Sunday, 25 August 2013

The Money Shop's owner Dollar Financial says tough new curbs for payday lenders could cost it up to £10m a year By NEIL CRAVEN, FINANCIAL MAIL ON SUNDAY

The Money Shop's owner Dollar Financial says tough new curbs for payday lenders could cost it up to £10m a year

By NEIL CRAVEN, FINANCIAL MAIL ON SUNDAY

PUBLISHED: 22:16, 24 August 2013 | UPDATED: 10:30, 25 August 2013

Britain’s second largest payday lender says that years of soaring growth have ended after an overhaul of the market by the Office of Fair Trading.

US-based Dollar Financial, which owns The Money Shop and internet lenders Payday UK and Payday Express, said turnover from online lending in Britain fell 2.9 per cent in the three months to the end of June. That compares with a rise of 34 per cent in the same period in 2012.

The lender told investors that tighter controls will cost it up to £10million a year. It said that the halt in growth had come from tighter limits on who can borrow and for how long.

Tighter controls: The Money Shop's owner, Dollar Financial, says new rules cost it £10m

The number of times customers can roll over loans into larger debts has been limited to three. However, Dollar Financial also told investors in a conference call that the drop had been compounded by aggressive marketing from rivals.

Executives said that such rivals were among those expected to pull out of the market, but in the meantime were trying to grow the size of their loan book ‘in an effort to acquire as many customers as they can before the Sword of Damocles falls on them’.

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Dollar Financial’s British operations are second only to Wonga in size. Cash America, which operates QuickQuid and Pounds to Pocket, is the third largest.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has been one of the fiercest critics of payday lenders, describing their interest rates as ‘usury’.

The OFT has referred the entire payday lending market to the Competition Commission, as first revealed by The Mail on Sunday in June.

The investigation by the OFT has already forced 20 of the top 50 lenders to quit the market or wind down their businesses.

However, Dollar Financial executives predicted that more lenders would drop out of the market and it could recover next year.

They said tighter controls on payday lending will make it ‘inconceivable’ that smaller operators will be able to operate legally in the UK.

Chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Weiss said: ‘We think many of the other operators, including some of the larger ones, will struggle with the necessary implementation and self-monitoring activities.

‘That is why we are confident that we will emerge from this process with a significantly stronger position.’

Britain's child poverty 'social apartheid': Problems faced by the young are worse than 1960s claim researchers

The report was carried out by leading charity National Children's Bureau
Warns that Britain is at risk of becoming a place where rich and poor children live in separate, parallel worlds
The report compares data collected from a study called Born To Fail published in 1969

By TARA BRADY

PUBLISHED: 10:03, 25 August 2013 | UPDATED: 13:38, 25 August 2013

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A report has found that child poverty is now a bigger problem than during the 1960s

Child poverty is now a bigger problem than during the 1960s, a damning report to be published this week has found.

The report was carried out by the National Children's Bureau and warns that Britain is at risk of becoming a place where 'children's lives are so polarised that rich and poor live in separate, parallel worlds.'

It blames a 'failure of political will' has resulted in poorer children having fewer chances in life today.

The report compares children's lives with data collected from a study called Born To Fail published in 1969.

It found that around 3.6million children are now living in relative poverty today compared with 2million in the late 1960s.

According to the report, a child from a disadvantage background is less likely to develop as quickly by the age of four than a child from a more affluent family.

Children living in deprived areas are also more likely to be the victim of an unintentional injury or accident at home and are nine times less likely to have green spaces to play.

While boys living in deprived areas are three times more likely to be obese than boys growing up in affluent areas compared with girls who are twice as likely to be obese.

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It also notes that 63 per cent of children living in poverty have at least one parent or carer who is working.

The report reads: 'Today, although there have been some improvements, overall the situation appears to be no better, and in some respects has got worse.'

