No fraud investigation against aviation fraud

Dear Mr. John,

I am shocked that you are not prepared to investigate this matter further, which must rank as one of the largest frauds ever.

It is clear who the victims are – they are the tax payers of this country, our youngsters and the next generation.

Flying Matters lobbies on behalf of the aviation industry and they are paid for by the aviation industry. It is their job to remove impediments in way of the aviation industry. There is no political restriction to stop their behaviour as all three main parties support expansion of the aviation industry. Now your actions demonstrate that they will also suffer no legal consequences either.

You have demonstrated that “might is right” by your inaction.

The facts are clear; Flying Matters have made deliberate false claims about future technical progress expected from the aviation industry and these claims form the backbone of their arguments, by their own admission they have achieved gain for their sponsors by getting the Conservatives to drop their quality of life agenda and green taxes, (see section Key Projects 2007-9). If you have done any investigation, you will also have discovered that the false claims of technical progress where crucial in getting the aviation industry of the hook in the ETS. If this is not serious fraud, it is hard to imagine what is.

You may have seen in the news today that the students are rioting - hardly surprising. They are being simultaneously told that they are going to be the ones that will pick up the problems of global warming, energy shortages and the government deficit, while simultaneously being crippled with student debt. At the same time, they watch helplessly as organisations such as the aviation industry subvert the democratic process to avoid paying fair taxes that reflect the extreme damage that they do the environment.

Our society is held together by a common belief that it is in everyone’s interest to obey the law. When it becomes clear that the law will not be upheld or applied selectively to support the interests of a powerful minority against the interests of the majority, then the perfect environment for societal breakdown is created.

I trust that you will reconsider your position and initiate the investigation that is warranted, and I look forward to hearing from you with an updated position.

Kevin Lister


--- On Tue, 7/12/10, +EIU wrote:


From: +EIU

Subject: RE: Fraudulent Lobbying of by Flying Matters.

To: "'Kevin Lister'"

Date: Tuesday, 7 December, 2010, 11:21





Dear Mr Lister

Thank you for contacting the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and for informing us that you suspect you a fraud has taken place.

After consideration of the information you have provided to us, we have concluded that this is not a matter which is appropriate for investigation by the SFO. Accordingly, no further action will be taken by us and I hope the following will help explain why this is so.

The SFO is a relatively small, highly specialised government department that is permitted by law to investigate only those cases where there are reasonable grounds to suspect serious or complex fraud. For this reason, we take on only a small number of new cases each year and almost all of these are referred to us by the police or other law enforcement agencies.

That is not to say that the matter you have reported is any less important. It is essential that suspected offences are investigated expeditiously and our intention in informing you that this is not a matter for the SFO is to reduce the delay in it being brought to the attention of the appropriate organisation.

If you believe you are the victim of have information of anything other than the most serious or complex fraud, you should normally pursue the matter through your local police force. The police have primary responsibility within the UK for investigating all types of criminality including fraud and other offences of dishonesty.

In certain situations the information you have provided may be retained on our intelligence database for future reference. Information which includes any personal data (such as your contact details) will only be processed, retained or disclosed in accordance with the principles laid down in the Data Protection Act 1998. Please be assured that all information you have provided will be handled professionally and with the utmost sensitivity.

Once again, thank you for contacting the SFO and for bringing your concerns to our attention.

Yours sincerely,

Nigel John

Intelligence Officer

Flying Matters, SFO and Freedom of Information

Dear Neil Carmichael MP

It was nice to meet you this morning at the Nailsworth Market.

As discussed, I have been writing about aviation and climate change. The material dispels the idea that the aviation industry can be let off the climate change hook by using outdated figures to claim they only contribute 2% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Following this research, I wrote to Flying Matters which is the lobby group for the aviation industry to challenge the claims that they made on their web site, namely:

• The industry is committed to improving fuel efficiency of new planes by 50% by 2020.

• The industry is committed to getting emission down to 2000 levels by 2050 despite a trebling of air passengers.

