David Cameron's former SpAd convicted of making indecent photographs of children

One of David Cameron's former special advisors has escaped punishment after being convicted of child sex offences.

Patrick Robert John Rock de Bescombes faced 20 charges of possession of indecent images of underage girls which he downloaded at a golf club in America. It was investigated in the US but no charges were brought there as they didn't consider them pornographic. However, a jury here in England convicted him on 5 counts of making an indecent photograph of children, acquitted him on 3 counts and couldn't agree on the remaining 12.

The judge sentenced Rock to 2 years conditional discharge and 2 years on the sex offenders register, saying that his punishment was losing his reputation rather than prison.

David Cameron resigns

David Cameron has announced that he is resigning as an MP, triggering a by-election.

In announcing his resignation, Cameron said that remaining a back bencher would distract from the work of Teresa May's new government. But since his resignation as Prime Minister he has mostly been ignored as the arrogant, irrelevant failed politician that he is. It will be interesting to see what is being done to his Witney constituency in the boundary review that is being announced today and whether his currently safe seat swallows up any of the nearby Lib Dem leaning areas.

Taking Witney would be a mammoth task for UKIP but one that would shake the Tories to the bone.

EU accelerating Turkey's EU membership application next Thursday

The EU is opening a new chapter in Turkey's membership application next week.

A UK spokesman in Brussels told Associated Free Press:

In March, all member states agreed to open Chapter 33, during the Netherlands (six-month EU) presidency. This is a technical step to implement that agreement.

David Cameron has been one of the most vocal supporters of Turkey's EU membership application and there is even a dedicated team at the British embassy in Ankara to help Turkey join the EU.

David Cameron was told by civil servants in 2012 that he can't control immigration as an EU member

David Cameron's former Director of Strategy, Steve Hilton, has said that Cameron was told "explicitly and directly" by civil servants that it was impossible to get immigration below 100k whilst remaining a member of the EU.

Despite repeating his pie in the sky aim of getting immigration into the tens of thousands in the most recent Tory manifesto, David Cameron was told in 2012 that it was impossible to achieve. Immigration has increased by a third since David Cameron promised to half it.

Like his sham of a renegotiation, Cameron is making promises he just can't keep.

Conservative Party donor cancels membership over Cameron's threat to pensions

One of the Conservative Party's big donors has withdrawn his support for the Conservatives after David Cameron threatened to abolish the legal mechanism that increase the state pension by 2.5%, inflation or average earnings, whichever is higher.

The Conservative manifesto pledged to maintain the so-called "triple lock" on pensions until at least 2020 but last week David Cameron warned that he would abolish it when we leave the EU.

Venture capitalist, Edi Truell, has donated £270k to the Conservatives since 2010 but has cancelled his membership after David Cameron's pension threat. He has said that he will not support the Conservatives again until David Cameron is gone.

David Cameron rewards donors and Remain campaigners with knighthoods

David Cameron has used the honours system to reward Tory donors and Remain campaigners in a blatant abuse of the system.

Amongst the Remainiacs and Tory donors being rewarded with knighthoods and titles are:

• Deputy leader of the britain Stronger in Europe campaign, Richard Reed
• Founder of Ocado and Remain campaign donor, Tim Steiner
• Actor and Remain campaigner, Brian Blessed
• Treasury propaganda agent, John Kingman
• Zoopla co-founder, Remain campaigner and Tory donor, Alex Chesterman
• Head of Tory fundraising, Mike Chattey
• David Cameron's Deputy Private Secretary, Edward Whitting

Head over to the Sun for a longer list of propagandists and Tory donors.

ITV's Cameron -v- Farage show was a farcical waste of an hour's TV scheduling

ITV's David Cameron -v- Nigel Farage event turned out to be a complete farce with yellow belly Dave too scared to go head to head with Farage.

The format of the programme was Nigel Farage spend half an hour having quotes from Remain activists read to him and then being interrupted by the audience and the presenter so he couldn't answer broken up by a couple of black women shouting at him about how racist he is whilst David Cameron got batted some soft questions and was allowed to answer the questions virtually interrupted for his entire half an hour.

The entire programme was a waste of an hour. Cameron and Farage didn't appear on stage together, the people picked to ask Farage questions were openly hostile towards him personally and two of them had no interest in the referendum whatsoever and just wanted their moment of fame in the Huffington Post and the Guardian for screaming racist at him. The programme is unlikely to have convinced many people to vote either way and will have done more harm than good to ITV's reputation as a serious broadcaster.