The charity says that if Britain tried to be more like other European countries, there would be less children dying from unintentional injuries, 320,000 more teenagers would be in education or training and nearly 45,000 11-year-olds would not be obese.

The report compares children's lives with data collected from a study called Born To Fail published in 1969

The charity is calling on the government to do more to stop the widening gap between children living in poverty and children from more affluent families.

The report says: 'The government made a commitment to protect pensioner benefits but there has been no equivalent commitment to protect children living in the poorest families or to tackle child poverty.'

Dr Hilary Emery, chief executive of the National Children’s Bureau, said: 'Our analysis shows that despite some improvements, the inequality and disadvantage suffered by poorer children 50 years ago still persists today.

'There is a real risk that as a nation we are sleep walking into a world where children grow up in a state of social apartheid, with poor children destined to experience hardship and disadvantage just by accident of birth, and their more affluent peers unaware of their existence.

'All our children should have the opportunity to fulfil their potential regardless of their circumstances. We cannot afford to let them grow up in such an unequal ‘them and us’ society in which the talents of the next generation are wasted, leaving them cut adrift to become a costly burden to the economy rather than a productive asset.

'This is a critical moment of opportunity to tackle the child poverty and inequality that has been a permanent feature in our country for five decades.

'Government has a major role to play in leading the way to address this but there must also be a wider mobilisation of efforts and resources led by politicians from every party and involving charities, businesses and communities all playing a part in having greater expectations for every child.'

The secret plane stuffed full of cash that saved the euro: When Greece burned and its banks melted, the EU talked tough and threatened to cut it loose... but covertly flooded it with 10 Billion Euros

The European bank Troika boosted Greek banks through secret flights
Billions of euros were flown to Greece and Cyprus to save the currency

By FAISAL ISLAM

PUBLISHED: 22:00, 24 August 2013 | UPDATED: 22:10, 24 August 2013

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To the casual observer there was nothing odd or even surprising in the sight of cargo planes lumbering east over the Adriatic or occasionally skimming southwards over the Alps towards the Balkans and beyond to Greece.

Some of these aircraft, giant Boeings, bore the distinctive livery of Maersk, the international carriers. Others, smaller, more discreet, were painted in the pale blue and white of the Greek military.

Had anyone bothered to pay attention, or even note down the serial numbers – such as the plane marked OY-SRH seen landing in Cyprus earlier this year – surely they would not have guessed at the purpose of these journeys or their extraordinary cargo.

Rescue mission: Maersk flights to Athens and Larnaca carried billions-worth of euros on each flight to save the Greek economy

Rescue mission: Maersk flights to Athens and Larnaca carried billions-worth of euros on each flight to save the Greek - and the eurozone - economy

Because the flights to Athens and Larnaca that began in 2011 were nothing short of a secret airlift.

The mission was neither to save lives nor even to preserve a fragile democratic freedom like the famous airlifts in post-war Berlin, but to protect and prolong the economic experiment of a multi-national currency. Billions in freshly minted euro notes made a clandestine journey to struggling Greece – a drama worthy of a John Le Carré novel but authored in Frankfurt am Main, known as Mainhattan, world headquarters of the euro.

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It was well known that Greece was running out of cash, in metaphorical terms at least. In June 2011, after months of stalling on its economic reform programme, the foreign Troika that effectively controlled the country had run out of patience.

Consisting of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the Troika made it clear that it would withhold the final instalment of a €110 billion bailout, agreed in May 2010. This last €12 billion payment of foreign funds was needed desperately – to pay pensions, public servants and interest on Greece’s huge debts. It was funding that Greece could raise neither in taxes from its own people, nor from the financial markets.

But what most people did not know was that Greece was running out of cash quite literally, too.

There were shortages of all denominations apart from the €10 note. Greeks had responded to the Troika’s threat to pull the €12 billion payment by withdrawing euros from their bank accounts at a record rate.

