It is live. For an hour. And all very… urban and cool and all things that I am not.

Wish me luck. And follow/support me @alexandralswann

Gah!

Contact Name – Alexandra Swann – 00322 284 5764
Release Date – IMMEDIATE

“MEP demands enquiry into the RSPCA’s politically motivated prosecutions”.

Roger Helmer MEP, UKIP Member of Parliament for the East Midlands, has today written to the Charity Commission to call for an investigation into the apparently political activities of the RSPCA, which appears to be in breach of its charitable status.

The RSPCA has recently launched a private prosecution against the Heythrop Hunt, situated within the Prime Minister’s constituency. This decision to issue summonses on an extraordinary 52 separate Hunting Act charges has a clear political motive, in breach of the Charity Commission’s code of conduct. An RSPCA spokesman suggested in a telephone conversation that the action could cost “millions” of pounds and this comes at a time when the RPSCA has publicly discussed its severe financial difficulties as it consults on 130 staff redundancies.

Roger Helmer says: “We all support the RSPCA when it sticks to its core task of protecting and rescuing suffering animals. But when it engages in contentious political campaigns, it calls into question its right to charitable status”.

ENDS

Fun fun fun.

Given their finances are in such a state, one might think they would focus their efforts on the task at hand – the reason that most donators contribute a portion of their post-tax earnings – saving fluffy from abuse and giving refuge to ponies. This is not the case.

The RSPCA is currently launching one of the biggest animal rights related private prosecutions in history against the Heythrop Hunt , aka David Cameron’s local hunt whose kennels are just outside Chipping Norton, under the Hunting Act of 2004 – one of the most odious, illiberal, almost comically useless and truly class-war driven pieces of legislation in history. Despite their apparent financial turmoil the RSPCA is content to spend a huge amount of money on what can only be described as a politically motivated campaign, something outlawed by the Charity Commission. The case comes before magistrates in Banbury, Oxfordshire, on June 1.

I had quite an interesting chat with the RSPCA press team today.

Masquerading as a virulentleftwinger final year politics student writing a dissertation on the Ban and it’s enforcement, I asked for any information they could give me about the Heythrop prosecution. The answer, unsurprisingly, was no; the RSPCA would confirm only that the prosecution is going ahead because “these prosecutions cost us millions of pounds, we would not want to jeopardise this action…”
upon further pressing…
“well, I cannot tell you how much that will cost but more than a few thousand”.
Interesting, I said. What a worthwhile cause. Just a final question, however… Would she be so kind as to confirm that these legal costs are fully funded by charitable donations?
“Oh yes” she replied, rather too chirpily. I wished her luck and hung up.

It is an absolute scandal that a charity is choosing to spend its donations on high-profile political cases rather than the genuine protection of abused animals – the sort of abused animals that appear with huge doleful eyes on their evocative posters and campaign cards. It is also a blatant abuse of the court system which will further cost the taxpayer. None of those summonsed, nor anyone else involved with the Heythrop Hunt have even been questioned by the police or RSPCA over any of the allegations which all allegedly occurred. This is surely the action of a pressure group, a campaign force, not a charity and I truly doubt that most donators have a clue where their money is going. Going to do a bit of digging.

“Soaring Energy Bill : an EU failure ?”

” While the risks of a global economic collapse have never been so high, nor austerity measures so hard on Europeans in recent years, consumers have for several years seen their energy bills continually increase. Energy suppliers expect a further 30% increase over the next five years for consumers. Why is the EU unable to protect and defend consumers and industry? Are the integrated market for energy and the “20-20-20″ efforts still relevant – if they ever were? What role should nuclear power play in the future? What about new geo-energy supplies and new geo-technologies? What might be a sensible European response? ”

I echo the sentiments of my boss in believing that the EU driven climate change agenda does little but push increasing numbers of people into fuel poverty while driving jobs and investment offshore – all for very little. Nuclear power and shale gas need to be given greater consideration than the impressively inefficient, ruinously expensive and terribly ugly wind farms or biomass which actually increases atmospheric CO2 for up to 50 years.

Should be an interesting event and it is brilliant to see someone in the EU posing the question, even if it had to be our group doing so.

In amongst the standard rules, procedures, plenary discussions and undrinkably vile coffee (strange thing about the EP – fantastic coffee in the bars, hideous stuff in meetings – perhaps why most Eurocrats spend more time in bars than working?) were a few points worth noting for the wrong reasons.

