Mike Parker, the BNP, chavs and bottles of Tippex (Updated)

Update 14/4/15 17.15

We can probably expect quite a few more updates to this one. The latest is that Guido Fawkes, the right-wing London blogger, has now heard about the goings on in Ceredigion, and in what must be a first, carries a quote from maes-e. Maes-e's server is probably held together with baler twine and elastic bands, so let's hope the old beast stands up to this sudden surge of interest.

A Tory backwoods MP (I know, currently technically not an MP) called Bob Neill is demanding that Huw Tippex Thomas should be told to stand down, with a load of guff about British flags.

And of course it was only a question of time before Nigel Farage jumped on the bandwagon, claiming that Labour hate England.

Update

Huw 'Tippex' Thomas has now dispelled any lingering doubts, and has admitted that he was indeed "Huw T" while apologising for his youthful indiscretions.

Meanwhile the LibDems are staying very, very quiet.

Diolch i 'Lol'

_____________________

On Wednesday The Cambrian News ran a front page splash claiming that Mike Parker, Plaid's candidate in Ceredigion, had compared incomers to Nazis or that he was defending a "Nazi slur" in its various editions. This was then picked up by the BBC, with BBC Wales running the item as its lead piece in its evening news bulletins.

The BBC did not use the word "Nazi", and neither had Mike Parker in the article which prompted the headlines - an article written in Planet Magazine 14 years ago, by the way. But although the BBC carried a short interview with Mike, it did not find time to explain that the racists he was referring to were a sprinkling of extreme right-wing fanatics such as Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, who had moved to rural Wales to escape from multi-cultural society in places like Birmingham.

But don't take my word for it. Here is the original piece:

Reproduced with thanks to Dr Seimon Brooks

Who spent hours digging out the article from a fairly obscure source and what their motives were is something we can only speculate about, but there is no doubt that the intention was to create the impression that Mike Parker, and by extension the rest of Plaid, think that English incomers are raving racist monsters.

Unsurprisingly but depressingly nonetheless, candidates for the other parties jumped for joy, and the Labour candidate demanded that Plaid should deselect Mike. Peter Hain weighed in with a tweet screaming, "Plaid must sack Candidate after this 'Nazi' attack on English constituents":

 

The row continued to rage for a second day, but this time with rather saner voices making themselves heard. Vaughan Roderick, the BBC's Welsh Affairs Editor, argued that if we want politicians to have experience of "real life" outside politics, the likelihood is that they will have written or said things in the past of which the party spin doctors might not approve. It's either that or bland career politicians who have remained "on message" ever since emerging from their special adviser cocoons.

Martin Shipton, no stranger to controversy himself, concluded in a thoughtful piece that the condemnation of Mike Parker did not stack up. Also deserving honourable mentions are the Carmarthen Journal, and an impartial analysis of the story by Aberystwyth Voice.

Then there is Ifan Morgan Jones writing on Golwg360 who, true to form, has a go at everyone.

After 48 hours of feeding frenzy, it seemed that the story was running out of steam, but Blog Menai has now uncovered a piece ostensibly written by Huw Thomas, Labour's candidate in Ceredigion, in June 2006 on maes-e, a Welsh-language chat room.

Huw T, who appears to be Huw Thomas, was worked up about the appearance of England flags in Wales during the 2006 World Cup. Many of those waving England flags were young Welsh people, he thought, and we had failed to integrate these "chavs" into Welsh society.

As for cars proudly displaying the England flag, Huw T's tip was to buy bottles of Tippex to throw over them. This would look like birdshit and take hours to clean off, he added.

Blog Menai also spotted that Huw Thomas had confirmed in a separate conversation that he was Huw T on maes-e.

As Day Three of Nazi-Tippex-Gate breaks, will Peter Hain be back on Twitter to call for the sacking of Huw Thomas as Labour's candidate in Ceredigion for advocating attacks on chavs and cars displaying the flag of Saint George?

We wait with bated breath.

____________________

At this point, I'd better declare an interest. In case readers had not noticed, Cneifiwr is a member of Plaid Cymru. As it happens, I have also met Mike Parker, and we have some mutual friends.

But what I and the other Twitterati think about the Cambrian News headlines, the BBC's treatment of the story or the Tippex attacks matters little compared with what ordinary voters think.

While all this was going on I spent the last two days out on the stump, canvassing for Plaid within a stone's throw - literally at times - of Ceredigion.

The Mike Parker issue cropped up only a couple of times on Wednesday and rather more on the Thursday after the BBC Wales coverage. One or two voters were genuinely confused by what they had heard on the news, while the rest were disgusted by what they felt were smear tactics. Some made the valid point that surely there were more important things to be talking about in this election.

