Forget tall stories about UKIP intimidation in Dudley - Lowles is trying to save his friend Austin's seat

Believe nothing about Dudley North - Labour PPC Ian Austin
is a long time friend of HnH's Nick Lowles. Both are full of
unlikely tales of their own victimhood.

Following our FB & Twitter post regarding the on-going campaign of vandalism against UKIP shops and intimidation against UKIP candidates and supporters, we have now seen Hope not Hate's response: to complain that they are the real victims. Unoriginal in the extreme, this rather dim-witted approach  is based on a handful of incidents, almost none of which are true. Their article focuses on Dudley North, where they complain that a Hope not Hate activist (also coincidentally a Labour activist) was photographed, with the photograph being put on Twitter by UKIP MEP Bill Etheridge followed by some alleged UKIP members saying rude things about him in the comments.

Contrast this with Hope not Hate's glee when posting pictures of hapless elderly UKIP members who can't keep up with whether people of African origin are coloured, black or BME in the latest politically correct terminology.

There is an ulterior motive for all this focus on Bill Etheridge and UKIP in Dudley North, which YouGov list as 'too close to call' between UKIP and Labour. Dudley North Labour PPC and outgoing MP Ian Austin is a friend of Nick Lowles, who previously wrote of Austin,

"Last night I spent about an hour on the phone with Ian Austin, the Labour MP for Dudley North. Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy"

This 'media strategy' has so far involved comedy death threats allegedly received from UKIP supporters, and leaking confidential information on a constituent who stood for UKIP, a strategy which backfired as that constituent is now local Cllr Dean Perks. It hardly needs mentioning that as a good New Labour man, Austin is also an expenses cheat.

Laughable claims of intimidation are nothing new. After the abortive attempt to deliver leaflets in Grimsby on Saturday when nobody turned up, Lowles was bleating that his activists were 'intimidated' and that the police had been called. However, as the Grimsby Telegraph makes clear in their article on Monday:

"The spokesman also claimed members and a member of Humberside Police staff had been physically assaulted. However, Humberside Police was unable to confirm if this was the case and, at the time of going to press, the group had not supplied the Grimsby Telegraph with a crime number."

In other words, even the local paper - which was there - doesn't believe them.

These lies seem to be a new tactic as Hope not Hate feel they are beginning to lose the battle, and the £600,000 a year that goes with it - an attempt, after years of bully boy tactics, to suddenly play the victim. Exactly the same tactic the Nazi's used, in fact.

In terms of threats, nothing compares to the vast amounts of hate that appear on Hope not Hate's own Facebook feed and on their own pages. Incitements to violence are frequent, as we have previously blogged here, while marches by anyone HnH deems unacceptable are given a running commentary to ensure their fellow hard-left bully boys can get the fight they desire, as here. Hope not Hate activists have called for UKIP shops to be burnt down, for attacks on the mentally ill and have cheerfully condoned acts of violence against UKIP MEPs by their own members. Of course, we have screen grabs of some of their supporters comments - we used to grab a lot, but it all gets a bit repetitive after a while.

Earlier today we posted a meme on our Facebook & Twitter pointing out that over 30 UKIP shops have been attacked during this extended General Election campaign. We have been unable to find any accounts of Labour Party or Hope not Hate premises which have been attacked outside of Scotland, where the SNP is responsible - something Hope not Hate has been at pains to not mention. If anybody has any knowledge of any attacks on Labour, HnH, Unite, UNISON, SWP, Green Party or Stand up to UKIP premises in England, we'd be interested in hearing of it.

When Hope not Hate talk about 'open and honest debate', they do so in poor faith

Hope not Hate's self-justifying article 'The 2015 UKIP threat' states in its midst:

"There is nothing wrong about talking about immigration or even expressing concern about the rate of change or immigration policy – in fact HOPE not hate has always argued that we need a much more honest and open discussion about the subject. But it is the manner of this debate that is so important."

Which leads us to wonder why later in the same article they bring up the subject of the repatriation of

immigrants. Still on he Hope not Hate website is an article copied from the Observer newspaper during the Newark by-election focussing on UKIP candidate Roger Helmer. Inspired by Hope not Hate research, the Observer attacked Helmer for comments in his book 'A Declaration of Independence', stating

"Voluntary repatriation, in which legal immigrants are given financial assistance to leave the UK, was supported at the last election only by the BNP. The last time the policy was accepted by a mainstream party was in 1970, when it was a cause of the Tory MP Enoch Powell and featured in his party's manifesto."

As we wrote at the time, voluntary repatriation of immigrants who wished to return to their country of origin was first included in Section 29 of the Immigration Act 1971, and the scheme was expanded by the Blair government in the Nationality, Immigration & Asylum Act 2002. It remains in force.

The Observer - following a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission - had the grace to apologise for the error, print a correction and withdraw the article from their website. Visitors to Hope not Hate's pages who follow the link in their article will find that it leads to a 'dead' page on the Observer.

Hope not Hate - who monitor the media both personally and via their US based consultants - can hardly fail to have missed the Observer's correction, or that voluntary repatriation was introduced by the Conservative government in 1971 and expanded hugely by the Blair government in 2002. Have they withdrawn their own version of the article, which is however you look at it simply untrue? No. So when they say

"HOPE not hate has always argued that we need a much more honest and open discussion about the subject"

Remember that what they mean by 'honest and open' is continuing to publish something which is not just spin or a matter of interpretation, but what in the old days was considered a straight lie. An untruth. A falsehood. And no 'open and honest' debate can start with such a blatant display of poor faith.

HnH's 'intimidated' Bradford man is anti-UKIP Twitter troll

Finan's letter, which makes no mention of his foul-mouthed
Twitter rants on behalf of the hard left

Hope not Hate's latest feeble attack on UKIP accuses the party of 'intimidation' by presenting a professionally outraged, foul mouthed anti-UKIP Twitter troll as if he was an ordinary member of the public.

In brief, a bloke in Bradford by the name of Peter Finan wrote to the Bradford Telegraph and Argus. Despite his local UKIP MEP being Amjad Bashir, and despite the highly publicised recent defections from Labour to UKIP of a number of British Asians, Finan trots out the old 'UKIP is racist' line. As 'proof', he cites a Facebook posting from that master of probity Nick Griffin urging people to vote UKIP, and mentions that Britain First - who polled 54 votes - urged people to vote UKIP in the Rochester & Strood by-election. He goes on to assert that Bradford will reject UKIP, a statement not entirely born out by last year's local election results in the city which saw UKIP narrowly miss taking a significant number of seats from Labour. Regular readers may recall Nick Lowles personal support for former BNP councillor (and friend of Nick Griffin) Paul Cromie after he narrowly held his seat against a strong UKIP challenge, such is Lowles' commitment to anti-racism.

