The Bilderberg Group

The Bilderberg group is an organisation which puts various business, politicians, academics in touch with each other.  They meet together and basically have a good chat about various other groups.  Like the Freemasons, they are a very secretive organisation and as a result, they do get accused of various things.  Whether this is true is not the point of this blog. What I want to look at is what we can find out about this controversial organisation.

Membership to Bilderberg is usual kept secret, so finding out who is going to these meetings is pretty hard and membership to this group is on an invite only.  Asking the Home Office which members of it is going to a meeting is probably not going to help any investigation of yours.  Not only that if a minister, like Kenneth Clark, William Hague, George Osborne goes to a meeting in a private capacity, then the department is not going to hold any information on it. Also asking the Cabinet office for the reason why MP’s are members is PROBABLY not going to help you find out about these people (Have a look at Becky Bbear annotations.  She is amazing).  Asking the Scottish Government if any members have been to a meeting does hold some results, and asking if Mervyn King (Ex Governor of the bank of England) has been to a meeting shows a negative.  So basically, the government is not going to help you find out what people are going to Bilderberg.

So with the secrecy that surrounds this group, is it possible that the BBC has some sort of policy on the meetings of this group?  It has refused to release the information about the meetings that it has had with it (For journalistic reasons) even though one of the directors (Rona Fairhead) did go to a meeting in a non BBC capacity. When question about their reporting of the Bilderberg meetings the BBC stated that it did not have a policy of deliberate non reporting (Read that one, it's amazing). So what have we found out from this?  BBC doesn't need to tell you about its reporting policy because it would affect their journalists sources as required by the European Human Rights Act (Not a punchline, per se but a required statement).

What we can find out however is the cost for policing their events. When the group met at the Grove Hotel, Watford in June 2013, the cost to police this events was £1.3 Million (Of which £500,000 was given by the group).  Hertfordshire constabulary also gave some details about how many people were arrested and what they did (And even had a little webpage based upon they did too).  

So what have we learnt, kids?  Well, this is an organisation which has a legendary status.  It is something that people want to know about.  The thing is, is it like the Freemasons where the secret is more interesting than the reality?  The thing that I am most interested in is the way that people have look at this.  There is a lot of information out there about these meetings (It was actually discussed in parliament, and you can look at those records here).  Which therefore begs the question, what are the people looking for?  More interestingly, how are they looking for this.  Remember if they are looking for a conspiracy, then they are asking the people who are creating the conspiracy.  Could anything be trusted from the government?