James O’Brien RIGHT To Kick BBW

Yesterday, LBC host James O’Brien opened a discussion on the subject of the Police using facial recognition software, and the case of one individual who had refused to be scanned by it. His first caller was Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch. But she did not get to talk about the cops and how they used their new software.

Just one thing ... this address of yours looks familiar ...

O’Brien had discovered that BBW is based at 55 Tufton Street, home of the so-called Taxpayers Alliance. And he doesn’t give a platform to groups like the TPA, who decline to say who pays the bills and salaries. So he asked Ms Carlo who paid her bills and salaries. She gave the same kind of response that the TPA always gives, claiming lots of ordinary people donate, and they aren’t named in order to respect their privacy.

This is disingenuous claptrap. As O’Brien pointed out, both the TPA and BBW were founded by Matthew Elliott. In the days when Zelo Street first featured the TPA and its tendency to falsehood, misinformation and smearing critics, BBW was actually described as “a project from … the Taxpayers’ Alliance”. The two organisations may no longer share staff, but they certainly did back in the day, as I discovered on a trip to Manchester.

Now who might live behind this front door?

The TPA invited its supporters to come and campaign alongside them in Ashton-under-Lyne early in September 2011. The total strength of the turnout was eight, just to show what grassroots support they don’t have. One of those who had travelled all the way from London to attend was Maria Fort. She was a BBW staffer at the time.

Attempting to persuade the Ashton locals that Tameside council was wasting lots of public money on rotten Lefty Trades Unions was so successful that a second outing, this time to Southampton, was later abandoned. It was a waste of time, and someone else’s money, but exactly whose money, we didn’t get to find out. And we won’t with today’s BBW.

What Ms Carlo also didn’t tell James O’Brien is that the BBW campaign against the so-called “Surveillance State” is a purely one-dimensional one. Attention is focused only on public bodies, and others who may be contracted to work for them. That is because BBW’s campaign to “roll back the surveillance state” is aimed at demonising and diminishing Government of any kind - the same aim as the TPA.

So those private security providers who routinely harass photographers, and indeed anyone who takes out a camera within the precincts of many modern buildings such as shopping centres, will not feature on BBW. Nor will firms providing their own physical and online security services get a hard time there. But if it’s the Police, local and national Government, the NHS, schools, and anything EU related - they’re on it straight away.

"A campaign from the founders of the Taxpayers Alliance"

What James O’Brien has discovered is yet another Astroturf lobby group claiming to have a grassroots base. It doesn’t. Silkie Carlo can bleat about having worked for Liberty, but that does not alter the fact of the matter: BBW was for several years a TPA sideshow, it shared resources with the better-known group, and its transparency level is zero.

O’Brien was right to deny Ms Carlo a platform. Now you all know why.

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