I have asked Flying Matters to support these claims, but they told me they came from Sustainable Aviation, who in turn claimed that they came from the IATA. In other words, it is a shameless example of buck passing in the face of a total absence of quantified evidence to support their claims, see correspondance.
This is hardly surprising as to meet the first claim all new plane designs such as the A380 and B787 must be abandoned and replaced with some other undesigned plane. To meet the second claim simple maths shows emissions from all planes must reduce to just 22% from today’s levels. To achieve both of these will require the laws of thermodynamics to be violated.

Making fraudulent claims such as this is extremely serious, not least because they have been successful in developing the idea that technology will ameliorate their climate change impacts. They have stated that as a result of their work they have been successful in persuading the Conservative Party to drop green taxes and contributed to the party moving away from the quality of life proposals.

Crude analysis shows that if aviation paid a similar tax burden to other forms of transport, up to 20% of the public spending cuts could be avoided by raising an extra £10billion of taxes.

In addition to avoiding taxes, the aviation industry has also been successful in delaying the introduction of a cap on aviation emission in the European Carbon Trading Scheme (ETS) to 2020 on the basis of fraudulent claims about the capabilities of technical progress. It will be the general public that will be forced to make much more punitive cuts in their carbon allowances in the future to compensate for aviation emissions today.

It is therefore hard to think of a more serious fraud, and as a result I have submitted the evidence to the Serious Fraud Office.

The SFO have advised “We cannot provide you with feedback on how we have used the information you have provided.” I am therefore concerned that the SFO will not pursue this investigation as they may feel it is simply too difficult as task for them to take on.

I therefore would request the following from you:

• To raise in parliament and within the Conservative Party the question to what extent your party’s policies on aviation and taxation have been shaped by unsubstantiated technical claims from Flying Matters.

• To support a Freedom of Information request on the SFO with regard to the investigative work and conclusions they come to on Flying Matters’ fraudulent claims.


Regards,
Kevin Lister

Appeal to MP to support a world wide military air show ban

Dear Neil Carmichael MP,


I have read with interest the offer in the Stroud News and Journal you made this week to adopt a charity that you wish to support in the coming year.

I offer you a proposition:

I am starting a campaign for a world-wide ban on military air shows and would welcome your engagement and support. To understand the seriousness of this proposal, I ask you to consider the wider picture and imagine of what would happen if we were able to make it a success, and the path that it could lead to. Please read on:

1. The inescapable conclusion is that runaway climate change which will lead to the loss of most life on this planet by the end of this century is inevitable with business as usual. Despite this, no country has succeeded in making the required deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and no worthwhile international agreements have been achieved that have led to any carbon reductions. The appalling outcome from Copenhagen was but the latest in a series of disappointments and is made even worse by the revelation in the Guardian’s August 4th article that loopholes in the current agreement are so large as to make it worthless to the point that it will simply allow emissions to continue rising. The situation is so dire that the Copenhagen Accord is widely accepted to be a step backwards from the already ineffectual Kyoto agreement.

2. There are two interlocking and fundamental reasons that no worthwhile agreement has been made. Firstly no democratic government feels it has the mandate from its people to insist on the lifestyle changes necessary to allow the CO2 cuts we need - in fact none are even prepared to start the discussion. Secondly, agreeing to the cuts would compromise the power base that the developed world has over the developing, and that power base is delivered by the military-industrial complex which needs to be continually fed with vast amounts of fossil fuel.

The desire to hold on to this power base led directly to the “Danish text” at the Copenhagen Conference demanding that the developing world make cuts in their CO2 emissions in exchange for financial aid from the developed. This was a racist attempt to push for a two-tier emission world where the powerful continuing emitting whilst the weak are paid to die.

3. To have any realistic chance of combating climate change, we must make significant emission cuts now and at all levels of our society. The only way we can do this quick enough is to cut all unnecessary consumption. Whilst we may make progress on renewables and nuclear technologies in the long term, we no longer have the luxury of time on our side to implement these solutions. Even with the best possible scenarios, these much hyped new technologies will not provide the energy we need for our society to operate anywhere near its current standards and levels. Finally, unless there are restrictions to consumption, the fossil fuel savings made will simply be squandered elsewhere, such as the ridiculous sale of A380 Super Jumbos as private jets.

