Saturday 15 November 2014

Manx Kippers

Well, as promised, I and a few pillars of the community were outside the Gaiety on November 11th distributing anti-racist leaflets to blue rinse bigot groupies.
It was an eye opener. A real losers convention of cheapskates, petty tax avoiders and vinegar-titted, niggling nobodies in general desperately looking for approval from someone only slightly less inconsequential then their sorry selves. It was as if the entire Manx daytime TV and UK Gold audience had simultaneously taken out a pay-day loan to watch the kind of shyster who sold it to them.
These were people too unimaginative to even crave decent heroes. What a shower!
More seriously, about two thirds were pensioners, who took our leaflets politely enough as we wished them a good evening but invited them to read another side to the fairy stories they were about to hear. Others were classic white flighters of the kind a Manx government policy document of 1990 (with major contributions by a former PR officer for the apartheid era Sun City resort in South Africa) indicates our then leaders decided to attract to this island.
The dead wood of the current House of Keys were also there, though significantly no female, Jewish or other politicians with non white or European partners. The Chief Minister had apparently been invited to meet and introduce Farage, but passed that dubious honour to an MLC whose prejudices are so well known that hanging out in public with a Euro-fascist could not lower his reputation further. Presumably, as the public can neither elect nor dismiss this Klingon he and his chums could enjoy yet another night of free drinks without worry.
Odder still was the presence of Manx Labour politicians and various characters who like to pass themselves off as trade unionists. The official line is that they were there to observe the enemy, but why pay him to do so?
It might also be pertinent to know that they were asked to join us leafleting. One professional trade unionist gave the kind of rambling response which explains why he loses every battle with government over public service pay and conditions. The other, like the MLP's elected members, never even replied.
Another myth peddled is that the proceeds of the event do not go back to Farage or his party, and that they went to charity. Not credible.
Firstly, the only known charitable donation on the night was passing buckets round the audience for the British Legion, an empty flag-waving gesture which cost the organisers nothing.
Secondly, a Manx registered family trust can ( if professionally constructed) also be a registered charity - though not necessarily registered on the Isle of Man. The whole concept was actually dreamt up by a well known figure in the dark 1980's days of the Manx offshore industry.
A common wheeze is to register the charity in another jurisdiction where nobody would look ( e.g. Monaco or Gibraltar) but bind the trust itself by Manx law. Also, under current law only the trustees would know the name of any underlying company or where it is registered, and would only be obliged to reveal anything in the chain of structures if a police force or government agency had credible evidence of criminal activity. Given that such agencies rarely even know of the existence of such entities unless a criminal offers them up in a plea bargain this simply does not happen.
Thirdly, the lunchtime before the show, Farage supporters gave a reception for a carefully selected few at The Claremont which nobody seems to want to mention. To get some idea why this might be, take a look at http://awaitingawesternrenaissance.blogspot.com/2008/10/foreign-owners-channel-cash-to-tories.html and remember who owns the Claremont, and also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/citydiary/10106554/Dashwood-Bangers-and-cash-for-Nigel-Farages-Brussels-blow-out.html .
You may also find http://www.directorstalk.com/nigel-farage-jim-mellon-paul-kavanagh-and-merryn-somerset-webb-at-master-investor-2013/ , http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/02/ukip-donor-belize-mining-southern-africa and http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/04/ukip-donor-arron-banks-shows-tax-cheque-sent-hmrc helps to give some idea how these things work and why middle ranking businessmen with massively leveraged businesses might want to bother.

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