The one exception to this was a Ukip voter who declared that Plaid Cymru were a bunch of racists. But then Cneifiwr can clearly recall a conversation with Mr Ukip's wife who told him that Welsh people were dirty and did not live in clean houses. Presumably she regularly cleans behind her fridge.

For anyone who has never done any canvassing, I can strongly recommend it. It is rare to encounter outright hostility, and nobody has ever shouted abuse or set the dogs on me, although I did have a slightly hairy encounter on Wednesday with a very excited Jack Russell belonging to a Plaid-supporting nurse. I was also ticked off by a stern-looking elderly lady holding a bunch of daffodils for saying 'foto' instead of 'pleidleisio' ('to vote' in English).

Some people, especially older voters, prefer not to say how they will vote. Some have absolutely no interest in politics, and a few appear never to read a newspaper or watch TV. Others are very interested in politics and are very well informed, expressing views about everything from Trident and the electrification of the railways to Carmarthenshire County Council and the Welsh economy.

Voters come in all shapes and sizes, but overwhelmingly they are polite, friendly and welcoming. The biggest risk in my experience is not that someone sets their rottweiler on you, but that you are invited in several times in the same street for endless cups of tea and biscuits.


I can honestly say that, apart from Mr and Mrs Ukip, racism or supposed tensions between incomers and locals are not subjects which come up on the doorstep.

Much more common is to encounter people who have made an effort to integrate and are aware of what is going on around them.

"The Plaid office has been brilliant helping Mary next door with her problems," one elderly man with a London accent told me. "We will definitely be voting Plaid, don't worry about that".

And their Jack Russell didn't bite me either.

The Breckman Case: Dear William

Further to the recent post about the destruction of part of the Special Area of Conservation and SSSI at Cernydd Carmel, a sharp-eyed correspondent has uncovered a letter written last year by the chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council to William Powell AM in his capacity as chair of the Assembly's Petitions Committee.

A Petition

The letter can be found here and was written in response to a letter from Mr Powell advising the council that the committee had received a petition calling on the Assembly to set up a public inquiry into the Breckman case.

Mr James's response can be summed up as "nothing to see here, please ignore and move on".

But the committee duly plodded on. It asked the Ombudsman for his views. The Ombudsman said he had been assured by the council that it had implemented his recommendations, and so that was that, apart from noting his disappointment at the tone of the apology the council had made to Mrs Breckman (see How to Say Sorry).

Eventually in May 2014 the committee decided to close the petition and take no further action after it considered legal advice in closed session, and the advice remains secret.

That was the end of the petition, but by no means the end of the story which prompted it.

A familiar recipe

Mr James's letter contains much that will be familiar to seasoned observers, with its mixture of patronising smarm, spin, sly digs and a large helping of half truths.

There are a couple of swipes at the Public Services Ombudsman for a start, including a clear indication that in Mr James's view he should not have meddled with the case in the first place. He also questions the Ombudsman's professionalism in several places, including an assertion that the Ombudsman only heard one side of the story and failed to interview Mrs Breckman's neighbour, road haulier, wholesale scrap merchant and part-time horse farmer Mr Andrew Thomas.

The obvious reason for this is that the Ombudsman was investigating the way in which the council had treated Mrs Breckman and her partner, and not the ins and outs of Mr Thomas's colourful planning history.

The council's attitude to the Ombudsman was very neatly set out in a very snotty letter about the case written by Meryl Gravell, then leader of the council, to Carl Sargeant, then minister for local government, in 2012. Roll forward a year, and the council had accepted the Ombudsman's findings, meaning that all of Meryl's confident assertions to Carl Sargeant must have been wrong.

Mr James is very keen for the politicians to see the affair as nothing more than a dispute between neighbours with the council caught in the middle, whereas the Ombudsman found an extraordinary catalogue of failures by the council to implement planning controls and the victimisation of residents who had brought those failures to the council's attention.


Even more striking are the many omissions and half truths contained in the letter.

Procedural Magic

The council did everything it could to prevent the Ombudsman's report from seeing the light of day. The chief executive even removed "Other Items of Business" from the agenda of meetings of full council to stop Cllr Cefin Campbell (Plaid) from asking when councillors would get to see and discuss the report's findings.

At that point the council had sat on the report for six months, and it even asked the Ombudsman for an extension to the deadline set for responding to it. In the end, the report never went before full council and councillors never received a copy.

As evidence that the council took the report very seriously, Mr James reveals that the council employed a barrister to fight it, or as he puts it, "I can assure you that the Council has taken this matter very seriously, including taking Counsel's Advice at the draft stage of the Ombudsman's report".


Eventually the report was "considered" by the Executive Board, and the Planning Committee was presented with a version of the report rewritten by the very same officers who were the subject of so many of the complaints. That was dealt with in closed session.

Bizarrely copies of the full report had up to then been freely available to any member of the public who wanted to read it - but not to councillors.