Finan goes on to complain of 'intimidation' because the following day there was a letter in the Argus from Jason Smith, UKIP's hard-working Bradford chairman, pointing out the idiocy of Finan's position. The day after that, there was a letter from a UKIPper of Bradford origin who now lives in Southampton also criticising Finan's tired arguments. On the same day as the second letter was published in the Argus, Finan received a letter from one of Bashir's staff, accompanied by a polite letter and a couple of UKIP leaflets and inviting him to a UKIP meeting to hear what UKIP is really about. And that's it. This is what Finan considers intimidation, and he is now 'seeking legal advice' because he was accused of a smear. Finan denies it is a smear when he talks of 'the sort of people UKIP attract', but he's not talking of Amjad Bashir, Winston MacKenzie, Mohammed Islam or Owais Rajput, is he?


Peter Finan

So who is Finan? To read his complaint which is lovingly reproduced on Hope not Hate's website, you'd be forgiven for thinking that he was just a political innocent who was strangely horrified by people disagreeing with him. In fact, Finan is a well known anti-UKIP twitter user as Chemical Punnage - @uncleskinny -  noted for his foul mouthed tirades against UKIP and his close association with the watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) tendency of the Green Party. His exchanges with hard left anti-UKIP campaigners, his intimidatory tweets towards any who dare support UKIP, his ready use of epithets like 'racist' & 'fascist', his unquestioning support for convicted forger and fraudster Jasna Badzak's increasingly insane campaign against UKIP are all a matter of public record for any who care to look at his Twitter. Or you would be able to, except he's suddenly locked down his Twitter account (it's alright, we'd saved the worst already) presumably to hide the more shameful of his tweets and to maintain the fiction that his complaint is genuine and he is the wronged innocent persecuted by two letters disagreeing with him in a local newspaper and a polite letter. 

Do Hope not Hate know who Finan is? Of course they do. Its just another of the increasingly clumsy set-ups Lowles organisation has been reduced to in the face of UKIPs rise. Its a pretty sad day when an organisation which is supposed to be anti-racist supports the sort of white, middle class 'class warrior' who would allegedly call Amjad Bashir and his fellow British Asians 'coconuts' for supporting UKIP. But then there's a lot of that around Hope not Hate's offices.

A final twist of irony. Finan appeared on Mastermind a in 2003, making it through to the quarter-finals. His specialist subject was Indie band 'The Smiths', describing frontman Morrissey as 'superb' in an article in the Argus. We wonder if he is still as enthusiastic nowadays. In Morrissey's words last May, "I nearly voted for Ukip. I like Nigel Farage a great deal. His views are quite logical – especially where Europe is concerned". Bloody racist. That's the sort of people UKIP attract.

Senior Labour Party figures Miliband and Ummuna closely associated to man with links to 'Britain First'

A 'Mr Robinson', happily posing with
Britian First candidate

Senior figures within the Labour Party including leader Ed Miliband and shadow Business Secretary Chukka Ummuna had been repeatedly photographed engaged in earnest discussion with a man known to associate with far-right group 'Britain First'.

Left wing commentators and campaign groups showed their outrage by not saying anything, and threatened to protest at such outrageous behaviour by not highlighting it in any way and by not flagging up the connection on their blogs at all.

Labour shadow business secretary clearly
associating openly with 'Mr Robinson'
despite his far-right links

Neither Miliband nor Ummuna had any comment to make on photographic evidence that they had repeatedly been seen in public with a Mr Nick Robinson, the political editor of the BBC, despite recent photographic evidence that he was in a 'selfie' photograph with the deputy leader of Britain First and their candidate in the Rochester and Strood by-election Jayda Fransen.

Mr Robinson, 51, of North London, has a long history of talking to people involved with politics, and has previously spoken to Nick Griffin, former leader of the BNP.

Self-appointed 'anti-fascist' leader of Hope not Hate Nick Lowles has remained strangely silent on the subject, despite earlier tweets during the by-election campaign demanding to know "Why are UKIP campaigners having photograph taken with Britain First candidate in Rochester today?" after Fransen 'ambushed' them for a picture. At the time, Lowles

Labour leader Milliband and Robinson

rubbished claims that they did not know who Fransen was, and said it was 'clear proof of a link between UKIP and Britain First'.

We asked Hope not Hate whether Robinson's photograph was clear proof of a link between the Labour leadership, the BBC and Britain First based on exactly the same logic, but their press officer put the phone down without responding. We also e-mailed the question to Mr Lowles, but on attempting to e-mail again 12 hours later after he had failed to respond, discovered that they had blocked our e-mail address. We were going to contact both the BBC and the Labour Party with the same question, but then remembered that we weren't Nick Lowles, and that drawing conclusions based upon photographs taken out of context was absurd, stupid and the sort of puerile childish behaviour one expects from an anti-UKIP organisation.

Hope not Hate's '85%' campaign runs into some factual difficulties

Hope not Hate's 85% campaign appears to have run into some difficulties, most of them factual. To make up for this, we've created our own '16%' campaign to highlight the share of the vote Labour gained in Rochester and Strood. See if you can spot which one is ours below.

 

Labour MP photographed with known NF activist in her constituency

 

UKIP MP pictured with stranger

 The top picture of course shows Labour MP Dame Anne Begg photographed with her local Scottish NF activist during the recent referendum campaign. She knew who he was. The bottom picture shows UKIP MP Mark Reckless photographed with a stranger who came into the constituency office and who was unknown to him. Even HnH don't name her. Somehow this makes him racist in a way that Dame Anne Begg isn't.

Comedy death threats from Lowles friend Ian Austin MP?

Today's Wolverhampton Express and Star carries the story "Death threat claim by Labour MP Ian Austin over challenge to UKIP's NHS policy".

In it, Mr Austin makes a number of outlandish, not to mention unsupported, claims that he was sent an anonymous death threat after criticising comments by UKIP leader Nigel Farage regarding

So terrified, he hasn't reported it to the police. Austin has form with HnH
director Nick Lowles, and there are few depths to which he wouldn't stoop.

privatisation of the NHS. Mr Austin, who is currently running a campaign to save Dudley Police Station from a program of cuts which the Labour Party is responsible for, makes no mention of his intention to report this death threat to the police, and in fact offers no evidence for its existence beyond his own tweet. Even the local newspapers hedges its bets on this one by saying he claimed it rather than that it had seen it. We presume that had it existed it would have been sent immediately to the local newspaper. The problem with doing so, we assume, is that had he done so then the police would have investigated.