On the brink: Protesters clash with riot police in Athens, Greece, as its government was teetering on the edge of collapse over the austerity measures

Soon there would be not enough euro notes in the country to cope with the number of Greeks trying to get their hands on their money from cash machines and banks. And so a secret plan was activated. ‘We’re talking about June 2011,’ a senior official overseeing Greece’s bailout told me. ‘Greeks were taking about one to two billion euros a day from the banking system. The Greeks had to send military planes to Italy to get banknotes. It got to that point.’

A decade after it gave up the drachma, the world’s oldest existing currency, Greece faced the crushing reality that it did not have the sovereign authority to meet the demand for paper currency from its own citizens.

It could mint euro coins and there were also plates for the €10 note. But coins and small denomination paper were not going to satisfy the demand.

Only the German Bundesbank, the National Bank of Austria and the Luxembourgers have ever had the plates for the highly prized €500 note, the highest-value paper currency in the world. (This form of manufacturing would appear to have been confined to German-speaking countries.)

Intentionally or not, the ability of Greece to meet a huge surge in demand for banknotes had been effectively proscribed.

By June 2012, Greek demand for paper currency had nearly trebled and amid last summer’s electoral tumult, the secret missions started in 2011 were once again required.

The response was extraordinary. While issuing public threats to Greeks, in private the Troika authorised military and commercial cargo planes to feed them euros – billions-worth on every flight. They were intended not only to preserve Greece’s fracturing social stability, but also to preserve the single currency itself.

Greece’s European partners were worried, and no wonder. The Governor of the Bank of Greece, George Provopoulos, subsequently explained that if the demand for notes had not been met, an impression would have been created that the banks were unable to repay depositors.

‘It would have caused a collapse of confidence with dire consequences for financial stability and the general outlook of the country,’ he said.

A Northern Rock-style bank run in Greece could have spread quickly across the Mediterranean – investor concern had already spread to Italy.

A Troika figure told me: ‘There would have been complete and immediate panic. They had no time.

A billion, two billion per day in banknotes is a lot of money. This then becomes an industrial problem.’

The airlift was only the first stage of the mission. Scores, if not hundreds, of journeys by truck and boat spread the new notes across the mainland and the Greek islands, from Rhodes to Corfu, from Crete to Komotini. Staff worked through the night to ensure that bank branches across Greece had sufficient notes to meet depositor demand, and contain any incipient bank run.

Incredibly, this operation proceeded without anyone noticing. The Bank of Greece tracked demand for paper money through bank branch orders. It did not have to deploy teams of ‘bank-run spotters’ as the Bank of England did in the crisis of 2008.

As far as ordinary Greeks were concerned, the cash machines continued to function. However, underneath their very noses a monetary revolution was taking place.

The value of notes in circulation in Greece doubled from €19 billion in 2009 to €40 billion in September 2011. By the summer of 2012 the total had reached €48 billion, of which at least €10 billion – possibly much more – had been delivered through secret airlifts.

Typically, developed economies have cash in circulation worth between four and seven per cent of gross domestic product. In 2009 in Greece, the figure was 8.2 per cent. By 2012 it had trebled to 24.8 per cent.

On these numbers, in mid-2012, Greece had a greater value of euro notes in circulation than the Netherlands, even though the Dutch economy is four times that of Greece.

Tens of billions of euros were yanked from Greek banks in the bank runs of 2011 and 2012, yet the authorities estimate only a third of it was spent. Another third was taken abroad for investments in, for example, London property, and a third was hidden under mattresses and floorboards in Greek homes.

It was not long before Greece’s near neighbour and cultural sibling, Cyprus, found that it too was in crisis. This time, Berlin was determined that a large chunk of the bailout would come from savings deposited in Cypriot banks. Bedlam, bank holidays and bank runs were the predictable result. As dusk fell over Nicosia on March 27 this year, the shouts of protesters were drowned out by the angry buzzing of helicopters and deafening wail of police sirens.

