The Society of Qualified Archivists

Who controls the past, ran the Party slogan, controls the future

2009-07-26T17:58:00.026+01:00

SQA reacts with despondency to recent expressions of outrage following the UK National Archives' announcement of closing its public areas on Mondays and the shedding of expert staff. The merits of such a policy decision by TNA, such it would appear to be (rather than a need to make savings) can be debated but the inadequacy of user groups' response is almost conspiratorial. It is as though all our efforts in alerting the world of archives, professionals and researchers alike, over the last few years, have been wasted (see our previous post Common Purpose) However, the optimists we are, we will persevere in explaining developments in a more strategic context, so lacking in all other analyses of this and other related events.

The UK National Archives

Let us begin by reminding ourselves of the function of the National Archives, formerly the Public Record Office, established in 1838 and originally situated in Chancery Lane, London but which completed its move to Kew in 2004. Their web site states:

The National Archives (TNA) is the UK government's official archive, containing almost 1,000 years of history, with records ranging from parchment and paper scrolls through to digital files and archived websites.

We give detailed guidance to government departments and the public sector on information management, in order to ensure the survival of records, and advise others throughout the public and private sectors about the care of historical archives. We also publish all UK legislation and advise upon and encourage the re-use of public sector information.

Note archives as evidence is not mentioned. Information and evidence are not the same thing.

TNA is distinct from the pattern of local government record offices throughout England and business, financial, university and charity archives, not to mention the National Archives of Scotland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The archives held by TNA are known as Public Records and the TNA's activities and collections are defined by the Public Records Act and other legislation.

Opening hours are currently Monday and Friday 09.00-17.00, Tuesday and Thursday 09.00-19.00, Wednesday 10.00-17.00 and Saturday 09.30-17.00. The new opening hours represent a 16% reduction on the current ones.

Righteous indignation abounds. Protestors include Saul David, Antony Beevor, Professor Jane Ridley, Jonathan Foyle, A.N. Wilson and Nick Barratt. Professor David is quoted in The Independent on Sunday on 19 July 2009 as saying "the future history of our country is at stake". Presumably he means access to archives as evidence is at stake as there is no stated limitation on the nature of independent historical research leading to the publication of new history text books. It is uncertain whether this is intended irony on his part or whether like all other commentators it is through ignorance of the agenda behind the changes.

The newspaper goes on to slavishly quote TNA briefing notes which typically of modern newspapers lacks the investigative and critical analysis skills to go beyond them: "the changes come as part of an ongoing drive to digitalise [sic] records so that they can be accessed directly online." The critics of TNA's proposals have questioned either the maths or efficacy of the proposed changes. No-one so far appears to have looked behind them for an agenda. SQA understands this agenda all to well.

Nick Barratt, a former employee of TNA and well known as a consultant on the BBC TV series Who Do You Think You Are?, makes his views felt in a letter to The Times and in the Action4Archives web site, see below.

A humbler researcher, Ruth Wilcock of Brentwood, Essex, writing to The Daily Telegraph, offers a savings argument to explain TNA's proposed changes even though making savings is not actually given by TNA as their reason, and states "in the current economic climate, it is inevitable that some cuts will be necessary," a superb example of how the recent economic downturn, believed by some to have been part engineered by Common Purpose and the Communitarian inspired government, can be used to justify change in policy. TNA's own statements make it plain the changes are not brought about by Government imposed cuts, they are entirely self-directed and have been given the nod by the relevant Government minister. This is an important point, one we shall come back to.

So much for setting the scene.

We asked Garth Bland, benighted County Archivist of Loamshire for his analysis of the situation, honed by decades of work in the archives sector.

I think we should for a moment look above the fog of war that is already obscuring the landscape. The teaching of history beyond Year 3 has been discontinued so will there be a constituency of historical researchers in future years and if so, how big and how well trained? Latin has already fallen by the wayside. The National Archives of Ireland is merging with the National Library of Ireland. Throughout the UK, archivists are seeing fewer academic historians and students in their searchrooms. The EU backs only cross-border projects, in the form of Interreg, to bolster support for a fabled Common European Heritage. The Heritage Lottery Fund will not support the cataloguing of archive collections and in any case their resources are being siphoned off to support the London Olympics. Local Government archive services are not included among the National Indicators in the Government's Local Area Agreements

Multiculturalism continues to undermine and embarrass the indigenous population in its striving for self expression and the preservation of its cultural identity. National archives legislation has not appeared. Three archives organisations, the Society of Archivists [sic], National Council on Archives and the Association of Chief Archivists in Local Government are proposing to merge. Politicians mislead the general public by manipulating history. The Community Archives Project challenges the collecting policies of local government record offices. Do you think these simultaneous developments are accidental, or could there be an agenda?

In the local govenment archives sector we note the obvious contrast between TNA's revised opening hours and the importance attached to our own, as measured in their annual or biennial survey of our services. As some wags have remarked, by their own benchmark TNA has now become a three star service thus presumably repudiating any pretension to leading the wider archives sector, which could indeed be part of the plan. This will be seen as an undermining of a collective approach to archives but few will understand why.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman for SQA, to develop Garth's suggestion that there is a hidden agenda.

Yes, indeed there is an agenda. It's called Communitarianism and it's often found to be associated with graduates of the crypto-Communist management training organisation Common Purpose. These so-called graduates are either trained in post or move from one post to another after graduating. In returning to their existing posts or taking up new ones, the Communitarian agenda can be more thoroughly established in the public sector, in readiness for the imposition of EU compliant government in what is now commonly termed the post-democratic age.

In layman's terms, Communitarianism is a diluted form of Communism, but not much diluted. Crucial Communist features are present most obviously totalitarian government, lack of accountability, manipulation of the economy and corruption, achieved through an elite high echelon of management and employees' uncritical acceptance of political correctness. A critical part of this process is control of elected politicians by civil servants associated with the merging of the policies of the main political parties.

Common Purpose makes clear its goal:

we develop leaders who can lead beyond their authority, beyond their direct circle of control.

TNA represents a huge threat to this Communitarian goal by supplying source material evidencing parliamentary democracy and has been identified as a target. More is to come. Replacing hands-on access to archives by digitisation ensures database oriented researchers are enabled only to navigate archives randomly without learning to apply academic research techniques, especially those involved in correlating different classes or series. The absence of staff and researchers skilled in navigating finding aids and hierarchies of archives will be a feature of the future, with inexpert researchers floundering around databases unable to unlock, relate and analyse evidence. Intuition will be insufficient.

While family historians figure prominently in the present discussion, it is the academic users who are the actual target. And by the way, please can we know what TNA personal visit statistics are for recent years? Have they really fallen enough to justify an emphasis on digitisation?

We thanked Benedict for his contribution.

We next asked Ellison Millinocket, SQA technical adviser and consultant conservator and repairer to comment on TNA's variable car parking fees, based on engine size.

This is the usual Government ruse to mobilise public opinion behind the case for Global Warming, which the alarmists say is caused by carbon emissions. In fact, while carbon emissions are increasing, there is no evidence to connect carbon emissions with global warming, apart from which we have been experiencing global cooling since 2001. If there is global warming, whether long term or short term, it could be caused by fluctuations in sun spots or ocean currents. The warmists are believed to be pursuing their agenda, along with the second strategy of a global war against a barely existent terrorist threat, in order to promote world government. The idea being that people, once suitably propagandised, will accept both draconian legislation on the one hand and regional or world government on the other. Regrettably therefore TNA has stooped to playing the Warmist card. This development provides an insight into how the different strands of the New World Order agenda are combining and converging in practice.

Further reading or viewing

Action4Archives

Common Purpose Exposed: a video courtesy of YouTube

Robert Peston denies undermining Northern Rock BBC News

Robert Peston denies undermining Northern Rock in an interview, video courtesy YouTube

Nigel Farage MEP, Leader of the UK Independence Party, takes apart Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister, for selling the UK Gold Reserve at less than its market value, courtesy YouTube (another video you haven't seen!)

Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?

National Archives of Ireland falls victim to the Euro

Demos and David Cameron

Video on the Iluminati, courtesy YouTube

Archivists Against Global Warmism

The Madeleine Foundation

Miserable curs

Posted on Britannia Radio - Cameron on Lisbon and no referendum

This is the consequence of the all the hot air which has been created by all those groups who claim to be opposed to being incorporated in the EU. At no time, other than the proposed action of A Few has there been anything other than hot air - all talk and no do! If this country finishes as a province of the authoritarian Franco/German Empire it is entirely because there is no will among the people of this country to be and remain part of a sovereign and independent democratic Britain. It means the end of our 1000 year history of independence. It will go down in history as the destruction of the most remarkable and productive nation which has ever existed on this earth. It will be recorded as the history of a Junk Generation of no good layabouts and degenerates who are in no way worthy of their illustrious ancestors. The suffering which will be visited on the future population of this country will be terrible but wholly deserved. Those who cannot determine their own fate are completely in the hands of others and history amply describes the excesses which follow. Worse this nation has been amply warned of its fate by those who have written to warn them of the future most particularly by the works of George Orwell.
I am a Canadian - you suckers who are British deserve all that will happen to you. You are a nation of miserable curs. I fought for your freedom. My friends died for that freedom you do not value.
In utter disgust.

Hugh Jones.

National Archives of Ireland falls victim to the Euro

2009-03-18T19:22:00.013Z

When Michael Collins excused his forces' destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland at the Four Courts in Dublin in 1922 by saying better a state with no archives than an archives with no state, it is doubtful that he anticipated current developments in the Republic of Ireland, now suffering under the thumb of European Union.

The Irish government has announced plans to merge the National Archives of Ireland in Bishop Street, Dublin with the National Library of Ireland.

For the Irish state to be overseeing the disbandment of a national institution is doubly ironic: that the national archives should again be disinvented when there is no obvious threat to Irish statehood and for it to be done by the political successors to the founding fathers of the Irish state.

The mining of the Public Record Office, Dublin, 1922

Observers of Irish archival provision will be both bitterly disappointed and bemused. The present National Archives was a much heralded step forward for a service once split between the Public Record Office of Ireland and the State Paper Office at Dublin Castle. It also means the Republic of Ireland falls behind the example of Scotland whose National Archives of Scotland, formerly the General Register House, even preceded the establishment of devolved government there. Thus the Republic of Ireland, a fully independent state (except for being a member of the EU) has no national archives while Scotland, a minor part of the United Kingdom, producing 20% of the UK's GDP, does have a national archives.

The National Archives of Ireland, Bishop Street, Dublin

So what has brought this sorry state of affairs into being?

In the words of the Bruges Group:

The Bruges Group’s detailed examination of the severe strains facing the Single Currency .... finds that the entirely ‘man made’ problems that confront the eurozone today have their origins in the fatally flawed notion that one exchange rate and one interest rate are appropriate for economies with very different and disparate histories, structures, performances and sovereign governments.

The euro was meant to bring convergence to the economies of the European Union. Yet it has caused even greater divergence.

This much applies to all of the Euro Zone. What about Ireland? Writing in The Daily Telegraph of 28 February 2009, Gordon Rayner says:

Irish government bonds are rated as the riskiest in the EU and there has been panicky talk of Ireland being the next Iceland. On the streets, there is a whiff of revolution, with 120,000 people staging Dublin's biggest mass rally in 30 years ... to protest at the government's handling of the economy and its decision to impose what amounted to a pay cut on public sector workers.

Businesses in the north of the Republic are on their knees because competitors in Northern Ireland are undecutting them by as much as half. Thousands of workers who have lost their jobs in other sectors have been allowed to set up as cabbies, meaning that Dublin now has 16,000 licensed taxis. New York, with a population 17 times as large, has 13,000.

Crucially, the Irish government is powerless to act because, as a member of the eurozone, it has no control over interest rates or currency devaluation.

Further reading

Could the EU invade Ireland?

Archives and the state

Anyone give a damn?

O Minister, Minister! wherefore art thou Minister?

New EU working laws will be disaster for NHS The Sunday Telegraph 18 January 2009

Ditching the euro could boost our failing economy Independent.ie

John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons has issued a dramatic warning that the National Health Service will not be able to cope with the effects of the controversial European Working Time Directive.

Mr Black is meeting Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, in February to propose a "speciality opt-out" and an upper limit on surgeons ' hours of 65 to 70 hours a week.

"I have no doubt we will be told that it is impossible to alter or bypass the European law. I do not believe this. All manner of EC law must have been bent or ignored in nationalising a bank in 24 hours. The Government can do it if it has the political will," Mr Black said.

Sleep you stinking cowards

2009-02-27T21:00:00.004Z

Philip Pullman
Are such things done on Albion's shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of
the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake's prophetic books. Sleep,
profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great
events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold,
and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices
whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are
silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don't know who we are any more. Are we
English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not
another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established
Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state?
Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and
feel proud of?

The new laws whisper:

You don't know who you are

You're mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to
you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we
shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the
only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It
fantasises about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of
its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what
the new laws say about that:

Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity

Whatever your opinions are, we don't want to hear them

So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall
treat you like the rabble you are

And we do not want to hear you arguing about it

So hold your tongue and forget about protesting

What we want from you is acquiescence

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made
by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people.
It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that
nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate
them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

The nation's dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our
sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of
justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we
remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.

And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth

Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours

We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely
on

We do not want to hear you talking about innocence

Innocent means guilty of things not yet done

We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence

You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt

We do not want to hear you talking about justice

Justice is whatever we want to do to you

And nothing else

Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an
ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence
in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don't
mind if we are. They don't think we care about it.

