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Danger Tourists - Part Three: Andy Drury and Nigel Green on holiday with the Taleban. And guess who was staying a few doors down...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:49:41 +0200

By JUSTIN DUNN

THE Khyber Pass connects lawless areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan - and is by far and away one of the most dangerous places on earth.

Part of the ancient Silk Road it’s one of the oldest passes on earth, is constantly in the crosshairs of various warring factions and is peppered daily by gunfire and exploding mortar.

But British cousins and “danger tourists” ANDY DRURY and NIGEL GREEN wanted to see where their late great-grandfather had been stationed in the 1890s, so went there anyway on HOLIDAY in 2008.

It was just one of many edgy, life-threatening journeys the builders, from Guildford, Surrey, have taken over the last twenty years.

Here, in more adapted extracts from their journals, Weekend Sport reveals how during their trip they stayed at one hotel not knowing that just yards away hid the world’s most wanted man – Osama bin Laden.

OUR great-grandfather Serjeant James Henry Simons served with the Royal Scots Fusiliers in Pakistan – then called the Punjab – and Afghanistan from 1896 to 1907, and we were eager to see what it was like.

We have a good contact in Peshwar, Prince Ullah Khan, who always helps us when we’re travelling in the dangerous North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

He’s an interesting, well-connected character and claims to be related to former cricketer turned politician Imran Khan. We don’t know – but you have to be VERY well connected to operate successfully in that part of the world.

Pakistan is pretty lawless everywhere, but mentioning Peshwar as our destination to any Pakistani other than Pashtuns, the NWFP’s dominant tribe, brings cries of horror and advice to avoid it at all costs.

On our first morning, Prince took us to a Sikh temple where five or six “priests” were lounging around, communing with god by smoking ultra-strong ganja and singing at the top of their voices.

Later he somehow got permission for us to enter the main Sunni mosque in Peshawar, the Qasim Ali Khan, where foreigners aren’t normally permitted.

A year earlier 11 people died there as a result of a Shi’ite suicide bomb. Prince explained that the mosque was the centre of all Taleban and extremist activity in the area.

In the afternoon he took us Kalashnikov shooting at an abandoned fort in the middle of nowhere – slightly worrying, as it was rumoured to have once been a training camp for pro-Taleban groups.

Back at our hotel Prince had arranged for the “beer man” to knock on our door and supply us with a few cans. Booze is illegal, so this was the equivalent of entering into a drug deal.

The beer man had a secret knock, the door was answered and the plastic bag containing beer passed through at ten dollars, about six quid, a can. We were told to dump the cans in bins outside.

Ironically, Pakistan has its own brewery in the town of Murree and the advertising slogan is just brilliant: “Eat, drink and be Murree.”

We visited the former British Garrison Church – St John’s Cathedral – in Peshawar as our great-grandfather would have undoubtedly attended services there.

As we took pictures, we were oblivious to a machine gun emplacement in a building across the road that overlooked the cemetery, where Muslim graves were immaculate and Christian graves in ruin.

They didn’t seem happy and began shouting, and when the machine gun was swung menacingly in our direction we decided it was best to stop taking photos!

As we continued to wait for the Khyber Pass to open, we first attended a cockfight at the invitation of one of the hotel waiters, and then went to a local gun factory where 15/20 men sat on a floor making surprisingly high quality automatic shotguns and handguns – many of which make their way to the UK.

Next morning, we learned the Khyber Pass was actually OPEN. It was a manic rush to get packed, locate drivers and pick up our escorts.

The scenery is dramatic but it’s the idea of the pass which really had an effect on us. Thousands of years of turmoil and fighting gave us a feeling of being in the midst of real history.

The danger is still ever present to this day. There is nowhere else in the world like it. It wasn’t hard to imagine tribesmen lurking in the high rocks waiting to pick us off – probably not far from the truth anyway!

And this was where our great-grandfather had been stationed, at Landi Kotal on the pass and at Dakka in Afghanistan.

It took us a while to get across, mainly because once you’re stuck behind a truck on the narrow and winding road it required almost suicidal overtaking to get past – something our driver was more than happy to do.

Coming back across was a gamble – but we took a chance again, even though there’d been trouble when Pakistani paramilitaries had freed two aid workers who’d earlier been abducted.

We had two armed escorts but they sat stony faced and there was none of the banter that we’d had with them previously. They made our driver go flat out but at the town of Landi made them stop – then jumped off and ran away!

We soon saw why – trucks full of Lashkar fighters suddenly appeared either side of our car. Our driver looked petrified but didn’t panic and drove slowly past them. Lucky escape.

Next day we visited the Swat Valley – an - out of bounds area run by a “parallel government” – and as we stopped for lunch, immediately knew something wasn’t right.

Prince suddenly shouted that we should put our scarves on and our heads down. Pick-up trucks full of black-turbaned Taleban fighters appeared around us on the street.

Our driver again stayed cool and calmly drove through the middle of them. They were celebrating the release from prison of one of their local terrorist leaders – and the danger wasn’t over yet.

Down the road we decided to stop, but as we entered the café we saw more Taleban fighters sitting at a table drinking tea.

After they noticed us we left quietly – but not before Prince got up and spoke with them. We have no idea what was said. We were just grateful for whatever strings he’d pulled.

After that close shave we had lunch in Mardan, right next to the market where three days later a huge bomb blast was to kill three people and injure dozens more.

Prince took us to the “law courts” – rows of lawyers sat down while, behind them Wild West-style, sat inmates crowded into a barred prison staring wide-eyed at the police.

We were told they were murderers, rapists, drug smugglers and terrorists, many of whom would find out their fate – including the death penalty – that day.

One man told us through Prince that he had shot his wife for nagging him – but who are we to make judgements on that!

Prince then took us to his main home in Peshawar, where he showed us his collection of 26 guns – the icing on the cake of which was the American M16 with laser dot sighting and an expensive scope.

Then he took us to the infamous Smuggler’s Bazaar where we were introduced to the market’s Chief Haji Qalandar Shah, a short but amiable man in his late 30s.

We couldn’t help wondering how ruthless he must have been to reach his position, this being one of the most lawless and violent places on the planet.

His lieutenants sat in wrap-around shades and carried guns, but we weren’t that worried until the chief began snorting pure crystal meth while holding a locked and loaded AK47 in our direction. It seemed the right thing to move out of the way…

His den was full of American goods such as “Operation Enduring Freedom” clocks and an Apache Helicopter mug. Turned out one of his sidelines was selling stolen US goods bound for GIs in Afghanistan.

Before we left, the chief asked us to pose with him and showed us the remains of a rocket powered grenade that had blown the leg off one of his friends just a day earlier.

While in Peshawar we also checked out the Pearl Continental Hotel, where we’d considered staying. A year later a huge suicide truck bomb detonated by the Abdullah Azzam Shaheed Brigade obliterated most of it.

Instead we stayed that night at the Metropole Hotel, where we finally lost our rags after being continually woken up by jabbering on the roof next to our rooms at 2am.

We ran out of the door and shouted at them to shut up, then realised we were only wearing boxer shorts while surrounded by half a dozen local Muslim women in full burkhas.

You should have seen the horror on their faces – but at least it shut them up for a bit.

Next we travelled along the main route to Abbottabad, where we stayed in a hotel on the outskirts of town. There didn’t seem much to see, although the chilli chicken in the hotel was good.

What was interesting – although we didn’t find out until three years later – was the identity of one of our neighbours living literally just yards down the road.

It turns out that holed up in a compound minutes away from us was none other than Osama bin Laden. Pity – that $25 million reward would have come in very handy!

Eventually we would make to Rawalpindi, where we eventually found a hotel called the Akbar International.

We visited the local bazaar which didn’t have a patch on the Smuggler’s Bazaar, but in any case took a couple of pictures of a gruesome butcher’s stall where the produce seemed to consist of nothing but goat heads and bulls’ bollocks!

While eating at our hotel, we noticed across the road there was a monument to something or other and asked Prince what it was for.

He explained it was a shrine - built on the exact spot where former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated in 2007. She’d been shot in the neck and then blown up by a suicide bomb.

It summed up what we’d seen on our trip - whenever a bunch of moderate Pakistanis tried to make progress or found something good to make a difference, a bunch of mentally unstable religious zealots would come along and destroy it.

* ON WEDNESDAY - NIGEL AND ANDY WITH THE REBELS IN CHECHNYA

* FOLLOW DANGER TOURIST ANDY DRURY ON TWITTER @andrewdrury

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Danger Tourists - Part Two: Mogadishu, Somalia, with Nigel Green and Andy Drury

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:12:42 +0200

By JUSTIN DUNN

AT least 29 people were killed when suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Somalia capital Mogadishu at the weekend.

The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group said it carried out the attack at the main courts and near the airport.

The Somali government said nine gunmen had been involved in an earlier assault on the court. Six of them detonated suicide vests.

The bombing campaign was one of the worst in Mogadishu since al-Shabab lost control of the city in August 2011 to the African Union and government forces.

Al-Shabab was forced out of Mogadishu in August 2011 following an offensive by AU and government troops.

But it has continued to carry out guerrilla attacks in the city, widely held as THE most dangerous and lawless place on earth.

That makes it all the more remarkable that British adventurers NIGEL GREEN and ANDY DRURY actively chose to visit the place last year – for a HOLIDAY.

Family men Nigel, 50, and his cousin Andy, 47, have spent the last 20 years travelling to the world’s most dangerous places.

In Sunday Sport - and on the blog post below this one - we told how they went to North Korea – the bonkers nation currently threatening nuclear war with South Korea, the United States and Japan.

Today, in more adapted extracts from their journals, Midweek Sport reports on how these otherwise unassuming builders from Guildford, Surrey, went in search of the infamous Black Hawk helicopter wreckage…

IN 1993 the United States sent troops into Mogadishu to try to restore order. They were after General Mohamed Farah Aideed – an ex US Marine who’d set himself up as the most powerful warlord in the city, profiteering by selling what was mean to be foreign aid.

The Americans sent in a land force and a fleet of helicopters to meet at Bakara Market near the Olympic Hotel, where they thought Aideed was holed up.

But their intelligence was wrong. Aideed wasn’t there. And then disaster struck – first a Ranger fell from a Black Hawk helicopter, plummeting 70 feet, injuring himself terribly, and then a rocket propelled grenade – RPG – hit the rear tail rotor of another, which crashed killing both pilots instantly.

Aideed and his generals knew that the Americans would not leave the bodies and waited to ambush them when they arrived. In the ensuing battle, 18 Americans died and nearly 1,000 Somalis were killed.

And that’s where we desperately wanted to get to – ground zero, where the helicopters came down.

Somalia had always been the jewel in the crown for us in terms of danger travel. What other country was synonymous with total anarchy and destruction? A suitable euphemism for Somalia would be “crapping on your own doorstep”.

They have an appetite for unruly behaviour – until the afternoon delivery of the local dope, “khat”, arrived, which would turn everyone into zombies.

If you want to get anything done in Somalia, it has to be in the morning before the khat turns up.

Even al-Shabab – the home grown terrorists linked to al Qaeda – allowed the khat planes to fly in unmolested.

Not so lucky were the planes carrying international aid – we saw the wreckage of one at the side of the road, where they had shot it down with RPGs.

We flew to Mogadishu via Istanbul, and on arrival at the airport terminal the sight that greeted us was pure hell.

Insane looking militia were swaggering about with AK47s, and our first experience of the country was seeing militiaman beating a drug crazed lunatic to the ground with a stick.

Our security guide, an ex-SAS man we’d arranged to meet in advance, ushered us quickly through the mayhem and the barricades to a waiting Land Cruiser with blacked out windows which was escorted by a pick-up truck full of armed guards.

The pick-up led the way to the compound where we would be staying. It was about 150 yards away! It had been too dangerous to even walk THAT small distance.

As we approached, the SAS man radioed ahead and two large steel gates were opened. The lead car with the armed guards swung around to protect our vehicle while we reversed in, quickly followed by the pick up.

SAS man told us NEVER to leave the car until the gates were shut. What an introduction – it was obviously going to be very different than anything we’d done before.

Mogadishu was not a place where normal rules applied. But as we sat later in the garden waiting for lunch, we reflected on how long it had taken us to finally get here – and it felt bloody good!

Originally, we’d planned to do the “Black Hawk Down” tour on day one, but it involved visiting the notorious Bakara Market area of the city.

