Since my original post on the subject of Andrew Withers and his morally dissolute treatment of those, myself included, who had held out a hand of friendship to him, I have been careful not to add further comment to the forest fire that subsequently raged throughout the Libertarian Party.
I had no inkling when writing my post that it would pose more questions than would ever be answered, and certainly no inkling that it would ultimately result in the rigor mortis, if not actual death, of the Libertarian Party.
I have watched with great sadness the betrayal felt by the many good people who had given freely of their time and money in the hope that a movement was being established which would counter the ever increasing state control which exists in Britain today.
It would appear, from everything that I have read, that Withers would prefer to see the death of the Libertarian Party than answer to the many members who wished to know where the tens of thousands of pounds that they had sent him, had actually gone.
The inference drawn by most rational people, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, is that the money had been used for the benefit of Withers, not the Libertarian movement.
I am today breaking my silence to draw attention to a blog post which has truly shocked me. I would ask that you re-tweet the post and alert as many people as possible to the allegations contained therein.
I cannot say whether the allegations are true or not – I am fresh out of hospital and don’t intend to spend any more time on the computer than I have to – but if it is true that Withers is once again advertising for people to send him money in the belief that they are supporting Libertarian principles under the circumstances outlined in that blog post – via an accommodation address, without so far having answered to the original members of the Libertarian Party as to the whereabouts of the many thousands of pounds they have already given him, then it is outrageous.
I would strongly advise anyone against giving their credit card details, or sending money to this accommodation address until they have fully satisfied themselves as to the credentials of the people behind the web site and the use to which the money is to be put.
Do please read this post and make your own investigations before parting with any cash. The “Andrew P Withers Benevolent Society” has far too many members as it is.
I understand that Avon and Somerset Police have issued a crime reference number to handle enquiries from people who may have reason to believe that money they have sent to the Libertarian Party has been misused – you may find it useful.
FSC/7858/11.06.2011/01
http://outspokenrabbit.
Updated to add: Further information http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2011/07/withers-goes-it-alone/
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
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Welcome back Anna, I’ll need to alter my pc browser settings to use the link, but your topic summarises it anyway. Get well soon.
To mount this sort of stunt, Withers must have boundless faith in the idiocy of human beings.
Thank you for providing the crime number. Having cancelled the standing orders whereby I was sending money to LPUK on a monthly basis almost from the day I joined it, I rather think I am going to make use of it.
” boundless faith in the idiocy of human beings.”
Sadly he is probably correct in his belief, there are some stunningly stupid people out there!
Woodsy42 beat me to it!
Glad you are out of hospital. Have good, fast and enjoyable convalescence.
I thought I had become un-shockable long ago, but the antics of Withers and his mates take your breath away.
This new website asking for money contains no information, it doesn’t say who will be getting the money, or what it will be used for.
Although this website passes itself off as the LPUK, including quoting its registration number with the Electoral Commission, the Party has not authorised any move from the old lpuk.org domain nor has it approved a change of Party address to the accommodation address that they are using.
The site doesn’t give the names of any people who might be responsible for it, but as Withers is still controlling Party accounts and records I can only assume that it is him.
Take note of the warnings everybody. We know that all the money given to the LPUK has gone and Andrew Withers has failed to account for what he did with it. Don’t let him get his hands on any more of your money. If you have paid a subscription or made a donation to the LPUK and you are concerned that your money may have been misappropriated, the right course of action for you is to add your complaint to those already registered with Avon & Somerset Police.
I’m glad to here you are recovering, Anna. Withers will not be getting my money. But I cannot decide if he is deluded or crooked – perhaps both?
I’d be grateful if I could flag up something by Ken Ferguson on the same theme – many thanks to him for writing this post, and it may have been run here itself in the absence of this post:-
http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/2011/07/coongate-cover-up.html
The majority of the regional blogs now redirect to the Paypal page.
http://www.blogger.com/profile/17499979740864497256
What? Yet another getting on board that pointless bandwagon of freedom of the individual? What’s up, feeling left out were you?