We want to watch you day and night

We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you

We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people

We can see you have abandoned modesty

Some of our friends have seen to that

They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible

In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not
want to be watched must have something shameful to hide

We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural

We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things

One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that
we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what
the new laws say about that:

We know who our friends are

And when our friends want to have words with one of you

We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where
you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have
committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full
consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to
pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the
Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers
Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police
Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal
Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social
Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act
(2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of
Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised
Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending
legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice
Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum.

From an article to mark the Convention on Modern Liberty, published on and then pulled from Times Online

Further reading click here

A new twist to multiculturalism

2009-01-27T20:18:00.012Z

Farhad Hakimzadeh, a wealthy Iranian businessman who went on trial in November 2008 for stealing and mutilating manuscripts at the British Library, London and Bodleian Library, Oxford, has been imprisoned for two years. Mr. Hakimzadeh had a special interest in western European experiences of travel and colonisation in the Middle East from the 16th to 18th. Centuries.

Rather like another thief of archives convicted recently, Oliver Fallon, Hakimzadeh had the cover of a reputable organisation, in his case the Iranian Heritage Foundation of which he was founder and director.

Iranians in Britain have mixed reactions to their fellow countryman's activities, some seeing his criminal activities in the context of conflict between Islam and the West, others a conflict between the Persian and non-Persian sections of Iranian society.

Farhad Hakimzadeh

However, of concern to SQA is the ease with which Hakimzadeh committed his theft and vandalism, over the lengthy period of 1997-2005 or 1998-2006, according to different reports.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman of SQA, to offer his thoughts on the episode.

It seems the national institutions are not quite on the ball as regards security procedures, exemplified in this instance by the British Library. It is axiomatic in the heritage professions that no matter how trusted researchers are, the same standards of security should apply as for the general public. This is common sense, of course. I tend to suspect that the heavier presence of academic types among the curatorial staff of such institutions causes them to lack the same orthodoxy of qualified archivists, who are almost certainly not to be found at the upper levels of British Library management. Instead, they empathise with their fellow researchers.

The founder of our profession, Sir Hilary Jenkinson for whom the physical security of archives was the paramount objective, would be turning in his grave. In referring to Jenkinson, I am reminded of his injunction that archivists' judgment should not be clouded by engaging in their own original research.

I must next address some of the odd statements made by the British Library and the police. Firstly, I quote a British Library spokesman:

Theft from the British Library is an extremely rare occurrence. Because we are a research library, not a museum, we are committed to making our collections available in the interests of scholarship and research: to facilitate this an element of trust is necessary. Hakimzadeh fundamentally betrayed this trust.

I don't quite see how being a research library makes security issues different to those in a museum...say the British Museum. Do museums not make their collections available for research? Is the BL saying museums don't have security arrangements? Are they also saying they recognise different tiers of researcher, all ostensibly card carrying readers, but some more equal than others? In any case, all archive repositories exist to make their material available for research. However, the crucial sentence is the second last sentence. This seems to suggest BL staff took a calculated decision to favour Hakimzadeh, or to trust him as they put it. This policy is at best mysterious and at worst negligent.

Secondly, I refer to a comment made by Detective Chief Inspector Dave Cobb of the Metropolitan Police, that:

It is extremely difficult to detect the absence of these pages as Hakimzadeh took care to select material that only an expert would be able to identify, as early printed books are unique. The original owner might have commissioned additional illustrations, or pages might have been missing when the libraries acquired them.

This carries forward the mysteriousness of the BL's own statement and indicates careful briefing of the police by the them. All archives are unique and the material stolen or damaged in this case is no different from archives at a county record office, insurance archive, business archive or university archive. That is to say, archives are descriptively listed so as to securely identify them precisely so the documents can be identified by a researcher. Quite often these descriptions are published in the form of online databases. Unwittingly, Mr. Cobb is acting as the BL's apologist. Any use of archives requires more mental capacity than taking a lending or reference book down from the shelf in your local library, assuming they still have such things as books.

We then turned to Ellison Millinocket, our security and conservation spokesman, based in Taunton, Somerset, for some practical insights.

Documents are retrieved from secure storage areas by staff rather than taken down from the shelf, as might happen with an open access book in a local library, and should then be inspected prior to being handed over to researchers and inspected again on return by issuing staff. There is no harm in repository staff also checking material, in the repository, we all have a responsibility. In the case of bundles of loose papers, these should be counted out prior to issue and counted back by issuing staff. I query whether this happened at the BL. The process of counting out documents and then counting them back in also allows searchroom or issuing staff to visually inspect the contents and intactness of the material. Some offices weigh documents, which even allowing for absorption of water from the atmosphere, is remarkably accurate, quite apart from being effective as a deterrent.

I note The Daily Telegraph states

British Library staff believe he smuggled a scalpel into the building and positioned himself out of the sight of security cameras to commit his crimes.

I am flabbergasted that Hakimzadeh perpetrated his crimes out of sight of CCTV cameras. No part of a searchroom should be uncovered by camera or the human eye or at any rate such researchers should be required to sit in clear view of at least one camera.

We thanked Benedict and Ellison for their contributions.

Further reading

The Daily Telegraph 21 November 2008

British Library press release 16 January 2009

The Daily Telegraph 16 January 2009

The Daily Telegraph: 8000 items go missing from British Library 28 February 2005

The Daily Mail 16 January 2009

The Daily Telegraph 21 January 2009

The Guardian 21 November 2008

What drives people to steal precious books Financial Times 6 March 2009

Long-lost manuscript available to historians Derby Evening Telegraph 5 March 2009

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know

Donald Rumsfeld February 2002

Archivists Against Global Warmism

2009-01-19T20:47:00.008Z

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph of 9 January 2009, John McGibbon of Cambridge advises anyone unable to heat his home properly during the present cold snap

to spend a day at their local council offices, perhaps researching their ancestors. As the temperature holds a sultry 75F, be prepared to strip down to not much more than underwear in order to blend in with the staff.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman for SQA, to comment on this apparent suggestion that local government record offices' public searchrooms are not only swelteringly hot but staffed by women wearing only bras and nickers.

You hint that the majority of local government record office staff are women. This is indeed the case, so we may deduce that the office Mr. McGibbon has visited to obtain this impression is typical of the trend, confirmed in various national surveys. As to a public searchroom being 75F, this gives very great cause for concern. We expect temperature and humidity in searchrooms to be controlled in broad conformity with BS5454 to ensure that documents temporarily relocated for research purposes from the strongroom to the searchroom will not be subjected to widely varying atmospheric conditions.

Devon Record Office: in bed with the Met Office

We also asked Ellison Millinocket, conservation spokesman for SQA, based in Taunton, Somerset to comment on the technical implications of searchrooms being heated to 75F.

Benedict is quite right. And may I say how heart-warming it is to see Fahrenheit used, instead of the fiendish metric Celcius system. Most British people prefer Fahrenheit, despite Met Office bullying. I would prefer a searchroom to be air conditioned so as to ensure documents are less subjected to microscopic mechanical wear through hydrolysis. There are other threats of course including photo-degradation but fluctuation or variation in temperature and humidity between or in document storage areas and searchrooms is something to avoid. And finally, may I enquire where these scantily dressed women archivists and archive assistants are to be found, I find I am free for the next few days and would like to pay them a visit....

We thanked Benedict and Ellison for their contributions.

However, still curious as to why a letter writer to a national newspaper should seem to want to grouse about the temperature in a local government record office searchroom, we invited Dr. Pochin Sturge of Wigston, Leicestershire, honorary consultant anthropologist to SQA, to offer some explanation.

Well, I rather regret this current obsession with global warming is behind the criticism. Local government has nailed its colours to the mast on this one, slavishly implementing EU directives on waste disposal and fining miscreants, so that any council is bound to be associated with the global warming phenomenon and become a target for disgruntled members of the public.

Even the national Archives has swallowed the bait. Their web site states Projects will soon be underway to understand the issues surrounding the impact of climate change on local environments in The National Archives, and archival collections globally. Existing models such as life-cycle costing, risk assessment and predictive modelling protocols will be applied to evaluate and define sustainable energy solutions and to optimise current preservation practices.....A climate mapping exercise has been carried out in all storage areas. The results will be used to develop The National Archives´ environmental monitoring programme as well as to improve the hardware and the Building Management System.

The significance of this for the tax-payer is that it may all be unnecessary.

The great shame is that there is no such thing as global warming. The evidence is that temperatures are cooling rather than warming and the ice caps are expanding. I have studied the origins of warmism and have deduced that the theory has been developed by the United Nations and its collaborators as a means of establishing world communist government. I am particularly fascinated by the tendency for Warmism to replace religion, especially Roman Catholicism, as being subject to inflexible doctrine and for anti-Warmists to be treated as heretics.

So you see, there is a very complicated social and scientific background to a brief and facetious comment in a daily newspaper. But whichever record office is in question, I wouldn't mind betting their visitor statistics are up at this time of year, hey what?

Further reading

WattsUpWithThat

2008 was the year man made global warming was disproved

Great Global warming Swindle

Blizzard of mad proposals descends

Wind Energy The Truth

More Hot Air From the Met Office

BBC Devon News

Taxpayers' Alliance

Customer care training for women archivists and archive assistants click here

National Archives

Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.

Karl Marx, 1867

Take Note

2008-08-05T23:07:00.001+01:00

We believe some colleagues in the archives profession will be chastened to read the following notice published in the British Weights and Measures Association annual report for 1907. The information is perhaps still as relevant now in the computer age as it was then.

Most progressive people now-a-days use card indexes of some sort or other, and with these obtain the necessary drawers, etc, for filing them. The standard sizes of these cards are 3 x 5, 4 x 6, and 5 x 8 — cabinets being sold to fit. We would warn all our members to make sure in purchasing these cabinets that the drawers will fit these sizes of cards. There are some cabinets on the market at present with drawers presumably of the standard size, but on looking closely at the circular or catalogue describing them, you will find the word “approximately”. These cabinets are not made in England, and are made to take cards according to millimetre sizes, which are incommensurable with British sizes.

If you should unfortunately get this make of cabinets in your office you will find yourself tied to obtain your future supplies of cards from the firm, or pay extra if you go elsewhere, as a drawer 75 x 125 millimetres will not take a 3 x 5in standard card. The difference is slight but just enough to tie you to one firm for supplies at their prices. We don’t want tied houses in the stationery trade, neither do we want confusion introducing into our sizes, which are based on the Imperial standard inch. There are excellent makers who supply cabinets to British standard sizes, and our members should insist on having these sizes.

Further reading

British Weights and Measures Association

The Treaty of Lisbon exposed

2008-05-10T09:21:00.015+01:00

Readers may recall our recent report of a hidden agenda within the Church of England in support of European integration, a policy that extends to divesting itself of its own bibliographical and documentary heritage in order to remove any sense of national identity and a record of centuries of achievement. It seems this has stimulated a discussion between our patron Lindsay Jenkins and a mildly Eurosceptic vicar.

We reproduce their email correspondence below.

Lindsay Jenkins

29 April 2008

Dear Mr. Knight,

Thank you for taking an interest in my posting.

I am very sorry to hear that both Archbishop Temple and Bishop Bell are today revered in the Church of England. Indeed I am surprised but no doubt you are in touch with a broad grouping.

Archbishop Temple

My own family tell me that Archbishop Temple was very far from universally revered while he was alive; many were appalled – even at a time when some were thoroughly hoodwinked by Stalin.

What was thought through in 1940 (and the thinking started a lot earlier than that) is what we now see in the Lisbon treaty – the EU in all its intrusiveness.

The end of the nation state was exactly what Archbishop Temple and others were working towards. He was not proposing a cosy federation of friends.

The aim was political union and that was exemplified by the first serious attempt with the help of a beneficial crisis in June 1940 – Anglo-Franco Union.

An Oxford lawyer, Professor Zimmern, wrote a detailed constitution of the proposed combination of France and the UK into one country and it had been agreed with sympathetic French in Paris in 1939. But it was stopped by the French government - cowering in Vichy and selling out to the Germans. You may remember the exchange:

General Weygand leading the defeatists said, ‘In three weeks England will have her neck rung like a chicken.’ (Churchill later replied, ‘Some chicken - some neck!’). Jean Ybarnegaray exclaimed, ‘Better be a Nazi province. At least we know what that means’.

An even more comprehensive constitution (similar to the treaty of Lisbon) to include most of Europe was written by an Australian solicitor, Ronald Mackay, who had settled in Britain in 1934, building on constitutional work begun by Lionel Curtis, and the American lawyer, Professor A H Goodhart of University College, Oxford.

That constitution was presented to a 1940 conference in Oxford organised by the Fabian Society with which Archbishop Temple was most closely associated.

On the World Council of Churches (WCC), if you have not already read it I found the Memoirs of the Rev Dr. Willem Visser ‘t Hooft illuminating: he was the first Secretary-General.

Many people over the last decades have not realised what was creeping up, because generations of politicians have either not read the texts (Ken Clarke), not believed them or have deliberately lied.

Should you be interested I have written a book on who has created the EU and why called Britain Held Hostage, The Coming Euro-Dictatorship.

With kind regards

Lindsay Jenkins

www.lindsayjenkins.com

From Rev. R. Knight
Subject: Re: THE CHURCH & ITS SUPPORT FOR THE EU - Another Letter to Bishop of Chichester
29 April 2008

Dear All,

I’m glad you are all vigilant about misrepresentations of what is going on with the Lisbon Treaty. I was dismayed to read a letter in the “Times” which seemed to imply that the Church of England supported Lisbon.