It’s a nightmare even on a good day but a businessman had been murdered there the day before and tensions were higher than normal.

Everything here has been utterly destroyed. We’ve been to some of the most volatile places on earth but there were always some areas that had escaped unscathed. In Mogadishu, NOTHING had been spared.

The local Roman Catholic cathedral had been obliterated and was now being used as a dumping ground for the city’s waste.

Burning piles of rubbish completed with post-apocalyptic vision of hell. That and the feral children who darted in and out from among the ruins, taking great delight in showing us their skills at jumping the considerable distance from the top of the cathedral’s steps straight into the burning fires below.

Opposite there we saw the town hall – another bombed-out ruin. No doubt at that very moment there were al-Shabab cells lurking somewhere, seething at this attempt to transform the city into anything other than the anarchy it is.

A short drive from the cathedral took us to the Unknown Soldier Memorial. He must have been turning his grave – literally, judging from the number of heavy artillery shells peppered around it.

On the road back to the compound we saw the wreckage of a Belarusian aid relief plane which had been shot down a couple of years earlier by two al-Shabab RPG strikes, with the loss of two pilots and eight crew.

It looked strange just left at the side of the road. If only they had painted “khat” on the fuselage, they might have been allowed to land safely.

Next morning, the Black Hawk Down tour was on. Our first objective was the Olympic Hotel. It was situated in the heart of darkness and we had to get in and out in two to three minutes to avoid being kidnapped.

The guards – including a tough Croatian – were very nervy and jumpy, but we managed to take a couple of photos in front of the building before the Croat stated: “We must leave – now.”

Back in the truck, he mentioned that he’d noticed the locals using their mobile phones and pointing at us – a sure sign they were letting people know we were there and that’s why we needed to move.

There was a bit of a scare on the way out when we turned into a road which was blocked by a lorry. When we reversed and tried another, it was also blocked.

We could see the concern on the Croat’s face – this was classic al-Shabab tactics and could have been dodgy. Luckily, we managed to find a route out and made our way to where one of the helicopters had come down.

There, in amongst a huge cactus plant, we spotted the remainder of the Black Hawk rotor blade still intact and embedded in the ground. This was a huge bonus and we took some photos, but we soon had to leave as we were attracting too much attention.

As we left the Bakara Market area, the Croat said he would allow us to do something he had let no journalist or official ever do – despite being asked – which was to ride in the back of the guard truck for a while.

We were amazed – this was EXTREMELY dangerous as it instantly made both us and the guards a target.

But he was the boss, so we climbed in, and he filmed us from the Land Cruiser as we wound our way through the streets in a state of total euphoria and the utter astonishment of the locals.

We’d wanted to walk the “Mogadishu Mile” – the route the US troops had taken to reach what was then known as the Pakistani Stadium back in 1993, as Pakistani troops were based there at the time.

It was too dangerous to walk it, but at the stadium we were amazingly given permission to tour the perimeter. To our delight we found a 30mm canon shell casing – a perfect souvenir.

For lunch, we went to the only Somalian restaurant in town - “The Village”. It was owned by a British Somali man who gone back out there and opened two restaurants - but the other had been blown up a month before our arrival killing 16 people and this one had thwarted a bombing attempt only two days before our arrival.

Security was very severe – gates, watchtowers, hands-on searches etc, but the food was very nice - camel and chips! Fortunately there was a live Chelsea game on the wide screen TV to keep the Croat and Andy happy.

Our guide knew of a relatively safe place we could go on the outskirts of Mogadishu to buy gifts. We were discussing how colourful the shop frontages were when we spotted a classic - the vasectomy shop.

It was a gem - a pair of scissors poised below a crudely painted penis. Brilliant!

At the market we found some Somali football shirts and scarves for presents back home. Everything was priced in US dollars as the local currency was practically worthless, the exchange rate being 2,000 Somali shillings to the $1.

It had been a fantastic trip and the next morning we were taken to the airport at 8am for our flight home.

Chaos ensued but even worse than before. An immigration official took away the 30mm canon shell. We argued our case but it was in vain and he just kept repeating “very dangerous”.

Once through to the departure lounge we were approached by the immigration officer again who asked for $20 for the return of the shell casing, so we paid him - thinking it would be the last we would see of him.

But he turned up with the shell half an hour later and demanded $50!

And it wasn’t the last in the story of the canon shell. When we reached Istanbul it was taken off us again.

We put up another spirited argument in defence of keeping it, but this time, sadly, we parted company.

* FOLLOW DANGER TOURIST ANDY DRURY ON TWITTER @andrewdrury

* IN WEEKEND SPORT - ON SALE FRIDAY AND SATURDAY - ANDY & NIGEL HANG OUT WITH GUNSLINGING GANGSTERS IN PAKISTAN

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Two Regular Guys, One Incredible Place - Danger Tourists Andy Drury and Nigel Green Invade North Korea

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 16:00:58 +0200

By JUSTIN DUNN

ADVENTURERS Andy Drury and Nigel Green have just one rule when planning their travels – it CANNOT be anywhere safe!

They’ve spent two decades visiting the most weird, dangerous, off-the-beaten track destinations the planet has to offer.

Absolutely NOTHING is off limits to this pair of cousins, who otherwise lead normal lives as builders living near Guildford, Surrey.

Family men Andy, 47, and Nigel, 50, have been shot at by the Taliban, gone monkey hunting with primitive tribes in India, been taken captive in Iran and visited the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster – where radiation levels are still 100 times higher than usual.

Two years ago they decided to do what pretty much no one else would – visit the crackpot nation of North Korea, which is currently threatening nuclear strikes against neighbouring South Korea, the United States and Japan.

Here, in adapted extracts from their journals, they describe the MADNESS of the rogue war-mongering state – where the tastiest meal they had during their three day trip was a bowl of DOG SOUP.

THERE are no direct flights from the UK to the North Korea capital, Pyongyang. Instead, we had to take an Air Koryo flight from Beijing, China.

This was bad. The airline, which uses aging Russian Tupolev aircraft, is officially the world’s WORST with just one star out of a possible five.

The plane didn’t inspire confidence. It must have been built in the seventies and as we taxied along the runway – after a 90 minute delay – it shook and rattled so much we thought it was never going to get off the ground.

Once in the air it was no better. The entire inner plastic panel on our side of the aircraft just gave way and moved every time the turbulence kicked in.

It was the first flight we’d experienced where we seriously thought it might crash. The Koreans screaming at the back didn’t exactly help, either…

When we arrived, our mobile phones were confiscated at customs and we were given a receipt to claim them back on arrival for our flight back to Beijing.

And once through customs, we found our two “guides” waiting for us – Huan, a girl of around 25, and Kim, a man of around 50. Every tourist here has “guides”, but you’re under no illusion they work for the government.

There were no traffic problems on the drive from the airport into Pyongyang for the simple reason that there is no traffic. Car ownership in North Korea is almost exclusively reserved for government officials and the military.

Arriving in our 25th floor room at the Yanggakdo Hotel, the first thing we did was check for bugs – the electronic listening device type.

We’d read that rooms were bugged and monitored from the 5th floor – made believable because the lift had no button on that floor, and our guides ALWAYS met us on the 4th floor as we travelled down.

That evening we went to see the Grand Magic Show – the ONLY activity in Pyongyang. It was being held in the Rungnado May Day Stadium, which seats 150,000 people – the largest stadium capacity in the world.

Foreigners – us and one or two diplomats – had to sit separately from the “locals”, who were all affluent Workers Party members and military top brass.

A special permit is required to live in Pyongyang and they are given only to select individuals. No undesirables or people with disabilities are allowed to clutter up the streets.

Before the show we watched the spectacularly lit fountains in the grounds of the stadium, hard to take in while eight million people are threatened with starvation because of the government’s policy that feeds soldiers first.

Back at the hotel later on we opened a window, only to be met with utter silence. We were in the centre of the capital city at 10.30pm on a Saturday night but there wasn’t a sound – thanks to the 10pm curfew.

There’s nothing there in any case. Pyongyang is spotlessly clean but there is barely any traffic and no shops to be seen. Besides, there’s no choice and hardly anything to buy, and no advertising.

Next morning we put on shirts and ties – required for a visit to the Memorial Palace and Mansudae Grand Monument. We discussed attempting to have a wander before the guides turned up to see how far we could get, as the hotel is built on an island for containment purposes.

But on our way down the lift stopped at the 4th floor, and there was Kim. The few tourists in Pyongyang arrive on one of the two flights a week, are put in specific rooms at two hotels and all taken on tours to the same places at the same time. At no point do the guides not know where you are.

Huan, the female guide, was actually great fun and bubbly, but had no idea about anything outside her homeland. She knew nothing of film stars or pop stars, other than the Beatles. We had an iPad with us that had films and music on it, and she was absolutely fascinated with everything on there – but she had to read it ducked down out of sight of Kim.

The Kumsusan Memorial Palace or Kim-il Mausoleum was the official palace of North Korea founder and former president, Kim Il –Sung, who now lies there embalmed in state inside a clear glass sarcophagus following his death in 1994.

Photography, smoking and talking are not permitted anywhere. All bags and coats had to be handed in before entrance.

Our shoes were cleaned in a walk-through machine, and then we were put through a metal detector and patted down. Good job we’d decided not to bring tiny spy cameras to get the first ever picture of Kim Il-Sung lying in state – one of our rare sensible decisions!

From there it was a short drive to Taesongsan Park and Funfair where we were told we’d see typical Pyongyang families enjoying themselves – and this is where we spotted the infamous roller coaster.

Being so poorly maintained and therefore dangerous, obviously we had to give it a go. It was scary – there was rust and weeds on the track and we were certain at one point that the track actually LIFTED at one sharp corner.

We also had a go on the shooting gallery, where you could have a go at shooting “US imperialist aggressors” with an air gun.

Next was a visit to the Mansudae Grand Monument – a 20m high bronze statue of the Great Leader in front of a 70m mosaic of Mount Paektu, spiritual home of the Korean nation, erected in 1972 as a 60th birthday present to himself.

We were also taken to the the Juche Tower, built for his 70th birthday, which at 170m is the second tallest monumental column in the world.

Huan and Kim decided to take us on the Pyongyang Metro. The trains were packed, and when ours arrived the doors burst open and people literally fell onto the platform. Squabbles broke out and a woman who’d been trampled on jumped up and punched another woman in the back of the head.

We tried to get a North Korean bank note as a souvenir but were told by Kim this was not permitted.

Then we went for lunch – which turned out to our own little stove and pot with various raw ingredients. We followed Kim’s instructions to the letter but no amount of hotpot expertise was going to transform the lumps of gristle and fat into edible meat.

After lunch we were taken to see the USS Pueblo, an American technical research ship boarded and captured by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1968. It’s the only ship of the US Navy currently being held captive.

At various points our guide showed us bullet holes incurred during the firefight, including a large shell hole in the ship’s structure. It was funny to hear the guide refer to “US imperialist aggressors” every time she spoke about them!

A grim evening meal followed, so we stocked up on chocolate and biscuits at the hotel. Even they were tasteless – though it does seem wrong to criticise food in a country where so many are starving.

Next morning we were taken to see the city of Kaesong Town, Panmunjon Village and the DMZ – the Korean Demilitarised Zone, a 2.5 mile wide buffer between North and South Korea and home to complexes were until recently peace – or reunification – talks were still taking place between the warring neighbours.

As we approached the DMZ, we noticed a series of large 30ft high concrete pillars along both sides of the road. We’d read that each one contains dynamite and can be detonated if North Korea is invaded from the South.

While there we went into the Joint Security Area (JSA), where unarmed representatives of both North and South used to meet regularly for meetings before the current stand-off.

Most tourists can enter this building from either the north or south – but it was eerie knowing that where we were, if large scale hostilities broke out on that border, that everything and everybody would be incinerated within minutes.

In the 1980s South Korea built a 323ft flagpole with a 287lb national flag in Daesong-dong Village.

The North responded by building a taller one at 525ft with a 595lb flag on the other side of the DMZ. The North has a “village” near the border that officially houses a farm, childcare centre, a kindergarten, schools and a hospital.

But the place is completely EMPTY. It was built in the 1950s as a propaganda exercise to encourage South Korean defectors. Scrutiny with telescopic lenses revealed it to be concrete shells with no window glass or interior rooms.