Safely kept: Money is seen stored overnight at Central Bank of Cyprus

The uproar seemed to be converging on the Central Bank. Had the previous day’s sit-down protest by bank workers turned into a riot?

The truth was much stranger.

At the Central Bank, tense meetings between international financiers, American management consultants, British Treasury advisers and Cypriot bankers suddenly broke off. Four very large green juggernauts laden with euros had arrived from the European Central Bank, just hours before Cyprus’s banks were due to reopen.

An historic just-in-time delivery. That afternoon a Maersk Star Air cargo plane had parked up at the end of the runway at Larnaca airport. Flight logs record that the plane, registration OY-SRH, had flown from Cologne to Munich in the early hours, and then, via Athens, to Larnaca. It was carrying €5 billion euros in notes – not a bailout, but an epic logistical effort to sate the Cypriot desire for paper money.

The cash had been transferred from the Bundesbank logistical reserve at the request of the ECB. But only after the Cypriot government had done its ‘homework’, complying with Troika demands for economic and financial reform.

After the notes had been loaded on to the trucks, their journey to Nicosia was accompanied by squads of police cars, while helicopters buzzed overhead. The cash had come courtesy of Cyprus’s real central bank, the one based in Frankfurt, 1,500 miles away – the European Central Bank. Effectively, the ECB’s threat made a week before to pull emergency liquidity funding to the island’s banks was a threat to withhold the cash that arrived on this plane. The consequences would have been dire.

It is perhaps understandable that this and the other cash flights remained clandestine but, in their secrecy and urgency, they offer a window to a still more extraordinary landscape of lies and half-truths told across the continent to keep the single currency alive.

Greece’s membership of the eurozone was, from inception, built on misleading data about the state of its economy. The Cypriot entry in 2008 was waved through, yet only now have the Cypriots been told that their main industry, an offshore banking sector, needs to be dismantled amid fears that it has aided tax evasion and money laundering.

But even these extraordinary lapses pale into insignificance against the two mega lies – untruths in the very structure of the euro – which persist even now, despite the seemingly calmer weather in the currency bloc. A blueprint for revival is being drawn up in the German headquarters of the European Central Bank. The ECB is in absolutely no doubt that the euro will survive.

But the people of the crisis countries – Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Ireland – are yet to be enlightened by their politicians about the price to be paid: in short, the survival of the euro means much lower wages for them.

To use the jargon, the Mediterranean countries must be ‘internally devalued’, which means pushing down average wages that had risen sharply, to regain competitiveness and promote growth. The existence of a common currency means, of course, that old-fashioned currency devaluation – the standard method of achieving these things in the past – is impossible.

I know for a fact that two ministers in charge of struggling Mediterranean economies (sadly, they must remain anonymous) are happy to boast about the scale of the cuts in workers’ wages when addressing international bond traders. Would they ever dream of saying this in public? Decisively not.

‘The public would not take it,’ one crisis economy minister tells me.

Meanwhile, even in the final weeks of a German election campaign (which Angela Merkel seems likely to win) the voters remain ignorant that they too must pay a price: that they are about to foot a bill of billions of euros as Greece heads inexorably for a third bailout.

It will happen safely after the votes are counted, of course.

Germany benefited the most from the introduction of the euro through trade within Europe, a cheaper currency for exports outside Europe, and ultra-low interest rates on its debts. But it now seems inevitable that northern European taxpayers, and German ones in particular, will bear a heavy share of the cost of rescuing the currency.

After all, the northern European taxpayer has effectively replaced bankers in funding Greece’s remaining debts. The first test will come from Greece, which will soon require a remarkable third bailout and yet another default on its debt, having already had the world’s biggest sovereign default in 2012.

This will be just the start of a process where public debts across the eurozone are shared. A de facto fiscal union and, soon enough, a form of ‘banking union’ will follow.

Underlying all of this will be political union – a super state.