That cannot be so for the reasons I included in my letter to the Bishop of St Alban’s.

I must say, however, that I do not at all agree with Lindsay Jenkins and, as a clergyman in the Church of England, I must suggest that it would be
counterproductive to use his letter as a template. William Temple and George Bell were good men - no doubt flawed in some respects like all of us - and are revered in the modern Church of England. Any decent person would want to ensure that nothing like the two world wars could never happen again and it is not unreasonable to explore the possibility that leagues or federations of nations might be an answer. Bell and Temple ought not to demonised for trying. Neither can they be held responsible for the EU’s development into a superstate which wants to intrude into every area of our lives. No-one would have foreseen this in the late 1940s. Indeed, part of the case for a referendum now is that most people did not foresee how the EU would turn out even as late as the 1970s. I’ll paste in my letter to the Bishop of St Alban’s to offer alternative arguments to use with the bishops.

Roger Knight

The Bishop of St. Albans

Letter from Rev. R. Knight to Rt. Rev. Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St. Albans
2 March 2008

Dear Bishop Christopher,

I was dismayed to read your letter in today’s “Times” suggesting that the Church of England supports the Lisbon Treaty. I should be very surprised if the Church of England has an official view on this subject or if there is any one view of the Lisbon Treaty to which Anglican Christians might be expected to subscribe.

In fact, I believe, there are two issues. Is the Lisbon Treaty a good thing? Ought there to be a referendum in the UK on the Lisbon Treaty?

The answer to the latter question is obvious. Nearly every MP at present in the House of Commons was elected on a manifesto promise to hold a referendum on the European Constitution. Virtually everybody, who has any expertise, in the matter agrees that the Lisbon Treaty is effectively the same thing as the constitution. MPs have broken a promise in refusing a referendum. Christians must condemn that (Psalm 15).

There ought, therefore, to be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. If we were given a referendum, I am sure that sincere Christians could with a good conscience vote either way. There is a strong case to be made for the EU and for strengthening its organisation and administration and you have made an important contribution to that case in today’s “Times”. One can also argue, of course, that the EU is a club of rich western nations which harms poorer parts of the world by its trade policies. One can argue that it is too intrusive into the life of its citizens. One can argue that there is a considerable democratic deficit in the EU. And one can also argue, that, while any decent person cannot but rejoice in the fact that nations which were deadly enemies twice in C20 are now allies and partners, it is wrong to overlook the fact that our membership of the EU has been to the disadvantage of Commonwealth countries and others who supported us in the fight against German expansionism under the Kaiser and the horrors of Nazism and Fascism. Christians are 100% committed to the reconciliation of enemies, but there is absolutely nothing in the Gospel that allows us to betray our former friends.

So, Christians, including Anglican Christians, should continue to demand a referendum on Lisbon and could vote either way in such a referendum without doing an injustice to their Christian conscience.

Roger Knight,

Rector of Cuxton and Halling,

Diocese of Rochester

John Hind, Bishop of Chichester

28 April 2008
Rt Rev John Hind
Bishop of Chichester
c/o House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW

My Lord Bishop,

In your recent speech in the House of Lords supporting the Lisbon Treaty, you described one of your predecessors, Bishop Bell, as 'one of the greatest Europeans of the last century'.

Bishop Bell

Bishop Bell was indeed of that inner group which was seminal in creating what is now the European Union. But I am not sure that Bishop Bell's views are worthy of the eulogy, which you gave him in the House of Lords; unless that is you are either a Communist or a Communist sympathiser and that I doubt very much.

As you may know, Bishop Bell was very close to Archbishop Temple, widely known throughout most of his adult life as a 'radical Bolshevik' and fervent admirer of the USSR. Bell joined Temple in many political ventures including the founding of Federal Trust in 1940 by an inner group of the Fabian Society.

Bell, when Dean of Canterbury, also helped Temple (then Archbishop of York) to launch the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1937. Temple had for many years campaigned and manoeuvred to lead the Protestant Churches away from a spiritual role to a much more political one, and a very left wing one at that, and achieved it with the WCC.

I quote from one of my own books :

"Thirty-five clergymen attended the 1937 meeting at Westfield College, London University and Temple hoodwinked most of them. Only two bishops voted against the motion to set up the WCC because they guessed its purpose was political, not spiritual. It was: Temple and Bell had deliberately manipulated the meeting."

Both Bishop Bell and Archbishop Temple were no friends of the nation state and believed that nations cause war and should be totally subsumed into a federal Europe, a federal Europe that would echo the USSR.

I am sorry that you have apparently so misunderstood the nature of the European Union not only to praise it, but also to praise your own predecessor, Bishop Bell, who wished to hijack the Church of England for political ends, ends which many then and now find deeply distasteful and who worked to end the independent sovereignty of the United Kingdom.

Your present position, like that of Bishop Bell, does of course leave the role of the Church of England in a no-mans-land: no England, no Church.

I do hope that you will review the nature of the European Union and support not only the Church of England but also the independence of the United Kingdom.

Lindsay Jenkins

Further reading

Anything but ordinary

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Ummm

2008-05-09T12:05:00.005+01:00

The light-fingered brigade has been at it again, exposing deficiencies in the security aspects of several major UK archive repositories.

Last year we learned that a series of major thefts of archives from the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) had taken place. The thief had targeted the Jersey Collection there and had stolen documents including letters from Queen Victoria and the first Duke of Wellington. The Islington Tribune was informed by the LMA’s parent authority, the City of London, that a security review was taking place and that Detective Inspector Joe Lock of Islington CID was asking for further information.

We await further news on the recovery of these stolen documents and the identity of the thief.

Scottish Catholic Archives

Meanwhile, in Scotland we hear the Scottish Catholic Archives has been raided by Oliver Fallon, better known internationally as a Sanskrit scholar, who has recently been convicted by a court in Edinburgh. 300 documents with a market value of £26,000 were stolen during five visits he made to that office in July 2006. Fallon adopted the normal technique of the archives thief, that of cutting or tearing off parts of pages or secreting smaller documents on his person. 132 documents are still missing and damaged documents require repairs costed at nearly £5000. The Edinburgh court learned from Fallon’s solicitor John Mulholland that he was already serving time in England for similar, apparently unreported thefts south of the border. SQA is unaware of any official connection between the LMA thefts and the Edinburgh thefts at this stage.

Oliver Fallon

Several sources place emphasis on Fallon’s story he was a postgraduate student, as though to say the Scottish Catholic Archives or its apologists need defend giving access to their archives to anyone. The issue in this instance is that Fallon was left unsupervised while he consulted the documents. It is unlikely in the extreme the public searchroom at LMA was unsupervised.

The Scottish Catholic Archives have also stressed researchers are not allowed to remove documents from the premises and must use pencils only, which is rather beside the point.

The Herald reports Fallon had also obtained documents by deception from the Catholic Archives in London although we are not aware of such a repository.

In an unrelated breach of security of a different kind, 29 forged documents have been inserted into 12 government files at the UK National Archives by Martin Allen, an enthusiast of Hitler’s Germany, in order to support spurious or unsubstantiatable claims. At least one forged letter was written on a blank page from an old book, a classic forger’s trick. The Times quotes Sir Max Hastings as saying it is hard to imagine actions more damaging to the cause of preserving the nation’s heritage than wilfully forging documents designed to alter our historical record and John Fox states how on earth were these documents slipped in? This is something that the National Archives has to answer. Whoever got these documents in must have done it in a very clever, sneaky way, so you can’t entirely blame the security. But maybe there are questions with the security.

The National Archives is reported as saying new security procedures had been put in place.

We asked Ellison Millinocket of Taunton, Somerset, the outspoken security and conservation spokesman for SQA, to offer some comments.

It really beggars belief. A searchroom left unsupervised? Have the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland no concept of security? I notice their entry in British Archives, 4th. Edition, states they allow access to bona fide researchers. It is all very well asking for a letter of reference but all researchers should be invigilated by trained staff when original and irreplaceable documents are being consulted. It tends to be the case archival material has high market value because it is unique and may bear valuable postmarks, autographs and stamps. The Standard for Record Repositories states:

When in use the study area should be constantly supervised by sufficient staff to provide an effective level of invigilation of the whole area, under the direction of a professionally qualified archivist (section 4.9)

I am not aware if the Scottish Catholic Archives employs a qualified, professional archivist. This would make a huge difference. The Standard also states:

Beyond the very smallest, record repositories accordingly require the services of one or more professionally qualified archivists with training or experience relevant to the kind of records held (2.2 (a))

and

In the case of a small repository where no appropriately qualified professional staff can be employed, the governing body should formally seek regular advice on such matters as acquisition, storage, conservation and cataloguing from a professionally qualified archivist in another repository or from The National Archives (which provides guidance on both public and private records) or, in Scotland, from the National Archives of Scotland and in Northern Ireland from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (2.3)

Thus it would appear several national institutions are implicated. My final advice is always bear in mind the heritage professionals’ axiom, that thieves tend to be the most trusted of our users. There is no such thing as a bona fide researcher and the strictest invigilation is required at all times.

We thanked Ellison for his comments and next asked Dr. Pochin Sturge of Wigston Hall, Leicester, consultant anthropologist to SQA, to explain what makes individuals such as Fallon and Allen tick.

Actually, these behaviours are relatively common in modern western society, which has confused cultural heritage and cultural icons with economic wealth, through the mass media impact of the auction trade, Ebay and popular television programmes like the Antiques Roadshow on the one hand, and the substitution of economic status with privileged access to and interpretation of our cultural inheritance on the other. Knowledge is power, so to speak.

The thief of archival documents achieves several ends; he acquires economic betterment based on his discernment, he relocates cultural material to a more deserving custodianship justified by intellectual elitism and overcomes an irrational jealousy associated with the academic mentality by obviating the need to consult vital primary source material by going through an intermediary.

As for the forger, whether in dealing with the superior or inferior academic mentality, there is a tendency to abuse the legitimate custody of archives not by theft or vandalism but through the more subtle and perverse frustration that official archives do not contain evidence supportive of a thesis. By putting the cart before the horse, this inconvenience can be overcome and a new reality can be created. If the documents don’t exist, they jolly well ought to. Finally, in this regard, the deviant mind can be reassured by having other researchers fall into the trap of accepting his forgeries as evidence, through the creation of a supportive network of the like-minded people. Society thus rectified can be more habitable for the forger and those with similar behavioural abnormalities.

You have my hearty sympathies that such cultural behaviours affect your most worthy profession. Please be on your guard.

We thanked Dr. Sturge for his analyses.

In a sequel to the thefts from Scottish Catholic Archives, we learn in a new report that the collections may be transferred to Aberdeen University. It is telling that a Scottish Roman Catholic spokesman has stated the material could be better preserved at the university.

Further reading

The Times

Standard for Record Repositories

BBC News

The Scotsman

The Herald

Edinburgh Evening News 19 May 2008

Press Association

Glasgow Daily Record 20 May 2008

Advaita Vedanta Research Center

Letter to The Guardian by Prof. Philip Murphy, University of Reading, 7 May 2008

The Convention brought together a self selected group of the European political elite, many of whom have their eyes on a career at a European level, which is dependent on more and more integration, and who see national parliaments and governments as an obstacle ... Not once in the sixteen months I spent on the Convention did representatives question whether deeper integration is what the people of Europe want, whether it serves their best interests or whether it provides the best basis for a sustainable structure for an expanding Union. The debates focused solely on where we could do more at European Union level... None of the existing policies were questioned... Consensus was achieved among those who were deemed to matter and those deemed to matter made it plain that the rest would not be allowed to wreck the final agreement.

Gisela Stuart MP, British Labour Party representative on the EU. ‘The Making of Europe's Constitution’ Fabian Society, London, 2003

Rogue employers, well almost

2008-04-29T16:54:00.003+01:00

Following up previous posts on unsatisfactory salaries or person specifications at Durham, Bromley and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), we return again to Bromley where it seems a previous advertisement for the post of archivist at Bromley Central Library is being re-run.

Bromley Central Library

The salary offered is £25,440 to £27,009 which suggests a slight move in the right direction. The advertisement also states the successful candidate will be a qualified archivist. However, we asked Garth Bland, County Archivist of Loamshire, to comment on the Bromley situation.

I think we are dealing with quite a common situation, one not at all beneficial to the cause and promotion of archives. Many local government archive services are beholden to library services even to the extent they are physically contained within a library building. It goes without saying the building is branded as a library and the archivist reports to a librarian. Usually in this context, the archivist is seen as a specialist, almost as a specialist librarian. Indeed, I have seen many advertisements for hybrid archivist/librarians. Unless such post-holders are qualified archivists and librarians, and there are some such beasts, this is an appalling cheek and damaging to our profession.

We continue to fight a battle for the equipping of stand-alone archive repositories headed by qualified, professional archivists employed at the same level as chief librarians and museum curators. Municipal traditions are hard to overcome, as is the strong position library services are in when it comes to competing for funding and access to decision makers. University libraries are much the same. This gives rise to difficulties based on the more specialised needs of archive services and representing such to committees, quite apart from the wider public and politicians.

I tend to think archives authorities should respect the spirit of the National Archives’ Standard for Record Repositories, which states that

Beyond the very smallest, record repositories accordingly require the services of
(a) one or more professionally qualified archivists with training or experience relevant to the kind
of records held
(b) one or more professionally qualified conservators
(c) one or more non-professional archivist or records assistants, and appropriate clerical staff
(d) support staff, who may include word processor/keyboard operator(s), porter(s) and cleaner(s).

