Homophobia, fraud & payola - Labour Euro leader's shocking past

UKIP had endured several months of attacks - mainly from Labour - after Polish MEP Robert Iwaszkiewicz joined the EFDD Group. This came after European Parliament president Martin Schulz effectively bribed a Latvian MEP into leaving the group in an attempt to cause its collapse by having insufficient nations represented in its membership. Schulz of course is a member of the 'Party of European Socialists' (PES), the group to which Labour belongs. But is everything clean in Labour's garden?

PES is currently headed by Sergei Stanishev, former PM of Bulgaria and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party from 2001 to 2014 until he was forced from office following a scandal after the appointment of a media mogul as head of the nation's Agency for National Security. Protesters chanted 'mafia' and 'red trash' in a series of demonstrations across the country. In 2011, he was elected unopposed as the President of the PES with the support of 91.5% of their MEPs, including backing from Britain's Labour Party contingent.

Baroness Royall & Stanishev,
showing what they think of
'gays', no doubt

It was no secret even then that Stanishev is a homophobe. In 2008, while he was Bulgaria's Prime Minister, he opposed the first Gay Pride march in the country, saying he did not like the "manifestation and demonstration of such orientations". While this matter of public record would bring howls of outrage from the usual suspects in Hope not Hate and UAF not to mention their Union and big business backers had it been said by anyone in UKIP, when it comes to Stanishev, there is a strange silence over his past indiscretions. In fact, it is the opposite of a silence, as Stanishev expects the backing of Glenis Willmott and the rest of the British contingent of Labour MEPs when he stands for re-election as the PES President in 2015. Will they really back him? Of course they will, homophobia doesn't matter when its their side that says it - if they cared, why was the leader of the Labour opposition in the House of Lords, Baroness Royall, so keen to be photographed with someone with such views? Royall serves as a Vice President of the PES in Stanishev's administration.

And then we have the fraud. There are a lot of allegations, both directed towards Stanishev personally, and against his wife, who if anything has even dodgier connections than him, including links to a jailed drug trafficker.

The first indication of Bulgarian Payola came with the development of a Black Sea resort in the country in an area designated for environmental protection by the EU. The Euro 1bn project was forced through in the face of huge objections - although the EU has remained strangely silent. The Bulgarian partner of the developing consortium is run by George Stanishev, who coincidentally is the brother of Sergei, who was Prime Minister at the time consent was granted. It's not what you know, it's who you know, eh?

This was followed by a bit of mutual back-scratching. Stanishev received the full backing of Commission President Manuel Barroso in early 2009, only for Stanishev to support Barroso's second term as Commission President a couple of months later.

And then we get on to the really serious fraud involving Stanishev's wife, drug traffickers and a payola scandal in Austria. Our apologies, but it makes for hugely complicated reading, so I hope you will bear with us.

Stanishev married his second wife, Monika Yosifova in 2011, although he had been living with her since late 2008. She was a noted PR expert in Bulgaria, and runs a PR company called 'Aktive Group'. In 2013, Aktive was given a contract by the PES under Martin Schultze to create a website explaining the function of the European Parliament to Bulgarians. The grant application had originally been rated 24th out of 111 submissions by the EP communications directorate. Rather than argue the case for the contract - which had been signed in his wife's family name of Yanova - Aktive

Sergei Stanishev and wife Monika - what name
will she be using today to hide her frauds?

promised to return the Euro 30k deposit it had already received.

 

This is not the first time that his wife had been involved in EU website funding scandals however. Between 2006 and 2008, Austrian national Peter Hochegger worked as a lobbyist pushing for Bulgarian accession under a Euro 1.5m contract issued by Stanishev's government. Part of this money was in turn paid to the PR company headed by Stanishev's wife, again under her former name Yanova. Hochegger himself was sentenced to 2.5 years by the Vienna Criminal Court last year for hiding donations to the 'Alliance for the Future of Austria' Party (BZO) during the 2006 Austrian elections - donations were hidden using fake invoices from PR and communications companies. Hochegger himself admitted that Euro 270,000 was paid by his company to Yanova/Yosifova/Stanisheva's company, along with Euro 100,000 to Ernst Strasser, the former Interior Minister of Austria. There were close links between the Bulgarian branch of Hochegger's company and other senior members of Stanishev's party in Bulgaria: Bulgarian branch manager Rositza Velkova was a close associate of Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, and other names close to the ruling party were also found to be connected to the PR business of Hochegger, including Juliana Nikolova, adviser to Prime Minister Borisov on EU funds management and Ivaylo Georgiev, former director of the Arena Armeets sports facility, who is currently in charge of the National Palace of Culture.

