Don’t believe for a minute that the likes of Rand Paul are bringing a whole new level of nutty to upper-house politics, in contrast to staid and boring countries like the UK. Via Joseph Cotterill and Charlie Stross, here’s an astonishing speech made in the Mother of Parliaments by David James, a/k/a Baron James of Blackheath.

After opening with reminiscences of seeing “Brigadoon” in the West End, James explains that:

Britain needs “investment in industry”, to the tune of about £5 billion.

He’s going to “raise a subject that I should not raise and which is going to be one which I think is now time to put on a higher awareness”.

There is “a strange organisation which wishes to make a great deal of money available to assist the recovery of the economy in this country”, which he refers to as Foundation X.

Foundation X has “megabucks”.

He, Lord James, has “handled billions of pounds of terrorist money”; his “biggest terrorist client was the IRA”, who weren’t as nasty as the north African terrorists.

As a result, he has “an interesting set of phone numbers”, which he used to “get a reference and a clearance on foundation X”.

He has “come to the absolute conclusion that foundation X is completely genuine and sincere and that it directly wishes to make the United Kingdom one of the principal points that it will use to disseminate its extraordinarily great wealth into the world at this present moment, as part of an attempt to seek the recovery of the global economy.”

The government — in the form of both the Bank of England and the Treasury — thinks that the whole thing is “rubbish”.

Foundation X’s people “expect to be contacted only by someone equal to head of state status or someone with an international security rating equal to the top six people in the world”.

They claim to have already deposited £5 billion in British banks — a claim Treasury says cannot be true.

They claim to have more than $7 trillion in gold bullion — more than the standard figure of 5.3 billion troy ounces of gold which has been mined in human history.

They would be happy to put up £5 billion for the UK government to invest in industry, they don’t want to control the funds, and they won’t charge interest.

They’d also be happy to transfer £17 billion to the UK government for the Crossrail plan — before Christmas.

Oh, and they’ll happily fund the building of hospitals and schools, too.

Lord James always struck me as a perfectly sensible person, but he does seem to have gone completely bonkers here. But hey, at least he’s provided years’ worth of grist for conspiracy theorists around the world. Who could this Foundation X be? Might they be related to the Rosicrucians? The Knights Templar? The Illuminati Elite? The Vatican? And what terrible fate might befall James, now that he has hinted at their shadowy existence?

Update: Jon Hendry reckons — and I’m inclined to agree — that Foundation X is the Office of International Treasury Control. Certainly this sounds very similar:

Though not generally or publicly known, OITC is the largest International Institution of its kind. It is the largest single owner of gold and platinum bullion in the World, in addition to being a major owner of Bank Debenture Securities, International Treasuries, Cash and other forms of securities… Original assets in the form of gold have been wisely and well utilized to create wealth that creates further wealth… It should be noted that only a few persons in each country of the world are eligible to be able to verify, or undertake a verification, re: the position of Dr. Ray C. Dam (International Treasury Controller) and the Office of International Treasury Control. Such persons are limited to Kings, Queens, Presidents, Prime Ministers, with Ministers of Finance and Ministers of Foreign Affairs subject to security status and special conditions / dispensation.

Any sensible person would recognize OITC as a scam after spending about two seconds on its website. Which says to me that David James is, sadly, no longer a sensible person. He’s had a long and noble and storied career; someone should let him retire with dignity at this point.

Update 2: Someone should show James the OITC’s extremely comprehensive Wikipedia page, which details, among other things, how the OITC swindled $20,000 out of an Ecuadorean mayor. There’s also this:

Speaking at a press conference in Fiji, OITC representative Masi Kaumaitotoya told the local media: “Don’t you ever, ever, ever again report negatively on OITC or we’ll sue you for defamation.”

Update 3: James tells Tom Espiner that he has not been approached by the UNOITC, and that there were no links between Foundation X and UNOITC.