It’s a movement, in its multitude of guises, birthed by, run by and popped-up-on-the-telly by, weirdos, racists, bigmouths and all-round bigots (e.g., Theresa Gormless and that McWhirter bloke in their Freedom Org. thang), who have no idea what the logical end is to their spaced out notion of what individual freedom represents. Fookin’ chaos!
This great country, Britain, is slowly evolving into the 51st state. Laissez-faire has just failed again after monetarism fell flat on its face. Both these extreme forms of capitalism have found their way back here from across the pond; from Friedman and his daft free lunch dogma to Stelzer and his cosmic wandering on this ‘n’ that, ain’t you just had enough of their “freedom”?
It’s about time we got back to some collective responsibility to neuter the grotesquely disproportionate power this madness gifted to the hands of a few greedy and hubristic bankers, media tycoons, and button-pressing yobbo-yuppies in the City. I never voted for any of them – did you?
Shame on you for even positing the idea the Government here interferes in our lives too much. The endgame to libertarianism is that of an elite few being much more “individual” than the majority thus “free” to do what they like to the same.
Have none of you ever read any of the musings of that arch anti-democrat, Edward Bernays? Read some, change things for the better, cut out all this daft tilting at the windmills of the worst sort of idealism, then get on with your lives.
I’m interested in your opinions, and I would like to receive one of your pamphlets…
/sarc
I’m interested in your opinions, and I would like to receive one of your pamphlets…
/sarc
Ain’t you just a witty gal.
Yes
You show me some real capitalism then we can see how well you have deconstructed it. This gangster capitalism around at the moment is a million miles from Friedman.
Sung to the tune of Tannenbaum (The Red Flag)
The people’s Eck comes on and rants
Suspect he’s soiled his underpants
It’s student hols this year again!
They whinge and whine and cause us pain
Tho’ poets laugh and Julias sneer
Soap dodgers come back every year
What a surprise Ferguson spends three years as ‘Pagar’ undermining the lpuk. Wrecks the party website through incompetence then proceeds over to Auntie Anna who has no idea if the allegations are true but can be guaranteed to repeat them regardless.
There is more than one crime number in process relating to our Mr Ferguson and those files are growing as the weeks pass.
Withers is not a signatory on any lpuk account. The telephone number is the same used since January. The paypal account is the same used for the last four years and is under the contol of four members.
Withers is not the only person the coterie of former civil servants with obscene payoffs for alleged stress have been attacking for months, never letting facts get in the way of a good smear and lies.
Pete, have we met or are you fictional?
OK Pete, who are the four members? Where do you get this detailed inside knowledge that has been denied to LPUK members?
We know that the crime reported against Withers is misappropriation of funds. What crimes are you suggesting might have been committed by Ken Ferguson?
When John Watson resigned as treasurer, that position reverted to Withers as the leader. If Withers is no longer a signatory to LPUK accounts who has he given the signature rights to? By what authority has Withers transferred control of the accounts when he has not had any such decision approved by the National Coordinating Committee of the LPUK?
And finally Pete, is your other name Withers?
“And finally, Pete, is your other name Withers?”
Or do you just play one on the Internet?
The main thing that Andrew Withers ever had to do was to open the LPUK expenditure accounts to all concerned LPUK members.
There would seem no reason not to do so other than a desire not to reveal them.
From what I understand these accounts are still secret.
Any other issues are red herrings.
Old Slaughter: “Gangster capitalism” as you put it is an inevitable consequence of the fairy tale Friedman managed to sell to the Josephs thus the Thatchers of his day.
Laissez-faire for the “individual with a vote” is nearer the mark. It is ego-driven, self-deluding and only ever ends in misery. Again, again, again …
Interestingly, it is always the majority who never did and never will vote for it who suffer most on its inevitable collapse. And the “middle class”, whose members in the main are just as culpable as a grouping for the current mess, get all the sympathy.