The Maersk Star Air OY-SRH that landed in Larnaca five months ago was the equivalent of a printing press in a nation that had ceded its monetary sovereignty. Such planes are a visible symbol of the loss of national power necessary to prevent the currency itself from crashing.

After the German elections next month, this truth will be revealed. A resumption of the airborne rescue missions is possible; turbulence is guaranteed. Fasten your seatbelts.

This is an edited extract from The Default Line: The Inside Story Of People, Banks And Entire Nations On The Edge, by Faisal Islam, published by Head of Zeus at £15.99. To buy a copy for £12.49 with free UK p&p, call the Mail Book Shop on 0844 472 4157 or visit mailbookshop.co.uk

Saturday, 24 August 2013

Marriage

Some thoughts on Christian Leadership/Church Leadership

Ephesians 4

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Unity of the Spirit

4 Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, 3 being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says,

“When He ascended on high,

He led captive a host of captives,

And He gave gifts to men.”

9 (Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.) 11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. 14 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; 15 but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

The Christian’s Walk

17 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. 20 But you did not learn Christ in this way, 21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, 22 that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, 23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

25 Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not give the devil an opportunity. 28 He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need. 29 Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. 30 Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

Ephesians 4

V 1–6: UNITY Paul urges the Ephesians to a worthy walk which reflects the oneness of the body of Christ in spiritual unity. In so doing, he clearly emphasises that there is only ‘one Lord, and one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all’. Unity for him does not mean sacrificing truth. It is because of his stand for God’s truth that he writes as ‘the prisoner of the Lord’. V 7–10: INDIVIDUALITY This unity does not detract from the fact that grace is individually given to each person who trusts Christ, and that God gives enabling gifts to individual believers. He is the universe’s highly ascended Lord, and can do that easily! V 11–16:

COMMUNITY God has given certain gifted people to His church. They are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. His aim, through them, is to equip and edify His people so, together, they know Christ, stand firm on biblical doctrine against those who would deceive, and recognise how they all together fit into the body of Christ of which He is head. V 17–19:

FUTILITY The Christian Gentile is to be contrasted with the other Gentiles who, as unbelievers, walk ignorantly, blindly, and in sin and greediness. V 20–24:

IDENTITY In coming to know Christ, their old ways are dispensed with and the ‘new man’ is put on, in righteousness and holiness. There is a spiritual renewal of the mind and a radical change of identity for the born-again Christian. V 25–32:

QUALITY There is a new quality of life of the Christian which reflects the fact that he does not ‘grieve the Holy Spirit of God’. He rejects former sinful ways, words and works, and applies himself to replacing them with positive good. He gives the devil no place in his life and rejects his former negative behaviour and sin. His new quality of life is shown by tender-heartedness, showing forgiveness to others, and avoiding grieving the Spirit. The springboard for this is that ‘God in Christ forgave you’.

Send your luggage away on Holiday

http://dailym.ai/17aibHe Ryanair £35 a bag luggage fare is so expensive it is cheaper to send your bag on holiday by courier ... #MailOnline

Benefits, a council house and non-stop partying. It's a tough old life being a fracking protester!, from the Daily Mail

One organiser said at least half Balcombe protesters are on benefits
Philip Lardo, 52, a druid, also has council house in Brighton
Police complain site is becoming a 'free festival' after anarchists from Spain, France, Holland and Poland, among others, joined the party
Cost of policing operation already £2.3million - likely to end up at £3.7million
Majority of local residents oppose fracking, but a growing number are tiring of the chaos

By GUY ADAMS

PUBLISHED: 01:47, 24 August 2013 | UPDATED: 01:48, 24 August 2013

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Support: Philip Lardo, pictured in full druid dress, is protesting at the Cuadrilla site in Balcombe but normally lives in a council house in Brighton

Each morning, 52-year-old Philip Lardo wakes up, lights a camp fire, parks his backside in a deckchair, and rolls a cigarette.

