Quote of the millennium.
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Saturday, January 09, 2016
Tuesday, January 05, 2016
That reshuffle, and "low-level non-violent misogyny".
Are there a more benighted people in this country than the poor, suffering souls of the Birmingham Yardley constituency? Up until May they were lumbered with the self-promoting Lib Dem John Hemming, who repeatedly made use of parliamentary privilege for his own ends, much to the delight of the press when it came to naming Sir Fred Goodwin for taking out a super-injunction, and much to the distress of others involved in legal proceedings involving Vicky Haigh. Hemming made a habit of naming individuals who were meant to be protected as court proceedings were ongoing, including doing so on Mumsnet, where he was banned for doing so. Fortunately, his constituents decided he should also be banned from representing them.
Less fortunately, they decided that Labour's Jess Phillips should replace him. Phillips seems intent on following the Danczuk pathway to MP super-stardom, where the sufferer believes that constantly spouting what the media wants to hear will be enough to save them should their new friends eventually tire of the act. As the last few days have proved, going down the Danczuk route only guarantees that eventually the media will turn on you. They always will, they always do. One minute you're earning thousands of pounds writing articles for the Sun and Mail outlining how your party leader is an idiot and it'll be when, rather if, you'll be sacked, the next those same newspapers have found a teenager who you sexted, complete with an (alleged) sideline in selling soiled undergarments, natch, and what do you know, that same party leader has found his excuse to get rid of you. And it's the fault of everything except your being a priapic halfwit, obviously.
For now at least, Phillips gives great copy. She'll stab Corbyn in the front if she believes he's harming the party's electoral chances. Don't lecture her on how to vote on Syria, as even though she voted against, "people will die no matter what decision was made", responsibility when it's British pilots, planes and bombs involved apparently not making any difference to her thinking. And while the rest of us can move on, her "card is marked", as Phillips is never knowingly under-dramatic. Indeed, in keeping with that theme, she's now upped the criticism of her party leader for not giving a woman one of the four shadow "great offices of state" to being "low-level non-violent misogyny". No longer is Corbyn merely sexist for his choices, it's proof he hates women. At a low-level and non-violently, anyway.
It's worth keeping all this in mind when considering the quite believable stupidity of the coverage of the is it or isn't it reshuffle of the past 48 hours or so. From the beginning some hacks and MPs have labelled it a "revenge reshuffle", which may or may not be attributed to briefings from Corbyn's head of communications Seumas Milne, but which nonetheless has turned out to be nothing of the sort. First, what supposedly is Corbyn seeking revenge over? If he really was intent on clearing the decks of everyone critical of him, let alone those who voted the other way on Syria, then it would seemingly require the entire shadow cabinet to go, such has been the leaking and whispers to the press almost since he became leader about how useless and what a liability he is.
Second, his moves so far, regardless of whether it was the intention to begin with or not, have been to move those most serially disloyal and critical. Michael Dugher has been practically asking for it Danczuk-style for months. Back in September (!) he was saying how self-indulgent it was to carry on with the navel-gazing, and boy did he not take his own advice. Maria Eagle meanwhile likely sealed her fate when she practically agreed with General Sir Nicholas Houghton's comments on Trident on the Andrew Marr show. Disagreeing with the leader on nuclear weapons is one thing; all but backing up a general intervening in party politics to implicitly criticise that leader is another.
If this has nonetheless been an example in how not to carry out a reshuffle, it's also been a case study into how not to report one. First it was definite Hilary Benn was being sacked, then it wasn't, then it might be back on, now it isn't again, or maybe it is. Who knows? Who by the time it happens will care? If this was meant to be a revenge reshuffle, as they were so convinced, why it hasn't it turned out that way? Have they been played by Corbyn's team, or have they just believed everything they've been told or picked up as being gospel truth because they can't stop tweeting or updating the live blogs? As increasingly is the case, it's also become about them: we might have hyped this whole thing up to absurd levels, but why can't it now be over? What are we still waiting for? Then, finally, there's the we were right smugness, as displayed last night by Laura Kuenssberg: hyuk hyuk, so much for a new, honest politics, allowing for dissent and openness.
As Owen Jones points out, rightly for once, no other Labour leader has or would have tolerated the level of criticism, of near mutiny as Corbyn has the past 4 months. Michael Dugher's claims of merely responding to briefing against Benn, Eagle and others, of practising straight, honest politics is absurd, as though this has been a one-sided operation. Reading all the tributes paid to him for no longer being shadow culture secretary, you would have thought he'd died. Yes, we all know Jeremy was a inveterate rebel, and so can't expect the level of loyalty past leaders have, but he is perfectly entitled to want his shadow ministers for foreign affairs and defence to back him, if not always agree with him. As it is, he looks to have come to some sort of agreement with Benn, even if it might only delay the inevitable. No one can say that he hasn't tried to make allowances, regardless of the way it has and is being spun.
Equally, you can't pretend this is anything other than the worst possible way for Labour to start the new year. The media are determined for their part to make sure the infighting continues, not least when some are set on causing mischief for their own reasons, but complaining about it is all but pointless. Today ought to have been solely about how Cameron can't whip his cabinet into supporting him on Europe, a measure of weakness that says much about his position, the manoeuvring of those who want to take over from him, and the impact it could have on our staying in the EU, with all a Brexit would entail for our economic and national security, as the Tory messaging would have it. Both critics and supporters of Corbyn have repeatedly said it's long past time when the focus should be on the government's failings rather than Labour's own. Surely now we've reached the point where both must practice what they preach.