(section 2.2)

We thanked Garth for his contribution.

A scorpion and a frog met on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asked the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asked, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion said, "Because if I do, I will die too." The frog was satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stung the frog. As they both began to sink, the frog had just enough time to ask "Why?" And the scorpion replied: "Because it is my nature..."

Do you still not understand the nature of the EU?

The Church of England’s hidden agenda

2008-04-28T11:18:00.006+01:00

For those observant and critical enough, the signs of the Church of England’s tendency to support European integration have been there for some time. We recall the letter from the Dean and Chapter of Coventry to a national newspaper in which they collectively stated their support for European integration.

We recall the Bishop of Exeter’s exclusion of the UK Independence Party’s representatives from the regional forum for the South-West Constitutional Convention. We recall the new Prayer Book which includes a prayer for European Institutions. We recall the appointment of a bishop of Europe. We recall the CofE’s involvement in the Council of European Churches and the Soul for Europe programme.

The latest activities of the Church of England to come to our attention are the disposal of numerous cathedral libraries, we assume as part of an act of self-censorship for removing inconvenient printed evidence of the rise of the Protestant based British Empire. The Church has not gone so far as to burn its books in the style of the Nazi Germany in the 1930s but the abandonment of its printed heritage amounts to a most useful act of self-imposed Europhile collaborationism, suited to supporting the gradual dismantlement of the national institutions of the most hated and democratic country in Europe.

The Frauenkirche after restoration

After all, was it not Protestant Britain that stood in the way of Spanish, French and Papal attempts at achieving European or world dominance? The Protestant-based constitution of Britain also undermined later German attempts at defeating Britain in two world wars. The modern European and German domination of Britain is symbolised by the officially sanctioned abandonment of the ruined medieval Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by German bombing and the recent rebuilding of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, after destruction by RAF and USAF bombing.

So what prompts SQA’s latest concerns?

A Bible sold by Truro Cathedral

In 2005 Pusey House, Oxford sold most of its pre-Tractarian library; Truro Cathedral sold Bishop Philpott’s Library; and writing in The Church Times, Professor Jonathan Clark in an article entitled The C of E is losing its own history reports the sale of cathedral libraries from Bangor, Canterbury, Ely, Lincoln, Llandaff, Lichfield, Exeter, St. Asaph and Wells on AbeBooks. Manuscript items are included in these various sales.

The critics of these actions mainly express concern about the Church’s financial incompetence. The Truro sale, described by one eminent librarian as a disaster, raised £36,000 for stock eventually sold on for half a millon pounds. However, to SQA it looks rather more like self-imposed asset-stripping allied to Europhile tendencies.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman for SQA, to offer comment.

Two things come out of this, the Church’s naivety in relation to book dealers and the Church’s naivety in relation to politics. Somewhere hidden away in the Church’s institutions is also a rabid pro-Integrationist agenda which sits very easily with self-imposed asset stripping. European integrationism sits well in turn with ecumenism. And ecumenism sits well with Roman Catholicism, as the EU is clearly modelled on the Holy Roman Empire and is founded on the Treaty of Rome. If the EU are to be our new political masters, then so must the Roman Catholics in religion. In short, the CofE has seen which way the wind is blowing.

Our Lady of Europe, Strasbourg Cathedral

My own pet theory is that many clergy and laity support European integration because they believe regional integration conforms to and paves the way for a divinely ordained progression towards unified world government. The only trouble is that such regional or world government is ordained by man not God and the evidence of the EU’s tendencies is that they are totalitarian, not humane and liberal. However, even on this point, many Christians will still support totalitarian rule because they see neither democracy nor dictatorship as a suitable substitute for theocracy.

So with a few Europhile clerics leading the way, the sheep follow, blissfully unaware they are being led away to the slaughter.

And thank goodness for the Parochial Registers and Records Measure!

We thanked Benedict for his insights.

Further reading

The Dresden Frauenkirche

The Times

Philobiblos

ThinkingAnglicans

Paul Oestreicher in The Guardian

The Church Times

The Holy European Empire

Treasures of the English Church 30 May - 12 July 2008, Goldsmiths' Hall, London

In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.

The Rev. Martin Niemoeller, on being released from Dachau in 1945

Anything but ordinary

2008-04-21T16:38:00.018+01:00

As inveterate readers of SQA’s pages are aware we keep an eagle eye on job advertisements in the sector, identifying rogue employers offering unsatisfactory salaries and those not requiring applicants for archives posts to be professionally qualified.

The PRONI logo

On this occasion an advertisement by the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) has been drawn to our attention. It is for the post of Director of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), in Belfast.

We are informed The post-holder will be an expert in archival and records management matters although as there is no mention of the successful applicant having to possess the postgraduate diploma in archive administration, conveniently available from University College Dublin, the NICS clearly envisages the possibility of finding such an expert who is not qualified. For its part, SQA is mystified that such a species can be considered to exist.

At £56,100 - £78,540 the salary is certainly not an issue: the devil looks after his own and while the rest of the profession laments the absence of national archives legislation which might regularise gradings at least in the public sector, civil servants sit pretty.

SQA has previously blogged its concern at similar developments elsewhere at national governmental level, particularly the appointment of Natalie Ceeney to head the UK National Archives.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman for SQA, to comment.

I heartily sympathise with SQA’s position. However, the trend in central government (if I may term the Euro Regional government of Northern Ireland such) is for non-qualified persons to be appointed to these senior positions. However laudable the retention of their original title (the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh and Public Record Office, London having changed their titles to the National Archives of Scotland and The National Archives respectively), PRONI is clearly still dedicated to dyed in the wool civil service officialese.

And meritocracy? I note the advertisement states ALL APPLICATIONS FOR EMPLOYMENT ARE CONSIDERED STRICTLY ON THE BASIS OF MERIT. Well, clearly qualified archivists are not recognised as meritorious by the meritocrats!

Intrigued by the situation in Northern Ireland, we asked Garth Bland, County Archivist of Loamshire to offer some comments on the constitutional position north of the border.

Very deceptive and messy, actually. Northern Ireland is a Euro Region exactly like London, Wales or Eastern England. The creation of devolved government there has always been viewed in the context of the Troubles but actually it would have come anyway and is merely a forerunner of planned EU regional governments throughout England and the rest of the UK. Nationalism in Ireland, Scotland and Wales has played into the integrationists’ hands perfectly.

Current elitist thinking concerning Northern Ireland is that by a process of national governments gradually relinquishing power to the EU, the devolution of power from Westminster to Belfast will make sectarian divisions irrelevant. Once the process is complete, the nationalist community will be unable to unite to the Republic of Ireland and the Loyalists will not be able to unite with, or remain united to Great Britain, because under the Treaty of Lisbon the process of the creation of the EU superstate will become complete and both states will cease to exist. The future EU is one of regions with no national governments or legislatures worthy of the name. It is not surprising Sinn Fein is campaigning against ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon.

It is hardly an issue now whether British troops will remain in Northern Ireland. British troops are just as likely to patrol southern Ireland under the Treaty of Lisbon. With a common foreign policy and common defence policy in place, German, French, Dutch or who knows one day Turkish troops are just as likely to be garrisoned in Ireland, along with the stationing there of former British and French nuclear weapons. No more neutrality, no more nuclear free zones!

Our Lady of Europe, Strasbourg Cathedral

Finally, I note applications from Roman Catholics are being especially sought. This will please the nationalist community but the appointment of a Protestant won't benefit the Loyalists in any case. The EU is predominantly Roman Catholic and the chapel of the EU is in Strasbourg Cathedral, a Roman Catholic church whose stained glass window proclaims the sovereignty of Our Lady of Europe. The image of Mary, wearing the hexagonal crown of the Holy Roman Empire, is surmounted by the EU's ring of stars.

Who said the EU was secularist?

Further reading

END OF NATIONS - EU Takeover & the Lisbon Treaty (Irish anti-Lisbon Treaty video)

The Balkanisation of Britain

Archives and the State

Tomorrow's World

Europe's Unholy Empire

Sir- We, being most concerned about matters of sovereignty arising from the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, held an informal conference in Guernsey this week. In the context of this treaty, currently being debated in Westminster, there are uncertainties as to the constitutional position of the Crown dependencies, which remain outside the European Union, as Britain cedes further powers to Brussels.
We consider it of vital importance that our people are fully informed about the implications of any constitutional changes that may arise from this treaty.

We would therefore urge Her Majesty’s Government to adopt a position of openness and honesty regarding this treaty, which affects not just the people of Britain, but also the citizens of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

Deputy Paul Le Clair (Jersey)
Deputy Robert du Hamel (Jersey)
Constable Simon Crowcroft (Jersey)
Deputy David Jones (Guernsey)
Peter Karran, Member of the House of Keys (Isle of Man)
Roger Knapman MEP*
Thomas Wise MEP Guernsey*

Letter to The Daily Telegraph 27 January 2008

* Editor’s note: the European Commission has grouped the Channel Islands with the UK South-Western Euro Region, although in point of fact, unknown to most Channel Islanders, they actually come under the French Lower Normandy Euro Region.

The Genocide Convention

2008-04-19T09:22:00.006+01:00

We must congratulate our patron Ashley Mote MEP for drawing attention to the European Union’s genocidal war against the British people. This is something SQA has expressed concern about previously in our blog The Natives are Revolting, in which we examined the implications of the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Ashley Mote MEP

This useful development has been reinforced by the Genocide Convention. Mr. Mote has asked the European Commission the following question:

Given that Malta appears to be the only nation state in the European Union that has failed to sign the Genocide Convention of 1948, can it be assumed the European Union considers itself a party to it? If and when the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, will the EU sign the Genocide Convention?

In which case, can the Commission explain how it will then defend its present activities and immigration policy in the light of Article II, and specifically sub-section (c)?

To save the Commissioner looking them up, I can remind him that the relevant words are:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such...(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

As the Commissioner will have seen in my recent pamphlet J ' Accuse...! the effect of present EU migration policy has been systematically to destroy national identity in the UK, and - for that matter - in most other nation states. Given that the Genocide Convention makes specific and separate references to "national", "ethnical", "racial" and "religious" groups being threatened, (implicitly either in isolation or in combination) is it not obvious that the uncontrolled influx of economic migrants and the mass influx of Muslims to the UK represent real and present dangers which fall within the Convention ' s definition of genocide?

If not, why not?

We look forward to their reply.

Mr. Mote has correctly understood that the current large scale immigration Britain is experiencing is not the result of something conveniently called Globalisation, it is deliberate policy aimed at dismantling British society and national identity and forms an essential Leninist plank for Communist world government.

Against such large scale immigration and anti-British policies and viewed as an obstacle to Europeanisation, the guaranteed preservation of British archives, which enshrine our identity and rights, becomes highly questionable.

We asked Dr. Pochin Sturge, honorary consultant anthropologist to SQA, to comment.

I suppose the principal effect of mass immigration is to undermine social cohesion. Islam in particular challenges the existing legal as well as religious and political status quo in the UK. In other societies, similar developments are taking place, this is not unique to our ancient culture. I must congratulate Alethea on including a video supportive of Islam in her reading list. Balance is of the essence and in a way the defining characteristic of a healthy society. However, I must point out one glaring error in Dr. Sultan's diatribe. She states the Jews are responsible for most of the world's inventions. According to a recent Japanese government survey, I quote several web sites which quote their findings:

In electronic computing, the biggest new industry to arise in the last half-century, British brainpower provided the ideas, foreign industry reaped the profits. And that's not only true of computing. The Japanese Ministry of Trade has recently worked out that of all the commercially viable inventions in the world since the Second World War, 50% have been British. The next most innovative country, the U.S.A., with five times Britain's population and vastly more wealth and resources, was only responsible for half the number of inventions - just 25% of the total. The Japanese, who have who have the world's second richest economy, only came up with a miserable 5% of the inventions. The Japanese Government study concluded that if British inventions had been put into production in Britain it would have added a stunning £156,000 million to Britain's Gross Domestic Product. With last year's GDP being £1,317,000 million, that would have made us 12% better off - or an extra £2,836per person or about £10,000 per family (source) and

A Japanese government report advised that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, c1780, 70% of innovations and inventions sucessfully used commercially by Japan originated in Britain; 55% since 1945 originated in the UK. The British Department of Trade reckons that this continued inability to exploit our own superior technological intellect costs Britain £165 billion annually (source)
We thanked Dr. Sturge for his insights.

Further reading

Immigration Gumballs: video on the impact of immigration on the USA

MigrationWatchUK

Ashley Mote MEP's web site

Video against Islamisation feauring Dr. Wafa Sultan Clash of Civilizations ? Islam and the West

Video in favour of Islam featuring Faisal al-Qassem Islam. Wafa Sultan Refuted

Each has won a glorious grave - not that sepulchre of earth wherein they lie, but the living tomb of everlasting remembrance wherein their glory is enshrined. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of heroes. Monuments may rise and tablets be set upto them in their own land, but on far-off shores there is an abiding memorial that no pen or chisel has traced. It is graven not on stone or brass, but on the living hearts of humanity. Take these men for your example. Like them, remember that prosperity can only be for the free, that freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

Pericles' oration to the Athenian war dead

Rewriting History

2008-02-02T12:36:00.000Z

Members of SQA’s south east, eastern and north-east Euro Regions have been approached by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) to assist in the trialling of MLA London Euro Region’s Revisiting Archive Collections toolkit, part of a process of expanding the project outwards from London to the rest of the UK.

