'Covid' Ops: A story to follow Hylton's recovery

The Daily Mail called it the survival story to inspire us all... the “patient who lived through hellish coronavirus battle and is friends with Prince Charles”.

After five days in intensive care and being on a ventilator, the 61-year-old “Harborough farmer” rolled out of Leicester Royal infirmary to an honour guard of NHS health workers. A marvellous story to lift a nation struggling to cope with this terrible pandemic. But something was amiss, it all seemed far too staged for my liking.

When interviewed, he didn’t sound much like a farmer, certainly no Old MacDonald. But nevertheless I’m delighted to see he left hospital well and clearly in good spirits.

But with huge doubt in my mind about the “Covid” operations going on at the moment, I had to try to verify the authenticity of Hylton Murray-Philipson’s ordeal.

My first question was whether he really is a farmer? He sounded far too posh for that, so I sought Google’s help to put my mind at rest.

When his picture popped up in the browser he certainly didn’t look like a farmer and his background read even less so.

In fact Murray-Philipson is quite a capitalist, truth be told. He “established Morgan Grenfell in Brazil in 1982 and was later chief executive of the investment bank Henry Ansbacher in New York”.

His biography goes on: “In 1992, he founded Wingate Ventures, providing corporate finance services to businesses making a positive contribution to the environment. Hylton is a director of Agrivert Ltd, one of the UK’s leading recyclers of organic waste to agricultural land, and is currently helping the business diversify into the generation of energy from waste through anaerobic digestion; he is also a director of Geothermal International Ltd, the UK’s leading installer of ground sourced heating and cooling systems.”

Quite an entrepreneur. It didn’t make sense, the BBC reports clearly described him as a farmer… why not just say a businessman or company director, why farmer?

Well, perhaps it is because in 2007 he set up Canopy Capital, a pioneering enterprise driving value to ecosystem services in Guyana. Apparently, he feels the conservation of tropical forests is, like the generation of renewable energy, a vital component in the battle against climate change.

A trustee of Global Canopy, Murray-Philipson is on the Advisory Council to the Rainforests Project of HRH the Prince of Wales, obviously why he was described as a friend of Prince Charles I guess.

But, as I discovered, the report could have easily said a friend of the Prime Minister, as he and Boris Johnson were at Oxford University around the same time, along with Michael Gove.

Other Oxford University alumni include former Prime Minister David Cameron, former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt as well as the current Prime Minister.

Then the dots transported me to the Bullingdon Club, apparently… as I’m only now discovering… the bastion of the rich and famous who have attended Oxford University since the club’s founding about 240 years ago, around 1780 by perhaps 30 men. Was Viscount Long a member? Wikipedia says he was, with the viscount describing it as "an old Oxford institution, with many good traditions".

Apparently a private all-male “dining club for Oxford University students” it is known for its wealthy members, grand banquets, boisterous rituals, and occasionally mischievous behaviour, including vandalism of restaurants and students' rooms.

The Wikipedia entry continues: “The club is known to select its members not only on the grounds of wealth and willingness to partake, but also by means of education, with undergraduates from colleges such as Christ Church and Magdalen, who, formerly pupils at various public schools such as Eton, Harrow, Shrewsbury, Rugby, Westminster, Charterhouse and Winchester among other private boarding schools, like Radley, form most of its membership.”

Past members are believed to have included Royalty, with Frederick VII of Denmark (1808-63); Edward VII (1841–1910); Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (1853-84); Rama VI, King of Siam (1881-1925); Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (1893–1976); Edward VIII (1894-1972); and Frederick IX of Denmark (1899-1972) all thought to have been involved.