Less fortunately, they decided that Labour's Jess Phillips should replace him. Phillips seems intent on following the Danczuk pathway to MP super-stardom, where the sufferer believes that constantly spouting what the media wants to hear will be enough to save them should their new friends eventually tire of the act. As the last few days have proved, going down the Danczuk route only guarantees that eventually the media will turn on you. They always will, they always do. One minute you're earning thousands of pounds writing articles for the Sun and Mail outlining how your party leader is an idiot and it'll be when, rather if, you'll be sacked, the next those same newspapers have found a teenager who you sexted, complete with an (alleged) sideline in selling soiled undergarments, natch, and what do you know, that same party leader has found his excuse to get rid of you. And it's the fault of everything except your being a priapic halfwit, obviously.
For now at least, Phillips gives great copy. She'll stab Corbyn in the front if she believes he's harming the party's electoral chances. Don't lecture her on how to vote on Syria, as even though she voted against, "people will die no matter what decision was made", responsibility when it's British pilots, planes and bombs involved apparently not making any difference to her thinking. And while the rest of us can move on, her "card is marked", as Phillips is never knowingly under-dramatic. Indeed, in keeping with that theme, she's now upped the criticism of her party leader for not giving a woman one of the four shadow "great offices of state" to being "low-level non-violent misogyny". No longer is Corbyn merely sexist for his choices, it's proof he hates women. At a low-level and non-violently, anyway.
It's worth keeping all this in mind when considering the quite believable stupidity of the coverage of the is it or isn't it reshuffle of the past 48 hours or so. From the beginning some hacks and MPs have labelled it a "revenge reshuffle", which may or may not be attributed to briefings from Corbyn's head of communications Seumas Milne, but which nonetheless has turned out to be nothing of the sort. First, what supposedly is Corbyn seeking revenge over? If he really was intent on clearing the decks of everyone critical of him, let alone those who voted the other way on Syria, then it would seemingly require the entire shadow cabinet to go, such has been the leaking and whispers to the press almost since he became leader about how useless and what a liability he is.
Second, his moves so far, regardless of whether it was the intention to begin with or not, have been to move those most serially disloyal and critical. Michael Dugher has been practically asking for it Danczuk-style for months. Back in September (!) he was saying how self-indulgent it was to carry on with the navel-gazing, and boy did he not take his own advice. Maria Eagle meanwhile likely sealed her fate when she practically agreed with General Sir Nicholas Houghton's comments on Trident on the Andrew Marr show. Disagreeing with the leader on nuclear weapons is one thing; all but backing up a general intervening in party politics to implicitly criticise that leader is another.
If this has nonetheless been an example in how not to carry out a reshuffle, it's also been a case study into how not to report one. First it was definite Hilary Benn was being sacked, then it wasn't, then it might be back on, now it isn't again, or maybe it is. Who knows? Who by the time it happens will care? If this was meant to be a revenge reshuffle, as they were so convinced, why it hasn't it turned out that way? Have they been played by Corbyn's team, or have they just believed everything they've been told or picked up as being gospel truth because they can't stop tweeting or updating the live blogs? As increasingly is the case, it's also become about them: we might have hyped this whole thing up to absurd levels, but why can't it now be over? What are we still waiting for? Then, finally, there's the we were right smugness, as displayed last night by Laura Kuenssberg: hyuk hyuk, so much for a new, honest politics, allowing for dissent and openness.
As Owen Jones points out, rightly for once, no other Labour leader has or would have tolerated the level of criticism, of near mutiny as Corbyn has the past 4 months. Michael Dugher's claims of merely responding to briefing against Benn, Eagle and others, of practising straight, honest politics is absurd, as though this has been a one-sided operation. Reading all the tributes paid to him for no longer being shadow culture secretary, you would have thought he'd died. Yes, we all know Jeremy was a inveterate rebel, and so can't expect the level of loyalty past leaders have, but he is perfectly entitled to want his shadow ministers for foreign affairs and defence to back him, if not always agree with him. As it is, he looks to have come to some sort of agreement with Benn, even if it might only delay the inevitable. No one can say that he hasn't tried to make allowances, regardless of the way it has and is being spun.
Equally, you can't pretend this is anything other than the worst possible way for Labour to start the new year. The media are determined for their part to make sure the infighting continues, not least when some are set on causing mischief for their own reasons, but complaining about it is all but pointless. Today ought to have been solely about how Cameron can't whip his cabinet into supporting him on Europe, a measure of weakness that says much about his position, the manoeuvring of those who want to take over from him, and the impact it could have on our staying in the EU, with all a Brexit would entail for our economic and national security, as the Tory messaging would have it. Both critics and supporters of Corbyn have repeatedly said it's long past time when the focus should be on the government's failings rather than Labour's own. Surely now we've reached the point where both must practice what they preach.
Labels: Jeremy Corbyn, Jess Phillips, Labour, media stupidity, politics, reshuffles, Simon Danczuk
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Thursday, December 31, 2015
Monday, December 21, 2015
Justice delayed is justice denied, but the furore over Janner was disgraceful.
Greville Janner is dead. This much we know. He died, his family say, from a long illness. But then they would, wouldn't they? The symptoms of Alzheimer's disease are fairly easy to fake; all you need do is pretend not to recognise anyone, speak incoherently or not at all, forget how to do absolutely anything for yourself, and so on. Isn't his death very convenient, just like Leon Brittan's was? Sure, they say Brittan had cancer, but how can we trust them either?
Janner might well have been guilty of all he was accused of. Equally, he might have been innocent. He should undoubtedly have faced a trial, had he not been incapacitated by dementia, as it's now it's clear he was.
Now that he has died, and speaking as someone who watched his grandmother week by week deteriorate until she finally, mercifully, took to her bed and and passed away, Alzheimer's having triumphed over her at last, it would have been at least sporting if those who doubted the diagnosis made some sort of acknowledgement of those facts. Nothing more, just accept that clearly he was ill. His alleged victims had and still have every right to want their day in court.