The building lights are turned on and off at set times and the empty pavements swept clean by a skeleton crew of caretakers.

Kaesong Town was somewhere we could actually take pictures, probably because the driver had no option but to drive slowly. Gone were the immaculately kept streets of Pyongyang. The roads were atrocious, the buildings falling apart and the people looked miserable and malnourished.

Bearing in mind Kaesong is one of the most important cities in North Korea, we couldn’t help but wonder how bad the rest must be.

Once back in Pyongyang, we wanted to try dog meat at the Dangogo Gukjib dog restaurant on Tongil Street, but Kim said it was not possible.

But at the hotel’s Korean Restaurant we ordered dog soup and sautéed dog – and it was the best meal of the whole trip.

The soup was quite spicy and the sautéed dog was tasty, incredibly – with actual meat on the plate instead of just fat and gristle.

So we sat and drank a couple of bottles of the excellent locally made beer before making our way back to our room, ready to pack for that dreadful flight back to Beijing in the morning.

* IN MIDWEEK SPORT - ANDY & NIGEL ON MOGADISHU MILE. On sale on Wednesday.

* Follow Adventurer ANDY DRURY on Twitter at @andrewdrury

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Inside The European Parliament - Part Three

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:48:27 +0100

By Justin Dunn

THE European Union is ripping you off – yes YOU, dear reader.

EVERY pint you buy, EVERY petrol tank you fill, EVERY warm shop-bought pasty you eat – tax from it gets sent to Brussels.

In fact, Britain sends £53m a DAY to our unelected masters in the Belgian capital – so what on EARTH are they spending it all on?

Weekend Sport has discovered that apart from showering THEMSELVES in our tax money, it seems the EU – at the behest of the mighty European Commission – is blowing countless MILLIONS on truly crazy schemes.

We visited Brussels a week ago at the invitation of North West MEP and UKIP deputy leader Paul Nuttall, who provided us with a dossier of information about some of the EU’s dodgier deals.

Handing it to me, he said: “Wait till you get a load of this - I promise you won’t believe your eyes. But every word of it is true.”

WARNING - If wasting YOUR hard-earned cash on madcap schemes that you have NO control over is likely to make you angry, you might want to look away NOW…

* In February 2009, £347,365 was given to Hungarian IT firm Gyrotech Commercial and Supplier Ltd for a hydrotherapy system “to improve the lifestyle and living standard of dogs”. It was never built – the firm used the cash to build new offices instead, which remain empty.

* That same year the EU awarded a £4,439,882 contract to a chauffeur company to ferry MEPs around Strasbourg – where they spend just 40 days a year. The firm, Birbin Limousines, boasts on its website that if offers “a confidentiality clause guaranteeing absolute discretion”.

* Not all the grants are huge. Farmers in the Tyrolean area of Austria were awarded £13,531 from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development in order to “increase farmers’ emotional connection with the landscapes they cultivate”.

* A cool £761,268 was awarded to the already successful Strelasund Golf Park in Germany – whose guests have included the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Located in an area of high unemployment, spending on the course – that employs just 18 people – was lauded as “best practice” use of EU funds.

* In Andalucía, Spain, £6,343,832 was awarded to regional government “to reinforce the message of the achievements in Andalucia thanks to EU funds”. It included an agreement with public service broadcaster Canal Sur TV to have the sun in its weather reports depicted using the stars of the EU flag.

* The EU’s “Socrates” programme – total budget £145,461,315 – included funding for people to learn new languages through “virtual” swimming “races” where competitors had to learn phrases like “catch a taxi to the pool” in Italian, Hungarian, Finnish and Slovenian.

* £4,312,005 was spent on buying the Foyeen Europeen in Luxembourg – home of the Cercle Culture des Institutions Europe, a network of clubs and societies that EU employees can use featuring restaurants and Scottish Highland Dancing and wine tasting clubs, among others.

* Two Swedish fishermen were awarded £422,698 to scrap their boats as part of the EU effort to reduce the continent’s fishing fleet. The pair were left with enough cash left over to go out and buy two brand new, state-of-the-art fishing boats.

* A staggering £7,184,700,986 grant to improve infrastructure in Sicily failed completely, including a useless new water supply system, just eight kilometres of new railway track and an utter failure to improve refuse collection.

* In 2009, the EU spent £37,184 on parties celebrating the entirely fictitious “Europe Day”, which saw Eurocrats quaffing free champagne and cocktails at events in Madrid, Vienna, Marseille, Lisbon, Sofia, Terrassa in Spain’s Catalonia and N’Djamena in Chad.

* The EU’s Luxembourg Office for Infrastructure and Logistics spent £26,938 on a team building trip to a German four-star hotel complete with “wellness centre” and top-class gym facilities.

* In 2008, Vienna-based contemporary dance troupe “danceWEB-Europe” was given a tidy £2,028,379 intended to benefit “emerging European choreographers and dancers with the aim of improving their production conditions and to foster culture diversity within Europe”.

* A year later the EU’s “External Relations” department gave £412 to the wine, spirits and beverage firms of Fiji for a booze up, cited as “expenditure of the delegations of the Commission of the European Communities”.

* Roberto Vincenzo Sindoni, the mayor of Capo d’Orlando in Sicily, was arrested in his role as legal representative of an agricultural firm given an EU farming subsidy of £845,201 to grow oranges on citrus orchards that never existed. No charges were ever brought.

* In 2010 the EU Council put out a tender for £33,803 for retailers to be gift providers including jewellery, boiled sweets, watches and ties.

* The “736 ideas 4 a Dream” children’s project – with a mission to create a postcard for each of the MEPs “to reflect on the current problems in Europe that generate social exclusion” -cost £148,262, or £201 per card.

* To address the “lack of co-operation in the field” of European hip-hop, the “European hip hop laboratory” in Lyon, France, was given £42,522 in EU funding to “improve the recognition and visibility of hip hop dance in Europe”.

* At a cost of £48,177, the EU’s Culture Programme financed the “European Joystick Orchestra” – a high tech orchestra that allows participants to make music through a computer joystick, apparently popular in France, Belgium and Italy.

* The Wind Art Festival of 2011-12 was handed £169,027 to make Europeans aware “of the diversity of their common European cultural heritage” by exposing them to “new applications of art disciplines with organs”.

* Belgian university Provincale Hogeschool, in Limburg, is receiving £426,736 over seven years to develop new video computer games, including one aimed at educating people on “the history of puppet theatre”.

There are two earlier reports on this blog a little further down. Please feel free to share these reports by clicking on the relevant buttons below.

ends

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Things They Don't Want You To Know #7935

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:09:12 +0100

A politician fined £100 by magistrates after admitting being drunk in a supermarket while in charge of her two-year-old daughter has lost a High Court anonymity fight.

Tess Gandy, 35, who was a Labour district councillor in Lowestoft, Suffolk, wanted an order which would have prevented the little girl - and her - being identified in media reports about the case.

But two senior judges have ruled against Gandy, who had previously been cautioned for a similar offence, after local newspapers the Eastern Daily Press and the Lowestoft Journal argued that principles of freedom of speech and open justice should prevail.

Judges said the public had an "undeniable" interest in learning how Gandy, who has now resigned from Waveney District Council, had behaved and of details given to magistrates in Lowestoft at a hearing in May 2012.

They described Gandy's arguments that the little girl might suffer "distress" if the case was fully reported as "highly speculative" and "doubtful".

"The Eastern Daily Press and the Lowestoft Journal seem to me to have a powerful case indeed," said Mr Justice Kenneth Parker, who analysed legal argument with Lord Justice Pitchford, at a High Court hearing in London.

"The criminal conviction itself, although it attracted a relatively low penalty, was far from trivial. To be drunk in public in charge of a small child of two and a half years of age raises very considerable concerns regarding the general welfare of the child, especially when a caution had been administered not long before for the same offence.

"The caution administered in private, and the real risk of public exposure on re-offending, had plainly failed to deter (Gandy) and this strongly suggested that there might be more serious underlying problems that needed to be addressed in the interests of (the child).

"Moreover, (Gandy) was an elected councillor, and her conduct in public had twice fallen well below the standard that could reasonably be expected of an elected official by her constituents and by the public generally, who had an undeniable legitimate interest in learning, through media publication, of how (she) had behaved."

A lawyer had asked magistrates to take into account Gandy's "mental health problems and alcohol dependence" in mitigation.

But Mr Justice Kenneth Parker added, in a written ruling published on a legal website: "That also was information about a serving councillor which arguably the public were entitled to learn through a press report of proceedings."

Nigel Pickover, editor-in-chief of the Eastern Daily Press, said today: "At a time when some politicians are trying to bring in controls on Britain's press by statute, it is gratifying to see (the High Court) protect our right to report a court case which contains important information in the public interest."

Sarah Branthwaite, a solicitor at law firm Foot Anstey, which advised the newspaper, added: "This was a matter of utmost public interest and the Eastern Daily Press took a principled stand."

Gandy told the Eastern Daily Press that she had been suffering severe post natal depression and added: "I deeply regret the incident last year as I let myself, my family, my party and my constituents down."

A Labour Party spokesman said today: "We accepted Tess Gandy's formal offer to resign as a Waveney District councillor as soon as she made it, believing it to be in her best interests and the best interests of her constituents."

ends

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Inside The European Parliament - Part Two

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:54:00 +0100

By Justin Dunn

MIDWEEK Sport spent last week in Brussels – the heart of Europe – unearthing the TRUTH about how our taxes are spent there.

Our stay was brief, enlightening – and very, VERY frightening.

In Sunday Sport we revealed how Eurocrats – many of whom earn more than our own Prime Minister – often skip work to romp with colleagues in the Belgian capital’s notorious “f*** hotels”.

We also revealed how the European Parliament is split between Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg – meaning 754 MEPs and their staff have to be pointlessly ferried between the three at huge expense to both the taxpayer and the environment.

Today, in the second of our exclusive series, we’ll show how the EU preaches one thing but practices another – urging countries to slash spending while being irresponsible spendthrifts themselves.

And we’ll also show how the unelected Eurocrats are so hell-bent on driving their self-serving institutions forward that they’re prepared to rewrite history to achieve their goal…

REWRITING HISTORY

WORLD War II – which claimed the lives of up to 70 million people – is to be wiped from history by the European Union.

Currently being built in Brussels, under the instructions of the all-powerful, unelected 27-man European Commission, is a new museum called The House of European History.

It’s costing taxpayers like Midweek Sport readers an incredible £137 million to construct – partly funded by the £53 million Britain sends to the EU every single DAY.

The idea of the museum is to promote an awareness of the mythical “European identity” – urging people not to think of themselves as British, German, or French, for instance, but European.

At The House of European History, history will astonishing BEGIN in 1946 – a year after Britain and its allies forced Germany to surrender after six years of the Second World War.

Except the conflict will no longer be called World War II or the Second World War.

Astonishingly, it is to be renamed the “European Civil War”. Who knows, maybe by the time the museum has opened the Germans won’t have even invaded Poland…

As our host in Brussels, UKIP deputy leader and North West MEP Paul Nuttall, put it: “The staggering rewriting of history with fictional titles for events demonstrates how the EU propaganda machine is dedicated to achieving its aims.”

It’s not as though Brussels doesn’t have enough pro-Europe misinformation on display already, either.

Opposite the main building is The Parliamentarium, an £18 million visitors centre which when I visited last Wednesday morning was host to just a trickle of bored looking attendees.

Its job is to not only show visitors the workings of the European Parliament, it is also shamelessly plugging the EU agenda.

In the propaganda centre various rooms and exhibits reinforce the “value” of the EU.

Along one wall more than 100 yards long, an array of pictures show historical European figures, reinforcing the image that Europe has naturally always been an integrated whole.

They wouldn’t want a pesky little thing like World War Two ruin that perspective, would they?

PROPERTY EMPIRE

THE European Parliament preaches austerity in a bid to prop up his disastrous single currency, the Euro.

Just look at what’s happening in Cyprus – a country brought to its knees by the banking industry.

Now the citizens of Cyprus who’ve been savvy enough to squirrel away money in savings accounts for a rainy day or retirement are being told they may have those savings STOLEN by the EU to pay for the mistakes of others.

If these drastic austerity measures are so vital, surely the EU is leading from the front on watching the pounds and pennies with care?

Wrong.

In the money-no-object world of the European Union, there are ALWAYS millions upon millions of pounds to be found – and ALL of it comes from taxpayers’ pockets.