UKIP Cllr Dean Perks, a previous
victim of Austin's ethics

We are currently seeing a huge number of comments and messages posted across social media and on news websites which purport to come from UKIP members. This follows on from the claims made by a Labour campaign team that their stall was overturned by 'UKIP thugs': it is worth noting that the claims that they identified themselves as UKIP was missing from the first reports of the story.

Of course, any fool can set up an account and pretend to be a UKIP supporter, voter or member. Increasingly, we are seeing these picked up as evidence of UKIP racism/sexism/homophobia/extremism etc, particularly by people like Ian Austin. How convenient! Of course, all parties have their idiots: this is not true of UKIP alone. Even as you read this, there is a village somewhere lamenting the loss of Mr Austin. There are several truths we should remember about him particularly.

Mr Austin is a friend of HnH director Nick Lowles. To quote Lowles, "Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy". What better media strategy than to use his position to lend spurious credibility to internet nonsense than by publicising dubious threats from Labour Party sockpuppet accounts?

Mr Austin also has form on the anti-UKIP front: we covered earlier this year his role in a widely publicised story regarding local UKIP chairman and councillor Dean Perks - Did Labour MP release confidential constituency mail to damage UKIP candidate in Dudley?.

Ian Austin MP. Somewhere in England, a village has lost
its idiot and is desperately searching for him.

One thing we can be quite certain of. There is a campaign underway to create false accounts of
imaginary UKIP-supporting people and to then use those accounts to blacken UKIPs name. Austin, who by Nick Lowles own admission used to hang around NF demonstrations - "Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy than hanging round National Front demonstrations gathering intelligence" - is no stranger to underhand methods and outright dishonesty. His claims should be read in that light.

On the wider point of false UKIP accounts on social media and elsewhere, we can all play a part in minimising their effect by following a few simple guidelines:

1. Be careful who you accept as a friend on Facebook. If it is brand new account with nothing but UKIP related friends, be wary of accepting any requests
2. Be careful what you say on social media. Labour and their puppets at Hope not Hate have teams of people who do nothing but trawl comments looking for something they can use against us. Bear this in mind when commenting.
3. Remember that even innocuous comments and jokes can be used against us when taken out of context.
4. Do not get suckered into arguments by trolls - they are trying to make you lose your temper and type something in the heat of the moment which you will later regret.
5. Warn your friends if you are concerned about an account, or if they say something which goes beyond the pale.

Most importantly, remember that there are no depths to which either Labour or the Tories would not stoop in order to maintain their hold on power. Councillors, MPs, MEPs - these all represent considerable influence and millions of pounds worth of financing to the people and parties which control them. We are engaged in a high stakes game against entrenched interests at the highest levels of the establishment. UKIPs 'People's Army' can win, but only if we keep our eye on the ball at all times.

Jasna Badzak on the warpath again with Tory help (but let's pretend it's not official help)

Observers of UKIP goings-on will have noticed recently that convicted fraudster and forger Jasna Badzak's psychotic ramblings have been given an extra push by the nostril fuelled Louise Mensch, who has been re-tweeting Badzak like there is no tomorrow.

Having abandoned her constituents in Corby for the high life in New York, former Tory MP Mensch now appears preoccupied with attempting to tie Mark Reckless to the nonsense peddled by assorted conspiracy theorists. Top of the list of these is Ms Badzak, who is determined to push the line that Gerard Batten, UKIP MEP for London, is so powerful that he engineered her conviction for stealing over £3k off of him and then forging her bank statement to cover it up by organising a conspiracy which involved the judiciary, her bank, the Metropolitan Police and god knows who else.

Ms Badzak meanwhile has most recently had her collar felt once again by London's finest when she was arrested and charged last Tuesday for her continued harassment of Mr Batten. Yet another criminal conviction will shortly appear on her record over this when it comes to court.

Ms Badzak has a history of making wild allegations. She left the Tory party some years ago making much the same complaints she now directs against UKIP, although as the Tories have found a means of publicising her nonsense without having their fingerprints directly on it, that is all forgotten for now. In case anybody had forgotten just how barking mad she is, we repost below a blog posting about her long term criminal activities:

HnH push story from convicted fraudster with links to Russian mafia in desperation to halt the rise of UKIP

Desperation strikes at both the Times and Hope not Hate today as they publish an article based on allegations made by Jasna Badzak, a former Tory candidate who briefly worked for UKIP before being arrested and convicted of fraud and forgery after stealing £3000 from UKIP MEP Gerard Batten. Following her conviction, Batten bankrupted her, although despite this she remains listed as the director of several companies with Companies House.

Since her conviction, Badzak has clearly gone off the deep end, with constant tweets and e-mails about UKIP including allegations that the Metropolitan Police are colluding with UKIP and Boris Johnson (yes, I know...) to 'hush up' her mad ravings.

This is not of course the first time that Hope not Hate have used the ravings of those who clearly suffer from a mental illness in their campaign, and there is a touch of irony in that Hope not Hate themselves are being investigated for VAT fraud while Badzak is under investigation for benefits fraud, offences under the Companies Act, and further acts of forgery including allegedly the letter which is the basis of the Times article.

The best expose we have read of her madness, not to mention her criminality, is contained in a blog post by Mark Croucher, former UKIP Director of Communications and now a freelance journalist. In it, he examines Badzak's links with the Russian mob and her long running 'Finance Central Europe' scam which netted her thousands of pounds while simultaneously claiming benefits in the UK. The original article can be found at http://itmaynotbeillegalbut.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/does-serbian-fraudster-have-links-to.html, but we repost the text in full here with the author's permission, for which we thank him!

Friday, November 8, 2013

Does Serbian fraudster have links to Russian mob? - a look at Jasna Badzak

A Serbian immigrant from Bosnia who was convicted last month of perpetrating a fraud on UKIP MEP Gerard Batten has a long history of fraud, it was revealed today.

42 year old Jasna Badzak of Harrow Road, Kilburn, West London plead not guilty to charges of forgery and fraud but was found guilty by the jury at her trial at Southwark Crown Court last month. She had doctored bank statements to show she had not received her wages, but records showed that after Mr Batten paid her from his own pocket she went on a shopping trip to Harrods. When Mr Batten attempted to recover the money, she launched a series of Employment Tribunal cases against him, all of which were dismissed. She received a 12 months suspended sentence and a 4 month curfew order for these offences, while the judge in the case, Michael Gledhill QC, said that if it were not for her son, she would have received an immediate prison term.

Jasna Badzak - also known as Maya Braun -
after her conviction for fraud and forgery

Things may have gone harder for Badzak had the judge been aware of the full extent of her dishonesty which dated back to shortly after her arrival in the UK as a refugee from Mostar in the early 90's.