Members of the nobility too: Charles Douglas-Home (1834–1918); Henry Chaplin, 1st Viscount Chaplin (1840-1923); Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847-1929); William Grenfell, 1st Baron Desborough (1855-1945); George Gibbs, 1st Baron Wraxall (1873-1931); Prince Felix Yussupov (1887-1967); Prince Serge Obolensky (1890-1978); Arthur Valerian Wellesley, 8th Duke of Wellington (1915-2014); David Ogilvy, 13th Earl of Airlie (1926-); Alexander Thynn, 7th Marquess of Bath (1932-2020); Peter Palumbo, Baron Palumbo (1935-); Michael Kerr, 13th Marquess of Lothian (1945-), Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party (2001-05) and chairman of the Conservative Party (1998-2001); Maharaja Gaj Singh Ji of Jodhpur (1948-); Count Gottfried von Bismarck (1962-2007); Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer (1964-); Shivraj Singh of Jodhpur (1975-); Arthur Wellesley, Earl of Mornington (1978-); and Edward Windsor, Lord Downpatrick (1988-), among the more esteemed patrons of the club.

On numerous occasions in the past, when the club was registered by the university, proctors suspended it on account of the rowdiness of members' activities, including suspensions in 1927 and 1956. John Betjeman wrote in 1938 that "quite often the club is suspended for some years after each meeting". While under suspension, the club has been known to meet in relative secrecy.

Move forward in time to the current crop of Tory members leading us through the “Covid” operations and they too have very strong associations with the Bullingdon brigade.

An article that appears on the History Collection website says: “The intimate network of the Bullingdon remains a force in UK politics, as the 2008 meeting demonstrates. Remember the three members who escaped from the police after vandalising a restaurant in 1987? Two of the young men ensconced in shrubbery were Boris Johnson and David Cameron.

“Mutual indiscretion clearly forges strong bonds, and it is theorised that the club’s arbitrary criminal acts are to ensure that members can be cajoled and blackmailed by one another. Indeed, when Cameron came to assemble his cabinet, he chose as his chancellor George Osborne, another Bullingdon alumnus, and welcomed Boris too in 2015.”

Dig a little bit further and we learn from a Huffington Post article that: “David Cameron, who used to be a member of the elite drinking club, faced political embarrassment after allegations of drug use, debauchery and ‘bizarre rituals’ during his time at university were published in a new book by Lord Michael Ashcroft.”

And that’s not all, an article produced on the crowdfunded website “Byline” reveals a number of photos of club members together that include Old Etonian Philip Dunne, MP for Ludlow and Minister for State for Health following Theresa May's January 2018 cabinet reshuffle, also a former Minister for Defence Procurement; Valentine Guinness, son of the 3rd Baron Moyne and heir to part of the Guinness brewing fortune; Mark Baring, son of Lord Ashburton, the former chair of British Petroleum and now a trustee of the Baring Foundation; Jonathan Cavendish, the Hollywood producer, who is the co-owner of Imaginarium Studios with actor Andy Serkis; Patrick Lawrence, 5th Baron Trevethin, a QC and Barrister at 4 New Square, Lawrence was recently elected to the House of Lords as a cross-bench peer; and, wouldn’t you know, Hylton Murray-Philipson, an inspirational Old Etonian and graduate of Oriel College.

Guinness' other Oxford exploits included founding the Piers Gaveston Society, well known for it's allegedly drug-fuelled raves. A Piers Gaveston party is supposedly the setting for Lord Ashcroft's allegations about Cameron's indiscretions with a “pig’s head”. He is also the grandson of Sir Oswald Mosley's wife Diana Mitford.

And the Baring family has a long history in the club: Thomas Baring, later Viceroy of India and First Lord of the Admiralty, appears in a club register from 1846. Other members include David John Ogilvy, whose father’s duties as Lord Chamberlian included arranging the funeral of Princess Diana. His mother Virginia Ogilvy is Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth II and accompanies her on high-profile state visits.

