Above all Maude has nailed his personal and political colours to the mast of transparency in government. He recently stated
Transparency is at the heart of the Government's programme, which is why the Cabinet Office, at the heart of government, is taking the lead. All departments will open up their data in the weeks ahead.
The gushing honesty and openness goes on ...
We are pulling back the curtains to let light into the corridors of power._ By being open and accountable we can start to win back people’s trust. Openness will not be comfortable for us in government; but it will enable the public to hold our feet to the fire. This way lies better government. Transparency is key to our efficiency drive, and will enable the public to help us to deliver better value for money in public spending. Today is just the start of what we plan to do. We are determined to set an example for the wider public sector, and to create a ‘right to data’ as a core part of government business.
So who is the middle aged woman with the empty shopping basket? None other than Julia Middleton, Chief Executive Officer of the political charity Common Purpose, who enjoys a salary of circa £85,000 a year, largely from the taxpayer.
Common Purpose & Dirty Deals
Maude’s relationship with Middleton is an interesting one. Whist Maude is at the centre of a Conservative government supposedly committed to achieving massive public spending cuts, Middleton is hoovering up public money for its socialist ‘leadership’ training. But alongside the common purpose money comes cronyism, if not fraud.
A damning 11 page Confidential Surrey County Council Audit report dated September 2009 was commissioned after an internal investigation could not justify a £48,000 Council deal with Common Purpose to send four senior officers and ten external delegates on a CP training course. Several senior council officers, including the Chief Executive Richard Shaw had previously served on Common Purpose advisory panels and the Council’s normal procurement processes were waived when the contract was awarded. Amongst other criticisms of the Council’s relationship with Common Purpose, the report states:
It is the opinion of the auditor that value for money could not be demonstrated on the subsidy of 10 places on the Surrey [Common Purpose] InsideOUT programme.
Unreported by mainstream press and media, Sheffield City Council recently had its circa £1 billion public accounts frozen by the auditor due to irregularities concerning Common Purpose contracts. As with Surrey, Sheffield is already infested with Common Purpose graduates.
In other numerous documented examples, Common Purpose has used public facilities for free, casually arranged future payments from within public sector budgets such as with Education Leeds, broken Data Protection laws, and compiled a ‘Black List’ of members of the public asking reasonable questions concerning Common Purpose, public money, vested interests and probity. Since Common Purpose has its secretive graduates and supporters in both the Audit Office and the Information Commissioners Office, not to mention the police, courts and prisons, transparency is apparently not one of its finer points.
What should be of immediate interest to cost-cutting Tories though, is that Common Purpose has already leached some £100 million from the taxpayers public purse over 25 years to pay for their behavioural and neuro-linguistic based training, which is creating thousands of so called ‘graduate new leaders of society’. The vision of the new Common Purpose belief system is to re-order traditional British society to meet a utopian socialist political and cultural change agenda. The so called Third Sector, Charities and the Voluntary sector are at the heart of this change or paradigm shift.
We must also remember that Common Purpose was at the centre of the Blair NuLabour socialist administration, and operated in close partnership with Prescott’s empire of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office. So why the friendship between Common Purpose and Francis Maude?
Dear Francis, Love Julia - Dark Actors Behind The Scenes
True Conservatives will be shocked to learn that Maude and Cameron’s Cabinet Office are engaged in a secretive dialogue with Middleton to achieve a “Culture Change’ in the Top 200 civil servants using the “Common Purpose model.” An email obtained by the UK Column shows Common Purpose attempting to use her personal contact with Maude in the Cabinet Office to secure ‘training’ contracts. Dated 18 May 2010 the email states:
Dear Francis, I think we - and quite a few Common Purpose alumni from the civil service - could help with the culture change you need to bring about. Could I and David Bell (Chair of Common Purpose trustees) come and see you for five minutes? Love Julia
The overfamiliar ending “Love Julia” appears to be indicative of a very personal friendship between Middleton and Maude, and / or mirrors Middleton’s over-familiarity with other government officials from whom she has previously attempted to secure contracts.
Other documents obtained by the UK Column, reveal rather more to Middleton’s Common Purpose request than initially meets the public eye. In Senior Leadership Committee Minutes dated 9 June 2010 supplied by the Cabinet Office Item 7: Any other business states:
Running workshops for the Top 200 [Civil Servants] under the Common Purpose model was proposed. Committee members agreed to consider the costs.
Contrary to Francis Maude’s declaration that
Transparency is at the heart of the Government's programme, which is why the Cabinet Office, at the heart of government is taking the lead.
the Cabinet Office covering letter for the 9 June Minutes states:
The Summaries of the Senior Leadership Committee meetings have been edited in accordance with Section 1 of the Act [Data Protection Act], and ‘personal data’ relating directly to third parties or their employment has been removed.
Readers will appreciate that whereas the redacting or blacking out of information allows the public to see original documents, the “editing” of the Leadership minutes by the Cabinet Office, can ensure that information can be distorted or lost without trace - the process becomes as transparent as fog.