Austrian Peter Hochegger - serving 2 1/2 years for his role in
a political payments scandal, and a close associate of
Sergei Stanishev's wife.

 

Stanisheva's links to Austria do not stop with Hochegger. In 2007, a company called Europroject Holdings AG was registered in Vienna. Notionally formed by Austrian citizen Herbert Edlinger and Bulgarian Evelina Gyuderova, by 2010 only Stanisheva (registered in the Austrian registry using her middle name as a surname, ie Monica Lyubomirova, owning 75%) and Aneliya Krushkova (owning 25%) were the beneficial owners. Krushkova was a former Deputy Minister of Trade in the Bulgarian government and was appointed head of the State Tourism Agency in 2007 by the government headed by Sergei Stanishev. Krushkova is also listed as the head of another Austrian registered company, BDZ Holding, related to the Bulgarian state railway company. In July 2007, a company was registered in Sofia called Europrojects Point, with the Austrian 'Europrojects Holdings AG' listed as the sole shareholder. Management of the Bulgarian company was in the hands of Zinaida Zlatnova until the end of 2007, when she was appointed the European Commission representative to Bulgaria. She is currently the Deputy Prime Minster and Justice Minister. Europroject Point was formed specifically (according to its now defunct website) to assist in the application by Bulgarian companies for European Commission grants, and between 2007 and 2010 the company dealt with L1.2m of grants (roughly £500k). Many of these represented clear conflicts of interest with deals having been signed by government members and companies which they owned, and Stanisheva had other business interests with several of them. This included contracts signed by Krushkova in her capacity as head of the State Tourism Agency with Europroject, of which she was also an owner.

At several general meetings of Europroject Holdings AG, both Stanisheva and Krushkova were represented by a lawyer/banker called Boryana Lindiger who was employed by Euram bank in Vienna. In 2006, Lindiger was involved with a private finance house in Bulgaria called 'Private Finance Union', or PFU. She assumed a board position vacated by a man called Simo Karaychev. Karaychev is the brother of Evelin Banev, nicknamed 'Brando', who was convicted in Italy of cocaine trafficking and in Bulgaria of money laundering. While Lindiger downplays any association between herself and either Banev or Karaychev, the Sofia City Court in its conviction of Banev stated that Lindiger had 'serviced the bank accounts of the defendant', and that the source of funds arranged by Lindiger was from cocaine smuggling between Columbia and Bulgaria. Lindiger was also involved in another company with Edlinger which hit the headlines when the Commission for Establishing Property Acquired Through Criminal Activity was attempting to foreclose a property owned by Ahmed Dogan. Dogan, apart from his sideline as a hotelier, was also leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which was a minority party in Stanishev's administration. Edlinger's company managed to dispose of the shares in the hotel before the Commission could act. Dogan himself was acquitted of corruption in relation to European funding of hydroelectric power projects in Bulgaria for failing to disclose his links to the company awarded the £300k contract after it was discovered the law he was prosecuted under was not in force at the time: this was alleged to have taken place while he was part of Stanishev's government.

 

There, was that complicated enough for everybody? Our apologies, it is very difficult to write this stuff concisely, as part of the 'modus operandi' of fraudsters is to make things complicated and difficult to follow in the event of a subsequent investigation, although with Stanishev placemen occupying the senior positions at any Bulgarian agency which might have to conduct such an investigation, there would seem little chance of that happening. Our thanks to the researchers on this, and we will add the links to the external sources as time permits: many of them are present on Stanishev's Wikipedia page in any case, so this stuff is hardly a secret. All of which begs the question - why does the Labour Party believe a corrupt homophobe is the best person to represent their interests in Europe?