It does though rather put the entire controversy over whether Janner should have been charged or not in a different light. It suggests that Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, was right when she decided back in April that Janner was not fit to stand trial. It remains to be seen whether or not the trial of the facts, established after Saunders' decision was reviewed, does continue, although it's difficult to see how it will be able to. Janner wasn't able to participate, in any case, and as former DPP Ken Macdonald has said, a decision to continue would be "groundbreaking, and probably groundbreaking in an unfortunate way".
That decision to order a trial of the facts should itself now be reviewed. Whether an opinion was sought or not on how long Janner may have to live, deaths as an overall result of Alzheimer's can happen quickly, sometimes within a couple of weeks of there seemingly being no change in overall condition. Janner's alleged victims were given false hope, for the best of reasons it should be stressed, when it may have been better for Saunders' initial decision to have stood.
Saunders would have been criticised regardless of the decision she made. Such however has been the tenor of the debate around child abuse post-Savile that there were open accusations, including by newspapers, that Saunders was just the latest official to be conniving in a cover-up. The likes of Simon Danczuk MP said her position was untenable, and now comments that while it's "very sad" for Janner's relatives, it's "extremely sad" for those who had hoped for justice. If he felt any doubt over his call for Saunders' resignation over such a marginal, balanced, difficult decision, then he certainly didn't let on.
Especially unpleasant in retrospect was the stand-off between Janner's representatives and the court, with the court succeeding in its request he attend a preliminary hearing. After a year in which we've seen the most lurid of allegations made, without seemingly being any closer to the police investigations reaching the point of either charges being brought or the inquiries being dropped, despite the chief investigation officer deeming them to be "credible and true" back in 2014, the claims of conspiracies look set to run and run.
Janner might well have been guilty of all he was accused of. Equally, he might have been innocent. He should undoubtedly have faced a trial, had he not been incapacitated by dementia, as it's now it's clear he was.
Now that he has died, and speaking as someone who watched his grandmother week by week deteriorate until she finally, mercifully, took to her bed and and passed away, Alzheimer's having triumphed over her at last, it would have been at least sporting if those who doubted the diagnosis made some sort of acknowledgement of those facts. Nothing more, just accept that clearly he was ill. His alleged victims had and still have every right to want their day in court.
It does though rather put the entire controversy over whether Janner should have been charged or not in a different light. It suggests that Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, was right when she decided back in April that Janner was not fit to stand trial. It remains to be seen whether or not the trial of the facts, established after Saunders' decision was reviewed, does continue, although it's difficult to see how it will be able to. Janner wasn't able to participate, in any case, and as former DPP Ken Macdonald has said, a decision to continue would be "groundbreaking, and probably groundbreaking in an unfortunate way".
That decision to order a trial of the facts should itself now be reviewed. Whether an opinion was sought or not on how long Janner may have to live, deaths as an overall result of Alzheimer's can happen quickly, sometimes within a couple of weeks of there seemingly being no change in overall condition. Janner's alleged victims were given false hope, for the best of reasons it should be stressed, when it may have been better for Saunders' initial decision to have stood.
Saunders would have been criticised regardless of the decision she made. Such however has been the tenor of the debate around child abuse post-Savile that there were open accusations, including by newspapers, that Saunders was just the latest official to be conniving in a cover-up. The likes of Simon Danczuk MP said her position was untenable, and now comments that while it's "very sad" for Janner's relatives, it's "extremely sad" for those who had hoped for justice. If he felt any doubt over his call for Saunders' resignation over such a marginal, balanced, difficult decision, then he certainly didn't let on.
Especially unpleasant in retrospect was the stand-off between Janner's representatives and the court, with the court succeeding in its request he attend a preliminary hearing. After a year in which we've seen the most lurid of allegations made, without seemingly being any closer to the police investigations reaching the point of either charges being brought or the inquiries being dropped, despite the chief investigation officer deeming them to be "credible and true" back in 2014, the claims of conspiracies look set to run and run.
Labels: child abuse, Lord Janner, media analysis, politics, Simon Danczuk
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Wednesday, August 05, 2015
A post bound to make me even more unpopular.
There are often times when someone beats you to the punch on a particular post. Far rarer in my experience is when Dan Hodges, of all people, both beats you to it and even more amazingly, is right.
Let's be clear about this then. If the same allegations that have been made against Edward Heath, given all the more publicity by the police, practically begging anyone to invent their own story of misery at the hands not just of the faceless establishment, but at a man that reached its very zenith, had been made against a living prime minister they would have been dismissed out of hand, and rightly so. John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, raping a 12-year-old, getting a case against a brothel keeper dismissed by mere virtue of their name being mentioned in connection, being involved in a previous over-hyped abuse scandal on the island of Jersey? Pull the other one, everyone would say. The police also would have looked at the allegations, quickly realised they were nonsense, and not publicised them for that very reason. Major might have sprayed salmonella all over Edwina Currie (or rather, did), Blair could possibly have banged Carole Caplin and Wendi Deng, and Brown might have, err, committed self-abuse somewhere he shouldn't have in Westminster, but anything more than that? Cobblers.
Heath wasn't an ordinary, regular, normal prime minister though, oh no. Sailor Heath. Grocer Heath. Unmarried Heath. Weirdo Heath, basically. At the time most assumed he was closeted, a possibly self-hating gay man at a time when to be openly gay and a politician, let alone prime minister, couldn't be countenanced. Ironically, Westminster itself was far more liberal in such matters. Good old Tom Driberg was tolerated after all, Churchill quipping that he gave sodomy a bad name. Indeed, it's most odd that Driberg's name hasn't been so much as mentioned in all of the allegations about establishment paedophiles, especially considering his penchant for men on the very cusp of the age of consent, and I mean what the age of consent is now rather than the 21 it was when homosexuality was first legalised.
The general consensus now, or at least was, that Heath was asexual, which makes him even odder in our eyes. Not interested in sex at all? Who could possibly believe that in our age, when sex and gender we're told are not binary but multifaceted, when transitioning is celebrated, at least if you're famous already? It just doesn't sound, or feel right. Far easier to imagine Bachelor Heath as suppressing his real sexual desires, or rather not.