Then there’s Philip Douglas Astor, a barrister at Temple Garden Chambers and younger brother of Baron Astor, the grandson of Field Marshal Douglas Haig; Nicholas Leese, chairman of Singapore-based nutritional supplement company Global Active Ltd, who was caught up in an alleged bribery scandal in 1996 in which he was charged by the Singapore Foreign Corrupt Practices Investigation bureau with 250 counts of fraud, but the charges were thrown out by a judge; Hugo de Ferranti, an art dealer at Hazlitt Holland Hibbert, described by Tatler as 'incredibly well-connected' and 'a chap from a long line of chaps'; James Blount, a former diplomat with the Foreign Office, who specialised in kidnap and ransom negotiations in Latin America and was country head for Iraq for private security contractor Control Risks in 2003 after the US invasion.

The list goes on, members from great European dynasties, with vast wealth and tentacles that know no borders.

And one thing seems quite apparent, members of the club seem to be rather fond of flaunting their privileged means in front of the hoi polloi, with even the mainstream press covering many of the unseemly gatherings they indulge in.

One Mirror report revealed claims that part of the club’s “initiation ceremony” involved new members having to burn a £50 note in front of a beggar, while the Sun reveals that members, known as “Bullers”, preen themselves in a specially made tailcoat that costs in excess of £3,500.

So, while I’m genuinely pleased Mr Murray-Philipson was discharged from hospital in good spirits, I wasn’t deeply inspired by what I found from delving behind the obvious and I can’t help but question the true severity of his ordeal.

A scan of the results from a UK Company Directory Search reveals his vast business interests in many environmental projects, but what are his motives… that’s going to require a lot more digging.

But there’s no doubt he has close ties with the Prime Minister, who also overcame a terrible ordeal with a corona bug, just like former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George did in 1918 after surviving the ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic… which interestingly did not begin in Spain, rather at Fort Riley… a US military base in Kansas.

All just a case of history repeating itself I’m sure. And, just as an interesting footnote, history has another story to tell us about the regard for humanity shown by members of these dynasties.

The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What is less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their “property”.

The Slave Compensation Commission was the government body established to evaluate the claims of the slave owners and administer the distribution of the £20m set aside to pay them off. That sum represented 40 per cent of the total government expenditure for 1834. It is the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn.

The compensation of Britain’s 46,000 slave owners was the largest bailout in British history until the bailout of the banks in 2009. Not only did the slaves receive nothing, under another clause of the act they were compelled to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters, for a further four years after their supposed liberation.

The records of the Slave Compensation Commission are an unintended by-product of the scheme. They represent a near complete census of British slavery as it was on 1 August 1834, the day the system ended. For that one day there is a full list of Britain’s slave owners. All of them.

Although the existence of the list was never a secret, it was not until 2010 that a team from University College London began to systematically analyse them. The Legacies of British Slave-ownership project is still continuing.

The large slave owners, the men of the “West India interest”, who owned huge estates from which they drew vast fortunes, appear in the files of the commission. The man who received the most money from the state was John Gladstone, the father of Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone. He was paid £106,769 in compensation for the 2,508 slaves he owned across nine plantations, the modern equivalent of about £80m.

Given such an investment, it is perhaps not surprising that William Gladstone’s maiden speech in parliament was in defence of slavery.

The records show that for the 218 men and women he regarded as his property, Charles Blair, the great-grandfather of George Orwell, was paid the more modest sum of £4,442, the modern equivalent of about £3m. There are other famous names hidden within the records as well. Ancestors of the novelist Graham Greene, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott all received compensation for slaves. As did a distant ancestor of David Cameron.

It’s an awful thing, but the more you dig, the more dirt you uncover, and by joining all the dots it becomes clear… we are in the middle of an enormous conspiracy perpetrated by a cabal of super-rich puppet-masters who have been around well before WW I… the last time an event such as this descended on mankind.

Then the second wave is reported to have turned out to be worse. Is that why the UK government is constructing all these “military field hospitals”? Do they have a pretty good idea of what they’ve been planning for us minions, and what role these hospital sites will play beyond this present outbreak?

Whatever, I’d hazard a guess and say more mind control and manipulation will whip up plenty of support for a vaccine that should just about be ready by then, if it already isn’t, so the population will be clamouring for it by then. Good vaccine or bad vaccine, that’s the question? And whose interests are these noble men protecting?