Merthyr Green PPC defends association with would be arsonist; Labour councillor resigns as admin

Elspeth Parris, the Green PPC for Merthyr Tydfil, commented on our earlier blog posting which pointed out that her group contained people who were advocating the burning down of UKIP's campaign office in Merthyr. She wrote:

We have reproduced this in full lest she consider it 'defamation of character', but to address her points in order:



"I didn't found this group" - perhaps, but you're certainly an admin of it. And fellow watermelon Harriet claims to support the Greens and Natalie Bennett, the UK's least inspiring political leader. And Elspeth (who is a personal FB friend of Harriet) certainly played a leading role in setting it up, explaining to members of the Facebook page which preceded the group the reason why it had switched to group format, with lots of 'we' and no 'Harriet said'.

"Harriet is a Merthyr resident who happens to be at university in Scotland" - if it were true, this

Elspeth says Harriet lives in Merthyr
Harriet says she lives in Edinburgh.
Is Elspeth lying, or does Harriet not
know where she lives?

rather begs the question as to why she is involved with the Radical Independence Campaign in Scotland when she wouldn't have a vote there, but the easiest way to deal with this is a screen grab from the achingly middle class Ms Protheroe-Davis' profile. On her own Facebook profile, she states that she lives in Edinburgh.

"the group has no connection with any suggestion that the shop should be 'burnt down', the person who the article suggests has made such a suggestion has only joined the group very recently" - which is true so far as it goes: the group was only set up last week, so everybody in it only joined the group 'very recently'. Previously, it was a Facebook page under the same name, and Malik Furreed was a member of that group as well. Conveniently for Elspeth, all posts have been deleted from that page, but its alright, we screen grabbed them in case you didn't. So horrified is Elspeth by Malik's suggestion that she has responded instantly by taking no action whatsoever and allowing him to remain a member of the group. Why would any respectable political group want someone who incites political violence as a member, and why would they go to such lengths to defend such views?

'Speeches made were made by UKIP representatives' - We will concede that we have not been able to find video evidence of any speeches, so we'll give Elspeth that one. Although we find it difficult to believe that you can get 40 members of the hard left together without there being several hour long speeches. Perhaps the red flag waving militants were too busy making plans for future arson at the premises they were protesting outside?

Malik Furreed, member of 'Merthyr says NO to UKIP'

What is quite interesting is that somebody seems to have had a word with Cllr David Davies, Labour councillor for Town ward in Merthyr. He is not longer an Admin of Harriet and Elspeth's page, we assume because he's not a complete idiot or at least someone in the Labour Party who isn't a complete idiot phoned him up and told him that his continued role as an admin was associating him with people who wanted to burn down a political opponent's shop and all the people inside it. Clearly this is a lesson Elspeth hasn't learned, as Malik Furreed remains a member of the group, despite the Green's Merthyr PPC knowing he was seeking volunteers to 'fuck up' the shop.

We already knew that the Green Party would consort with criminals in its quest for power. Natalie Bennett, the Green leader, shared a platform with a convicted fraudster and forger so desperate is she to damage UKIP. Thanet Green councillor Ian Driver - himself the proud holder of a criminal record - helped organise the demonstration which saw Nigel Farage assaulted in Thanet by one of his friends.

Elspeth complains that our original article is defamatory, something she repeats on Twitter. The truth is much simpler. We said that a group that she is behind contains people who threatened to burn down the UKIP shop in Merthyr and those inside it. That was and is the absolute truth, and the rest of her protestations are just fluff. If you lie with dogs, you get fleas, Elspeth. The time when the Green Party should be called to account for its association with political violence is long overdue.

PS incidentally, getting your little gang of Welsh communists to flood the comments doesn't address the problems. And you wonder why we're attacking you? We're sure you'd like to think its because you're a political threat to the UKIP vote, but it's not, because you're not. It's because you're condoning the actions of someone who threatened to burn the UKIP shop and those inside it. We don't see what is so difficult to grasp about this - your Labour councillor obviously got it.




Calls to burn down UKIP shop by members of group run by Green PPC & Labour Councillor

A Facebook group run by a Green Parliamentary Candidate, a Welsh Scottish Nationalist and a Labour councillor has members who advocated burning down the UKIP shop in Merthyr Tydfil.

Elspeth Parris, Green Party 'watermelon'
who is happy to associate her group
with instigators of political violence and
intimidation

The group - Merthyr says NO to UKIP - was founded by Elspeth Parris, Green PPC for Merthyr Tydfil. Other admins were David Davies, a Labour councillor in Merthyr and Harriet Protheroe-Davis, a student activist who will apparently join any campaign so long as it features a red star.