If anyone is able to provide some background into the bigots pictured below who were there just to disrupt the programme and scream racist at Nigel Farage, feel free to leave a comment.

David Cameron -v- Nigel Farage tonight on ITV

For the first - and probably last - time ever, David Cameron will face Nigel Farage live in front of a TV audience.

Cameron isn't going to be the pushover that Nick Clegg was last year when Farage famously destroyed him in the leaders' debates but he's certainly no match for a Farage barrage.

David Cameron explains why were should vote to LEAVE the EU

Project Fear says food prices will increase by 60p when we leave the EU

David Cameron and Harriet Harperson went to a specially evacuated Asda where they wouldn't have to meet any plebs at the weekend to tell the media that when we leave the EU the average food bill for a family of four could rise by 60p a day.

The Treasury have used the same models that have failed to predict any of the financial crises that have befallen us in the last decade to predict a worst case 12% devaluation of the pound and then, ignoring the fact that being in the EU inflates food prices, estimated that a 12% weaker pound would increase the cost of imported food in real terms by £220 per year for a family of four.

There are several things wrong with Project Fear's latest dodgy prediction. Firstly, it assumes that food prices will stay as they are rather than reducing when we leave the EU even though it is commonly accepted that the EU pushes up food prices. It also assumes that devaluation of the pound is a bad thing when a strong pound harms exports and makes it harder to sell what we produce. Devaluation of the pound would boost the manufacturing sector and help reduce our trade deficit and bring down inflation. Finally, the financial models that the Treasury uses have failed to predict any of the financial crises that we have faced over the last decade. They are completely untrustworthy and open to manipulation by Project Fear.

The truth is, food is more expensive because of our EU membership. There is so much red tape and technology involved to comply with EU regulations that our food bills are inflated by as much as 17% thanks to the Common Agricultural Policy alone.

As well as the cost of the CAP, the EU imposes a 54% tariff on dairy products imported from outside the EU, 30% on sugar, sweets and chocolate and 10% on fruit and veg. That's a tax just to get something into the EU before import duties are applied and then VAT charged on top when it's eventually sold to the consumer. As an example, if you imported 1kg of butter from outside the EU for £1 you would have to charge a consumer £2.01 for it just to cover the tax. Dairy products attract a 54% EU tariff, then there's a 12.8% import duty and then 20% VAT added on top when it's sold. To import 100 litres of milk from outside the EU at the GB dairygate average cost of £23.18 you would have to pay the EU's 54% tariff bringing it up to £35.70 and then add on £15 in import duty, bringing the price up to £50.70. That's 50.7p per litre just to buy the milk and pay the taxes without putting it in a bottle, refrigerating it or taking it somewhere to be sold.

Rather than putting food prices up, leaving the EU is likely to bring food prices down or worst case, make no difference whatsoever.

Project Farce

Yellow belly Dave agrees to face up to Farage in Brexit debate

David Cameron has finally found his backbone and will debate Nigel Farage live on ITV on our membership of the EU.

Cameron has bottled out of every opportunity to go head to head with Farage and after Nick Clegg was comprehensively demolished in live debates with Farage during the 2014 EU election campaign it's understandable that he would continue to avoid facing up to the country's most trusted party leader.

The debate will take place on June 7th in front of 200 people where both leaders will answer questions from the audience.

The BBC is reportedly pushing on with plans to exclude UKIP completely from an EU debate they are holding at Wembley Stadium.

Shameless Cameron claims that leaving the EU will cause world war three

Project Fear went into overdrive today with David Cameron making the bizarre claim that by leaving the EU we will cause world war three and genocide!

Throughout the EU referendum campaign Project Fear have been claiming that the UK is so small and insignificant that we won't have any influence on the world stage once we've left the EU yet now we're apparently so important that leaving the UK leaving the EU will result in a world war.

Cameron shamefully invoked images of rows and rows of white gravestones marking the graves of millions of British and Commonwealth men and women who gave their lives fighting to stop the last attempt to create a United States of Europe to claim that it would be dangerous to leave the EU. This marks a new low for Project Fear and shows that nothing - not even belittling the sacrifice our forebears made to fight off the very thing he is helping to create - is out of bounds for this bunch of disrespectful snake oil salesmen.

Bizarrely, after repeating the myth that the EU has been responsible for peace decades of peace he said that it was barely two decades since the civil war in Bosnia - the scene of the only genocide in Europe since the second world war, perpetrated under the watchful eye of EU peacekeepers.

