it – is an increase in VAT. That's the most regressive of all taxes, inflicting disproportionate pain on the poorest: pain that will only deepen with the coming Tory assault on tax credits. A third cause for alarm can be expressed in three words: Chancellor George Osborne.

I warn you not to have an urgent need for the NHS. Sure, the Tories say they've ringfenced health spending, but check the small print. They plan to drop Labour's guarantee on waiting times. No longer will any patient be sure to see a cancer specialist within two weeks: under the Tories, that decision will be left to the consultant. Fine for the sharp-elbowed middle class, who are used to barging their way to the front of the queue. Not so good for the poorest who, all the data shows, struggle to get the most from public services.

I warn you not to be a single mother or widow. You'll get less than those who are married. Not that much less – about £3 a week – but just enough to know that the tax system regards you as a second-class citizen and to remind you of how life used to be under the Conservatives, when single parents were a routine target for public mockery and scolding.

I warn you that we will be back to the sterile relationship with Europe of the 1990s, a British government once again on the margins, but aligned this time with homophobes, rank antisemites and assorted apologists for fascism. Prepare within weeks for a Cameron stunt, demanding negotiations to "repatriate" powers back to Westminster. Britain is set once again to become the club bore of the EU, happily swallowing the agenda of economic liberalisation but moaning about sovereignty in the abstract, annoying the other members but never having the courage to up and leave.

Cameron won't have much choice in the matter. He'll be answerable to the newly-strengthened backbench hard right of his party, who will have veto power over his programme: he won't be able to govern without their votes. With their loathing of Europe, their disbelief in man-made climate change and their disproportionate ties to the City and finance, they will ensure Cameron sticks to the right and narrow.

Of course, it would feel better to make a positive case for Labour, echoing its promises on a living wage and a cap on predatory chargecard interest rates or its plans for green jobs. But the hour is late. Tomorrow is the day of decision. And we have been warned.

Jonathan Freedland @'The Guardian'

The scum always rises

@'Liberal Conspiracy'

 Murdoch you really are such a fugn knob!

Warsi: keep Muslims out of Parliament ... Times pulls report which would "severely embarrass" Cameron 
" [He] says we need more Muslim MPs, more Muslims in the House of Lords. I would actually disagree with that because one of the lessons we have learnt in the last five years in politics is that Muslims that go to Parliament don't have any morals or principles" - Baroness Warsi, Tory Shadow Cabinet minister for community cohesion."these remarks, coming so close to tomorrow's election, will be a severe embarrassment to the party leadership" - news report filed to The Times news desk and not published.

sunny_hundal I've now heard from two different sources in media that lawyers representing Phillipa Stroud are putting pressure on journos about 2 hours ago via HootSuite

Johann Hari: Welcome to Cameron land

Castle Youth Club in Hammersmith was built in Dickens' time and bequeathed to the local council. The Conservatives shut it down two years ago to sell it off

David Cameron cites Hammersmith and Fulham council as a 'model' of compassionate conservatism. So what can the actions of Tory councillors here tell us about how the party would behave in government?

This is a dispatch from David Cameron's Britain, the country that could be waiting for us at the other end of the polling booths and the soundbites and the spin. I didn't have to take a time machine to get there; I just had to take the District Line. In 2006, a group of rebranded "compassionate Conservatives" beat Labour for control of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, a long stretch of west London. George Osborne says the work they have done since then will be a "model" for a new Conservative government, while Cameron has singled them out as a council he is especially "proud" of. So squeezed between the brownish dapple of the Thames and the smoggy chug of the Westway, you can find the Ghost of Cameron Future. What is it whispering to us?

Hammersmith and Fulham is a sprawling concrete sandwich of London's rich and London's poor. It starts at the million-pound apartments on the marina at Chelsea Harbour – white and glistening and perfect – and runs past giant brownish housing estates and Victorian mansions, until it staggers to a stop on Shepherd's Bush Green, where homeless people sit on the yellow-green grass drinking and watching the SUVs hurtle past. Here, high incomes squat next to high-rises in one big urban screech of noise. In such a mixed area, the Conservatives had to run for power as a reconstructed party "at home with modern Britain". They promised to move beyond Thatcherism and make the poor better off. They were the first to hum the tune that David Cameron has been singing a capella in this election.

People who took this at face value were startled by the first act of the Conservatives on assuming power – a crackdown on the homeless. They immediately sold off 12 homeless shelters, handing them to large property developers. The horrified charity Crisis was offered premises by the BBC to house the abandoned in a shelter over the Christmas period at least. The council refused permission. They said the homeless were a "law and order issue", and a shelter would attract undesirables to the area. With this in mind, they changed the rules so that the homeless had to "prove" to a sceptical bureaucracy that they had nowhere else to go – and if they failed, they were turned away.