MLA informs us:

The Revisiting Archive Collections toolkit takes collection managers through the process of opening up their records to external scrutiny and comment and capturing new information and understanding in their core collection description and cataloguing systems. The purpose is to help archivists to attract and serve non-traditional audiences and people wanting to access the material from non-traditional perspectives.

Also:

Participating archives will be trained and supported to use the toolkit by a team of consultants with expertise in both archival cataloguing and description and in facilitating community participation.

This development almost certainly stems from recognition of the huge potential arising from the publication of electronic archival finding aids on the web. Online finding aids stand to benefit researchers who will be alerted to the existence of many relevant collections and documents for the first time. This all seems very harmless and indeed beneficial, but only when viewed from the standpoint of archivists unversed in current political trends.

To the Leninist however, the advent of online finding aids to historical source material, available alongside contemporary socio-political web sites through search engines such as Google, has prompted the appalling realisation that objective archival description of documentary evidence of the development of the world’s most influential state, England, and its empire, laws, customs, accountable government, rule of law, presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, etc., will undermine their surreptitious scheme for Communist world government. The MLA web site reveals some clues as to their real motives:

The Revisiting Archive Collections toolkit takes collection managers through the process of opening up their records for external scrutiny and comment and capturing new information and understanding in their core collection description and cataloguing systems. The purpose is to help archivists to attract and serve non-traditional audiences and people wanting to access the material from non-traditional perspectives.

It is at this point the whole devious plan is exposed. What the metropolitan elite are proposing is that archival descriptive lists are written or re-written on advice from persons who are not necessarily objective, qualified archivists, so as to conform to the Leninist world view. Based on our prior knowledge of the Malvine Project, which seeks to “harmonise” the archives of the EU member states alongside the accompanying dumbing down of history, we knew it wouldn’t be long before EU collaborators got to grips with the bread and butter work of archivists, descriptive listing, which clearly forms the first stage in access to and interpretation of archives.

As if it’s not good enough for qualified, professional archivists, who are already expertly trained in identifying and describing material of socio- historical value, to be effectively retrained on the job, archivists will now be suitably politically indoctrinated and politically re-educated by MLA commissars who are not identified at this stage and whose credentials therefore cannot be checked by the wider profession.

Academic research is already heavily funded by the EU and the BBC is now also being indirectly funded by the EU. The outcome will therefore be a seamless conveyer belt of carefully slanted archival description leading to approved historical research, interpretation and educational propaganda, both feeding into a biased media presentation of heritage, all issues SQA has warned of previously.

We asked Garth Bland, county archivist of Loamshire, to describe his office’s experience of working with MLA’s commissars.

The Duke of Wellington, saviour of Europe

We were visited by Jacinta Sprout-Davies * and the whole experience proved very traumatic. Jacinta criticised our descriptive lists as being reactionary, Fascist and politically incorrect. Staff were hurt and offended. Until Jacinta’s visit we were proud of our high standard of descriptive listing. To give you an example of how some of our descriptive lists had to change, I will compare our original description of a letter from the Duke of Wellington to Jacinta’s revised version.

Letter from Sir Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Apsley House, London to Sir Lionel Scratchrace MP, Bloggsbridge, Loamshire, describing the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815) and its consequences. Wellington describes Napoleon as a tyrant and ogre, the French as stinking of garlic and thanks God the peace of Europe has been assured for generations to come, the Code Napoleon denied imposition on England and the British Empire and its numerous good works preserved as a beacon of justice for all civilisation.

Following Jacinta’s revision, the description now reads:

Letter from Sir Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Apsley House, London to Sir Lionel Scratchrace MP, Bloggsbridge, Loamshire, in which he makes racist and chauvinistic remarks about the French people, criticises Napoleon’s enlightened social and political theories and objects to the fulfilment of European Union, the harmonisation of legal systems, a single currency and imposition of post-democratic governance, instead favouring reactionary forms of government, populism disguised as democracy and the upholding of Anglo-Saxon world dominance.

I just can’t see what's wrong with our original description!
We thanked Garth for his contribution.

For a final view of the whole sorry business, we approached Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman for SQA.

Obviously MLA is getting carried away with the EU's success in imposing the revived European constitution on member states even to the extent they are anticipating its formal implementation. The UK represents the biggest cultural and political threat to the European project, not just because our instincts are so anti-EU but because our institutions, traditions and cultural heritage are quite simply not European. We are British and identify much more with the Americans and Commonwealth, with which we should have a true free trade area instead. This is Big Brother entering the world of British archives for the first time. And they are only just warming up!

We thanked Benedict for his valuable insights.

[* Editor’s note: readers may recall Jacinta is Assistant Archivist at Norrey Record Office (Priscilla Dyke, county archivist). Jacinta is a qualified archivist and previously worked for the European Commission. She is a graduate in sociology, holds the Diploma in Advanced Political Correctness from the Institute of Political Correctness in London and during her student vacations obtained valuable experience of dealing with the general public at McDonald's]

Further reading

MLA Revisiting Archives Collections

MLA Guidance

MLA gauleiters in action

BBC Bias

The Fabian Society

Dumbing down history

Common Purpose

The Malvine Project

It wasn't worth creating a negative commotion with the British. I rewrote my text with the word federal replaced by communautaire, which means exactly the same thing.

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Wall Street Journal Europe, 7 July 2003

It's Queer up North

2008-01-14T13:56:00.000Z

Rogue Employers Update

Our members continue to cast their eyes over job advertisements in the archives sector in order to help maintain professional standards.

The latest to come to our attention is that of County Archivist of County Durham, based at County Hall, Durham. The post is advertised at £28,919-£31,606 and is currently subject to a job evaluation exercise which means it could go down or up.

SQA believes the advertised level of remuneration is unsatisfactory. However, of even greater concern to us is the failure of Durham County Council to stipulate the postgraduate diploma in archive administration is an essential qualification.

Instead, they require a degree and a further degree or post-graduate qualification in archive administration. Thus, while Durham County Council is aware of the existence of the professional qualification, they recognise it as merely an option and will accept another postgraduate qualification instead. This is a disgraceful.

The unsatisfactoriness of the Durham County Council position is compounded by their requirement for the successful candidate to undertake to obtain the NVQ Level 4 in Management within 3 years of appointment. No similar stipulation is made as regards obtaining the University of Wales archives diploma or the University of Dundee MLitt in Archives and Records Management by distance learning.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman for SQA, for his observations on the Durham situation.

This is rather similar to developments we have observed elsewhere, e.g. Cambridgeshire. Increasingly, we are witnessing the downgrading of the senior professional role in repositories, with the highest professionally qualified staff operating at assistant archivist level. This cannot be conducive to promotion of or advocacy for an archives service beyond an archive service or within the community. It relegates the most experienced staff to a more junior level and prevents the correct level of influence from being exerted on policy makers.

We are certainly seeing the politically correct trend towards dumbing-down the management of highly specialised professions, with the emphasis instead being placed on management skills. This is a mistake of course as the management issues around archives are rather too specialist for pure manager types to grasp and develop. Employers are now beholden to the cult of managerialism, by which it is deemed all services and professions can be competently managed by any Tom, Dick or Harry.

We should also take into account the possibility that more senior departmental managers overseeing archive services such as County Durham’s are genuinely unaware of the range of skills involved in managing such a specialised operation.

A local government chief archivist is responsible for prioritising the listing and conservation of collections, ensuring their correct arrangement and documentation, observance of the relevant standards and compliance with professional ethics, guiding colleagues and researchers in the specialised use of archives and above all, perhaps, he is expected to be sufficiently professionally expert in palaeography and administrative history to be able to give the right quality of lead to his service especially when representing it to the wider community.

These skills are all the more important for an authority shortly to become unitary*, with added responsibilities for the archives of the former district councils, stemming from their separate functions. A record office serving an authority inheriting district level as well as county functions must become intimately acquainted with such functions. The skills of a chief archivist in such an environment will be tested. County record offices working in the two-tier system tend not to have a very close involvement in district council records and therefore have little or no knowledge of such records or district council functions. Hence our concern with administrative historical expertise and knowledge on the part of such a postholder.

In short, a local government chief archivist post is not suitable for a cardboard cut-out who merely boasts abstract management skills.

What really irks me however is that the job title is County Archivist. This gives rise to the expectation on the part of depositors, researchers, council colleagues, elected members of the council and the media that the postholder is a qualified archivist but in the event a non-qualified person is appointed, this amounts to a gross deception. This is a tremendous insult to the wider archives profession. We will continue to expose employers who take this line.

We thanked Benedict for his insights.

*Editor's note. Unitary authorities are being introduced as part of the process of dividing the UK into Euro Regions, by which groups of counties form a Euro Region, a group of unitary authorities a Sub-Region and a single unitary authority a Sub-Sub-Region, eventually to be controlled direct from Brussels. Traditional counties play no part in this system as they represent age old traditional local loyalties which present the EU with a diametrically opposed cultural threat.

Further reading

Durham Record Office

Nuts to us all

The Balkanisation of Britain

RegionalAssemblies.co.uk

Norman and Saxon by Rudyard Kipling

“MY SON,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for my share
When we conquered the Saxon at Hastings , and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:—

“The Saxon is not like us Normans, His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealings,’ my son, leave the Saxon alone.

“You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your Picardy spears,
But don’t try that game on the Saxon; you’ll have the whole brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They’ll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.

“But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs and songs.
Don’t trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale of their wrongs.
Let them know that you know what they’re saying; let them feel that you know what to say.
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear ’em out if it takes you all day.

“They’ll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour of the dark,
It’s the sport not the rabbits they’re after (we’ve plenty of game in the park).
Don’t hang them or cut off their fingers. That’s wasteful as well as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man-at-arms you can find.

“Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and funerals and feasts.
Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish priests.
Say ‘we,’ ‘us’ and ‘ours’ when you’re talking instead of ‘you fellows’ and ‘I.’
Don’t ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell ’em a lie!”

Food for thought

2007-11-24T12:12:00.000Z

Our regular readers by now will be familiar with SQA's hatred of blockbuster exhibitions. Of course we refer to our previous blog Is Nothing Sacred?

We are pleased to report on a sequel to the first story, which concentrated on the British Library's exhibition Sacred.

Jonathan Jones

This time the exhibition is Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, mounted at the British Museum. Jonathan Jones dismembers it in an article entitled Tomb Raiders in The Guardian of 15 November 2007.

It is refreshing to note our national institutions' blockbuster exhibitions are establishing such a critical following. However, there is something else that catches our eye in the article.

Jones states:

It may be that you live in dread of your child growing up to be an archaeologist, stuck in an underpaid job at a local museum surrounded by dusty pots. If that's your nightmare, then by all means take your children to see this exhibition. It will put them off Egyptology - and may put them off history, art and the entire education system.

We at SQA find this most amusing. Of course we see a parallel straight away between archaeology and museum curatorship on the one hand and archives on the other. For dusty pots, read dusty parchments. For local museum, read local archives. Everything else is the same including and especially the pay.

While some archival bodies attempt to raise the profile of archives, few including the rival Society of Archivists [sic] seriously attempt to raise the profile and status of archives as a true professional elite worthy of practitioners who have spent at least four years at universities. For graduates holding a postgraduate diploma in archives administration, the Society of Archivists recommends a starting salary of £20,895. The average reader and many graduates may think this is adequate. The catch is, salaries and career progression mean many archivists remain on little above this figure for most of their career. The post recently vacated by the long serving, experienced and respected Elizabeth Silverthorne, Archivist of Bromley Borough Council, was advertised at £25,000, a figure that devalues the employer as well as the profession.

Sensing some deep social malaise must be at the heart of this problem, we asked Dr. Pochin Sturge, consultant anthropologist to SQA and an eminent Darwinian, to offer an explanation of the underpaid role of the archivist in society.

The position is relatively simple (oh, and may I say how delighted I am to be called upon occasionally to comment on what is a most intriguing profession, whose members' behaviour is most worthy of anthropological investigation. And so close to home as well; I am more used to investigating the culture of Alpine and Mediterranean Europeans, but I digress.....) you are caught in what my students have flatteringly called the Sturgian Cycle.

What is the Sturgian Cycle you ask? The Sturgian Cycle theory is founded upon the very unpopular premise that humans are by nature cannibalistic. In our natural state, without a modern economy and such fragile and controversial social assets as out of town shopping centres, we are perilously vulnerable to events such as total war and natural disasters such as earthquake, inundation, famine and drought. In consequence of such extreme circumstances many would inevitably be reduced to cannibalism.

Brazilian cannibals tucking in

Now here lies the rub. In our modern society in which we are encouraged to take the view the sexes are equal, it is hard to grasp how society might exist in the conditions I describe. However, this is not a matter for speculation as ancient societies and early anthropologists have left sufficient record. Indeed, I refer among others to the work of that great man Charles Darwin who during the voyage of the Beagle in the 1830s was privileged to meet and question the cannibals of Tierra del Fuego who for much of the time merely subsisted. In their society, there was little discretion and no lottery when it came to deciding who should be eaten. Oh no, you see, they had a harsh method enforced by need. This was to eat only the women, who were considered expendable at such times. The men and boys were considered essential for hunting; even the dogs were spared for the same reason. And no doubt cannibals the world over from the dawn of time have conformed to this natural law. The only exception to this I should say is ritualistic cannibalism which however is not true cannibalism and merely stems from it as society takes steps towards a slightly more advanced stage.