Luxembourg is the third “seat” of the European Parliament with a £316 million complex housing 2,000 admin staff.

Yet its two debating chambers are never used as most parliament business takes place in Brussels - apart from 40-odd days a year when the circus has to travel to Strasbourg to keep the French and Germans happy.

But that hasn’t stopped the EU revealing plans for a brand new £354 million building for Luxembourg to replace renting five existing buildings – despite calls from some MEPs to settle all parliamentary business in Brussels once and for all.

The new Konrad Adenauer Centre – named after the first post-war German chancellor - will come complete with restaurants and a gym and will house 4,000 staff including clerks, translators and lawyers.

Its plans include a “majestic entry portal” built on 16 steel pylons. The British taxpayer will contribute £50 to the cost of this new complex.

But the cost of the new building and the cost of renovating older existing buildings will total a whopping £685 million.

It is slated to accommodate “support staff” from the European Commission and European Parliament – currently split between Brussels and Strasbourg – meaning even MORE expensive, non-green friendly travelling between the three bases.

The centre – set to open in 2016 – will had a further 3.1million square feet to the nearly 25 million sq ft that European officials already occupy across three cities.

Meanwhile in Brussels, work continues on the construction of the £268 million “Residence Palace” for European Council president Herman Van Pompuy.

PROPAGANDA MACHINE

THE EU has been paying news agency AFB to pump out pro-EU propaganda for years.

But in 2008 they decided to go one better – and launch their own TV station.

EuroParlTV costs £7.9 million a year to run – all paid for by you – and is so bad that not even the very people it is aimed at tune in.

The station, which highlights the work of MEPs, is only thought to have around 850 viewers a day - considerably less than the 9,000 people working in the parliament itself or the 500 million people the EU assembly claims to represent.

In 2011 Finnish centre-right MEP Ville Itala – sitting on a budget control committee – said the assembly was spending money to justify its own existence rather than representing votes.

He demanded a “detailed explanation of the underlying need” of the parliament's 722 communication posts that cost £70.8 million.

Despite the legions of spin doctors, the Finn noted that a £4.9 million campaign to persuade people to vote in the 2009 European elections had actually resulted in “overall decline in turnout” to its lowest ever level of 43 per cent.

He singled out “deplorable” spending on the EuroparlTV channel, saying it “cannot be considered to be a success story in view of its very low number of direct users”.

He added: “The only people who watch it are in Brussels and they are MEPs or their office staff, not normal citizens.
“Our job is to be a political and legislative institution not to run our own TV station.”

UKIP’s Paul Nuttall is also concerned about prize for journalism worth £17,500 a year rewarding press coverage that “promoted a better understanding of the EU”.

He said: “I really don't understand why we are giving money to journalists whose task should be to be critical of EU institutions. It is not my idea of democracy.”

UKIP leader Nigel Farage added: “The European Parliament has become a nothing more than a spending machine that lavishes public money on projects that are pointless, useless and turn off voters.”

DODGY BOOK-KEEPING

EU staff are amazingly allowed to sign off their own expenses and pay allowances to family members.

In 2011 the European Parliament’s internal auditor found serious problems with “personal entitlements” and perks worth up to £81m a year paid to civil servants.

His for-your-eyes-only report – which was kept secret from most MEPs – revealed examples of officials being paid twice for the same thing or claiming allowances they weren’t entitled to.

His leaked report, which covered a three year period, said cash was being paid out without any receipts or later audit checks.

It also found “critical” irregularities and conflicts of interests concerning procurement contracts worth up to £600m a year.

Marta, Andreasen, whistleblowing former European Commission chief accountant, said: “The parliament’s bureaucracy operates with a total lack of transparency, which is how it gets away with these irregularities.”

IN WEEKEND SPORT: WHAT THE EU SPENDS YOUR MONEY ON

ends

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Inside The European Parliament

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 14:37:54 +0100

By Justin Dunn

SUNDAY Sport was off on its travels last week – to the heart of the dreaded European Union.

I was dispatched to Brussels in an attempt to brush aside the propaganda and discover what REALLY goes on over there.

After all, like it or not, these people are now in charge.

More laws and directives that affect the way we live now come from Europe instead of Westminster.

I expected to find a glorified office building packed with wall to wall bureaucratic drones.

And I wasn’t disappointed – although what I also discovered was a HUGE and ever-growing mini-city that is a money-soaked shrine to a failing concept.

The staff of the European Parliament – which seems to be lots of leery old men and vastly more pretty young women from all corners of the continent – spend a lot of time chatting and walking.

But I was hard-pressed to find any of them actually WORKING.

And no wonder. NOBODY seems to be in charge.

The civil servants – some 40,000 of them – aren’t expected to clock on or off. And no one checks, anyway.

Long lunches in the subsidised bars and canteens are legendary, as are off-site slap-up meals in one of the city’s many Michelin-starred restaurants.

One of the most hotly debated local issues of the last few years was whether or not to install a swimming pool for the MEPs to use.

Security is so useless that there have even been ARMED ROBBERIES at the on-site bank!

But the most scary part is that WE taxpayers pay for it – and in the UK’s case, that’s a staggering £53 MILLION every single DAY.

My host in Belgium was Paul Nuttall, North West MEP and deputy leader of the UK Independence Party.

As I arrived, he told me: “You won’t believe your eyes in this place. It’s madness.

“They’ve been taking the piss for so long that half of them genuinely believe there’s a point to it all.”

Ukip wants Britain out of the EU, even though it would mean its MEPs like Paul would lose their jobs.
He explained: “We’re the turkeys voting for Christmas, basically.

“But someone has to. The European Union is too expensive and too pointless. We can’t afford it and we shouldn’t be in it.”

BREATH-TAKING HYPOCRISY

I WAS invited to Belgium by the UK Independence Party deputy leader and North West MEP Paul Nuttall, who was keen to see what Sunday Sport readers - taxpayers like all else - would make of what goes on there.

After all, British taxpayers are forced to hand over £53 million A DAY to help fund the European Union.

They have "f*** hotels" here - more of which later - but trust me, they are just the tip of the iceberg.

Because while some Eurocrats are sneaking off for extra-curricular romps, their parliamentary colleagues are busy screwing those of us who pay for the whole thing.

Last week bank account holders in Cyprus were facing the desperate prospect of having their savings plundered by the EU in order to prop up the failing Euro.

But in Brussels – where the idea of stealing from innocent Cypriots was dreamt up – work continued on a brand spanking new and entirely unnecessary £268 million Residence Palace for European Council president Herman Van Pompuy.

Confused between the European Council and the European Union? Me too.

The EU is actually made up of seven obscure institutions – the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Council, the European Central Bank, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Auditors.

Nearly 40,000 people work for it and it’s fair to say not a single one of them will be worried about paying the gas bill this month.

And it’s all in Brussels, right?

Wrong. The European Parliament is bizarrely run from THREE countries – Brussels in Belgium, Strasbourg in France, and a third mostly unused “seat” in Luxembourg.

Luxembourg has two debating chambers that have never been used and more than 2,000 “administration” staff that no one seems able to explain what they actually do.

But their new HQ – which cost £716 million to build – has sports facilities and a pool to keep them occupied.

The three-seat policy means that the whole legislature, administrative team and thousands of support staff are shifted for four days each month and relocate from the Belgian capital to Strasbourg, nearly 300 miles away.

That means 754 politicians, their staff, thousands of lobbyists and journalists travel thousands of pointless, expensive, and very non-green miles every year just to keep all three countries happy.

A fleet of 20 juggernauts carries tons of paperwork between the two parliament buildings and the process wastes £135 million of taxpayers' money every year.

Paul Nuttall said: “The EU likes to publicly advertise that it’s a champion of green policies and has brought in policies that have seen energy bills rocket, transport tax rises and hard-hit companies taking their industries to far-flung foreign countries where they get clobbered much less.

“Yet the Strasbourg building is used for only 40 or so days per year and getting to and from it creates a staggering 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

“Of course when you point this out – like we do – you’re treated like some kind of criminal.

“The truth is, the EU is only in it for the people who work there. It’s a colossal gravy train earning people a fortune and that’s the only thing they’re in it for.

“They’re busy telling anyone who’ll listen how important the EU is, but the truth is more people want to be out of it than in it.

“As you’ll see, the hypocrisy on display here is breath-taking.”

MONEY NO OBJECT

WHILE the EU preaches austerity in a bid to protect its disastrous single currency, for the Eurocrats themselves money is quite literally no object.

More than 1,000 of them working here are paid more than UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s relatively modest £142,000.

The highest paid civil servants are raking it in, too. Those on the highest grade get a whopping £15,500 a MONTH – for a 37 hour week.

Normal Belgians earn half of the average worker at the EU and face a top rate tax of 50%.

Yet despite getting far higher wages, EU staff pay a special rate of tax of just 16%.

Their kids get FREE private education along with a £250 monthly allowance PER CHILD, and preferential mortgage rates from banks. The first car they buy is VAT free.

In the subsidised restaurants and canteens, half a lager costs just a quid - and you can have it for breakfast, too.
The Parliament also has a new massage parlour, a state of the art gym, and two saunas.

When I was there I saw another of my “local” MEPs from the North West – a Lib Dem - working terribly hard on the one of the gym’s dozen top-of-the-range treadmills.

Every evening around 6pm, there will be five or six champagne receptions taking place to promote one piece of hot air or another.

Champagne flutes clink as bottles and bottles of the expensive fizz – all paid for by the taxpayer – are poured down the necks of people who largely don’t know what they are even there for.

And get this – you can SMOKE inside the hallowed halls of the European Parliament.

All the bars and canteens have open-fronted bus shelter-style smoking booths. Sat at a non-smoking table six feet away, I was happily inhaling other people’s Marlboro Light fumes.

Many people smoke in their offices, too – not even slightly put off by the rare 300 Euros fine if they’re caught out by administrators.

TOOTHLESS

DESPITE having 754 MEPs representing 500 million people from 27 countries, the European Parliament – the bit YOU are allowed to vote for – has actually very little power.

Instead, all decisions are made by the 27 members of the European Commission, housed in a fourteen-storey three-pronged building half a mile from the parliament complex.

The commissioners are all UNELECTED – instead they’re usually former politicians from member states like Britain who are appointed by individual governments.

Past British appointments have included Leon Britton, Neil Kinnock and Peter Mandelson.

All the 754 MEPs are there for is to rubber stamp whatever policies the European Commission dreams up and puts forward for the expected “yes” vote.

On the one in a hundred chance that parliament actually says “no” and rejects a policy, the Commission simply rewrites it a slightly different way until it gets the answer it wants.

As Ukip leader Nigel Farage said to me over lunch last week: “If voting actually mattered here, they wouldn’t let us do it.”

Further proof of how little say the MEPs have can be found in their massive main voting chamber in the Brussels complex.

The roof fell in a YEAR ago – and it’s still not been fixed!

THE F*** HOTELS

I’M standing in the drizzle watching business take place at Studio Intime, a dingy little nine-bedroom hotel smack bang in the centre of Brussels.

Throughout the morning a steady stream of couples wander a few yards across the road from their plush offices at the massive European Parliament building to use its services.

They enter under a canopy decorated in blue with yellow stars – the colours of the EU.

Then, for just over twenty quid, they hire one of its tacky perfumed rooms to spend the next two hours shagging each other’s brains out.

And needless to say, the couples are more often than not married to other people.

Welcome to the “f*** hotels” or “love rooms” of Brussels – just one of the many astonishing sights on show in the beating heart of the absolute piss-take that is the great European Project.

Another popular haunt is the Treviso Hotel on Place Stephanie where many of the EU’s well-heeled Eurocrats live.

It unashamedly advertises itself as a venue for couples “with room service and discretion assured” in more glamorous rooms than Studio Intime, rented out at £66 an hour.

There, Anne De Schepper, the hotel’s manager, says the parliament’s long lunch break is the preferred time of day for EU officials to commit adultery.

She said: “Eurocrats are 80 per cent of our business. Unlike the traditional hotel industry, we have not experienced the economic crisis thanks largely to the Europeans in Brussels.

“We are busiest at lunch time, followed by early evening in between the end of office hours and the time people need to get back to their homes.”

MEP – NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT

NO wonder most MEPs are desperate to cling on to the European Union.

British MEPs are currently paid around £71,000 a year – as they’re paid in Euros, the amount varies depending on the exchange rate.