Also members of the group are two other Labour councillors from Merthyr, Darren Roberts and Rhonda Braithwaite, a Plaid Cymru PPC, Freddy Greaves, and UNISON managers Dawn Bowden and Dan Beard.

The member we are interested in though is part time musician Malik Furreed. Furreed was so incensed by the operation of democracy that he called for volunteers to 'fuck up' the UKIP shop in Merthyr which was due to open a couple of days later.




Malik Furreed's barely literate call to violence

His friend Jake Morgan was quite enthusiastic about it, suggesting that they 'burn whatever cunt goes in there as well', an idea that Malik was quite happy with. Similar comments appeared on his Facebook page. Clearly someone has been in touch, as young Malik has deleted the comments. Luckily we have the screen grabs (right).

Had it been a UKIP supporter who'd said such things about a political opponent, UKIP would have expelled them and/or cut all links to them. No such scruples in 'Merthyr says NO to UKIP' though. Although the tweets and Facebook posts have been deleted, Malik remains a member. As do the Labour councillors, the Green PPC, the Welsh Scottish Nationalist and the Plaid PPC.

Perpetrators of the violent attack on the UKIP shop in Penarth

That they would put up with such threatening behaviour is hardly surprising. On the 14th December, a group of youths - one of whom does not look dissimilar to Malik - attacked the UKIP shop in Penarth, a short distance away from Merthyr. On that occasion, a gang of 6 - 5 youths and one older man who stayed safely out of range of the CCTV cameras - urinated in the shop doorway and threw beer glasses and bottles at the shop frontage. This was just 4 days before Malik was appealing for volunteers to do the same to the UKIP shop in Merthyr Tydfil.

Such behaviour in this part of South Wales is hardly new, although it has stepped up a notch since UKIP finished a narrow second behind Labour in this year's European Elections. In July last year, we reported how a UKIP candidate in Llansamlet was forced to withdraw after his wife's UNISON rep at work warned her that if her husband stood as a UKIP candidate, her career would be at an end. It is not surprise then to see two UNISON reps as members of the 'Merthyr says NO to UKIP' group - UNISON's regional manager Dawn Bowden and University of Wales UNISON secretary Dan Beard.

Protheroe-Davis and Merthyr's homeless with a
rather confusing sign

There's plenty of other hate around in the group. David Davies, group admin and the Labour councillor for Town ward on Merthyr council is a Hope not Hate activist who 'likes' Socialist Worker, UAF and In Defence of Marxism among other hard left groups. Double-barrelled class warrior Harriet Protheroe-Davis, another admin, belongs to a veritable smorgasbord of radical, hard left groups including Radical Independence Campaign, the violent Scottish Nationalist group, although her only link to Scotland appears to be as a student at Edinburgh University.

To date, actions directed against the Merthyr shop have amounted to little more than a poorly thought out sign held briefly outside the door by Protheroe-Davis and a number of Merthyr's homeless to judge by their appearance. Some speeches were made, and a lot of people who pretended to be local turned up 'spontaneously', although a significant number went to some lengths to show their affiliation with the hard left of the Socialist Workers Party by staying out of camera shot and covering their faces. A number of 'Stand up to UKIP' signs were also present: the campaign is a strange mish-mash of activists which receives funding from both the trade unions and big business through the 'British Influence' group, but is run by the SWP front UAF. As we have seen elsewhere in the country, how long will it be before they tire of their tactics of intimidation in the face of UKIPs continued rise and resort to the sort of violence advocated by Furreed and seen elsewhere in the country?

Rotherham paper 'apologises' for production error in UKIP ad which hit front pages

News reaches us that the Rotherham Record has issued an apology for incorrectly running a UKIP
advertisement with the phrase 'Say No to the UK'.

The paper today printed the apology on page two, blaming an 'error in the production process'. The error amounted to an employee (believed to be a Labour Party member) deliberately altering the artwork, as it was supplied 'print ready' and in the correct format to be directly inserted in the paper without intervention.

The usual media suspects ran the story about UKIP getting it wrong - we won't link to them here, but the Huffington Post, Metro, etc plus of course Hope not Hate all made merry at UKIP's 'mistake'. Now it appears that it was a dirty trick by a newspaper employee, do you think they'll run that story too?