What surprises me, and surprised me from the outset of this panic, as that is certainly what it's become, is that otherwise sensible, cynical, inquiring minds appear to have been taken in by allegations that have come from highly suspect or confused, unreliable sources. Oh, but the Heath story about the brothel, that's not from a survivor of abuse who is mistaken as a result of the damage and trauma they received and went through, or just a random loon, that's from a former inspector of Wiltshire police. Only, as it's now turned out, the keeper of the brothel denies making any such claim in a bid to evade prosecution. It raises the question of just what precisely Wiltshire police did investigate for those months before they passed it on to the IPCC. Did they so much as approach Myra Forde, or was the account of someone convicted of perverting the course of justice, despite supposedly making the allegation, thought unnecessary?
History seems to be repeating, except this has gone well beyond farce. Geoffrey Dickens at least had a legitimate target in the Paedophile Information Exchange, and his exposure of Peter Hayman was backed up by facts. Our latter day Dickens', our Danczuks, our Watsons, our Manns, they don't even have that. Simon Danczuk is repeatedly credited with exposing Cyril Smith, as though Private Eye and the Rochdale Alternative Paper didn't all those years ago, only they weren't listened to. Tom Watson piggybacked off Nick Davies' work on phone hacking, and being right once does not make you right all the time. John Mann meanwhile doesn't even have those feeble credentials; he's the archetypal loudmouth rent-a-gob MP, saying whatever he thinks will get him in the Daily Mail.
None of the three had any involvement with the Lord Janner case, beyond demanding that Alison Saunders resign for making the unpopular but reasonable decision that Janner's dementia meant it was not in the public interest to prosecute. As it is, expect even the trial of the facts to not take place, as Saunders clearly thought it wouldn't, again due to perfectly reasonable legal challenges from Janner based on his condition. All these investigations launched, all these operations, all these allegations, and what so far has been found in way of evidence other than against Janner, considering it was there about Smith if only anyone had bothered to look? Very little, to precisely nothing. The police believe the account of a man we know only as "Nick" about what went on at Dolphin Square, including murders, and yet they can't find any bodies, they don't have full names, they don't have exact locations, they have very little other than a couple of decades' worth of speculation, innuendo and rumour, since filtered through the internet conspiracy machine to the point where it's almost become accepted fact.
Ever since the Met and NSPCC mutually decided in the aftermath of the Savile revelations that accounts given to the police about historic child sexual abuse, so long as those accused are dead and so can't contest the claims, should be regarded as "not unproven allegations", or as you and I would call them, facts, the slow descent into the completely ludicrous has been all but inevitable. Almost all the claims about Savile's wider access to NHS hospitals and state properties were unsubstantiated or couldn't be proved, not that you would have known that from the media coverage. The reviews that have been conducted, like the Wanless and Whittam review, with the pair not altering their conclusions based on the new documents that were found afterwards, suggest there wasn't a cover-up. Their comment on a newly found letter from 1986 between the head of MI5 and the Cabinet Secretary discussing a Conservative MP alleged to have "a penchant for small boys", something the MP denied, that it just reinforced their finding that crimes against children were given far less serious consideration than they would be now, doesn't go anywhere near far enough for those convinced there's no smoke without fire.
And to be fair to them, the MI5 archives remain relatively untapped. If there's going to be evidence that child abusers within the establishment were known about and were tolerated, as to expose them would be more embarrassing to the government of the day than a genuine security concern, it's most likely in there. Which was all the more reason why the overarching inquiry into child abuse should have been allowed to get under way as soon as possible, rather than twice delayed while Danczuk and others demanded that Theresa May find someone without any "establishment" links whatsoever. Presuming the Goddard inquiry does get such access, it will still be years before any conclusions are reached. Goddard herself said she expects the inquiry to take five years; if she goes down the same Maxwellisation route taken by the Chilcot inquiry, as was discussed at length in the Slicker column in the last Private Eye, you can probably double that time frame.
This isn't of course to argue that allegations of historic child abuse should not be investigated. They should be. What should not be happening however is that they are either treated as fact regardless of the level of implausibility involved, or that the reputations of the dead should be besmirched before anything approaching evidence has been turned up. In the space of a few days Ted Heath has been slandered in a way that would be unconscionable and unthinkable were he still alive, only for the claims to almost immediately be called into question. Any lessons that should have been learned from the cases of either Lord McAlpine or Chris Jefferies to name but two have been thrown out the window or ignored on the basis of Heath not being around to defend himself. Moreover, just as with Jefferies and McAlpine, the reporting has been driven just as much by demand, by the echo chamber of social media, so many apparently wanting to believe the absolute worst about people who look weird, are weird, or were politicians and so deserve it.
Last night, meanwhile, the BBC ran a report on the head of Greater Manchester police saying tracing missing teenagers, many of whom abscond from care homes, was becoming "unsustainable". Considering the potential for such missing youngsters to be drawn into child sexual exploitation, it seems perverse that more attention and money is lavished on chasing what might well turn out to be phantoms than protecting those who could become victims today.
Let's be clear about this then. If the same allegations that have been made against Edward Heath, given all the more publicity by the police, practically begging anyone to invent their own story of misery at the hands not just of the faceless establishment, but at a man that reached its very zenith, had been made against a living prime minister they would have been dismissed out of hand, and rightly so. John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, raping a 12-year-old, getting a case against a brothel keeper dismissed by mere virtue of their name being mentioned in connection, being involved in a previous over-hyped abuse scandal on the island of Jersey? Pull the other one, everyone would say. The police also would have looked at the allegations, quickly realised they were nonsense, and not publicised them for that very reason. Major might have sprayed salmonella all over Edwina Currie (or rather, did), Blair could possibly have banged Carole Caplin and Wendi Deng, and Brown might have, err, committed self-abuse somewhere he shouldn't have in Westminster, but anything more than that? Cobblers.