Despite her CV claiming she was a 'high level business analyst' for the Economist Group, the Economist confirmed that they had no record of an employee or a subcontractor of that name. She did at one stage sell advertising space in European Voice magazine for an advertising sales company - KP Sales Ltd - but that is a far cry from the 'consultancy and business development' role she awarded herself. She also claimed to have "taken sole charge of European Voice and ensured it’s (sic) survival’.

The real frauds begin around the turn of the millennium, however. At that time, she emerged as managing director of a company called 'Finance Central Europe', which she claimed to have bought off the Economist when it 'consolidated or spun off some of it's operations'. The Economist has never had a publication by that name, although it did have a similarly named one which it remained the owners of.

Finance Central Europe presented itself as a magazine which specialised in the subjects which one might expect given its title. There is just one problem - nobody has ever seen a copy of the magazine, which operated from a maildrop operated by Citibox Ltd in Central London and which was registered at Badzak's home address. Her and her husband, Dragomir Mikulic, were the sole directors, while it's website (now removed) was a simple text affair with no content.

So what did Finance Central Europe do? It appears to have been in the business of selling non-existent business awards to companies - some unsuspecting, some involved in organised crime - across Eastern Europe. Badzak, occasionally using the alias Maya Braun, would contact companies in Central Europe offering them research packages costing between £ 485 and £ 5250. As revealed in an article in Montenegran newspaper 'The Monitor', they offered a ranking service for banks - the difference with their service was that only banks which paid for their 'research' - a collation of publicly available figures - would be ranked. The 'Monitor' article followed an earlier expose in a Bosnian newspaper - 'Independent' - based in Banja Luka which precipitated the threat of a lawsuit against them for £1m each. While the lawsuit never materialised, the lawyer 'hired' by Finance Central Europe proved to be Badzak's father-in-law according to Boris Djurik, the paper's foreign correspondent. 'Independent' responded by re-publishing the article, along with a selection of comments from its readers. The comments included claims that Badzak and her mother were defrauding the British social security system and that that fraud was continuing.

When it came to issuing the awards, simply buying the research packages weren't enough. There were further fees to be entered into consideration, a premium level report had to be commissioned, and then there was a formal entry fee for judging. The awards issued reflected how much had been paid, and could cost in excess of £20,000 per award per year.

Now, some of the banks which effectively purchased their awards from Badzak were reputable companies simply unfamiliar with doing business in Western Europe and who thought that publicising such awards would show their increasing strength. Others, however, had rather less reputable motives.

Universal Bank of Moldova began buying FCE awards as far back as 1998 and continued to do so through 2007, according to their website which is currently under re-construction. Universal Bank is quite interesting, as it was at one stage owned by Russian banker German Geruntsov. Geruntsov was gunned down in the street outside his London home in 2012, supposedly by a Serbian hitman. Geruntsov himself was a suspect in the assassination of Russian state Duma deputy Ruslan Amadayev, who was investigating corruption on a massive scale by companies owned by Geruntsov and his business partner, Alexander Antonov. After Geruntosov fell out with Antonov, the latter and his son were also assassinated. Universal Bank of Moldova (Best bank in Moldova, Finance Central Europe Awards 2006) is suspected of holding over £1.5bn embezzled from the Russian railway network on behalf of the Russian mafia.

This is not all. When you look at other banks which have won Finance Central Europe awards, a surprisingly high percentage are under investigation or have been closed down for links with either Serbian organised crime or the Russian mafia. What Badzak's awards managed to achieve was to lend the banks a spurious credibility and plausibility by making them appear as if they had won awards from a company linked to the Economist magazine of London. Even worse, gullible but apparently honest banks such as DSK Bank of Bulgaria continue to tout such awards in the mistaken belief that they have won honestly - DSK was awarded 'bank of the decade, 2000-2010' by FCE.

The fraud appears to have not just been limited to banks, however. At various times, non-financial companies also received awards from Finance Central Europe, including Serbian Railways and the Sarajevo Brewery.

So, how much has Badzak made from her fraudulent activities? It is difficult to say, as Finance Central Europe Ltd was struck off the register in 2004, and in any case never filed any accounts. Despite this, it continued to trade as a UK limited company until early last year, and may still be doing so. I have found evidence of at least 130 awards on the internet over the past few years, although several of these have now disappeared - either the awards have been removed from webpages, or the company websites have disappeared completely. A not unreasonable estimate of her income from these scams would be in the region of £100,000 per year, and all the while she was also allegedly claiming benefits in the UK as a refugee - she later became a naturalised British citizen.

Is this all? Apparently not. According to the Monitor, there is a link between Badzak’s ‘magazine’ and another rating company, this one called Global Ratings Ltd. Global Ratings Ltd is, as the article suggests, another company scamming businesses in the Balkans. Like Finance Central Europe Ltd, it was also struck off the register in 2004, although it’s ownership was more convoluted than Badzaks company. Shareholders in Global Ratings Ltd were two companies – Financial Results LLC of 1072 Folsom Street, San Francisco, Ca – the address is a maildrop – and Star Premier Corporation, PO Box 3321, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands – another maildrop. Registered directors were Frank and Ellen McGlinn of 6, Divert Road, Gourock, Renfrewshire, Scotland. At the time of writing, Frank McGlinn is the director of 5 companies, and is listed as having been a director of 7 others which have been struck off the register, including Global Rating Ltd. The awards made by this company followed a similar pattern, although also caught a number of unsuspecting companies. How? It invited their directors to gala award dinners in London to collect their awards, and then afterwards presented them with a bill for the dinner and accommodation of over £5,000 each: rather expensive rubber chicken. This scam stretched outside the Balkans and their immediate surroundings, gathering victims in the Ukraine, Uzbhekistan and as far afield as India. My investigations into the precise form of the link between Badzak and McGlinn are continuing.

The question must be will Badzak ever be prosecuted for any of this? Clearly the benefit fraud - which has been reported - is the most likely, although with Finance Central Europe's bank account presumably being held offshore, and with the limited company struck off long before the fraud finished - assuming it is not still being perpetrated - it is difficult to know who exactly will investigate and/or prosecute. As for Badzak's links with organised crime, who knows? Was she a useful tool to make mafia and organised crime controlled banks appear respectable, or was she a willing part of the scheme to make them so? Either way, a 12 month suspended sentence seems like a stroll in the park compared to her crimes.

The biggest lie of them all - Jihadi threatens Hope not Hate apologists

Anjem Choudhary in the days when he was chasing virgins
in the UK, rather hoping for them in heaven



We're used to seeing lies being published on Hope not Hate. Almost every post concerning UKIP if it doesn't contain an outright lie contains the truth stretched almost to breaking point. We make no secret of our support for UKIP, but even when it comes to organisations we don't support such as the EDL or BNP, we see Hope not Hate publishing rubbish which leaves credibility behind.