But on top of that they receive a no-questions-asked allowance of £36,000 a year for expenses, for which they have to provide NO receipts.

PLUS, for every day they attend the parliament in Brussels or Strasbourg they get an “attendance allowance” of £237 just for signing in.

Many do so and then immediately leave without having to do a scrap of work.

The MEPs’ chauffeured limousine service – a fleet of leather-trimmed, top of the range black matching Mercedes sitting glistening in a car park three floors beneath the parliament – costs an incredible £3 million a year.

In 2009, one MEP infamously took a limousine trip from Brussels to Berlin. Three others were ferried from Brussels to Paris.

They all travel first class and have access to business lounges at Eurostar terminals and airports across the continent – all paid for by you.

Paul Nuttall said: “We get treated like kings over here but back home no one knows who we are and no one’s even arsed.

“Yet still the gravy train keeps moving costing billions and billions of pounds, and for what?

“The whole thing is a disgusting, empty sham. It’s like the emperor’s new clothes, except it’s the taxpayers paying for it.”

IN MIDWEEK SPORT ON WQEDNESDAY: HOW THE EU WILL AIRBRUSH WORLD WAR II

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We're All In This Together

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:04:28 +0100

January 06, 2013

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Gentry Update: Malcom Barber resigns from the Bridging Finance Solutions Liverpool & District Cricket Competition as honorary treasurer and all other LDCC capacities

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:35:03 +0200

October 27, 2012

From today's Liverpool Echo:

A BUSINESSMAN accused of fleecing pensioners in a £5m fraud has quit his high-profile position in Merseyside cricket, but says he will fight the allegations.

Malcolm Barber, 69, appeared in court this week charged with defrauding 127 investors through a business called Gentry Investment Trust.

It is alleged those who put money into Gentry were predominately elderly with investments often made from life savings and retirement funds.

The Liverpool and District Cricket Competition (LDCC) confirmed yesterday that Barber had tendered his resignation as honorary treasurer of the organisation and “all other capacities in which he currently serves”.

Barber, who is vice-president of the Lancashire Cricket Board as well as a well-respected umpire, had his resignation accepted by the LDCC management committee.

A letter this week seen by the ECHO tells how Barber intends to fight “to the bitter end” the charges he faces.

A statement released by his solicitors was sent to cricket clubs including New Brighton, where Barber is vice-president.

Peter Quinn, of criminal defence lawyers Quinn Melville, writes in it: “We act for Malcolm Barber in connection with allegations which have been made against him following an investigation by Lancashire police.

“As a consequence Mr Barber has been charged and there is to be a trial at Preston crown court in September 2013. The matter was reported in the Liverpool ECHO and elsewhere.

“Our client vehemently denies the allegations. He has given a full explanation in interview and has set out in detail his response to these allegations. We are surprised that the Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there was a case for him to answer. Our instructions are that not guilty pleas will be entered at the next hearing in March and that this matter will be fought to the bitter end as Mr Barber intends to prove his innocence.”

The charges Barber, of Links View, Wallasey, face do not relate to his cricketing roles.

He is jointly-charged with Morecambe businessman Terry Warrington. It is alleged the men committed money laundering amounting to just under £5m between March 2002 and August 2010. They are also accused of conspiracy to defraud between December 1999 and August 2010 and failing to register with the Financial Services Authority between November 2001 and August 2010.

See also:

* The Bridging Finance Solutions Liverpool & District Competition website announcement here

* The LDCC.org.uk announcements here

* New Brighton Cricket and Bowling Club's announcement here **

** If you clicked on that last link and read it, my response and that of all the investors and their families to the "surprised" element of that statement is: "We're not surprised in the slightest."

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Gentry court proceedings: Day One

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:54:25 +0200

October 23, 2012

From today's Liverpool Echo

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2012/10/23/liverpool-cricket-competition-vice-president-malcolm-barber-on-5m-fraud-charge-100252-32084779/

A MERSEYSIDE businessman appeared in court charged with a £5m con which allegedly saw dozens of pensioners defrauded.

Wirral man Malcolm Barber, 69, is one of two defendants charged with fleecing 127 investors through a business called Gentry Investment Trust.

It is alleged those who put money into the investment vehicle were predominately elderly with investments often made from life savings and retirement funds.

Barber is honorary treasurer of the Liverpool and District Cricket Competition and was made vice-president of the Lancashire Cricket Board earlier this year. He is a well-respected umpire and also serves as disciplinary secretary for Merseyside Cricket Umpires Association.

The allegations do not relate to his cricketing roles.

Barber’s co-accused is Morecambe businessman Terry Warrington who it is understood set up Gentry in 1986.

A Lancashire Police investigation has probed the pair’s business dealings since 1999 and will claim a complex, long-running fraud amounting to just under £5m.

It is alleged the men committed money laundering between March 2002 and August 2010.

They also stand accused of conspiracy to defraud between December 1999 and August 2010 and failing to register with the Financial Services Authority between November 2001 and August 2010.

Warrington is also accused of a £329,853 theft linked to investors in a bonds company.

Barber, of Links View, Wallasey, appeared at Preston Crown Court yesterday with Warrington, 65, for a preliminary hearing. Pleas will not be entered until a case management hearing in May.

A six-week trial was pencilled in for September next year.

Both men were given on unconditional bail.

Warrington, of Michaelson Avenue, appeared without a lawyer after claiming he could not afford to pay for legal representation.

Comments

Gentry, Barber and Warrington

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:59:08 +0200

October 22, 2012

Read the Liverpool Echo tomorrow.

Trial starts September next year.

Tick.

Tock.

Comments

Jimmy Savile

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:48:46 +0200

October 15, 2012

For those who forgot to buy the Sunday Sport yesterday (on sale until Tuesday!), here's what wasn't printed in any other newspaper - Savile, in his own words....

LURID tales of Jimmy Savile’s sordid lust for young girls have dominated the headlines all week.

Interviews with now grown-up victims of the late Jim’ll Fix It star have been flooding the airwaves.

Former patients and staff from Leeds Royal Infirmary and Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Bucks, have come forward with tearful testimonies about Savile’s sick predilections.

Savile died last year aged 84 and was given a hero’s send off – but an ITV investigation screened a fortnight ago , which interviewed many victims, has shattered that illusion for good.

The former Top Of The Pops host’s papal knighthood is almost certainly likely to be forfeited - and his own family have removed and demolished the £4,000 headstone from his Scarborough grave.

Police have launched an official criminal inquiry and the BBC has promised one of its own to see who knew what – and when – about his evil activities within the corporation’s own buildings.

But Sunday Sport has discovered that the clues were all there in Savile’s own words from his 1974 memoir, As It Happens.

The book is now out of print but our investigators managed to track down one of the few available dog-eared copies.

He ends the book – which he says he proudly wrote entirely by himself in longhand – with a telling post script to God: “PS,” Savile writes, “I hope He really does take it easy on sinners!”

But it now seems likely that rather than going to meet his maker, Savile was headed straight to hell.
For here, in his own words, is the REAL Jimmy Savile.

GETTING CAUGHT

“NEAR heart failure when caught is an occupational hazard.

“I had once been invited by six young ladies to their holiday caravan for a late night visit. Half the caravan had been made into an enormous bed and we all lounged upon it.

“At 4am came a large knocking on the door…. A scene of human collapse met the eye. The heat of the albeit innocent night had caused the girls to shed the majority of their clothes - in some cases all.”

Savile says he blagged the parents outside that he’d arrived only an hour earlier and the girls – hurriedly dressed – had yet to make him breakfast. The parents believed him and he left unscathed.

Later that same day Savile claims he was walking along the beach with two minders when a young girl “in a one-piece swimsuit and looks good enough to eat” approached him, and asked to introduce him to her parents staying nearby at a caravan.

Savile says he said hello, and the girl then asked to show him inside the caravan, whereupon she locked the door.

He wrote: “Wild horses would not have got me into another situation similar to my recent deliverance but this chick was in no way resembling a horse, wild or otherwise.

“With her bare feet in the sand, legs straining to pull me up, tanned body and corn hair, she took me in two like a zombie.”

He says once inside the caravan, his “kidnapper” asks for a lift into town and says she first has to change.

Savile: “I have sunk into a chair, wringing wet with the heat and temptation. A rustling and snapping from the dark end tells me that the swimsuit is off.”

At that point her parents try the locked door’s handle.

Savile writes: “Within, there was a naked young lady stomping up and down on one leg; without was mum and dad claiming rightful admittance.

“Three things I did at the same time – pray that I might simply disappear, put a comic magazine over my head, and reached out to unlock the front door.”

Savile says the girl told her parents: “We had to keep the curtains closed else he’d been snowed under the autographs.”

He adds: “I was near passed out in the chair under my comic and uttered not a word.

“The situation had been saved by daughter sliding like an eel into a slip of a dress, minus undies, and pretending to make tea.

“I was finished. But really finished. Twice delivered in but one day was just too much and I was robbed of movement and speech, so I feigned sleep.

“Eventually it was business as usual but friends will tell you that since that day I never, ever, operate outside my four walls.

“As I have a considerable number of four walls dotted about the country, life is not too restricted.”

LUCKY ESCAPE

“LUCKY escapes figure prominently in my apparently never ending fun, money and healthy life.

“On one dance hall occasion five young ladies came to me asking if they could stay with me for the night as they had missed their bus home… a strange request as it was only 8pm and the last bus didn’t go until midnight.

“So after the dance they all finish up back at my place. The fact they all produced nighties and toothbrushes caused me to marvel momentarily at the completeness of ladies’ handbags.

“After much running about the house, preparation, girl talk and continuous idiot laughing, we all collapsed in a heap and fell asleep.”

Savile says he got up early to for a bike ride, leaving the girls asleep in bed and his minder dozing upstairs.

Later that morning “two fire-breathing mothers” turn up looking for their daughters, and demanding to know where Savile is.

The girls say he is away for the weekend and had just kindly let them have use of the house.

The mums went upstairs but failed even to find the minder.

Savile wrote: “But where is my big meaty minder? Why, in the wardrobe of course, for I train my men well and, to date, we have not been found out. Which is the eleventh commandment, is it not.”

CAMPING GIRLS

ASKED for ideas on how to attract youngsters to a youth dance in Otley, Yorkshire, Savile says he came up with a “good idea”.

He told the chairman of the local council: “I will come… if you arrange for me to sleep in a tent… with another tent alongside with six girls to sleep there as my bodyguards.

“The council had to decide which six, so they called a special meeting. Some of the members only then realised what they were doing.

“‘We can’t have a council meeting to decide which six of our girls sleep with this man,’ said several, more bewildered than outraged. So half the council left and half stayed.

“Six girls were selected and all of them were in matching mini-skirts and white boots… They looked good enough to eat.

“Needless to say the girls’ tent fell over and we all had to finish up together… So who says charity isn’t fun?”

YOUNG FANS

“THE social dangers of such temptations are immense. At 2am one morning there came a small knock on my door in Manchester. Standing there was a young, super-shape girl. About seventeen or eighteen, I estimated. Manchester is a big city and such things can happen.

“’I’m just going out,’ says I with great effort and cursing myself for being chicken, ‘but I’ll be back in half an hour.’

“Leaving her sitting on the step I was off to town in the car. Fifty yards down the road I get stopped by a police car.

“’That girl just gone into your block is an absconder,’ saws the law.

“’What girl?’ says I.

“’Lucky boy,’ says the law, and zooms off to claim the runaway. Such eleventh-hour escapes reduce one to a jelly.”

GIRL IN A SACK

“ONCE, in London, I had a girl delivered to me in a sack. It was far too heavy to lift from the outside step and I got a touch of the horrors in case the body… was dead.

“It wasn’t but it was also unnecessarily melodramatic because it was broad daylight and one doesn’t feel half as guilty during the day.”

RUNAWAY GIRL

THE Jim’ll Fix It host goes into detail about a night working at a dance hall in Leeds.

“A high ranking lady police officer came in one night and showed me the picture of an attractive girl who had run away from a remand home.

“‘Ah,’ I says all serious, ‘if she comes in I’ll bring her back tomorrow but I’ll keep her all night first as my reward.’

“The absconder came in that night. She… agreed that I hand her over if she could stay at the dance, come home with me, and that I would promise to see when they let her out.