HMS Beagle in Tierra del Fuego

Now my theory proceeds thus. Society, even modern society, must in nature's view, always position itself for disaster and it is then the tendency towards cannibalism emerges. Lying not so far below the surface as to discourage our social institutions from fully accepting women into equal roles, the cannibalistic tendency dictates a re-emergence of the function of the female as a food source.

Do you see the connection? Over the generations women's social and economic status has been decided by this largely unknown and unrecognised instinct or imperative. So you see, if a profession is underpaid, those persons most likely to be eaten in times of famine will fill it, in other words women. The solution is to encourage those members of society most likely not to be eaten in times of natural or man-made disaster to join the profession by raising salaries, in other words men. I should add your profession is not alone, the same can be said of primary school teachers.

I trust my contribution has been acceptable.

Indeed is has been and we thanked Pochin.

Further reading

Lancashire girl made into kebabs

Career Guidance

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

- Joseph Goebbels

Anarchy in the Archives

2007-11-22T22:06:00.000Z

It's official. Archives are now a hotbed of anarchy, revolutionism and terrorism. Hard to believe?

The Daily Telegraph (15 November 2007) reports the government is to launch a hearts and minds campaign to root out terrorist extremism. It is not clear quite who the target audience is (whose minds? whose hearts?) although we are informed the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) is to agree a common approach to inflammatory and extremist material held in or propagated by museums, libraries and archives, no doubt to be implemented through its gauleiters in the Euro Regions.

We observe that normally hearts and minds operations are aimed at indigenous populations, for example the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, Chinese and Malays during the Emergency in Malaya, Afghans since 2001 and the Iraqis since 2003. If this new campaign nearer to home is true to form, the indigenous British population will bear the brunt of this propaganda and censorship, even to the extent the government is prepared to politicise archives. This is reminiscent of developments in Iraq, where the Iraqi National Archives were reportedly ransacked with US and British collusion in order to impoverish indigenous cultural evidence and thereby create a thirst for the occupiers' agenda.

So it seems the government is not going to stop at identifying printed matter in pursuing its Leninist inspired EU agenda. This time, unusually in the history of political paranoia and fear of criticism and the written word, archives have been identified as a threat, perhaps an unintended consequence of the Archives Awareness Campaign whose theme this year ironically is Freedom and Liberty.

It is rather trite to say SQA is aware of the dangers of religious hatred and racism. However, we are clever enough to understand that first of all the government's policy is not concerned with improving relations between religions and secondly that what constitutes inflammatory and extremist material is a matter of interpretation and political context. The object is to gain ever more control over the unwashed masses, many of whom still cling to inconvenient ideas of accountable government.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman of SQA to discourse on this thorny subject.

Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano, seen here with HM The Queen. He has described critics of the EU as terrorists.

It is possible to form a pretty shrewd idea of the way the wind is blowing thanks to our subjugation to EU law and the European Arrest Warrant. Under EU law terrorists include eco-warriors, protesters and anarchists. Furthermore, the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano has stated
those who are anti EU are terrorists.....It is psychological terrorism to suggest the spectre of a European superstate
(quoted by the Daily Express Monday June 18, 2007)

We also know how the EU deals with whistleblowers and its critics from the experience of Bernard Connolly and Marta Andreasen.

Many of us can remember the decades of IRA terrorism and how lax the UK government was in its response. We now face a miniscule threat from Muslim extremists by comparison but we are being indoctrinated to believe such a small threat justifies massive suppression of civil liberties, won over centuries. It is clear that what SQA has foretold over the last three years is coming true: archives as evidence of accountable government are to be hidden, destroyed, discouraged, removed from the National Curriculum, dumbed-down or re-interpreted.

Prof. David Coleman

The government is clearly anticipating what Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, Pakistani-born Bishop of Rochester believes, that in several decades England and the UK will have ceased to Christian or Protestant. Indeed, according to Professor David Coleman of MigrationWatchUK, by 2050 1/3 of the UK's population will be non-white. Most of this non-white section of the population will be Muslim. By around the same time, Holland may be mainly Muslim. One can understand why many people in the UK and the rest of the EU fear the Islamisation of the UK and Europe. The Israelis share this concern.

For archives, the implication is that the documentary heritage of a mainly indigenous population will either become irrelevant or endangered. You see, with such a burgeoning Muslim population, we will see renewed and more effective calls for the introduction of Sharia Law. Not only that, but the government of the day, if the present one is anything to go by, will be even more drastic in its policies towards indigenous thought and culture.

I can think of several archives that might already be at risk: Keele, the International Institute of Social History and University College London. These no doubt will soon reverberate to the jackboot of the EU thought police.

Now if you will excuse me, I must dash in case the EUSSR thought police arrest me for spreading anti-EU smears.

We thanked Benedict for his contribution.

Further reading

Report by 24 Hour Museum

Our previous blog on Archives and the Terrorist

Sources for anarchist history on the web MathabaNet

The Natives are Revolting

2007-11-08T13:27:00.000Z

SQA welcomes the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 7 September 2007.

At last we feel the archival heritage of the British and English peoples have a safeguard against the tyranny of the European Union and the consequential cultural impact of EU membership, a UK government dominated by Scots, enforced mass immigration and metrification.

Typical indigenous inhabitants of Britain

The Declaration contains several clauses useful to the British and English resistance movements. Of particular interest and relevance is Article 8:

1. Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.
2. States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for:
(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of forced population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of forced assimilation or integration;
(e) Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite racial or ethnic discrimination directed against them.

We take "states" to mean either the UK or the EU, the latter gradually acquiring sovereignty in all areas of state with UK defence and foreign policy set to follow within the next ten years according to recent EU statements.

Forced cultural assimilation in the form of the one-sided case for a common European heritage, metrification and the forced population transfer of EU and non-EU migrants into the UK especially the south east England are governmental and supra-national governmental actions bringing the UK government and EU into conflict with the Declaration. England is now the only part of the UK under direct UK government rule.

Article 9 evokes memories of the Metric Martyrs, convicted under still binding UK legislation despite European Commission statements that they do not expect English customary weights and measures to be suppressed:

Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right to belong to an indigenous community or nation, in accordance with the traditions and customs of the community or nation concerned. No discrimination of any kind may arise from the exercise of such a right.

Leading on from the Metric Martyrs' case in which EU was held to supersede UK law, we feel UK statute law and Common law are also upheld by the Declaration, article 27 of which states:

States shall establish and implement, in conjunction with indigenous peoples concerned, a fair, independent, impartial, open and transparent process, giving due recognition to indigenous peoples’ laws, traditions, customs and land tenure systems.

Article 11, clause 1 clearly includes archival heritage and weights and measures in its purview:

Indigenous peoples have the right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature.

Article 12, clause 1 seems also to protect indegenous weights and measures:

Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practice, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of their ceremonial objects; and the right to the repatriation of their human remains.

Article 13, clause is the most potentially useful to resisters:

Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.

Article 31 continues the theme of indigenous people being able to safeguard their culture:

Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures...They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman of SQA, to comment.

I couldn't be more delighted. This declaration is a refreshing development in the battle against political correctness and I look forward to it being used in favour of the English and British peoples in their campaign for cultural survival, in particular in defence of archivists who oppose anachronistic metric units in archival description.

We also invited Dr. Pochin Sturge, founder of the Institute for the Study of Mass Social and Foreign Behaviour (STUMSFOB) at Wigston Magna, Leicestershire, consultant anthropologist to SQA, to give his views.

Like Benedict, I am delighted. I have no doubt in anthropological terms the English and British qualify as indigenous peoples and are therefore covered by the new declaration. We should be most grateful to the UK government for supporting it. The genetic record indicates the non-immigrant portion of the UK's population is ancient indeed. Even the English are largely descended from the ancient British but as the people who have given their name to England, the Mother of Parliaments, the English are doubly assured their status as an indigenous people.

No doubt those who framed the Declaration had in mind such peoples as the Australian Aborigines, American Indians, Pygmies, the headhunters of Borneo, Montagnards of Vietnam and Maoris of New Zealand. This is interesting thinking but it shows the limitations of the mindset of the New World and post-colonial countries whose intellectual elite are inclined to think of indigenous peoples as being those in former white peoples' colonies. This is therefore a typical illustration of the way in which English and British history tends to confound foreigners.

The distinction between indigenous Britons and immigrants is not only highlighted by current mass immigration but by the tendency for second and third generation immigrants to apply for the citizenship of their forebears' country of origin, which rather indicates how they view themselves. Impliedly, the Declaration has created a most useful way of differentiating indigenous Britons from immigrants, just at a time when our rulers are obsessed with integration. There appears to be a conflict between Foreign Office and Home Office aspirations here, or at least in the legal advice they are receiving.

As to race, well, a people in anthropological terms is not necessarily a race so we do not have to prove we are a race apart, merely that we are anciently settled here "time out of mind" as it says in your musty old charters, hey, wot!

We thanked Benedict and Pochin for their contributions.

Further reading

International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs: text of Declaration

Save our Cultural Heritage

A common cultural heritage?

A figment of our imagination

There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified

(Edward Heath, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1973)

Is nothing sacred?

2007-09-22T17:46:00.001+01:00

Senior members of SQA had been looking forward to a quiet time of year. Unfortunately, they had established this expectation without taking into account the activities of the society’s energetic conservation spokesman, Ellison Millinocket. Ellison had been alerted to a cause for concern in one of our great national institutions.

Unbeknown to the rest of us, he had taken the train from Taunton to London one sunny day in early September to visit the Sacred exhibition at the British Library. And what a tale of woe he brought back to the committee.

A sacred Muslim manuscript

He explained now horrified he had been at the scrummage in the exhibition gallery as people elbowed each other out of the way, obscured interpretation panels by leaning on them (in apparent obliviousness to the presence of other visitors) and stood or leaned in the way of the exhibits. As for the exhibits, some had curled in increased humidity, and light levels were so low (to prevent UV and lux damage rather than create ambience we assume) that it was often impossible to read the interpretation panels, let alone appreciate the exhibits.

On top of this Ellison was spitting blood at the British Library’s practice of using the new chronological terms BCE (Before Common Era) instead of BC (Before Christ) and CE (Common Era) instead of AD (Anno Domini) in interpretation panels.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, principal spokesman of SQA, to comment on this practice.

Well I’m afraid it would have Cheney turning in his grave. For an institution committed to preserving continuity in the historical record and a national institution housing documentary as well as printed heritage, they seem instead to be committed to causing confusion and undermining the integrity of British archival chronology. And as for sacred, you have to be joking. Is taking Christ out of the dating system sacred? Would a Muslim or Jewish museum or library unilaterally convert exclusively to the Christian dating system? Of course not, so much for what we have in common then. It’ll be public beheadings in Trafalgar Square next!

Apart from anything else, the new acronyms use exactly the same dating system as before, the Gregorian Calendar, which rather makes the new system look like hypocritical nonsense. A Muslim or Jew will be just as aware of the Christian basis of the new dating system as previously. The BL is making a fool of itself. And by the way isn’t the BL meant to be British? Don’t foreigners come to Britain to experience or even exploit Britishness? The historical context of our great collections is being deliberately hidden.

Garth Bland, County Archivist of Loamshire fuelled the debate by drawing to our attention Alasdair Palmer’s article entitled The greatest art should not be moving in the Sunday Telegraph of 16 September 2007. In the article Palmer describes a litany of damaged art works and objects. In respect of visitors enjoying exhibits, he shares Ellison’s view, literally. If you went to the Caravaggio exhibition at the National Gallery, or the exhibition of Michelangelo’s drawings at the British Museum, your most potent memory is probably not of the glorious masterpieces on show. It is of being pushed and shoved, and of seeing more of the back of people’s heads than works of art.

Palmer is only scratching at the surface. Little does he know that our heritage is damaged in being exhibited in house, let alone when transported between museums, libraries, galleries and archives. It is axiomatic in the archives profession that any handling of archival material whatsoever results in mechanical wear and tear to documents. Archivists and archival conservators frequently have to deal with crumbling paper, eroded pigment, loose bindings, loose pages and this is without seeing fibre damage under a microscope. This is the reason we microfilm or scan popular collections of series of records. I regret that sooner or later society must grasp the nettle and accept that precious objects, art works, printed books and manuscripts must not be exhibited at all. We must turn our attention to a wholly digital future.

And so we have come full circle! No exhibitions, no squalid fighting for elbow room, no obscured interpretation panels and no curling parchment membranes!

Finally, we asked Dr. J. Pochin Sturge of the Institute for the Study of Mass Social and Foreign Behaviour (STUMSFOB) at Wigston Magna, Leicestershire, consultant anthropologist to SQA, for his explanation of the behaviour witnessed by Ellison and Palmer at the National Gallery, British Museum and British Library.

Palmer’s situation is perhaps the most pertinent as he clearly represents several perspectives rolled into one, those of indigenous Briton, the erudite intellectual desirous of appreciating fine art works, manuscripts, objects and printed books and the taxpayer whom one assumes is contributing to these institutions’ funding under the unmistakenly British misapprehension he can hold Parliament or the institutions it funds to account. For Ellison and Benedict, it is more a matter of professional hypocrisy, not understood by journalists and dilettantes. Allow me to concentrate on the points of mass behavioural interest.