Heath wasn't an ordinary, regular, normal prime minister though, oh no. Sailor Heath. Grocer Heath. Unmarried Heath. Weirdo Heath, basically. At the time most assumed he was closeted, a possibly self-hating gay man at a time when to be openly gay and a politician, let alone prime minister, couldn't be countenanced. Ironically, Westminster itself was far more liberal in such matters. Good old Tom Driberg was tolerated after all, Churchill quipping that he gave sodomy a bad name. Indeed, it's most odd that Driberg's name hasn't been so much as mentioned in all of the allegations about establishment paedophiles, especially considering his penchant for men on the very cusp of the age of consent, and I mean what the age of consent is now rather than the 21 it was when homosexuality was first legalised.
The general consensus now, or at least was, that Heath was asexual, which makes him even odder in our eyes. Not interested in sex at all? Who could possibly believe that in our age, when sex and gender we're told are not binary but multifaceted, when transitioning is celebrated, at least if you're famous already? It just doesn't sound, or feel right. Far easier to imagine Bachelor Heath as suppressing his real sexual desires, or rather not.
What surprises me, and surprised me from the outset of this panic, as that is certainly what it's become, is that otherwise sensible, cynical, inquiring minds appear to have been taken in by allegations that have come from highly suspect or confused, unreliable sources. Oh, but the Heath story about the brothel, that's not from a survivor of abuse who is mistaken as a result of the damage and trauma they received and went through, or just a random loon, that's from a former inspector of Wiltshire police. Only, as it's now turned out, the keeper of the brothel denies making any such claim in a bid to evade prosecution. It raises the question of just what precisely Wiltshire police did investigate for those months before they passed it on to the IPCC. Did they so much as approach Myra Forde, or was the account of someone convicted of perverting the course of justice, despite supposedly making the allegation, thought unnecessary?
History seems to be repeating, except this has gone well beyond farce. Geoffrey Dickens at least had a legitimate target in the Paedophile Information Exchange, and his exposure of Peter Hayman was backed up by facts. Our latter day Dickens', our Danczuks, our Watsons, our Manns, they don't even have that. Simon Danczuk is repeatedly credited with exposing Cyril Smith, as though Private Eye and the Rochdale Alternative Paper didn't all those years ago, only they weren't listened to. Tom Watson piggybacked off Nick Davies' work on phone hacking, and being right once does not make you right all the time. John Mann meanwhile doesn't even have those feeble credentials; he's the archetypal loudmouth rent-a-gob MP, saying whatever he thinks will get him in the Daily Mail.
None of the three had any involvement with the Lord Janner case, beyond demanding that Alison Saunders resign for making the unpopular but reasonable decision that Janner's dementia meant it was not in the public interest to prosecute. As it is, expect even the trial of the facts to not take place, as Saunders clearly thought it wouldn't, again due to perfectly reasonable legal challenges from Janner based on his condition. All these investigations launched, all these operations, all these allegations, and what so far has been found in way of evidence other than against Janner, considering it was there about Smith if only anyone had bothered to look? Very little, to precisely nothing. The police believe the account of a man we know only as "Nick" about what went on at Dolphin Square, including murders, and yet they can't find any bodies, they don't have full names, they don't have exact locations, they have very little other than a couple of decades' worth of speculation, innuendo and rumour, since filtered through the internet conspiracy machine to the point where it's almost become accepted fact.
Ever since the Met and NSPCC mutually decided in the aftermath of the Savile revelations that accounts given to the police about historic child sexual abuse, so long as those accused are dead and so can't contest the claims, should be regarded as "not unproven allegations", or as you and I would call them, facts, the slow descent into the completely ludicrous has been all but inevitable. Almost all the claims about Savile's wider access to NHS hospitals and state properties were unsubstantiated or couldn't be proved, not that you would have known that from the media coverage. The reviews that have been conducted, like the Wanless and Whittam review, with the pair not altering their conclusions based on the new documents that were found afterwards, suggest there wasn't a cover-up. Their comment on a newly found letter from 1986 between the head of MI5 and the Cabinet Secretary discussing a Conservative MP alleged to have "a penchant for small boys", something the MP denied, that it just reinforced their finding that crimes against children were given far less serious consideration than they would be now, doesn't go anywhere near far enough for those convinced there's no smoke without fire.
And to be fair to them, the MI5 archives remain relatively untapped. If there's going to be evidence that child abusers within the establishment were known about and were tolerated, as to expose them would be more embarrassing to the government of the day than a genuine security concern, it's most likely in there. Which was all the more reason why the overarching inquiry into child abuse should have been allowed to get under way as soon as possible, rather than twice delayed while Danczuk and others demanded that Theresa May find someone without any "establishment" links whatsoever. Presuming the Goddard inquiry does get such access, it will still be years before any conclusions are reached. Goddard herself said she expects the inquiry to take five years; if she goes down the same Maxwellisation route taken by the Chilcot inquiry, as was discussed at length in the Slicker column in the last Private Eye, you can probably double that time frame.
This isn't of course to argue that allegations of historic child abuse should not be investigated. They should be. What should not be happening however is that they are either treated as fact regardless of the level of implausibility involved, or that the reputations of the dead should be besmirched before anything approaching evidence has been turned up. In the space of a few days Ted Heath has been slandered in a way that would be unconscionable and unthinkable were he still alive, only for the claims to almost immediately be called into question. Any lessons that should have been learned from the cases of either Lord McAlpine or Chris Jefferies to name but two have been thrown out the window or ignored on the basis of Heath not being around to defend himself. Moreover, just as with Jefferies and McAlpine, the reporting has been driven just as much by demand, by the echo chamber of social media, so many apparently wanting to believe the absolute worst about people who look weird, are weird, or were politicians and so deserve it.