“At 11.30am the next morning she was willingly presented to an astounded lady of law. The officeress was dissuaded from bringing charges against me by her colleagues, for it was well known that were I to go I would probably take half the station with me.”

DYING GIRLS

“TWO girls I knew, patients both. Their complaint was one of the touch and go killers [men who clear off after a one night stand]. I used to threaten enthusiastic mayhem to their honour, if I ever got the chance.

“Off I went to the [Lands End to John O’Groats] walk and reappeared on the wars a month later.

“Girl No 1 is delighted to see me back and there is much story telling…. After half an hour I turn to leave. ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘where’s your pal?’

“’Oh,’ says Girl No 1 after coming back to reality, ‘she died’.

“This caught me a low blow. ‘She didn’t!’ says I, feeling suddenly bad.

“Girl No 1 mistakes my emotion and thinks I’m annoyed with her pal for not waiting for me.

“I swear I broke to pieces inside at that moment. Teenager girls, who should be out and about, not wanting to die just yet.”

Savile then recounts that the girl died some weeks later and “I was there, this time, and yet once more did the disc of darkness inch slowly across the sunshine of my life”.

ON CALIFORNIA

“GLEAMING cars and the gleaming bodies of beach girls made the head turn and I felt it officially criminal that the age of consent in that admirable state is eighteen. It really is unfair because everyone knows that everything matures quicker in the sunshine.”

HIDING IN LADIES’ LOO

SAVILE tells a story of making an appearance at a London university, where he eventually had to run away from his fans and hide in the ladies toilets.

“A technical point here – when taking refuse in a ladies’ loo it behoves one to elevate the feet for those who would peer beneath the door, as a pair of big male shoes gives the game away.

“Several times groups of ladies charged in to, as it were, dwell on the facilities, and talk about where I was.

“There was a keen sense of disappointment at being deprived of the anticipated sight of my wedding tackle.”

SCHOOLGIRLS IN SCARBOROUGH

“WHERE would you ever see a dustcart chased by screaming girls? During some training for a forthcoming wrestling bout I bumped into the lads that empty the bins round my flat.

“Some schoolgirls on a day trip were idling near a passageway…. ‘Ahhhh,’ screamed the young ladies. ‘It is him.’

“Surprised holidaymakers stood aghast at the unlikely scene of forty fine-bodied young girls running, with shrill cries, after a dustcart.

“The explanation that Jimmy Savile was one of the dustmen brought back much of ‘whatever will he get up to next’.”

ON HIS MUM, “THE DUCHESS”

“THINK not that three scores and ten were a handicap for the Duchess. She had the energy of a teenager and could pleasure all night as often as the opportunity arose.”

HYPNOTIST

WHILE attending a post-war Lend a Hand on the Land farming camp, Savile says he discovered he could hypnotise people.
“To demonstrate, and choosing a girl who was already fast asleep in her easy chair, I stood behind her.

“Passing myself off as first her mother, then her father, and finally boyfriend we had a lively patter going. I was convinced she was awake and just playing along with me.

“Taking again the part of her mother and asking her what she was doing in bed with all her clothes on, sweet horror, did she not stand up and start to undress.

“Telling her to stop, and in the nick of time as it had been a warm evening, she was handed to her girlfriend with instructions to be put to her bed.

“The next morning, expecting to be denounced and dismissed, I was shattered with relief when she stood next to me in the breakfast queue and gave not the slightest sign of recognition.

“Years later in the Isle of Man I met Josef Karma, one of the great hypnotists. Telling him the story, he was not surprised and suggested I should study under him… and not finish up in the nick!”

LONER GIRL

SAVILE described running dance halls as “better than running a harem”.

But he adds that “were I to tell all, no one would believe it, plus I’d have to take up residence in some inaccessible Himilayan village”.

He describes how running the dance halls led to many house party invitations, referring to one held in Sale, Cheshire: “As I drove there a foolproof plan formulated in my mind.

“The first girl I found who was on her own would be mine for all to see…. So it was into the house, shake all around, and settle down and find a loner girl. By far the most attractive girl in the room was sitting on the floor playing records.

“For the next one hour there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was my girl. Dancing closer than a stamp to a letter, with many a caress and a wink to the other guys in the room… it was time for the hawk to carry the captive dove off to its nest.”

But the “girl” turned out the wife of the home owner – and Savile escaped through a toilet window.

“The next day my host telephoned: ‘You’re a diabolical bastard to carry on with that poor man’s wife like that’.”

SEX

“THERE have been trains and, with apologies to the hit parade [the old term for the top 40], boats and planes (I am a member of the 40,000ft club) and bushes and fields, corridors, doorways, floors, chairs, slag heaps, desks and probably everything except the celebrated chandelier and ironing board.

“As to the right and wrong of it, most of us have burned out bridges... long before we realise there could be a right or wrong to it.”

ends

Comments

Whole Lotta Love

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 15:34:12 +0200

June 24, 2012

There's a man, a tall man, who lives down the road from us in West Kirby, which for those non-Wirral dwellers is a mile down a meandering, leafy, stupidly well-heeled road from Hoylake.

It's a road stacked to the brim with paper millionaires, the kind of people who park their Mercedes 4x4s in disabled parking spots and wear make-up in the bath.

They don't own hoovers, delight in watching an old man clip their lawns, feign an absorbing interest in tennis, absolutely love living near a golf club, and have no idea how to boil an egg.

Thankfully, not everyone around here is like that.

Take the tall man, for instance. He sings, and plays, like this:

His name is David Bob Picken. He's 33 years young.

I can't pretend to have met him before last night, but my other half Annie has known him for years, as he's a close friend of her nieces and nephews, who can also play a bit.

A bit like this, actually:

Oh, and these fellas, too, who are apparently familiar with the workings of what I believe they call the hit parade:

The reason we all happened to be in the same premises is that David - dare I call him Bob? Fuck it, yes I will - very recently discovered he has quite an aggressive brain tumour.

Now, my oldest friend in the world and I would refer to a discovery like that as an FBD - a Fucking Bad Downer. Which it is, isn't it?

But if Bob thinks it's an FBD, then he's doing a superb job of not showing it.

Last night, he grinned as LOADS of people gathered for this.

Quite extraordinary to see these top muso types performing at an intimate venue for free, you might suppose - until you realise that on the night, they're not being top muso types, but they are being ridiculously talented boys and girls being a bloke's mates.

Occasional readers will be aware that I cheerfully know bugger all about music. But I do know a little about friendship.

And - despite a brief electricity-lite interlude thanks to our amazing British summer - there was Ready Brek-style friendship glowering out of The Coda Maine last night.

I wonder how many of those bland people sat staring at their deep-pile rugs on Meols Drive ever experience a friendship like that?

Or, indeed, ever put their hands in their swollen pockets to help someone out?

But hey.

Last word to Bob, who put this up on Facebook this morning:

Morning everyone,

I wanna start off by saying a huge thank you to Jessica Rose Trigg and Martin Moseley for organizing the Bob Picken Campaign and to all the staff who worked yesterday.

Secondly to all the bands that played throughout the day, what a day for music, i enjoyed every moment of it so cheers for coming down!!

And last to everyone who came down. Your support has been overwhelming and this tumour i have which i've named Justin Bieber by the way cos he's just as annoying i will continue to fight and your support before last night and last night will help me do that so a huge thank you for being there last night.

Love you all,

Bob xx

Comments

Train Tales #2

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:56:41 +0200

Saturday, March 31, 2012

It had just gone 6.39pm.

I know this because, as ever, the train was two minutes late leaving the station, due no doubt to some unhelpful, selfish passenger holding the whole boarding process up while a temporary ramp was found for their sodding wheelchair.

Great, I thought. That's the connection missed at Lime Street.

Again.

Well done to you, Mr Bloody Unfortunate. You get to play at going the wrong way up a slide and I get to add another 30 minutes onto my bastard journey.

One nil to God.

Still, at least I have a table.

I shuffle over to the window and slam down the armrest with an angry loud bang, lest whoever comes to sit next to me a) should think me in any way welcoming or b) thinks my skinny arse doesn't deserve the same amount of room as their undoubtedly fat one.

An enormous woman duly sits down on my right.

And looks disapprovingly down her sweat-dampened nose as I extract from my M&S carrier bag one crisp, cold can of Vodka & Tonic.

I pop it open. Phssssh.

I can tell she's glaring at me in either disgust (I hope) or envy (I hope even more). Her face looks quite like the Angry Birds' Mighty Eagle.

I'm already a bit tetchy because my seven month old laptop that had to be sent off for a new hard drive hadn't been delivered back to work.

Except that's not entirely correct.

According to the tracking website, it was indeed delivered to work and signed for by someone called "Anderton".

We have no one in our business by the name of "Anderton".

We are in serviced offices but because I only remembered to check where the laptop was at 5.40pm, the reception staff - hopefully including someone by the name of Anderston - had gone home.

So I ring the repair company. But their answering machine informs me that they're "open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, please fuck right off".

I'll find out if it's been delivered here on Monday.

Otherwise I've been robbed. Which, knowing my luck, would seem the most obvious outcome.

Two nil to God.

But because I was expecting the laptop I'd left the iPad at home.

Stuck now with a mere Kindle - which was my best friend right up until the moment the iPad arrived and made it look like one of those charity plastic kids in calipers with a coin slot in his head that I always pretend not to see, a bit like buskers - I took a sip from the delightfully tangy V&T and begrudgingly flipped the bookreader open, ready to devour the second half of The Times.

It's needless to say, but yes, it wouldn't work.

Fully charged yesterday, but now kaput.

I raise my glinting tin of booze and tip a silent toast to the heavens.

Three nil to God.

The table adjacent to me - or which would be, were it not for the steadily humming mass of Mrs Fat - fills up. Three as a group, one alone.

The loner is immediately set up upon by The Three Cheeriest Cunts In The World.

Two of them are women. I did not catch their names. But we shall call them Jemima and Jemima. Both are "bubbly".

Their male companion is tall, with a blonde quiff, and Elvis Costello glasses. He thrusts his Cheerfully Enthusiastic Hand out at the loner and declares he is - and I feel my heart fluttering anxiously inside my chest as I recall this - "Toby".

Oh god, I think.

I might actually have to kill him.

Four nil to god.

Jemima and Jemima have brought "nibbles".

A selection of olives and sun-dried tomatoes and houmous and vegetable crisps and little breads and other things all from a shop called Cunts R Us.

They also have M&S tins, but theirs of course are Fancy Southern Types Gin & Tonic as against my miserable and now half-empty tramp piss juice.

They also have a bottle of fizzy stuff.

Toby and Jemima and Jemima start talking all at once.

Barking lines of Withnail and I at each other - "We've come on holiday by mistake!" - in accents carved somewhere in that specific part of the Home Counties where they churn out cunts like Coventry churned out cars (before the factories closed down and they all died).

After each booming reprisal they bray like convulsing donkeys, throwing their heads back like someone has yanked them by their hair.

Which is of course what I wished I was doing.

While slicing the new kitchen knife that I still haven't actually used across their blessed carotid arteries full of all that precious life-giving blood.

"DO YOU LIKE TAPAS?" they shriek at their unfortunate tablemate. "DO YOU? DO YOU? DO YOU? DO YOU MWAH TAPAS? WE LOVE TAPAS? DON'T WE TOBES? WE LOVE TAPAS DON'T WE?"

Tobes shrieks back: "LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT YAH! MWAH YAH!"

I realise I have not blinked for too long.

My eyes are paralysed by the sheer horror of what they are taking in.

My ears are begging for rape counselling.

And my eyes and ears are not alone. Mrs Fat is now staring at their spread in the way a stray dog stares at a lamb bone.

And it is not just me and Mrs Fat.

The train from Manchester Piccadilly to Liverpool was ram packed, each seat taken and the aisles stuffed with hot, knackered, want-to-go-home standing passengers.

All of them are now staring aghast at this bunch of utter wankers.

"TOBES! TOBES! TELL ME AGAIN ABOUT NAPLES!"

My vodka and tonic is finished.

"JUST CAN'T SAY ENOUGH JEMS JUST CAN'T SAY ENOUGH LOVE IT LOVE LOVE IT CIAOBELLA."

My hand blindly gropes for my emergency second tin. (They are only little, after all.)

"FANDABISSIMO!"

More braying. I blink, quickly, picturing the bore of a shotgun shattering through Tobes' forehead.