A Soft Option

After dragging its feet for more than six months, the council had found a way out. By accepting the Ombudsman's findings, the report was downgraded and no longer a Public Interest Report, but what Mr James describes in his letter as "the much softer option" of a Section 21 report.

The version of events described to William Powell AM and the real, extraordinary history of the report are entirely at odds.

Down on the Farm

One of the most glaring half truths and omissions in Mr James's letter concerns what he describes as a "cattle shed proposal".

There are now two very large sheds on the site.

The application for the first shed was for 'agricultural implements' and 'tractor and hay store'.  The planning officer, Ceri Davies, recommended refusal on the grounds there was no agricultural justification due to lack of agriculture.  It was refused.  Mr Thomas appealed, and the Appeals Inspector stated in her report amongst other things, that 'the council acknowledge the site is agricultural'. 

The Inspector was left with no choice but to approve it.

The second shed applied for was for 'agricultural implements hay and tractor store' as the implements were 'out in the open'.  The planning officer assigned to the case again recommended refusal on the grounds of lack of agriculture. It was refused.

The head of planning then overturned his planning officer's report and the planning committee's decision and approved the second shed using delegated powers.

In his letter to the Petitions Committee, Mr James writes that "Mrs B also claimed that its [i.e. the council's Ed] decision to allow the development of the shed was perverse". Mr James clearly did not think it was, but others may disagree.

A few lines later, and Mr James says that the Ombudsman formed the view that the process followed by the council was "flawed".

No mention of the head of planning's decision to overturn a decision by elected councillors.

The second shed was in reality used not for storing farm implements, but for Mr Thomas's road haulage business. The council rejected Mrs Breckman's complaints as "unfounded".

The fact remains that apart from about 30 horses, there is very little about Blaenpant Farm that most people would recognise as farming.

A "Dialogue"


Mr James goes on to mention that the council has been "involved in a multi-agency dialogue" with the police, the Police Commissioner and the Assembly Member (Rhodri Glyn Thomas).


What lies behind this rather bland assertion are very serious complaints about the way in which Mrs Breckman and her partner were victimised, with Mrs Breckman having been arrested in her own home at one point.


This aspect of the case is currently under investigation by West Mercia Police.


The extent to which the council mended its ways in the wake of the Ombudsman's report and sharpened up its planning enforcement can be seen in a recent post, Wild West Planning News.


Meanwhile, William Powell and other Assembly Members may feel that Mr James was rather "economical with the actualité" when he wrote to them last year.

Borgen comes to Port Talbot

As the old saying goes, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and this certainly applies to the BBC's surprise hit with Borgen, the Danish political drama which follows the fortunes of a woman party leader whose career includes a stint as prime minister.

Borgen means "the castle", a reference to the seat of the Danish parliament and government, and it features a large cast of politicians of various political persuasions, sometimes duplicitous civil servants, spin doctors, media types and assorted family members. One of the more memorable cameos features a pig farmer who also leads a party which bears an uncanny resemblance to Ukip. Danish viewers would instantly recognise the bluff pig farmer as the late Mogens Glistrup who founded and led the Progress Party.

In reality, Glistrup was not a pig farmer but a lawyer specialising in tax who once boasted on national television that he did not pay income tax.

Tax is an extremely hot topic in all of the Nordic countries where the gap between rich and poor is much narrower than in Britain, and there is a deep-rooted consensus that those who earn most should also contribute most to maintain health and welfare systems which make the UK look Dickensian by comparison.

Glistrup's boast turned out to be a big mistake, and he eventually went to jail for tax evasion.

In the first series of Borgen, the lead character, Birgitte Nyborg, is married with two children, but the marriage breaks down and Phillip Christensen, the ex-husband, is mightily relieved to escape from the media spotlight and his role as house husband and political consort to resume his career in business.

If the script writers had made Christensen the scion of a political dynasty who stays married to Nyborg while launching his own political career overseas, it is likely that viewers would have felt that the plot was all a bit too far-fetched, but of course that is precisely what has happened in the case of Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the real Prime Minister of Denmark, and her husband Stephen Kinnock, only son of that aristocratic couple, Baron Kinnock and Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead.

Europe has not seen this kind of dynastic power-play since the Saxe Coburg Gothas were at their peak.

This blog previously recorded the interest shown by the Danish press in Stephen Kinnock's selection as Labour Party candidate to fight the safe Labour seat of Aberafan/Aberavon, and Kinnock is naturally odds-on favourite to represent the people of Port Talbot, one of the most deprived parts of Wales, in Westminster after 7 May despite having no known previous connection with the town.

As that blogpost noted, Kinnock's tax status has been the subject of a great deal of controversy in Denmark where such matters are taken very seriously.