Now they incessantly whine away with a totally unearned sense of entitlement to this and that, blaming everything and anybody but themselves for the obvious to all others contribution they made to their own downfall; worse, the misery it invoked on the still larger innocent majority.
The thing is, an infant could have predicted today’s economic privations way back in the early 1980s when monetarist ideology was foisted upon us.
So “real capitalism” is an oxymoron. When successive governments here, mostly Tory, embraced monetarist ideology it evolved in the only way it could: less and less regulation of it and a concentration of influence and power over the economy in the hands of certain individuals and financial institutions.
Thus leverage over our politicians by the media tycoons whose “interests” were/are best served in perpetuating the situation. As I’ve said before – I didn’t vote for the latter of those. Did you?
And please, no economic theorising in return on how this or that could have worked better, or might have rectified things at junctures along the way. The Tories agreed with New Labour’s leave-it-alone naivety, thinking they were simply doing the business on behalf of their own economic tenets. When in opposition and all seemed set fair they claimed original ownership of it often enough, indeed they crowed about it.
The point is, no-rules activity in the hands of human beings can lead only to chaos. A sense of responsibility beyond the immediate goes out of the window. That isn’t decent in any sense of being English and British that I know of.
Livewire: Don’t be silly. I’m not a student (can’t folk like you do better than assume anyone who may just disagree with your world view must be: a student and/or a Communist?).
No doubt you believe there’s a worldwide Marxist conspiracy going on right under your bed.
Pillock.
Strawman
“Strawman”
Wow! How hurtful is that, flunkey?
‘Flunkey’ Are you reduced to name calling? You sad little man.
It wasn’t an attempt to be hurtful, it was merely highlighting the stupidity of your comment. If I thought it worthy of actually pulling apart in detail I would have elaborated.
Perhaps you should keep the hurling of insults to yourself or go to a site not normally associated with polite adults.
Your conduct ‘isn’t decent in any sense of being English and British that I know of.’
“Flunkey’ Are you reduced to name calling? You sad little man.”
Give us all a break. Your attempt above to justify what’s directly below is a perfect example of individual sadness.
It is that air of superiority practised online by certain folk who will never see what others see: an evident over-compensation for feelings of inferiority in real life.
“It wasn’t an attempt to be hurtful, it was merely highlighting the stupidity of your comment. If I thought it worthy of actually pulling apart in detail I would have elaborated.”
Who said it was “hurtful”? Only you. Why? And please, don’t bore me with childish threats of pulling anything apart. In detail or otherwise.
You’d only drive up and down that same old dead-end street where all so-called experts on monetarist economics shunt into each other.
Banal justifications in monotone on how an ideology works simply because it can only ever justify itself; as if it is some kind of god who cannot be denied.
Narrow and almost robotic arguments. And I’ve heard them all before.
“Perhaps you should keep the hurling of insults to yourself or go to a site not normally associated with polite adults.
Your conduct ‘isn’t decent in any sense of being English and British that I know of.’”
You do make me chuckle with this. While it’s true most Brits have a decent grasp of the concept of irony, a small number do not.
Self-parody can be amusing. Though it is always a sad character trait of those who are unaware they are sending themselves up in the first place.
You have my empathy. Because I’m decent. In the English and British sense.
No room for the reds, too many gold ingots and Krugerands stored there.
You’re relatively polite so we’ll be cordial, have fun converting people here to your point of view.
Oh, how nice, a bit o’ condescenscion. Typical.
Liked the gold and Krugerands thing, mind. Are you on the run?
I detect psychopathalogical comments consistent with con men whose preoccupations are their own egos and other peoples’ money.
But certainly nothing to do with exploring reality; the truth.
Straw men and red herrings, indeed.
Con man kedgeree.
“I detect psychopathalogical comments consistent with con men whose preoccupations are their own egos and other peoples’ money.
But certainly nothing to do with exploring reality; the truth.
Straw men and red herrings, indeed.
Con man kedgeree.”
You’re not a very good detective, are you? Or cook.
You sound like a poor man’s Matthew Parris. He thinks he’s a psychiatrist, too. The berk.
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