And then we have Hope not Hate's apologism for radical Islam. Their deliberate evasion of criticism of some of the most dangerous men to visit these shores. Mohammed al-Arefe. Yasser al-Habib. Not a word about the arrival in the UK of these two as Nick Lowles lead his crusade to keep Pam Geller and Robert Spencer out of the UK.

And then there is Anjem Choudhary, who is pretty much the only Muslim extremist Hope not Hate mention, and only then to keep up the pretence that they are against extremism rather than against UKIP. Even when it transpired that the killers of Lee Rigby in Woolwich were closely associated with Choudhary's al-Muhajiroun group their condemnations were muted and hedged with caveats.

Despite all this, today Nick Lowles had the gall to post the following:

Today's newspapers are full of the story of Choudhary's arrest. Its on the BBC, ITN, Sky and networks ranging from Al-Jazeera to Russia Today. The blogosphere is full of it. Twitter is full of it. Politicians across the UK have been quoted on it. And yet of all of these outlets, Lowles expects us to believe that somebody would waste their time by making threats against an organisation which has come to symbolise Labour's appeasement of radical Islam?

Pull the other one, its got bells on.

The responsibility for the grooming crisis lies within the culture Hope not Hate has infected the Labour Party with

Make no mistake - Nick Lowles and Hope
not Hate are a major part of the conspiracy of
silence in the Labour Party which allowed
this to happen repeatedly.
 

'Shining a light on abuse' is the disgraceful apologia issued by Hope not Hate director Nick Lowles following the publication of the report on child abuse in Rotherham. As an exercise in obfuscation and blame passing it is truly New Labour in its scope, which is only to be expected from an organisation so heavily supported by the New Labour faithful, many of whom have ended up in prison for expenses fraud.

Lowles - while at least having the decency to join calls for Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Shaun Wright to resign - goes on to say, "HOPE not hate was vocal in its criticism of how local authorities were dealing with on-street grooming from as far back as 2005". Leaving aside the minor point that Hope not Hate as a separate entity did not exist in 2005, their interest in the issue was politically motivated and solely an attempt to counter BNP propaganda: the type involvementstawhich Hope not Hate advocated and which was deeply entrenched within the Labour Party - turning a blind eye and hoping the problem went away on its own - ensured the continued ability of these grooming gangs to operate.

The desperate attempts to play down their culpability have lead to major re-writes of sections of their blogs and websites as history is re-arranged to make their own actions seem less supportive of those who engaged in child grooming. Luckily, we still have their pages available off-line, meaning articles such as the snippet below are not entirely lost to posterity:

"New HOPE not hate leaflet - £700 needed by midnight tonight

We are producing a new leaflet to debunk the racists’ lies around grooming.... the leaflet will also debunk racist myths peddled by far right groups. We have a mother of a girl who was groomed condemning the BNP for exploiting the issue. We have people in the Muslim communities speaking out. And while racist groups try to blame all Muslims for the actions of a criminal few, this leaflet will also show that many of their own supporters have been convicted child pornography and child abuse"

Nobody was attempting to suggest that every Muslim or every Asian was a child grooming paedophile in waiting except in the deepest reaches of Lowles mind - but making out that that was what his political opponents really meant ensured that the problems could be deferred or ignored. It was a policy always destined to failure, and the price of that failure to date - 1,400 sexually abused young girls in Rotherham alone - is only the tip of the iceberg.

Their actions in opposing child grooming amounted to pointing the finger at the BNP and saying that they too were child abusers, while attempting to minimise the cultural associations which made it particularly prevalent within sections of the Asian community. Elsewhere, serious attempts to deal with the ongoing problem of grooming have been deliberately ignored by Lowles for political reasons. We have long supported the campaign by Imam Alyas Khamani which seeks to impose a 'khutba' in mosques underlining that grooming is un-Islamic behaviour. Hope not Hate meanwhile have never mentioned Khamani's initiative because he is a Respect councillor in Bradford: in fact, in Bradford Nick Lowles was recently praising a councillor with long, established links to the British National Party for managing to hold his seat and keep UKIP (and Respect) out in last May's elections.

 

Lowles goes on to paint himself as a martyr in the fight against Asian grooming gangs, writing, "Unfortunately, too many people have remained silent for too long,” I wrote at the time. “Police and local authorities have been slow to protect these young girls. Leading figures in local Muslim communities have often been too slow in speaking out on this issue, and in some cases simply dismissed it as Far Right propaganda. They have been joined in this by some on the left, who have been too quick to silence any discussion.". He fails to mention that he himself is one of those on the left who have for many years been desperate to silence calls for action by dismissing them as racist and attacking the messenger rather than the crime. It is Lowles and his band who have ensured that these crimes have continued by refusing to countenance the idea that there may be a racial/cultural/ethnic basis simply because it clashed with their dogmatic, blinkered approach to racism: all differences are good, and to suggest that some are not is to be a neo-Nazi.

We should be clear about this. When the report talks about councillors of Pakistani origin who blocked and mislead the inquiry, this is a direct result of the type of culture within the Labour Party which has been encouraged by Lowles and Hope not Hate. It is a culture which is so determined to turn a blind eye to anything which may have ethnic origins that they would rather sweep it under the carpet than deal with it head on, regardless of the consequences to some of the most vulnerable members of society.

In this, Lowles is as guilty as the PCC whose resignation he calls for: Labour's Shaun Wright, who was responsible for children's services in Rotherham at the height of the scandal, and who was also a member of the police authority at the time. His compliance with the idiotic, blinkered approach advocated by Lowles and the rest of the Labour Party hierarchy allowed this to happen. While taking foster children away from a couple because they happened to be UKIP members, they also permitted over 1,400 children to be sexually abused, threatened, beaten and trafficked as they turned a blind eye because to act may have been considered racist. If clearer proof was needed of the political motivations of this bunch of clowns elevated to high office, we're not sure what form it could take.

And so Lowles finds himself now walking a tightrope. Posts by his organisation which dismissed rumours of major and organised involvement in child grooming by members of the Pakistani and Kashmiri community have been deleted, while some attacking those who suggested a link between certain immigrant communities and child sex have been deleted altogether.

Time and again, Lowles and Hope not Hate have ignored some of the most unpleasant aspects of extremist Islam as they try to persuade us that there is nothing to worry about. Misogyny and homophobia have been ignored as they take aim time and again at any who would dare to raise the fundamental incompatibility between a secular western democracy and fundamentalist Islam. By refusing to shine a light on crimes which they are supposed to expose Hope not Hate have revealed their fundamental hypocrisy: it could be argued that they are in some respects even complicit for promoting an attitude and a culture within the Labour Party which actively prevented such issues from being dealt with.