Last night, meanwhile, the BBC ran a report on the head of Greater Manchester police saying tracing missing teenagers, many of whom abscond from care homes, was becoming "unsustainable". Considering the potential for such missing youngsters to be drawn into child sexual exploitation, it seems perverse that more attention and money is lavished on chasing what might well turn out to be phantoms than protecting those who could become victims today.
Labels: child abuse, child sexual exploitation, Edward Heath, Geoffrey Dickens, media analysis, moral panics, politics, Simon Danczuk, Wanless review
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Thursday, January 22, 2015
What the Dickens?
The death of former home secretary Leon Brittan has been met with dismay by campaigners for a full inquiry into historic allegations of child sexual abuse.
"Firstly, I’d like to offer my condolences to Sir Leon’s family for their personal loss," said Simon Danczuk, MP for North Salem and Lower Pendle. "I do however believe his death is just the latest example of the horrifying lengths to which the establishment is going to cover-up its role in the sickening abuse of children. It's no coincidence so many of those allegedly involved in the depravity and murders at Elm Guest House are now dead, as they would rather be in their graves than face justice or questions on what they knew and when they knew it. Brittan's death from "cancer" needs to be confirmed by post-mortem if abuse survivors are to be convinced this isn't just another convenient get-out by someone with a case to answer."
Asked if Brittan might have been able to give evidence prior to his death if the first two appointees to head the overarching inquiry hadn't been forced to step down over their own establishment status and links to the former home secretary, Danczuk was indignant. "The only person responsible for the hold up is Theresa May. Her complete incompetence, not to mention arrogance in failing to put forward a truly independent chair, someone such as myself for instance, as well as refusing to give the inquiry statutory powers demonstrates how only survivors' groups can be relied upon to get at the truth."
Any sceptics who find it strange no one saw fit to file a copy of Geoffrey Dickens' dossier on establishment paedophiles, whether it be Dickens himself, his allies or the newspapers that reported on the allegations are clearly in league with those involved in the cover-up, and will probably die of "cancer" like Brittan before they can be held accountable.
"Firstly, I’d like to offer my condolences to Sir Leon’s family for their personal loss," said Simon Danczuk, MP for North Salem and Lower Pendle. "I do however believe his death is just the latest example of the horrifying lengths to which the establishment is going to cover-up its role in the sickening abuse of children. It's no coincidence so many of those allegedly involved in the depravity and murders at Elm Guest House are now dead, as they would rather be in their graves than face justice or questions on what they knew and when they knew it. Brittan's death from "cancer" needs to be confirmed by post-mortem if abuse survivors are to be convinced this isn't just another convenient get-out by someone with a case to answer."
Asked if Brittan might have been able to give evidence prior to his death if the first two appointees to head the overarching inquiry hadn't been forced to step down over their own establishment status and links to the former home secretary, Danczuk was indignant. "The only person responsible for the hold up is Theresa May. Her complete incompetence, not to mention arrogance in failing to put forward a truly independent chair, someone such as myself for instance, as well as refusing to give the inquiry statutory powers demonstrates how only survivors' groups can be relied upon to get at the truth."
Any sceptics who find it strange no one saw fit to file a copy of Geoffrey Dickens' dossier on establishment paedophiles, whether it be Dickens himself, his allies or the newspapers that reported on the allegations are clearly in league with those involved in the cover-up, and will probably die of "cancer" like Brittan before they can be held accountable.
Labels: Geoffrey Dickens, mockery, Simon Danczuk
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Wednesday, November 12, 2014
There isn't a whitewash at the Home Office.
Not proven. Such was the verdict given by Theresa May yesterday on the allegation there was a Home Office cover-up after Geoffrey Dickens MP sent his now famed dossier on establishment paedophiles to then home secretary Leon Brittan for his perusal. She couldn't say categorically there hadn't been a conspiracy, as the review she commissioned by NSPCC head Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam QC also couldn't be certain there wasn't, as all but one of the 114 documents found to be missing, presumed destroyed remain unaccounted for. They also however found nothing to suggest there had been an concerted effort to remove evidence; the majority were likely shredded in line with the 2 year retention policy the Home Office had at the time.
Had this been a report into nearly any other aspect of policy or alleged wrongdoing by government, the minister would have ignored its inconclusive findings and claimed it proved nothing untoward had gone on. Nor could you particularly blame them for doing so: for a report that decides to hedge its bets in its conclusions, the evidence fairly speaks for itself. Wanless and Whittam, despite what critics have suggested since, did not feel constrained by the somewhat restrictive terms of reference they were given (paragraph 12, page 5 of the report), and so went beyond the Home Office to see if they could find anything related, including asking MI5 to delve into their archives. They failed to discover anything either.
The report makes clear this wasn't a half-arsed quick look behind filing cabinets and inside previously locked cupboards. 777 storage units were checked (para 2, page 13), and nothing that shouldn't have been in them was found, with all the physical holdings of various branches of the Home Office searched. In addition, the CPS, Department of Health, Department of Education, Department for Communities and Local Government, the Attorney General's office, HMRC and the Cabinet Office were all asked to see if they had anything that could be related to the missing files or of relevance to the inquiry, and none did. One new discovery was the Ministry of Justice, split off from the Home Office by the last government, found it had destroyed one of the lost files as late as two years ago (para 38, page 24).
One other highly significant document that was found by the Home Office following the publication of the first inquiry poses as many questions as it answers. Not located initially due to its title failing to suggest it contained anything relating to child sexual exploitation (para 3, page 13), it records details of a meeting between Dickens and Brittan in November 1983, a couple of months after an attack on a child in Brighton made front page news. Dickens gave Brittan two letters containing allegations, and sent a further letter in January 1984, thanking Brittan for his "splendid support" along with more cases for investigation. Brittan sent a reply in March the same year outlining the progress made, with the DPP having decided two of the cases should be the subject of further inquiries by the police. Wanless and Whittam note that contrary to contemporary media coverage of these meetings, there is no mention of "prominent politicians or celebrities" in the cases under discussion (para 9, page 14).