It seems that all languages are generally catered for except Irish/Gaelic. Irish MEPs are allowed to use their own langauge if they wish but should they choose to do so there will be no translation available for non-Irish speaking MEPs. Is this because the pesky Irish insist on voting no to further EU integration? Actually no, it is due to “insufficient resources”. I am always in favour of the EU spending less money but after the past weekend’s fiasco of ageing DJs, laughter yoga and more free EPP pens/bags/ducks than I care to think of, is the EU really choosing to discriminate against multilingualism?! Europhile propaganda trumps language provision for a member country. Insanity.

Then was discussed the different ways of voting: by hand, electronic, paper, roll-call or secret. The perversity of secret voting aside, the chap manhandling Powerpoint went on to explain that “the only type of vote you need to correct (if the MEP accidentally votes the wrong way) is roll-call, because it is only then that the name of the MEP is recorded rather than the number of votes”.

To get this right… a man working on behalf of the Parliament, assigned the role of training Parliamentary Assistants, is genuinely stating that it does not matter if the MEP votes the wrong way, so long as noone can find out afterwards. This is utterly appalling! These are laws affecting however many millions of people’s lives across the EU – and yet, to the EP, mistakes do not matter. Assistants should only worry if their MEP is about to get into trouble. This reminds me of something that happened in mini-plenary last week, and I am sure many times previously, where an MEP asked for voting to stop for a second because amongst the 64 pages of votes he had just made a mistake. “No, we do not have time” was the answer. THESE ARE LAWS! Argh.

Today is the first day of my fourth week working at the European Parliament and – for the second time in 4 weeks – I have a three day week courtesy of Europarl´s love of public holidays. Not content with wasting hundreds of thousand of euros on “Europe Day” propaganda this weekend (actual amount currently under investigation by my office…), the Eurocrats have decided that because Thursday is a Belgian holiday we shall also have Friday off.

It may seem obvious to say “bugger it” and go in to work anyway but when Europarl shuts, it shuts. Because I have not yet been here three months, my pass is only at the second level of security access so the building itself needs to be open with bag scanners in action for me to get in. On Saturday, PropagandaDay Europe Day saw the building fully open to tourists so getting in to do a few hours work should have been easy. But, of course, nothing here is so simple. Upon entering the building (wearing a pass) I was stopped en route to the office by a guard who told me that we are not open for work, only for Euro celebrations, meaning that spending tax-payers’ money is totally fine but actually doing any work is not. I made it in anyway through a friendly usher and sneaking through a fire door but that is not the point.

Here’s to another three day week in an undemocratic, wildly bureaucratic and terrifyingly expensive experiment of a “Parliament”. Of course, it is your taxes funding it.

Better off out…

Today a friend of mine (from the left, no less – a leftwinger who gives a damn about individual rights, how novel) sent me a link to an article in the Indy about plans to microchip festival wristbands in the name of “cutting queue times, clamp down on fraud and even allow festival goers to update their facebook pages”. Wahey. Personally, I am yet to find a way of updating my facebook page without a desktop computer and festival fraud disturbs my sleep nightly…

Using similar technology to an oyster card, the wristbands will track individuals across festivals or beyond and “gauge how popular each band is”; for me there are two obvious, glaring yet very different risks here. Primarily, why should individuals be tracked; how will this data be used; and what will be done with it after the crushed Carling cups and desecrated tents are cleared away?Granted, these are private companies not the state but even more reason to fear the information may be sold. More importantly, perhaps: what will this mean for newer, less successful, non-mainstream bands? If “popularity” is measured in such a way then how long until commercial revenue trumps taste and festivals line-ups the world over are taken over by the idocy of popular opinion and tragic mediocrity or Katy Perry reign supreme?

I’ve been to a fair few festivals in my many years and will once again be heading to Serbia for EXIT in July – there’s no doubt that being able to pay for drinks with a wristband would be convenient (although rather dangerous , which I suppose is part of the point) but given the choice between idly waving my wrist in the air or having it chipped, swiped and monitored in the name of “convenience” takes very little thought. Without clear limits to how the data will be used, stored and then destroyed I think objection o this is worth more than accusations of libertarian scaremongering. I want to leave a festival with a wristband covered in mud, beer and the essence of festival filth- not a pseudo nectar card.

Obviously this websit is painfully out of date- I am definitely no longer 23 nor a Tory but rebranding has been back of my priority list behind starting new job, moving to Brussels and settling into the rather wondrous UKIP family (a life without censorship after so long… incredible).

Please bear with me until this website turns purple (and watch me on BBC3′s Free Speech panel Wednesday 8pm GMT)