For most of the past three weeks, he’s been living in a tent by the B2036 in Sussex, where he’s spent days relaxing in the sun, or visiting the local shop to stock up on tobacco, snack food and drinking water.

At meal times, Lardo adjourns to a marquee a few hundred yards away to queue up for the home-cooked food that is served free of charge to residents of the leafy site where his tent is pitched.

‘For lunch today, we had Tuscan bean stew,’ he tells me. ‘They served it with bread and rice. It was pretty tasty, if you like that kind of thing.’

In the evenings, he likes to sit around the fire listening to bongo drums and guitar music, or — if he’s feeling energetic — wander to the local pub, the Half Moon.

It sounds, on the face of it, like an idyllic way to spend August. And, as he relaxes in the sunshine, Lardo looks every inch the happy camper. But he isn’t on what you might call a traditional summer holiday; quite the reverse, in fact.

For, as the crowds of uniformed police officers circling warily in the distance suggest, we are at what is currently the country’s most high-profile political demonstration. Lardo is one of the several hundred protesters who have taken up residence on grass verges near the pretty commuter village of Balcombe.

They are lobbying against an operation by the energy company Cuadrilla, which has started exploratory drilling several thousand feet beneath the rolling countryside of rural Sussex.

Environmentalists fear the Balcombe site could in future be used for fracking, a controversial extraction technique in which pressurised liquid is pumped deep underground to release oil and gas trapped within shale rock.

They have therefore pledged to remain at the scene until the drilling is stopped.

The demo began quietly last month, when a few dozen concerned locals began picketing the site. They were soon joined by Lardo and other activists from across the country, including designer Dame Vivienne Westwood, and perennial activist and ex-rock wife Bianca Jagger.

The group scored a major victory last Friday when drilling was suspended altogether, on the advice of police, after several hundred new protesters arrived for a pre-planned five-day rally.

The suspension was lifted a few days later. But not before the authorities had been accused of surrendering to ‘mob rule’.

On Monday, on a day of so-called ‘direct action’, more than 30 people were arrested for blocking access to the Cuadrilla site, including the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, whose plight helped place the demo on the front pages.

Noisy: Demonstrators making their voice heard at the drilling site on Monday

Since then, police helicopters have buzzed almost constantly in the skies above Balcombe, where more than 400 officers from across the country have been deployed.

Yesterday, Sussex Police said the operation had already cost £2.3 million, and is likely to eventually set the taxpayer back some £3.7 million.

The lanes around the usually picturesque village are now filled with riot vans, and coverage of events has helped spark a national debate about the pros and cons of fracking.

Yet at the centre of this expensive circus lie some pressing, unanswered questions. Who exactly are these well-organised eco-warriors? Where did they really come from? Just who is bankrolling their long-running protest? And have the once supportive villagers of Balcombe started to tire of the noisy activists in their midst?

Lardo makes for an instructive case study. While organisers of the Balcombe protest do much to play up its local roots, he, like most of the colourful demonstrators, has no connection to the village. Instead, Lardo has a council house in Brighton. But for most of the year, this publicly-funded property lies empty, since he chooses to live in the woods of Sussex — as a druid.

Gathering pace: The protest began quietly last month with a few concerned locals but has now become the country's most high-profile political demonstration

The job doesn’t always see him wearing traditional druid’s robes but it does allow him to spend weeks on end at ‘direct action’ protests.

With this in mind, Lardo spent the early months of 2013 on the outskirts of Hove, attempting to prevent the construction of a new bypass. When that protest petered out, he moved to Balcombe.

‘As druids, we revere nature and we revere the Earth,’ he says. ‘It’s where we live. Nature is our birthright. That’s why we try to save it.’ Lardo is, of course, entitled to spend his time as he wishes. But like many of fellow protesters, his activist lifestyle turns out to be entirely funded by the taxpayer.