Could it possibly be that Dickens' dossier, which might in fact be nothing more than a slab of letters if it has any relation to the attachments sent to Brittan in January 1984, didn't in fact name the establishment figures it was claimed in the media? We know Dickens was one of the first MPs to go out of his way in courting the press, and it wouldn't surprise if there was some mutual exaggeration going on for additional effect. It would explain why Dickens didn't so much as mention or ask whether progress was being made on these high profile individuals, and also why contrary to the media coverage of their meetings no further cases involving VIPs were presented. That Brittan was also more than cooperative rather casts doubt on the point of hounding two successive heads from the overarching inquiry into child abuse due to their links to him; Brittan may well have been treated unfairly.
Indeed, as Wanless and Whittam note, of the missing files not assumed destroyed at the end of the standard 2 year retention period, most seem to have vanished this century (para 2, page 34), well after the point at which most of those employed at the Home Office will have moved on. Why someone at this remove would feel the need to "protect" the Home Office isn't clear. Nor are these 114 files a trove of exposes. Annex I of the report (PDF) details what is known about them, and 67 are letters from MPs, while the rest are mostly on paedophiles or paedophilia in general. Some do relate to the Paedophile Information Exchange and discussions on whether it should be outlawed, with the report in its second part considering whether PIE was funded either directly or indirectly by the Home Office. With no files again being found to support the evidence of Tim Hulbert, who believes £30,000 was paid to PIE via the Voluntary Services Unit, possibly to assist Special Branch with infiltrating or monitoring the group, Wanless and Whittam can only conclude there is nothing else to back the claim up.
It is, as the report concludes, "very difficult to prove anything definitive based on imperfectly operated paper records system at 30 years remove". This suits those who are convinced something has to be there just fine, as they can point to omissions in the search process and carry on regarding 30-year-old media reports and the works of not taken seriously by almost anyone for good reason MPs as gospel. It also means those like me who are sceptical at best about the idea of an establishment cover-up when the establishment is terrible at cover-ups can say there's better things those worried could be doing than looking for something that probably isn't there. Like how the raids on Tor last week targeted not the real source of depravity on the dark net, the paedophile forums, but instead some of the drug markets and Doxbin (which is already back online). The most sexually exploitative site seized was the Pink Meth, a "revenge porn" onion. We also have vigilantes targeting those of very little brain, prompting Jim Gamble to suggest we should have police officers sitting in stations entrapping potential abusers on social media, something guaranteed not to result in injustice or abuses of power.
Obvious is that the child abuse inquiry needs a new chairman, and quickly. When the likes of Simon Danczuk refuse to accept the findings of a report by the head of the NSPCC though, it's difficult to know just who will be acceptable.
Had this been a report into nearly any other aspect of policy or alleged wrongdoing by government, the minister would have ignored its inconclusive findings and claimed it proved nothing untoward had gone on. Nor could you particularly blame them for doing so: for a report that decides to hedge its bets in its conclusions, the evidence fairly speaks for itself. Wanless and Whittam, despite what critics have suggested since, did not feel constrained by the somewhat restrictive terms of reference they were given (paragraph 12, page 5 of the report), and so went beyond the Home Office to see if they could find anything related, including asking MI5 to delve into their archives. They failed to discover anything either.
The report makes clear this wasn't a half-arsed quick look behind filing cabinets and inside previously locked cupboards. 777 storage units were checked (para 2, page 13), and nothing that shouldn't have been in them was found, with all the physical holdings of various branches of the Home Office searched. In addition, the CPS, Department of Health, Department of Education, Department for Communities and Local Government, the Attorney General's office, HMRC and the Cabinet Office were all asked to see if they had anything that could be related to the missing files or of relevance to the inquiry, and none did. One new discovery was the Ministry of Justice, split off from the Home Office by the last government, found it had destroyed one of the lost files as late as two years ago (para 38, page 24).
One other highly significant document that was found by the Home Office following the publication of the first inquiry poses as many questions as it answers. Not located initially due to its title failing to suggest it contained anything relating to child sexual exploitation (para 3, page 13), it records details of a meeting between Dickens and Brittan in November 1983, a couple of months after an attack on a child in Brighton made front page news. Dickens gave Brittan two letters containing allegations, and sent a further letter in January 1984, thanking Brittan for his "splendid support" along with more cases for investigation. Brittan sent a reply in March the same year outlining the progress made, with the DPP having decided two of the cases should be the subject of further inquiries by the police. Wanless and Whittam note that contrary to contemporary media coverage of these meetings, there is no mention of "prominent politicians or celebrities" in the cases under discussion (para 9, page 14).
Could it possibly be that Dickens' dossier, which might in fact be nothing more than a slab of letters if it has any relation to the attachments sent to Brittan in January 1984, didn't in fact name the establishment figures it was claimed in the media? We know Dickens was one of the first MPs to go out of his way in courting the press, and it wouldn't surprise if there was some mutual exaggeration going on for additional effect. It would explain why Dickens didn't so much as mention or ask whether progress was being made on these high profile individuals, and also why contrary to the media coverage of their meetings no further cases involving VIPs were presented. That Brittan was also more than cooperative rather casts doubt on the point of hounding two successive heads from the overarching inquiry into child abuse due to their links to him; Brittan may well have been treated unfairly.