"SO WHAT DO YOU DO?" they all ask at the same time of the loner.

"I'm a student," he says, which should have been obvious, as he is wearing boating shoes and no socks and has comedy facial hair that he assumes makes him original.

He follows it up with the killer line: "A post-grad journalism student."

The shrieks go so high I swear I see one of the standing passengers at the far end of the carraige shatter into a thousand ice-sharp pieces.

"TOBES WANTS TO BE A JOURNALIST DON'T YOU TOBES DON'T YOU TOBES DON'T YOU."

And thus I spend the next 40 minutes listening to how VERY IMPORTANT it is that GHASTLY AWFUL JOURNALISM should be WIPED OUT like a PLAGUE but there is no need to worry BECAUSE TOBES KNOWS IT'S ALL OVER FOR THE TABLOIDS and oh yes TOBES CONTRIBUTES A LOT TO THE COMMENT IS FREE BIT OF THE GUARDIAN WEBSITE.

My second tin of tramp piss juice is also empty and I debate whether to tear one in two, slice my way through Mrs Fat and gouge each of their eyes out and using the holes to shove, letter box style, copies of the Sunday Sport.

But instead I get off at Lime Street.

My ears are ringing like they've been boxed.

I have indeed missed my connection.

Five nil to god.

But at least the bar at the station is open to bide away a balming half hour.

Five one.

"A bottle of Peroni, please," I ask the Dusky Maiden of Liquid Relief.

I take myself to the far end of the bar, back to everyone for peace and quiet, raise the bottle to my lips.

"TOBES! JEMS! JEMS! TOBES! MWAH ! MWAH ! MWAH ! MWAH !"

I'm off to Piccadilly now to catch the train home.

God help them all.

Comments

The Great British National Railway Service

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:31:02 +0100

February 23, 2012

Today, with a few idle minutes waiting for a late train, I enquired about what "saver" deals were available were I to buy, say, a weekly or monthly "season" ticket to get me to Manchester and back, five days a week.

Weekly, they told me, after a few tippity taps on the computer, would be £75.20.

Monthly - well, 28 days - would be £288.80.

"Thank you, fine woman," I didn't declare, as I pocketed the note she'd made and slipped out of the queue and onto the platform.

My maths are rubbish, so I plucked out the phone and pulled up the calculator.

£14.40 a day, times five, I put in.

Result: £72

So, three pounds and fifty pence LESS than if I buy a "saver" weekly ticket.

So I tried the monthly "season" "saver" ticket instead.

Result: £288.80.

Which is eighty pence a month more than I pay daily.

I wait until I return back from Manchester tonight, after my normal two and a half hour journey home - yes folks, services are improving since they increased the fare by 90p day in January - and wearily went to the kiosk again.

"Well," says the bloke behind the perspex. "You can travel the trains to Liverpool on your days off, too, so that's where it's a bargain."

Yes.

That's right.

Travel. On a fucking train. On my days off.

For "a bargain" price of more than I pay already for late trains packed full of tossers.

A friend asked lately if I'd ever seen the movie Falling Down.

Seen it?

I am it.

God help that fucking busker in the morning.

Comments

Destination Excellence. Oh Dear, Oh Dear.

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:00:18 +0100

January 17, 2012

In response to their complete and utter meltdown at Wirral's town hall, the desperados came up with something called Destination Excellence (where do they find this shit?) which is, it almost goes without saying, yet another ludicrously botched attempt by the idiots who Just Don't Get It That They Should Resign.

Our correspondent Gerry Mander brings us this fly on the wall reaction to it....

* Hat tip to Wirral Leaks for more fine work.

Comments

Inside The Mind Of Wirral's Self-Declared Finest

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:39:39 +0100

January 16, 2012

Must be awful, all that pressure upon you.

Really, really awful.

Maybe you should ask for a compromise agreement and leave?

Mendacious tossers.

It ain't over until you're over.

Please do know that.

Comments

Wirral Council's bunker mentality

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:28:03 +0100

January 16, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5wD4lgw6viU#!

Too brilliant.

Comments

Twits

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:57:20 +0100

January 13, 2012

Good things come to those that wait.

Comments

The Definitive Guide On How Not To Run A Council

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:59:12 +0100

January 11, 2012

Rape. Violence. Theft. Money laundering. Intimidation. Drugs. Death.

All allegations made by very vulnerable adults in the "care" of unregistered, non-contracted agencies that were being paid millions to be apparently quite shit at their jobs.

All there in a report into the way Wirral Council ignored a whistleblowers's concerns about the fears of vulnerable people within the local authority's "care".

Someone at the council once told me that the whistleblower was "a bit mad".

Can't wait to see herself get out of that one.

Comments

The Little Fucking Ginger Bastard

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:54:01 +0100

November 26, 2011

IMAGINE this:

Your tired, frazzled, yearning-for-weekend head has been unexpectedly and ungraciously stuffed like sage into a cheap stinking turkey carcass into the hot, beating, swollen belly of the permanently out of wedlock Planet Poor, in which resides a thousand sweating faces, a zillion angry "old" people, a blond, suited, absolute cunt with a French horn, and a three and a half foot high little twat with a high pitched voice and freckles, whose thick father is trying to pick a fight with a man in his eighties in temperatures something close to the surface of the sun.

Can't, can you?

But I didn't have imagine it. I just fucking did it.

IT is 5.46pm precisely.

I'm at Manchester Piccadilly, platform 14, feeling almost giddy that a) the train I'd missed was late, thereby offering me the opportunity - amazingly - to steal back some of the time of which I am persistently robbed, and b) I've used all of my journalistic cunning/travelling nous/cuntishness to wheedle my slender way towards the front of the mob waiting to board the train.

Believe it or not, I have become that anal about these fucking journeys that I actually know the exact place on the platform to stand so that when the 37-mins-past-the-hour train arrives - late, of course, naturellement - I am the first ugly face that the alighters behold.

Because I need a double seat.

And a table.

And I don't fucking care that you're a woman, or old, or disabled, or pregnant, or lame, or cancerous, or albino, or a blind.

Tough, I say.

Grow some fucking eyes.

It's not my fault you're shit at being a cunt like me who can wheedle his bony self towards a double seat&table.

This fella, dear reader, is sitting down, come what may.

THE French horn is now lay half on my laptop bag, and half on my face, as the big fat blond cunt is apparently at ease trying to insert his instrument into my ear while allowing very, VERY fat people to squeeze past him towards a buffet car that DOES NOT EXIST on a two carriage cross-country route to Liverpool.

Same very VERY fat people then tumble people aside in all directions on the fucking way BACK in case they missed the non-existent buffet car at the end of the train the fat fuckers have just come from. This is, bear in mind, a fifty fucking minute journey. Unesco need not worry.

As the Fats squeeze their way back, French Horn Cunt not only knocks my glasses off with his French Fucking Horn Case, but he does so while standing on my fucking toes at the same time.

We're almost at Warrington.

"WHO the fuck do you think you're talking to, eh? Who the fuck? Who the fucking fuck? Dickhead."

"You, yer prick. Who the fuck d'ya think you're talking to? Dickhead. D'ya wanna take this outside?"

"Dad, I need a wee."

JAMIE/Wayne/Jack/Tommyfella/Tattoo/Cunt barked and yelped at my feet for 57 whole minutes. Waggled his little ADHD head against my shins. Actually punched the top of my feet a couple of times "cos it sounds like a drum".

When The Little Fucking Ginger Bastard finally moved towards the front of the train - three inches, that is - his dad managed to pick a fight with an octogenarian for allegedly touching up his son, which, to be fair to paedophiles, I can't imagine any of them going near in a month of Sundays. We're talking about a child you could possibly never tire of punching, and just when you have run out of steam, up pops another burst of vigorous energy that makes you want to smash the little cunt in a bit more.

But the Octo man didn't help, either.

Get this: A Birkenhead-dwelling Man United FAN OAP picking fights with a six-year-old Little Fucking Ginger Bastard.

I'M buying a fucking Taser.

Comments

Thai Tales - The Book

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:03:45 +0100

November 14, 2011

Finally, it's now on sale.

Available now at http://www.bangkokbooks.com/php/product/product.php?product_id=001126

And from Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc, in the next 48 hours.

It is a mere pittance at $4.99.

Buy one immediately and then complain about the spelling.

Comments

Chef De Jour And His Sidekick, Aiden...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 02:03:55 +0200

October 29, 2011

Comments

Why Does It Always Train On Me?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:28:09 +0200

October 29, 2011

Twitter and Facebook chums have for the last few months been subjected to an unrelenting barrage of undoubtedly tediously repetitive status updates about my train journeys into Manchester and back.

I should apologise, really, but seeing as it's evidently amused a few people along the way (me included, in fairness, but only hours and hours and hours later, and only with the help of industrial amounts of Russian Standard vodka) I'm not going to. So there.

Anyway:

Tonight something else happened.

Tonight, the train I was getting home actually left on time (18.07 from Piccadilly to Lime Street, fact fans).

No unannounced delays; no suddenly missing train; no football fans attacking the buffet bloke; no fat stinking goth playing loud shite through his iPod while half sat on top of me; no menacing pissed Scouser with "MAD CUNT" tattooed back to front with a blunt compass on his forehead sat opposite me; no earnest woman on her way back from a course reading "How to be a better absolute fucking pain in the arse"; no illegal immigrants looking shifty with their backpacks while drinking Stella; no twat who clearly only sat next to me because he knows I want his iPad (see also: Kindle) and, best of all, no old people looking longingly at me sat down while they're stood up and genuinely thinking that after everything I go through on that journey that I fucking give the slightest shit if their knees are about to turn into crumble and make them die.

No, no.

None of that.

Instead, allow me to introduce Kelly and Hayley: Two shrieking Scouse orange-coloured eyebrow-scoured shrews who, with their begotten trio of vile, disparate offspring and complete lack of social skills, have left my ears and nerves more shredded and abused than your average late-night council kennel mongrel.

I board said train at just after 18.05, with a sparkly feeling of delight that I have somehow managed to cheat the Perpetual Cloud Of Bad Luck that follows my each and every transportation move.

Alas, there is but one table almost free: But lo, it features a rather pretty girl sat by the window, who is wearing quiet earphones - always a bonus. She is wearing a pained expression, though, and I naturally assume it's the same one I affect when someone invades my double-double seat, too. Tough, I think. Share my pain.

But then I discover really why she's looking so pained.

The two pissed Mancunians that I, a trained observer no less, have somehow completely managed not to spot, are lounging over the back of the seats of the table on the other side of the aisle where Kelly and Hayley are sat.

An enormously loud exchange is taking place about swapping numbers, meeting up, your kid's gorgeous, wish she was mine, I mean him, but yeah her as well, but sound, let's meet up, so what's your number, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, no way dickhead, oh sorry can't say that can I?, fuck, oh fuck!, I mean soz, shit!, Oxford Road! Textmetextmetextmetextmetextmetextme.....

A collective sigh of relief is drawn throughout the carriage - imagine the noise a high tide makes when sucking itself out to sea, and then double it, and perhaps add some enthusiastic applause.

It is in any case a long, slow, relieved sigh, that says with a certain poetic eloquence: "Thank fuck the cunts have left."

But alas, again, no.

Only two of them have.

For Hayley and Kelly, who are sisters, and their offspring Kylie, Miley and Smiley, are to then spend the next 48 minutes variously:

* On the phone to Manchester Cunts who are lashed out of their minds and presuming they're up for a quick fumble.

* On the phone to the various nefarious fathers of their brats calling them, and I kid you not, "cunt", "dickhead", "meff", "blert", "twat", "tosser" and much, much more, at THE TOP OF THEIR VOICES while children Baz, Caz and Maz do shuttle runs up and down the carriage, only occasionally stopping to trip over my deliberately stuck-out leg and falling down to then burst into tears to which their mum(s) would scream at them: "STOP MAKING A FUCKING SHOW OF ME! I MEAN A SHOW!"

Beneath their table lies a mountain of debris the United Nations would declare a slum; if the train journey was any longer, Lenny Henry would have been stood in the middle of it telling his usual shit jokes before trotting out the Comic Relief donations number. It is a mish-mash of toy cars, hats, squashed sausage rolls, shattered crisps, spilt juice, broken dolls, filthy clothing, empty cans, some crap magazines and, of course, somewhere underneath it all, the tickets they can't find for the inspector.