We know where this ended. A young woman – let's called her Jane Phillips, because she wants to remain anonymous – turned up at the council's emergency housing office one night, sobbing and shaking. She was eight months pregnant. She explained she was being beaten up by her boyfriend and had finally fled because she was frightened for her unborn child. The council said they would "investigate" her situation to find "proof of homelessness" – but she told them she had nowhere to go while they carried it out. By law, they were required to provide her with emergency shelter. They refused. They suggested she try to find a flat on the private market.

For four nights, she slept in the local park, on the floor. She is still traumatised by the memories of lying, pregnant and abandoned, in one of the wealthiest parts of Europe. The Local Government Ombudsman investigated but the council recording of the case was so poor she said it "hindered" her report. After a long study, she found the council's conduct amounted to "maladministration". Since they came to power, the Conservatives are housing half as many homeless people as Labour – even though the recession has caused a surge in homelessness. That's a huge number of Janes lying in parks, or on rotting mattresses by Hammersmith Bridge.

Why would they do this? The Conservative administration was determined to shrink the size of the state and cut taxes as an end in itself. Rather than pay for it by taking more from the people in the borough with the most money, they slashed services for the broke and the broken first. After the homeless, they turned to help for the disabled. In their 2006 manifesto, the local Conservatives had given a cast-iron guarantee: "A Conservative council will not reintroduce home-care charging". It was a totemic symbol of leaving behind Thatcherism: they wouldn't charge the disabled, the mentally ill or the elderly for the care they needed just to survive.

Within three months, the promise was broken. Debbie Domb, 51, is a teacher who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994. She had to give up work, and now she needs 24/7 care. After being lifted up by a large metal harness and placed in her wheelchair so she can talk to me, she explains: "This was always such a great place to live if you were disabled. You were really treated well. Then this new council was elected and it's been so frightening... The first thing that happened when they came in was that they announced any disabled person they assessed as having 'lower moderate' needs was totally cut off. So people who needed help having a shower, or getting dressed, had that lifeline taken away completely. Then they started sending the rest of us bills."

She "panicked" when a bill came through saying she had to pay £12.50 for every hour of care she needed. "I thought, 'Oh my God, how am I going to do this?' The more care you need, the higher your bill, so the most disabled people got the highest charges. Everyone was distraught. I had friends who had to choose between having the heating on in winter and paying for their care ... I know a 90-year-old woman with macular degeneration who can't see, and she had to stop her services. There are lots of people who have been left to rot, with nobody checking any more that they're OK, and I'm sure some of them have ended up in hospital or have died." One of the council's senior social services managers seems to have confirmed this, warning in a leaked memo that the charges could place the vulnerable "at risk".

Debbie co-founded an organisation to fight back – the Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition Against Community Care Cuts – and, after appealing, she finally had her charges cancelled. "But there are a lot of people who can't appeal," she says. "You're talking about very vulnerable people – the very old, the mentally ill, the blind. A lot don't know how, or would be ruled to have to pay anyway, because the rules are so arbitrary. Now they're being taken to debt-collection agencies for non-payment. I know an 82-year-old woman who's never been in debt in her life who is being taken to a debt-collection agency for care she needs just to keep going... They want volunteers to do it instead. But you don't want to have to ask your friends or a volunteer to pull up your knickers for you."

Each year since the Conservative council was elected, the pressure on the housebound has increased. Meals on Wheels brings one good, hot meal a day to people who can't get out. The council jacked up the charges for it by £527 a year – so half of the recipients had to cancel it. A local Labour councillor documented that the council rang up a 79-year-old woman with dementia, and when she seemed to say she didn't need any food, they cut off her meals.

The cost of almost all council services has sky-rocketed, to fund tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. David Cameron says he wants to make Britain "the most family-friendly country in the world" with "childcare as a top priority", but his showcase council has increased charges for childcare by a reported 121 per cent – a fact that makes the warnings about Michael Gove's planned "top-up fees" for nursery places seem even more ominous.

As I spend days walking across the borough, I find the detritus of the old thriving public sector now shut and shuttered. Next to a big council estate I stumble across the large red-brick Castle Youth Club. It was built in Dickens' time and bequeathed to the local council "to benefit the children of this area for perpetuity". The Conservatives shut it down two years ago to sell it off. The deal fell through, so now it sits empty while the local kids hang around on the streets outside.

***

Ricky Scott, 18, tells me what it used to be like: "It was a really good place. When I left school they found me a part-time job at Sainsbury's – they taught me how to write a CV – and they persuaded me to go to college. They gave you a place to go to stay out of trouble, they got you into the gym, they helped us learn loads of stuff ... They did a lot to teach us about knife crime and how to stop it. When my friend was stabbed they helped us organise a big campaign about knives." After the youth club was closed, there was a surge in anti-social behaviour orders in the area. Ricky isn't surprised. "People don't want us on the streets, but then they take away the only place for us to go, so what do they expect? It feels like we used to have some good things but now they've all been taken away. It always gets taken away."