‘Druids aren’t paid, so I am officially unemployed,’ he says, when I ask about his finances. ‘I happen to sign on. I get roughly £80 a week for that. Then, because I’ve got osteoporosis in my knees, hip and toes, I also get disability of around £100 a month.’

$Controversial: The protesters are objecting to the process of fracking - a technique which involves pumping liquid deep underground to release oil and gas$

Controversial: The protesters are objecting to the process of fracking - a technique which involves pumping liquid deep underground to release oil and gas

The money is deposited in Lardo’s bank account each week, as he sits in his deckchair. And among residents of the Balcombe protest site, precious few appear to be gainfully employed.

Also camping nearby, for example, is full-time protester Natalie Hynde, the 30-year-old daughter of Pretenders singer Chrissie and The Kinks frontman Ray Davies. She and her unemployed boyfriend Simon ‘Sitting Bull’ Medhurst, a 55-year-old veteran eco-warrior, were arrested on Monday for ‘supergluing’ themselves to the site’s entrance gates.

Rodney Jago, a retiree and resident of Balcombe, says that’s typical of his village’s new residents.

‘One of the organisers told me that at least 50 per cent are on benefits,’ Jago says. ‘He was quite shameless about it; didn’t think it was at all embarrassing. It’s like a free holiday for these people. They wave a placard from time to time, but basically all they do is sit in a deckchair, getting free food, while their kids run wild.’

This week anarchists from Spain, France, Holland and Poland, among others, joined the party. Their presence led police to complain that the village has turned into a ‘free festival’ for professional agitators.

One new arrival, from Malaga, said: ‘I was in London and going back to Europe when I heard about this. I’ve only recently learnt about fracking, but thought this would be fun.’

A group of French squatters, who had been living in a derelict house in Islington, North London, meanwhile said they had now moved to Balcombe because ‘the weather is really good and everyone is friendly’.

So how many of the people at the demo really care about fracking?

It’s hard to tell. But many of those involved in Reclaim the Power, a mysterious organisation whose supporters turned up in vast numbers this week, appear to have little connection with the issue.

In its literature, Reclaim the Power says it’s a coalition of ‘member groups’ that include UK Uncut — lobbyists against David Cameron’s spending cuts — Occupy London, who were behind last year’s anti-capitalist protests at St Paul’s Cathedral, and the Greater London Pensioners Association. Other members include a pro-Labour group called Disabled People Against Cuts, along with officials from the powerful trade unions Unite and the far-Left RMT, which supposedly represents transport workers.

Profile: The arrest of Green Party MP Caroline Lucas at the protest brought it to the front pages

Quite why such outfits should take a strong position (or indeed any position) on fracking, and want to be pulling strings in Balcombe, remains unclear.

Some observers wonder if they are merely ‘piggybacking’ the issue for political reasons. The Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has decried demonstrators as a ‘rent-a-mob’, saying that ‘buses of hooligans’ had come to the village to party and cause trouble.

The most curious organisation behind the protest is surely Fuel Poverty Action, listed in the protest camp’s handbook (yes, it has its own handbook), as one of its major organisers. This group supposedly exists to campaign against high energy prices. But in the U.S., a fracking boom has helped reduce domestic gas prices by about a quarter.

So why does Fuel Poverty Action see fit to lobby against the introduction of the technology in the UK? A Reclaim the Power spokesman will say only that it sees fracking as ‘part of the way that the big six energy companies are exploiting the vulnerable in society’.

From a distance, the camp resembled a poor man’s Glastonbury, with hundreds of tents pitched around a selection of stages and marquees. Up close, the smell of BO mingled with an occasional whiff of marijuana. Residents seemed friendly, though their ranks included at least two undercover reporters.

Placards could be seen supporting gay rights, opposing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, advertising a pro-migrant demonstration in Calais, and calling for an end to animal testing.