Back in 2011 we compiled a list of wars and conflicts in Europe in the 50 years that the Nobel Committee insultingly awarded the EU the Nobel Peace Prize for creating 50 years of peace.

Fifty years ago was 1961, two years after the Basque separatists started a civil war in Spain and France. In 1968, the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia and the IRA started a civil war in Northern Ireland. In 1970 various far left groups started a civil war in Italy and in 1974 Turkey invaded northern Cyprus. In 1984 the PKK started a civil war in Turkey and in 1988 Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1989 Romania underwent a revolution and in 1991 Slovenia went to war with Yugoslavia for its independence. In 1991, rebels in South Ossetia and Abkhazia started a civil war in Georgia and Croatia went to war with Yugoslavia for its independence. In 1992, ethnic Moldovans started a civil war in Transnistria, there was ethnic cleansing in North Ossetia, civil war in Abkhazia and the start of the war in Bosnia. In 1994, civil war started in Chechnya for the first time. In 1998 there was civil war in Kosovo, the Real IRA started terrorism again in Northern Ireland and civil war broke out in Abkhazia again. In 1999, Chechnyan separatists invaded Dagestan, the second civil war started in Chechnya and there was another uprising in Yugoslavia. In 2001 there was civil war in Macedonia. In 2004 there was more fighting in Kosovo. In 2007 there was civil war in Ingushetia and in 2008 there was a second war in South Ossetia with a Russian invasion.

The five years since the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize peace have been far from peaceful. Russia invaded and then annexed Crimea after the EU supported a coup against the pro-Russian president of Ukraine in 2014-15. There have also been a number of terrorist attacks in Germany, France, Bulgaria, Belgium and Denmark committed by a variety of Islamic terrorist organisations made possible by the lack of border controls within the EU and the stupidity of throwing the doors open to millions of people from terrorist hotspots in the Middle East and Africa.

Membership of the EU has made us less safe. We can't deport criminals and terrorists and we can't stop them coming here in the first place. Our courts are hamstrung by EU human rights legislation that gives so much privilege to criminals that it's virtually impossible to protect the population. Meanwhile, the EU Arrest Warrant allows UK citizens to be handed over to foreign police services with no evidence required, the EU wants to take over the coastguard and incorporate it into an EU border force and they have a blueprint for an EU army which will take effect after our referendum.

The safe choice is to leave the EU.

Some perspective on trade and Cameron's dangerous games

Supporters of the EU talk a lot about the impact on trade of leaving the EU. They tell us that leaving the EU will be devastating for trade and cost 3 million jobs.

This claim is simply based on just under 10% of our trade being done with the EU, an assumption that just under 10% of of jobs are therefore linked to trade with the EU and a ridiculous assumption that leaving the EU will mean ending all trade with the EU and therefore making those jobs redundant. The idea that we would cease all trade with the EU when we leave is just preposterous and there is no evidence of any correlation between the percentage of trade we do with the EU and the number of jobs in the economy. These jobs (whatever the number really is) rely on trading with the EU, not being a member of the EU. Almost every country in the world trades with the EU and almost all of them are not members of the EU.

Let's just put these claims about trade into perspective shall we?

How much of the UK's trade is actually done with the EU? Listening to the Remainians you'd think it was most of it but it's not. Less than 10% of trade carried out in the UK is with an EU member state, just over 10% is carried out with non-EU countries around the world and a little over 80% of trade in the UK is domestic trade carried out within the UK.

So only about 9% of trade carried out in the UK is with EU countries and the other 91% is either domestic trade or with the rest of the world outside of the EU. The impact of the laughably implausible scenario of all trade with the EU ending two years after our referendum is not insignificant but we're talking 9% of trade, not 90%. In the incredibly unlikely event that the EU stops trading with its largest export market - that's us if you didn't know and it's something that literally nobody but Guardian readers believe would happen - then we're talking about 9% of all trade carried out in the UK as it stands now without the increased trade from being able to trade freely with the rest of the world again.

So whilst trading with the EU is important and of course serious curtailment of trade with the EU (which would be illegal under WTO and EU rules) would have a negative impact on the economy, what about the benefits of not being shackled to the red tape machine that is the EU Commission? Being able to retake our seat on the World Trade Organisation would be a positive, obviously. Free trade agreements with the world's largest and fastest growing economies would of course be another huge positive. But remember that over 80% of our trade is with ourselves where free trade agreements and import duties are irrelevant. The biggest difference leaving the EU will make on our day to day lives is that the 91% of our trade that's conducted outside of the EU won't be regulated and restricted by the EU.