So, Mr Lowles. Spare us your self-serving crocodile tears. You are not a martyr. You are not and have never been working towards a solution, and to suggest that you are is to overlook your own complicity with the culture of secrecy and silence which permitted such crimes to flourish in Labour controlled areas. 14 months ago, we wrote of Lowles refusal to even mention Imam Kharmani's initiative:

"So I say this to Nick Lowles and his Hope not Hate comrades. Shame on you, for betraying your core principles. Shame on your silence which allows hate to grow and lies to spread unchecked. And shame on your shoddy attempts to put your own personal allegiances ahead of an initiative which will clearly aid better relations between communities. Your blinkered attitude and political partisanship makes you no better than those you claim to oppose. For many years, you attacked the BNP, and ran with the slogan 'Not in my name', only for us to find the tables are now turned, and an increasing barrier to harmonious relations between communities is not the BNP and the EDL, but Hope not Hate and your refusal to back initiatives like Karmani's. If you must continue with such wilful blindness, be aware you do so on your own and not in my name."

It is as true today as it was then. Shame on you, and shame on the cowards you represent. Your moral ambiguity has permeated the Labour Party to such an extent that it has failed in its duty towards not just children, but whole populations of a significant number of Metropolitan areas which it controls. The fault is your, so don't you dare try and wash your hands of it.

Self-congratulating yourself for abject failure: HnH's self-deluding campaign 'analysis'

Nick Lowles -
Now lacks the smug grin after UKIPs
advances in Labour heartlands

After Lowles congratulatory tweet and blog posting (both now deleted) to a far-right former BNP councillor, his latest contribution is his 'analysis' of the elections so far.

As might be expected, his analysis is not what it quite appears to be. For a start, on UKIP he writes:

"The earthquake promised by Nigel Farage has not materialized. Yes, UKIP gained 128 seats and held on to 35 others, but at 17% of the national vote, support for the party was down from last year’s 23%."

Which may be technically true. But we reckon in England there were 4211 council seats up for election, of which UKIP contested only around 2300. As the vote share is calculated across all seats and not just the seats the party contested, that means that the 1911 seats which UKIP didn't contest count as a 0% vote share. If you take out those almost 2000 seats, UKIPs vote share in the wards it contested climbed from the 17% Lowles quotes to closer to 30%. Lowles is not so stupid that he is not aware of this, meaning his argument is somewhere between disingenuous and a downright lie. It is certainly a wilful distortion.

He then returns to the Labour fantasy that somehow it is Tories who are voting for UKIP and not Labour, dismissing as aberrations UKIPs results in Rotherham and other Labour heartlands and pointing to the 'success' of Hope not Hate's campaign in 'halting' UKIPs advance. Perhaps he should have taken a closer look at the voting figures in cities where they previously weighed the Labour vote rather than counted it. Somewhere like Bradford perhaps, where of UKIPs 16 candidates, 1 was elected, while 11 took second place, some just a handful of votes away from winning. Only 4 candidates received under 20% of the vote, while 6 scored over 30%: and this despite - or more likely because of - a sustained and concentrated effort by Hope not Hate throughout the city. A full breakdown of UKIP's results in Bradford can be found here on the local branch's blog.

Then there is some more Lowles comedy - what used to be called spin before it became so outrageous that it expects to get away with saying that white is black:

"HOPE not hate ran its largest campaign to date, with over two-and-a-half million newspapers and leaflets being distributed nationally, thousands of people involved and strong and lasting links across many local communities built. Over 3,600 of our supporters donated to our campaign over the last few months and this helped us fund an eight-page supplement in the Daily Mirror."

We have discussed their newspapers and leaflets before following the failure of their action days over the May Day bank holiday and on 'Transport Tuesday' last week. The claim that they deliverd 'over 2,500,000' leaflets and newspapers is rather strange, since on the 2nd May they announced that their

Only a week ago, HnH were asking for
help to deliver half as many leaflets as
they now claim

'Deliver Hope' campaign 'have produced over 1.3 million leaflets and newspapers', and their ability to deliver even that many seemed suspect. In Brighton they claimed to have delivered 27,000 newspapers despite having a campaign team of only 5 people for 2 days. Our suspicion is that they did indeed deliver 27,000, except that 24,000 were delivered to one of the many recycling centres run by the Green council there in a single batch.

The discrepancy of 1,200,000 leaflets can only be accounted for by including the circulation of the Daily Mirror, which included an 8 page insert shortly before polling day - Lowles was begging for the £10,000 needed to pay for it, despite Hope not Hate being awash with Labour Party and trade union funds simply to create the entirely false impression that HnH is somehow a grassroots campaign which relies on donations from individuals, whereas in fact the vast majority of its money in 2009 - 89% - came from the largest trade unions. As for the Daily Mirror, their efforts succeeded in turning out their readers to vote for UKIP on a scale previously unimagined.

Lowles then went on to make the laughable claim that:

"While not underestimating the size of UKIP’s advance, we believe that our efforts made a real difference."

So lets take a look at that real difference (with thanks to a poster on our Facebook page for the figures):

Party                              Seats before                Seats after               % increase/decrease

Labour                           3827                            4111                        +     7.4%
Conservative                 2927                            2702                         -     7.7%
Lib Dem                        1168                            893                           -   23.0%
UKIP                             17                                184                           +980.0%

Yep, that really put the brakes on UKIPs advance, didn't it?

As Lowles says in his closing remarks, 'We really did make a difference'. We'd agree. Without you, we couldn't have made the British public realise just how much of our country had been sold out from underneath us. We couldn't have made them feel that they were being lectured to by a bunch of middle class kids with no understanding of working class life. We couldn't have highlighted just how alien some of our largest cities have become. So thanks, Nick. We appreciate the help. Keep up the good work, and you just keep fooling yourself that you helped your side of the argument.

We believe Hope not Hate is now entering its final days as the anti-UKIP campaign of the Labour Party, a subject we will return to later.

On a point unrelated to this post, Hope not Hate deleted Nick Lowles' congratulatory posts to former BNP councillor Paul Cromie on his success in barely holding off a UKIP challenge in Bradford, and claimed later that the posts were 'a joke' and that Cromie 'hated them'. And yet earlier in the evening, Lowles and Hope not Hate seemed to be getting their information on how the count was progressing in Bradford from Cromie, as the following blog post on Lowles blog makes clear:

"We're not responsible", bleats Lowles as the focus shifts to Hope not Hate inspired violence and lies

Having spent the past year doing his very best to stoke up hysteria by misrepresenting UKIP's immigration policy, HnH director Nick Lowles has this afternoon published a self-justifying set of lies and evasions on his personal blog. This came after UKIP leader Nigel Farage shone a spotlight on the violence Hope not Hate and Unite Against Fascism  have incited against UKIP in an interviewon BBC1's 'Sunday Politics' programme this morning.