Crucially, we have to analyse the profile of visitors to our national institutions. We find they tend to be foreign and lacking in British behavioural norms which probably contributes to the experience described by Palmer. It is indeed unfortunate these are substantially the same individuals for which exhibitions and the new dating system cater. In the mind of the foreigner we find a state of impulsion to identify with, remember and convey what they perceive as being British (and therefore better) in order to become British or be improved in some way by allowing something that could almost be perceived as a quasi-religious to be brushed off onto them. This attitude of course leads to a sort of miasma descending upon exhibition galleries in which visitors undergo a transition to a sort of trance culminating in total loss of sensory awareness of the presence of other human forms or politically distorted interpretational material. I am glad you have drawn this interesting focus of mass behaviour to my attention.

We thanked Ellison, Benedict, Garth and Pochin for their contributions.

P.C. scholars take Christ out of B.C. click here

Common Purpose

2007-09-17T22:27:00.001+01:00

In previous blogs we have railed at numerous fifth columnists, traitors and collaborationists working towards the goal of subjugating Britain to the European Union in the realm of cultural heritage.

These organisations and individuals include John Prescott, the Fabian Society, regional bodies, national government bodies including QUANGOs and of course the EU itself. However, one organisation or movement to have evaded our attention so far is Common Purpose, founded by Julia Middleton, Head of Personnel under John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister.

Julia Middleton

The Common Purpose web site is interesting in that it stresses the importance of its graduates networking with each other and cutting across traditional disciplinary boundaries. CP states we develop leaders who can lead beyond their authority, beyond their direct circle of control. The organisation is a charity and (unavoidably one would have thought) proclaims political neutrality. The closeness of Julia Middleton to New Labour however and their known client base indicate a socialist and collectivist agenda.

Also stressed on the web site is the relevance to democracy of the organisation’s leadership programmes. This is highly significant because many totalitarian states have termed themselves democracies, notably China and East Germany. The United Kingdom is of course a democracy but this is only partly true. It is more specifically a parliamentary democracy and the distinction is important. In a parliamentary democracy, the people hold their government to account, through a democratically elected parliament.

Peter Mandelson

In this regard we begin to see some cause for concern straight away, in that Common Purpose does not respect democracy, it respects authority. In her book Beyond Authority, Middleton argues for a leadership style that enables [Common Purpose graduates] to lead beyond the traditional boundaries and constraints of their organizations. This of course means beyond the constraints of democratic accountability, whether at local or national level. As Peter Mandelson, former Communist and European Commissioner put it in March 1998

it may be that the era of pure representative democracy is slowly coming to an end

We have therefore arrived at the truth: Common Purpose is concerned with something beyond democracy. It is concerned with the so-called post-democratic society and supranational government. In short, Common Purpose is a front for the European Union and the next major step towards Communist world rule. The fact the common purpose of Common Purpose is not actually stated anywhere by the organisation is confirmation of this. It is implied only and only for the elite.

The style of Common Purpose does not actually promote engagement, as the following speech made by Middleton to the South West Regional Development Authority confirms

The other day I was in a meeting in Belfast, I have no idea how I ended up in this meeting. It was a really wonderful meeting with about fifteen people there. When we were really getting going there was this little jerk in the corner, who kept piping out “What is your legitimacy?” and we all said “just shut up” and we kept on going.

She goes on to say

I believe passionately in the definition of civil society of Mr Mandela, who says that civil society is anyone who stands up. Anybody who stops crouching down and stops trying to be taller than everybody else and standing out and who is too embarrassed to be taller than anybody else and actually civil society are anyone who actually stands up and makes things happen.

Presumably this doesn't apply to the jerk!

Critics of Common Purpose are gaining in numbers and concern is spreading that CP is a means of fraud as well as Europhile indoctrination of persons identified as suitable for the leadership of post-democratic society. CP has been compared to the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London (of which it may be a front) and whose language is similarly jargonistic and luciferian (multi-organisational working, cross-boundary working and the global-national-local interface each raise their own set of organisational dynamics which must be surfaced and worked with if collaboration is to be effective. They also raise particular challenges for leadership (and followership). The Institute's approaches to organisational consultancy and leadership development, based on organisational theory and systems psychodynamics are particularly appropriate for helping organisations to address these complex issues) and whose intervention in the public sector appears to share the same objectives.

Other organisational comparisons can be made with the Fabian Society and European Movement, originally funded by the CIA

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, SQA’s principal spokesman, to comment.

We are actively compiling a list of CP graduates working in the archives and heritage sectors. I am particularly concerned they are influencing the outcome of Designation Status applications and it goes without saying they have plenty of potential for misappropriating public funds in the regional bodies. The South West Euro Region seems to be heavily infiltrated and Sue Underwood, Chief Executive of the North East Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (NEMLAC) is a graduate.

We can take some satisfaction that they are probably mostly unwitting footsloggers for communist world rule. Lenin conceived that there would be different tiers of collaborators worldwide, one tier of which he described as useful idiots, those whose full knowledge of the Communist stratagem was limited but who at least would inadvertently help advance the cause.

We thanked Benedict for his contribution. Ellison Millinocket, SQA spokesman for the South West Euro Region, was too irate to comment.

A sorry tale of Common Purpose networking against true grassroots heritage initiatives in Plymouth is told by Dr. Brian Gerrish on YouTube.

Further reading.

Video: a talk on CP by Brian Gerrish, chaired by Roger Helmer MEP The Public Defender

Shoot out

Designation status

Eutruth

CP takeover of Bradford

Cremation of Care

An interesting sequel

2007-06-18T13:43:00.000+01:00

Our longstanding readers may recall we expressed anxiety about the poor security lying behind the publication of government documents online from our previous blog Hidden Truths. We have pleasure in reporting on a strange new twist to the tale, an accusation that an eminent scientist has been murdered and one which also overlaps with another of our concerns, resistance to compulsory metrication.

Dr. David Kelly

Shocking new details about the death of Dr David Kelly have emerged on the Alex Jones radio show broadcast from Austin, Texas. Kelly was one of the most respected microbiologists in the UK and senior arms inspector in Iraq. Exclusively, in a lengthy interview with Jones, Michael Shrimpton, a leading British barrister, revealed that sources within MI5 and MI6 are `furious' that Kelly was murdered, it is argued, because he was such an effective source for the BBC in exposing UK and US government lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Michael Shrimpton

Many readers will be familiar with Michael Shrimpton as the lawyer who defended the Metric Martyrs and brought to the world's attention the new preposterous, Europhile concept of a hierarchy of Acts of Parliament enunciated by Mr. Justice Laws on the instructions of EU lawyers. Whereas in case law in the past when new legislation conflicted with old, the more recent statute was considered to outrank the older statute on the basis it represented Parliament's most recently expressed will, now we are led to believe, earlier legislation outranks later if it is classed as Constitutional. Thus the Metric Martyrs could be convicted under the European Communities Act 1972 even though it preceded the more recent Weights and Measures Act 1988 which permitted their actions. Constitutional history had been made.

Shrimpton spoke in depth about the details of Kelly's murder on 17 July 2003, offering information subsequently withheld by the British press.

With apparent backing from the organisations whose members he claims to speak for, Shrimpton presented their view that Dr Kelly had been murdered by a team of assassins and the charade of an apparent suicide was then played out to cover this up.

Speaking with impeccable credentials, including contributions to the Journal for International Security Affairs and having previously given a closed-doors confidential briefing to the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Shrimpton exploded the much-reported myth that Dr Kelly had taken his own life.

He spoke of the probable method of Kelly's death, the group which most likely carried out the assassination, who arranged it and finally where the responsibility lies. Additionally, he explained the political context and motive for Kelly's murder.

David Kelly went missing on 17 July 2003 and was found dead on 18th July. In the previous days, Kelly had testified before Parliament's Foreign Affairs Select Committee that he was not the source of a BBC story which had accused the Government of making false claims about Iraq's WMD. When Kelly's body was found, the British press quickly reported it as a suicide, though several analysts had their doubts.

On Jones' show, Shrimpton explained how he had learned that David Kelly was the BBC's source before the BBC disclosed this fact. He went on to explain that his source from within the intelligence community knew David Kelly personally, and did not believe that he had committed suicide. After making their own enquiries, says Shrimpton, this source determined that Dr Kelly had not committed suicide, but rather had been assassinated.

Apparently at ease to discuss these explosive disclosures, Shrimpton explained that there was advance knowledge of Kelly's death in Whitehall, but that the deed itself was most likely carried out by the French external security organisation, DGSE. There was no indication that anybody in MI5 or MI6 had been involved. He went further by suggesting that the hit squad itself was composed of Iraqis from the former regime's Mukhabarat intelligence organisation, recruited from Damascus with the help of Syria's own intelligence apparatus. They were apparently then flown into Corsica, seven days prior to the murder. He doubts that any of the hit-squad are still alive.

Officially, Kelly's body was said to have been found in a copse, in a wood, but the forensic tents were set up in the adjacent field, suggesting, says Shrimpton, that the body was found in the field. This has not been explained to his satisfaction.

The incision in Kelly's wrist was probably to conceal the injection of both Dextroprypoxythene, the active ingredient in Co-Proxamol, and Succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant, rather than as evidence of his bleeding to death, as highlighted by a group of six doctors in letters published in the British press. Shrimpton further agreed with the doctors by pointing out that Kelly only had one Co-Proxamol tablet in his body and that this was not sufficient to kill him.

According to Shrimpton, Kelly was murdered because he had been talking to the press and there was a fear of what else he might discuss with journalists. Furthermore, Kelly was due to return to Iraq and may have learned fresh information on that trip which Whitehall could not afford to trust him with.

Shrimpton's appearance on Jones' show gave him the first public opportunity to bring forward his information, since the story has been effectively censored by the British Press, who according to Shrimpton are concerned about losing the pro-Euro Tony Blair as Prime Minister were they to publish details of Kelly's assassination. Blair's departure, he says, could threaten Britain's proposed adoption of the Euro as the national currency.

Whilst this story begins to circulate in the USA, the coverage in the UK may well remain nil, whilst maneuvering behind the scenes attempts to pre-empt Shrimpton's accusation of government-sanctioned murder of one of its own operatives.

[Kelly was a former Porton Down scientist, a former UNSCOM arms inspector in Iraq, and latterly an adviser to the Ministry of Defence's Director of counter-proliferation and arms control. The Ministry of Defence paid his salary in that capacity but the Foreign Office in turn reimbursed the MoD.]

Infowars recording of Shrimpton's interview

Infowars transcript of Shrimpton's interview

ThoughtCrimeNews

Does history repeat itself?

2007-06-17T21:52:00.000+01:00

We couldn't resist bringing this story from the pen of Sorcha Faal to our reader's attention, especially in view of SQA's obstinate resistance to EU tyranny. We leave judgment to you.

Daughter of Adolph Hitler Vows to Complete European Union

It is with troubling concern that we report today that the Western Nations have announced this week that the ancient German city of Meerholz, Germany has now become the ‘Heart’ of the European Union with the inclusion of the former Soviet block nations of Bulgaria and Romania.

Frederick Barbarossa

The symbolism of this ancient citadel, founded in 1170 by the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (who was also crowned the Holy Roman Emperor in 1155, and who has been known throughout history as Barbarossa) now being the ‘Heart’ of Europe cannot be lost upon our World of today, particularly when viewed in the light of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s vow today to unite all of Europe under one single constitution, which in effect would wipe out the National Sovereignty of all the countries in the European Union.

Angela Merkel

This vow being made by Angela Merkel to unite the European Continent under one flag cannot be ignored, especially when viewed in the light of still secret, but ‘obtainable’, Soviet KGB archive files which present a terrifying portrait of the present German Chancellor as being the daughter of the former German Nazi Leader, Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler

Though said to be born on July 17, 1954 in the former Soviet controlled German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Angela Merkel’s Stasi GDR file (currently still held in the Soviet KGB archives) states that she was instead born on April 20, 1954, the birth date of her ‘true’ father, Adolph Hitler who was born on April 20, 1889.

The means of Angela Merkel’s birth, as detailed in these documents, was based upon the research of the German Doctor Carl Clauberg, and though classified as one of the worst Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ doctors, and convicted by the Soviet Courts as being a ‘war criminal’, was nevertheless freed by the Soviets as he was recognized as being the ‘Father’ of artificial insemination.

According to these reports, Doctor Clauberg was released by the Soviets after serving only seven years of his sentence in return for turning over to the KGB his hidden files on his Nazi artificial insemination experiments and, more horrifically, the frozen sperm of the former Nazi Dictator, Adolf Hitler.

Upon their receipt of the Nazi files on artificial insemination, along with Hitler’s frozen sperm, the Soviet Politicheskoye Buro (Politburo) authorized the experiments to ‘resurrect’, ‘if possible’, a child bearing the ‘genetic markers’ of Adolph Hitler.

Eva Braun

Doctor Clauberg then brought to the GDR (Communist East Germany) the wife of Adolph Hitler, Eva Braun's, youngest, and most devoted to the Third Reich, sister, Gretl to be the ‘surrogate’ mother for the intended offspring of the Hitler’s frozen sperm. It was ‘reasoned’ that the combining of the genes between Hitler’s sperm and Eva Braun’s closest family would produce for the Soviets a ‘near match’ of what a child of Hitler and Eva Braun would have been, should one have been born.

Eva and Gretl

Upon the birth of Angela Merkel in 1954 it was ‘agreed upon’ by the Soviets, Americans and the Vatican, that she would be ‘placed’ under the ‘control’ of the Catholic Church through its ‘connections’ with the GDR Lutheran Church, and whom she was in fact placed with. Doctor Clauberg, after the birth of Hitler’s Daughter, and upon his return to West Germany was promptly imprisoned and then murdered almost two years later while still in custody of the West German and Americans.