When we vote to leave we can do away with EU tariffs on energy saving lightbulbs that were imposed to protect german manufacturers from cheaper Chinese imports. Nor will we pay through the nose for "cheap" shoes because of EU tariffs imposed to protect Italian cobblers. We will be allowed to eat bendy (or straight) bananas and square strawberries. We won't have to cover the cost of the EU's carbon trading scam scheme through our energy bills. In other words, we will be free from the kind of clueless, self-perpetuating bureaucracy that can spend 6 months investigating the safe quantity of wine gums a lorry driver can eat before discovering to their utter amazement that wine gums don't actually contain any alcohol.

By drafting in big business to fight on the side of Project Fear, David Cameron and his cronies are playing a very dangerous game. They are backing these companies into a corner where they will be forced to react negatively to a leave vote to save face, having told the world that the UK outside of the EU will be bad for business. Investors aren't going to have faith in the board of a London-based company that predicts the collapse of their business when we leave the EU and then after we've voted to leave carries on as if nothing happened. If they can't get that right then what else have they got wrong and while we're at it, why is their investment being risked by using it as a political football? These are the inconvenient questions they will be keen to avoid.

The complete lack of planning for a leave vote is another dangerous game. It's sowing uncertainty and it's having a negative impact on the economy. This is deliberate of course because companies and investors like certainty and they're not getting any and what better way to scare people into thinking a leave vote will damage the economy than by sabotaging it while we're still talking about it? Companies and investors want to know that the British government has a plan for life after Brexit but all they're getting is lobbying from ministers and civil servants trying to get them involved in Project Fear.

But the most dangerous game of all is talking down our prospects. Having spent the whole referendum campaign telling the world that we can't survive without the EU, he can't then tell the world that the UK is the best place to do business outside of the EU after we've left. In his desperation to make voters think that the world's 5th largest economy can't survive outside of the world's fastest declining economic bloc Cameron is telling the world that we are weak and that they may as well give us a wide berth when we vote to leave.

These are not the actions of a capable leader, these are the actions of a desperate man who has staked his political career on this referendum and has no qualms about taking the economy down with him to try and secure the result most likely to keep him in a job.

Cameron's empty threats to farmers over leaving the EU

David Cameron has warned Welsh farmers that his government won't use any of the money saved from leaving the EU to subsidise farmers.

Cameron has taken the Project Fear Tour to North Wales to warn farmers that leaving the EU will mean no more subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy and increased costs and tariffs.

We currently pay £55m a day into the EU and the cost to business and consumers of endless red tape and pointless regulations adds even more to the cost of being a member of their club. We pay £6bn a year into the Common Agricultural Policy budget and get £3bn of that back in subsidies. The British government could pay UK farmers the same amount they get in subsidies now for half the current cost and without burdening farmers with one-size-fits-all regulations that are applied equally to sheep farmers in Wales, olive growers in Italy and wheat farmers in Poland.

The standard tariff applied to agricultural imports by the EU under WTO rules is, indeed, as high 40%. This is the rate applied for goods that aren't covered by a trade agreement. Would the EU choose not to conclude a free trade agreement with the fifth largest economy in the world and its largest export market in the two years between voting to leave and finally getting to throw off the shackles? Of course they would, it's inconceivable that they would damage their own economies just to punish us for leaving them.

Research by the Bruges Group and published by the British government found that over 90% of our exports are tariff free and those tariffs that do remain are generally low or not collected because it costs more to collect them than the income they generate. The same research also found that 80% of trade in the UK economy is domestic, over 10% are exports to the rest of the world and less than 10% is to the EU.

Things will change for farmers when we leave the EU but there is no reason to believe they will change for the worse. Cameron's threat that the Tories will abandon farmers is an empty one, the Tories rely on rural votes and donations from wealthy landowners like David Cameron's father-in-law.

Cameron plans to abuse honours system to bribe pro-EU campaigners

David Cameron is planning to reward up to 40 supporters of the EU with peerages^(£) after the referendum.

The combined upper and lower houses of Parliament makes the UK's legislature the second largest in the world, second only to China's which administers a country of 1.36bn people.

Stuffing the House of Lords with political appointments by successive governments has grown the upper house to a whopping 850 members which, when combined with the 650 MPs in the lower house, makes a total of 1,500 lawmakers. That's one politician for every 43,000 people or thereabouts. In the United States there is one lawmaker for roughly 617,000 people.

Cameron's abuse of the civil service and honours system to support his pro-EU campaign shows him up for the bullying dictator he is.