Indeed, as Wanless and Whittam note, of the missing files not assumed destroyed at the end of the standard 2 year retention period, most seem to have vanished this century (para 2, page 34), well after the point at which most of those employed at the Home Office will have moved on. Why someone at this remove would feel the need to "protect" the Home Office isn't clear. Nor are these 114 files a trove of exposes. Annex I of the report (PDF) details what is known about them, and 67 are letters from MPs, while the rest are mostly on paedophiles or paedophilia in general. Some do relate to the Paedophile Information Exchange and discussions on whether it should be outlawed, with the report in its second part considering whether PIE was funded either directly or indirectly by the Home Office. With no files again being found to support the evidence of Tim Hulbert, who believes £30,000 was paid to PIE via the Voluntary Services Unit, possibly to assist Special Branch with infiltrating or monitoring the group, Wanless and Whittam can only conclude there is nothing else to back the claim up.
It is, as the report concludes, "very difficult to prove anything definitive based on imperfectly operated paper records system at 30 years remove". This suits those who are convinced something has to be there just fine, as they can point to omissions in the search process and carry on regarding 30-year-old media reports and the works of not taken seriously by almost anyone for good reason MPs as gospel. It also means those like me who are sceptical at best about the idea of an establishment cover-up when the establishment is terrible at cover-ups can say there's better things those worried could be doing than looking for something that probably isn't there. Like how the raids on Tor last week targeted not the real source of depravity on the dark net, the paedophile forums, but instead some of the drug markets and Doxbin (which is already back online). The most sexually exploitative site seized was the Pink Meth, a "revenge porn" onion. We also have vigilantes targeting those of very little brain, prompting Jim Gamble to suggest we should have police officers sitting in stations entrapping potential abusers on social media, something guaranteed not to result in injustice or abuses of power.
Obvious is that the child abuse inquiry needs a new chairman, and quickly. When the likes of Simon Danczuk refuse to accept the findings of a report by the head of the NSPCC though, it's difficult to know just who will be acceptable.
Labels: child abuse, child sexual exploitation, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Geoffrey Dickens, politics, Simon Danczuk, Wanless review
| Permalink
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
So damn easy to cave in.
Pressure is once again growing on ministers over their latest choice of candidate to lead the inquiry into historic child sexual abuse.
It had been thought all sides would unite around the appointment of the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, known for his long record in uncovering paedophiles, including in cases where there was no record of the guilty so much as having contact with a child. "He's completely unbiased," said a ministerial source. "Every single person he has accused has been found guilty, as proved by their failure to pass ordeal by water. You can't get more unbiased than that."
Campaigners have since discovered however that Mr Pursuivant is a 10th cousin, thrice removed of Lord Brittan, bringing his objectivity into question. The Witchsmeller denies ever meeting Lord Brittan, but admits he cannot guarantee having never been within 10 miles of the former Conservative home secretary, the latest stipulation asked for by MPs and lawyers.
Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, was scathing of the choice of Mr Pursuivant. "How many more times does this government intend to choose establishment figures who are unable to prove they are sufficiently removed from Lord Brittan? That he can't account for every single one of his movements over the course of the past 45 years simply isn't acceptable. I don't know what world these people inhabit but where I come from you know if you're within 10 miles of a lizard in human skin. You can smell them for a start."
Asked who he would like to chair the inquiry, Danczuk had the answer. "There is only one man for the job. I realise Geoffrey Dickens has been dead for 19 years, but that doesn't mean he can't be channelled by a medium, one suitably removed from Leon Brittan, obviously. His spirit would also be able to answer questions over the contents of his dossier as no one else could. The fact he was vehemently opposed to the occult poses a problem, I'll admit, but it shouldn't be insurmountable. I'm sure he'll understand."
Should Pursuivant be forced to stand down, he will join Lady Butler-Sloss, Fiona Woolf, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Will.i.am, Jeremy Irons, Sara Payne and Chris Hansen, all of whom have been appointed only to then resign.
In other news:
Ched Evans speaks - "It wasn't rape, just a light sexual assault, and I apologise for my infidelity"
Meghan Trainor withdraws All About That Bass from sale, apologises for pretending to be African-American
Man kills everything
It had been thought all sides would unite around the appointment of the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, known for his long record in uncovering paedophiles, including in cases where there was no record of the guilty so much as having contact with a child. "He's completely unbiased," said a ministerial source. "Every single person he has accused has been found guilty, as proved by their failure to pass ordeal by water. You can't get more unbiased than that."
Campaigners have since discovered however that Mr Pursuivant is a 10th cousin, thrice removed of Lord Brittan, bringing his objectivity into question. The Witchsmeller denies ever meeting Lord Brittan, but admits he cannot guarantee having never been within 10 miles of the former Conservative home secretary, the latest stipulation asked for by MPs and lawyers.
Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, was scathing of the choice of Mr Pursuivant. "How many more times does this government intend to choose establishment figures who are unable to prove they are sufficiently removed from Lord Brittan? That he can't account for every single one of his movements over the course of the past 45 years simply isn't acceptable. I don't know what world these people inhabit but where I come from you know if you're within 10 miles of a lizard in human skin. You can smell them for a start."
Asked who he would like to chair the inquiry, Danczuk had the answer. "There is only one man for the job. I realise Geoffrey Dickens has been dead for 19 years, but that doesn't mean he can't be channelled by a medium, one suitably removed from Leon Brittan, obviously. His spirit would also be able to answer questions over the contents of his dossier as no one else could. The fact he was vehemently opposed to the occult poses a problem, I'll admit, but it shouldn't be insurmountable. I'm sure he'll understand."
Should Pursuivant be forced to stand down, he will join Lady Butler-Sloss, Fiona Woolf, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Will.i.am, Jeremy Irons, Sara Payne and Chris Hansen, all of whom have been appointed only to then resign.
In other news:
Ched Evans speaks - "It wasn't rape, just a light sexual assault, and I apologise for my infidelity"
Meghan Trainor withdraws All About That Bass from sale, apologises for pretending to be African-American
Man kills everything
Labels: Geoffrey Dickens, mockery, moral panics, Simon Danczuk
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