And in this boarded-up youth club, in Debbie's panic, in the image of Jane and her bump on the floor of the park, I realise I am peering into the reality of David Cameron's "Big Society". The council here told people that if they took away services like this, there would be volunteers; if the state withered away, people would start to provide the services for each other. But nobody opened their home to Jane, or volunteered to feed Debbie, or started a new youth club on their own time and with their own money. The state retreated and the service collapsed. It's a rebranding trick. The Conservatives know that shutting down public services sounds cruel, while calling for volunteerism sounds kind – but the effect is exactly the same. It's as if Marie Antoinette called in Max Clifford, and he told her to stop saying "Let them eat cake" and start saying: "Let them form a workers' co-operative to distribute cake on a voluntary basis."

But it turns out that it's not just the services on the council estates here that are threatened by the council – it's the estates themselves. Recently the leader of the Conservative council, Stephen Greenhalgh, co-wrote a pamphlet called Principles for Social Housing Reform, recommending that Cameron adopt a radical new approach to council housing. He said it provides "barracks for the poor" and helps create "a culture of entitlement", while "deliver[ing] a risible return on assets". He asked: why do we continue to "warehouse poverty in the core of our great cities", on land that is worth good money? Instead of following "the same narrow agenda of 'building more homes'", he said councils should "exploit [the] huge reserve of capital value" in the houses and the land by selling it off and charging "market terms", with some mild subsidy for the very poorest.

He seems to be trying to act on this agenda. He has stopped building any affordable houses for rent, and he is searching for council estates to sell off. I walk to the Queen Caroline Estate along the river, and it is one of the most calm and bright council estates I have ever seen – a walkway of houses and flats lined with trees, all washed over by a gentle river breeze. Teenagers are playing on a football pitch; an elderly couple is watching them, eating sandwiches. Everyone I talk to says they like it – "You've got a good mix of people, and it's so friendly," says one woman. On the other side of the Thames, staring down, is the £25,000-a-year St Paul's School, where Greenhalgh was educated alongside George Osborne in the 1980s.

Greenhalgh has declared that this estate is "not decent", and has offered it for sale to property developers. Maxine Bayliss is a 42-year-old mother who lives here with her two children. She says: "It's frightening to discover there are plans to sell off your home so they can give the land to rich developers. At first the council denied it, but when we challenged them they finally said, yes, we do have plans, actually. One Conservative councillor shouted at me that this was a ghetto and I shouldn't want to live here. Does it look like a ghetto to you? This is my home, it's my children's home. If they charged market rents, people like me would be forced out of London totally. This should be a city for normal people too, not just rich people. It's so insulting to say people like me shouldn't be living here."

Together with a coalition of other mums from the estate, Maxine has formed a group to stop the sell-off. When David Cameron came on one of his visits to the area to cheerlead for the council, she asked him about the threat to her home – and he accused her of "black propaganda". When she explained that the council itself had admitted to having plans, Cameron snapped: "If you don't like them, you should stand for election."

***

Do we want our cities to look like Paris, where the rich own the centre, and the poor are banished to grey concrete slums on the outskirts where they riot with rage once a decade? If we hive out all our housing to the market, that will be our future. Or do we place a value on our land – and who lives there – that is more than purely financial? Do we think some things are more important than the market price? Later that night, I watch Greenhalgh on YouTube, lecturing these single mothers, and I keep thinking about that phrase he is so fond of: "a culture of entitlement". Who has really grown up in "a culture of entitlement": Maxine, who has so little, or Cameron and Greenhalgh, who have so much?

I walk the borough for days, trying to find what Cameron celebrates about this council – until, at the tip of the borough, I find a large grassy metaphor for Conservative priorities that seems so crude that I wonder whether it could have been secretly designed by the Socialist Workers Party cartoonist and plonked in my path. Hurlingham Park was a big vibrant patch of green where kids from the local estates could play, and run on one of the few professional running tracks in the country, in a setting so classically beautiful it was used in the film Chariots of Fire. But then the Conservatives were elected. They handed the park over to a large international polo consortium that has ripped out the running track and shut the park down for a month every year – so rich people can watch polo for hundreds of pounds a day.

Lying in the sun on the edge of the green, I find Nick Anderton, a 17-year-old from the local estate. He stares at it sadly and says: "The park is meant to be for everyone, isn't it? But we have to stop our football now so they can get it ready so these people can play polo, and we won't be able to use it for most of the summer ... My friend used to run on the track every day, he wants to be an athlete, but they got rid of it so he can't now ... It feels like we don't have the right to be here any more. They've taken our park and given it to these snobbish people who've got nothing to do with this area. Look at us. Does it look like we need a polo pitch round here?" Later, I read that Monty Python came to this park to film one of their sketches: "The Upper Class Twit of the Year."