Cameron is trying to fiddle the referendum using civil service

David Cameron has banned MPs' advisors on the public payroll from helping their MP campaign to leave the EU whilst allowing those working for pro-EU MPs to produce pro-EU propaganda.

Under new rules, civil servants working for MPs who are campaigning to stay in the EU will have full access to government briefings and will work on promoting the EU during the normal working day when you and I are paying their wages. But civil servants working for MPs who are campaigning to leave the EU have been banned from receiving government briefings and are only allowed to promote their MP's leave campaigning in their personal time.

The remain campaign will have double the spending limit of the leave campaign thanks to political parties being given spending allowances, the purdah rules have been changed to allow local councils and quangos to spend taxpayers' money to promote the EU, both EU-funded state broadcasters - Channel 4 and the BBC - are promoting the EU and now our taxes are being used to fund covert state propaganda using civil servants.

This is the sort of thing you expect to find happening in Zimbabwe, not the UK. The only way this will be stopped is with a court injunction banning the remainians from abusing their power to fiddle the referendum. This should be on the to-do list of whichever group is officially designated by the Electoral Commission, along with a request to the UN for international observers to stop any more such abuses of power from taking place.

Desperate Dave's Dodgy Deal Disappoints

David Cameron has got his deal having caved in further on his already watered down compromises on the compromises on his original "demands".

No firm details have been released yet as it will need to go to a special meeting of the Cabinet where Cameron will attempt to bully as many ministers as possible into backing his sham renegotiations.

What we do know is that his plans for cutting in-work benefits for immigrants have been watered down again. It originally started off as limiting immigration from the EU, then it was changed to a ban on immigrants claiming any benefits for 7 years to try and discourage them from coming here, then it was watered down to 4 years of in-work benefits, then it was watered down to starting at nothing and building up to full entitlement by the end of 4 years but the EU gets to decide when the restrictions can be applied and they can only stay in place for a maximum period of time which was originally 13 years but was watered down again yesterday to 7 years. It would also only be applied to newly arrived immigrants and only starting from 2020 and the restrictions will have to be applied to our own citizens as well so it doesn't discriminate against people from other EU countries.

We also know that the "ever closer union" statement in the Treaty of Rome which has no legal standing will continue to have no legal standing and that it will be changed in a future treaty to say that everyone else in the EU still wants ever closer union but the UK doesn't.

Cameron's red line on immigrants claiming child benefit for kids they've left at home evaporated and they will continue to be able to export their child benefit, albeit at different rates. Child benefit for kids not living in the country will be index linked to the cost of living in the country in which they live. For most immigrants that will result in a decrease in payments but for a significant number it will result in higher payments because the cost of living is higher than the UK.

The fact that even these pathetic, watered down tweaks that change absolutely nothing about the EU or our relationship with it were opposed so vehemently highlights the abusive relationship we find ourselves in with our so-called partners in the EU.

President of the EU Parliament says Cameron's renegotiation won't be legally binding

President of the EU Parliament, Martin Shultz, has told David Cameron that any deal he does with the EU Commission won't be legally binding despite repeated claims by Cameron, the Conservatives and Downing Street that it will be.

Cameron said that his renegotiation will be lodged with the United Nations as a legally binding treaty.

If it is agreed, it will be agreed as a legally binding treaty deposited at the United Nations

But Schultz has dismissed that fantasy, confirming that there will be no treaty change and that it won't become legally binding until MEPs have amended it and voted on it after the referendum.

Cameron has form for inventing treaties. You may recall that in the back end of 2011 we were told that he had vetoed a new EU treaty but after submitting a Freedom of Information request for a copy of the draft treaty, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office replied "no EU Treaty was drafted at the European Council in December".

Cowardly Cameron bottles out of meeting Nigel Farage

David Cameron has chickened out of meeting Nigel Farage in Brussels, deciding to only hold a meeting with pro-EU leaders instead.

Cameron was due to meet EU group presidents tomorrow to discuss his sham negotiation and technical briefing papers were sent out in advance. But Yellow Belly Dave has bottled it and will only meet with pro-EU politicians.

In response to Cowardly Cameron's hasty retreat, Nigel Farage said:

The Prime Minister is chicken. I received my official documentation this morning to say that I was one of several meeting the PM tomorrow morning and he has now run away scared.

Frankly I'm not surprised. Not only is the deal pitiful but he would not want me exposing the fact that even if he wins the referendum, the European Parliament will veto it.

UKIP won the European Elections in 2014. By refusing to meet me Mr. Cameron is insulting millions of British voters. He knows he’s losing.