In the, aforementioned, ‘agreement’ between the Soviets, the Western Powers and the Vatican, the ‘ascendancy’ of Hitler’s Daughter to power could not be achieved until the Vatican also brought to power a German Pope, and which was accomplished in 2005 following the death of Pope John Paul I, and which then brought to power the former German Nazi Joseph Ratzinger, and who is now known as Pope Benedict XVI, and who assumed the Leadership of the Roman Church on April 20, 2005 following his election the previous day.

(It goes without mentioning the significance of the present Nazi Pope taking power on the 116th birthday anniversary of Adolph Hitler.)

Quickly following the Nazi German Pope to European power, Hitler’s Daughter was elected as the Chancellor of Germany on November 22, 2005, and which is one of the most significant dates for the World Globalists, as it was on November 22, 1859 that the ‘final assault’ upon Christianity was made with the publishing of Charles Darwin’s "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection", and whose intention of fragmenting the Western Worlds peoples from their truest origins, and meanings, has succeeded beyond their expectations.

Today, the Daughter of Hitler, holding the same office as her father, Chancellor of Germany, is now the most powerful human being on our Earth as she is also the President of the European Union (EU) and the head of the powerful Western Economic Block known as the G-8.

More concerning, however, is that her Father's dream of uniting Europe under German/Vatican control through war is now to be accomplished by his Daughter using deception. For as we have been taught from our ancient past, in the uniting of the Continent begins the destruction of our present World, and which as the New Comet runs, and as Mabus* has died, begins the tribulations of awakening and Final Destruction of the dragons of old.

Someone sent me yet another 'The Sky is Falling' operetta written by Sorcha Faal ("as reported to her Russian subscribers") which I've re posted below. I'm amazed by the number of people who are sucked in by this rank promoter of doom & gloom anxiety; a fear monger in the fullest sense of the word. Sure, she raises front page concerns and issues, but these "issues" are CREATED and generated by the Illuminati in order to manipulate you into following THEIR scripted agenda-which is to get you to run around in circles in a continuous state of apprehension and insecurity. Don't be mislead by people who attempt to posture themselves as 'fearless reporters', such as Ms. Faal. She and others like her are MINIONS of the Illuminati propaganda apparatus. Use your brains and recognize that these propagandists are trying to sow anxiety, fear, and uncertainty in order to keep you off balance and misdirect you down a rabbit hole brimming with orchestrated terror scenarios, exaggerations, and obfuscations.

We asked Benedict Crumplethorne, SQA's principal spokesman to comment.

This is all rather apolcalyptic and millenarian for my liking and I don't want to compromise my professionalism by commenting in too much detail. Certainly don't expect me to research all the statements! I would say however, that for the new pope to begin his reign (he is ruler of the Papal States) on the birthday of Adolf Hitler is not exactly a triumph of public relations, especially as his apologists have been keen since to emphasise he was an unenthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth.

We thanked Benedict for his contribution on this sensitive subject.

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index973.htm

The trouble with Ernest Pottergill

2007-06-13T17:06:00.000+01:00

No stranger to political posturings, impassioned views and the interventions of interlopers, Garth Bland, beleaguered county archivist of Loamshire has been wrestling with the latest of the many challenges facing him.

Sir Roger Twit's Almshouse, Bloggsbridge

For some time Loamshire Record Office has been home to the records of the ancient Sir Roger Twit’s Charity, founded in the late 16th. Century by, as one might suppose, Sir Roger Twit. Twit rose to some local prominence as one of Queen Elizabeth I’s minor administrators and in his latter days became disposed to relieve the condition of the paupers of Bloggsbridge, the county town of Loamshire, the legislative efforts of his glorious queen notwithstanding. By his will therefore, he established the charity whose name commemorates him to this day.

The collection had only occasionally been subject to the depradations of the curious, the genealogically inclined and a few chance users who had irritatingly found the Internet version of its list a useful inroad into some otherwise obscure and forgotten technicality of history. Until one day Miss June Piddler, clerk to the trustees, rang him, that is.

Now Garth had had some previous contact with Miss Piddler. She had always made it plain she was irritated at the lack of progress in his office's listing of the unlisted part of the collection. Naturally it would cut no ice with her or the trustees that Garth and his colleagues had a vast backlog of unlisted collections, that they were snowed under with exhibitions on ethnic minorities or that management of the collection was commensurate with the office’s business plan.

She had been approached by that most amenable of freelance archivists, Ernest Pottergill DPhil, who had proposed just the solution. For a suitable fee, he would list not only the unlisted portion of the collection but would re-list the listed portion of the collection too. How kind of him. Would Garth mind letting Dr. Pottergill take the material away to undertake this work? Naturally it would be returned on completion.

The staff room at Loamshire Record Office was buzzing. A freelance archivist touting his services to their depositors behind their backs? A major depositor disregarding their longstanding arrangement with Loamshire County Council? Loamshire Record Office treated as merely a convenient record store at the disposal of freelance archivists? No consultation on such a significant exercise? A complex, large and ancient collection arranged and listed by an unqualified person? How to incorporate the new list, especially the electronic version, into their finding aids and online database? How to avoid anomalies in the numbering? The cheek of it.

Garth considered his best course of action. Dr. Pottergill was not a qualified archivist and as he was not, and could not be a member of SQA, no disciplinary action could be taken against him through SQA. Dr. Pottergill was a member of the rival Society of Archivists [sic] but disciplinary action through that body seemed unlikely and in any case their membership was open to non-archivists. One could sympathise with Miss Piddler for being impressed with Dr. Pottergill’s paper credentials. To the wider public, membership of the Society of Archivists naturally implied all its members were unambiguously archivists, qualified by some means or other to undertake professional archive work. There was no choice in the matter: Garth had to agree to the scheme.

In the event, Garth met with Dr. Pottergill and Miss Piddler, stated some of his concerns about the lack of prior notice, the benefits of properly scoping such a project and the need for careful planning and collaboration from that point onwards. He tactfully left unstated the ethical issue of a depositor dealing with a third party behind his back and the matter of Dr. Pottergill's lack of training and professional qualification.

And so there the matter rested, if not quite to the satisfaction of all the interested parties.

Turning point

2007-06-12T11:34:00.000+01:00

SQA's concerns about the implications for archives of EU Directive 80/181 have been expressed in these pages several times.

The Directive required the ending of dual Metric/Imperial usage or so-called Supplemental Indications with effect from 1 January 2010 with grave consequences for British literary and archival heritage. SQA was not alone in interpreting the Directive as being applicable to all situations and Christopher Booker echoed our concerns in his Sunday Telegraph features. Booker has stated "it would become a criminal offence to make any written mention of the hated non-metric measures in sales literature, on packaging or anywhere else" (article in full)

Most importantly, archivists were faced with the prospect of having to compile descriptive lists, describe documents and provide exhibition interpretation in metric only, quite anachronistically and more important than that, unhelpfully to a public almost entirely conversant with only Imperial units.

However, the European Commission has stated its intention to allow dual measurements and supplementary indications indefinitely, in keeping with similar arrangements for British road signs and pints.

This startling victory for common sense, British heritage and archival description and interpretation is almost the single-handed achievement of John Gardner, Director of the British Weights and Measures Association who has orchestrated a strong and united response from British and European industry and even the UK government itself, to an EU consultation exercise on changes to weights and measures directives.

This change of mind is apparently the result of industry's clamour against hugely expensive conversion and an unnecessary one at that, driven by the need to trade without penalty with the USA, the world's biggest market place. The USA is steadfastly Imperial and any limited metrication there is being reversed, as exemplified by the Californian State Railways.

Neil Herron, inveterate Metric Martyr

Neil Herron, mastermind of John Prescott's defeat in the North Eastern Euro Region's referendum in connection with the proposed pilot elected regional assembly there and Metric Martyr, has also played an important part. Claims by a Conservative MEP to have influenced the outcome can be discounted as merely an attempt to steal votes from the UK Independence Party.

We close by echoing Christopher Booker's concerns about the general context in which these developments have taken place. The UK remains in the EU and is fully beholden to the European Commission and its directives and the stranglehold of the various EU treaties. There has been no change to our continuing loss of sovereignty and no powers yet surrendured to the EU have been returned. The episode represents a turning point rather than a reversal. However, archivists can continue to use Imperial units in their work.

It now only remains to take the anti-metric campaign to our European neighbours to ensure their road signs and goods labelling is dual for the convenience of British and American visitors. Fair's fair.

Awakening

2007-04-28T10:52:00.000+01:00

SQA has been raising the alarm about the effect of the total cultural, economic and political abolition of Imperial weights and measures (under EU Directive 80/181, which comes into force on 1 January 2010) in the heritage context for more than two years now. It appears our fears are increasingly being shared.

Europhile Dim Leb MPs are looking desperately for ways to neutralise the UK Independence Party whose candidates secured a greater number of votes in the last European Parliamentary elections.

John Hemming MP

On 18 April 2007, Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) tabled the following early day motion:

That this House notes the concerns of model engineers and other heritage engineering workers that they may not be allowed to use imperial measurements subsequent to the EU Directive 80/181; recognises that this could do a considerable amount of damage to the maintenance of imperial heritage engineering and the model engineering sector; and calls for an urgent review by the Government of mechanisms to facilitate the continuation of this aspect of British heritage, which may include a permanent derogation from this aspect of the directive facilitating the reporting of measurements in both imperial and metric units.

The motion is signed by the following MPs: Peter Bottomley, Ann Cryer, Andrew George, Mike Penning, Bob Russell, Bob Spink and David Taylor.

Presumably the other 638 MPs whose names do not appear on this motion do not care about British heritage or were having a lie-in. At least heritage lobbyists and archives lobbyists can gain some indication from this motion which and how many MPs are worth lobbying on heritage issues and archival legislation in future. Not a lot.

It isn't merely a matter of sentiment over heritage. Mr. Hemming and his colleagues in the House of Commons are presumably unaware of the weight of business opinion opposed to compulsory metrification. The British Weights and Measures Association has published details of organisations lobbying the European Commission for a permanent waiver to metric-only usage. It includes the UK government and makes interesting and enlightening reading click here

Thus the resistance movement is much wider than we might think.

Of course SQA is mainly concerned to avoid the anachronistic use of metric units in archival description. The use of metric units out of historical context also amounts to falsification, something archivists must avoid at all costs as a paramount professional ethic. However, we are strategically minded enough to understand our concerns apply equally in other branches of heritage too, more strategically minded than Mr. Hemming whose only myopic concern is the continuation of this aspect of British heritage.

It is so sad museum interpretation panels so often give only metric units.

The preservation of heritage as a political justification in itself, is even recognised in the Aesopian language of the European Union's recent Declaration on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the signature of the Treaties of Rome which proclaims:

We preserve in the European Union the identities and diverse traditions of its Member States. We are enriched by open borders and a lively variety of languages, cultures and regions.

Oh really? Don't British weights and measures come into this?

And by the way, please could one of our many highly educated MPs mention archives sometime? Surely our national documentary heritage extending from the Domesday Book to the 1901 census is as worthy of an early day motion as model engineering?

Further reading

Save Our Cultural Heritage

More EU hypocrisy

2007-04-23T22:37:00.000+01:00

The watchdog Statewatch has lodged two complaints with the European Ombudsman concerning the European Commission’s failure to implement its own regulation on public access to documents (1049/2001)

Nikiforos Diamandouros, European Ombudsman

This is a well intentioned step by Statewatch but merely in keeping with the activities of such truly Eurosceptic (i.e. critical and reformist rather than opposed) organisations which in fact impliedly support the EU and its constituent institutions without coming to the realisation they are terminally corrupt, intentionally unaccountable and permanently unreformable. In short, Statewatch is naïve.

The basis of Statewatch’s complaint is that the European Commission failed to maintain a proper public register of documents with only a fraction of those produced listed and failed to publish its annual report on access to documents for 2005 in the year 2006.

This is rather ironic as the UK and other members states’ Freedom of Information legislation was enforced by the European Commission, not that this is widely known.

The preamble to the regulation makes interesting reading as it contains fundamentally conflicting objects.

The second subparagraph of Article 1 of the Treaty on European Union enshrines the concept of openness, stating that the Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen.

Openness enables citizens to participate more closely in the decision-making process and guarantees that the administration enjoys greater legitimacy and is more
effective and more accountable to the citizen in a democratic system. Openness contributes to strengthening the principles of democracy and respect for fundamental
rights as laid down in Article 6 of the EUTreaty and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Openness? Presumably this is the same oppenness proclaimed by Angela Merkel in the recent Declaration on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the signature of the Treaties of Rome.

It is not clear to which state citizenship refers, the EU as a supra-national superstate in the making, the residual member states and what rights appertain. We find the unashamed mention of the ever closer union upon which the British and many other nations have not voted and an Aesopian mention of democracy, which is certainly not of the Parliamentary kind with its notions of the people holding their government accountable through elections. Our government is now the European Commission and it is unaccountable and talk of transparency is merely manipulation and Luciferian fog, while the EC green paper seeks to undermine and reinterpret their own regulations as noted by Statewatch in their briefing notes (click here)

So much for a progressive future under the EU and so much for Statewatch as a pressure group.

Further reading
Freedom of Information in the European Union (Statewatch)

European Parliament’s recommendations

The European Commission’s green paper