Why would Maude’s Cabinet office be so reluctant to release the truth? Despite the crude attempt at censorship the minutes suggest a classic case of insider dealing and conflict of interest. Gus O’Donnell sits as a Chairman of the Senior Leadership Committee. He is also Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service, which means he has authority over all civil servants, including their employment and promotion. Of particular interest in this case is that he appears an enthusiastic supporter of Common Purpose.
Janet Paraskeva (First Civil Service Commissioner) is also a Common Purpose supporter and senior graduate, and she has close links to Julia Middleton. Paraskeva attended both the 9 June Senior Leadership meeting and others.
Surprisingly David Bell is also a Senior Leadership Committee attendee under his Pearson business title, and yes he attended the 9 June meeting. Bell is, of course the very same David Bell Chair of Common Purpose Trustees as mentioned in Middleton’s original email to Maude. Aside from a personal involvement with over 23 companies, he is also involved with the Common Purpose driven Media Standards Trust, which allegedly aims to ‘protect’ the independence of the UK media using the assistance of the corporate sector, including international banks.
Unless Maude’s own Cabinet Office staff edited them out, there are no declarations of interest from the Common Purpose members present in the 9 June meeting, nor is there any indication of which other Leadership Committee members are themselves Common Purpose trained.
Insider dealing and failure to disclose their activities under cover of so called ‘Chatham House Rules’, are standard Common Purpose graduate practices. At the other end of the scale the Common Purpose networks have hidden paedophiles; witness Cameron recently photographed with Merseyside Common Purpose paedophile Mathew Byrne.
As we have already stated, documentary evidence for Common Purpose’s abuse of probity across the public sector is overwhelming, but Maude’s case is at the heart of a Tory Government supposedly committed to rooting out waste and ensuring transparency for the public.
Aside from Maude’s position as Chair of the new Public Transparency Board based at the Cabinet office, he also stars on Common Purpose’s website as an active supporter. Yet another conflict of interest?
Local Tories Dupes By Central Office
Before the last general election, many informed local Conservative party activists were becoming concerned about the political activities of Common Purpose, particularly where it was able to help implant and sustain a NuLabour socialist doctrine within the staff of Unitary Authorities, Councils, Quangos and the Third Sector by means of its secretive graduate networks. Local Councillors were quick to spot that Common Purpose ‘leaders’ amongst key Council Officers could effectively undermine and neutralise Conservative policy and values, even if the Tories were to be elected.
Across UK, Tory Councillors began to collect and report information on Common Purpose to Conservative Head office. Despite their growing concerns, they were told not to worry - Common Purpose would be rooted out from key organisations once Cameron was in power. In the meantime they were advised to watch, listen and report, but not to make a public noise. This advice can now be seen as a deliberate con trick by the heart of Cameron’s government. In line with the Fabian socialist agenda which advises “what we do with our hands we deny with our lips” Maude’s Cabinet office has been caught actively embedding the Common Purpose NuLabour socialist doctrine into the heart of the British Civil Service, by means of the ‘re-framing’ and ‘socialist re-education’ of the Top 200 Civil servants.
Further evidence that Cameron’s LibCon inner circle is a Blairite clone with common purpose is easy to find. The Cabinet Office has recently declared that it is to cut some 180 Quangos - the very unaccountable bodies that have been used to spread a new socialist agenda through the public sector and wider society with the help of Common Purpose. In a letter dated 26 August seen by the BBC, Maude suggested [apart from the 180 quangos to be cut] a further 124 quangos will be merged, 56 retained subject to "substantial reform", and 282 retained.
It sounds good, but thanks to the Taxpayers Alliance, we now know that In fact some 1162 Quangos exist with a total budget of some £64billion. So how many will really be left - most? Far from attacking this bureaucratic cancer and recovering the wasted billions, Cameron is creating another public smokescreen while he creates two super quangos - the Independent Board for the NHS and the Office for Budget Responsibility (Setting Britain’s Fiscal Framework). But the Common Purpose cancer is already well established in both the NHS, and the Treasury. For example Helen Bailey has overall responsibility in the Treasury for oversight of public spending on education and children; health; housing, communities and local government; and the UK's devolved countries and regions - representing in total over £250 billion a year of public spending. She is Common Purpose of course.
Whist Francis Maude betrays true Conservatives in the dark, David Cameron prefers just to ignore the concerns of ordinary Conservatives - in August this year, he launched a major Common Purpose International event in Bangalore India. Tories shouldn’t be surprised at his betrayal of them. Cameron did tell the 1922 Committee that they would need to “get used to the New World Order”.
The stated socialist doctrine has always been to establish a world socialist government, and Common Purpose International is already connecting Common Purpose socialist cells world-wide to assist the cause. True Conservatives should be aware that Julia Middleton’s shopping basket is far from empty. It’s just that the extreme socialist content can’t easily be seen.