Shameless: When anarchists from elsewhere in Europe began to turn up, police complained the protest was becoming a 'free festival' for professional agitators

During the afternoon, I spotted three representatives of the local Labour party, wearing red rosettes and campaigning on site on behalf of Alan Rew, a county council election candidate.

Their presence was surely the height of hypocrisy: Labour is cautiously in favour of the technology.

The identity of the key people at the camp remains somewhat obscure. Reclaim the Power calls itself a ‘horizontal’ protest organisation, meaning it has no official leader.

Its finances are also opaque. Some chemical toilets used by protesters have been funded by Greenpeace. Free vegan meals are being provided by a non-profit organisation called ‘Veggies’. Campers seemed unsure who was funding their smart marquee tents and printed literature.

The group was originally formed by 21 environmental activists who were arrested and prosecuted after occupying West Burton coal-fired power station, in Nottinghamshire, last year.

Several are Oxbridge educated, and hail from highly privileged backgrounds. One, Danielle Paffard, studied at Wadham College, Oxford, while her father, Roger, used to be chief executive of High Street chocolatier Thorntons and stationery giant Staples.

Another is Ewa Jasiewicz, 35, a veteran far-Left activist who is best known for campaigning against the Iraq war and being a leader of the Free Gaza Movement, which in 2011 attempted to send a flotilla of ships laden with provisions to the Gaza Strip. She certainly knows how to organise a protest.

Expensive: Sussex Police said the cost of policing the protest is already £2.3million and is likely to increase

The Balcombe site boasts a media centre, a legal advice tent (the sign outside reads ‘have fun and keep us busy!’) and three restaurant tents serving vegan cuisine. Yet for all the creature comforts, it was actually staged illegally: Jasiewicz and her cronies set up their marquees, without permission, on the field of Richard Ponsford, a local farmer.

‘We didn’t have permission to move there, but we now have a constructive relationship with the farmer,’ a spokesman told me.

Strangely, when I spoke to Mr Ponsford, whose family have been tenants at the farm for 60 years, he saw things differently. ‘It’s a pain,’ he said. ‘We’re just hoping they go away without causing too much damage and leaving a mess.’

Mr Ponsford first learned that his field was being invaded when a neighbour told him several cars and vans were setting up camp there. After a three-hour stand-off, police advised him it was safer to back down and let them have the field.

Earlier this week, police arrested a demonstrator at a different site north of the main camp for allegedly threatening a landowner who asked him to cease trespassing. Little wonder, perhaps, that many residents of Balcombe are starting to grow weary of the invasion of their rural idyll.

Contradiction: Residents in Balcombe have begun to complain at the actions of the protesters with several urging them to leave

Not wanted: Residents in Balcombe have begun to complain at the actions of the protesters with several urging them to leave

Though polls show that a firm majority — perhaps understandably — are opposed to fracking on their doorstep, growing numbers also appear to be tiring of the chaos. Last week, Alison Stevenson, chairman of the parish council, published an open letter saying that it ‘strongly opposes any actions which may be taken which involve civil trespass and/or illegal acts’.

Anti-fracking posters now compete with a smattering of signs saying: ‘Balcombe is 80 per cent opposed to fracking and 100 per cent opposed to illegal actions.’

One resident, drinking at the Half Moon pub, told me: ‘People are very reluctant to criticise the protesters, or speak publicly in support of fracking, because they feel intimidated.’

Peter Cockburn, a 67-year-old retiree who supports the potential arrival of fracking to Balcombe because, among other things, ‘it might bring jobs to the village’, meanwhile compared the protest site to a third world slum. ‘There are bodies lying everywhere, all this smoke going up — and heaven knows what’s in that — and it looks like some sort of Malaysian kampong [shanty town],’ he said.

The former botanist devoted several years of his career to campaigning to save the rainforest in Borneo. ‘I did plenty to save the planet, thank you, and unlike this lot, I didn’t achieve it by sitting on my arse on a grass verge smoking pot.’

Views, Visions and Values.

Sunday, 25 August 2013