At one time Stephen Kinnock was based in Geneva and was paying tax on his income in Switzerland. The Swiss tax system is complex, and rates of tax vary hugely from one commune to another. Some of the surrounding villages have some of the lowest rates of tax in the country. Where you live, as far as the taxman is concerned, can make a great deal of difference to your tax bills, and uniquely in Europe, tax evasion is not a criminal offence.

As far as tax is concerned, Denmark and Switzerland are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

For several years Kinnock insisted that he was not liable to tax in Denmark as he was based in Denmark for less than 183 days a year, although his wife and children lived in Copenhagen.

These claims have been questioned by the Danish press, with one leading daily, BT, citing statements made by both Kinnock and his wife which suggest that he has regularly spent rather longer in Denmark than the tax authorities supposed.

Kinnock announced in 2010 that he would begin paying tax in Denmark, but shortly afterwards changed his mind.

Matters came to a head later in 2010 when the Copenhagen tax office carried out an investigation and concluded that his tax affairs were indeed in order and that he was not fully liable to pay tax in Denmark

The tax office's report was confidential but was nevertheless leaked to the press a year later, shortly before a general election which saw Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the leader of the country's Social Democrats, become Prime Minister.

An official investigation into the couple's tax affairs was begun in December 2011. The two experts charged with clarifying matters came to very different conclusions. Soon afterwards allegations surfaced that opposition politicians had tried to influence the investigation, and a spin doctor was reported to the police for trying to leak the original Copenhagen tax office report to a newspaper.

A second inquiry into the leaks and allegations of political interference was launched a few days before Christmas 2011.

The inquiry continued through 2012 and 2013, with various prominent journalists and politicians giving evidence. A bizarre twist in the affair came when it emerged that the couple's own tax adviser had suggested to the tax authorities that Stephen Kinnock was gay or bisexual.

The Danish press speculated that there might be a tax advantage in this, the implication being that the marriage was, well, not quite what it seemed.

The tax adviser himself told the inquiry that his suggestion was merely a hypothetical explanation as to why Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Kinnock had not wanted to meet the head of the tax office together.

Thorning-Schmidt and Kinnock both vehemently denied that there was any truth in the claims about his sexuality, and the tax adviser was sacked.

A further twist took place in September 2013 when it emerged that an anonymous letter had been received by the inquiry alleging political interference by opposition politicians. The letter was considered to be so sensitive that it could not be published or shared with all parties to the case. Parts of the letter were nevertheless leaked to the press.

It then emerged that the letter originated from a lawyer who claimed to have information showing that the whole affair was a plot, and that he or she was considering publishing a book about it. We are still waiting for that one.

The inquiry was finally concluded in December 2013, with the chair announcing that a final report would not be published until September 2014.

The report was eventually published in November 2014, and concluded that there had been serious leaks of sensitive information to the press and that several civil servants had broken their duty of confidentiality.

To complicate matters further, while all this was happening a separate case involving the tax affairs of a prominent dom/non-dom Danish citizen was in progress. This involved Camilla Vest (stop sniggering at the back), a Danish model who was married to Peder Nielsen, boss of the Danish shipping conglomerate Maersk. The couple were found guilty in November 2011 of tax evasion and sentenced to 21 months in prison and a fine of DKr 6.6 million (approximately £650,000). The verdict was  overturned a year later, with the tax authorities' ruling on the Kinnock case playing a significant role in the court's decision.

There have been changes to the rules since the Kinnock case first broke, with the tax authorities allowing a little more leeway for "sporadic" work, such as answering work-related e-mails and telephone calls, while officially at home "on holiday" in Denmark.

As matters currently stand, Stephen Kinnock remains non-domiciled in Denmark for tax purposes, but it is unlikely that we have heard the last about his tax affairs.

If he is elected to the House of Commons in May the Danish press and opposition politicians are likely to take renewed interest in his comings and goings, and those of the prime minister.

In 2013-14 the House of Commons sat for just 162 days, and few if any MPs would have been present on every single occasion. Sittings begin at 2.30 pm on a Monday and most MPs clock off on Thursday afternoon, the conscientious ones heading back to their constituencies. Some, such as Gordon Brown in the last parliament, are very rare visitors indeed.


Unless Stephen Kinnock opts to spend a great deal of time in Port Talbot away from his wife and family and the rather more attractive surroundings of Copenhagen, it is likely that he will struggle to meet the threshold set by the Danish taxman who will also be interested in how much time he spends on the phone and dealing with e-mails while at home. And that opens up the strange possibility that Aberafan could become the first Westminster constituency to have an MP paying tax on his MP's salary in another country.

Labour rightly made a big fuss about non-domiciled Tory peers being part of the legislature while not paying tax in the UK. How would the party react to its own red prince of Denmark if the Copenhagen tax office cracks down?


 Sources

The sources for this piece are all taken from the Danish media. Some are embedded in the text, but the account of the inquiry relies heavily on a Five Minute Explanation of the Tax Affair produced by TV2.