We should all be prepared for more dirty tricks along the same lines. While UKIP has been hounded by poor headlines this week, the other parties have escaped, despite stories such as these in just the past 4 days:

Ringwood Tory councillor in racism row after using 'n' word in council meeting

Rochdale Labour councillor fails to overturn sentence of homophobic abuse hurled at fellow councillor

Former Tory councillor fined £100 for breaching terms of sex offenders order relating to child porn conviction

English Democrat councillor thrown out for saying Liverpool was cursed for supporting Gay Pride

Cornish Lib Dem councillor alleged to pose 'serious risk to children' could face disqualification for non-attendance

Plymouth Labour councillor faces charges of fraud by abuse of position as executor of will

There are more - see our Facebook page via the link to the right (in a web browser) to see the details. And we repeat - this is just 4 days worth at a quiet time of year!!

From payola to paedophilia, the establishment parties escape the media attention

Labour's Farooq Ahmed - convicted
 of hurling homophobic
abuse at fellow Labour Councillor

It has undeniably been a difficult couple of weeks for UKIP particularly in Essex. The withdrawal from the Basildon & East Thurrock selection process of Natasha Bolter appears to be one of those things about which UKIP could have done nothing: either she was a 'woman scorned', or a deliberate plant by another party, but the release of e-mails and texts she sent to Roger Bird seem to confirm that whatever she was, she was not a victim of sexism. Luckily, her sexism allegations, even if couched in terms deliberately designed to damage UKIP and with the added suggestion of racism thrown in, will have little long term effect upon the party's prospects.


More worrying in our opinion were the events which came afterwards involving Neil Hamilton and Kerry Smith. Both were victims ultimately of their own past actions and as such may not be deserving of too much sympathy. But what we find most depressing is that both were victims not of the media unearthing things which they would prefer to have remained undiscovered, but of fellow UKIP members deliberately releasing information in the furtherance of a personal agenda and regardless of the wider damage it would cause to the party.



Labour's Pauleen Gibson found guilty
of making reckless and
unsubstantiated racism allegations

We know who was responsible, but we have no intention of naming names and prolonging this rather pitiful bout of mud-slinging. We would also caution commenters to not name names below this article, as we will delete them: it serves no purpose to enter another round of recriminations and accusations. A brief look at Labour's social media output is sufficient to gauge the damage that UKIP has inflicted upon itself.

We scan the media every day. We know just how many councillors and officials from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are hauled up on accusations of homophobia and racism, and as a result, we know just how many of these make it out of the pages of local newspapers and into the pages of the nationals. The answer of course is almost none. The same is true about scandals involving expenses fraud - look at what is happening at Dorset County Council, where the Tory leader is facing criminal charges for failing to declare his interests. But we also know the extent to which UKIP is both particularly targeted for such things, and the propensity of the national media to run any local story which reaffirms UKIPs image as being both racist and homophobic.

We have attached below links to a number of articles which show the problems UKIP face: had any 

Lib Dem Stephen Fenwick (at rear)
was convicted of
racially aggravated assault

of these people been UKIP, the stories would have warranted the front page of the Daily Mail. As they were from the establishment parties, the fall-out was safely contained in the local area.

It may well be that the general public see through what the media is attempting to do, and there is some polling evidence to suggest that is the case. Whether the voting public will continue to make such allowances for UKIP when it is UKIP members who are handing the media the ammunition remains to be seen, but this sort of self-indulgent jostling for position can only serve to make us look exactly like the parties we criticise.

Cllr Pauleen Gibson (Labour, Haringey) (Feb 2014) was found guilty by a standards board of making reckless and unsubstantiated allegations of racism. She was found guilty of bringing the council into disrepute, and announced her decision to not seek re-election.

Cllr Stephen Fenwick (Lib Dem, Sutton) (March 2014) was convicted of the racially aggravated assault of a barman at the pub on Charing Cross station concourse.

Cllrs Sajaad Khan and Pervaz Khan plus three others (Labour, Middlesborough) (May 2014) resign from Labour group following re-selection process which Cllr P Khan described as "treating some of my Asian family and friends in a manner which they perceive to be racist".