Then Ally, or Cally, or Sally began to play up yet again. But they couldn't deal with the child because they were busy swapping the mobile back and forth on yet another conversation with the Mancunian Pricks which largely went like this:

"I know. I know, I know, I know."

"I know."

"Me too. I feel the same, lid. I feel the same."

"I know."

"Honest? Me too. I know."

"Really? I know."

"I know."

"No, I know."

"No, I know you know."

"Do you know?"

"Good. Honest. Cos I know."

"I know."

"No I know."

"No. Maybe Satdee."

"I know."

"Can't hear yuz babe me signals fucked. I mean gone."

"I know."

"Don't be ringing us all night cos yer pissed."

"I mean drunk."

"I know."

"No, I really do know. And I really do fink same."

"I know."

And then their fucking infernal battery finally ran out.

But then Wayne, or Dwayne, or Lorraine, started wriggling away from the "adults" again.

So Hayley or Kelly dragged him back onto the seat, with the boy unfortunately banging his lip on the table.

Cue hysterics.

Cue Haley/Kelly: "WE'RE GETTING OFF THE FUCKING TRAIN COS YOU'RE MAKING A FUCKING SHOW OF US AND EVERYONE'S WATCHIN'."

To a four year old, who, by my untrained eye, possibly has learning difficulties.

Finally, we reach Lime Street.

As ever, I have moments to jump off the train and leg it across the platforms and down onto the Wirral Line to get back to Hoylake.

But I can't get off the Manchester train because Hayley and Kelly and the Three Prongs Of Forking Hell are blocking the aisle before I can get off.

So.

Yes.

I missed the fucking connection.

Again.

Good job, then, that my renowned patience and unflappable manner remain intact.

Anyone got an axe?

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Good Afternoon

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:36:52 +0200

October 5, 2011

It's been a while, I know...

Now then.

How's things?

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Dean Bartlett, Terry Warrington, And Ticking The Wrong Box

Tue, 31 May 2011 23:02:04 +0200

May 31, 2011

An email arrives from a friend I haven't laid eyes on for over a decade.

He's tracked me down because he's been Googling "Gentry IT".

His parents, it seems, are down by thousands of pounds thanks to the merry band of "interesting" financial advisors led by the delightful Morecambe suspect Terry Warrington, whose many business associations include the equally delightful and above board and not at all crooked Business Assistance NW in Wallasey, and what was Bridging Finance NW, but is now Bridging Finance Solutions (sic), both based curiously enough at exactly the same address in Wallasey.

I ask this old friend how he is.

A bit rubbish, comes the reply. During his years living in London he was hit by a car late one night, and among the catalogue of injuries he lost an eye.

Nasty, but, as ever, he remains a cheerful soul.

So now he's back up north living near his parents, who've become the latest people to find out that their investment into "Gentry Investment Trust" (also sic) seems to have disappeared, just like the money of so many other older people, like my mum, for instance.

(Not that Terry Warrington or his equally upstanding friends and associates at Business Assistance or Bridging Finance have explained any of this, however.)

So our talk twists and turns from old memories revisited: His bloody bad luck under the wheels of another person's car; his parents being completely ripped off by person or persons "unknown" (also sic) in an outrageous loan shark scam that will, eventually, be paid for - in whatever currency the indebted choose; and the lawyer who, after his accident, helped to arrange his compensation.

The lawyer's name is Dean Bartlett. Which is interesting. Because Dean is a former co-director of property companies with one Terry Warrington. How weird! That'll be Dean who was reprimanded and fined £17,500 for... Oh, you'll find it on the internet, won't you?

And here's something else weird: When my friend's parents didn't receive their annual interest cheque from Gentry IT two years ago, they rang Terry Warrington to ask why.

He told them that, daft old buggers that they are, they'd mistakenly ticked for a "five year interest option" and would therefore have to wait that long until they got either a payment or their investment back.

Meanwhile, Malcolm Barber of Business Assistance, established in 1976 and so very much his baby, still has a lovely new Audi on his drive and villas in Florida and Spain.

Sorry to be such a dreadful bore about this, Malcolm and Terry and Dean - but until we get the lot of you in a room and someone starts explaining something, this is not - NOT - going to stop.

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Overnight Viewers

Wed, 11 May 2011 10:31:20 +0200

May 11, 2011

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Short Memories Refused; Or The Page That Business Assistance NW Forgot, Maybe?

Wed, 11 May 2011 01:06:05 +0200

May 11, 2011

And, oh look, it's Wednesday, May 11, 2011.

Interesting times.

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Latest on Gentry Investment Trust and Dublin Finance and The Grubby Thieves Who Don't Want To Sue Me

Sat, 07 May 2011 20:08:34 +0200

May 7, 2011

I received an email today from yet another Gentry Investment Trust/Dublin Finance investor.

A person who knew nothing about the scandalous state of affairs surrounding the "companies" founded by Malcolm Barber and Terry Warrington, and administered by the pair of them, or their representatives, or their interesting businesses that pretend not to have anything to do with one another, on and off for years.

So today I've had to do, yet again, what Malcolm and Terry have always refused to do, and that's explain, as best I can, how the investor is almost certainly the victim of a pair of cowardly swindlers.

This week, Terry Warrington is expected to answer police bail and presumably find out if there are any charges he may have to face.

"Other" people - I wonder who? - will nevertheless be interviewed, I understand.

Oh. And there's a nice new Audi on Malcolm's drive, funnily enough.

More here and here and here and here and here and here.

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How To Not Harbour A Grudge

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:14:44 +0200

April 13, 2011

I RECEIVED an interesting text message this morning in response to one I sent to a number I've never used before, but was on a business card given to me almost two years ago which had been lying completely forgotten in the back of my wallet until yesterday afternoon.

Both related to the morning of Friday, July 3, 2009, when I was still working for the Wirral Globe newspaper, and in that capacity attended a press conference in the Pavilion in the middle of Birkenhead Park.

The press conference had been called by the local MP, Frank Field, who was there to support the announcement of a proposed boys' academy for Birkenhead. The "sponsor" of the academy, also in attendance, was a locally born and raised businessman called David Hughes.

Before heading out to the press conference, after a little outside prompting, I did a quick Google search about Mr Hughes and discovered that he had indeed had some extraordinary successes as a businessman, but also some recent, high-profile failures. There was also the question of a £1.42 million fine still owed to the Government after a price-fixing scandal in his former business, the sports clothing retailer All:Sports.

After both Mr Field and Mr Hughes had finished speaking and members of the press were asked if there were any questions, I raised my hand and put the issues of businesses failures and the outstanding fine to Mr Hughes, on the grounds that if he was going to put any money into a local school, and thus have a considerable say in how that school was run, how, in light of what a ten minute Google search had already revealed, could we be entirely certain of his probity?

Mr Hughes - and indeed Mr Field - were unimpressed by this, appearing to think the press are merely there to take notes of their wise words and faithfully skip away and report them, without question, as gospel.

Mr Hughes said he would speak to me after the press conference about the issues, which he did, quite concisely, in a conversation which began with him calling me "a twat".

I wrote a blog post about the whole incident here on Saturday, July 4, which didn't name Mr Hughes, but otherwise faithfully recorded what had happened, from my point of view.

A few days later I received an email from Mr Hughes who, in turn, must have been Googling me, because he'd found my blog, and indeed the "You're A Twat" post. He felt unfairly done to, so despite the fact we'd decided as a newspaper to anyway give him the benefit of the doubt and so just did a straightforward report on the academy proposal - which with hindsight was a mistake, I think - I decided to block the post to the wider world and make it friends only.

This morning, however, I have opened it up so anyone who wants to can read it. If you can be bothered, have a look. I actually think it's pretty fair.

I mention all this because a parcel arrived at the Globe's office yesterday addressed to me. My former colleague opened it and inside there was a book called Dirty Business, authored by one David E Hughes.

Here's the book:

Inside was small piece of headed "Dirty Business" notepaper.

The note read: "Dear Justin, Have a read of page 151. If you like the book, you might want to do a decent write up on it. With best wishes, David E Hughes."

Here's the note:

So I turned to page 151, which was part of a chapter entitled: "People to Avoid at all Costs."

The three relevant paragraphs, where he was talking about dealings with media over the years, were this:

"I can give you many more examples than that, but we can fast forward again 30 years to 2009, when I did a press interview down in Birkenhead about me being the sponsor for a proposed new academy in secondary education. Although I was there to talk about education, one particular reporter asked some pretty searching questions about my business track record and I responded by offering to answer any questions that he had on that subject outside of that conference and immediately afterwards. In fact, I said to him I would not leave the building until he had been satisfied that I had answered his questions fully and openly.

"Press conference over, I met him in a private room and he asked me what I thought of his questions. I told him unequivocally that I thought he was a twat for introducing them when I was there to talk about something quite different.

"I then answered his questions to his total and complete satisfaction and was astonished 48 hours later to see reported in a well-read blog that the new proposed academy sponsor had called this poor innocent and maligned reporter a twat! He did not say it was off the record, he did not say it was in a private conversation. He got his headline. Used and abused, again. Justin Dunn of the Wirral Globe you are indeed a twat!"

In case I hadn't noticed the last sentence, Mr Hughes or one his aides had placed an adhesive yellow arrow on the page, next to it.

Here's the page, with the arrow:

Eighteen months down the line, I figured he must have been muddled about a few details. I still maintain that the conversation wasn't off the record, and nor was it private - my photographer colleague Dave Gennard was with us, and Mr Hughes had merely indicated that he wanted to put his side of the story away from the press conference, which along with other media was attended by local education professionals and some students. He was only answering the points I'd already put to him publicly, and besides, the blog - which, remember, didn't name Mr Hughes - was describing from a reporter's point of view how a press conference doesn't always go according to the plan of the protagonists.

Also, in our exchange of emails in the week that followed, we'd settled that we would "agree to disagree" about the pertinence of me asking those questions, which I also maintain were quite the right questions to ask in my capacity as a reporter for a local newspaper whose readers included the future students, and their parents, of Mr Hughes' proposed academy.

(Private Eye and the Times Educational Supplement in this article also seemed to think these details were relevant, too.)

Something Mr Hughes definitely appears not to recollect from these events is this email he sent to me, out of the blue, more than a month after our first exchanges, on August 19, 2009.

From: "David Hughes" [Email address redacted by JD]
To: "Dunn Justin" (Email address redacted by JD]
Cc: "Gregory-Jones Lisa" [email address redacted by JD]
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 12:58 PM
Subject: New Academy for Boys

Good Afternoon Justin.
Can you call me please on eIther [mobile number redacted by JD] or [landline redacted by JD]?
I am probably in need of a poacher-turned-gamekeeper media savvy operator and you could be just the man.
Either officially or otherwise you have that elusive je ne sais quoi that I find attractive!!
I am a morning person and try to do all my business stuff by 1300 in the day - but for you I will make an exception. Please feel free to call me up to 1800, any day.
Thanks
David Hughes

Perhaps it's because I never called him that hurts? I don't know.

Anyway. Back to yesterday.

After reading the words on page 151, I sent the following the text: "Thoroughly enjoyed page 151, David, though I cringed at the punctuation from a master of the universe as erudite as yourself. And no mention of my 'je ne sais quoi' that you find so 'attractive'? Fear not - I'll be refreshing your patchy memory for you, and we'll people decide [sic] who's really a twat. Should be fun, eh? Pip pip!"

This morning I got a reply: "On no! You kept my private number. But do you know how to hack as in "News of the World" fearless reporting? No matter. You are quite right about the proofing. It was bizarre trying to get people whose first language was clearly not English to make corrections. Had I gone beyond a 6th version to many more it would have been years before the book got out. Hope you really liked the hard bitten gumshoe I presented you as. If you liked the book - give it a plug. If you didn't - criticise intelligently. Break your own mould. The forum for mere mortals is www.dirtybusinessbook.co.uk You can have the last word. Good luck and get over yourself. I have learnt that harbouring grudges is ultimately self-defeating. David."

As it turns out, Mr Hughes is no longer involved with the academy - and indeed, the proposed boys academy is no more.

Still, Mr Hughes has his book out, Dirty Business, published by Austin Macauley, priced £9.99.

The book's website is here and features a forum, apparently.

I haven't read the whole book yet, but I will, and I'll review it, too.

And just like Mr Hughes, I'll do it without harbouring a grudge.

Because ultimately, they are indeed self defeating.

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