So what is Cameron so proud of here? There seems to be only one answer: in this area the Tories have managed to cut council tax by 3 per cent. They've given back about £20 a year to somebody on an average income, and about four times more to a rich person. That's why, when Cameron was challenged about what has happened here, he said: "When I look at the record of what the Conservatives have done here in Hammersmith and Fulham, far from being embarrassed as the Conservative leader, I'm proud of what they're doing." As I heard this, I remembered that earlier this year Cameron's close friend and shadow cabinet member Ed Vaizey said Cameron is "much more Conservative than he acts, or than he is forced to be by political exigency". The principles that run through Cameron's politics seem to become visible at last, as clear and as stark as the Westway on the Hammersmith skyline: tax cuts, whatever the social cost.

Is wielding the Hammersmith hammer really worth it? Is cutting taxes by a fraction justified if it means abandoning the most desperate people – the homeless, the disabled, the poor? Is that who we want to be? The last time I see her, Debbie Domb tries to move a little in her chair – painfully, slowly – and says: "People should look at what they have done to us in Hammersmith. This is what Cameron and Osborne want to do to Britain. They say so. Remember, the people running this council said before they were elected that they were compassionate Conservatives. I can see the Conservatism. Where's the compassion?"

 Johann Hari @'The Independent'

Last chance to think bout your future Britain...don't say you haven't been warned!

FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.
Nextel cell phones owned by two alleged mobsters, John Ardito and his attorney Peter Peluso, were used by the FBI to listen in on nearby conversations. The FBI views Ardito as one of the most powerful men in the Genovese family, a major part of the national Mafia.
The surveillance technique came to light in an  opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He  ruled that the "roving bug" was legal because federal wiretapping  law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations  that take place near a suspect's cell phone.
Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique "functioned  whether the phone was powered on or off." Some handsets can't be fully  powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia  models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set.
While the Genovese crime family prosecution appears to be the first time  a remote-eavesdropping mechanism has been used in a criminal case, the  technique has been discussed in security circles for years.
The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns  that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and  transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the  vicinity of the phone." An article  in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can  "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the  owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its  owner is not making a call."
Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially  vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a  counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government  agencies. "They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio  all the time," he said. "You can do that without having physical access  to the phone."...

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Declan McCullagh @'ZDNet News'

(Thanx BillT!)

Taxi for Rafa?

There'll be conspiracy theorists aplenty wondering quite how Chelsea won so comfortably at Anfield.

Steven Gerrard looked like he might be reminding Chelsea of his ability to deliver a killer through ball (should he become available this summer) but the real reason for Liverpool's demise was simple: they're not very good.

I saw that banner depicting the heads of great Liverpool managers with Benitez in the frame too. But I can't see him staying - or Liverpool sticking with him. Rafa says that expectations were too high but then whose fault's that? He was the one who 'guaranteed' they'd still finish fourth.

Maybe he shouldn't have got his team playing grand and fluent stuff for the last 10 games of last season, then we would all have looked upon seventh as a decent effort.

On the other hand, I'd rather hear a manager make bold and confident statements, rather than this ever so very 'umble stuff we get from the likes of Harry Redknapp and Martin O'Neill.

"They're a quality side... blah blah... meagre resources... blah blah". I mean, Spurs and Villa have forked out a banker's bonus in transfer fees this season, so all this "please sir, can I have some more?" Dickensian apologies don't cut the mustard anymore.

But why have Liverpool been, relatively speaking, so abject? The fact - and facts are what Rafa loves most - the fact is that this Liverpool side is born of five long years in charge. The players are his players, by and large, and not the ones he inherited and miraculously conjured a Champs League victory from in 2005.

In other words, he may be a decent manager but Torres apart he can't find a player to save his life. If life is like a box of chocolates then Rafa is the poor fella holding the coffee cream.

It now appears that he cancelled a couple of tete a tetes with new chairman Martin Broughton for reasons best known to himself. Juve appeared to be courting the bloke, but his agent says he's desperate to stay. Given that there's summat between a 10 and 15 million pay-out in the offing if he gets the boot, you wouldn't really expect that agent to say anything else.

Of course, as Benayoun has noted, LFC have to keep hold of Torres and Gerrard if they are to do anything next year (and you can't say that's cut and dried). Or do they?

It's fair to say that Gerrard has had a rotten season. He's looked a little lost without Nando upfront, and although the blokes around him have shown all the imagination of the Institute of Actuaries, he's been looking like a sulky prince all year...

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@'Robbo Robson's Blog'