Former Cllr Lester Holloway (November 2014) resigns from the Lib Dems after racist remarks, and complains that the party is not doing enough to promote racial equality and is deliberately failing to select Black and Asian candidates for winnable seats

Cllr Paulette Hamilton (Labour, Birmingham) (September 2014) deselected in Labour witch hunt, supporters warn of 'danger of becoming an apartheid city'

Cllr Farooq Ahmed (Labour, Rochdale) (June 2014) resigned from the Labour Party because they failed to give him sufficient support following his conviction of a public order offence after hurling homophobic abuse at a fellow Labour councillor in the street.

David Bishop (Conservative, Brentwood) (May 2014) resigned as a candidate after he made homophobic and racist tweets

Don't worry, there are plenty of double standards at play elsewhere. UNISON - who fund both Hope not Hate and UAF's 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign, were happy to support one of their own shop stewards who told a Polish agency worker that jobs emptying bins in Salford were for 'English people'

This is just a random selection - there are hundreds more examples of this type of behaviour by representatives of the establishment parties posted on our Facebook page which is updated daily, not to mention stuff which is far more serious: criminal offences ranging from firearms to fraud, explosives to expenses cheats, payola to paedophilia.

We accept that sometimes people say or do things which deserve wider exposure. Do these things include the contents of private letters or private telephone conversations between members of the same party? If people find themselves watching what they say when talking to fellow party members, then the true exchange of ideas necessary for political debate is gone, and we are channelling our thoughts down the same road as the establishment. Smith and Hamilton may both have been wrong - we make no judgement on the basis of politically partial leaks - but both had a right to expect their colleagues to keep private matters private.

LaRoche supported 'race play' sex leader of International Socialist Network

Bunny LaRoche - fond of calling people racist, but happy to
support the idea of 'race play' sexual relationships

Long terms readers of this blog will have recognised the shrill, blue haired scold in the Question Time audience last night as professional middle class agitator and Socialist Worker's Party/International Socialist thug Bunny la Roche. La Roche, who hails from Thanet, was a leading organiser alongside Thanet Green Cllr Ian Driver of the demonstration which saw UKIP leader Nigel Farage assaulted in Cliftonville at the beginning of this year. It is no surprise to discover that she is also a personal friend of Andrew Scott, the man convicted of the assault.

More surprising for a woman whose every other sentence involves labelling someone racist is her involvement with the International Socialist Network (ISN). When LaRoche left the SWP she joined ISN, one of the splinter groups formed as the organisation began to break apart following the rape allegations directed towards leader 'Comrade Delta', normally known as Martin Smith. We suspect that she wasn't one of Smith's victims.

The International Socialist Network - of which she became one of the self-appointed leadership clique - was itself almost immediately riven by dissent. Much of this centred on a row about a sexual practise known as 'Race Play', in which partners of different ethnicity ignore social conventions and - basically - call the black one a 'nigger' while shagging. Life doesn't really get more racist if not white supremacist than that. The main proponent of this rather bizarre, counter-revolutionary activity was Richard Seymour, the 'leader' of ISN and a close ally of Bunny LaRoche.

Despite many of ISN's activists departing over the row, LaRoche has stayed loyal to Seymour, and continues to feature him on her website. All of which seems to indicate that LaRoche thinks racism is just fine so long as she decides on who gets to be racist and when. As LaRoche has a face like a slapped arse and a body like two billiard balls in a sock, we haven't dwelt too long on whether she herself partakes in 'Race Play' lest we lose our breakfast at the very thought, but it wouldn't surprise us.

Elsewhere, La Roche is hardly popular even among the self-described 'anti-racist' groups. She is also not averse to a bit of capitalism, as this posting from 'Socialist Unity' outlines: when their Stoke branch received an £2000 donation from the PCS union, she attempted to bill them £1800 for UAF's unwanted assistance. They write,

LaRoche - back on the SWP payroll as a 'Stand up to UKIP'
paid organiser.

" Bunny Laroche, a full timer who previously excelled herself by making the SWP’s name mud in Kent"
"Bunny accused the activist of stealing them from her. She then changed tack and said she was “not allowed” to sell the shirts"
"Bunny came into her unpleasant element again... She went from sweetness and light at the founding meeting... to an aggressive bully at the anti-fascist rally held a few days later"

There is much more, and we really recommend that you read it the Socialist Unity report linked.