Farage said, "Sadly we have a a couple of organisations out there headed up by senior Labour Party figures, who purport to be against fascism and extremism, who receive funding from the Department of Communities, who receive funding from the trade unions, who have acted in a violent way more than once."

Asked if he was accusing the Labour Party of organising the violence, he said: "No. I said Unite against Fascism and Hope not Hate are taxpayer-funded, they are trade union-funded, they are headed up by very senior Labour figures".

Lowles bleats a whole host of untruths and partial truths in his defence as he sees his income stream unravel before his eyes. In his response, it is what he fails to say which is more revealing than what he does. As an example, nowhere in his blog posting does he deny that Hope not Hate members have acted in a violent way and he makes no attempt to disassociate Hope not Hate from such violence.

Hope not Hate of course have a long history of inciting violence against groups they don't like. We blogged back in February of this year how HnH 'director of intelligence', former BNP thug Matthew Collins sent a series of tweets during a visit to London by members of the Hungarian far-right party Jobbik which were designed to vector Unite Against Fascism boot boys to their exact location. This sort of incitement has been carried out repeatedly by Hope not Hate, including during EDL demonstrations both in the UK and overseas.

As for direct violence against UKIP Andrew Scott, the man convicted of assaulting Farage with a banner in Margate, was a Hope not Hate supporter. Fred Glenister, the man currently on bail after assaulting Farage by hitting him with an egg in Nottingham, was a Hope not Hate supporter.

Of the rest of his evasions, to take some of them in turn:

"We are not aligned to any political party" - This is hardly worth responding to. It is so transparently a Labour Party & trades union front that such an assertion is simply laughable. Lowles deputy director is Ruth Smeeth, a Labour parliamentary candidate selected for a safe seat, while 80%+ of their funding comes from the trades unions. UnionsTogether organiser Byron Taylor sits on HnH's management board. Meanwhile, in 2009, Lowles wrote, "anybody...serious about stopping the BNP was by now mobilised behind the Labour Party campaign. The campaign was carefully planned with Hope Not Hate Yorkshire to coordinate Labour activity and third party interventions". Former Labour MEP and Europe Minister Glenis Kinnock is a patron. Meanwhile, Hope not Hate's online campaigning is managed by the Labour facing Blue State Digital. Verdict - Lie

"(Our) supporters have not attacked or disrupted any UKIP meeting, nor have we encouraged anyone to hold protests outside such meetings." - Except that UnionsTogether is closely aligned with the UAF's "Stand up to UKIP" campaign, while their organiser Byron Taylor said earlier this year on the Labour List website, "To save them a lot of time and effort, I’m very happy to point out that in my spare time I’m on the management committee of HOPE Not Hate". Attendees at last week's UKIP rally in Westminster may have noticed that alongside the Socialist Workers Party (no imperialist apostrophe in their name) banners were a large number of 'UNITE' ones. And it was difficult to miss the UnionsTogether advertising truck with their poster on it which drove past repeatedly. As we reported the following day, our own representative at the protest reported that a number of SWP people present also identified themselves as Hope not Hate activists. The membership overlap between these organisations is so great that it is impossible to tell where one ends and where another begins. We have of course dealt with precisely this issue in more detail in an earlier posting and comprehensively demolished Lowles' lies then Verdict - Lie

Nigel Farage has claimed  that I'm a member of the Communist Party with close links to the Socialist Workers Party: claims which are utterly untrue - We can not comment on his membership status with the Communist Party, but it has long been rumoured that he was a member in the past. As for links with the Socialist Workers Party, HnH paid hack Carl Morphett is a former member, while the HnH website frequently highlights events run by Love Music, Hate Racism, another (like UAF) SWP front organisation, this one headed by UAF in-house rapist and former SWP leader Martin Smith. Meanwhile, UnionsTogether - who are actively represented on HnH's board and who supply funding to HnH - work closely with the UAF in the 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign (see above) Verdict - Lie

"Now Farage is peddling a fantasy that we have received Government money to take him on. This is a lie. Three years ago our charitable arm received a grant for £60,000 from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to undertake anti-racist community work in four areas of the country. This was a one-year project which ended in 2012, long before we started scrutinising UKIP" - Hope not Hate's accounts show a total of over £120k received from the DCLG between 2010 and 2012. As their most recent accounts have yet to be filed, it is not possible to tell whether this has continued. Meanwhile, Hope not Hate has been scrutinising UKIP since 2005, as confirmed by former UKIP staffer Mark Croucher who liaised with them. Verdict - Lie

"Last year we began to identify racists and extremists within UKIP. We initially tried to form a constructive relationship with the party leadership but it became quickly evident that they had no interest in working together to root out these racists" - UKIP worked closely with Searchlight and then Hope not Hate (see above) up until the scale of the drift in support from Labour to UKIP became clear. By 2011, this cooperation had completely ceased, not because of UKIP, but because of Hope not Hate, who had no interest in continuing cooperation with a party it was about to start actively campaigning against. Verdict - Lie

So why did Lowles fail to disclaim violence? A look at their supporter's comments on their Facebook page is instructive. In an article published on the 25th January this year regarding comments by UKIP's Farage on gun control, a whole series of HnH supporters made violent suggestions, including the following:

 

These are the sort of comments which - had they featured on a UKIP website or been written by a UKIP supporter - would be spread all across Hope not Hate's page as 'evidence' or 'proof' of violent intentions.

Lowles bends the truth as he tries to fight of 'establishment' claims

Lowles fights 'establishment' label

It was interesting to read Hope not Hate director Nick Lowles self-congratulatory puff piece in the Huffington Post yesterday, not least because of the levels of distortion it contained.

In the article, Lowles says,

"In fact, the UKIP leader sounds worried. This morning he attacked me personally, and HOPE not hate, on BBC radio and in national newspapers, claiming I was a Communist and linked to the Socialist Workers Party (I am neither), or that we were linked to another organisation Unite Against Fascism (we are not) and that because our charitable (non-campaigning) arm accepted government funding in the past (now ceased) we are part of the 'Establishment' trying to stop them. I guess he must be feeling riled."

To deal with these distortions in turn:
..claiming I was a Communist and linked to the Socialist Workers Party (I am neither)...