4. As our global society becomes increasingly unstable due to the combined effects of over population, resource shortages and climate change we will move towards a worldwide arms race which will exacerbate the underlying problems. These issues are already evident in the many conflict zones of today. As worldwide tension builds it will become increasingly unlikely that we will ever reach the international agreements that our survival depends on and which is already proving so hard to achieve. In the face of this continuing failure, rather than enlightening our population of the problems and seeking to educate them on the solutions, we do the opposite by glorifying war and fossil fuel consumption.

5. The glorification of war and fossil fuel consumption comes in many guises, from adverts for cruise holidays in the Caribbean, F1 racing and military air shows. However, it is the military airshows that stand out as a particularly pernicious target. They combine unwarranted displays of power and fossil fuel consumption together, with a government blessing that implies cutting CO2 emissions will always be someone else's job.

6. Given the above, achieving a worldwide ban on military air shows and other unnecessary displays of force is vital for the following reasons:

a. All long journeys start with a single step. To expect the worlds nations to agree on the massive cut backs necessary in a single step, such as that proposed at Copenhagen is fantasy. Better by far to try a series of small steps which lead to the end goal, and where each step allows confidence to be built up so the next step can be taken. So far, not a single significant step has been taken, not at Kyoto, not at Bali, not at Copenhagen.


b. Banning military air shows is an easy first step. No one suffers, all countries can be involved, it is verifiable and the logic is clear and obvious. Further more, it has precedent with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and Strategic Arms reduction agreements which were made at the height of the cold war and which are credited with saving us from nuclear Armageddon.


c. Governments around the world, but especially those in the developed nations, would be able to determine if they have the mandate from the people to make cuts in living standards and expectations necessary to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions that we need.


d. As airshows are predominantly events carried out by the powerful nations, it would send a message to the developing world about our determination to cut emissions - it is an action that is the polar opposite to the destructive Danish text of the Copenhagen Conference. This single action will speak louder than all the words that can be delivered and will be heard by leaders and populations alike.


e. The Fairford Air Tattoo, like many other similar events, is a shameless attempt to glorify militarisation, to seek a mandate from the tax payers to continue funding the arms trade, and to recruit our young people into the forces. This leads to self fulfilling prophesies where governments of the day become infatuated with the war machine at their disposal and are more inclined to wage war. You may remember Hans Blix’s recent statement that “George Bush was high on military” prior to the second Gulf War. This attitude in both our leaders and population at large is especially dangerous when we are rapidly moving to the brink with critical resource shortages, mass migration and other mounting pressures around the world.


f. A ban on military air shows can quickly be followed by similar bans on provocative military exercises, such as those being held off the Iranian and Chinese coasts. These lead directly to increased tensions and arms races around the world, at a time when we can least afford such distractions. The recent reports of China's development of new anti-aircraft carrier capability in direct response to the US exercises off their coast is a case in point. These weapons which deliver mass death within seconds massively increase the chance of an accidental holocaust, whilst simultaneously diminishing the chance of achieving successful agreements on climate change.


g.  If tensions can be reduced, then a space opens up for the kinds of intentional agreements that are so urgently needed, such as the introduction of carbon rationing or carbon taxation. Defusing of tensions is the first step to sapping the lobbying strength of the military-industrial complex that worked so hard on undermining the last Copenhagen agreement and it will allow recognition that we must enter a difficult era of international co-operation rather than international competition.


The global response to climate change is reaffirming the ferocious law which states, "To he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away." Failure to challenge this law will lead us to world wide chaos and anarchy, yet challenging it will be the first step toward a genuine solution to climate change. Providing the right governance that we need in a planet afflicted by limits requires courage to do the things we would never expect nor imagine and to have the vision to see the path ahead.

This initiative needs political and activist support. If you are willing to provide the political support that is needed, I will explain to you the next steps that we are taking.

Finally, it has widely been stated that we need a crisis to galvanise the world wide response to climate change. This summer we have witnessed the deaths of thousands and destruction of the way of life for millions. If now is not the time, then when is?

Regards,

Kevin Lister