It is worth mentioning that LaRoche has rebuilt her links with the SWP while remaining a defender of racist sexual practises, and is now involved with the SWP inspired 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign, the bully boy front of that other union funded organisation, Hope not Hate. We understand she receives a salary in return for her efforts.

It is the left's Orwellian policies on the NHS that are racist

As Hope not Hate continue their infantile attacks on UKIP's attempts to find workable solutions to the chaos which passes for our NHS, our attention has been drawn to an article in the Daily Mail from last August which raises an issue we mentioned several days ago: the fact that the NHS strips doctors from the poorest countries when we are turning away British kids who want to train as doctors from our own universities.

Villagers queue to see a doctor in the Sudan. Hope not Hate
think taking Sudanese doctors to prop up the NHS is an
acceptable way of dealing with the shortage of medical
personnel in the UK.

The Mail article refers to General Medical Council figures on the number of overseas trained doctors who are on the British medical register.

An example would be the 1,415 doctors who trained in the Sudan. According to data from the Henry J Keiser Family Foundation, Sudan has 2.8 doctors for every 10,000 people, or 14 for every 50,000. The British NHS has 138.5 for every 50,000.

Sudan suffers from famine and drought. 20% of the 30 million plus population live below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day. The country receives some £50m of aid from the UK alone every year. The Global Hunger Index ranks the country the 5th hungriest in the world, and states it has an 'Alarming Hunger Situation'. The country ranks 171st on the Human Development Index, making it one of the states with the lowest human development in the world. The Red Cross talks of the 'desperate situation of health care' in the country.

Despite all this, Hope not Hate and their Labour and Union paymasters seem to think that taking 1,415 doctors out of the country is somehow a good idea for the NHS, an damn the poor Sudanese. To put this into perspective, with 2.8 doctors per 10,000 population and a 30,000,000 population, that means there are only around 8400 doctors in the Sudan. If you work out the maths, that means the equivalent of 16% of all Sudanese trained doctors are now in the UK, and yet the UK continues to recruit medical personnel from there to prop up the NHS.

As if taking doctors from the Sudan wasn't bad enough, the NHS also employed doctors from Haiti, Burundi and Liberia, where there are so few doctors that they don't even register on statistics which count the number of doctors per 10,000 of population. All of these nations are so desperate for doctors that much of their healthcare is provided by charitable organisations such as Medecins sans Frontiers. They have economies ravaged by civil war and natural disaster, huge healthcare problems including major epidemics of HIV/AIDS and, in the case of Liberia, Ebola.

Hope not Hate might want to pretend that the NHS is one of the reasons why unlimited immigration is such a wonderful thing. From their point of view, we're sure it is - it hides the abysmal failure of the Labour government between 1997 and 2010 to come up with an educational system which can train the number of doctors we need. It brings relatively poor, non-English speaking immigrants right to the door of the largest unions in the UK. Unions which, coincidentally, fund Hope not Hate.

Whether it is quite so good for the Sudan, Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, Libya, Syria and all the other desperately poor countries is an entirely different question. For that, you'd have to ask the villagers who walk for hours to see one of the ever decreasing number of doctors. Will Hope not Hate do that? We doubt it. The villagers are black, poor and don't vote in UK elections, so why would those right-on, achingly liberal class warriors give a shit?

Are we angry? You'd better believe it. As Lowles, Smeeth and their colleagues in the Labour Party and the unions sit on their arses feeling smug about 'protecting the NHS', the thought that they are depriving millions of desperately needed, life or death medical care doesn't seem to cross their minds. And how are they doing it? By allowing the poorest countries in the world to train medical personnel, and then stealing them with inducements to emigrate to the UK because it is cheaper to throw money at them than it is to train our own doctors. And when UKIP - or anybody else - attempt to have a serious, grown up discussion to ensure that we can create an NHS which is capable of living within our means, they attempt to close down the argument with the sort of 'four legs good, two legs bad' arguments which Orwell would recognise for what it is.

The hard left are fond of labelling stupid statements by individuals racist, fascist and Nazi. They seem incapable of realising that what they are doing is far worse than someone being called by the wrong politically correct term for their colour this week. Their solution is imperialist, racist and breathtakingly cynical, but they see nothing wrong in that, for in their quest for equality, there is one thing they are absolutely certain of: All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others.