Lowles originally worked for Searchlight before engineering his own well paid political career by breaking Hope not Hate out of its founding organisation after an internal power struggle. Searchlight was founded and run by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Some of his Hope not Hate staff members - including website contributor Carl Morphett and his pseudonyms - remain associated with hard left, communist groups.

As for the SWP, it is true that the SWP and HnH had a falling out, although close links remain between them. HnH staff regularly attend far-right demonstrations, often disguised as serious journalists, and their detailed tweets giving the specific locations of far-right activists are eagerly used by UAF/SWP to target them for violence. Meanwhile, SWP front organisation Love Music Hate Racism - headed by rapist Martin Smith, former SWP leader - regularly has its events publicised by Hope not Hate. A quick internet search shows Norfolk Hope not Hate advertising an LMHR event at the Mulberry Tree, Ipswich in October last year.

Verdict: False. While Lowles' assertion that he is formally linked to neither the Communist Party or the SWP may be true in the narrow sense that he is a member of neither, there are clear, ongoing links between all of these groups.

... that we were linked to another organisation Unite Against Fascism (we are not)...

If his denial of involvement with the SWP is false, his denial of links to UAF must also be false, since the UAF is merely an SWP front organisation, as is LMHR. HnH is more than happy to use the street violence of the UAF (see above) as a part of its tool set, while not being stupid enough to permit more direct links. Notwithstanding that, at last years failed 'Stand up for HOPE' meetings which were designed to produce an anti-UKIP consensus within the Hope not Hate membership (they didn't, and few people turned up, as we reported at the time), UAF members were conspicuous attendees advocating a harder line against UKIP and were welcomed because of it.

Verdict: False. As above, Lowles denial is disingenuous at best as clear links between UAF and HnH exist and are well documented.

.....because our charitable (non-campaigning) arm accepted government funding in the past (now ceased) we are part of the 'Establishment' trying to stop them....

Lowles closeness to the Labour Party is no secret, and that of his deputy, Ruth Smeeth could hardly be clearer - she is an open Labour supporter who has just been selected to fight a safe Labour seat. Their own accounts with the Charity Commission and Companies House show them receiving government funding - 2013's accounts have yet to be filed, so it remains to be seen whether his assertion that such funding has ceased is true. In a week in which we have seen the Corporation of London donating money to oppose UKIP politically, it is difficult to escape the notion that Lowles is indeed a part of the establishment. After all, unlimited cheap foreign labour undercutting the British workforce - whatever their race - is only good for the richest in society.

Verdict: False. Hope not Hate attempts to present itself as a grassroots organisation, but in fact has solid links with bankers, big business, the Labour Party and the media, as evidenced in its sponsorship by the Daily Mirror. It doesn't get much more establishment than that.

Far from UKIP's Farage feeling riled, it would appear that Lowles is concerned that the general public is seeing through his propaganda to the point that he feels obliged to write a HuffPo article patting himself on the back. How nice it would have been to have seen some honesty in it, but that would be a step too far for Hope not Hate.

Immigration - the partial truth Hope not Hate want to sell

We've published this before here, but it is worth a slight edit just to drive home the point!

 

Dan Hodges - 1 cheque from the Telegraph, 1 cheque from Hope not Hate

Dan Hodges - paid by the Telegraph, paid by
Hope not Hate: nice work if you can get it

It was hardly a surprise to see Nick Lowles triumphantly echoing the words of Dan Hodges - "UKIP
is a racist Party" - and using this as a justification for continuing political action against UKIP not because it is racist, but because it threatens the Labour Party.

Hodges reached his conclusion because, amongst other heinous crimes, UKIP members were caught laughing at a racist joke at conference in Torquay, and used a slogan once used by the BNP. Hodges also complains that "there has been a steady stream of outrageous and disgustingly racist comments by UKIP councillors and officials" which he claims have gone unpunished. In fact, most have been punished, unlike the many Labour Party councillors who have featured on our Facebook page over the last year.

Lowles has of course been looking for an excuse to drag the dwindling band of Hope not Hate supporters along on his quest to attack UKIP, a party he was once happy to work with in fighting the far-right - as, in fact, was Dan Hodges who met with a senior UKIP official on a number of occasions. That was before UKIP looked like thumping the Labour Party in the European elections, and before UKIP started taking huge chunks out of the Labour vote in previously safe Labour seats in the Labour heartlands of the north.

Lowles has long faced a problem within Hope not Hate. Huge numbers of his own supporters were decidedly lukewarm about HnH turning its guns on UKIP, as we discussed about this time last year when he was doing a speaking tour in an attempt to drum up anti-UKIP feeling. Speaking mostly to empty chairs or hand-selected audiences of UAF and SWP activists who thought Lenin was a bit right wing and Mao was a fascist, he still lacked anything approaching a mandate to fight a battle with UKIP.

And now, out of the woodwork, crawls Hodges with his thoroughly dishonest diatribe. Hodges and Lowles are hardly unknown to each other - in the 2010 General Election campaign, HnH paid Hodges over £4,500 for a raft of services ranging from fundraising to writing press releases - the invoices are attached below. Hodges himself is a defender of Peter Mandelson, on the pages of Labour Uncut and even in the Progress Online website, while Mandelson's group are suspected of funding Hope not Hate. And yet, as Left Futures says, "Dan Hodges is not the most reliable of soothsayers."

No-one however has ever accused him of not knowing which side of the bread the butter is on. His latest column will inevitably raise the question about whether he is being paid by two masters for the same article: in 2010 he was already hard at work for Hope not Hate by this time of the year, although we'll have to wait for HnH's Electoral Commission returns later in the year to find out for sure. It's nice work if you can get it though - being paid to promote the views of one organisation in the columns of a national newspaper which is also paying you for the same thing.

And with Hodges mother - Labour MP Glenda Jackson - standing down at the next General Election, having Peter Mandelson's influence on your side shouldn't hurt when the selection battle starts. It just goes to show, it's never too early to get your nose in the trough.

So, what's in it for Lowles? He can trumpet a national newspaper - albeit one he is hardly likely to read - labelling UKIP as racist, and flaunt the article before his dwindling band of supporters. It helps drag out the death throes of Hope not Hate - an organisation which since UKIP saw off the remnants of the BNP has no purpose - for another election campaign, and all the money that involves. The bleaker long-term reality for Lowles is that Hope not Hate is becoming an increasingly unwieldy alliance of hard left and Blairite Labour funding, with the trades unions on one side, and Mandelson's Progress on the other. The public meetings mentioned earlier showed that HnH has no true grass roots support - this is why in 2010 it was reduced to paying private companies to carry out its leafleting as it simply no longer has the ability to put feet on the ground.

How long can he continue to pull off this balancing act? The smart money is that his organisation will be gone by the end of the year.